The Drowned Vault (32 page)

“Finally!” Horace said. “Some initiative!” He pulled his napkin from his shirt, dabbed at his mouth, and stood up. “Shall we go, then?”

Cyrus was staring at Robert Boone, and Robert Boone was staring back—or Cyrus assumed he was. He could have been asleep behind the creases around his eyes.

“Sorry about the bowl, Mrs. Boone,” Cyrus said.

“Perfectly fine, honey,” Sadie said behind him. “Break one over his head if you need to.”

“Well?” said Cyrus.

Robert Boone smirked. “You got the blood, kid. But you gonna fly this plane yourself?”

“If I have to,” Cyrus said. “But I’m pretty sure everyone is coming with me. Jeb can fly it, if he wants.”

“Am I invited on this warpath?”

“Do you have another plane?” said Cyrus. “We might need two.”

“All right, little chief,” said Mr. Boone. “You got me.

Where to?”

Cyrus opened his mouth, but he didn’t have an answer. He looked at his brother.

“I’m not sure about the Gil guy,” Dan said. “Just Phoenix, and that’s a little general, locationwise.”

Cyrus looked around the kitchen, his eyes drifting out of focus. His mind was racing. No, it was tumbling down a flight of stairs completely out of control. Where would they go? Rupert would know, but … maybe Diana would … Dan? Could Dan be in charge? He shook his head at the thought. He needed Antigone. He needed to talk all of this through with her. Even if he could just see her … He blinked in surprise. He
could
see her.

The Quick Water. Antigone had said his half was in his pack. If she was alive, Antigone would have hers. She’d remember. But there was a good chance Gil would have taken it from her. So maybe he couldn’t see Antigone, but he could see the man who had taken her. Would
that help? Would he even be able to tell where Gil was? No, but …

The kitchen returned to focus. Even Rupert had gone looking for help.

“Where’s the Captain?” Cyrus asked. “Are Nolan and Arachne here?”

Sadie handed Cyrus a fat slice of cold apple pie on a plate. “Boone wanted the transmortals to eat in their rooms,” she said. “And you need to eat something, too, honey.”

“Hey, now,” Boone said, raising his hands. “Under the circumstances, transmortals won’t be dining at my table for some time, even if …”

Cyrus was already walking toward the stairs, wolfing the pie. Diana was right behind him. Dan jumped off his bench and jogged to catch up. When they were gone, Robert Boone looked around the room. He nudged Jeb.

“Little hard on him, Pa,” Jeb said. “Given what he’s going through.”

“Hard?” Boone asked. “Nah. I like that kid. Born to trouble. Hard is what he’ll be when he’s passed through this valley he’s in. Hard … or dead.”

seventeen
EVERY WHICH WAY

C
YRUS REACHED
the bedroom door and stopped. There was a padlock on the handle.

“Wow,” Diana said. “Sorry. I’ll try to find the key.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Cyrus. He was already slipping Patricia off his neck. A moment later, the padlock was off and he’d thrown the door open. Nolan and Arachne looked up from the carpeted floor inside. Nolan was eating scrambled eggs; Arachne hadn’t touched her plate. She was sitting primly with her legs crossed and her spider bag in her lap.

“Where’s the Captain?” Cyrus asked.

Nolan nodded at another door. “Bathroom,” he said. “Been in there awhile.”

Cyrus crossed to the door and knocked hard.

“Hey!” He gripped the handle. “John Smith! We need to talk.” Cyrus pushed and the door swung in. Steam billowed as Cyrus stepped inside.

Captain John Smith was sprawled on the floor. He was on his side, bare-chested, and his shirt was dangling
over a towel rack like he’d washed it and set it out to dry. His breastplate was in the dry bathtub and glistening gold—a tube of metal polish sat on the edge of the tub beside blackened rags. His coat was on the floor as well, and the buttons gleamed.

The Captain had his chained left hand hooked into the toilet bowl. Steam was rising up around his wrist, and his chest was heaving. The chain ran down to where iron Vlad III was leering on the floor.

Cyrus jumped forward, and Dan and Diana followed. Together they rolled the limp Captain onto his back and fished his hand out of the steaming toilet. His eyes were shut tight, and his skin was slick with sweat. The chain was hot around his wrist, and his skin was badly blistered.

“Bloody heat,” the Captain muttered into his beard. “Bastard nighly molt his last shackle.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you okay?” Cyrus asked. “Can you stand?”

“Can I stand? Child, away!” the Captain shouted. He pushed Cyrus back, then grabbed the toilet bowl and the sink and heaved himself to his feet. Vlad rolled behind him. Above his wide belt, his belly and chest were thick with hair except in a sharp bald triangle over his heart—there, his flushed skin visibly quaked with his pulse. He rolled his head slowly, moaning, his chest hair clinging to his square beard like straggling Velcro.

“I have a plan,” Cyrus said. “Sort of. But I need help. Have you read Sun Tzu?”

The Captain squinted. Centuries-old lines jutted out from the corners of his brown eyes—eyes that had hardened long ago, staring at the sea and sun. “A right tick, that one. A blood-suckling eel.”

“I mean, you were a general or something, right? You planned battles?”

“Admiral,” the Captain said. He seemed to have oiled his square beard and slimed his mustache into heavy curling loops at both ends. Cyrus looked at the counter around the sink. Two small bottles of hair conditioner were empty and missing their caps. Cyrus opened his mouth, but clicked it back shut. It didn’t matter what the man did with hair conditioner. Not right now.

“Grab your shirt and get out here,” Cyrus said, backing through the door. “I need a strategy.”

“A stratagem?” the Captain asked. “Aye. That you do.”

