Freemantle swept closer. There were Indurans and dazed Molemen standing amongst the embers of market stalls, Balasts looking up at the blue sky for the first time in their lives, where the Rot's dark mouth no longer hung. Spindles and Pinheads and Blues and even Adjunc wandered in lazy paths gazing upward, set loose from the boundaries of caste and congregating like a swell on the Sheckledown Sea.
At the same time fresh castes flooded in from Seasham, where the lost army of Aradabar had put down and were being led forth now by the Moth Abbess, Leander. Freemantle watched in tears as Sen and the others came down from the Aigle palace, and walked back through the wreckage of the city toward the Grammaton Square at the center, like a victory parade.
They were feted at every turn, until the streets were lined with people waving and calling out the Saint's name, amidst those who were helping to ferry the injured from both sides to Gnomic stations set up by Awa Babo, where they employed Mjolnir-era medicine to save lives.
In Grammaton Square, on a stage hastily nailed up against the clock tower by Gnomics and dazed Molemen both, Sen stood at the fore looking out over a crowd of thousands. He was plainly uncomfortable, so young in front of so many, but when he spoke his voice carried, and his words resonated with the people who'd risen to his call.
"Thank you," he began, "you have saved yourselves."
The crowd broke into cheering that lasted for minutes, as people of myriad castes hugged those closest to them, and kissed, and rejoiced that they were still alive. When they finally quieted he went on.
"This city will change, I promise, to reflect all the deeds you have done in service of it." He paused a moment, then went on with greater strength. "I hereby abolish all laws of caste! No longer will your children be hunted for the marks in their skin. No longer will caste relations be banned and caste movements and abodes be restricted, no longer will Unforgiven be murdered for the bodies they were born into. The old rule is over and a new world is rising, because of what you did here today."
The crowd cheered wildly now, screaming and whooping themselves hoarse, for him, for his generals, for the Saint and for themselves.
"No more spikings," Sen shouted out over their celebrations. "The HellWest frigate will be sunk and its memory reviled. No more usury butchers, no more mogrification of living bodies. We will pull down the Drazi smokestacks and open up the Induran slums. There will be law but it will be a different law, no longer written in flesh and blood. It will be just, built out of knowledge not fear. This city will rise to shine at the top of the world as its forbear Aradabar once did, no longer languishing as a brutal, cruel, unjust cesspool. Your children will be safe. Your future will be secure. You stand now amongst your brothers and sisters beneath the Saint. Thank you."
The cheering went on and on. Alam nudged Sen in the back.
"Where did that all come from?"
Sen beamed at him. "I just made it up."
The speaking continued, because the people demanded it. This was a show they wanted to last all day long, with all their heroes on proud display. When Sen grew tired of making promises and inspiring cheers, the others stepped up.
Mare spoke to her people of the fears they no longer had to hold in their hearts, the curtain they no longer had to draw around their bodies and their minds for the shame of a lowly birth. Daveron described the sensation of feeling pain for the first time, and how the Molemen would be different from now on, following the precepts of Awa Babo's logic, not the basest dictates of the old King's torture. Gellick stood and yelled out, "Balasts!" at the top of his lungs, which had hundreds of his people thumping their feet and howling, "For the Saint!" so loud that many screamed with fright.
Feyon spoke of the changes coming to the Roy, of a new Council of castes they would help usher in, one that offered opportunities to all and demanded that all voices be heard. Alam spoke to the middling castes, the artisans of Carroway and the traders of the Haversham, describing all the ways they would overcome the many differences between them, and push back the stigma of caste.
Freemantle watched until the end, as Lord Quill took his turn to shine, and Awa Babo spoke of history and grace, as King Seem/Sharachus venerated freedom and learning, and Lonnigan Clay told tall tales from the sea.
