The Gutter Prayer, page 18
Cari’s voice. He can’t see. Have his eyes turned to stone? It happens, scaly fragments that spread out from the edges, then turn into this blank white film over the whole eye, sealing the socket. Blindness is a new horror.
“I’ve got alkahest. Roll over.”
She pulls at his chestplates, but he’s too heavy for her to move. With a tremendous effort that opens up new sorts of pain, he pushes himself over.
He’s not blind. Moonlight through some high window plays over a carved ceiling depicting gods and saints. They’re in a church.
Cari finds a gap in the plates, right above his heart. There’s a sharp but welcome pain, and then alkahest—real alkahest, not the poison Jere gave him—flows through him. He shudders and convulses, but when the shakes pass, he feels better.
“Where are we?”
“The Holy Beggar. They had a shot of alkahest in the vestry. For the poor faithful, I guess.” She puts her bag on a nearby pew, and it jingles with coin. “Not sure if you qualify on either count, but fuck it.”
Spar tries to sit upright, but that’s not happening for another few minutes. “What if—discovered?” he manages to say. Speaking’s easier than it was, but he still feels like his lungs have to push against boulders lying on his chest.
“Yeah, about that.” Cari looks around, then up towards the bell tower. “I’m pretty sure everyone here has been eaten by a monster.”
“How—know?”
“I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”
Her footsteps recede into the cool darkness.
Spar closes his eyes, feels his heart beat, pumping blood and alkahest through him. Feels the alchemical cure dissolving the stone, softening sinews and joints, eating away at the leading edge of the plague. It runs into his brain, and with sharp knives of pain it digs away at the channels of his thought, letting him think clearly for the first time in a long time. Like pure rainwater washing away debris in a gutter.
And underneath the debris, beneath the calcification that pressed on his mind, he finds something hot and bright. Anger.
The spire of the Holy Beggar is a stunted thing. Two smaller towers flanking it rise almost as high as the belfry, giving the church a hunched look. A church for the Wash as the city thinks it should behave—humble, plain, simple, pathetically grateful for the benedictions given to it from on high. The spire faces up towards the three great cathedrals up on Holyhill, a paltry, earthbound approximation of their celestial glory.
The staircase up to the bells is very narrow and rickety. Spar would never make it up here. Cari doesn’t mind—she wants to make this pilgrimage alone. In a small anteroom at the bottom of the stairs, she finds an old coat and some other clothes. She hastily changes, glad to be rid of the piss-soaked student robes. She feels more like herself again—but even the Cari of the streets, the sneak-thief and wanderer, has to deal with her changed circumstances.
Even if she’s right, and the Raveller killed everyone else in the church, they still can’t stay here. They can’t go back to their little hovel either. Spar’s an escaped criminal, and she’s—well, if the watch catches her she’ll be at Ongent’s mercy, and she doesn’t know how far she can trust the professor. She doesn’t trust this gift either, this strange power.
It’s the bells. It happens when the bells ring. So, let’s go and look at a bell, she thinks.
Then back to the original plan—down to the docks, down to a ship. Maybe Spar will leave with her. The money she stole from Eladora isn’t enough to cover both passage and a supply of alkahest, but they could steal or stow away if it came to it.
One more twist of the staircase, and she’s out in the open air, on a narrow balcony that runs around the bells.
Bright moonlight, stark and white across the rooftops. From this perspective, Desiderata Street is hidden behind the shoulder of Holyhill, so she can’t tell if there’s anything happening up there, although she can see a thin column of smoke. Closer, fires burn in the docklands. A warehouse, set alight in the riots.
She takes a deep breath, then turns around.
A single bell hangs there, forged from some black metal that’s crenellated and ridged. It was once something else, she guesses, another metal shape that was melted down and cast in the form of a bell.
Greatly daring, she reaches out towards the metal surface. She touches it gingerly, expecting it to be hot or painful to the touch, tensing in anticipation of some magical discharge or revelation, but nothing happens. It’s just a bell, still and cold.
