by N. D. Wilson
Above him, he heard the sound of muffled engines. Green and red lights blinked in the air.
Phoenix was descending.
Nolan sighed. He hadn’t eaten all day, his sticky new underskin still stung whenever he moved, and he was hungry. Hungrier looking down on a dining hall full of armed people inhaling their dinners between nervous whispers. Only the monks seemed unaffected by the mood of the place, mounding their plates and talking loudly about judgment and divine protection.
At first, he hadn’t fully understood why Rupert had wanted him to leave the hospital and hide. Now, after a day of playing fox and beagle, he knew perfectly well.
Nolan had watched men hunt for him; he’d tucked himself in dead-end ducts while clumsy groundskeepers stumbled sneezing through the dusty tunnels, searching for Nikales the thief and cursing Sterling. Sterling? The legless cook was right at the center of whatever was unfolding.
As soon as the Smiths had arrived in Ashtown, Nolan had known that Phoenix wouldn’t be far behind. He’d had his theories about Phoenix. With the Solomon Keys in hand, creeping through the most sealed of the Sage collections, he’d confirmed them.
He’d found a naked wooden mannequin.
According to an official note pinned to the naked chest, the mannequin should have been wearing the Odyssean Cloak. The cloak, originally a talisman to protect and enhance Odysseus’s mind and vitality against the wrath of various gods, had been collected and abused by Keeper John Smith some five hundred years ago, resulting in his Burial.
Thirty years ago, a nameless Sage had added a scribble to the bottom of the card: “Presumed stolen.”
Nolan had told Rupert. The long-missing cloak might explain the mind and abilities of Phoenix, but even if it did, what made Mr. Ashes, he couldn’t even guess.
Today, he’d crept into the document wing of the Sage library looking for a stack of old handwritten notes he’d seen once before—transcripts of interviews with a troubled young Acolyte, detailing the horrible experiments his father had performed on him and their various effects on his body and mind.
He had rolled the transcripts into a tube. The tube protruded from his pocket.
And now he was wedged high in a vent, wondering what doom would fall on Ashtown, sure that whatever had been planned, no bullets could stop it.
Beneath him in the dining hall, glass crashed and silver clattered to the floor. Men and women yelled in surprise and horror as the first diners slipped out of their chairs, twitching where they fell.
Dragging Antigone, Diana Boone quickstepped up the kitchen stoop, past the trash cans, and banged through the door.
The room was in chaos.
Pots were boiling over. Smoke was pouring out of unattended ovens.
The floor was a tangle of bodies. Cooks and waiters and busboys sprawled motionless on cold stone tiles.
Gunner, tall in his long, wet coat, pale and sick, was holding a large revolver in each hand, pointing at the only two cooks still on their feet, and at four surly groundskeepers. His legs were shaking. Little Hillary Drake, the girl from Accounting, was curled up, quivering on the floor beside him.
“Who did it?” Gunner yelled. “Where’s Sterling?”
“Gone,” said a cook. “He just walked out. Don’t shoot. We had nothing—”
“Shut up!” Gunner yelled, and he staggered backward into the island of simmering pots.
He moved the guns to the groundskeepers. “Phoenix’s lads, aren’t you?” He was slurring. “All of you. Embarrassed you couldn’t hack the Order? Well, me too, but I didn’t turn to murdering for a clown.”
The men didn’t say anything. They only had to wait. The tall Texan wouldn’t last long.
Dripping, Antigone threw off her coat. “Gunner!” she said. “What’s going on?”
Drawing her own revolver, Diana ran across the room and dropped to her knees beside Hillary.
Head lolling, Gunner lowered his shaking arms. Two of the groundskeepers jumped forward, but too soon. Both of Gunner’s pistols rose and cracked. Both men tumbled.
Gunner slipped to his knees, his face twitching. “They poisoned the … everyone,” he said. “Everyone. Greeves warned us. Phoenix …” He dropped his left arm to the floor, exhausted. His right hand wavered. “You!” he yelled at the last two groundskeepers. “Did you know?”
The two men breathed slowly, looking at the bodies of their friends, taking in the room.
“Answer me!” Gunner yelled. He fired into the wall behind them.
