Dead of Veridon (34 page)

The trick was, it was true. Except for the gratitude part. The Church had captured this angel, and spent the better part of two centuries taking her apart and using the knowledge gleaned from her dissection to power their engines of god. And now the angel was out.

"So I was right," Wilson beamed. "The Church was in on it all along."

"Not at all," Camilla said. "This was just a lucky break. Crane really did come back here to destroy the Church. But I'm better than him. After I figured out what he was, and what he was doing, I lured him into the chambers below and convinced him that only I could truly destroy the city. Which is true. Just not in the way he planned."

"Where is he?" I asked.

"I take care of my servants, Jacob. Ezekiel Crane is going to live a very long and interesting life." She held up her arm and smiled at the birds. "Amazing breakthrough, don't you think? The foetal metal is suspended in their essence. The metal and the life are one thing. I never knew the Artificers. Hadn't figured out how to communicate with anyone outside of the Church, by the time they were banned and exiled. But I have to say, they were some clever people."

"So, what now? You're going to kill us and then level the city, like you promised to do, back when you were trying to get the heart from me?"

"Hardly, Jacob. This has been a long time coming. These..." She shuddered. "These damned holy men have held me for a long time. And they've collected many of the things that we sent down the river. None of this" - she spread her arms, indicating the whole of the Church of the Algorithm, the centuries of accumulated cogwork, the pattern of god itself - "was meant for you. Meant for this place. You're like a blocked artery in the veins of divinity. And I'm going to clear it out."

"Which means that if we just get our things and get out of your way..." I started.

"I heard about Emily, Jacob. Heard that the last angel possessed her. That you had to kill her." Her centuries young face pouted at me. "I felt bad about that. And you buried her in the river, didn't you? Put her in a boat and sent her over the falls, along with the Destroyer's heart. I thought that was such a beautiful thing to do." Her face changed, suddenly angry. "So damned poetic, throwing the heart away like that. So damned beautiful."

Her arm snapped forward and a column of blackness, lined in the shapes of crows, shot forward. It swallowed me, filled me, darkened me. I fell, and the world fell around me.

Chapter Seventeen

An Orrery of Memory

I
WOKE UP
in a coffin with a woman in my arms. It seemed like she'd been trying to get out of my arms for quite a while, because we were tied together, and it felt like she'd been using my spine to try to wear through the ropes. She was doing it right now.

"Stop that, please," I mumbled. My throat was sore and dry, and my head was swimming. I had trouble moving my tongue. My muscles all felt like they'd been packed with kindling and then broken.

She screamed once, loudly, directly into my ear. I winced, but that just led to me banging my head against the wall of the coffin. I assumed it was a coffin, at least. Not many small, wooden things you would put people into.

"Gods, I thought you were dead," she said. It was Veronica. Great. "You haven't moved in half an hour. Haven't even breathed. Can you get your arms free?"

"Maybe I am dead. Maybe they stuffed a bird down my throat and they're controlling my every move. I feel bad enough to believe it."

"Will you stop screwing around and try to get your arms free!" she yelled.

"I don't think we're going anywhere. I mean, even if we get free. What's the matter, Lady Bright? You don't like holding me?" The coffin lurched and I banged my head again. "What was that?" I asked groggily.

"A wave. Because we're on a boat."

"That sounds bad," I said.

"It is bad. That crazy kid wouldn't shut up about how you floated some damn piece of cogwork down the river, then she had a barrel brought in and stuffed you in it."

"And then you jumped in to save me and they closed the top?"

"She got it in her head that it would more damned poetic if there was a girl, and I was the only one who qualified. Something about a lady named Emily." She started sawing at my backbone with her bound wrists again. "Now stop talking and do something about getting us free."

"Wilson will probably save us," I said. "Just be cool."

"No one is going to save us. Do you understand, they put us in a barrel and then in a boat, and now we're out on the river somewhere," she hissed into my ear. "And they're going to float us down the river and over the falls."

"Oh. Oh, I see where she's going with that. Because of the heart. Right." I shook my head, but that did nothing for the vertigo. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm really not at the top of my game. Something happened to my head."

"Something happened to your whole body, idiot. Like I said, you haven't even been breathing."

"Well. I'm breathing now. I'm going to assume that you've screamed for help?"

We hit another lurch and then the whole barrel rolled a couple times. We landed with a splash. Even inside the barrel, I was pretty sure that I couldn't hear the roar of the waterfall. We had a little while.

"Listen. Calm down for a minute. We don't want to break out of this thing just yet," I said.

"Yes," she answered. "I do."

"No, you don't. That boat of guys just dropped us into the river. If we pop out right now they'll just pick us up again and then we're back in the barrel. Or they'll just shoot us. Anything in your lifetime of training gonna keep you from dying when you get shot?"

She was silent.

"Right. So we're going to get out of these ropes and then we're..."

"That's what I've been trying to do! All the way over here I've been trying to use a corpse's backbone to saw my way out of these ropes, so I could get out!" I knew it. "Do you not think I want to do this? Is there something about my commitment to the idea of escape that is eluding you?"

"Stop. Panicking."

"There's water coming into the barrel."

"We're in the river," I pointed out. "It's natural."

