I knew it was wrong before I got there. The sounds, the light. None of it was right. I almost turned back before I got there. I stood at the last corner, my hands and face resting on the cold stone for ten minutes. I kept hoping to hear something; Wilson complaining to himself, or working on some experiment. Anything.
The cistern was torn up. This is what had happened, what had interrupted Sloane’s questioning. They didn’t need me to tell them where the Cog was. They had it. They came in here and got it. They had come in with guns, explosives. Stone fell from the ceiling, choking the water. Whatever secret outflow had swallowed the spring was blocked, and the cistern was rising. Dark water was pooling up over the rocky pier, flooding the floor of our hideaway.
Wilson’s things floated in a half foot of water, tubes and shattered jars swirling in the new currents. Specimens, leaves and dead bugs clumped together like tiny islands. His delicate netting was torn and burned, hanging in charred tatters from the bullet-eaten walls. There was blood, smears, spatters, thin whirls in the water, drifting among Wilson’s abandoned wreckage.
No bodies. Shell casings, one of Wilson’s cruel knives, broken and bright in the water. Emily’s shotgun was in a far corner, near the sunken tip of the pier. I waded out there, scooped it up and stared down into the deep water beyond.
I stood there a long time, waiting for something to come out of that water, or for me to sink down into it. Nothing happened. I slung the soggy belt of the gun over my shoulder and went out. I had some questions for dear old dad.
Chapter Fifteen
“Billy, ” I said.
“Master Burn is not-”
I punched him pretty hard. Harder than I meant, but better that than too light. He went down, his lip burst like a balloon. I stepped inside and closed the door.
The foyer was empty, no sound but the half dozen clocks dad kept on display, each one a little out of step with all the others. I dragged Billy into the coat check, tied him as best I could with an old scarf that was lying in the corner, and locked the door.
Cradling the shotgun in my hands, I started to search the rest of the house. I didn’t have any shells, but my father was a rational man. Even the threat of the gun would keep him in line.
I didn’t find him, or anyone else for that matter. Mother lived with the kids, my sister and her officer gallant, upriver in their exciting new life as expatriates. My brothers were in the navy. The Academy wouldn’t take any more chances on the Burns. Father Burn lived here pretty much alone, him and Billy, a couple servants and the rare itinerant mistress. Most of the house was closed up. It looked like father was living mostly in the ballroom, sleeping in one of the private sitting rooms that clustered around the dance floor. How bad had things gotten?
I went back to the foyer and opened the coat check. Billy was in the corner, free of the scarf, using it to mop blood off his face. He stared at me with narrow eyes.
“What was it you were saying, Billy, before I interrupted?”
“You’re a psychopath, Jacob,” he hissed. “Alexander was right, putting you out.”
“I’m getting to that. Maybe you’re right, but maybe you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Now,” I cradled the shotgun in my arms. “What were you saying?”
He looked down at his feet. His shoes were badly scarred, but well polished.
“You’re going to kill me.”
“Where is he, Billy?”
“No. You’re going to kill him, too. You can…” he sobbed, a noble little kink in his voice. “You can do what you want with me, but I’m not going to let you kill him.”
“I can just wait, Billy. I can sit here and lock the door and wait for him to come home. And I know he’s coming home eventually. My old man, there’s nowhere for him to go. Just tell me, Billy. I’m not going to hurt him, but there’re some things he and I need to talk out.”
“You expect me to believe that? Look,” he wadded up the bloody scarf, held out his crimson hands. “Look at me. Look at what you’ve done. You’re a violent, horrible, ugly man. You’re just a godsdamn thug, Jacob. Just a violent, angry, broken man.”
I stared at him. He was crying, but only in his eyes. The rest of him was stick straight and furious.
“Tell me where he is. You have my word, Billy. And I’m sorry about your face.”
He was trembling, the scarf knotted up between his fingers, fresh blood on his lip. His shirt was ruined, and I couldn’t imagine he had that many shirts, not working in this house.
“Williamson,” I said. “Where’s my father?”
“The Singer,” he whispered, tears anew in his eyes. “He’s at the Singer. Praying.”
I nodded, then set Emily’s gun in the corner of the tiny room and went to the kitchen. I came back with wet towels and a bottle of dad’s better whiskey. The shotgun had been moved, bloody fingerprints on it. He probably picked it up, just long enough to see it wasn’t loaded. I’d never seen Billy use a gun, and I didn’t expect that to change today. I cleaned his face, made sure he drank three expensive fingers of the whiskey. He felt guilty about that, I could see, drinking the master’s bottle.
“You won’t hurt him?” he asked.
“And give him a way out? No.” I picked up the shotgun. “Thanks, Billy. Williamson. Get some ice on that lip.”
“Billy’s fine,” he said. He followed me out, locking the door behind me.
The Dome of the Singer sits on the edge of the river Ebd, on the far south side of Veridon. It’s seen better days, and most of those days were a decade ago. We kept one of our old gods here, one of the Celestes the original settlers found waiting for them in silent vigilance, hovering over the delta that would eventually become Veridon. That was from before the Church of the Algorithm, and their techno-spiritual dominance.
There are five Celestes, or were the last time I checked. Used to be six, but the Watchman flickered and disappeared, twenty years ago. I barely remember that; my mother crying in a closet, my father drawing heavy curtains across the dining room window and burning secret, heavy candles that smelled like hot sand. My parents followed the old ways, at least in private.
The door to the Dome was open, so I went in. The walls were thick, three feet of stone shot through with iron braces to hold it all together. The other Celestes had ceremonial houses, just places for worship and ritual. The Dome of the Singer was, at first, a practical matter. She sang, loudly. Or she used to. When I stepped into the cool dark interior of the Dome, all I heard were feet scuffing on stones and the low moan of breezes circulating through the drafty heights. She was silent, and I felt a chill.
The main level of the Dome was a single open room. The floor was loosely fit stone, time-eroded and haphazardly level. The walls were hung in the remnants of holy tapestries, framed in sconces that held cold torches. There was little light, at first just the illumination from the open door at my back.
I walked inside. In time my eyes adjusted. There was other light, a bluish glow that descended from the second floor. A broad central staircase of wrought iron twisted up at the center of the room. It circled a patch of empty dirt like a screw ascending a pillar of air. The ceiling was thirty feet up, with a matching opening, about twenty feet wide, through which the staircase rose. The glow came down through that hole.
Pausing at the bare patch in the floor, I looked up. I could see the shadowy smear of the Celeste eclipsing the smooth white ceiling of the Dome. She hung in empty space. I looked down at the bare dirt. One thing we’d learned about the Celestes; you couldn’t build under them. They exerted some kind of eroding force straight down. Any structure below them would wear away into this gritty gray sand in a matter of weeks. The flagstones near the sand’s perimeter were starting to show age, the corners crumbling like stale cheese under my feet.