The Gutter Prayer, page 13
One of the other players grunts. “He’s gone to stone. What’s Heinreil going to do for him? You can’t bribe the plague to let the boy go.”
“The Brotherhood looks out for its own,” replies Tammur, quoting the scripture of the streets. “When he comes before a magistrate, we’ll do what we can for him—as we would for any fellow in good standing. Play your cards, Hedan.”
Hedan growls in frustration, then picks up the minimal possible bet and throws it in. Nine Moons Falling puts in twice that without hesitation, smoothly confident in its cards. The fourth player, a tattooed woman Rat doesn’t know, takes her time to think.
“What about Cari?” asks Rat.
“The Tallows or the gallows,” laughs Hedan. “And no waiting.”
“I heard tell sweet Cari found a benefactor,” says Tammur. “Any ideas who that might be?” The last directed to Rat, but Hedan provides his own wordless response, lewdly thrusting his crotch against the table and grunting.
Rat tries to think what Tammur could mean. All he can guess is that she’s running a scam on some mark. At least she’s out of jail.
“Your turn, Tam,” says the woman. A sailor, Rat guesses, one of Tammur’s business partners from across the ocean.
“Spar said I’d get paid,” insists Rat.
“I’ll tell Heinreil that—” begins Tammur.
“Tell him what?” The door opens and Heinreil swaggers in. Two bodyguards flanking him, another two in the corridor outside. Behind him comes the Fever Knight, armour clanking, clear liquids hissing through pipes and tubes or spilling onto the floor, scarring the wood. Glimpses of scarred, translucent flesh through the cracks. Heinreil’s leg-breaker, here to scare the troops into line.
Heinreil pulls over a chair, puts it between the woman and Tammur, deals himself into the game, and throws in three gold coins without even looking at his cards.
“The ghoul wants to be paid for the Tower of Law,” says Tammur mildly, without looking up.
“Did the ghoul get what he was sent for?”
“Circumstances change. Towers explode.”
“Did he get what we asked? No, he did not.” Heinreil glances in irritation at Rat. “What are you still doing here? You smell like you fucked a sewer. Get out.”
Rat fades into the shadows, but doesn’t leave. If Heinreil notices, he gives no intimation of this.
The turn comes around to Tammur again, and he raises. “We need to make it known that the Tower wasn’t us. The watch are spreading it around. Saying that it was revenge for Idge, maybe, or a botched job on the treasure vault.”
“This is not the last.” Hedan’s bravado is in full retreat, driven from the field by the presence of Heinreil and the Fever Knight. “That’s what it said. On a wall. Everyone’s saying it.”
“Are they now? Oh well,” mutters Heinreil.
“Fanatics,” adds the woman. “That’s how the Godwars start. Madness breeds madness, breeds … unwelcome divinity.” She flexes her wrist. Her tattoos resemble magical wards. Some of them almost seem to glow in Rat’s eyes. He blinks; some lingering after-effect of communing with the elder ghoul, maybe.
“Is that it, Heinreil?” asks Tammur. “The Godwar coming to Guerdon?”
“Not a prayer.” Heinreil draws a card, then leans back and shows his hand to one of his bodyguards, who smirks. “Bad for business. Still, put more men on the warehouses—if things kick off and there’s panic, make sure our places are safe. I’m going to move more cargo through to the Archipelago.”
“We’d do better moving people,” says Tammur. Guerdon is crowded with refugees fleeing the Godwar, eager to buy passage to the safe, unspoiled frontier of the Archipelago—a chain of islands across an ocean so storm-wracked that they can be reached safely only by ships with modern alchemical engines. “Myri here has a line on an old passenger liner we could refit.”
Heinreil yawns. “Not interested.”
“Tam promised you’d give me a fair hearing,” says the woman hastily. “She’s a good ship, seaworthy. She can make a run to the Archipelago in—”
“I don’t repeat myself,” says Heinreil. “If you want to do business in my city, remember that.” He turns to Tammur. “What I need from you is a full audit—how much cash do we have on hand, and how much can we raise if needed?”
Myri sits back, seething, teeth clenched, clearly signalling her displeasure. Rat narrows his eyes—she’s overacting, putting on a show. Tammur sighs. “I’ll look at the books. How much should I put aside for the magistrates?”
