“Is that going to achieve anything?” She kneads the back of his neck. He reaches up, takes her hand, holds it.
“Come with me. You’ve taken the ash. What did Rasce say – it buys a measure of indulgence? Let’s see what they’ll do for you.”
The New City juts out into the harbour of Guerdon, skirted by a towering seawall. There are few places to moor a ship in the original design (if the word design can be applied to the dream of stone that is the New City), but Guerdon is always quick to adapt. Ugly concrete platforms, stained with alchemical run-off, now abut the seawall. Most of the ships docked here are Lyrixian military vessels, taking advantage of the only secure port friendly to them in the west. They’ll refuel here, then steam south, laden with supplies for the Lyrixian war effort against Ulbishe and Khenth. The strange sight of convoys escorted by Ghierdana dragons, instead of being preyed on by them.
There are two dragons on the docks, Thyrus and Carancio, lazing in the afternoon sun. There are few places in the New City where a dragon can stretch out to its full length, and Thyrus sprawls along the dock. Carancio has slithered into the water, his tail snaking off into the mud. His wings are extended to dry in the sun; he has propped himself up by his elbows, like a fat man in a steam bath. Beside him, a cargo ship newly arrived from Lyrix unloads crates of supplies – most of which are destined for the markets of Guerdon, not the war. Lyrixian silk and jewels pass through Ghierdana hands to be smuggled across the border into the city proper, to come washing back as coin and armaments. The dockworkers have to shuffle awkwardly to avoid treading on Carancio’s wingtip; Baston fights the urge to hurry over and give them a hand shifting the boxes.
Each dragon is accompanied by a host of Ghierdana attendants and other bodyguards. The dragons are more dangerous than any assassin, but there are other forms of assault. A brigade of mercenary priests chant and ring bells, in the hopes of disrupting any divination miracles targeting the pair. Hired sorcerers, too, ready with defensive wards and dampening rods. A cowled figure in a porcelain mask stands near Carancio – a Crawling One. Baston hasn’t seen one in months.
A few passengers disembark from the Lyrixian ship and gingerly pass between the dragons. One – stooped and thin, with a broken nose – casts a curious glance at Baston and Karla, and seems almost to recognise them, but he hurries on without a word.
The dragon Carancio, too, notices the pair. He beckons them with a lazy wave of a claw that could rip through steel armour like tissue paper.
“Look, Thyrus – Taras’ Chosen sends his servants to treat with us.”
“It is the way of this city. These people have no understanding of civility or respect. Is that not right, little ones?” Thyrus rolls her neck to fix Baston with the full glare of her reptilian eyes.
“We need to talk,” says Baston, awkwardly. “Sharpish. It’s business.”
Karla steps in. She sweeps back her hair to show her forehead, marked with fresh ash. She raises her voice, projects like she’s treading the boards of the Great Metropolitan Theatre in Bryn Avane. “Great ones, I have heard many accounts of your magnificence from your kinfolk. Carancio, Bane of Cities. Thyrus, Queen of Calamity. I beg leave to address you in the name of Rasce, Chosen of Taras. The matter is urgent.”
Thyrus smirks, then furls her long body. She extends one wing, mantles it into a tent. Baston hesitates for a moment, then Karla gives him a sharp shove, pushing him forward. The dragon curls around him, enfolding him. All he can see is Thyrus’ eyes, glowing with inner fire, inches away from him.
“Speak.” Her voice is a subsonic vibration, shaking his bones.
“City watch Tallowmen are attacking us. So far, they haven’t crossed the border into the occupation zone, but—”
“‘Us?’ I smell no ash upon your brow, mortal. You are not Ghierdana. You are not Eshdana. You are nothing to me. I could swallow you whole, here and now, and no one would gainsay me.”
“I’d taste foul.” Baston opens his jacket, revealing a metal cylinder tucked inside. “Withering dust.” He has no idea if the alchemical poison would work on a dragon, but at this range, it certainly wouldn’t be pleasant. “Rasce is my employer, and my friend. He’s saved my life, and I’ve saved his.”
