Heart of Veridon (The Burn Cycle)

by Tim Akers

  We stood in the central sanctuary. The room was a geode of machinery, walls of cogs spinning, meshing, divine murals of clockwork that moved across the walls, generations of timed gears scrounged from the river and reassembled. The Wrights searched for the holy Algorithm, the hidden pattern, the divine tumble of tooth and groove that would reveal itself only to the purest, the most humble. Ages of Wrights had worked this building-engine, fitting axles and aligning screws. Always working. Devotion was measured in oily hands and callused fingers.

  The room was loud and close. It had been large once, a grand hall dedicated to the study of the hidden mysteries buried under the city. Time had taken that away, layers of cogwork accreting on the walls, clenching tighter and tighter until the ceiling was close and the air was closer. The floor shook with the clashing pistons, the grinding gears.

  I steadied Emily. I remembered that I had been overwhelmed myself when I first came here as a child. My father had prepared me, in his way.

  “You’ve no right to be here!” The Wright yelled. His voice was a quiet roar among the machines. “This is a holy place.”

  “It is,” I said. “We’re only here to show our devotion.”

  “Then put the gun away,” he said, nodding to Emily. “And let me call my brothers.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “We won’t need your brothers. Not today. But, my dear,” I placed a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Maybe the gun is unnecessary.”

  “What?” she asked, her neck still craned towards the ceiling. I leaned close to her, let my cheek brush hers.

  “The gun.”

  She stashed it sulkily, then returned to the cogwork.

  “She sees the glory of it, son.” The Wright looked pale, but stern. “Not you. Where’s your awe in the presence of God?”

  “I’m unable to contain it, Wright. It fled. Now. The Pillar of Deep Intentions,” I said, reciting what Morgan had told me. “Near the Tapestry of Hidden Ambition. I have a deep… fervor… to see it.”

  The Wright paled even more. “That is… there is no such miracle in the house of the Algorithm.”

  “There is. I believe, brother.” I grasped him by the shoulders and looked deeply into his eyes. “It was revealed to me. Prophecy, call it. Now where’s the pillar?”

  “It is not… not for people. Not for the unholy. The pillar is a very peculiar gift of God.”

  “Yes, it is. That’s why I must see it. You must show me. Surely you wouldn’t deny a pilgrim?”

  He set his lips, looked down and shook his head. Emily hit him.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Morgan gave me an idea. Just hoped to do the easy thing.”

  “We can’t stick around,” Emily said, looking down at the fallen Wright. He had crumpled at her touch, and was curled up around his chest. “Make it quick.”

  I ignored her. Memory served, and I found the old family pews. Without sermons and choirs, services of the Algorithm were less structured than the older ceremonies of the Celestes. Ironic, if you thought about it. The pews were scattered around the room, facing different directions, arranged in different ways.

  I ran my hand over the soft wood of our pews, sat and closed my eyes. That was familiar. My heart seemed to sync up with the room, rumbling in my bones. When I opened my eyes, I saw the pillar, off to my left and across a haphazard aisle.

  “Emily!” I yelled, and crossed to the pillar.

  “This is it?” she asked. I nodded.

  Up close I saw that it wasn’t really a pillar. More like two closely fit camshafts, sheathed together and turning very quickly, so that it looked like a single column. There were carvings on the pillar’s face. The rapid cycle of the shafts animated them, so the patterns danced and crawled up the cylinder. It looked like water flowing, like rivers twisting and slipping through the steel. The air was hot, rushing up from the floor where the shafts disappeared into the stone.

  “I know you!” I turned. It was the Wright, his mouth bloodied, holding himself up on my family pew. “Burn, the child. Your father sent you!”

  “Not for a long while,” I said.

  “He did, I know. The brothers will know.”

  “What can you tell me about this pillar?” I asked. He clammed up, then sat on my pew. I looked up the length of the pillar. There was something familiar, near the top.

  “I need to get up there,” I said. Emily nodded and looked around for some way to make the climb. The whirling pillar wasn’t something you just shimmied up.

  “The pews,” she said.

