The Gutter Prayer, page 20
“Safidists … want to be saints, right?”
“To offer up the soul entire to the will of the divine.” He guesses she’s quoting something. She probably got that from Ongent; half of what the professor says is a quote from some book, or sounds like it is.
“Was she always a Safidist?”
“I don’t know. She became more committed after Carillon left. She decided that it was her fault that Carillon was so, um, wayward. So, I got the benefit of her … determination.”
“And did she give you a ‘religious education’?”
“Ha. She tried. You think a Safidist would have anything to do with Professor Ongent? Safidists believe we should all be subservient slaves to the gods of the Keepers. That there’s only one true faith, and it’s theirs. The professor studies the whole history of Guerdon. All its many gods. And they’re all the same.”
Jere looks down at the illustration, still open on the table. Keeper saints and underworld devils of the Black Iron Gods, fighting to the death. He realises, suddenly, that the battle depicted took place roughly where this very coffee shop stands. “‘And they came to the place called Mercy,’” he says. Quoting is catching, apparently. “How are their gods the same?”
“They’re all self-sustaining magical constructs. I don’t pretend to understand the sorcery of it, or the mathematics, but it’s true. Gods—all gods, I think—are just spells that keep going. Like waterwheels powered by the passage of souls, maybe. Prayer strengthens them, and so does residuum, the portion of the soul that remains in the corpse after death. The gods are not omniscient or omnipotent, just very different from us. More powerful in some ways, but locked into patterns of behaviour they cannot change, so they’re not really sentient, I suppose. Saints are p-p-points of congruency between our world and theirs.” Eladora pauses, takes a breath. “That’s what the professor says. I suppose that’s one sort of religious education, but not quite what my mother had in mind.”
“You’re underselling the gods.”
“Are you among the faithful, Mr. Taphson?”
“No. But I’ve seen the Godswar.” Cities melting like ice under a blowtorch. Armies of the dead. Wild saints wielding lightning like spears. “Omnipotent sounds about right.”
“If their gods were all-powerful, they wouldn’t need to their worshippers to fight a war,” says Eladora quietly.
“And they wouldn’t need to buy weapons from the alchemists, or hire mercenaries, I suppose.” The city’s wealth and its neutrality in the Godswar are two sides of the same coin. Jere wonders what it would be like if the gods of the Keepers joined the conflict. The thought is absurd, even laughable. It’s mixing up a cannon with a chimney pot just because they’re both tubes that belch smoke.
“I suppose not.” Eladora closes the book, then speaks hastily. “Mr. Taphson, my mother strongly disapproves of my studies with Professor Ongent, so much so that we are no longer on speaking terms, and have not been in some time. She no longer supports me financially. I have some savings, but Carillon took all my coin and everything else is in Desiderata Street and they won’t let me go back there. The professor’s in prison, I … I don’t know where Miren is. He often vanishes for weeks, and I, I …” The tears threaten to come back, but she collects herself. “I don’t know where to go, and I have no money.”
Commotion outside. Jere stands—he’s taller than most of the customers by a head—and can see right to the door. Bolind’s there, clutching the back of his head, shouting at one of the coffee shop’s waiters. Bolind’s supposed to be watching the prisoner. Jere swears under his breath, then digs a handful of coins out and drops them on the table in front of Eladora.
“If Miren doesn’t show up today, come down to my offices. They’re in the old plague hospital in the Wash. Come down before dark, mind you. There’s plenty of space there.”
“The lithosarium?”
“I’d bring you down there now, but I need to attend to this. Keep good care of that book.”
She gathers up the coins. “I am in your debt.”
“Aye, you are. You can thank me later. Good luck—I hope Ongent’s boy turns up, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
The Stone Boy is gone. Carillon Thay was here.
Bolind’s lucky to be alive. Spar could have smashed every bone in his body. Jere’s tempted to do the same. Two prisoners, both of immense value, and he lets them stroll out. They even stole Jere’s staff, and he can see the bloody symbolism himself thank you very much.
He’s trailed them to the Holy Beggar church, where they’d forced the door. After that, they could have gone anywhere in the city. He’ll find them again, if they’re still in Guerdon, but it’ll take time, and things are slipping out of his grasp.
