The Drowned Vault (18 page)

“The crest of the Laughlins,” Arachne said quietly. “That one is for Phoenix.”

Behind them, Rupert spun and, with a huge booted kick, split the door to the locked room right down the
middle. Then he attacked the shards, clearing a hole and shouldering his way through.

“Boarded up from the inside,” Rupert said, flinging splintered scraps behind him. “Old wood. Get in here, Cyrus.”

Cyrus lifted his bare feet carefully over the splintered wood and ducked through the hole. The dim room on the other side was not what he’d expected—not that he’d expected anything. But given the state of the rest of the rooms when they’d moved in—especially the library—he certainly hadn’t expected tidiness.

There was a film of dust on everything, but even that wasn’t too heavy. The floor was oiled and polished wood; a plush rug covered half of it. There was a small cot with a pillow and a folded blanket. Two slippers sat side by side beneath it. There was a hot plate and a tiny refrigerator, one tall, tightly packed bookshelf, and a two-drawer filing cabinet. The top drawer was labeled
MAPS
, and the bottom drawer was labeled
LAWNEY
. Rupert jerked the bottom drawer open and then kicked it shut again. It was empty.

There was also a desk with an old wooden chair behind it, and a small artist’s table with a stool. On the artist’s table were detailed drawings on strange, fragile paper. Cyrus immediately recognized it as rice paper. The same kind of paper that had been used to make the floating lantern globe Skelton had left them in his will,
the globe that had been covered with indecipherable ink scrawling. Cyrus would have looked at the paper more closely, but Rupert whistled at him from the opposite corner of the room.

“All of this makes sense,” Rupert said. “For years I knew Skelton had to be in and out of Ashtown. But I assumed his little lizard lawyer John Horace Lawney hid him.”

“Rupert Greeves, you’re in no position to be making slighting remarks.”

Cyrus spun around and laughed. Bald and spectacled, the lawyer himself was sticking his head through the door. “Really, Rupert,” Horace said. “I thought we were past all this suspicion and doubt.”

“Horace!” Cyrus said. “We haven’t seen you in forever.”

“And that,” Rupert said, “is just one of the reasons we haven’t gotten ‘past all this suspicion.’ The so-called estate of William Skelton hasn’t done much for his heirs.”

The short lawyer stepped into the room. He was as stout and calmly pompous as the day Cyrus had first met him, sitting on Cyrus’s bed in room 111 of the Archer Motel, surrounded by the debris of Cyrus’s shattered wall. Now, like then, he was wearing tweed trousers and a tweed vest, but no jacket. And he was completely filthy, trailing hair snarls and cobwebs.

“Were you in the vents?” Cyrus asked.

Horace nodded briskly, adjusted his half-moon glasses, and squared off with Rupert. “You saw the will,” he said. “You witnessed the unsealing. The estate has been sufficient financially, but I was as surprised as you were at the somewhat modest contents.”

Rupert stepped toward the lawyer, towering above him—looking almost straight down. “No, Horace, I don’t
know
that. What I
think
is that you were hiding Skelton’s full holdings, because to reveal them would have been an admission that you maintained and controlled illegal assets for years.”

Horace sniffed. “You are, of course, free to believe whatever nonsense you like.”

“Um, why are we in here?” asked Cyrus.

Rupert looked at Cyrus, then turned back to Horace. “We are here to discover how the outlaw Skelton used to slip in and out of Ashtown.”

Horace rolled his eyes. “And I would know that how?”

“Horace …,” Rupert said. “This is an opportunity for you to avoid a beating.” His voice was low, but there was distant thunder in it.

“Fine.” Horace pointed at the ceiling. “When Skelton did come, he came through there. He dropped in, as it were. Check the desk. There’s a bottle opener on one of the drawer fronts. Lift it up.”

Rupert holstered his gun and jumped around the desk as Cyrus studied the high ceiling. It was covered
with dingy tin squares, each bent and shaped to look like plaster.

“Mr. Cyrus,” the lawyer said, “I hope that you and your sister feel that I am above suspicion of any wrongdoing. I did get shot in the line of duty—serving as your Order solicitor.”

Cyrus laughed. “And we saved your life.” He glanced at the little lawyer. “Rupe is right. What you told us about Skelton’s estate wasn’t true. We got these rooms and just enough money to pay our Order dues and send Dan to college.”

Horace sniffed, but before he could respond, four tin squares banged out of the ceiling, followed by a bundle of rope and boards. Wooden treads rattled and clattered down onto knots until finally the whole thing was swinging gently in place—a spiral staircase made of rope. The lowest tread was just a few inches above the floor.

