The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  The flagstones of the street had been scored clean by winter, the lush greenery of the park stripped away, only now to start budding again. The air that gusted through the old millinery smelled of ancient dust, the fumes of Drazi bones rotting in their Slumswelter tombs.

  The Rot was almost there. He could feel it thickening in the shadows.

  He walked to the central hall, where every wall was now covered in pinned papers like the scales of a fish. The Molemen had stopped raiding by then, finally coming to the understanding that The Saint was being printed outside the city. Now they focused their efforts on the docks and the walls, but the Duke Gravaile had managed to keep slipping their noose so far, burying shipments deeper in the increased military requisitions the King was bringing in.

  He rested a hand on Shellaby, the black iron press that stood in the middle like some giant forlorn toad, long neglected. They would use it again soon. By the open archway shutters, built by Gellick a few months earlier, he braced against a rain-spitted wind, blowing through and making the papered walls shuffle like dry autumn leaves. He looked up, to where the Rot now filled half the sky, a yawning black hole into nothing. There were no clouds within it, no stars, only darkness, and an end for them all.

  It was time.

  He sat down at a table with a quill, inkpot, and paper, and started to write out the story of Sharachus. Everything had been building to this, and now he felt the change in the air. It was time to turn The Saint into a weapon.

  On the first page he wrote of the Spider's birth, leading up to the top of the Aigle palace, where the Rot itself healed the King. On a second he described the King's pact with the Rot, which had shaped the city's laws on caste and scars for thousands of years. Last of all he brought in Avia, and himself, and the children, finishing with a wood block print of the Gloam Hallows cathedral.

  He'd been working on it for months. It would be printed double-spread across two sheets, showing Avia in the fore with her scarred baby son with scars on his face. Behind her was the volcano and the Rot, and the burning figure of Saint Ignifer rising up to battle. Trailing behind him came the great bulk of his army, each figure tiny but filled with detail; many castes, many weapons, many people coming together for one aim, under one hero.

  The Saint Will Rise.

  It was a simple headline. It expressed everything they'd been building to.

  After a time Feyon came in from the larder-room and settled down beside him. She looked at the papers and the wood block.

  "It's time?" she asked.

  He nodded, and handed her the papers. It was hard to say anything.

  She read them in silence; slowly, carefully. When she was finished she turned his chin to face her.

  "I love you," she said. "From the start I've loved you."

  He held her close, and whispered the same words in her ear.

  * * *

  It took three days for the copies to return.

  In the dark before dawn Feyon and Gellick came back bathed in sweat and smudges of ink, with a heavy Ogric cart drawn by Gellick laden with ten thousand printed copies.

  They were beautiful. The image from the woodblock print shone from the double-page spread with a beautiful, crystal clarity. Just looking at it took Sen back to the Gloam Hallows cathedral, where this vision had begun.

  "We dropped hundreds already," Feyon said, as they loaded the mountain of papers into the millinery. "We'll distribute the bulk of them tomorrow night."

  They'd discussed the repercussions. They expected this final edition would blow the top off the city, with the King launching a full-scale war against his own citizenry. People would die. The revolution would rise, and hopefully the Saint would rise with it.

  "Did you warn your parents?" he asked.

  "They've moved," she said. "They had bags ready. The King has been watching his Court more closely than ever."

  Upstairs, sitting around the freshly oiled steam-press with huge stacks of blank paper in reserve at its side, they ate a somber breakfast together.

  "It's like the day you left the Abbey again," Gellick said into the silence.

  "I'm coming back," said Sen. "We'll do this together."

  Mare raised a glass of spiced wine. "To killing the Rot." They toasted.

  Sen looked around at them, at these four of his five friends from the Abbey, the children his mother had prepared, and wondered if he was mad to have brought them to this point, banking on faith in a dead hero to save them. Yet he only had to look up to see the dark jaws of the Rot closing on the city, as they had once closed on Aradabar, to know that it was real.

  "I'm lucky to have you," he said. "I'm proud to know you."

  "I'll second that," said Mare.

