The Drowned Vault (8 page)

Cyrus’s hand drifted up to his neck, and Patricia’s cool body twitched at his touch. He fingered the silver sheath where the tooth had been. The tingle it used to give him was long gone. Skelton’s two other charms were still on either side—the moon-colored pearl, gripped by the tiny silver claw, and the small reddish piece of wood, polished smooth by fingers and time. He didn’t know what they were for, but they weren’t the tooth. He moved on, fingering his shape-changing Solomon Keys—the longer gold one and the short silver one. Despite all the warnings—or maybe because of all the warnings—they hadn’t turned him into a thief. Not yet. A trespasser, yes.
Constantly. And why not? When any door could be unlocked, curiosity was hard to kill.

“Cy! Hello?” Antigone elbowed up to the window beside him. “Arachne’s here.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “You all right? Nolan left and you didn’t even notice.”

“What?” Cyrus looked around, startled. Nolan was gone. The rug was back over the grate. No doubt the pale transmortal boy was weaving his way through the heat tunnels, down to the Polygon.

Arachne, dressed all in black, stood in the center of the rug. Her midnight hair had been oiled and was pulled back into an explosion of curl. She had a backpack over one shoulder and a sagging, heavy satchel over the other. Her light blue eyes studied Cyrus and Antigone.

“Hey,” said Cyrus. “I’m glad you’re here. Rupe said we could head out if you were good with it.”

“First things first,” Arachne said, and she lowered her heavy satchel to the floor. As it touched ground, the bag sagged and deflated, spilling spiders like sand. Thousands poured out of its mouth and flooded across the floor, legs whispering like wind on a cactus.

Antigone screamed and jumped up onto the wooden dining chair. Cyrus lunged for the safety of the armchair, but his toe caught on the corner of the rug and he knocked the armchair over and crashed to the floor.

He twisted and tried to roll away.

Arachne jumped forward and put her hand on his head. “Be still,” she said, and Cyrus felt cold pour through him. His skin was suddenly numb. There must have been things on him, all over him, but he couldn’t feel them. He couldn’t feel anything, not even the rough wool of the rug against his skin. Arachne was whispering, singing some strange and hushed spider song.

Then her hand rose off Cyrus’s head, and warmth roared back through him. He scrambled to his feet and looked around.

Antigone was on her chair, biting the knuckle of her forefinger to keep from screaming. Her eyes were on the walls.

“Watch,” said Arachne. “But be calm and silent. They need to hear me.”

Cyrus did as he was told. He watched the spider storm begin to take a more ordered shape as the arachnid army scaled the walls and surrounded the windows, surrounded the mouth of the fireplace, surrounded the door behind him, and then became still.

Rows and rows of spiders had lined up on either side of the window. An even thicker regiment had lined up at the top. Not one sat on the sill beneath.

There were heavy spiders and tiny spiders. Fat-bodied garden spiders, and spiders built for jumping. Gray, brown, black, orange, green, and even white spiders, all still and ready and waiting for something.

Arachne dragged the wooden chair in front of the window, climbed up, and lightly touched four large spiders above the window. Immediately, they swung down on their lines and began to spin. Arachne moved to the fireplace, selected eight spiders, and then moved to the next window.

Cyrus studied the spinners in front of him. The four spiders were working on a single web unlike any normal spider construction. This was a grid. They were simply dropping vertical lines, attaching them to the windowsill, then climbing back up and doing it again.

Arachne stood between Cyrus and Antigone. After a moment, the spiders had finished and resumed their original spots.

“So …,” said Antigone. “They’re just—”

Arachne raised a finger to her lips and then hummed a single note, long and low. The smallest spiders muscled forward on all three sides. She shifted her pitch up higher, and Cyrus shivered as the hair on his arms tingled.

Then, in unison, every spider marched forward, and every one was dragging a line. One row swept down, one left, one right. Keeping exact time and pace, they clambered across the web ladder and wove between each other, over each other, around each other. They tucked and ducked and braided and looped and twisted like a square-dancing militia. And then, when they had reached the other side, they regrouped, paused, and returned.

As Cyrus and Antigone watched, the loom of spiders wove the beginnings of a tight sheet of silver silk across the window. Cyrus looked around—across the other window as well. And the fireplace. He turned around. Nothing was happening at the door. The spiders there were waiting patiently.

