Empire of Bones (19 page)

Cyrus could hear Father Patrick speaking, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but getting breath into his lungs and blood to his brain. The world was growing blurry. The fingers on Cyrus’s left hand couldn’t quite close on the man’s throat, but they could almost reach the fluttering gills. Almost. Cyrus writhed, trying to get his right hand to the knife handle that was digging into his back. He … couldn’t … quite. He couldn’t even bite the hand over his mouth. He couldn’t uncrush his throat.

Pain. Panic. But pain was a message he could choose to ignore. Panic was the wrong reaction. He had been trained to suppress both.

Cyrus’s feet scrambled, scraping on stone, bracing him against the wall. And then he grabbed the cold arms and jerked his throat and face up even harder against the hands. The world went purple with pain. His eyes felt like they were going to explode. He only needed … an inch.

Cyrus pulled himself harder into the pain. The purple went black and his body was suddenly warm. He threw his left arm up and clawed blindly for the man’s neck. His fingers found the gills. He hooked them down inside, and he tore.

The man barely grunted. He grabbed Cyrus’s left wrist, and his fingers closed around Patricia. Cyrus saw a silver flash and felt the snake strike from his arm. He gulped one breath down his crushed throat, and his right hand found his knife. Still blind, Cyrus stabbed and felt the blade bite deep.

The man’s sharp bark of pain and anger rattled through the room. Fists hit Cyrus’s face, but the blows were weak. Cyrus stabbed again, and the man slumped onto the stone floor beside him.

“Rupe!” Cyrus tried to shout, but his voice was a sandpaper whisper. He rolled onto his knees, coughing, and grabbed at the stone rail. As his vision cleared, he saw the monks below looking up and around at the dark balcony with wide eyes. Father Patrick was uncoiling his golden snake. Rupert held his knife in one hand and one of the black-bladed swords in the other. He looked up, and when he saw Cyrus, relief filled his eyes.

A single black sphere bounced down into the chapel, trailing smoke. The monks all turned. Rupert yelled, leaping away toward the altar.

Boom
.

The blast stayed low. White fire, waist high, swept across the bright tiles, toppling monks, torching robes, and then breaking around pillars and washing up the outer walls. The balcony quivered. Smoke rose up, and rubble rained down. Moving like cats, the black shapes
of Phoenix’s Reborn leapt the rails and dropped among the writhing fiery monks.

Cyrus pulled his knife free and managed to stand. His windpipe felt as small as a straw. Patricia was bigger than normal and trying to coil back around his arm. He grabbed her tail.

“Stay big,” he rasped, and he stepped onto the rail and jumped, swinging Patricia as he fell, aiming for a black shape in the smoke below.

Cyrus punched his feet into the back of a gilled man just before he finished off a burning monk. Then he slammed down onto the hot tiles. The last of his breath was knocked out of him, and his head snapped back against the floor.

He held on to Patricia’s tail, and he could feel her striking, writhing across him. But the smoke was burning his eyes. So he shut them.

Bells were ringing. Big bells. Alarm bells. Cyrus opened his eyes and found that he was staring up through thin smoke at a red painted dragon on a ceiling. Patricia was long and visible, coiled up Cyrus’s right arm and glowing silver in the smoke. Her green eyes were sharp and furious. Her tongue was lashing at the air, blood stained the underside of her jaw, and her body was taut. She
was ready for more. Cyrus coughed, sat up, and coughed some more. Something was very wrong with his throat. And his head. And his eyes and nose were streaming.

A gilled man, one of the Reborn, lay dead beside him, slumped over the smoking body of a monk. Cyrus shifted onto his knees. More dead monks. Lots of dead monks. All of them smoking. He saw Father Patrick in a pool of blood. His snake was gone. He saw the Abbot, sprawled on his back without his legs. Cyrus gagged, but his throat was too tight to throw up.

There were gilled men, too, but not many. Four? Five? And one more on the balcony. No Rupert. No Niffy.

Bells. Ringing. They would be in the spires above the Galleria. They were telling Ashtown that something was wrong, telling everyone to hurry, to hide, to be ready, telling men with guns to race to find the site of an attack … 
here
.

