The Drowned Vault

by N. D. Wilson

  Cyrus knocked the bucket away and sat up. Antigone sat up beside him. Rupert Greeves stood above them, holding a dinner tray and wearing nicer clothes than he usually did—and weapons on his belt.

  “With Arachne’s touch, that’s months of hard training done in three days.” He smiled. “Lockdown is good for you. Now eat and change. We’re due in the Galleria soon.”

  Cyrus, sitting in a puddle, leaned back against his wobbling arms. The blood was still draining from his head, and dizziness swirled around him.

  “We’re leaving?” he asked. “We get to go outside?”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Antigone said, and she fell back onto the floor.

  “That’s right,” Rupert said. “You’re coming outside.”

  Cyrus could feel water draining out of his sinuses and down the back of his throat. He spat on the carpet, rolled onto his face, and shut his eyes.

  six

  ORDO

  CYRUS MOVED QUICKLY through the narrow hallway, following close behind Antigone. Ahead of her, Rupert disappeared down the stairwell. Arachne had stayed behind with her spiders.

  They had eaten—but only cheese and a dry brick of strange bread. It would have been too hard to chew if Cyrus hadn’t dipped each bite in water. Rupert had said that it was fortified and would fortify. He’d also said that he needed to know how their bodies reacted to it while they were still in a controlled environment.

  Cryptic, but Cyrus hadn’t cared. He’d been hungry enough to eat anything, but a steaming pile of noodles from the dining hall would have come back up as quickly as he pushed it down.

  Antigone shoved back her hair with a headband and put on a linen safari shirtdress that Diana had given her. She belted it at the waist and pulled on caramel-colored boots. Cyrus wore straight trousers, his own shorter boots, and a black cotton tee with the Polygoner monkey on the chest under his flight jacket. Once clothed, Rupert had them heading for the Galleria without much explanation.

  Cyrus adjusted his leather flight jacket as they went. It would make him sweat soon enough, but while he’d been unconscious, Arachne had stitched on his two new patches. Rupert eyed them as they walked.

  Antigone groaned. “Rupe?”

  “He is a Smith,” Rupert said. “Those who hate that crest already hate him, and they will not have forgotten who he is simply because he wears no label. The motto speaks truth, and Cyrus honored it when he killed Maximilien. Soon enough, he may honor it again.”

  Cyrus smiled, though he didn’t care to think about fighting anyone else like Maxi. High on his right shoulder, above the boxing monkey in its yellow shield, he now had the white circle and black ship that signified the Ashtown Estate. On his left shoulder, Arachne had removed the French World War I tricolor and replaced it with the sign of the Smiths—the three heads. The tricolor was now on the inside of the jacket.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Rupert paused by the door.

  “Ignore the dragonflies. They’re expecting us and will stay with us across the green. And no matter what any transmortal says or does, do not flinch, do not respond, and do not show fear.” He opened the door and stepped through. “Stay close.”

  The evening air was still and wet and warm. At the green, Cyrus noticed the change in the Acolyte tent city right away. There were no water fights. No bread wars. No games of tag, and no pranks. They were all at their tents—all but a small group on the gravel path, huddled together and talking.

  “Quarters!” Rupert shouted, and the group scattered, racing toward the tents.

  “What’s going on?” Antigone asked. “What happened?”

  “I have placed the Estate under Field Rules.” He glanced back at Cyrus and Antigone. “Every member above Journeyman is to be armed at all times. Acolytes are under curfew, and every member above Acolyte has been assigned to a Field Unit and a Field Captain, to whom they report.”

  “We’re not Acolytes,” Cyrus said. “And we haven’t been assigned to anyone.”

  Rupert laughed. “You two are mine. And you didn’t need a special assignment to know that. The protocols we are following were designed for large explorations in hostile territory. As long as the transmortals are here, Ashtown has become hostile territory.”

  As they walked, Cyrus could hear the giant watchful dragonflies hum and rocket through the darkness above him as they circled. Massive wings and abdomens like baseball bats flashed shadows across distant lit windows. Somewhere, he knew, Rupert would have men carrying little domed monitors, seeing what the dragonflies were seeing.

  And then he heard the shriek of a bird.

