by Mike Wild
"Quite a show of strength," Makennon observed, "for a common street player."
As the Anointed Lord spoke, Slowhand was jostled into position before her, where he bowed with theatrical exaggeration, sweeping his hand under his stomach and then up into the air.
"Actually, I prefer to think of myself more as an artiste. Troubadour, bard and all-round entertainer, in fact."
"Really."
"Absolutely." Killiam pulled a balloon from a pocket, blew into it and, with a series of tortuous squeaks, twisted it into the semblance of a fluffy animal. "I even do balloons."
Makennon slapped the shape from his hand, ignoring it as it bounced away across the floor.
"Why is it that you are doing what you are, Mister Killiam Slowhand?" she asked without preamble.
"Ah. So you know my name."
Makennon gestured with a flyer in her hand. "'Killiam Slowhand's Final Filth — Every Hour, On The Hour'," she read. "It wasn't hard."
Slowhand smiled. "No. Suppose not."
"And why is it that you have so little respect for our church?"
"I don't know," Killiam said, though, in truth, he had every reason in the world. "Why does your church have so little respect for the other ones out there? How does that little ditty go again? The One Faith, the — ?"
"Ours is the true faith."
"Right, of course. True as well. You consulted the Brotherhood of the Divine Path about that, lately? The Azure Dawn? Or the rest of them your mob have squeezed out or shut down or disappeared since you began annexing the whole damn peninsula?"
Makennon smiled grimly and stared him in the eyes. "Killiam Slowhand. That really is the most ridiculous name…"
"Hells. You should hear my real one."
"Those churches are irrelevant," Makennon declared, answering his question. "Misguided fancies, the beliefs of fools. They — and others like them — will come to understand the way of things."
"When you've knocked it into them, I suppose. If you really want to know why I have so little respect for your church, Anointed Lord, then I'll tell you." Slowhand remembered her as she had been. "This isn't Andon and the peninsula's no longer at war — but most importantly, you're not a general any more. Stop running your religion as if you're still trying to build an empire and maybe, just maybe, people will voluntarily listen to what you have to say."
Makennon laughed out loud, as if the whole idea were ludicrous, then stopped suddenly and leant forwards until she was staring Slowhand directly in the eyes. "I'm not the only one no longer serving my country as a soldier, am I, Mister Slowhand?" Her eyes grew curious and her tone deepened as she drew in almost seductively close to him and he could feel her hot breath on his cheek. "Oh yes, I know you just as you know me. So tell me, Lieutenant — what makes you do this? Just why is it that you are donning the garb of a fool and attempting to undermine us in this ridiculous, seditious way?"
Slowhand's eyes narrowed. "I have my reasons. And one of them is I just don't like people running other people's lives."
"Hmm. But surely someone has to do just that, don't you think? Otherwise the whole of society would simply degenerate into an unruly and unruled rabble."
"Rabble, eh? Why do I get the impression that as far as your opinion of your flock goes it rather neatly sums things up?"
"We provide them with guidance."
"They didn't ask for guidance."
Makennon sighed, then gestured around her audience chamber with her hand, sweeping it to indicate what lay beyond as well. "You think this all a sham, don't you?"
"A sham and a scam, actually."
"That we have no destiny? That our only concern is with our own material gain?"
"Bang! Nail on the head."
"That we do, in fact, lust solely after power?"
"Woohooh, you're good. No wonder they made you the boss."
Again, Makennon leaned in close. "What if I could prove to you that it was otherwise? That our future is plain. Would you then cease your public mockery of our church?"
"That would be something of a tall order."
"Then allow me to fulfil it."
Slowhand stared at her, unsure of where this was going. "What's this about, Katherine?" he asked with intended familiarity. "I'm far from the only seditionary out there, so why the special treatment — this personal touch? Why didn't your lackey's dagger go all the way in? After all, it's happened before, so I hear."
"Because I want you to join us."
"What?"
