by N. D. Wilson
The man had no legs.
Of course he has legs, Cyrus thought. They’re just … metal.
Below his apron, two thin, bending black rods ran down into a rubber-coated ball joint of an ankle. Beneath each of those, a small triangle hoof of rubber made contact with the ground. Cyrus tried not to stare. It was like seeing an elephant with antelope legs.
Standing in front of them, the big man put two hairy fists onto his wide hips, and he glared.
“You bring guests,” he said. “Invaders.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Outlaws. And at this mad hour, too.”
Nolan didn’t seem put off. “This is Big Ben Sterling, lord of the one-acre kitchen. Ben, behold the last two Smiths of Ashtown—Cyrus and Antigone.”
“Nice to meet you,” Antigone said, elbowing Cyrus. She held out her hand. Ben Sterling swallowed it with his.
“I know all about you two.” He winked. “Oh, the chatter today. Billy Bones picked himself quite a pair. Your ancestors were living outside the law before Skelton’s great-granddad had his first thieving thought. Rogues to the bone, you are. Bones’s new rogues.”
Cyrus opened his mouth, confused, but Sterling waved him off. “Oh, don’t fret yourselves. Be it true or false, the kitchen hears everything, the kitchen knows everything, and I … am the kitchen.” Slapping Cyrus on the back, he whistled sharply between his teeth. “Make a hole at the rail! Three stools!”
Immediately, the lineup at the windows compressed, and a man who had been shaking potato peels into a can scurried off after stools.
Bells ringing, Sterling walked them toward the newly empty space. “I’ll stop and chat as chat can,” he said. “But your tour guide chooses the devil’s worst moment.”
Three stools were shoved in place. Sterling pulled one out for Antigone and stepped aside for Cyrus. “I have a rule for you two,” he said, eyeing them both. He rubbed his netted beard and then leaned down, lowering his voice. “If there’s a light on in my kitchen, you come in and make free. If there’s not, well, you come in and make free. Night or day, you two duck in. My breakfast crew will catch the crumbs. And don’t feel as if you have to use the tunnels, like some I could mention.”
He grinned and straightened.
Cyrus laughed. The man’s eyes were sharp and knowing. His teeth were gapped but brilliant white. His netted beard was thicker than a bundle of black hay. But no matter where Cyrus looked, his eyes snapped back to the man’s bouncing earrings, catching and spraying the chaos of kitchen light, chiming with every step, breath, and smile.
“Thanks,” said Cyrus. He wasn’t sure what else to say.
Nodding, the cook turned away. “Melton!” he bellowed. “Look to your sauce, man!”
A woman in white slid three bowls of fine noodles onto the rail, followed by a platter mounded with well-sauced skewers of grilled beef.
Cyrus inhaled slowly.
Antigone looked at her brother and smiled. “I’m surprised I’m this hungry,” she said. “You probably aren’t surprised at all.”
Cyrus shook his head. Nolan was scraping beef onto his noodles. “Is he for real?” Cyrus asked. “We can come in any time we want?”
Nolan nodded. “But don’t make enemies on his staff. Always clean up after yourself.”
A chuckle came from the man chopping vegetables next to them.
“How did he lose his legs?” Antigone asked.
“Lake shark,” Nolan said. “Midair collision. Motorcycle racing. Or he lost them to Thai pirates. Or he cut them off and cooked them for a cannibal chieftain. Depends on the day and on how much wine is in him when you ask.”
Cyrus shoveled in a large first bite, and the flavors swam together—soy and cayenne and peanut sauce. His eyebrows climbed in surprise. It was a combination he hadn’t tasted in more than two years—his mother’s combination.
Antigone set her fork down, swallowing. She looked at him with wide eyes. “It’s exactly the same.” She looked at Nolan. “It was our dad’s—” Her eyes flooded. Tucking back her hair, she looked up, breathing evenly. “This is stupid. I’m just tired and hungry.”
Cyrus cranked around on his stool. Ben Sterling was hugging a tall, smiling, ponytailed girl who had just pushed through a swinging door into the kitchen. But the big cook was looking back over his shoulder as he did. He flashed Cyrus half a grin and winked. The girl tugged his netted beard to get his attention.
