I walked down the stairs on stiff legs. The pain in my chest was a searing flare. I’m going to die down here, I thought. I approached the thing on the stage. Wilson hung back, his attention caught by the collected detritus of the pit. He looked at me nervously.
“I don’t think we should be here, Jacob,” he hissed. “I think this is the kind of place the Tombs would kill you for seeing.”
“Tried once, already.” I paused at the edge of the stage, my hand on my heart. “What’s the harm?”
“There’s always harm,” Wilson said. He crept up behind me. “What is it?”
It was a face, iron, huge. It reclined on the ruined wood of the stage, eyes closed, fat cheeks and lips relaxed. It looked like a giant, sleeping. My hand was on the chin. Cables spilled out from all sides, twitching with power and hydraulic currents. I stepped back.
The eyes opened, slowly. Behind the lids were eyes of glass, windows into a tank of green liquid. A body floated there, bloated and ancient, the flesh pale, cables making a ruin of the flesh.
“Patron Tomb,” I said.
Chapter Eight
“You are the Burn child.” The voice came out of a box, near my feet. Each word sounded like the final exhalation of an old man, dying of wasted lungs.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes.” The Patron had signed over his family’s Writ of Name generations ago, to be enacted on his death. He lived on, here, always dying but never gone. “Angela speaks of you. Who is your companion?”
“This is Wilson, a friend.”
“He is anansi,” Tomb groaned.
“Yes,” Wilson said. He sounded nervous.
“Wilson, of the anansi. We have met before.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” Wilson said.
Tomb was quiet for a minute, the body in his eyes drifting slowly around the cold liquid of his chamber.
“Of course I am. Pardon an old man.” His machinery rumbled. “Burn, you are close to Angela? A friend?”
“She and I were friends, when we were younger.”
“And now?” The mausoleum’s voice was slow, each word weighted with time and patience.
“I couldn’t say. Times have been strange.”
“Times have always been strange, child Burn. Time in Veridon is a graceless thing, lurching through the city, leaving ruin and promise equal in its wake. And even its promises are ruinous.”
“Yes, well.” I held down a cough, cringed at the bright crimson pain that arced through my ribs. “This is the sort of strange where she shot me. It’s hard to get past that, childhood friends or not.”
The Tomb was silent for a moment. “When next you are offered the opportunity to die, child Burn, I would consider it more closely.”
“You threaten well,” I said, shifting away from the Patron, “for a body in a tank.”
“I don’t make threats.” He was silent for many long, metallic breaths. “It was advice, from someone who has gone on ahead.”
I waited in the silence, in the dark heart of the strange theater, listening to this living Tomb breath and remember.
“What’s going on, upstairs?” I asked. I had heard stories of how the Patron lived throughout the house, like a pilot on his ship.
“You said yourself, child.” The body behind the eyes seemed to shift. “Strange times.”
When he didn’t go on, I prompted. “Is it the Church? Are they moving against the Council, trying to leverage the Families apart so they can take over?”
He made a harsh noise, something that might have been laughter.
“The Church will never upset the balance. They are the balance. They are the power! No. This is the business of dead men. Their choices come back to tempt us.”
“If not the Church, then who? Someone in the Council?”
Another long silence. Sounds of fighting drifted down through pipes and duct ways, distant and tiny in this crowded room.
“I remember your grandfather,” he said. “Or his father. It’s hard to keep track. We built this lovely city, out here on the edge of the world. Built it on the bones of old gods, among mysteries and wonders.” The voicebox rumbled. “I wasn’t a Tomb then, either. Walking, that’s the name I was born with.”
“Yes, Patron. I know the histories. But what’s happening to your city now?” Would the old man know anything about his Family’s plans, or was his time spent in addled nostalgia?
“Now?” The face seemed to settle, as though it was drifting into sleep. “There is a great deal of desperation, Alexander. The girl has gotten involved in more than she can handle. You shouldn’t have asked it of her.”
“What?” I asked. I exchanged a quick look with Wilson. He shrugged. Tomb had forgotten which Burn I was. He mistook me for my father. “What shouldn’t I have asked of your Angela?”
“Do you keep things even from yourself? A bad habit, Alexander. This plan of yours has become too much.”
“I believed she could do it.” How to uncover the plan without tipping off the source. “But she has failed me, hasn’t she?”
“Your son, he’s the failure. He’s the damn weak link, Burn. You trusted him with too much. Don’t blame my Family for your wastrel’s dim headedness.”
“Listen, you fat shit! Jacob’s business is his own. He doesn’t want to be involved in your goddamn power games. Leave him out of it.”
The Tomb tensed, then seemed to settle, again with that sound that passed for laughter.
“Perhaps he thinks himself more clever than the old man. Perhaps he thinks himself too clever by far.” A long sigh. “Don’t play those games with your elders, Jacob Burn. It’s beneath you.”
“What did my father ask of you, of your family? I’m tired of being jerked around, Patron Tomb. I’ve given enough to this city.” I snarled and poked my finger at his metal chin. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“You threaten the dead, child. With what? Disrespect? Violence?” The body shifted behind the green eyes, the puffy face floating near the glass. “Do not think to threaten us.”
“There is more in the world than you, old man.” I tapped my foot against the metal tubes that fed his body. “What good is the Patron if his Family is gone? What will you be if the Family Tomb is no longer respected in Veridon?”
Long silence, metal breath. “He shouldn’t have asked it of her,” he said, crossly, the anger coming through the voicebox as a sharp hiss. “She didn’t grasp the whole picture. I advised against it.”
“What, exactly, did you advise against, Patron?”
“Why are you here, Jacob Burn? What brings you into my house, to disturb my rest? Alexander didn’t send you. Ask yourself why, Jacob. And why, if he hasn’t let you in on the secret, why should I?”
“I didn’t come to see you, old man.” The pain flared in my chest again. I was feeling better, I realized. I was feeling almost normal again. “I’m here on my own business.”
“But not Family business. No, you don’t stand for the Family Burn, do you? Are you here as a representative of your new family? What is that wind-up thug’s name. Valentine?”
“I am acting on my own, Patron. I stand for myself.”
“Noble words. But what you mean is that you’ve been abandoned. Again. Valentine has foresworn your service, forbidden his people from working with you. Isn’t that right?” He seemed to leer up from his watery bed. “That must be a feeling you’re getting used to, eh? Being cut out, like a sickness.”
“I am not alone. Friends stand with me. You don’t know the whole game, old man.” He was distracting me, diverting my attention from the central point. “What is my father’s role in this? What is your Family’s role? If I’m meant to be a part of it, as you imply, then how can I be of any help if no one will tell me what’s going on?”
“You are here for the artifact, yes? The one taken from the Church, in secret. Passed on by a criminal. I believe they buried him in the backyard, all those years ago.”