  “Oh. Dad’ll hate that.” I smiled and crossed the aisle, dragging the Wright from his seat.

  We tipped the pew up on end. It took both of us. We leaned the heavy wood against a nearby mural. The gears chattered against the wood, then seized up. Something deep in the wall broke, and gears plinked across the stone floor.

  “That’ll get some attention,” Emily said. The old guy was gone anyway, snuck off while we struggled with the pew.

  “I’ll be fast.”

  I scrambled to the top of the pillar, my hands slick against the polished wood. At the top I bent as close to the pillar as I dared, the speed of their cycle a hot breath on my face.

  “You aren’t going to believe this,” I yelled down.

  There was a cog, meshed between the shafts, driving the pillar. It had many teeth, many gears, concentric circles that slipped together and flowed like quicksilver.

  “It’s the Cog. The fucking artifact,” I yelled. Though it wasn’t. Similar, just as complicated, just as beautiful. I realized that its cycle was matched in every mural. The room meshed with it. “It’s running the whole place.”

  “Can you get it out?”

  The door banged open. There were Wrights carrying ornate hatchets and hammers. I slipped, the pew slipped. It banged onto the central pillar and shattered. I fell, landed among the stacks of cogs that hadn’t yet been distributed to the Algorithm, cracking my head on the stone floor and scattering the gears. I lay there, the world buzzing around me. People were shouting. There was a boom, yelling; I heard Emily’s voice. I rolled onto my side and fought through the haze.

  Emily was standing in the narrow aisle, pistol in her right hand, hammer in her left. There was blood on her face and oil on her dress. She glanced at me, concern etched across her eyes. She was shouting. I nodded. She fired at someone unseen, shook the hammer in the air, and disappeared for a second. When she came back there was blood on the hammer, and more on her. She looked at me again. Everything was so loud.

  The bullet entered at her shoulder. Just above the meat of her breast, blood puffing up, misting across her face. The hammer slipped from her hand. She gestured weakly with the pistol. Her lips were slack, and she fell.

  I rolled to my feet, revolver out. There was a crowd of Wrights, carefully approaching Emily’s body. There were others, on the floor. One had his face caved in, blood and mucus running across shattered teeth. They looked at me. They hesitated.

  I shot the first two, bullets into their chests, a slug for each lung. Walking past Emily, I emptied my chamber, dropped the pistol and scooped up her hammer. I didn’t even see the next three, just put the heavy, dead metal through them, crushing them, moving on. A bullet skipped past me. Found the guy, cowering behind a boiler, fumbling with the lever on an antique hunting rifle. Spent some time on him. When I turned around the room was empty, just bodies and smoke. The gear walls were slick with blood, the filth passing from cog to cog, tooth to tooth, each cycle spreading it farther and deeper into the pattern.

  I cradled Emily against my chest. She was light, like a bundle of twigs. There was a lot of blood. I picked her up and headed for the door. Just before I got there it irised closed. I heard hammers, and iron. A lot of yelling in the hallway beyond. The door wouldn’t open.

  I turned back to the chamber. So many cogs, walls and walls of gears flashing and spinning in a cacophonous roar. There had to be another way out. I set Emily gently on the floor next to the toppled pew
and looked around.

  Every natural door in the place was sealed shut, clogged with accretions of cogwork. Some of it spun quickly, some creaked lazily, but all of it moved, and none of it allowed passage. In places the original walls had been removed, tunnels burrowed out by camshafts and long boiler pipes that clawed into the foundations of the Church. There were gaps around the pipes that went deep into darkness, but there was no way I could crawl through there, much less carry Emily out.

  I went to check on her. She looked okay, I told myself. She was going to be okay. I stuffed her chest with some clean rags and told myself it was going to be okay.

  Outside the door the hammering had stopped. Were they getting the Badge, or did the Church have its own security measures? What sort of horrors did they keep in the cellar of this place? Childhood stories bumped around my head. I went back to searching.

