Heart of Veridon (4 page)

“Ah, fuck,” I muttered. My voice was husky, like I’d been yelling. The ceiling above me was a twitching tableau of clockwork precision, cogs and escapements and coiling springs that slipped and ticked and groaned loudly. Metal crashed against metal. Not my idea of heaven. I tried to sit up and found myself weak and naked. I looked down and saw that I was bound to a bed, covered only by a thin sheet of white linen. I spat, and a wad of dried leaves scattered across my chest. The taste in my mouth was of dry earth.

Embalming herbs. They meant to bury me. I looked around. There were other bodies, lined up neatly on either side. Lots of bodies. About as many as you would expect to recover from an airship crashing into a river. I struggled free from my ceremonial bonds and stood up. Behind me, someone screamed.

There was a door, and a crowd of Wrights of the Algorithm clustered inside it. They shook under their grease-lined brown robes. I wrapped the linen around my waist.

“Can I have my clothes back?”

They were quick to oblige. I walked out of the Church of the Algorithm with most of my possessions. The pistol was gone, along with my boots. My shirt had been cut off me, but they had been careful with my pants. They were nice pants. Probably some eye-wise Wright saw some quality he could sell, later on. My jacket was intact, too. And, surprisingly, I still had the Cog Marcus had pressed into my hand moments before he died, tucked into the inner pocket of my jacket, the lining still cold and damp from the river. Thank the Celestes.

“H
E DIDN’T SEEM
like someone on his way to die,” I said. I held the thing Marcus had given me in the palm of my hand. The slightest movement of my arm set off its internal machinations, spinning gears and flexing cogs in the central complex. I turned it slowly under the light on Emily’s desk. “He just seemed like someone who was on his way somewhere. Like he knew where he was going.”

She shrugged. She wasn’t really paying attention to me yet, not at this stage of the conversation. This is how it was with us. She was bent over a ledger, marking deliveries and balancing columns. Her fingers were inky. She had her hair up in a bun, but strands had fallen out, and her face was framed in a wispy nimbus of gold, reflected light from the incandescent on her desk. She looked pretty.

“Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t want to stick around to get burned up like everyone else.” She glanced up. “Maybe he just wanted a quick end. Maybe he was just anxious to join the Fehn.”

I shuddered. The river folk, the Fehn, were little more than animated corpses, possessed by some sort of flat worm that haunted the deep currents of the Reine. They talked like the people they had been before they died, but they were something else completely.

“I heard the Fehn are helping out with the recovery,” I said. “The Council’s gathering the
Glory
up, going to use the parts to make some kind of memorial.”

“Fitting,” she said. “Something to remember it by, I suppose. You have to do that sort of thing, when an airship crashes and kills everyone on board.”

“Not everyone,” I said. She sighed.

“Everyone who hasn’t had half their body replaced with foetal metal, everyone with flesh and blood hearts and eyes that don’t look like dirty dishes.” She set down her pen. “Regular people.”

“You’re just jealous,” I said. “You wish you had eyes like mine. Anything’s better than those mud bogs.” I nodded toward her deep brown eyes, eyes that were wet and warm and sparkled in the light. She smiled and looked down.

“Jacob Burn, the most charming man to ever survive two zepliner crashes, one of which he caused. Why, you must have to drive the ladies away with a stick.”

I smiled. “You know I carry a gun.”

She snorted. “Jacob, Jacob. Why are you here again? Not to show me souvenirs, no.” She closed her ledger and packed away the ink kit. She did things like that very precisely, very neatly. Her whole apartment was like that. The plaster walls were clean, the dark wooden floor never hinted at dust. Once her desk was clear, she opened a different drawer and set three things on the desk. Two of them were envelopes, and the third was an inlaid wooden box, about the size of a short book.

“We need you to meet a man.”

“We?”

She nodded. “This one comes from Valentine. You’re okay with that?”

