Heart of Veridon (8 page)

“Of course. I mean, just,” he waved his hand at all the people around us, most of them in uniform. “You’re not a very popular man with the Corps. You don’t worry about that?”

“I should worry?” I asked.

“Well, I mean. A lot of young recruits, all of them drinking. You aren’t worried that one of them will drink a bit much. Talk too much, maybe dare too much? Try to start a fight.”

I snorted. “Fights start sometimes. I can handle myself.”

“Oh, I have no doubt. Still. It’s something to think about.” He smiled coldly and looked out at the crowd. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe none of them have the balls.” He said that word strangely, like a very proper man trying to swear to fit in with the rough crowd. “But maybe they do something cowardly, hm? In the dead of night. A gun.” He turned back to me. “You are, after all, a very unpopular man.”

“How did you say you knew my dad?”

“Acquaintances. Old acquaintances. So.” He set down the glass of liquor and patted my arm. “Just be careful, Mr. Jacob Burn. There are some desperate people here, I think. Ah,” his eyes narrowed as he looked across the room. “You’ll pardon me.”

I turned to see where he was looking. Angela Tomb was making her way through the partygoers, trying to wrap things up for the night. When I turned back the strange Mr. Sloane was gone.

I sighed and finished my drink, then found Harold and plucked at his sleeve.

“Sir?” he asked.

“Those Guildsmen, the Artificers. Did they already head home?”

“No, sir. They’ve been made comfortable.”

“Where?”

“Sir?”

“Where are they staying? What room?”

“The, uh. The entertainment, sir, does not usually mingle with the guests.”

“Just tell me what room, okay?” I slipped the only hard currency I had brought with me into his palm. “Let’s just say I’m a curious guy.”

“Of course, sir. They are housed in the servants’ quarters, near the zepdock.”

“Stairs down somewhere?”

“Near the kitchens, sir. Just this side of the theater.”

“Thanks.” I cuffed him on the shoulder, then headed to my room. Didn’t want to look too anxious.

T
HE STORM KEPT
going, maybe even got worse. Angela had given me a third floor room with a window. Not a benefit on a night like this. The room had been closed up all winter, only opened hours earlier by the servants. The air was stale, and the sheets smelled like dust and cobwebs. The heavy curtains gusted with the storm outside, evidence of drafts in the old walls.

I lay in bed, fully clothed, until I figured everyone else was asleep or passed out. I took the pistol out from where I’d hidden it, checked the load again, then snuck out into the hall.

The lights in the hallway were dimmed. The carpet swallowed my footsteps as I crept downstairs. I got down to the servants corridors without anyone seeing me. It was quiet down there too, and dark. No windows out, just cold stone floors and wood paneling. I crept along, quiet as a cat. There were a lot of doors down here. Perhaps I could have gotten a little more detail out of Harold for my money.

I didn’t have to look long. They left the lights on, and their door open. It was around a corner from the main stairs, away from the rest of the servants. Not unusual… people got nervous around Artificers. All those bugs and their history of heresy. I came around the corner and smelled it, that heat-stink of fear and shit, like a slaughterhouse. I took out the pistol and thumbed the hammer up.

They were dead. It happened quietly, no mess, no fuss. They had been sleeping, the Guildsmen all in one room on tiny bunks. The master was in a different room off to one side. Each had a stab wound, straight into the heart. I didn’t check them all. I got the idea, after the first couple. There was another room, opposite the master’s bed, where the Summer Girl had slept, probably. She was gone. Signs of a struggle in here, piss on the floor, some blood on a broken bottle. She had swung at her attacker. Probably woke up while her keepers had been breathing their last. Tried to defend herself. Where was she now? And why kill all these folks? Not like it was self-defense.

I went back into the main room. It smelled in here, more than it should. I went back to the tidy bodies, checking each one. It was the fourth one. He’d been dead for a while, maybe two weeks. And he wasn’t an Artificer.

