Nine, and she’s in the old fort building on the perimeter of the isle. The upper storeys are ablaze; burning sparks fall from the ceiling, and the gaps between beams in the ceiling glow a burning red. The building creaks alarmingly.
Ten, and she’s downstairs. The steel door at the bottom of the stairs is locked. Silkpurse is there, scrabbling at the door, tearing at the mortar around the doorframe as she tries to force it open through sheer strength. Her muzzle’s choked with blood and soot, making her breathing horribly laboured.
“Cari’s in there!”
Eladora pushes past her. “Get out!” she shouts. “Go to the boat! Make them wait for us!”
The steel door is hot to the touch as she searches for the right key. Silkpurse has done so much damage to the hinges that Eladora can only partially open the door, but the gap is wide enough to squeeze through. Inside, there’s no light. She takes a breath, the air in the mask stinking of sweat and ash, and–eleven minutes–murmurs a sorcerous incantation. The spell rises through her, tugging at bones and muscles, as she gathers the energy and spits it out as a little ball of light. It’s almost funny how difficult the incantation is, compared to the power she was able to briefly wield as a saint.
The spell illuminates the corridor of cells. There’s Carillon, lying on a bed in the furthermost cell. Unconscious, but stirring. Eladora hurries forward, looking for the matching key for that cell.
“Let me out.”
Miren’s hand shoots out of the gap between the bars, grabbing her right elbow. His fingers close on her arm, digging in, trapping her. He’s so very thin, so very pale, but it’s him. There was a time–a year and a lifetime ago–when she’d devoutly wished for him to touch her in any way. When she’d seen his quiet blankness as concealing hidden, tender depths.
She never saw with her own eyes the things that Miren is accused of doing. She never witnessed any of the murders, never knew he was bred by his father to be a replacement for Carillon, another saint of the Black Iron Gods. She read the reports that Kelkin and Ramegos shared with her, about how Miren eliminated his father’s enemies, how he teleported around the city in secret, locked-room murders and thefts. About how he killed Spar at the height of the Crisis.
Some foolish part of her always wanted to disbelieve. She could never completely reconcile the monster in those reports with the boy she’d known.
Now she can.
Miren pulls her over to the cell, his limbs frighteningly twisted, like a python. One arm wrapping itself around her neck, pressing on her windpipe. The other hand grabbing for her left arm, trying to reach the bunch of keys.
She drops the keys, kicks them away out of reach down the corridor. He hisses in anger, and increases the pressure on her throat. She tears at his arm with her nails, but he doesn’t react. She tries for a spell, and he lifts her off the ground, slamming her head against a crossbar. The pain breaks her grasp on the sorcery.
“I thought you’d come for me,” he whispers in her ear. His hand moves across her, probing. He finds the letter she forged, unfolds it. “What’s this? You leave me rotting here for months, but as soon as my Cari’s put in jail, you come running?”
“Didn’t know. You. Here.” Twelve, says another part of her mind, remorseless and cold.
“If I let you go, will you open the lock?” he whispers in her ear.
“Yes,” she gasps.
A long moment passes as he considers her words. “No. I don’t think I believe you.” He keeps squeezing, and squeezing. The cells are very far away now. She tries praying to the Kept Gods–a fraction of her mother’s strength would be enough to rip Miren’s arm off, or bend the bars of Cari’s cell–but they’re far away, too, and far above. She feels like she’s falling into some dark abyss, populated only by echoes and the pounding noise of her own heart.
“Father always thought more of you than I.” His voice sounds like it’s coming from inside her, a thought running through her brain that isn’t hers. Broken shapes of darkness move in the deeps. There’s an awful silence there, how she imagines death must sound. An absence that smothers everything.
Miren’s arm around her throat is smooth and dry, but she remembers her grandfather’s wormy hands choking her, too.
She hears Carillon’s voice, somehow overlapping. It’s right there with her in this dark place, and echoing down from far above.
“Murderer!”
The pressure lifts, and Eladora falls to the floor. Purple lights explode in her vision as she gasps for air. Cari’s there, unsteady on her feet, but free, out of the cell. She’s holding the bunch of keys in her hand, and blood’s dripping from one jagged key. Miren cradles a wound on his forearm. He raises his arm to his mouth and sucks the blood.
