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.
“Oh, he’s not a monster, you know.”
“If you say. But if he brings me a sandwich of fly wings, you know who I’m going to blame.”
She snorted and sat up. “You’re a ridiculous man.”
“If you say.” I rumpled Wilson’s jacket, to make it look as it had when I first touched it, then stood up and stretched. “Emily, how well do you know him?”
“Wilson? Well enough. Feeling suspicious?”
I shrugged. “The Badge showed up, right on his heels. And maybe he let them know I was going to visit the Manor Tomb, for the Cog.”
“You said yourself, they saw you go in. You walked right past them, up to the gate. You announced yourself, Jacob.” She rubbed sleep from her face and stretched, luxuriously. “No, Jacob. I think that whoever is pushing the Badge around figured out Tomb had the Cog. You just forced their hand, showing up like that.”
“You’re probably right.” I sat on the pier, my feet over the water. “Still. You trust him?”
“I do. Not every rock hides a snake, Jacob.”
“Just the rock that kills you, picking it up.”
She snorted again and stood, adjusting her riding skirt. How she kept up with us in that thing was a mystery to me. She sat next to me and sighed.
“What now, Jacob Burn?”
“Lots of stuff I want to know. Why Angela shot me. Who sent me that gun up on the Heights. What this…” I had a panicked moment, a stab of suspicion as I patted my pockets, searched frantically, found the Cog with a sigh and held it in my hand. “What this thing has to do with it all. I mean, if you’re right and Tomb set me up, well. She had the Cog. What does she need me for?” I fiddled with the Cog absently, running my finger down its edge. The metal hummed at my touch, sending smooth fire into my bones. It felt nice. My chest seemed to almost vibrate with calm.
“Tomb. Sloane. Marcus. Wellons.” I took the slip of paper out of my pocket. “Not a very likely bunch of companions. And I don’t know anyone else on this list.”
“Can I see?” Emily asked. I gave her the paper. She flattened it out and then traced her finger down the list of names. “Is this an exact copy?”
“No. I just took down the relevant details.”
“So, ‘Hire: 4,’ there was no other indication what that might mean?”
I looked over at the paper. Emily had her finger over the second to last line, just above where Tomb was listed as the Council Approval.
“No idea. I think it might have been spelled out, rather than the number.”
“Because the rest of these names, with the exception of Wellons, are all common criminals.”
“Right. So?”
“I don’t know Sloane. Never heard of him before this mess. And I know everyone in the crime market. Is Angela the kind of girl who hangs out with criminals?”
“Gods, no. Not her particular social circle.”
“I didn’t think so. So someone else made the contacts.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“Jacob. Four.”
I looked at her, and it hit me. I was a fucking idiot.
“I’m a fucking idiot,” I said. Matthew Four was an old friend of the Families, and probably the first criminal I’d ever met. He provided Veridon’s rich with whatever gray market items they needed, without disturbing the social fabric of their expensive parties. If Angela needed to hire a bunch of roughs, of course she’d go to Matthew. “Godsdamn it, Em.”
“I’ll forgive you. But he seems like someone worth talking to.”
“Yeah, yeah. And he might know who gave you that music box, too.”
“I thought we decided it was Tomb’s doing. Getting you up there, trapping you.”
“Oh, she had her part in it. Sure. But other forces intervened. The angel, for one, in the form of the Summer Girl. And the gun. Someone sent that to me, either as a warning or a threat.”
“Do you think it was the actual pistol, the one from the Glory?”
“I don’t know that it matters. Someone was telling me that they know what happened up there, that night, they know what I did to Marcus. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“You told me,” she said.
“Is that what happened, Em? Did you mail me a secret package, then send your angelic minion to kill me before
