meant walking.
I almost got to my room before I ran into the guards. I ducked into a draped windowsill, just deep enough to hide me if I held my breath and thought skinny thoughts. They were sneaking up to my room. Ten of them, maybe more, with rifles and truncheons. They were Tomb House Guards.
They settled around the door to my room, checked the loads on their guns, then nodded among themselves. One of them, a sergeant, stepped forward and pounded on my door.
“Master Burn! By the authority of the Council of Veridon, spoken for by the Lady Tomb, we have a warrant for your arrest and detention. Please open the door!”
He waited half a breath, then put his shoulder into the door. I hadn’t locked it when I left, and it burst open. I got a good view of my empty room. They milled about in the entrance, poking their rifles at the bed and under the covers, talking loudly. I started to go. Something caught my eye.
There was a sudden hard scrabble against my window, like hail or teeth on a water glass. I watched the window burst. The storm disappeared, to be replaced by a complexity of darkness and metal. There was a man standing, or nearly a man. His clothes were sodden and torn, the skin beneath like a dead man’s skin, ivory and shot through with black veins. He had one hand on the sill, jagged glass snagging the flesh, and one of his feet was already in the room. Behind him flat planes of oiled metal shifted and ruffled, shiny leaves flexing against the buffeting winds. Wings. He had wings of coiling metal.
He came into the room, clenching his wings to fit through the window. Wet hair hung in ringlets around his face, a jaw line like a storm front, lips and skin that were porcelain smooth. And his eyes, blue so light that it looked like the thinnest clouds over sky.
The guards panicked. They fell back before him, rifles raised, yelling. He ignored them. He looked out the door into the hallway. Right at me.
“You are Jacob Burn,” he said. His voice was a trick, tiny pistons and valves pushing air through the long hissing whisper of organ pipes. I raised the pistol and fired over the heads of the guards. The report was enormous; it filled the hallway with sharp smoke. The shot went into his chest, and my second took him just below the throat. He winced, bent forward like he’d been punched. When he straightened again his face was smooth. He raised a hand and it flickered, skin and bone shuffling away in a lethal origami, replaced by smooth, sharp metal. His arm became a knife. There was already blood on it.
The guards looked at me. Some of them turned to make that arrest they were talking about earlier. The rest kept their eyes on the angel. The close ones crowded around me, trying to keep me boxed in.
“Gentlemen,” I said tensely and dived into their ranks. “Pardon.”
They reached for me, would have taken me but the Angel crashed through after me. Two of them fell, their bones cracking like fireworks as he tore through them. There was shouting and I ran.
I took the first stairway, even though it led up and every exit was down. Panic. The next floor was closed, but I popped the door. It was quiet here, smelled like mold and linen. Footsteps hammered on the floor below, crowds mustering to the disaster. There was gunfire and the dreadful sound of bodies snapping. I walked quietly to a bedroom and slipped inside.
The room was empty, just a heavily worn rug and a window. The storm continued. The sounds of fighting had slowed, though they may have been masked by the wind and rain at my back. I knelt and fumbled two new shells into the revolver. I stayed there, breathing hard. It was quiet now, just the rain pounding the glass. I shifted to be able to watch both the window and the door.
I looked down at the gun. Had he sent it? He was on the zep, he might have known about Marcus. But if he intended to attack me, why arm me? Then again, the shot didn’t seem to hurt him. I checked the cylinder, to see if the rounds that had been loaded were tricks, some kind of stagecraft mummery. I emptied them into my palm, turned them over with my thumb as I examined them in the dim light from the window. The dull brass cylinders looked real enough.
There was a rattling in the hallway. I caught my breath, and started reloading the gun as quietly as I could, the bullets slippery in my sweaty fingers as I struggled to slot them home. Footsteps, and the dry-leaf scraping of his wings on the walls and ceiling. I looked up, saw that I had forgotten to lock the door and dropped a bullet. I scooped it up, dumped the whole handful of loose shells and the revolver into my jacket pocket and ran to the window. He was outside the door, and the window was storm bolted.
