Empire of Bones (21 page)

“I’m sorry. You have been sleeping more.…”

“I’ve been growing. Boys of the age of the one I now inhabit tend to have growth spurts. Boys whom I have modified as extensively as this one can expect to have even more. Am I asleep now?”

“Father—”

“I am not asleep.” Phoenix turned. He was at least eight inches shorter than the man, but the redhead retreated a step.

“Word from Ashtown,” the man said. “That’s all. I thought you’d like to know.”

“Indeed,” Phoenix said. He tucked the bamboo cane into his belt, slipped on a shirt, and began working on the buttons. “That’s very thoughtful of you. And what might that word from Ashtown be, or are you saving it for later?”

“Six Cryptkeepers were with the monks like Bellamy said they would be. But not just them. Rupert Greeves was there. And the Smith boy. They smelled him.”

Phoenix raised Oliver’s eyebrows and waited. “And?”

“And six of ours went down.”

“Six? Who cares about six? I can make six more of you between breakfast and brunch.”

“My brothers killed five of the Cryptkeepers and all the monks they saw. Greeves made it out, but they’re tracking him.”

“I’m sure they are,” said Phoenix.

“They have his plane, but he never went back to it.”

Phoenix nodded. Then he walked out the door and down a hall and into a living room with black-and-white portraits on the walls beside framed cross-stitched lists of rules, and filthy furniture, and a moldy rug, and boxes of soap stacked in towers. The redhead followed him along the dust-free path on the hardwood floor where Phoenix always walked, past silver microphones hanging from the ceiling, and a pipe organ, and the skeletal remains of a woman in a high-necked satin dress slumped onto the keys, buried in a shallow grave of dust.

At the wide oak front door, Phoenix stepped into sandals and walked out of the big brick house and onto the only hill in Plumm, Nebraska. The brightness of the morning sun forced his eyes shut, to give his oversize pupils a chance to adjust. Then Phoenix moved down the steps and onto the broken sidewalk, which ran beside a street that was more weeds than pavement. He enjoyed taking crisp, swift steps and not having a limp, but longer legs would be nice. He looked forward to it.

“Father,” the redhead said behind him. “One more thing. When they got to the chapel, Greeves was talking to the monks about Skelton’s map.”

Phoenix wheeled around, suddenly a snarling old man caged inside a boy. Decades of fury poured out of his new eyes, and his lip curled as he spoke. “One more thing? That is
the
thing, fool, that and the Smith boy. If your brothers return without a Smith or that map, I will gut them each myself.” He jerked the bamboo cane out of his belt and thumped the silver knob against the redhead’s chest. “How many of my sons are still there?”

“Seven.”

Phoenix clicked the knob open and pressed the tooth against the tall man’s neck, just beneath the gill. He wanted to slash. To kill. To end this fool like every other fool who dared frustrate him.

“Then go join them,” he said. He reached out with his mind, trying to grope his way inside this oaf he had
created, to make him feel fear, to make him shake with terror and awe, to motivate complete obedience.

The redhead blinked in confusion and began to sweat.

“Father, I’m … dizzy.”

Phoenix lowered the tooth. He glared at his Oliver hand. He sneered at his Oliver mind. He was the Phoenix. He was the New Man. But this flesh was not yet what it needed to be. It channeled less power than his broken-down old carcass had. He needed time to train his Oliver self, to cut spirit doors inside his new skull so he could once again flood out into the skulls of others. Oliver could not be a mere flesh costume, a boy possessed. Phoenix knew he must truly be Oliver, and every cell of Oliver must be his.

He had time. Plenty of it. Radu Bey and the transmortals were only getting started. But if Greeves had Skelton’s map, was that how they had found the cigar factory? Skelton had known that place. He had known many places.

“William Skelton,” Phoenix said.

The redhead blinked.

“Was he ever here? In Plumm?”

“I don’t think so, Father.”

Phoenix made his Oliver head nod. “Good. Are the women ready? And the vats?”

