She brings the sword down on him, putting her whole weight behind it, and, fuck, it’s awful. The blade bites, sinks in, and he lets out a ghastly gurgle, blood and spittle bursting from him with the sound. He whimpers, one leg kicking against the tiles, hands grabbing at her shoulders, clawing at her face.
Cari’s not a stranger to bloodshed, but not like this. When she was just a thief, she cut and ran. A quick slash with a sharp blade to slow down a guard, to slice her way free when someone tried to grab her. For all she knows, maybe someone she cut like that bled out, maybe the wound festered and they died from it, but she never hung around to find out. Cut and run.
And when she was the Saint of Knives, it was different. For one thing, she knew who she was killing. Spar could see everything that happened in the New City, so she could watch them. She could judge them with the perfect knowledge of a god. And when she did confront them, it was like a game. She had all the power, she was sainted and invulnerable, and they were – for the most part – only human.
It’s not like this. She has to work to kill the boy, to kneel on top of him and push the blade in. She doesn’t know how to do it clean, or quick. She has to look into his eyes as she does it, and they’re full of confusion and fear. What does the boy see when he looks at the woman who murdered him?
He’s still moaning and dying when Adro finds her, pulls her away. “Come on! Come on!”
She lets Adro lead her to a rotting roof garden when Ren and the boy wait. Ren’s shaking with the effort of stifling his cough, to avoid giving them away to the other guards searching for them. A swaying rope ladder gets them down to street level. No sign of Twelve Suns. Adro lifts the child like a sack, and Cari and Ren run after him. There’s a pinkish glow in the distance, beyond the Rock. Sunrise is coming soon. Right now, curfew’s working in their favour, but once dawn comes there’ll be more eyes, more desperate people looking for their own ticket out. Speed’s their only hope now. Sprinting through the mud, Ren spluttering and spitting, Cari’s own legs aching. It’s hard to catch her breath, and every step sends sharp pain stabbing into her right lung. The bloody sword a dead weight in her hand.
Every moment, she expects a gunshot to ring out, a Ghierdana soldier to block her path.
Or, worst of all, the unnatural grip of a paralysis spell, locking her in place, freezing her like a statue, forced to watch, unable to act.
There! There, rising above the rooftops, the masts of a small sailing ship. No sails, bare as a tree in winter, but it’s a ship, just like the Crawling Ones promised. They race down the Street of Blue Glass, wading through the waters now. Knee-deep, waist-deep, shoulder-deep – and then Twelve Suns Bleeding’s sickeningly soft fingers clasp around her wrist, and lift her on to the deck of the derelict ship.
The mask smiles blankly. “To Khebesh, then.”
Cari falls to her knees as the ship begins to move. No sails, no oars, no engine, just sorcery. The boards of the deck beneath her fingers are rotten and waterlogged – this isn’t a ship, it’s an animated wreck, drawn up from the seabed by magic. Pale shapes squirm in the swollen planks, and she realises the wood is riddled with grave-worms. The whole ship’s a Crawling One.
With unlikely grace, the dead ship pulls away from Ushket, navigating the narrow channels of the flooded streets. Cari follows Adro and his family into a cabin and sinks down against the slimy wall.
“Hey, Cari.”
She can’t remember how to speak.
“That was almost like old times. We made it. We’re out.”
Twelve Suns Bleeding slithers out of the cabin walls, forming itself in front of them. The writhing worms fascinate the little girl. She reaches out to dip her fingers in the slime, but Ren pulls her back, gathers her close.
“Where is the grimoire?” asks the Crawling One.
Cari hesitates for a split second. The fucking book is her only leverage here – but she’s under no illusions about the honour of Crawling Ones. She’ll have to play this very carefully – but right now, she’s got to co-operate. “Captain Hawse has it. It’s on the Rose.”
“A brief diversion, then.” The worm-ship shudders and changes course. Twelve Suns sees the child, and bends down. The porcelain mask changes, becoming more clownish. “We shall play later, child,” it says, then dissolves again.
“Those fuckers are never not creepy,” mutters Cari.