“Nothing. It’ll be foreign investment, through local agents there. You don’t need to worry about our home-grown leeches.”
“Not about the audit. Spar.”
“If Taphson doesn’t beat him or break him, and he actually reaches court alive—put aside twenty, but don’t touch it unless we know the boy can still work. We can plead compassion and have him sent to the Isle of Statues for five thousand if he’s gone to stone.”
Tammur draws another card, then folds. The turn goes around the table again twice. Hedan tries to stay in, tries to brazen it out, but it’s clear he has nothing and the other three bleed him dry. Myri’s still in the game, but has only a few coins left in front of her.
“I shouldn’t play with Crawlers,” spits Hedan. “Can’t read a bloody mask.”
Obligingly, Nine Moons Falling reaches up and removes its porcelain face. Worms writhe in the shadows of its hood. It forms them into a pallid, thin-lipped smile.
Heinreil doesn’t flinch. “What’s it to be? Call or raise?”
The Crawling One reaches inside its shadowy robe. It pulls out a bag and upends it on the table. Rubies and emeralds tumble from it, a fortune in stones.
Without a word, Myri lays her cards face down on the table and clasps her hands, head bowed. Again, her tattoos ripple and glow faintly.
“I don’t carry that sort of money,” says Heinreil. “And Crawlers don’t play cards. Not unless there’s a good reason for it. What do you want?”
“A trinket.” The worm’s voice is like a slithering chorus. “A thing of nothing.”
“When a sorcerer says something’s a trinket, it means it’s worth a lot more than it looks. Wizards could take lessons from street magicians. Learn how to play a mark.” Heinreil thinks for a moment, then reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a small token on a string.
Rat recognises it. Cari’s amulet.
Heinreil dangles the little talisman over the pot. “Add one more thing—tell me why you want it.”
“If you win,” gurgles the Crawling One.
The talisman drops. “Call.”
The Crawling One lays its cards down on the table, and, as it does so, it whispers a spell. Reality squirms and bends under the force of its magic. Probabilities warp. The wave of change passes over Tammur, over Hedan, over the bodyguards without any of them noticing. Most humans can’t perceive subtle sorcery like this. Rat couldn’t either, usually, but his senses are somehow heightened after his experiences in the tunnels.
That’s why he can see Myri’s tattoos glow dimly, as though her blood’s on fire. He can see her strain against the change, see her grab it and hold it, then swallow it, forcing the spell to wreak its reality warping effects inside her instead of on the cards. She gasps in pain, then smiles bloodily through clenched teeth as Heinreil reveals his cards.
A winning hand.
Shielded against the Crawling One’s magical attempt at cheating by Myri. She was a plant, Rat thinks, and he wonders how Heinreil anticipated the Crawling One’s scheme. He shivers, aware of forces moving around him invisibly, connecting his friend to greater events.
Heinreil scoops the pot. Pockets Cari’s talisman and rolls the three biggest rubies to Myri. He stands, addresses the Crawling One. “You and I need to have a little chat. Everyone else, out.”
Apparently, everyone else doesn’t mean the Fever Knight, or Myri, both of whom remain with Heinreil. Rat follows Tammur like a shadow.
He wants to listen at the door, lurk and see if he can make out anything of Nine Moons Falling’s confession, but another of Heinreil’s bodyguards grabs him first, leads him downstairs, out of the hall and back onto the streets.
“The boss has another job for you.”
CHAPTER NINE
Entering the house on Desiderata Street by the front door still feels wrong to Carillon. All her instincts tell her to go around the back, to the servant’s entrance, or to scale the side wall and climb in through that little window. It’s a place to rob, not a home. Eladora walks arm in arm with her all the way down from the university, though, grip like a vice, chattering all the time, a nervous rush of words that Carillon doesn’t bother pretending to hear. Although she’s grateful for Eladora’s literal support. She still feels horribly weak and unsteady.
In the door, and down to the little kitchen. Eladora places her heavy satchel on the table and bustles around; it’s Aunt Silva in the kitchen at Wheldacre, projected twenty years across space and time. Tea brews, soup bubbles on the stove.