“We have the same dreams,” he says to Cari. “You killed most of them, but there are still two left. Broken, like us.”
“El, do you have a fucking gun? Or a knife? I’m going to kill this bastard.” Cari has to lean against the wall to stay standing, but there’s no hesitation in her voice.
“We have. To go.” Eladora wheezes. “They’re going to. To b-bomb the whole island.”
“That’ll do,” says Cari. “Hear that, fucker?” She imitates the whistle-blast of an incoming shell. “They’ll drop this whole building on top of you. Just like daddy.”
Miren licks away the last of the blood. Stretches like a cat, sniffs the air. It’s full of smoke, but there’s no remaining smell of the gas. “Follow me, Carillon,” he says, reaching out through the bars. Polite this time, offering his hand like a gentleman helping her out of a carriage. “I know a way.”
Cari doesn’t move. Miren withdraws. “As you wish.”
He clenches his fists, and vanishes.
It’s ghastly. The one time Eladora saw him teleport before, in the crypt on Gravehill, he’d simply disappeared. One heartbeat he was there, the next gone, a flickering shadow. This is different. He doesn’t move, but she can tell he’s laboriously pulling himself through whatever dimension he travels through. A dozen heartbeats, and with every one, new agonies cross his face. He fades, beat by beat, with the sound of joints cracking, of sinews snapping and reforming. Worst of all, he leaves some of himself behind–a ghostly afterimage, made of leftover flesh. A moon shadow of bone, thinner than the finest china. A wisp of flesh, like onion-skin parchment. A ghost of tissue. A mist of moisture from his eyes, a few droplets of blood, a few small fragments of thread from his rags. All falling to the floor or blowing away on the hot draughts when he’s gone.
“Gods below,” says Cari, sinking back against the wall.
“No time,” says Eladora, grabbing her. She’s lost track of how long before the artillery bombardment begins, but they can’t have more than a few minutes. They run through the burning fort, climbing back up to ground level, looking for a door that leads out into the courtyard near the gate. They sprint through endless abandoned rooms, the flames crackling over their heads, burning timber falling around them.
They find a window that’s large enough to climb out of. On the other side is a steep drop down to rocks atop the island’s eastern flank. They half clamber, half fall down, landing heavily on the hard rocks. Carillon gulps fresh air as the sea breeze cuts through the smoke. There’s a goat-path from there down to the jetty. The light from the burning buildings above them is brighter than the sun.
“I’m getting woozy,” says Cari, slipping on the rocks.
“It’s just a little further,” Eladora says, but she’s interrupted by the distant crack-boom of artillery fire. She looks towards the city on the horizon. At this distance, Guerdon is a little semicircle of light, with only a few features discernible. The white bulk of the New City, the spires of Holyhill.
Smoke over Queen’s Point. Tiny pinpricks of light, like fast-moving stars.
CHAPTER 43
“Swim!” Eladora pulls Cari towards the water as the first shells descend. Fortunately, the gunners’ initial target is the summoning machinery on the
south shore, not the fort itself. Still, they’re only a few hundred yards away from the blast zone, and half the world explodes. The first barrage is howler-shells, designed to shatter hard targets. Warships, fortifications, gods. The second wave will be the same, she guesses, to destroy the remainder of the fort, rip away any shelter where a rogue saint might hide.
The next barrage will be phlogiston, to sear the island clear.
Hand in hand, they plunge into the chilly water, struggling to stay afloat. Detritus from the sunken Retort bobs past them. Carillon’s a stronger swimmer, but she’s still weak from her imprisonment. Eladora grabs a piece of floating debris large enough for her cousin to rest on as they continue to paddle towards the receding lights. Her breathing mask fills with salty water; she pulls it off and loops the strap around her wrist.
“El,” says Cari weakly. “Thanks.”
“Yes, well,” sniffs Eladora, “it seemed like the right thing to do. I could hardly leave you there.”
“Not that. Well, that, but also, y’know, kicking the shit out of your mother. I know how scary it is, letting a god in. How hard it is to stay yourself, afterwards.” She coughs, shivers. “Even with Spar–he’s not a god, I guess, but it’s still hard to remember sometimes where he stops and I start. Sometimes, I’d get on a train and just fuck off out of the city for a few days.”