Ren lifts up Ama, hugs her and hands her to Adro before extending a hand to Cari. “Adro spoke of you often, but I didn’t think I’d ever meet you.”
“Yeah, well, here I am.”
“Adro trusts you, and he’s got a good heart – we’re all in your hands now.” Ren glances around the rotten cabin. “I brought a little food, but we’ve a long journey ahead of us. Let’s hope the worm-men eat something other than bodies.”
“I don’t think they do, but we can make it to the coast before we starve.”
“Before we starve,” echoes Ren, looking at the child in Adro’s arms. “All right.”
“Come on, Ren. We’re off the Rock.” Adro grins. “This is one of those adventures I told you about. Cari, come over here, meet Ama properly.”
Ama’s younger than Cari was when they sent her away to Aunt Silva’s. She barely remembers that time, just the confusion of everything changing around her. People talking above her, transforming her world for reasons she couldn’t understand. Being sent to live on a farm in the countryside outside Guerdon isn’t quite the same as being kidnapped on to a worm-ship and sent on a mad quest to a city of sorcerers, but maybe it’s not any weirder to a child.
Ama looks up at Cari with dark eyes. She seems less enchanted by Cari than she was by the Crawling One, and Cari tries not to take it personally.
“Where’d you get her?”
“Ren found her,” says Adro, dandling the girl on his knee, “but we don’t talk about those times, do we?” Ama laughs, and Cari wonders how much of the Godswar and the fall of Ilbarin the child recalls – and how much she should know. The child seems immensely fragile in Cari’s eyes all of a sudden, ignorant of how much peril she’s in. They’re sailing from one land blasted by the gods to another ruined region, and who knows what they’ll run into along the way. Cari imagines Ama running up the hillside near that shrine, the goddess manifesting. Thorn-fingers ripping Ama’s soft flesh apart.
The child laughs, and Cari forces herself to smile.
Ren whispers something to Adro, who stands and carries Ama out on deck. She can hear him poking around the other cabins on this rotten ship of worms.
“When the Ghierdana come after us,” Ren asks, “will that Crawling One protect us?”
When, not if. She tries to be reassuring. “Sure. Maybe. Look, we’re out – we’ll put as much distance between us and the Rock as we can. I need to get to Khebesh—”
“Paravos is closer, and much safer.”
“That’s the deal. Khebesh first.”
“Once, long ago,” Ren says softly, “I was a servant in the house of the prefect of the ninth district of Ilbarin. When especially complex or arcane matters came before her court, she would dictate a letter to the sorcerers of Khebesh. The greatest scholars in the world, she said, wiser than the gods in these troubled times.” He makes a sign with his hands, to ward off evil. “She’d write to the temple of the All-Seeing One, too, of course, but everyone knew the god was mad, and we discarded the replies from His priests without reading them.”
“Did the sorcerers of Khebesh reply?”
“Sometimes they’d send letters back, giving sage counsel. And a few times, they’d send a sorcerer with a white staff and a great book. The sorcerer would never do anything except stare and mutter, and make notes in their grimoire. I was always disappointed – the conjurers in the market could call up demons, and make the fires dance around the square, which seemed far more impressive. But one day, the sorcerers stopped coming, and the gates of Khebesh were shut. That’s when I realised they truly were wise – they saw the war com
ing and hid from it.”
“I’ve got a key to those gates.”
“So Adro said.” Ren runs a finger over his close-cropped greying hair. Cari notices that his earlobes are both torn; he’d worn earrings there, and someone tore them out. “I know some people who fled Ilbarin tried to take refuge in Khebesh, but the gates stayed shut, and they had to turn back. I wonder about the sort of people who wouldn’t open their doors to people fleeing the mad gods.”
He looks like he might be about to say more, but they’re interrupted by a child’s cry. Cari leaps up, grabbing the captain’s sword, but Ren seems unruffled, unhurried.
Adro comes back in, the sobbing child in his arms. “Moon came out, and she saw where we were.”
“I’ll take her.” Ama’s transferred from one parent to the other, still shrieking and keening. A breathless whole-body shriek, over and over. “She’s scared of the waters,” explains Ren as he cradles Ama.
