by Oliver Atlas
Damon, Milly’s jilted ex.
The other familiar voice only laughs. “No, my boy. Sir Gavalier is right. It’s one thing to be outraged over morning pastries in coffee shops. It’s another thing to do anything about that outrage when it’s out of biking distance. That’s what Portland is for: quarantining insurrection, keeping defiance demarcated. Milly Ruse is right where we want her. Sooner or later, she may draw Malcolm out of hiding. If she does, we take them both. If not—if she becomes too much trouble—well . . . ”
“But she’s different,” insists Damon. “She’s smart . . . she’s dangerous.”
“This from the man charged with keeping her in hand,” observes a sultry, accented woman’s voice.
“That failure is on me,” says the jovial man. “I assigned Damon to her, even though I knew he’d had feelings for her before his time with us. The pretext for trust seemed worth the risks. Besides, I gave her some of the Uni-O as a tracker. She knew what it was worth. Who could imagine she would have let it go?”
Maplenut. Now it hits me. The voice belongs to Mayor Hinton Maplenut.
“Fair enough,” says the woman. “But what about these two ruffians who’ve been helping her?”
“Harmless,” replies the man called Sir Gavalier. “The one is a mercenary. The other is a nobody. The one knows nothing. The other knows less than nothing. They’re puppets. I’ve dispatched Vandercain to deal with them.”
“That should suffice.” The woman’s voice pricks up into curiosity. “And what about South? Any word?”
“He is still keeping eye on the Order. So far nothing out of the ordinary,” reports Sir Gavalier. “He does suspect they hold their cabals in a nearby bookshop frequented by the priest.”
“Fine,” says the woman. “As of tonight, there’s no longer any need for patience. I motion that we send South to take the priest. Let’s see what this theologizer knows before we take the bookshop. And please, someone remind that dog of ours to be more discreet.”
Maplenut seconds and Gavalier intones, “Hear, hear.”
Pastor Jon grabs my sleeve and tugs me forward. For fifty feet we move without a sound, but then his insistence on silence disappears and we shuffle into the dimness with comic hurry. He leads us one way, then another, straight for long stretches, and then back to guessing zigzags. Three times he almost teeters into the unseen river beside us, but I haul him back to balance. I’m beginning to think he’s gone mad until, at last, I hear his hand knocking against hollow metal. He keeps to a staccato rhythm. It must be some sort of code.
After an uncomfortably long and loud thirty seconds, the door opens. Even though the light from behind is faint, I find myself squinting. A slender silhouette steps forward and ushers us out of the sewers, before hurriedly latching the door again.
Chapter Fifty-Two
What You’ll Do With What You Know
“Yaverts made it, Jon,” says the woman, brushing past us and loping down the hallway. “He just made it out of the chapel. I saw what happened to your ear. Let’s get you a bandage.”
“Clara,” says Jon, gesturing to me even though the woman’s not looking. “Meet Mr. Blake Prose.”
Clara’s large eyes flick back at me. Her face is childlike, delicate, pale. “Glad to have you, Mr. Prose.” She turns from the dim hallway and we follow her into a crammed twenty-by-twenty bunker full of monitors crawling with surveillance scenes from the city, computer servers humming and twittering, and a wall lined with conspicuously neon-lit, futuristic weapons.
“Okay,” I say, startled by the sheer concentration of so much illegal high technology. “Who are you guys?”
“Have a seat, Mr. Prose,” says Clara, handing Jon a first-aid kit before settling in behind a computer. She begins typing and clicking and scowling.
Wincing, Pastor Jon swabs his tattered ear with alcohol and covers it with a bandage. He wipes his hands on his pants and heads to the weapons wall, where he purses his lips in decision. “We don’t have much time, Clara. We passed under the Pantheon and overheard some of the Council. They’ll be coming soon. South will be coming.”
“Yes. I’ve been watching. They’re already on their way. That’s why I’m wiping everything. I’ve already sealed the stairs.”
Jon sets aside a blue, cone-nosed ray gun. “But what about Yaverts? How will he reach us?”
“He won’t. We have to reach him.”
“What do you mean?” Jon opens a duffle and throws in a short, fat, cylindric cannon.