His bloated chest strained against the buttons of his military jacket. Square cut, the cuffs braided in the traditional knots of the Air Corps. But he wasn’t a Pilot. Patches were torn off his sleeve and chest, the threads dangling. His buttons were iron and stamped in the double fists of the Marines. Assault trooper. Heavily modded, his bones and organs sheathed in metal cuffs, iron plates welded just beneath the skin. A little engine so he could walk longer, march harder, fight until the bullets ran out. What was he doing here? And why had the Guildsmen been lugging around a two-week old dead body?

I stuck my hand into his jacket pocket, fished around. Bits and bobs, dirt, some pictures of a girlfriend or something. Finally, an ID card. Not the slickest murderer, whoever had done him. Took the time to strip his jacket of unit patches, but left his ID card in his pocket. Sergeant Wellons. The card was worn and dirty, the edges ragged like a favorite book. I didn’t recognize the unit, and he listed no ship. Maybe a garrison assignment, somewhere? Still. I pocketed it and left.

I was getting a little worried about Harold. People were going to find these bodies; people were going to ask questions. Eventually Harold was going to say something about how I was asking where the Artificers were staying, and then maybe people would be coming to ask me questions. I would have to have a word with Harold. Clear things up, before they could get messy. But first, I had to find out where my friend was. Why he’d killed these nice people, and what he wanted with me.

Wasn’t Prescott a Register? Yeah, he was in charge of unit assignments and personnel. He might know this Wellons guy. Might at least be able to find out where he was stationed. Seemed like a golden opportunity. I’d drop by Prescott’s room, give him the ID card and a way to contact me, and I’d go and find Harold. Then I’d find my friend, and we’d straighten out our differences. Prescott was somewhere near the main hall, probably near my own room.

I found it, sure enough. Again, his was the open door. This time there was more blood. Plenty more. The window to his room was open, too, and the storm was gusting in. I went in and shut the door, then secured the window. His tablelamp was humming quietly, next to an upturned book of erotic poetry.

Prescott was sprawled across his bed, his fingers curled around a gun belt that still held the pistol, peace-locked in place. I pushed him over carefully. His ribs grinned up at me. I let him settle back onto the bed. There was blood all over the floor, thinned out by the rain that had blown in the window. Blotchy footprints circled the bed, but the wind and rain had disfigured them significantly. The mess was all over my feet.

I was seriously freaked. I didn’t want to talk to Harold, didn’t want to find my creepy friend. I wanted to get the fuck out of this house and down the mountain back to Veridon. Nobody heard anything? It happened fast. A lot of drunks in the rooms around us, but still. Whoever killed Prescott had done it quick, and quiet. I wiped my feet carefully on Prescott’s bed sheets, turned off his light, and then snuck out into the hall. Back to my room, so I could collect my coat and the stuff Prescott had given to me to deliver to Valentine. I was going back to town, even if it meant walking.

I almost got to my room before I ran into the guards. I ducked into a draped windowsill, just deep enough to hide me if I held my breath and thought skinny thoughts. They were sneaking up to my room. Ten of them, maybe more, with rifles and truncheons. They were Tomb House Guards.

They settled around the door to my room, checked the loads on their guns, then nodded among themselves. One of them, a sergeant, stepped forward and pounded on my door.

“Master Burn! By the authority of the Council of Veridon, spoken for by the Lady Tomb, we have a warrant for your arrest and detention. Please open the door!”

He waited half a breath, then put his shoulder into the door. I hadn’t locked it when I left, and it burst open. I got a good view of my empty room. They milled about in the entrance, poking their rifles at the bed and under the covers, talking loudly. I started to go. Something caught my eye.

There was a sudden hard scrabble against my window, like hail or teeth on a water glass. I watched the window burst. The storm disappeared, to be replaced by a complexity of darkness and metal. There was a man standing, or nearly a man. His clothes were sodden and torn, the skin beneath like a dead man’s skin, ivory and shot through with black veins. He had one hand on the sill, jagged glass snagging the flesh, and one of his feet was already in the room. Behind him flat planes of oiled metal shifted and ruffled, shiny leaves flexing against the buffeting winds. Wings. He had wings of coiling metal.