  Antigone grabbed her brother’s arm. The red-winged blackbird shot past them, low to the ground, flapping frantically. Two three-and-a-half-foot dragonflies zipped after her, like jets after a crop duster.

  “No!” Cyrus yelled. “Rupe! Make them stop!”

  Confused, Rupert wheeled around, reaching for his gun. The blackbird twisted and wove its way through the tent city, lapping tents, twisting, doubling back, looping figure eights. But the dragonflies kept pace easily, and everywhere they went Acolytes ducked and yelled and dove for cover.

  Antigone and Cyrus were sprinting, dodging tents and jumping Acolyte legs, trying to catch up. The bird saw them from down a long row. Veering quickly, she dropped low, and with wings battering blades of grass, she flapped frantically toward them.

  Above her, the huge dragonflies closed in.

  A moment later, the bird smacked into Antigone’s stomach. Antigone dropped to the ground and curled around it as the dragonflies shot past and swung around.

  Cyrus stood above his sister, fists clenched, but the dragonflies hovered just out of reach, their huge heads cocking and twisting, studying him.

  Behind the insects, with gun drawn, Rupert strode between the tents. “What was that?” he asked. “Antigone, what are you protecting? Why was it following you?”

  “Our blackbird,” said Cyrus. “She always follows us, and she’s not dangerous, no matter what the dragonflies think.”

  Antigone rose to her knees and held out her hands, fingers laced around the bird’s body.

  “She’s terrified,” Antigone said. “Her heart’s racing.”

  The bird opened its beak and shrieked at the dragonflies. The big insects drifted forward, and the wind from their wings gusted warm, sticky air across Cyrus’s face. Antigone pulled her hands back.

  Rupert whistled short and sharp, and with a blast of air, the dragonflies were gone. He looked around at the startled Acolytes, and then back at Cyrus and Antigone.

  “You do realize that bird is male?” He arched his brows, but Cyrus and Antigone didn’t answer. Rupert shrugged and turned around. “Stay close.”

  By the time they reached the main building, Antigone had the bird perched on her shoulder. Rupert took the stairs two at a time, and Cyrus and Antigone quickstepped up behind him. At the top, just outside the tall doors, three shapes were waiting for them—four if Cyrus counted Dennis Gilly, playing porter off to one side.

  George and Silas Livingstone stood on either side of a huge blond man with a short, thick beard. The man wasn’t as tall as Rupert, but his chest and shoulders looked like they belonged to a rhinoceros, and his bare woolly arms had been borrowed from a blond orangutan. He wore an old pocketed shirt cinched tight beneath a thick belt loaded with weapons. And he had a patch on each shoulder.

  Rupert stopped, and Cyrus and Antigone stopped on either side of him. Rupert extended a hand, and the big blond man shook it with a stern face. Laughing suddenly, the blond man pulled Rupert into a bear hug, slapping his back with thick arms. Cyrus and Antigone watched in surprise, while George and Silas smiled.

  “Ye stiff Brit,” the man said. His accent was like the boys’, but thicker. “Times are dark, but it’s always good to slap eyes on an old tent mate. I searched for a glimpse of you all the day yesterday, but I knew where you’d be tonight. I laid my ambush.”

  Rupert pulled free, and when he tu
rned around, he was smiling.

  “Cy, Tigs, these are the Livingstones. Alan, Keeper from the Carthage Estate, and his sons, George and Silas—but you’ve met them already.”

  George, Silas, and Cyrus all nodded. Antigone smiled.

  Big Alan stepped forward and dropped a ten-pound hand on Cyrus’s shoulder. “It’s a pleasure to meet you both—despite the storm clouds. I knew your old dad, though not as well as I would have liked.” He shook his head sadly. “I love the Order, but it did him wrong when it denied his bride—your lovely mother. I understood his leaving, and I grieved his passing. And when I heard two Smiths were back in the door, well, I laughed, and I’m not ashamed to say I wiped a tear or two—though you came in wearing the boots of an outlaw and I was sure you’d track in trouble.” He winked, smiled at both of them, and then stepped back, suddenly serious. “Can’t say I knew just how much trouble, and I wouldn’t have laughed if I had. But the blame rests on old dead Billy Bones, not on you.”

  Antigone sighed. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Mr. Livingstone. And thanks. Most people seem to think everything is our fault.”

