by D. P. Prior
The thought occurred to him, that was what his problem was: a soul like a drain badly in need of unclogging. So many thoughts, words, actions heaping sin upon sin, and yet here he was carrying on like the last great hope of all Creation and putting Nous to one side to be picked up when he’d set the cosmos to rights. Not him, he realized: Aristodeus. Was that where his allegiance lay? With the philosopher, rather than the creator of all things? He squeezed the prayer cord so tight one of the knots dug into his palm. He lifted his hand to look at the red mark it had left, and his mind threw up an image of Barek nailed to the tree.
What would the lad be doing now? What could he do, save wait for the darkness to fall? Pray, maybe. Shader scoffed at that. For all he knew, prayers to Nous could be answered by the Demiurgos, considering the hand Otto Blightey had in organizing the Liber.
He stepped to the side of the queue so he could get a better look at what the clerk was doing. His eyes were drawn to a patch of wall, where the paint was lighter, as if something had once hung there but then been removed. It was in the shape of a cross, just like the one adorning the dome of the basilica.
“Is there problem, sir?”
Shader started. A soldier stood at his shoulder, peering at him through narrowed eyes.
“I need to speak with the senate.” He indicated the line in front of him. “It’s urgent.”
The guard gave a slow nod. “I’m sure they won’t be much longer.”
“Look,” Shader said. “You’ve noticed the weather? Is that normal?”
The soldier puffed his cheeks out and looked about till he caught the attention of one of his colleagues, who stepped toward them. “Keep your voice down, sir. No need to start a panic.”
“I know what it is,” Shader said. “If I don’t see someone soon, there’ll be no one left to panic. There’ll be nothing left at all.”
The other soldier took hold of him by the arm. “Step this way, please.”
Shader complied and, with a soldier on either side, was escorted to a door. The guard on the door let them into a waiting room.
A woman with the same long black hair as Rhiannon looked up from a row of chairs. She was scantily clad in the most gaudy colors, and her face was rouged and streaked with tear tracks.
“Won’t be long, darling,” one of the soldiers said. “Then you can be on your way.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “What you done?” she asked Shader.
“Done?”
But before she could respond, Shader was whisked off down a corridor and into a windowless room with a desk and two chairs.
“Wait here, sir. Someone will be with you shortly.”
The guards left, shutting the door with a clang, which was when Shader noticed it was iron. Then he saw the reddish stains on the whitewashed walls. The desktop was dappled with dark splotches.
Surely not, he thought, recalling the cell he’d been dumped in at Arx Gravis. Surely not again.
To his relief, the door opened almost immediately, and a hawkish man in a gray tunic came in with both guards in tow. With a curt nod to Shader, he seated himself at the desk and gestured for Shader to take the chair opposite.
“I am Darylius Mesqui, clerk to the Senatorial Prefecture for Civic Rectitude. I will take some details and ask some questions, after which you will have the opportunity to ask questions of your own.” He held out a hand, and one of the guards passed him a clipboard. The other set an inkwell and quill on the desk, and then both retreated to the door and stood in front of it, arms folded across their chests.
Shader leaned toward Mesqui. “Are you a senator?”
“No, which is why I introduced myself as a clerk.”
“Then you’re wasting my—”
Mesqui held up a finger. “Details, my questions, then yours.” He dipped the quill in the inkwell and scratched away at the paper on the clipboard.
“This is urgent,” Shader said. “I must—”
“Name?” Mesqui said without looking up.
“I gave it to the guard on my way in. Can we just—?”
Mesqui sighed and scratched his forehead. “Must I repeat the question?”
Shader gritted his teeth. “Look, there isn’t time for this. It’s a senator I need, not a clerk.” He started to stand, but strong hands pressed down on his shoulders.
“Make it easy on yourself, sir,” the guard said. “Just answer the questions.”
