Dead of Veridon (Burn Cycle)

by Tim Akers

  THERE WAS NO need to talk about where we were going, or where we had been. We walked in silence, Wilson's hands thrust into the damp pockets of his coat, his thin face turned down. The fog cleared, the clouds parted, and the sun came out. It did nothing for our mood, or for the scent of madness that settled over the city. The air smelled like smoke, but not woodsmoke. Unnatural things were burning, somewhere.

  The streets weren't safe. The citizens of Veridon had taken protection into their own hands, each street watching out for itself, enforcing their own idea of who should be safe. We stuck to the houses. No one was inside, not in the Lower City. Several of the houses we walked through showed signs of struggle. One house, there was something banging around in the parlor. The door was nailed shut, a couch leaned against the frame. There were bodies, too. Fehn and regular folks, some of our pearl-white friends who used to be Fehn, as well.

  "They're running," Wilson whispered, as we looked down at the bloated remains of a Fehn. There was none of the tar-black blood we had seen during our fight out on the river. "Something's happened, and they're trying to get out of the river as quickly as possible."

  "Coming up in people's homes, or at the docks. Throw in a couple reports of these cog-dead, and suddenly every Fehn is a monster." I rubbed my eyes and looked around the house. It had been looted at least once. The city's thieves saw what was happening, and they weren't wasting any time. "This is going to be a hell of a thing to get past."

  Wilson grunted and went to the back door. A quick hop across the alley and he picked the lock of another house. We walked on.

  The closer we got to our destination, the more Badge we saw. The gray-coated officers held important intersections or patrolled in tight, heavily armed groups. There were plenty of them around the canals, too. We avoided the lot of them, going extra wide around the barricades and staying away from the water. Tough to do in Veridon, and it was taking us forever to make our way across the city. By the time we got where we were headed it was well past noon. People were settling down, repopulating their homes, leaving the streets to the Badge. There was a lot of hammering, as basements were secured or sealed off completely.

  Finally, we stepped out of our last looted building and skulked across the street. The house stood opposite, black and broken as when I'd first seen it. The house on Marlowe street, where I'd first met Mr. Ezekiel Crane.

  "Wish we'd had time to stop for a dry pistol," I said. I took my revolver out and shook it. Even the wood grip felt soggy.

  "What you get for depending on powder, son," Wilson said, drawing the wicked steel blades from his vest. He shrugged off his coat and dropped it to the street, extending his six bonewhite spider arms like a bird shaking out its wings. "You'll just have to be more traditionally brutal."

  "Suppose so." A quick look up and down the street showed no witnesses. "Ready?"

  "Ready enough," Wilson answered, then rushed the front door in a clattering flutter of arms and legs and razor's edge. The door splintered on impact. I ran after him, yelling and brandishing the damp revolver like a club.

  The tiny foyer was empty. The bookcases were splintered, their contents reduced to pulp. The oil lamp was gone. And something had dug ruts into the walls around each of the doors, like a beast trying to dig its way out. Wilson paused long enough to give me a nervous look, then rushed down the hallway Gray and I had taken to meet Mr. Crane. Still low, still narrow, like a tunnel burrowed in a tree. The walls were scorched, and the oil lamp from the foyer lay smashed on the floor in the middle of the room. Its glass hood crunched under our boots as we ran, faster and faster, into the final room.

  Empty. It showed all the signs of a thorough looting, the kind of job professionals do if they're looking for something, or trying to hide something. A little random vandalism thrown in to make it look like a casual job.

  The fireplace was still warm, the last embers smoldering under a curtain of ash. The furniture was overturned but undamaged, and the massive table was clean of paperwork, though the forest of candles remained. As soon as I saw the papers were gone, I went to the fireplace and poked through it with the barrel of my revolver.

  "Awfully confident that powder's ruined, aren't you?" Wilson asked, wincing. I muttered something noncommittal and continued my search. Got nothing for it but a barrel full of ash. Banged it out against my thigh, then grimaced down at the mess it made on my pants. Wilson was giggling at me.

