by Darius Hinks
Isten grabbed the weapon and managed to stuff it in her belt but, as she tried to leave, she almost fell and had to steady herself against the doorframe.
“Do you have any cinnabar?” she asked.
He shook his head, not looking at her. Then, as she nodded and opened the door, he came after her.
“You’ve got no money. What will you do? Let me give you enough to buy–”
“I’m going back to the Sisters of Solace,” she said, interrupting him, determined to have no more of his charity. “They’ll give me help even if I have no money. Once I’m straight, I’ll make it back to the Blacknells Road.”
He shook his head, but took her arm, helping her down the stairs. He grabbed a falcata from the wall and stuffed it in his belt. “Let me at least get you there,” he muttered. “If you’re going to kill yourself, I don’t want it to be tonight.”
“I feel the same way,” she said, as they headed out into the night. She managed a faint smile. “Or I would have accepted your offer of a meal.”
6
Phrater Alzen rushed through the Giberim Temple, his robes snapping behind him. The chamber was a vast sun-drenched octagon, topped with a magnificent ribbed dome. The emerald-green walls were clad in a storm of copper lattice work, crashing and soaring around columns that reached hundreds of feet to cradle an undulating honeycomb vault, an ocean of glass tiles, each facet staining the sunlight a different colour, spilling a profusion of reds, golds and blues that flashed across balustrades and walkways before igniting the gilded mosaic floor, a circle of ceramic flames framing a polished onyx sun.
Another Curious Man rushed to his side, dressed in identical finery and looking equally harassed. It was his old friend, Phrater Ostan. “For God and the Temple,” whispered Alzen.
“God and the Temple,” Ostan replied.
“Did you know about this?” asked Alzen.
Ostan shook his head. He was shorter and stockier than Alzen with far less heroic features – wary eyes, jowly face and an expression of perpetual bafflement. Even draped in yellow robes and hung with golden baubles, he looked more like a harried cleric than a skilled practitioner. “I was on the other side of the temple. I had to summon a contrivance to get here so quickly.” He dabbed his face, looking furious and exhausted. “Most inconvenient.”
“I was on the other side of the city,” muttered Alzen.
Ostan nodded and glanced at him. “I know. You’re an example to us all, Phrater Alzen. Mixing with the vulgar like that. So selfless. Everyone has been talking of it – how bravely you tend to those wretched souls.” He shook his head. “If only my heart were even half as pure as yours...”
Alzen was not listening to his friend. He was watching the crowd gather on the dais up ahead, a rainbow-drenched multitude milling around the black sun. There were dozens of Curious Men, surrounded by a small army of scribes, secretaries and laborators. The entire fraternity had been summoned. Whoever was to be dragged across the coals, the Old King clearly wished the humiliation to be as public as possible.
“If a crime is worthy of a such a gathering,” said Alzen, “surely it’s worthy of some deliberation beforehand. I can’t believe that nobody knew this was happening. There must be a reason we were given no advance warning.”
Ostan nodded, but they were too close to the crowd to continue the conversation. Allegiances amongst the Elect were always uncertain, and it was never wise to be heard openly criticizing the Old King.
They climbed the steps of the black dais and joined the crush of figures, nodding in greeting to their brethren and heading towards the circle of chairs at the centre of the mosaic.
The other phraters were already taking their seats, but several of them rushed over to Alzen, bowing as if he were the Old King and stumbling over their words as they praised him for his recent successes. Alzen took the compliments with a dismissive wave of his hand, outwardly playing down their significance, inwardly rejoicing.
It was unusual for the whole fraternity to be gathered at once, and the clamour continued for a few more minutes as the phraters shared news and greetings while their attendants adjusted robes and crowns, fussing around their masters like bees at pollen, until finally being shooed away. Then everyone fell quiet as a distant door clanged open and the Old King entered the hall.
