For a moment, a Bythos lingers at the entrance to the hold, the unblinking saucer of its fish-eye staring right at Cari, beckoning her. It’s the Monkfish, the one she saw on her first night on Ilbarin. She can still see the scars left by the broken glass.
“Now,” she hisses at Adro, grabbing him by the arm. They run out, staying low, and plunge into the midst of the procession.
The Bythos on either side of her extend their fins over her, soaking her with dripping seawater and slime.
The fishy stench is all-consuming; she can taste it in her throat, in the back of her sinuses. Slime coats the ground, making it slippery, and if she falls the Bythos might trample her to death. She can’t see anything except confused fragments of Bythos – a rotting buttock or forearm here, a wriggling fish-tail or gaping mouth there. She has to trust that the creatures will keep to their usual parade route, that they’ll march along the road to the town of Ushket.
Cari desperately wants to look back at the Rose, to see what’s happening on deck. Where’s Dol Martaine? The sorceress? Is Hawse all right? She can’t see anything except zombie fish-men, can’t hear anything except the hooting and yawping of the Bythos. She can’t tell how long they’ve been marching for.
Her lungs feel choked with their slime, her skin slick with goo. She feels them pressing on her. Their fishy gurgles and hoots become a hymn to the Lord of Waters, a plaintive cry for a missing parent. She’s not sure if their voices have changed, or if they’ve worked some change on her ears so she can suddenly understand. Is this how Hawse hears them?
Her fingers dig into Adro’s sleeve, holding his wrist tight. She can hear him cursing and complaining through gaps in the Bythos chorus.
Slimy rocks and mud give way to the packed surface of the road. The parade picks up speed, the Bythos wriggling with excitement as they rush towards Ushket. They’ve made it.
As they enter the town the parade breaks apart and the Bythos go their separate ways. Some turn down alleyways and streets; others just stop and amble aimlessly around. Cari tugs Adro into a sheltered doorway.
They’ve fucking made it.
“What the hell are we going to do?” Adro whispers, fearful of attracting attention. “We’ve got to get off the streets.”
“What about your place?”
Adro’s face is a mask of anguish. “No, no. I can’t bring you to Ren, Cari, it’s too risky. What were you thinking, going up against the Ghierdana like that?”
“We’re clear,” she says. “No one followed us.”
“Not that. In Guerdon. You stabbed Artolo! You crossed the dragon! Godshit.” He paces back and forth, rubbing his forehead. “I thought you’d just stolen from them.”
“Things were different back there.” She doesn’t know what to say. She’s already told Adro everything about her sainthood, but she can’t make him understand. He’s never known the strangeness of being close to the gods, the intoxicating and terrifying power to remake the world. And what terrifies her, almost more than anything else, is the thought that Artolo was nothing to her, back in Guerdon. He wasn’t the only crime boss or foreign spy she destroyed when she was the Saint of Knives. How many others are out there? How many enemies has she made in her heedless course? “It doesn’t matter anyway. Hawse said to go to the Street of Blue Glass – where’s that? Show me where to go, and I’ll go. You’ll never see me again.”
She knows she should leave him behind. She’s the source of the danger. He’ll be safe if she goes, right?
Until Dol Martaine finds out he was there. Until the witch finds him. Until her friend ends up as one of those poor starving slaves she saw working the hillside farms. There’s no “safe” on Ilbarin. Only degrees of suffering.
Cari grabs his hand. “Or come with me. We’ll get out. We’ll get Ren and your kid. We’ll come back for the captain, and we’ll all get out.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Guerdon was like the open ocean. Cari could easily lose herself in the sea of people, the flow of life in the streets. The choppy waters of the Wash, the fast-flowing river of Mercy Street emptying into the whirlpool of Venture Square.
By comparison, Ushket’s a small pond, and full of sharks. It’s not the first time Cari and Adro have run through the streets of a city, evading the Ghierdana, but back then they risked nothing but their own lives, and weighed the risk lightly. Tonight, they’re both conscious of their burdens, of how much they have to lose.
