I was sure she was going to Mazol's bedchambers for another minute, but then she turned again.
She wasn't going to Mazol's bedchambers. She was going to the Caldroen.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Cevo
Friday
6:58 pm
3 hours, 52 minutes until the Falling
"How much longer do we have?" Hagnus asked, still shaking from the drop down the shaft.
I looked at my pocket watch. "3 hours, 52 minutes."
It was infuriating. I had the location. I just didn't have the means of getting there. And I was running out of time. Quick. I needed the mine to work faster.
We were 1000 feet underground, directly below my 7th century manse, in a small stone walled room no living eyes, save mine, had ever seen. Even the laborers who built this secret underground laboratory were unable to spread any word of it's existence. Digging underground is a dangerous business. By pure coincidence, just after the work was complete, there was an explosion. The fatality rate was 100%.
Hagnus was not aware of the storied history of those who came into my laboratory; that none had ever been allowed to leave. She may not have descended so willingly into the earth on the steam-powered elevator had she known.
But I was not sure about what to do with Hagnus yet. I had the vow, but she was resourceful. And talented. Somehow, she'd gotten her hands on a piece of information I'd been searching for longer than she'd likely been alive. I didn't want to throw her away before I used up her usefulness. But, I had to watch her too. I still wasn't sure why she wanted to get to me so desperately. Was it just information about what she was? Or something more devious?
I took out my pocket watch and waited. It ticked for a few more seconds until the hands showed exactly 8 o'clock. A moment later, a brass bell, attached to a spiral spring on the wall, rang three times. A glass vialus appeared with a popping sound at the end of a tube which ran down the wall from a hole in the stone ceiling.
We were cutting it close, but the mine had barely been able to pull together enough as it was. In fact, I had been extraordinarily lucky that we had found a seam so soon after beginning work. But, luck favors the brilliant, so it really wasn't luck after all. Just the natural result of my own excellent plan.
Under ordinary circumstances, I would have bid Hagnus to fetch the vialus. But we were 1000 feet underground in a room no living person had ever seen and the contents of that one vialus were of more value than what a 100 laborers earned in a lifetime. These were not ordinary circumstances.
I tightened the gloves on my hands, then trembling, took the vialus from the tube.
Hagnus stepped towards me, her hand in the air like she was going to strike me, but I looked again and she was just reaching out, as if to steady my hand.
"Stand back," I snapped. She startled, then put her back to the wall.
Her face transformed. Her skin was patchy from sobbing; hair tangled; eyes bloodshot. She had a curved black knife in her hand, but she tucked it quickly behind her. I barely recognized her, but I shook my head, like I had been falling asleep. Blinking twice, I opened my eyes and was relieved to find the nightmarish version of Hagnus had vanished. She was back to her normal self. Not pretty, but not so ugly as the vision I'd just seen.
"Don't look so frightened," I said. "It ruins your face." In fact, her looks were actually starting to grow on me—I might have even called her beautiful—if I was feeling very generous and if filthy dogs were my type.
I took the vialus to the press which sat squarely in center of the room.
"What is it?"
"This is the result of 2538 men, women and children working since yesterday morning. And what you might call a considerable amount of luck."
At 10:15 the previous evening, minutes after I discovered the location of Evan Burl, a messenger notified me that the miners had successfully tapped into a seam of diamonds. And not just any diamonds; Azul diamonds. These diamonds, which are light blue in color, can be processed using a complicated and expensive process into a dark blue liquid so thin it could cover the floor of an entire room with just a single vialus—not that anyone has ever possessed so much in one vialus.
"What's it called?"
It wasn't very often I spoke with anyone except to give a command to a servant. And though Hagnus was a vialus creature with no manners and no self-respect, I have to admit, I was hating her company less and less. She reminded me of when I first discovered sapience—I think she made me feel a little younger.
"Ember. It is the most rare and valuable mineral in the world, 100,000 times over." I looked at her carefully. "It would be a mistake to repeat anything you hear from me, I hope you understand this." She nodded her head. I wasn't sure it mattered, I planed to strangle her anyway. But just in case I decided to let her live, I thought I should warn her.
Holding my breath, I uncapped the vialus, steadied my hand and tipped the contents into a tube sticking out the top of the press; barely more than a drop. My face twitched twice as a stream of dark blue liquid thinner than a strand of hair plucked from a newborn's head poured from the vialus. Immediately, steam began to roll out. The machine began to rattle, but it was bolted firmly to the stone below. If you listened very carefully, you could also hear something like the sound of dozens of women who have been locked in a burning house screaming for their lives.
"And now we wait," I said as I closed a cap tight on the tube, hoping there was enough ember to make the rubric work. I didn't know what would happen if it wasn't powerful enough. I'd never used one before, these things were Terillium's trinkets. I'd never had use for them, until now.
There was a whistle vent which sounded every 20 seconds or so when the pressure built up. I watched the feet of the press, where they were bolted to the floor and remembered the day it was installed.