“He’s already en route.”
“En route? You mean—”
“Does he know?” Clara’s owlish eyes leave her screen long enough to make me feel like a worm. It’s clear that by he she means me.
“No,” says Jon. “Not yet. But Yaverts gave him a letter. He said to open it if he hadn’t caught up within an hour.”
Frowning, Clara takes a screwdriver and begins unhousing the computers around her. “The timeline has changed. It’s time for him to read the letter.”
“Really?” Pastor Jon looks alarmed. “But Yaverts is alive. He doesn’t need Blake to take his place anymore.”
“Fine. He doesn’t need Blake to take his place. But he needs Blake’s help. That’s if he’s right that Blake can be trusted.” Clara takes a pump gun and begins applying a brackish red ointment to the computer panels. Faint tendrils leap up with a hiss, filling the room with acrid fumes. “Rickard didn’t know the Faction had decided to move. They’ve been biding their time, happy to play cat and mouse. But no longer. I don’t know why. Something has changed. Something has made them bolder.” She looks at me once more. “The letter, Blake.”
The letter. Hesitantly, I pull it out of my jacket.
“Understand,” says Pastor Jon, spreading his hands wide before me, “if you open it, you may learn things that can’t be unlearned. You’ll be committed.”
I hold the envelope as though a ticking bomb. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Open the letter,” commands Clara.
“I can’t commit to something I don’t know anything about.”
“That’s why you must open it,” she insists. “This is about knowledge first, commitment second. Your only choice now is whether or not to stay ignorant. The only choice you’ll have once you open it is what you’ll do with what you know.”
Pastor Jon sets down his bag of guns and starts pacing.
“Think about it like the gospel,” he says, winning an immediate groan from Clara. “Once you hear it, you have to ask if it’s true. If you can’t believe it, fine. But if you do believe it, it changes everything, whether you like it or not. Once you open that letter, you’ll suddenly have a choice you might wish you didn’t. Because some choices leave us with no choice.”
“Enough preaching,” snaps Clara, finishing the last of her computer wipes. She fastens me with her piercing gaze. “We’ve got to go. Are you coming with or not? Do you want into the story or to go on your own way?”
I sigh. Metaphorically speaking, I’ve been opening these kinds of letters ever since I arrived in Oregon. So—oh well. What’s one more? I take the Bowie knife from my ankle and slit open the envelope. Inside is a single piece of paper with a few notes in pencil. It says:
* * *
name zoe now - ms
* * *
A fit of dark laughter seizes me. “’Name Zoe now’? Yeah. That sure leaves no gray for my conscience. Now I’m really committed. Now I know all your secrets!”
Clara glares at me with such heat I suddenly feel a bit ashamed without knowing why. “Yes, you are committed. Because now that you’ve opened the letter, I’m going to tell you what it means. The ms in that note isn’t an abbreviation for manuscript or Miss. Those are initials.”
“Malcolm Schlozfield?”
“Correct.”
“But who is Zoe?”
“One secret at a time.” Clara crosses to the gun wall and takes down a long-barreled pistol. “All you need to know is that Zo
e matters more than anything, and we’re going to get her.”
“The Cure,” I mumble, starting to work things out in my head. “Malcolm Schlozfield is so dangerous because he’s got a chance of finding it. If Zoe means everything—”
A buzzing alarm sounds from the staircase at the room’s far corner. Clara checks the last operative computer screen.
“They’re here. We’ve got to go.”
In a rush, we grab our things.
This time we pass through the sewers loaded down with strange weapons and aided by faint blue glow sticks. I can now spot the giant rats scurrying ahead of us, the lightning black scuttles of skull-sized bugs. For some reason it’s comforting to know that even in a utopia like Bentlam, stuff still stinks. Although . . . after the stinging smoke of burning electrical circuits, the sewers’ brown bleghk is almost welcome.
We’ve tracked under the city for about a mile when we arrive at a broad staircase. It takes us up to service tunnels lined with railcar tracks. From there, Clara leads us at a run, up one tunnel and down another. They’re all lined with dozens of evenly spaced metal service doors. We run for what seems like hours, constantly checking our trail, until Clara suddenly stops at one of the doors and wipes grime away from the placard near its handle.