“There’s another cabin,” says Adro, speaking over his daughter’s screaming. “Full of salvage and crap. I’ll clear it out. No other supplies. The captain will never let this stand. He’ll be barking orders at the worms until the whole deck is spotless.” He strokes Ama’s head, and she starts to quieten down.
“Go and clear the cabin,” says Ren. “And keep looking for something she can eat.”
Cari sits there a moment, listening to Ama’s sobbing diminish. The makeshift ship creaks, and the creaking’s answered by a whispering of worms, weaving more spells to keep them afloat. Everything around Cari suddenly seems immensely fragile, and Ama most of all. Gods below – she doesn’t know if Adro’s immensely stupid or immensely brave to love such a thing. If there was anywhere safe on the way to Khebesh, she’d happily leave Adro and his family there. Slip away, like she’d done before, taking no more than she could carry while keeping her knife-hand free.
She remembers an argument with Spar, years ago now. Back when he was alive, back when she was offered the power of the Black Iron Gods. I don’t want it to be up to me, she’d told him. I want out. The open sea, and a place where no one knows where I am. To leave her family name behind, and all the gods and horrors and responsibility that comes with it. He argued she should stay.
There’s so much out there beyond Guerdon, she told him. The Godswar isn’t everywhere yet.
That’s not true any more. There are fewer places now that the mad gods haven’t reached, and fewer still untouched.
You should have come with me, Spar, she thinks, but he won that argument, hands down. They’d taken the power and used it, remade the city. And after that, he’d won again. She’d stayed, and it had all been up to her. As the Saint of Knives, she’d protected the people of the New City – but that had been easy. Nothing could harm her, and she’d made no promises. If she saw something that offended her – some act of cruelty, some injustice – hell, some score she wanted to settle from her old life in the Wash – she’d been able to drop out of the heavens and smite. She’d driven herself hard, gone without sleep, taken immense risks, thrown herself into battle against all sorts of weird foes, but it was all her choice. She’d had the power to carry it all.
Get to Khebesh, she tells herself. Find a way to help Spar. Then go back. Kick the Ghierdana out, and this time do it all better. That vision of Adro and Ren in their little apartment crosses her mind again, but this time she imagines them in the New City, happy and secure. Ama running in the streets, heedlessly climbing the towers, laughing and playing – all watched over by the Saint of the New City, all protected from the war and sorrow.
She files that thought away. It’s an image Spar would like. An image she’ll share with him when she makes it home.
The ship creaks again. Twelve Suns Bleeding appears at the entrance to the cabin.
“There is a problem.”
She follows the Crawling One outside. Looking on Ushket in the dawn light, Cari can see the whole sorry place laid out before her – the bulk of the citadel, white stone painted a delicate pink by the dawn. The new harbour, ugly as a freshly sutured wound. The thick mud staining everything. And off to the left, the long shore of wrecked ships.
Black smoke. From near the Rose. Maybe, maybe, from the Rose. Too far away to be sure.
“Oh.” Cari’s voice sounds small and childlike in her ears. The Rose was her home. And she’s brought disaster to it. You ruin everything. She looks for some sign the captain’s still alive. Surely they’d have brought him to the work camp in Ilbarin City. They can rescue him – she’ll demand the Crawling One help her break the captain out. Hawse has to still be alive.
“Has the grimoire been destroyed?” Twelve Suns Bleeding’s cultivated voice expresses sympathy and deep concern, but she’s quite sure the Crawling One is about to cut its losses. Without the grimoire, the gates of Khebesh stay shut. Without access to Khebesh, the Crawling Ones have no use for her, or anyone else on board.
“It’s safe. The captain hid it.” She puts as much fervour into her words as she can. “But we’ve got to go back.”
The ship turns smoothly, the useless rudder bumping against the hull, the masts quivering under the shock of the sudden change of course. They’re not so much sailing as being carried in a wooden box. A floating coffin.
Adro notices the smoke and comes running up. “Is that the Rose burning?”
