Empire of Bones (32 page)

REMNANT

T
HE LAWNS WERE DOTTED
with bobbing flashlights and lamps. Shouting men and fretting women and a few children were lugging bags and packs and overflowing pillowcases toward the crowded grassy airstrip. Some passed it, heading toward the dark harbor.

One plane after another bounced down the airstrip and then climbed into the night as dozens more were wheeled out of the underground hangars or sat idling outside the doors.

“Zoo!” Niffy shouted. The thick monk slapped him between the shoulder blades. “Focus, lad!”

Cyrus jerked back into the moment and began moving again. Most of these people had always been distant to him, some even unfriendly, but there were a few faces that had been kind to him in the halls, faces that had grinned and laughed with Rupert Greeves. And they were running. Running like none of it—the O of B, the vows, the history, the darkness Ashtown quarantined—really mattered. Cyrus understood the families that had
avoided Ashtown under Bellamy Cook, but this was different. This was an evacuation. This was surrender. The war was lost before the fighting had even started. To these fleeing people, the O of B was a club, not a calling. Asking them to stand and fight, to stand and possibly die to prevent the taking of Ashtown, would be like asking someone to die for a neighborhood baseball team. They just didn’t care. Not when their lives were at risk.

The fear was contagious. Cyrus could feel it in the air, feel it prickling his skin as men shouted at each other, as taxiing planes cut each other off—tails smacking wings—to race down the grassy strip and veer away into the night. They were risking their lives so they wouldn’t have to risk their lives.

He looked back and up at the mountains of stone of Ashtown. By the light of the moon and the low flicker of fires, he could see smoke still rising from the ruined rooms of the dead Brendan.

“These people,” Cyrus said. “What was the point of everything if they won’t stay now?”

“The point,” Niffy said, “was to live comfortably in the way that they saw fit. The point now is to continue doing the same thing elsewhere and as soon as bloody possible.”

“But if the Burials are opened, if all the transmortals are freed …” Cyrus trailed off. It was hard to imagine a world made in the image of Radu Bey. Or Phoenix.

The charred and bloody monk grew more serious as they walked. “In every herd, many stampede, while only a few turn to face the lions. Cowards live for the sake of living, but for heroes, life is a weapon, a thing to be spent, a gift to be given to the weak and the lost and the weary, even to the foolish and the cowardly.”

Cyrus slowed to a stop. The stone and steel shape of the zoo loomed in the trees ahead, its glass roofs higher than the highest leaves. He looked back at the scattered and fleeing members of the O of B. Two young men scurried past, dragging four packs each.

“Aye, even them,” the monk said. “When mothers lay down their lives for children, when brothers die for sisters and sisters for brothers, when fathers die for wives and children, when heroes die for strangers on the street, they do not pour out their blood because the one they save deserves such a sacrifice. Nah, lad. Love burns hotter than justice, and its roar is thunder. Beside love, even wrath whispers. Not one of us snatching breath with mortal lungs deserves such a gift, and yet every day such a gift is given.” He thumped Cyrus in the shoulder with a heavy fist. “To love is to be selfless. To be selfless is to be fearless. To be fearless is to strip your enemies of their greatest weapon. Even if they break our bodies and drain our blood, we are unvanquished. Our goal was never to live; our goal is to love. It is the goal of all truly noble men and women. Give all that can be given. Give even your
life itself.” Niffy stretched one open hand out toward the crowded airstrip, the blinking lights, and the shouting. He splayed his burnt fingers like he was dispensing a blessing. “What do they deserve, lad? A flogging. The old bamboo rod in the hand of the late Abbot. Death. And yet Rupert Greeves would gladly die even for the least of these. For you. For your sister. For me. Do we deserve that gift?” He laughed and turned, looking straight into Cyrus’s eyes from beneath his own sooty brows. “There is only one Rupert Greeves, Cyrus Smith, and many undeserving fools who need him. He walks the boneyard path, following in the steps of the one Mortal from whom even the Reaper fled in fear. That path runs beneath headstones, down through the lightless cold of lonely loss, through the dark valleys where death was borne down to the black soul river and the final battle line. Only love can set a man’s feet on such a path. Only love can see him through, into rest and the hot light of the sun.”

Cyrus blinked. Niffy smiled slowly, still staring. The blistered and soot-covered monk didn’t look at all like someone ready with a homily on love. In the dark, he looked barely alive. Which, Cyrus figured, was his point. Niffy was very willing to die for others. That had been clear from the beginning.