"It's kind of a lot of water."

She was right. There was a lot of water sloshing around in here. And I was on the bottom, so things were looking less than rosy for me. Not that they had been looking that great beforehand.

"Well, the good thing about that is that we're not going to go over the waterfall. Because we're going to sink right here." I started kicking at the barrel. "So there's that."

"You're not very good at optimism."

"Oh, love," I snarled. "You have no idea."

I kept kicking at the barrel, from about where it felt like most of the water was coming from. This had the unexpected benefit of bringing more water into our little vessel. This was rapidly becoming a race between how quickly the barrel would fill up versus how quickly I could get a hole big enough to squirm through. And Veronica picked up on that, because she started kicking too.

"You're too high," I said. "The water's coming in over here."

"I'm trying to loosen the iron bands. If we can slip one of those off, the whole thing will splinter open."

"You're talking about kicking iron bands," I said, then remembered how hard she had hit me earlier. "Nevermind. You do what you're doing."

And she did, and we were both remarkably successful at getting water to flood the barrel at a tremendous rate. Which meant that we sank, and fast.

"One more breath," I gasped. "One more breath. One more."

"Shut up," she hissed. And with that we were underwater. It felt like we were sinking a lot faster than we should have been, but I didn't have a lot of experience in drowning. When I fell, it was usually out of the sky. But I was pressed hard against Veronica, and she was flat against the barrel, and we were both thrashing madly against the boards. There was some slippage between the boards, but it wasn't going to be enough, considering how fast we were sinking.

And then, suddenly, we were moving sideways and up, fast. We broke the surface with a smack. Water rushed from the split boards of the barrel. I craned my neck to get my mouth into the air as soon as it was clear, breathing in deep, clean breaths. Veronica, shorter than me, hitched herself up on my shoulders to get to the new pocket of air.

We weren't out of the water yet. There were maybe six inches of clearance at the top of the barrel, and the rest was still flooded. I noticed an iron barb that had pierced the end of the barrel, and that I had in fact cut myself on when I was struggling for air. Veronica was looking at it, too. It could easily have pegged one of our skulls.

"Hey, hello!" I yelled, when my lungs were done spasming. "There are people in here!"

"Quiet down there," a voice said. Dangerously familiar. Iron springs and tuning forks, struck to mimic a human voice. An artificial voice. "We know you're in there. Play it cool."

"I'll play it cool when I'm out of this river," Veronica snapped. There was silence above us, then a low, trilling laughter.

"You always travel with women, don't you, Jacob?"

"They know you," she said.

"Yeah. And I hope it's not who I think it is."

Seconds later a rough, noisy machine fired up and the barrel rose out of the water. Wood and steel groaned at the weight of the barrel, full of us and the river. The engine changed gears, and we swung in to the deck. It was a full minute before we were on solid ground, and by then only half of the barrel had drained.

"Stand away from here," a regular human voice said, tapping on the wall of the barrel. We hunched over. The staves on that side splintered, and then the shiny head of an ax protruded into our compartment. Soon the whole barrel cracked open like an egg, and we tumbled to the deck of a tiny fishing boat. Rough hands pulled us over, cutting ropes with the efficiency of men accustomed to cleaning fish.

"A pretty one, too. What do you think, Cacher? Would she be a good replacement for Emily?"

I rolled onto my butt and looked up. Valentine stood over me, Cacher at his side. Both of them were armed with skinning knives. Cacher had an ax looped over his shoulder. We were not on land, but on Valentine's boat.

"Hey, boss," I said.

"There are two things you will never call me again, Jacob. 'Boss,' and 'friend.'" He leaned down and slapped me casually across the cheek, his heavy metal hand spinning me over and cutting my cheek against my teeth. My mouth filled with blood. "In case you are unclear on our arrangement."

Metal hand, because Valentine was a metal man. I don't know at what point in the modification process Valentine stopped being meat, but it was a long time ago. His memories were engrams, stored on metal coils. His voice was a trick of springs, the kind of voice a harp might have. And his face was a work of art. Carved darkwood sketched the merest hint of cheekbones, chin, jawline, eyebrows. These pieces moved on hidden tracks, shifting as he talked, or scowled, or laughed. Everything behind the sculptured mask was shadow, his head an orrery of memories and thought.

He was also my former boss, and someone I had pissed off mightily. Right before I got Emily killed, in fact. Oh, and Cacher, standing there next to Valentine? He was Emily's boyfriend, technically. So we were all old friends, and none of us had to go looking for reasons to hate each other.

Veronica stood up and stepped between us. Noble of her, but she wasn't a noble girl. Probably just counting her allies and trying to keep things even. I turned over and spat blood onto the deck.

"I'll have you know that I'm the Lady Bright, Councilor of Veridon. And that man is also a member of the Council, although you already seem to know his name. To whom am I addressing myself?"

"Hanging out with Councilors now, is it?" Valentine asked.

"S'alright," Cacher said. "Councilors can be whores, too. And this one's got the tits for it."

Cacher was on his back, the knife cartwheeling across the deck and splashing into the river. The ax was in Veronica's hand, resting lightly against Cacher's knee. Valentine roared with laughter.