The Unnaturalists

CHAPTER 6

The need for the stone came sooner than Syrus could have imagined.

Two nights after his encounter with the Architects, he settled gratefully into the nest of old quilts between uncles, aunts, and cousins. Granny Reed was at the rusting potbelly stove, feeding it carefully gathered wood and pony dung. As it often did when winter approached, the passenger car smelled of bodies that hadn’t been washed in a while. But Syrus didn’t mind so long as everyone was warm.

The summoning stone was secure in an inner pocket of his jacket and he patted its hard circle one more time just to be sure it was there. In a family of pickpockets, he’d be an absolute idiot to keep the stone where it would be easy for one of his cousins to steal it. He hadn’t told anyone about his encounter for just that reason. He was hoping to be able to tell Granny when all the others weren’t around; he just hadn’t found a chance yet. Perhaps tomorrow.

Evidently, Granny hadn’t told the story of the Manticore’s Heart last night because he heard her say, around her corncob pipe: “It was quite some time ago that a Tinker witch made a bargain with a Scientist from a City in the World Before. He asked her to steal something very powerful for him. And what he asked her to steal was none other than the Heart of Tianlong, the heavenly Dragon that rested on the banks of that river yonder. For it was said that the Heart of Tianlong was a well into the Universe, and if a man held that—well, then he held the power of the Universe in his hand. But only a powerful witch could remove the Heart.

“So, she took the Heart and sold it to the Scientist who in turn used it to bring his City here. And one of the Scientist’s followers called himself Emperor, and his descendants still rule to this day.

“At the time, the Emperor had only one daughter, a Princess named Athena. And Athena was as wise and just as her father wasn’t. She knew that magic is the lifeblood of this world, and she was determined to use her knowledge to keep magic alive.

“In his dungeons, the Emperor experimented on Elementals, stealing the secrets of their magic when he could. He had discovered that when he used their magic in conjunction with Tianlong’s Heart that his mortal life could be extended. But not indefinitely. Occasionally, he needed to recharge the Heart, so to speak. That didn’t satisfy him, though. He wanted a direct way to absorb the Elementals’ power and live forever. And so he tortured and maimed and killed the Elementals in service of that desire.

“The Princess came to understand the truth of her father’s evil, for she visited the dungeons and a Manticore, who was near death, told her what had happened. And that night, when the Tower was very quiet, the Princess snuck into her father’s secret cabinet, stole the Heart from where he kept it, and fitted it into the Manticore’s chest to help her live. She released the Manticore and freed magic back into the world where it belongs. She fled with the Manticore and a guard who had fallen in love with her, but eventually her father caught her and marched her off to the Creeping Waste to her death.

“And that, my dears,” Granny said, looking around, “is why we must be ever-vigilant and protect the Manticore at all costs. For the Empress is doing this very thing again, I guarantee it. That’s why all the Elementals have been disappearing and why the Creeping Waste keeps growing. She’ll make sure there will be no one to aid us this time. We must stay here and ensure that magic survives. Protect the Manticore and protect us all.”

There were murmurs of assent that soon fell into whispers and snatches of swaddlesongs. Granny kept the stove open a long time, smoking and staring into the flames.

“But Nainai, what happened to Tianlong?” Syrus asked.

Granny looked at him, and it was almost as though her face was wreathed in fire. “Tianlong still sleeps by the river, and there is a hole where his Heart should be. The Manticore is all that stands between us and the Waste.”

Syrus fell asleep thinking about Granny’s story. It took a long while to drift off. Not only did his thoughts chase around like foxes in a rabbit pen, but the new baby was fussy. He’d grown used to such things, but tonight the baby was as loud as his thoughts.

Nainai often read his face and said he would “change the world.” But Syrus wondered how. Certainly, his people thought him special for his gifts. But how could these gifts be used to protect the Manticore and his people? Maybe the Architect he’d met today would open the way. He patted his breast pocket before his thoughts drained away into warm darkness.

The last thing he saw was Granny’s outline in front of the stove, smoke drifting from her pipe. He didn’t feel the little fingers that slipped down toward his chest, nor did he hear the hushed giggle as his cousin Amalthea worked the stone from his secret pocket and tiptoed back to her place.