"The Final Faith needs people such as you. People possessing certain skills." She turned and walked to the wall of the chamber, where she opened a compartment and Slowhand found himself staring at something he thought he'd never see again. "Where did you — ?"
"Does it matter? The point is, it's yours if you join us. Yours to use again, in our cause."
Again, Slowhand stared, but this time at Makennon — getting the woman's measure. It was clear her style of running the Final Faith was unorthodox, but it was also clear that she believed in what it did, at least to a degree. But despite the incentive she'd just offered, he had no interest in joining her, though, he had to admit, she'd got him curious.
"Okay, Katherine — what do you have to show me?"
Makennon led him out of her audience chamber and along another seemingly endless corridor, to the furthest reaches of the cathedral, the threesome who'd brought him to her trailing behind. There, she showed him into a library whose shelves were filled not with books but rolled-up scrolls. Other scrolls were unfurled on the walls, images daubed on them in red and black ink — images of hellsfire and damnation, praying and weeping souls, vast marching hordes. Before them knelt figures he didn't recognise — stylised, twisting forms that somehow didn't look quite human — and symbols splashed here and there, some of which reminded him of the crossed circles of the Faith, others vaguely of keys. He had no idea what any of them meant. But he knew who was responsible for them.
Hunched and twitching over long tables down the centre of the library, Final Faith brothers scratched away at scrolls with quills, creating more of the strange images. Hollow-faced and exhausted, the worst aspect of them was that they were not looking at what they were doing — their eyeballs, to a man, rolled up into the backs of their sockets, completely white.
"Hey, fella, are you all ri — ?" Slowhand asked, touching one, and then found himself somewhere else entirely, where other hands moved across another scroll, in another room he sensed was far away — gods, was it the League, in Andon? He spasmed suddenly, totally disorientated, and then felt his own eyes begin to roll upwards in his
Makennon slapped his hand away and he gasped. He knew now who these people were — telescryers, remote-receivers, weavers of the threads whose particular use of magic wrecked their bodies and burned their brains away.
And Makennon had them working some kind of… production line.
"What is this?" he said.
Makennon smiled. "The future. The scattered pieces of a jigsaw held in a hundred sealed collections and forbidden libraries across Twilight, being brought together, here, for the first time, so that the path of the Final Faith might be fully divined. Prophecies, Mister Slowhand — prophecies as old as time. Prophecies that show the destiny of the Final Faith."
"Let me get this straight. You've got these poor bastards telepathically purloining a bunch of dangerous-looking old doodles because you think they are relevant to you?"
"Yes." She swept her hand across the walls. "Don't you see?"
Slowhand saw nothing — except maybe that Makennon had got a bump on the head on one battlefield too many. But he reminded himself it made her no less dangerous — if anything, more so.
"Join us," Makennon urged. "There are many things to be achieved."
"Erm, no thanks. I'll come back when your god's got his head screwed on."
Makennon's expression darkened. She summoned the escorts.
"Oh, let me guess," Slowhand said. "This is the pa
rt where you lock me up and throw away the key?"
"You are a nuisance to me, and I cannot afford to have a nuisance… spoil things at this time. I would have preferred to convert you to our cause because the removal of someone who has made himself so obvious on our streets is itself obvious, but then what choice do I have?" She directed her attention to the escorts and said: "He's a tricky one. Have him stripped and searched thoroughly. Take everything from his person."
"Everything? Katherine… not my balloons?"
"Including his balloons. When you're done, take Mister Slowhand to the Deep Cells. He'll be staying in our most prestigious quarters for a while."
The escorts grabbed Killiam by the armpits and began to shuffle him off, noticeably turning his back into which the knife dug once more towards the Anointed Lord. This breach of etiquette wasn't a privilege, he guessed, but a sign he was considered already dead. Nevertheless, he let them take him. Actually smiled. Because this was the other thing that the Final Faith excelled in — they made people disappear. And in forcing Makennon to make him disappear he'd got her exactly where she wanted him.
