The Drowned Vault

by N. D. Wilson

  Cyrus studied the girl’s pale face. “How do you get them to do what you want?”

  “Practice,” Arachne said. “It used to be harder.”

  “When?”

  Arachne smiled. “Centuries ago.” She drummed thin fingers on her knees.

  Cyrus closed his eyes and dragged his hands down his face. “Do you know how long we’re going to be stuck in here?”

  “That depends on the presence and behavior of my fellow transmortals,” said Arachne. Cyrus didn’t like how cheerful she sounded. “At least a week. And getting off on the right foot is important. We’re going to divide our energies. Part of the time, we will overhaul and clean these rooms. Part of the time, we will study. And part of the time, we will train.”

  Cyrus looked at her. She was talking like she was a lot more in charge than he’d thought. In the other room, the shower turned off.

  “Train?” he asked. “At what? There’s not a lot of room in here.”

  “Rupert has given me a list.” Arachne’s eyes sparkled. He felt rude staring at them—into them—but he couldn’t really help it. “I enjoy lists,” she said. “There are very specific things he wants me to work on over the next few days.”

  Cyrus scratched at his head. His scalp was oily. He needed his own shower.

  “A list?” he muttered. “Can I see it?”

  Arachne shook her head. “The list is for me. Goals from my perspective. How would you like to begin? Cleaning, studying, or training?”

  Cyrus slumped deeper into his chair. “Eating.”

  The bathroom door opened and Antigone stepped out, cinching her wet hair back with a toothed headband. She was in shorts and an old short-sleeved safari shirt. Her bare feet left damp tracks on the wood floor. Through the door behind her, Cyrus could see the shower spasming out the last of the water still in its gullet.

  “Water’s cold this morning,” Antigone said. Cyrus caught her eyes and then rolled his own. “What?” Antigone glanced at Arachne and then her brother. “What’s going on?”

  Arachne straightened in her chair. “Rupert has given me a list of things to work on with you while you’re locked in.” She smiled. “And I’m going to help you clean and freshen this old place.”

  Antigone blinked in surprise. She looked at her brother, confused by his obviously dark mood.

  “That’s terrific,” she said. “Lists are terrific, and we could definitely use help in here.”

  “Oh, gosh …” Cyrus stood and moved past his sister toward the bathroom.

  “It’s cold!” Antigone said. “You might wanna wait.”

  Cyrus shut the bathroom door behind him.

  A really cold shower isn’t too terrible when you know that you’re going to walk outside into frying-pan heat. Tight cool skin, tight cool muscles, and a near ice-cream headache were all solid preparation for a long morning in the sun. But Cyrus wasn’t going to have a long morning in the sun. A long morning, yes. Sun, no. Air, no. Grass, no. Sky, no. Spiders, probably. Dust, for sure. Two girls talking about paint colors and decor or whatever they called it, almost certainly. And a list that sounded a whole lot like homework. Training wasn’t supposed to be homework. Training was diving. Fencing. Running. Climbing. Sailing. Shooting.

  Cyrus shut his eyes and ducked his chin to his chest. That was the only way he could fit under the low showerhead.

  Water that had obviously been ice thirty seconds before, and would likely be ice again in another minute, splashed irregularly down his neck and back. Despite the loud pipes, Cyrus could hear the girls laughing.

  His new boss was smaller than he was, and she had a face like an almost creepy doll. If almost creepy dolls could also be incredibly beautiful. Her eyes weren’t real. They couldn’t be. Looking into them was like … what? Falling? Tripping? Like taking an awkward extra step on stairs when the stairs have already run out. Her eyes—that’s why she was in charge. Or at least why Cyrus didn’t argue about it. Her eyes were the only part of her that said she wasn’t just another pretty girl a few years older than him. Her eyes were all the way old.

  Like the moon, Cyrus thought. They had craters, but not literally. There was a lot of damage in there. Old hurt. But they were young eyes, too. Not like Nolan’s. There was no anger in them, no hardness. They could sparkle like the sun on water. Like the sun through water.

  Cyrus let his mind drift away, and he was back under the lake’s surface, looking up at Arachne’s silhouette, looking at the sun’s golden rays slicing through the blue and the floating, weightless spider army all around. That’s what her eyes were like.

  He hadn’t argued with her, but he had sulked. No one likes a sulker.

  Cyrus bent his knees and tipped back his head, letting the glacier water tighten his face. The week was going to be awful, that much was obvious. But he wasn’t going to sulk again.

  The pipe shook in the wall. The showerhead quivered. Cyrus opened his eyes wide.

  “No.” He tried to jump back, but too late. Steam whistled at him. His bare feet skidded and he fell as the scalding water lashed across his skin. Yelling, he rolled on the tile and pinned himself into the corner, out of direct fire. But even the spattering drops were pure pain. Wincing, straining, he stretched his leg up through the lava lasers and grabbed at the handle with his toes.

  Outside, overlooking the tented green, the red-winged blackbird was sitting on a windowsill in the sun. She heard the yells, and she knew the voice. She knew the sound of water in the pipes. She wasn’t worried. She shut her eyes against the morning and nestled her head beneath her wing.

  When Cyrus walked from the bathroom to his bedroom, most of the red stripes on his skin were hidden by his T-shirt. Antigone and Arachne were eating on the floor beside a pile of books. They smiled. He didn’t. Books? And the pile wasn’t small.

  No sulking.

  Cyrus stopped in the bedroom doorway.

  “Water got a little warm,” he said. “I feel bad for lobsters. Don’t eat all of that.”

  While they laughed, he moved inside to root through his cardboard box for his cleanest clothes.

  Day one: For Cyrus, it crept by like a snail parade. He could hear airplane after airplane descending, but he couldn’t see the sky. He could hear Acolytes laughing on the green and training on the gravel paths, but he couldn’t see the grass. For breakfast, he ate some cold bacon and a bowl of fiber flakes with what he was sure couldn’t be more than two teaspoons of milk. There was no lunch. Arachne said they were in training. He ate some stale crackers that had been around for months.

  And he cleaned. And cleaned. He scrubbed what he was told, he swept where he was told, and he even dusted the ceiling, balancing on the back of the armchair. And for all of that, the rooms were only slightly less moldy and rotten—though now they reeked so much of lemon and pine that Cyrus’s nostrils burned and he couldn’t stop blinking his watering eyes.

  The training was as uninteresting as it was grueling. Arachne said she was only testing their physical starting points, and she needed to see their bodies in motion. Which meant push-ups and sit-ups and lunges and planks and frozen poses.

  Dinner was cold potatoes, sausage, and a pitcher of water.

  Nolan delivered yellow paint up through the heat vent, Rupert never came by, and Cyrus climbed into his hammock early, trying not to listen to the girls talk about ancient Greek syntax while he bounced his foot against the wall.

  Day two: Before breakfast, Cyrus did more push-ups and more sit-ups and more lunges while Arachne watched, hardly blinking. His legs burned with soreness from the day before, but he wasn’t going to tell her. Nolan delivered three plates of cold, slippery eggs up through the heat vent, but left before Cyrus could talk to him.

  After breakfast, Cyrus reslung his hammock. He resorted his cardboard box of clothes. He got the wobbly, clear Quick Water out of the wooden box on the mantel and played with it. Arachne pointed out particular books in the Book Dump and Cyrus carried them out in stacks and set them whe
rever she told him to. Antigone thought they looked interesting, but the titles made Cyrus’s brain water.

  The Seven Depletions of Bajan Voo. The Neverwhere Voyages of Timothy Maggot. Soils and Salts. Theses on Economic Inversion. Your Best Maps Now: A Cartographic Memoir. And more and more and more …

  Finally, Cyrus got out his two new patches and sat in the armchair while Antigone and Arachne talked and planned and sorted through the books Arachne had selected.

  Cyrus studied his patches. The basic circle patch of Ashtown with the black boat in the center—that hadn’t cost him anything. But the crest of the Smiths, well, he’d made big promises before Old Donald had let him have it. Donald had said that he didn’t think another Smith patch that old existed—at some point they’d all been burned. Some modern Smiths had worked up variations—all without the heads—but none of them had stuck around. The old Smith crest was too memorable, too rooted in the stories of grandmothers and thus in the imaginations of kids. Or so said Old Donald …

  Sic Semper Draconis

  Cyrus traced the motto, and then studied the three heads. Beard, mustache, and clean-shaven. Thus to all dragons. Thus always to dragons—that was the better translation, wasn’t it? But he wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. All dragons should be beheaded? But they weren’t dragon heads. They were men.

