The girl turns the Third Secretary’s body over and starts rifling through his pockets. His dead eyes stare at her face. It’s hard to tell, but he can’t find a trace of remorse on her features, which irritates him.
“Go and tell her we got him!” orders the girl.
Definitely not a coincidence. Definitely a conspiracy.
He’s waited long enough.
They trained him for this moment, over and over again, so when it comes it’s forgettable. All the practise runs blurring into the only real one. With an effort of will, the dead secretary relinks body and soul. There’s a flash of heat as the iron periapts implanted beneath his skin fuse with his bones. Necromantic energy suffuses his dead body, and he feels strength flood into his stiffening limbs.
The woman shrieks and slashes him with her knife, but he’s too fast for her now, too strong. He catches her wrist, crushing it with his undead fingers, and then slams his other hand into her sternum. She crumples and falls off him, gasping for breath.
The young man looks on in terror, frozen to the spot as the man he shot springs to his feet, blood-drenched, still gushing from two mortal wounds. The gun’s still in the boy’s hands, but it might as well be a thousand miles away.
Run, says the Third Secretary in his new voice. It sounds ever so terrifying and sepulchral, and it works–the boy drops the gun and sprints down the alleyway. After all, he’s seen a ghost.
Maybe, reflects the Third Assistant Secretary, being Vigilant won’t be that bad. He spins around and delivers a brutal kick to the woman’s forehead, knocking her out. He can have her questioned. Find out how she knew about the deal, discover who she’s working for.
First, though, he needs to find out how much of this vital operation can be salvaged, find out what his life was worth. He picks up her knife, runs one finger along its sharp blade, finds it pleasing. He pads down the alleyway, testing the balance of his reanimated body. He finds that pleasing, too; in his new state, he’s faster and stronger than before. The soul realigned with the flesh. Or, well, with the bone anyway. The flesh is dead weight now.
A light burns brightly within the safehouse. The Third Secretary grins with lips that are already stiffening, then throws himself through the door with blinding speed. The dead move fast.
The old woman in the safe house moves faster.
In her hands, a flaming sword.
The Third Secretary’s last thought is that he really, really needs to tell the Office of Foreign Divinity what’s happening, because this changes everything. But then the fire catches his bound soul, and he burns, and there’s nothing left.
CHAPTER 4
The Dolphin enters the great harbour of Guerdon. The city proper is another hour’s travel; Guerdon straddles what was once the mouth of a river where it spilled into the bay. The river is now mostly buried, dissected and diverted into a hundred canals and underground waterways.
The bay is flecked with islands. From the deck, Emlin and the spy watch them pass by. Dredger plays tour guide, offering running commentary. He’s glad to be back in his city.
Some islands are crowded with guns and fortifications, naval bases ready to protect the city from invaders. Guerdon remains unaligned in the Godswar because of commerce, not idealism. They do not trust to the mere fact of their neutrality to protect them from invasion, and the war is closer every day.
In the distance, they spot the Bell Rock, a reef so low in the water that it is visible only at ebb tide, and invisible and lethal when the seas rise. Dredger points out the ruins of a lighthouse on the rock, and the teetering steel frame of the temporary replacement light. The legs of the frame are stained a sinister bright yellow, just like the rocks around them, and Dredger explains there was an accident there a few months ago. A freighter carrying alchemical weapons broke its moorings and ran aground, spilling a cargo of bombs and poison gas on the Bell Rock. He points to another boat, similar in design to the Dolphin, moored off the island. The tide is low; men in breathing masks and rubber waders clamber amid the tainted rocks. Dredger explains they’re some of his employees, collecting strands of a seaweed his alchemists bred. The seaweed soaks up the poison, concentrating it. Later, they’ll dry out the seaweed, grind it up, and resell the dust to some merchant of death like Sanhada Baradhin.
