The Shadow Saint

by Gareth Hanrahan

  CHAPTER 34

  “Shitshitshit.” Cari concentrates on the wall, and the stone flows sluggishly. Long tendrils slither out, interlacing like fingers to barricade the entrance.

  “Come out!” Silva’s fist smashes into the door, making the whole building shudder. The barrier cracks.

  “At least six or seven of them.” Cari speaks breathlessly. “Silva, sniper, more coming up. I think one of them’s a saint. Fuck.” She nearly slips in Terevant’s blood as she backs away from the door.

  “A girl of flowers,” says Eladora, unsure how she knows. “A young saint.” Young, drunk on power, newly transfigured by the flood of divine grace set loose by the belief in a king.

  “Leave him,” says Cari. “Maybe we can get out the back.”

  Eladora shakes her head. “I’ll stall Mother here. You go.”

  Carillon doesn’t hesitate. She darts upstairs and vanishes.

  Saints are blessed with healing powers. There’s nothing else that she can think of to do. Eladora stands, staggers to the door. “Mother! It’s Eladora. Cari’s gone.” She feels dizzy, like it’s a horrible dream. The air’s thick with the smell of wildflowers; somehow, even though it’s night outside, and the windows are stone, sunlight seems to be streaming into the room.

  “ELADORA, MY CHILD. I SHALL CARRY YOU OUT AND BRING YOU INTO THE LIGHT OF SAFID! BURN AWAY YOUR SINS. DON’T YOU REALISE, CHILD? WE’RE MARCHING TO FREE THE CITY FROM THE TYRANNY OF MONSTROUS GODS! WE SHALL CAST DOWN THEIR TEMPLES AND RESTORE THE THRONE ON HIGH.” Again, the door quakes. More fingers of stone break. “HOLY FIRE SHALL BRING DOWN THE WORKS OF BLACK IRON!”

  She’s talking like it’s three hundred years ago, when the forces of the Kept Gods–before they were Kept at all–freed the city from the Black Iron pantheon. The war of saints.

  “Mother, listen to me. The world’s changed. The gods don’t understand that, they can’t change, so you have to do it for them. The Black Iron Gods are gone! Cari’s not their saint any more. Things are different!”

  “FIRE SHALL DESTROY THEM. STORMS WILL WASH THEM AWAY. FROM THE ASHES, FLOWERS SHALL GROW.”

  A sword of holy fire cleaves the door in two. Eladora scrambles back, staring in horror. The figure outside is unrecognisable. Clad in ancient armour, wielding a sword of cascading flames. A cloak of storms, armour forged by the Holy Smith. A crown of flowers transmuted to steel.

  For an instant, Eladora’s perspective flickers, and somehow she’s looking at herself through her mother’s eyes. Her beloved daughter, steeped in lies and sin. The same horrible taint that runs through Silva’s own veins, the sins of the Thay family who strayed so far from the path. The fires in Silva’s blood burn away the taint; she accepts the agony as penance. Eladora must be made to understand the same. The city must be cleansed, too–the fires will burn away the taint. The towers will burn, and be washed away by summer storms, and from the ashes, temples will grow like flowers, and they will worship the true gods of Guerdon, now and forever and forever—

  A flash of explosion.

  Carillon flings herself out of the upstairs window of the half-made house, dropping the flash-ghost grenade as she does so. Trusting to Spar’s guidance that the blast won’t hit Eladora or whatshisname.

  The sniper across the city snaps a shot while she’s in mid-air, and it hits. Spar’s miracle protects her, transfers the wound from her fragile mortal flesh to the stone of the streets. Most of it, anyway–it still fucking hurts when a bullet hits you in the face. She hits the ground, rolls, and grabs another weapon from her bag of tricks, spoils of that house on Gethis Row.

  A can of withering dust. She twists the handle and throws it down the street, towards the girl-of-flowers. The canister skitters across the ground, hissing and spitting a cloud of lethal dust-grains. The girl falls apart, her body dissolving to thousands of glowing seeds that float on the breeze and drift until they find a place to land and take root. Most of them alight on poisoned earth, too close to the grains of withering dust to survive.

  Behind you. Spar’s voice. She dodges to the side as Silva charges, flaming sword in hand. The grenade doesn’t seem to have sapped her at all. Fuck. Still, for all her god-given strength and speed, she’s just an old woman, flailing with a sword she doesn’t know how to use.

