She looked at me incredulously, then set her mouth in a grim line. “You asked about the pillar, and the Cog at its tip.”
“I did.”
“And you have held a similar Cog in your hand. Yet you do not know what it is, for certain.” She settled back, closed her eyes. “A messenger, then. Sent only to deliver a message. But is it a threat, or a misbegotten offering.” She seemed to be musing to herself. Her eyes open, full of calculation. “Who sent you to me?”
“No one. I’m here on my own.” I considered for a second if I was being manipulated, if events had been planned to get me down here, in this chamber. Things were unfolding faster than I could think about them. “This thing fell into my hands, under difficult circumstances. And, frankly, circumstances have done nothing but gotten more difficult every damn day since.”
“Fell into your hands?” She stared at me in disbelief. “Like stars fall out of the sky! This is a place of madness. What is it you want to know? I will tell you. The cog on the pillar, high above, the one whose cycle runs this seething cancer on your city? That is my heart. Plucked from my chest and put on display, that these fumbling idiots may learn a truth that was not meant for them. It is my heart, the heart of cursed Veridon.”
“Your heart?” I asked. “But you’re still alive.”
“It is a careful balance. What they can take, how far they can reduce me without losing me entirely. They’ve managed so far.”
“It hurts?”
“Something like pain, yes. Something more intimate than pain.” She leaned away from me, her rage flickering as she thought back. “Some parts of me die, when they take them. Some live, either in their chapels or implanted in surrogates. Their echoes crowd the city, like lost children drowning.” She shuddered. “The sound of it is too much, sometimes.”
“Why are they doing this?”
She laughed, a clattering sound like an engine flying apart. I was amazed she was able to talk at all, lacking as she did a true mouth and lungs.
“They fed the city on the secrets of my bones. The cogwork, the zepliners, your PilotEngine… all derived from the hidden patterns of my body. Pale reflections of the master pattern, of course, but-”
“That’s impossible. The Church has been passing out the benefits of the Algorithm for generations. Over a hundred years.”
“One hundred twenty-six,” she sighed. “They have been very thorough in their ministrations.”
I would have sat down, but I was worried about sticking to the frost cold floor. I put a hand on Emily’s chair and looked down at her. She wasn’t going to believe me, when I told her who we had met. I wish she was awake for this. I didn’t trust myself to ask the right questions.
“And the other Cog, the one that I was given?”
“We can’t live without some connection to our heart.” She looked down, crestfallen. “I’m afraid that, by sending them the map, I may have killed one of my brothers. It was not what I intended.”
“The map?” I asked. “You gave them a map?”
“The Council, yes. I don’t know if they realized who they were negotiating with. I have agents, here in the Church, and in the river, among the Fehn. I hoped they would catch the attention of one of my people, perhaps summon a rescue party.”
“Oh,” I said, “I think that may have happened. I think one of your people might be wandering the city right now.”
She straightened up.
“Bring him here, Pilot. Or tell him how to get here. Do it quickly, before they capture him. I would not consign another to my fate, and feed Veridon a new pattern.”
“He keeps trying to kill me, and take that Cog. Everyone seems to want those two things. Me, and that Cog.”
“You flatter yourself. The Cog is all that matters.”
“Yeah, well,” I shrugged. “You said that an Angel can’t live without their heart?”
“Angel. Such childish mythology. Yes, the… Cog, it gives us our pattern. Without it we’re just the metal.” She nodded at the pipe feeding foetal metal into her system. “We can’t hold together.”
“Then I think your friend’s already screwed. He’s fallen apart at least once, I saw it. I did it. He just melted into little cogs and left someone else’s body behind.”
“One of your friends, probably? A Pilot or some such?”
“An engram singer, but you have the idea. Someone who’s been cogged.”
“He’s seeking patterns, trying to recover his heart before he dissolves completely.” She brushed her cheek with one fragmented hand. “Not much time. You must take that Cog to him, and then bring him here.”
“And if I do?”
“What do you mean?”
“What will happen to this building, this Church?” I crossed my arms. “What will happen to the city?”
“Does that concern you? You didn’t seem too concerned about the well-being of the Church when you broke in.”
I shrugged. “This is my city. The Church and its devices are the core of Veridon’s power. I don’t have to like that, but it’s plain truth.”
“You don’t look like someone who shares in that power, despite your enhancements. You look like a thief.” She leaned close to the bars. “You even smell like a…” her voice faltered. “Thief. You said my brother still pursues you, even without his heart. How long has it been?”
“I don’t know. Weeks. Maybe months.”
Her sad face cracked into a grin. “You have seen both Cogs, yes. Mine, and the one stolen from my brother. How would you say they compare?”
“The one upstairs, your heart. It looks different. Simpler.”
“No offense taken.” She smiled like a broken bottle. “I was a messenger. Like you; sent by other hands. We had been sending material down the river for eons; long after the sleep cycles started, we continued. It was realized that, recently, the missives were not getting through. I was sent to find out why.”
“And the other heart?” I asked.
“It is the heart of a destroyer. It has great potential.”
“Big trouble, I take it.”
“Trouble that you can still avoid. Go back to whoever sent you and beg them. Beg with your life, Pilot. Tell them to bring me that Cog, and I will leave. And I will take my brother with me.”
“You would just go?”
She shrugged. “In my way, in my time. But yes, I would go.”
“And you were a messenger?” I asked.
“Yes, sent to find the gap in the system. The failure in the river.”
“Sent? By whom?” I found it strange to be hearing about the true origin of the Church’s vessels. That their religion was based on misplaced baggage seemed appropriate.
“Ancient machines. Deep places. Your churchmen, these Wrights, they were taking the vessels from the river and making things with them. That cursed Algorithm of theirs.”
“And you told them to stop?”
“They wouldn’t,” Her face fell. “I underestimated their… fervor, I suppose.”
“When you didn’t return to the deep engines, no one wondered where you were?”
“We move in very long cycles,” She sighed. “And most of us are off the line. It will be a while before I am missed.”
“So you sent a message, somehow, to the Council. Directed them downriver in the hope they would kick over a wasp tower and your friends would track them back upriver and rescue you.” I leaned closer to her. The air around her smelled like burnt oil. “You meant to destroy the city.”
She looked up, her eyes following the lines of the cage, the webwork of pipes and the pillar growing out of her spine, then looked down at the dissected ruin of her body.
“Can you blame me?”
“Yes. Not in principle, I suppose, but in practice. This is where I live, see, and where I’ll probably die. But I’d
