Empire of Bones

by N. D. Wilson

  Cyrus sat up and dug for a raindrop in his ear.

  Niffy smiled. He had bathed, and his visible portions were striped with bandages. His robe had even been washed. More likely, he had swiped a new one. His stripe of hair was now uneven on his gauze-dotted scalp, but it was clean.

  “Rupert told me to let you sleep,” Niffy said. “But enough is enough.”

  Cyrus’s brain slowly shook off the image of black water and his blond brother. In the Galleria, when he had refused to run to Africa with the others as a sort of Avengel in waiting, he had expected Rupert to argue, to banish him from Ashtown, to grow angry. He hadn’t. After the first flurry of activity, Rupert had sent Cyrus onto the roof to keep watch for incoming planes. But now it was day. Niffy wouldn’t be standing here if Radu Bey was downstairs.

  “What happened?” Cyrus said.

  “What happened is that wily Rupert Greeves sent a bone-weary lad to keep watch over the safest place in all of Ashtown.” Niffy winked. “He even sent you with a blanket. I think he hoped that the war would come and you would sleep through it, tucked up here on the rooftop, watching for planes behind your eyelids.”

  Cyrus felt his damp face growing hot. “No planes came. I would have heard.”

  Niffy’s grin widened, his high round cheeks pinching his happy eyes into slits.

  “You slept through the grave digging and the funeral bells, and the final wee air fleet as it flew away. Vesuvius couldn’t have roused you.”

  Cyrus stood, wiping his rain-wet face. He ran his hands over his short hair, flinging an army of tiny drops up after his fingers.

  “One plane dropped by,” Niffy said. “Landed not thirty minutes ago, claiming to have been summoned by some right daft prat named Cyrus Smith. You know him?”

  Cyrus sucked in a long breath. Rupert had wanted to die alone. He had spent the night shuttling people away. And Cyrus hadn’t bothered to tell him that he had sent out a slightly different message.

  “Is he mad?” Cyrus asked.

  “Yes,” Niffy said. “Aye. Indeed. Verily. And in more ways than one.”

  Niffy turned and Cyrus followed him around chimneys back toward the hatch door that the monk had left open. Cyrus glanced back at the black smoke curling up from the far corner of the world of Ashtown rooftops.

  Rupert had wanted to be alone then, too.

  Nervousness floated up behind Cyrus’s sternum and settled in his throat. Yes, he had undermined Rupert.

  Oh, well. On this point, Rupert needed undermining.

  It was strange, walking an empty Ashtown. Hall after hall, stair after stair, Niffy and Cyrus moved in near silence. The floors were a mess of things cast off and left behind, too heavy to carry or too useless to pick up when dropped.

  Members’ quarters had been left open. Beds unmade. Trunks open and overflowing. Water dripping in unseen tubs.

  Only fifty of the faithful had remained.

  And then there were five.

  Niffy led Cyrus through the main hallway, past the black ship of Brendan on its pedestal, past the empty dining hall, and into the kitchen.

  Sterling worked one small block of the massive fire island of stoves that would normally be ablaze. Omelets sizzled. Bacon shook and cracked small whips of grease.

  Rupert sat on a stool across from Sterling, his eyes shut, his head in his hands, his mouth open. He looked asleep.

  Jax sat on a stool beside Rupert, glaring at Sterling.

  A butcher-block table usually reserved for vegetable-dicing prep cooks was mounded with heavy charge guns that could stun a transmortal.

  Rupert stirred. “Cyrus,” he said. “Who else is coming?”

  The big man sat up slowly and turned.

  Cyrus didn’t answer. Sterling winked and flicked a hot piece of bacon through the air at Cyrus’s head. He caught it, shuffled its heat from hand to hand, and then tucked it between his teeth.

  Rupert stood up, crossed to Cyrus, dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder, and steered him toward the swinging door into the dining hall. He pushed it open and held it, looking down at Cyrus’s face as he did.

  The Captain and Gilgamesh and Arachne sat at one table. Gil and the Captain were both wolfing massive piles of some special Sterling scramble. A dozen plates were already empty.

  Arachne sat quietly with her bulging bag on her lap. She’d gained a lot of spiders in the woods, and she looked like she was waiting for something. She turned her frigid eyes to Cyrus and smiled slightly. It wasn’t a happy smile.

