Dead of Veridon (12 page)

I mentioned the boiler. It was big, iron. Incredibly old. Iron enough that the first two slugs did nothing more than flake rust and dimple the skin. Old enough that the third, fourth and tenth slugs went inside. Inside, where the fire was. The fire came out. Rapidly.

Wilson and the iron girl both turned their heads when the first shots impacted the boiler. Situational awareness, they call that. I saw them looking concerned, and I've been around Wilson enough to know that his concern is my concern. When the acrobats-militant flipped out of the way and threw themselves to the ground, I did the same. The fire washed over me in a sheet of angry heat. It treated the rest of the factory poorly, including those riotplated Badgemen.

It was all noise to me. Screaming, tearing metal, the rapid rush and roar of consumed air and guttering fire. Engines tearing free of their moorings to bounce playfully across the floor. More screaming. Wilson pulled me up, shook me. Looked concerned when I opened my eyes. He was talking but I couldn't hear anything over the din of the factory. I looked around the floor. Dimpled concrete where there had been machines. Fire where there had been Badgemen. Nothing where there had been an iron girl.

He shook me again. I got the idea. We had to go. Now.

Chapter Six

The Formal Engine

I
WAS IN
worse shape than I thought. It took Wilson's help to get me through the wreckage of the factory floor to the ladder that led up to the catwalk. The building was still surrounded. We might have made it out in the smoke and the confusion, but the Badge was keeping the fire brigade away from the flames, so they were pretty serious about the cordon. Don't know why they wanted us so badly.

Wilson got me to the ladder and followed up to the roof. Sections of the steel sheeting had already fallen in, and pillars of smoke were climbing out of the building. We crawled carefully to one of the alley-side edges and peered down. Badge, all over the place.

"I can make the jump," Wilson said, as if there was ever any doubt. "You?"

"I don't know," I said. My leg was numb, and something was throbbing in my hip. Probably nothing broken, but still. Pain. That would have been embarrassing. Broken hip, jump like my great aunt Ada. "I'm pretty banged up."

Wilson looked nervously around the building. More of the roof was collapsing, more smoke pouring out. Clouds of cinder swirled up from the shattered skylights, like swarms of burning insects. I thought of the dry husks that littered the floor down there, and the eruption of maker beetles from the body. This was going to lead to some weird dreams, I could tell.

"They're not going to let us off the roof any other way," Wilson said. I realized he'd been talking for a while. "So either we jump, or we signal them and surrender."

"Or we do both," I said. He gave me a look.

"You take the mask and get out of here. Keep it away from the girl. I can't help but think that she's the one Crane was expecting." I rolled over onto my back and closed my eyes. "I'm going to stay here. Turn myself in to the Badge. We haven't really done anything wrong."

"You think that matters to the Badge?" Wilson asked.

"No. But it'll matter to the Council. If anyone can talk their way out of something like this, it's me. And honestly, there are some people in the Council I'd like to talk to. Some questions I'd like to ask." I rubbed the ash out of my eyes and grimaced. "Some folks in that chamber know more than a little about things Celestean."

"You sure you're going to be okay?"

"Oh yeah. Ruined my leg, almost got eaten by a bunch of dead river people, talked to a man full of insects, discovered an ancient and possibly homicidal artifact." I gave him a big thumbs up. "I'm going to be great!"

"Your enthusiasm is admirable," Wilson said with a thin smile. "Well. Don't fall thirty feet into the burning factory. Though the falling part would probably kill you, I'd hate for your dad to have to bury a pile of ashes in your memory."

"You are the courage-maker, Wilson."

He thumped me on my shoulder, then scrambled across the roof and onto the next building. I watched until he disappeared around a chimney. When he was good and gone, I pulled myself to the lip of the roof and yelled down.

"Gentlemen of the Badge! I have come to terms with the inevitability of my capture. Please stop burning buildings in my pursuit!" A handful of faces looked up at me. None of them moved. "I surrender," I said to emphasize the point. "And please get a ladder. This roof is getting hot."

W
HEN PEOPLE FIRST
came to the Veridon delta on the river Reine, they found things. Old things. Mostly it was buried buildings and broken machines and an undeniable heaviness to the air that made the place feel like a museum that had been cracked open and laid out to the sky. And some of the people who came to the delta found a way to use some of those things. My many-times great grandfather, for example, uncovered a buried furnace as big as several houses, and managed to harness the power to fuel the initial boom of the city of Veridon. That was our ticket into politics, got our name on the Founder's Charter, our seat on the first Council of Veridon. The Tombs used to have a different name, something to do with fishing or shipping. I forget. But then old Patron Tomb made his deal and then didn't die, and people changed the way they talked about the family. We even changed their name on the Charter. That's how we treat history, here in Veridon. Something to be mined, and changed, and used. That's how we treat everything.

We found other things, too. Living things, or at least undying things. The Celestes. Seven of them, spread out across the delta. They looked like people, their features a little more perfect than we could imagine, their skin whiter than any of ours would ever be. Like light, sculpted onto their bones. They hovered above the ground, oblivious to the dirty-faced crowds of the early Veridians, gathered around. We gave them names. The Singer, The Watchman, The Warrior, The Mourning Bride, The Forgotten Love, the Queen Alone. And the Eternal, who looked dead and yet animate, the blow to his chest going all the way to his heart; and yet his eyes watched you steadily, no matter where you stood.

