SEATTLE, PRESENT
In the fairy tale, the prince kisses the sleeping beauty on her rosy lips and she wakes up, eyelashes fluttering. Standing in the mangled wreckage of this cathedral, on a lake of cool marble hidden deep underground, I feel like this could be a fairy tale world. Peter, with his dimpled chin and closed eyes, could be a prince asleep under an evil curse.
I’d kiss him, maybe, but I’ve got my hands buried wrist deep in his chest.
Click.
Both relics finally slide together against the stone disk. My fingertips tickle long enough for me to think Oh shi—
With a concussive thump, the relics lock together and a column of white light strobes from Peter’s chest. The surge throws me back, the outline of my forearm leaving an imprint on my vision. Blinking, rubbing my eyes, I see Peter’s eyelids fly open, his mouth twisting into a surprised grimace. He screams in agony, back arching and chest convulsing.
This is not like a fairy tale.
“Peter, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
I snatch a leather strap from the tool roll and use both hands to push it into Peter’s mouth. His teeth clench on the strap, eyes rolling left to right, squinted against the blue-white electrical light pouring from his open chest. I take his right hand in both of mine, wincing at his grip and the numbing tickle of electricity, and pull it close to my chest, leaning to him.
“It’s a power transfer,” I say. “You’ll be okay.”
I hope I sound confident. Squeezing my eyes shut, I hope he understands.
Still holding his hand, I crouch and lean against the table. Through my closed eyelids, the strobes of light pulse quicker and quicker, and a whining sound grows to an earsplitting crescendo. My whole body buzzes with electricity, and Peter’s moans are lost under the scream of hidden machinery.
Then, finally, the storm passes.
The unnatural glare fades and we are left again under the warm flicker of hundreds of candles and the shadows of the whirring drones that tend them. A thin haze of smoke lingers above us. The seams of Peter’s face glow a dark silver, but his eyes are open and alert.
“Peter?” I ask. “Are you okay?”
Straining to sit up, Peter reaches into his own chest and pulls out Batuo’s relic with a shaking hand. The stone bi disk is still attached to it. Looking at it in wonder, a slow realization creeps over his face. Turning to me, I can see that he knows.
“Batuo,” he asks, voice flat.
I shake my head sadly, glimpsing the dull glow of Peter’s relic inside his exposed chest. The symbol imprinted on Peter’s anima looks like a flat column, a plinth used to support larger structures. Noticing my gaze, Peter quickly closes the spherical cage around his anima. The carbon fiber ribs of his chest lace themselves shut and with a swipe of his finger, he draws a line from his navel to his collarbone—the skin over his muscular chest connecting like a zipper.
Now Peter looks like a bare-chested man, his body still quivering with occasional electrical spasms. He swings his legs over the table, looking around for the first time. At his feet, he spots Batuo.
“How did you know?” he asks. “To commit the transfer?”
“I didn’t. It was an emergency—an accident,” I say, packing up Batuo’s leather tool roll. I take the monk’s relic and the bi disk and place them both inside. I roll the fabric up and tuck it into the waistband of my jeans, in the small of my back.
“No, not an accident,” says Peter with a grim smile. “I chose well, after all.”
My cheeks turn hot and I look away.
“How did it happen?” Peter asks, spotting the portly man, splayed out in a mess of robes, arms and legs mismatched, his skinless chest open to reveal an empty cradle where his relic was housed. Batuo’s face is still, eyes closed and peaceful.
“That,” I say, nodding across the room.
The wreck of Talus lies in a heap of disembodied limbs, faceless, teeth snarling at nothing, fingers curled in agony, a spear shaft jutting from his chest.
“Oh, no,” Peter murmurs.
At the sight of Talus, a sadness settles into his broad shoulders, his lips set in a small hurt grimace. Slipping off the table, Peter walks over, stepping around the smears of quicksilver and broken limbs.
He kneels beside the wretched body.
Reverent, Peter pushes Talus over onto his back. He sighs at the insults to the destroyed face. Hidden by the curve of his back, I see Peter’s hands move busily over the fallen man’s chest. In quick economical movements, Peter is retrieving a relic.
Stepping closer, I stoop to pick up a slice of metal. It’s the death mask—a curve of hardened liquid that covered Talus’s face, jagged along the edges where he sawed it away from his own skull. The features on the mask are calm, a beatific expression locked forever in contours of silver-colored metal.
Standing at Peter’s shoulder, I hand him the mask. Peter places it over the body’s ruined face, returning the corpse to some semblance of peace.
Peter holds up the relic that belonged to Talus, considering it. On its face is a fading symbol, I realize—a plinth. It is the same squat column that I saw on Peter’s relic. The two avtomat somehow have the same inscription—the same Word.
Talus was a monster, a murderer without remorse.
“What does that symbol mean?” I ask, my voice hollow.
Peter ignores my question, pocketing the relic. Leaning over, he scoops Talus up in both arms. Holding the limp body like a sleeping child, he lumbers toward the shadowed wall of crypts.
“Peter, I know his symbol is the same as yours,” I say.
The man pauses a few yards away, shoulders massive and sloped. He doesn’t turn to face me, just clings sadly to the body in his arms.
“We have the same symbol, but different masters,” he says.
“Tell me the truth,” I insist. “Why do you have the same Word as that monster?”
Peter’s voice is hoarse, drenched in sadness.
“Because he was my little brother.”
38
LONDON, 1758
Five thousand years. The black, broken stretch of lost memory reels on for longer than I ever imagined. My mind fails to contain it, balking and returning always to the girl.
Hypatia sits beside Elena, watching me carefully across a skyline of teacups and saucers and a teapot and a small clay dragon kept for good luck. The anima rests on the table between us like a poisonous spider. I don’t dare to touch the half-moon of metal again. My mind is buzzing from the thoughts it gave me before—a vision of death and loss.
This artifact has reappeared from a forgotten life, and it threatens to pull me away from the only life I know. Away from my sister. When I learned she was in danger, my priorities snapped into focus—Elena is all I have ever truly cared about. The undertow from this shard of evil metal cannot break that focus.