The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  It was immense, spread before them like a glittering black map spotted with twinkling orange gaslights. This was what he'd hoped to see when he'd begged sister Hen to let him climb the roof. It felt like he was four years old again and back standing with his mother in a dark part of the Slumswelters, overwhelmed, seeing it all for the first time. He was adrift on a vast and powerful ocean of countless dissonant minds.

  Moonlight picked out the dark outlines of alleys and streets below, stretching away from the Abbey to the broad yellow spine of the Haversham tradeway, which cut through the city's districts like a Moleman's blade. Past the ancient Slumswelters the tradeway sliced, by the white dust-clouds of the Balast Calk and the twisting artisanal lanes of Alam's Carroway, past the Moleman's sharp-cornered Belial and Grammaton Square and the clock tower which tolled the city's pulse, all the way to the sweeping Levi River.

  The Levi was a winding silver ribbon with its own firmament of moving revelatory lights; barges that blinked in and out of existence as the current tugged them under bridges. More districts radiated out from it, areas that had seemed distinct in Sen's studies but now swelled and rolled into each other, Afric and Glave and Dirondack, the Boomfire, Cressier Quarter and Flogger's Cross, overlaid with a labyrinth of interwoven bi-rail train lines: the Carothaby, the Ambersham, the Heckatoa. They crisscrossed the Haversham and the Levi in patterns more complex than his scars, all of it a grand patchwork of thought and minds running deep and wide, and the sense of every district was different. Each had its own unique flavor of mind rising up like scents in the air, divided by caste and law, with here and there the distant cold sting of Adjunc.

  Sen stared open-mouthed, overcome. He had dreamed of this view so many times, echoes of the distant memory, and now he was seeing and feeling it again.

  "It's beautiful," he whispered.

  Alam grunted something, but Sen didn't hear.

  He let his gaze rove wider, down to the HellWest frigate at the end of the Haversham, where criminals hung on spikes off the great ship's side, marking the point the city surrendered to the Sheckledown Sea. He could clearly see the sickle-moon outline of HellWest docks by the lights of dinning bars and aling dens along the quay, and could feel a hint of the fumey pleasures rising off the people there, even fancying he could catch a scent of the sea on the warm night air.

  Back in the other direction, round the Gutrock obtrusion lay the high-caste hills of Afforvia, Jubilante and Galabriel leading up to the Roy, where the King's jagged black Aigle palace stood at the peak, studded with towers and revolving slowly. It seemed to catch none of the silvery light that picked out the rest of the city, leaving only a twisting silhouette, like a mouth full of grinding, broken teeth.

  Beyond that lay the long dark fathoms of Gutrock, which covered the legendary city of Aradabar, buried three millennia ago in a volcanic eruption. Beyond even that was the vast bulk of the Saint's mountain, rising so high it seemed the earth was reaching up to touch the sky.

  Sen felt dizzied, and knelt in silence drinking it in, until the Grammaton chimed for one in the morning. Then he remembered the Spindle by his side, the reason they were there, and the words he'd uttered moments ago.

  "I'm sorry," he said, turning. "It's not beautiful if your father just died."

  "No," said Alam, his voice tight, "it still is. I've never seen it like this either."

  Together they gazed across the city, to the furthest rim of the Manticore district, where three slim chimneys stood like fingers of stone, with fires at their tips. The Drazi smokestacks. Sen caught the faintest hint of pain in the air, interleaved with drifts of dark smoke rising up to gray the stars.

  There were tears in Alam's eyes now, and Sen felt the boy's grief welling up to eclipse the anger. He pulled the wooden box from his pack. Its whittled contours were reassuring under his fingers. He was glad that he'd taken the time to carve the designs.

  "Your father's ashes will be here too," he said, gesturing to the grass. "On some days you can smell the sulfur burn on the wind."

  Alam said nothing, just stared out at the clouds rising from the three thin Drazi fingers.

  Sen tugged at a patch of grass, revealing black soil beneath. "They'll be in all of this, mixing with it." He scooped out a handful of soil and tipped it into the box with a cool pattering sound, then held it out.

  Alam took it. "This is the grave," he said.