  Back in the farm in Wheldacre, as a child Cari used to infuriate Silva by refusing to submit to punishment. She remembers dodging and climbing and hiding around the farmyard, while Silva stalked her with a wooden spoon.

  Now it’s knives. And a fuck-off sword.

  Cari slashes at her aunt. Her blow skitters off Silva’s armour, but she can tell it’s not real. It’s a miraculous protection. All Cari needs to do is keep dodging, break Silva’s concentration, and her aunt won’t be able to maintain her connection to the gods. Cari knows as well as anyone how hard it can be to maintain saintly gifts, to find that point where you’re lifted out of the mortal realm enough to channel miracles, but stay grounded enough that it’s you in control and not the gods.

  Incoming. She flings herself to the side as the sniper shoots again. She sees the bullet from a dozen angles. All the windows are her eyes.

  He’s gone. Strong, callused hands grab the sniper from behind. Someone got him. She was wrong–there are two groups out there. Silva, the flower-saint, the sniper–and a second group.

  She doesn’t know who her unseen allies are, and the sniper’s right on the edge of Spar’s perception, but right now that’s less important—

  —than the big fiery death sword that’s coming right for her face.

  Carillon rolls to the side. Silva may be a little old lady, but it’s like fighting the Fever Knight. Blundering and clumsy, but also fast and terribly strong. She needs to get off this wide street. Left is covered in a carpet of withering dust and flowers.

  Right is a maze of alleyways.

  Left has her bag of alchemical weapons. There’s a big pistol in there, the sort they use to put down Gullheads.

  Right urges Spar, but she hesitates for an instant, and the sword catches her.

  She’s not hit. It was a graceless, stumbling swipe, one she can easily avoid, and the blade whistles by her harmlessly. It’s the flames surrounding the sword that catch her. Holy fire scorches her, and instinctively, she draws on Spar’s miracle, transferring the injury to the New City.

  Fire lights the night sky. The skyline is suddenly outlined in flame. Towers become burning torches as the stone bursts into flame.

  Spar’s voice in her head becomes a bellow of pain.

  Shit. It’s holy fire. It burns the soul.

  Burns the soul. This whole city is Spar’s soul, made tangible.

  Silva swings again, wildly. Cari ducks again, scoops up the pistol from the top of the bag, but again she’s brushed with flame. Again, more buildings become candles. She can’t hear the screaming of the people in those towers, but Spar can.

  She runs to the right. Silva leaps after her, jumping thirty feet in a single bound. The sword comes down a finger’s breadth clear of Cari’s head, and again the flames scorch her. This time, she cuts Spar off, rejects that grace.

  Takes the fire.

  Blinded, her face blistered and scorched, Cari slams headlong into a wall. The wall reshapes as she collides with it, becomes a staircase she dances up blindly, climbing out of Silva’s reach. Leaving the street behind, reaching for the rain-gutters. Silva jumps again, scrabbling at the walls like a mad dog, but she can’t find purchase.

  Cari reaches the rooftop. More flowers are sprouting up here, growing impossibly quickly, their closed heads unnaturally large. She pays them no heed, doesn’t have time for their weird shit when there’s Silva with a flaming sword down there. She loads the pistol, and the bullet’s a year’s worth of anger. The pain so bad she can hardly stand, she sways back and forth on the precipice, choking on the smell of her own scorched flesh and burning hair, but she’s not missing this shot.

  You knew and you could have warned me, she thin
ks. Silva’s a Thay. She knew what her family was doing, knew what they made Carillon for. And when Cari first started hearing the Black Iron Gods in the night, Silva should have known what that meant, too. Cari ran from Guerdon, and should never have come back. Coming back led to the Crisis. You knew and you deserve this.

  Cari doesn’t even need to aim. Even with one eye burned, the side of her face blistered, Cari can see everything down there. Spar shows her what she needs. She sees Silva, sword upraised in challenge. Eladora stumbling out of the shattered doorway.

  She fires. Silva staggers under the impact, her miraculous armour flaring with light, then vanishing. Her aura of divinity vanishes. An old woman, stick-thin, in a tattered dress, stands unsteadily on the street below. She drops her sword, unable to bear the weight of it. Blood gushes from her mouth, her nose. She topples to the ground.