He was preceded by another legion of attendants, some carrying standards, metal-forged images of the Athanorian sun – stylized flames surrounding a black circle. Seleucus was riding in a palankeen like Alzen’s, a dome of gilded tracery, cradled by a mass of needle-like limbs, but the Old King’s carriage was large enough to carry both his throne and the enormous bulk of Seleucus himself. He was a giant, like every previous Old King, transfigured by alchymia reserved only for the regent. The palankeen climbed the steps of the dais with a rattle of oiled joints and a hiss of escaping steam, before disgorging Seleucus in a torrent of golden threads, placing his throne in a gap in the circle of chairs.
Alzen had avoided Seleucus since his coronation and his breath faltered as he saw how the regent had changed. As well as being over ten feet tall, most of the Old King’s skin had vanished, enveloped by a tangle of burnished coils. He was clad in ornate golden armour that was engraved with heliacal symbols, but it was hard to see what was armour and what was flesh. His face resembled the armature of an enormous sculpture. No skin, just a mask of glittering filaments woven in the likeness of a man’s face. He carried a ceremonial bronze staff that was nearly as tall as he was and his throne was flanked by an armour-clad honour guard, but Seleucus’s real protection came from the creature that padded up the steps and lay down before his throne: Mapourak, the emerald lion, twice as tall as a man and blessed with a calm, human intelligence. It surveyed the circle of phraters with disdain, its eyes half-lidded and its faceted body glinting as it moved.
Alzen was no longer looking at the Old King or the lion. He had noticed something that caused his pulse to race. At the side of the throne some of Seleucus’s guards were holding a chained man. He was not one of the Elect; not even one of their attendants. He was one of the verminous little crooks from the Azorus slums. Alzen did not recognize his face, but he knew from the man’s grotesque mutations that he was one of the Aroc Brothers. Alzen prayed that the prisoner did not recognize him. Associating with criminals was expressly forbidden. If the Old King had learned of their connection, Alzen would soon be getting a closer look at the lion.
Seleucus sat in silence for a few minutes, looking down at his expectant audience. His breath emerged from his threaded mask as slow, heavy tendrils of smoke. The fumes drifted away from his crown, serpent-like, catching colours from the honeycomb vault as they writhed above the dais, moving towards the circle of phraters, seeming to sniff at them.
Alzen endured the attentions of the smoke with all the calm he could muster, knowing that it was an extension of the Old King’s thought, knowing that he was being examined.
“What is the greatest secret of the Art?” said the Old King. His words spilled more fumes into the air. Like the first, they were opaque and leaden, flowing purposefully across the chamber and showing no sign of dissipating.
“Purity of heart,” murmured the phraters, sounding awkward and uncomfortable as the smoke surrounded them. They were all conscious that Mapourak was Seleucus’s executioner.
“Purity of heart,” agreed Seleucus. His voice was as inhuman as the rest of him, deep, musical and resonant. “To be curious, of course, is essential, there is never any doubt on that score. But purity… purity is harder to define.” His words had birthed another sinuous cloud and he paused for a moment, letting the shapes roll around the phraters, brushing against their robes and faces.
“There was an incident last night,” he continued, “in a warehouse next to the Azof embassy.” He reached down and stroked Mapourak, his metal fingers clinking along the lion’s crystalline mane.
To Alzen’s horror, more of the smoke tendrils drifted his
way, circling his crown like carrion crows over a corpse.
If Seleucus noticed, he gave no sign. “There was a shipment of cinnabar in the warehouse.” He glanced at the shivering chained wretch next to his throne. The man was covered in lesions and bruises and his fingertips were dripping blood onto the tiled floor. “I have learned that the cinnabar belongs to criminals who call themselves the Aroc Brothers. They intended to move it today, but a rival gang arrived at the warehouse and tried to steal the shipment.”
Alzen was still reciting his incantation and, to his relief, the fumes drifted away from him, settling on another phrater.
The Old King leant forwards in his throne, staring down at each of them in turn. “Now, why would I drag you all away from your work to discuss such a matter? To our shame, Athanor is rife with criminality, but I would not summon you here to discuss the death of a few…” He glanced at his prisoner. “Misguided souls.”
