ALAM V
When they reached the habitation block in Jubilante, Alam waited as the rest left the cart, nudging and kicking him as they went, then slid out feebly. It was hard to stand and his vision wasn't good. The other scriveners were filtering in to the building, but Collaber remained with a few of his cohorts, fists clenched.
"Where did you get it?" he demanded.
Alam said nothing.
"You humiliated us all. You don't belong here. Take your filth and leave Jubilante, spittle. Get back to the muck."
Alam looked at him, at the anger in his eyes, and thought about the long battle he'd planned to make of his life. Just like his father, fighting the castes a shade or two above him, expending all his energy just to keep the King's gears from grinding him down.
If the pain wasn't so bad he would have laughed. Instead he turned and started to hobble away.
Collaber laughed.
"That's right, spittle!" he called after him. "You finally learned your place. Good boy!"
A few rocks landed either side of him, striking off the cobbles, but none hit him. He barely heard their cries. He trudged down through Jubilante in a fog of pain, oblivious to the chaos building around him. Across Gilungel, he saw teams of Adjunc and Molemen working to bolt cannon into position. He showed his seal of fealty when they asked, mumbled some story about being on a scrivening mission for the King, and they let him through.
Down the river, on the distant Haversham he glimpsed stick figures of more Adjunc swarming around bonfires of books, fuming the night air with a starry blizzard of burning words. When he reached the dark side bank, he was knocked down by an Allswellmen, running about the streets with a water-damped net on a long pole, trying to catch floating embers as they spread on the hot wind.
He trudged on down the Haversham, until the bristling flanks of Adjunc grew too thick, and ahead he saw signs of a turbulent, pell-mell fracas beginning. Screams rang out, and there came the clash of metal on metal, and he turned off the Haversham for quieter side streets.
He found a sun-browned park and drank deeply from a water spigot, but no amount of could wash away the sour taste of ink. He walked on, barely able to look up, while the things Sen had said filled up his mind.
The address was still intact, miraculously, written neatly on the last page of The Saint. In the Slumswelters, they had taken refuge in an old hat shop. It was ridiculous, but still he kept walking. He didn't know what he would do when he reached them, but he could not only stand by while Carroway was destroyed.
There were screams as he passed Grammaton Square. The air smelt of tar and wood-smoke, and there were crowds gathered around bonfires, tossing rocks and flaming bottles at a line of Adjunc. Their powerful bodies rippled oddly in the chaos while Molemen called out instructions.
There was a fire at the clock tower's base. In the shadows away from the flames, several Adjunc battled a mob brandishing pipe-hoes and cast-metal pans. They reared back and crushed men in their deadly embrace. The crowd managed to pull one of them down, and a cry went up, spreading the fighting to nearby streets.
Alam moved on, and their battle spread around him, creating a trail of detritus and bodies behind. Here and there he was tugged at here by frantic figures. A Euphlact with a staved-in horn seized him by the arm and yelled incomprehensible words into his face. Only afterward, moving in a daze through smoke and dust, did he realize the man had been crying out, "For the Saint!"
Then he was once more on quiet streets, winding through Carroway where he had grown up, where his father had sold the skill in his hands for debt. He'd always crafted such fine-toothed gears, the finest of any gearsmith in the district. What strange paths the Heart worked, he wondered.
An ill-matched brigade of low-caste citizens on stocky workhorses reared round a corner. The riders atop them were tinpot knights, clad in bizarre armor of cookware and roofing tiles, holding graveyard spikes and butchery picks aloft as weapons. They clattered down the street past him, waving a bloody banner. Alam watched them force entry to a terraced hovel and set it alight from within.
The Slumswelters were silent, and felt like stepping into an open, dry grave. He trudged the gray streets and wondered if this was truly the end, with the city pulling itself apart at the seams. Looking up at the sky, he saw the black bowl of the Rot stretching further down on either side, covering half of the sky.
At last he reached the old building on a corner of two un-named streets, near an un-named park near to the Calk wall. He saw a figure standing on the roof.