Shader narrowed his eyes, and the guard stiffened and gave an almost imperceptible nod, as if to say, “Come on, then.” With a sword, Shader would have have cut the grunt down to size, but without one, he wasn’t so sure. He shouldn’t have left the gladius at the front desk. If he’d insisted on bringing it, they’d have had a hard time stopping him. Fighting back the urge to say something he might regret, he lowered his eyes and decided to do this the other way. The Nousian way. He almost sneered at the idea, but then looked at Mesqui with what he hoped was contrition. The problem was, humility hurt, just as much as biting his tongue.
“Shader,” he said. “Deacon Shader, as I already told the guard on the desk. Don’t you people talk?”
Mesqui rolled his eyes. “May I continue, or would you like to tell me how to do my job?”
“Get on with it,” Shader said. He sucked in a breath between gritted teeth. Who was he kidding? Deacon Shader, humble? The harder he tried, the more he wanted to grab Mesqui by the throat and throttle him till he got someone in authority, someone who could make decisions. Someone who might just recognize the urgency of the situation and do something about it.
Mesqui appraised him with practiced indifference, waiting, as if for a truculent child to quell its tantrum. Finally, with the raise of an eyebrow, he resumed.
“From?”
Shader let out a trickle of breath and willed his shoulders to relax. “Friston. South East Britannia.”
“Outlander, eh?” Mesqui scribbled away on the clipboard. “Where’s that, near Illioch? Pellor?”
“Malfen way, I reckon,” one of the guards said.
“Oh.” Mesqui peered down his nose at Shader. “You don’t look like a brigand.”
“Merc, I’d say,” the other guard said. “Fighting man, whatever. I could tell that first I saw him. It’s all in the walk.”
“Mercenary,” Mesqui said out loud as he wrote. “Good.”
“No,” Shader said. “That’s not—”
“Now, Mr. Shader,” Mesqui said, “empty your pockets onto the table.”
A rustle of movement from behind made Shader glance over his shoulder. Both guards had their fingers hovering above the pommels of their shortswords.
With a shake of his head, Shader tugged the Liber from his pocket and slid it onto the table.
Mesqui leaned over it and squinted at the title. “Liber?” His eyes widened, and he looked past Shader to the guards.
“Yes,” Shader said. “It means ‘book’.”
“I’m not an imbecile, Mr. Shader,” Mesqui said. “I can read Latin.” He then muttered, almost to himself, “But this looks…” He riffled through the pages, pausing now and then to skim over a passage, all the time shaking his head. “This is yours? You read it? You pray?”
Shader sat back and looked up at the ceiling. What could he do? He couldn’t lie. No matter how tenuous his faith in Nous had become, he couldn’t deny him.
“Yes.”
Mesqui sat perfectly still for a long moment, eyelids drooping almost shut. Finally, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sucked in a whistling breath through his teeth. “I think it’s best you see the prefect.”
Shader took back the Liber and slipped it in his pocket. “Is he a senator?”
Mesqui stood and picked up the inkwell, balancing it on his clipboard. “Yes. Yes, he’s a senator. Thank you for your time.”
Shader rose from the table and made to follow him to the door, but Mesqui held up a hand.
“The prefect will be with you presently.”
The guar
ds parted for Mesqui to exit then shut the door and stood either side of it, one tapping out a rhythm on the pommel of his sword, the other clenching and unclenching his fists.
Shader instinctively reached for the comfort of his gladius, even as he recalled it was probably somewhere in that heaped pile at the front desk. The chances of him getting past the guards, should it come to it, were slim to nothing without a weapon. If he could snatch a sword from one of them, backslash, thrust, elbow to the face… He rehearsed the moves in his mind. It might work, but then again…
He sat back down and decided instead to offer it up to Nous. No matter what Aristodeus said about the senate’s hostility to religion, surely that paled into insignificance against the coming cataclysm.
He didn’t have long to wait. The door was slung open, and a pot-bellied man in a white toga flounced in.
“Mr. Shader.” He held out a hand, eyes twinkling, a perfect smile cutting a white line across his box beard. “Senator Whittler. I’m the prefect here at the Civi-Rec. Mr. Mesqui has given me the bare essentials, but you’ll have to fill in the blanks.” He came round the table and grunted as he lowered himself into the chair Mesqui had used. “I’m so, so sorry you’ve had all this trouble getting to see me.” He threw up his hands and rolled his eyes. “That’s bureaucracy for you. Now, how can I be of help?”