The Old King sat back and fell silent again as the vapours caused by his speech rolled across the gathering.
“When the Aroc Brothers arrived to discover the attempted theft, they also found something else.”
Seleucus waved to his guards and they carried an object into the centre of the dais. It was covered in a black cloth, and at a nod from the Old King they unveiled it.
There was a chorus of gasps as the phraters saw the lifeless, metal corpse of Amoria, frozen in the position she had been in when she died.
“Transfiguration,” said Seleucus, the music fading from his voice, replaced by an edge of fury. “This low-born thief was killed by alchymia.” He tapped his staff on the floor, clearly struggling to remain seated, so great was his anger. “The glorious subtleties of the Great Art have been deployed in defence of a squalid, illegal drugs deal. And the only souls in Athanor capable of wielding such power are seated in this room.”
Alzen recited his incantation with even more urgency, trying to stifle the rage that was burning in his chest. No one should have known about the shipment. He had left the Ignorant Man there as a warning to the Aroc Brothers, an example of what he could do, nothing more. There should have been no deaths. Someone had betrayed him.
“Can anyone explain this to me?” asked the Old King.
No one spoke. The only sound came from Seleucus’s metal mask as the fumes hissed through his mouth grille.
He nodded. “Return to your cells. I will visit each of you in turn until I discover the truth.”
He watched them for a few more seconds, then he returned to his carriage and left the chamber.
When the doors had closed behind Seleucus, Phrater Ostan turned to Alzen. “What kind of fool would get mixed up with gangs?”
Alzen shook his head, still staring at the contorted metal corpse on the dais, wondering which of the Aroc Brothers he would kill first.
7
“How do they drink this shit?” Sermo grimaced at his tea, clanging the cup back down on the metal table he was seated at. It was still early but, behind him, the Valeria Bazaar was stirring into life. Traders were bustling through foliage-draped colonnades, filling the square with noise and dust as they prepared for another day of business. The vast bulk of a hoveller was being herded through an archway into the square. The hunched creature was the size of a small house and its owners were yelling curses and wielding sticks as they steered it through the stalls, tearing awnings and smashing trellises as it refused to acknowledge their blows. Its barnacled, lice-infested carapace was laden with sacks of turmeric and saffron and every time it thudded against a wall, it filled the air with an explosion of colour and insects. Sermo watched the scene for a while, amused by the traders’ increasingly irate attempts to direct the enormous creature.
From what Sermo had seen of the city so far, the place was a chaotic farce, played out by the inebriated and the half-human, with no apparent logic or purpose. It seemed to Sermo that Athanor had absorbed so many cultures and races that it had no idea what it was anymore. There was no way to know who stood where in the hierarchy – the Curious Men were allegedly the city’s rulers, but they were not like any rulers he had encountered before, hiding in their laboratories, manipulating the city in ways only they understood, and beneath the Elect, there was just this slovenly jumble of emigres, none of whom even seemed interested in where the city was. It moved and changed every few years, but the crowds thronging its streets were so absorbed in their own petty intrigues that they never appeared to care what was happening beyond the city walls.
He tried his tea again, finding it no more palatable on the second attempt, and returned his gaze to the streets below. The bazaar was one of the highest points of the city, and from here he felt as though he was almost able to understand Athanor’s bizarre, skeletal structure. The street that led from the market square intersected with several others, all of which turned and looped down towards the rest of the city, creating a bewildering mesh of roads, domes and viaducts. Far below, flashing gold in the morning light, was the river, already busy with crowds of fly-shrouded scavengers. From this distance, it was possible to see the arc of the river as it reached up to swallow its tail. The river devoured itself endlessly like the ouroboros, the mythical serpent that was wrought in high relief around so many of the minarets that filled this part of the city. He had tried to comprehend the cyclical nature of the Saraca, but it only made his head hurt. Somehow, the ruling priesthood of Athanor had bound physics to their will, creating a confluence with no beginning and no end, girdling their absurd city with its burnished, binding currents.