“Yes!” one of them blurted. “But it wasn’t serious. Sterling recruited us. We never knew it would be like this. We didn’t know.”
Gunner swallowed. “Is Phoenix coming?”
The man nodded and pointed out the wall of rain-rattled windows. Below the dark clouds, blurry but visible, green and red wing lights were blinking. A seaplane was touching down in the rough water.
“He’s here,” the man said.
“On your faces,” Gunner said, and the groundskeepers dropped to their knees and fell forward. “Antigone … tie … tie … find some rope.”
The kitchen door swung open and two laughing men stepped through. “We need a gun! Little Jax is brawling in here, going crazy with some table knives—”
Gunner shot twice and both men dropped, yelping, clutching at their legs.
“Them too,” Gunner said. He closed his eyes and fell onto his face.
The unwounded groundskeepers both jumped to their feet, but Diana slid to Gunner’s body, raising her own revolver. “Down, ticks. I’m a Boone. From here, I could shoot your rat ears off. Not that I’m aiming for your ears.”
The men dropped back onto their bellies. Diana picked up one of Gunner’s pistols and tossed it to Antigone.
“Point at what you want to hit and keep them down.”
Shaking, the warm gun heavy in her hands, Antigone aimed at the men, and then at the two white-faced cooks. Diana ducked into the dining hall.
“Jax!” Her voice was still loud through the door. Gunfire was louder. She ducked back through. “Keep pointing, Tigs. Jax is fine, and he’s coming this way.”
The grate rattled off of the heat tunnel in the wall behind her, and she spun around.
Nolan stepped into the kitchen and looked up at two gun barrels pointed right at him.
The dining hall door burst open and Jax jumped through, red-faced and bleeding. “Jaculus venom!” he yelled. “My vipers! I don’t know how Sterling got it, but he did. I built an immunity a long time ago. Where is he?”
“Shoot if you like,” Nolan said. “But I was just going to ask the same thing. Where is he?” He squinted out the window. “That’s a plane. Sterling doesn’t matter. Phoenix is here.” He scrunched his face. “And if he’s here, we shouldn’t be. Where’s Greeves? I didn’t see him in the hall.” He looked around. “Where’s Cyrus?”
Antigone’s eyes widened. “Cyrus!” she yelled. “Diana, where do I go?”
Backing up, Diana picked up Gunner’s second gun and handed it to Nolan. “Get these four tied up. I still don’t trust the cooks.” Then she hurried through the room, grabbing Antigone as she went. On the far wall, behind the groundskeepers, Diana slid a bolt and jerked open a little door. Tight stairs twisted down and to the right.
Dennis had managed to worm his way across the floor until his trussed feet were on the pickle jar. But he still hadn’t spit out the pot holder.
“Did you hear it that time?” Cyrus asked. “That’s a gun. I know it is. How many rounds is that? Who do you think is shooting?”
Dennis grunted and wiggled.
“Sorry,” said Cyrus. “I know.” He looked back at the Quick Water in the onions. “Come on!” he yelled. “Tigs, I know you’re somewhere. I know you can see me. I’m surrounded by spices! Where could I be?”
The door opened. Stairs moaned.
“Hello?” Cyrus said. “Who is it? This room is occupied.”
“Cyrus!”
Diana staggered into
the room, Antigone pushing from behind.
“Wow,” said Diana. “You guys are the lucky ones.” She bent down and plucked out Dennis’s gag.
The porter sputtered. “Lucky? This is lucky?”
Diana nodded.
“It’s terrible upstairs,” Antigone said, pulling on Cyrus’s straps. “Sterling’s poisoned the whole Order. Everybody. The kitchen is full of bodies.”
“You didn’t even see the dining hall,” Diana said. She stopped suddenly, forcing herself to breathe. She looked dizzy. “The Order’s gone. Everyone.” Her eyes widened and she blinked quickly. Pulling the last ropes off Dennis’s wrists, she helped him to his feet.
Cyrus stood up, and Antigone thumped into him with a hug. She was soaking wet.
Cyrus pulled free and picked up the mayonnaise jar and eyedropper, handing them to his sister. “Sterling said to put two drops under the tongue. We were the only ones in here. He was telling us what to do.”