  If Wilson had been here, we might have been able to climb up to the dizzy heights of the chamber. There were more gaps there, and I could see natural light filtering in from the cathedral’s original stained glass windows. I began to regret leaving him in the cistern to guard the Cog. I looked over at Emily’s still form, breathing slowly. I began to regret bringing her, too.

  What I found was hardly the best solution, but it was the only way out. Near the Pillar of Deep Intentions there was a cluster of pipes that led down. The pipes were cold, leading in from somewhere deeper in the Church before heading under the floor. Where they disappeared, there was a long axle, a camshaft that spun slowly around. With each revolution I could see far down, to a stone floor at the bottom. There was light there, and ladder rungs were built into the shaft-way. Maintenance access, probably. I just needed to stop the cams.

  I moved Emily closer to the tunnel, then dragged the family pew over. From the direction of the door I could hear machines and heavy footsteps. I was sweating, gods, I was sweating a river. I leaned the pew on its end, the weight almost too much to bear, but I had to do it. Emily started to bleed again. I walked the precariously balanced pew to the lip of the shaft-way. One chance, I suppose. When the shaft cleared the cam, I pushed the pew forward and dropped it straight down into the duct.

  It fell about three feet before the cam came back, crushing the wood. The remainder of the pew splintered and fell. The cams ate it up, shattering and scattering bits of wood and leather all over the room. I fell over Emily. Splinters stung my back. There was a lurch, then quiet. I looked up.

  The remnants of the pew were lodged in the camshaft’s workings. The whole mechanism moaned under the strain. Nearby cogs pinged and fell out of cycle, teeth grinding against their drive shafts. The shaft-way was clear, but not for long. I wasn’t sure I could make it down all the way. I looked at Emily, at the door, down the shaft. No choice.

  I hefted Emily over one shoulder, ignoring her moans and the blood on her chest. I took the rungs three at a time, more falling than climbing. It reminded me of the obstacle courses at the Academy, only much more difficult, with higher stakes. My shoulders were popping in protest.

  Some of the pew slipped, and the cams started again. I flinched against the wall, but the cam roared at me, the wide metal face of the thing oily and flat, a hammer to the face, a tidal wave of force and energy. It stopped, inches short of me. I looked up and saw a Wright, looking down.

  “Come on up, son,” he yelled. “We can work this out.”

  Something loomed behind him. It was a rough parody of a man, ten feet tall with arms of latticed steel and wire. Its clenched fists like barrels.

  I let go and dropped. I hit first, cradling Emily. Pain went through my legs and back as I rolled, keeping her off the stone. I was bleeding now. As I hit, the axle lurched, the pew finally shattered, and the camshaft whirred into life. The Wright looked down at me, the cams blurring as they sped up. He shook his head and disappeared.

  I stood, picked up Emily, and tried to run down the corridor. The world was roaring in my head. Emily opened her eyes, briefly, and stared at me.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I hissed. “Everything’s okay.”

  She coughed blood, then closed her eyes and shivered. I ran faster, faster, blind into the dark tunnels beneath the Church of the Algorithm.

  Chapter Twelve

  Pieces of the Girl

  THE TUNNELS BELOW the Church weren’t meant for escape routes, and they weren’t built to accommodate carrying an unconscious person. They were tiny, clogged with machinery and oil-slick. I was lost, I was tired, and Emily was dying. The Wrights kept getting closer, their frictionlamps stuttering in the period of whirling cog walls, their voices drowned in hammering machines. I almost gave up.

  Eventually I dropped into an open space, a room that was built like a trench, the ground narrow and the ceiling wide. The walls slanted away from me. Here at the end the ceiling was close, but twenty feet on, the trench opened up. I couldn’t see its height in the darkness, but the air was damp and my footsteps echoed as I went forward. The walls were cut stone, or something very similar. Dull gray veins ran through the rock. We were deep beneath the Church. How were these tunnels kept so dry? Anything this far below the city should be drowned in the rivers.

  I ventured down the trenchway. When the low ceiling ended, the darkness stretched above me. It was an unsettled darkness. Something moved far above me. It looked like storm clouds seen at night, indistinct shreds of cloud ripping across a muffled moon. There was a sound like a river of smooth stones tumbling in the distance. I struggled forward under that barely seen, buried sky, carrying Emily close to my chest.