Cyrus spun in a quick circle. He had to leave. Now. Where was Rupert?

“If this goes badly,” Rupert had said, “you know the way out.”

Cyrus hurried to the big main door. It was ajar but only by inches. Cyrus pulled it open and peered out into the long hall with the alcoves. It was empty, but there was blood all over the floor. He could see the narrow entrance to the balcony stairs.

Ignoring his head and gasping for air like a drowning man, Cyrus forced himself to jog.

“Don’t linger,” he could hear Rupert saying. “Get to the plane.”

Cyrus tried to straighten his course. He was drifting toward the walls as he ran. He almost slipped on blood when he reached the first stairs. There was a monk’s body at the top. And another beyond his.

The hall bent, and Cyrus practically tripped over three of the gilled Reborn. They were all dead and their wounds were deep, clean hacks. Cyrus looked away and focused on his route. From here, he had to get below the barns. He knew the way. He could count his steps back.

Fear rattled inside him. He wasn’t going to be able to count back anything. Not now.

“I can,” Cyrus said aloud, but his voice was only a groan. He would get it right. He would. He had to.

Cyrus crashed through a door and into the paths beneath the barn floor. His head was clearing, and his breath was coming a little more easily. Above him, milk was dripping down through a wooden grate. Cyrus could see a monk’s limp hand and the bucket he had dropped. Turning back the way Rupert had brought him, Cyrus staggered into darkness, trying to piece together the string of directions. Dodging pillars through the broad dark room that smelled of hay, he began to chant the
directions aloud. Patricia was still glowing on his arm, but she was shrinking quickly now. Soon she would eat her tail and disappear.

Cyrus reached a door and banged it open, knowing what lay on the other side.

“Twenty-nine stairs down, tread four missing, bridge, fourteen, forty-nine, slight left, ten stairs down, right turn, thirty-three, full left.”

Cyrus trundled down the stairs, hopping the missing tread. At the bottom, he jogged toward the dim shape of the bridge.

Patricia disappeared and darkness swallowed them both. Cyrus didn’t care. He had run in; he could run out. He counted down his steps and left the bridge behind him, entering a tunnel. Dragging his fingertips on the wall, he counted down his steps again and then veered blindly left into an unseen tunnel mouth. Turning sideways, he counted ten blind steps down and then turned right. He pushed himself faster but tried to match the strides he’d used coming in, counting down from thirty-three. He was getting there. He would reach the river tunnel. What had Rupert said? Fifty seconds out through the tunnel into the lake? From there, a quarter-mile swim to the harbor. If Lilly didn’t drop by, Cyrus would steal a boat and head for the plane.

Cyrus slowed, put his arms out, and felt for his full left turn.

Tiny bells jingled in the darkness behind him, and Cyrus froze, holding his breath. Metal legs squealed.

“Cyrus Smith, lad o’ legend,” a familiar voice said. “Go no further. Their nets are ready and waiting for a fresh catch of you.”

A match struck in the darkness and Cyrus turned, staring at the grinning firelit face of a big black-bearded man. A small golden bell hung from each ear. Big Ben Sterling eased himself forward on his two thin metal legs, both of them bending and bouncing beneath his bulk.

“Look at you,” Sterling said, still smiling. “Lad no more. You’ve grown to a right towering man.”

“Stay back,” Cyrus rasped. “I
will
kill you.”

Sterling puffed out his match. In the darkness, Cyrus slid away.

“Is that any way to talk to old Ben?”

Cyrus didn’t answer.

“I understand you might have a grudge or two gnawing on your insides, and I don’t blame you, boy. But I’m just a simple cook who found himself in a difficulty. Don’t forget, old Ben may have done some wrong, but he did save your life.”

Cyrus snorted. He unwound Patricia from his wrist and popped his thumb in her mouth. He held up his glowing silver fist. Sterling’s eyes widened in admiration.

“You saved my life?” Cyrus spat the words and then coughed, trying to widen his throat. “I was tied to a chair
in your cellar. You poisoned this whole place for Phoenix. People died! You killed them!”