"Hello, Alam," Sen called down.
He passed through the ground floor lit by shards of moonlight, climbed the dark stairs in a fugue. Sen stood alone on the roof, silhouetted against the distant fires of the city, his scarred face pocked with orange shadows from the burnlight. Alam hobbled near, not sure what he was going to do. With one shove Sen would topple from the roof, strike his head on the flags below, maybe die like all the people he'd fated with his paper. He could do that. He thought about it until the last moment, as he stood within reach of his old 'friend', craning his battered neck back to look him in the eye.
Perhaps something passed between them. Alam wasn't sure. But his hands didn't shove Sen off the roof. Rather they stretched out, showing the blood-crusted newsroll still wrapped in his fist.
"You did this," he said, voice raspy with fatigue. "It's your fault."
Sen nodded. "I thought it might go badly for you, Alam. I'm sorry for it."
Alam gave a dry laugh that hurt his throat. "Sorry?" He waved at the distant Haversham tradeway, where ant-sized Adjunc were now marching with a rail held aloft, strung with charred bodies. "The city's in open revolution because of you."
"Not because of me," Sen said sharply. "It's the King doing this, and the Rot. I just told the truth."
Alam's laughter became half-manic. "You can't blame everything on the Rot, Sen. This is real."
In the distance something exploded, sending a brief plume of fire upward. The bang echoed round the barren Slumswelters streets, setting the fetchlings in the park to flight. They both peered out at the dark skyline, seeking a sign of what structure had blown, but the city was too much aflame to pick it out.
"I know it's real," Sen said, in the strangely quiet aftermath. "It's necessary. The city has to rise for the Saint to follow."
Alam shook his head. "The Saint is just a myth, Sen. I've seen the King's orders. The attack is coming. All this, it's skirmishes." He waved a hand. "What do you think will happen when all those Adjunc charge, except a lot of people are going to die?" He sucked in a breath. "What do you think when they bring the cannon down here and fire? There's no shining hero coming to save us from that. You've started a war you can't win."
Sen didn't speak for a long moment. Instead he studied the taller boy's bloodied hands, his hunched back. "I think they must have whipped you," he said at last. "What they did to your fingers, I have no idea."
Alam turned over his clotted, trembling hands. "Stitching," he mumbled. "They had me sew the papers I fouled, as I sat agitating about you. They found the copy of The Saint you gave me."
Sen nodded, then turned his gaze to the burning skyline. A hot wind dusted orange embers down the ruined street.
"I can't change what happened, Alam, neither between us nor what the city did to you. I'm sorry that it hurt, but I'm glad that it's brought you here. I need you. Without your help, all this will fail."
The Spindle looked around. "Your glorious revolution? It's already failing, with or without me."
"Then why are you here?" Sen pressed. "Why did you come tonight, if that's what you think?"
Alam said nothing for a time, only swayed in the dusty wind. The muted ruck of roaring voices washed faintly over them. "I don't know," he said at last. "Maybe I was angry. I had to come."
"I think you wanted to be part of it," Sen said. "I think you're sick of a city where your father can be killed for debt, where caste dictates your life, where we live every day in fear o
f what the King might decree. Wouldn't you change that if you could?"
Alam hacked out another laugh. "That's the difference between us, Sen. I always lived in the real world."
Sen held out his hand. "This is the real world, Alam. Let me show you."
Alam looked at his scarred hand, and was faintly reminded of his father's hand, extended through the Abbey bars all those years ago. He hadn't taken it then, and regretted it ever since.
He took it now.
Sen's warm hands wrapped around his, and showed him things that weren't possible and couldn't be real; Kings, and cities, and battles in the sky. He saw three thousand years of preparation, and a long, lonely lifetime of suffering, and the epic sweep of Avia's plan, and a glorious hero rising into the sky.
It changed everything.
He'd always fought. His father had taught him to fight to his last breath, and he'd been ready to do that. Build the manufactory. Fight the tiny battles of caste every day, and force his way upward in the world.