  That day was their last. They lay, and talked, and slept and ate. At times they played games in the park, around the pressroom, while the first bloom of revolution grew in the city without, from the roots they'd sown for years. When night fell they left, each towing carts stacked high with the final edition, peeling off through the Slumswelters one by one, bound for their own assigned districts, to sprinkle the final seeds on the city's fertile soil.

  Sen went with them, watching as they split off each to their own district, until at last he was alone, bound for Jubilante, and Alam.

  BOOK 5. THE ROT

  ALAM IV

  The city was restive, from the Carroway blind alleys to the off-Haversham lanes en route to the Roy. From every cracked window and back-shop doorway, deep-dug aling den and scarab joint, Sen overheard the susurrus whisper of rising dissent.

  Voices teetered back and forth about what the latest edition of The Saint meant. Few of them had read it yet, but they'd all heard of it and rumors of what it said, and they wanted to know more. Some were quiet and afraid, others drunkenly strident, openly questioning the King and wondering whether the Rot was more than just a hole in the sky, if it was really coming to devour them all.

  Hurrying along a row of revelatory-lit damask-halls, Sen overheard the painted ladies whispering to each other urgently, putting together the pieces about a de-limbed Spider called Sharachus and a scarred boy named Sen who defied the King.

  Through breaks in the building cover he glimpsed heavy Adjunc patrols setting up positions on the Haversham tradeway. The lumbering creatures stopped to beat those caught in their paths, too powerful and blunt-edged to manhandle people without breaking their bones, while their Moleman handlers worked at their leashes for control.

  Sen pulled his balaclava tight around his face and sped down the gutters of a row of terraced cottages near the Levi. Gilungel Bridge to the Roy was swarmed with Molemen, so he entered a sewer weir that lead to the Willoughby line. Walking in a dark tunnel underneath the Levi River, he pressed himself to the soot-blackened walls as trains hurtled by in stinging clouds of coal-smoke.

  He emerged through a ventilation grate on the river's opposite bank, then skirted Jubilante along the Levi banks, walking the narrow grindstone edge of cantilevered buildings that teetered out over the water, until he neared the site of a grand conflagration. He climbed a draining pipe to the roof of an old dovecote and looked out at the flames in Hattet Square, now abuzz with Molemen and fire.

  In front of the esteemed offices of The Soul, several wooden frames had been erected, hung with naked men being tortured by the Molemen. Newspapermen caught up in the King's folly. They were lit by the orange flicker of five bonfires mounded over with paper, within which the skeletons of five iron presses burned.

  The Soul would no longer be printing.

  It was strange, as it had only ever been loyal. Sen said a prayer to the Heart for these innocents at the Molemen's hands, then dropped into the street and continued on. There was nothing else he could do.

  Jubilante was largely deserted but for the odd Ogric-driven rickshaw rumbling by. At Alam's dormitory he entered easily, unobstructed, and walked the rows of sleeping boys until he found Alam again. He was even taller now, and thicker with muscle, and angry even in
his dreams.

  Sen nudged him gently awake, then pointed to the roof while he roused. He walked away without waiting, to the stairs, then on the roof turned to wait.

  The view overlooked a broad stretch of Jubilante, its square-cut old buildings like keys on the press-plate, split by narrow alleys and throughfares, largely in darkness but for odd gas-lamps and the fulgent glow of The Soul's fires.

  Alam joined him there shortly, dressed in his stovepipe jacket, embossed with the King's brand. He was fealted now, had earned his scrivenership. There was a cold confidence in his eyes, and in his fist he held the old gearsmith's ratchet.

  "I told you not to come back, Sen," he said. "I warned you."

  Sen met Alam's eyes. He'd imagined this moment many times, since he'd last failed atop this same rooftop well over a year ago. He could not fail again.

  "I see you're licensed now," he said, nodding at the mark on Alam's jacket. "To the Aigle, isn't it?"

  Alam spun the ratchet in his hand. "You've been watching me."

  "No."

  Alam snorted. "Of course you have. How else could you know that? The summons just came through a week ago. There's been no announcement."

