The Shadow Saint

by Gareth Hanrahan

  “Stick close,” says Lemuel. “Vanth got ended here. It’d be awkward if you went, too.”

  Lemuel clearly knows the New City well. He leads Terevant through a maze of stairs, corridors, winding streets, unlikely turns. Moving faster now, hurrying through the strangeness. Terevant wants to linger, to take different turnings–he spots a market, a street of shrines, a tower decked in bright banners, things that might be buildings or sculptures or the graves of monsters–but he follows doggedly after Lemuel.

  Until Lemuel stops. There’s shouting in the distance, gunfire. Terevant’s hand goes to his sword, but Lemuel stops him. “Shit,” says Lemuel, his confidence visibly shaken, “wait here. Don’t fucking move.” He hurries through a door, closes it behind him.

  Confused, Terevant cautiously advances down the alleyway. The brief spate of gunfire stops, and the city’s abruptly silent, holding its breath. The walls around him creak suddenly, like the solid stone’s transmuted to sailcloth caught in the sea breeze for a moment. Terevant draws his sword, ducking low. The air is full of presences, as if some god is close at hand. It reminds him of the landing at Eskalind, before the miracles rained down like artillery. His heart’s pounding, his stomach turning to water. Vanth was murdered by a saint, Lemuel said.

  Lemuel told him to wait. To hell with that. Terevant tries to find his way towards the fighting, but the streets are impossibly twisted, and every route seems to lead away from where he heard the gunfire. Doubling back, he tries to find a doorway that might let him follow Lemuel. The one Lemuel went through is locked, but Terevant finds another one down the alleyway.

  It opens into the cool, unexpected darkness of a little chapel. The sigils of the Kept Gods above the altars. The chapel is brand new, born from the same miracle-conjured stone as the street outside, but there’s an ancient golden casket on the altar. A holy reliquary, Terevant guesses, older than the New City. Maybe older than the old city, too.

  The church is deserted, except for a bald-headed priest who rises from the frontmost pew.

  “Put your sword away, sir. No one will trouble you here.”

  “Don’t you hear the gunfire?”

  The ugly priest clasps his hands together. He’s missing two fingers from one hand. “Perils and monsters abound here, but here we are safe in the hands of the Mother of Mercies.” He smiles beatifically through broken teeth. “My name is Sinter.”

  “Here we are,” says Silkpurse, “Sevenshell Street.” A little snug row of townhouses, facing out over the open sea. Parts of the New City jut out over the ocean. Down below, mudlarks pick through the rocks for shellfish and flotsam. One part of the wall below is discoloured a sickly yellow-brown, and moisture drips from it. An old sewer entrance, maybe, accidentally walled up in the Miracle. Behind the houses, a curved wall like a frozen wave, like someone built a seawall two hundred feet above the shore and then decided to add a row of houses at its base. It makes as much sense as the rest of the New City.

  The street’s empty, but the spy glimpses fearful faces in windows. He can smell trouble.

  Trouble and soot.

  The last house in the row is burned out. The door’s been smashed open, the windows are hollow-eyed and blackened. Soot streaks run down the walls. Wordlessly, Eladora runs ahead, steps over the threshold. Inside, the room’s been blasted. It was no natural fire. Even if every scrap of wood and cloth in the place had been piled in a bonfire and set alight, it couldn’t have produced this inferno. Magic, then. Or a miracle. Or alchemy.

  “This… Carillon lived here.”

  The spy glances around the remains of the house. Two other rooms, similarly destroyed. No other exits.

  Silkpurse sniffs around, pauses, sniffs again, then scrabbles at one pile of ash. There’s a body in there, partially burned. “Oh, no. Oh, gods,” says Eladora, staring in horror. She turns away, steadying herself against the scorched wall.

  The spy kneels, helps the ghoul uncover the remains. Some of the ribs have been shattered–a gunshot. And in the wrists… iron periapts.

  He flinches, expecting the skeleton to leap up and attack them.

  Silkpurse glances up at both of them with ghoulish amusement. “What, did you think it was Cari?” She chuckles, running her claw almost tenderly down the length of the scorched femur. “This is a man’s corpse.”

  “A man of Haith,” says the spy. “He’s got periapt implants.”

