Another long silence. Sounds of fighting drifted down through pipes and duct ways, distant and tiny in this crowded room.
“I remember your grandfather,” he said. “Or his father. It’s hard to keep track. We built this lovely city, out here on the edge of the world. Built it on the bones of old gods, among mysteries and wonders.” The voicebox rumbled. “I wasn’t a Tomb then, either. Walking, that’s the name I was born with.”
“Yes, Patron. I know the histories. But what’s happening to your city now?” Would the old man know anything about his Family’s plans, or was his time spent in addled nostalgia?
“Now?” The face seemed to settle, as though it was drifting into sleep. “There is a great deal of desperation, Alexander. The girl has gotten involved in more than she can handle. You shouldn’t have asked it of her.”
“What?” I asked. I exchanged a quick look with Wilson. He shrugged. Tomb had forgotten which Burn I was. He mistook me for my father. “What shouldn’t I have asked of your Angela?”
“Do you keep things even from yourself? A bad habit, Alexander. This plan of yours has become too much.”
“I believed she could do it.” How to uncover the plan without tipping off the source. “But she has failed me, hasn’t she?”
“Your son, he’s the failure. He’s the damn weak link, Burn. You trusted him with too much. Don’t blame my Family for your wastrel’s dim headedness.”
“Listen, you fat shit! Jacob’s business is his own. He doesn’t want to be involved in your goddamn power games. Leave him out of it.”
The Tomb tensed, then seemed to settle, again with that sound that passed for laughter.
“Perhaps he thinks himself more clever than the old man. Perhaps he thinks himself too clever by far.” A long sigh. “Don’t play those games with your elders, Jacob Burn. It’s beneath you.”
“What did my father ask of you, of your family? I’m tired of being jerked around, Patron Tomb. I’ve given enough to this city.” I snarled and poked my finger at his metal chin. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“You threaten the dead, child. With what? Disrespect? Violence?” The body shifted behind the green eyes, the puffy face floating near the glass. “Do not think to threaten us.”
“There is more in the world than you, old man.” I tapped my foot against the metal tubes that fed his body. “What good is the Patron if his Family is gone? What will you be if the Family Tomb is no longer respected in Veridon?”
Long silence, metal breath. “He shouldn’t have asked it of her,” he said, crossly, the anger coming through the voicebox as a sharp hiss. “She didn’t grasp the whole picture. I advised against it.”
“What, exactly, did you advise against, Patron?”
“Why are you here, Jacob Burn? What brings you into my house, to disturb my rest? Alexander didn’t send you. Ask yourself why, Jacob. And why, if he hasn’t let you in on the secret, why should I?”
“I didn’t come to see you, old man.” The pain flared in my chest again. I was feeling better, I realized. I was feeling almost normal again. “I’m here on my own business.”
“But not Family business. No, you don’t stand for the Family Burn, do you? Are you here as a representative of your new family? What is that wind-up thug’s name. Valentine?”
“I am acting on my own, Patron. I stand for myself.”
“Noble words. But what you mean is that you’ve been abandoned. Again. Valentine has foresworn your service, forbidden his people from working with you. Isn’t that right?” He seemed to leer up from his watery bed. “That must be a feeling you’re getting used to, eh? Being cut out, like a sickness.”
“I am not alone. Friends stand with me. You don’t know the whole game, old man.” He was distracting me, diverting my attention from the central point. “What is my father’s role in this? What is your Family’s role? If I’m meant to be a part of it, as you imply, then how can I be of any help if no one will tell me what’s going on?”
“You are here for the artifact, yes? The one taken from the Church, in secret. Passed on by a criminal. I believe they buried him in the backyard, all those years ago.”
I ran a finger down the Cog. However it had gotten here, it hadn’t been years ago. The Patron was talking about something else. What could it be?
“Perhaps. What is it? It has something to do with all this trouble?”
“Something. What do you want with it?”
“I’m going to solve this thing, old man. Whatever my father intended, I’m going to put an end to this.”
“Mm. It isn’t the sort of trouble that can be solved, child. Merely avoided, and survived.”
“Is that why you’re down here? Hiding from the trouble?”
“My Family’s future depends on my survival. You wouldn’t understand.”
I laughed. “Did you fear death so much, that you trapped your Family into preserving you? Is that why you signed that terrible contract, blackmailing your Family with their place on the Council?”
“Is this life! This fallow harvest, Jacob, is this living!” Heat rose from the Tomb, and the cables hummed. “You have no idea, sir, what this is. We make sacrifices, Jacob, for family. For the city. Your father, he understands. He knows what it is to sacrifice for family.”
“My father? Noble Alexander! Tell me, Patron, if he understands the value of sacrifice, of family, what is it, sir, that he valued so much that he sacrificed his own family, his own blood, his goddamn son!”
Tomb was quiet. Eventually, “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Now that,” I said, leaning in toward the massive face. “That I believe.”
“It is here.”
“What?”
“Your artifact. Third shelf, against the wall. An ivory box. They made it into something holy, those churchmen. I don’t know where the key is hidden.”
I stood up. Wilson was already up the pit, rummaging in the area Tomb had indicated. “Why tell me? If it has been hidden all this time. What would Angela say?”
“Angela has gone a great deal farther than I think is prudent. And I am tired. Now, go.”
He settled down, the face shifting ever so slightly into slack inattention. I bounded up the stairs. When I looked back the face was still open, the glossy green eyes staring up at the darkness with their pupils of bloated flesh.
Wilson brought me the box. We squatted in the walkway. It was a long, narrow container, the flat planes thin sheets of ivory set in tarnished silver fittings. It was a simple matter to crack open with my knife. The artifact clattered out. I squatted above it, looking for damage. It was quiet in the hallways.
The artifact was a cylinder of steel with grooves. Something twitched inside me, like a stolen memory burning through my head. Without thinking I ran my hand down the artifact, triggered some hidden catch, then balanced it on one end. The cylinder blossomed, like a flower.
There was wire, a fly wheel, and a tightly packed central axis of stacked metal segments. It spun up. Plates folded out from the central core, supported and guided by the wires, which stiffened as they expanded. The plates spun in wider circles, shifting, sliding by each other until they blurred into a single brilliant image. Viewed from above it made a picture, like a cinescope.
It was a map. Most of it looked like nothing to me, just lines and rivers and a coastline, far in the top left corner. And then I saw Veridon, or where Veridon should have been, near one edge of the map, in the arms of the Ebd and the Dunje. From there I found the Reine, the Breaking Wall, the Cusp Sea, the Tavis Minor and Major, the Salt Sweeps. It was different than the map I knew, the one I learned at the Academy, but some of the landmarks were similar enough. I followed the Reine where it left the Cusp, far beyond the borders of the Academy’s maps.
There was a city, massive, if the scale was to be believed. It was at the center of the map, sprawled on both sides of the Reine hundreds of miles downriver from the Cusp. So far beyond the ken of the Academy’s far ranging Expeditioner’s Corp I could only stare in amazement. I felt like there was someone over my shoulder, a presence both ancient and young, a presence that stank of fear and isolation. I looked at that city and the phantom in me spoke with my voice.
“Home,” we said.
“Well now, ” Wilson muttered. “Well, well. Now isn’t that interesting.” He hooked an arm under my shoulder and dragged me to my feet. I realized I had been lying down. He propped me against a shelf, littered with the parts
