But before she can move, it begins. A flare rises over the southern side of the fort, launched from Aldras’ boat. Edder makes a half-hearted attempt to usher Eladora back down the stairs, but he doesn’t press her very hard. He wants to linger here as much as she does.
A matching flare goes up from the Grand Retort, rising like a bloody comet. A secular portent.
Is this an exercise? Are they getting ready to fire? But there’s nothing in sight. No enemy ships in the water, no godspawned monsters. Just the island.
“Invocation station reports ready, sir,” says a sorcerer.
“Begin,” orders the commander. He strides over to the southern window, picks up a telescope, focuses it on that little outcrop of stone.
A thrill of sorcery runs through the tower. Huge aetheric engines groan into life. Electro-mechanical sorcery, their wires and valves mimicking the sorcerer’s will. Alchemical soul-stuff, raw power, boils through them, churning in reaction chambers. Buried cables spark and hum. The whole fortress blazes with it. Static electricity crawls along drainpipes, leaps between the bars in the cells. Along the shore, where the cables run from the walls of the fort to the rocky tooth, magical discharges flash and transmute patches of sand to glass. Under the fortress, the shadows move.
The prisoners in the cells feel it. Some scream. Some cower. Some welcome the rush of magic, even though it’s not meant for them. They beat on the bars and try to snatch some fraction of the energy of that massive invocation.
Thunder rolls across the city. There’s a storm somewhere off to the north-east, rolling in on the far side of Holyhill.
All eyes watch the southern approach. Even those whose attention should be fixed on their instruments can’t help making furtive glances south.
All except Eladora. She’s seized by a sudden, intense terror, but it’s not coming from the south. It’s external to her, but it’s centred around the Grand Retort. The warship’s coming around the western shore of Hark, turning in the shallow waters. Crewmen wrestle the launcher into position. The god bomb’s ready to fire. In Eladora’s eyes, it’s loathsome, a poisonous horror so vile she can’t bear to look at it. As repulsive as the sun is bright.
The tower seems to spin around her. From here all things are visible.
“Manifestation,” says one of the sorcerers–and in the same moment, from far away, her mother’s voice: “We are betrayed! He means to strike us!”
Where is a god? Where is a thing without physical form? Where is a living thought, a prayer once it has left the lips, a spell before it is cast?
There, in that machine that has become a shrine. Entangled, hissing in fury and frustration, a thing of shadow unfolds, forced to manifest in the mortal world. There, right there, bound in chains of sorcery, is a god.
And there, on Holyhill. Above and around the Palace of the Patros. In the Victory Cathedrals. In the minds of the faithful who gather to praise their newfound king. In the House of Saints. In their gilded cages. The Kept Gods.
Kept. Trapped. But not bound.
Eladora raises her hand, to shield her eyes against the lightning flash.
CHAPTER 40
The guards hustle Terevant down a back staircase. The jostling makes him gasp in pain. They move abruptly from richly decorated halls to bare rooms with peeling paint; servants’ quarters and storerooms. A few servants look curiously at Terevant, but they avert their eyes when the guards glare at them.
One servant, a stoop-shouldered, bearded man carrying a bundle of gardening tools, spades and forks and a mechanical spray-pump, passes by. The man’s face is familiar to Terevant, but it takes him a moment to place it–the last time he saw that bearded man, it was on the train from Haith, all those weeks ago. He was the chaperone of those girls, the man sleeping under the newspaper.
Lemuel.
As the guards pass under an archway, they’re ambushed. The bearded man smashes one over the back of the head with a shovel. When the other guard turns, the spray-pump goes off, shooting a small cloud of dust into his face–and then the guard’s face shrivels, collapsing and shrinking like a rotten apple as the withering dust eats it away. Terevant steps back, retching, shielding his nose and mouth.
The man pulls the false beard from his face, revealing Lemuel’s customary sneer. “Stay quiet and come on.”
Lemuel hustles Terevant through a warren of storerooms. “Courtesy of the Bureau,” he hisses. “We’ll stash you somewhere, keep you safe.”
“What about Lys?”
“She’s where she needs to be–she’s got the ear of the king and the Patros, and they’ve all played their parts. The alliance between Haith and the Church holds. The Crown can’t blame the Church for you getting kidnapped. And she’ll deny everything, say you’re the bastard who killed her husband.” There’s a note of admiration in Lemuel’s voice. “I bloody told you to get out of the city. You should’ve listened.”