John Smith snatched his shirt off the towel rack and picked his gold breastplate up out of the tub. “From plotter’s clay, the plotter’s hands shall soon beget a plot unseen. Lead me to thy plottery wheel! Ha!”

“Um …,” said Cyrus. “Well, just come out here.”

Dennis and Jax and Horace had come into the room and joined the others, sitting on the floor. Cyrus paced as the Captain worked himself back into his shirt—he had
sliced the left sleeve open in order to get Vlad through it. When he had the shirt on, he let the chain dangle, and Vlad rested on the floor. Then he began buffing the breastplate in his hands.

“Okay,” said Cyrus. “We have to find a way to deal with Phoenix and Gil at the same time.”

“That sounds nightmarish,” Nolan said.

“How many regenerations has this Phoenix seen?” the Captain asked. “Has anyone glimpsed him? Do we ken his scale and his heft?”

Everyone stared at the Captain.

“Not a real Phoenix,” said Nolan. “A man called Phoenix.”

The Captain seemed befuddled. “Is he transmortaled then? Undead? Undying?”

Arachne looked up. “He has the cloak, John. And has worn it for many years.”

“The Odyssean Cloak!” The Captain sputtered his lips into his slick mustache. “That cursed cloth, and from your hands, weaver!”

“It served you well,” Arachne said quietly.

“ ‘Well,’ you say? Devils have treated me with better love.”

“I could not weave it as I was told,” Arachne said. “Things would have been much worse if I had.”

“Wait,” Cyrus said. “You wove the Odyssean Cloak? The white coat Phoenix wears?”

“Who else could?” Arachne asked. “Odysseus demanded that I weave him a cloth that would make him stronger than any man and more cunning than the craftiest serpent, that would give him immortality like the gods, but an immortality which he could shrug off when he finally wished to die. He began killing my spiders until I let him bind me with his oath. I did as I swore, but not the way he desired.”

Dennis Gilly’s eyes were wide. “At Ashtown! When Phoenix took off his coat, he became a beast! We all saw him.”

Arachne nodded. “The cloak bonds to its master. When it is worn, a man is clever and cunning and unable to die—though he is as strong or weak as he was when he put it on. When it is taken off, he loses all cunning but becomes as powerful as one of the ancient apes.”

“So get his coat off,” Horace said. “And then shoot him.”

Arachne shook her head. “He has worn it too long. His only life is in the cloth. The cloak must be destroyed. Burn it, and he will burn.”

Cyrus nodded. He knew that already. He and his sister had burned one arm off the coat on a kitchen stove in Ashtown. Phoenix had lost his hand.

John Smith finally sat down. “That cloak was my undoing, too, alas, and shame to my folly. I donned it to
gain cunning in my war with the dragons. I did not know I would become a beast when I laid it down.”

Dennis’s eyes sparkled with unhidden awe. “That’s why you were Buried?”

“One part to the blend of my damnation.” The Captain sighed. “I wore it too long. Once I learned that I could not shed the cloak and remain a man, I asked Arachne to unweave a corner for me, and I bound it into myself, above my lifeblood, forever.” He pulled open his shirt, revealing the bald triangular scar above his heart. Then he flicked his shirt closed again and began to buckle on his breastplate. “Undying, wily as the serpent, desperate for victory, I broke the oath of a Blood Avenger—I knelt beneath dark sorceries.” The Captain stared down at his breastplate. “Better that I still slept entombed.”

“Dark sorceries?” Jax asked.

The room waited in silence. Horace cleared his throat. “Technically, Captain, you have never been convicted of any wrongdoing.”

The Captain snorted. “God Almighty, lawyer, I covenanted with the serpents. I need no jury to speak. By the thinnest chance, three Keepers encaged the great Radu Bey while hunting another. When I arrived, they had all been killed, but he was not yet free. And I saw how I could end myself and the dragons. I soul-bonded myself to him as a brother. I gave him my very hearts-blood for his spell and swore he would be as unchained as
I, if only he betrayed but one Dracul—his hated brother, the Impaler.”

John Smith raised the iron head by its chain. His jaw was set, and his hard eyes angry. “I found the Vlads where Radu promised. And I professed my trans-mortality and begged to be slave-bound to their
Ordo
.” The Captain drew his sword, and everyone in the room inched back from the flashing steel. “With this ancient blade, gift of the dragon gods of their fathers, they pricked their bloods. They spoke the spells to make me thrall—a Smith as slave to play their fool. And they passed the bloody blade to me, to plunge into my heart.

“But I was already twinned to Radu; my hands could wield the Dracul blade with Dracul power just as they could. With it, I took their heads. And I gave their bodies to a witch’s black flames in a secret place.” He looked directly at Cyrus, and Cyrus couldn’t help squirming. His throat had tightened while he listened, and the stinging in the cut on his throat reawakened.

“Blood can ne’er be unspilt; oaths can ne’er be unbroken,” the Captain said. “My soul was stained. I’d accrued guilt enow. Radu was Buried on a pillar in a cave. And I, as much dragon as he, sent myself into the sea, as anchor to his freedom.”

“Sic semper draconis,”
Cyrus said quietly. “Thus always to dragons.”

For a moment, the room watched the Captain in
silence. He sheathed his sword, then coiled Vlad’s chain around his forearm and tucked the iron head into the crook of his arm.

Cyrus looked down and saw that his knee was bouncing. He had his plan. He had the whats and the whys and almost all the hows.

The door opened and Alan Livingstone eased his blond bulk into the room. George and Silas slipped in behind him and stood at his sides. Alan sniffed with his stitched nostril and then scratched his beard. “Is this the council of war?” he asked.

Horace tucked his thumbs into his vest. “A confession, more like. Our friend, the Captain, has himself a heavy conscience.”

The Livingstones all looked confused, but Cyrus didn’t try to explain. He moved right into his plan.