Cari sits there in domestic normality and thinks about falling into that lightless chasm. Some god tore her soul from her body and dragged her down. A leaf getting washed down a sewer, that’s what she was. Tiny in the face of the divine. She grips the rough wooden edge of the table tightly, as if she can hold onto the material world by sheer force alone.
“Tell me, did the professor find my notes useful? You will tell me if you have another episode, won’t you? Actually, I should really have my notebook to hand. Best be prepared.” Eladora rummages through her satchel, stacking books on the table next to Cari until she finds what she seeks. She stares at Cari and vanishes off to another room, returning with a cushion. “In case you have a fit and fall off the stool, aim for this.”
Cari briefly contemplates smothering her cousin with the cushion.
“Well, tell me, what did the professor say?” asks Eladora.
Cari tries to make light of it. “You were right. I’m a saint.”
“Oh.” Eladora takes a step back, as if expecting Cari to burst into flame or start manifesting ectoplasm all over her kitchen. “How … unusual. No doubt it’s some f-foreign god.” She makes it sound like it’s a lover’s pox that Cari picked up in some distant port.
“Maybe. All this only started after I came back to this fucking city,” says Cari. She rolls that thought around in her head. It makes a lot of sense. She’s had more than her share of weird experiences since she fled Guerdon all those years ago, but none of them involved head-shattering supernatural visions sent by some old blind god. Maybe it even explains the antipathy she’s felt towards the city all her life; as a child, in Grandfather Thay’s mansion, she’d always been uncomfortable. A feeling like the constant buzzing of bees that only she could hear. Going to Aunt Silva’s house in the country had been a blessed relief—but even there, a few miles outside Guerdon, she’d been restless, uneasy, like there was something chasing her.
Invisible fingers fumbling across the countryside, looking for a dropped plaything. Lifting her like the dancing saint in Severast. Snapping her.
A plan forms.
She announces, “I’m wrecked, El. I’m going to bed.”
“But I’m making soup,” protests Eladora.
“I’ll heat it up later.”
Down to her little nest in the basement, where thick walls blot out the sounds of the city. It’s barely even evening, the clocks haven’t yet struck six, but Cari curls up and closes her eyes, and tries to ignore the city as it breaks over her.
Midnight. The house is silent and still; she can’t hear anyone on the street outside, except some distant revellers down in Glimmerside.
Cari steals up to the kitchen. Eladora’s satchel is still on the table, but her notebook’s gone. Typical—her cousin can’t be helpful even when she’s being robbed. Cari glances at the stack of books next to it—some of them might be worth a fortune, she reflects, but she has no idea which, and they’ll all too heavy.
She flips through one of them while she drinks cold soup. Architectural drawings of churches and cathedrals, sketches of Guerdon in ruins. A few pictures of some civil war, fighting on the streets, the city burning. Sword-wielding knights bearing the Keeper’s mark, patrolling lines in the ash that were once grand thoroughfares. Some of the buildings Cari recognises. On the page they’re ideals, perfect forms. She wonders what their long-dead architects would say now to see them, soot-stained and graffitied, overshadowed by the smokestacks and towers of industry.
Turning a page, she comes across an illustration of a vertical shaft, lined with marble, extending from the crypt of some great church down into the earth below. At the base of the shaft dance a pack of hungry ghouls. The artist, perhaps sick of drawing endless geometric shapes and sweeping architecture, lavished attention on these illustrations, and their canine faces are alive with glee and hunger. She worries about what’s become of Rat. Did the Tallowmen catch him? She remembers Ongent asking her questions about her ghoul friend, asking if he’d talked to her about the previous ages of the city. And Spar, still—
Stupid girl, woolgathering when she should be acting. Angrily, she closes the book and pushes it away across the table. She finds a sharp knife in a drawer, and spends a minute trying to cut the alchemical peace-bond off her own dagger, but the black stuff regrows as fast as it’s damaged. Fine. She stuffs her dagger into Eladora’s satchel, then slips the knife into her belt. She ransacks the kitchen cupboards for food and slips upstairs, bypassing her own room. There are two others—Eladora’s, and Miren’s attic room at the top of a narrow stairs.
