The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

The crossbow bolt clattered uselessly off the wall, as Sen was already gone, ducked into the shadows and down a storm drain, sprinting along a narrow passage in the darkness beneath their very feet. He felt their certainty turn to confusion as they reached the place where he'd been and found nothing but The Saint.

  Sen surfaced on their other side, in a thick warren of alleys, and waited for the hubbub to quiet, then made sure to let Daveron see him again while he posted a second copy. The bugle's wail rang out once more, the tone shifting to reflect Sen's position, and this time he darted away and up onto the rooftops. Running along the spine of the city, he left that brigade behind and moved to another, tearing the perfect pattern of their pre-planned route and leaving chaos behind.

  His heart thumped madly and he felt the old exhilaration, just like those days when he'd felt the truth of his mother might be only inches away. This was every bit as important as that. Every step was life and death, not only for him but for the children in the cages too.

  The chase was on.

  * * *

  He riled them into a hectic froth throughout the night.

  More Molemen came, flooding in from surrounding districts; Belial, The Clangells, Flogger's Cross, the Boomfire, until the streets of Carroway became a blur of red tubing suits flowing like the Levi River, and the air grew thick and muddled with their wailing bugle calls.

  Still Sen darted amongst them like a needle slipping in and out of velvet, using pathways they couldn't see and didn't understand. He dropped into the smallest of gaps in their hastily reformed brigade patterns, taking just long enough to slap up a copy of The Saint before the first crossbow bolts flew, leaving a squall of confusion and reedy wails in his wake. He worked them like a baker kneading dough, turning them on each other, leading them ragged and sprinting from the Swidlington canal to the center of Babo Park, from Lord Quill Square to the Ambertham bi-rail turnstile off the Haversham, so that they took each other for sightings and fired bolts into their fellows, and blew into their bugles at any sighting of a shifting shadow.

  In the midst of that madness, while they lashed at themselves like the Scranth beneath Aradabar, Sen crept up on the wicker cages. There were more than one now, with others brought in from neighboring districts and corralled into a protective position in a narrow alley near the border with the Calk.

  Sen dropped in from above, dangling from a revelatory gas line, and moved amongst the cages as silently as an assassin. His long months of training across the city paid off, as he drew up to the first of the Moleman brigade watching over the street, and grappled him in a neck lock learned from Delarante. With one misericorde pressed tight across his furry throat and the other locking the first into place, the Moleman had barely a second to resist before unconsciousness struck.

  He used that second unexpectedly well, getting his cosh free and swinging it back to crunch off Sen's head. Sen almost blacked out on the spot, but managed to jerk his spikes as he reeled backwards, finishing the maneuver with a hard pull on the Moleman's throat that dropped him flat to the stone.

  Rainbows sprayed across Sen's vision, and an intense and cold pain radiated out from his left temple. He lurched sideways against the narrow alley wall, trying to blink the colors away, aware that at any moment a crossbow bolt could spike him in place. The righteous joy of the last few hours was forgotten as he held his palm up to his hot, bloody eye.

  Had he been seen?

  He tried to catch some sense of the nearest Molemen. There were no wails on the bugle that he could hear, but perhaps there was a feeling of one of them creeping down the side of the cages, nocking a bolt to his crossbow frame even now, any minute about to-

  "Move!" hissed a little voice, and without thinking Sen did.

  Shhh, clunk.

  A bolt flew and cracked uselessly off the wall where he'd been leaning. Sen reeled, bouncing off the wicker cage where small faces looked out at him hopefully; a Ratfer girl, a Billericay, a Montacre. The Ratfer seemed to be pointing, and Sen spun blearily.

  The wail of a bugle went up, and Sen lurched toward it. The wall and the cage bounced side to side as he ran, jolting more sharply with every step. He caught a sense in the air of the Moleman thrusting forward with a pike, and barely rolled to the side as the metal pole jutted forward, catching his posting bag and spilling his paste can and un-posted papers across the alley floor.

