Heart of Veridon bc-1

by Tim Akers

  We came to a door. It was old and heavy, the hinges gummy with rust. I fell against it while Wilson ran his hands over the surface, looking for an opening mechanism. It was warm, and as I lay against it, the iron seemed to beat like an ancient heart. I was just summoning the strength to stand and try to give Wilson a hand when the door opened. I fell inside, and the door shut behind me. Wilson rushed to support me. He got in just before the heavy iron slammed shut with a tortured grind.

  The room was like a bowl, terraced circles leading down to a pit at the center, a stage of dark, polished wood. On each level there was crowded refuse, like a scrap heap, machines that hissed and gurgled and twitched in the bare light. Stairs led down through this mess. There were frictionlamps at regular intervals. They spun up as we came into the room, covering everything in soft, warm light. There was a lot of brass, and a lot of deep, brown leather. The air smelled like a furnace that was about to blow. There was something at the bottom of the pit, something on the stage. It was swollen and alive, like an abscess of the architecture ready to burst. Light shone off metal and coils quivered. Something was breathing with the cold metal regularity of an engine and valve.

  I walked down the stairs on stiff legs. The pain in my chest was a searing flare. I’m going to die down here, I thought. I approached the thing on the stage. Wilson hung back, his attention caught by the collected detritus of the pit. He looked at me nervously.

  “I don’t think we should be here, Jacob,” he hissed. “I think this is the kind of place the Tombs would kill you for seeing.”

  “Tried once, already.” I paused at the edge of the stage, my hand on my heart. “What’s the harm?”

  “There’s always harm,” Wilson said. He crept up behind me. “What is it?”

  It was a face, iron, huge. It reclined on the ruined wood of the stage, eyes closed, fat cheeks and lips relaxed. It looked like a giant, sleeping. My hand was on the chin. Cables spilled out from all sides, twitching with power and hydraulic currents. I stepped back.

  The eyes opened, slowly. Behind the lids were eyes of glass, windows into a tank of green liquid. A body floated there, bloated and ancient, the flesh pale, cables making a ruin of the flesh.

  “Patron Tomb,” I said.

  Chapter Eight

  A Fallow Harvest

  “You are the Burn child.” The voice came out of a box, near my feet. Each word sounded like the final exhalation of an old man, dying of wasted lungs.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes.” The Patron had signed over his family’s Writ of Name generations ago, to be enacted on his death. He lived on, here, always dying but never gone. “Angela speaks of you. Who is your companion?”

  “This is Wilson, a friend.”

  “He is anansi,” Tomb groaned.

  “Yes,” Wilson said. He sounded nervous.

  “Wilson, of the anansi. We have met before.”

  “I think you’re mistaken,” Wilson said.

  Tomb was quiet for a minute, the body in his eyes drifting slowly around the cold liquid of his chamber.

  “Of course I am. Pardon an old man.” His machinery rumbled. “Burn, you are close to Angela? A friend?”

  “She and I were friends, when we were younger.”

  “And now?” The mausoleum’s voice was slow, each word weighted with time and patience.

  “I couldn’t say. Times have been strange.”

  “Times have always been strange, child Burn. Time in Veridon is a graceless thing, lurching through the city, leaving ruin and promise equal in its wake. And even its promises are ruinous.”

  “Yes, well.” I held down a cough, cringed at the bright crimson pain that arced through my ribs. “This is the sort of strange where she shot me. It’s hard to get past that, childhood friends or not.”

  The Tomb was silent for a moment. “When next you are offered the opportunity to die, child Burn, I would consider it more closely.”

  “You threaten well,” I said, shifting away from the Patron, “for a body in a tank.”

  “I don’t make threats.” He was silent for many long, metallic breaths. “It was advice, from someone who has gone on ahead.”

  I waited in the silence, in the dark heart of the strange theater, listening to this living Tomb breath and remember.

  “What’s going on, upstairs?” I asked. I had heard stories of how the Patron lived throughout the house, like a pilot on his ship.