She runs her fingers over the metal, feeling every imperfection. It didn’t melt neatly. Traces of its previous shape can still be felt even in the thing’s new form. That was a hand, she can tell. Those were runes. They couldn’t destroy whatever-it-was, so they imprisoned it.
She’s the saint of a trapped, truncated god.
Not just a god. A pantheon. There are dozens of church bells in the city. What sort of god, though?
One way to find out.
Cari braces herself against a wall, puts one foot on the bell, and shoves. She shouldn’t be strong enough to ring the bell, but it moves, swinging smoothly away from her until it can go no further and the clapper slams into the bell … and Cari falls to her knees. This close, it’s not images, it’s feelings, tastes, sensations exploding beneath her skin.
In her vision, the city burns. A tide of Ravellers rise, slithering up from the depths. Black iron gods squat on impossible towers, howling for worship, for offerings to their terrible glory. Robed priests, elbow-deep in the blood of sacrifices, red knives cutting out the hearts of their enemies to be thrown on burning braziers. The smoke from a million burning hearts hangs over Guerdon like a ruddy pall. Death fuels death. A woman kneels before these idols, a high priestess, beautiful and terrible. She clasps a medallion in her red-stained hands, and it blooms with a ghastly light, a colourless fire. Transfigured in the bloodshed, made divine by slaughter, Carillon recognises herself.
She feels the overwhelming urge to prostrate herself before this divinity. To worship it. Become its vessel, its channel to the mortal world. More than a saint; an avatar.
Fuck that.
If the thing in the bell wants to keep her in Guerdon, it’ll have to do better. Show me Heinreil, she demands.
She doesn’t see anything, but it’s not like nothing happens. It’s the difference between having your eyes closed and opening your eyes in the darkness. Heinreil’s somehow blocked from her, occluded. She snarls with anger and shoves the bell again. Show me something!
The bell tolls, and Carillon sees everything.
The sound of the bell dies away slowly. Vibrations ripple through the bones of the Holy Beggar, through his stone skin. Spar lies and recovers his strength. He can already feel the dose of alkahest wearing off, which is much too quick. A vial should last him a week, more like two if he’s careful and doesn’t aggravate the disease. If he’s working, maybe three days minimum. If his disease has progressed to the next stage, where he needs nearly constant supplies, that’s going to be a problem.
He hears Cari’s footsteps as she circles around, checks the bar on the door, listens for anyone coming to investigate the noise.
“Did you ring the bell?” he asks. He can tell his voice is stronger.
“Yeah.” She sounds drunk, or dazed. She can’t stop scratching at her collar, her neck. A nervous twitch.
“The ‘why,’” he wheezes, “was implied.”
She kneels down next to him in the darkness, careful to keep her bare knees away from his skin. “A weird thing’s going on with me, Spar,” she begins, and starts with that moment he witnessed, when she tried to escape from the lithosarium by climbing out of the lake of dead men, but was struck down by a vision. Four nights and a lifetime ago. She tells him about Ongent buying her freedom, her family and what happened to them, the visions, the professor’s experiment, the Raveller and the Tallowmen, and her vision of the poisoned alkahest.
When she’s done, Spar lays his head back on the hard floor and stares up at the distant ceiling. He’s silent for a very long time.
“Do you want to use this?” he asks at last.
“Yes!” she hisses, eyes bright in the darkness. “We take down Heinreil. He sold us out, poisoned you.”
“You can’t prove that,” says Spar.
“I will. We will. We prove that he sold us out, tried to poison you, and the Brotherhood turns on him. You take over. And then … gods, what couldn’t we do then, with the Brotherhood behind us? Once I work out how to use this without it breaking my head—”
“If.”
“Maybe we cut a deal with Professor Ongent, or find someone else who knows about saint shit. I don’t know yet. But I can do it.”
“And I can punch through walls or wrestle a Gullhead, but I’m still sick, Cari.”
“You didn’t give up, though, did you? You could have just sat down and never moved again, gone to the Isle of Statues, stopped taking alkahest. It’s the same with this. Fuck the gods, or the bells, or whatever, but I’ll take their stuff and make it into a weapon.”
“It’s never that easy.” He grabs the butt end of the staff, holds it out to her. “Help me up.”