“I don’t know.” Ilbarin swells before them once again, as if the Rock exudes some malign gravity, pulling them back.
“This won’t take long,” Cari insists, to herself as much as Adro or Twelve Suns. “I’ll just grab the captain, and the book, and we’ll be gone again. Straight to Khebesh.”
Adro digs the box out of his pocket, holds it up to show Twelve Suns that he still has it. “We’ll plant your little wriggler for you, soon as you get us there.”
Twelve Suns doesn’t answer. The Crawling One shudders, the whole ship, too. From all around them there’s a sudden cacophony of chirping and hissing, like fat in a frying pan.
The ship slows, almost stops. Abruptly, they’re drifting on the waves instead of being propelled by the Crawling One’s sorcery.
“Twelve Suns?”
The waters around them whiten with worm-flesh. The ship’s leaking, worms wriggling out from every timber and hole, pouring out in pale torrents. She can see shoals of the worms swimming away from the ship, knotting together into new shapes like eels or dolphins.
“What’s going on? I’ll get you the book, I swear! Don’t—”
“A thousand pardons.” The human form of Twelve Suns collapses. The Crawling One topples forward, vomiting itself over the railing into the muddy sea.
“Cari, what are they doing?”
Cari tries to grab at Twelve Suns Bleeding, but the worms wriggle between her fingers, or burst in gobbets of slime. There’s no way to stop the Crawling One from abandoning them again. The whole ship sags, creaking as the sorcery ceases to support it. They’re riding lower in the water now, the lower decks flooding.
Ren, coughing, struggles out on to the deck, clutching Ama, pressing her face into his shoulder so she doesn’t have to see the ocean. They’re close enough to the shore that they should be able to make it if they swim, but the waters here are treacherous. Cari imagines their bodies washing up by the Rose, to be picked through by the Bythos.
The last of the worms leaves the ship. They’re alone on a sinking wreck. But why have the Crawling Ones suddenly fled? She looks around, scanning for the Ghierdana gunboat approaching, or…
There.
There, in the sky.
Circling down towards them. Lazily, unhurried, its great wide wings outstretched like storm clouds. It comes lower and lower, and Cari can feel heat radiating off the dragon’s underbelly, a promise of the terrible fires within.
Closer and closer. She can see the monster’s armoured flanks now, the gigantic claws, the sinuous serpent tail. She can see the jaws, a crocodile smile. The eyes fix on her – not on the ship, on her – and she can’t mov
e. Terror roots her to the deck, even as water begins to well up between the boards.
Closer and closer. The sword drops from her nerveless hands. Far away, Adro’s running back and forth, looking for a weapon, looking for a way out. Looking for anything, but they’re powerless in the face of the dragon. Ren crouches down, holds Ama, waits for the fire.
Closer, but the fire never comes. The sky is full of dragon, pressing down on her. A hemisphere of scale and muscle, fire and bone, awful in its undeniable existence. This is no god, nor it is a conjured monster like a Kraken, dependent on unseen forces, bound by arcane rules. No, the dragon’s as solid as she is, as free as she is, but infinitely stronger, infinitely more powerful. As solid as the bells of Guerdon.
Closer, and the stench of the dragon rolls over her, sweat and soot and rotten meat. It circles around once more, beating its wings as it turns, hurricane winds whipping up waves that crash over the wreck, cracking the timbers. The ship lurches, sinking faster now.
The dragon hovers above them, filling the world. Cari won’t kneel, won’t look away. There’s nowhere to run and there’s no way to fight back. No god will grace her here, she’s got no clever tricks to hand. All she has left is defiance – to look into the dragon’s eye and say, at the last and for all time, fuck you.
Claws dig into the ship’s side, grabbing the wreck’s ribs, and the dragon lifts the whole ship out of the water. The worm-ship doesn’t have the strength to hold together for long, but it’s only a short flight to land. The dragon drops them in the mud, another in the line of wrecked ships along the shore.
Then it slithers forward, touching down just inland of them. Its tail bats Cari, knocking the wind from her lungs, sending her sprawling on the deck. The wings fold back along the monster’s flanks.
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