  “You said yourself, child.” The body behind the eyes seemed to shift. “Strange times.”

  When he didn’t go on, I prompted. “Is it the Church? Are they moving against the Council, trying to leverage the Families apart so they can take over?”

  He made a harsh noise, something that might have been laughter.

  “The Church will never upset the balance. They are the balance. They are the power! No. This is the business of dead men. Their choices come back to tempt us.”

  “If not the Church, then who? Someone in the Council?”

  Another long silence. Sounds of fighting drifted down through pipes and duct ways, distant and tiny in this crowded room.

  “I remember your grandfather,” he said. “Or his father. It’s hard to keep track. We built this lovely city, out here on the edge of the world. Built it on the bones of old gods, among mysteries and wonders.” The voicebox rumbled. “I wasn’t a Tomb then, either. Walking, that’s the name I was born with.”

  “Yes, Patron. I know the histories. But what’s happening to your city now?” Would the old man know anything about his Family’s plans, or was his time spent in addled nostalgia?

  “Now?” The face seemed to settle, as though it was drifting into sleep. “There is a great deal of desperation, Alexander. The girl has gotten involved in more than she can handle. You shouldn’t have asked it of her.”

  “What?” I asked. I exchanged a quick look with Wilson. He shrugged. Tomb had forgotten which Burn I was. He mistook me for my father. “What shouldn’t I have asked of your Angela?”

  “Do you keep things even from yourself? A bad habit, Alexander. This plan of yours has become too much.”

  “I believed she could do it.” How to uncover the plan without tipping off the source. “But she has failed me, hasn’t she?”

  “Your son, he’s the failure. He’s the damn weak link, Burn. You trusted him with too much. Don’t blame my Family for your wastrel’s dim headedness.”

  “Listen, you fat shit! Jacob’s business is his own. He doesn’t want to be involved in your goddamn power games. Leave him out of it.”

  The Tomb tensed, then seemed to settle, again with that sound that passed for laughter.

  “Perhaps he thinks himself more clever than the old man. Perhaps he thinks himself too clever by far.” A long sigh. “Don’t play those games with your elders, Jacob Burn. It’s beneath you.”

  “What did my father ask of you, of your family? I’m tired of being jerked around, Patron Tomb. I’ve given enough to this city.” I snarled and poked my finger at his metal chin. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “You threaten the dead, child. With what? Disrespect? Violence?” The body shifted behind the green eyes, the puffy face floating near the glass. “Do not think to threaten us.”

  “There is more in the world than you, old man.” I tapped my foot against the metal tubes that fed his body. “What good is the Patron if his Family is gone? What will you be if the Family Tomb is no longer respected in Veridon?”

  Long silence, metal breath. “He shouldn’t have asked it of her,” he said, crossly, the anger coming through the voicebox as a sharp hiss. “She didn’t grasp the whole picture. I advised against it.”

  “What, exactly, did you advise against, Patron?”

  “Why are you here, Jacob Burn? What brings you into my house, to disturb my rest? Alexander didn’t send you. Ask yourself why, Jacob. And why, if he hasn’t let you in on the secret, why should I?”

  “I didn’t come to see you, old man.” Th
e pain flared in my chest again. I was feeling better, I realized. I was feeling almost normal again. “I’m here on my own business.”

  “But not Family business. No, you don’t stand for the Family Burn, do you? Are you here as a representative of your new family? What is that wind-up thug’s name. Valentine?”

  “I am acting on my own, Patron. I stand for myself.”

  “Noble words. But what you mean is that you’ve been abandoned. Again. Valentine has foresworn your service, forbidden his people from working with you. Isn’t that right?” He seemed to leer up from his watery bed. “That must be a feeling you’re getting used to, eh? Being cut out, like a sickness.”

  “I am not alone. Friends stand with me. You don’t know the whole game, old man.” He was distracting me, diverting my attention from the central point. “What is my father’s role in this? What is your Family’s role? If I’m meant to be a part of it, as you imply, then how can I be of any help if no one will tell me what’s going on?”

