The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  "To Mare and Daveron," she said at last, holding out her cup. "Coming home."

  "To Feyon, Sen, and Gellick," answered Mare. "And to the Saint." They drank.

  "It's just like the Abbey first day again," said Gellick cheerily. "Except with liquor."

  Even Daveron laughed.

  "It's good to see you here," Sen said, finally finding the right words. "Both of you."

  "I'm here to help, however I can," said Mare. "I can't speak for Daveron though."

  She turned to the Moleman.

  "Daveron…" Sen began, then trailed off. After what he'd done, how he'd used him for so long, he didn't know what could be said. Trails of the Moleman's long year of brokenness still clung like a dark cloud around him, though they were eclipsed by this new thing with Mare. He was changing before them even now. "If I'd thought you wanted to, I would have asked you to join us a long time ago. I'm sorry."

  The Moleman didn't blink. "You never asked. You only took. You destroyed me, that night. You did not have the right." He looked at Mare, who gave a slight nod. "But I am at peace now."

  "It was cruel," Sen said. "I should have found a better way."

  "It was cruel," Daveron repeated blankly, "but then so was I. My people were cruel. Now the King has driven them beyond realms they would ever have considered lawful. He asked no permission either, and his crime is the worse. So I have come to help."

  Sen nodded. It wasn't forgiveness, but acceptance. It was a foundation to build on. "Then thank you. We need as much help as you can give us."

  He looked around at them all. What would Avia say, if she could see this now?

  "Let me show you our work," he said.

  Together with Feyon and Gellick he led them round the hall, pointing to the scraps of paper detailing their plans for the final run into rebellion, and explaining the system they'd arranged with the Duke Gravaile.

  "Most of all, we have to be ready," he said, as they sat down at one of Gellick's rock-solid hand-crafted tables. "I can feel the Rot coming. It's growing faster every day. We have to be ready."

  "It's already here," Mare said. "In places across the world. I've seen it with my own eyes."

  She told them about how the sky had turned black at Faldrop Edge, and the rumors of tongues falling to cleave ships out of the water.

  "I heard rumors," Sen said. "Navvies have been talking about it for months, sometimes as clouds, sometimes a great monster, but always black and filling the sky. We never knew for sure."

  "It's real," Mare said. "And it's spreading fast, getting stronger, covering more land and ocean. There can't be long left. I understand what your paper is, how it's a rebellion and a statement of everything we are. I just need to know how we can help."

  Sen smiled. Years had gone by, but now he realized how much he'd missed Mare, always so blunt in their night time sessions. He'd even missed Daveron, sitting there quiet and assured, soaking up everything. This was surely what Avia had intended.

  "We need your stories," he said. "We've hardly any left, and it's more important now than ever." He pointed out through the arch, where the stars and city lights both twinkled against black. "The next deadline is just a few hours away. Can you give us anything? It can be on caste, on the King, on the Rot, on history. Anything that will help build our argument."

  Mare grinned, then pulled off her Induran cowl, revealing her dark tattoos to the light. Gellick gasped. "These are my stories," she said. "From all around the world. From the Aradabar diaspora."

  Sen's heart quickened. All his life he'd been the one condemned for the marks on his skin. To see Mare like this, having condemned herself by choice, moved him in a way he didn't understand.

  "Like a mirror, I know," she said. "Though I'm sure yours were more painful."

  "I was just a baby," he managed, his throat tight. "I don't remember."

  Mare tapped her head. "Then it's in here, even deeper. But you wanted stories, and I've got the perfect one to start."

  She told them the tale of her gypsy captain, a lost descendant of Aradabar, and his endless fight against the monster inside. Sen and Feyon both took notes as Mare ran her fingers across her body, tracking the story along her tattoos.

  When she had finished, Daveron told the story of the first Moleman, Awa Babo, but this was a version of his tale that Sen had never heard before, one the Molemen kept only to themselves. In his version Awa Babo was a trickster god who riddled directly with the Rot, in exchange for great knowledge. In the bargain Awa Babo lost all his senses, but gained the wisdom to build Aigle skyships and other weapons of war, which allowed his Mjolnir Federacy to expand across the world, even up to the edge of King Seem's Absalom dusts.