She wraps two slim hands around his wrist instead, pale flesh touching stone. “You know better,” he mutters, but he can almost feel her touch through his skin. He reverses the staff, digging its iron-shod butt into the ground and pushing against it. With Cari’s help, he drags himself upright. His head spins, but the pain’s mostly gone for now.
“We’re not staying here.”
“The priest’s gone.”
He uses the creature’s name hesitantly. “The … Raveller might come back. Or the … bell-ringer, come to see what’s wrong. And I’m starving. I can walk far enough to find some food, anyway. Let’s go.”
Cari hesitates. “We’ll need money. I have some, but I saw silver and jewels when I went looking for alkahest. Give me two minutes to clear this place out.”
“It’s bad luck to rob a church. It’s not the Brotherhood way. Come on, I know people who’ll help us.” He lifts the heavy bar away from the door with one hand, and ushers Cari out.
They leave the church behind them almost empty.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The coffee at the watch headquarters on Queen’s Point is just as bad as Jere remembers it. No matter how much Guerdon changes, there are fixed truths you can rely on. Everything else seems to be spinning into chaos, so he takes a maudlin comfort in the acidic taste. He imagines that it must be mostly run-off from the alchemists’ vats. The fire-fighting wagons have been out in force this morning, if you can call this pre-dawn hour a proper morning. The city hasn’t slept. It staggers, drunk-tired, into the new day, uncertain of everything and looking for a fight.
Jere stretches. He’s glad not to be on the watch roster any more. Keeping order in this city isn’t his problem these days. What did Droupe call it, a stew pot that needs to watched in case it boils over? More like one of the alchemists’ dangerous mixes of unstable elements. Waiting for a match to set it off.
A guard. Bridthen. Jere worked with him, years back. Knows he likes gambling on cards more than he should. Bridthen’s always in need of a little extra coin.
“You can see him now,” whispers Bridthen, “five minutes, all right?”
Jere drains the last of the coffee, knowing he’ll regret that in a few hours, knowing he needs it now. He follows Bridthen down familiar corridors and stairs, down into the cells. They’re crammed to bursting with those arrested in the rioting last night, twenty prisoners crammed into a space made for two, but Ongent rates a room on his own. An ageing professor of history doesn’t fit the profile of the watch’s usual guests.
Ongent’s lying on a little straw pallet, arms folded behind his head, but he’s not asleep. He’s staring at the ceiling, eyes a little glassy. Drugs? Not Ongent’s usual vice. Jere doesn’t know if the professor has any usual vices. For an … informant? Consultant? Friend? Whatever word applies to their relationship, Jere realises he knows little about why Ongent would be willing to cultivate an association with a thief-taker. Jere can buy someone like Dredger with coin, Pulchar with threats. What does Ongent want?
“You don’t want to lie on that,” says Jere, nodding towards the bed. “You don’t know what’s crawling around in there. Things with too many eyes and ears.” He hopes the professor gets his meaning, that this place is bugged. “Are you all right?”
“Never better, dear fellow,” says Ongent. “Positively exhilarated.”
“I went by your place up on Glimmerside last night. Lots of dead waxworks, and burnt buildings, and a big hole in the ground. Miren and that student of yours are fine, by the way. Just shaken.”
Ongent sits upright, stares right at Jere. “You will ensure that all my students are safe, won’t you? Some of them are so nervous, especially in the wake of the recent attacks. There were two girls staying in that house, along with my boy.”
He’s more worried about Carillon-bloody-Thay, realises Jere, than he is about being in prison himself. “They’re fine,” says Jere. “I’ll keep an eye on them. Now, tell me, what happened?”
“I really don’t know. Miren came running to me with warning of some sort of supernatural attack on Desiderata Street. The Tallowmen were already there when I arrived, fighting—I have absolutely no idea what, though. I told Miren to go make sure Eladora was safe, then I—well, you know that I dabble in sorcery. It came into my mind that I could possibly help with a little magic. Foolish, absolutely idiotic in retrospect, but I was overcome with excitement. I’ve never gone to war, Jere, or done anything dangerous in my life, so when the opportunity arose I couldn’t resist the temptation.”