Cari’s got a better feel for Ushket, now. She almost feels like she knows the town, thanks to Hawse telling her about his excursions. Half the town’s been abandoned to the rising seas; the new harbour near the prefect’s fortress marks the dividing line. Downslope of that harbour, it’s all tidal ruins, inhabited only by the most desperate. The only way out of there is through the Ghierdana. Work in the labour camps, or the yliaster refinery. Or, if you want to get out faster, try jumping the fence that divides the town and take a Ghierdana bullet. Cari was very lucky, that first night. If the Monkfish hadn’t found her, she’d likely have ended up on the wrong side of the line.
Upslope of the harbour, life in Ushket is almost normal. People still have jobs there, still go to the market to shop, meet their friends for a drink. Oh, the lower levels flood when the tide’s high, and the temples are all ashes, but you could close your eyes and imagine that the Godswar never came.
But you’re still the dragon’s property, there. Cross the Ghierdana, and you lose everything. You go downslope, beyond the chain link fences and the barricades. Ushket isn’t a place where humans live, not any more. It’s a machine for enforcing compliance, for grinding every scrap of service out of a captive population.
The Street of Blue Glass, Adro tells her, is as far downslope as you can go without drowning. So, they go down, through alleyways choked with mud and driftwood, along walkways over flooded streets. She’d be lost without Adro as a guide, but when it comes to sneaking and slipping through the fences, she takes the lead, drawing on skills she learned in Guerdon. She and Adro make a good team, even after all these years.
It gets easier once they’re past the rotten heart of town – the prefect’s fortress. Cari glances up at the towers, wondering if Artolo’s behind one of those lighted windows. She tries again to recall her first clash with the Ghierdana boss, back in the New City – there were so many bastards to destroy in those glorious months of power. Slavers, rapists, murderers, arms dealers, god-touched – anyone who threatened the people under Spar’s protection, she broke. She looks up at those windows and tightens her fist, imagining the stone obeying her, blotting out the light.
The Street of Blue Glass looks to be entirely abandoned. Floodwaters surge in and out of the ruined buildings, like the street’s breathing.
“I can’t figure out the seas here at all,” mutters Cari. “Did the whole island sink? The sea level around the rest of the Firesea hasn’t changed, far as I could tell.”
“It’s all fucked.” Adro sounds shaken. “Kraken piled the seas up on Ilbarin – they’re not level any more. The Ghierdana have to use motor-tugs to pull ships up the slope. And it’s worse on the far side.”
The buildings that line the street were once physicians, artists’ studios, solariums. Most have shattered panes of blue glass in their upper storeys. There was a belief in Ilbarin that light filtered through such windows had healthful properties, and rich folk from the city used to travel to Ushket in the winter to bask in the blue-tinged sunlight. Now it’s all filtered through a murky soup of silt and broken glass.
“Do you know who we’re meeting?”
Adro shakes his head. “I’ve heard there are evil sorcerers living down this way – I’ve seen a black ship sailing through the ruins. Moving against the wind.” He probes the water with the captain’s sword. “The rumour is that they’ve got an arrangement with the Ghierdana, so no one dares come here.”
Something slithers past Carillon’s ankle, something sinuous and slimy. The waters around her churn with sudden
animation. It’s dark, and the faint moonlight dances on the leaping water without revealing what’s beneath. Adro ineffectively slashes at the water with his sword. It’s not one creature down there, it’s hundreds of them. It’s thousands.
It’s worms.
The worms boil out of the water, piling on one another, a pillar of writhing slimy bodies rising above Cari like a putrid wave. Two long fronds emerge obscenely from that central mass, growing in length and thickness. They shrug on a cloak of darkness, pulling the night sky around them as a garment. A worm-fingered hand passes over what approximates the entity’s face, and suddenly it’s got a white porcelain mask for a face. The mask smiles in an expression of bland reassurance.
The Crawling One extends a hand to Cari, offering to help her out of the water.
Adro runs forward, hacking at the Crawling One with his sword. It’s as ineffective as slashing the floodwater. His sword slips right through the monster, comes out covered in worm-goo, but the Crawling One isn’t wounded.
“We mean you no harm,” says the Crawling One. Its voice is rich and deep, soothing in its confident warmth, but there’s a disconcerting accompaniment – barely audible, at the edge of hearing – of other voices saying the same words. “We have been expecting you. Please, come with us.”