He came into the room, clenching his wings to fit through the window. Wet hair hung in ringlets around his face, a jaw line like a storm front, lips and skin that were porcelain smooth. And his eyes, blue so light that it looked like the thinnest clouds over sky.

The guards panicked. They fell back before him, rifles raised, yelling. He ignored them. He looked out the door into the hallway. Right at me.

“You are Jacob Burn,” he said. His voice was a trick, tiny pistons and valves pushing air through the long hissing whisper of organ pipes. I raised the pistol and fired over the heads of the guards. The report was enormous; it filled the hallway with sharp smoke. The shot went into his chest, and my second took him just below the throat. He winced, bent forward like he’d been punched. When he straightened again his face was smooth. He raised a hand and it flickered, skin and bone shuffling away in a lethal origami, replaced by smooth, sharp metal. His arm became a knife. There was already blood on it.

The guards looked at me. Some of them turned to make that arrest they were talking about earlier. The rest kept their eyes on the angel. The close ones crowded around me, trying to keep me boxed in.

“Gentlemen,” I said tensely and dived into their ranks. “Pardon.”

They reached for me, would have taken me but the Angel crashed through after me. Two of them fell, their bones cracking like fireworks as he tore through them. There was shouting and I ran.

I took the first stairway, even though it led up and every exit was down. Panic. The next floor was closed, but I popped the door. It was quiet here, smelled like mold and linen. Footsteps hammered on the floor below, crowds mustering to the disaster. There was gunfire and the dreadful sound of bodies snapping. I walked quietly to a bedroom and slipped inside.

The room was empty, just a heavily worn rug and a window. The storm continued. The sounds of fighting had slowed, though they may have been masked by the wind and rain at my back. I knelt and fumbled two new shells into the revolver. I stayed there, breathing hard. It was quiet now, just the rain pounding the glass. I shifted to be able to watch both the window and the door.

I looked down at the gun. Had he sent it? He was on the zep, he might have known about Marcus. But if he intended to attack me, why arm me? Then again, the shot didn’t seem to hurt him. I checked the cylinder, to see if the rounds that had been loaded were tricks, some kind of stagecraft mummery. I emptied them into my palm, turned them over with my thumb as I examined them in the dim light from the window. The dull brass cylinders looked real enough.

There was a rattling in the hallway. I caught my breath, and started reloading the gun as quietly as I could, the bullets slippery in my sweaty fingers as I struggled to slot them home. Footsteps, and the dry-leaf scraping of his wings on the walls and ceiling. I looked up, saw that I had forgotten to lock the door and dropped a bullet. I scooped it up, dumped the whole handful of loose shells and the revolver into my jacket pocket and ran to the window. He was outside the door, and the window was storm bolted.

I threw my shoulder against it and the glass splintered, the lead panes bending like a net. Again and a couple panes snapped, slicing my coat and my skin. He opened the door smoothly and hurtled in. I hit the window, he hit me, and we both burst out into the storm.

Tumbling down the slate roof, I kicked out and made a lucky hit. We separated and I hooked my arm around a chimney. There was blood leaking out of me, damage from the window and whatever brief contact there had been with the angel’s wicked arm. I scrambled, trying to find him, finding nothing but the roaring storm. Something was wrong with my shoulder, and I felt my grip going away. A flash of lightning and I saw wings, diving. I let go.

I slithered down the roof, just clearing the chimney as he hit it. There was a dull thud above me. Splinters of slate shot past and the roof shook. I dug fingers into the flooding shingles, slapped at chimneys as they flew past. A bump and I was over the edge. I was falling and screaming the shredded air from my lungs. As I fell into a crash my legs collapsing and then something popped and became a rain of glass and more blood and tearing and falling.

I ended up in the Great Hall. I was bleeding red and black, the oil of my deepest heart mingling with my common blood. High above I could see the fractured skylight and a thin column of rain coming through. There were wings crouching, flashing past. He started to come through, unfolding as he emerged.