Cyrus turned back around. “It’s not like he could have known.”
Nolan rubbed his welted neck, chewing. “Oh, he knew. Your father was here. The kitchen knows everything.”
“Dan should be here,” Cyrus said. “That’s the only thing that could make this taste better.”
Antigone winced, knuckling the corners of her eyes. “Don’t, Cy. Please. I’m trying not to cry. I already feel like a puffy-eyed moron.”
Cyrus twisted up a mass of noodles and wedged it into his mouth.
“These are the new ones? You’re letting ’Lytes into the kitchen?”
Cyrus and Antigone spun around on their stools. The ponytailed girl was standing immediately behind them, wearing glistening, oiled boots, trousers, and a white linen shirt almost identical to Antigone’s—although she was a year or two older, inches taller, and hers was spotless and fit perfectly. Her hair couldn’t decide if it was red or brown or gold, and her tan face and arms were sun-freckled. Her sharp eyes were bright blue at the rim, but her pupils were haloed with brown. The big cook loomed behind her. It was the girl from the plane. Cyrus knew it was. The girl pilot.
Cyrus felt sweat forming on his forehead, and he almost choked, gulping down his load of noodles. Peanut sauce dribbled out the corner of his mouth. He wiped it quickly, but more kept coming.
“Are they Acolytes?” Ben Sterling asked. “How’s a cook supposed to know a thing like that?” Shaking his head and smiling, he retreated to Fire Island.
The girl scowled, but then she saw Antigone’s worried face. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes widening. “I was only joking. It must have been a long day, and I’ve heard Cecil Rhodes has been a prat. The Rhodeses always are. But you’ll be fine. I grew up thinking Smiths could do anything. Sorry I wasn’t there for your presenting, or I would have yelled something rude about Cecil’s mustache. I’m just getting back from a longish trek. Do you mind?” She snagged a piece of beef off Antigone’s plate and popped it into her mouth.
She turned to Cyrus. He managed another swallow, wiped his mouth, and straightened.
“Already heard a story about you,” she said. “My cousin says he thrashed you in the hall after you tripped him.”
Cyrus blinked.
The girl laughed. “Don’t worry. I heard the real story, too. You actually called him a snot?”
“Um,” said Cyrus. “Yeah. I think so. He was your cousin?”
“Everyone is my cousin. And you were right. He is a snot. Well, I have to run to get some stitches out.” She tugged down the collar of her shirt, revealing a jagged and crudely sewn-up gash at the base of her neck. Cyrus stopped chewing. “A little run-in with a cave owl, and I’m not much of a seamstress.” She backed away. “Best of luck and all that. I hope you make it. Don’t always eat in the kitchen!” She strode toward the swinging kitchen door, ponytail bouncing as she went. One hand jumped, flicking Ben Sterling’s left ear bell as she passed.
“Who was that?” asked Cyrus when the door swung behind her.
“That,” said Nolan, “was Diana Boone. Youngest-ever woman in the O of B to achieve Explorer. She’s not even seventeen yet. Beat Amelia Earhart by one month.”
“I’m not sure about her,” said Antigone. “Wait. Amelia Earhart? You’re serious?”
“Who’s Amelia Earhart?” Cyrus asked.
Antigone slapped him without looking. She sighed. “I’m really confused. Cyrus might not mind. Confusion is one of his best friends. But I hate it. Acolytes and Keepers and Explorers? There should be some sort of, I don’t know, orientation.”
Nolan leaned over and tugged the Guidelines out of Cyrus’s pocket. “Everything you need is in here.” He folded back the front cover.
Still glancing at the kitchen door, Cyrus returned to twirling his noodles.
“Five ranks in the O of B.” Nolan’s breathing had leveled and his hands were barely twitching. The food had helped. “Acolyte, Journeyman, Explorer, Keeper, Sage. Each has its own privileges and chores. This morning, you would have just been accepted as Skelton’s heirs by becoming Acolytes. But Rhodes challenged, so now you have to become Journeymen before you inherit. If you don’t inherit, the Order gets everything.” He smiled at Cyrus. “Including those lovely keys. Rhodes made it even harder by applying 1914 standards—”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Antigone. “We know.”