  "I know, because I had you requested there."

  The snort became laughter, stifled by the quiet night, but raw and angry still. "Had me requested? Don't be ridiculous. You're just a boy."

  Sen smiled sadly. "Am I that ridiculous to you, Alam? Standing here, is it ridiculous that I've come back for my friend?"

  "We're not friends."

  Sen looked into Alam's fierce dark eyes, and felt something different from the previous time. He wasn't angry or worried anymore, he was contemptuous. Sen was something he'd left behind a long time ago, had moved on from, to be dealt with quickly now and forgotten.

  In a way, it was better. He could work with that.

  "You were right about Feyon," Sen said, toeing the roof surface, smudging old chalk scratchings. "I went to her instead of you."

  Alam didn't stir. "I don't care. Get off the roof or I'll throw you off."

  Sen didn't budge. "She's the one who requested you to the Roy. It's why you're in the Aigle. I'm sure you're a very good scrivener, Alam, but do you really believe they'd put a Spindle in such a respected position, without some grease to lubricate the gears?"

  Alam scoffed. "And you helped, I suppose? You made Feyon do it?"

  "It was her idea."

  Still there was no anger, only disbelief. "That's a lie."

  "Is it? Come touch my hand, Alam, I'll show you something you won't easily forget."

  The Spindle snorted. "That again? I'll be happy to." He raised the ratchet and started forward.

  Sen nodded at the ratchet. "It's good to see you're still carrying the gears in your heart. Keeping your father proud."

  "Shut up."

  Alam closed the distance between them and Sen drew his spikes, spinning them smoothly out to either side. Alam stopped.

  "I killed a King with these," Sen said conversationally. "I showed you that last time. Will I have to kill you too?"

  "You won't even get near me with those toys. Your head'll be caved in and all your fancy tricks will just ooze out."

  "Feyon sends her best wishes, by the way," Sen answered. "Mare too, Daveron and Gellick."

  Alam's dispassion faltered for a moment, the façade breaking before he pushed it back up again.

  "Gellick," Sen repeated. "That's right, he's with me too. We play Cuttlebones. I've got them all now, working with me. You're the only one out here alone."

  "Stop talking," Alam said. "Shut up."

  "You're your own man, I understand. But nobody gets to stand alone before what's coming, Alam. We need you, so we placed you in the Aigle, beneath a Pinhead arch-scrivener who hates you. How else could I know that, if I hadn't arranged it myself?"

  Alam took a step closer. "Tricks," he snarled. "That's all they ever were, to get what you want."

  "And what do I want Alam? I know you don't believe the Rot is real, even though you can see it growing in the sky. Maybe you think I get a thrill from this, having you as a doll with your life as a kind of game, so we're all laughing behind your back?"

  "You don't want to say these things to me now," Alam said, and Sen felt the anger rising off him. This was how they'd begun, with a rage-filled fight in the Abbey path's chalk dust.

  "I've come to gloat, then, have I? I ran away to Feyon and I've been laughing at you ever since. Doesn't that make you angry?"

  "You're trying to make me angry."

  "So get angry, spittle! I know what they did, all the boys here, how they pissed in your clothes and shat in your bed, beat you while you slept and cursed you while you woke, and you know what? I thought it was hilarious."

  Alam's face was shading red now, his breathing growing heavy. He pointed the ratchet at Sen's face.

  "I don't owe you anything. You want to laugh, go laugh somewhere else. Get the hell off this roof right now, or you'll regret it."

  Sen just stared. "Regret what? Regret that I ever thought you were my friend? Regret that I wasn't strong enough to help you when you needed me most? What am I supposed to regret Alam, you tell me, how many things do I have to regret?"

  "I'll hurt you," Alam whispered, his eyes shining and his knuckles white. "Don't make me."

  "So do it." Sen tossed his spikes to either side, clattering off the roof, and stepped up to Alam's face, tears in his eyes now. "Break my head open, Alam, if it's what you want. If you really think I'm here for myself, if the Abbey meant nothing to you, then do it now."