The long night has made Artolo’s eyes feel raw. He shuffles through the papers, and the columns of numbers dance in his vision. To the abyss with it – he’s no clerk to fuss over accounts. The shape of the problem is clear enough – the yliaster produced by the work camp is barely enough to meet the quotas demanded by Great-Uncle, and the supply of workers is limited and dwindling. Either fewer of the bastards get to leave, or they stop dying – or Artolo sends more bodies to the camp.
He tries to shove the papers away across the desk, but his gloves bend under the pressure. The damn ghost-finger spell has worn off again. He slams his palm down on the papers and paws them across the table. He storms across the room and fumbles with the doorknob but he can’t get a grip on the slick brass. Infuriated, he steps back and kicks the door down, splintering the lock. A passing servant in the corridor yelps in alarm and scuttles backwards.
“Where’s the witch?” demands Artolo.
“Shore! The shore! She’s down there!” The words come spilling out of the servant in a jumble, a frantic defence against Artolo’s anger. “Someone reported seeing the Guerdonese woman there!”
Artolo snorts, like a bull about to charge. The witch should have told him there’d been a tip-off. Has her sorcery rotted her brain? Damn Eshdana should know their place! The ash-mark can be wiped away as easily as he put it there, he thinks, but his limp fingers mock him. He remembers the first time she woke his ghost-fingers, and how pleasurable it was to dip his thumb in the ash and smear the grey dust across the brow of her helmet. She won her life with that spell.
But she must learn her place.
“Find Dol Martaine. Tell him to fetch my horse—”
“Begging your pardon, lord, but Dol Martaine’s gone down to the shore, too. Soon as he heard the witch was gone, he took his men and followed.”
“Get my carriage ready. Now.”
Cari doesn’t know if the Crawling One found this loft room intact, or if it salvaged furniture from all over Ushket. The shattered blue windows look out on the troubled stars over Ilbarin.
Adro sits down next to her on the rotted sofa, his eyes fixed on the Crawling One. His face has a sickly greenish cast, and his hands grip his knees tightly to keep from shaking.
“You may call us Twelve Suns Bleeding,” said the creature. “Forgive us – we were not expecting you until tomorrow. We intended to provide more pleasant environs for any negotiation.”
“But you have a ship, right?” asks Cari.
“One that suffices for our purposes,” says the Crawling One. “You will not find it a pleasant voyage, I fear.”
“And you’ve got an understanding with Artolo? With the Ghierdana?”
“We do,” says Twelve Suns Bleeding. “We do not interfere with their harvest of yliaster, and they do not interrupt our consumption of the remains.” There’s a sickening relish in the way it says the last word, a sort of leering. The Crawling Ones devour the dead, capturing what remains, reading the lingering patterns in the brain. The colony in front of her has the knowledge of hundreds of people, all their minds trapped within the grubs. There must still be corpses down there in the ruins of Ilbarin City. Most of the human remains would have rotted by now, but there could be the relics of saints and divine monsters. A banquet for the worms.
“Do they search your ship when it leaves?”
“We have, as you say, an understanding.”
“All right, let’s talk business.” Cari’s eager to get out of here. If things turn sour, they’ve got nothing that can hurt the Crawling One.
Twelve Suns Bleeding doesn’t so much sit as engulf the chair. “Do you desire refreshment? Dry clothing, perhaps?” The creature’s black robes are bone-dry.
Adro looks to Cari for guidance, and she shakes her head. Accepting anything from the Crawling Ones is perilous. Cari rarely dealt with them directly, back in Guerdon, but she knows they’re not to be trusted.
“You need not fear us, Carillon Thay.” It must notice her involuntary frown, as it continues. “Your friend Hawse did not tell us your true name. We knew it through other sources. We are exceedingly well informed on many matters.”
“Does my name make a difference? I just want passage to Khebesh.”
“We knew your grandfather.” The porcelain mask remains impassive, the voice measured. “He too sought the city of Khebesh.”
“He did?”