“You attacked me! At the Festival. You knocked me out.”
Lemuel rolls his eyes. “That was Daerinth’s clerks, not me. His little club.”
Lemuel maintains a fast pace, enough to make Terevant’s injuries painfully inconvenient, and he clearly knows it. He looks sidelong at Terevant, curiosity on his face. “Did you kill him? The ambassador?”
“No.”
“I would’ve, if she’d ever asked me to.” He shrugs. “Out through the gardens.”
There’s a heavy door, securely locked, but Lemuel has a key.
“Quick,” mutters Lemuel, leading Terevant through the maze of the gardens. He chooses a route that avoids the lamps and candles, bringing them down paths shielded by tall plants and hedges. The air’s thick with unfamiliar scents, the honey-sweetness of the flowers mingling strangely with the stench of burning fat from the corpse shafts. Their escape is so swift, so sudden it’s almost dreamlike, as though Terevant left some part of his soul back in the palace, and now his wounded, hollow body is stumbling after Lemuel.
The stone walls of the garden can be glimpsed through the trees, half lost beneath the ivy. Moss grows over half-ruined walls and fallen stones as the garden tumbles down the tree-greened slope. “There are ghoul tunnels round this way,” says Lemuel, “We’ll go below.”
They plunge into a deeper, darker part of the garden, where willow trees hang over sheltered flowerbeds. Lemuel slows down, relieved that they’re almost out of view. Terevant leans against a tree for a moment, to catch his breath. He looks back at the dark bulk of the palace, its uppermost levels still outlined against the fiery sunset. He looks for the window of the room where he spoke to Lys, but he can’t tell which one it was, or even if it’s visible from here. The last rays of the sun glancing off the polished roof conjure phantoms in the air. He blinks, seeing shapes in the sky for moment. Suddenly, there’s a new energy in the air. It feels like it did at Eskalind, as he climbed towards the temples. The Kept Gods are close at hand. So close that even Terevant can sense them.
“Move,” hisses Lemuel, “bloody idiot. The tunnel entrance is just down here.”
Lemuel yanks his arm, pulling him down another shady avenue lined with flowers.
“Wait,” says Terevant. He can tell something’s wrong, something’s dangerous, but it takes him a moment to spot it.
It’s dusk, but all the flowers are open. He looks at one, and it looks back at him.
A human eye has sprouted in the middle of each blossom. The same eye, in all the thousands of flowers.
“Saint,” he says. Tries to say. Then Lemuel’s nearly swallowed by a flowerbed. Hands–the same hand, over and over–emerge from the flowers, dragging him down. Terevant grabs the other man by the belt, throws himself backwards onto the gravel bank, yanking Lemuel out of the murderous flora.
“Back,” shouts Lemuel, “to the carriage!” The Haithi carriage is on the other side of the garden wall. His gun barks, blossoms exploding in showers of bloody petals. They fall back towards the carriage, the rescue abandoned, the distinctions between Bure
au and House falling away in the face of divine wrath.
The Vigilants hear their shouts and come rushing to their aid, swords drawn, battle-cries of Haith like leaden weights in the air. The two skeletal warriors scramble onto the garden wall with the uncanny agility of the dead. For an instant, Terevant sees the two Vigilants standing atop the wall, like sentries on the battlements of Old Haith, scanning the undergrowth.
Lightning flashes–from the sky or from the rooftop of the palace, Terevant can’t tell–and one of the Vigilants is incinerated in a flash. Shards of bone rain down amid the flowers. The other’s hurled off the wall by the blast, lands heavily amid the shrubberies. She tries to run, but the hammer of the Holy Smith catches her. Invisible hammer blows knock the Vigilant to the ground, smash her skull. She tries to rise, and the unseen hammer hits her again, driving her down into the gravel of the path. Then again and again and again.
Terevant tries to run towards the ghoul tunnel Lemuel indicated, but more assassins emerge from the shadows of the garden. Two of them corner Terevant; they have pistols drawn, but they don’t fire. They know he’d be more dangerous dead than alive. Instead, one of them punches him sharply in the chest, right into his bandaged wound, knocking the air from his lungs. He stumbles, and the two of them seize him.