Jere winces. “Did your spell cause all that damage?”
“Oh, my, no. I don’t have anywhere near that kind of power. I’m afraid that whatever the attacker was, it responded in kind and with vastly greater force. Fortunately, it struck at the Tallowmen, not me. I was on the periphery of its blast, and survived with only a few bruises.” Ongent actually grins. “To be honest, it was rather fun.”
“What was the attacker? Describe it.”
“I don’t know what it was. It kept changing shape. I can’t recall ever seeing anything like it. It was horrific.” The professor’s voice quavers. “Is it gone?”
“Like I said, there’s a big hole in front of your house. To me, it looks like something was trying to escape, but I’ve no idea if it got away or got killed.”
“The Tallowmen will know.”
Jere shakes his head. “There weren’t any survivors. I counted more than two dozen waxworks, all snuffed out. The alchemists might be able to reconstitute some of them, get at their memories that way, but from what I’ve heard that takes time. You’re the only surviving witness.” Apart from Carillon Thay.
Bridthen knocks on the door. “Time’s up.”
“Tell them exactly what you just told me. Try to remember everything you can about the attacker.”
“Certainly. Civic duty, and all that. Jere, I am terribly sorry for all this fuss. I know it was idiotic of me to try my little sorcery. Do you think I’ll be here long?”
“They’ll question you, then other guards will question you, and then they’ll let the alchemists have a go. It’ll be a few days, but I can put in a word with the magistrates, and make sure the guards know you’re a witness and not a criminal. Get you moved to somewhere better, with fewer bugs.”
“Thank you. That’s very reassuring,” says Ongent. “You will look in on my students, won’t you? And do me one last favour, Jere. In my office at the university there’s a book, Sacred and Secular Architecture in the Ashen Period. Miren can show you. I’ll need something to read while I’m helping the watch with their inquiries.” Ongent winks, obviously finding the whole situation much funnier than Jere does. Twenty dead Tallowmen is no laughing matter, even without the threat of some unknown monster stalking the city, or the bomber that destroyed the Tower of Law. And Carillon Thay, the common thread between both incidents. He’d like to know exactly why Ongent was so willing to pay the girl’s bounty, take her in under his roof, but he can’t ask now without giving too much away to the watch.
“I’ll be back with it when I can,” says Jere.
He takes a side exit from the cell block, a backstairs used only by the watch. It leads out through a portico onto a wind-chilled yard overlooking the harbour. A pair of ornamental cannons long since fallen into disuse point out to sea, guarding Guerdon against vanished foes. The alchemists build better guns now, and, anyway, who’s going to attack a city that makes weapons for all sides in the Godswar? The alchemists and weaponsmiths are scrupulous about staying neutral and selling to anyone with the coin to buy their bombs and poisons and monsters.
Jere watches the gulls wheel above the harbour and thinks about monsters.
Something old, some predator from a past age drawn to the blood and meat of the crowded city? Or something new? They make their own monsters these days, Tallowmen and Gullheads and other things, breeding them in great profusion in the vats. The alchemists’ industrial complex is off to the east, across the bay, and the seas out there are stained yellow and red from run-off. Did something escape from a lab and slither out onto the city streets?
This isn’t your problem, he reminds himself. He’s not part of the watch anymore. Until someone puts a bounty on the monster’s head, this is all just a waste of his time.
A narrow steep staircase, cut into the cliff-side, zigzags down from this perch to the dockside below. From here, he can see a cargo ship bound for the Silver Coast wallowing in the harbour, waiting for the tide to turn and carry her out to sea. A few smaller tugs and fishing boats, and a barge heading out towards one of the isles. He wonders idly if that’s one of Dredger’s boats.
Jere hurries down into the morning hubbub of the fish markets, as boats that were out all night come back in with the morning tide. The smells are flashes of childhood memory; any of those kids running laughing through the crowd could be the Jere of thirty—gods, more like forty—years ago, before the wars and the watch and too many late nights. He stops at a little stall to buy fresh-baked bread and better coffee.