No, wait. Exactly where he wanted her.
At any rate, they had each other where…
"How long a while?" he called back.
"Until you come around to our way of thinking, or until you die."
"Right. In that case, about those balloons…"
Makennon watched him go and then returned to the audience chamber, summoning Munch back before her.
"I've considered your report," she said. "This Kali Hooper. I want her found."
Munch nodded. "Yes, Ma'am."
"Take whoever you need for the task and locate her. Quickly. Bring me that key."
"Just the key, Ma'am?"
Makennon stared at him, then laughed. "Has your pride been injured, Konstantin? Is that it?" She waited a moment. "Very well, Munch, just the key. The girl is unimportant. Feel free to do with her what you will."
There was a pause, and Munch smiled in anticipation.
"The One faith."
"The Only faith."
"The Final Faith."
Chapter Five
You win some, you lose some, Kali mused. It was a week later and she was halfway down her third tankard of ale, draped at the table by the captain's chest in the upper nook of the tavern, the affair of the Spiral — despite a lingering nag about her vision — fading from her mind. Time to think about what to do and where to go next — there was, after all, enough choice out there. The Lost Canals, as she'd mentioned to Merrit? Uummm, maybe — she didn't yet know. But it was something that she intended to plan out, here, at this very table, over the next few days.
While at the same time getting some serious drinking done.
She quaffed the rest of her ale in one and signalled Aldrededor for another — no, make that two. The swarthy, grey-haired and ear-ringed Sarcrean winked and blew her a kiss as he set the golden brews down, pleased to have her back where she belonged. Behind him, down a small flight of bowed, skewing steps, business in the Here There Be Flagons was busy and lively, the air thick with laughter and banter, and a cloying mix of pipe, rolly smoke and sweat whose strength could still not mask the heady aroma of Dolorosa's Surprise Stew. The stew had been on the menu — was the menu, in fact — for as long as Aldrededor and his wife had been at the Flagons, and the surprise about it was the reaction anyone got if they were stupid enough to enquire what was in it. "Why you wanna know?" the tall, thin and equally swarthy woman would demand loudly. "You think Dolorosa trying to poison you, ah? You think maybe she cook witha the weebleworm anda the flopparatta poo? Well, Dolorosa tell you, iffa Dolorosa wanna you dead she would sticka the cutlass inna your belly and she woulda laugh! Like-a this — ha-ha-ha-ha-haaar! Now go! Getta outta theees taverno! Go away, go, shoo, go, go, go…"
Kali smiled. Dolorasa's more… unusual approach to business was, along with the captain's chest in a tavern landbound for leagues in every direction, a clue to the fact that before the elderly couple had fetched up here, they had pursued their own, long career on Twilight's roiling seas. Exactly what that career had been she had never felt the need to ask, because as far as she was concerned the ear-ring and the cutlass and the hearty laugh said it all.
It was what she loved — had always loved — about this place — the mixed bunch all of them were. Looking down towards the bar, she could see Fester Grimlock and Jurgen Pike engaged in a game of quagmire, the merchant and the thief staring daggers at each other as usual. There was Ronin Larson, the local ironweaver, and Hetty Scrubb, the herbalist. Between them weaved Peter Two-Ties, who had prepared the render for her expedition to the Sardenne. And then there, perched on his groaning and perpetually buckling stool, as he was perched every day — but only during the day — was Red Deadnettle, the flame-haired giant of a man who was the reason she was here in the first place.
All of them had made her welcome over the years, and all of them were friends, but to Red she owed it all. Kali knew nothing of her parents or her origin, only that she had been found, twenty-two years before, abandoned and naked as the babe she was, by an unknown adventurer exploring an Old Race site — a site she had never since been able to find. The becloaked adventurer had rescued her and walked the roads on a storm-lashed night, looking for somewhere or someone to take her in. That someone had been Red, who, seeing dawn coming, had brought her here. The rest, as they said, was history — and the adventurer had never been seen again.