“Both ready. The potion is bottled and the vats were cleaned last night.” The redhead looked nervous. His
blue goat-pupiled eyes were unsteady. Tremendous peripheral vision in those sideways eyes, Phoenix knew, but truly grotesque on a man. He turned away. The Holy Soap warehouse was waiting for him.

“My name is Dr. Oliver Phoenix,” he said aloud. He closed the knob over the tooth and pressed it against his lips. “Oliver. My name is Oliver. I am Dr. Oliver Phoenix.”

He sniffed as he walked, stepping around the tall dry forests of weeds that owned the sidewalk cracks.

“Dr. Oliver,” he said. His nose itched, and he rubbed it with the heel of his hand. His eyes began to stream. “Oliver Phoenix. I am Oliver Phoe—”

A sneeze erupted out of him. He snorted and spat and widened his eyes while he walked. This could be fixed. He would find a way. Three more sneezes took him to the bottom of the low hill. Main Street was a rustling pastureland of weeds. Shattered storefronts gaped darkness. The Founder’s Park had been swallowed by scrub brush.

Oliver Laughlin, lean, gilled, and furious, whose portrait hung in the Galleria of Ashtown, sneezed his way across the street.

Two large coyotes watched the strange one from their barbershop cave. He smelled like the other mans that now wandered their town, but rot and death clouded around this young one with the snout fits. He smelled like traps, like poisons in meats, like one whose eyes would soon bleed and whose snarlings would drip foam.
He smelled like mate-killer, young-eater; he smelled like madness and rage.

Lips curling, hackles rising, the animals growled loathing and backed deeper into shadow.

The plane jostled through another pocket of turbulence, and the wheel shook in Antigone’s hands. Again. Her copilot headset rattled down onto her cheeks. Again. She pushed it back up. Again. Then she looked at Diana Boone. Tan, freckled Diana in her aviators and ponytail and khaki safari shirt with the sleeves buttoned up and the neck open, showing a long scar just above her collarbone. Diana who liked Cyrus.

“I don’t like this,” Antigone said. She was sick of her chair and the fizzly air-conditioning; sick of her headset and the noise it couldn’t keep out; exhausted from too little sleep and too little food and too much worry. She didn’t want to be flying the plane. It added even more stress to the layers of things she had to fret about. And it made her tense. Her shoulders were knotted tight.

“You don’t have to like it,” Diana said again. She glanced over from the pilot’s seat and then rechecked the instruments. The tilt-rotor plane hadn’t pulled itself out of the mud by the lake easily. For a while, it had looked like it might not pull itself out at all. But Diana had gotten
in the air eventually, though they were still behind Rupert’s mandated schedule. Four and a half hours in the air—three of them Antigone’s—and another hour until their fuel-up at some nowhere airstrip in Mexico.

“Do you like this?” Antigone asked.

Diana looked at her. “What if I do?”

“You don’t,” Antigone said.

Diana shrugged. “I like this more than I like ignoring orders from the Avengel of the O of B. I like this more than I like the idea of explaining my disregard of orders to that Avengel when he eventually shows up mad.”

Antigone twisted in the copilot’s seat, looking back into the cabin. Dan was reading some old book he’d found at the camp. Katie Smith was leaning on his shoulder, her eyes open but blinking slowly. She gave Antigone a smile. Pythia ignored her empty chair and sat on the floor in a nest of her own hair. Nolan and Horace were both asleep. The rest were still at Llewellyn’s camp. The division between those who had stayed behind and those on the plane had been part of Rupert’s instructions. Dennis Gilly, Gunner, and Llew were the only mortals still at the lake with the Captain, Arachne, and Gil.

Antigone turned back around.

“I don’t know why we brought the hair along. If we wanted protection, we should have at least brought the Captain. And Arachne is basically our doctor and we left her with all the people who will never need one.”

Diana smiled. “The split makes sense if you think about it. You would never want to leave Nolan and Gil together. Dan is the only one who even talks to Pythia, so why leave her behind? The Captain and Arachne both have a chance at controlling Gil if things go bad, so they should stay with him. And if Bellamy or Phoenix or both take a shot at the camp, I think it’s in pretty good hands. Would you want to drop in on that gang?” Diana laughed. “Gilgamesh, John Smith, Arachne and her ten billion forest spiders, and Gunner, too. Did you see all those rifles in the weaponry shed?”