We called them gods. We worshiped them, scryed by them, studied them, formed false histories or revealed narratives. We named them Celestes. This was their city, and we thanked them for the gifts they had left behind. There were priests, and an infrastructure of rite and ritual that went along with the name. It was Veridon's first religion.

Others came and went, but the Celestes remained. Even the Artificers challenged their influence for a while, making a temple of the Academy and a ritual of the contemplative life. Oddly, it was a new religion that was not yet a religion that ended that. It was called The Algorithm at the time, a new group that was studying certain debris that could be gathered from the river. Together with the priesthood of the Celestes, they denounced the practices of the Artificers, their study of the dead and the living, of the lines that crossed between those worlds. It was a Council decree that ended the Guild, signed by three hands. The Lord of the Council, the Highest of the Celestean Sight, and the Master Wright of the Algorithm.

Later, The Algorithm took on the name Church, and slowly drove worship of the Celestes out of the minds of Veridon. Not by condemnation, or decree, but by apathy and forgetfulness. The Church of the Algorithm offered real glories, in the form of cogwork and machination, clothed in the language of miracles. Eventually it was their narrative that became the history of Veridon, a story about a girl who was an angel, swept down the river until she was rescued by the Wrights of the Algorithm. They healed her with what they had learned from the river, and she was so grateful that she showed them the true mysteries of the Algorithm. That was the history we all accepted.

And the Celestes were forgotten. Their domes still stand, but their priests are gone. The Wrights of the Algorithm have gathered such influence that, although there is no law against the Celestean Sight, no one who aspires to power or riches will admit to worshiping the ancient mysteries. And yet there are some, behind closed doors, in secret rooms, who keep the old ways. Who light heavy candles that smell like hot sand, and trace their fingers over icons that have been with their families for as long as anyone can remember. There are still adherents, though they hide. There are still those who know the old languages, the old rites.

My father, for example. Alexander Burn, last of his line, and Councilor of the city of Veridon.

T
HEY TOOK ME
to an old lockup and put me away. I don't know if any of my guards recognized me. Don't know if they would have treated me better or worse if they did, and I didn't feel like pressing the point. Having a father on the Council should have gotten me certain rights with the Badge. Having been disowned by a father who sat on the Council was another matter.

I hurt, that kind of low grade ache that felt like a hangover or the flu or like my skeleton had been used as a tuning fork. Or all of those things. Shoulder was pretty bad, too. At least it wasn't my shooting arm, but it was my lean-against-the-wall-looking-casual arm, so I was sitting on the bench muttering when the duty-officer came in to talk to me. Well. To yell at me.

"Jacob Burn, ain't ya?" he boomed, before he had the door fully open. I winced and nodded. "Figured. Kind of person we pick up in a burning factory amid reports of mad cartwheeling women and bugs." He squinted at me over a clipboard. "Another one of your killer angels, is it?"

"It is not," I said.

"Better not be another one of them angel killing things," he muttered, marking things off on his clipboard, completely ignoring me. "That's all I'm going to say on the matter."

"Whoever she was, I feel confident that she is not 'another one of them angel killing things.' Not by a long shot."

"Well," he said, again mostly to himself. "Be that as it may. Better not."

"Am I being charged with something, or is this just an opportunity for you to meet a famous person?"

"Famous person? Famous?" He poked the clipboard at my face and snarled. "Don't get out of your head, Jacob Burn. Don't think you're famous, just because you made up a bunch of stories and got a bunch of good people killed. Don't be thinking that."

And there it was. Two years ago some pretty crazy stuff happened to me, and I made the mistake of being completely honest about it with everyone I met. And other people, people with an interest in that crazy stuff staying quiet, had gone to some length to make me out for a fool. Now half the city thought I was a little insane, or a liar who got into some trouble and spun it into a good story to cover his guilt. Blamed me for the people who died in that mess, or at least thought I was trying to hide what actually happened.

One of those people who died? The one woman I loved, had ever loved. Would ever love. Killed her with my own hands, because something horrible was taking her over, was turning her inside out. Was going to kill a lot more people. So I killed her. There it was.

"Famous," I said bitterly, and shot him a look that would burn stones. "Or you wouldn't know my name. Would you?"

He grimaced, like he'd drunk sour milk.

"Don't get out of your head," he said, but quieter. He returned to his clipboard, mutely crossing things off and writing things down. "You want to protest the charges?"

"What charges?"

"Destruction of property. Theft." He squinted as he ran his finger down the page. "Something here about conspiracy, but I don't think that one's going to hold. Think Matt threw that one in just because it was you." He scrubbed at the page with the blunt end of the pencil. "Just a joker, that Matthew."

"I didn't burn down that factory. Badge was as responsible for that as anyone."

"Your friend, the jumpy one. It's on her. You're on that team, though. The boat..."

"Boat?" I snapped.

"Let's see." He ran his finger across the page. "Boat. Service Vessel
Bandycoat
, sunk this morning in the Ebd-side harbor, catching fire and damaging one supply raft and a number of other vessels." He flipped the page over, read a few more lines, and then looked at me over the board. "All hands lost or unaccounted."