“They thought you’d leave the city.” Eladora rests on the floating debris, too, her body trailing in the water. She kicks off her boots to swim better, her toes freezing in the cold water. She’s exhausted, and it’s getting harder to kick. The currents here will sweep them back towards Hark if they stop, though, bringing them back into the line of fire.
“Sail away. Yeah. I thought about it, but… I don’t know. I felt like I fucked everything up, so it was on me to fix it. I never used to feel like that, before…”
“Cari, stay awake.”
“If I don’t, just… take care of it, all right?” Cari loses her grip on their little raft, begins to slip backwards.
Eladora catches her cousin’s wrist. “Carillon Thay, stay awake!”
“Trying.” Cari bites her lip, squares her shoulders, and pulls herself up onto the raft.
Behind them, more shells fall on Hark. More howlers. The sky momentarily bright, then darkness closes in again. After the screeches fall to silence and the echoes die away, Eladora adds. “It was Rat who sent me to get you. He needs your help, I think.”
Carillon smiles. “Fucker’s still in there.” She closes her eyes, as if in prayer.
Eladora holds onto Carillon’s hand, feeling the pulse in her wrist, like a bell. The smoke and flickering lights from the ruin on the island behind them makes the night sky untrustworthy. Dark shapes that might be clouds, mottled with unearthly colours. She feels something move beneath her, deep in the waters. Gods circle the city like wolves, like sharks, unseen as they draw closer. And the city’s only weapon is down there, too.
What does the election matter now? Will the invading gods care if it’s Kelkin or Sinter or someone else at the minister’s pulpit in parliament when the city falls? All the decisions and sacrifices of the last ten months–do they even warrant a footnote? She’s achieved nothing lasting.
She recalls Professor Ongent lecturing her on Guerdon’s history. The city has been conquered before, but those were mortal wars. The victors installed new kings and satraps, demanded tribute, dwelt in the city and became part of its fabric. Wars of territory, wars of gold. There could be compromise. Treaties and ransoms, truces and alliances. They could show mercy.
The Godswar is different. It’s all-consuming. Severast showed that–the sundered gods even slaughtered their worshippers, tolerating no dissent. The city will be destroyed.
Thinking of Ongent makes her think of Miren, stepping into the darkness. It’s her nightmare come to life. All those carefully buried memories, those thoughts she’s locked away over the last year, come spilling out, but she’s too tired and cold to feel much. They float there in the darkness of her mind, like the debris that surrounds them. She can consider them dispassionately, watch them drift and spin, forming new patterns.
Half-drowned rats scramble over the debris. Bedragged, terrified, desperate, the creatures claw at each other as their little refuges sink beneath their combined weight.
A horrible idea presents itself. A horrible way out.
“There has to be another way,” she says to herself.
“El,” calls Cari. “Look.”
And in the distance, a boat’s coming towards them. Silkpurse perched on the prow like a figurehead, waving.
Commander Aldras drapes them both in blankets, has them sit near the hot housing of the engine. Silkpurse perches next to them, like she’s a gargoyle on a tombstone in Gravehill, then remembers herself. She sits down as well, crossing her legs and borrowing one of the blankets.
“I found Alic,” she says, her voice breaking. “He went to get Emlin, but they didn’t make it.”
“Emlin is alive.” Eladora shivers at the memory of the thing she saw in the tower. The thing with the boy’s voice, his eyes. “But he was transformed into a giant… spidery thing.” She stares across the water to the city, a light’s flashing in the darkness, from some tower atop Queen’s Point. On and off, on and off, pulsing out a message.
“Fate Spider,” says Cari. “Diviners and rumour-mongers down in Severast. Pay ’em a copper and they’ll read your fate in the cobwebs, that sort of stuff. Harmless, I thought.”
“The Ishmere branch of the church is different.” Eladora recalls the few reports she was privy to.
“We’re turning,” says Cari suddenly. The blazing island behind them provides an easy reference point, so it’s clear she’s correct. The boat’s changed course–instead of returning to Guerdon, it’s now circling back, orbiting a point off the north-west shore of Hark.
