Heart of Veridon bc-1

by Tim Akers

  Alexander indicated a chair, then sat down. I took a different seat and propped my feet against the cart. In a few minutes, time spent invested in scowling and small talk, Billy brought coffee. It was good stuff.

  “So, what’s this about?” father asked, firmly clanging his spoon around the cup as he stirred in his sugar.

  “Tell me about the Council,” I said.

  “Finally taking an interest in your nameright? That’s nice, but it’s a little late. I’ll be passing the seat on to your brother, once he gets out of the navy.”

  “Gerrald won’t take it. He’s married to the river, and that trollop from the outer banks. But that’s not what I mean. Tell me about the Council right now. The problems you people are having.”

  “Problems like what?” he asked. Alexander folded his hands in his lap and looked uninterested in a carefully cultivated and well practiced manner.

  “Let’s not play games, father. There’s something going on, in the Council. Either you’ve been sleeping through the sessions, or you’ve picked a side. I need to know what you can tell me about it.”

  He grimaced and plucked a newspaper from the rack. Rather than look it over, he folded it into a tight square, and then unfolded it. Once it was open, he started over.

  “Look, Jacob, son. This is all very intricate stuff. Yes, there’s some tension in the Chamber Massif. People are balancing obligations, weighing allegiances. Trying to get a little advantage. But that’s the way it always is. There’s nothing new about this squabble.”

  “Angela Tomb shot me.” I pointed at his chest, then mimed a pistol shot. “Close to me as we are right now.”

  Alexander looked at me dully. “I’m sure you’re mistaken, Jacob. I’m sure Councilor Tomb-”

  “People keep saying that to me. I’m the one who got shot, father. I’m the one the bullet went into. Are you saying I mistook the bullet?”

  “The bullet, no, but her intent, Jacob. Surely she didn’t mean to kill you. Perhaps the gun went off by accident? Knowing you, you probably gave her plenty of reason to hold a gun on you.”

  I slammed my palm down on the wooden arm of the chair. The slap resounded through the room. Billy rushed in, a broom in hand. We ignored him.

  “If not us, if not the Founders! Well, then, no one! Bang! What does that mean, Dad? What about that did I mistake?”

  “Sir, if I may-” Billy began.

  “Later. And my coffee’s cold.” Alexander leaned closer to me, poking his finger at my face. “We need to be very clear here, Jacob. The Tomb is a close ally of this house, and a good friend of the Family. We don’t go around shooting one another, and to say anything less is plain absurd.” He swatted the breakfast cart with the folded newspaper and stood up. “Now, unless you’re going to say something sensible, I must bid you good day.”

  “Do you know Malcolm Sloane?” I asked. My father was already on his way to the foyer, to see me out. He stopped.

  “What did you say?”

  “Malcolm Sloane. Is that name familiar to you?”

  Alexander crumpled the paper in his hand, then returned to his chair and sat down heavily.

  “Sloane. Yes. How do you know that name?”

  “We met, at Tomb’s party on the Heights. Who is he?”

  “He’s… a friend to the Council. To some of the Council.”

  “Is he a friend to you?”

  Alexander winced and looked out the window. “We have worked together, but no. I would not call a man like that my friend.”

  “What does he do?” I asked.

  Father kept his eyes out the window, leaning forward, his hands clasped between his knees. His eyes were watery, I thought, like an old man’s rheumy eyes.

  “Difficult things,” he said. “Things Councilors can’t do. Not directly.” He turned to me. “I ask again, how do you know that name?”

  “Like I said. We met at Tomb’s party. It was casual.”

  “There are no casual meetings with Malcolm Sloane. In the same way that there are no casual meetings with bullets, or back alley knives. Sloane is a weapon, Jacob, an animal. He’s a damn summoned monster for the Council. Whatever business you have with him, abandon it.”

  I laughed. “Gladly. But I seem to have his attention. I’m in some trouble, and he keeps popping up, everywhere I look for a way out.”