  "What's this look like to you?" I asked him, ignoring his joviality.

  "What it is. A professional job. Someone wanted us to think it was theft." He tipped one of the delicate chairs up and sat. "But it's not. Thief would have slit these cushions. Thief would have taken the chairs, maybe even the table." He peered at me with his insect-curious eyes, his hundred teeth glittering in the light from the window. "Thief would not have taken all the papers. Papers are not money."

  "No, they're not." I sat on the table and swung my legs. "And the stuff in the hallway. Theater?"

  He nodded. "Theater. Those doors did not lock. There was no need for something to try to claw its way in. If the doors were barricaded, we would see evidence of the barricade. And the lamp was dropped in the one place it probably wouldn't spread to the rest of the house."

  "If someone, and I'm assuming it's Crane we're talking about, if Crane wanted to cover his tracks, why not just burn the place?"

  Wilson watched me for a dozen heartbeats, though I don't think he was really seeing me. Finally, he stood up and walked to the table. With those long, articulate fingers of his, he plucked something from among the candles and presented it to me. Crane's glasses, carefully folded shut and hidden.

  "Because he expected someone to come by. Because he wanted us to search the house."

  I grimaced. I didn't like that. Didn't like being led, being part of someone else's game. Didn't like someone else playing me. I took the glasses from Wilson. They were light, the rims incredibly delicate. The lenses were very thin. I held them up to my face. No distortion. They were false glasses, just for show. Just for theater. I dropped them to the floor and put my boot on them.

  "Then I guess we search," I said.

  Chapter Four

  A Mask, Black,

  Words in Iron Across its Face

  MY FIRST VISIT to this house left me nervous. I came out with the impression of a house full of dark rooms, rooms that may be full of silent people or completely empty. It was a house of strange noises and unsettling quiet. That had changed, but not in a good way. Walking through the house now, I felt like I was sitting in a room with a dead man. No sound, and all the more maddening for the quiet.

  There wasn't much to the first floor. The doors off the hallway were empty. There wasn't even dust to disturb. Crane was the tidy sort of criminal. Other than the staged items in the foyer, the hallway and the fireplace room, there was not one scrap of personal detritus. The whole first floor could have been deserted when we held our meeting with Crane. I began to think the whole thing was a set up, until we found the stairs and went up. Things were different upstairs.

  It didn't seem like the same house. Everything was painted white, walls to ceiling; even the floor had been drenched in a thick, tacky coat of white paint. The stairs came up in a central room that was ringed by eight doors. Six of them had heavy padlocks that were hanging open. The two without were on opposite sides of the room. One corner of the room was littered with children's toys. Wilson crossed quickly to the toys and poked through them with absolute attention.

  "They're all broken," he said with clinical detachment. "Some in quite ingenious ways. Do you think Crane had a child up here?"

  "No. I think he kept those for himself, Wilson." I crept to the nearest door without a padlock and put my ear against it. Quiet. "How the hell do I know?"

  "Don't you want to do the locked rooms first?" he asked.

  "Those are obviously empty. Hopefully. They're hopefully empty." I shrugged and nodded to the door I was standing next to. "Come on."
/>   Wilson put down his toys and stood behind me. The door opened easily. Inside was a bedroom, or something like a bedroom. A room with a bed, at least. A bed, a dresser, and two traveling cases, like you would take on a cruise. Their lids were bound in brass, and the wood showed a great deal of wear. The bed was iron, with a thin mattress and the barest of covers. It was the cheapest piece of furniture we'd seen in the house yet. Where the rest of the house had been compulsively tidy, the covers on the bed were twisted and stained, like they held a madman and his nightmares, night after night. There were no pillows. The dressers were empty.

  "That leaves these," Wilson said, and bent to pick up the traveling cases. He scrabbled at the first for a while, fishing around in the tumbler, his face slack with concentration. Longest I'd ever seen him take on a lock.