Commander Aldras comes down from the wheelhouse. He glances suspiciously at Carillon, then addresses Eladora.
“New orders from Queen’s Point. We’re to stay here until dawn, guard the wreck of the Grand Retort. As soon as I can, I’ll have you back on the mainland.” He pauses. “There was no mention of your mission. I can signal back if you wish, but under the circumstances, you should just count your blessings.”
“Fuck him,” mutters Cari, once he’s out of earshot. “I need to get back to Spar.”
“Can you, ah, contact him from here?” asks Eladora. The New City’s almost invisible in the darkness.
Silkpurse looks confused. “But–Spar’s dead, dear.” Then she hunches, her voice changes. “URRH. YOU HAVE HER?”
“Rat?”
“HELLO, CARILLON,” says the elder ghoul. Foam wells up from Silkpurse’s mouth, and Eladora wipes it away with a corner of the blanket. Silkpurse’s limbs twitch, but stay locked in place, as Rat takes control of her voice from miles away.
“You tried to kill me, you fuck,” says Cari.
“HAD TO. THE BLACK IRON GODS COULD HAVE RETURNED THROUGH YOU. NOT A DANGER NOW. BUT THERE ARE OTHERS DIGGING UNDER THE NEW CITY. YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SEEK. WHERE ARE YOU?”
“On a fucking boat,” says Cari.
“We’re at the wreck of the Grand Retort,” whispers Eladora. “They said we wouldn’t be back in the city until the morning.”
“TOO LONG. URRRH.” Silkpurse’s body suddenly goes limp, and she collapses to the deck. Commander Aldras stands up at the same moment, but it’s too far for Rat to hold onto the officer’s mind. Aldras looks around in confusion, then takes a swig from a canteen and returns to his labours, his crew dropping off another marker buoy.
Silkpurse convulses again. “Rat, you’ll hurt her. I’ll come as quick as I can,” says Cari.
“Urrgh.” The light begins to fade from Silkpurse’s eyes.
“Wait,” Eladora says hastily. “Warn Kelkin–there’s an Ishmeric saint in the aethergraphs. And Miren’s loose.” She has no idea what the elder ghoul will be able to do about either threat, b
ut if she tells him, at least there’s a chance that the city will be warned.
As Rat departs, a hideous smile spreads across Silkpurse’s lips. Rat has wanted to kill Miren from the moment he met him.
“We’ve got to get back to Guerdon,” says Cari. She scrambles to the railing, stares at the New City, one hand holding onto the amulet she wears around her neck, a talisman of the Black Iron Gods. Eladora shivers, remembering how Jermas placed it around her own neck when he tried to summon the gods through her. “I can’t reach Spar. It’s too far.”
“You can’t do what Miren does, can you?” asks Eladora.
“Teleport? Not really. I tried, a few times, but it’s something the Black Iron Gods gave him.” She slumps down. “I saw sorcerers do something similar, years ago. Down in Severast. You throw spells, these days–can you get us back to shore like that?”
“I’m not an adept,” says Eladora, thinking of Ramegos. Teleportation is likely beyond her, too, although… She takes that thought, lets it float with the rest of the debris.
“Figured. Right.” Cari nods over at Commander Aldras. “Do you want to talk to him, or should I?” Cari reaches under her blanket and produces a knife.
Eladora stifles a shriek. “You just got out of prison! And then we were in the ocean! How did you get that?”
“Sailors have knives.” Cari shrugs.
“Put that away.” Eladora hurries over to Aldras’ side. He looks up at her, half his face illuminated by the raging phlogiston flames on Hark, the rest in shadow.
“Commander, it’s imperative that we return to Guerdon immediately. There are other boats here to guard the wreck–surely they can spare your vessel for a swift return trip?”
“I have my orders, miss. I may not understand them fully, but I’m not about to question them.”
Eladora crosses to the railing, looks down into the dark waters. The reflections of flames dance in the waves and ripples, turning the sea to fire. Beyond that undulating ribbon of light, she can see sense a point of revulsion. The military don’t need to mark the wreck of the Retort–anyone touched by the gods can sense the precise spot where the awful thing lies.
The Shadow Saint Page 47