A number of shadows darkened the outside of the small, whorled-glass windows of the tavern, before continuing on towards the door. Kali would not normally have given them a second thought — more customers — but their bulk and the way they had skulked for a second outside gave her cause to suspect something might be amiss. Sure enough, a second later, five half-uniformed thugs entered the tavern and headed straight for Red. They were heavies for hire, guards in the employ of local landowners to protect their interests on their estates, and while they had every right — at least in the eyes of the law as it had conveniently been written by their employers — to apprehend people on their land, they had no right to do so in a public place such as this.
"Mister Deadnettle?" their somewhat obese leader enquired. "Mister Red Deadnettle?"
Still hunched at the bar, his back to the man, Red did not move or respond to the question in any way. The thug swallowed and thumped him on the shoulder.
"Deadnettle, I know it's you. I insist you — "
There were sharp intakes of breath — warning hisses, really — from the others seated along the bar, and then a slow and universal shaking of their heads. The hubbub of the tavern quietened as Red rose from his seat, dwarfing the hulks before him as his fists balled.
Kali sighed. She was tempted to let Red continue but if she didn't want her relaxation — and indeed the Flagons itself — ruined by the earthquake that would suddenly and inevitably come, she knew she had better intervene. She leaned down and opened the captain's chest Aldrededor let her use, pulling a small blackjack from beneath a pile of maps, diagrams, schematics and other Old Race paraphernalia, just in case. Then she picked up her ale, descended the steps, and with a slow lowering of her hand bade Red sit down. That done, she tapped the guard on the shoulder.
"Is there a problem, officer?"
"No problem," the guard said tiredly, without even looking at her. "This gentleman and I needs a little chat, that's all. A matter of a small misdemeanour."
"He was taking a short cut across your boss's fields, unless I miss my guess," Kali said, though she knew full well that Red had been poaching again — it was in his blood. "Don't you think misdemeanour is a little strong?"
"It's the law of our lands, Miss. Or do you think that folk should just be allowed to wander wherever they want, eh?"
"I do, actually, yes. To wander… and explore." She gestured outside, beyond where the ramshackle tavern was slumped like a knackered cat beside Badlands Brook. "To see what's out there."
>
The guard turned and looked Kali up and down. She'd only got back to the place an hour before and, having spent a chunk of that time stabling Horse and reassuring him that Dolorosa's stew did have bacon in it, as yet hadn't changed, and the guard took in her sap-stained and torn clothing, the general dishevelment of her appearance. He sniffed as he saw the toolbelt at her waist.
"Oh, you're one of those. Take my advice and stay out of this, adventurer," he said with undisguised disdain. "Our business with Deadnettle is no flight of fancy — and no concern of yours."
Kali immediately railed at his attitude. She had never understood how people such as him could live on a world such as theirs and not be curious about it. As Merrit had said, their lives were mired in the mundane, obsessed with petty issues and their own selfish concerns. When all they had to do was look up at Kerberos and wonder -
Hells. She would have given him a lecture but he wasn't worth the bother. "Red is a friend of mine," she said.
"Yeah, he looks like he would be. Now off with you before I have the innkeeper eject you from the premises."
Red said something for the first time, then, leaning down to whisper quietly in the guard's ear. It was still a rumble. "That might be difficult, Mister Policeman. 'Cause Miss Hooper, she owns the place."
The guard guffawed and looked Kali up and down again. "Don't make me laugh. A strip of a girl like her owning a grub's den like this in the back of beyond. Why would she want to do that?"
Kali took a sip of her ale and stared at the guard measuredly. What Red said was true — the tavern had hit hard times a few years ago, and so, when she'd had the funds, she'd bought it, simple as that. But she hadn't changed anything. Except the name. You just didn't with this place. The year before one of the local gentry had objected to the fuggy atmosphere and had suggested it became a non-smoking tavern. After the laughter had died down — a non-smoking tavern? — Red had dragged the man to Bottomless Pit and thrown him in. After setting him on fire.