Beyond the Bell Rock, closer to Guerdon, is a long flat island or sandbar. More than half of it is artificial, created by dumping barge loads of poisoned earth into the bay. That’s Shrike Island, Dredger’s little kingdom. Even at this distance, the spy can see chimneys and refineries on the stable part of the island; the yards where Dredger turns the leavings of the alchemists into weapons for resale. His own alchemy, turning used poison into gold. Never a death wasted.
Between the Dolphin and the Bell Rock is another island. It’s crowded with ships of all sizes, berthed wherever they can find space along the long piers that splay out into the bay. There’s a low building, and beyond that an encampment. Tents, fences, guard towers. Hark Island, where Guerdon filters those fleeing the Godswar from those who bring the mad gods with them. An internment camp for the divine. Rogue saints, blessed monsters and true believers get detained; the faithless and the fearful get to go on.
Dredger grunts and points at the western side of Hark. There’s an old prison there, a crumbling fortress of greyish stone, its walls partially overgrown with ivy. Rising over the walls of the fort, the spy can see signs of construction–skeletal frameworks topped with metal tanks, alchemical engines.
“Been building that all year,” says Dredger, glancing at Emlin. “Prison for saints.”
From his perch on the railing, Emlin stares at the rugged isle like it’s a slumbering monster.
South of Hark, two hundred yards or so from the shore, there’s a jagged tooth of rock poking from the water. The spy can see more figures moving around that little island. Collecting more tainted seaweed, maybe, although there’s no yellowish stain on that tiny outcrop.
Naval patrols–fast little gunboats–circle around Hark Isle. No doubt the Dolphin has already been seen, and if Dredger does not dock there so that his passengers from Severast can be poked and probed by the city’s inquisitors, there will be trouble.
They cruise past the Isle of Statues, a quarantined land for sufferers of the ghastly stone plague. A low, grassy island about a mile across. Grey shapes stand sentinel, unmoving, and the spy cannot tell if they are natural rocks or the stony husks of the dead. The sound of a church bell comes mournfully over the water. It’s time for Sanhada and Emlin Baradhin to drown tragically.
The spy slips over the rail of the Dolphin and drops into the waters of the bay. The summer sun is warm, but the water’s still chilly. He signals for Emlin to follow. The boy throws a waterproof bag to the spy, then jumps into the water, before eagerly striking out for the nearby shore. The spy collects the bag and sees Dredger at the rail. The big man says nothing, but one armoured hand gives an almost imperceptible salute, and then the ship is gone, heading for Hark Island.
It’s only a short swim to the shore but the water smells off, tainted by some chemical runoff from the alchemists, and it’s a relief to scramble up onto the rocky beach of the Isle of Statues. The shore is littered with stones. Some are jagged, like broken shards of pottery. Others are rounded and shiny, and then he realises what he’s walking on. The gleaming stones are bullets, washed clean by the tide. The jagged pieces… he picks one up, turns it around. Runs his fingers over the shape of an eye, a nose, half a brow. The beach is all broken Stone Men. Probably from the early days of the quarantine, when they tried to rush the boats in their stumbling, awkward fashion.
Emlin sees the stone face, opens his mouth to ask a question, then thinks better of it. Good. He’s learning.
The spy strips off his wet clothes, and uses the stone face and other body parts to weigh them down when he throws them into the sea. Emlin does the same. The boy’s back is marked with ancient scars and bite marks. Ritual exposure to the venomous spide
rs of the Paper Tombs.
From the bag Dredger gave him the spy removes a pair of hooded robes. He puts one on, pulling the scratchy garment over his head. A disassembled rifle and a few other treasures remain in the bag as he seals it up and hefts it over his shoulder. As the spy walks across the beach, he adopts the hunch-shouldered, downcast demeanour of a Keeper priest. Live your cover, he thinks.
“This way,” says the old priest to the young acolyte who follows behind him.
A narrow path leads off the stony shore in the direction of the church bell. From the top of the path, they can see the church spire in the distance. The island is all scraggly green grass and grey stone, a jagged outcrop in the midst of the bay. A few half-wild goats watch them from the crags. Other than the church, there is no sign of habitation; other than the goats and the gulls wheeling overhead, there is no sign of life. The priest wonders at the absence of the island’s cursed population. Are all the Stone Men in the little church?
