The Drowned Vault (5 page)

C
YRUS AND
A
NTIGONE TURNED
sideways to squeeze through an oncoming group of men. All of them were in safari boots and shorts; all of them were fit and hard with sun-browned skin. Cyrus had never seen any of them before—they’d either been on an extended trek, or they were from another of the O of B’s Estates. The men were talking seriously, but every eye followed the Smiths as they passed.

They knew who Cyrus was, and they knew what he’d lost.

Antigone and Cyrus quickened their steps. The halls were crowded with the late rush to the dining hall.

“New people everywhere,” Antigone said quietly. “Where are they coming from?”

Cyrus watched a group of five teens approaching. Three of them he knew—Sean, Chris, and Francis—typical boring, rich-kid Journeymen who disliked the Smiths and always seemed to be vacationing with family somewhere incredibly obscure. The three of them were
clustered around and chattering at two blond brothers who Cyrus didn’t know. Both of the brothers were shorter than Cyrus, but had broader, heavier shoulders and long, thick arms. They were wearing tight black T-shirts and pocketed fatigue shorts. A simple white design had been stenciled on the center of each shirt—an elephant skull with large curving tusks above crossed telescopes.

Cyrus stared at the strange Jolly Roger and then looked into the boys’ faces. Tan skin, square jaws, and very blond hair. One of them had traded half of his right eyebrow for a lump of white scar tissue. Cyrus could still see a faint crisscross where the wound had been stitched.

The boy with the scar saw Cyrus and Antigone as they tried to pass, and shouldered his way free of his fans.

“You’re the Smiths?” he asked. His voice was accented, almost British, but Cyrus knew that wasn’t right. Australian? That was wrong, too.

Cyrus nodded. Antigone looked down the hall, where Rupert had stopped and was waiting for them.

“I’m Silas Livingstone,” the boy said. He pointed at his brother. “This is my little brother George.”

“Hey,” said George. “You two are why we’re here.”

“Great,” said Antigone, glancing at the three other Journeymen. They all looked like they smelled something unpleasant. “Nice to meet you. Cy, we should keep going.”

“Wait.” Silas cocked his head, raising one and a half eyebrows. He was looking at the emblem on Antigone’s shirt. Then he looked at Cyrus’s. “What is that? A boxing monkey? I’ve never seen that before.”

South African accent, Cyrus thought. Or something close.

George pointed at it. “Is it your family’s crest?”

Silas laughed. “George, that’s not the sign of the Smiths.”

“Right.” George looked embarrassed, like he’d forgotten something obvious. “Well, it’s not a Continental crest or an Estate crest or an Expeditionary Badge. Is it a new trainer’s?”

Cyrus looked at Antigone, and back at the two brothers. He shrugged. “I have no idea what most of that meant.”

Antigone tucked back her hair and smiled. “It’s the sign of the Polygoners,” she said. “We got it off a World War One flight jacket. Now it’s our symbol.”

“Smiths!” Rupert yelled. “Now!”

“What
is
the sign of the Smiths?” Cyrus asked.

Silas cocked his half-eyebrow in surprise. “The three heads?”

“Heads?” Antigone asked. “Of what?”

“Of men,” said Silas, confused. He seemed to think he was missing a joke. “Grand to meet you both. And no hard feelings, I hope.”

Cyrus and Antigone continued down the hall and rejoined Rupert. Antigone glanced at her brother.

“Heads? That’s a little weird,” she said. “And no hard feelings? What was that about? Why would there be hard feelings?”

“They’d like their father to be named Brendan instead of your trusty Keeper. Some would take that personally, but I share their hope, as unlikely as it is,” Rupert turned and continued down the hall. “Stay close and keep moving.”

“Where are we going?” Cyrus asked. “I thought you wanted to talk.”

“We’ll talk in your rooms,” Rupert said. “Not before.”

“Our rooms?” Cyrus said. “What about dinner?”

Rupert laughed. “Cyrus Smith, we’ll talk when we get there.”

Rupert carved his way through the crowded halls. Even side by side, Cyrus and Antigone fit easily in his wake.

Three heads. Living heads? Dead heads? Cyrus liked the boxing monkey better. He watched the mapped mosaic floors slide past under his feet. He stepped over a tile street map of Rome. And then what he thought was the Grund of Luxembourg—but only because someone had told him once. He still wasn’t sure what a Grund was, but by now he was probably supposed to.

