Heart of Veridon (11 page)

I looked forward, forgetting the boys. If they didn’t care what happened once I got off the bridge, it could only mean that I wasn’t getting off the bridge. I saw the trap, a guy in front, waiting. Not someone I knew. He wasn’t as big, but his coat fell unnaturally over his shoulders. I drifted right and he drifted with me, like he was a kite on a string. He was going a little slower than me, getting closer with each step. I slowed down hard, nearly stopping. The guy behind me stumbled into my back, fell on his ass. Whatever the guy had been carrying, a bag or basket of fruit, scattered and rolled in oblong patterns down the cobbles. He was swearing as he stood, but the tail to my front was having similar problems. An old lady had dropped a jar of coffee and was yelling at the tough’s unturned back. I shot forward and to the side, my fingers brushing the pistol in my coat as I passed him. I risked a look over. Under his coat there was a lot of metal and the tiny whirling dance of gears and flywheels. He looked up at me, unconcerned, his eyes dead stone pits. I pushed hard on the crowd and broke into a lull in the traffic, an open courtyard between rivers of pedestrians. I dashed across, squeezed between a sausage vendor and a closed stall and got off the bridge.

Fourth guy. He put a hand on my chest, the palm wide, his other arm hidden behind him. He looked me right in the eye and smiled.

“Burn. Where you headed?” He said. It was Cacher. Friend of Emily. Good friend.

“I don’t know, Cacher.” I looked back to see the Orrey boys and the metal guy amble up. “Where am I headed?”

I
T WASN’T ONE
of the quayside warehouses, so that was okay. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t that bad. The third guy kept really close, his eyes dead. Other than Valentine, this guy was the most metal I’d ever seen. His face was a steel plate, the eyes pitted ball bearings that looked like river stones. However he saw, it wasn’t the way I did. Just his jaw and teeth were original issue. When his coat flipped aside there was more, a plain of tiny gears spinning through their cycles. Most of it was probably just for show, but I made a note to never gut-punch this guy. Probably lose my knuckles in the grind. He kept those dead eyes on me.

The others were real casual, like we were buddies out for a walk. Hell, we were buddies, of a sort. I didn’t always like to be around Cacher when Emily was in the room, but we all got along well enough.

“Boss could have just arranged a meeting,” I said. “My appointment book is open.”

“I figure he just did, Burn,” Cacher said. He grinned. His teeth were lined in black gunk, drippings from the cassiopia he had tucked into his cheek. “An urgent meeting, I figure.”

“Fair enough. Still.” I shrugged. They had taken my gun, chuckled as they read the inscription on the service piece. “Coulda been more direct about it. You make me feel like I did something.”

“Well,” Cacher sighed. “Well, we’ll see. We’ll let the boss talk that out for you.”

“Sure.”

I was still on edge from last night, tired and wired and itchy to find Emily and that damned Cog. That could be it, though. Em could have gotten the Cog to Valentine, and maybe Valentine wanted to talk about it. Maybe. Not sure why that warranted an armed escort, though.

They led me to a quiet street on the River Road, the wooden sidewalk under our feet echoing hollowly. We stopped at a house, literally just stopped. Cacher and the other boys leaned against the yard post and lost interest in me. The street crowd was lean, just businessmen who didn’t have to keep a clock, going off to work on their own time. The house was nice, a neat little breadbox place with clean paint and windows that looked into a tidy sitting room. It could have been situated on the country road to Toth, rather than crowded up against a dozen rowhouses, blocks from the river Reine. I saw someone move, just a flicker behind the curtains and then the room was empty again. I looked around at Cacher.

“I’m supposed to go in?”

He ignored me. I went in. The inside of the house was just as neat and clean as the outside. The wooden floors hardly creaked, the heirloom furniture was polished, and the upholstery was so sharp and uniform that it looked uncomfortable. I poked my head into the sitting room. It was empty, but I could see out the window, see Cacher and his crew still standing around.

Back in the hallway there was still no sign of Valentine. There were two more rooms off the hallway, and a staircase. A final door at the far end of the hall, not twenty feet away, probably led to an alley entrance. I could see from here that the bolt was off, and the door unlocked. I was walking down the hall before I realized it, deciding to run before even thinking about it. The first room I passed, to my right, was a kitchen. No lights, and no Valentine. I thought I heard something upstairs, the barest whisper of movement as I passed the stairs. There was a door at the top of the stairs, a bright light shining around the cracks where the door didn’t sit properly in the jamb.

The final room was an office. Hardwood on all sides, and bookcases, heavy golden spines peering out from behind glass doors. The room smelled of hot metal and must. There was a desk and a chair. Valentine was sitting at the desk, his hands folded, the unnatural bulk of his shoulders slumped forward. He was looking down at the desk, facing the door. He didn’t move as I went past.

I had my hand on the doorknob leading out, waiting, listening to see if Valentine would try to stop me. There was no noise, only the slight metallic creak of Valentine’s machines and my groaning heart. Whoever was upstairs shuffled, something dragging across wood, like a boarding hook on a ship’s hull. I backed up and went into the office.

“Hello, Jacob,” Valentine said. He didn’t move, his eyes still calmly on the desk in front of him. I came into the room and found a chair, leaning against the near bookcase.

“Valentine.” The room was hot, all the windows shut up and covered, the morning light only getting through in thin streamers of dust. I settled into the chair and looked the puzzlebox man over.

People approach cog-modification two ways. The guy outside, with the eyes like dead stones, they go for the machine look. He’s a pure, straight killing factory, an algorithm of danger and intimidation. Guys like that don’t hide it, they leave the metal plates showing. But Valentine? No, Valentine isn’t like that guy. That guy’s machine. Valentine is art.

