Nether Light

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Nether Light Page 28

by Shaun Paul Stevens


  “I’ll take the dice then, instead of the money.”

  Cermonthyl shrugged. “Be my guest, they’re no use to me like that.” He handed them over.

  Guyen regarded the Overteller. “What happened to that thing?”

  “You bust it,” Cermonthyl groaned, “that’s what happened. If I had to guess, I’d say you stole all the probability from it and gave it to the dice.” His dark eyes hid a waterfall of truths. Shifty, that’s what the man was, yet he was full of interesting theories. He picked up his cage. “You want to be careful, guv. Transferring probabilities between things is dangerous.”

  Guyen considered. “What if I don’t transfer probabilities? What if I just make things how I want them to be?”

  The streethawk shook his head gravely. “The probability has to come from somewhere, guv, if you don’t decide where, you’ll end up taking it from anything, even yourself. And that would not be advisable. Don’t change anything, that’s my advice, if the Devotions find out what you’re up to, they might decide it’s safer to lock you up.”

  That was more than likely. “What am I?” Guyen asked.

  The streethawk’s brow furrowed. “Gifted.”

  “I’m not a demon then?”

  He laughed. “Sorry, guv, I’m not a religious scholar.” He glanced up the street. Two tinhats approached. “A right old pleasure,” he said. “Till next time, eh?” He tipped his black-brimmed bowl hat and hurried off.

  Guyen let him go.

  26

  A Crystal Scream

  Guyen arrived at Whitefriars, still dazed, thoughts jumbled. Tishara waited on the hospital steps, a vision in an elegant lavender-blue dress. “Where have you been?” she demanded.

  “Sorry, one of those days,” he said, offering a smile. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”

  She turned up her nose. “I couldn’t wait inside. It smells of death.” She nodded at the hand, still dripping blood. “What happened there?”

  “I cut myself.”

  “On what?”

  “My knife.”

  She shook her head disapprovingly. “How by Lily do you cut yourself with your own knife?”

  “Dunno. Careless, I suppose.”

  She tutted. “Well, at least you’re already at a hospital.” She started up the steps. “Come on then.”

  Whitefriars was vast, a creaking complex of uneven floors and walls flaking with yellowing paint. The lobby reeked of damp and lime antiseptic, and peeling posters on the wall warned citizens to be on the lookout for Unbound. A party waited for them, eight Corpus Ordinates and the Wield of Midwifery, Mistress Dina—an older, olive-skinned woman, silver hair carefully sculpted in a bob.

  “Citizen Yorkov?” she enquired.

  “At your service,” Guyen said, removing his hat.

  She looked him up and down. “Do they not have a dress code at the Gate these days?”

  “I’m in between tailors,” he said.

  She narrowed her eyes. “There is no need for insolence, young man.” Her accent placed her from one of the southern duchies, Rizak or Tombar perhaps. She noticed his bleeding palm. “What have you done there?”

  “Ah, I er, fell over.”

  An orderly watched from a booth at the entrance. She signalled him.

  He sloped over. “Yes?”

  “You’ll see to this,” Dina instructed, waving at the hand.

  “It’s nothing, I’m fine,” Guyen protested, even as his head throbbed.

  “Dripping filthy blood all over the patients is hardly nothing,” Dina said. She glared at the orderly. “Hurry now, before he passes on gods-know-what to the rest of us.”

  “Of course,” the orderly said. “I shall bring some water.” He disappeared into a side room.

  Dina turned back. “I have heard some interesting stories about you, Maker Yorkov.”

  “You have, Mistress?”

  “Yes. They say you are Purebound.”

  “I am, Mistress.”

  She craned her neck, taking a closer look. “You are gifted in multiple Talents then?”

  “I couldn’t say, Mistress.” He wasn’t about to list them for her.

  “Come now, Yorkov, one should not hide one’s light under a bushel.”

  “I am a Bindcrafter, Mistress. I dedicate myself to that.”

  She sniffed. “Well, you certainly don’t devote yourself to fashion or cleanliness.”

