Empire of Bones (8 page)

Clearly on guard beside Gil, Captain John Smith stood with his arms crossed over a glistening gold breastplate. He was smaller than Gil, but just as dense. Beside each other they looked like men made of stone in a world made of cloud. But the Captain seemed to be enjoying
himself a great deal more. He was wearing baggy camouflage pants tucked into his high Elizabethan boots, and his sword was low on his hip. His thick, square-cut beard almost reached his chest, and his rough hair was pulled back into a short ponytail. His cheeks were creased by centuries of smiles and songs, and his pale sun-bleached eyes shone, even in the shade.

Cyrus sputtered. He coughed. He wasn’t … quite … able … to swim.

“Cy?” Rupert asked. “You coping?

The Captain laughed. “Have ye never seen a rat drowning? The lad’s a flesh anchor yearning for the bottom.” The Captain shot Gil a warning glance, and then strode forward and marched out onto the dock, stepping over Llewellyn Douglas without a glance.

Spitting and kicking in place, Cyrus watched the Captain draw his sword. The dragon-etched blade sliced air and light as the Captain flipped it, catching the steel perfectly in his bare hand. Crouching, smiling through a squint, he extended the hilt to Cyrus.

Cyrus couldn’t speak, but he shook his head. He shut his eyes, took a breath, and sank. Underwater, he followed the steps he’d been taught, contracting his torso around full lungs, forcing blood to flow. He felt his heart quicken in his chest. And then he contracted his will. The cold couldn’t stop him. It was nothing. The fiery needle teeth were in his mind. He was loose. He was liquid. He
pointed his arms and slithered forward. Moments later, he stood on silty stones, walking awkwardly up onto the bank. His teeth suddenly clattered without asking permission first. His skin was made entirely of bumps.

“Wow,” Antigone said, worried. “It’s really that cold? I think I’ll skip.”

Cyrus, shaking, glared at Rupert Greeves, and his Keeper spread his guilt out with a smile.

“What?” Rupert asked. “The water sorted your leg pain, yeah? How about a little gratitude?”

Cyrus fought to settle his quivering chest and steady his breathing. Then he nodded at Gilgamesh, still watching from beneath his tree.

“Why?” Cyrus managed. “Why. Gil’s. Loose.”

“Get dry,” Rupert said quietly. “We are all that we will be, and it’s time for a plan. Gil’s part of that. Arachne’s here to make him behave, and the Captain’s here in case he doesn’t.” He turned to Antigone. She was hugging the towel and shirt to herself and chewing her lip. “Will you show him where to go?”

Antigone nodded and moved toward her brother.

“Grand,” Rupert said. “Don’t be long.” He turned, striding away through the cabins, and the group trickled after him, with the Captain at the end, pushing the nearly naked Llewellyn Douglas in his wheelchair, beneath his mounded clothes.

Llewellyn winked at Cyrus as he passed. “I might have done a little teaching,” he said. “The water ain’t killed you yet, boy. And she’s had her chances. Yes, she has.”

As they rolled away, Antigone handed her brother the towel and he buried his face in its scratchy thread, rubbing his skin warm.

“Cy,” Antigone said. Her voice was serious, and Cyrus looked up into his sister’s wide eyes. “I know your leg is hurt and you’re completely frozen and I got Rupe to agree to let us into his powwow, but there’s something more important that I have to show you. Something I haven’t shown anyone.”

“Okay …,” Cyrus said.

“Like, right now,” Antigone said. She handed him the shirt she had been holding. It was old and green with a white tadpole on the chest bent into the shape of a lightning bolt. “Symbol of the Douglases, apparently,” she said. “Put it on.” Cyrus obeyed slowly, still slightly shaking. As soon as his head was through, she grabbed his hand and began to drag him away. Wincing, hobbling over tree roots, Cyrus pulled back. Antigone stopped and assessed him, tucking her hair behind her ears.

“Fine,” she said. “We really don’t have time.” She turned around and braced herself. “Jump on.”

“Tigs.” Cyrus laughed. “You’re a bug. I’ll crush you. And my shorts are soaking wet.”

“I’m an ant,” Antigone said. “I could carry Rupe if I had to. And I don’t care about wet. Just get on before I get mad. I’m serious, Cy. You and your stupid leg are too slow right now. Do it.”

Cyrus put his hands on his sister’s shoulders and hopped onto her back. She groaned, and he felt her buckle a little as she grabbed for a grip on his legs, but she stabilized quickly.

“Giddyup, Tigger,” Cyrus said.

“Shut up, Rus-Rus, or I’ll drop you on a rock.” Antigone gasped, and then she raced away.

Antigone carried her brother past their cabin and then veered for the stream. As the trees thinned and the stream and the meadow and the tilt-rotor plane appeared, she turned upstream and uphill, and the ground became rocky.

Finally, chuffing like a dying train, Antigone staggered around a boulder and stopped in front of an old outhouse. She dropped Cyrus, and he leaned against the warm stone, waiting for an explanation.

“Okay,” Antigone wheezed. She bent at the waist, coughed, and straightened. “Rupert told us not to use this outhouse. Animals down inside or something. Will attack if you try.” She put her hands on her head, breathless. Her face was flushed and wet with sweat, but she wouldn’t slow down. “Perfect, right? No one would come
here. So I did. And they’re fine, Cy. They’re perfect. It’s solved. And it’s crazy. Seriously, all-the-way, I-can’t-even-believe-it crazy.”

“Wait,” Cyrus said. “What are perfect? The animals? You fixed the outhouse?”

“No!” Antigone barked. “The globes! Skelton’s paper globes that you dropped in the motel pool!”

