Dead of Veridon (14 page)

"Kindly forward the citations to the Council, officer. Or just forget about them. I don't really care. Whichever is easier for you," she said, giving the man the briefest of nods. "And see that Mr. Burn's possessions are sent to him. Especially his revolver. I feel that the gentleman will have need of his revolver."

"He wasn't armed, ma'am," he said. Angela turned to me, her eyebrows arched.

"Jacob. That is so unlike you. It's as if I didn't know you at all."

"Believe me," I said, thinking of the iron girl's party trick hands, and the scattered bits of my weapon clattering off the floor. "It wasn't intentional."

"Well. I'm sure that's something we can correct."

And with that we swept out of the room, and on into the street. Arm in arm. Just like we were children again, and not at all like we actually were.

Chapter Seven

The Silent Garden

H
ER CARRIAGE WAS
waiting for us in the street outside. I saw good old Matthew on my way to the door, sitting stiffly behind a desk. He watched us go with a look of complete calm on his face, but his fists were clenched on his desk. I tried not to smile.

I felt a lot less like smiling once I was sitting in the carriage, alone with Angela. The interior had been modified to account for the Lady's peculiar form. Most of the compartment was open, with buckles that unceremoniously secured the bulk of the formal engine to the floor. What little space remained was given over to a padded bench. Once we were all as comfortable as we were going to get, Angela drew the curtains and then closed her eyes. The carriage lurched forward. I hung on to the bench and watched the Lady Tomb. She showed no interest in conversation, so I let my mind wander.

There were some cracks in my usual cheery, optimistic demeanor. Starting off with a morning swim among the dead had done little for my happiness, but it was the things that happened since that disturbed me the most. I've spent years getting into the kind of trouble you can shoot your way out of, and our friends from the river seemed, at their most basic level, to be that sort of trouble. There were probably more complicated problems behind them, but the straight-forward situation of a horde of living dead monsters crawling out of the river and ransacking the city could be handled with skills that I was very adept at deploying. I wasn't going to lose any sleep over that. Some teeth, maybe. But no sleep.

What bothered me more was what might be behind these attacks, and what various people in the city seemed to know about them. Take our friend Matthew, for example. Nevermind that he thought I was involved in some grand conspiracy. That's just a Badge thing. Ever since the trouble I got into with the Academy and the Algorithm two years ago, it had become a hobby of certain elements within the Badge to blame me for anything that stumped them. So let's just pretend that bias is shining through. The other stuff he said though, about the device and the fire at the docks, that I didn't like. Because of course there had been a device that Crane gave me. I didn't set it off, and it didn't start any fires, but it was a pretty good bet that whatever was in that canister had something to do with the Fehn and their newly discovered love of murder. Matthew said he had been in contact with the people who created that device. If that was true, then I'd give anything to have a conversation of my own with those people. Badge probably had them locked away, or hidden in some safehouse, depending on whether or not they were cooperating.

For all that Matthew claimed secret knowledge about the device and its origins, he didn't seem to know anything about what had actually happened at the docks that morning. Both he and the clipboard man seemed to believe that the device had started a fire that had swept through the docks, killing all sorts of people. Didn't seem to know about the cog-dead at all, or the fact that units of Badgemen were gunning down ships that were trying to get to shore. Didn't speak well for his knowledge. Unless he was lying about that, but why would that be? I was there, wasn't I? Not like he had to hide those events from one of the witnesses. Led me to think he didn't know that stuff, which led me to wonder why he didn't know what the Badge was doing.

And that brought us to Angela. To say that we weren't friendly was a social grace. A lot of the horrible things that happened to me two years ago were at her hand, at least indirectly. It was her greed for power that had brought some of that trouble into the city, and her unwillingness to share the secrets that might lead to that power that had got me so deeply involved. If there was anyone I blamed for Emily dying, it was Angela. So, no. We weren't on friendly terms.

Everything she did, though, she did for a reason. As long as I had a handle on her reasons, I could stay clear of her doings. Angela Tomb would always act in the best interest of her family, and then the other Founder Families, and then the Council as a whole. It was the Council that gave her power in the city, it was her alliances with the other Founders that gave her power in the Council. And without her family, well, it was doubtful Angela would even be alive today. I looked over at her limp form, pinned in place by the glittering tower that traveled up her spine, the thin wires that burrowed into her skin, the slack curve of her jaw. Not sure she was even alive now, honestly. But that's the Tomb family way.

I sat back on my bench and closed my eyes. Too much going on. I never liked the job for Crane, but I didn't think it would end up here. I wanted nothing to do with trouble in the Council, and I wanted less to do with Angela Tomb. Best thing I could do was open the door, roll out of the carriage, and disappear into the city. Somehow, I didn't think it would be that easy to step away from this one. Not yet, at least.

When I opened my eyes, Angela was staring at me. I nodded at her.

"Getting my beauty rest," I muttered.

"That never works for me, anymore," she said. "Tell me, Jacob. Is there anything I should know about your involvement in this? Before we go any further."

"You're asking if I'm working for Crane?"

She shrugged, a motion made difficult by the wires in her back. "I'm asking you to give me a reason to trust you. I'm asking you to put everything on the table, so that later on I'm not forced to make a decision that neither of us will enjoy."

"Oh," I said, nodding. "This is a threat. Good. I was getting a little worried about you."

"It isn't a threat. You're not a man I need to threaten. We both know how I fix problems, especially ones that I'm not expecting. Is there anything that I should expect, Jacob?"

I looked across the carriage at her, listened to the wheels grind across cobbles, felt the heat washing off the engine at my back. Tried not to shiver at the emptiness of her eyes.

"You know I'm not a man you need to threaten," I conceded. She lingered for a second, then turned her head as though she were looking out the shuttered window.

"Fair enough," she said.

"Fair enough," I agreed.

Fortunately, we didn't have to sit in the silence that followed our display of neighborly love for too long. The carriage changed gear and rattled to a halt. Without looking at me, Angela undid the clasps that held her in place, then unfolded the extra wide door and slid out of the compartment. All I could see past the shimmering bulk of her formal engine was darkness. I set my shoulders and got out.

We were in the dank confines of a stable. There were several carriages tucked into parking berths against the near wall, facing several empty pens. The horses were gone, although the sweet stink in the air hinted at that being a recent absence. Behind us, two stablehands were pulling down the garage door with a clatter. Once the door was down, we were wrapped in darkness. I stood still as my eyes adjusted. The deeper shadow of Angela Tomb brushed against me.

"Like when we were kids, Jacob?" she asked. Her voice was strangely giddy. She breathed deeply and then sighed, a strange sound coming from lungs of brass and leather. "Sneaking off to the stables while the grown-ups danced."

"Long time ago, Ange," I whispered. "Where are we?"

"So anxious." She wrapped her fingers around my hand. "Stand with me for a minute, will you?"

Not sure what was making her so melancholy. For a woman who wouldn't have cared if I lived or died two weeks ago, she was awfully interested in reliving our childhood all of a sudden. I was uncomfortably aware of the driver, the stableboys. Whoever else might be out there in the darkness. Aware of the formal engine, too, huffing air into her body and venting steam and a smell like refrigerated meat. I pried my fingers loose and sighed.

"Where are we, Angela?" I asked again.

Silence. Several people moving around the room, shifting nervously, unbuckling straps or sweeping floors. Other feet, too, in other rooms.

"Can we get some light in here?" Angela asked. As if waiting for the command, several frictionlamps whirred up to brilliant life. I blinked in the sudden light.

Everything I had seen before, but more people. In the wall in front of our carriage, there was a short staircase leading up to a door. Several guards stood on the stairs, and another stood directly in front of the door. Two more guards had stepped from the empty pens. I saw that the stableboys were actually grown men, and were armed as well. I didn't recognize the livery of their uniforms, but they looked like more than thugs in fancy dress. Lot of iron in this room. I began to regret not stopping for a revolver of my own. I turned to Angela. She was looking at me expectantly. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't get. After a second her eyes softened and she looked around the room.

"This is the garage of a building on Owens, near the Lamplight. It used to be a private residence. One of the older buildings in Veridon, actually." She sniffed the air and grimaced. "Seen better days. It's changed hands many times, has been many things. Until recently it was acting as a rent house, owned by one of the minor families in the Council." Again she sniffed and gave me a look. "Industrialists."

"Until recently," I repeated, ignoring her comment about industrialists.

She nodded and motioned toward the stairs. The guards cleared the way and she swept forward, her hundred tiny, piston-like feet performing with an agility I would not have expected. Soon as she opened the door I smelled that familiar smell. Butcher-shop, tinged with dust.

Other than the smell, the house looked normal enough. Shabby, but you could still see the glory of its early days. A lot of care had been put into the decorations on the door lintels, in the crown molding and the baseboards. A lot of detail, a lot of hand carving. The floorboards were broad and brightly polished, laid in tightly woven carpet runners. However old this house was, and the boards still didn't creak. Good construction. The Manor Burn was full of creaky old floors and loose doors, but we had a special kind of neglect that we applied to our holdings. At least people were living in this place.

Or had been. The first body was down the hall, his feet in the hallway, the rest of him stretched out in a tiny kitchen. His hands were clutched around his face. The guards, I noticed, stayed in the garage. It was just me and Angela. We went down the hallway to the kitchen, stepping through a doorway that had been burst in from the outside. Other numbered doors opened to either side of the kitchen, and I saw other hallways, other kitchens. Some of it looked like new construction, like the recent owners had taken large rooms and cut them into smaller ones. We stopped by the dead man's feet, Angela hanging back a little to let me get a good look.

There was something wrong with the body. Hard to say at first. Dead bodies never looked right to me. Always bent in some inhuman way, their faces horribly twisted or impossibly peaceful, considering the state of the rest of their body. They always had such stillness to them. It was hard to get used to.

It was the hands. I glanced back at Angela, but her eyes were fixed on the body. I squatted to get a closer look. They were bumpy. No. They were bumps. The hands were made up of small, rice-sized lozenges of flesh-colored... something. I took a penknife from my pocket and touched it to the dead man's hand. His skin dissolved like a sandcastle, hissing as it slid to the floor. I stood up, probably quicker than was necessary.

"What happened to him?"

Angela nodded back to the body. The dissolution had continued, even accelerated. A hissing pile of dead skin was sloughing off both hands. When it got to his face, other things began to slide free of the carcass. Beetles, dry and dead and hollow of life. Without realizing it, I was behind Angela, one hand on the reassuring metal bulk of the formal engine. By the time the little horror show on the floor ended, both hands and part of the face were gone. Several dozen dead beetles had worked their way free, and were now lying on the floor around the body.