Chapter Twenty-Five
“I SYMPATHIZE WITH THOSE WHO DOUBT THE EXISTENCE OF WHAT OTHERS HAVE DUBBED AN AALDENBERG KNOT (OR KNOTS, AS MAY BE THE CASE). I CAN ONLY SAY THAT, IN MY EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS ON TRINITY, I HAVE GROWN EVER MORE SURE THAT OUR WORLD HOLDS DEEP SECRETS, AND THE AALDENBERG KNOT IS LIKELY LEAST AMONG THEM.”
I leave Halle snuggled underneath that yellow quilt, her arm around Kelda, and move through the row house on stealthy footsteps.
Halle and Kelda and I need a plan for getting out of here as quickly as possible.
One or two of the Bookers’ automaton mounts would be ideal—that way we could move freely, without being tied down—but I’m not sure how keen they will be to hand them over and I don’t know how competent I would be at steering them in the first place.
There’s the lightningrail, but they’re crowded and unreliable.
I need to know our options in this little mirage town.
Atlas is sitting with Liren and their parents, talking quietly, and Dani has stretched out on the couch in the parlor, her rucksack under her head as a pillow, one arm thrown over her eyes to block out the light.
I hesitate in the doorway, wondering if I should wake her up, demand to know why she’s still here, tell her to go back home.
But her home was the Shipyards, and who knows how much is left of that place now?
I leave her to sleep, telling myself it’s fine, that we’ll be putting everyone else behind us soon anyway, so what’s one more person?
In a small room at the back of the house, I find Orion hunkered down at a table, bent low over the Aaldenberg knot.
It looks smaller than it did back in the vault, and all the etchings across its twisted surface seem a dozen times more complex in the full afternoon light.
Orion has his ear trumpet out again, pressed to the top of the device, as he works his fingertips slowly and steadily over the surface.
I fold my arms over my chest and step farther into the room. “What do you hear when you listen to safes like that?”
“Usually? I hear the sweet, sweet clicking of a lock just begging to be broken.” Sighing, he sits back, taking the trumpet out of his ear. “Right now, I hear nothing. Not even the slightest sign that I’m on the right track.”
I draw closer, pulled in by the sight of this strange, intricate contraption despite myself. “Is it really that big of a deal? Finding one of these?”
“Are you serious? It’s huge.” He crosses his arms, staring at it with no small sense of awe.
“Aaldenberg knots are legendary, at least among the small circles of people who know about them. The theory is that they were created a thousand years ago—some people think they actually go all the way back to the founding of Trinity—and no one is completely sure how many there are. Could be one, could be a dozen.”
I raise a skeptical eyebrow. “So you don’t know what’s even in there?”
“Not exactly, no.” He glances at me, sheepish. “Lots of folks think there has to be some kind of fathomlessly big treasure in there. Others think there’s information or secrets. Maybe even the Book of Signs.”
I almost laugh but check myself at the last second when I see the expression on his face. “You’re serious? The Book of Signs? That’s just a myth people made up.”
He shrugs. “Maybe, but a guy can dream, can’t he? The possibility that there’s a book somewhere that dates all the way back to the beginning of Trinity that the Ministry doesn’t want found? That’s delicious stuff. Finding it would be game-changing for the work I’m doing as the Skywayman.”
I eye him, studying his profile in the orange-gold sunlight. “And what is that work exactly?”
“Collecting the cash and valuables of grotesquely wealthy skyliners for what I like to call ‘involuntary redistribution.’” He tips his head back to look up at me. “But also stripping them for information in the process.”
“What kind of information?”
“Lies, cover-ups, secrets the Ministry and the chapels have hidden away. All we know about our world and our history is what they tell us, and I’ve always felt like pieces of it were … missing. I want to find them. I want to get to the truth.”
“And do what?”
“I don’t know yet. I guess it depends on what I can find out.”
I reach out and touch a finger tentatively to the Aaldenberg knot. The flat black metal almost seems to hum against my skin in a way that feels familiar. “How does Atlas feel about it?”
Orion smiles ruefully. “He’d rather I find a less dangerous way to go about my rebellion.
Honestly, he and I have similar goals, just different ideas on how we should get there.
Atlas is still a preacher, through and through.
He wants to work from the bottom up. Change people’s hearts, show them a new set of teachings, motivate them to make change. ”
“Let me guess: That’s too slow for you?”
“You could say that. I just don’t see anything really changing unless we break the wheel first.” He laces his fingers behind his head, leaning back deeply into his seat. “So I keep trying it my way, and he keeps trying it his. But we’re both working toward the same thing.”
Making real change. Like Halle always talks about. I never understood it when we were younger when Orion would go on and on about taking action and fighting back. It always sounded ridiculous—there was no breaking the system; there was just doing whatever you had to so you could survive.
But here they are—the Booker brothers. Doing the work and somehow finding family in that.
“You really are doing something,” I say softly, and I know he can hear it in my voice: that I’m impressed by him. That I’m even a little proud of him. “With all that idealism and hope. You’re turning it into something bigger.”