Thyrus snorts, and the wing-tent fills with sulphur. It’s hard to breathe. “And yet you have not sworn fealty to him. He must be a fool to trust one such as you.” The dragon yawns. “Rasce has brought this misfortune on himself. You mortals are hasty and lack wisdom. It was careless of my brother to leave the child without adequate supervision.”
“That’s as maybe. But now they’re attacking the Ghierdana.”
“The things of wax have not crossed the border. They are attacking you and your cutpurses, not my kin.”
“They attacked Rasce, too, on Glimmerside. A jack nearly cut his throat. And Vyr got killed down on Mercy. And let me tell you something – the last time they let the Tallowmen loose on the streets, it wasn’t long before there was martial law. Curfews, mass arrests, raids. All sorts of trouble.”
“That was before the Godswar came here. They would not dare do so now.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Jacks are hard to keep under control. And even if they don’t cross the border, you’re not just a soldier, are you? Not just here for the war effort. You’ve got business, same as me. How hard do you think it’ll be to smuggle goods across when there are Tallowmen watching?”
The dragon growls in irritation, which Baston takes as an acknowledgement of his point.
“My lads know the city. That’s why Rasce recruited us. We can help your family, too.”
“And in exchange? What will this cost?”
“Your presence down on Mercy Street stopped the city watch from arresting us when Vyr was killed. So, we need you and Carancio to watch over the old docks. There are still a few places in Glimmerside they haven’t gone after yet. And—”
“You ask too much,” says Thyrus. Her wing begins to open, letting in the world again.
“You don’t have to fucking do anything!” shouts Baston in her face. “Just be there! They won’t dare act while there’s a dragon present!”
“Unlike my feckless brother,” hisses Thyrus, suddenly rearing her head above him, flames flickering in her nostrils, “I still play my part in this bargain. I have responsibilities to my children back on the isles, and so I fly to war for Lyrix. I keep the peace of the Armistice. I owe little to my brother’s chattels—” she snarls at Karla, “and I owe nothing to you.”
That night, they lose the old docks.
The Tallowmen attack again, but this time they come via the ghoul tunnels, cutting the thieves off from the New City. It’s like the burning of Dredger’s yard all over again, recapitulated in a nightmare. The scorched ruins of the yard are alive with dancing flames again, only this time the flames pursue Baston and his crew, chasing them through the alleyways and warehouses, a whirl of knives and fixed, distended grins.
Some of the thieves try to retreat up Heavengut Wynd, just like before, but some bastard’s informed the Ishmerians they’re coming. The demigod Cruel Urid stands at the top of the stairs, spear in hand, judging the unworthy wretches who flee up the stairs. None are deemed worthy to enter heaven. Caught between the candles and the demigod, they perish. Baston hears their screams across the night. Their souls forfeit to the Ishmeric gods.
Baston leads another group west, towards the spires of St Storm. It’s not St Storm’s any longer, not since Kraken took it, but he knows those spires – and knows the little streets around them, the ones that slope down to the shore. There, on the edge of the IOZ, there are still a few fishing boats, near the houses of the harbour-priests who bless the ships and pray for fair winds.
They steal these boats and cut back east, trying to thread a course between the Tallowmen on the docks and the city watch patrol boats in the deeper harbour. Oars dip into black water; thieves hunch against spotlights. One boy, his stomach cut by a Tallowman, coughs wetly and dies at Bast
on’s feet, the warmth of his blood soaking through the leather of Baston’s boots. They heave him overboard. Let him go with Fae, the poor lad, and they can’t afford the extra weight.
One of the Tallowmen hears the splash. The crazed monster takes a running jump, leaping impossibly far out into the harbour, a grasshopper arc, head-flame like a signal flare. It falls short. Splashes loudly in the water, thrashing around and shrieking, until a wave quenches the fire in its wax skull and it freezes, bobbing up and down. Its fellow Tallowmen cluster along the edge of the docks, straining to get closer to their quarries.
Searchlights find Baston’s boats. The city watch bellow some command, an order to surrender. The whole city’s against them, watch and jacks, gods and governments. Rasce went too far, part of him says, pushed them too hard, but the truth is this was always going to happen. There’s no place for Baston’s kin in this new Guerdon, this city ruled by gods and alchemists who think they’re gods. Rasce just made it happen faster.