I threw my shoulder against it and the glass splintered, the lead panes bending like a net. Again and a couple panes snapped, slicing my coat and my skin. He opened the door smoothly and hurtled in. I hit the window, he hit me, and we both burst out into the storm.
Tumbling down the slate roof, I kicked out and made a lucky hit. We separated and I hooked my arm around a chimney. There was blood leaking out of me, damage from the window and whatever brief contact there had been with the angel’s wicked arm. I scrambled, trying to find him, finding nothing but the roaring storm. Something was wrong with my shoulder, and I felt my grip going away. A flash of lightning and I saw wings, diving. I let go.
I slithered down the roof, just clearing the chimney as he hit it. There was a dull thud above me. Splinters of slate shot past and the roof shook. I dug fingers into the flooding shingles, slapped at chimneys as they flew past. A bump and I was over the edge. I was falling and screaming the shredded air from my lungs. As I fell into a crash my legs collapsing and then something popped and became a rain of glass and more blood and tearing and falling.
I ended up in the Great Hall. I was bleeding red and black, the oil of my deepest heart mingling with my common blood. High above I could see the fractured skylight and a thin column of rain coming through. There were wings crouching, flashing past. He started to come through, unfolding as he emerged.
I stood. There was a lot of business at the other end of the room, a lot of voices and movement. Most of the Corpsmen were there, standing by a hastily constructed barricade that cut off the wing that held my former room. They were variously dressed and armed, very drunk men in pajamas wielding hunting rifles and croquet mallets. When they saw me, several of them formed a firing line. They couldn’t see what was above, what was coming down.
Just a flash, but I saw several Councilors standing nearby, their faces cold and terrified. Angela stood with them, still in her complicated dress, her knuckles white across the barrel of a shotgun. She looked at me and blanched. The Corpsmen were getting closer.
“What did you summon, Jacob Burn?” Lady Tomb yelled, her voice shrill. “What darkness followed you into my house?”
I shot a look at the Corpsmen and their rifles, then up at the angel. He was almost through, his wings unfolding to descend. I couldn’t see his face or his body, just the swirling mass of wings. I jumped, hit the balcony door and rolled outside. My bones were screaming with pain. Maybe I was screaming too.
I kept my eyes up, but the rain was too much. I couldn’t see anything, not even the roof. I stumbled across the deck until my hand brushed the rough stone of the railing. I crouched and started to follow it. For now I just wanted to get away from the main house. Whatever the thing hunting me might be, I’d rather face it alone than worry about getting shot in the back by some sloshed Corpsman.
I turned to look at the house. The glass windows looked like a fogged aquarium, little more than shapes moving across the bright field of the Manor Tomb. As I watched a form fell from the ceiling, spreading out as it descended into the Great Hall. The Angel. The storm swallowed any sound, but there was a staccato brightness, gunshots, and tiny cracks appeared in the window. I was up and running, found the stairs to a lower balcony. They were narrow, with a small gate separating them from the balcony. I vaulted and clattered down the steps. Maybe the Corps and their rifles could manage the angel. Maybe not, but at least they’d buy me some time.
The central window shattered outward, spilling glittering glass and light out onto the balcony. A dark figure scurried out, disappearing into shadows. A line of Corpsmen appeared, bristling with rifles. They began to drag furniture and torchieres into the Manor’s newest entrance, shining light into the storm.
I kept moving. These stairs were rickety, clearly not meant for running down in the rain. The ground fell away below me, and I got the feeling I was moving between terraces. I lost sight of the Manor, though I could hear voices yelling out into the darkness. They hadn’t finished the thing, that’s for sure. It was still out here. I was shivering with damp and adrenaline.
The stairs led to a small ledge, with a shed and a steep set of stairs leading down. A maintenance area of some kind. I kicked open the shed door and went inside. It was a gardener’s storage shed, all right. A tiny frictionlamp clicked on as I opened the door, the mainspring sparking up. The light glittered off a wall full of tools, blades and shovels and spikes. I doused the light and took a hammer, then went back outside. I had just started on