Shader was too taken aback to speak. No mention of the Liber, no grilling about religion; just an offer to listen. “Uh…”
Whittler leaned his elbows on the table and nodded encouragingly.
“Sektis Gandaw,” Shader said.
Whittler’s eyes darkened, but his smile remained fixed in place. He stuck out his bottom lip, prompting Shader to go on.
“I need to speak to you about Sektis Gandaw.”
Whittler spread his arms. “What’s to tell? Gandaw’s not troubled us for decades. Why, we’ve heard nary a peep from him since the revolution.” He thumped his chest three times and then cocked his head. “The Harrowing of the Holy?”
Shader shook his head dumbly.
“The Triumph of Reason? You mean you don’t know? Don’t they teach history these days?” Whittler raised his eyes to the ceiling.
“I’m not from around these parts,” Shader said.
“So Mr. Mesqui tells me. Malfen, he says.” Whittler wrinkled his nose. “But surely, even there, the candle of history still burns, albeit faintly. I assumed that’s why you’d come, a representative of the dispossessed, returning to Old Mother New Jerusalem with a message of repentance. Tell me I’m right. In amongst that den of thieves, there’s a thriving—what do you call it?—church?”
“I’m sorry, Senator,” Shader said. “I have no idea where this Malfen is.”
“Probably best you keep it that way,” Whittler said. “So, I’m an ignorant buffoon who needs to stop jumping to assumptions. Hardly news to my ears. I hear it from the wife all the time. So, you’re not a prophet on a mission, which is something of a relief. Do you know how many I’ve hung out to dry since taking up this post?” He held Shader’s gaze for a long while and then broke away with a broad smile. “Forgive me the gallows humor. It’s an unappetizing task, but someone has to do it. Do you know, I have an easier time licking my own balls than keeping the fish down.”
Shader swallowed a lump. “I’m sorry, I don’t know—”
“Oh, you do. The religious nuts who prowl round the markets handing out their nauseating little slips of paper. We got wise to the fish symbol and banned it, but the name stuck. Probably come up with something else by now, but they’ll always be fish to me—slippery, and if you don’t get them off the streets, they start to stink like the Abyss.” Whittler chuckled at his own joke and leaned back in the chair, clasping his hands over his belly. “So, what is it about Sektis Gandaw you want to tell me?”
Shader took a deep breath. “This storm—”
“Oh!” Whittler exclaimed. “A little inclement weather and everyone’s talking about the end of the world. Let me ask you something, Mr. Shader. Why would Sektis Gandaw leave us in peace all these years and then decide to wipe us out without a word of warning? It’s a storm—an unusual one, I’ll grant you—but a storm nonetheless.”
“It’s the start of the Unweaving,” Shader said.
“Naturally,” Whittler said. “Or the Demiurgos ate some spicy food and let rip with an almighty fart. Reason, Mr. Shader, reason. That’s what has lain at the heart of our city since the revolution. Up till then, it was all superstition and nonsense. You only have to look at the statues outside the basilica to see the kind of thing our illustrious first settlers bequeathed us. If I had my way, they’d all be pulled down, but apparently it would be a crime against art and culture. It’s the price we have to pay for democracy. Reason demands evidence, Mr. Shader. Evidence. Have you been to the Perfect Peak, spoken with Gandaw yourself?”
Shader nodded. “Believe me, it has started. You’re no fool, Senator. You know what’s going on.”
Whittler’s eyes flicked between the two guards before he leaned across the desk and spoke in a whisper. “It makes no sense. We eradicated all that Gandaw despised on Earth. We are a city devoted to reason, have been for decades. He has no cause to turn on us.”
“It’s not about you, Senator,” Shader said. “It’s about everything. Gandaw sees all of Creation as imperfect. He wants to start again.”