  For a moment, Carillon senses an immense movement, a dislodgement of forces. Like a mainstay has come loose and is now whipping around the deck. The divine power that Silva channelled is loose. The grace of her sainthood broken. Nothing more than human.

  Cari loads the gun again.

  Suddenly, one of the flowers swells impossibly, convulses obscenely, birthing a human form. The young girl-saint slithers out of the flower, body slick with nectar or amniotic fluids or some other gunk. She slides out with enough speed to come flying at Cari, punching her in the side. Grabbing for the gun. The girl’s nowhere near as strong as Silva, but she’s in the first flush of her power. A new-minted saint, drunk on miracles.

  Cari lets their combined momentum carry them both off the roof. They land in a tangle of limbs and bodies–but only one of them has Spar’s gift. The impact of falling four storeys is safely shunted to the stone around her, throwing up dust in a circle around the spot where she lands, cracking the pavement.

  The flower girl isn’t blessed in the same way. Flowers sprout where her blood pools on the sidewalk.

  Still, Cari has the wind knocked out of her. She lies there, gasping for air. Without looking, she knows that her knife has fallen from her belt. She reaches out, finds the handle.

  A booted foot steps on her hand. The pavement’s crushed instead of her fingers, but her hand’s trapped.

  Silva, clad in armour once more, her sainthood recovered.

  The sword catches fire again.

  Eladora hides by the door, frozen in fear. She clasps her hand over her mouth as the wind catches the withering dust, but the doorway’s sheltered. She watches in horror as her mother’s sword burns Cari, and the city catches fire in response.

  A touch of holy fire against Cari’s skin, and those towers burst into flames. What will happen if Cari’s killed by a saint’s blade? Will the whole New City burn? She visited half those towers while campaigning, knows how crowded they are. Tens of thousands will die.

  Run, she urges Cari, and it’s as if her cousin hears her above the carnage. She watches as Cari springs up the side of a building, steps forming and vanishing just in time for her feet to catch them. Cari’s out of reach of Silva, who’s left raging on the street below. Her mother hacks at the wall in a fury.

  If Cari keeps running, then maybe Eladora can talk Silva down. Eladora stands and walks, shaking, towards the avatar of divine wrath that’s supposed to be her mother. Overhead, storm clouds have gathered, and Eladora can see shapes in the sky. Mother of Flowers, Saint Storm, Holy Beggar. The gods of Guerdon are abroad tonight.

  “Mother—” she begins.

  And then Cari pops back into sight, gun in hand. Aiming right at her.

  The shot rings out. Eladora dives to the ground, convinced that the bullet is about to strike her. A sudden burst of pain in her chest, but there’s no blood. The clouds wheel overhead.

  It’s like being back in the tomb under Gravehill. The same wrench in her soul, the same terrifying feeling of being exposed to terrible and vast attentions.

  Saint Storm reaches down. His armoured gauntlet, lightning-clad, bigger than the city. Steel-clad fingers the size of towers. The pain vanishes as the god offers her a sword. Reminds her she already has a sword.

  And then she’s back on the street. Her mother crumpled on the ground ahead of her. She watches as Silva’s fingers scrabble at the ground, as she wipes blood from her mouth, drags herself upright using a walking stick as leverage–and then rises, stronger than the storm. The stick becomes a sword. Her bloodied clothes become shining armour. Her eyes, fire.

  Carillon’s down, too. Eladora watches in horror as Silva stalks towards her cousin, sword held high. Cari goes for her dropped knife, and Silva steps on her hand. The sword bursts into flame.

  Eladora reaches into her own bag. Takes out the hilt that Sinter gave her, the broken remains of Saint Aleena’s sword. Aleena saved her in that tomb. Called down the Kept Gods and defeated all the monsters.

  She holds the sword and prays.

  Her sword, too, becomes fire. She, too, rises. Armour–translucent, frail, hesitant–appears around her. Strength flows in her like waves, dizzying her. One moment, she feels like she could shatter the city with one blow; next, she feels as fragile as glass.

  The shapes in the clouds lose their symmetry. They clash and swirl.

  She raises her sword. It blazes, and the flames on Silva’s sword gutter and die.

  Thunder booms overhead. The storm god roars in confusion, unable to tell which vessel is his saint.