Bolind emerges from the shadows of the bell tower, clutching a grey robe.
“I found this. Looks like she changed clothes.”
Jere grunts in acknowledgement. He shakes out the robe, but there’s nothing of interest in it.
“And this,” says Bolind. He holds up an empty syringe of alkahest. “Looks like one of ’em broke into the back room to find it.”
“I gave Spar a shot just last night. Bloody thieves.” Jere drums his fingers on his cane, missing the familiar weight of his staff. Bolind, still swearing that his skull is fractured, sits down on a pew and gingerly probes his purpled head with black-stained fingers. The theft and immediate use of the alkahest might mean that Spar’s in worse shape than Jere had suspected, if he needs a second dose of the drug so soon. Alkahest isn’t that hard to come by in the city, but if the Stone Boy needs a dose every day or two, maybe he’ll slip up and reveal himself. And if the Thay girl sticks with him instead of bolting, Jere can catch her, too.
Go after them, or work on the mysterious THIS IS NOT THE LAST message? The one that implicates either the city watch or the Tallowmen in the bombing of the Tower of Law and the Desiderata Street murders?
The church darkens suddenly. A figure in the doorway, outlined against the morning light streaming in from the Wash. Portly and robed.
“My heavens, what happened here?”
One of the priests. “You had a break-in during the night. A pair of thieves. One of them was a Stone Man, and they robbed your alkahest.”
“To profane the house of the gods, even when one is in dire need, is a terrible thing. Terrible indeed. The Holy Beggar is humble and unassuming. He asks for charity, but does not expect, and thus draws out the best in the hearts of others.” The priest approaches Jere, extends a pudgy hand. “I am Olmiah, one of the Keepers of this church. What can you tell me of them?” The strong scent of a woman’s perfume, and beneath it a foul stench, like the priest’s trodden in a pile of dung.
“Jere Taphson, thief-taker,” says Jere, bowing rather than clasping that hand. He doesn’t want to get caught in a long conversation. “I must hurry in search of them, Keeper, but my associate Bolind here has some questions for you. We know they took alkahest, but if you notice anything else missing …”
“Of course, of course. Oh, but you are injured,” says the priest on seeing Bolind. “Come into the sacristy, I have bandages and healing salves somewhere.” Bolind offers groans as gratitude.
“All right,” says Jere, “once you’re done here, fetch as many of the old crowd as you can and get them to report in. We’re going to need bodies on the streets.” The old crowd are a mix of fellow veterans, ex-watch, adventurers and the like that Jere knows he can trust, at least as long as Kelkin’s coin keeps flowing. Bolind nods and winces. “Go, go.”
The big man follows the priest into the shadows of the sacristy. Jere pauses on the threshold, suddenly troubled by a sense of foreboding.
Above him, the bells of the Holy Beggar ring out, marking the noon hour.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mother Bleak’s home is an old barge turned into a houseboat, tied up at the edge of what was once a canal, but is now so choked with weeds and garbage that it’s almost solid ground. Still, the weight of Spar made the boat lurch to one side when he stepped on board, and Mother Bleak insisted on making him sleep right in the middle, in the little galley. Cari curled up on a bench nearby and slept like the dead. It’s not much of a boat, but she’s spent half her life at sea, and the cramped cabin feels more comfortable than Desidirata Street ever did.
She’s woken by the sound of gulls walking on the roof overhead.
Spar’s almost invisible in the darkness, an unmoving lump. She can’t tell if he’s asleep or just brooding.
“Morning,” she says.
“Can’t move,” whispers Spar. “Stone.”
“Shit.” She kneels down beside him. She has to press her ear to his mouth to understand him.
“Seized up. Tried calling for help, but can’t speak.”
“Gods, I didn’t hear. I’m sorry.”
“Alkahest.” He spits the word, sounding ashamed and furious.
“I’ll find some,” she promises, though she has no idea where.
She scurries up on deck. There’s no sign of Mother Bleak, who seems to be some old family friend of Spar’s. She took them in without question last night, and fussed over him like proper aunts are supposed to do. There’s a little framed portrait of a man who looks like Spar—or like Spar would if he wasn’t covered in rocky sores—hanging on the wall of the cabin. It must be Idge. They’re trading on old debts to stay here.