  “So here we go, at last. You’re in some trouble, and you need the old man to get you out. Upfront, Jacob, you could have told me that.”

  “I can get my way out, sir. All I need from you is information, and a little good will.”

  He stood over me, not a tall man, but an angry man. “Both are in short supply, boy. What do you need?”

  “I need to know what Sloane has to do with the current trouble. Because, for gods’ sakes, it seems to involve me.”

  “It doesn’t,” father said firmly. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

  “Angela thinks differently. As does Sloane. Now out with it. What’s splitting the Council, and how bad is it.”

  Alexander ground his teeth, staring at me with his dark eyes. The newspaper was still in his hand, crushed and smudged. He walked firmly to the window and stared out at the weedy remains of our formal garden. The room was quiet. Billy came, poured fresh coffee and then left. Father’s cup had stopped steaming before he spoke again.

  “Stay here,” he said without turning around.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Stay here. Until it blows over. I can’t keep you in your rooms, but you could be comfortable. Safe. Gods know they would never look here.”

  I stood up and went to the breakfast cart. The sausage was cut-rate, but the eggs had been cooked properly. Too bad they were cold. I made myself a plate. Father wouldn’t look at me.

  “That your plan, dad? Keep me safe and hidden away. Maybe use me to bargain with whatever rogue element in the Council is hunting me down. Maybe, if you’re lucky, get the artifact in the bargain.”

  “Artifact?” he asked, half-turned towards me.

  “Coy, old man. Yes, the artifact, the one you and Angela sent Marcus and his boys downriver to collect. The one that came in on the Glory of Day, right up until the whole ship burned up. That must have been a bitch, huh? All those plans, and the damn zep flames out at your doorstep.”

  He turned to face me, his mouth set in a distasteful grimace. He looked like he’d drunk bad milk, lumps and all.

  “You seem to know more than you’re letting on, boy. Trying to trick your old man?”

  “Seems fair.” I ate a mouthful of eggs while I watched him pace the circle of chairs. “You weren’t going to tell me anything useful, not willingly. First you act like there’s no problem in the Council, then you offer to shelter me? So who do you stand with, pop? Sloane or Angela?”

  “Would it matter?”

  I shrugged. “Sloane hasn’t shot me, yet.”

  “You’ll be lucky if, when he finds you, all he does is shoot you. He’s an unpleasant man.”

  “Sure. So who are you with, Alexander? Who has your loyalty?”

  He set his shoulders and leaned against the chair opposite me. He was still angry, but the anger was trimmed in shades of cold pride and desperation.

  “The Family Burn. Always, Jacob, always my first loyalty is to the Family. As yours should be.”

  “I lost track of loyalty about the same time you threw me out on my ass, Alexander. So tell me what this is about, or tell me to get out. I don’t care which way it goes.”

  He let out a long, slow sigh, then sat down and drank from his cup of cold coffee. He stared at me with his wet eyes while I ate. When I set the plate aside he laced his fingers together and set them in his lap.

  “Angela Tomb came to me, a couple years ago. Probably three years now. She was talking to someone inside the Church. Maybe someone who had access to the Church, but whose purposes lay in direct opposition to the Algorithm. This person had an artifact that they wished to sell.”

  “Those guys ar
e a pretty devoted lot, father. I have trouble believing that a Wright would be negotiating with the Council to sell a bit of his God.”

  “We had trouble believing it, too. And the deal itself was complicated. Many proxies, many dead drops. A deal of many hands. But the deal was made.” He stopped and took a drink of coffee, grimacing as he swallowed. He set the cup aside. “But the deal came up in open session. At first it was just us, just the Founders. What’s left of them. But the others found out. The industrialists. They were… very interested. And they held enough sway in the Chamber to force their way into the deal.” He reached for the cup, paused, then wiped his brow. “That’s how Sloane got involved.”

  “He was the representative for the Young Seats, then?” I asked.

  “Yes. He put a couple of his own men on the team. Some marines-”

  “Wellons?”

  “I don’t remember the names.” He squinted at me. “How do you know them?”

