Dead of Veridon (24 page)

"Look, that was a misstep. Okay?" I started to walk toward her, but thought better of it. I ended up hovering in the middle of the room. "What's going on out there isn't natural. It isn't normal. And I haven't yet heard anyone give me a good reason why the whole city is under curfew, much less blockade."

Veronica put the last glass away and turned to me.

"Blockade? They've shut the port, that's all."

"They've done more than that, whoever they are. This whole town is cut off from the rest of the world. No one's getting out of here."

"I assure you, the Council order was for a curfew. Nothing more."

"Well," I said, folding my arms. "You may be in for a surprise. There might be more going on at the Council than you know."

She scowled again, but didn't look me in the eye.

"I suppose we're going to find out, aren't we?"

"We are?" I asked.

"Councilor Tomb has called an emergency session. The martial law has been extended. She's opening a vote to have the whole city militarized."

"Martial law? Is that what this is about?"

"Mostly. The little horror-show she took you to." Her eyes flitted up to mine, just briefly. "That's barely the beginning of it. The Council has been bickering about it for months. And now that action is being taken, well" - she threw her arms up - "they're overreacting. They're scared."

"I've asked this a thousand times, Ms. Bright, and I'll ask it a thousand more unless someone answers me. What the hell is going on?"

She sighed and looked me over. Made up her mind.

"A Council meeting. You can come with me."

"Are we going to accompany your brother?" I asked, then kicked myself as her face hardened.

"Yes. Let's go get him, shall we?"

She marched out of the room. I followed. We took a turn, then another, and finally walked into what must have once been a grand dining room. It was a butchery. The food was still on the table, eggs and ham and coffee had gone cold. The bodies had been moved, but not far. They lay on the floor, side by side, covered in spotted sheets. Mother stood near the head of the table, her face a mask of tragedy.

Veronica walked to the table and flicked a sheet aside. A young man, a masculine version of her, his face white and empty. She looked down at him softly, then up at me. Not as softly.

"Maybe he won't be able to make it today. I suppose I'll have to stand in his place."

"Veronica, I'm sorry. I had no idea. You can't go to a Council meeting when your family has just been... when they're all..."

"That's all I can do, actually. Staying here isn't going to make it any better." She walked up to me, her cold eyes burning into my face. "Besides, I want to take my new friend Jacob Burn with me. Introduce him to all my old friends."

I felt the iron on my wrists and looked down. Realized I was blinking away tears as the cuffs clicked into place.

"There's a warrant for you, Mr. Burn. We can talk about it on the way. And you better talk well, because I'm not really in the mood for clever boys."

Chapter Twelve

Old Names, Old Ink

T
HE RAIN BEGAN
to come down in earnest, long before we got to the Council Chamber. Veronica and I sat in opposite corners of her carriage, looking out the windows. She spent a lot of time folding and then refolding a pair of long, satin gloves in her lap. There was a box on the floor between her feet, and she kept moving her leg to check it was still there, like a child looking for comfort from some icon. We had guards, lots of them, running alongside us in the rain. It slowed us down, but the Lady Bright was clearly in no hurry to get to the Council.

"How many have there been?" I asked.

"Dead brothers? Just the one."

"You're awfully flip about this," I said, shifting in my seat to face her. "There were a lot of bodies in there. How many of them were family?"

"Everyone under my roof is my family, one way or another." She put her hands on top of the gloves and sighed. "Should I mourn them less if they were only a friend, or a servant? Should my father's brother's third daughter mean more to me than the man who poured my wine every night for the last eight years?" She looked at me and shrugged. "People die, Jacob. These people just died quite suddenly, over breakfast."

"You're out of your fucking mind."

"Oh, love. You have no idea."

I squeezed against the side of the carriage, trying to put as much space between us as I could. She sat as comfortable as you please, looking out the window, her hands folded demurely in her lap. Her toe tap-tap-tapped against the box.

"I meant, how many attacks have there been? I know the Council is hiding them from the public. I don't know exactly what happened at the docks, but what happened and what the Badge says happened are two very different things."

"Six," she said, finally, as we came around the last bend before our stop. "Six attacks. Most of them very isolated events. Isolated is the wrong word. Very precise events."

"They were targeted," I said.

"Yes. Targeted." She cocked her head like an animal. "But not logically. No real pattern. It was like the murderer is singing a song in a language none of us know. The pattern is lost on us. What you said about the docks." She paused and then turned her head to me. "What happened there?"

"You're kidding, right?"

She shook her head. "I felt there might be some connection. It seems unlikely that a fire could cause so many deaths. So many, in fact, that no one who survived has reported a fire at all."

I settled myself against the seat. What to tell her? What to be honest about, and what to hide?

"The Badge says they have witnesses who will swear that I set off a device, and that device started the fire." I gave her a hard eye, trying to weight her reaction. "There was a device, but not a fire. And I didn't set it off. I delivered it."

"To whom?" she asked.

"The Fehn. That was the contract."

