You should not be in here, vagabond.
“What are you doing in here, Lemuel?” asks Terevant.
“Just looking for some papers. They’re not here.” Lemuel springs up. “You’re welcome to it.” He hurries to the door, tries to push past Terevant.
Terevant grabs the wiry man by the arm. “You’re supposed to assist me. Where are you going?”
“Out.” Lemuel twists free. “I’ve got contacts to meet. Got to go alone.”
“All right.” Terevant gestures to Vanth’s files. “Where should I start, then?”
“Bureau training, ten fucking years ago,” mutters Lemuel. “I don’t know. Vanth never talked to me. I wasn’t one of his little club.” A clock in the office behind him chimes, and Lemuel winces. “I’m late.” He hurries off down the corridor.
Yoras makes a sound that might approximate a throat-clearing cough, if he had a throat to clear.
“Something to say, Yoras?”
Lemuel is a disagreeable and base creature, by all accounts. I would not rely on him, sir.
Terevant enters the office. Pages of scribbled notes, maps, diagrams litter the desk. Thick folders of typed documents, too. A wine glass and the remains of a plate of food left balanced atop one pile.
“What did he mean about Vanth’s club?”
The Third Secretary and many of the permanent staff have worked under the First Secretary for several years. They are all Haithi. Lemuel may work for Haith, but he… Yoras inclines his head. He’s very mortal, sir. I don’t know what use the Lady Erevesic finds in him.
“I see,” says Terevant. He picks up the plate of food, the wine glass, puts them on a side table. “Well, you may go.”
I’ll stay on watch, sir. Just in case.
Yoras closes the door, leaving Terevant alone in the office.
The chaos of the room–and the wine glass–remind Terevant of his own rooms in Paravos, and the thought cheers him.
Olthic, he thinks, will be easier to deal with in the morning. In a few days’ time, they’ll fetch the sword back from Lys, and all will be well again.
He works for a while, sifting through documents, looking for any mention of the god bombs or a clue to where Vanth might be, but something distracts him. The noise from the city outside, maybe. Old Haith’s quiet as a tomb, and, before that, he was used to the silence of the Erevesic mansion, the stillness of the night broken only by his father’s coughing in the next room and the hooting of the owls in the east tower. Guerdon never sleeps. Trains rumble by underground; there’s shouting and singing from distant taverns, the clatter of carriage wheels on cobblestones.
He crosses to the little window, stares out across the nighted city. From here, he can look down. In the distance, beyond the dark outline of Castle Hill, he can see the weird shape of the New City, glowing with its own light. An alien cityscape, like some baroque moon had crashed into Guerdon. Half of Vanth’s notes are reports about the New City–mapping it, establishing networks of informants on its streets, ferreting out its secrets. The New City’s said to be dangerous–maybe Vanth went there, disappeared there. There are reports in his archives about the streets shifting, archways snapping shut like monstrous jaws.
But, no, it’s not the distant city. It’s something closer at hand. His gaze is drawn across the street, to the shapes on the roof of the Ishmeric embassy. Statues of gods, shapes out of his nightmares. Blessed Bol and Cloud Mother. High Umur, his bull horns glimmering in the moonlight.
And, there, hunched as if about to pounce, the savage Lion Queen. The bringer of war. If she brings the Godswar to Old Haith… the long, long lines of the ancient Houses, the eternal Bureau, the divine Crown have all endured for centuries, and now they might all be destroyed before the end of the war. The last stand of the Empire of Haith, brought down by fire and storm and savage divinity.
Sometimes, he imagines that it’s him and Olthic and Lys, standing side by side against the gods.
And sometimes, in his private dreams, it’s just him and Lys, and he has the sword.
CHAPTER 13
Even before her cousin’s miracle, Eladora knew the city was alive. Guerdon shambles on from age to age, incorporating its scars and eating its scabs, surviving as best it can. Eladora waits with the rest of the crowd gathered outside the House of Law, with the reporters and doomsayers, and the runners who’ll sprint down to the speculators in Venture Square when the verdict’s announced. The mob presses in on her, adding to the uncomfortable heat of the morning. Someone jostles her, sending a shock of pain through her side–the wounds she suffered during the Crisis have never fully healed. She lets the crowd push her away from the House of Law, finds a doorway where she can wait in peace. The lintel over her refuge is soot-stained; a legacy of the Tallowmen that once stood guard here, before everything changed.