  Silkpurse examines one of the little iron talismans grafted to the corpse’s ankle. “Oh, is that what those things are?” she says with distaste. “Shouldn’t he be prancing around, then, not lying dead here?”

  Eladora, still deathly pale, joins them around the body. She doesn’t dare touch it. “What… Can you tell what happened to him?”

  “Shot. Cut. Burned,” says the spy, pointing at the wounds in turn. The body’s been burned, but not as much as the spy would have expected, given its surroundings. He’s about to explain–when the windowsill behind him shatters in a shower of dust and debris. The whip-crack of an alchemical pistol, the acrid smell of phlogiston. Attackers on the street outside.

  He flings himself to the side, out of the line of fire. Silkpurse scampers over to the doorway, daintily removes her hat and veil, and then roars an animalistic howl. Eladora’s frozen in surprise. Blood runs down her cheek, but she’s lucky, it’s just a graze from flying shrapnel. The spy darts across and drags her into the cover of the wall, pushing her head down. Her blood sticky on his fingers. More shots from across the street, and the sound of someone scrambling on the roof. Who are they? It’s a good question. But it’s only the second most pressing one in the spy’s mind, on the heels of do I have any better weapons than this poster stick?

  “Take this!” Eladora presses a gun into his hand. It’s a small alchemical pistol, single-shot, little more than a lethal toy. The spy hesitates for an instant, wondering if Alic should be a good shot, and then one of the attackers comes through the front door of the house and it turns out that Alic is a brilliant shot. The intruder crumples, clutching the ruin of his kneecap, blood gushing from between his fingers. Gods, he’s only a few years older than Emlin, another child sent to war.

  Eladora shrieks. Silkpurse grabs another enemy who came too close to the front door. Her claws, made for tearing dead flesh, sink into his living wrists, and blood spurts freely. She swings him around, like it’s a grotesque waltz, leading him by the arteries, positioning his body between her and the gunmen across the street.

  The spy dares to take a look out of the window. Four or five more foes across the street, emerging from doorways, climbing down from hiding places. They’re good, whoever they are–they advance cautiously, darting from cover to cover. They were lying in wait, he guesses, ready to ambush–who? Eladora? Her mysterious cousin? Did they expect the dead Haithi to spring up?

  Shouting. A man comes rushing up the street, frantically waving his arms, his long army jacket billowing behind him. “Not now! Not now!” he shouts. “Get rid of them, quick!”

  One of the attackers unholsters a flash-ghost grenade. The aetheric discharge from that would kill everyone in the house. The spy snaps off a shot, forcing the bastard to duck before he can throw it. The shot goes wide, catches Army Jacket in the shoulder. The newcomer falls in the street, cursing. The spy fumbles for another cartridge, but reloading the tiny gun is like trying to pick a lock, and by the time he’s reloaded Army Jacket’s crawled out of sight.

  “We’ve got to leave!” the spy shouts at Silkpurse. The ghoul nods, shifts her grip on her human shield. Stepping out of that door means stepping into a hail of gunfire.

  “Miss Duttin,” calls Silkpurse, “stay behind me. I’ll guard you as much as I can.”

  “W-what about that door?” asks Eladora, pointing to the back of the house.

  There’s an opening in the wall that wasn’t there a moment ago. An archway, leading to a narrow staircase. A way out. The edges of the stone archway are still fluid, the ghostly marble flowing like liquid
moonlight.

  It’s a miracle.

  A miracle they have no time to question.

  “Go!” hisses Alic, and Eladora stumbles towards the archway, tripping over the Haithi corpse. Alic follows her; Silkpurse comes last, dragging her waltz partner as a shield.

  Their foes pursue them as they scramble up the steep stairs. The ceiling is low and cramped, and the steps wet and treacherous. Gunshots behind them make Eladora flinch. Wet cracks as Silkpurse’s waltz partner gets hit and goes limp. The ghoul discards the body, dropping it to block the narrow stairwell and force the enemy to clamber over the remains of their own. Glancing back down, Alic sees the fellow with the flash ghost at the archway at the base of the stairs.

