'I don't really care, Jacob. As you can see, I take care of myself.'
'What is… what…' Matthew stammered. For him, the little angel Camilla was a fairy tale, something everyone was told about as a child and then stopped believing when they grew up. The Church used it as part of their origin story. That an angel had come to the city and offered her help, that the Wrights of the Algorithm had used their knowledge of cogwork to heal her of some sickness, and in her gratitude the angel sacrificed herself to bring knowledge to the city of Veridon.
The trick was, it was true. Except for the gratitude part. The Church had captured this angel, and spent the better part of two centuries taking her apart and using the knowledge gleaned from her dissection to power their engines of god. And now the angel was out.
'So I was right,' Wilson beamed. 'The Church was in on it all along.'
'Not at all,' Camilla said. 'This was just a lucky break. Crane really did come back here to destroy the Church. But I'm better than him. After I figured out what he was, and what he was doing, I lured him into the chambers below and convinced him that only I could truly destroy the city. Which is true. Just not in the way he planned.'
'Where is he?' I asked.
'I take care of my servants, Jacob. Ezekiel Crane is going to live a very long and interesting life.' She held up her arm and smiled at the birds. 'Amazing breakthrough, don't you think? The foetal metal is suspended in their essence. The metal and the life are one thing. I never knew the Artificers. Hadn't figured out how to communicate with anyone outside of the Church, by the time they were banned and exiled. But I have to say, they were some clever people.'
'So, what now? You're going to kill us and then level the city, like you promised to do, back when you were trying to get the heart from me?'
'Hardly, Jacob. This has been a long time coming. These…' She shuddered. 'These damned holy men have held me for a long time. And they've collected many of the things that we sent down the river. None of this' — she spread her arms, indicating the whole of the Church of the Algorithm, the centuries of accumulated cogwork, the pattern of god itself — 'was meant for you. Meant for this place. You're like a blocked artery in the veins of divinity. And I'm going to clear it out.'
'Which means that if we just get our things and get out of your way…' I started.
'I heard about Emily, Jacob. Heard that the last angel possessed her. That you had to kill her.' Her centuries young face pouted at me. 'I felt bad about that. And you buried her in the river, didn't you? Put her in a boat and sent her over the falls, along with the Destroyer's heart. I thought that was such a beautiful thing to do.' Her face changed, suddenly angry. 'So damned poetic, throwing the heart away like that. So damned beautiful.'
Her arm snapped forward and a column of blackness, lined in the shapes of crows, shot forward. It swallowed me, filled me, darkened me. I fell, and the world fell around me.
Chapter Seventeen
I woke up in a coffin with a woman in my arms. It seemed like she'd been trying to get out of my arms for quite a while, because we were tied together, and it felt like she'd been using my spine to try to wear through the ropes. She was doing it right now.
'Stop that, please,' I mumbled. My throat was sore and dry, and my head was swimming. I had trouble moving my tongue. My muscles all felt like they'd been packed with kindling and then broken.
She screamed once, loudly, directly into my ear. I winced, but that just led to me banging my head against the wall of the coffin. I assumed it was a coffin, at least. Not many small, wooden things you would put people into.
'Gods, I thought you were dead,' she said. It was Veronica. Great. 'You haven't moved in half an hour. Haven't even breathed. Can you get your arms free?'
'Maybe I am dead. Maybe they stuffed a bird down my throat and they're controlling my every move. I feel bad enough to believe it.'
'Will you stop screwing around and try to get your arms free!' she yelled.
'I don't think we're going anywhere. I mean, even if we get free. What's the matter, Lady Bright? You don't like holding me?' The coffin lurched and I banged my head again. 'What was that?' I asked groggily.
'A wave. Because we're on a boat.'
'That sounds bad,' I said.
'It is bad. That crazy kid wouldn't shut up about how you floated some damn piece of cogwork down the river, then she had a barrel brought in and stuffed you in it.'
'And then you jumped in to save me and they closed the top?'
'She got it in her head that it would more damned poetic if there was a girl, and I was the only one who qualified. Something about a lady named Emily.' She started sawing at my backbone with her bound wrists again. 'Now stop talking and do something about getting us free.'
'Wilson will probably save us,' I said. 'Just be cool.'
'No one is going to save us. Do you understand, they put us in a barrel and then in a boat, and now we're out on the river somewhere,' she hissed into my ear. 'And they're going to float us down the river and over the falls.'
'Oh. Oh, I see where she's going with that. Because of the heart. Right.' I shook my head, but that did nothing for the vertigo. 'Look, I'm sorry. I'm really not at the top of my game. Something happened to my head.'
'Something happened to your whole body, idiot. Like I said, you haven't even been breathing.'
'Well. I'm breathing now. I'm going to assume that you've screamed for help?'
We hit another lurch and then the whole barrel rolled a couple times. We landed with a splash. Even inside the barrel, I was pretty sure that I couldn't hear the roar of the waterfall. We had a little while.
'Listen. Calm down for a minute. We don't want to break out of this thing just yet,' I said.
'Yes,' she answered. 'I do.'
'No, you don't. That boat of guys just dropped us into the river. If we pop out right now they'll just pick us up again and then we're back in the barrel. Or they'll just shoot us. Anything in your lifetime of training gonna keep you from dying when you get shot?'
She was silent.
'Right. So we're going to get out of these ropes and then we're…'
'That's what I've been trying to do! All the way over here I've been trying to use a corpse's backbone to saw my way out of these ropes, so I could get out!' I knew it. 'Do you not think I want to do this? Is there something about my commitment to the idea of escape that is eluding you?'
'Stop. Panicking.'
'There's water coming into the barrel.'
'We're in the river,' I pointed out. 'It's natural.'
'It's kind of a lot of water.'
She was right. There was a lot of water sloshing around in here. And I was on the bottom, so things were looking less than rosy for me. Not that they had been looking that great beforehand.
'Well, the good thing about that is that we're not going to go over the waterfall. Because we're going to sink right here.' I started kicking at the barrel. 'So there's that.'
'You're not very good at optimism.'
'Oh, love,' I snarled. 'You have no idea.'
I kept kicking at the barrel, from about where it felt like most of the water was coming from. This had the unexpected benefit of bringing more water into our little vessel. This was rapidly becoming a race between how quickly the barrel would fill up versus how quickly I could get a hole big enough to squirm through. And Veronica picked up on that, because she started kicking too.