OEO – 15
“This is it,” she announces, sitting down on the tracks. “Now we wait.”
I glance along the dark tunnel. “Wait for what?”
“For Yaverts to open the door.”
Waiting in the open on service tracks makes me nervous, to say the least. It’s probably too late by now for anyone to be sending food or laundry, but all the same, after the fiasco on the road into Bentlam, I’ve had my fill of anything train. And then there’s the little matter of East, Maplenut, and company wanting to eliminate us for some as-of-yet-foggy, albeit clearly nefarious reasons. It’s so easy to imagine Vandercain strutting around the corner of the nearest tunnel at any second, lips cocked in a sadistic grin, an army of dark figures at his back.
I watch and watch, pace and pace. The hours begin to blur. Finally, I sit down beside Pastor Jon.
“So Yaverts was the other guest you mentioned,” I say, thinking back to when I asked about lodging at the church. “I can’t believe you two work together.”
Jon’s resting eyes shoot open. “Me neither! When they first tried recruiting me for our little cabal, I couldn’t imagine what use I would be. I don’t believe in violence. I can’t tell a lie if my life depends on it. About all I’m good for in the world is thinking about the Bible. And I’m not even very good at that! I’m about the last person you’d want on a team meant to—”
“Keep your voice down, Jon.”
“See?” he says, full of good humor despite the dark and danger. “Anyway, one day when I still lived in Portland, Yaverts came to see me at my office. I worked at a church there, too. He pointed out that I was honest enough and crazy enough to really want to help those in need. He asked me if I knew what those two qualities were worth these days. I shrugged, a little nervous about where the conversation might be headed. Anyway, Yaverts went on that he’d always hated religious folk for being such hypocrites. He despised us. Resented us. Scorned us. But lately he’d started rethinking all that. He said he used to wish that we’d all disappear—through rapture or recanting or bad juice—he swore he didn’t care how. But one day he changed his mind. He came to believe it was too bad there were so few of us left.”
“Why did he say that?” I wonder aloud.
Jon’s finger dings an invisible bell, as though my question has won a prize. “Exactly. Why would he say it? I was blown away. Yaverts and I had already talked a few times, and this was a completely new angle. I asked him what he meant and he said something like this . . . ” Pastor Jon pauses and screws up his face into what must be his best Yaverts impersonation. “’I’ve been stupid,” he continues in an affected grumble. “I mean, most of you aren’t devious. You’re just well-meaning folk who are either dumb enough or crazy enough to tie yourselves to impossible standards. And instead of mocking you for your failures, I should be kicking your asses into being who you ought to be. I may not believe what you do, but I believe if a tenth of you people could live up to half of your best ideals, the world would be a hundred times better off.’”
Pastor Jon shrugs. “So that’s how Yaverts won me over. As strange an alliance as it’s been, he’s managed to point me to God. And that’s pretty cool. Because I figure in order to do that you have to be looking in God’s direction yourself. Makes my job of sharing the gospel a lot easier. Plus, it’s amazing how much better Yaverts is at pointing out my hypocrisy than other Christians. Not that there are any left. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but I find that my fellow believers tend to get pretty confused about the difference between living holy lives and acting holier-than-thou.”
“Jon,” I say, distracted by other thoughts. “Who is Zoe?”
He glances to Clara, who shrugs. “Well,” he continues, clearly uncertain how much to say. “What do you already know about her?”
I think for a second. “That she needs a name.”
“All right,” says Jon, nodding. “Ask yourself: ‘Who needs a name?’”
It’s an absurd question. Still, I think about it. A little alarm in my head says that I have an answer, but I’m not sure what it is. Suddenly I’m sitting beside Jenny on the train again, watching the dead limping west, trying to catch a glimpse of Milly across the aisle. And then we’re getting off the train and I hear Yaverts make a jibe about . . .
“The Nameless One.” The title falls from my mouth.