“Sure. He knows I do good work, and he pays well.” I try to balance my obligations in the underworld, but Valentine was my main employer. I owed him a lot.

“A Corpsman. Register Prescott, of the
City Rampant
. Give him this.” She pushed the first envelope a little closer. It was cheap butcher’s paper, hand-folded over something thick. I picked it up. Felt like river clay, dense and cold in my hand.

“It’s cassiopia, right? Pure.”

She shrugged. “It’s an envelope. You give it to Prescott.”

I nodded and put it into my coat pocket.

“The name’s familiar, but I’ll have to do a little research. Most of my contacts are Academy. Pilots and Mates, not the desk crew.”

“Won’t be necessary. There’s a formal dinner being held, to honor the Corps. One of those political things. It’s being thrown by the Family Tomb at their estate on the Heights. Many Corpsmen will be there, including Prescott.”

“It’s not a good place to make a deal. Too many curious eyes at a party like that, too many officials. I can make contact there, but the deal will have to happen somewhere else.”

“It will have to happen there. Prescott has insisted. Doesn’t trust us, I suppose.”

I shrugged.

“I’ll need an invitation.”

She pushed the second envelope towards me. “There will be a ceremony, in remembrance of the
Glory of Day
. Naturally, as the sole survivor, you’re expected.”

“Naturally.” I took the envelope. “Anything else?”

She presented the wooden box, turning it so I could see the clasp that opened it and slid it in front of me. “The party is being hosted by the Councilor-in-Standing for the Family Tomb. You know her? Angela Tomb?”

“I know her.”

“Her family has been making... let’s call them overtures in force. I’d like you to deliver that. Discreetly.”

She opened the box, and a quiet song tinkled out. A music box.

“Is this going to get me in trouble with the Lady Tomb?”

Emily smiled and shrugged. “I hear you carry a gun.”

She put the box into a leather folder and handed it to me. It fit nicely in the outer pocket of my coat.

When I looked up, Emily was holding the cog-wheel. She was weighing it in her hands, shifting it slightly to watch the inner gears spin and cycle.

I hadn’t thought much about the thing when Marcus handed it to me on the
Glory
. Other things on my mind at the time. I assumed it was some memento, something he wanted to get back to family in Veridon. Second looks made it clear that it was no sentimental bauble.

“Marcus had this?” she asked.

“Yeah. Wanted me to get it back to the city. Gave it to me, then went on about how he had killed the captain, wrecked the ship.”

“It looks like a Church thing.”

I shrugged. The Church of the Algorithm was a strange group. That being said, they were the dominant religious organization in the city. Veridon was blessed with many mysteries, but the most profitable mysteries were the strange vessels that floated down the river at regular intervals. No one knew where they came from, or who sent them. They contained random collections of cog, half-built machines and enigmatic autonomic artwork. The Church of the Algorithm was built on the belief that these vessels were messages from a hidden God far upriver. They lived their lives trying to reassemble the machines, to reveal the nature of their deity. They worshipped a hidden pattern. We owed them a lot, sadly. Their divinations led to many of the technological discoveries that kept Veridon the dominant power on this edge of the world.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’d rather not go to them. They’ll saint me.”

“I doubt that. No one’s going to mistake you for a holy prophet.”

“Stranger things have happened. Besides, this came from downriver. Their god is upriver, right?”

“So maybe the devil sent this?”

“Then the devil can have it back. I just want to know why Marcus had it.”

“He gave it to you and told you to take it to the city?”

“He did. Hell if I know why.”

“Hm. I have to ask, Jacob. Why’d you shoot Marcus?”

I shrugged. The details weren’t important, but I felt like I’d done him a favor. I had offered finality, a clear judgment on his actions and a clean end. Lots of my fellow passengers lingered on for days before they passed. My friendship with Marcus had bought him something easier, even if he was responsible for the disaster to begin with.

“I wonder,” she said. She set the device on the table. “Why did he do that? Give it to you, for one thing, but everything before? Why he took an axe to the Captain, and killed all those people by proxy? It seems he got off a little easy, dying at your hand.”