  "Having trouble there, master thief?"

  "Yup."

  "You want me to handle it?"

  "Handle it?" His voice was barely a whisper, barely more than the inhalation of breath. "Shut up. I'll get it."

  "Because it looks like you're having trouble there. With the lock."

  He let the pick clatter to the floor and sighed.

  "Jacob, you're just about the biggest-," he said, turning to look up at me. His eyes locked beyond my shoulder and his body stilled. "Ah."

  "Ah?" I asked, then turned quickly. I couldn't see anything. "Ah, what?"

  He stood and went to the bed, standing on the sweat-stained mattress to reach the ceiling. Something was nailed to the boards there, just above the theoretical sleeper's head. Wilson pried it free and peered at it.

  "Ah," he said.

  "What is it?" What I could see was that it was black, about the size of two hands together. He handed it to me.

  A mask, black. There were words in iron etched across the face. Other than the eye holes, there were no other features.

  "What the hell is this?" I asked.

  Wilson came down from the bed and sat wearily on the chest he had failed to pick. I knew the look on his face. It was his scholar look.

  "That is what we were meant to find." He drew a pair of reading glasses from one of the innumerable pockets in his vest, rubbed some river water off them, then returned them to the pocket. "We can look in the other rooms if you'd like, but that's going to be it."

  "Doesn't answer my question, Wilson." I held out the mask. The words meant nothing to me. Even the letters looked funny. "What is it?"

  "I'm not sure. But the lettering is Celestean. It roughly translates into 'Cull.' Or 'Purge,' I suppose. Yes, purge is probably a better translation." He ran his tongue across his hundred teeth, deep in thought. "The image imposed is of a tree stump, burned down to the roots."

  "You read Celestean?"

  "Tricky question. It's not really a language." He stood and took the mask, holding it at arm's length. "The Celesteans seemed to communicate in unformed ideas. Images. The pictograms we use to program foetal metal cogwork are a derivation of their form. The idea is to let the words interact with the unconscious part of your brain. They impose meaning directly into your..." he searched for the word. "Soul, I guess. Directly into your heart."

  "That was perfectly clear," I sniped. He grimaced like a schoolmarm.

  "Hold still," he said, then held the mask about an arm's length away from my face. "Look at the words without looking at them. Unfocus. Just let your head talk directly to the..."

  "Look, this is bullshit. You told me what it means. Cull. I get it. I don't need to..."

  It fell on me like a nightmare. The room disappeared and I was filled with the smell of blood and fire. Ashes in my mouth and the sky was coiling cinder. The earth below me sagged under the weight of blood and my veins crumbled like dry leaves. I gasped, but the only air was thick as steel wool, and just as harsh. On my knees and I could feel the life being dug out of me, out of my heart, out of my blood. Behind me I felt death reaching back for generations, rooting out everything I had known or been or remembered. It was like a fire that burned through time. And before me, nothing, nothing, just the empty night and nothing.

  And then I really was on my knees, and Wilson was shaking me with both his stone-hard hands. The mask was on the floor between us, the words in my head coiling like that sky of cinder. I hurled myself back and banged into the cheap iron of the bed.

  "Well," Wilson said, standing. "That's the thing about the Celesteans. They said different things to different people." He carefully picked up the mask and wrapped it in a bit of sheet he tore from the bed. I realized I was still staring at him, and tried to compose myself. "Don't. Just relax. Let it get through you. Let it go."

  I watched him numbly as he went around the room. He got the chests open, finally. He went through them meticulously, unfolding and then refolding things, rearranging the contents, open pouches, sniffing, closing. My mind was a smooth stone in a babbling brook, the room around me sliding coldly over without penetrating. It was minutes before I understood the things I looked at. I stood.

  "What the hell is that thing?" I asked. My voice was harsh, like I'd been crying.

  "What we were supposed to find," Wilson answered. "The question is why. And if we were the ones who were supposed to find it, or if he left it for someone else."

  I rubbed my hands together and stretched my shoulders.