The light of the tunnel is faint, but I can see Pastor Jon well enough to know that I’m right. I can see well enough to know that whoever or whatever the Nameless One is, the thought of it pains this quirky preacher to the bone.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The Nameless One
When the service door finally slides upwards, I expect to find Yaverts reeking of iron and gunpowder, his beard dark with sweat, his sleeves dark with blood. From all I’ve gathered, we’re about to storm a fortress and Yaverts has had to pry open the back door. But instead of a bedraggled warrior barking terse commands through ragged breaths, Yaverts steps into the tunnel with a simper.
“Well hello, friends.”
He is groomed to perfection in a dapper gray suit with copper cufflinks, his golden hair slicked back, his beard combed nobly straight. I blink. I don’t know what to say. My sewer-singed nose twitches. “Are you wearing cologne?”
His eyes narrow wolfishly. “It’s rosewater, Mr. Prose. Here,” he thrusts something toward me. “Put this on.”
A suit. Dark blue. I can’t remember the last time I had to don one. I can’t imagine why I’m about to don one now. But Yaverts insists, so Clara kindly turns away while I trade my normal gear for formal attire. When I’m done, Yaverts sculpts my hair with a bit of gel, spritzes me with rosewater, and helps me tie a charcoal necktie. One of my eyebrows can’t help arching at the oddness of the moment. Yaverts catches the look and pats my cheek. “Not a word, pretty boy.”
Deflecting our questions with the wave of a meaty hand, he begins issuing orders. Jon—back into the tunnels to find a handcart. Clara—stay put and keep watch. Me—grab the AbraCannon and follow. Clara fishes through Jon’s duffle and hands me the short cannon. She catches my skeptical eye.
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t kill things.”
“At least not directly,” adds Yaverts, taking the slender cone-headed ray gun and holstering it inside his sports coat. He eyes my cumbersome weapon with what might almost be sympathy. “Better wrap your jacket over it and tuck it under your arm.”
Before I can ask why in the world I have to carry the fat gun and what in the world we’re doing in the first place, Yaverts is hauling me through the door into the soft white light of a large, empty, industrial kitchen.
“This is it, Blake. This is what we’ve been looking for.”
He plops a mint into his mouth and sneers. “They hid the answer in plain sight all this time.”
I can’t help cringing. I can’t help wondering why he isn’t whispering. Is he beyond caring? Is he ready to tempt fate and invite a blood bath? If the Nameless One is really nearby and has anything at all to do with Schlozfield and the Cure, I’m sure the place must be swarming with guards. But as we leave the kitchen for a service hallway, I become even more confused.
“Is this a museum?”
Yaverts chuckles. “More like a mausoleum. Bentlam’s Grand House of Fine Art. But shit. Can you believe it? All these years . . . those stupid rumors. It was hidden in plain sight.”
Paintings line the hallways, large watercolors with placards beneath, and well-dressed Bentlamites clustered about admiring them. It seems early—or late—to be perusing art, but Bentlam is the strangest of cities.
“What’s hidden?” I ask under my breath. “Yaverts, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. I don’t have a clue what’s going on.”
The big man only chuckles more deeply. ‘I know’ is what he’s saying. ‘I know what’s going on, and I think it’s hilarious that you don’t.’ This must be another occasion of Yaverts deciding to tap into that fuzzy, apparently amusing line that relationships of necessity usually make possible. Do I trust him? Yes. No. Sometimes. Maybe. Apparently, I trust him enough to be raiding Bentlam’s Art Museum in search of the Nameless One.
The problem, really, is that I trust him more than my other options. Yaverts may be a coarse, savage, cutthroat, but at least I know he believes in something, and for all I can gather that something is the Cure. In a strange way—in however loose and surprising a way—that unites us. We’re both at least chasing after restoration. We’ve been woven into the same story.
We pass through the crowded hallway and up a sweeping staircase into a vast sunlit hall filled with giant frescoes, alabaster sculptures, and a surprising number of soft-voiced patrons. Great beams of yellow morning light cut through the eastern windows to crisscross the building’s mighty marble columns. The art stands on tall marble displays, shining in the sun, most of it portraying classical heroes in romanesque largess, demigods hurling lightning, or nubile temptresses firing serpents from bows, or medieval quests, bright with chivalric crests and colors, sparkling with swords and armor.