The day saw one long unspooling of order and grace descending. Throughout all that day there were no crimes, no murders, and no looting anywhere in the city. The people had seen a god rise of their own making, a hero for the ages, and his light still shone within them. How could they harm each other after that? For the first day at least they were all sister to each other, and brother, and for one day the divisions of caste were forgotten.
He watched as the Drazi absorbed the Adjunc and took over their role in patrolling the city, falling into work smoothly and restoring order, putting out fires, cleaning up the streets of barricades and bodies, as willed by Lord Quill at their heart. He watched as Lonnigan's ships unloaded, bringing a city's worth of food, medicine, and essential goods with them, delivered for free to a needy people starved after a week of siege and deprivation. He watched as the districts began the long and slow process of rebuilding, beginning with clearing ash and broken furniture from the streets. He watched as families found each other, and the lost were buried and grieved, and the great wound that the King and the Rot had wrought began to heal.
At last, as that first long day became night, and there were whispers of love in dark rooms, as old bonds became bright again and a thousand new lives were conceived, Freemantle pulled out of the veil to find the body of Sen in its white chair gone, and a new figure growing in the wall.
* * *
When he woke the next day it had grown clearer and more distinct. He kept an eye on it as he dipped in and out of the world, watching his descendants as they returned to some altered semblance of their old lives. There was a first mustering of the castes organized, building upon systems of elected governance borrowed from Aradabar and the one share/one ballot structure of Lonnigan's days as a pirate captain.
News of the Council of all castes was spread through The Saint newspaper and scheduled to first convene in two weeks, until which time Sen, the man who had been the Saint, was acting to prepare the city for its new rule.
The walls to the Calk were broken down. The gates of the Aigle palace were thrown open and so were the doors to all the Aigles, that people might see the means of their deliverance. The ring-fence around Indura was lifted and all its citizens admitted to the Bodyswell Dome for treatment. The Ators were commandeered as roving hospitals, staffed by Gnomics and several trainee Molemen, who now sought new work in the reduction of pain rather than causing it. The HellWest Docks were cleansed of bodies on the Spike, the King's frigate was sunk, and fresh envoys were sent out encouraging trade from all fellow nations and city-states.
Encampments sprung up in the Fallowlands to accommodate the armies of Aradabar. The Manticore and mogrification dens were usurped by Lord Quill's Drazi, who continued to appoint themselves the city's new constabulary. They pulled down the Drazi smokestacks, burned the mogrifers' labs, and began the institution of a new set of laws on scientific experimentation to be voted upon and enforced.
Sen and Feyon worked from a townhouse in Grammaton Square throughout, managing the process as they once had managed their newspaper. The market swelled back to bustling, overcrowded life around them, filled with hawkers selling the new and strange goods carried across history from the time of the Albatross. They worked tirelessly to prepare a docket of potential laws designed to intermingle low caste with high, that the Council would deliberate upon. With King Seem/Sharachus and the tireless logic of Awa Babo to guide them, they outlined a path toward new taxes and tithes on the rich, with new systems and education for all. Through endless meetings across all caste boundaries they stitched together a sense of order throughout the city, while lining up investments in libraries, schools, and public health, organizing the rebuilding, and working with the newly unemployed Molemen to find suita
ble outlets for their unusual skills.
Alam went to Jubilante, where he found the scrivener boys he'd once studied with and brought many of them back to the Slumswelters, where he restarted The Saint newspaper; reporting on the great changes afoot in Ignifer's city, with a wide-ranging mandate to investigate injustice and corruption wherever it lay.
When Gellick wasn't helping at Alam's side, he worked with his people in the Calk, where the clouds of lime dust were fuming out again already, as demanded by the plethora of new construction the ravaged city required. He instated a rotating system inspired by the Aigle palace, where the pounding yards were moved once a month, so each part of the Calk was only cloaked in dust for one part of the year. He also began encouraging his people to move into other areas of work, spreading wider into Afric, to the Gutrock, into industries that had been blocked to them for so long.