“Maybe. He seemed to think someone was following him, someone he couldn’t kill. Something wrong with his head, maybe.” I cleared my throat. “I think wrecking the ship was his way of escaping, ensuring that no one could follow him, wherever he was going. He meant to get off. He was making for the glideboats when someone jettisoned them.”

“Well, he certainly made sure no one followed him.” She held the Cog out to me, held it between her hands like a plate. “Everyone who could follow him on that ship died, sure as fire burns and water drowns.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.” I took the Cog from her, placed my palm under it and lifted. My thumb brushed the inside of her wrist, and I hesitated. Felt her pulse through my hand, the warmth of her skin on my callused knuckle. We stayed there a second longer than we should have.

“Cacher’s on the way,” she said. “He’s coming by to pick up these ledgers. Valentine wants monthly reports, now.”

“He’ll be here,” I said, “sooner or later.”

“Sooner.”

I took the Cog and held it up, blocking her face from my view. “Sure,” I said. “Soon enough.”

She shuffled papers, retrieved the ledger and started checking it again. I stood still for a moment, looking at her between the workings of the Cog.

“Look, if you’d like, I could hold on to that. Ask Cacher about it, or maybe Valentine, later on. They might know something.”

I hesitated again. She was a good job-boss, good as any in the city. Like me, she was independent. Like me, she was in this for herself. Anything she did with the Cog would be in her best interest, not mine. But she had a wider base of contacts, and a better chance of getting Valentine’s attention, through Cacher.

“Sure, thanks.” I held out the Cog again, waiting for her to take it. She didn’t look up, just nodded and motioned to the desk. I set it down and left.

T
OMB HAD SET
up a private zep shuttle from the city up to their estate on the heights. There was a road, but it left the city and traveled twenty miles up the Ebd before crossing at the port town of Toth and winding up into the Thalleon Heights that overlooked the city of Veridon. It was a half-day’s journey in most cases, and the zep was simply quicker and more glamorous. Expensive, too.

The Tomb Estate was a grand place, perched on the side of the Heights that overlooked Veridon’s gentle slopes like a crown on a stony forehead. There were many such estates on the Heights, though not all of them were as dramatically situated as the Tomb. Most of the founding Families had preferred a little more privacy, perhaps more of an escape from the city to their country homes. Elizor Tomb wanted a view of the delta he had helped found, the wide arms of the Ebd and Dunje, the flat plain of the Reine, and all the buildings in between. More buildings now than when he set the first stone in this estate.

Yes, a grand place, and probably one of the last old holdings still in the hands that had built it. The rest of us were just glad to hold onto our seats on the Council and the pared down manors of the city. Most of the old estates that dotted this ridge now belonged to factory bosses and Guild capitalists, along with a bare minority of the Councilorships. Old names weren’t worth much in Veridon anymore, not in the new city, the brave city of cogs hatched by the Church a couple generations ago. The city of my father was passing, with its traditions and lineage, and a new city was breaking through. Old names got you nostalgia and the occasional invitation to parties, and maybe a certain amount of tolerance with the Council and its agencies. And that was the product I sold, to Valentine, to Emily, to anyone who needed it. Someone else’s tolerance, and a name people would recognize, maybe respect.

The crown of the Tomb Estate glowed under us. Night had already fallen, the countryside deep in velvet blackness that hummed with wild insect life, but the estate was lit up like a torch. It was early spring, and the weather was still wildly variable in the city. It was usually cooler up here on the Heights, but tonight was firmly in the grip of a promised summer. Most of the estates were still closed up, but Tomb had brought in the Summer help early, to host tonight’s party. There were stepped balconies that crept down the rock face, and I could see people gathered, musicians playing. We passed over the estate to the landing square. A loose ladder rolled down the zep, and Ensigns clambered across to secure us. A more permanent mooring gate was hauled up, and soon we were debarking.