  Robert Boone, Jeb Boone, Gunner, and Dennis were eating loudly and talking at another table. The creases on Robert’s face were as hard as canyons. His brows were low, and white scruff lined his unshaven jaw. Jeb had stitches down his shorn scalp and across his temple. And he was wearing an eye patch. Diana’s father and brother both looked as serious as death. Gunner looked lost in thought. Only Dennis was smiling, clearly glad to be in Ashtown.

  Rupert let the door swing shut, then marched Cyrus back through the kitchen and into the long hallway lined with Explorer displays.

  He pushed Cyrus away from him and crossed his arms.

  Cyrus staggered at the force of the shove and turned to face his Keeper.

  “What were you thinking, Cyrus?” Rupert asked. “Do you want your friends killed? Robert says his daughter and Antigone are on their way as well.”

  Cyrus swallowed. “Ashtown should be defended.”

  “And it will be,” Rupert said.

  “By you?” Cyrus asked. “Alone?”

  Rupert inhaled slowly. “What do you think Radu Bey will do to John Smith?” he asked. “Do you think Arachne’s spiders can face a dragon? Do you expect loyalty from Gilgamesh? Every mortal in this place will die, Cyrus. But any transmortal who stands with us … they can expect decades and decades of horror.”

  Rupert stepped forward, uncrossing his arms. “You and every other wakeful soul in this place will get on Robert’s plane, and you will leave.”

  Cyrus shook his head. “You need help. Do you even know where the Brothers Below are? You still have to find them, and there aren’t even any Sages left to ask.”

  Rupert blinked.

  “You were going to try to wake them up, right?” Cyrus asked. “In the chapel, you said you wouldn’t because they would kill too many innocents. And you’ve done nothing but chase people away since then. You were going to wake them, because even if they killed you, they could stand against Radu Bey.”

  “It is an option,” Rupert said. “If I find them. But only if I am alone.”

  “But aren’t they evil? Don’t they kill everyone and everything?”

  “No man is pure in heart, mind, body, and soul. There are stains in all of us that the Brothers see, and because they see all things without grace or mercy, because they are Justice and Wrath …”

  “They kill everyone,” Cyrus said.

  Rupert sighed. “They issue a just judgment. If I want justice for Radu Bey, I will bow before it for myself.”

  “Rupe.” Cyrus shook his head. “You don’t deserve to die.”

  “Before I was born, did I deserve to live?” Rupert asked. “I was made and life was given to me so that I could be standing right here, right now. So that I could be spent.”

  Cyrus bit his lip, thinking. He understood what Rupert was saying. But that didn’t mean he had to accept it—not just yet.

  Rupert leaned forward, eyes wide. Cyrus studied the floor.

  “Our race is flawed, Cyrus. Mortality is meant for us. We will take our faults into the grave, and in the grave, we will leave them. Pity the transmortals, living forever with their stained souls. We can lay our burdens down; we can offer up our lives for the ones we love.”

  “Exactly,” Cyrus said, looking up, meeting his Keeper’s eyes. “We.”

  A sharp whistle shot out of the kitchen.

  “Rupe!” Niffy shouted. “Planes! One low and landing, and one coming in fast—”

  Engines roared. Air shrieked. Glass sha
ttered. The ground shook Cyrus off his feet as white fire billowed out of the kitchen, sucking the air dry.

  Rupert was on his face. Cyrus rolled over and elbow-crawled to him. He grabbed for his Keeper’s pulse, but Rupert knocked his hand away and pushed himself up, his back smoking slightly.

  “Niffy!” Cyrus shouted, but he couldn’t hear his own voice. The only noise now was a shrill shrieking in his head, the impossibly loud ringing of some internal fire alarm.

  Rupert scrambled up and ran into the obliterated kitchen. Cyrus staggered after him.

  The wall of windows had become a gaping hole. The wall between the kitchen and the dining hall had been split wide, and the smoking remains had been thrown across the smoking tables. Everywhere, things were burning.

  Tucked in the shattered shadow of a half-gone fire island, Sterling lay across the bodies of Jax and Niffy. All three were moving slowly.

  Rupert turned to the dining hall.