Rupert eyed the swinging ropes and treads, then sat down on the desk, crossed his arms, and stared at Horace.

“What?” Horace said. “I was his lawyer. I couldn’t have told you when he came and went. Not ethically.”

“You realize,” Rupert said, “that I am currently in a lot of trouble with our beloved O of B?”

“I do,” said Horace. “And I’m sorry about that. If I thought I could help—”

“In fact,” said Rupert, “it is likely that my relationship with the Order is nearing its end. You’ve heard this?”

Horace nodded.

“Then my question is this.” Rupert pulled at his short beard. “Would I be in any more trouble if I shot you right now? Think about it. Don’t answer too quickly. I want your legal opinion.”

Horace laughed, but his eyes were jumpy. “You wouldn’t. This is just cheap theater.”

Rupert shrugged and set his gun on the desk. “You’re right. I’m not going to shoot you. But when we’ve gone, I’m going to have a rumor sent Gil’s way, a rumor that John Horace Lawney the seventh knows full well where we are, and that John Horace Lawney the seventh helped us leave.” Rupert smiled. “How’s that sound, mate? I don’t want my threats to be cheap.”

Horace had turned white. “He’ll kill me,” he said.

“Eventually,” said Rupert. “But you’re mortal. It was bound to happen sometime.”

Horace sniffed and took off his glasses. He was polishing them on his vest when he finally spoke. “I’m not a thief. I was going to give them everything,” he said. “Eventually.”

Rupert’s eyes narrowed. “Why the fraudulent will? Why the game?”

“You,” said Horace. “Skelton made me swear never to reveal the contents of the estate to any officer of the
O of B. He thought you’d confiscate it and that the children would get nothing. The will was always going to be a fake—the will the Order saw. I was to communicate the rest directly to the Smiths—off the record, completely off book.”

“Why didn’t you?” Cyrus asked. “A little money would have been nice. We’ve been sleeping in hammocks.”

Horace nodded at Rupert. “I was in the hospital. Eleanor Eldridge was killed, and then the Avengel himself became your Keeper. As long as that was the case, the full estate could wait.”

Rupert stood. “Here’s what you’re going to do. Money, and a lot of it, needs to show up in traditional non-Order bank accounts in the names of Cyrus and Antigone Smith. And it needs to show up fast. When the storm has blown, you can tell them what else is theirs. I’ll not probe—they can tell me about whatever they choose to. Is that clear?”

“Mr. Greeves,” Horace said, cheerfully popping his glasses back on. “It is. I appreciate the—”

“Jeb!” Rupert bellowed.

Jeb Boone stuck his head in through the broken door.

Rupert nodded at Horace. “Keep an eye on him. Tie him up if you have to, but the lawyer doesn’t leave until we’re gone.”

Jeb nodded.

“Has the herd arrived yet?” Rupert asked. “Who all is here?”

“Everyone, I think,” said Jeb. “Diana, Antigone, Dennis the porter, Jax, Nolan, Arachne, and a little staffer named Hillary. Dennis brought her.”

“Good. Get them ready and keep them calm. One pack per, if they have gear—and only if they can carry it themselves.”

Rupert stepped cautiously on the lowest tread of the rope stairs, letting the whole structure swing for a moment before he began to climb. Jeb escorted Horace back to the broken door, but the little lawyer hesitated.

“Mr. Cyrus,” Horace said, “I am sorry things have been so … complicated.”

Cyrus rolled his eyes. “Things have been real simple on our end.”

Cyrus stepped onto the spiral rope stairs. Using his hands on the treads in front of him like he was climbing a ladder, he scurried up.

Squatting in the darkness beneath attic rafters, Rupert was waiting for him, poking at an old electric coil gun that was strapped to a beam, pointed down the rope stairs.

“Crude but effective,” Rupert said. “At least if it still held a charge.” He stood as tall as he could under the low ceiling and began to weave his way down a narrow plank path. “Mind the route, Cyrus Smith. You’ll have
to retrace it.” He glanced back as Cyrus scuffed along through the dust. “Maps and mazecraft have their uses. Remember that.”

Cyrus followed Rupert as their attic met up with other attics—crossing or joining the hollow, dust-filled skulls of adjacent buildings. To Cyrus, the taste of the dust was old and familiar—he had eaten a lot of it in the barns and haylofts out in the pastures behind the Archer Motel. Even in the rafters of his school, the perches he had retreated into when teachers and classes and desks and chairs and the whole organized world became too much for him.