Three hours later, when the doors splintered inward and the Raven Guard stormed in, Syrus’s searching fingers met with nothing but string, lint, and the jade toad he had stolen from the girl in the carriage.

The Guard had been in the Imperial service since the first Emperor, John Vaunt, had created them. No one knew how the Emperor had made them—no one dared question—but they were obviously the work of some dark, twisted magic. Though the Guard spoke and moved as humans did in their rusting suits of armor, they had the heads of Ravens and, it was rumored, communicated secretly with their winged cousins that patrolled the skies around the Empress’s Tower. The Guard were killing machines, powerful and quick and utterly devoid of emotion.

The armored creatures moved through the train car, shaking people out of their quilts. They either shoved the Tinkers toward their compatriots at one end of the car or skewered them. It was only when the blood started to flow that the screaming began. Syrus watched in horror as his cousin Amalthea was pierced and tossed aside while her mother wailed.

Wicked dancing shadows lit the broken panes and dark stains that spread among the quilts on the floor. Granny Reed stood and thrust a rolled blanket into the stove. She lunged toward the nearest Guard, trying to set his feathered head afire, but he turned his long pike on her before she reached him, slitting a dark line from chest to navel. He shoved her body aside, then stamped out the flaming quilt with an armored foot.

“Nainai,” Syrus breathed. He was too shocked to yell. He patted his chest all over again for the summoning stone, but the toad mocked him.

“More will die, unless those eligible for Refinery work come quietly with us,” one of the Guards said in his spiritless voice.

Someone spat. Otherwise, all Syrus heard was labored breathing and hushed weeping.

“Syrus,” his Uncle Gen whispered. “Get out of here before they take you or kill you—do you understand?”

Syrus was about to protest, but then saw the glint of a curved dagger under his uncle’s sleeve. Most Tinkers slept with their weapons outside their doors; it was too dangerous to have weapons among a nest of children and babies and grandmothers. But when Syrus thought of how easily the Guard had entered and slain so many before they’d even had a chance to wake, he wished with all his might he’d kept his dagger and dart pipe.

His uncle shook his wrist gently. “Do you understand?” he repeated.

Syrus nodded.

“Out that window there,” Uncle Gen said, tilting his head toward it. “And go warn the others if they’ve not already been captured. There hasn’t been a Cull like this since your parents were taken. We’ve gotten soft.”

“But—” Syrus started to say.

The Raven Guard waded toward them.

“Now!” his uncle hissed.

Syrus slithered toward the wall. Hoping none of the Guard would notice, he tugged at the end of a leather flap that had been loosely nailed over a broken window.

His hopes were quickly dashed when a blast of energy sizzled right next to his hand. The only fortunate thing about it was that it blew the leather clean off the window.

“Go now!” Uncle Gen shouted. Syrus saw his uncle throw his dagger, even as a blast of energy took him down. Syrus dove through the window, rolling on the hard, cold ground. As he crouched by a rusting wheel, he realized the Guard had used their pikes merely for effect. Their real weapons were the thunderbusses.

He ran to the next train car and the next, thankful each time that they were empty. The others must have heard and slunk off to the Forest. He was glad they’d escaped, but he was angry, too. Angry that no one had come to help his family, that Granny Reed and Uncle Gen, aunts and tiny cousins had been murdered in their beds. He gritted his teeth against sobs.

Truffler shuffled along behind him, making frightened noises. He turned to the hob as he headed toward the Forest. “Hide,” he hissed. “You don’t want them to find you and collect you, do you?”

It was then he heard the clanking footsteps behind him. He deeply regretted again that he had hung up his dart pipe in the entryway to the passenger car like everyone else. He wondered what must have happened to the summoning stone the Architect had given him—most likely one of his cousins had managed to steal it. All he was left with was the toad, the toad that Granny Reed had said would bring down trouble. He had to wonder if something he’d done—stealing the toad, helping the Architects—had brought this Cull down on his clan. Best not think on that now.

The Raven Guard was just behind him—Syrus sensed the scrape of metal through the tossing trees, the vague scent of guano and rust over the forest loam as the wind changed direction. The Guard didn’t call or taunt; his threat was in his steadiness of purpose, a purpose given by the Empress in her Tower. Syrus knew the Guard would find him and destroy him or bundle him off to the Refinery with the rest of his clan.