A gutter-press reporter stalks through the throng, notebook in hand, looking for vulnerable aides like herself. Eladora presses herself into the doorway to avoid being seen. She doesn’t have the verbal agility needed to fend off questions; she’s cursed with academic honesty. If they ask her about this court case, she’ll answer honestly. By law, anyone who can claim a ‘hearthstone or gravestone’ in Guerdon has a vote. This universal suffrage was one of Kelkin’s triumphs; under the previous rules, the franchise was determined by attendance at the churches of the Keepers. But the law was not written to account for miraculous eruptions of architecture, and it’s possible that, legally, the New City doesn’t count as part of Guerdon. If the judges rule against Kelkin, the Industrial Liberals will lose the election. Someone more adept at handling the press, like Abver, might be able to bluster and spin, but not Eladora.
Fortunately, the reporter spots Perik in the crowd, and Perik’s only too happy to give a quote. He flushes red as he shouts to be heard over the noise of the mob, and she catches fragments of his response. He’s talking about security, about the need to elect more Hawkers in order to protect Guerdon. He gestures up at the remains of the House of Law to underline his point. The House of Law was Guerdon’s chief courthouse and city archive, until a bomb destroyed the bell tower and set fire to the archives.
Eladora knows that the bomb was planted by agents of the alchemists’ guild, the Hawkers’ own patrons. She knows that the bell tower of the House of Law was once the prison for a slumbering Black Iron God, and that the alchemists plotted to reforge the monstrous deity into a god bomb. She knows so much she dare not speak. Perik, unencumbered by secret knowledge–or any knowledge at all–produces a fluid, burbling stream of half truths and slogans.
Firefighters managed to save parts of the House of Law, and now the city has adapted. What remains of the archive now extends into the warren of lawyers’ chambers and clerks’ cubbyholes in neighbouring buildings, with salvaged court records stacked in precarious piles in every available corridor. The court itself was at the far end of the quadrangle from the explosion, so it survived, but the chambers of the Lords Justice and Mercy were destroyed. The judges have taken over a nearby inn as their sanctum, and Eladora suspects this “temporary” arrangement will persist for centuries. Neither is especially convenient to the functioning of the court, but they work, and so the city continues.
It reassures her. Whatever happens, Guerdon will muddle through. Kelkin will step in and find a way forward.
The doors of the court open. The crowd presses forward, then gets pushed back by city watchmen. In the crush, Perik’s separated from his reporter. He shouts one last quote, waving his arms like a drowning man sinking into a sea of flesh.
The Lords Justice and Mercy, sweating beneath their ceremonial masks, troop across the grass of the quad in the direction of their inn. Behind them, the courtroom spills out lawyers, petitioners, scribes and gawkers in great profusion. The House of Law was full to bursting. Eladora can’t see Kelkin, but he must be in the centre of that tide.
The crowd parts, and a massive monster pads towards her. Stinking of the grave, his horned head, wit
h its face like a skinned horse, would be eight feet above Eladora’s if he wasn’t hunched over. The King of the Ghouls, the Great Rat of Guerdon. Hurrying along by his side is his spokesman and clerk, a young man carrying a bundle of papers.
The glowing yellow eyes spot Eladora. The ghoul’s mind brushes against hers, and it’s the feeling of someone walking on your grave. Rat stops, and the crowd pouring out of the courthouse flows around him as if he were a boulder in a river. The clerk massages his throat and looks as though he’s about to faint for an instant, then speaks–elder ghouls find human speech unpleasant, but can force others to speak for them. She recalls the hideous sensation herself and wonders if the mental discipline Ramegos taught her would be enough to block Rat’s commands, but the ghoul is polite enough to restrict himself to his designated spokesman.
“MISS DUTTIN. GOOD AFTERNOON.”