  “My fault,” Cyrus said. “Usually.”

  Alan Livingstone nodded, and then thumped his fist on Rupert’s shoulder. “Well, in we go,” he said. “Come what may.”

  Dennis Gilly opened the wooden door, and Alan stepped aside. “Smiths and their Keeper first,” he said. “The Livingstones will watch your back.”

  The halls were crowded with people, but Cyrus and Antigone walked in an empty hollow, the space between Rupert Greeves and Alan Livingstone. They moved easily past the ship on its pedestal and reached the wide-open doors of the Galleria. George and Silas followed close behind them.

  Inside the Galleria, a narrow path to the front was all that was still empty of bodies. The mezzanines were overburdened on every side, and the scaled stone columns rose to the vaulted ceiling like pylons holding up a pier above a sea of heads.

  Cyrus could feel his sister’s tension. The blackbird hopped in place on her shoulder. They had walked through a smaller version of this crowd when they’d first arrived at Ashtown. He’d felt like a curiosity then. Now it was hard not to feel like the condemned.

  They passed the Brendanites in their monastic robes and sandals. They passed men and women they had never seen before—Asian faces and African faces, Russian faces and Spanish faces, pale faces and faces as brown as and browner than their own. Some wore khakis and boots and linen, and some seemed to be in understated uniforms. Some wore patches, and some wore shirts as empty as the expressions they ladled onto Cyrus and Antigone.

  As Cyrus and Antigone moved forward, the crowd on their left changed. Cyrus saw Gilgamesh scratching at his bearded cheeks, and he saw men even taller and broader than Gil. He saw men sleek and shiny and well oiled, and men who looked like heroes. He passed two identical pale women with almost entirely white eyes and tangled hair bound back loosely and hanging down to their waists. He saw women who were lean towers and men as small and slight as his sister.

  As Cyrus passed them all, Patricia’s sleek body grew colder and tighter around his neck. If his snake was nervous, he had to be. These were the transmortals. Every eye was angry, and Cyrus could feel their hate. He tried to keep his own eyes forward, to stare at Rupert’s back. But he couldn’t.

  His eyes darted left and collided with a tall, beautiful woman’s. Her skin was olive, and her black eyes searched his before they slid down to his shoulder—his left shoulder, his patch.

  Up front, Rupert pointed at empty chairs to the right of the aisle. Cyrus sat. Antigone sat beside him, and the Livingstones beside her. Rupert walked to the front of the room and turned around beneath the towering wall of portraits.

  Rupert cleared his throat, and his ribs expanded. When he spoke, his voice boomed in the vaults.

  “Journeymen, Explorers, Keepers, Sages—sons and daughters of the Voyager, sink.”

  Rupert dropped to his knees. With a tremendous scuffling of feet, the crowd of mortals followed his lead. Cyrus and Antigone lowered themselves to the stone floor. Cyrus glanced back at the mob of transmortals, some still standing, some still in their seats. There had to be more than a hundred of them. Maybe two hundred.

  Rupert closed his eyes and let his chin drop. “The fallen Brendan!”

  “Hail!” With one voice, in one moment, the crowd cried out that single word, and Cyrus felt his bones shiver.

  “Life—” Rupert cried.

  “Vapor!” the crowd roared.

  “Glory—”

  “Dust!”

  Rupert opened his eyes and looked up. “The voyage—”

  “Done!” the crowd shouted.

  “The race—”

  “Run!”

  “The fallen Brendan!”

  “Hail!” Cyrus and Antigone finally added their voices to the crowd. The echoes died and silence fell. No one moved.

  From above the roof, a heavy bell rang. Once. Twice. Thrice.

  Rupert rose to his feet. “Sons and daughters of the Voyager, rise.”

  The mortals rose.

  Rupert’s arms were behind his back, his chin up, his eyes glistening. “Do you hear the bells?”

  “We hear the bells!” the crowd roared.

  “Where is our captain?”

  “He has reached the shore.”

  “What has he found?”

  “Haven.”

  Rupert took one step forward. “Shall we join him?”

  “No!”

  He took another step forward. “Shall we join him?”

  “We face the storm!” The crowd’s roar washed around Cyrus, and chills ran down his back, from his scalp to his heels.

  Rupert took a final step forward, and this time, his voice was lower.

