The Gutter Prayer, page 17
If the Ammonite was carrying anything of real worth, she’d be at a guarded dock, not left exposed out here. Rat doesn’t know what they’re doing out here, but that’s the modern Brotherhood for you. Heinreil has his plans and his orders, and you follow them or the Fever Knight comes calling.
The other thieves clamber out of the tunnel. By their standards, they’re being quiet. Rat hunches against the cacophony. The only one of them with any stealth at all is Silkpurse. The ghoul has shed her usual absurd finery, the dresses and feathered hats on which she spends every coin she can steal, so that maybe, just once, she can pass for human in a dark room. Instead, she’s dressed like Rat, in rags and tatters scavenged from the dead, although her face is slathered in powder and filler to disguise her ghoulish features. Rat doesn’t know if play-acting human helps her stay on the surface, helps her delay going feral—but she’s a ghoul, and that means she’s quiet. She’s bringing up the rear, making sure none of the rest go astray in the dark.
Rat wishes they’d managed to lose Myri. Her tattoos glimmer in the darkness as she clambers over the gate. He wonders what magic she’s working—and how long she can keep it together. Every human sorcerer has to have a death wish. Humans aren’t made to work spells, and it kills them one way or another. Right now, Heinreil’s new pet seems calm and controlled, but that’s a surface impression. Rat suspects she’s here just to keep an eye on the other thieves, remind them that Heinreil’s not to be questioned.
The other three are Cafstan and his sons. A Brotherhood family, four or five generations now, and no doubt Cafstan’s grandchildren are being taught to pick pockets before they can walk. All three are laden down with heavy packs that clank when they set them down.
“What are those?” hisses Rat.
Cafstan shrugs. “Boss wants us to swap out these dummies for the real thing. So they don’t know they’ve been robbed till they’re long gone to sea.”
Rat rolls his eyes. This sort of overcomplex, controlling detail is typical of Heinreil. No simple robberies anymore.
Silkpurse joins him at the tunnel mouth. “Darling, pay it no mind. Unanswered questions will only give you wrinkles.”
“No guards,” says Rat. He’s been watching the ship’s deck for several minutes now, and hasn’t seen the slightest bit of activity.
“Well, get on with it,” orders Myri. She pulls off her right glove and flexes her hand. Fat purple sparks crawl around her fingers, and there’s a sudden sizzle in the air.
“Moonlight.” Rat waits until the clouds pass in front of the moon again, and then he and Silkpurse scrabble down the slime-slick, wave-licked edge down to the sea. Just upstream of the tunnel mouth, there’s a pile of rocks, and hidden there in a nook is a small wooden boat. The two ghouls untie it, check it, then float it on the water. The Brotherhood usually use this tunnel mouth for smuggling.
With Silkpurse’s help, the other four manage to climb down to the boat.
“We left the packs up top,” whispers Cafstan. “You get them.”
The two ghouls scramble back up. The heavy packs are there. Spar sneaks a look inside. Metal gas cylinders, capped with valves and spigots. They look brand new. From their weight, they’re full, too. A very elaborate deception for little gain.
They lower the packs down. The boat’s only big enough for four; the ghouls’ job now is to wait until the others come back. Cafstan’s boys grunt with effort as they push off into the filthy waters of the harbour, and row towards the outline of the freighter.
“They’ll be a while,” says Silkpurse. She sits down on the edge of the sewer tunnel, dangling her bare legs in the slime. She produces a cloth-wrapped bundle from a satchel. “Sandwich?”
Rat’s nose wrinkles at the stench of scorched grains, of gut-clogging plants, of dumb bovine meat, sickeningly bland and soulless. He should take the surface food, but he can’t bring himself to stomach it. “I’m not hungry.”
Silkpurse nibbles on the crust of one of her sandwiches, daintily, fussily brushing away any crumbs that fall on her rags. She doesn’t talk with her mouth full. Finally, she swallows with effort, then says, “You’ve been below. I can smell it on you.”
Rat nods. “All the way.” All the way to the elders.