  Cyrus rubbed the red silky-smooth shield with his thumb. He wanted it on his jacket already.

  His stomach rumbled, and he closed his eyes.

  For a while, he was simply walking along the Northern California cliffs, listening to the seals bark, watching the white lines of surf roll in. For a while, he wandered the pastures of Wisconsin, searching for tires in the irrigation ditches. For a while, he walked along a country road looking for the Archer Motel. Cars would slow down with lowered windows and drivers would ask if he needed a ride. He told them he was heading to a place called Waffle.

  And then it was night and he was sitting on a boulder on the side of a mountain. Beneath him, a thick pine forest rustled like the sea sucking at sand. Across from him, on another peak, there was a fortress. A needle-sharp crescent moon was rising behind it.

  But the fortress didn’t matter. Three men strode out of the pine forest and climbed up to his boulder. The oldest and heaviest man had a thick black beard, and he carried a long slender ax with a blade as thin and vicious as the moon. The second man was taller, with broad shoulders and long, lean arms. He had a mustache that dangled past his sharp chin, and in one hand he carried a long, slightly curved sword, like something between a saber and the weapon of a samurai. The moonlight danced across its blade, and Cyrus saw the long, twining image of a dragon etched into the steel. In his other hand, the man carried a long, sharpened wooden pole. The third man was the youngest and the slightest. His face was clean-shaven, and he carried only a bow, with arrows in a quiver on his belt. All three men wore thick silver chains around their necks, and thin silver crowns were nestled into their dark hair.

  The man with the sword stepped forward.

  “Vos volo?” His growling voice sounded distant, like he was speaking from a cave.

  “Sorry,” said Cyrus. “I need to sew your heads on my jacket.”

  The man lunged forward, slashing with his sword.

  “Cy!”

  Cyrus jerked awake as Antigone kicked him in the leg. Arachne was standing behind her.

  “Tigs!” He grabbed at his shin. Both of his patches slid to the floor.

  “Sorry,” Antigone said. “You wouldn’t wake up.”

  Arachne bent and picked up the patches. She tossed the Ashtown patch back onto Cyrus’s lap, but she studied the Smith patch.

  “A vivid dream,” she said simply. “A wandering mind can be a strength.” She looked up from the patch at Cyrus. “The embroidery is good. I never understood the trouble about Smiths—apart from the treachery of your greatest grandfather. These three”—she tapped the heads—“earned their ends, though most of my kind will deny it.”

  “Who were they?” Cyrus asked. “Or are we not allowed to know?”

  Arachne inhaled slowly. “It’s on my list. Rupert said to tell you as much as I know. They were men that I—and the world—feared. The heart of Ordo Draconis. The Tri-Dracul. Sorcerers of a rare and bestial breed.” Starting with the bearded one, she tapped all three. “Vlad the Second, Vlad the Third, Vlad the Fourth—each beheaded by Captain John Smith with their family’s own heirloom sword.” She handed back the patch.

  Cyrus stared at her, waiting for more. But more wasn’t coming. “Come on,” he said. “You know more than that. Tell the whole story.”

  Arachne’s blue eyes laughed, and she shook her head. “Train hard and I will tell you later.” She looked at Antigone. “If you train harder, we may paint later.”

  Antigone smiled. Cyrus looked at the patch in his hands. “Will you help me sew this on my jacket?”

  “Cy, no.” Antigone crossed her arms. “Now that you have it, you should keep it somewhere safe.”

  Cyrus grinned at his sister. “Somewhere no one can see it, maybe?”

  “Preferably, yeah,” Antigone said.

  Arachne looked from sister to brother. Then she nodded. “I may sew it on later. But now, both of you lie on the floor.” She waved at the rug. “Facedown, please. You must learn to bend.”

  “Any chance of lunch soon?” Cyrus asked. His stomach roared at him as he slid out of his chair and onto his knees.

  “No chance,” Arachne said. “Not for a while. You need an empty stomach for this. Now flatten out on your face, arms at your sides, hands palms up.”

  Cyrus eased himself down. The rough wool rug scratched at his forehead and nose.

