With Silent Screams (23 page)

CHAPTER
25

S
tanding outside the temple and looking down at Shadow Falls is an incredible experience. It stretches for miles and miles in all directions. At one time the city was tiny, just a few hundred people lived there, but over the centuries it grew and grew as more people decided that Avalon rule wasn’t for them.

“So, if the realm is called Shadow Falls, what’s the city called?”

“This,” I said with a gesture, “is the city of Solomon.”

“Solomon, as in the Bible?”

I nodded. “Originally this place was to be the paradise for the wise and righteous. The original founders wanted it to an enlightened place, and one of them said Solomon and it stuck.”

“Didn’t he have, like, seven-hundred wives or something?”

“Yeah, I think that part’s optional.”

Caitlin laughed. “So, where’s the king?”

I pointed to the far end of the city, there was no way to see the castle without binoculars, though. “There’s a stream that starts on the mountains, by the time it gets to the city, it’s a river. When the city was first made, it was used as a moat to protect the people who lived here. But as the city grew, it became a river that separates the king and his council from the rest of the people who live here.”

“So, are different parts of the city doing different things?”

“See the aqueducts?” I asked. “They not only supply water to the city, they also divide the city up. The west is mostly agriculture and farming, the east is industrial. You have to pass check points to get through them.”

“What do the people who live here use to get around?”

“Trams,” I said and motioned toward one of the three coach vehicles that moved along a structure next to the aqueducts. “They were designed by the man we’re going to go meet, the same person who did the blueprints for the prison.”

When we’d walked out of the temple, the sun was high in the sky, with barely a cloud in sight, but after a few minutes of walking down the steps to the nearest tram station, the sun had moved until it was behind Shadow’s Peak, the mountain range to the east, casting a huge swathe of darkness across the city.

“It happens every day,” I told Caitlin as the lights began to ignite, bathing everything in a blue hue. “That’s different,” I said to the guards who had been accompanying us.

“They were changed a few years back, the gas ones were unreliable,” he said.

A twinge of guilt hit me as I realized that I’d never visited Galahad in Shadow Falls since he’d become king. After what had happened in Maine, I’d made a conscious effort to stay as far away from the place as possible. But I began to wonder if maybe that had been the wrong decision, to allow the anger of that day to build up, maybe it had done more harm than good. I pushed the thought aside. It was not the time for second guesses.

We followed the three guards and Harrison to the closest tram station, a small hut next to the line.

“What do the trams run on?” Caitlin asked.

I shrugged. “At one point it had been gas power, but with the removal of the lamps, I don’t know anymore.”

As one of the trams stopped at the station, I realized that they were completely different from how they used to look. Gone was the blocky design, replaced with something sleek and elegant, almost bullet-train-like.

Harrison motioned for the passengers to disembark before allowing Caitlin and me to get on. “You will have two guards accompanying you at all times until you reach the king’s district. There are more than enough armed soldiers there to keep an eye on you. Me and my men have better things to do than babysit the two of you, but if you step out of line
.…
”

“Yeah, they’ll kill us,” I said. “You’ve mentioned it before.”

Harrison stared at me. “Just give them a reason. They’d enjoy it almost as much as I would.”

I took a seat on the tram and watched Harrison, who didn’t move as we pulled away, high above the rest of the city.

As much as I didn’t want to feel like a tourist, I couldn’t help but look out of the windows at the hustle and bustle of the city a hundred feet below. The tram moved up and down with the aqueduct, stopping every few minutes, although the guards ensured that no one else got into our coach. I wasn’t sure if that was because they thought I might attack someone, or because they were worried that someone might recognize me and attack. I doubted it was the latter, but it had been thirty years and a lot could have happened in that time.

The shadow continued to move across the city, eventually catching the tram in its snare. As the shadow engulfed us, the interior lights sprung to life and I began to wonder what the hell had replaced the gas lamps of old.