“Go below too much, you stay below, remember that. You’re still young, darling. I remember you when you were sucking finger bones and the teats of them who died in childbirth. You’ll go feral quick if you go visiting the elders.” She shifts uncomfortably, glancing down the tunnel behind them as if expecting one of the fabled giants to climb out of the underworld right there. “You should stay away from them. You’ve got friends up here, not down there. Idge’s boy, I like him. And that foreign girl, the angry one. What became of her?”
“Gone.” Rat’s irritated by the thought. Still no word from Cari, and Spar’s still in prison.
Silkpurse finishes the last of her sandwich. She takes out a small mirror and checks her thick makeup. “Pity. Pity.”
Out in the harbour, he spies figures moving on the deck of the Ammonite. The two carrying heavy bags must be Cafstan’s boys, heading down to the hold to make the switch. Dummy alchemical caskets for real ones. A third must be Myri, the sorceress. She’s at the stern of the ship, and Rat’s elder-touched eyes pick up the glimmer of magic. He strains to see, wondering what mischief she’s working now.
“Why’d you go below?” asks Silkpurse.
“Church messenger needed a guide.”
Silkpurse hoots softly in amusement. “A good little errand boy, you are. Me, I spit on the church. Can’t buy me with a few stringy grey carcasses tossed down a well. I remember when the church wouldn’t let folk like us go above ground, not never. Many’s the time I got beaten by the Keeper’s fucking holy warriors for setting foot outside Gravehill. Blessed be the liberator, Mr. Kelkin. He put things to rights, he did.”
“I won’t be doing that again. I took a short cut and ran into a Crawler nest. It didn’t like that.”
“Just the two of you, and you’re not dead?” Silkpurse sounds surprised.
“The church woman was a bloody saint, as it turned out. Flaming sword and everything.”
“Ugh.” Silkpurse shudders. “They used to have lots of the bastards, and they were the worst. You could sneak past most of the churches, but not saints. Not their miracle workers. Few of them around these days, and thank the gods below for that. No Godswar here, thank you very much.”
Rat shrugs. The Godswar is always distant from Guerdon. It takes in alchemist weapons and mercenaries, spits out money, refugees and bad news. The idea of the Godswar coming to the city is as absurd as a river flowing backwards.
Humans are slow. So very slow. What are they doing on that ship? What takes so long? Rat frets, scurrying back and forth along the lip of the tunnel. Sniffs the air, and smells burning. Distant shouts, and bells ringing wildly. There’s some sort of disturbance in the city. Silkpurse hears it, too.
“Rioting,” she guesses. Unconsciously, she rubs an old scar on her shoulder. Parts of the city are waiting for an excuse to erupt, to turn fear and hatred of the Tallowmen into action. And when the city does riot, ghouls often come off the worst. There are few of them on the surface, and the corpse eaters are mistrusted. Rat bares his teeth. Let them come. He has excess energy of his own to work off, frustration and worry and the lingering effects of his contact with the elder ghoul. His mouth floods with black bile.
“Keep an eye out for a watch ship,” says Silkpurse, then she clambers down to the edge of the water, waiting for the other thieves to return.
Rat scans the harbour. The city watch has a dock at Queen’s Point, and gunboats they use to patrol the river and harbour. If the riots bring them out, there’s a good chance they’d spot the thieves on the Ammonite, because Cafstan and his boys are so fucking slow they deserve to be caught.
Finally—finally!—there’s movement on the freighter. One of the Cafstan lads, climbing down a rope to the boat below. Then the other, and he’s half carrying something. It’s Myri. Rat can’t tell if she’s injured or sick, then realises that she must be drained by whatever magic she cast. The Cafstan boy helps her down the rope, then follows himself.
Off in the direction of Queen’s Point, Rat hears a ship’s horn blaring, the coughing choke of an engine. Lights, a searchlight blazing brighter than the dawn.
Cafstan’s boat starts moving, but they’re going the wrong way. They should be heading straight back to shore, back to the tunnel mouth where Rat and Silkpurse wait, but instead they take a detour to the mooring holding the Ammonite. They only spend a moment there, just long enough for Myri to touch it with an outstretched hand. There’s a flare of energy and Rat nearly panics, thinking that they’ve given themselves away. Then he remembers that the spell was invisible to everyone else—assuming the watch ship doesn’t have any sorcerers on board, or thaumic lenses. He rubs his eyes, wondering if this knack for seeing magic is ever going to fade or if his contact with the elder has triggered some permanent shift in him.