Cyrus looked at his sister, and then at Nolan. “Is that when the Order started? 1914? Wow. I guess Horace did say it was old.”
Nolan stared at him, his eyes searching. And then, for the first time, he laughed. And he was clearly out of practice. He wheezed. He sputtered. His paper skin flushed, and he grabbed at his welted neck in pain.
“What?” Cyrus muttered. “I mean, I know I’m hilarious and everything.…”
Nolan leaned forward, wiping tears from his cheeks. “The Order is old,” he said. “And not just by your American standards. Its seed was planted fifteen centuries ago, and like anything else that has survived for so long, it has seen some dark times.”
Cyrus’s chewing slowed.
Nolan shrugged. “There has been light, too, and plenty of heroes to the world’s benefit. But a fair share of villains as well. Through the centuries, the people of the Order have called themselves many foolish things—Knights of the Navigator, the League of Brother Explorers, and on and on. But only two names matter now. This is the Order of Brendan, and within the Order, there is Custodis Orbis—the Guardian Circle. Those are the people who oversee the Order and, at times, have overseen the world.”
“People like Rhodes,” Cyrus said.
“No,” said Nolan. “Nothing at all like Rhodes. Much wiser or much more foolish than Rhodes.” He winced and closed his eyes, rubbing his arm. Exhaling through gritted teeth, he collected himself.
Antigone winced with him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Nolan nodded, and his legs began to bounce. “I’ll back up. Sometime in the sixth century, Brendan the Navigator set out from Ireland in a big leather boat. He and sixty others reached this continent and sailed up what is now called the Hudson River, finally stopping here. They built some of the first—very small—structures of the Order right where we are now. Leaving some men behind, they sailed on for another seven years. Those sixty were the first Custodis Orbis.
“The Order of Brendan maintained harbors and holdings on every continent. Ashtown was one of the measliest, designed as a grim penal colony—a prison. The Order, in all their explorations, had begun to encounter things they could never defeat and could only hope to contain. At the far reaches of the known world, Ashtown was a dungeon for the most dangerous of those things. Here, the Sages explored death and how to bring it to the undying. Here, they collected and burned legions of vile relics—and, in some of the more foolish centuries, some of the greatest treasures man could ever hope to find. That is when Ashtown earned its name. Civilization has grown up around it, but Ashtown remains. And it still houses the most dangerous collections.
“The Order saw its boom before World War I—global membership was above one hundred thousand. Since the close of the Second World War, it has been well below ten. But the O of B still explores, discovers, and preserves as it sees fit. And if you know where to look, it can still tell you the world’s secrets—to historians, the worst kind of myths and legends; to scientists, rumors, impossibilities, and even nightmares.”
Leaning forward, Cyrus raised his eyebrows. “You’re saying a guy named Brendan discovered America?”
Nolan groaned. “Is that all you heard? No. There were entire civilizations here long before the arrival of Brendan’s sixty.” Nolan turned all the way around on his stool, propping his elbows against the table, watching the kitchen bustle. His fingers began to twitch. He clenched them into fists. “Of course, for many people here, the great mysteries are as normal as Sunday’s nap. The origin of the first pyramid, the death of the moon, the fire eyes of the leviathan, how to confine an incubus—they know these things like you know of Pilgrims and butterflies and baseball. They have always known them. Their parents and grandparents and one-eyed uncles are hanging in pictures on all the walls.” He half-smiled at the two of them. “Just like yours.”
A sharp whistle rang through the kitchen. Ben Sterling jerked his head toward the wall with the heat tunnel. The kitchen door banged open, and Cecil Rhodes stepped through, sharp nostrils flaring above his tiny mustache.
Nolan hopped off his stool. “Leave the food. Stand straight. Don’t run. Stay behind me.”
Cyrus and Antigone followed Nolan as he wove slowly through the traffic of cooks. Rhodes was tracking Sterling in the opposite direction, occasionally glancing around him.
Nolan reached the wall, lifted the grate, and turned around.
Antigone ducked in.
Cyrus ducked in.
Nolan and the grate followed. He pushed past them. “Keep up. We have to be quick.”
“Why?” Antigone asked.