A third grabs Lemuel, overpowering him with ease. He draws a sword, and harsh white flames leap from the edges of the blade, driving away all shadow. All the fight goes out of Lemuel–they can’t hope to stand against one Keeper saint, let alone two.
Or three.
Sinter comes down the path, pushing a wheeled chair. Silva Duttin sits in it, wrapped in blankets, her head lolling to one side. A line of drool runs from one corner of her mouth; on her lap, tied to the chair, is a sword.
“Ah, hell, don’t tell me the bloody skeletons got involved,” curses Sinter. He spits in the direction of the smoking crater.
Silva groans, but doesn’t speak. Sinter wipes the drool from her mouth, and flicks the spittle into a little crystal vial that he pockets. “She pisses holy now, our Silva does. You want this, Lem? Heals all wounds, I’ll bet.” He swaggers over to Lemuel. “Though not this one, you godless Haithi prick.”
The sword-wielding saint drives his blade into Lemuel’s chest. It goes in with horrible ease, driven with such force that it cuts through bone as smoothly as skin or muscle. The holy fire burns very briefly. Even his last scream is cut short.
Sinter turns to face Terevant. “Lemuel was a local boy with ambitions. You could buy the little shit for two coppers. Daerinth, Lyssada, Vanth… fucker even tried to sell himself to me, once.” Sinter waves his three-fingered hand, warding off the stench of the burning body. “I cannot fucking abide faithless people. They deserve everything they get.”
Silva makes a noise that might be a laugh.
The fact that Sinter hasn’t killed Terevant too suggests that the spymaster intends to keep him alive. To hand him over to Haith as planned, sealing the alliance between the Keepers and Haith.
“And what are you loyal to, Sinter?”
“The blessed Church,” says Sinter. “The gods in their place, and me in mine, and let none fuck that up. Oh, don’t worry–we won’t touch Lyssada Erevesic, though I’ve no doubt she’s behind this little escapade. She’ll have her alliance–on our terms, not with a fucking Haithi puppet king. And we’ll have parliament. The city made whole and holy. Put an end to all this nonsense. And Kelkin, too.” He kicks Lemuel’s burning remains, as if anticipating having a different defeated enemy dead at his feet.
The entrance to the ghoul tunnels is just a short distance away. A short distance, and unimaginably far. The saints can move much faster than he can, and their bullets go faster still. They can heal him, too, or kill him and wait for him to come back Vigilant. Run, or don’t run, live or die, all paths lead to the same place. To disgrace back in Haith. He’ll be branded a murderer, a brother-killer. The last of the line of the Erevesics, a fool to the end.
“We’re done here,” says Sinter. “Put the Erevesic back in his room. Send word to Prince Daerinth that we’ll bring the prisoner ourselves, tomorrow morning.”
The two men grab his arms. Their hands are like manacles.
The flower-saint appears at Sinter’s side. Her hands are stained, red with blood and green with crushed plant juice.
“He–the Patros–wants you. Up in the palace,” she says, words tumbling out in haste. “There’s something happening. He said, he said Grand Retort’s left port.”
“Who’s been sighted? What gods?” demands Sinter, grabbing the girl by the shoulders. She flinches at his touch. “Is it Ishmere? Ulbishe? Lyrix?” The girl shakes her head in confusion.
Holyhill is thick with divinity. The clouds above the garden ripple and flow, becoming huge figures that seem to lean down as if listening.
Sinter spins around, grabs a decorative lantern from an ivy-wreathed arch, thrusts it into the hands of one of the saints. “Ask the Holy Beggar for fucking guidance, quick–who’s out there? Who the fuck is Kelkin aiming at?”
The saint holds the lantern awkwardly. No miraculous light of revelation shines forth. Whatever miracle impends isn’t the one that Sinter desires. Terevant strains against the iron grip of his captors, but they’re too strong for him to break free. The presence of their gods gifts them inhuman might, and here, tonight, they’re as strong as they’ve ever been.
As strong as they’ve ever been. Here, at their temples.
