Heart of Veridon

know.”

He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. He was measuring me, weighing his options, my possible reaction.

“I can’t tell you, Jacob,” he said, finally, sadly.

“I’ll find out. You know I will.”

“Not from me.”

“Then in spite of you.”

He nodded slowly, but didn’t move. “Forget her, Jacob. Don’t go rushing in…”

“To get her. To get captured,” I snarled at him and poked the air in front of his face. “That's what you're afraid of, isn’t it?”

He flinched, then flexed his fingers around the pistol grip. “Perhaps.”

“Which is why you told me. That’s why you flipped your card. If I knew she didn’t love me, that the last five years have been staged and she was your little spy, you thought… you thought I would abandon her.”

He didn’t look at me.

“I don’t want you to waste yourself on her.” He spoke quietly, as he spoke to me when I was a child. “They have her, yes. They’re using her as a lure. Think about it, Jacob. They’ll get you, and then they’ll have everything.”

I watched him, stared at him, his pale, noble face watching the motionless Singer.

“We don’t understand each other, father. If that’s what you thought, that I’d abandon her.”

“You can’t save her.”

“So what? I can try.” I turned angrily from him and snatched up the shotgun. “I can fucking try.”

His shoulders sagged, and he closed his eyes.

“Actually, Jacob, your father understands you quite well.”

I turned. Angela Tomb stepped out of the shrine of the Noble, along with three of her Housies. Wood clattered. Guards emerged from all the shrines, shortrifles in hand.

“He wanted a chance to dissuade you,” she said. Her voice was cold and numb. “He had it.”

“It was a lie, then? About Emily?” I asked as I twisted my hands on the empty shotgun.

“It was not,” Alexander said without opening his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“We’re all sorry, Jacob,” Angela said. “But we really can’t let them get you.”

“You’ve said that before, Ange. You’re going to shoot me again?”

“Someone here will, if needs must.” She grimaced. “We’re all packing Bane this time, Jacob. Don’t make it happen.”

“You can stop them,” I said. “You can go to them and stop them.”

“We can’t,” father said. “We’re sorry. There’s too much at stake.”

“Let us handle this our own way, Jacob. Let us negotiate. If they have the Cog, and we have you… terms came be made.”

“Not good enough,” I said. “You’re going to let this happen, Alexander?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe,” I said. I backed up until the railing was against my legs, the quiet goddess at my back. I raised my empty gun.

Chapter Sixteen

Her Eyes Were Open

“I gave you your chance, Alexander,” Angela said. She had one hand on her hip, the other flourishing a heavy caliber dueling pistol. “We can’t have it both ways. Give it up, Jacob.”

“I can’t, Angela.” I twisted the shotgun in my hands, like a wet rag. “I just can’t do that.”

“We’re your family, son,” Alexander said, though his spirit wasn’t really in it. “Who else are you going to trust? They have the Cog. We really can’t let them have you as well.”

“But you won’t be content with just me. Will you? You’ll want the Cog as well, and what sort of terms will you come to with Sloane to get it? The Cog is powerful, but nothing like it could be if you had my heart to go along with it.”

“One item at a time. We can enter negotiations with Mr. Sloane later on.” Angela smirked, then flicked her pistol to the guards. “Now. Put down the shotgun.”

“Where’s Emily?” I asked. “Where’s Sloane holding her?”

“Why does it matter?”

“I’m going to save her. You fucks won’t take care of your girl, I’m going to.”

“Always the brave lad,” Angela said. “Always the hero. You’ll never get her. They have her locked up tight, up on the Torch’.”

“Why up there?”

“Council’s got part of the base sectioned off, has for years,” Alexander said. “Experiments, trying to break free of the Church’s grip. The surgery they’re giving her, it’s very specialized. Building cogwork without a church- sanctioned pattern. Very difficult stuff. And the equipment they’ll need to do that, it’s up there.”

“You have to let me go. You have to let me help her.”

“No, we don’t,” Angela said. “Now put down the shotgun and come with us.”

“You heard the lad!” A voice called up from below us. I turned and looked down.

Wilson. He was standing in the middle of the gritty sand below. His skin looked like it had been scrubbed with charcoal, and he was wearing a knee-length black duster that was singed at the edges. He looked blasted. His hands were in his pockets, and his spider arms were bunched up around his shoulders like restless wings.

Angela and a couple of the Housies joined me at the railing.

“A friend of yours?” she asked.

“Maybe. Getting hard to tell, these days.”

“Ah, yes. Still mourning the affections of our little spy-whore. Tell him to come up here, or you’re both dead.”

“Wilson…” I yelled.

“I heard the bitch.” He took his hands out of his pockets and held them wide apart. Each held a small glass jar, squirming in the pale light. “I’ll be right up.”

He dropped the jars, then immediately leapt onto the iron corkscrew staircase. The jars broke with a muffled pop, and glittering hordes swarmed out onto the sand. Beetles.

“Put him down!” Angela screamed. The guards responded, without thinking.

They really were packing bane in those shortrifles. The shots crackled off the wrought iron, the staircase began flaking away like thin ice. Wilson bounded up, much too fast for their aim. One got close and the anansi yelped, but he kept coming. I turned and smacked the nearest guard in the head with the butt of the shotgun, then scooped up his weapon as I slung Emily’s shotgun over my shoulder.

“Jacob!” Wilson yelled. I looked down, only to see him gesturing up. I looked up. At the Singer.

Her eyes were open, her arms raising slowly in benediction.

I threw myself back, just as the rest of the Housies were rushing forward to take me. I fell between them, sliding on my back. Angela was still looking down, firing wildly at Wilson.

My father was on one knee, hands folded calmly on his leg, facing the Singer. I covered my ears and curled up.

Her voice was catastrophic in the close roof of the Dome. My memories of her were quieter, a gentle murmuring that splashed through the building like a stream. This was a tornado, an avalanche of voice. It was three years of pent up divinity, forgotten by its servants and furious in its glory.

We fell, even my father. The building shook. I saw Angela tumble forward, screams drowned out by the Singer’s master stroke. None of the Housies had caught on to what was about to happen, and lay prone, clutching at bloody ears. My father was flat on the floor, his face slack. He might have been asleep for all I could tell. Wilson crawled