But what about his people? What about every Spindle coming up behind him, would his battles help them at all? If he had the King's mark, would it allow them a better life?
Looking into Sen's gray eyes, he understood what was coming, and couldn't stop it as tears ran down his cheeks.
"No," he said.
Sen smiled, and in that smile Alam saw the boy who climbed the Abbey tower, and would soon climb higher still to kill the Rot.
"I have to."
Alam laughed through his tears. "I can't climb with you this time."
"Not this time."
Alam nodded. So much had changed in a few moments, but it had always been there, just waiting for the right lever to spring it loose. It was funny, and ridiculous, and he didn't care. It all led to this, and he couldn't help but believe. He was a Spindle, and it was time to stand up and be proud.
"Show me, then."
Sen nodded, and led him down off the roof, helping him to walk as the pain and exhaustion dug in deep. They stopped on the second floor at a frayed gray curtain, behind which he knew everything lay, everything he'd longed for for so long, and never known it. Sen sparked a hanging revelatory lantern, then pushed the curtain aside to let gaslight spread into the dark hall beyond.
There were papers everywhere. They hung from the walls and ceiling like thick rushes of vines, and standing amongst them were the others.
Feyon, Gellick, Mare, and Daveron.
Alam's knees trembled. "Gellick," he said.
The Balast strode over and wrapped his black-lithed arms tenderly about Alam's back, pulled him close with bright tears in his eyes too.
"I've missed you," Alam whispered.
"I've been waiting for you," said the Balast. He lifted Alam in his arms as easily as if he were a child, and carried him over to a cot amongst the papers, where he laid him down.
Alam gazed up at their faces through blurry eyes, at the papers tacked to the walls and hanging down from above.
"I never thought," he mumbled, as he felt the long day and night take their toll on him, as emotion overcame him, "I never knew…"
"It's all right, Alam," Feyon said, stepping close and taking Alam's wounded hand gently in her own. She was so beautiful, but somehow through his tears her face took on that of his father, and finally he was holding his hand.
"I'm sorry," he slurred, as his eyes rolled shut and their faces turned to black. "They made me sew paper."
"I know," came Sen's voice, the last thing Alam heard before the darkness took him. "But never again."
* * *
As Alam fell to a deep sleep, Sen tuned the gaslight to a dim glow, while Feyon fetched a bowl of distilled amaranth and a clean white rag from beside the press.
"Let me," said Daveron, and took the rag. He knelt down before Alam's long, spit-stained body and began to tenderly clean his clotted hands.
"They'll pay for this," said Mare. Sen felt the cold rage rising off her. Once she had disdained the Spindle for his weakness. Not anymore, because what they saw here was not weakness. It was strength twisted into an impossible shape, forced to contort like the trees of Indura, just to survive the King's law. She picked up one of the stacked single-sheet copies of The Saint, the first edition of a new direction they'd run off the presses that day, filled with orders for their gathering troops in the streets.
"After this, there'll be nothing holding us back. The city will rise."
Sen nodded, then looked round at them all. "Thank you."
An hour passed, two, while Daveron treated Alam's hands and the wounds on his back, while they prepared, loading their bags with the Saint's first true call to arms. Sen stood at the hole in the wall, and they went to him one by one, to say goodbye.
"No more Cuttlebones," Gellick said, his eyes still red.
"You'll play with Alam," Sen said. "You'll play with other Balasts in the open air, I swear it."
He watched them each leave, waving them down the old nameless street past the park, each to their own districts, to their own armies, into the furious embrace of the city.
Last of all was Feyon, who kissed him long and hard.
"I'll come back," he said, when she let him, whispered words between them. "I promise."
She smiled, because they both knew it was a promise he couldn't make. She took his hands in hers and squeezed. "So will I. Say hello to Saint Ignifer for me."
He smiled, then she was walking away, down through the millinery, out into the dark of the burning city alone.
RAISE THE SAINT
Sen stood watching over the street after she was gone.