The searchlight plays over the shore, but merciful gods below, the watch gunboat turns her nose upstream. She’s heading towards the city docks, towards the riots. Her engine roars as she cuts through the water, sending white moon-scar wakes out behind her on the black waters.
In comparison, Cafstan’s little boat is a ghost. It reaches the shore. Rat reaches down and helps haul them up. First Myri—she’s cold and shivering, fists clenched tightly, but she’s not injured. “Come on, get the others,” she snaps. “We need to get back quick.”
“What’s happening?” asks Rat.
“The warehouses along Sedge Street are on fire.” Sedge Street runs parallel to Hook Row. Tammur—and through Tammur, the Brotherhood—owns most of Hook Row. Warehouses crammed full of stolen goods. If the fire doesn’t get them, the looters might.
Below, the Cafstans unload the boat, and as soon as they’re clear Silkpurse pulls it out of the water and stashes it back in its hidden nook. The Cafstan brothers hand up the first satchel to Rat. They’re grinning, laughing to one another, joshing and pushing with glee.
Old Cafstan climbs up next, huffing with the effort. One of his sons starts to follow, but the weight of his pack makes him slip on the slimy rocks. He twists and falls awkwardly, scraping his pack against the rock face. There’s the crunch of breaking glass, and suddenly the boy is on fire.
The flames burn blue and green. Phlogiston, the alchemist’s fire. The same impossible heat Rat remembers from the Tower of Law. The Cafstan boy’s screams are unutterably loud in the sheltered cove. His brother, stupid and brave, grabs him and pulls him back into the water. If this were normal fire, maybe that would work, but this is one of the alchemist’s weapons. Water only feeds the flames.
The search light on the gunboat tracks back towards them, like the finger of an accusing god. Cafstan stares in horror, frozen as one of his sons thrashes in the water, blue fire and steam like wraiths that devour his flesh. The other boy and Silkpurse are still down there, but the fire’s between them and the tunnel entrance. The other boy’s screaming, too, all their laughter forgotten.
Distantly, Spar realises that the boys must have lifted some of the Ammonite’s cargo for themselves, filled their pockets with a little extra. Decanted phlogiston from the canisters into glass bottles, deviated from the plan. The time for recriminations will come later, though—if they don’t get clear before that watch cutter closes on them, nothing will matter.
The heat from the burning man is tremendous. Through the flames, Rat can see the brother stumbling in the shallows, half-blind, cradling his maimed hand. If Silkpurse can get to him, maybe they can rescue one of them. Cafstan throws a leg over the edge, as if climbing down into that inferno will help matters.
“Hold him,” snaps Myri, and Rat obeys, locking his arms around the old man. He has to strain to hold him back.
Myri steps to the edge. Her tattoos glow, their light pale and washed out against the blue-green hellfire. She points to the burning boy, and he slides backwards, pushed by an invisible force. He slithers, still screaming, out into the deeper water, and then he sinks like a stone, the black waters swallowing him. He’s still visible for a few moments, like a shooting star falling into the darkness.
The other boy’s maimed, half blind, but still alive. Maybe Silkpurse can carry him up.
But she can’t carry the stolen goods and the boy.
Myri makes the decision for them. The sorcerer points at the other Cafstan boy, and invisible forces drag him out too, scudding across the waves and then abruptly plunging beneath them. Unlike his brother, he’s not limned in blue fire, so he vanishes instantly.
Rat muffles Cafstan’s screams.
Silkpurse scuttles up the cliff, carrying the three satchels. Between the two ghouls, they’re able to hustle both Cafstan and the stolen goods back into the shelter of the tunnel. Myri follows behind, her hands flat in front of her like she’s holding something down, something that’s straining to rise back up. Her left hand smokes, and the skin blisters as though burnt.
The gunboat’s beam lights up the tunnel mouth behind them, but there’s no trace left of their presence, save a few fresh burn marks on the rocks, invisible at range.