“I didn’t drop them,” Cyrus said. “The wind—”

“Doesn’t matter!” Antigone said, and she held up both hands. “With everyone around all the time, I brought them up here. We thought the water ruined them but they’re fine. They’re more than fine. They’re solved. And now I know why everyone was so mad when Skelton made us his heirs. Horace wasn’t lying. Skelton was rich, Cy. Way crazy go-to-the-moon-and-back rich. And he didn’t just show up to the motel and make us his Acolytes all spur of the moment. He knew what he was doing. It was all a plan.”

Panting, she put her hands on her hips and smiled. “Wanna see?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she tugged open the old outhouse door and stepped aside.

“Get in there.”

Cyrus stepped onto a sighing plank floor, and Antigone followed, banging the door shut behind her. Enough light trickled in through the cracks that Cyrus could watch
his sister hop up onto the wooden toilet bench with one dark ominous hole, then pull the two stiff and folded globes and a flashlight down from a dust-covered shelf.

Antigone held up the first globe, and it looked like a collapsed umbrella.

“Okay,” she said. “So no one could ever decode all that ink writing. Not Nolan, not Rupert. Nobody. Some of it almost made sense; some they thought was maybe a weird Sanskrit. But everything they tried to translate ended up being nonsense.”

Cyrus nodded. “Right. Get to the new stuff.”

Antigone beamed. “It
was
nonsense, Cy. The ink on the paper globes was a distraction all along. The real stuff was written into the paper. It just needed you to dissolve all that ink off in the Archer’s stupid pool!”

Cyrus squinted at the paper. “I don’t see anything, Tigs.”

Antigone flicked on the flashlight and held the folded globe up to her brother’s face with the light right on it.

At first, Cyrus thought he was seeing white fibers in the yellowed paper, much lighter than the rest. He leaned closer. The fibers looped together much too neatly, and there was a lot more of it than he had first noticed. It was writing as tight and sharp and fine as any he had ever seen. But it wasn’t English. He couldn’t make out a single word.

“It’s tiny,” Cyrus said. “We need a magnifying glass.
And it’s not English, Tigs. I don’t know what you’re seeing that I’m not.”

“Oh, come on,” Antigone said. “Is it that hard to figure out?”

She carefully expanded the paper, pulling it out into something like the original globe.

“It’s English,” she said, and she slid the glowing flashlight up inside the globe. Then she rotated the paper carefully until she had found what she was looking for. “But it’s all backward.” She glanced at her brother with half a smile. “Don’t you remember what came with it?” she asked. “A candle for the inside. That was the clue. I put the flashlight inside it and …” She pointed the lit paper at the outhouse wall, suddenly spraying a murky cloud of light across it. Inside the cloud, pale cursive letters crawled across knotholes and planks.

“Wow,” Cyrus said. “Wow.”

“Correct,” said Antigone. “I know.”

Cyrus stepped forward and put his hand under his sister’s, trying to steady the wobbling light.

“ ‘To Antigone Elizabeth and Cyrus Lawrence,’ ”
he read aloud, “ 
‘I leave you this, my …’
What’s that say?”

“ ‘My Empire of Bones,’ ”
Antigone said. Her voice was low. “And there’s a whole letter that comes after.”

 five 

DEAD MAN’S TALE

A
NTIGONE HANDED
C
YRUS THE PAPER
and the flashlight. When he pulled back from the wall a little too far, the words disappeared in a blur. When he leaned forward, they sharpened.

Antigone tapped the planks. “Slide the light down. Read the letter.”

Cyrus tried to adjust the flashlight and the paper, but he was hopeless, spraying blurry lines sideways or losing his place. He gave it back to Antigone.

“You do it,” he said. “You were the one who kept that screen and the old movie projector in your room.”

Antigone was distracted, her eyes on the wall. “This … is … nothing like that, Cy.” But she stepped up close to the wall, adjusted the flashlight, and old, dead William Skelton’s words immediately came into focus four lines at a time. She read the whole thing aloud as she went, pausing only to smooth the paper or shift the light. Cyrus watched the tight cursive words slide by as he listened to his sister’s voice.

To Antigone Elizabeth and Cyrus Lawrence
,

I leave you this, my Empire of Bones. Keep it tight to yourselves. Secret. You hold the Dark Tooth, and no one—no one—must know that you possess it. If Ashtown grows unsafe, run and don’t ever look back. The O of B has been dying since your father was a kid, but if you can keep the tooth hidden, the Order might still win its war with Phoenix. Or it won’t, but at least you’ll be breathing. Every little thing that I collected and hid in my outlaw years is charted in this map. All of it is yours—allies and artefacts, weapons and wealth, enough hidden paths and hidden doors to last you through lifetimes of running. The keys I gave you will open every door. Do not use the keys to steal, or they will turn against you. When more is needed than keys, consult my ink bones. I’ve made notes of which bones will help you. Look closely. Trust no one but the caretakers named here. They are all staunch outlaws, haters of Phoenix as well as doubters of the Order. Tell them nothing about what you carry. Horace will serve you faithfully. Rupert Greeves is honest, but a fool who still believes the Order will stand for the good when blood begins to spill. I have left another globe for him—every little bit I learned about the holdings of that devil, Phoenix. He must be hunted now and put down before he grows
.

Be good. Be brave. I wasn’t
.

Billy B

Antigone sighed as she finished.

“That would have been nice to have sooner,” said Cyrus. “We’ve already lost the tooth, and to the worst guy possible.”

“I know,” Antigone said. “And we would have had this right away if the Order hadn’t shoved us down in the Polygon instead of letting us move right into Skelton’s rooms.” She shifted the paper, searching for something. “But it could still help. Look.”

A projected image of a large boat wobbled on the wall. Skelton had labeled it: