Eventually, after the robed man had pressed cool and sweet-smelling poultices to her forehead, and set about strapping her left arm, she managed to speak again. "Godolkin?"
"Mistress?" He came over to crouch next to her. "How do you feel?"
"Guess." She gritted her teeth and shifted as the physician did something to her arm. "Sneck, that smarts."
"The bone is cracked, star-fallen, but the ends of the break appear to meet. With luck, and rest, this should heal."
"Glad to hear it but it doesn't look like I'll be resting much for a bit." She nodded towards the centre of the chamber. "Where is it?"
"The helot?" Godolkin glanced back at the littered chamber. "This is where you bested it?"
"Yeah, just before Makeblise came in and tried to cook my head off. Harrow said I'd been out for a while. What's been going on?"
"Much," said Godolkin flatly, "and little of it good."
"Sounds about right. Did you get in touch with the sheriff?"
"He did, my lady." One of the marshals tipped his visor back, and Red saw the same lined, grey-fringed face she had first seen back in the square. "Sheriff Poul Roder, at your service."
Red heaved herself up, making the physician cluck and fuss around her. "Pleased to meet you, sheriff. Sorry about the last time."
"The warrant for your arrest still stands, my lady." He smiled. "But since it was issued by that whoreson Makeblise I feel we can safely ignore it."
"Speaking of that particular scumbag..." Red wandered away from the wall, out into the centre of the chamber. She saw a piece of debris among the litter that she recognised, and stooped to pick it up. It was one of the helot's legs. "I can only assume he's at the heart of all this."
"He is," replied Godolkin, "and he has the dragon."
Red cursed. "Okay, guys, fill me in while we find a way out of here."
Godolkin was right. Quite a lot had happened while Red was lying insensible under the rubble, and she didn't like the sound of any of it.
The mission she had given Godolkin had, at least, been something of a success. He had found Sheriff Roder at the docks, co-ordinating the clean-up operation and the dousing of the last few fires. Roder had been partly aware of the increased Endura presence on the streets, but any attempt to inform him of the takeover must have been intercepted. It wasn't until Godolkin had arrived with Sarah and Rudhale in tow that he had learned what was actually going on.
It had taken all of Godolkin's strength, and all the Daedalans' diplomacy, to stop him from going after Makeblise there and then.
During this time, Makeblise himself had not been very much in evidence. This, Red learned, was because he had still been down in the sewers, supervising the removal of the helot. Somehow, it had been dragged up into the street, and was now at the centre of Makeblise's plan to bring Igantia to heel.
"The last we heard," Roder told her, as he helped her towards the tunnel entrance, "he was having it hauled onto some kind of wagon. Nobody knows why, or where he's taking it. This was out in the open, mind. He's making no secret of it."
"Makes sense." Red let the Sheriff assist her as far as the tunnel and then moved ahead of him. Godolkin had already taken the lead. "Willem Makeblise, dragon-slayer. You don't get people on your side by showing how much of a git you can be. He's out for the popular vote."
"Will Igantia fall for such blatant subterfuge?" Godolkin asked.
Roder snorted. "Anyone would, giant. The people are afraid. They've been whispering about the dragon for diurns, and we've been doing our best to tell them it was all lies and rumour. Then the dock area goes up in flames, and suddenly Makeblise has the dragon in his power."
"Look at it this way, Godolkin," Red sighed. "There really aren't that many Endura, and apart from the lightning gun their weapons aren't anything special but people still tolerate what they do, because that's the way they want it. Their history tells them that God spared Igantia because the city had already started to go down this route. That's not legend, that's fact. Makeblise is just a master at playing it."
"The Eye looks down on us all," intoned Roder.
They had reached a corner. Red expected Godolkin to turn left, and head back to the drain, but instead he took a different branch. "Where are you going?"
"There is a faster way out of this sewer, Blasphemy, than the way you went in. Not only that, but there is something else you should see."
He had reached another junction. Red could see that the tunnel branched off to the right, although that way was one of the rough-edged, circular diversions carved by the helot itself. She peered inside. "Is it okay?"
Godolkin assured her that it was. Walking carefully on the uneven surface so as not to jar her bad arm, Red continued along the branch until it, too, opened up into a cavern. This space, however, had the same look as the tunnel. It was rounded, not a straight edge anywhere, and every part of it had been chipped out of the rock and concrete by whirling helot tendrils.
Great girders had been wedged into place to shore the roof up. Red could see that some kind of flat deck had been laid down, and around the rim of the cavern were huge piles of mechanical debris. Mostly rusted metal sheeting and pieces of gantry, but there were great cogs and pistons, too, coils of cable, broken lengths of pipe and more of the components she had seen in the side-chamber.
In the centre of it all, something squatted silently in the darkness.
"Sneck me," Red breathed, stepping out into the cave. "It did all this?"
"The spoil must have been pulverised and washed away down the main drainage funnel," said Godolkin quietly. "It must have been working since it arrived, continuously. This was its entire plan."
"The sewage pumps. It stripped them, broke them up." She was under the shape, looking up at its patchwork hull. The landing spars it crouched on were welded together out of girder, pipework and folded steel sheet. Light spilled down from complex joints within the undershell. "That was why it wanted tech from Daedalus. It wasn't going after them, it was collecting components for this."