  "It's the grave," agreed Sen, "the highest and best in the city."

  "I didn't take his hand," Alam said, gazing down into the box. "I had the chance, at the end, but I didn't do it."

  Sen tentatively rested a hand on the Spindle's bony shoulder. There was no right thing to say. They stayed like that for some time, looking out over the city. Then the Spindle began to scoop dirt into the box, slowly and carefully, as though every scoop was precious.

  "This is…" he began, but didn't continue, too choked up with emotion.

  "This is for your father," Sen said, and finished hollowing out the hole in the roof-loam Alam had dug. "Right here."

  Alam lowered the box into the hole, then reverently covered it over, laying one budding hawkenberry over the top.

  * * *

  For a time they lay back and watched the stars revolve. Alam's breathing slowly steadied, his misery fading beneath the majesty of the skies, and Sen thought back on everything that had happened in just a week. Up here the Adjunc seemed very far away. Up here it was possible to believe his mother truly had a plan for them all.

  "Do you know what that is?" Alam asked, his voice hushed, pulling Sen from his reverie. He was pointing up at the stars. "The hole."

  "It's a mouth," Sen answered quietly. "The Rot. You've heard of it, I think."

  Alam thought for a moment. "From the Saint Ignifer stories? Lots of tongues?"

  Sen smiled. "That's right. My mother taught me it was real, like a real mouth opening across the world, widening to eat it. Everything she did was supposed to prepare me to fight it."

  Alam snorted. "You're supposed to fight it?" He levered himself up on one elbow, looking Sen up and down. "But you're so short."

  Sen laughed. "Right. But according to her prophecies, I wouldn't be alone. You'll be there too. The other children as well, all six of us. We're supposed to raise Saint Ignifer back to life. It's what all my scars are for. So your height can make up for my shortness."

  Alam frowned. "Wait, you're actually serious?"

  Sen smiled. "She was. She believed it, enough to carve me like this." He held out his arms, so his scars glistened slightly in the starlight. "Your name's written here, along with the others. But do I believe it? I don't know."

  Alam jawed at the air for a moment, then slumped back to the grass with a whomp.

  "Heart's Balls," he cursed again. "Your own mother did that?"

  Sen chuckled. "Yes."

  "And you're the one who's going to save us from that," Alam said, pointing up at the black hole. "Is that why the King wants your scars?"

  Sen shrugged. "I suppose. Maybe he thinks there are great secrets written here. There aren't, though. It's all just stories of Saint Ignifer, written in an old language."

  Alam laughed. "Stories to beat back the dark."

  "I guess so," said Sen.

  A long, quiet moment passed by.

  "Did it hurt?"

  Sen turned. "Did what hurt?"

  "All that carving? I can't imagine."

  Sen sighed. "I don't remember. I was just a baby when she did it."

  "And all these Sisters watched, while she did that? I thought you said they were kind?"

  Sen chuckled, but the humor leached away. It was something he'd wondered about himself before. Why had they let his mother do this to him, to a baby? It was kind that they'd sheltered him for so long from the Adjunc, but then they'd stood by while the scars that damned were carved in the first place.

  "They are," he said, but wasn't sure where to take it from there. "It's just, they believe."

  "They be
lieve," Alam repeated. "In scars. Enough to bring me here. And the Deadhead, and the others?"

  "Yes."

  Alam let out a long sigh. "I thought I had a messed up family."

  Those words hung in the air between them. Sen had never really talked about his mother to anyone. Not about her life, or about her death, beaten to an unrecognizable pulp just outside the Abbey gates by Adjunc.

  "She used to make me do all these tasks," he said, gesturing vaguely at the city. "My mother. I had to memorize the city, the stars, all the stories of Saint Ignifer. She took me out of the Abbey once and left me in the Slumswelters, to find my own way back, when I was only four."

  Alam looked sideways at him. "Four years old? That's crazy. The Slumswelters is the other side of the city, nobody even goes there. How did you do it?"

  Sen shrugged. "I knew the way. I looked at the stars for a bearing, figured out what street I was on from the map in my head, and just went."

  "When you were four years old?"