Sermo’s face was distorted by a mass of angry, red scar tissue. It covered most of his head, a souvenir from his journey to the city. The scars had left his features in a constant, brutal snarl and there were only a few bristle-like tufts of hair sticking up from his pink, heat-rippled scalp. Traders stared in surprise as they passed his table, taken aback by his brutalized face, but Sermo tried to ignore them, doing his best to hide his injuries under the hood of his cloak. He was meant to be a spy and he caused a stir wherever he went. The whole thing was a farce.
He shoved his cup away with a muttered curse and was about to move on, when he saw a familiar face rushing through the market stalls. The man was scrawny and stooped, swathed in filthy black robes, and his face was just as scarred and tormented as Sermo’s. The burned man weaved through the bazaar, keeping clear of the hoveller, which was now thudding its low-hanging head into a column, eliciting more furious insults from its owners.
“Vola,” said Sermo, as the man reached his table, gasping and grinning.
“He’s here,” said Vola, bent double with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He nodded back through the archway that led from the square to a street running on the other side of the bazaar.
“Who?”
“The artist. The one who used to live with Isten. I saw him coming out of a brothel on Crassus Street.” Vola’s eyes were wide with excitement. “I’m sure it’s him.”
Sermo nodded and rose from the table. Vola was a moron, but after weeks of enduring Athanor, he was happy for any kind of distraction. He dropped a coin on the table and sauntered off through the colonnades, waving for Vola to follow.
They forced their way through the bazaar, emerged into a sun-drenched avenue on the far side and looked around.
“He went that way, down Dacia Street, towards the park,” said Vola, heading in that direction. They walked past the facades of several grand townhouses and entered a shady arboretum, crowded with shrubs and frankincense trees surrounding a grassy hill with a tomb at its summit.
“There,” whispered Vola, pointing to a man who was walking through the trees, heading towards the tomb. He was as thin as Vola but, where Vola was stooped and stunted, this man was tall and proud-looking, wearing elegant blue robes and carrying rolls of paper under his arm.
“That’s him,” said Sermo, shocked. They had spent weeks scouring Athanor, crossing countless regions and districts, but thi
s was the first sign of progress. “Brast. He knows her. He’s one of them.” He wiped some of the sweat from his eyes, dusted down his heavy, Athanorian-style robes and pulled his hood forward, trying to hide his scars.
They strolled around between the trees, pretending they were chatting and enjoying the shade, as the artist stopped outside the tomb, sat down against a tree, spread his paper on the grass and began to draw.
“Of all the places in this city,” said Vola, “the best thing he can find to draw is this.”
Sermo nodded. It did seem a strange choice. The tomb was one of the few structures in Athanor that had not been transformed by the chemicals that spilled into the river. The stones had remained resolutely square and unadorned, not sporting any of the organic shapes that had sprouted from other parts of the city. It was a simple pagoda-style heap of tiered grey stone, shattered and crumbling in several places and leaning slightly to one side. Whatever Sermo thought of Athanor, its architecture was spectacular, but this place was decidedly ugly.
“What do we do now?” asked Vola.
“Where was he when you first saw him?”
“He was leaving a brothel.”
Sermo looked at Vola with a disgusted expression.
“I was waiting outside,” said Vola, scowling back at him.
Sermo rolled his eyes. “Are you sure that’s where he came from?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then we’re starting to learn a bit about our artist friend. He likes to visit brothels and draw the only ugly building in Athanor. Now we just need to bide our time and see where he heads next. If we can find out where he lives we might even find Isten waiting there.”
Vola’s eyes glinted.
Sermo nodded. “We’ll be as rich as–”
Vola gripped Sermo’s arm and looked around the arboretum.
Sermo cursed as he realized Brast had vanished. The papers were still scattered at the top of the hill, but the artist was gone.