The view below regained my attention as it changed from dense housing to open fields and farmland, and then a few
minutes
later we arrived at the stop just inside of the king’s
district
. When I’d last been in the city the tram had stopped on the opposite side of the river; it had been deemed unsafe for the tram to go further, but apparently things had changed.

The four of us got off the tram as a stampede of passengers made their way inside. The guard took us along the tram platform and down some steps where the grand splendor of the king’s district shone through. The houses were bigger, many with ornate paintings or mosaics on the street-side external wall. The street itself was different; the pavement was made with tarmac and concrete, while the rest of the city had to contend with brick.

“How far do we have to walk?” Caitlin asked.

“Not too far now,” one of the guards said.

The inhabitants of Shadow Falls wore a mixture of modern clothing, such as jeans, and older-style Victorian outfits. The result was a bit of a mishmash, but Caitlin and I could walk around without looking like we didn’t belong.

We made our way to the far side of the king’s district, under an aqueduct arch and into a large field with only one house in the middle.

“This is it,” the guard said and both of them turned and walked back up to the main part of the district.

“We should go say hello,” I told Caitlin, who took a step and then froze as an explosion rocked the ground.

“You’re probably safe,” I said. “From him anyway.”

Although clearly uncertain, she followed me to the sizeable two-story house where I used an easel-shaped brass knocker.

The door was opened almost immediately by a large young man who appeared to be in his early twenties, although I knew he was at least two hundred.

“Antonio,” I said with a smile.

“Nathanial,” he bellowed and picked me up in a massive b
ear hug.

“Nate,” I squeaked. “Call me Nate. And also, put me down.”

Antonio laughed, a deep bellow that would have probably woken the dead. “And you’ve brought a lady friend.”

“Emphasis on the friend part,” Caitlin said as Antonio took her hand in his and kissed it lightly.

“Any friend of Nate’s is welcome in this home,” he told her. “I assume you wish to see the idiot working out back.”

“Idiot?” I asked as we stepped into the house. While the first room we stepped in was neat and tidy, the further back into the house we went the more and more drawings and sketches sat on every surface. Any spare space was taken up with small models or the occasional bust.

“He’s found a new toy,” Antonio said. “And by toy, I mean something that’s going to blow him up if he’s not careful. But you know him, he can’t stay away once his mind starts tinkering with things. I swear he has the attention span of cheese sometimes.”

I laughed and caught Caitlin looking at some of the sketches that hung on a nearby wall.

“These are incredible. What are they?”

“No idea,” Antonio said. “He has ideas, sketches them out and works on them for about a day, and then something else catches his attention. A few weeks later, he’ll come back to this and do some more. You can try to tell him to calm down, but that’s just not him. Since he found those damn crystals he’s even worse than he ever was. It’s like they charge his mind.”

“Crystals?” I asked.

“He’ll explain better than I could.”

Antonio opened a window and shouted, “You have guests.”

A few seconds later a door opened and closed, followed by footsteps heading toward us.

“If it’s one of Galahad’s men, they can come back when I’m not busy; the king has commissioned me for enough projects,” said a male voice from a nearby room.

“Then why aren’t you doing any of them?” Antonio bar
ked back.

“Because this is more interesting,” the second man said as he stepped into the room, noticed me and gave me a hug that rivaled Antonio’s.

“Nathanial, it’s been so very long.”

“Leonardo,” I said as he placed me back on my feet. “It
has
been too long. How are you?”

“Good, good,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Now, who is this delightful lady?”

“Caitlin, Leonardo,” I introduced. “Caitlin’s an FBI agent, we’re working together.”

Leonardo spoke in hushed Italian and kissed her on both cheeks.

“What did he just say?” she asked when the greeting
was over.

“That you were a sight that he thought only the heavens themselves could create,” I said.

Caitlin made a noise that sounded like she approved. “So, his name is Leonardo? And he’s Italian? Oh shit, not
the
Leonardo?”