The weeks passed, and the Council of over a thousand castes was established. Built on precepts from Aradabar, one representative stood for every caste in the city, giving voice to peoples forced into silence and bondage for so long. By unanimous vote of the Council, Sen was nominated as city Overseer, and by his first act he ordered construction of a grand House of the Council along the Afric Levi banks, where first he'd found his daughter. There were resources aplenty after they'd levied first taxes on the Roy, and with Seem/Sharachus and Awa Babo's technology, many new things seemed possible. Soon Ignifer's city would be clothed in glass and shot throughout with libraries, parks, and universities; the intellectual heart of the Corpse World.
Daveron and Mare set to sea as soon as they were healed by the Gnomics' careful touch. There was a tattooed captain from the Aradabar diaspora that she had to find and tell the news. Daveron went with her happily, glad to leave the site of his greatest betrayal behind.
"I hope, in time you'll return," Sen said to him, at the HellWest Dock as they boarded the Albatross' own ship. Daveron held Sen's hand.
"We did what we had to."
Mare hugged him. "We'll spread the good word. Expect people to flock here in their thousands."
"We'll be ready," Sen answered. "We'll be waiting for you too, whenever you want to come home."
They boarded, and with white wings aloft, and captain Lonnigan Clay and his love Mollie at the wheel, they set off over the Sheckledown together.
Everything was changing.
Freemantle pulled out of the world, filled to the brim with happiness, to find the figure from the wall now standing before him.
"Freemantle," she said.
"Craley," he replied.
* * *
The young woman nodded. She was perfect, just as perfect as Sen had been when he was born through the wall. Freemantle hugged her and wept. Craley hugged him back.
They sat and talked for hours, about the direction the city and the world would take now, about how their choices had played out. It was only after Freemantle had shown Craley the book of Sen's memories, walking her through every chapter, that he noticed the difference in the wall of his cell.
He rose and walked over to it. In the midst of the featureless white, where he'd once spent countless days in his early captivity hammering and screaming to be let free, there was now a door.
It was white like the wall, and had a white handle. He let his hand drop to clasp it, then jerked away as though stung. It was cool and metallic. It wasn't possible
He turned and saw Craley smiling.
"How?"
"I used the last of the Saint's power to open it," Craley said. "You'll be amazed what's on the other side."
Freemantle's eyes bugged wide. "You've been on the other side?"
Craley shrugged. "You were in the veil a long time. I didn't want to disturb you."
"I-" Freemantle began, then stopped. He looked at the wall, at the door, then back at Craley.
Craley laughed. "I know. But you can. There's nothing out there that can hurt you, not now at least."
"But I have to be here. I can't…"
"All the time? You can come back. I did. I'm here. You can come and go."
Freemantle's eyes welled with tears. He nodded once sharply, setting the tears free down his cheeks. Then he swung to the door, took hold of the handle, and yanked it open.
On the other side was a white corridor, stretching out to white vanishing points in both directions, and lined on both sides with hundreds of doors. They were all white with white metal handles, and there had to be thousands of them, maybe more. His throat went dry.
"All the worlds of the Corpse," said Craley, standing beside him. "Spread before us."
Freemantle couldn't speak. The breadth of it overwhelmed him.
Craley patted him on the shoulder, brushed past him into the corridor and then, before Freemantle could stop her, opened the door opposite.
"Wait!" Freemantle started, but Craley was already through.
"Come in here," she called back.
Freemantle stood and stared. He hadn't left his cell for three hundred years. He looked both ways again down the corridor, as if he was crossing the busy Haversham and afraid an Ogric rickshaw might run him down. The corridor remained empty, but stepping out seemed like an act of defiance too far.
What if he was locked out here instead of his room? What if he was cut off from the veil? He didn't think he could take that again.
Instead he peered through the doorway that Craley had opened. Inside was another white room, with another white bed, chair and white walls. Craley popped back into view, startling Freemantle so much he let out a yelp.
"Come on," Craley said, "come in."