“What to do after he poisoned everyone?” Antigone asked. “Why would he do that?”
Cyrus shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s not all bad.”
His sister’s eyebrows shot up.
“Or,” said Cyrus, “maybe he is all bad, but he doesn’t want to think he is.”
“Come on,” Diana said. “Back upstairs. We’ll ask Jax.”
In the kitchen, all four of the thugs had been tied up with apron strings.
Jax had Hillary and Gunner lying on their backs, and his fingers were on the Texan’s throat.
Dennis staggered through the kitchen and dropped to his knees beside Hillary.
“His heart’s beating,” Jax said. “Slowly. Every five seconds or so. With spasms. Hillary is worse, but she’s much smaller.” He looked up at Diana and the others. “It doesn’t take much with a Jaculus Viper, and unlike normal snakes, it doesn’t need to be injected. The venom is acidic enough to get into the blood through tissue—skin, stomach lining, anything that has blood in it. It was in the food, so that gives us a little time—they’d all be dead already if it was a direct bite. But there’s too many people.” He teared up and looked away quickly. “The small ones have thirty minutes. Forty-five if they’re lucky. Maybe. I have to get to the zoo, catch a viper, cut it open, drain a gland, and get back. And that might only give me enough for five people.” The zookeeper sobbed. “I’ll have to pick. I don’t want to pick.”
“What about this?” Cyrus asked, holding out the jar. “Sterling had it.”
Swallowing, James Axelrotter took the jar, twisted off the lid, and sniffed at the contents. Surprised, he snatched the glass eyedropper out of Cyrus’s hand. Pinching a dropperful, he raised it to his mouth and dabbed it with his tongue. It hissed. The boy zookeeper flinched, and then laughed. “This is it! I don’t know how he got this much, and I don’t care.”
Jax opened Gunner’s mouth and squeezed two drops under his tongue. Then he rolled him onto his face.
“It’ll foam,” he said. “And they won’t come to for a little while. They’ll choke if we leave them on their backs. There are hundreds of people and not much time. I’ll need help.”
He turned to little Hillary Drake, and Dennis opened her mouth.
“Excuse me,” Nolan said. “But we can’t stay here, and soon enough, we won’t be able to do this at all.” He pointed at the window. “The plane has landed, Phoenix will be here any minute, and there are other thugs still around to give him a welcome.”
“Have any ideas?” Diana squinted at the dark window.
“Maybe,” said Nolan. “Almost.”
Jax and Dennis rolled Hillary onto her face, and then crawled to the next body—a busboy.
“Whatever we do,” Cyrus said, pointing at the four tied-up men, “they shouldn’t hear about it.”
“Drag them downstairs,” Antigone said. She jumped over to Jax. “Give me some,” she said. “We need more droppers. I’ll start in the dining hall.”
Cecil Rhodes sat on his couch, drumming his fingers on his knees, wiping sweat on his sleeve, and then drumming his fingers on his knees. He couldn’t stop thinking about what Maxi had done to Mrs. Eldridge in that very room. His eyes kept drifting to the bloodstain on the floor, and then up to his telephone. It was supposed to ring. Any second.
He looked across the room at the muscle who had been assigned to him. The man was working on his teeth with a fingernail.
“Did it really work?” Cecil asked. “What happened?”
The man sighed, examining his hand. “I told you already. They kicked, they screamed, they dropped down dead.”
Cecil didn’t like the man’s eyes. They were cold. And catlike. But they weren’t as bad as the gill slits on the sides of his neck. He used to wear a scarf, and Rhodes wished the man would tie it back on. Cecil knew what the man had done as an Explorer. Cecil had served as the O of B’s prosecutor at the trial.
The phone rang.
Rhodes jumped forward, nearly knocking it off the desk.
“Hello, sir. Yes, sir. It’s done. Just the boy, sir. The girl may be among the poisoned.” Rhodes covered the handset and looked up at his guard. “Sterling?”
“No sign of him.”
Cecil lifted the phone back up. It was slippery with sweat. “No, sir. We don’t know where he has gone. Would you like us to begin moving the bodies? No? I understand, sir. We will leave them for you to view. Wonderful. Yes, sir.”
He hung up and jumped back, like he was shaking off a spider. The man with the gills laughed.