  “Shall we join him?”

  “Soon,” the crowd said. “We shall join him.”

  Rupert seemed to relax, but he wasn’t finished. Cyrus watched his Keeper—broad-shouldered, long-legged, sharp-eyed, dark-skinned, exuding pride and strength—pace in front of the crowd.

  “Sages,” Rupert said, “Keepers, Explorers, Journeymen in the Order of Brendan.” He stopped in front of the transmortals. “Allies and Tributaries, name one to lead us.”

  In one rumbling motion throughout the crowd, on both sides of the aisle, those who had chairs sat down.

  The process, as Cyrus and Antigone discovered, was a long one. A name was called out and seconded, and then the person named—the oldest ones first, both men and women—made their way to the front and faced the crowd. Rupert asked if they would stand in the Order for Brendan. Most of them said they would not, and then returned to their seats. But every now and then, someone would say yes. That person would then speak about the Order, about difficulties, about mistakes, about the future, and men and women would stand up in the crowd and shout questions, and the old woman or old man would answer, and people would shout affirmations, and people would shout denunciations and boo and hiss and whistle. And when the speaker and the crowd had both grown tired, Rupert would step in and ask who wanted the person to stand for Brendan, and people would shout “We do!” all at once, and then Rupert would ask who denied them the right to stand for Brendan, and other people would shout “We do!” And the second group of shouters was always much, much bigger and much, much louder, and they shook the high windows and skylights with their whoops as the person sat back down.

  Eventually, the people named grew younger. They were able to walk to the front without canes, and they stood up straight beneath the towering wall of oil portraits. They talked about the need for fresh leadership, and they talked about the Smiths, and the tooth, and its loss. They never looked at Cyrus when they spoke, but he still squirmed in his seat, and Antigone’s hand would clench his knee.

  Throughout the proceedings, Cyrus would glance over at the transmortals, and every time, he would see faces studying him—simmering eyes and jaws of cold stone. He realized quickly that they weren’t voting. Occ
asionally, one of them would shout a question—always about the tooth or Phoenix or him—and they would boo or cheer, but they never raised their voices when Rupert called for a vote.

  And then a man strode to the front whom Cyrus had never seen. He was tall and thin, and his movements were fluid and relaxed. When he turned, he rested one hand on the holstered butt of a revolver and the other on the hilt of a sheathed machete. To Cyrus, he looked like a coiled whip or a compressed spring—maybe a cocked gun.

  The man was wearing a battered pale-khaki suit. His mud-colored hair was slicked straight back, his creased skin was tan, and his face was unshaven. Gray whiskers dotted his jaw, and he turned sharp eyes straight onto Cyrus.

  Rupert addressed him from the side. “Will you stand in the Order for Brendan?”

  The man smiled at Rupert, and then looked back at Cyrus. His voice was Australian. “My name is Bellamy Cook, Keeper from the Barrier Estate. I will stand in the Order for Brendan.”

  Cyrus was relieved when the man broke eye contact and slowly—with brows hooded low and creases at the corners of his eyes—scanned the silent crowd.

  “Edwin Laughlin,” he said, “now known as Phoenix, brother to our fallen Brendan, was raised and trained in this, the Ashtown Estate. William Skelton, the late outlaw known as Billy Bones, was a Keeper in the Ashtown Estate. His Acolytes who carried and lost the Dragon’s Tooth brought it here, to the Ashtown Estate. Now Phoenix is hunting immortals and somehow”—he paused, looking out at the transmortals—“somehow, he knows where to find you.” He sighed, glancing back at Rupert and adjusting his belt. “Something only the Avengel of this Ashtown Estate should know.”

  Cyrus heard the crowd shift and rustle behind him. He could feel undying eyes staring at the back of his head.

  Bellamy Cook grinned and began to pace silently. After a moment, he scratched his scruffy jaw thoughtfully and then continued, doling out his words slowly like spoonfuls of ice cream.

  “The world has changed. The Order needs cleaning. Old rules need erasing.” He stopped and pointed at the transmortals. “We have tributaries among us, immortal men and women forced into treaties centuries ago. They had their own worries to attend to, and their own Order. But we destroyed it.” He shrugged, still pacing. “Of course, by we, I mean …” He held out his hand for the crowd to finish his sentence.