  Sen dropped to his knees and waited while the tumult of fury and frustration welled through Alam like a storm.

  "Do it!"

  * * *

  Alam's arm trembled. He gazed down into Sen's wide, calm eyes and saw himself reflected back. Only now, nearly three years after leaving the Abbey, was he finally building a path forward for himself. It would be so easy to drop the ratchet and close off this part of his life.

  He could carry Sen's body and dump it in the Levi. He could go on, becoming the scrivener he'd trained for years to be, and save enough money to buy his manufactory, all along knowing that Sen was no more.

  Would that make his father proud?

  Mare and Daveron, he'd said. Feyon and Gellick. It was probably a trick, but a trick for what? What kind of joke was this? He couldn't see the angles; the teeth of the gears didn't align. It was too much effort to make for nothing, too structured to be mad.

  Now here was Sen, as vulnerable as he'd been atop the tower. But they weren't boys any more. He'd had enough of Sen trying to direct his life, trying to steer him in a direction he preferred. Alam was his own man, and proud, just like his father before him, and he didn't need anybody's help.

  He brought the ratchet down.

  * * *

  The tool bounced off the rooftop with a thump, bounced once, then skidded to a halt.

  Sen felt Alam's anger swirling with confusion.

  "What have you done to me?" the Spindle asked, stepping back and looking at his hands as if they'd betrayed him. "Why do I feel like this?"

  "Because we're friends," said Sen. "And I need your help."

  Alam backed up further, looking around as if he'd lost his bearings. "I can't help you, Sen. I'm a scrivener in the Aigle. It's my life."

  "I know that. And I know how hard it was to get here."

  "You don't know! How could you?"

  Sen rose to his feet slowly. "I know it like I was there. I can feel it now. I'm sorry for it."

  The Spindle took another step backward, shaking his head. "You don't get to do this to me now. I'm going to the Aigle, Sen. It's my path."

  "And that's where we need you," Sen said softly.

  Alam just looked at him, then let out a breath, as if a string holding him up had been cut. He slumped inside himself. "Feyon really put me there?"

  "Yes. Her parents made a proxy request. Someone in the Aigle thinks they now hav
e a chip with the Gravailes."

  "And they're the reason I'm licensed, too?" Alam asked, the last anger draining out of his thin cheeks. Sen nodded, and his shoulders sagged and his long arms drooped heavily at his sides. "What is it you want me to do?"

  Sen reached inside his tunic to pull out a folded copy of The Saint's final edition.

  "Do you know this paper?"

  Alam looked. "That rag? Of course. It's full of sedition. The Molemen are planning a final purge to stem the flow of it."

  "They are." Sen pointed out over the rooftops, to where the red spark of numerous fires were visible as a glow off the surrounding buildings. "They're burning all the copies they can get their hands on, along with the offices and the presses of The Soul. There's no connection between The Saint and The Soul, but perhaps the King believes there is. The last edition is coming. Feyon, Gellick, Mare and Daveron are out distributing it now."

  Alam blinked. "What? Feyon and the others are doing what?"

  "Distributing it."

  It took a long moment for that to settle in. "You want me to believe you're behind The Saint?"

  "I am. They are. We're doing it together."

  Alam shook his head. "No. That's not possible. The Saint's reach is enormous. I heard stories from one of the southern satrapies, where a satellite of that paper brought on a civil war. How could you be behind that?"

  "Because of Feyon's parents," Sen answered easily. "They finance it, and the Duke prints our copies and smuggles them into the city. Just like they requested you for the Aigle. We all write it together."

  Alam laughed weakly. "And the Abbess edits you for grammar mistakes, is that right? What kind of fool do you think I am?"

  "I don't know what kind. Have you read it?"

  A muscle in Alam's cheek twitched. "No. They don't allow us frivolities like that in the Roy. We're to only read the Soul." He looked out at the fires. "At least, we were. I heard some rumors about the latest edition, of course. Apparently there were only a few copies. Something about a renegade Spider."

  "A Spider, that's right," Sen said. "Sharachus. He saved me. You may remember some of this from the memories we shared, the last time I was here."