He and Tigs had been walking over these mapped floors for a year now, and in that time Cyrus had come to genuinely like their new home. A lot. Even though the rich Skelton inheritance promised to them by the little lawyer John Horace Lawney VII had been a wash, and even though they were surrounded by people who always seemed to be giving them the stink-eye, this was the place where Cyrus had learned to fight and shoot and fly. He could wander halls lined with relics and artifacts that would have been beyond his collector’s imagination only a year ago. He knew what it was like to ride a bull shark and how its muscled sandpaper skin felt against his hands. There had been days when he had done nothing but search through faded old photographs of explorers, wondering which faces belonged to Smiths. But for all of that, he also felt stuck, almost more stuck than he had at the Archer Motel. He and Antigone weren’t allowed to leave the Estate without the permission of their Keeper, and Rupert was never around to take them anywhere off grounds. He certainly wasn’t about to let them go anywhere on their own.

There were no classes and no real structure. Every time he looked at a book, he suddenly wanted to go for a run, or find a sparring partner, or ask Diana to take him up in one of her planes. But he was going to have to start making himself do the studying if he ever wanted to leave this place and hunt for Phoenix himself.

Cyrus grimaced. Yeah, there was plenty he didn’t like. The looks in the dining hall. The muttered comments in the halls and the collections and even in the armory. And the fact that almost no one would train with him. That made him angry—even angrier because, on some level, the people who hated him were right. He, Cyrus Smith, had come to Ashtown carrying the Dragon’s Tooth—a dangerous relic given to him by an outlaw. And he had lost it.

Next time … he didn’t even finish the thought. Even now, Cyrus could picture Phoenix’s face and see the beast he became without his white coat. He could feel those powerful hands, and even more powerful eyes, eyes that could close a throat and choke out breath.

Cyrus shivered. He had to do something, had been trying to do something. But even he could see that his efforts to qualify for Explorer were usually distractions when he felt penned in. Would Phoenix really be any more frightened of Cyrus the Explorer than he had been of Cyrus the Acolyte? Phoenix wasn’t even frightened of Rupert.

Cyrus hopped over a complicated tile map-tangle in the floor labeled
Sub Aquagium Parisii
. Aquagium? It didn’t ring a bell.

“Tigs?”

“Sewers of Paris,” she said simply. “You’ve scraped through one level of Latin. You should know that.”

“You should know that I wouldn’t.”

The three of them passed the loud dining hall and wound their way through the hallways. They passed photographs and strange animal heads and maps and guns and swords and battered wooden propellers until the hallway broadened and they finally reached the ancient leather boat of Brendan on its pedestal and the long dragon skin on the wall. Rupert strode past them to the great doors—the huge wooden doors that opened onto the courtyard lawn of Ashtown. Rupert opened a small wicket door on the right side and ducked out.

Cyrus and Antigone hopped through after him, and a moment later, they were both blinking in the smoldering heat.

The sun was already low, but the humid air held the warmth like … like a baked potato, Cyrus thought. A potato he had to live in. He groaned and shut his eyes. His skin already felt greasy.

“I don’t mind it,” Antigone said. “Better than the cold.”

Cyrus watched Rupert move down the stone stairs toward the huge courtyard lawn flanked by hulking stone buildings. In the center of the lawn, the towering fountain was steaming as it churned. All over the lawn, in tight regimented rows, Acolytes were erecting canvas tents.

“What’s going on?” Cyrus asked. “Did I miss something?”

“Preparations,” a voice said behind Cyrus. He wheeled around. Dennis Gilly stood beside the big wooden doors, sweating in his porter’s suit and the bowler hat he had tied on with a ribbon beneath his chin. He wasn’t nearly as pimply as when they’d first met him, but he’d hardly grown in the last year. “Mr. Greeves has ordered all Acolytes out of quarters. The staff are expecting a great number of guests who require quarters in isolation.”

“Smiths!” Rupert shouted. He was already striding away along a gravel walk.

“See ya, Dennis,” Antigone said. Dennis nodded and touched his sweat-slick nose.

Cyrus and Antigone jogged down the stairs and ran to catch up to Rupert. Two Acolytes shrieked past, laughing and wrestling over an old bloated football.

“Rupe,” said Cyrus. “When Gil was storming out of Mom’s room, he said he wouldn’t play football again. What did he mean? Why would he have to play football?”