She owes Rat her life; the ghoul carried her out of the tomb. The city owes the ghouls; there are rumours of a secret war fought beneath the streets between the ghouls and the Crawling Ones. Jermas Thay’s true kin, thinks Eladora–sorcerous demon-worshipping worms, not her.
“Lord Rat.” She bows her head, hoping he doesn’t see her press her nose to a scented handkerchief, knowing he doesn’t care. “I take it you triumphed in court.”
“KELKIN DID. THE REFORM ACT HOLDS. THE NEW CITY CAN VOTE.”
“And so can the undercity,” she points out. Rat shrugs his shoulders, and flakes of mould cascade down his mountainous flanks.
“KELKIN SHALL HAVE MY SUPPORT IF HE LISTENS, AND IF MY KIN ARE FED.” He bares his teeth at that, sharp and yellow-brown, each tooth as long as one of Eladora’s fingers.
Abruptly, he sniffs the air near her face, tasting her breath. Yellow eyes narrow, and again comes the psychic grave-tread, only this time it’s more intense, the sensation of digging, of claws ripping at the surface of her mind. She steps back and draws on her rudimentary skills of sorcery to put up a mental barrier as Ramegos taught her. She senses the elder ghoul could push past it without effort, but it stops him. He tilts his monstrous head.
“YOU SMELL OF DIVINITY.” The elder ghoul is a sort of necrotic demigod; during the Crisis, Rat was able to hunt down Carillon and tried to kill her because of her connection to the Black Iron Gods. At first, she panics–what can he smell on her? In the tomb, under Jermas’ spells, she was a sort of proxy saint for Carillon, and she’s had nightmares about the ghoul crawling in through her window, about those claws slashing her throat, those teeth ripping at her dead flesh. Then she realises that it must be smelling the lingering magic of her mother’s presence.
The thought of her mother being eaten by a hulking monster from the underworld is not an unfamiliar one to Eladora, but it’s unworthy of her. She pushes it away.
“I’m looking for Mr Kelkin. Where is he?”
The ghoul laughs, and the crowd parts again, abruptly, as everyone on one side of Eladora takes one step towards Castle Hill and everyone on the other takes one step in the opposite direction, down towards the New City. All psychically shoved by the elder ghoul, clearing a straight path between Eladora and Kelkin.
The crowd goes quiet for an instant, the silence broken only by the chuckling of the ghoul.
Cheeks burning, Eladora hurries down the path cleared for her. Kelkin watches with bemusement as she approaches, then sees the ghoul and scowls.
“Bloody idiot,” he snaps, and she hopes Kelkin means Rat and not her. The old man’s temper is legendary. He grabs her roughly by the forearm and leans on her. “The Vulcan,” he barks, like she’s a cabbie.
It’s only a short walk down to Venture Square, but he’s breathing heavily by the time they arrive at the coffee shop. In the junior ranks of the Industrial Liberal staff, Kelkin’s health is the subject of endless speculation. Usually, his energy is boundless, but though he snaps orders at various passing aides as he and Eladora cross the square, she can feel him wince as he limps, and he sits down heavily in his armchair when they get to the backroom.
“Unanimous,” he crows, “without so much as a half-penny bribe. That’s good lawyering. What the devil do you want? What’s the point of me ensuring that every beggar in the New City can vote if you’re not up there telling ’em to vote for ME?”
“I’m… well, that is, we…” Eladora’s thoughts swirl and her words trip over one another.
“Bah? Is it Spyke? He was complaining about you, too. If you can’t work together, I’ll pair you with someone else. Here.” He grabs a sheet of paper from his overburdened desk, glances at it, hands it to her. A few names are underlined. “These ones are working the New City. Talk to them, see if they’re more suitable. Just get it done.”
“It’s not about the New City. It’s about my m—about the church.”
“The Keepers. What?” She has Kelkin’s full attention now.
“I, ah, met my mother for dinner. Mhari Voller was there, too.” Kelkin’s eye twitches at the mention of her name, but he doesn’t interrupt. “And… I don’t know if you know him, but—”
“Sinter,” he snaps. “Quickly now.”
“Voller hinted… more than hinted, really, that she was rejoining the Keeper party. They proposed a coalition, a p-pact. They even talked about you returning to the fold.”
