We found two more places where we'd been watched, where someone had sat and waited for the Fratriarch to come by. Mostly they were improvised rooms, cobbled together from driftwood or old crates, hidden in alleys and under tracks. We found another of those communication rigs, this one still active. We shut it down and took it. I felt something when I was close to it, like a voice in my blood, but then it faded. There were signs these guys had been there for days. At one place we found a body, some old guy who must have stumbled on their hideout and paid with his life. He'd been dead almost a week, wrapped in some kind of sheeting that masked the smell. We even found a lookout on the closest waterway, accessible only by depthship or a really good set of lungs. The last place we looked was along the Pershing circle, trying to find where the guys who had actually attacked us were hiding. It was almost dawn.
It was an easy place to find. Just had to figure out where we were when they had attacked the rails, and then backtrack a little bit. It was a nest, built into the open gridwork at the level of the train, shielded from view by barrels taken from a local distillery. There was no communications rig here, just some kind of tube that was charred at both ends and smelled of gunpowder. From here I had a clear view of the crash site, and the surrounding square. Patrols milled about, whiteshirts circling nervously and black-robed Amonites working on the track. I sat down on the little platform and swung my legs over the edge.
"So," Owen said, sitting beside me, "what do we know?"
"We know where they waited. That there were a lot of them, spread out all over the city. They knew we were coming, and how."
"Not necessarily. We've only looked in places we knew you could have gone. There might be other sites like this, all over the city."
"That's a cheery thought."
"Yeah," he said. "Means there could be a lot of those guys."
"We also know that someone killed some of them. Either because they were following us, or knew we were being followed." I rubbed my face and looked down at the street, far below. "That's something."
"Really, we still don't know much of anything," Owen said.
"We know the Fratriarch is missing."
There was a shout, far away, and we both looked up. In the distance, there was a commotion around the crash site. Amonites were rushing away, all of them running toward a white-robed man who held one hand high in the air. They threw themselves at his feet. The other Alexians at the site were milling about. The tracks and other buildings blocked much of our view.
"They've found something," I said.
Owen stood and spun up his rig, the swirling orbits of the helmet closing around his head and eyes as it tapped into the communications grid.
I didn't wait. I jumped to my feet and, invoking a little trick from the book of Morgan, leapt the distance to the track. I ran along the rails, toward the crash site, bully out, heart pounding.
5
hey were gathered around a crater in the ground. The Amonites were fully leashed, lurking unhappily behind their Alexian master on the far side of the square. There was a yellow tape barrier around the crash site, lined with a handful of curious passersby, though more were gathering as the search team became increasingly agitated. It didn't help when I boomed down the tracks, glory wicking off my boots as I leapt to the ground in full combat gear. I'm a crowd pleaser.
The investigator in charge, a bald-headed, frail, middle-aged man in an impeccable Alexian robe, waved me to a stop. Then he put a hand on my shoulder as I passed him and, eventually, hurried after me as I closed on the crater. He was sputtering.
"We don't know the full extent of its power, my lady, and think caution is best."
"Full extent of what's power?' I asked. There were a number of craters in the ground, all of them from my fight yesterday. Already yesterday, I mused. How long did the Fratriarch have? "What did you find?"
"It's… unclear. An icon, perhaps. It might be nothing."
"Nothing, huh? That would be in line with the rest of your findings." I reached the crowd of whiteshirts who had gathered around the crater and muscled my way through.
It was far from nothing.
The crater was shallow. I didn't remember it from the fight-at least, I didn't remember doing anything dramatic in this particular spot. Close to the tracks, but not where I had engaged the two burnpack soldiers. My line of retreat had been… over there. This hole could have come from something the coldmen had done while they tried to get to Barnabas and the girl. The sides of the crater were charred, and most of the indentation was filled in with rubble. The cobblestones here had been pulverized but left in place, like a giant cube of ice crushed in a bowl. The Amonites had been clearing it out, from the looks of things. And among the shards of stone was an icon, torn from someone's ceremonial robe.
We all wear icons, the scions of the three Cults of the Brothers Immortal. My armor is an icon, as are my sword and revolver. Very practical icons. But I wear others, noetic symbols of the power of Morgan. An iron fist pendant at my neck, the bound copper wire around my wrist, tattoos on my chest and legs. There is a holy symmetry to my symbols, brought to arcane life by the power of Morgan. The Fratriarch jangled with the icons of the holy Brother.
This was not his symbol, not a symbol of Morgan or of Alexander or any of the other minor sects dedicated to inchoate powers of significant events or famous battles. This was a symbol of the Betrayer. Amon, in his aspect as murderer and assassin. It was a pendant, silver clasping the gnarled blade of that darkest aspect of our darkest god. No wonder they had the Amonites so tightly reined.
"Is there any doubt now that the Betrayer was involved?" the inspector whispered at my side.
I holstered my revolver and looked back nervously toward the pack of Scholars at the far corner of the square.
"Did any of them touch it?" I asked.
"One of them found it, but swears it did not reach his skin."
"Contain him. You'll need to keep the rest out of the general population until you can confirm they were not infected."
"We know the rites of infection, my lady." The inspector sniffed and waved a hand at some of his fellow whiteshirts. "We will do our duty."
"Whatever." I bent to the icon and dusted the debris away from it. It had been embedded in a cobble, like a stone pressed into hot wax. I removed the penetrated cobble and slid it onto the ground. "Some force that was."
"Your battle was mighty, my lady."
"I had nothing to do with this," I said. "Those weren't servants of the Betrayer I was fighting. Not scions, at least. Evil creatures, perhaps, but there was nothing… blessed about them."
"Who, then? The Fratriarch?" the inspector asked. Doubtless remembering the old man who walked in the parades. Not exactly a figure embodying power.
"What is it?" Owen asked, running up. He skidded to a halt and looked over my shoulder at the stone and its infernal decoration. "Ah. Oh… huh."
"You are a man of culture and insight, Justicar. What do you make of it?"
"You did not speak of scions of the Betrayer, though we all suspected they were the power behind the attack."
"Suspected," I said, nodding. "But unknown."
"We can lay that to rest, it seems. How did it get here?"
I craned my neck to look up at the elevated track. The damaged car had been removed, and the twisted support towers were being rebuilt. The tracks themselves looked solid enough.
"A fight," I said. "The icon gets ripped off in the heat of battle."
"When, though? You stated that the Fratriarch was locked away in a column of steel, and the coldmen could not break him out. Then you returned and he was gone. They were all gone."