  “After the fact. I found Wellons’s body, shortly before I met the Angel for the first time.”

  “Ah. Angela mentioned that. Anyway. We had a map to something… something marvelous, Jacob. And we sent a group of people after it.”

  “And they never came back.” I said.

  “Until a couple weeks ago, correct. By then, the Young Seats had split from us. They were already organizing another party to head down. When Marcus made contact with us via messenger, both sides started maneuvering. He must have been in BonnerWell at the time.” BonnerWell was the furthest of the messenger stations, barely a scratch of dirt on our maps. “He was coming in. And he had trouble.”

  “I’ll say. So you brought him in?”

  “On the contrary. We told him to stay put. We’d send someone. Whatever was following him, we didn’t want it in the city. So, Marcus stopped talking to us. Maybe he started talking to the Young Seats. Maybe he stopped talking at all. We don’t really know. And then,” he shrugged, “he just showed up. Sent a message from Havreach. Nothing but the name of his ship.”

  “ Glory of Day.”

  Father nodded. “We had teams on the shore, waiting. I can’t properly express my shock at how things went. We were going to quarantine the ship until we had Marcus and his artifact in hand.”

  “Looks like he found a way around that.”

  “Probably not how he planned it. Anyway. We wrote it off, figured he had died in the explosion, and the artifact destroyed. And now we’re learning that we were wrong.”

  I nodded my head, and doubted. Alexander told the story like Angela had come to him with the artifact, but Patron Tomb had been pretty clear that my father had initiated whatever plan was being undertaken. I’m sure there was some truth in what my father was telling me. I just didn’t know which parts were honest, and which were careful lies.

  “And all this business in the meantime. Angela shooting me, the Badge chasing me out of Emily’s apartment, and then Wilson’s place. That’s just you guys trying to recover the artifact?”

  “I can’t speak for the actions of the Badge, Jacob. Or for Angela, for that matter. But yes, we’re just trying to get that artifact.”

  “You couldn’t ask?” I smiled.

  “You would have answered?”

  I shook my head. He was right, of course. I wouldn’t have listened, wouldn’t have trusted. Didn’t trust him now.

  “So what is it, this artifact?” I asked.

  “You tell me. We haven’t seen it.” He stood up and went back to the window. Angela has seen it, I thought. For that matter, Angela has held it in her hands. I put another check in the careful lies column. Or maybe the Tombs weren’t being as forthright with their allies as old Alexander thought. “But it’s something to do with the Church’s power. Something that will shake them off our backs.”

  “By our backs, you mean the city? Or the Council?”

  “The Families.” He put his hands in his pockets and sighed. “They have too much favor with the Young Seats. They have too much power. They’ve helped, of course. Without the Church there would be no zepliners, no cogwork. We’d still be dealing with the Artificers Guild. But they need to be put in their place. Restrained.”

  “Good luck with that. Suppressing religion always goes well.” I stood up and wiped my hands on a spare napkin. “Thanks for the answers. And the breakfast.” I started to leave.

  “Just like that? You’re going to walk in here, demand answers, and then walk out?”

  “Looks like it,” I said.

  “And give me nothing in return. You know I can’t let you do that, Jacob.”

  “You know you can’t stop me, either. I don’t have the Cog with me. I’m not going to tell you where it is. You can’t call the Badge, because they’ll take it to Sloane and the Young Seats. Are you going to stop me? Is Billy?”

  He folded his arms and looked at me. He was tired, I could tell. I shrugged and walked out.

  No matter how I felt about my father, about his lies and his betrayals, I had the feeling he had mostly been straight with me back there. Nearly the truth was the best kind of lie. And the bit of the story that had me most interested wasn’t the stuff about Angela and the Young Seats and Sloane. That was all development, complication. What interested me was the seed of it. Someone in the Church, he had said. Someone with access to the Church of the Algorithm.