“This will take them a while,” Arachne said. She smiled. “If you’d like me to walk the grounds with you before your captivity, now’s the time.”

“It’s …” Antigone shrugged, surprised by her own reaction. “Well, it’s beautiful. And impossible.”

Arachne smiled. “It is both. And when my weavers have finished, it will be stronger than steel and far lovelier than any worm silk.” She laughed, as if worm silk was the most ridiculous thing in the world. Then she looked into Cyrus’s eyes, and he blinked in surprise at her happiness. The pale ice in her blue irises was gone, replaced by the burning warmth of a summer sky or the blue of a … of a something really, really blue.

“Come,” she said, and Cyrus followed her to the door. Antigone trailed behind him.

“Where are we going?” Antigone asked.

“For a walk on a hot summer evening,” Arachne said. “Before your door is sealed behind you for the night.”

The sky was dark above the Ashtown green. On one horizon, whispers of silver promised that the moon would
soon rise above the trees. On the other, only the faintest blue glow was left behind the sleeping sun. All across the green and surrounding the tall fountain, hundreds of small canvas field tents had been pitched in tightly ordered rows. Lanterns hung on poles lit the rows within the tent town. More were hanging above tent flaps, and others were spreading their glow from within, lighting canvas walls like the sides of large lamp shades.

All around, Acolytes were racing, shouting, and laughing—like the coming wave of transmortal refugees and Order members was cause for a festival. Three boys were struggling to force a fourth into the fountain. In the distance, tent stakes were pulled and cries of revenge went up as canvas collapsed.

Cyrus, Antigone, and Arachne stood on the gravel path beside the green and watched. Antigone laughed.

“I’ll follow you,” Arachne said to Cyrus. “Go where you will.”

Antigone stepped toward the main building. “Let’s go down to the lake.”

Cyrus turned the other way and began to walk.

“Okay, fine!” Antigone said, and she jogged up beside her brother. “Where are we going, fearless leader?”

“You can go to the lake,” Cyrus said. “Go where you wanna go.”

“Sorry,” said Arachne from behind them. “You’re staying together.”

Cyrus watched the tents as they passed. A few Acolytes seemed to notice them, but not many. They were too preoccupied with their own comic turf wars.

He could hear an airplane landing, but he didn’t look for it. He needed to get out of the courtyard gate, away from the green, and into the little street where Mrs. Eldridge had taken them a year ago to get their Order clothes when they’d first arrived. He hadn’t ever been back, but he was sure the right building wouldn’t be hard to find.

Antigone nudged him. “Cy? What’s going on? Why so surly?”

“What do you mean?” asked Cyrus. “I’m not surly.”

“Oh, come on,” Antigone said, and she brushed back her hair. “Are you being a grouch because I bossed Dennis when you were bossing Dennis? Are we only allowed to boss one at a time now? Or is it because Diana is leaving and we can’t? If I think about it, I start to get surly, too.”

Cyrus shook his head. “Tigs, I’m not surly. Not at all. I’m just, well …” He trailed off. What was he? Not happy. Not unhappy. It wasn’t like that. Worried? Unsure? The transmortals were afraid. And if they were … He felt like there was something dark creeping up behind him. Or something heavy hanging right above him that was about to fall. Phoenix was out there somewhere, using the tooth William Skelton had handed to Cyrus. The Acolytes could laugh and play and camp on the green,
but something seriously unpleasant was brewing. And Cyrus could do what?

Antigone was watching him. “Well,” she said, “you’re either surly, or you’re some synonym for surly.”

Cyrus looked at his sister as they walked along the path, looping around the green toward the gate.

“I’m not exactly helpful to the Order, am I, Tigs?” Cyrus scattered a lump of gravel with his toe. “I lost the tooth. Phoenix is out there doing whatever he’s doing while you and I prepare to be locked up with half the spiders on this planet.”

Antigone opened her mouth, and then clicked it shut and scrunched her face. Cyrus watched her. He knew she wanted to argue him into being cheerful. But he also knew that
she
knew that arguing with him would only make him worse.

Suddenly, Cyrus laughed. “I am a little surly.”

Antigone smiled. “Let’s go with surlyish.”

