of a shattered clock.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. My throat felt like it was lined in barbed wire.
“Be a hell of a time,” Wilson said. “Lots of folks out there. And I don’t think Angela’s going to like us walking out with that thing.”
“Yeah.” I tested my legs, found I could stand. “Well, maybe there’s another way out of here.”
Patron Tomb shuffled, his eyelids cracking just slightly. “There is.”
“You can get us out?” Wilson asked.
“No. But I can show you the way.” He paused, his eyelids flaring wider in surprise. “There is something upstairs, a presence. It has found the hallway.”
“What?” I asked.
“Something… brilliant. What is this thing?” Tomb’s voice was low, in awe.
“The angel,” Wilson whispered. “We need to get the hell out.”
“Yes, you do. My gods, you do. He’s at the door.”
The door at the top of the stairs clanged. Dust settled from the roof in wide sheets. The clanging continued, steady, metronomic.
“This is going to be interesting,” Tomb said. “I should thank you, Burn. It’s a good day you’ve brought me.”
“It will try to kill you,” I said.
“Perhaps. Here,” machines cycled, and a narrow door opened in the wall opposite the main entrance. “That leads to a covered canal near the Bellingrow. It’s quite a trek, I’m told. In case they ever need to get me out.”
“You would never fit through that door.”
“Desperation and technology can do amazing things,” he said. “Now, hurry. He’s persistent.”
We rushed out the door. I paused to look back. The old man’s bloated eyes were settled on the other door, watching the angel break his slow way in, like the tide battering a rocky coast. The door closed behind us.
I don’t remember much after that. The darkness faded into gray, tunnels of brick and dirt that stretched for an eternity and when I came to I was lying on a hard stone floor, Wilson looking down at me.
“You’re trying to show me wrong, son,” Wilson said quietly. His face was bent very close to mine, so I could smell his breath. It smelled like ground up flies and specimen jars. “Trying to die, aren’t you?”
“Far from it.” My voice was a whisper. “Just other folks, testing the theory.”
“Well. More luck than science, this time.” He picked up a tin cup and rattled it around. There was a deformed slug at the bottom, shiny with blood. “Frail gun she shot you with. More ornament than weapon, I suspect.”
“She who?” It was Emily talking, somewhere. I couldn’t see where exactly, but it sounded like she was standing near my head, looking down. Behind me a little. I twisted and saw her face, grimacing down at me.
“Tomb. Little Lady Tomb.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
“Fine, Em. Whatever. It was the Blessed Celeste. But she looked a hell of a lot like the Lady Tomb.”
“It was her alright,” Wilson said. He grinned tightly up at Emily. “Pretty as you please, nice to meet you, and here’s a bullet for your time.”
“What dumbass thing did you do to get her to shoot you, Jacob? Did you break into her house? Steal some silverware?”
I tried to answer, but it came out as a dry rattling cough. Wilson put his hand on my chest until it settled down. When I could talk again, even I had trouble hearing me. Emily bent down close. She smelled like sweat and dry flowers.
“Badge broke into her house. Stormed the place. We were running, got cornered.” I paused to spit, but came up empty. My tongue felt like a strap of leather. “She said some shit about not letting them get a hold of me. Then she put a bullet in my chest.”
“Hm,” Emily said. She stood up and walked out of my field of vision. Wilson watched her go, then looked back at me. His eyes were carefully neutral.
“How’d you get out?” she asked.
I started to answer, but Wilson shushed me.
“We lost her and found a back door. Things were very…” he paused, nodding to himself. “Very confusing. For everyone, I think.”
“Lost her? You didn’t kill her, did you?”
I shook my head. “Angel’s back,” I said.
Emily raised her eyebrows. “That’s sudden. Thought you said you’d killed it?”
“I killed something. But it was the same guy.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” Wilson said, washing off his hands in a puddle of rain water. “I have some thoughts.”
“Are they warm, happy thoughts?” I asked. “Thoughts that are likely to reassure me as to our own safety?”
“Not completely,” he said. “But they may shed some light on what we’re dealing with here.”
“Then keep them to yourself.” I stretched out on the floor and laced my fingers behind my neck. “I’m limiting myself to good news for a little while.”
“Let’s hear it, Wilson,” Emily said, shooting me a cross look.
“Ever since you talked about killing the Summer Girl, I’ve been churning away at what could have happened there. What happened, exactly, to bring about that specific transformation.”
“I hit her with a hammer,” I said.
“Not… gods, you’re horrible. Not that transformation. The one where this little girl turns into a murdering angel.”
“Ah. Continue.”
“Well, the way that the Summer Girl works, the way all engram singers work, is the maker beetles. That and the queen fetus. The Artificers burn a pattern into the queen, the queen takes up residence in the singer’s internal machinery, and then the beetles burrow their way-”
“What?” Emily almost shrieked. “They burrow into her body?”
“You’ve never seen an engram singer?” I asked.
“No, you filthy noble pig. I grew up watching normal people sing normal songs, that they had memorized or made up or something.”
“Oh, right. I keep forgetting I was born so much better than you.”
“Listen, you little fucking-”
“Okay!” Wilson interjected. “Okay. So the beetles burrow in,” he turned to Emily, “through her machine. There are little tunnels that run through her body. Most of the transformation is facilitated by the machine, but it’s the beetles that do it. The machine is kind of like… like a hive, I suppose. Okay?”
“It’s still weird.”
“The point is, there’s a pattern, held by the queen. Sound familiar?”
“Cogwork,” I said. I suppose I had always known the two practices were similar, I had just never thought about how they were almost identical. “The Wrights have you memorize a pattern, they inject the foetal metal, and the metal makes itself into whatever the pattern dictates.”
“More or less,” Wilson said. “The pattern is also inscribed onto a coin and put in with the foetus. But without the pattern, the foetal metal is nothing. Just hot metal.”
“Where do the patterns come from?” Emily asked.
“The Church,” I answered. “And where do they get them? Who knows. But it’s the foundation of their religion.”
“So the Artificers and the Church, they both make their technology the same way?”
“Let’s make no mistakes, Emily.” Wilson sat up straight. “The Wrights only have what they’ve found. Their holy vessels come down the river, and the Wrights catch them and scrounge out any mysteries they can manage. They’re very good at it, and very good at applying what they find, but it’s not creation, really. More like scavenging.”
“And the Artificers?” I asked. I’d never met anyone willing to talk about the Artificers and their technology. Ever