  The holy men of the Church of the Algorithm, the Wrights dedicated to the machine’s maintenance and liturgy, were devoted to their clockwork deity. They didn’t break ranks, and no one left the service intact. I had seen the hobbled Wrights in the street, their peaceful faces, the smooth machine of their skull pumps. I shook my head. They went in to the service knowing that there was no out. The Algorithm was jealous of its revelation. For there to be someone inside who was willing to sell bits of that revelation to the Council; it was unthinkable. There were no former Wrights. Well. There was one, and he had gotten out in a very unconventional way. He had died, drowned, and ended up among the Fehn. I swung by the cistern first, to pick up the map. I thought it would interest him.

  He drank water like I breathed. He kept a glass in his spongy hand, and every time he stopped talking he lifted it to his blistered lips and drank. His voice gurgled.

  “These are unusual questions, Jacob.”

  “You wouldn’t believe.” We were near the river Reine, two doors down from a publicly accessible basement pier on Water Street. One of the few contact points with the Fehn. People came here to visit lost relatives or trade with the people of the river. What they needed with money, I was never sure. Then again, they sometimes demanded more exotic pay for the treasures they dredged. “But what do you know about it?”

  He gestured to the pistol I had laying on the table, the one from the Glory.

  “You think it’s the real thing?”

  “I think someone’s trying to scare me, or warn me. And the people who would want to do that?” I leaned back in my chair and looked the dead guy square in his milky eyes. “Those kind of people would take the time and effort to get the genuine article.”

  He nodded, then picked up the pistol in both hands, touching it only with his fingertips.

  “We were contracted, of course. You know that. The Council hired us to recover the wreckage, for their memorial. This would have been part of that.”

  “And all that material, all the wreckage, it went to the Council.”

  He nodded. “The bodies as well. We kept our percentage.”

  “Some of the victims have joined the Fehn?” I asked. It would help to be able to talk to some of them. Maybe talk to Marcus. “Was there a guy named Marcus among them?”

  “Marcus, Marcus. The name is familiar, but he was not among our tithe. Those we took have not hatched yet, if you mean to interrogate them.”

  “Maybe. But if Marcus isn’t among them, there’s no point. So you think this pistol is the real thing, maybe taken from the wreckage for the memorial?”

  “Unless someone paid one of us to steal it.
Unlikely.”

  “But could that happen? Enough money or shiny beads or whatever you people trade in, someone could ask for a specific thing?” I leaned forward. “Get one of you to fetch it?”

  “Fetch.” He curled his lip. “Fetch. Yes, I suppose. If it were important.”

  “How would I find out? If this had been… retrieved. And who paid to have it done?”

  “The way you talk about these people, it seems they would pay a great deal to have it done. And a great deal more to keep that transaction from public eyes.”

  I sniffed, then regretted it. He smelled like stagnant water and the sickness of swamps.

  “How do I find out?”

  He waved his hand, spreading the fingers like a fan. “Is that all this is about? This gun? Really, Jacob, you’re usually so much more interesting than this.”

  “It’s important, Morgan. I can pay.”

  “No, Jacob. You can’t. Just because we live in the river doesn’t mean we don’t hear things. And you’ve been making a lot of noise. The Council, Valentine, some of the Founding Families.” He drank a long and slow glass of water, savoring my discomfort as much as the slosh. “I was looking forward to this discussion, Jacob. I thought you might come to me for something interesting. This?” He tapped the revolver, then shook his head.

  “There’s more than this involved, Wright. Your old buddies, they’re in on it, too.”

  He paused, just as he was reaching for the pitcher to refill his glass. Just a second’s hesitation, then he completed the action. When he set the pitcher down, he stared at me with cold eyes.

  “The concerns of the Church are much deeper than this. You can’t claim to have caught the attention of the Algorithm, Jacob. Unless there’s much more to this than I’ve heard.”

  “Do the Church concerns include angels, Wright Morgan?” I picked up the pistol. “There’s something in the city. Hunting.”

  “How dramatic,” he said glibly, but he had the glass halfway to his lips, and showed no sign of moving it.