  “Look out!” he shouts. Silkpurse sees the danger, bounds down the stairs, but she won’t get there in time to stop—

  There’s a flash of purple light and a sound like tearing, and the attacker’s flung against the wall. Eladora’s outstretched hand blazes with the same purple light for an instant, the bones limned in fire. Silkpurse reaches the man a split second later. She picks him up, smashes him against the wall again, and he’s down. A roar of ghoulish pain as Silkpurse is wounded. The house below is full of foes.

  Alic hustles Eladora up the stairs. She’s wobbling after throwing that spell, so he has to half carry her until she finds her feet. Her fingernails are bleeding; almost absently, the spy filches a handkerchief from her purse and catches the blood. He pockets the cloth.

  The tunnel ends in another archway, opening onto a deserted alleyway, a canyon between two towers like stony cliffs. He shoves Eladora out into the alleyway, then turns to help Silkpurse up the last few steps. The ghoul’s limping, and blackish blood stains the fresh marble of the steps. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” mutters the ghoul.

  They emerge into the alleyway, and find it empty.

  Eladora’s vanished into thin air.

  Another door in the chapel, and Lemeul tumbles in, breathless, his army jacket covered in dirt like he’s been rolling in the gutters. Terevant feels like he’s backstage at a theatre, watching the cast enter and exit through the wings and trapdoors, that there’s some drama happening outside that he’s missing. Lemuel double-takes at the sight of Terevant.

  “What’s happening out there?” asks Terevant.

  Lemuel’s bleeding from a gunshot wound to his arm. “Half-dozen armed bastards,” he spits in frustration, “versus some bitch saint.”

  “I have spoken to Lemuel here of the threat posed by the hateful Saint of Knives,” proclaims Sinter, “and I fear it was she who murdered your Edoric Vanth. This New City is an an abhorrence, and she is part of it. A demon child, a murderous footpad granted unholy powers. Once, she preyed only on criminals, but her bloodthirst grows. The city watch try to catch her, but–alas–to no avail!”

  “The watch are on their way up now,” adds Lemuel. “We have to go.”

  Sinter looks surprised for a split second, then nods. “Indeed, young Lemuel is right–it would be better if you left here now, before the watch find you. Old Haith has few friends in the city.”

  Terevant looks towards the door Lemuel came through. He takes a step towards it, sword in hand. “We should get Vanth’s body, even if he’s fully dead.” Thinking of Lys on the station at Grena, of the oath he swore.

  “Fucking come on,” snarls Lemuel.

  Sinter glides forward. “The city watch will bring any remains they find to the morgue at Queen’s Point.”

  Terevant hesitates. He wants to charge out there, but… You charged on at Eskalind, a voice whispers at the back of his mind, and see where that got you.

  “We’ll go. I’ll demand the remains from the city watch.” He tries to sound commanding.

  Sinter bows his head. “Mother of Sorrows, bless his passing. You have my condolences on your loss.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Eladora stumbles, and a hand catches her and pulls her to the side. For an instant, she has the disconcerting impression that she was pulled through the wall, because the way back seems impassible. Her rescuer–kidnapper?–drags Eladora up a narrow staircase and along a gallery cut into the seawall. Narrow shafts of sunlight from the windows illuminate the room, and Eladora catches a glimpse of the other woman.

  “Cari?”

  It’s been only a few months since she last saw her cousin, but the changes are marked. Cari looks like one of the miracle-shocked mercenaries that come back from the war, her face gaunt, her expression like flint. The hand that’s locked around Eladora’s wrist is covered in scabs and calluses. Her grip is stronger than Eladora remembered, but it’s a strength born of training and street-fighting, not a divine gift.

  “Silkpurse is back there–and Alic. And someone’s attacking us.”

  “I fucking noticed. Same bastards burned down my house a month ago.” Cari seems to listen to some unseen, unheard message for a moment, “They’ve split up. Silkpurse is clear. They won’t catch her if she heads that way.” Cari grins. “Can’t catch a Guerdon ghoul.”

  “What about Alic?”

  “Dunno.” She concentrates for an instant. “Shit. Sorry. They got him.” She abruptly changes course, dragging Eladora through another door. “They’re after us instead.”

  They hurry through another tunnel. From behind, Eladora hears shouting, running feet.

