The Drowned Vault (35 page)

Behind them, beside the wide track door she had jumped out of with Oliver, was a jumbled pile of bodies
in orange jumpsuits. Two men began throwing the bodies into the river below.

Oliver. Where was Oliver?

She looked back at the pools. Four of the pools held a tattooed body; the center pool held Oliver, floating with his eyes shut and his arms extended, his face barely breaking the surface of the water. His ribs were rising and falling slowly as he breathed.

One Hand hobbled out from behind the freezers. His dirty white coat was dripping. His black hair was slick wet, clinging to his face. His eyes were glittering with excitement. His one hand leaned against his bamboo cane. Hanging over his stump was a bundle of loose thin wires attached to long needles.

Dixie watched as he set the needle wires down beside Oliver’s pool, then hobbled to a bench against the wall, making sure to circle far around the chained Pythia as he went. She was facing a corner, wrapped tightly in her hair.

On the bench there sat an old-style record player. One Hand lowered the machine’s playing arm onto a record that was already in place and spinning. The sounds of an orchestra jumped from the speaker, filling the room.

One Hand swayed cheerfully as he limped back to Oliver’s pool. He knelt beside it and began to insert the needles into Oliver’s pale flesh. He worked several in at
every joint, then placed others in lines along his limbs and torso.

When all the needles were satisfactory, Phoenix muttered to himself, and the thin wires attached to the needles uncurled and stood up straight, five feet tall, swaying and twisting in the air like swamp grass in the breeze.

One Hand moved to the other bodies, setting needles, humming, conducting the music with his stump.

When all the needles were set and the room was full of the strange, swaying wires, Phoenix shut his eyes and stretched out his good arm, running his hand slowly across the tops of the wires, whispering as he did. The water in the pools began to seethe, bubbling cold, and the bodies in the pools began to twitch. Dixie watched as Oliver’s skin boiled and rolled. His muscles knotted and bulged like exploding tumors. His joints unhinged and folded backward.

Dixie shut her eyes and tucked her chin against her chest. She thought about her mother, about her father’s laugh and the sound of the odd songs he’d sing while he worked, the whir of his saw and the crack of his hammer, anything but the loud music and the bodies splashing and thumping and One Hand’s terrible whispered groaning.

Dixie couldn’t say how much time passed. She sent her mind racing elsewhere and elsewhen. She spent whole days with her parents, whole weeks at her grandmother’s.
She hopped through summers, and the life spans of two pets. She rearranged her rooms in three different houses. Until finally, she noticed that the room around her had grown still.

The music had stopped, but she could hear the record player still turning. One Hand was breathing hard. Sniffing.

Feet moved past her, and finally, she opened her eyes.

The wires and needles had been collected and carried away. The bodies they had been connected to had changed. Tattooed arms had lengthened. Necks were gilled. Muscles bulged strangely. Joints and limbs were bent akimbo. Men who before had looked like floating sleepers now looked dead and violently broken. Oliver was the least changed, but still his back was twisted. One of his legs was hanging over the side of his pool and bent sharply back at the knee.

Tattooed men were dragging four of the unconscious jumpsuited bodies into the room from the hallway. Each was laid beside a pool, with one hand flung over the edge and into the water. Only Oliver did not receive one.

One Hand hobbled from pool to pool, prodding the convicts’ submerged hands with his cane.

“Pythia!” he shouted, pausing beside one. “Oracle! Is he like enough? Is he a killer?”

Dixie looked at the mass of hair in the corner. The
hair didn’t move, but a single leaf fluttered up into the air. Dixie saw a symbol burning on the leaf before it turned to ash and dusted out of the air.

The smell of the fiery leaf made her think of fall, of her father’s old burn barrel, of watching football with him on the back porch and yelling at the men in the wrong-color shirts on some faraway field, picture flickering on their little screen.

One Hand nodded, and a tattooed man stepped forward. He took the convict’s wet hand and laid it on top of the floating hand of the broken body in the pool. Then he stepped away.

One Hand began to speak words that Dixie couldn’t understand. These were not whispers. They grew louder and louder, and as they did, he opened the silver head of his bamboo cane, revealing a sharp black point. He turned the cane around like it was a spear.

“Come on, Roger!” one of the tattooed men shouted from the side.

With a quick thrust and a sharp word, One Hand speared the two hands together. Blood leaked through the pool as the watchers fell silent.

The big jumpsuited body jolted, and the body in the pool stretched slowly. Joints straightened as the watchers burst into cheers. One Hand withdrew his spear, and the man called Roger rose from the water. His symmetrical veins ballooned. The gills on the side of his neck
fluttered. He nodded at One Hand and then joined his fellows, clasping his bloody hand with theirs.

Dixie couldn’t help watching the next three. Two of them rose just like Roger had, to the excitement of his comrades. Only one remained broken and motionless. When the cane spear was withdrawn, he and the convict were both dead.

Finally, only Oliver remained. One Hand turned and smiled at Dixie. Men approached her chair, and in a flood she realized what was happening.

She was for Oliver. Her hand would be pierced to his.

When she began to scream, a rag was shoved into her mouth. The men unstrapped one of her arms and carried her whole chair to the pool, where they tipped it onto its back. A hand closed around her wrist and forced it into the pool.

She stared at the ceiling and the giant lightbulbs her father had so carefully collected, the wiring he had so carefully run through the rafters. At a burning leaf floating through the air. And then another. And then a whole flock. Ash snowed down on her, and she closed her eyes.