Edwin Ashes-Laughlin-Phoenix rose from his seat and limped forward into the cockpit of his seaplane. One of the pontoons was grinding against the jetty. But he didn’t care about the rocking waves or the damage to the plane. He cared about what he could see at the top of the slope, with its windows lit. He cared about a small piece of sharp tooth, and hidden sleepers in their Burials. They were now his.
The men and women of Brendan were dead. The time had come for a Phoenix to rise up out of Ashtown.
Behind him, two unconscious shapes lay motionless on narrow cots, and a red-winged blackbird fluttered and screeched angrily in a cage hanging from the ceiling.
“Shall we bring them?” One of the green twins pulled off his headset.
“No,” said Dr. Phoenix. “First, the triumphal entry.”
twenty-one
THE SLEEPING MOB
DR. PHOENIX WAS not going to enter Ashtown through a kitchen door. Nor would he make one of his offspring carry an umbrella for him. He had walked, flanked by his two lean sons, all the way up and around to the main lawn. Now, with rain streaming off his long trench coat and his straw hat, he stood at the base of the great stairs, near the wet body of a porter.
He could hear the beating wings of a platoon of giant dragonflies in the darkness behind him. They had grown in number, but there were no guards to see what they saw, and no one to command them to attack.
Climbing the stairs, he approached the huge wooden door, but it whined open before he reached it.
Inside, the glistening mapped floors and the vaulted frescoed ceilings stretched away toward the leather boat on its pedestal. Phoenix inhaled slowly and then sighed. It had been too long.
Cecil Rhodes and twelve others stood in a line with their backs against the wall.
Dr. Phoenix savored the sight. And then, laughing, pulling off his gloves, and shedding his hat and trench, he crossed the threshold into Ashtown. Farther down the hallway, he could see bodies, all facedown, limbs splaying awkwardly, foam dribbling from their mouths—the casualties of his triumph.
“Where is the boy?” he asked Rhodes.
Rhodes cleared his throat and picked at his mustache. “Not exactly sure, sir. Sterling had him. But, as you know, we seem to have lost Sterling.”
A gilled man laughed. “Crack team.”
Phoenix turned slowly, and then moved down the line until he stood in front of the man. He was much taller than the man was, though far thinner.
“My friend
, who gave you those eyes?” he asked, smiling. “Those lovely shark gills?”
The man said nothing. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Did you ask to be born, sir? Did you ask for sight, for smell, for ten fingers? No. And yet you were given them. And I have given you more.”
The man looked into Phoenix’s eyes and flinched, trying to look away but unable to. Panic raced across his face. Phoenix raised his right hand, a long forefinger pressing against his thumb. He snapped, and the man’s eyes rolled back in his head. His legs wobbled, and he staggered forward, gasping.
“Your body no longer wants its lungs,” Phoenix said. “And gills do need water.” The man fell to the floor. “Be comforted,” Phoenix continued, smiling. “You are unique. Not many men can drown in air.”
While the man kicked, Dr. Phoenix turned back to Cecil. “You are missing nine of the men named to me. Where are they?”
Rhodes licked his lips and shook his head. “I don’t know, sir.”
Phoenix nodded, filled his lungs, pushed back his black hair with the heels of his hands, and flattened the lapels on his soiled lab coat. “Do please take me to the bodies, to the harvest, to the sweet sunset of the Order’s chattel.”
“Right,” said Rhodes. “Follow me, then.”
While they moved down the hall, Rhodes cleared his throat. “About what we discussed, sir,” he whispered. “The Brendanship … the coup is complete. It might be appropriate for you to tell the others. I will, of course, reiterate my loyalty to you.”
Dr. Phoenix stopped and let his head hang. His long arms dangled limp by his sides. His shoulders bobbed with laughter, but when he looked up, his face was a sharp tombstone.
“Mr. Rhodes,” he drawled loudly. “You are a traitor to your people, your Order, and your friends. I would not entrust you with my laundry.” He moved on. “When I have need of more betrayals, then I shall have more need of you. Come. I have asked to see the dead, the many you have stung for me.”
“I didn’t—” Cecil stopped himself. The green twins parted around him, neck gills fluttering, heeling to their master. “But you said …”