Miren’s not worth the risk.
Eladora’s room, then. Pressing her ear against the door, Cari can hear her cousin breathing evenly. She tries the handle. Locked. Her lock picks are scattered across the ruins of the Tower of Law, she realises, or maybe in the thief-taker’s place. The kitchen knife might work, but it’s not ideal.
Inspiration strikes. She returns to the kitchen, makes one small adjustment, then comes back up.
She knocks on the door.
“Eladora?”
Stirring, mumbled confusion.
“Eladora?” she asks again.
“Carillon,” mutters Eladora in half-sleep. Then, bolt awake: “What’s wrong? What’s happening? Did you have another attack?”
“I can’t work the stove.” She puts just enough pathetic whining into her voice, mimicking Eladora’s own.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Give me a moment.” Shuffling, then the click of the lock.
“Sorry,” says Cari, “I’m starving.”
“I did offer earlier, but never mind.” Eladora smiles and rubs her eyes. “It’ll take a few minutes.”
“I’ll be down in a moment,” offers Cari. Still half-asleep, Eladora stumbles downstairs. Cari hears her fumbling with the stove, cursing as it fails to light. It’ll take her a few minutes to find the stopcock that Cari turned all the way off.
Clothes first. Cari raids Eladora’s wardrobe, rifling past half a dozen identical grey robes and dresses that were unfashionable even in Aunt Silva’s day. She’s not looking for fashion, just practicality. Neither frumpy dresses nor grey robes are suitable for what she has in mind. She finds a pair of trousers that might fit, some other clothes that she can adapt. Into the bag with them. She can wear them until she pawns them and finds something better, or technically worse but more like Cari’s preferred outfit. And, hey, what’s this—a box of coins, hidden where no one would ever think to look, at the back of the wardrobe. Into the bag, too.
A quick sweep of the room. More coin, enough to buy passage to Severast maybe, if she doesn’t mind eating bilge rat. And in a drawer next to the bed, a little alchemical pistol. Cari pauses at that—it doesn’t square with her mental image of her cousin. The gun’s been fired a few times, from the stains on the muzzle. A safety talisman for a nervous country girl in the big city? Something Aunt Silva insisted on? Or connected to her work with Professor Ongent?
Into the bag with it.
Then out of the window, into the night. Cari perches on the little windowsill, scanning the street below, breathing in the night air. She looks across the shrouded city. Moonlight on the harbour, turning the fumes over the Alchemists’ Quarter to a purple haze. The great bulk of Holyhill to her right, with its white cathedrals like three skulls lined up on a shelf. The bulk of the city to her left, Glimmerside sloping down to the docks and the Wash. She looks for the tell-tale flicker of candles in wax heads, for traces of the Tallowmen. That’s her one last fear—that one of those horrors will find her before she gets out of the city.
She sways unsteadily on the windowsill as another vision rises within her brain, but she’s ready for it, or maybe it’s less intense this time. Either way, she’s able to tighten her grip as she sees—
Another street in the city. Not too far. Still in Glimmerside. Her perspective’s horribly skewed, like she’s seeing it from a dozen angles at once, and feeling it, too—the trickle of rainwater in the gutters, the hissing heat of the gas lamp, and the heavy footsteps of the night watchman. Human; it’s Glimmerside after all, almost genteel. No freakish gull monsters or psychotic waxworks here, thank you very much, but if the watchman comes around the corner and looks up, he could look straight at Carillon.
With a strange doubled vision, she can see the distant light of the guard’s lantern with her own eyes, reflecting in shop windows at the end of the street, and she can see the lantern directly through this divine vision or whatever it is.
The street—the other street, the one she’s not on but can still, impossibly, see—is nearly empty. Just one other person, coming up the long steep stairs from the subway. A youngish man, also human, in the robes of a priest.
She recognises him instantly. It’s the priest from the Church of the Holy Beggar, the one she saw before—being devoured by a shadowy monster-thing.
The watchman approaches the thing that looks like a priest. The priest smiles and speaks a greeting, and Cari, from her divine perspective, can feel the thing change as it does so. She can feel it form lungs and throat even as it opens its mouth, taste the acid on its newborn tongue.