“I miss Dan.” Cyrus sighed and glanced back at Arachne. Her eyes were down, focused on the sharp turf edge to the grass beside them. He could see faint shadows and whispers of tiny movement on the path behind her. Were all spiders her spiders? Did they really just find her anywhere?

A pack of giggling Acolytes raced by, weighed down with what had to be water balloons. It would have been nice to be one of them.

His eyes drifted up to the main building. The statues on the roofline carved black shadows against the dark sky. Four bulbous shapes were floating above them.

Cyrus turned Antigone around to see. Arachne stopped beside them.

“What are they?” Antigone asked. “What’s going on?”

Arachne took them each by a wrist. Her grip was cool and calming on Cyrus’s skin. Her voice was quiet.

“We should go back now,” she said, and she pulled.

Cyrus resisted. “No, no, it’s fine.” He looked into his babysitter’s face, and he grinned. “I know what they are. Really. Watch.”

Four small football-shaped hot-air balloons with quiet rear propellers dropped down over the tented green. Each balloon was armed with a cannon for firing bread. While Cyrus and Antigone and Arachne stood and watched, the Journeymen in the balloons began their assault on the Acolytes below.

Loaves rained down and tents collapsed. Acolytes scattered, shouting in confusion. In mere moments, the tent-city neighborhoods had forgotten their feuds and had unified. From various corners, fast-moving teams with oversize slingshots began to launch water balloons as the floating fleet descended on every side.

A stale loaf thumped to the ground at Cyrus’s feet. Laughing, he and Antigone began to run.

The battle was still loud and visible when they ducked through the gate and into the little road. The shouts still echoed and the belching bread cannons still
phoomphed
when they reached the door into the tall, narrow stone building Cyrus was looking for.

The door was locked, and on the ground floor, the windows were dark. They stayed dark for the first thirty seconds of Cyrus’s banging.

When a light did flick on, Cyrus stopped. His sister studied him.

“And we’re here why?” she asked. “You need another flight jacket?”

Arachne had stepped close to the wall and was looking up, studying the eaves.

The front door opened, and Cyrus felt cool air-conditioning rush out around him, carrying the smell of old leather and oil and mothballs and four generations of recollected clothes.

An old man glared at them from the doorway. His eyebrows were even more tremendous than Cyrus had remembered. He had a crumpled cigarette tucked above his hairy left ear, and another soggy, unlit, and thoroughly chewed cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Mr. Donald,” Cyrus said, relieved that he could remember the man’s name. “I’m sorry to bother—”

“Smiths,” the man snorted. “Nineteen-fourteen guidelines. What do you want with Old Donald right now?”

Cyrus smiled and made sure he didn’t look at his sister. “Patches,” he said. “Some old patches.”

Antigone moaned. “Cyrussel …”

“I
will
start calling you Tigger again,” Cyrus said, still smiling. “Not you,” he said to Donald. “Just her. And only when she’s a total pain.”

“Patches,” Donald said. “Not many patches needed now.”

“I know,” said Cyrus. “But I also know that you keep everything. You have to have some patches.”

Without answering, Donald turned and walked back into his shop. He hadn’t invited Cyrus in, but he hadn’t closed the door, either.

Cyrus followed him, and Antigone trickled along behind. Arachne stayed in the street.

The two of them tracked the man around and between the mountains of leather flight jackets and the ladders propped against them. They slid past a pyramid of riding boots and shelf after shelf of safari shirts and jodhpurs and fatigues. They pushed on, farther than they had gone before, to the very back of the shop. And there, the two of them stopped in front of a towering set of tiny drawers, like an ancient and oversize card catalog from a precomputer library. It was at least ten feet tall and fifteen wide. The wood was dark, but the stain was worn thin in places, revealing a light grain beneath. Each drawer was only a few inches across and had a little brass handle.

Donald sniffed and leaned against it. “Patches,” he said. “What are you hoping for?”

Cyrus scanned the drawers. “Smiths,” he said. “The old family crest. Do you have one?”

Donald’s eyebrows collapsed down over his eyes. “I might. What will you be doing with it?”

Cyrus shrugged. “I just want one. Or a couple. I’m a Smith.”

“Well, I don’t have a couple,” Donald said. “I have one. And it’s not for sale. And not for display, especially right about now, with the transmor—with the immortals flowing in.”