  “You are here for the artifact, yes? The one taken from the Church, in secret. Passed on by a criminal. I believe they buried him in the backyard, all those years ago.”

  I ran a finger down the Cog. However it had gotten here, it hadn’t been years ago. The Patron was talking about something else. What could it be?

  “Perhaps. What is it? It has something to do with all this trouble?”

  “Something. What do you want with it?”

  “I’m going to solve this thing, old man. Whatever my father intended, I’m going to put an end to this.”

  “Mm. It isn’t the sort of trouble that can be solved, child. Merely avoided, and survived.”

  “Is that why you’re down here? Hiding from the trouble?”

  “My Family’s future depends on my survival. You wouldn’t understand.”

  I laughed. “Did you fear death so much, that you trapped your Family into preserving you? Is that why you signed that terrible contract, blackmailing your Family with their place on the Council?”

  “Is this life! This fallow harvest, Jacob, is this living!” Heat rose from the Tomb, and the cables hummed. “You have no idea, sir, what this is. We make sacrifices, Jacob, for family. For the city. Your father, he understands. He knows what it is to sacrifice for family.”

  “My father? Noble Alexander! Tell me, Patron, if he understands the value of sacrifice, of family, what is it, sir, that he valued so much that he sacrificed his own family, his own blood, his goddamn son!”

  Tomb was quiet. Eventually, “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Now that,” I said, leaning in toward the massive face. “That I believe.”

  “It is here.”

  “What?”

  “Your artifact. Third shelf, against the wall. An ivory box. They made it into something holy, those churchmen. I don’t know where the key is hidden.”

  I stood up. Wilson was already up the pit, rummaging in the area Tomb had indicated. “Why tell me? If it has been hidden all this time. What would Angela say?”

  “Angela has gone a great deal farther than I think is prudent. And I am tired. Now, go.”

  He settled down, the face shifting ever so slightly into slack inattention. I bounded up the stairs. When I looked back the face was still open, the glossy green eyes staring up at the darkness with their pupils of bloated flesh.

  Wilson brought me the box. We squatted in the walkway. It was a long, narrow container, the flat planes thin sheets of ivory set in tarnished silver fittings. It was a simple matter to crack open with my knife. The artifact clattered out. I squatted above it, looking for damage. It was quiet in the hallways.

  The artifact was a cylinder of steel with grooves. Something twitched inside me, like a stolen memory burning through my head. Without thinking I ran my hand down the artifact, triggered some hidden catch, then balanced it on one end. The cylinder blossomed, like a flower.

  There was wire, a fly wheel, and a tightly packed central axis of stacked metal segments. It spun up. Plates folded out from the central core, supported and guided by the wires, which stiffened as they expanded. The plates spun in wider circles, shifting, sliding by each other until they blurred into a single brilliant image. Viewed from above it made a picture, like a cinescope.

  It was a map. Most of it looked like nothing to me, just lines and rivers and a coastline, far in the top left corner. And then I saw Veridon, or where Veridon should have been, near one edge of the map, in the arms of the Ebd and the Dunje. From there I found the Reine, the Breaking Wall, the Cusp Sea, the Tavis Minor and Major, the Salt Sweeps. It was different than the map I knew, the one I learned at the Academy, but some of the landmarks were similar enough. I followed the Reine where it left the Cusp, far beyond the borders of the Academy’s maps.

  There was a city, massive, if the scale was to be believed. It was at the center of the map, sprawled on both sides of the Reine hundreds of miles downriver from the Cusp. So far beyond the ken of the Academy’s far ranging Expeditioner’s Corp I could only stare in amazement. I felt like there was someone over my shoulder, a presence both ancient and young, a presence that stank of fear and isolation. I looked at that city and the phantom in me spoke with my voice.

  “Home,” we said.

