“She shot you?” he purred. “Dramatic.”
“Do you know where I can find this Sloane guy?” I asked.
“I could probably scare something up,” he said. He was much calmer now than when we first started talking. He drank a bit of his wine, then dabbed his lips with a napkin. “What do you know about him?”
“Not much. Met him at that party up on the Heights. And he talked to Emily, once.”
“Up on the Heights? He was there?” Four folded his napkin and lay it on his lap, then leaned closer to me. “Does Angela know that?”
“Why wouldn’t she? I assume they’re working together in this.”
“Mm. You should pay better attention to the matters of the Council, Jacob. It’s your family’s business, after all. The forces that align with Sloane are, distinctly, no longer friendly with the Family Tomb.”
“Did he have something to do with the Badge kicking in her front door?”
“Sounds his style. If I were to postulate, Mr. Burn, I would say that it is this matter, this list, that drove them apart.”
I looked back up to the stage. The ruins of the girl had become a tableau of the city of Veridon. Gears and levers fluttered into buildings. Camilla’s face appeared briefly in the streets, the canals, the skyline… only to disappear like a ghost. I shivered. If Sloane and Angela weren’t working together, it just meant more groups aligned against me. There might be some way to play them off one another, but for now it just meant more trouble for me.
“Jacob,” he said quietly.
“Four, I need to know who stands with Sloane, and who stands with Tomb. And what they want with me, for that matter.” I turned to him. There was a pistol flat on the table, his hand folded around the grip.
“You had to know, son.” He sounded legitimately sorry. “And I’ve heard all about your remarkable stamina.” He wiggled the gun. “Bane.”
Bane was one of the things that got the original Guild of Artificers disbanded and its Elders hung in the public square. A living bullet that took itself apart inside you, then ate its way out in a thousand pieces, in a thousand directions.
“That shit’s illegal.”
“We’re all illegal, Jacob. And I thought you might be coming by. Now,” he folded his napkin with one hand and nodded to the nearest exit. “I have an arrangement with the guard. If you’d be so kind. And leave your piece on the table.”
I laid my pistol among the ruins of his dinner and stood. He slipped my gun into his coat and followed me out. As we walked, he stayed far enough behind to keep me from taking him by surprise, but close enough that he was sure to hit with his first shot. No one looked at us as we left. He’d done this before.
“So, all that stuff you told me before, you make all that up?” I asked.
“Of course not, my boy. More of an investment. I suspect the people we’re going to see will have some questions for you. You’ll serve as a fine messenger. Let them know what I know, what I’ve managed to connect. Maybe I can sell them something.”
“I’ll just lie. They won’t hear what you want them to hear.”
Four chuckled. “The way they ask questions? No, you will tell them what you know. Everything you know.”
We went outside. The guard even held the door for us, smiling, then locked up behind us. There was a carriage in the alley, its engine already alive. We got in. The driver’s compartment was separate from the passenger’s seating. I sat across from Matthew. He drew the curtains and we rumbled off, the driver going faster than was wise on Veridon’s narrow roads.
“So,” I asked. “Who’s buying me?”
“Patience, Jacob. You’ll have plenty of time for questions once you’re delivered.”
“Sounds like they’ll be asking the questions, and I’ll be in no shape to ask my own.”
“Oh, no, no. You misunderstand. They’re not going to beat the answers out of you. Nothing so primitive, my boy.”
I sat with my hands in my lap.
“They’re not going to hurt me? Did they tell you this, or is it just a lie you need to believe, to salve whatever conscience still survives in that powdered skull of yours?”
He grimaced and poked the pistol in my direction.
“You won’t be hurt. Not your body at least. They’ve been very clear about that.”
“They’ve been clear. Because when they told you to take me, they also told you to bring me in unharmed.”
“Well…” he flexed his fingers around the trigger of his pistol. He was holding the grip white-knuckle tight.
“Which means you won’t be shooting me with a load of Bane. Will you?”
He raised the pistol. “Is that a risk you’re willing to-”
I was. I lunged, ducking down. By the time he realized his error, finished calculating the risk of displeasing his masters versus the imminent threat of my attack, it was too late. I had my hand on his shoulder. The shot went wide. The metal wall of the carriage sizzled. I punched the old man twice, then hissed as a blade went into my shoulder. I batted the pistol out of his hand and looked down to see the other wrapped around the hilt of a knife that was digging around for my lung.
“I’m sorry, Jacob,” he said through gritted teeth. “Things change. We have to move with the tide.”
I broke his wrist, broke his arm and then plucked the knife out of my shoulder and put it into his throat. His powdered face flushed, then drained of color and he went limp. The driver was yelling. I banged on the wall of the carriage and we slid to a halt. By the time I got out, the driver had ditched and was disappearing around the corner of the nearest darkened alleyway.
The side of the carriage was brittle from the Bane. Not much good against inorganic material, certainly not as dangerous as it was to flesh. I picked up the pistol and checked the cylinder. The rest of the load was normal shot. It rarely took more than one. I fished my gun out of Matthew’s pocket, then leaned over the carriage wheel and threw up. I left Matthew his pistol, crossed his jigsaw puzzle arms over his chest and closed his blank eyes.
I ran. It wasn’t more than a block before the blood stopped leaking out of my shoulder, and in another block the wound didn’t hurt at all. I tried the arm out, twisting it back and forth. I was fine. Wilson was right. Whatever artifact had been installed in my chest was mending me, and it was doing a better job of it. I felt less real every day.
The ease with which I’d killed Matthew was still settling in. I’d known the old man since before I went into the Academy. He had betrayed me, fair enough, but to throw him away like that… it didn’t matter. I could feel the desperation nagging at my heels. I didn’t like being desperate. I was done being desperate.
I stumbled into our hidden cistern and started gathering my things. Wilson was back, busy in his corner under a frictionlamp, Emily peering over his shoulder.
“Any luck?” Emily asked. Her voice betrayed none of our earlier awkwardness.
“Kind of. Had to kill an old friend. But I found out some interesting stuff.”
“That your method now? Beating secrets out of old friends?”
“Hardly. He forced my hand.”
“Who?”
“Matthew Four. He pulled a gun on me. Bane.”
“Shit,” Emily said. Wilson looked up.
“He wasn’t bluffing?” Wilson asked.
“Nope. He only had the one round, but it was the true thing.”
“Shit,” Emily said again, just to be clear. “Valentine’s not going to like that. Four was a resource.”
“I’m getting tired of other people’s resources, Em. Right now I’m taking care of myself.” I finished packing my things. “But like I said. Learned some good stuff.”
“What, exactly?” she asked. Wilson had turned back to his work.
I told them about Sloane and Tomb, and about the split that seemed to be forming in the Council. If the Founding Families were aligning against the new Councilors, the industrialists and the commercial mavericks who had been buying out the Council seats for the last twenty years, then things were going to get difficult. If that split centered around Marcus’s mission downfalls, and this Cog, then the complications were just going to get worse and worse.