  Between them, along with the latest news and a piece on the growth of the Rot across the world, the two stories filled a single edition. Working in hasty tandem with Sen and Feyon they plugged the stories into their overall plan, inserting connections to the Saint and the city and anchoring it in details from their own lives. When it was finished and the draft prepared, Gellick and Feyon took it from the millinery and out to a designated park bench in Cragfennel Square, where the Duke's man would collect it.

  It left Sen alone with Mare and Daveron.

  By the ruddy glow of a revelatory, across the table scattered with scrawled notes, Mare winked at him. "So you're the homemaker then."

  He flushed red. She laughed.

  "Really," he protested, "we're not like that. We're friends."

  It was true. They had barely even touched since her arrival nearly a year ago. At the beginning he wouldn't have wanted to, still so confused by his old anger. Yet as the time passed, and she shared the hardships of their life in constant flight, and the keenness of her courtier's mind came to the fore in pieces that unveiled the hypocrisy at the heart of the Roy, that began to change.

  Sometimes he dreamed about the time he'd kissed her in the doll room. Sometimes he'd catch himself watching her while she worked, as she brushed stray curls of red hair off her fair blue cheeks, when her forehead creased as she concentrated on a slippery point of an essay.

  It was a confusing thing.

  They'd held hands once, sitting on the old church where Sharachus had urged him to go to the Gutrock, hiding out from a raid. That was three weeks ago, and it had made his heart race crazily. He'd had trouble getting it out of his head ever since. He'd wanted to do more.

  Mare just smiled. "Well, you will."

  He blushed harder.

  "And you need more stories," Daveron said, breaking the moment.

  "Yes," Sen said quickly, happy to change the subject. "Every day, it's endless. There's a larger plan for the last few editions, so for now we need to keep building. Anything that unites the people, and drags down the King and raises up the Saint."

  "I have so many more stories," Mare said. She told him of Caracts who believed the Rot was just a gap in the Heart's mind and rain was its memories poured out. She told of the legendary Cray, pirate captain of the Albatross who chased after the white vault of heaven, searching for his lost love swallowed within. She told more tales of the Aradabar diaspora, and their long years of hunting for a part of the Corpse to call their own.

  Daveron interspersed his ideas as she went, adding tales of woe from the men he'd once beaten, all their long and convoluted excuses rattled out in shades of blood, love, and addiction. He described other secret myths of the Molemen, origin stories about the first tail and how it was won, the first snout and why it was grown, of their velveteen fur and how that aided in bringing order to all things.

  Sen wrote notes throughout, sewing more richness into the tapestry of The Saint. When Feyon and Gellick came back, they drank more amaranth to celebrate, until it seemed a good idea to go out into the park and throw Cuttlebones in the long grass by moonlight. They didn't have Cuttlebones though, so Gellick suggested they used sticks, and nobody disagreed.

  "I never understood the appeal of this game," Daveron said, as he tossed a stick which n
arrowly missed Mare, clacking off the fountain at the center. "It's just so pointless."

  "Your tail is pointless," answered Mare, and threw a dirt clod at him. "It's just a stub."

  He threw a clod back at her, and then the two of them were wrestling on the ground. Sen laughed as they bit each other, and made each other squeal, until the sounds grew a bit too boisterous. Then he, Feyon and Gellick went back into the millinery, and Gellick retired to his Hax, leaving Sen and Feyon standing along in the orange glow of the brazier.

  In the shadows she looked beautiful. She wasn't the girl she'd been before. Sen felt a flush of heat rise into his face, and thought probably he should say something.

  "I-" he began, just at the same time as she said, "We-".

  They laughed.

  "You go," Sen said, heart racing now. Something was changing here. He felt fuzzy and happy in a way he hadn't felt before; maybe the amaranth, or the return of Mare, or something else. The moment seemed to crystallize, and there was something about the way she was looking at him now, something that made him feel bigger than anything else in the world.