“Because as long as Cecil Rhodes is in the kitchen, he can’t catch you anywhere else. Acolytes aren’t allowed in the hospital. Now you see Horace.”
The tunnel, long and straight at first, had become busy with noise. Fingers of golden light spread around the iron flowers on a dozen decorative grates. The dining hall was rowdy with silverware and laughter and conversation.
Cyrus squinted through the first grate. The hall was partitioned into sections with huge tapestried walls on wheels. He could see tuxedos and waiters. He could see a man in a jumpsuit dotted with oil stains. He saw Diana Boone throwing a roll at a boy at another table. Probably a cousin.
“Up,” Nolan’s voice echoed. “Let’s go, Cyrus. Climb.”
Straightening, Cyrus looked around for Nolan and his sister. He was alone in the tunnel, but a silent blizzard of dust was descending through the golden grate-sliced light.
Iron rungs stuck out of the wall. He couldn’t see anything above him, but he could hear breathing, and the occasional squeal and groan of metal.
He began to climb.
Ten feet up, he sneezed for the first time. Twenty feet up, he ducked his head and held his breath. Thirty feet up, he rammed his head into the back of Antigone’s legs and clutched the ladder while he fought a sneezing fit.
“Quiet, Rus-Rus,” she whispered. “Down, boy. Nolan said to wait here. He’s checking something.”
Cyrus sneezed again and one foot slipped free.
“Cyrus,” Antigone said. “Just hang on, okay?”
He snorted out his nose and ground the runoff onto his shirt shoulder. His eyes were streaming. “You try hanging on down here. It’s like a dust volcano. A dust bath. No. You know what it’s like, Tigs? It’s like climbing straight up a long shaft with more dust than the moon while your sister climbs above you, kicking it in your face. That’s what it’s like.” He sniffed hard, cleared his throat loudly, and then leaned back off the ladder, spitting between his feet at the tiny light square beneath him.
“Did you just spit?” Antigone asked. “You’re hawking loogies inside?”
“My sinuses are solid snot clods,” Cyrus said. “And I think my lungs each have two inches of mud.”
“Okay, come on up,” Nolan whispered. “Cyrus, I could hear you two rooms away. And if I could hear you, so could anyone near any vent in this entire wing.”
“If you could hear me”—Cyrus sniffed—“then you know what I was doing.”
He followed Antigone up. At the top, Nolan grabbed his wrists and pulled him to his feet in another horizontal tunnel.
Wheezing, C
yrus grabbed his sister. “Can I borrow your shirt? I need to blow my nose.”
Antigone shrugged him off, and the two of them hurried after Nolan. He had stopped beneath a dark grate in the ceiling. Little constellations of pinprick light dotted his scalp. Stepping onto a rickety, old library stool, Nolan pushed up.
The grate rose on one side, and white light flooded in along with the lemony smell of cleaning fluid. Wedging it open, Nolan dropped back down.
“Go ahead,” he said to Antigone. “I’ll boost you.”
Antigone stepped up onto the stool, and then onto Nolan’s cupped hands. She hopped, he pushed, and she wormed through onto the floor above.
Cyrus jumped and managed to wriggle his way up. With a shove from behind, he hooked his waist on the lip. Antigone grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged him forward out of the hole.
Cyrus rolled onto his back. “I could have done that by myself,” he said. “I would have been far more graceful.”
Antigone smirked. “That’s you, Cy. Mr. Graceful. Now stand up.”
From his back, Cyrus looked around. They were in a hall. The walls were white stone, the floor was covered with oddly interlacing glistening white tiles, and frosted skylights in the white ceiling were glowing orange with the evening light. White doors with white glass windows and black numbers lined both walls. Cyrus sat up. Voices trickled down the hallway around them.
“Nolan,” he whispered. “You coming up?”
Nolan’s face appeared in the hole. “No. I wait here.” He scraped the grate closed behind them. “Good luck.”
Antigone stood and grabbed Cyrus by the hand, pulling him to his feet.
“Where do we start?” Cyrus whispered.
His sister stepped to the closest door, cracked it open, and stuck her head inside. “Nobody. You do that side, and we’ll work our way down.”