Tim Akers - Heart of Veridon

“Like he was a Family guy. Someone’s important son?”

“Right. He gave me the box and told me it needed to go to Tomb. At the party. He said you needed to do the job.”

“You were really looking out for me there, Em.” I kept my voice as even as I could. “Really watching my back.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry. You’re pretty good at handling yourself. I figured it was some Council thing. Some… political statement.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So. Angela Tomb gets me up on the Heights, then tries again at the Manor.” I remembered the troop of soldiers outside my door up on the Heights. I hadn’t given that much thought, what with all the bloodletting and falling out of windows. What had they been doing there? They couldn’t have found Prescott or the Artificers, then rushed to arrest me on basic assumption. “So what does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” Emily shrugged. “Honestly. I could be wrong about the whole thing.”

“Well. We’ll see. Anything else, Emily? Anything I should know?”

She shook her head, kind of sadly. “Nothing else.”

“Where does that leave us? Angela Tomb wants me alive, then she shoots me.” I leaned over and took the Cog from Wilson and held it in my palm. “And lots of people want this. How many groups are we talking about? Tomb. Whoever’s pushing the Badge around from inside the Council. Whoever paid Pedr to break into my room. Someone sent that gun up to the Heights, that wasn’t Angela. Sloane, we know he visited Emily after I left the Cog with her. And his name’s on that list, along with Angela, Marcus, and Wellons.” I looked up. “Lotta folks interested in us.”

“What do we do?” Wilson asked.

“I don’t know. Hide some more. Dig up some information about this thing. Why everyone wants it. Figure out who we’re up against, and why.” I slipped the Cog into my coat pocket and stood up. “But first, we hide.”

We moved at night, down the Prior Grosse and into the Long March wards. I was careful of the sky, dashing between buildings and staying to the narrow alleyways. We followed the terraces down towards the Reine, where the streets covered generations of pipework and history. We went down to the cisterns.

Walking through the old avenues reminded me of home. We were uncomfortably close to the Burn family grounds. Tomb was near the top of Veridon, but great old Burn made his lands farther from the thick walls of the old city. I saw the eternal lights of Tower Burn looming in crimson stained glory over the other buildings on its terrace. I hurried on.

Emily drew up beside me. She had her hands in her pockets. Wilson was a shadow behind us.

“Jacob, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to go like this.”

I kept my eyes forward. “Sure. You had your reasons for doing things.”

“No, I mean it.” She plucked at the sleeve of my coat, an irritated gesture. “Don’t get all noble on me. It was a gamble, but I figured you were up to it. I figured that if the Tombs were involved, well.” She shrugged. “That’s just the sort of job you were born for, isn’t it?”

“Born and raised. But next time you gamble with my skin, lady, maybe let me know.”

“You might have turned down the job.”

“I might have. But I might have gone in better prepared. When did it occur to you that Tomb might be trying to get a hold of me, Em? When those men came looking for me, in your office? When the Badge chased me out of your apartment?” I turned to look at her. Her face was pale, like winterglass. “Was it when you sent me into the Manor Tomb, to fetch that Cog?”

“No!” she hissed. She turned her shoulders to me. Her face was pale, sure, but it was anger. She slammed her finger into my ribs. “Damn it, no. I wouldn’t sell you out like that. If I thought it, before then, if I thought it was a trap… who else has been with you since the start, Jacob Burn? Since you fell from your fancy house? Valentine? Cacher? Old Man Burn? No, cogsdammit, it’s me. If you ever, ever once, accuse me of selling out on you I’ll gut you and hang your noble god damn head on my wall. Emily Haskin doesn’t sell out her people.”

We had stopped walking. Wilson disappeared, probably scrabbling up some wall to get away.

“Okay, Em. Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

She balled her fist and lay her knuckles lightly against my jaw line, then let her nails brush my cheek.

“Forgotten.”

She marched down the road, disappearing between two buildings while I stood, my hands still in my pockets, the lightning burn of her touch traced across my face. Wilson was back. He patted me on the shoulder as he went by.

“This is good, the two of you. It’s good.”

“Shut up.”

He laughed, a sound like an ungreased winch, breaking.

“Just shut up.”

Veridon was a city of terraces, streets and avenues that crossed canals, canals that became aqueducts and then tunnels and pipes. There were locks that raised and lowered the domesticated rivers of the city. Waterfalls spilled into plazas, fed pools that drained into cisterns which in turn burst out at lower terraces to rush in torrents along bricked canals through the streets. River and tunnel, the flow and the fall, but everywhere there was water, rushing and collecting, in deep stagnant pools or wild torrents, driven by gravity or muscled along by ancient pumps that seemed to pre-date the city on their shoulders.

The city had settled in layers over this veinwork of water, leveling out and spreading further toward the shore. Parts of Veridon extended far into the river Reine, held up by piers and pillars that kept the lower wards from sinking into the water. A brisk trade was done there, on the river beneath the city, tarblackened boats with shuttered lamps creeping in to secret docks beneath nondescript buildings. I rode those boats, in the messy, early days of my exile. Before Emily, and Valentine.

The truly secret places of the city, though, were higher up. Between the streets and the stones were hundreds of miles of cisterns, piped canals, aqueducts that had been strapped down with bridge after building until there was no daylight to reach their grimy currents.

We hid ourselves in the guts of the city. It took hours to find the right place, somewhere that had been abandoned by the service crews and criminals alike. We ended up on a stone pier that stretched into a cistern, the water deep and still, the walls smooth stone that echoed with our voices. It made us feel less alone. It was hard to believe that the city had ever been this low, or the river this high. We collapsed on the pier, wrapped ourselves in jackets, and slept like the dead. When I woke up the tip of my nose was frigid, and my back was stiff. Acceptable, for a man who should have died twice in as many weeks. Three times, if you count the Glory.

Wilson had already left. I spun up the frictionlamp to find his coat in a rumpled heap, the rest of his belongings carefully stashed in notches along the wall. Emily was asleep nearby, breathing quietly. I crept over to Wilson’s things and searched them carefully. There were bottles and envelopes of dust, a glass rod that was warm to the touch and seemed to vibrate against my fingernail, other mysterious things that could have been tiny machines or just rare insects, killed and dried. His shortrifle was there, loaded. He had taken that wicked knife.

“He went out, about an hour ago. Said he needed something. Instruments or whatnot,” Emily said. She had turned to face me, her eyes puffy with sleep. “Said he’d be back in a few hours.”

“Maybe he’ll bring us some dinner. Though I’m not sure I look forward to discovering the joys of anansi appetite.” I returned Wilson’s things to their proper place.