I ran a finger down the Cog. However it had gotten here, it hadn’t been years ago. The Patron was talking about something else. What could it be?
“Perhaps. What is it? It has something to do with all this trouble?”
“Something. What do you want with it?”
“I’m going to solve this thing, old man. Whatever my father intended, I’m going to put an end to this.”
“Mm. It isn’t the sort of trouble that can be solved, child. Merely avoided, and survived.”
“Is that why you’re down here? Hiding from the trouble?”
“My Family’s future depends on my survival. You wouldn’t understand.”
I laughed. “Did you fear death so much, that you trapped your Family into preserving you? Is that why you signed that terrible contract, blackmailing your Family with their place on the Council?”
“Is this life! This fallow harvest, Jacob, is this living!” Heat rose from the Tomb, and the cables hummed. “You have no idea, sir, what this is. We make sacrifices, Jacob, for family. For the city. Your father, he understands. He knows what it is to sacrifice for family.”
“My father? Noble Alexander! Tell me, Patron, if he understands the value of sacrifice, of family, what is it, sir, that he valued so much that he sacrificed his own family, his own blood, his goddamn son!”
Tomb was quiet. Eventually, “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Now that,” I said, leaning in toward the massive face. “That I believe.”
“It is here.”
“What?”
“Your artifact. Third shelf, against the wall. An ivory box. They made it into something holy, those churchmen. I don’t know where the key is hidden.”
I stood up. Wilson was already up the pit, rummaging in the area Tomb had indicated. “Why tell me? If it has been hidden all this time. What would Angela say?”
“Angela has gone a great deal farther than I think is prudent. And I am tired. Now, go.”
He settled down, the face shifting ever so slightly into slack inattention. I bounded up the stairs. When I looked back the face was still open, the glossy green eyes staring up at the darkness with their pupils of bloated flesh.
Wilson brought me the box. We squatted in the walkway. It was a long, narrow container, the flat planes thin sheets of ivory set in tarnished silver fittings. It was a simple matter to crack open with my knife. The artifact clattered out. I squatted above it, looking for damage. It was quiet in the hallways.
The artifact was a cylinder of steel with grooves. Something twitched inside me, like a stolen memory burning through my head. Without thinking I ran my hand down the artifact, triggered some hidden catch, then balanced it on one end. The cylinder blossomed, like a flower.
There was wire, a fly wheel, and a tightly packed central axis of stacked metal segments. It spun up. Plates folded out from the central core, supported and guided by the wires, which stiffened as they expanded. The plates spun in wider circles, shifting, sliding by each other until they blurred into a single brilliant image. Viewed from above it made a picture, like a cinescope.
It was a map. Most of it looked like nothing to me, just lines and rivers and a coastline, far in the top left corner. And then I saw Veridon, or where Veridon should have been, near one edge of the map, in the arms of the Ebd and the Dunje. From there I found the Reine, the Breaking Wall, the Cusp Sea, the Tavis Minor and Major, the Salt Sweeps. It was different than the map I knew, the one I learned at the Academy, but some of the landmarks were similar enough. I followed the Reine where it left the Cusp, far beyond the borders of the Academy’s maps.
There was a city, massive, if the scale was to be believed. It was at the center of the map, sprawled on both sides of the Reine hundreds of miles downriver from the Cusp. So far beyond the ken of the Academy’s far ranging Expeditioner’s Corp I could only stare in amazement. I felt like there was someone over my shoulder, a presence both ancient and young, a presence that stank of fear and isolation. I looked at that city and the phantom in me spoke with my voice.
“Home,” we said.
“Well now, ” Wilson muttered. “Well, well. Now isn’t that interesting.” He hooked an arm under my shoulder and dragged me to my feet. I realized I had been lying down. He propped me against a shelf, littered with the parts of a shattered clock.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. My throat felt like it was lined in barbed wire.
“Be a hell of a time,” Wilson said. “Lots of folks out there. And I don’t think Angela’s going to like us walking out with that thing.”
“Yeah.” I tested my legs, found I could stand. “Well, maybe there’s another way out of here.”
Patron Tomb shuffled, his eyelids cracking just slightly. “There is.”
“You can get us out?” Wilson asked.
“No. But I can show you the way.” He paused, his eyelids flaring wider in surprise. “There is something upstairs, a presence. It has found the hallway.”
“What?” I asked.
“Something… brilliant. What is this thing?” Tomb’s voice was low, in awe.
“The angel,” Wilson whispered. “We need to get the hell out.”
“Yes, you do. My gods, you do. He’s at the door.”
The door at the top of the stairs clanged. Dust settled from the roof in wide sheets. The clanging continued, steady, metronomic.
“This is going to be interesting,” Tomb said. “I should thank you, Burn. It’s a good day you’ve brought me.”
“It will try to kill you,” I said.
“Perhaps. Here,” machines cycled, and a narrow door opened in the wall opposite the main entrance. “That leads to a covered canal near the Bellingrow. It’s quite a trek, I’m told. In case they ever need to get me out.”
“You would never fit through that door.”
“Desperation and technology can do amazing things,” he said. “Now, hurry. He’s persistent.”
We rushed out the door. I paused to look back. The old man’s bloated eyes were settled on the other door, watching the angel break his slow way in, like the tide battering a rocky coast. The door closed behind us.
I don’t remember much after that. The darkness faded into gray, tunnels of brick and dirt that stretched for an eternity and when I came to I was lying on a hard stone floor, Wilson looking down at me.
“You’re trying to show me wrong, son,” Wilson said quietly. His face was bent very close to mine, so I could smell his breath. It smelled like ground up flies and specimen jars. “Trying to die, aren’t you?”
“Far from it.” My voice was a whisper. “Just other folks, testing the theory.”
“Well. More luck than science, this time.” He picked up a tin cup and rattled it around. There was a deformed slug at the bottom, shiny with blood. “Frail gun she shot you with. More ornament than weapon, I suspect.”
“She who?” It was Emily talking, somewhere. I couldn’t see where exactly, but it sounded like she was standing near my head, looking down. Behind me a little. I twisted and saw her face, grimacing down at me.
“Tomb. Little Lady Tomb.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
“Fine, Em. Whatever. It was the Blessed Celeste. But she looked a hell of a lot like the Lady Tomb.”
“It was her alright,” Wilson said. He grinned tightly up at Emily. “Pretty as you please, nice to meet you, and here’s a bullet for your time.”
“What dumbass thing did you do to get her to shoot you, Jacob? Did you break into her house? Steal some silverware?”
I tried to answer, but it came out as a dry rattling cough. Wilson put his hand on my chest until it settled down. When I could talk again, even I had trouble hearing me. Emily bent down close. She smelled like sweat and dry flowers.
“Badge broke into her house. Stormed the place. We were running, got cornered.” I paused to spit, but came up empty. My tongue felt like a strap of leather. “She said some shit about not letting them get a hold of me. Then she put a bullet in my chest.”
“Hm,” Emily said. She stood up and walked out of my field of vision. Wilson watched her go, then looked back at me. His eyes were carefully neutral.