  "Let's go up on the roof," Feyon said, and reached out a hand. "Count some stars."

  As if in a dream, he took her hand.

  They stumbled together, both fuzzily tipsy. They sat at the roof edge, where the giggling and squeaking of Mare and Daveron below were just a murmur, resting atop the low whisper of Gellick at his Hax. Shellaby bugs flickered in the overgrowth, flitting across the red and yellow lights of the city. His heart swelled up like a hawkenberry, ready to burst seeds into the air, and every breath felt like it was filling him up a little more, making the next breath harder to draw.

  "It looks beautiful like this," Feyon said, running her fingers absently over the back of his hand. He clutched the edge of the roof so hard that his knuckles cracked. Images drifted back to him of another time, in her doll room when her face had been so close, and outraged, and all he'd wanted to do was kiss it.

  "The city and the stars," she whispered.

  Sen took a breath, and pointed up. "The Book of Airs says every star is another sun. Around every sun, there are more worlds, just like this one. The Corpse Worlds." He paused, letting the moment lengthen, thinking about what he even wanted to say. "I sometimes wonder, is there a boy on one of those worlds like me, looking back at us now, and wondering the same thing?"

  Feyon made a soft sound of assent, then lay back on the roof's dry, warm tar paper, letting her hand rest against his thigh. Sen lay down carefully beside her, certain she would feel the thumping of his heart through the wood.

  "The Corpse Worlds," Feyon sighed contentedly, looking up. "My mother used to say the stars were the eyes of all the past Gravailes, watching down. My grandmother was up there, she said, and one day she would go to join her, and my father, and me too."

  She'd never told him that before. He turned to find her already looking at him, and her glowing, perfect face in the starlight nearly stole away his breath. "That's beautiful," he said.

  "You're beautiful," she answered, and reached one hand shyly up to touch his face. He didn't pull away. Her fingertip was a tingling thrill on his scars, drawing a slow, soft path over his cheek, down his chin and into the hollow of his throat. "I always thought so, even from the beginning. I didn't know how to say it. But you are. Your mother made a work of art."

  He smiled sadly. "It's my mother's work."

  "No, it's yours now. You're making it your own, like Mare. You're making it ours, and I'm thankful for that."

  "Feyon-" he began, but now she leaned forward and kissed him. Her lips pressed hard against his, soft and firm at the same time, and he couldn't breathe but that didn't matter, because this was better than breathing. His heart rammed his ribs and his lungs felt ready to burst, and he kissed her back hungrily, like a drowning man.

  She shuffled her body against his, and they wrapped their arms around each other, and kissed passionately beneath the stars, with the Corpse Worlds and the eyes of all the dead Gravailes looking down.

  ABSENCE

  For a time it was like it always had been in the Abbey, only better.

  Daveron and Feyon joined in everything, where before they'd stood to one side. In long sessions gathered around a table in the millinery, round a pew in the ramshackle church, in the bottom of a dry sewer sump beneath Carroway, they hammered out their editions, weaving fresh strands into the tapestry of the Saint's rise.

  Mare undertook delivery duties on the dark side, after Sen showed her the basics on running the roofs and sewers. At the same time the Duke increased their print numbers exponentially, to eight thousand copies each run. The Saint was everywhere, on the lips of every district, while the Molemen and fresh floods of Adjunc washed through the streets every night.

  In the few giddy hours when they rested, between the dawn relief of a delivery run completed and the call of their cots before the cycle began again, they listened to the city for the next raid. In stolen moments between the dawn and the day, they played giddy, half-drunken games in the park. Gellick invented new ones, like hop-scotch-a-rock, which none of them but Gellick really understood, since it seemed he made up the rules on a whim. He always won, but they played anyway. They drank together and ate together, then each night the couples retired to their secluded corners of the millinery, leaving Gellick to relive the day in his Hax.

  But there was still one thing missing. Alam.