“Right,” Cyrus said. “Honestly, I don’t care about those people at all right now. They can go wherever and
do whatever. There are people I care about protecting. And there are things that I hate. I want them dead no matter what.”

Niffy’s smile disappeared. “Aye,” he said.

Cyrus kept pace with the thick monk, his ankles slicing through tall, cool grass as they moved beneath the trees. People didn’t often come this way.

“This morning in the chapel,” Cyrus said, “your own Abbot, the one with the gold patrik …”

The monk cocked his blackened, mostly bald head. “What do you know about patriks?”

Cyrus smiled. “I know that you didn’t take it from him, because they have to be given. If he’d died with it, that snake would go with him into the grave to live among his bones. I know that they aren’t mortal creatures, and that they are named after St. Patrick. I didn’t know that they could be controlled like that.”

“How do you, lad, have opinions on their control?” Niffy asked. His voice was sharp. “I know only of the golden patrik—called the endless serpent—of the Brothers of the Voyager, and he is always held by the First Cryptkeeper of Monasterboice. And yes, the serpent passed from my master’s hands into my own before his death, as he passed from his master’s hands into his, and thus all the way back to the day of our beginning, when the serpent was first gifted to Brendan by Patrick himself.”

“Well, I hope you know how to use him,” Cyrus said.
“We’re going to need as much help as we can get. I wish we could just throw Radu Bey in the Crypto wing.”

“He is the greater monster,” Niffy said. “Any beast would tremble before the dragon Azazel. We should be seeking the Brothers Below.”

Cyrus stopped. They had reached the zoo. It climbed up from the darkness below the tree canopy and into the moonlight well above the highest branches. The uppermost level was entirely glass framed in black steel; below that, smooth stone plunged to the ground, decorated only with smooth pillars and tarnished copper waterspouts that ended in open-mouthed beasts well out of Cyrus’s reach. Up close, it was like standing beside a small mountain sliced in half.

There was a large wood and iron door in the center, beneath a stone arch. Cyrus veered away from it, toward a tiny one-story building attached to a corner.

“The Brothers Below,” Cyrus said quietly. “Are they in a Burial? How do we wake them up?”

“They are named Justice and Wrath, they are not people, and they are not in a Burial,” said Niffy. “Under their judgment, any impurity is cause for death. If my master knew of a way to rule them, he took it with him into death.”

Cyrus nodded. He’d heard Rupert say that much in the chapel that morning. The moon shadows were dense, and the path to the corner of the zoo was rough and
uneven. Patricia was still around his wrist. Cyrus slid his hand around the key ring that she carried, then slid his fingertips beneath the cool scaled body, pulling her invisible tail slowly out of her mouth.

Patricia appeared in his hands. Cyrus looked up into Niffy’s surprised face, lit with silver. In a flash of gold, the monk’s snake appeared, quickly unwinding on his forearm, growing, extending, tongue flicking. Patricia writhed in Cyrus’s hands, crushing his fingers as she fought to disappear.

Niffy’s mouth hung open.

“Hey …,” Cyrus said, backing away.

The golden snake struck.

Cyrus jumped backward, tripped, fell onto his back in the long grass, and the hot, heavy golden body landed on top of him.

Niffy was shouting. Cyrus rolled, shoving his hands and Patricia beneath him, but the snake was too quick. Powerful coils slid around him, crushing Cyrus’s arms to his sides. They lifted him, twisted him, and slammed him onto his back.

Cyrus’s breath was gone. Bones were cracking in his hand where the now-invisible Patricia was still shrinking, squeezing, grinding the key ring into Cyrus’s knuckles.

The golden snake forked Cyrus’s face with its tongue. It butted its hot nose into his chest, worming down along Cyrus’s arm toward his hands.

“Patrick!” Niffy was shouting. “No!”

The monk was pulling at the coils. He was grabbing at the head, but he only managed to lift Cyrus and the snake both off the ground before dropping them again.

The coils tightened and Cyrus’s ribs screamed and popped.

Niffy found the tip of his snake’s tail and grabbed it hard. Cyrus watched him pinch the gold point, and he felt the coils loosen. As the monk backed away, the snake began to shrink and unwind. The head rose, and Cyrus stared into its green glowing eyes. The forked tongue snapped out like a whip and dragged down Cyrus’s face once more before Niffy tugged the animal all the way off him and into the grass.