  "It was strange. She took me to this abandoned building with an amazing view of the city, like here, and she said, 'Remember this.' I still do. Then she left me there."

  "She's sounding madder by the minute."

  Sen laughed. "I know." He paused, then went on. "She died that night. After I got back to the Abbey, she was dead. Adjunc did it, but nobody knew why, because she didn't have any kind of markings. They buried her the next day."

  Alam sucked in a breath. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"

  "No, it's all right. I've had a lot of time to think about it. And I don't know. It's either true or it isn't, you know? I just try to get along."

  They lay quietly for a while.

  "So you're going to save us all?" Alam asked.

  "You and me both. Feyon too."

  Alam chuckled. "Feyon too? In those dresses?"

  They laughed, until the dark night swallowed up the humor, and long silent moments passed. Somewhere far off a shout rang out from the city's dark side. Probably some poor soul getting caught by the Adjunc, Sen wondered.

  "It sounds sad," Alam said, breaking the quiet. "That your mother would make all that effort to get you ready, then die before she could finish."

  Sen nodded. It was sad, really. But that was ten years ago now, and Alam had just lost his father that night.

  "I really am sorry about your father," he said.

  Alam nodded. "It's done, now."

  "Do you still want to kill me?" Sen asked. "Push me off the top?"

  Alam snorted. "I can't now, can I? You gave my father a grave."

  They didn't say anything more after that. Sen felt drowsy, watching the stars blur by overhead. A while later they rose, and Alam wordlessly began the climb back down the side of the tower. In the distance the Grammaton chimes rang out for four in the morning. Sen looked out over the city a final time, then started down.

  They went the rest of the way in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. The feeling off Alam was different now, the anger gone, replaced by something new and hopeful.

  Back on the ground, they walked together through the graveyard in companionable silence, between the fading fairy circles of shellaby bug light, into the dark sacristy and back to their rooms.

  * * *

  From the shadows amongst the graves, crouching over a bag filled with silver and topaz and clutching a knife in her hand, the Deadhead Mare watched them go.

  MARE I

  She'd been stealing from the first day.

  Two weeks earlier the black-clad women had fetched her from her rain-barrel cot in an off-Indura alley. She'd fought back, screaming and clawing, but they had already untied the dagger strapped to her left hand, and they were strong.

  They dumped her in a windowless room somewhere near the Levi River. She could hear its sluggish lapping through the grindstone walls, as she worked at the lock with a slender coil of copper rolled out of her ragged leather dress. Sometime in the middle of the night she picked it open, but that did nothing for the deadbolt. She spent the rest of the night pacing, alternately furious at what they'd done and terrified of what was yet to come.

  The next day the women forced her into a tub of lukewarm water, splattered her with powders and creams, dressed her in a plain black cassock, then tied her into a chair. As she struggled against the bonds about her wrists and ankles, she wondered if this was it, and she was finally going to lose the other half of her mind. She defecated in the cassock and raved, hoping desperately it would put them off whatever they planned.

  The woman that came in eventually was long and thin, a Gawk. To Mare's delight she wrinkled her nose as she entered.

  "I see we'll have to bathe you again," she said.

  Mare spat. The gob hit the woman's dark robe and she looked down at it impassively. "And wash that too, I suppose."

  Mare let loose a stream of invective.

  "Is your name Mare, of Indura?"

  Mare stopped cursing in surprise. The tall thin woman smiled, and Mare realized she had confirmed it. She began cursing again, but the Gawk left the room. Soon afterward other women came in, who bathed and powdered her once more, then carried her out into a waiting brougham carriage.

  The Gawk was sitting in the seat beside her.

  "My name is Sister Henderson, Mare," she said. "And your life just changed for the better. I'll ask you not to foul that robe, I won't have it washed a second time."

  The brougham pulled away, and Mare tried to judge her best line of attack.

  "Don't try it," said the Gawk, as though reading her mind. "I grew up in Carroway, and I would put you down in a second."

  So she waited. She waited as she rode in a brougham for the first time in her life, waited as the Gawk explained about Abbeys and scars and a special boy, and in the midst of it she remembered a story she'd heard a long time ago, from a mad woman in a ruin in the Slumswelters, about a boy and scars and a role to play.