  He gritted his teeth, suppressing another sarcastic comment. He didn’t need the stress of an argument with a Wield, not today, not the way he felt. The orderly reappeared with a bowl of water. Guyen rinsed his palm, patting the wound dry with some clean linen. The cut stung, but wasn’t deep. How hadn’t he realised what he was doing? Idiot! Still, maybe he should be grateful—the pain had probably dragged him back into reality. The orderly offered a bandage. He tied it around his hand.

  Dina watched on, eyes cold. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed, Maker Yorkov.” She sighed. “Perhaps you will grow on me.”

  Tishara offered a sympathetic smile. It was enough to keep going.

  “Very well, we have a schedule to keep,” Dina said, and signalling the group, pushed through a set of double doors. They followed. Guyen brought up the rear. Out of sight was hopefully out of mind.

  They trooped along a windowless, whitewashed corridor. Smoky oil light glittered on the surface of a long leech bath, the water’s rancid stench combining with the tang of polish and rot. Along the walls hung various blood-stained tools, vicious saws and drills, clamps and cleavers, ready to butcher patients in the adjoining rooms. It soon became apparent, as they trudged to the midwifery via an endless warren of similarly dreadful passageways, past rooms thick with sickness sprites, and a dark morgue, that Whitefriars was not a pleasant place.

  They gathered in a narrow corridor outside some cubicles. The stink here was as retch-worthy as the catacombs, and of a similar quality. A passing porter clipped one of the Ordinates with his trolley.

  The woman slapped him round the head with a rolled up paper. “Great oaf!”

  The porter cursed. “Perhaps if your fat arse didn’t take up so much space, madam.”

  Dina glowered at him. “How dare you address a member of the Devotions in that manner! Go around the other way, man, before I apply to revoke your Assignment.”

  He scurried off, trolley wheels squeaking in protest.

  Dina surveyed them, clipboard in hand. She’d prepared a speech. “Today, you will witness Binding,” she said. “There may be opportunities to participate, but this is to be at the discretion of your allocated midwife. You will work in pairs.”

  Tishara looked over. Guyen nodded back.

  “As you know,” Dina said, “Binding is a delicate affair and parents tend towards emotion, so you will be patient, respectful and professional. And remember—” Her eyes flicked to Tishara. “It is a privilege to witness the sacred rite, one which can easily be revoked.”

  Guyen suppressed a snort. Sacred rite? What hokum! Even The Book of Talents would be proud of that kind of propaganda.

  “I suppose we are a pair then,” Tishara confirmed, as Dina glided over to speak to the duty midwife.

  Guyen smiled. The support was welcome. But why had the happy-go-lucky Bindcrafter offered to come along? Sworns had no obligation to any Devotion except their own. “Have you done this before?” he asked.

  “Actually, no,” she said. “Corpus rarely allow Bindcrafters anywhere near Binding.”

  “Really? Why not?” Guyen asked.

  “They resent us, think the concoction is their domain, which by the statutes it is.”

  He huffed. “If it wasn’t for Bindcraft, there’d be no damn concoction.”

  Tishara nodded in agreement. “Yes, well, Binding’s a sensitive topic.”

  A midwife bustled up, a plain woman with severely tied, long black hair. She addressed Tishara. “Good afternoon, Mistress. You are to assist me, it seems. We have two patients, straightf
orward cases.”

  “What shall I do?” Guyen asked.

  She looked down at his staining bandage. “Are you the best the Makers could send?”

  “The very best,” he returned sarcastically.

  Her eye twitched. “You will observe. At a safe distance.”

  Well, that sounded just fine, the way he felt.

  A short while later, the first infant arrived with its mother, the haughty, social climbing type. Her face resembled a child’s bed sheet, if said child had played with a drawing set under the covers—white with powder, cheeks hideous pink, painted-on beauty spot a smudged, purple ink blot.

  “I didn’t expect to have a vagrant see to my daughter,” she complained in Guyen’s direction as she hauled her expensive high-wheeler into the cramped cubicle.

  He sent a blank look.

  “Unfortunately, Mistress,” the midwife simpered, “these Makers attend on Devotions business.”

  “Bloody Devotions,” the woman snapped, “always sticking your beaks in where they’re not wanted, aren’t you?”

  Guyen rolled his eyes at Tishara. She smirked.