“And in return, a ban on foreign faiths.”
“I think so. They want to meet with you.”
Kelkin snorts. “Do they have the backing of the Patros?” he asks.
Eladora shrugs. “I don’t know. I asked Sinter that, but—”
“Ach, it doesn’t matter what Sinter says. I’ve never known a more faithless man. The bastard should have found his calling as a bookmaker on the race-track, not a priest.”
Now that Kelkin points it out, Eladora can see the resemblance. Sinter, with a stable of hobbled gods and bridled saints. He wanted to run me, Aleena said of him once.
“On a related matter, what do you think of this?” Kelkin hands her another document. This one is fine parchment that glimmers with its own internal radiance, ornamented calligraphy and heavy with wax seals. From the hand of the Patros himself. Eladora skims it. It’s a notification that the Keepers are shutting down the corpse shafts underneath their churches. For centuries, there’s been a secret bargain between the Keepers and the carrion-eating ghouls of the city. The Keepers gave the ghouls most of the dead, and in exchange the ghouls kept watch over the subterranean prison holding the monstrous servitors of the Black Iron Gods.
During the Crisis, those servitors escaped and were destroyed by the Gutter Miracle. There’s no need for the bargain now–but paying off the ghouls was only part of the arrangement.
“What… what will they do with the dead instead of giving them to the ghouls?” she asks.
Kelkin raps his stick on the table. “Exactly! The city’s gods are weak because the church starves ’em of soul-stuff. If they go back to the old rites, if they give them the residuum of all the faithful dead, then soon the gods start getting notions about their divinity! How long before Guerdon turns into Ulbishe or Ishmere?”
“At the dinner last night, my mother demonstrated… spiritual gifts.”
Kelkin lowers his voice, and there’s a note of uncertainty in it that she’s heard before only once. “All right. This needs looking into. I’ll send for you when I need you. Right now, get back to work.”
“What should I tell my m-m… ah, Lady Voller?”
“Nothing yet. If they contact you again, say you talked to me, that’s all. I don’t know if this is just Voller and a few Safidist lunatics, or if the Patros supports this play.” He pokes the fire burning in the grate, even though it’s a warm day outside, and stares into the flames.
Even though Eladora has to venture through dark and perilous streets alone, she does not miss Absalom Spyke’s punishing pace or his abrasive company. She’s able to walk as she pleases, making her way down by degrees into the Wash. The summer heat drives away the shadows, but conjures up an incredi
ble stink; effluent and dung and alchemical runoff combining in a witches’ brew. The streets are mostly deserted in the afternoon heat.
She looks at Kelkin’s list of volunteers again. One name on it she’s seen before, in a very different context. During the secret inquest after the Crisis, everyone who’d associated with Carillon and the other key figures was investigated by the city watch’s saint-hunters. Eladora recalls an endless parade of names, some of which she knew, and others that meant nothing to her. Spar, Rat, Heinreil, Rosha, Aleena, Sinter, and other names she’s locked away and doesn’t think about.
One of Carillon’s tangential associates was a ghoul named Silkpurse.
Elabora has an idea, but it’s not one she’s willing to acknowledge yet. It scuttles through the back of her mind, an unwelcome visitor. She tries to squash it, but it’s tough. She tries to lock it away in the same place she keeps all those other things she doesn’t like to think about, but it’s got its hooks into her and won’t be relegated to the category of things from her past life. It’s a grubby, unwholesome, poisonous idea, and she doesn’t like it at all, but it won’t go away.
Eladora picks her path, following sea breezes and open spaces where the air is less foul, until she finds a door off Lambs Square with the symbol of the Industrial Liberals painted on it. The door is unlocked and inside the hall is dark and mercifully cool. She climbs a short stairway that leads to a large hall. There are painted sets stacked against one wall, and stained curtains hang down over a small stage. A bar, closed at this hour. A row of trestle tables, mostly empty, although there are a few stacks of election posters that should, ideally, be pasted on walls across the Wash. There should be a throng of volunteers here, too, but the place is deserted apart from a pair of old women.
“I’m Eladora Duttin,” she introduces herself, “I’m looking for Silkpurse.”
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