The bell rang again, and the echoes died slowly.
“Hello?” Antigone said, her head on a swivel. “A doctor, please? Our lawyer’s been shot.”
“Initiates, step forth!” The voice was deep — rumbling irritation.
The crowd pressed back to the sides of the enormous room, and Cyrus, regripping Horace, began to move toward the front.
“No!” Antigone pulled back. “Not until we have a doctor.” She looked around the room. “He bled a lot!”
Two middle-aged, pale-faced women in white skirts edged nervously out of the crowd and then hurried forward. They took Horace and laid him gently on his back. One finger-checked his pulse.
Massaging her shoulder, Antigone nodded at her brother, and the two of them walked slowly toward the front of the huge room. Cyrus’s eyes skidded through the crowd. White-haired men in safari jackets stared at him. A group of older girls in tall riding boots sneered. Behind them, deeper in the crowd, Cyrus spotted a small flock of starched nuns’ hats. He moved on, past a cluster of fit, sweating boys in tall socks and the same short white shorts and shirts as the runners outside. They all stood with their arms crossed, each with a simple black medieval ship printed high on his cotton chest. Farther on, a young group of flushed, ponytailed girls in similar uniform whispered and giggled. Instead of a ship, each girl’s shirt had a small snake curled in a ring, swallowing its own tail. Cyrus’s hand went to his neck as women and men in pocketed shorts and trousers and jodhpurs scowled and stepped aside. A group of monks in brown robes with rope belts and sandals stepped backward, crossing themselves as Cyrus and his sister passed. Cyrus tore his eyes from theirs, from the crowd, and focused on the room.
Columns of different colors, scaled like fish, held crowded mezzanines on both sides, and light streamed down through large windows. In the front, a forest of enormous portraits collaged the wall with color. Men and women stood on ships, beside strange creatures, on mountains and beaches and walls. The paintings at the top, arranged beneath the high, black-beamed ceiling, were crude and simple. Below them, the canvases became more ornate, crowded and medieval, cluttered with red robes and dragons and sea creatures. Even farther down, the styles changed again and again, until, at the very bottom, a single abstract portrait hung — a boy’s face, intense in its wide strokes, colored only with red and black. In front of the portrait, the same boy sat behind an ebony table. His face was freckled and sharp. His hair was brown and strawberry, and his loose linen shirt was open at the neck, revealing a heavy silver chain. A red cloth dangled over his shoulders, and a book the size of a small hay bale was open beside him.
At one end of the table, a tall black man stood behind a paper-covered lectern with his arms behind his back. His head was shaved almost to the skin, his strong jaw ended in a tight, pointed beard, and his eyes were as sharp as they were dark. At the other end of the table, sitting open on a low pedestal, there was a long wooden box. Inside, with tattooed hands crossed and eyes closed, lay the pale and charred corpse of William Skelton.
“Cyrus,” Antigone whispered. “Cyrus …”
“Shhh,” Cyrus whispered back. “I see it.”
“Name yourselves,” the bearded man commanded. His voice was accented, British.
Antigone coughed and cleared her throat. “I’m Antigone Elizabeth Smith, and this is my brother, Cyrus Lawrence Smith.”
“Hi,” said Cyrus.
“Do you present yourselves as the heirs of William Cyrus Skelton?
Cyrus blinked. William Cyrus? “What?” he asked.
Antigone hit him with an elbow. “Yes, we do,” she said. “And we’re his apprentices or acolytes or whatever.”
A thin man with a pencil mustache, wearing a cream suit and a skinny blue tie, stepped out of the crowd. He smiled at Cyrus and Antigone and then turned to the bearded man. “The Order challenges. With my colleague John Horace Lawney unfortunately injured, there is no longer a Keeper to confirm the children’s identities. Without confirmation of identity, their presentation as Acolytes and claims to inheritance cannot be acknowledged.”
The bearded man turned to the boy behind the table. The boy’s eyes were down, but he nodded slightly.
“Will any Keeper stand up as witness?” The bearded man scanned the crowd.
The thin man winked at Cyrus.
“Hold on,” Cyrus said. “Can’t we wait till our lawyer wakes up?”
“You could have requested an emergency deferral.” The thin man smiled. “But you didn’t. You presented and declared yourselves.”
“Seeing no witness …,” the bearded man yelled.
“Wait a bit there, Rupert Greeves!” An old woman in a belted safari jacket forced herself forward. “Eleanor Elizabeth Eldridge will stand up. I watched them born, and I watched them grow.”
Cyrus gaped.
“Mrs. Eldridge?” Antigone asked. “What are you doing here?”
“Identity has been confirmed,” said the man called Rupert Greeves. Mrs. Eldridge nodded, and retreated to the rim of the crowd.
Stunned and confused, Cyrus watched her go. Then an old and very bald monk hustled forward, bowing to the boy as he came. “Perhaps,” he said, bobbing, “I could remind the dais that William Skelton was duly excommunicated from the Order of Brendan on charges of theft, murder, and other gross misconducts. He was an outlaw with no standing to bring Acolytes into our Order.”
The boy ignored him. Rupert Greeves cleared his throat. “Perhaps I could remind you, Gregory, that Brown Robes and Brendanites do not have the authority to expel anyone from this Order with your own declarations. Your charges were thrown out without a hearing.”
“But our evidence,” the monk said. “So much evidence.”
“Visions, spectral testimony, and dreams are inadmissible,” Rupert said. “You know this. Now step back.”
Sniffing, the monk spun and retreated, glaring at Cyrus as he did.
The thin, cream-suited man jumped even farther forward. He was almost to the table. “The Order wishes to establish Passage.”
The big, bearded man grimaced. “On what grounds, Cecil?”
The lawyer turned, smiling to the crowd. “These children stand before you, hoping to be established as Acolytes and heirs to one of the most notorious outlaws this community has ever seen. No, he was never successfully expelled, but his misdeeds have become a matter of record. If the community were to reclaim the entirety of the Skelton estate, it would be no injustice, and only the slightest step toward righting a lifetime of wrongs.”
The crowd murmured its support, and the thin man turned, locking eyes with Cyrus. “In addition,” he said, “twenty-one years ago, their father, Lawrence Smith, was himself expelled from this Order. Children to an outlaw, Acolytes to an outlaw? I have to wonder how committed these two would be to our ways and to the rule of our law. I have to wonder why we would want them at all.” Again, he winked at Cyrus, and then turned to face the bearded man. “Their Acolyteship was filed literally minutes before the death of Mr. William Skelton — suspect already, to say the least — and their family has a questionable history with our Order. In fact, these two would become the only living members of the Order to have a known ancestor contained in the Burials. At a minimum, Passage as established in the case of Earhart, 1932, would seem an extremely reasonable request for the community to make before acknowledging such a substantial inheritance.”
Rupert Greeves scratched his pointed beard and turned his dark eyes to Cyrus and Antigone. “Any response?” he asked.
Cyrus looked at his sister. Her brows were down over eyes that looked as confused as he felt. Turning back to the big man, he shrugged. His shoulders ached, and his head was spinning. “Honestly, I don’t have a clue what’s going on. But that guy is snaky.”