Rupert smiled. They were nearing the shade of a covered stone walkway. “After that whole scene, that’s what you’re wondering about?”

“No,” said Cyrus. “I want to know why the courtyard is all of a sudden a huge campground, and I want to know if more Gils are going to show up, and I want to know what Arachne’s deal is, and I want to talk you into taking me on your next trek. But if I bring any of that up,
you’ll probably just tell me to shut up and wait till we’re in our rooms.”

Rupert laughed. “All right, then. Money is complicated for a transmortal. Think about it. They tend to have the needs of mortals, but without the mortality. Just because they don’t die doesn’t mean they’re wealthy enough to feed themselves and clothe themselves and shelter themselves
forever
. Mortals retire when they think they have enough money to care for themselves until death. But when there is no death, there’s never enough money. Gil recently lost a great deal of his worth, and in the recent past, whenever he’s run out of money—all the way out of money—he’s made up a new identity and played professional football. He’s actually in the Hall of Fame under two different names. Apparently he doesn’t want to do it again. It’s usually best if he waits a decade or so between careers.”

“Bizarre,” Cyrus said.

Rupert laughed. “You have no idea.”

Their three sets of feet stopped crunching gravel and began scuffing along paving stones. The shade wasn’t any cooler than the sun.

“I don’t care about football,” Antigone said. “And I don’t care about Gil, as long as he stays away from us and from Mom. I want to know why the sign of the Smiths is three heads.”

Rupert stopped at a battered door set into a rough stone wall. For Cyrus, opening that door always took
two hands and a braced foot. Rupert jerked on an iron ring with one hand and the door squealed open. “The three severed heads?” Rupert asked. “Who told you about them? Did you see it in a book?”

“Severed?” Antigone grimaced. “That’s disgusting.”

Inside the doorway, stairs curled up in a spiral. “Yes, severed,” said Rupert, smiling. “It’s a grim crest and a famous one. The Order expunged it almost a century ago, but it’s still in all the books and stories. Expunging history is harder than some committees might think.” Rupert gestured for Antigone to go first, and she began to climb. Cyrus followed. The stairs were as dank as ever, but beautifully cool once the door banged shut behind them. Rupert’s voice echoed in the stairwell.

“For the last forty years or so, crests and seals haven’t mattered much in Ashtown. There were fewer great expeditions to be had and less pride in Expeditionary Badges, less pride in what remained of the old families, and less rivalry between Continent and Continent, Estate and Estate. Now one tends to see the symbol of the Order—the ship of Brendan—or the crests of trainers on the chests of paying pupils. But there are those who still keep the old crests close.”

Cyrus reached the top and stopped in the long narrow hall that led to their rooms. There were windows, but only the size of arrow slits. The walls were cool bare stone. Antigone was waiting.

“What was the point?” she asked when Rupert reached the top. “And why did we have three severed heads?”

Rupert followed her down the hall. Cyrus trailed behind. “The point,” he said, “was pride in one’s family, in one’s Estate and Continent and achievements, et cetera. People who understood could look at your badges and crests and they would know who you were, where you were from, what you had done, and—frequently—what your ancestors had done. Your three severed heads became the Smith crest four centuries ago as a result of John Smith and his … achievements.”

At the end of the hall, Antigone pushed open a little door.

Rupert laughed. “You don’t keep it locked?”

Cyrus shook his head. “Not usually. There’s nothing in there worth taking.”

Antigone stopped in the doorway and looked up at Rupert. “What is the crest of the Greeveses? Is your family old, too?”

Rupert looked from Antigone to Cyrus. After a moment, he sighed. Then he began to unbutton his worn safari shirt.

“You two,” he said, “and only you two, get me to yammering like an old nan on her front porch.”

Cyrus stared, confused, as the big man stripped off his shirt. The tangled web of scars on his muscled chest
was beyond sorting out. His left shoulder was dotted with what looked like bullet wounds—or maybe teeth marks—and his right side had a large old-looking T scar just above his hip.

“Wow,” said Antigone. “What are those—”

“No,” said Rupert. “No questions.” He jerked his safari shirt inside out, and then slid his arms back through the sleeves. Now there were patches on both shoulders—three on his right and one on his left. He slapped his right shoulder. At the top, there was a black medieval ship in a yellow circle.