“No, we don’t,” Angela said. “Now put down the shotgun and come with us.”
“You heard the lad!” A voice called up from below us. I turned and looked down.
Wilson. He was standing in the middle of the gritty sand below. His skin looked like it had been scrubbed with charcoal, and he was wearing a knee-length black duster that was singed at the edges. He looked blasted. His hands were in his pockets, and his spider arms were bunched up around his shoulders like restless wings.
Angela and a couple of the Housies joined me at the railing.
“A friend of yours?” she asked.
“Maybe. Getting hard to tell, these days.”
“Ah, yes. Still mourning the affections of our little spy-whore. Tell him to come up here, or you’re both dead.”
“Wilson…” I yelled.
“I heard the bitch.” He took his hands out of his pockets and held them wide apart. Each held a small glass jar, squirming in the pale light. “I’ll be right up.”
He dropped the jars, then immediately leapt onto the iron corkscrew staircase. The jars broke with a muffled pop, and glittering hordes swarmed out onto the sand. Beetles.
“Put him down!” Angela screamed. The guards responded, without thinking.
They really were packing bane in those shortrifles. The shots crackled off the wrought iron, the staircase began flaking away like thin ice. Wilson bounded up, much too fast for their aim. One got close and the anansi yelped, but he kept coming. I turned and smacked the nearest guard in the head with the butt of the shotgun, then scooped up his weapon as I slung Emily’s shotgun over my shoulder.
“Jacob!” Wilson yelled. I looked down, only to see him gesturing up. I looked up. At the Singer.
Her eyes were open, her arms raising slowly in benediction.
I threw myself back, just as the rest of the Housies were rushing forward to take me. I fell between them, sliding on my back. Angela was still looking down, firing wildly at Wilson.
My father was on one knee, hands folded calmly on his leg, facing the Singer. I covered my ears and curled up.
Her voice was catastrophic in the close roof of the Dome. My memories of her were quieter, a gentle murmuring that splashed through the building like a stream. This was a tornado, an avalanche of voice. It was three years of pent up divinity, forgotten by its servants and furious in its glory.
We fell, even my father. The building shook. I saw Angela tumble forward, screams drowned out by the Singer’s master stroke. None of the Housies had caught on to what was about to happen, and lay prone, clutching at bloody ears. My father was flat on the floor, his face slack. He might have been asleep for all I could tell. Wilson crawled over the top rail, grimacing. He scuttled to me and pulled me up.
I tried to tell him where Emily was, and what they were going to do to her. My voice was silent against the Singer’s roar.
We ran to the staircase. It was crumbling, the iron brittle as glass. The steps twisted under our feet, the handrail coming off in sharp flakes whenever we stumbled and reached for its false support. We fell the last ten feet as the whole latticework failed. I came down in the sand, grimy with bugs.
I landed next to Angela. Her mouth was open and bloody, half full of sand. Her arms and legs were awkward, and her chest was caved in. I stood up and ran. Out the door into the impossible quiet of the streets, the crowd gathering at the unexpected noise coming from the Dome; the gunshots, the newly ignited Singer pouring out the open door. I pushed past them into the street and ran, the world a mute humming in my ears. No sound but the impact of my feet, my heart, my lungs. The sun was incredibly bright, the buildings seemed to peel back and the sky was blue and quiet.
Wilson caught up with me and pulled me into an alley. I looked at him once, the grit on his burned face sticky with blood. I put a hand on his shoulder, then leaned over and retched onto the cobbles.
We ended up in the basement of a burned out house on the Canal Blanche. My hands were still shaking as I set down Emily’s shotgun and collapsed against the mossy brick wall of the cellar. Wilson looked nervous.
“You look like hell, boy,” he said. “What was that all about?”
“How did you get there?” I asked, ignoring his concern. “And what happened to the Cog?”
He grimaced, then squatted on his heels across from me. His many arms folded out, hanging in a rough circle around him like the spokes of a wheel.
“They came for us again. Quieter his time, more serious. Some of them were in the water, using some kind of breathing mask. There was no way out.”
“There must have been,” I said. I lay the Cog beside the shotgun, then struggled out of my coat. “You’re here.”
“They didn’t care about me. They came for that trinket.” He watched me carefully, relaxed but ready. “Showed up right after you left, actually. I put up a fight, but they had the numbers.”
“So how’d you get out?”
“I ended up on the ceiling. After the collapse, I crawled up into some of the new cracks.” He shifted awkwardly, his hand running nervously over his scalded pate. “They tried to burn me out.”
“And the Cog? Where was it, while you were hiding away?”
“Long gone, Jacob. The ones in the water, they got it before I even knew they were there. They took it down through the channels, then blew it up behind them. That’s what took the roof.”
“I left it with you, Wilson.” I lay my hands palm up on my knees. “I trusted you.”
“We trusted each other, Jacob. Funny timing.”
“What?”
“I said, funny timing. You left with Emily, and they came in on your heels.” He flexed his extra arms nervously, his prime arms folded loosely in his lap, hand near the open fold of his scorched coat. I remembered that he had two knives, and I had only seen one broken in the cistern. “You see anything on your way out? Talk to anyone, maybe?”
“You have to be kidding,” I said. “All that’s happened, all that we’ve seen… you’re accusing me of selling you and Emily out to the Badge?”
“You show up, take the girl, and rush right out again. Tell us some kind of story about hitting the Church of the Algorithm,” he said evenly, the anger I expected paved under a layer of fatigue. “Badge walks in, and you’re heading out the door.”
“So you think I told them where the Cog was and cut my losses? That I made a deal?”
“Makes some sense. You had Emily with you, knew she wouldn’t get hurt. Probably couldn’t just hand the Cog over, cuz they’d put you down rather than pay you. Me, they weren’t so careful about.”
“Why in the hell would I do that, Wilson? Why would I sell you out?”
“Things are bad, Jacob. Complicated bad. Maybe you found yourself a way out, and knew I wouldn’t take the deal. And you didn’t want to give Emily a chance to turn it down, either.”
“Seriously, fuck you.”
He shrugged. “My loyalty is to her, Jacob. Not you. If you sold us out, I’ll learn of it. If you let them hurt her-”
“Let them hurt her? Let them? Do you have any idea what she and I went through after we left you? As long as they didn’t have the Cog, it didn’t matter what they did to me. Soon as you let them get it-”
The knife was against my throat before I could move. It was plenty sharp.
“Say that again,” Wilson said, quiet. “Tell me it was my fault one more fucking time.”
I swallowed and tried to back into the wall. His hand followed me the whole way, steady as stone.
“Two ways we can go from here, Wilson. One of them gets Em killed. The other one, we talk this out, come up with a plan, and break her out.”
“And kill the people who have her.”
“Of course.”
“You’re assuming that I can’t get her free myself, Jacob. That I need your help.”
“You do. And I sure as hell can’t do it without your help.”
He stared at me for a while, his dark eyes reflected in the barbs and arcs of his blade. Finally he put it down.
“This is true. So tell me, Jacob Burn. Where have you been? And what shall we do about our girl?”
“You won’t believe me. I don’t believe me. But I learned that the thing in my chest is a very old artifact, hidden there with my father’s blessing. And the Cog is the heart of a dead god.”