The city watch boats close in, their alchemical engines driving them, faster and stronger than the arms of the rowers. Acrid smoke drifts across the water. A searchlight falls on them like a blazing eye.
A loudhailer crackles, calls out.
“SURRENDER.”
Baston stands, casts off his coat. Braces himself.
Opens fire.
The gun’s a heavy repeater, fresh from the foundries. A beautiful piece of engineering, really. Something the Fever Knight would have appreciated, a weapon for laying waste to one’s foes. You could never get a gun like this for love nor money on the streets of Guerdon in Heinreil’s day, but the city’s changed, and Ghierdana coffers run deep.
The thunder of the repeater deafens him. The recoil nearly sends him backwards over the side. The nearest city watch cutter lights up in a dazzling shower of sparks, bullets ricocheting off the hull, smashing through the cabin. The searchlight explodes, and he turns his fire on the other boats. “Row!” he roars. “Row for fucking home!”
And stroke by stroke they draw closer to the New City, last refuge of scoundrels.
Spar can feel himself fracturing again. His mind falling apart, his thoughts wandering off and never coming back. I’m dying. Rasce still acts as an anchor, but he’s drifting, like an anchor skipping over the seabed instead of holding fast. He’s a maelstrom in Spar’s mind, pulling Spar into darkness instead of giving him a beacon to rally around.
He’s coming apart. His consciousness is already overstretched, spread all around the New City, and now it’s cracking under the strain. Even thinking has a cost now, he can tell. He’s a clockwork engine running down.
He’s been here before, when it was his body and not his mind that was dying – but that doesn’t have to change anything. When he lived, he resolved once to spend his remaining days helping the Brotherhood, fighting the Black Iron Gods that threatened the city. He fought to save Cari, and she ended up saving him instead. So, if he’s got only a little of this strange second life left, he’ll use it like he used his first life.
It’s tricky. Observing is less costly than thinking, and thinking is less costly than acting. He has to build instincts, autonomic responses, cut his conscious mind out of the loop as much as possible. Simple rules first – help running thieves escape. Block the Tallowmen. Give shelter. Help those who want to be found, and those who seek to be lost. The Tallowmen come like falling stars, like a siege, each burning wick an incoming shell, and he deflects them as best he can. No stairs for you, candle-man! This alleyway has a doorway at the end when a thief passes through, but not when you follow! And those roof slates are treacherous, and prone to falling on wax heads.
In truth, he’s unsure how successful he is. Without Rasce as a focus, time and space become distorted. He reacts to block one Tallowman, and a day later the streets change. Or a day before. Or he moves the wrong stone, warps the city the wrong way. He observes far more than he acts, for few of the attackers cross into the part of the New City where he has the most power.
It’s easy for him to observe. Easy for a Stone Man to cut himself off. Loneliness and isolation are old companions of his.
His thoughts spin out, escaping him. Vanishing like runaway children down twisted alleyways of memory or might-have-been. Phantom conversations haunt him. He imagines long conversations with Rat. His old friend is the one other soul in Guerdon who might understand his situation. Both he and Rat underwent strange transformations during the Crisis. Spar became the New City, and Rat became an Elder Ghoul, something closer to dragon or godspawn than mortal.
Rat wouldn’t see it that way, of course. Like most ghouls, Rat is a survivor at heart. Relentlessly practical, unsentimental, even amoral. Rat would speak in his old voice, the voice he has in Spar’s memory, not the borrowed heralds the Elder Ghoul uses. You should have died when you fell from the Seamarket. Anything that keeps you going after that is life. I haven’t eaten you. That’s how you know you’re alive. And Rat would grin, showing his corpse-tearing teeth, and his eyes would burn with this fierce faith in Spar, this belief that his friend could endure anything.
Spar observes Rat moving through the New City. Now. This is happening now. Sees him speaking with Baston. Watches them descend to that empty vault in the depths to where Cari waits for them but that hasn’t happened yet.