  "Here," another child called, and Sen moved toward the sound, spinning on instinct, following the patterns he'd practiced a thousand times from Gilbroy's 'Misericordist' that detailed how to disarm a pikeman in close confines. He stabbed down at the point where the pike ought to be in the Moleman's hands and caught something, then spun in a stumbling flurry of his cloak and hood, slamming his left misericorde into-

  It hit flesh and sank in deep. The weight of the Moleman's body sagged immediately backward, driving Sen down like an anchor, even as an answering sensation of failure spiked through his own heart. He'd failed. Or the Moleman had failed. The feeling of it was overwhelming.

  Then the haft of his spike clanked off the cobbles and he came back to himself, tugging desperately to get it free. Sweat or blood ran in his eyes and he blinked it away, to see the sharp end waggling out of the front of a young Moleman's chest. The red of his tubing darkened with blood, and the bugle fell from his lips to clatter on the stone nearby.

  For an awful moment Sen thought it was Daveron. The snout was the same. The beady dark eyes were the same. Then the swirling in his head paused, the strange coldness in his chest diminished, and he realized it wasn't. It was a dying Moleman, but it wasn't Daveron.

  "Sorry," he whispered pointlessly, even as he felt more Molemen drawing in to the bugle's call. He had just killed a man, and now he had moments only before a dozen brigades descended. There was something he had to do, but what was it?

  "Hurry, here!" a little voice called, and he remembered. The wicker cages. He rolled the dying Moleman and dragged his spike out with a grotesque sucking sound, then scrabbled at the dying figure's belt. His fingers settled first on the ring-spike, moist with slivers of flesh cut throughout the day's work, then jangled onto a set of keys.

  He snatched them up and held them out into the darkness, wavering as fresh silver lines rippled across his vision. Little hands took them and set to work.

  "Don't flypost any more," Sen managed to say. "Tell your friends."

  Then he was lurching back the way he'd come. He climbed a drainpipe so sloppily he couldn't believe a bolt didn't pluck him from the air. On the roof he lay back while the children scampered and muttered below, and bugles rang out while the Molemen came rushing in.

  He couldn't do any more, not without getting caught himself, not in this condition. He blinked away blood, which only made the pain worse, then started inching carefully along the building's rain gutter. It seemed like down below the Molemen were holding a street party. He heard hands slapping their way up the drainpipe, and managed to roll round the corner just before the first of them took to the roof.

  He didn't have the strength for it, but still he let himself dangle and half-fell in through an open window on the building's top floor.

  In the deep dark he saw it was the storeroom of a tavern. Rickety shelves stretched away into shadow, stocked with old jars, boxes of accounts and broken barrel parts. He turned the fractured map of Carroway in his head and dredged up a piece of knowledge; this was the Yaling Chain, a dinning bar near the Boomfire. It had a basement, and that basement linked directly to the sewers.

  Down through the building he went, while outside the Molemen stamped order onto the cage escape. He felt it as some children were retaken; their brief flowers of hope stamped out. He felt it as some escaped. Hopefully they would warn any others. Nobody would be flyposting now, except Sen. If even Sen.

  He tried not to think about the blood on his left fist, or how slick the spike felt as he sheathed it down his thigh, or what would happen to the children who'd been retaken. Instead he pushed past barrels
and stacks of beer crates in the Chain's basement and took to the dark and safety of the sewers.

  He made it back to the Slumswelters slowly, emerging at the Calk wall many hours later as the light was breaking in the East. From there he limped to the millinery half-blinded by the pain in his head, where Gellick caught him at the doorway with horror on his face.

  "What happened?" he asked. "Sen, your head! What did you do?"

  "My head," was all Sen could think to say.

  Gellick sped upstairs and laid him in the larder room, where he lit a fire and prepared hot water and blankets in an uncertain panic. He washed Sen's head, and asked him what to do, then washed it again, and throughout Sen could only think two things.

  Some of those children were going to die tonight, because of him. And one of the Molemen had already died, because of him.

  When unconsciousness finally came, it was a blessed relief.