Ben’s face grew sorrowful. “I regret that. I do. But I also set out the antidote to that poison and gave you a wink, now didn’t I? I don’t regret that, and I don’t regret leaving your little Quick Water behind to help your sister find you.” He shook his head. “I hoped no one would die, Cyrus Smith. I did indeed. But if I hadn’t ruined that lovely sauce with poison, Phoenix would have killed people I loved. I tried to have it safe every which way and I failed. I did. I’m sorrowful about it, and here I stand to show it.”

Sterling stepped forward, and this time Cyrus didn’t back away. The silver light glinted on the man’s eyes, his teeth, and the little bells in his ears. His black beard shifted light like oil.

“Cyrus Smith,” Sterling said, “I’m showing my sorrow by clattering through these dank spider tunnels to find you. Those bloody green Reborn found your plane after you air-delivered Flint. They’ve had watchers lurking around Ashtown for weeks, but a whole platoon since Rupe managed to thieve your mother from under Bellamy’s nose. The green beasties might answer to Bellamy, but it’s just as likely to be the other way round. They’re all filth regardless.” Sterling’s lip curled, and he sniffed disgust. His ear bells jingled. “I’d hoped Greeves would be with you, but as he’s not, he’s either dead already or
playing fox to those green gilled man-hounds. If you want out of Ashtown, you’ll follow the old cook with no legs.”

Cyrus licked his lips. The cook’s smile widened.

“There’s some who might not trust old Ben,” Sterling said. “But you can, Cyrus Smith. You can trust me with your life. If I wanted harm done to you, it would have been done long ago when that scareder, younger you was tied up in my cellar and my poisoned sauce was dropping bodies all around Ashtown.”

“How do you know about the plane?” Cyrus asked. “How did you know to find me down here?”

“A cook rises early,” Sterling said. “I saw your plane. I saw Flint drop. I saw you blaze away across the lake.” He smiled. “And I know Rupert Greeves. I know him well. He wouldn’t set a clatter at the front door unless he was coming in the back.”

“But the tunnels,” Cyrus said. “How did you know we’d come in here?”

“How many unguarded doors into Ashtown do you think there are?” Sterling asked. “Not many. The Avengel would know them, and so does an old smuggler turned cook. I was creeping in and out of Ashtown when I was just a wee two-legged Acolyte,
importing
things that may not have been strictly permitted on the Estate. There are other routes, but you were coming from the water and Rupert Greeves wasn’t likely to risk the Crypto zoo.”

“Phoenix’s men,” Cyrus said. “The Reborn. How did they get in?”

Sterling’s eyes narrowed, and his smile disappeared. “They’re not that bold yet. They keep to the outskirts. Bellamy Cook and his regular old-fashioned human thugs are the worst you’ll find inside the walls. Those gillies will be waiting at your plane, as sure as sunshine, they will.” Sterling winked. “But Big Ben is here to warn you.”

Cyrus’s mouth hung open. Sterling really didn’t know what had just happened? Hot anger surged up into Cyrus’s aching head. He tried to shout, and his voice rasped like it was passing through a saw in his throat.

“Where do you think I was?” Cyrus yelled. “What do you think just happened? The alarm bells were ringing! Phoenix’s Reborn just firebombed a Brendanite chapel and murdered almost everybody. The Abbot is dead! Most of the monks are dead. Father Patrick the Cryptkeeper was there, but now he’s dead, too.”

Sterling’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “The gillies? Inside? Not Bellamy’s thugs? You’re sure?”

Cyrus chewed back his anger, and his words came out hard, like stones. “Gills. Eyes like lizards. Bone tattoos. One had me by the throat. Yeah. I’m sure.”

Sterling hissed through his teeth; then he looked up and down the narrow stone passage, his bells jingling against his beard as his head turned.

“Rupert?” Sterling asked.

“I don’t know,” Cyrus said. “But his body wasn’t there.” Cyrus moved to the tunnel mouth that led to the stairs, that he knew would take him down to the river. “I have to go. Rupe told me to get to the plane.”

Sterling shook his head. “The harbor is swarming. I told you they found your plane. An ambush will be waiting. But if the Reborn are inside, you need to be outside these walls, lad, and that quicker than quick.”