It’s mostly his face. Valentine’s head is carefully carved darkwood, polished bright, no metal showing at all. His face is a minimalist sculpture; darkwood lips, cheekbones, the impression of a chin and nose and eyebrows suspended over an emptiness of shadow and the bare twitchings of gears. The individual pieces are animated, moving silently on hidden tracks, clacking softly against one another when he smiles or talks or scowls. He was scowling, looking at me, waiting.

“Busy day you’re having,” he said. His voice was a trick of metal, the kind of voice a harp might have.

“Yeah. I mean...” I wondered how much he knew. “Yeah.”

“Me too. Having a busy day.” He sat up a little and spread his hands across the desk, like a blind man feeling up his environment. I always felt like his hands were a little too big, almost awkwardly proportioned compared to the rest of his body. They seemed clumsy. “I wonder if our days are similar at all. If maybe we’re having the same... complications.”

“Could be.”

He nodded absently. “Could be. Where’s Emily, Jacob?”

“Emily. I don’t know. Shouldn’t you be asking Cacher that kind of thing?”

“I think Cacher would like to ask you that himself.” Valentine gazed over my shoulder, staring at the wall. The machines of his face went a little slack. “I think him asking you would be a lot less pleasant.” He refocused on me, leaned forward. “For you. So. Where’s Emily?”

“I said I don’t know. Haven’t seen her since that job.”

“I have a lot of wheels spinning, Jacob. Which job?”

“The Tomb thing, and the deal with Prescott. You sent me up the Heights to take care of it.”

“I sent you up the Heights. And the deal with Prescott.” He nodded. “I tasked Emily with making the deal with Prescott, and I take it she contracted you.”

“Correct.”

“And you arranged to make the deal,” he paused, his eyes on his hand. “Up at the Heights?”

“Emily said that was part of it, that Prescott would only make the deal there.” Of course, I knew that wasn’t entirely true, at least according to Prescott. But I told the story I knew. “And while I was there she had me do the Tomb thing, too.”

“The Tomb thing.” He folded his hands. “She had you on another contract, for another outfit?”

“No, I...” and then realized that I didn’t know. She had said the Prescott deal was from Valentine, but she hadn’t been specific with the Tomb part of the deal. “She implied the deal was from you. That the Tombs had been making overtures and that you wanted to lean on them a little. She gave me something to give Angela Tomb, figured I could make the meeting because of my history.”

“What was it that she gave you?”

“A music box. Some old hymn.”

He was quiet for a while, just staring at me. His face ticked slightly, clenching and unclenching, the darkwood tapping. I squirmed in my seat, trying to look calm but probably not doing much of a job of it. There was an uncomfortable line forming in my head, running from the Cog to the inexplicable events on the Heights and intersecting with Emily. I was worried for her.

“Is she missing?” I asked. “Is she okay?”

His face evened up, like he had been absent and was now re-summoned to his body. “We don’t know. She missed an appointment with Cacher yesterday, and another last night. No one has seen her. There’s been a lot of trouble, Jacob.”

“We should be looking for her.”

“We are. But like I said, a lot of trouble. Council’s been tumbling a lot of my operations. Kicking in a lot of doors. It’s unpleasant.”

“You have a mole in the outfit,” I said.

“I know. That’s what I’m getting at.”

“It’s Pedr. He broke into my place this morning. Told me he’d been hired by a guy, someone who looked official. It’s Pedr you should be talking to, not me.”

“Pedr is a known quantity. He’s been a fink for the Council for years. I only let Pedr see the things I want the Council to see. He’s been a very useful tool, Jacob.”

I could hear muffled clawing upstairs, like heavy cloth being torn. I glanced up. Valentine followed my gaze.

“The Henri-Bearings. Owners of the house. By the time they get free or someone misses them, we should be well on our way. Unless the Badge is already on their way, Jacob. Say, if someone who came here was being followed. Or escorted.”

“Oh. Oh, you don’t think it’s me?” I leaned back in my chair, very careful to keep my hands on my knees. “You can’t think it’s me.”

“Tomb has been talking to me, but no one knows that. Not Emily, not Pedr. But you know it.”

“Emily told me. She said...”

“You have family on the Council, Jacob. You went to the Academy.”

“Which is why I’m good for you. That’s the very reason you hired me in the first place: the people I know, the places I can go without causing a stir. Valentine, seriously, you can’t think it’s me.”

Again, he was quiet, unmoving. Upstairs someone shifted, slid heavily across the floor.

“I don’t. It’s an interesting angle, but I don’t think it’s the right one. See, these Council goons who are tumbling my operations, they’re looking for some people. Specifically, they’re looking for you. And they’re looking for Emily.”

“That’s not good. Maybe I should duck down for a while, find a deep hole and bury. You have a place I could do that, Valentine?”

He shook his head. “I can’t have it, Jacob. I can’t have the Council tearing down the industry I’ve built. It’s a fragile thing, depends on trust as much as it depends on gold. People need to feel safe with me, Jacob. I can’t offer that with officers of the Badge kicking in my doors, can I?”

“You can’t... you aren’t going to turn me in, are you?”

He smiled. It looked like a theater mask, a wild grin playing to the back seats. “I’m not. That’s also bad for business. But look, I can’t have you around. I can’t help you. And I can’t help Emily. Whatever’s going on, you need to fix it.” He stood up and walked to the door. “Stay away from my outfit until things are cleaned up. It’s been good working with you. Cacher will leave your piece out back, behind the house.”

He walked out of the room, just like that.

“What am I supposed to do?”

He paused in the hallway. I could see his broad back, facing away from me.

“Survive. It’s what people do, Jacob. Or they don’t, and then it doesn’t really matter.”

And then he left.