"I have spoken to Harrow about this," Godolkin told her. "He says it exhibits the same power signature as the helot. It may have even cannibalised one of its fellows."
"So what is it?" Roder asked. "This is the second time I've seen this monstrosity, and I still can't sort its head from its tail."
Red grinned. "I don't think it's finished, sheriff but your dragon was busy building itself a starship."
There was a major drainage inlet in the north of the city. Successive construction projects by post-Manticore Igantians had managed to cover it up almost entirely, but the helot had sought it out and had been using it as the entrance to its lair. Red and her companions climbed out of the sewer through a shelving tunnel and emerged inside a derelict wine-store.
They crept out between rows of broken casks. Once Godolkin had gone ahead to make sure there were no Endura about, the rest of them followed.
Red called Harrow on the comm-linker. "Jude? Can you see the helot from where you are?"
"I have its power signature, holy one, but it's weakened a lot. I think it must be very severely damaged. "
"Is it moving?"
"Yes but slowly, along the Northway, towards the Tabernacle."
"That's not far from here," Roder interjected. "We can be there in a few minutes. Although what you intend to do once you are there I can only imagine."
"Right now? Me too." She flipped the linker on again. "Jude, one more thing. Get the sneck out of there."
"Holy one?"
"You've done all you can. If Makeblise gets things his way he'll probably head back there soon, and I don't want you and him meeting up again, not until I can be there too."
Harrow didn't sound happy, but he agreed. "Very well. I'll find you."
"Take a coat. It's still snecking freezing out here."
The temperature hadn't gone up by much, it was true, despite the increasing light in the sky. Towards the east the sky was almost blue, with hints o
f gold creeping over the city wall. In the other direction is was still black and above her...
When Red looked up, she stopped dead in her tracks.
The Eye of God was looking right back at her.
She gasped. All the talk of the Eye looking down on Igantia, the symbols above the church doors and on the cloths of the faces of dead men, it all made sense in that one, awful moment. As she stared up at that unwinking eye, Red realised just why the population of the city had allowed the Endura such control, why they had never gone back to the ways of technology, even though their world was killing them year by year.
It was a wonder, in fact, that anyone sympathised with Daedalus and its followers at all; that anyone would deny the gaze of God.
"What is it?" she breathed. "Godolkin, what am I looking at?"
"Think about where you are, Blasphemy," the Iconoclast replied. "About what lies in this system, and beyond..."
Red shook her head. "I can't... Oh, the black hole!"
For a few moments she couldn't reconcile the two. The black hole was invisible, a singularity cloaked in the lightless sphere of its event horizon. Its physical size was minute, and even the influence it had over light was no wider than a planet. There was no way something so small could be seen at this distance, especially through Purity's atmosphere.
Yet, here it was. A rough lens shape, as big as her thumb held at arm's reach, its edges twinkling and the bright spot at its centre glaring down at her. It looked exactly like an eye, sketched out above the atmosphere. It was weird, unworldly. It made Red's skin crawl.
"It's Kentyris, isn't it," she whispered. It would do no good for the marshals to hear this.
Godolkin nodded. "The black hole's gravity is lensing the star's light. The image of the neighbouring system is smeared out into that shape, and has been ever since the black hole wandered into Easach's polar orbit."
Red whistled under her breath. The Kentyris system was close, dreadfully so in stellar terms. Close enough for the black hole's hugely concentrated gravity to bend and magnify its light, warping it into this stylised eye-shape and projecting it down for the citizens of Igantia to look up at and marvel.
It was around Kentyris Secundus that the Manticore had first appeared. If Brite Red had taken her war machine on a straight path from one star to the next, using her discontinuity drive to circumvent every known law of orbital mechanics, wouldn't it have seemed like the Eye was raining tears of fire down on Purity?
"The Eye looks on us all, Blasphemy," said Godolkin. "Although it is only people like Makeblise who believe that it looks down with favour on them alone."
Red tore her gaze away from the Eye, and nodded. "Yeah. Let's go and convince him otherwise, shall we?"
Roder and his marshals parted company from Red and Godolkin before they got to the Northway. The sheriff had several patrols secreted around the entrance to the Tabernacle, and needed to co-ordinate them. Red had told him that she would need a diversion, and it was clear that Roder had something in mind, so she had left him to it. As for her own plan, if the truth was told she didn't actually have one.
All her plans so far had come to nothing. She had decided, in this instance, to simply go with what felt right.
When she and Godolkin reached the Northway, it became instantly clear what Makeblise was up to. As soon as Red realised what he was doing, she found herself both horrified and impressed in roughly equal measure. It had made perfect sense to her that the man would use the dragon to aggrandise himself in the eyes of the populace, to show himself as their saviour, their natural leader. What she would never have believed was how far he was willing to take that idea.
Lord Makeblise had built himself a parade.
It was already most of the way down the Northway, and within a few hundred metres of the Tabernacle wall. There was a gate there, flanked by two massive watchtowers. Red noticed that the corpses had been cut down from the gibbets ranged around the wall, although she had little doubt that this was simply to make room for more. Once these theatrics were over, she knew all too well, the knives would come out.