What did Eladora see, in those notes from the Gethis Row safehouse? He remembers how ugly they were, how functional. As if stripping the majesty and mystery from the act was a necessary part of it…
“‘To ensure complete annihilation of the aetheric weave, it is necessary to achieve a local maxima of divine presence’,” shouts Terevant.
Sinter stares at him. “What?”
“One of Vanth’s documents. It’s about the god bombs. Some military project. Their ideal target–a big temple, lots of saints. The gods close at hand.”
Sinter freezes. “Kelkin wouldn’t. He fucking wouldn’t.”
The grip of the saints slackens enough for Terevant to shrug. “The Bureau thinks he might.”
“We are betrayed!” hisses Silva from her chair. “He means to strike us!”
Suddenly uncertain, the saints look to Sinter for guidance. The air in the garden is unnaturally still, as the heavens hold their breath. Would Kelkin betray them? Would their city turn its most terrible weapon upon them?
Sinter stands there, like a man who’s knows he’s been shot, but hasn’t yet felt the pain.
For a moment, Terevant’s back on the shore at Grena. In his memory, the seagulls wheel above that empty, godless valley. There are other figures there, too–an armoured knight with a sword of fire, a woman crowned in flowers. Two thin figures grub for scrap metal in the surf, one holding a lamp. The Kept Gods are so close that even Terevant can touch them. The silent figures move through the hollows of his memory, probing the sand of the shore.
Then.
“Scatter! Scatter, you fucking shits!” Sinter runs amid his collection of fresh-minted saints, shoving them, blaspheming at them. He names them frantically. He pulls the symbol of the Keepers from his breast and hurls it into the mud, stamps on it. If he could, he’d burn down the temples, deny the king, drive the crowds away. Anything to break up the locus of divine power above the hill. Anything to make the Kept Gods less of a target for an incoming god bomb.
Silva topples backwards, spilling out of her wheelchair, but she’s caught by unseen hands. Levitating, her head still lolling, her neck limp, but her right arm strong as a tower, she lifts her sword to the heavens.
And the heavens answer.
A bolt of lightning blasts from the sky above Holyhill, blazing across the city.
CHAPTER 41
The spy waits in the empty interrogation room. The rest of the prison vibrates around him, guards hurrying this way and that, alchemists and sorcerers fussin
g over their machinery.
Even through the thick stone walls of the old fort, the spy can sense forces moving. As though there are great invisible cogs and wheels under the skin of the world, moving and spinning, the teeth of the gears interlocking. Alic imagines Emlin crushed by these gears.
The spy quenches that thought. The sacrifice is necessary.
At the door, a snuffling noise. A ghoul, sniffing for scents.
“Alic?” It’s Silkpurse.
“I’m in here.”
The door cracks. The lock snaps. Silkpurse tumbles into the room.
“We came to get to you,” she says. “You and Emlin and—” Her voice changes, growing deeper. “CARILLON. HAVE YOU SEEN CARILLON?”
The girl in the prison cell. “Downstairs.”
Silkpurse wrings her hands. “I’ve got to get her–but oh, Emlin! I smelled his scent out there, on the rocks. They took him out to this—”
She’s interrupted by a massive boom of thunder, breaking right above the prison. The whole island shakes.
That wasn’t the god bomb. It was something else.
“What was that?” All the spy can think is that they’re under attack, that the invasion has begun.
“Up,” says Silkpurse. They rush out of the door, and up a narrow staircase to the roof of the fort.
There, just off the shore, is the Grand Retort. Smoke pours from the hole that’s been punched in her. Her screws churn desperately, but she’s sinking quickly into the shallow waters off Hark. Tiny figures crawl around her burning deck. The god bomb’s there, in its cradle. Dying sailors stagger towards that dark shape, trying to fire it at…
At.
Eight legs arch from horizon to horizon, arching higher than the sky. Eight eyes like moons blaze with madness and hatred. Mandibles quiver as they taste the secret thoughts of every living soul in the city, and fangs drop godly venom that splashes on the southern wall of the fort, melting the stones. The sun does not set–it flees the master of shadows, the lord of whispers.
Silkpurse throws herself to the floor as the gaze of the god crosses over them. Mortals cannot bear the direct attention of a god for long. In the yard below, guards and prisoners alike fling themselves to the ground; sorcerers huddle behind triple-warded blast shields, and quail at the horror they’ve brought forth.
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