Cyrus sat up, coughing. He raised Patricia and his pained fingers to his lips.

“It’s okay,” Cyrus whispered. “He’s gone. It’s okay.”

Niffy was backing away through the grass, dragging the limp and shrinking snake like a golden garden hose. Finally, the patrik dangled from his hand, once again slender and small. It wound around Niffy’s arm and disappeared. Breathing hard, the monk looked up at Cyrus. He wiped sweat onto the sleeve of his robe, then began to laugh.

“Funny to you?” Cyrus asked. “Your stupid snake almost killed me.”

Niffy laughed harder. “You have a patrik! And she’s a girlie! Do you know what this means?”

Cyrus stood up, tugging Patricia’s tight body down off his hand and onto his wrist.

“Babies!” Niffy bellowed, raising his arms. “A brood of patriks!”

Cyrus shook his head. “Not going to happen. No way.”

Niffy seemed confused. He dropped his arms. “How’s that then? Why not?”

“I don’t know if you were paying attention,” Cyrus said. “But she doesn’t like yours. Not even a little bit.” Cyrus shivered and rubbed at his face where the snake had tasted him. “And I’m not going to make Patricia do anything she doesn’t like.”

“Patricia! Ooh, that’s lovely.” Niffy raised his own arm and whispered loudly to his sleeve. “Her name is Patricia!”

Cyrus smiled despite himself. “Come on,” he said. Then he turned back to the zoo. Niffy whispered snatches of snaky poetry as he followed.

The little outbuilding attached to the corner of the zoo was unlocked. The lights didn’t work, but the electricity was still on—two large refrigerators hummed in the darkness inside. Cyrus banged into large piles of stacked bags of grain, but he didn’t dare light up Patricia again. In the end, he managed to find the door he was looking for, and he tested the steel handle.

Locked.

Cyrus banged on it.

“Jax!” he shouted. “James Axelrotter! Hey, Zoo Boy!”

Nothing. Finally, he glanced back at Niffy.

“Turn around,” he ordered. “I need Patricia and I don’t want your stupid snake seeing her again.”

Niffy was probably grinning, but it was too dark in the building to tell. Cyrus heard the monk turn, whispering advice to his snake as he did.

Cyrus recovered the key ring as quickly as he could and examined the door with Patricia’s silver light. She was tinier and fainter than he had ever seen her—barely longer than a big night crawler.

There were three locks. The silver Solomon Key opened two of them, and the gold opened the third. More silver and gold. He wondered what color Patricia’s eggs would be. Or maybe she wouldn’t even lay eggs. Maybe she would give birth to her young like a rattlesnake.

He pushed the door in slightly. The warm smell of zoo rolled through the dark crack to greet him.

“Jax!” Cyrus whispered as loudly as he could. There were a lot of things in there that he didn’t want to wake up if they were actually sleeping.

Cyrus stuck his head all the way into the room. Moonlight filtered down through high, dirty skylights, softening so much it barely reached the ground. Cyrus
could just make out the tall waterfall at the extreme end. From this far away, it actually sounded more like wind than water.

“Jax!”

“I’m not leaving!” The voice was faint, echoing off the walls and the ceiling.

“No one’s asking you to!” Cyrus shouted back. “Jax, it’s me! Rupert needs Leon!”

Something distant crashed. Cyrus instinctively pulled back his head. This part of the zoo was inhabited by at least half of his nightmares. And Jax.

“Are you inside?” Jax asked. “Don’t be inside. I’m turning the lights on, Cy. Watch yourself.”

Cyrus slid his keys back onto Patricia and let her vanish around his wrist. As long as stupid Patrick was around, she wasn’t going on his neck.

A switch popped loudly, and small spotlights buzzed to life above old black cages that ran down the length of the nearest wall.

A bird shrieked. Something large and unseen and uncomfortably nearby snorted itself awake and then bellowed irritation.

But Cyrus’s eyes were up, scanning the high steel rafters overgrown with canopies of hanging vines. He saw distant white wings flare in a roost, but no serpents dropped into flight. Nothing dove out of the roof or off the upper mezzanine of cages.

Niffy squeezed into the doorway beside Cyrus. The monk’s odor was a dozen shades of rank, but he didn’t smell any worse than the zoo—or Cyrus, after the day they’d had.