Tim Akers - Heart of Veridon

“These are unusual questions, Jacob.”

“You wouldn’t believe.” We were near the river Reine, two doors down from a publicly accessible basement pier on Water Street. One of the few contact points with the Fehn. People came here to visit lost relatives or trade with the people of the river. What they needed with money, I was never sure. Then again, they sometimes demanded more exotic pay for the treasures they dredged. “But what do you know about it?”

He gestured to the pistol I had laying on the table, the one from the Glory.

“You think it’s the real thing?”

“I think someone’s trying to scare me, or warn me. And the people who would want to do that?” I leaned back in my chair and looked the dead guy square in his milky eyes. “Those kind of people would take the time and effort to get the genuine article.”

He nodded, then picked up the pistol in both hands, touching it only with his fingertips.

“We were contracted, of course. You know that. The Council hired us to recover the wreckage, for their memorial. This would have been part of that.”

“And all that material, all the wreckage, it went to the Council.”

He nodded. “The bodies as well. We kept our percentage.”

“Some of the victims have joined the Fehn?” I asked. It would help to be able to talk to some of them. Maybe talk to Marcus. “Was there a guy named Marcus among them?”

“Marcus, Marcus. The name is familiar, but he was not among our tithe. Those we took have not hatched yet, if you mean to interrogate them.”

“Maybe. But if Marcus isn’t among them, there’s no point. So you think this pistol is the real thing, maybe taken from the wreckage for the memorial?”

“Unless someone paid one of us to steal it. Unlikely.”

“But could that happen? Enough money or shiny beads or whatever you people trade in, someone could ask for a specific thing?” I leaned forward. “Get one of you to fetch it?”

“Fetch.” He curled his lip. “Fetch. Yes, I suppose. If it were important.”

“How would I find out? If this had been… retrieved. And who paid to have it done?”

“The way you talk about these people, it seems they would pay a great deal to have it done. And a great deal more to keep that transaction from public eyes.”

I sniffed, then regretted it. He smelled like stagnant water and the sickness of swamps.

“How do I find out?”

He waved his hand, spreading the fingers like a fan. “Is that all this is about? This gun? Really, Jacob, you’re usually so much more interesting than this.”

“It’s important, Morgan. I can pay.”

“No, Jacob. You can’t. Just because we live in the river doesn’t mean we don’t hear things. And you’ve been making a lot of noise. The Council, Valentine, some of the Founding Families.” He drank a long and slow glass of water, savoring my discomfort as much as the slosh. “I was looking forward to this discussion, Jacob. I thought you might come to me for something interesting. This?” He tapped the revolver, then shook his head.

“There’s more than this involved, Wright. Your old buddies, they’re in on it, too.”

He paused, just as he was reaching for the pitcher to refill his glass. Just a second’s hesitation, then he completed the action. When he set the pitcher down, he stared at me with cold eyes.

“The concerns of the Church are much deeper than this. You can’t claim to have caught the attention of the Algorithm, Jacob. Unless there’s much more to this than I’ve heard.”

“Do the Church concerns include angels, Wright Morgan?” I picked up the pistol. “There’s something in the city. Hunting.”

“How dramatic,” he said glibly, but he had the glass halfway to his lips, and showed no sign of moving it.

“A friend of mine, an anansi familiar with the Artificer’s Guild, says it looks like a cross between the cogwork of the Church and the Artificer’s biotics. It’s killing people, and it’s looking for something. Looking for me, too.”

“Well.” He set his glass down, then rubbed the slack skin around his eyes. “Your friend is a heretic, comparing the holy pattern of the Algorithm to those Artificers and their damn beetles.” Drink. “But he has a lot correct, as well. The pattern, as manifest in the seedcoin, is the body of God. Longing for the pattern in us. Together, we are becoming something more complex. More beautiful.”

“Minus the theology.”

“Cog needs blood, and it needs our mind.” When he talked I could barely see the writhing pool of flat, black worms that replaced his organs, squirming at the back of his throat. “That is the layman’s version.”

“So this Angel?” I asked.

He crossed his arms and stared just above my shoulder. Several long drinks later, he refilled the glass from his pitcher and then steepled his fingers.

“That interests me,” he said.

He was quiet for several moments, not even drinking. When he spoke, his voice was still, like a deep pool.

“I had heard, of course. The events at the Manor Tomb have been spinning the rumor mill. To think, another of the Brilliant would visit us, all this time later.”

“Another?”

“Camilla. Jacob, you know your books.” He was reproachful, disappointed. “Her gifts raised the city up. I wonder what this visit portends.”

“Camilla’s a story, Morgan. A parable.” I took a drink of water, to fit in.

“A story? A story.” His voice rose gradually, like the tide. “Scripture, Jacob. Truth. True enough to end worship of those ghosts.”

The Church liked to bring up the usurpation of the spiritual reign of the Celestes whenever possible. Especially in the company of the Founding Families, who held the ethereal creatures holy for the longest time, held out against the encroachment of the Algorithm. My childhood home had been littered with the Icons of the Celestes, hidden away whenever Churchmen were to visit.

“Not even your own Master Wrights acknowledge that story anymore. Camilla is an origin myth, a convenient vehicle to describe the Church’s ascendancy, and its mastery of the Cog. A child of the Angels, really? No one believes that’s real anymore.”

“The child?” he asked, a grin leaking across his face. “Or the Angels?”

I grimaced. “Two weeks ago, no one believed in Angels.”

“Of course not.” Morgan sniffed, a strange sound in a river-logged head. “Such an enlightened age for Veridon. Clearly absurd to think she was the child of Angels. Right?” Drink, a messy slurp that drained his glass and sucked air. “Because then there would be such a thing as Angels. Which brings us, Jacob, back to your question. What was it, again? What did you want to ask me?”

Morgan’s bond to the Algorithm may have dissolved when his boat capsized and his life washed away so many years ago, but it was clear they still had his loyalty. Strange, but it was probably that fierce devotion that kept him so animate. So many of the Fehn simply faded into the dark current of the Reine, bumping against the piers and scaring children.

Still, he had me. Deny as I may, the problem at hand was an Angel. Mythic or not, propaganda or not, I had seen it twice and killed it once. It was real.

“Yes, okay,” I said, shifting in my seat. “Okay. But it wasn’t just at the Manor. I saw it before, a couple days ago. Up on the Heights.”

“The Heights?” he asked. “The Tombs again? What have they done to attract its attention?”

“That’s what I’m looking into. Though, to be honest, he seemed pretty interested in me. In something I have.”

“I am an old man, Jacob, and dead. Stop playing around with me. What do you have, and what do you know?” He leaned forward. “I can’t help you out if you’re not honest with me.”