  The tunnel brings them to a twisted spiral staircase. “Climb,” orders Cari, and Eladora obeys, but her cousin doesn’t follow. Instead, she sees Cari unholster a pistol and aim it down the empty tunnel.

  The shouts behind them grow louder, but Eladora can’t tell how close their pursuers are.

  Carillon can. She squeezes the trigger an instant before the first attacker enters the little tunnel. The shot strikes true, and the lead pursuer roars in shock as his gun explodes in his hand. Eladora shrieks and scrambles up the stairs on her hands and knees. The stairwell seems to wheel around her, as if it’s spinning on its axis, trying to throw her back down into the carnage.

  She glances back, sees Cari retreating up the stairs behind her, knife in hand. The man is behind her, snarling, slashing at her with a curved blade. He’s clumsy, fighting with his off-hand. Cari moves like a dancer, perfectly anticipating her foe’s every swing, dodging and jumping on the narrow, uneven steps as surefooted as if she was on level ground. The man swings again, her knife flashes, and his shirt is suddenly marked with blooming red stains.

  There’s a second attacker. She glimpses the pistol in his hand, looks right down its muzzle, sees the phlogiston flash–and then suddenly Cari jumps in front of her.

  The bullet hits her cousin squarely in the chest–and all the walls in the stairwell crack simultaneously, like it’s an earthquake in this room only. Huge wounds opening up in the stone, showering them all with dust and shards. Cari falls to her knees, winded, but she’s alive and unhurt despite taking a bullet at point-blank range.

  The city took the blow, some part of Eladora thinks, but at the same time she’s stretching out her hand and reflexively reciting the incantation Ramegos taught her. The spell goes awry again. Every muscle in her arm, her side, her shoulder goes numb as the spell’s backwash runs through her. She grabs something heavy from her bag–the sword hilt Sinter gave her–with her left hand and swings at the attacker. She gets lucky, catching him when he’s off balance, and he falls backwards, striking his head against the wall. Run, she thinks or says or shouts, she can’t tell. Pulling Cari upright, sending pain arcing through her right arm. Eladora feels lightheaded; as she stumbles up the stairs, she sees that her fingernails are all burned. Her hand was already bloodied and blistered from her incantation earlier; if she tries the spell again, she’ll burn out the nerves or burst the veins in her hand.

  Cari grabs her, hustles her onwards, leads her through another bewildering series of nonsensical rooms. Some are empty, some are littered with debris from parts of the city consumed in the Crisis. Eladora picks her way over pipes and tanks bearing the sigi
l of the alchemists’ guild, over a pub sign from Glimmerside that she recalls passing in her university days. Over pews and statues from a Keeper chapel. The statues had vat-grown jewels for eyes, once, but now they watch Cari and Eladora through empty sockets. They pass through a room that might be furnished for a banquet, but all the tables and chairs are pushed up against one wall like driftwood.

  Cari drags her towards one blank wall.

  “In here.”

  The wall miraculously quivers and reshapes itself at her touch, the stone pulling apart like flesh. Sinews of mortar breaking and snapping. A cold wind blows in through the growing aperture, and Eladora gasps at the sight revealed. They’re high above the New City, a dozen storeys or more. She can see the street with all the saints down there, and all the other glimmering towers and mansions and twisted coral carbuncles of the conjured city. Then, beyond that, stretching to the horizon, is old Guerdon. She can even see the green-stained roof of the nearest Victory Cathedral, so they must be up very high indeed.

  “Come on.”

  There’s a narrow bridge, a spit of stone, no more than two feet wide, arching between this building and another tower, leading to another blank wall. This tightrope of stone is at least a hundred feet from end to end, and looks slick with moisture. Cari steps onto it without hesitation.

  Eladora has hesitation enough for both of them. “I can’t. Oh, gods, I can’t.”

  “We won’t let you fall,” says Cari, taking her by the arm again and pulling her out onto the narrow span. Eladora slips and clutches at Cari, but Cari seems rooted to the stone, able to bear Eladora’s weight with ease. Her cousin strolls over the bridge with insolent grace, and at the far end the other wall convulses and opens, too, revealing a room in the building beyond.

  Eladora glances back to see if the first opening is still there. Not only has that first impossible door closed, but the bridge behind her is melting away, the stone retreating like an icicle in spring.