  “What are we doing?” he asked. “What’s the point?”

  Arachne’s cool hands closed around his right ankle. “Deep breath in,” she said, and a second later, Cyrus’s leg folded up into the small of his back. His toes splayed, his tendons screamed, and his mouth opened, but he couldn’t even yell. His tongue clawed at the dirty rug, and in some other world, he could hear his sister laughing.

  “Exhale,” Arachne said, and electric ice shot through Cyrus’s leg and rattled through his body. Pain and tension disappeared as he felt his leg bend farther and farther up into his back.

  “What are you doing?” he heard Antigone ask. “You’re going to break him! Cy, are you okay?”

  Arachne pried Cyrus’s other leg up into his back. His face compressed into the rug, and an involuntary groan slid out of him as his lungs collapsed.

  “I’m a weaver,” Arachne said, and her voice was cheerful. She was enjoying herself. “To some, I am the weaver—the first and true spinster. And the human body is—like many things—woven. Rupert has asked me to rework and rearrange a few things in the two of you.”

  “y?” Cyrus licked the rug as he tried to speak. His teeth would have chattered if there weren’t floor wedged in between them. The cold electrical current in his body was growing stronger. Even his eyelids were beginning to twitch.

  “You could achieve this flexibility on your own over years—with the right training, of course. But Rupert cannot wait for years, and I am here now. He asks, and I comply. This will greatly improve your recovery after strain.” Cyrus’s legs dropped to the floor as limp as two sacks of liquid. Then his arms crossed behind his back.

  “Oh, gosh …,” Antigone blurted.

  Arachne continued talking, but Cyrus’s brain was drifting away.

  “Some muscle fibers will not change or be rewoven without dramatic assistance. Yours are strong already, but they need more endurance and more quickness. That means, well, you might call it braiding rather than weaving.”

  Cyrus’s arms flopped back out to his sides.

  “Lie down, Antigone. You’ll catch up in a minute. Cyrus, this part is … uncomfortable,” Arachne said. Her hand slid up to the back of Cyrus’s head. “If you were awake, it would mean hours of prolonged cramping followed by the most intense itching and ti
ckling you’ve ever felt. Like stinging ants beneath the skin.” Cyrus tried to sputter an objection, but Arachne held his head still. “Which is why you’ll be uncon—”

  Darkness landed on Cyrus like a pile of quilts.

  He looked around. There was nothing. No floor beneath him. No him to have a floor beneath. He’d been kicked out of his body and into … nowhere.

  “Cyrus?” The voice was low and surprised and a little worried. It was a woman’s voice, sweet and mellow, grown in tropical sun and tropical soil. It plucked thick unused strings in Cyrus’s soul, playing a chord he’d forgotten. Shocked emotion roared through him.

  “Mom?” He couldn’t look for her. He couldn’t search. He could only listen. Hours passed. Or years. And still he waited in the nowhere silence for his mother’s voice.

  “You should not be here, Cyrus. The sleep is long here. Go back. Stay with your sister.”

  “Mom?” Antigone’s voice was louder, closer than their mother’s. But Cyrus couldn’t see her, either.

  “Antigone? Take your brother and go. Before you are lost in the in-between.”

  “Mom, I want to see you,” Antigone said. “Where are you?”

  “You do see me,” she said. “You braid my hair. You sit with me and sing to me and read to me. I listen and I feel. And, in my own way, I have seen you. I watch you run and sleep and study. I watched Cyrus race the bigger boy and sink beneath the plane. Cyrus has grown tall, like my lost brothers. And you, Antigone, your hair, your eyes, your face, they make me sing. Care for your brother. Cyrus, keep your sweet sister safe. Now go. Both of you. This is not a place for wandering.”

  “Wait,” said Cyrus. “Mom, wait—”

  They were being pushed, sliding away through the darkness. Antigone was gone. Cyrus was alone, alone without time, without thought, until even the darkness faded away. And then … he was incredibly hungry.

  Cyrus opened his eyes. He was staring into the rug. He could taste thrown-up stale crackers in his mouth, and his body was shaking from somewhere deep inside. Sharp-bladed pain had sliced the inside of his gut, his smashed nose was running, and he could feel tears in his eyebrows.