  MOLEMEN

  Sen woke to the shellaby-bug whine of distant bugle calls, and a fierce, grating whisper in his ear, and a terrible, blinding thump in the left side of his head.

  "Sen," came the whisper, "wake up, please, we have to go!"

  It was Gellick, rasping as quietly as he could. His big stone face was inches away, stark and afraid in the bright midday light flooding in through the open wall. Sen peered out of the hole through slitted lids and straight into the sun, sending a new spike of pain into his left eye. He clapped one hand to it to block out the blinding light, and tried to focus on Gellick's face with the other.

  "What?" he croaked.

  "They're coming," Gellick croaked. "The Molemen are coming."

  At that, Sen felt them. Perhaps they'd been in his dreams, creeping up like a mindless tide, combing up over the beach and leaving all the sand perfect and smooth and-

  "They're coming?"

  Gellick nodded so sharply his outer lith cracked. Sen could feel them circling round, could feel the steel traps of their minds like a hundred pincers closing around his heart.

  As he struggled to get out of the hot, sticky blankets and stand, a memory clanged out like the Grammaton bell, the sound echoing down the deep dark well of his thoughts.

  He'd killed a Moleman.

  This was why they were coming, why he could feel them everywhere, hundreds of them sweeping the city. It wasn't just The Saint now, but murder.

  It was an accident. He hadn't meant to do it. It was…

  He reached his feet, bouncing off Gellick with his head reeling. His balance was shot, but he made it to the hole in the wall without falling, to peer out over the dizzy park to the bright Calk wall, with the white fog and blue skies around it, then down toward Carroway where the first of the red-tubed brigades were marching in.

  Their whiney bugle calls sliced into his throbbing head.

  He cursed, then looked at Gellick, frozen by the press, and then around at the papers on the floor, the patterns etched on the walls, the supplies of paper and ink, and his flagging mind raced.

  If they were coming directly for him here, if they knew where he was, then it was over. There was no way to escape. But then, if they knew where he was, they wouldn't be calling out warnings with their bugles. How could they know? There was no way they'd followed him through the sewers.

  He took a breath, trying to steady himself. That meant they didn't know. This was just a broad sweep. They would be methodical, and careful. The millinery looked abandoned, and might register late as a thing they had to check. Perhaps they might have a little time.

  The pain in his temple was piercing, but he had to put it aside.

  "Pick up the press, Gellick," he said, slowly and clearly. "Take it down the stairs and hide it in the park. Make sure it's covered up. Make sure the Molemen don't see you. I need you to do that now."

  Gellick just stared at him.

  "Now!" Sen snapped, and Gellick snapped into motion, lifting the press easily.

  "Should I-" Gellick began, but Sen cut him off, even as he dashed forward and kicked the weight-spreading boards far apart, removing any hint of what they'd been used for.

  "In the park, through the rotten wall. In a dark place, covered over with nettles. If they see that, it's over. Go."

  Gellick went.

  Sen ran. In the larder room he kicked the larder over and rumpled the bedding in a corner, spreading the logs and embers from the fire around the dim space, hoping it would look suitably abandoned. From the cupboard where the dead crow had been, he snatched up his last few unused sheafs of reed paper, his ink stones, quills and nibs and stuffed them into his pack. In the midst he tore up the floorboard that hid his stash of money and secreted it in his tunic.

  The sound of the bugles grew louder, as if they were already starting up the bottom of the hill.

  He lurched unsteadily into the hall, where papers lay everywhere; his trial runs lying on the floor, his handwritten ideas for the first edition tacked to the walls, the Book of Airs and Graces, claggy bits of reedpaper that had gone soft. He gathered them as best he could, cramming them into the sack and cinching it tight to his back. He was spinning around for a final check when Gellick's head appeared up the stairs.

  "The stairs look new," he said.

  It took Sen a moment to understand what that meant. Of course they looked new, they'd only just repaired them. Then the weight of it dawned. New was suspicious, especially with the light-colored new wood standing out so starkly. He stared at the stairs, thinking that when the Molemen came in five minutes, in three minutes, they would see them and look more closely. They would find the press in the weeds. The millinery would be burned, and where would Sen and Gellick go then?