The planks in the attic paths were loose and uneven, balanced on the rafters wherever there was headroom beneath the sloping roves. Petrified tar hung down, and nail tips nicked his scalp when he stood too tall. Old insulation kicked up around his bare toes and floated in the slanting slices of light that slipped through the occasional roof vents.

The path turned left at an attic junction, and then left again. It led Rupert and Cyrus past a large camp of sleeping bats. Judging from the smell, the bats and all their bat friends had been camping there for quite some time.

The plank path dead-ended at a brick wall.

“Right there.” Cyrus pointed at a rumpled-up pile of insulation between two rafters. An old ladder had been bedded down inside the pile.

The ladder was a rickety one, but it held Rupert easily enough. Cyrus followed his Keeper up over the brick wall and onto a long slope of fir planks that must have been above a vaulted ceiling. A path had been worn smooth by others—or perhaps only by Skelton over time. They disturbed a smaller camp of bats and discovered a deposit of brittle ancient carnage left over—most likely—when some cats had discovered a favorite pigeon roost.

They climbed and they slid, and they walked silently over precarious planks listening to muffled voices through the ceilings beneath them. And all the way, Cyrus watched as—one by one—the last of the red paper dragons that had clung to Rupert’s wet clothes slipped off and settled in the dust among the rafters, where they would stay, perhaps for always.

“Rupe?” Cyrus asked. “What does the dragon mean? And the crests on it …”

Rupert ducked beneath another rafter. “Inside it. The crests were in the dragon’s belly. It’s a message, and an old one.” He glanced back. “A death sentence. The
Ordo
has claimed us for its own. The Dracul decree. They would issue them to kings or popes or sultans when they intended to take one of their subjects.” He laughed. “Or one of their cities. Or one of their nations. It was a warning to stand back—to expel the condemned and provide no aid or protection. And—with very few exceptions—it was obeyed.”

“We were in the dragon’s belly?”

“We
are
,” said Rupert, and he cracked a dark smile. “ ‘Shall I fear the dragon’s inners, where it keeps no armor to turn my blade?’ That from your famous ancestor, the Captain.”

“Arachne said the other crest belonged to Phoenix.”

Rupert grew serious again. “It belonged to the last Brendan—and to his twisted brother, Edwin Laughlin.” He glanced back. “Phoenix. And to his grandnephew, Oliver Laughlin, wherever he may be.”

Cyrus slipped along behind Rupert. The shrunken old Brendan had been nice enough, but Cyrus had only spoken to him once before he died. He’d actually interacted more with Phoenix. Just thinking about that man sent Cyrus’s neck hair bristling—the singsong drawl; the limp; the wild all-seeing, all-sucking eyes; the ancient stained white coat; the electric tingle in his frigid touch; the voice that had probed into his mind. And Mr. Ashes—the snarling, rushing power he’d become when the coat had slipped off his shoulders.

And Oliver Laughlin. The boy. He had sat beneath the wall of portraits in the Galleria and decided Cyrus’s fate with silent nods and silent shakes of his head. The Order had bowed to him as the rising successor. But he hadn’t cared—not about anything. And he’d turned out to be the loneliest kid Cyrus had ever met. He hadn’t
hung out with the Polygoners for long. The Brendan had died, and Oliver had gone.

Now they were inside a dragon together.

Cyrus thumped into Rupert’s back.

The path had terminated at a tremendously thick chimney. Bricks had been removed from one side and carefully stacked out of the way, leaving a black ragged arch behind. A rope ladder dangled inside.

Rupert squeezed himself in and began climbing. When the avalanche of ash and char finally slowed and stopped, Cyrus held his breath and ducked into the hole.

After fifteen feet of darkness, Cyrus reached the upper lip of the chimney and stuck his head out beneath the hazy sky. Rupert grabbed Cyrus’s forearms and rocketed him out the chimney into the daylight.

They were standing on a copper roof—old and tarnished green. The roof sloped down past a row of mossy statues and stopped at a broad gutter. Another rope ladder had been attached to the chimney, and it ran down to the edge of the roof and disappeared into what looked like nothing but treetops and sprawling woods—the outer unkempt grounds of Ashtown. To their left, looking past the stone corners and higher roofs of the main building, they could just see the jetty, the crowded harbor, and a flock of anchored seaplanes. Gil’s was the biggest, floating on its fat belly.