as a knife and spoke harshly to the bird. And then he turned and looked right at us. I could see his smile from here.
'Is this the part where we get the hell out of here?' I asked.
'Sure looks like it.'
Wilson followed me down the stairs, breathing heavily on my neck as I clumped my nervous legs along. We ran through the crowd of homeless men living in the sanctuary, then got out the door and tried to look nonchalant as we hurried down the street, busy getting lost in the afternoon rush. It was ten minutes of quiet, desperate flight before we realized there was no pursuit.
'It was the crow,' Wilson said, breaking the silence.
'What?' I gasped. I hadn't been breathing as I should. I stopped next to a soup cart and used the one stool that was open. The owner gave me an ugly look until Wilson dropped some silver on the counter. We got a dirty bowl of chowder that didn't look completely dead. Brave was something I had given up, so I pushed it to Wilson.
'The crow,' he said, picking up the chowder but making no move to eat. 'That's how he knew we were there.'
'Crows don't talk,' I said.
'Neither do dead bodies. Neither do pipes in an empty house,' Wilson answered. 'Jacob, all the crazy stuff we've seen, you're seriously going to argue over whether that freak can talk to crows?'
I shrugged. Wilson stared at me until, forgetting himself, he put some of the chowder into his mouth. Without chewing, he re-opened his mouth and let the contents slop back into the bowl, which he returned to the counter. The cart owner swept it away, probably to serve it to another eager customer.
'I paid good silver for that,' he muttered.
'We all make mistakes, Wilson. Now. What are we going to do next?'
He stood there looking thoughtful for a minute, leaning against the cart and working his mouth silently. Probably still regretting the loss of that silver. Finally, without turning to me, he spoke.
'Say. What was in that house, anyway? The one you and Angela spent so much time inside?'
I was hoping he wouldn't ask. I told him, leaving out a lot of the details and focusing on the conversation between the two ladies of the Council. I knew that if I included the other stuff, the cog-dead and the flower- corpses, if I made those things sound as interesting and bizarre as they actually were, that Wilson would want to go back there. Take some samples. I wanted no part in that. He seemed to know I was holding back, but kept his response to a rude smile.
'So, this really interesting conversation you had with the Lady Bright, while standing in this absolutely dull and nondescript building which, according to your story, may have had a couple bodies in it.' He straightened out and shook his head. 'What was that about? The stuff about your dad, and you maybe being groomed to take his spot on the Council?'
'Yeah, I'm not sure. It's like she doesn't know the story between me and Alexander.' I stayed out of Council politics; even stayed away from the periphery of Council business. Alexander had disowned me, twice now. With the turnover rate in the Council, I was sure there were people in that chamber who didn't even know he had a son. Veronica Bright seemed to be one of them. 'What I really didn't like was the bit about how Alexander might not be in any kind of shape to approve of what Angela's doing.'
Wilson squinted at me. Alexander had been complicit in some things Angela did a couple years ago, might even have been directly involved. He was usually pretty deeply involved in the dirty side of Council politics. If he was no longer paying that close attention to the chamber games, I wondered what he was doing with his time.
'When's the last time you talked to the old man?' Wilson asked, delicately.
'Probably shortly after he kicked me out of the house.' I stared out into the crowd. 'Does shouting count?'
We sat quietly for a minute, the cart owner increasing the severity and frequency of his angry stares, until Wilson finally clapped me on the shoulder.
'Let's have a word with Alexander, perhaps?'
'Sure. I can't imagine that going wrong.' I stood up and dusted the memory of that horrible chowder from my mind. 'But seriously, first we're going to stop somewhere and pick me up a revolver. Just in case.'
The old house stood on a little hill, nothing more than a jumble of rocks that rose up out of the street to break up the monotony of town houses and warehouses. No soil on those rocks, except what generations of Burns had brought in, and the ground was hot. We had always had trouble maintaining the formal gardens that were expected of the Founders' estates. Now that the money was gone, nothing remained of those gardens but withered shrubs that clung to the stony ground like dead spiders. Rain and the heat that radiated from the ground had washed the rest away.
The house itself looked like those bushes. Dried out and twisted, roots clinging desperately to the hill, all the color washed out. I remembered grander days, and although the house was no smaller than it had been back then, the whole estate looked like it had collapsed in on itself. And the air, that smell, like burning dust. The ground thrummed with the warm engines of the Deep Furnace. I never noticed the smell when I was a kid. Used to it, I guess.
I don't know who I thought I was kidding. Coming back here, even now, was a waste of time. Alexander had given me his speech, he had said the words that he felt needed saying. I wasn't welcome here. I would never be welcome here. And yet, what that girl had said. Veronica. The way she talked about my father, as though Angela had him by the shirt strings and was just leading him around. I had to know what that meant. I had to know what had become of my father.
He didn't even bother locking the gate anymore. There was nothing to steal here, people knew. What we'd had was mortgaged or sold. Just the house, and the history of our name. Still. You'd think he would lock the gate. Wilson hung back a little bit, his hand resting on the rusted iron of the gate as I walked up to the front door. The cobbles of the walk were uneven, the mortar washed away and the stones pushed up by weeds and erosion, until it was a challenge to walk across them. Have to get that fixed, someday.
I banged on the knocker and waited. A long time, honestly, and when the door opened it protested the unexpected change. Williamson, our family's long time servant, stood with his hand on the door, staring at me.
'Bil… Williamson,' I said, remembering how much he hated being called Billy. 'Long time since I've seen you. What brings you here?'
'What brings… ha!' He laughed, which was not something he usually did. 'What brings me here. Brilliant, Master Jacob. Brilliant!' He shuffled out onto the front porch and put an arm over my shoulder. 'Come in, come in. Do come in!'
There was a little hysteria in his voice, and he nearly shut the door on Wilson in his haste to throw the latch. Once we were all in, he rattled a number of locks and then stood with his back against the door, his joviality abandoned.
'This had better be damned good, Jacob Burn,' he said, a fresh glimmer of sweat beading across his balding head. 'The old man's going to assume you're here to kill him.'
'Kill him? You're kidding, right? I mean, not that I wouldn't kill him if it was justified, you understand, I just don't think this is the time for it.'
'Don't even joke about it.' Billy pushed himself away from the door with an effort and walked to an archway that had once been a coat room. He slid a nasty looking knife from his cuff and slid it into a sheath hanging just inside the arch. This bit of sleight-of-hand got an appreciative look from Wilson, but made me nervous. Last time I'd seen Billy, he had no more been capable of holding a fighting knife properly than of flying. 'Let's get everyone a drink, then, and we can figure out what to tell your father about this little visit.'
'What to tell him? Tell him that I want to see how he's doing.'
'Funny. Two years without a breath from you, and you drop by in the middle of all this,' he said. 'That'll bring a smile to his face.'
'Billy, what the hell is going on around here? Where's my father?'
'Upstairs. Where you're not going, until you know something more about this. Let's get that drink.' He