  “Well now, ” Wilson muttered. “Well, well. Now isn’t that interesting.” He hooked an arm under my shoulder and dragged me to my feet. I realized I had been lying down. He propped me against a shelf, littered with the parts of a shattered clock.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said. My throat felt like it was lined in barbed wire.

  “Be a hell of a time,” Wilson said. “Lots of folks out there. And I don’t think Angela’s going to like us walking out with that thing.”

  “Yeah.” I tested my legs, found I could stand. “Well, maybe there’s another way out of here.”

  Patron Tomb shuffled, his eyelids cracking just slightly. “There is.”

  “You can get us out?” Wilson asked.

  “No. But I can show you the way.” He paused, his eyelids flaring wider in surprise. “There is something upstairs, a presence. It has found the hallway.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Something… brilliant. What is this thing?” Tomb’s voice was low, in awe.

  “The angel,” Wilson whispered. “We need to get the hell out.”

  “Yes, you do. My gods, you do. He’s at the door.”

  The door at the top of the stairs clanged. Dust settled from the roof in wide sheets. The clanging continued, steady, metronomic.

  “This is going to be interesting,” Tomb said. “I should thank you, Burn. It’s a good day you’ve brought me.”

  “It will try to kill you,” I said.

  “Perhaps. Here,” machines cycled, and a narrow door opened in the wall opposite the main entrance. “That leads to a covered canal near the Bellingrow. It’s quite a trek, I’m told. In case they ever need to get me out.”

  “You would never fit through that door.”

  “Desperation and technology can do amazing things,” he said. “Now, hurry. He’s persistent.”

  We rushed out the door. I paused to look back. The old man’s bloated eyes were settled on the other door, watching the angel break his slow way in, like the tide battering a rocky coast. The door closed behind us.

  I don’t remember much after that. The darkness faded into gray, tunnels of brick and dirt that stretched for an eternity and when I came to I was lying on a hard stone floor, Wilson looking down at me.

  “You’re trying to show me wrong, son,” Wilson said quietly. His face was bent very close to mine, so I could smell his breath. It smelled like ground up flies and specimen jars. “Trying to die, aren’t you?”

  “Far from it.” My voice was a whisper. “Just other folks, testing the theory.”

  “Well. More luck than science, this time.” He picked up a tin cup and rattled it around. There was a deformed slug at the bottom, shiny with blood. “Frail gun she shot y
ou with. More ornament than weapon, I suspect.”

  “She who?” It was Emily talking, somewhere. I couldn’t see where exactly, but it sounded like she was standing near my head, looking down. Behind me a little. I twisted and saw her face, grimacing down at me.

  “Tomb. Little Lady Tomb.”

  “Bullshit,” she said.

  “Fine, Em. Whatever. It was the Blessed Celeste. But she looked a hell of a lot like the Lady Tomb.”

  “It was her alright,” Wilson said. He grinned tightly up at Emily. “Pretty as you please, nice to meet you, and here’s a bullet for your time.”

  “What dumbass thing did you do to get her to shoot you, Jacob? Did you break into her house? Steal some silverware?”

  I tried to answer, but it came out as a dry rattling cough. Wilson put his hand on my chest until it settled down. When I could talk again, even I had trouble hearing me. Emily bent down close. She smelled like sweat and dry flowers.

  “Badge broke into her house. Stormed the place. We were running, got cornered.” I paused to spit, but came up empty. My tongue felt like a strap of leather. “She said some shit about not letting them get a hold of me. Then she put a bullet in my chest.”

  “Hm,” Emily said. She stood up and walked out of my field of vision. Wilson watched her go, then looked back at me. His eyes were carefully neutral.

  “How’d you get out?” she asked.

  I started to answer, but Wilson shushed me.

  “We lost her and found a back door. Things were very…” he paused, nodding to himself. “Very confusing. For everyone, I think.”

  “Lost her? You didn’t kill her, did you?”

  I shook my head. “Angel’s back,” I said.

  Emily raised her eyebrows. “That’s sudden. Thought you said you’d killed it?”

  “I killed something. But it was the same guy.”