Leonardo beamed a smile that I’d seen used to melt fro
sty hearts.

“It’s less impressive when you get to know him,” I said, receiving a hearty laugh from Antonio.

Leonardo clasped his hands to his chest in mock outrage. “You wound me, old friend. Wound me deeply.”

“Stop flirting then,” I said with a smile as Leonardo continued to ham it up.

“I assume you’re here for something important,” Leonardo said, running one hand over his lengthy beard.

“Wait a second,” Caitlin said. “I’ve seen a self-portrait of you as an old man. There are first hand records of people meeting an elderly man, but you don’t look anything over thirty-five.”

“Ah, that was simple. Prosthetics. I’m an alchemist; I can create most things through sheer willpower, so remodeling some items to make me look like an old man wasn’t difficult. I couldn’t just leave Italy when there were so many people there I cared for, so I aged myself as if I were human. Then I moved across Europe to live and work in Avalon. Turns out I was just swapping one dictatorship for another. Shadow Falls is a place that suits me perfectly. Galahad allows me the freedom to do as I wish in exchange for working on things for the city.”

“Like the trams?” I asked.

“Yes, they were unreliable for a long time, but they were also the best we could manage on the technology that’s available here. Then we found those crystals and everything changed.”

“Antonio mentioned them,” I told him. “What are they?”

“Oh, you’re going to be very excited.” A thought seemed to stop Leonardo from saying more. “Am I still a turtle?”

Caitlin and I glanced at once another in confusion.

“Ah, I should explain,” Leonardo eventually said. “The last time I was in your world, I found that television had moved on, there was a cartoon about four turtles. One was named after me. I assume that’s a beloved program still. Leonardo was the leader. That impressed me, although I always thought that the fact that I wasn’t the inventor of the group put me in a bad light.”

“It’s still on,” Caitlin said. “My neighbor’s kids watch it.”

“Ah, good. I did so enjoy what I saw. Michelangelo would have hated it. He was such a melancholy man.”

“He was human?” Caitlin asked.

Leonardo nodded sadly. “Yes, unfortunately. I often wondered what we would have achieved if we’d both still been around. But then, I didn’t get to meet Einstein either, so there are many opportunities lost to times gone by.” For a moment Leonardo appeared to lose himself in his memories, before grinning a moment later. “We can neither live in the past, nor in the opportunities lost to us. So, why are you both here? I assume you and Galahad still aren’t on talking terms, Nate?”

“I haven’t seen him in thirty years, although I get the impression everyone knows what happened.”

“The guard who came back told people, who told more
people
. They said you killed the mayor and then attacked Galahad because of a disagreement. I knew there was more to it than that, but rumor has a way of becoming fact if enough people believe it.”

I explained what had actually happened.

“They used you,” Leonardo said. “I can understand your anger. And I understand why you wouldn’t want people to think you had killed someone you’d left alive. But I also understand why Galahad’s guard told people it was you. People can’t think that Galahad will kill those who go against him; he doesn’t want to show himself as a tyrant. But the fact that you killed someone who had been responsible for the murders of many of Galahad’s subjects, that’s more palatable to the people here. They would have wanted a trial. Galahad couldn’t risk that, so he kept you in the dark. A new king, new rules. He was in over his head back then, although I’m glad to say he’s improved with time.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“Well, I was an advisor when the plan was delivered to him. I advised him to ignore it and go a different route. He went with them. Political pressure I imagine, the advisor who had devised the plan had a lot of clout with the elite in the city. Although that vanished when it came out that his plan had failed and innocent people had died because of it. Galahad fired him the second he was back in the city and the advisor fled the city after that. Unfortunately, I can’t remember his name.” Leonardo tapped the side of his head and smiled. “Too full of more important things.”

“Well, whoever he was, he was an asshole,” I said.

“No argument from me,” Leonardo agreed. “He had too much power and nowhere near enough talent to use it.”