The plane bounced hard and Antigone’s heart skipped. Her headset slipped down. She sputtered her lips and pushed it back up.

“You don’t like leaving, either,” Antigone muttered.

“Of course not,” Diana said. “Because I’m selfish. Because right now Cyrus and Rupert are in the fight, or at least circling the enemy. Because I haven’t talked to Jeb and I don’t know how he’s doing. Because I’m anxious and curious, and because my job is to sit still for hours and make sure you fly straight and don’t crash.”

Antigone looked down at the globe Skelton had left them, folded neatly and tucked into a leather pouch below the instruments. Rupert had given it back but took his with him. After refueling in Mexico, she would be pointing the plane south and very, very west, all the way to a ship on the globe marked:

S.S.
FAT BETTY

LIBRARY, ARMORY, FUEL
MS. LEMON CHAUNCEY, SAGE

“Have you ever heard of Lemon Chauncey?” Antigone asked.

“I have,” Diana said. “But nothing good.” She turned her aviators at Antigone and smiled. “What would you expect from a friend of old Billy Bones? She was tried twice at Ashtown and got off both times. When they wanted to charge her a third time, she filed a trek and skipped out of there. Basically the same thing Rupert did before Bellamy could raise a tribunal.”

“Charged for what?” Antigone asked.

“I only know the dining hall stories,” Diana said. “From other kids. Not exactly reliable. They said she murdered three Acolytes she was training. Some other kid said she was charged with sorcery—curses, charms, dark stuff. You’ll have to ask her.” She laughed. “I’m sure she remembers.”

Antigone adjusted her headset, thinking. “That map might be outdated,” she said.

Diana nodded.

“Skelton died more than a year ago.”

“Yep,” Diana said. “And he even made the map before that.” She smirked.

“And we’re trying to find a ship. Ships move. What
if this Lemon lady decided she wanted to go somewhere new? What if Skelton didn’t know what he was talking about?”

“Well,” said Diana, “then we will fly for a very long time and look at a whole lotta ocean, and then we will run out of fuel and fall into it.” One side of her mouth twitched up. “Don’t worry, it’s not a bad way to go. Popular, even. Been used a lot in the O of B since people started strapping wings on.”

“Well, thanks for that,” Antigone said. “Good to know. But if we’re going to die, I’d rather keep the cause of death unique. Think you could you arrange that?”

“You mean like being eaten by a dragon? Tigs, you could have done that months ago. Opportunity missed. I think right now it’s falling out of the sky or nothing.”

Antigone looked out her window at the herd of clouds marching around the world. It was like being back in Radu Bey’s strange open room on the pillar, looking out at sky that wasn’t really there. She exhaled slowly, remembering how close she had come to death that day. She could still smell his hot dragon breath. Her ribs remembered the crushing strength of his tail. If Arachne hadn’t woven her the Angel Skin, Antigone would have died right there. For weeks after, she hadn’t wanted to take off that shimmering spider silk. Now she kept it in her pocket, folded into a tiny square as light as a pack of tissues. Two spiders lived in its center, always ready
to march down her bare spine, binding her into her charmed pearly skin. They were friendly, but the thought still made Antigone shiver.

“Tigs?” Diana asked. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that about dragons. You don’t need to keep that memory fresh.”

Antigone shook her head. “No, it’s fine. I think I’ll skip the dragon option. Maybe a meteorite. Lightning. A tornado.”

Diana held out her hand, palm up. She waited, eyes hidden behind her glasses, strong jaw set. Antigone took the older girl’s hand.

Diana squeezed. “Old age,” she said. “Let’s die of old age. In times like this, with what lies ahead, old age is as unique as it gets. Maybe even impossible, but we should definitely give it a shot.”

Antigone felt her throat begin to tighten, but she smiled, and she meant it.

“Deal,” she said. “And that goes for everyone.”