“When you didn’t return to the deep engines, no one wondered where you were?”
“We move in very long cycles,” She sighed. “And most of us are off the line. It will be a while before I am missed.”
“So you sent a message, somehow, to the Council. Directed them downriver in the hope they would kick over a wasp tower and your friends would track them back upriver and rescue you.” I leaned closer to her. The air around her smelled like burnt oil. “You meant to destroy the city.”
She looked up, her eyes following the lines of the cage, the webwork of pipes and the pillar growing out of her spine, then looked down at the dissected ruin of her body.
“Can you blame me?”
“Yes. Not in principle, I suppose, but in practice. This is where I live, see, and where I’ll probably die. But I’d rather it not happen like that.” I paced around the cage, looking over her limp form suspended from the pipes. “No matter what these people have done to you, that doesn’t mean the whole city deserves to die. Hardly any of them know you exist. I certainly didn’t.”
“And if they did? Do you really think they would clamor for my release? Give up their cogwork and their airships, the power those things bring to the city? Would you?”
“Give up my cogwork? In a damn second. It’s been nothing but trouble.” I laughed. “Ruined my whole life.”
“So. You have it in your power to do that, right now. Help me. Release me.”
“I’ve got my own trouble, ma’am. I just want out from under this thing. I don’t want to add your little crusade of destruction to my list. Your psycho friend can find you on his own, or he can fall apart and die in a gutter. Not my problem.”
“Ah, but you don’t need him. His loss is tragic, of course.” Her eyes were manic. “But I am weak only because my heart is so far away.”
“So you’re saying I could bring you the other Cog and you’d just be able to walk away.”
She nodded, her hands tingling with nervous energy. “With that heart, an Avenger’s heart, and all this metal. I could walk out.”
“They would try to stop you.”
“Yes.” Her eyes glittered like knife points. “They would try.”
“And you would kill them. And then? You would wreak your vengeance on Veridon. Am I right?”
“No, no, of course. Well. You could be there to steady my hand. Guide me. Certainly there are elements of this city that need purging, yes?”
“You would kill the people I asked, root out the institutions I demand.” I nodded my head. “And if you get overexcited, if you started to rampage.”
“You could stop me,” her voice was smooth, her hands together in prayer. “Guide me.”
“I could try.” I smiled grimly. “You see my point. If this heart is as powerful as you say, I’d be a fool to give it to you. I understand the need for vengeance, believe me I do, but you’ve been through too much to be trusted.” I turned to go.
“It’s not a question of helping me! It is not a matter of saving your city! You will help, and your city will fall. What is not decided is whether you will live to tell about it.” She rose to her full height, her every fractured limb and organ twitching in rage.
“Yeah, crazy bitches don’t get weapons of the apocalypse,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
“Your own vengeance then.” The cold coming off the cage was titanic. It froze the sweat I didn’t realize was on my forehead. I turned back to her. “I can show you how to use that Cog to save yourself. Save those you love!”
“My problems are big, and my grudges are deep. But I’ve never felt the need to destroy a city. I handle myself, thanks.”
“I know you. I scented it, earlier, but I wasn’t sure. Burn, isn’t it?”
I stopped. “How do you know that name?”
“Jacob Burn, son of Alexander. A boy of such talent and promise.”
“How do you know my name!” I screamed.
“How’s the Air Corps, Jacob?”
I rushed the cage, yelling. “Tell me how you know my name! Tell me!”
“Or has the Air Corps not worked out, hm? Because of your PilotEngine, perhaps?” She smiled, a pretty little girl smile. “It doesn’t work, does it?”
“You seem to know already, bitch.”
“I do. Because your Engine is not your own. It is mine, Jacob. You are one of my children, crying in the night.”
Blood rushed through my head. I was numb, tired, instantly drained. “No. It’s a PilotEngine, installed by the Academy. An accident, and now it’s taken on a life of its own, but it’s just that. Just an Engine.”
“Your father was most anxious to please the Church. The Family’s influence slipping in the Council, his power dwindling, his riches falling away. The Church needed someone, someone they could trust. Take my son, he said. He’ll never-”
“Quiet!” I kicked the cage with the heel of my boot, shattering the thin covering of frost. It drifted down in fat white flakes that dusted the floor. She was laughing. “Quiet! My father was outraged, heartbroken! He blamed me, the Academy, my mother… everyone but himself and the Church. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”
“Take my son,” her voice was mocking. “Give it to him, instead of the PilotEngine. He’ll never know. I’ll make sure of it.”
Rage tore me up; my hand was trembling and white.“He wouldn’t. Not his son. Not me.”
“Tell me, Jacob, how the city deserves to live. Tell me they don’t deserve a taste of that rage. The Council, the Church… your Family. They all knew. How has the city treated you, Jacob? Well?”
I stared at her. Long ago I accepted the disgrace of my family as inevitable. Only recently had I come to terms with my exile. To learn that it was intentional, that my father had sold my future to curry favor with the Church he claimed to despise… it was too much. It was too much.
“Forget your Family. Avenge yourself on Veridon, Jacob. This place has used you, as it used me. It doesn’t care about you. Take the heart and let it change you. Let it make you into the vengeance this wretched city deserves.”
I looked at her, broken and fractured in her cage. I saw myself in the same place, a tool of the Church, my life carved away to serve the city, to feed it, to let it use me and abandon me. Emily stirred.
“I’m not going to do that,” I said. “I’m not going to become that thing.”
“You will, perhaps. You never know.”
I grimaced. The air had suddenly gotten hot. Emily’s eyes fluttered open. She stared in clear shock at Camilla.
“They are coming,” the girl said. I whirled to her, then to the door. I could hear footsteps.
“We have to get out,” I said. I lifted Emily. She was heavier, much heavier. She tried to talk, but her voice seemed gone.
“Behind you,” Camilla said. “I have friends. They will guide you.”
I turned. A plate in the floor slid away. Black water slapped against the metal, slopped over onto the frosty floor. Two hands slid out of the darkness, pale white and bloated. A man pulled himself into the room.
“Camilla,” he said, sadly.
“Wright Morgan.” Her voice was empty.
He nodded, then took my hand and led me to the water.
“I can get you to the river, Jacob. No further. I can’t get involved.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Old crimes, friend.” He looked at me glumly, and smiled. “Old sins. Come on.”
We went into the water. The current was thick under my feet. The river took me in a hand of a thousand tiny, flat worms and bore me away. I moved as though in a dream. I don’t know what I breathed in that time, but when I reached the surface my lungs were heavy with water, and my mouth tasted like swamp sickness. It was the Fehn, the wet mind that wriggled through the mud of the Reine. The flat black worms of the Fehn, helping us through the river’s depth.
The water broke over my head, and I began to thrash. There was a weak light around me, and the air smelled like close, rotten wood and stale sewage. As I watched, Emily rose up from the water, borne aloft a cloud of mucous black sludge that dissipated as I took her in my arms. I began to swim wildly, losing the battle to Emily’s new weight and the river.
My hand slapped against wood and I looked around. We were under the city, under Water Street, on the part of the Reine that flowed beneath the streets and houses of the Watering District. There was a dock under my arm, its frictionlamp barely lit.