Then he sees a pair of eyes, watching him from what he mistook for a standing stone, and he realises that the Stone Men are all around them. He does not know if they let him pass willingly, or if these particular specimens are so far gone that they cannot move or speak. Some of them are certainly paralysed. These ones have little wooden bowls next to them to catch rainwater; their more mobile fellows and visiting priests or family members do them the questionable kindness of feeding the locked-in Stone Men, of pouring little sips of icy cold rainwater past frozen lips, of spooning mouthfuls of mush into their mouths.
Their route across the island brings them past one such Stone Man–a weathered dolmen, a living gravestone. One eye peers at the spy from beneath a mossy brow; the other eye is encrusted with thick flakes of granite. The Stone Man’s arms have fused to his torso; the legs have sunk into the soil. The creature’s mouth cracks open, but no words come out, just a rattling, like pebbles tapping on stone. Tuk-tuk-tuk.
“Come on, let’s go,” says Emlin, repelled by the diseased creatures.
The spy is not, by nature, a merciful man. He is ordinarily unmoved by suffering. But he is about to set foot in a new city, and he needs all the luck he can muster.
“We can afford a little kindness.” The spy stops and picks up the Stone Man’s water bowl. Raising it to the Stone Man’s lips, he lets the liquid dribble into the grey-streaked mouth. The creature’s teeth have become stalactites and stalagmites. A half-stone tongue, like a grotesque cancerous hybrid of snake and tortoise, rolls around behind the stony teeth, licking at the edge of the bowl.
“Remember us in your prayers, friend,” whispers the spy. He returns the bowl to its niche.
From all around him comes scraping and shuffling. Mouths crack open, eyes stare pleadingly. Semi-mobile Stone Men crawl closer; others just click and grunt, for they can no longer make human words. Emlin backs away from the wretched creatures, tugging at the spy’s robe.
They can’t stay to help them all. They have an appointment. The spy leads Emlin along the path. The church bell has ceased to ring, and now the only sound is the wind and the waves and the gulls.
The church doors are closed when they arrive, but another, more distinct path runs down from the church to the little harbour. Following that, they soon come upon the other priests. A knot of a dozen men, dressed like the spy and Emlin–loose grey robes, thick rubbery gloves to protect against infection. Some come from the little island chapel, others from their ministrations along the shoreline. They hurry to join them, just two straggler priests who lingered a moment to tend to another poor soul. The boy stretches himself, stands as tall as he can, tries to pass for a grown man. At the harbour, the fourteen priests climb into a long rowing boat, and, if any of them notice their new brothers, they say nothing. Dredger’s used this route before to smuggle people into the city. Or maybe smuggle Stone Men off the island, to bolster his workforce at the yards.
Once clear of the Isle of Statues, one of the priests passes around a heavy glass jar the size of a milk pail. Removing their gloves, the priests scoop out handfuls of clear jelly and rub it on their skin. The spy does likewise; the slime is gritty and stings his skin. Alkahest, in case any trace of the Stone Plague contagion made it past their gloves.
With slow, hard-won strokes, the rowing boat crosses the waters between the Isle of Statues and the city of Guerdon. As it approaches the city, their little boat must jostle for space with much larger vessels. Huge freighters and merchant ships–older ones with sails or oars, and newer ones, iron-hulled and driven by alchemical engines. Hulking refugee ships, scarred by passage through the Godswar. The spy sees kraken-size tooth marks on some of the floating wrecks. Fast-moving customs cutters, racing past, trailing foul streamers of chemical smoke. Bright sunlight makes the water glisten with a sheen of oil. Floating debris bumps against their hull.
The priests are bound for the Church of Saint Storm, an ancient temple venerated by the sailors and fishermen of Guerdon for centuries. The church stands near the docks at the seaward end of the district called the Wash, notoriously the poorest and most dangerous part of the city. The tenements of the Wash visible from the boat appear to be empty; a row of vacant towers, empty windows like the eye sockets of piled skulls at Severast. That part of the city is eerily quiet.