“I don’t believe you!” One Hand was saying. “Child for child, innocent for innocent. You’re telling lies, sweet Pythia. If only you hadn’t been raised in a cave, you would know that lies are unacceptable.”

“Never,” a girl’s voice said. “Lie.”

“Ah,” said One Hand. “The savage little oracle can
speak after all.” One Hand loomed above Dixie, massaging his bamboo cane, his eyes on Pythia in the corner. “As you’re now consulting more thoroughly, I should explain that this is only the first phase for this particular boy. He is meant to die three times tonight, and in the third resurrection, his flesh shall become mine.” He paused. “Is that why you lie? Is that what you hope to prevent?”

A leaf floated by.

“No leaves!” One Hand screamed. “No more! Shape your oracle with a tongue!”

Dixie’s heartbeat was pounding in her head, but she could still hear the girl’s quiet, simple voice as it grew to fill the room.

“Pierce her, pierce him. Soul with soul, they bird away, smoke float, river rush, twain flee forever. Truth escapes. The boy is no innocent.”

One Hand raised his cane to his lips, then looked down at Dixie. His wet hair bent around his eyes and clung to his jaw and his thin, stretched neck.

In his eyes, Dixie saw death.

He turned away. “Find me the youngest convict!” he yelled. “Not a killer. A thief, perhaps.”

The tattooed man holding Dixie’s wrist in the water restrapped her arm to her chair, lifted her up, and carried her back to the wall, where she was set down out of the way.

• • •

Phoenix slid the cane’s silver cap over the tooth and kissed it. He looked at his remaining men. Three more cycles before the task was complete. The thought poured exhaustion into his bones. He was cracking, flying apart with the strain. Without the coat, the forces flowing through him, through the tooth, would have splattered his ash all over the walls.

His mind … only the ancient charms in the white weave were keeping him clever now. The time would soon come when he must shed the coat. And then … would the beast do what he commanded? Would it complete the task ungoverned? Or would he be completely mad? He shut his eyes and doused the tiny flame of fear that had sparked within him. There had always been risk, and it had always been worth taking.

He looked at his new regiment of sons. Thirty new lives in thirty new bodies, with hearts that would never explode … unless he spoke the word. And when he’d managed to collect enough transmortals, the greatest among his sons would be rewarded further, with unending life in his service.

Two more cycles of his men, and then one or two from the freezers before his final work on Oliver. That’s all the strength he could risk before the struggle with the transmortals. His unchanged men would die when the transmortals came. Enkidu would bring them after midnight, as he and Phoenix had agreed. The trap would be
sprung, Enkidu would have his payment, and Phoenix would have the first of many pet dragons.

There wasn’t much time, but there was enough. His new crop would rest and be prepared. By midnight, the snares would be set.

Unless the transmortals found him sooner. Even a few hours early, and … Phoenix shook his head, shedding the thought. No. They wouldn’t. If another of the transmortals had tracked him, the dragons would have descended on him already. Ponce had no summoning magic, and the other transmortals he’d captured were all dead and at the bottom of the river from his testing with the tooth. He looked at Pythia, once again hair-shrouded in the corner. What could she do besides conjure leaves and write in flame? She could see the future, but she could not summon. Could she? Even if so, she had never been allied to the Great Dracul.

“Pythia! Oracle! When will the dragons come? No leaves. Speech.”

Pythia’s hair stirred and slithered as the girl stood. Her eyes were fierce, her voice stone.

“Seventy weeks. Dragons will fear the one called Desolation.”

Phoenix laughed as four more of his men lay down in the pools around Oliver. There were fear and resolution in their blinking eyes. They were prepared to die and rise again.

“Seventy weeks is rather generous,” Phoenix said. “And Desolation is rather harsh. If I destroy, it is as a farmer tills a field. I sow men and reap gods.”

Phoenix pointed his cane at one of the floating men and shook his head. Surprised, the man jumped up, dripping. Phoenix pointed at the freezers.

“It is time for a specialty,” he said. He ground his cane into his itching stump. “Bring me the Smith.”

nineteen
DRACUL

A
NTIGONE
’
S SHOULDERS WERE KILLING HER
. Once again, she tried to shift her weight, bending her legs as far as her straps would allow and then straightening them again. She slid her arms against the leather at her wrists over and over and then exhaled frustration.

Rupert was asleep, his head hanging. Mentor had disappeared, she had seen nothing of Gil and the transmortals, and her mind wouldn’t stop running laps. Were the transmortals really off chasing Cyrus? He wouldn’t lead them to Phoenix. He couldn’t. No one had a clue where Phoenix was. What was Cyrus planning? Knowing her brother, something crazy and borderline stupid. She hoped the older people were keeping him sane. And safe. They had to be. That had been her job for the last three years, and she wasn’t there to do it. Cyrus had better realize that Gil would never honor the trade. Of course, whatever his plan was, Cyrus would be welching, too. And that meant that Gil would come back angry.…

At least Cyrus was alive. For now. But how long would she be?

Up in the pillared room, quiet light flickered. Antigone groaned. She was hungry. She was exhausted and in pain and she needed to go to the bathroom.

“Rupe?” Antigone said. “Rupe!”

Rupert opened his eyes and looked at her. Despite all the blood soaked into his shirt, the patch with the flying chess knight shone perfectly silver on his shoulder.