  There was a door at the end of the path. It was a simple door, wood, the brass handle smudged with use. The sound of that river of stones came from somewhere beyond it.

  The room behind the door was a funnel. Its wide mouth was high above me, the lower tip about twenty feet below. Pipes entered the room on all sides, wide and narrow, iron and brass. I realized that the barely glimpsed movement in the ceiling behind me was a single enormous conduit, glass bound in steel, that carried murky quicksilver. Shapes moved within the confines, twitching and lurching in the current.

  All the pipes, regardless of their origin or size, led down to the tip of the funnel. They branched and narrowed until they reached an intricate caged sphere. The room was hot and loud, a cacophony echoing off the sloped walls and distant ceiling. The pipes sweated a black liquid, thinner than oil but darker.

  A set of stairs led down. They were lovingly worked, shiny wood that would not have been out of place in the loftiest manor. Though the rest of the room stank of oil and engines, there wasn’t a drop of grime on these stairs. The banisters were tightly carved in the holy symbols of the Algorithm. Ancient, but beautifully maintained.

  I stumbled down the stairs. When I got to the floor, I registered a terrible cold in my feet. The floor glittered with frost, the freezeline melting quickly along the wall about three inches up. The frost crackled under my feet like tiny shards of glass. I was careful as I walked. Emily was getting heavier.

  There was one pipe that was not a pipe, I realized as I got closer to the cage. A single brilliant column twisted up into the ceiling from the center of the intricate sphere. It hummed, and as I approached I saw that it was the Pillar of Deep Intentions from the Church, far above. It spun rapidly. I shuddered to think how long that axle must be, that led from here to that mystical cog on the surface.

  I shuffled closer, to see where the pillar led, and looking for a place to set Emily. The shaft plunged into the center of the spherical cage. There was something inside. Closer, and I saw that the sphere was little more than a hollow cage, bars supporting pipework, much smaller tubes continuing in. Leading to a girl.

  She was held in place by a complexity of iron fittings, wires and pipes and axles that sprouted from her fingers or hooked to her bones. Again, closer and I saw that she was no girl, but a machine in the form of a girl. Much of her was missing. Her arms were stripped to the bone, the occasional fleck of porcelain skin pinned in
place like an unfinished mosaic. Her fingers were long and thin, the tendons nothing more than wire and pulley. One hand was missing. She had no legs. Her torso was little more than framework, the bones matte pewter, her ribs spread or snipped away to reveal the engines of her inner workings. Her heart was a void, the spine glistening through. The column that traveled from such a height down to this chamber narrowed as it approached her, then evolved into a whirring spindle that meshed with her spine. The sound and speed was a high pitched ticking that hovered at the edge of hearing.

  Her shoulders were slumped but largely intact. The skin there was pale white and smooth, very like the shoulders of any normal girl. Where it ended over her ravaged chest, the edges flaked like mica. It looked as though the flakes squirmed, blind inchworms looking for the next blade of grass.

  Absolute peace and resignation rode her face. Again, some of that was missing. Her jaw was a sketch of metal bone, her lips hanging over empty air, her teeth gone. Cheekbones that looked like polished marble framed perfect eyes, eyes that could have been chiseled from sapphires. The skin of her face was a jigsaw of porcelain and bone. Her hair was a flat wedge. Behind her were spread two broad vein-works, like trees that had been pinned in place, then burned away.

  “Wings,” I whispered. She stirred.

  Camilla. The martyr child, daughter of Angels, broken mythology.

  She looked up at me.

  “I have been waiting,” she said, and her voice was like sweet crystal wind. “So long, I’ve been waiting.”

  “For me?” I asked. The air around her cage was so cold my bones ached. My breath rolled out in frosty tendrils.

  “For anyone.” She straightened briefly, fixing me with her cut glass eyes. “And you? Have you traveled great distances to find me?”

  “I came a ways to get here, but not all of it of my own volition.”