Read Online The Drowned Vault by N. D. Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

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