  He had no idea. There was no district so well-placed as the Slumswelters, so well-sheltered by centuries of fear and superstition. He couldn't return to the Abbey. The docks were too active. Perhaps they could sink into the sewers like Sharachus, but minus a press, and trying to print in the filth and damp…

  There had to be something they could do. He strained for an idea, looking around at the walls, the floor, the ceiling of damp, plastered hay, and-

  He pointed up.

  "Collapse the roof, Gellick," he said.

  Gellick looked at him as if he'd gone mad. "The stairs," he said blankly. "It's the stairs, Sen."

  Sen darted over and took the rock man's hand. "I know, you have to trust me. Pull the roof in. The hay will cover everything, and maybe they won't look too hard when they see there's no roof. You couldn't run a print shop in the open air, could you?"

  Gellick let himself be dragged. It was desperate, Sen saw that. It would only take one Molemen looking beyond the straw to see through it, peering too deeply into the bushes in the park, picking out the smaller scraps of paper he'd left behind. But how many places had they raided already? How many more did they have to see? Molemen didn't feel hunger or pain, but surely they could be distracted, could be weary…

  "I don't," Gellick muttered, but in the center of the room he let Sen throw his arms up to the roof, where he took hold of the white-washed central roof beam, and pulled.

  The old wood splintered with a dry puff and a shower of termites. Gellick let the pieces down gently onto the floor, then began tugging at the molding yellow straw above. It came out in lumpy, black clots, piecemeal at first then in a kind of chain reaction, pulling more with it in a sighing, whispery collapse. Narrow intermediary beams gave way with a wet shearing sound, and the whole roof of foul, rain-decayed straw husks fell.

  Sen kicked it around the hall and down the stairs, covering them evenly, then he grabbed Gellick's hand and led him down in a long tumble out onto the street, in the bright light of day. He peeked round the millinery's edge and saw a Molemen brigade just a hundred yards away, barely obscured by the building's pitted edge, and pulled the Balast back in.

  "We can't go that way." He ran jerkily back through the ground floor, over damp peat and kicking ruffs through the scads of hay that had tumbled down from the stairs, to the broken back wall. L
ooking back, in the half-light the coating of festering yellow looked moderately convincing.

  "Now we run away," he whispered at Gellick, "quietly."

  Together they pushed through a hole in the back wall of the millinery, emerging into the sappy green overgrowth of the park. Sen could see the space where Gellick had tried to hide the press, crumpling the weeds around it, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He took Gellick by the hand and they ran.

  Across the park they went, ducking in and out of the cover of trees, away from the brigades. Gellick's feet made a muffled thump on the undergrowth, leaving a trail any keen eye could spot, but they were deep into hope now. At the corner of Lilith and Tavoy he led Gellick out onto the flagstones and ran.

  They ran and ran through the dead streets of the Slumswelters, past gutted mansions and collapsed mini-palaces until they hit the Swidlington canal, where they dropped down and sprinted at a thudding, booming pace down the cluttered towpath toward the HellWest outflow, until a sewer weir opened up on the right and Sen led them in. they zigzagged deep into the black until finally they stopped to rest at the bottom of a dry well, with a faint wash of light coming in through cracks in the cover high above.

  He was panting and Gellick was gasping. Beyond one of the walls there came a thunderous shaking, and Gellick's head popped up in fresh concern.

  "It's the Willoughby," Sen said. "The underground bi-rail passing. We're safe here."

  He wasn't sure that was true. He remained in a half-crouch with his head throbbing for a long time, listening to the air, trying to feel the flow of normal people on the streets above, waiting for the sharp stab of a brigade to pierce the calm, as surely as the Willoughby.

  But it didn't come. Not in an hour by the muted clang of the Grammaton, or in two. He poked his head out of the weir into the blinding light and listened to the sound of bugles spreading faintly through the ghostly Slumswelters. There was no localization in one spot. There was no focus. He took in a deep breath and let it out.