It was hard to believe that this was really it. The Rot. The Saint. He looked out at the city, to the skirmishes down the Levi's banks and the fires in the Roy, to the Aigle palace standing against the stars like a fractured shard of bone.
A short distance above it hung the lip of the Rot.
It was massive now, filling the dome of the sky with its endless black throat. There were stars only at the fringes, but no moon and no clouds overhead. The Rot had expanded to cover half of the sky. It was happening right now.
He took a breath. Feyon was still in his thoughts. It was a strange progression, from their earliest days in the Abbey to this, from a silly girl dressed in frills and ribbons to a leader of the revolution, and the woman that he loved. It was the same for each one of them, his friends. Now their strange lives were bound together in intricate ways, like threads woven into a tapestry, crafting something far greater than they could ever have made on their own.
Now it was time to tie off the threads.
He walked over to Alam, sleeping peacefully on his cot. Simple dreams of the past ran through his mind, of arguing with Gellick on the grounds about Cuttlebones points. For the first time since he'd left the Abbey, Alam was at peace.
Sen began gathering up the papers that were tacked to the walls and spilled across the floor. That part of their work was done now. He stacked them in the larder room fireplace, then uncapped a fresh tin of whitewash.
There was no urgency to his actions in this final task. With the same brush he'd used many times before, when plotting Sharachus' route or planning their Aradabar hunt, he daubed a final coat of whitewash over the walls and ceiling. When it was done, he sketched once more the lines and angles of the city onto it in dark graphite, charting the path the revolution would take. He added the Molemen bastion forts, and the Adjunc line on the Haversham, and the cannon on Gilungel Bridge.
This was the map they would work from.
When that was done, he detuned the gaslight, rested a hand briefly on Alam's fevered forehead for a final time, then left the millinery behind.
* * *
Walking the empty streets of Carroway toward Afric and the Ambertham line, he felt at peace. Leaving had been harder then he'd imagined, but now it was done and he felt calm and focused. There was something complete about seeing the end of the track his mother had laid out for him. All he had to do now was walk it
.
He felt light.
A bi-rail carriage clattered by overhead, ablaze, dropping trails of cinders that caught and smoldered in old thatch roofs. Soon the whole of the Boomfire would burn. He watched the carriage rattle off, its orange light casting fleeting shadows along the streets, raining fire until it was out of sight.
He walked on, taking side routes off the Haversham, echoing now with the sound of street battles. Down lanes and alleys he saw brief vignettes of the Haversham fighting: a Cowface on the ground as an Adjunc stamped down, Ratfer children fleeing, a Gaunt with his head on fire bashing it against a stone wall, a brigade of Molemen raising their flintlocks. All their thoughts were chaotic, even the Molemen now, put in charge of beasts that were never meant to be so controlled. There was a thickness to it like the air before a storm, heavy with anticipation.
Sen stepped around wreckage. Carts with their wheels torn off lay in half-hearted barricades across the cobbles, staffed with early corpses of the revolution. Here was a dead half-Balast spotted with a dozen rounds of flintlock fire, the little leaden balls lodged tight in the rock-hard oil of her wounds. Here was an Induran crushed to pulp by the many hands of Adjunc.
Grammaton Square dawned like a battlefield. Everywhere was violent motion, shouting, begging, the loud crackle of flames. A hot wind carried the stench of burning flesh. Molemen had set a frame in the ashes around the Grammaton tower and driven raw spikes into the stone, from which bodies hung three deep. The tower's pink sandstone had turned blood red, becoming a tree of the dead with corpses blooming from its metal branches like gory flowers.
A wounded Adjunc saw him and loped over with its gray arms spreading. Sen stepped inside the creature's closing fist smoothly, reached through its arms as it began to squeeze, and impaled it through the head with a double thrust of his spikes.
Even as the creature shrieked, he shut down its thoughts with his mind, stabbed it once more in the neck and heart with each misericorde, and it sank without another sound.
He stepped over the corpse, and on.
The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1) Page 41