Syrus found the low mound by memory rather than sight. It rose like a giant, bracken-covered turtle shell through the trees. He knew he’d arrived by the smell—the odor of carrion and cat piss was strong. He thought he heard the Guard slow, as if he too had caught the scent and had suddenly become unsure. Faint ticking issued from the mouth of the mound.

Syrus swung up into a tree, climbing as fast as he could before the Guard fully entered the clearing. Two swift, sharp sounds—tink, tank—and the Guard was on his knees. Spines in his feathered neck and the shoulder joint of his armor glinted with their own deadly light.

Then, the great maned head emerged and before the Guard could shriek, he disappeared into the Manticore’s maw.

Syrus clutched the tree, gasping. A sharp breeze rattled the dry leaves. He looked down, and a face peered up at him through the trees—a wide, razor-toothed face that was all the more horrible for its very human grin.

And all along there was that ticking, as of a muffled clock. Or a faintly beating heart.

Thank you, the Manticore said. I was quite hungry. Her voice was liquid silver, exquisite as the Harpy’s.

“You’re . . . you’re welcome,” Syrus stuttered.

You may come down now, boy, the Manticore said. Fierce red energy pulsed around her. Her power scorched his feet and he wondered that the tree didn’t shrivel into ashes.

He clutched the trunk tight and said, “You . . . uh . . . sure you’re full? ’Cause there’s plenty more where that one came from in the trainyard, and I wouldn’t mind you having your fill of them.”

The Manticore chuckled. I will not eat you, if that is what you fear.

“Well, let’s just say I want to make certain you don’t change your mind. I’m sure I’m a mite more tasty than one of them old Guards.”

That is most likely true, the Manticore conceded. The creature sat on her haunches, the shadow of her barbed tail curving around her paws. Still, you are far less edible because you are much more interesting.

“Eh?”

I take it there has been a Cull, the Manticore said.

Syrus nodded, then realized the Manticore mightn’t be able to see him. “Yes,” he said. He began his descent, picking and choosing until he came to the last branch just a few feet from the Manticore’s smiling jaws.

“All my family were taken or killed,” Syrus said.

The Manticore’s eyes were like two small moons as she looked up at him. All my family have been taken or killed, too.

Syrus remembered another old tale Granny used to tell—about Lord Virulen killing the Manticore’s child long ago on a Hunt. Anger flared like white-hot lightning. “Then why don’t you do something about it?” he shouted. The rational part of him realized he had just sassed the Manticore and that she could kill him with a well-placed barb from her tail if she chose. He shrank against the trunk again.

Instead, she laughed, as if she read his mind. You may as well come down.

He considered, figured there was nothing left to lose, and slithered down to land square on his bum in front of her giant paws.

He had never been this close to her before; he had only seen her at a rare distance whenever the clans made their offerings at the edge of her clearing. He looked up at her in awe. Red light pulsed around her heart. But it was no ordinary heart. Cross-hatched with wires and hoses and gears, it sang out its rhythm like a clock. Something was scrawled on it in the old language that Granny had taught him; the characters read: ENDURANCE.

I have done nothing because I thought there was nothing I could do, the Manticore said. But perhaps you have shown me the beginnings of a way.

“I have?” Syrus said.

Bring me the young witch from the City, the Manticore said. And then we shall see what might be.

“A witch?” Syrus scratched his head. “But aren’t all the witches dead?”

Everyone knew all the witches had been killed right around the time the Emperor had executed his daughter for openly declaring herself a witch. He had sent hundreds to die on the fatal sands of the Creeping Waste. Only the Architects had escaped, and they were all men. Every Emperor since had sponsored periodic purges from time to time; the Empress had enforced the most recent perhaps fifty years ago. All the witches, as far as Syrus knew, were gone.

Would I ask you to bring me someone who does not exist? Do as I say, boy, the Manticore said. He heard the steel in her grin. Find the witch and together we will free our families.

“But how?” Syrus asked. He thought about what his Granny had said—that the Manticore must be protected at all costs to keep the Waste at bay. In the old tales, it was a witch who had stolen the Heart in the first place. What would the Manticore want with her? Wouldn’t she be dangerous? He wished again that his talent was great enough to be of use.

Bring her to me and you will see.