Authors: Tim Akers
"I paid good silver for that," he muttered.
"We all make mistakes, Wilson. Now. What are we going to do next?"
He stood there looking thoughtful for a minute, leaning against the cart and working his mouth silently. Probably still regretting the loss of that silver. Finally, without turning to me, he spoke.
"Say. What was in that house, anyway? The one you and Angela spent so much time inside?"
I was hoping he wouldn't ask. I told him, leaving out a lot of the details and focusing on the conversation between the two ladies of the Council. I knew that if I included the other stuff, the cog-dead and the flower-corpses, if I made those things sound as interesting and bizarre as they actually were, that Wilson would want to go back there. Take some samples. I wanted no part in that. He seemed to know I was holding back, but kept his response to a rude smile.
"So, this really interesting conversation you had with the Lady Bright, while standing in this absolutely dull and nondescript building which, according to your story, may have had a couple bodies in it." He straightened out and shook his head. "What was that about? The stuff about your dad, and you maybe being groomed to take his spot on the Council?"
"Yeah, I'm not sure. It's like she doesn't know the story between me and Alexander." I stayed out of Council politics; even stayed away from the periphery of Council business. Alexander had disowned me, twice now. With the turnover rate in the Council, I was sure there were people in that chamber who didn't even know he had a son. Veronica Bright seemed to be one of them. "What I really didn't like was the bit about how Alexander might not be in any kind of shape to approve of what Angela's doing."
Wilson squinted at me. Alexander had been complicit in some things Angela did a couple years ago, might even have been directly involved. He was usually pretty deeply involved in the dirty side of Council politics. If he was no longer paying that close attention to the chamber games, I wondered what he was doing with his time.
"When's the last time you talked to the old man?" Wilson asked, delicately.
"Probably shortly after he kicked me out of the house." I stared out into the crowd. "Does shouting count?"
We sat quietly for a minute, the cart owner increasing the severity and frequency of his angry stares, until Wilson finally clapped me on the shoulder.
"Let's have a word with Alexander, perhaps?"
"Sure. I can't imagine that going wrong." I stood up and dusted the memory of that horrible chowder from my mind. "But seriously, first we're going to stop somewhere and pick me up a revolver. Just in case."
T
HE OLD HOUSE
stood on a little hill, nothing more than a jumble of rocks that rose up out of the street to break up the monotony of town houses and warehouses. No soil on those rocks, except what generations of Burns had brought in, and the ground was hot. We had always had trouble maintaining the formal gardens that were expected of the Founders' estates. Now that the money was gone, nothing remained of those gardens but withered shrubs that clung to the stony ground like dead spiders. Rain and the heat that radiated from the ground had washed the rest away.
The house itself looked like those bushes. Dried out and twisted, roots clinging desperately to the hill, all the color washed out. I remembered grander days, and although the house was no smaller than it had been back then, the whole estate looked like it had collapsed in on itself. And the air, that smell, like burning dust. The ground thrummed with the warm engines of the Deep Furnace. I never noticed the smell when I was a kid. Used to it, I guess.
I don't know who I thought I was kidding. Coming back here, even now, was a waste of time. Alexander had given me his speech, he had said the words that he felt needed saying. I wasn't welcome here. I would never be welcome here. And yet, what that girl had said. Veronica. The way she talked about my father, as though Angela had him by the shirt strings and was just leading him around. I had to know what that meant. I had to know what had become of my father.
He didn't even bother locking the gate anymore. There was nothing to steal here, people knew. What we'd had was mortgaged or sold. Just the house, and the history of our name. Still. You'd think he would lock the gate. Wilson hung back a little bit, his hand resting on the rusted iron of the gate as I walked up to the front door. The cobbles of the walk were uneven, the mortar washed away and the stones pushed up by weeds and erosion, until it was a challenge to walk across them. Have to get that fixed, someday.
I banged on the knocker and waited. A long time, honestly, and when the door opened it protested the unexpected change. Williamson, our family's long time servant, stood with his hand on the door, staring at me.
"Bil... Williamson," I said, remembering how much he hated being called Billy. "Long time since I've seen you. What brings you here?"
"What brings... ha!" He laughed, which was not something he usually did. "What brings me here. Brilliant, Master Jacob. Brilliant!" He shuffled out onto the front porch and put an arm over my shoulder. "Come in, come in. Do come in!"
There was a little hysteria in his voice, and he nearly shut the door on Wilson in his haste to throw the latch. Once we were all in, he rattled a number of locks and then stood with his back against the door, his joviality abandoned.
"This had better be damned good, Jacob Burn," he said, a fresh glimmer of sweat beading across his balding head. "The old man's going to assume you're here to kill him."
"Kill him? You're kidding, right? I mean, not that I wouldn't kill him if it was justified, you understand, I just don't think this is the time for it."
"Don't even joke about it." Billy pushed himself away from the door with an effort and walked to an archway that had once been a coat room. He slid a nasty looking knife from his cuff and slid it into a sheath hanging just inside the arch. This bit of sleight-of-hand got an appreciative look from Wilson, but made me nervous. Last time I'd seen Billy, he had no more been capable of holding a fighting knife properly than of flying. "Let's get everyone a drink, then, and we can figure out what to tell your father about this little visit."
"What to tell him? Tell him that I want to see how he's doing."
"Funny. Two years without a breath from you, and you drop by in the middle of all this," he said. "That'll bring a smile to his face."
"Billy, what the hell is going on around here? Where's my father?"
"Upstairs. Where you're not going, until you know something more about this. Let's get that drink." He walked past us, completely ignoring Wilson, other than to nod as he went by. Last time Billy met the anansi, he had nearly pissed himself. "You still drink, don't you, Jacob?"