  "I'm ready to go," I said. Wilson shook his head.

  "Not yet. This is what we were meant to find, but..."

  "I'm ready to go, Wilson. As in, we're going."

  He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. It hurt.

  "Jacob. This isn't the worst thing we've seen. It's likely not to be the worst we'll see before this is over. You need to pull yourself together."

  "Sure. But first we're going to go somewhere else." I made for the door. Wilson stopped me.

  "First we're going to search the rest of this house. Then we can go."

  "You said that we wouldn't find anything else. That we were meant to find that. So. We found it."

  "We did." He gestured to the chests. "But what about those?"

  I looked over his shoulder. "Looks like clothes to me."

  "Yes. Clothes that have been recently packed, and then left behind." He spread his hands in a question. "Why?"

  "I don't know. Maybe he forgot them."

  "Jacob. Is there anything about Ezekiel Crane that makes you think he would just forget his clothes?"

  Grudgingly, I admitted he was right. I didn't say anything, though.

  "Which means that he left them behind. By mistake or by plan. And there's nothing in them to make me think it was planned. To me it looks like he brought them here from some great distance, unpacked them while he was here, and then repacked them with the intention of taking them somewhere else. And then he didn't."

  "So," I said, slumping my shoulders. "We search the rest of the place."

  Wilson nodded. I gave the bundled lump of the mask one more nervous look.

  "Locked rooms first, please?" I said.

  "That's fine with me. And look," he said, then opened one of the chests. There was a revolver laying on top of the carefully folded shirts. "A present."

  I tossed my water-logged iron on the bed and holstered the new revolver. Didn't bother checking the load, or the balance. Just hoped I wouldn't have to draw it. Mostly wasn't sure that I had the heart to draw iron right now. The Celestean nightmare was still howling at the edges of my mind. I didn't trust myself with a weapon. Distastefully, Wilson picked up my old pistol from the bed and stowed it in his coat.

  "Always leaving things around, Jacob. You should know better."

  "Whatever," I said, heading for the door. "Let's get this over with."

  Whatever had been locked in those rooms was long gone. The rooms were devoid of furniture, although the windows were boarded up from the inside. The paint on the floors showed heavy wear, like someone spent all their time pacing back and forth, window to door to window to corner to door. That was the only difference in each of the room
s, actually. The pattern of wear on the floor was of varying complexity. And all of the rooms smelled, though not unpleasantly. Like fresh soil, and the harvest. It reminded me of summers in my youth, out on the estate. Back when we had an estate, and I had summers. Wilson stood in the door to each room, sniffing carefully at the air and studying the floor. He never went in. After the third room I got tired of standing in the hallway and pushed past him into the room. He frowned, but let me go.

  "So, he was keeping someone in here?"

  "Maybe. It doesn't seem like security was terribly good."

  "A padlock doesn't strike you as good security?"

  He shrugged his complexity of shoulders. "Those windows could be opened pretty easily. The nails are tiny and the boards aren't flush." Grimly he walked into the room and went to the window. With two fingers he tore a board free and peered out into the light. "Easy enough to undo."

  "Remember the toys. Maybe these were kids he had in here. They wouldn't have been strong enough to do that."

  "Cheery thought," Wilson said with a sigh. "The foot traffic isn't consistent with that. Big feet made these tracks. Heavy feet."

  "Maybe. So if the window isn't any good, why the lock on the door?"

  "Maybe it wasn't to keep people in here. Maybe it was to keep people out of here."

  "You think Crane had a lot of curious visitors?" I asked.

  "Don't you find him curious, Jacob?" Wilson set down the board and quickly exited the room. "I think you're right. I think it's time for us to be on our way. This place makes me oddly uncomfortable. Let's finish up."

  The last of the locked rooms provided no additional insight. Without much hope, we turned the knob on the second of the unlocked rooms and threw open the door. It was the smell that got me first, before the door was even fully open. That butcher's smell: spilled meat and blood.