  It was hard for Sen to really grasp his absence, with all the noise of the others, with Feyon always there and their new love blossoming in such sweet, overwhelming waves, but there was a constant sense of something missing, a hollow flavor in their interactions, something still undone that he knew he had to do.

  Alam had a role to play. He didn't know quite what it was, or how to bring him in, but as the weeks went by he spent more time thinking of it. Alam had already seen what Sen had to offer and rejected it. He couldn't force him to join the Saint, but without his presence they would never be ready.

  One night as he sat on the roof waiting for Feyon and Gellick to return from a Cragfennel drop, Mare came to sit by his side.

  "Thinking of your dog?"

  He snorted. That was an old joke now.

  "I miss him. He should be here."

  "I heard he punched you in the face."

  Sen sighed. "Yes. Nearly knocked me out. Then he threatened to kill me if he saw me again."

  Mare laughed. "Sounds like Alam. He's stubborn, like you."

  "Like you," Sen countered.

  "True. But he won't come of his own accord, not like me. He wasn't pleased to see me, when I went to Jubilante. You'll need to persuade him."

  "I know. But how?"

  Mare absently twirled a length of curly hair around her tattooed fingers. "Help him understand. You took a big risk with Daveron, exposing everything. I think you'll have to go even further for Alam."

  "But I already showed him everything," Sen said, exasperated. "The things I've seen, the truth about Aradabar. He thought it was a trick."

  Mare frowned, bringing the puddingy side of her face up tightly. "Wasn't it a trick? An easy way out? I think it's got to hurt more than that, Sen, more than just a few punches and harsh words. You're not boys any more. You almost killed Daveron, and you put your life in his hands, but for Alam you only turned up and touched his hand, as if you really thought he was a dog who would come running."

  Sen frowned. She was making it sound awful. "I suppose I wanted to respect him. His choices. I didn't give Daveron that choice, and I've regretted it ever since."

  "It was easier with Daveron," Mare said, nodding. "What he was doing, the person he was, it was all wrong. It's not like that with Alam, is it? He's doing a good thing, fighting for his caste. But it's a small war. It's not big enough. You have to show him how big the war really is."

  Sen sighed. "I have to ruin his life."

  Mare patted him on the shoulder and rose. "Probably. Avia set it up that way, right? But
he'll get what he wants in the end, anyway."

  Sen looked up at her. "What, a gear manufactory? I don't think the Saint is promising that."

  She laughed. "He might. But that's just a symptom; look at the cause. Look at who killed his father. Not just Molemen, just like it wasn't just mogrifers who took my brain."

  "The King," Sen said. "The whole system of the city."

  "That's right. And what are we doing here, Sen, if we're not overthrowing the King and his system? If your Spider friend was right, they're the same. We have to do both. We have to kill the King, even as we kill the Rot. Alam might like to hear that."

  Sen looked back at his hands, working a sprig of dried moss between them. "Right."

  "Right."

  She patted his shoulder and walked away.

  * * *

  The black hole in the sky grew.

  Soon HellWest buzzed with stories of its growth, and The Saint carried them all. They increased their print run again, as the city and the world turned to them for stories of hope. Independent presses in other cities began churning out copies of their compendiums, sold in all the ports of the world. Their new stories began to coalesce toward a final unification, bringing in more castes, from navvies and Indurans to Molemen to Blues and Orioles, until even the new stories gradually petered out. Again they spent longer working on new ideas, scraping together enough to publish. All that remained were the final stories that would trigger the end.

  Spring came round again. Another autumn and winter had come and gone in a flurry of long revelatory-lit nights, pouring their energy onto paper. They were exhausted, dry from draining their minds of every idea, and the Rot was so large it sometimes blocked out the sun.

  It was evening, and Sen rose from a nightmare. They were growing worse as the days lengthened and the nights grew warm. Always they were images of the Rot and the destruction it would bring. After-images danced across his eyes; a column of fire and a rain of ash, as he peered through a crack in the wall while Feyon stirred in the blankets behind him.