“No,” Whittler said. “He is unhappy about the fish, that’s all. They’ve grown bolder again. Scarcely a day goes past without them scouring the markets for converts and meeting in secret to eat the flesh of their so-called god. But we’re dealing with that, and Gandaw would know. He sees everything. This is just a warning. A warning, I tell you. And besides, we have the Cyclopean Walls. What harm could possibly befall us?”
“They’ll be uncreated along with everything else,” Shader said.
“And you’ve seen it, you say? Seen what’s happening at the Perfect Peak?”
“Inverted lightning, a smog cloud, and now these weather patterns. But more than that: I’ve seen Gandaw, fought against him on Earth.”
“Earth?” The color drained from Whittler’s face. “You’ve been to Earth?”
“It’s where I’m from.”
Whittler stroked his beard and scoffed. “According to the myth, we’re all from Earth, Mr. Shader, if you go back enough generations.”
“No,” Shader said. “I’ve just come from Earth. Sektis Gandaw has once more harnessed the power of Eingana. He has commenced the Unweaving.”
Whittler’s eyes roved back and forth for a while. He smacked his lips and tutted. It was hard to tell if he thought Shader was mad or lying. With a brisk wave of his hand, he moved on. “But we are fellows of reason. Gandaw would not destroy us, if it weren’t for the fish.” He stared Shader in the face, eyes wide and feverous. “The book. Mesqui said you had a book. Show me.”
Shader passed him the Liber, and Whittler flicked through the pages, muttering to himself. Finally, he handed it back and gave a resolved nod.
“It’s close enough. Different in parts, but it’s the same jumbled verbiage. What’s that beneath your coat?”
Shader’s hand flew to his collar, where the white of his surcoat was plainly visible.
“Remove it.”
The guards stepped in close, giving Shader no choice but to take off his coat.
Whittler peered at the red Monas symbol on the surcoat. “Explain.”
“It is the Nousian Monas, Senator,” Shader said. There seemed no point holding back now.
“This city was built by dwarves,” Whittler said, “on the orders of Maldark the Fallen, the great betrayer, and a devotee of the slave religion.”
“I know who he was,” Shader said, a hint of steel entering his voice. “Your point?”
“Your clothing is the same, save for this… this Monas. Maldark wore a cross, like that thing on the dome outside. How many of you are there?”
“On Aethir?” Shader said. “Just me
.” Rhiannon sprang to mind, but what good could come of mentioning her? And Shadrak, well, Whittler seemed to be asking about wearers of the Monas; keeping the assassin secret wasn’t exactly a lie, more a sin of omission.
“Just you,” Whittler said. “And your arrival coincides with the storms coming from the Perfect Peak. Coincidence? I think not. You know, Mr. Shader, I have a theory—more of a hypothesis, really—and I propose to put it to the test. You said that you fought Gandaw on Earth. That didn’t go too well, I’m guessing, otherwise you wouldn’t have come here.” He flashed a look at Shader. “How did you come here, by the way?”
Shader pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes.
“It’s immaterial,” Whittler said. “Do you want to know what my hypothesis is? I think Sektis Gandaw is angry that you’ve followed him here. I think this storm is a warning to those foolish enough to harbor you. In the best tradition of his scientific method, we need to put my theory to the test.” Whittler stood and loomed over Shader. “I trust I made it clear earlier how we treat fish?”
Shader started to protest, but Whittler held up a hand for silence.
“Oh, you might be a fish with a different symbol, but you’re a fish all the same. You see, I think Gandaw will be very pleased with us, if we deal with this problem for him. I have a hunch he’ll be placated.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Shader said. “It’s not me he’s after. He wants everything to end. Everything.”
“No,” Whittler said. “No, you’re the one who’s wrong. It’s deviation he wants to eradicate. If we appease him, he’ll spare us; he’ll find a place for New Jerusalem in his future world.”
Whittler headed for the door but turned back to Shader as a guard opened it for him. “Prepare yourself. There are a few formalities we need to go through—a trial of sorts.” He flashed a smile. “The demands of bureaucracy! But by the morning, the crisis should have passed, and you’ll have made the ultimate sacrifice, for which we’ll be eternally grateful. Gentlemen,” he said to the soldiers. “You know what to do. Same as you do with all fish.”