The rowing boat heaves around the stern of a freighter anchored in the middle of the harbour, and for the first time the spy can clearly see the New City. Instantly, he is reminded of the heavenly camp above the battlefield of Mattaur. Impossible towers, airy-light and stacked like dreams. Palaces piled on palaces, stairwells rising and splitting into a dozen branching walkways in the sky. Minarets and unlikely plazas jostling in the wild growth; a jungle of marble. The unnatural stone of the New City is pearl-white and gleaming, and now the light of the setting sun sets the marvellous sight afire with unearthly beauty.
It might be a heaven.
Emlin nudges him and points at a flurry of movement in the distance. A woman appears at one of the balconies of the New City overlooking the bay. If the spy were closer, he’s sure he could hear her screaming. She throws one leg over the balcony, hesitates an instant as she looks down at the grimy waters hundreds of feet below. That moment is enough–two men emerge onto the balcony, grab her and then drag her back into the shadows. The other priests pay no attention to the distant spasm of violence, which tells the spy that such things are not uncommon in the New City.
It might be a heaven, but it’s full of sinners.
What the spy looks for, though, is the towering fortress of Queen’s Point on the other side of the bay. Guerdon’s stalwart defender, a granite mountain bristling with cannons. There are other emplacements, too, watching over other approaches to the city, ready to spit the worst horrors of the alchemists at any invader.
The rowing boat enters the inner harbour, picks its way through the canals and arched channels of the old river, down scummy waters to a jetty at the side of Saint Storm. The spy notices open sewer entrances, tunnel mouths and narrow wynds that slope up from the water’s edge–a hundred possible exits. He nudges Emlin, nods towards one alley almost at random.
The two help the priests unload their boat. They have brought next to nothing back from the Isle of Statues, other than a great box full of empty syringes with steel needles. Alkahest in a more concentrated form, for the treatment of the plagued. Hoisting his own bag, the spy follows the priests up the slick steps to the door of the church, but turns at the last moment and hurries down the side alley that runs behind a dockside tavern. Emlin follows his lead perfectly–the boy has met his first challenge, and performed well. They vanish in an instant.
In the backyard of the tavern, hidden by barrels of empty oyster shells, the spy removes his priestly disguise and helps Emlin struggle free of the damp robes. Their brief vocations abandoned, he takes two final sets of clothes from his bag and stashes the robes in their place. The nameless priest joins Sanhada Baradhin as an identity shucked by the spy. They’re folk of the Wash now,
the dregs of the city.
The spy leads the boy along the street, looking for an inn or dosshouse where they can stay for a few days. The city leers at them, bubbling up a cavalcade of strange voices and faces. Limbless veterans beg in the gutters; barkers and con men look for marks. Initially, the spy’s pleased at how well he and Emlin fit into the flow of the crowd, how quickly they seem native.
Soon, though, he sees the same face twice. They’re being watched. The thought perversely amuses him; they’ve been in Guerdon less than five minutes, and already their cover might be blown. It’s unlikely to be the city watch–they wouldn’t observe him, they’d just grab him and beat him with truncheons, another illegal trying to steal into the city without passing through Hark.
He considers the possibility that it’s one of the other agents from Ishmere. He’s not supposed to make contact with them for another week, but if he were running things here he’d pick the new asset up early, keep surveilling until they were sure he wasn’t a security risk. But he’s reluctant to give the new guard in the intelligence corps that much credit.
So. Someone else, then.
“Son,” he whispers to Emlin. “Keep your head down.” The boy’s looking around, overwhelmed by the crowds and the hubbub of the city.
The spy lets Emlin walk a few paces ahead of him. He watches for people watching the boy. There. A grey-haired woman, in a habit. Very similar to the priestly robe he just discarded. A Keeper priestess? She hurries to catch up with Emlin. Catches the boy’s arm.
The Shadow Saint Page 5