"Those stones were brought over the seas by mercenaries from the East." I pointed at the floor. "They were taken from a 320-year-old castle, built by the ancestors of an great emperor--"
"What are we waiting for?"
I had been prepared to tell her about how I slit the man's throat myself before taking the stones, but she didn't seem interested. "The ember. It must die."
"It's alive?"
"Yes, of course. But the press kills the ember by infusing it into a solid platinum casting. Later, we charge it with electricity and the casting is reborn as a rubric." I knew she didn't know what electricity was, but she probably didn't understand most of what I was saying.
"The rubrics, they're alive?"
I watched her mouth move as she spoke. If I didn't detest her so much, I might have thought she reminded me of myself.
"Terillium found a way to keep the ember alive, but he kept the secret to himself." I pulled a hand mirror from my pocket and checked my face.
"Are rubrics sapient?"
I frowned and lowered the mirror to inspect her. "Where did you hear that word?"
"I used to live with a man who taught it to me. He told me that was what they called people like me, a sapient."
"Describe him to me."
She seemed hesitant and I knew whatever she said next would be a lie.
"He was tall, like you. He was from the east. Strong arms and he spoke with an accent."
Lies. Lies. I wanted to rip the jaw from her face. My grip on the mirror tensed until it shattered. She jumped and for a moment the hideous vision of her returned. Hatred filled her eyes. I blinked it away again. I had to get control of myself.
"Are you all right?" she said.
"Of course I am."
There was a long silence, then she spoke again. "What is sapience?"
I eyed her angrily, but resisted the urge to say something. She was just curious; she didn't know not to use the word. And no one was around to hear her but me. I began to explain. "Ember is found in exactly two types of organisms. Azul diamonds and blood."
Her eyes widened.
"Every human has a small amount of ember living
inside them, pulsing through their heart to the muscles and back again. Ember is the secret to life. Without it, you would just be a lump of flesh. Your organs would beat and breathe, but there would be no life in you."
"So sapience is ember?"
"You must be careful about using that word," I snapped, my baritone voice even lower than normal. I sighed. "Let me explain. Sapience is the result of making use of the ember living inside you. Most humans never discover this so they live and die as mere mortals. While others, like you, uncover the potential embedded in your blood. Those who do not discover this power are nothing more than animals, which also, have ember in their blood. Yet animals are not intelligent enough to use this power. This is not their fault of course, because they are just animals. Humans on the other hand, are to blame for their ignorance. They have intelligence, yet they refuse to use it and instead they make themselves become like animals. It is disgusting and unnatural."
I had explained this many times before, to other sapients like Hagnus, before I killed them. But I never enjoyed myself quite so much as I was when describing it to Hagnus. It felt like when my father explained how it worked to me for the first time.
"What does that have to do with rubrics?"
"The rubrics are infused with ember, but the ember is frozen, or you might say it's asleep. When you take hold of a rubric, you lend your energy so they can live again, for a short time."
"That's why you want Evan. You want what's inside him, you think the ember inside him can't be killed?" She was smart. She was closer to it than I would have thought she could guess.
"Not quite," I said, "Evan's ember is just like any other. Humans cannot live without ember and ember cannot live without humans. When you kill one, you kill the other."
"So it's just the spider you want?"
"I want both of them. Evan and the spider."
"What is it? The spider."
"It's like a rubric, only much more powerful. The ember in the spider never died. It's still alive. The spider becomes part of you, its ember swims in your blood. It lends you it's power in exchange for your life. And the host becomes more powerful than you can imagine."
"But what about Evan? What is so special about him?"
"Evan could change everything. If left alone, he could bring the world to it's knees."
"So you're going to kill him."
I cleaned between my teeth with my tongue as I thought for a moment. "I'm not sure yet."
"What you going to do when you find him?"
"I'm going to give him a choice."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Evan
Friday
7:22 pm
3 hours, 27 minutes until the Falling
I followed at a distance, hoping Henri would turn down one hall after another. But she didn't.
It was only a few minutes before I saw her step through one of the huge blast doors that led to the Caldroen.
I crept up to the door, though I could easily hear their conversation from the hall. My ears were becoming so sensitive, I had to concentrate to block out the pattering rain which had just begun on the windows and the buzzing of insects for several rooms in every direction.
"What took so long?" Mazol said.
"I had to go along with him for a while," Henri replied. "He's so suspicious."
Realization washed over me. It was worse than I feared; her words cut me so hard I could feel physical pain. How many times would I trust Henri only to learn that she was never who she said she was? I almost turned and left, but I couldn't pull away. I felt like a shade and Henri was my drug. No matter how much she hurt me, I kept coming back. I had to at least hear what she said.
I peaked through the opening and saw Henri priming a pump that powered dozens of powerful oil lamps which hung around the room. Most of them had been destroyed when Claire fell through the ceiling, but six or seven began to glow faintly, building slowly till they became burning orbs of ebbing light.