  Cyrus could hear him shouting but his voice was muffled and distant.

  The Captain erupted out of the rubble, his square beard gray with dust, his breastplate dented, and his camouflage pants smoking. Bellowing curses, shaking with rage, he drew his sword and stomped toward Rupert.

  Gilgamesh rose slowly, uncurling himself from around the body of Arachne. She was untouched and her bag uncrushed, but Gil’s broad back was a bloody swamp, studded with shrapnel.

  “Robert!” Rupert waded into the destruction, heading toward the table where Robert, Jeb, Gunner, and Dennis had been sitting. A solid slab of wall lay across that part of the room.

  Dennis emerged on his hands and knees from beneath it.

  “We’re fine, Mr. Greeves!” he said. “All fine!”

  Rupert spun back around.

  “Cellars!” he shouted. “Everyone into the cellars. Get belowground! We’ll get pounded before we make our stand.”

  Just as they touched down on the little green airstrip, Antigone saw the jet scream over and the fireball swallow the kitchen. And the Brendan’s rooms looked like they had already been destroyed.

  “Not good!” Horace yelled behind her. The little lawyer was out of his seat and pressing his face against a window. “Not good! Not good! Not good!”

  Nolan leaned forward between Diana and Antigone, looking up the slope at the smoke rising from Ashtown. The jet responsible was out of sight, but at the speed it had been moving, it could be back on top of them between two heartbeats.

  “Let me out,” Nolan said. “Then take off and disappear.”

  Antigone shook her head. “Diana can leave, but I’m coming with you.”

  Diana pointed to a plane at the end of the runway. “That’s my dad’s,” she said. “I’m staying.”

  As the plane stopped, Antigone pulled off her headset and Nolan threw open the cabin door. Still wearing gloves, he had the heavy black bag slung over his shoulder.

  Nolan, Antigone, Diana, and Horace jumped out one after the other. The props were still turning as they ran up the hill.

  Low on the horizon, Antigone saw the jet approaching again. Nolan dropped to one knee and unzipped the long black bag. He jerked a short, fat brass tube from the jumble of gear. It had a brass wheel on the side, a handle and trigger on the underside, and an oversize musket-style hammer on the top. Nolan flipped a tiny lever, and the tube suddenly telescoped out to at least six feet long. Nolan’s hands were moving fast, digging back through the bag.

  “Crank that wheel!” he yelled, and Antigone and Diana both jumped forward. Antigone had her hands on the wheel first, and she began to crank it clockwise as fast as she could. Three twists. Four, and it clicked.

  Nolan dropped a dark canister down the wide end of the tube, grabbed the handle, and cocked the oversize hammer.

  The snub-nosed, dual-nostriled jet roared in over Ashtown. Black spheres dropped from its belly as it came.

  Nolan pointed the fat end of the tube straight up and pulled the trigger.

  With a crack, the long telescope sprang back together, lifting Nolan off his feet and hurtling the canister up into the wet gray sky.

  The jet’s bombs were erupting in a chain as they slammed into walls and roofs and grassy earth.

  Nolan’s lonely canister slowed at its peak and crumbled into barely visible dots.

  The jet roared beneath it.

  The dots struck faster than Antigone could see. While bombs marched down the grassy slope toward the airstrip, hundreds of small explosions punched into the jet’s wings and cockpit.

  Bomb heat lifted Antigone off the ground and flung her back onto the airstrip in a cloud of earth. She landed and rolled. Spitting dirt and blinking, she looked back up at the sky from her belly.

  Trailing smoke, the jet hit the lake at full speed. A pillar of flame and water marked its end.

  She could hear Nolan laughing. He was on the ground only a dozen feet away.

  “Two hundred pyro-newt eggs in a crank launch!” He looked at her, eyes gleaming in his dirty face. “Not a banned weapon, but an antique!”

  “Is it done?” Antigone asked. “Is that it?”

  The pale boy leapt up easily, the fat tube dangling from his hand. He looked happier than Antigone had ever seen him—full of a strength and energy that was, for once, not powered by rage.

  “Done? Antigone Smith, it hasn’t even started.” Nolan shook his head. “That was just Radu knocking on the door.”

  eighteen

  THE QUICK AND THE DOOMED

  CYRUS WAS STANDING ON A STATUE floating in black water. She was higher now. Inches higher. He wheeled around. There was Dan, eyes shut, head resting on his arms. There was Antigone, braiding her hair.