  Perhaps there was something to this, she wondered. Not what the mad woman had wanted, but something for Mare, a scam to run or a way to get ahead. So she stilled herself, and waited as they arrived at a white wall with wrought iron gates. Then the Gawk led her into the greenest, cleanest, biggest open space she'd ever seen, and at that point, she began to understand the true possibilities that lay before her.

  This Abbey of theirs was rich. Everywhere was Hasp stone, gleaming buildings, statues, and topiary. The place reeked of wealth. The Gawk led her over to a bizarrely casted troupe of children sat around a trestle table.

  "Your life will be better here, Mare," said the Gawk, then strode away.

  She looked at the others, a Balast, an unfealted Moleman, and a Blue. It was against the King's law for such castes to gather together, especially for Mare herself, an Induran, to be anywhere near them, but they didn't try to run, so neither did she. Instead she gazed at the vellum pages spread across the table, the quills and ink. There was enough barter value here alone for her to eat for a month.

  "What happened to your head?" asked the Balast.

  "It got bitten off by a landshark," she said sharply. "What happened to your hair?"

  The Balast touched his bald head tentatively. "I never had any."

  "Not since they casted it out of you, anyway," snapped Mare, already beginning to palm the vellum papers into her cassock. She watched the Moleman carefully, but he seemed oblivious, and being unfealted meant he wouldn't care.

  When the boy with the scars came, it was faintly amusing, harking back to those stories in the days after she'd survived the mogrifer attack. Perhaps all this was fated? That thought amused her no end. She would show them their 'fate'.

  When the Spindle came and attacked the boy with the scars, she took her opportunity, snatching up another sheaf of papers and quills then running for the wall while all the women were distracted. In moments she was through the graves and the bushes and at the wall's top, ready to drop down the other side. There she stopped. Clutched in her hands she held more value than she'd
ever seen before, but there had to be more. No one had even tried to stop her from running.

  If she fled now, she'd be missing the biggest opportunity of her life. Instead she could do this bigger, and better.

  She dropped down and walked back to the table. The fight between the two boys was over, the bodies cleared, but only the Balast seemed to notice she'd been gone.

  "Where did you go?" he asked in his dumb thick voice.

  "Picking daisies," she answered absently, laying the vellum and quills out again.

  After that there were classes, a tour, dinner in the refectory. All along she was observing and planning. When the Gawk led her to her room, a room all for herself, she couldn't believe how completely she was going to rob them. They were not ready for her at all. In the dark and quiet that followed, she slipped out of her window, climbed down to the ground, and began to search for the treasure she knew the Abbey must contain.

  It took her a week to find it.

  Every day she went to their classes and ate in a drowsy fog, saving her energy for the nights when she explored the recesses of the Abbey, picking whatever locks she needed to with a bent refectory fork and a metal tine pried from a revelatory gaslight grill.

  Beneath the Abbess' chancel she discovered a vault filled with ceremonial trappings, from diamante urns and silver miters to blocks of fragrant topaz and delicate gold-leafed books. She gathered up what she could in a potato sack and carried it away.

  Out of the chancel, she carried the heavy sack over the grass, to the graveyard. Some of the women were out on patrol around the grounds, watching for the Spindle to flee, but avoiding their gaze was elementary for a child of the Induran streets. The shadows were her home, and she could move through them at will.

  Then a sound rang out, feet crunching on gravel, and she ducked back into deeper shadows amongst the graves, with the knife in her hand. She watched the scarred boy and the Spindle pass by, solemn and silent like they were in some strange procession, coming back round the side of the cathedral. What were they doing roaming the grounds in the middle of the night?

  It was curious, but she put it to one side, because it wasn't her affair. They hadn't seen her, weren't looking for her, and that was all that mattered. She turned back to the task ahead, working her way through the labyrinthine graveyard. The bag was heavy, a little too heavy really, making it hard to be quiet working a path through the graves. She'd been too greedy. But there was still time left in the night. She resolved to empty half and bury it by the wall. They'd never know, and if she ever needed it she could come back.