Conversations with Cari, too. Most are memories from her time as the Saint of Knives, those madcap days after the Crisis, after she’d come into her power. Her happiness when he answered her from the stone, the zeal with which she threw herself into her self-appointed role as guardian of the New City (the eagerness to forget the tragedies and mistakes of the past). The two of them against the world, souls intertwined, unable to hide anything from the other. The city was hers, and she embraced it with violent joy.
Rasce was like that, too, he reflects. Both Rasce and Cari are wild, quick to act, fiercely loyal to their friends. But Rasce’s alliance with Spar is a temporary thing; he’s a shooting star flashing over the New City, crossing Guerdon in an eye blink.
Another memory – the god-bomb arcing over the New City, striking Pesh, the goddess of war, and annihilating her. And his own voice, saying we can remake the world, and Cari replying who wants to do that? You get it wrong, and the whole world is your fault. How do you live with that?
But later, she said, if you ask me, I’ll do it.
Spar can feel himself fracturing again. I’m dying, he thinks.
Cari, he thinks. Goodbye. I wish we had time.
The flames of the Tallowmen look like stars, he observes, and then everything vanishes behind grey clouds.
In his dream, Rasce has slipped from Great-Uncle’s back. He’s falling from the sky, falling through endless roaring storm clouds. Falling for hours, buffeted by winds, scorched by lightning. Plummeting through cloud-cities, falling through sheets of rain, and no end to this fall in sight.
He hears Spar’s voice like thunder, but he cannot make out the words.
He senses his body, lying in bed, but cannot find it.
He breaks through the clouds, falls towards a black ocean. It writhes, glistening like a sea of tentacles. A living darkness. He would scream if he had the breath for it, if he had the body for it. In the distance, beyond the rim of the world, the sound of chanting.
And then – miraculously, he’s rescued. For a moment, Rasce fumbles with the thought that he has the Ring of Samara, that its magic has saved him from this fate, but no – it’s something else. There are hooks in his elbows, his thighs, his chest, even between his eyes, burning bright as fire, wrenching him into the sky. Heat floods through his veins, like alkahest – no, that’s Spar, he’s the Stone Man, he’s got the plague, not I – as he flies in the dream.
Soars like a dragon.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Cari’s initial assumption can be summarised as I’m so stupid. Myri seemed too exhausted to move. Righteous fury wells up in her as she imagines Myri sneaking off into the wastes with the grimoire, c
ackling evilly. Immediately, Cari imagines what will happen next – she’ll track the sorceress down.
Maybe it’ll be a desperate chase all the way to the gates of Khebesh. She’ll hunt Myri through the Godswar, always one step behind her, stalk her just as she stalked her foes in the New City. The very moment Myri tries to use the book to get inside the walls, Cari will appear out of nowhere and cut the witch’s throat from behind. Serve her right for stealing from a thief. Or maybe it’ll be the lack of pills that does her in, and Cari will find Myri’s corpse in some ditch, all curled up and stiff like a dead insect.
As she searches, though, she finds clear signs of a struggle, of a magical blast of some sort. Myri was surrounded, attacked on all sides. Scorched areas, with drag marks nearby – Myri used sorcery to kill some of her attackers, and their bodies were later removed. No doubt they’ll be interred in the walls, too, the dregs of their souls fed to the god of Gissa. And that deformed building wasn’t there earlier. Cari’s one of the few people in the world who can give constructive criticism on weaponised architecture-miracles; she guesses that Rhan-Gis himself was here, the saint of the city, using the power of Gissa to counter Myri’s spells. No wonder Myri fled.
Cari climbs down into the ditch where Myri was hiding. The epicentre of the battle seems to have moved away from their original hiding place. She guesses that Myri was already sneaking out with the book when she was spotted, had to fight her way clear.
Cari’s foot brushes against a stone, and there’s a pop as a concealment ward fizzles out.
Oh.
Oh fuck.
There, hidden beneath the stone, warded against discovery – there’s the fucking book. The remainder of their supplies. The aethergraph in its case.
The sorceress left the book. She drew her attackers away from the book. She left it for Carillon. She saved it for Cari, sacrificed herself so Rhan-Gis and his minions wouldn’t find it.
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