  “Wicked child,” screeches Silva. She tries to stab Carillon, but she lacks the strength to hold her sword, and the blade falls harmlessly to the ground. Cari wrestles her hand free, and it comes up holding the knife.

  “NO!” shouts Eladora, and Cari’s sent tumbling away across the ground by the force of her cousin’s command.

  “Ungodly child! Thief!” Silva’s weeping now. “Faithless as father!” She shuffles forward, hands outstretched. Eladora recoils, but her mother’s not trying to embrace her.

  Instead, Silva embraces the flaming sword Eladora holds. “The fires of Safid! Carry my soul!” The crackle of burning flesh. Eladora drops the sword in horror. The flames go out, leaving Silva clutching the cold blade with hands so scorched Eladora can see bone.

  Eladora’s armour flickers, reappearing around Silva. Her borrowed sainthood returning to the true vessel. The gods vacillating between two choices.

  But in that instant of transfer, that brief gap, another shot rings out from across the city. The sniper rifle, again.

  Silva sprawls on the ground. Eladora can’t tell if her mother’s dead or mortally wounded, but her divinity’s gone.

  Cari struggles to rise, and a second shot catches her in the forehead. The wall behind her cracks asunder, saving her life, but she’s knocked unconscious. One side of her face burned, the other now marked by a hideous purple welt that runs from her hairline to the middle of her cheek.

  Overhead, the clouds weep; hot summer rain falls across the city.

  After leaving Eladora’s flat, the spy walks and thinks. The city’s afire with rumour–that the new king has brought an army with him, the new king is actually the old king returned from sea, the king was grown in an alchemical tank and it’s all a plot by the guilds to regain power. Alic hears snatches of stories about troops from Haith, but he dares not show too much of an interest.

  The evening passes into night. The streets grow quiet, and he’s left alone with his furious thoughts. Outwardly, he looks calm, but behind the mask of Alic a frustrated storm rages. The stolen documents, the Khebeshi notes–they point to a terrible flaw in his plan.

  There is a solution. A cruel one.

  Everyone, he realises, has thought of the god bombs in the wrong way. They think of them as bombs–as products of the alchemists’ foundries. Machines made for a task. A blind chemical reaction.

  But they’re gods, and gods demand faith. They demand a sacrifice, proof of devotion. Even the mangled, truncated, ruined Black Iron Gods demand their divine due. He should have seen that long ago.

  The s
py walks in a great circle, encompassing the Wash, only to end up back at Jaleh’s. The house is sleeping now. Emlin’s sleeping, his pillow sticky with blood. The boy stirs in his dream, muttering the names of ships at sea. Something he recited for Annah, maybe, or an echo of some other spy’s report.

  Alic strokes the boy’s hair, and Emlin rolls over, reassured.

  The boy’s so fragile, so defenceless as he sleeps there.

  The spy makes Alic reach under the bed for his bag. Underneath the rifle is a priest’s robe, still stinking faintly of seaweed and alkahest. He bundles it up.

  Alic is conscientious, a hard worker. No one pays any attention as he moves through the house, doing odd jobs. Securing the attic window. Nailing down a loose roof tile. Checking to make sure the back door is locked. But when he’s done with that, he keeps working. Cleaning out rooms, scrubbing the kitchen. Stalling.

  Live your cover, Alic tells himself.

  Emlin comes downstairs, tousle-haired, still half asleep. “I’m thirsty,” he says. One of his six wounds has opened again. Alic fetches the boy a cup of water, makes him sit on a stool while Alic smears some of the alchemists’ balm on the cut.

  “Is there any word from Annah?” asks the boy.

  Alic’s about to answer honestly, but instead he nods, and whispers: “Yes. She’s told us that it’s time to leave.” It’s only half a lie–they should have fled Guerdon immediately after sending the message. Got clear of the cataclysm, instead of waiting here for the coming of the gods. Waiting for the blast. You can come back, Alic tells the spy, let me get Emlin clear, and you can come back.

  “We’ll go on one of Dredger’s ships again. Maybe go west, to the Archipelago.” As far from the Godswar as possible.

  “What about your election?” Emlin frowns. Touches the wound on his face, suddenly worried. “Is this because of me? I didn’t mean…”

  “No, no. It’s not that. It’s–it’s orders from Annah. Can’t disobey the intelligence corps, right? But she told us to hide, to go quietly. Can you do that?”

  Emlin nods. “I’ll go and pack.”