Mazol, Yesler and Ballard were just as I left them, still wrapped in a thin, towering cocoon of twisted iron, wood and glass. The clankers were swaying slightly from the tinsel cord that seemed to barely hold up under the weight.
I tried to focus and stay calm. As my head cooled, I realized there could be another explanation. She could still be playing a part with Mazol. She said she was working against him. Maybe she was trying to find out where the skull pendent and spider were.
"Don't just stand there," Yesler said with a spit, "help us get out of this racket."
No one was looking so I crawled through the door and hid behind a broken clanker. I could see Henri's shadow from where she stood on the platform about ten feet from where I crouched.
"Who said I'm here to get you down?"
"What are you talking about?" said Mazol.
I saw Henri's shadow pull out something that was tucked in her belt, unwraping some kind of cloth from around it.
"How did you—" Mazol said.
"There are lots of places around Daemanhur to hide something like this," Henri said. "You picked one of the most obvious." I craned my neck to see what she was holding, but couldn't quite do it with risking being seen.
"That's mine," Mazol said.
"Wrong. It's Evan's."
Henri turned and her shadow revealed what was hanging by a chain from her hand. It was shaped like an enormous spider.
"You don't know what you're doing," Mazol said.
"Wrong again. I've read the letters."
"I knew he had them. That gimp stole my book 5 years ago. I bet showed them off to you every chance he got."
"He never showed them to me. He's afraid of the letters. But he hasn't put it all together like I have. He doesn't know the power of the spider."
"Has he put together who's been sneaking around at night, killing children?"
"No. And I'm going to make sure he doesn't."
"What if I tell him?"
"You're dead if you do. That was my deal. You promised."
"Don't talk to me about deals," Mazol said, his voice cracking with anger. "If you don't get us down from here this instant—"
"You forget that I'm holding all the cards."
"You think you're so smart, but you don't know anything. Don't you think the owner of that spider is going to come looking for it someday? You better stop acting like some lictor's brat and smarten up or I swear—"
"You'll what?" Henri said. "Kill Evan? Don't you think that threat is getting a little stale?"
I couldn't make sense of everything I was hearing. One moment it sounded like she had blackmailed Mazol to keep secret that she had been killing the fallings. The next it sounded like Mazol had blackmailed Henri by saying he'd kill me if she didn't help him out.
"Fine, if you've got it all figured out, what's your move?"
"That depends on you."
"We're still leaving, nothing can change that."
"I don't have a problem with that. But I'm coming with you. It's Evan and me or nothing. And we'll not be your slaves."
"We can't afford to bring you both. That's why we have to cut our losses with the others."
"You'll just have to figure out a way to make it work. It's both of us or nothing."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I give the spider to Evan and we see what happens. You're no match for him, not now—"
"Now that he's a monster?"
"Don't ever call him that. He's good. He's got to be."
"You're more delusional than the gimp," Yesler said.
"You will not call him the gimp either."
"You've got an awful lot of terms to this agreement," Yesler said.
"What about the gimp, how do we know he won't just snap our necks while we sleep."
"Because as long as you keep your end of the deal, I'll make sure he can't use sapience."
Henri pulled something else from her pocket. I risked peeking around the machine just to catch a glimpse. It was the skull pendent.
"Th
is is how I've been getting the black liquid for the syringes. I extract it from the skull. Evan hasn't figured it out yet, but if we force him to wear this pendent, he can't use sapience."
"So we'll be your servants and you'll keep your dog on his leash?" Mazol said.
"I wouldn't serve you and the gimp if it was my only chance to live," Yesler said with a spit.
"Let me explain it to you," Henri said. "Ballard does whatever he's told, as long as he get's 5 meals a day. Yesler will stay in line if Ballard get's to thump him on the head if he doesn't. And if any of you do anything that displeases me, I'll take the skull pendent off Evan and unleash him on you. He won't even realize what he's done before all three of you are buried in the dirt."
"He really is just a dog to you."
"I love Evan. But, he's not good for himself. He needs me to help him."
Mazol started laughing. "Smart girl. You're starting to remind me of, well, me."
"You're not actually going to accept this are you?" Yesler said.
"What choice do we have?" Ballard said.
"Just one question," Mazol said. "How are you going to get us down from here? Unless you've managed to conjure the same freakish skills as the gimp."
Henri turned to the door I had come through and I had to scramble to stay out of her eye line. She beckoned to the door and said, "It's alright, you can come out."
For a moment, I thought she was talking to me, but then I saw a ghostly face appear in the door. It was Little Sae. After her came the other three dead fallings. As they walked passed me, they smiled at me, but I waved for them to not say anything. Then looked away quickly, as if playing along in a game. A moment later, they were standing next to Henri, waiting to be told what to do.
"So, do we have a deal?" Henri said.
Yesler started to protest, but Mazol silenced him.
"Henri's smarter than I thought. And Ballard's right. We don't have a choice."
"I'll take that as a yes," Henri said. I saw her shadow turn to the four girls. "Go ahead, just like I told you."
Evan Burl and the Falling Page 26