  The lady, in the loosest sense of the word, picked her child out of the stroller. “Very well, you may proceed. But he’s not to touch her.”

  “As you say, Mistress,” the midwife said. She took the baby girl, placing her in a cot at the centre of the cubicle.

  The mother took a seat on the bench, withdrawing a nail file from her clutch bag. “I have a dining engagement at fifth hour,” she muttered. “This had better not take all day.”

  The midwife’s brow wrinkled, but she offered no response. She cleaned the baby’s thigh with a swab—antiseptic and painkilling, she explained—then she transferred a translucent blue liquid from a vial into a small bladder. The concoction. She clipped the membrane shut and attached the quill needle. “Hold her still,” she instructed Tishara.

  Uncertain, as if she might break the tiny girl, Tishara held the baby’s waist, pinning a leg down with her other hand.

  “Here we go then,” the midwife said. She picked up her knife and glanced at the mother. The uncaring witch merely continued her manicure.

  Guyen steeled himself. Did he really want to witness this? Binding seemed such a savage act. Still, it had to be done, he supposed. The midwife bent over, and pressed the knife to the baby’s thigh, eliciting a howling scream. Blood trickled from the cut. Tishara looked over, ashen-faced, but the midwife remained business-like. She picked up the syringe, pushed the quill into the incision, and squeezed the bladder.

  Toulesh folded out as screeching clamour replaced the child’s cries—cutting, painful, bone-shattering. Pinpricks of light danced about the room. Guyen clamped his hands over his ears, but it made no difference, the sound inside him. And it was unbearable. He needed Toulesh back.

  Return, he ordered.

  The simulacrum folded in. The clamour dulled.

  He panted air, relief surging. What the hell! First the banshee sounds in the alley, now this? Tishara sent a questioning look. She’d noticed that? Damn.

  The midwife dabbed the child’s leg with gauze, applied a little ointment, and tied on a dressing. “See, that wasn’t so bad,” she said, wrapping the baby in her swaddling.

  The woman took her back. “About time!” She threw her in the high-wheeler, covered her with a blanket, and turned to leave.

  “Mistress, your receipt,” the midwife said. She offered a paper stamped with a Corpus mark—evidence of Binding. The Office would issue a certificate in short order.

  The woman snatched it. “Ah yes, I shall need this for her betrothal. How vacant of me.” Sending a last icy dagger Guyen’s way, she pushed the pram out into the corridor. The wooden wheels clattered away over the loose floorboards. You could only feel sorry for the child, and what she might become at the hands of that poison apple.

  They sat in the corridor, awaiting the next case. Guyen massaged his head. Had playing the dice game weakened him somehow? He stared at a poster on the opposite wall, testing his vision, but it was too blurred to read the words now. He picked up a discarded leaflet to see if he could read that instead. Squinting, he could just make out the title: Sanity Through Sacrifice.

  Tishara tutted. “What are you reading that for?”

  “Bored,” he said, not wanting to admit he might be going blind.

  “I wouldn’t have thought that was the kind of thing you’d be interested in,” she said.

  “Why, what is it?”

  “Echelist propaganda.”

  “Oh.” He scanned the sheet. A totem symbol adorned the bottom of the page. “Who prints this shit?” he said. “I thought Echelism was banned.”

  Tishara sighed. “It is. How anyone can believe all that mumbo jumbo is beyond me.”

  “Is that what it is then, there’s nothing in it?”

  “Seriously?” Her tone was incredulous. “Faze a curse sent by the spirit world? Blood rites an alternative to Binding?”

  Guyen shuddered, remembering the ritual in the House of Conquerors. He screwed the paper up and threw it at a wire waste basket. It rolled around the rim and dropped in. Not bad for a first-time shot. “You know,” he said, “we really don’t have a proper explanation of where Faze comes from. It’s hardly a surprise crazy theories take hold.”

  “People don’t think gravity is sent by the supernatural, do they?” Tishara said. “So why would Faze be?”

  It was a good point, but one he could have argued. Another day, perhaps.

  She regarded him soberly. “You don’t look well.”

  “I’m fine.”