She had seen witch-hunts before, and they were never pretty. With a man like Makeblise at the helm, she would lay money on the city of Igantia being a graveyard in less than a year.
Red began to work her way along the road. Godolkin had brought her robe with him from the church, so she was able to move around without causing an immediate riot. Before long she was parallel with the start of the parade. Makeblise was there, sitting astride one of the shaggy horse-creatures she had seen before. A small troop of halberdiers marched behind him, blades held high.
Just after them, four more of the beasts hauled a heavy, six-wheeled wagon. Red could hear the laboured creaking of its frame as it passed her, the grumble of its massive wheels on the cobbled street. The wagon was solidly built, and obviously used for carrying something massively heavy from place to place - building materials, maybe.
It was having a hard time with the helot tied onto it.
Red was so busy studying the helot's wagon that she almost didn't see what followed. Godolkin had to nudge her and point it out. When she did see, she almost bolted forwards there and then, and only his hand on her shoulder stopped her. For here, on a smaller wagon, Makeblise had constructed a mobile pyre, with two stakes rising from piles of kindling. Each of the stakes was occupied.
Giles Fysher hung from one, his face puffy and bloodied. From the other, and in similar condition, dangled Anton Trewpeny.
If Makeblise had expected his parade to enthuse the crowds surrounding the Northway, he had misjudged their reactions. Red was very pleased to note that there was no cheering from the citizens around her, no catcalls at the prisoners. Instead there was muttering, dark and low; a mixture of fear, distrust and honest loathing. The Igantians might well have been terrified of the dragon, but it seemed that many of them considered Makeblise worse.
The wagons had almost passed them. Red prodded Godolkin, and together they began to weave their way through the crowd, keeping pace with the pyre-cart.
"What do you think?" she said to him, keeping her hood pulled forwards and her head low. "Is Roder going to come up with the goods?"
"He gave the impression of confidence."
"Yeah, but so did I, and I've not got a clue what I'm going to do."
Godolkin gave a kind of growling sigh. "I am only surprised that I am surprised. I should have learned to expect this by now."
"Don't get snarky. Just come up with something."
"Very well. What is your highest priority? Makeblise, the prisoners or the helot?"
"I don't think there's much I can do about the helot, not at this stage. I reckon my priority has to be Makeblise."
"In which case," he said, raising his head. "I shall attend the prisoners. Now ready yourself, Blasphemy. The diversion is about to begin."
Red looked up, and followed his gaze.
Smoke was rising from one of the watchtowers.
The tower on the left was burning from within. As Red watched, the flames broke free of the upper compartment and began to pour out along the decks. Roder must have kept something flammable up there, barrels of spirits or suchlike. There was no way he could have arranged that in the last few minutes. The stuff must been up there already.
Perhaps the marshals had been planning something of their own.
Everyone was watching the tower, including those in the parade. There were shouts and a few screams. The crowd began to ripple and surge back as those too close to the gate began fighting to get away.
With no warning at all, the upper level of the left tower exploded.
Red, caught quite off-guard by it, swore roundly and ducked as the tower was blasted apart. One moment it had been intact, although smoke-blackened and wreathed in flame, in the next it was a billowing fireball surrounded by an expanding halo of blazing wood.
Panic erupted through the crowd. Red felt herself being shoved back as frantic Igantians scrambled a
way from the road. Her left arm was bumped, agonisingly, and then struck again. In pain and fury, she lashed out and started fighting through the crowds to the road.
Pieces of watchtower were tumbling down through the air, burning as they came.
Everything was screams and smoke. Red could hear Makeblise shouting orders, and the clash of sword against halberd. The marshals had come out of their hiding places and attacked the parade.
Pieces of blazing wood smashed against the cobbles, exploding into sparks and splinters. Some of them hit the helot, and Red saw it stir. A few more came down on the pyre-cart.
The kindling there shot up smoke, and then burst into flames.
Red leapt forwards, cursing as another plan fell apart around her. Sheriff Roder's rather over-enthusiastic diversion had turned into a full-scale battle, one that he was very likely to lose. There was nothing for Red to do now but salvage whatever she could.
She vaulted up onto the pyre wagon, kicking aside an Endura guard who was stationed there. The man spun away from the cart and clattered onto the cobbles.
Trewpeny was struggling against his bonds. The flames licking his feet had given him a burst of strength. Red braced herself against his stake, and used the fingers of her good hand to rip at the ropes. After a few seconds, they began to part, and together they tugged his wrists free.
"Star-fallen?" He blinked at her through the bruises. "How did you-"
"For sneck's sake, Anton! Later!" She grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dumped him unceremoniously off the edge of the wagon and then turned to free Giles Fysher. The man was writhing on his stake, his face white with pain.
The flames had reached his feet. There was no time to deal with the ropes: Red just wrapped her arm around the stake, braced herself against the burning floor of the wagon and shoved forwards.
The wood cracked, splintered, and sheared off at the base. Fysher, still tied to it, went tumbling.
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