Tentatively, as though stepping out onto thin ice, Freemantle put one foot down in the corridor. The ground held firm. He held on to his doorframe and took another step. Again it held firm. With a great feat of will he released the wall of his cell, and braced himself to lose it forever.
He lost nothing. Nothing changed.
Craley snorted. "You're funny. Come on in."
Freemantle followed. Craley stood in the middle of this new room and spread her arms.
"It's another world. Well, not this bit maybe, but through the veil. I've looked through it and it's all strange creatures made out of blobs of gas, floating through a kind of purple haze." She made a wavering gesture with her arms. "They don't talk like we do, but through some kind of chemical transference. They don't get married and have children either, instead they merge then subdivide into two new parts, so there's never any more of them, or any less. They can't die, they can't be born except through the merge/split cycle; it's fascinating really. I could write a dozen books on them."
Freemantle struggled to catch up with what she was saying. "They're what? Gas bubbles?"
"Exactly!" Craley said, snapping her fingers. "It's brilliant, better than any book in a library. They don't even have wars, not really, because even if there's a fight all that happens is one group of bubbles absorbs the other, which means they all get reshaped. Nothing can be destroyed, nothing can be created from whole cloth, it's all in a perfect equilibrium; so much more equitable than our world."
Freemantle frowned, trying to parse what this Craley he'd heard so much about was trying to say. "So, you'd like to be one of them? A gas bubble?"
Craley laughed, a bright and merry sound. "Ha, no, not me. But isn't it fascinating?"
Freemantle nodded. It was. It sounded insane. "Why are they even here? Why would the Heart make this?"
"I don't know, but I think it's wonderful." Craley tugged at the white sheets on the bed. "Looks like this room hasn't got an observer like you though. It's not really kitted out for a gas bubble."
Freemantle said something that was more a burbling sound than a word.
"But you're right, it's fascinating to think that the Heart made all this," Craley went on. "Maybe it's all part of a plan, after all? Wouldn't that be stunning, like it really cared about us? And you look at that corridor. It's like the Heart thought this might happen one day; that someone would make
doorways and we'd pass between them. It knew we'd pass between worlds, Freemantle, can you imagine that?"
"Bleurgh," said Freemantle, trying to say something about how awe-inspiring it was and coming out with nonsense.
Craley laughed. "You see it, of course you do; you're an observer. It's beautiful. All this time we've thought it was Avia's plan we were following, dealing with a world cast into chaos by the Heart when it tore itself apart, but what if there's more to it than that, and the Heart really does love us?" Now there was wonder in her voice. "Who drove Avia mad after all? Who brought her the visions of Saint Ignifer?"
Freemantle felt his world, already upside-down, rattle hard. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying the Heart may have meant for all of this to happen! It killed its twin, it tore itself apart, but still it loved us. Some part of its mind built this place so that we could one day come together, and face the enemy that it also made. It amazes me that the Heart might really love us, and really want us to succeed."
Freemantle opened his mouth. "So-"
"So it made the observers," said Craley. "It left the corridor. It made the doors possible to open. I couldn't have opened them if they weren't already there, Freemantle. This is the Heart's work we're doing, and it's compassionate. It loves us and wants us to do well. Maybe we even have to save it."
Freemantle gulped. That was enough. It muddled everything he knew, but it made a beautiful kind of sense. He blinked, seeing clearly perhaps for the first time. "You're right."
This seemed to delight Craley. "I am? I am, aren't I? Perhaps you can find a way to tell the other observers. They'd love to know this. We are not alone. There are other worlds, and they are just like us, even though they're, hmm, gas bubbles. We all come from the Heart."
Freemantle nodded as the epiphany took root in him and grew strong. Of course this was whom he'd served for so long. This was why he'd watched over the world, guiding it with his thoughts, judging it, knowing it. For this.
"I'll try to find a way," he said. "I want to tell them too. This is amazing."
The Rot's War Page 44