“When he was a young man, as humans reckon age. He came to Ilbarin as a merchant, trading with the prefects and the spicers by day, but by night he visited the crypts and the temple of Rammas, Recorder of All Deeds, seeking wisdom. He tried to enter Khebesh, but the gates of the sorcerer’s city open for few.” The mask tilts slightly, asking the unspoken question: why would they open for you?
“What was Jermas looking for in Khebesh?” Cari can’t resist wanting to know more. Her grandfather was a lunatic – he squandered the family fortune on a deranged attempt to remake the Black Iron Gods, to turn them from monstrous deities of carrion and suffering into something more tractable. Civic gods, protectors of Guerdon. Guardian spirits for the whole city.
“He sought the most skilled mortal sorcerers.” Twelve Suns Bleeding turns their pseudo-palms up, as if to say, what are we, invisible? Crawling Ones are far more able than fragile mortal flesh at surviving the devastating side effects of sorcery. “He found a renegade from Khebesh who was able to assist him in his efforts. We greatly admired your grandfather’s ambition. He foresaw what the Godswar entails for your civilisation. In time, he turned to us. We were honoured to be able to preserve part of his indomitable will.”
“The fucker’s ash now. And the ghouls kicked you worms out of Guerdon.” She knows she shouldn’t antagonise the Crawling Ones, but the way they’re talking about Jermas like he’s a visionary to be admired sickens her. The old man was a monster in human form even before he came back as a pile of worms.
The mask doesn’t slip. “A regrettable situation,” replies Twelve Suns Bleeding, “Guerdon holds much knowledge that should be preserved. The pioneers of alchemy were the greatest minds of their generation, and their souls were tossed down the corpse-shafts to be food for the savage ghouls, or burned as offerings to the Kept Gods. We offer a new path. A form of survival.”
Cari shudders as an unwelcome mental image appears in her brain – the towers of the New City, but they’re made out of a gigantic seething pile of maggots instead of heavenly stone. She perceives Spar’s soul locked within that worm-city. Another form of survival – and can she say it’s any worse than Spar’s current state? She imagines the worm-towers collapsing in on themselves, unwinding, taking on a new shape. A cloak of black, and then a white porcelain mask with famil
iar features. Spar’s face, no longer disfigured by the scales and carbuncles of the Stone Plague, but preserved for ever in perfection—
“Get out,” says Cari through clenched teeth, “of my fucking head!”
The Crawling One doesn’t react, but the thought vanishes, snuffed out like a candle-flame.
“We seek only understanding,” says Twelve Suns Bleeding mildly. “We are akin, are we not? All psychopomps, custodians of the souls of the dead.”
“Passage to Khebesh. For me.” Cari wonders how far she can push it. Ask for the moon, and get a silver coin. “And Adro, and his family. And Captain Hawse. After we’re done in Khebesh, you bring us back to a safe port. Not here – Paravos or the eastern Caliphate.”
Adro reaches over and squeezes Cari’s hand in gratitude. Of course, it complicates things. They’ll have to pick up Adro’s family. And circle back for Hawse and convince him to come. Hell, maybe it’ll be like old times. A pile of malign sentient grave-worms can’t be that much worse than sharing a cabin with Dol Martaine.
Twelve Suns Bleeding considers. “The city of Khebesh is closed to outsiders. None may pass the gate. How do you intend to gain entry?”
Cari tries a bluff. She shrugs. “I’m a thief. I’ll find a way in.”
The worms withdraw, the Crawling One seeming to recoil. It reminds Cari of a sea anemone pulling back its tendrils. “Khebesh is not as other cities. It is locked away behind the Ghost Walls. Even we are not able to force entry. Your skills will not avail you.”
“All right. If that doesn’t work, I’ve got something they want. A book.”
The mask slips a little. When Twelve Suns Bleeding speaks, the grave worm chorus is louder, more discordant. “What book?”
Adro shoots her a curious glance, too. Cari takes a deep breath before answering. The book’s her only leverage. It’s Spar’s only hope.
“A journal belonging to Guerdon’s chief thaumaturgist, Doctor Ramegos. She came from Khebesh. They’ll want her spell diary back, right? Much knowledge that must be preserved.”
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