"I've yet to be given a good reason to stop," I answered.
"I imagine today will provide plenty of reasons to keep the habit," he muttered, then disappeared down the hall. Wilson popped one of his happier smiles, then bowed and motioned me forward. First time in a while I hadn't been looking forward to a drink.
O
NE OF THE
jewels of the Manor Burn was its bar. This room stood as one of the gatehouses of my childhood. Early memories were of a dark room, sheathed in leather and stained wood, where my father and his friends would retreat from the women and children to discuss important matters. I would sneak down the hall to listen to them drink and laugh and joke. Most of these important matters seemed to involve women who were not mother, but once in a while I would overhear some bit of serious news, some murder or political strategy that had gone amiss. I treasured these early memories, because they had been the last time I looked with awe on my father's role in society.
It was also in this room that father gave me the news that I had been accepted to the Academy, where he told me he had arranged for my PilotEngine surgery personally, and later where he had dressed me down for my expulsion and the disgrace that had followed. Not one word of the people who died in the accident, nor one hint that it was my father's personal surgeons who had planted the seeds of my failure during that surgery, that my PilotEngine was actually an artifact hidden in my chest at the behest of the Church of the Algorithm. But I've told that story.
This is where I came when I moved back into the house, no longer welcome in the barracks or among my supposed friends. This is where he greeted me, where he told me that mother was leaving, that my brother was dead. That I would never be the heir of the Burn line, because he would rather the name die out than pass to someone like me. Anyway.
Through it all, the room remained the same. Too warm in the summer, too cool in the winter. The rows of leatherbound books untouched on the walls. And the bar, broad and shiny, with its glittering glass display shelves, underlit, so that the bottles of rare and expensive liquor sparkled in the dark room. Constellations of intoxication. Even when the money was gone, father did not get rid of the collection, except for what he drank. Which, apparently, had become quite a lot.
Billy was helping, clearly. He laid out three glasses and selected a fine whiskey from the shelves. Fewer bottles now, and those that remained were mostly empty. Billy poured us up and stoppered the bottle, but left it on the bar. Wilson and I sat down and watched my father's faithful servant drain his glass and pour another.
"I have trouble believing that things have gotten tougher than they were," I said.
"More difficult? Probably not. But certainly more immediate." Billy stared at his glass as though it were an oracle speaking wisdom. His eyes were watery and old. I wondered how much of the household he was running these days, how much of the burden of the Burn problem was his to manage. "There has always been an element of the inevitable in what we do, here. The father is getting older. One son is dead, the other" - he glanced at me - "unwelcome. Just a matter of time before things came to a head."
"What, exactly, has come to a head?" Wilson asked.
Billy looked between us. I couldn't tell if he didn't know how to answer, or just didn't know how much he wanted to say in front of Wilson. He took a slow drink from his glass and sighed.
"Jacob, your father is an old man. A troubled man. The events of the last two years have worn him quite thin. And I worry now that he might be breaking."
I drank, to give myself a breath to think out what I wanted to say next. My immediate response wouldn't be appropriate. The whiskey was a good, complicated dram, and I let it sit on my tongue and burn my eyes while I turned the conversation over in my head. Wilson spoke up before I could come up with something polite.
"Mr. Williamson, sir, as much as I enjoy sitting in the wreckage of aristocracy and mourning the passing of an age of privilege and expensive tastes by drinking the master's very fine whiskey, Jacob and I don't really have time for this sort of conversation. There are things that we need to know, and unless you're attending Council meetings, I seriously doubt you're going to be able to answer our questions." He drank the whole glass in front of him with a snort, then slammed the glass on the bar. "We must speak to Jacob's father, immediately."
Billy smiled at that, a kind of sad smile that reminded me of my father on his better days.
"Alexander hasn't been going to many meetings, himself. And as to his ability to answer your questions, well. I suppose that depends on the questions, and how you ask them."
"Do we need to write them on little slips of paper and stuff them under his door?" Wilson asked angrily. "Or maybe give them to you, and let you scurry off like a priest at an oracle? Or do we go to the man, and ask him directly? Because that's how I prefer to ask my questions."
"I can't imagine why the two of you get in so much trouble," Billy said quietly, looking down at the glass that had paused on his lip. "With such subtlety of form and intention. You would do so well in the Council."
"Perhaps the Council could do with a little less subtlety," I said, trying to insert myself between Wilson's rant and Billy's nostalgia. "Might get something done."
"Oh. The Council gave up on subtlety, at least as far as the Family Burn is concerned."
"Hence the jack-knife in your coat room," I asked. "And all the secrecy as to my father's wellbeing? What's going on, Billy? What's got you so badly spooked?"
"Your father," he answered. He looked at me with eyes that were almost apologetic. "That man scares the living hell out of me, Jacob."
"He's become violent?" I asked.
"Not at all. Worse." Billy shakily drank the rest of his glass and stared at the bottle, steeling himself. "He's become a prophet. Or mad. Probably both."
"That one you're going to have to explain," I said.
"It started maybe a year ago. Maybe less." He put his hand on the bottle, thoughtfully tapping his finger against the glass neck. "Just part of Council business. But it required him to review some military records. He came across the accounts of your brother's death. He had read them before, of course, immediately after. But it seemed different, this time. His reaction. Alexander kept the report aside, after his business with Council was over. Kept it in his office. I found it on his desk. Shortly after that, he was required to travel upriver. Again, on business."
"Did he go that far?" I asked, carefully. My brother Noah was in the navy, part of the Exploratory Corps that tested the edges of Veridon's empire in the wilds upriver. He died in something that might have been a skirmish, or it might have been a massacre. The Eranti had been blamed, but no acts of war were ever drawn up. In the end, the whole mess was buried and forgotten. Like my brother.