He clears his throat. I think I actually made him uncomfortable. “Trying anyway. Honestly, anybody could do it, V. I’m not exactly special.”
I don’t think that’s true. I think he’s one of the most special people I’ve ever met. I think he’s beautiful and I miss lying on rooftops beside him with our fingers laced together. I think driving him away three years ago is a regret I’ll carry around for the rest of my life.
But I can’t bring myself to say any of that to him. I focus on the Aaldenberg knot instead, leaning close to it to trace the whorls of engraved patterns. “You don’t have any way of opening it?”
He rubs at his eyes, looking tired. “Nothing I know of. It’s possible that the skeleton key might’ve helped…
” He trails off abruptly, sidestepping around the awkward point of why he no longer has that key.
“Anyway, finding it is half the battle, right?” he adds with forced cheeriness.
“There’s got to be a way to figure out the rest. Find another key maybe. ”
Keys won’t work. The thought pops up unbidden as my fingers continue to move across the knot’s surface.
There’s something compelling about the flow of the engravings, the way the lines intersect and split apart and twist together.
I don’t realize it reminds me of Trinity’s song until I’m already humming it, softly, nearly under my breath.
There’s a click from deep inside the Aaldenberg knot, and it shifts just a little beneath my fingers.
Orion jerks upright. “What just happened? Actually, no, never mind. Don’t tell me, just keep doing it.”
I start humming again. I’ve never been particularly musical and I can’t really mimic the thousands of layered harmonies I hear in the actual song, but I pick my way through the notes just like the prophets do, the melody flowing out of me smoother and louder as I gain confidence.
Ripples shiver across the surface of the Aaldenberg knot, and then it starts to split apart, all along its engraved lines.
Bright-gold light radiates out as the pieces separate, expand, rearrange themselves into a curved, glowing bowl of flat black metal.
Orion leaps to his feet, staring at the box in awe, the glow from it highlighting the planes of his face. “What was that? Some kind of saint thing?”
I open my mouth to try and answer him, but I’ve got nothing. Nothing that won’t take an hour to explain, anyway.
As the light dies away, we get a clearer look at what’s inside, and it isn’t anything I could’ve guessed or expected. It’s far bigger on the inside than it seems. There’s an engraved silver tablet, and next to it, perfectly preserved, is a kind of plant I’ve never seen before—
No, that isn’t quite right. I have seen it once, back at the room above the dram shop when I’d hallucinated all that greenery. This had been one of them, a slender purple flower with a bright-green stem and long, elegant, triangular leaves.
Beneath both of those items, curled into a tight ball, is a …
I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.
It’s like a tiny automaton except it’s not made of metal and naphtha.
It’s warm and organic like Orion and me, covered in short, light-reddish-brown hair, with brushes of white around its little black nose.
I think it has to be a statue or carving of some sort at first, but then I notice that its chest is moving, slowly and gently, up and down.
It’s breathing.
“Orion.” My voice sounds strangled and tight. “What the fuck.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He reaches in and carefully picks up the silver tablet, leaving the plant and the breathing thing where they are for now as he scans the words carved into it.
“What does it say?” I ask, not taking my eyes off the creature.
Or maybe the truth is I couldn’t look away even if I wanted to.
Part of me knows that if it moves, opens its eyes, proves it’s alive, everything around me will change at such a fundamental level that I’ll never get it back to how it was before.
And I’m balanced on a knife’s edge, not sure which one I want more.
Orion frowns deeply, looking frustrated. “It hardly says anything at all. It’s just—”
To whomever finds this,
Proof of life. There are answers at the gate. Find me there.
Signed, Samuel Covenant
Now that does make me look up. “Covenant? As in, the Herald Covenant?”
Orion digs his knuckles into his eyes. “I just wanted an absurdly big diamond or maybe a handbook on how to take down the Heraldic Ministers. Is that too much to ask?”
My eyes fall back to that hairy creature, and heart pounding, I reach in and touch it with one tentative finger.
It’s soft, so very soft, and beneath my fingertip, I can feel a tiny heart pulsing away in its chest. Trinity’s song swells inside me and it feels like the ground is tipping underneath my feet as I scrabble for purchase, for understanding.
Bells cut through the air, bringing me back to myself.
The chapel bells of Concord are ringing.
Whipping around, I dash out of the room, across the house, skidding to a stop by the front windows. With a trembling hand, I ease back the gauzy curtain and look out at the quiet town street beyond.
Something drops out of the sky and lands right in front of the house, the heavy impact of metal upon metal vibrating in my ears.
The shape unfurls to its full towering height.
A giant construction of metal in the rough shape of a person, with enormous wings made of viciously sharp metal feathers, and a mask of exaggerated human features, fixed in an expression of frozen benevolence.
An impossibly long broadsword sits on its back, and a golden glow emanates from its eyes and smiling mouth and from between every crack and crevice in its plating.
An Archangel.
Looking straight at me.