Once they’re clear, Cafstan falls into the sewage and stays there, weeping. Rat shoots a glance at Silkpurse, but she just shrugs. Nothing can be done. All that’s left is to keep going to the warehouse, pitch in there. Without the Cafstans to help carry the satchels of stolen alchemy, they have to split the load between the two ghouls.
The satchels are noticeably lighter than the supposedly empty ones they brought over.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Even with the staff, walking is agony. His limbs are stone, unmoving, unresponsive, or they are burning, blazing, searing liquid, no strength or control just agony racing through him. All his muscles turned to angry serpents, ripping and biting him from the inside. He tries to croak, to tell Cari to leave him to die, to get out of here, but his tongue rebels and his jaw locks.
His father held out. His father was tortured by the watch. Poisoned, drugged, beaten. He didn’t talk. Hanged, and he didn’t talk. Up until now, Spar could hold onto that, emulate his father’s martyrdom. He knew he was going to die, but at least in Jere’s prison he could be like Idge, and not give the bastards the satisfaction of breaking him.
Now, Spar is faced with the terrifying prospect of not dying. Two minutes in the open air do more to shatter his resolve than all the deprivations of the prison cell. He clings to Cari like a drowning man.
Down streets that surge and fall back like stone waves on the night shore. Distant voices, shouts, and he cannot tell if he’s really hearing them, or just remembering them. The channels of his thought are calcifying, he thinks, the Stone Plague creeping into his brain.
His father held out. His father was tortured by the watch. Poisoned, drugged, beaten. He didn’t talk. Hanged, and he didn’t talk.
He didn’t give up the Brotherhood. Idge didn’t. Or Spar didn’t—which is it? And which Brotherhood? He’s nine years old, sitting on the stairs of the big house, listening to his father playing cards with the others, desperately wanting to be part of their circle. Hearing them make plans for changing the city. New buildings springing up in the Wash, in the shadows of Castle Hill. Protecting people from the cruelties of parliament. Even changing parliament. Laughing, but not completely denying, the idea that one day Spar or someone like him would be in parliament, a voice for the oppressed.
He’s nine years old, and he sneaks around the bottom of the stairs and looks in, and all the faces are Heinreil’s, red-flushed and grinning. All except Idge, still at the head of the table, but there’s a noose around his neck, tongue bloated like a purple slug pushing out of his mouth, eyes bulging, waxy yellow-green and the smell of shit.
Down streets that surge and fall back like stone waves on the night shore. Distant voices, shouts, and he cannot tell if he’s really hearing them, or just remembering them. The channels of his thought are calcifying, he thinks, the Stone Plague creeping into his brain.
His father held out. His father was tortured by the watch. Poisoned, drugged, beaten. He didn’t talk. Hanged, and he didn’t talk.
They’re asking him to do something. He won’t—he won’t talk. He won’t give in. Better to die here. Stone men don’t bend.
The channels of his thought are calcifying, he thinks, the Stone Plague creeping into his brain.
He hears a voice, echoing as if shouted down a very long tunnel. Cari.
“Push!”
He’s leaning against something solid and wooden. A door. He pushes, and the lock splinters, the doors open, and he falls heavily onto a marble floor. Echoes inside and out. Cari drags him across the marble, getting him off the street, then the doors close again. He hears a bar drop, then darkness.
Cool silence and stillness. Restful. He knows he should get up, that lying down is death for a Stone Man and that he’s risking more of his joints calcifying, but the pain’s bearable for the first time in an eternity and he’s very tired. The channels of his thought are calcifying, he thinks, the Stone Plague creeping into his brain.
He wants, very much, for the Brotherhood to say the same things about him that they said about his father. He wants quiet old men in dark suits to go by his mother’s little house, and tell her that her son died well, just like his father. But one of them will be Heinreil, or all of them maybe. He’ll lie. Tell Spar’s mother that her son was a coward, or a traitor. Tell her that he’s still alive, alive forever in a stone prison. Throw her out in the streets, cut her throat, anoint himself master of the Brotherhood in the blood of Idge’s widow.
“You still there?”