  “Dan!” Cyrus yelled. “We’re being bombed! I don’t have time for this!”

  “Have you found the girl?” Dan asked. His voice was tense. “You have to find her. There’s not much time. Go! You shouldn’t be here right now!”

  Cyrus couldn’t breathe. He had been on the cellar stairs when the last round of bombs dropped the world on him. Stone rubble was pressing down on his chest, and his mouth was full of blood. He wormed free of the pressure and began to hack out dust with his first weak breaths. At least he wasn’t burned. He hated burns. He managed to twist onto his side and pulled himself in the direction he believed to be up. It was up. He could see fire. And gray daylight.

  Cyrus crawled up the rubble slope into what had been the kitchen. Now it was a crater of smoking stone with walls that were mostly holes. He snorted and spat out blood made black with dust.

  “Cyrus!”

  He looked up. Antigone was climbing toward him over a hill of glass and stone where the kitchen windows had once been. She was wet from the rain, and she was dirty, but she was wearing her leather coat belted. Gun on one hip and long knife on the other. Angel Skin alive with light at her throat. Her hair pulled back into a tight braid. She was dressed exactly as she had been in the dream.

  She was hurrying forward. She was pulling rubble off of him. She was checking him for broken bones. She was talking.

  Cyrus wasn’t listening.

  “Hey,” he said. “Antigone.”

  She paused, her eyes spilling worry.

  “We have to get into the Burials. Like, now.”

  Radu Bey walked barefoot through his human hall, chains dragging behind him. Anann the Morrigan walked with him, stride for stride. Muffled by the walls of bodies but still audible, sirens whined in the world outside. The full force of the Ordo Draconis had assembled in his temple. They were silent. They were ready. But with so many transmortals in one place, the city blocks around them had slipped into chaos.

  Outside, the police. Again. Emergency, emergency. Humans are weaklings. Azazel, the dragon inside him, could sense every breathing body the police dragged away from his temple. And before they could be taken too far away, Radu felt Azazel ripple and slither beneath the skin of his chest as the serpent used the power of the temple to snip their soul strings and send another servant into de
ath.

  This building had never been meant as a long-term home. Radu smiled. It was a launching point. An egg that would hatch into his new empire. And it had been his first real feed. Something quick and easy after centuries of chains.

  Tonight, when every Burial of Ashtown had been emptied into his temple, he would lead his army of gods out into the crowded streets and show them the tall towers of light, and he would make them his. Together they would shatter the City of Man with chaos, ascend the great towers, and then turn their eyes to the world.

  Tonight, he would claim his capital city.

  Radu’s first wave had reached Ashtown, and he could see fire when he shut his eyes. The second wave would be sweeping the rubble for survivors … and for any of Phoenix’s Reborn with their tooth potions. The potions were a worry, but Phoenix would not have sent the sample to him unless he had wanted Radu to worry. It was potent, but it was a bluff. Phoenix couldn’t possibly have produced enough of it to down two dozen transmortals for any length of time, let alone two hundred. It was a complicated ritual preparation that required at least one full phase of the moon to mature. Since Phoenix’s factory had been destroyed, there hadn’t been time for that many new batches. One batch, maybe, but he would have needed vats and vats boiling down the mixture for a month to get as much as he would need. The sheer strength of Radu’s force was enough to overwhelm even one thousand of the Reborn if they were foolish enough to engage the gods with only a few tranquilizing dart guns.

  “The road is long ready,” Anann said. “Your army is waiting. My sister is waiting.”

  “Yes,” Radu said. “And she can wait a little longer.”

  Anann grabbed his arm and the two stopped.

  “You swore to me,” she said. “She will be the first. She is waiting.”

  “As is Phoenix,” Radu said. “We will tread cautiously when the path is prepared by an enemy, even one as weak as Phoenix.”

  He studied the hard, scarred face of Anann the Morrigan. There was beauty in her bloodthirst, in her dedication. She was like the cliffs along the North Sea—jagged of soul, pitiless, unmoving. He traced one of the blue ink scales on her neck with a long bronze finger.