The Drowned Vault Read Online Free

waiting for Jeb back at the line.”
    Most of the spider army seemed to have straggled into or onto the boat. Rupert Greeves jerked a pull cord, and the outboard motor roared to life.
    With the boat racing toward the harbor, Cyrus sat and shut his eyes against the wind. Muscles in his thighs and bruised back shivered and quaked in tiny spasms of exhaustion. He felt someone sit beside him, and he opened his eyes wide enough to squint.
    Antigone reached up and touched a lump on his scalp. Cyrus winced. His sister showed him her fingertips—blood. He didn’t want to know what his back looked like.
    Antigone leaned toward him.
    “I thought you were dead,” she said. “Again.”
    Cyrus forced a smile and shook his head. “Not yet.”
    His sister studied his face, and then looked at the strange girl in the prow, surrounded by huddling spiders. As the wind lashed and dried Arachne’s black hair, it was beginning to curl.
    “Cy, are we ever going to get used to this place?” Antigone asked.
    Cyrus reached up and felt the keys hanging safely on cool, invisible Patricia. He stared at the spider girl. How much had he already gotten used to?
    “Maybe,” he said. “But I hope not.”
    The boat bounced on. After a moment, Antigone leaned her head against her bigger little brother’s shoulder. A year ago, he would have shrugged her off.
    “You did good, bruv,” she said. “Better than Rupe thought you would, that’s for sure.”
    Cyrus snorted. But he let the compliment settle in. He was grateful. He wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone else, but he was even grateful for the plane. He wouldn’t have finished the swim. At least now he had gotten out of the water with a shred of self-respect and one of the best excuses of his life—a plane had landed on him. But he wasn’t any closer to making Explorer. He wasn’t any closer to being able to set out from this place on his own.
    He focused on the fat silver plane, now anchored just off the harbor jetty. Behind it, the green slope climbed up to the grassy airstrip and the underground hangars,and up again to the hulking stone building that was the heart of the Ashtown Estate, heart of the Order of Brendan. A crown of statues on the roofline posed against the blue sky, and sunlight sprayed off the tall windows Cyrus knew belonged to the kitchen. Last year, Big Ben Sterling had ruled that realm, walking on two metal legs with golden bells dangling from his ears. Now Cyrus only saw Ben in his dreams. Food in the O of B had been a lot better back when Sterling had been around. Even thinking about the crooked cook made Cyrus hungry, which was strange given that Sterling had ended his Ashtown career with a mass poisoning.
    Antigone lifted her head from his shoulder. “Wanna go see Mom?”
    Cyrus inhaled slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “As soon as I eat something.” He looked up, squinting against the sun. A small bird was flying fast above the boat, its dark outline moving in and out of the glare. As surely as he knew anything, Cyrus knew there were red feathers high on each wing.
    Three hours passed before Cyrus opened a door in the hospital wing and stepped into his mother’s room. He’d insisted first on returning to the starting line with Rupert to wait for Jeb—and to congratulate him on shattering an old Order record when he arrived. He’d scrounged for food in the kitchen. Finally, he’d gone to the hospitalwing and been bandaged—one butterfly on his scalp, two on his back. Small cuts. He’d had worse from training with dulled sabers with Antigone.
Much
worse from training with knives against pale Nolan.
    The hospital room was white and clean and fresh. A black ceiling fan whirled above the bed, and white curtains fluttered around a window. Bright photographs had been arranged on a small night table. Antigone was already seated beside their mother’s bed, tipped back in her chair with her riding boots on a stool and a book in her hands. Her eyebrows shot up when