"It seems unlikely to me that a device delivered to the Fehn could then cause a fire on the docks. There is a great deal of river between those two places." She stared distractedly out the front of the carriage. "Tell me, who contracted you to do this thing?"

I thought of Crane, up in the tower of Angela's grand home. What would this industrialist do with that knowledge?

"I don't really know, not yet. The guy who hired me, he was probably a ruse. Just passing the thing on to me. I'm sure there's someone above him. Just trying to figure out who it is."

"Could it be someone in the Council?" she asked carefully.

"Seems to me that there's not much that goes on in this city that doesn't get touched by someone in the Council."

"That's a very roundabout way of saying that you don't know, but that you intend to find out." She smiled. "And if anything I've heard about you is even vaguely true, you will find out by knocking people over and kicking them until they tell you what you want to know."

I snorted. "I like to think I'm a little more subtle than that," I said.

"I don't think you are, Jacob. I think you're a blunt instrument, accustomed to bloody work." She held up a hand when I frowned. "Don't get me wrong. I think there's a place for that. But I think that this matter may be a great deal more nuanced than you are prepared to manage."

I was quiet for a minute. We were making terrible time toward the Massif. It was in sight, but we were crawling toward it. I stared out at the guards who surrounded us. They were paying special attention to a nearby alleyway, and talking among themselves. I looked that way.

"These six attacks. How many of them were like this morning?" I asked.

"How many of them involved the wholesale butchering of a family of the Council? None," she answered. "Like I said, Jacob. Too blunt. Like the rent house, or the docks. They were attacks on properties that didn't seem to be connected to any special thing. There was no pattern."

"It wasn't an attack on the docks. It was an attack on the Fehn. And if they're so wildly different, how do you know they're all from the same attacker? Veridon can be a violent city. To say that the horror of your rent house, or the cog-dead crawling up from the river and sinking a boat, or even the madness that's afflicting my father are all..."

"So your father is going mad? We've been wondering."

I folded my arms. Always politics. Always stories told or untold, and secrets held.

"Does it matter, really?"

"He holds one of the few Founder's seats remaining on the Council. Every one counts. If they lose him, they lose much of their ability to influence the Council. So, yes. It matters. Besides, he's your father. Shouldn't it matter at least to you?"

"This from the woman whose family was just killed
en masse
, and who doesn't seem to give a damn."

"Jacob, we've covered this. I'm out of my fucking mind," she said stiffly, then clenched her hands in her lap. "Or I've spent my whole life learning to carry on in the face of tragedy, and doing whatever is necessary to advance the family. To put the strong face forward, no matter what. Which is its own sort of madness, isn't it?"

I stared her down. I honestly couldn't tell if she was finally opening up a little bit, or just being crazier. Strange girl. Strange family, what was left of it.

"What does the Church say about all this? If anyone's going to see a pattern in something, it's those old apopheniacs."

"I think you made up that word," she said. "But I like it. The Church of the Algorithm has been quite silent on this one. None of the attacks have touched them, that we know of."

"But they could have."

"Of course. They lie as well as us. After all, they're hiding an angel in their basement, aren't they, Jacob?" She smiled at me. No one believed my stories from two years ago, especially not the industrialists. They could afford not to believe me. "But we have agents. I think we would know."

"Do you know the guy living in the Manor Tomb? Up in that old tower on the west side?"

She squinted at me, trying to make a decision. Secrets to tell, secrets to keep.

"That has something to do with the balance of power in the Council, Jacob. Are you sure you want to know about it?"

"I asked. I could knock you down and kick you until you tell me what I want to know, if you'd rather."

"Not really to my taste," she said, smiling wickedly. I decided right there and then that I never wanted to find out what was to this girl's taste. "Fair enough. There has been a rumor circulating that the Patron Tomb is finally dying. And not just in the process of dying, but really, nearly dead. You know he's been on the Council since before the Church rose to power? Before the Artificers Guild was disbanded and its leaders strung up, even."

"How could I possibly not know that, Lady Bright? I'm the son of a Founder, remember."

"So easy to forget sometimes, what with your rough and tumble ways, Mr. Burn." She looked down at her fingers, preened away some bit of dust from her nails. "But yes. The Patron is dying. And that's what makes your father's condition so interesting. Because if the Patron dies, Burn becomes the premier Founder seat."

"What does this have to do with the guy in the tower?" I asked.

"That's someone the family has brought in to sustain the old man's life," she answered. "Someone from outside the city. An expert. Of what, no one seems willing to say."

I felt my heart sink. I began to suspect what kind of expert he was.

"Anyway," she continued. "There are two ways this plays out. First, the Patron dies. Per the terms of their contract, the Patron's death will move the Tomb Right of Name on to the Family Verde, who bought it from him all those generations ago. And the Tombs are out of the Council."

"Seems like Angela would do everything she could to prevent that."

"Yes. Unless..." she held up a second finger.

"Unless?" I prompted.

"Unless the Family Burn is declared incapable of performing their duties. Say, if it was shown that their seat was held by a madman, with no declared heir. Angela has positioned herself to be declared the ward of that seat, in perpetuity. The Tombs would maintain their position in the Council."