  But he wasn’t fine. His head ached, his vision was blurred, and those terrifying hallucinations from the alley were seared into his mind. What had happened with those dice? It had been touch and go, as if he’d be stuck in that terrifying state forever, the world broken, mind lost. And now he felt fragile, like logic and sense could leak away at any moment. Was the dice game responsible for the out-of-control clamour in the cubicle? It didn’t feel like it—and not knowing the cause was even more a worry. He should probably head back to the Gate, but he couldn’t desert Tishara. He poured a cup of water from the jug on the side, sipping slowly, gathering his chaotic thoughts.

  The second child was late, or rather his young mother was. A slum girl, she had to be a sex worker judging by her indecently short skirt and the rough-shaven man trying to blend in at the end of the corridor. They filed into the cubicle, the girl clinging tightly to her child, eyes darting. She nodded towards Guyen and Tishara. “Who are they?”

  “They are just observing, my dear,” the midwife said. She stroked the baby’s cheek. “Who do we have here then?”

  “Bartelemhew,” the girl said. “He’s had a cold.”

  The midwife smiled sympathetically. “Don’t worry, dear, a sniffle will make no difference to the procedure. May I?” She held out her arms. The girl reluctantly passed her the child. “Please, take a seat,” the midwife offered, indicating the bench. The girl sat, perched forwards, eyes fixed on her son. The midwife placed him on the cot and picked a fresh bladder from the instrument tray. She filled it with more blue concoction.

  “Is it the same formulation every time?” Guyen asked.

  “I’m expected to answer questions now, am I?” she retorted. “Yes, it is strictly controlled, identical for each child. Surely a Bindcrafter should know that.”

  “This variant dates back twenty years,” Tishara interjected.

  “Is that all?” Guyen said, surprised it wasn’t older.

  The midwife shook her head as if he were an idiot. “One must strive for progress, Maker. It is the only thing that separates us from the animals.” She leaned over the cot, syringe in hand, while the slum girl played nervously with a thread from her skirt. The baby kicked his legs and bawled, the sound frazzling.

  “Oh, you’re one of those, are you,” the midwife sniffed. “How am I supposed to do this if you won’t cooperate?” Unsurprisingly, Bar
telemhew didn’t offer an explanation, choosing instead to cry louder, kicking the midwife’s hand away. She signalled Tishara. “See if you can calm him.”

  Tishara bent over the cot and stroked the boy’s head. He quietened. The midwife swabbed his thigh and picked up her knife and syringe. She signalled Tishara to hold the child. “Here we go then,” she said, and pressed the skin tight over the boy’s leg like she had the girl’s earlier. She made her cut.

  The boy’s face crumpled, no sound emitting for a split-second, then he screamed, an anguished sound too intense for such small lungs. The mother’s face crinkled with matching despair.

  The midwife pushed the quill into the incision, and administered the concoction.

  Toulesh exploded out as the same unholy screeching blared again in Guyen’s mind. Sudden migraine hit, intense like it would fracture his skull from the inside. Unable to suppress a cry, he staggered backwards, grabbing the curtain for support as grey flashes filled his vision. Tishara whipped round to look, then turned back to the child, now deathly quiet, jerking in place, jaw locked tight.

  “No!” his mother cried, jumping up from the bench.

  “What’s happening?” Tishara shrieked, trying to hold him still.

  “He’s rejecting,” the midwife replied. “Stay calm, I have the antidote.” She checked the labels on a row of vials.

  Toulesh dissolved into base energy, an aura of pure distress, refusing to be summoned. Guyen fought the sound, pawing at his head, trying in vain to scrub out the agony. He staggered towards the cot. He had to do something. The baby was turning blue.

  “Stop! You’re killing him,” the girl wailed. She grabbed for him.

  The midwife railed at Tishara. “Keep her away. There’s no time.” She transferred a familiar green liquid to the syringe bladder—Karotin—the same stuff the crone had administered that dismal night in Tal Maran. Tishara sent a pleading look. Fighting the head-splitting pain, Guyen caught the boy’s mother from behind, pulling her back.

  “Get off me,” she protested, but he held on, even as his head burned.

  The midwife rolled the child over, feeling for a spot on the back of his neck. “Hold him still, damn you!”

 

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