Three other boats, equally weed-locked. A canyon of tenements, overhanging the canal. Faces in windows stare at her, at this new intrusion into their neighbourhood. Cari keeps her head down, letting her hair hang over her face. The burn marks from the melting bell in the Tower of Law are still fiery red, an easy distinguishing mark for anyone searching for her. Ongent, Heinreil’s thieves, the watch, the Tallowmen … the Raveller.
She climbs off the boat and crosses the concrete bank, follows the old horse-track upstream a little. Passes a rusting alchemical engine that once dragged boats along the canal. Its smokestacks remind her of the petrified, drowned Stone Men in the lithosarium, their mouths open in silent screams, their hands outstretched towards the surface as they drowned.
Into a maze of alleyways, the west end of the Wash.
Turn right, and she’ll be in familiar territory. She can see the spire of the Holy Beggar in the distance there, a landmark that’s haunted her dreams and her waking hours for the last five days. Go past that and turn down towards Pollard’s Square, and she’d come to the little tenement flat she shared with Spar. There’s a backstreet potion shop near there, selling fake cure-alls and patent medicines; that’s where Spar bought his alkahest. She can’t go back there. Heinreil will have someone watching it.
So, she turns left, along the city-ward spur of Queen’s Point. New lines of regimented terraced houses, in serried ranks along the slope. Cari kicks herself for dumping her student’s robe back in the church—the grey robe would draw less attention here than her current garb. There are gates and choke points between the Wash and Newtown, where the watch turn back undesirables. Sneaking past them used to be easy enough, but she’s heard stories that there are Tallowmen in the side wynds now, waiting there to catch any pickpocket or footpad who might rise out of the scum-sump of the Wash to trouble the not-quite-gentry-but-better-than-you of Newtown.
Cari took very little with her when she ran away from Aunt Silva’s house. She took some clothes and money—just like she did when she ran away from Silva’s daughter, she realises, and the thought is both funny and sad. She took the black amulet, the only physical reminder she ever had of her mother. She also took years of Silva’s lessons on proper behaviour, on posture and diction and how to be a lady. Act like you belong, and most people won’t look at you. So she straightens up as she approaches the gate, brushes her hair back, and adopts the proper sneer. She practically dares the guards to stop her, to ask about her business or her scarred face.
And if that doesn’t work, there’s the comfortable weight and sharpness of her knife.
Neither social grace nor her knife would work on a Tallowman, but she’s lucky, and all the guards are human. Only one gives Cari a second glance, but she doesn’t stop her.
A neat row of shops, and at the end an apothecary. Inside, a fat woman stares at her from a high stool behind the counter, like a glassy-eyed gull watching fish flop in the shallows. Rows upon rows of jars behind her, all neatly labelled. A door to a back storeroom.
The woman initially assumes that Cari wants an abortifacient, and frowns down at her with feigned pity. “No, alkahest,” Cari corrects her.
The apothecary produces a heavy glass jar, brimming with a clear slime. It’s the wrong sort of alkahest. The substance comes in two forms—the injectable liquid that Spar needs, in its metal syringes with rock-punching needles, and as a caustic ointment, a purging stinging slime meant to be rubbed on skin that’s come in contact with Stone Men, to avoid infection. Cari never bothered with the precaution before, she just washed after brushing against Spar when she remembered to, and has got away with it so far.
She doesn’t know the technical term for the injectable form, though. “The sort in the syringe.” The woman’s frown grows. Buying the ointment isn’t that unusual—many people in Guerdon are obsessive about avoiding contact with the plague, even now. Carillon remembers seeing a half-empty jar of the ointment in Eladora’s medicine cabinet back in Desiderata Street. The syringe is only for Stone Men with the incurably advanced form of the plague. Not the sort of people, these days, who’d be found in a shop like this.
The woman names the price, and Cari nearly chokes. It’s three times what she expected. She can pay with the money stolen from Eladora, but not for long, not if Spar needs the drug almost daily now. She hands over the money, praying that this is some after-effect of Heinreil’s poison that will soon wear off, and he’ll be back to one dose every week or two if he’s careful.
“You must sign for it,” says the woman. She pushes a large ledger across the desk. The last entry in it dated four years previously. A printed notice at the top of the page talks about plague ordinances passed by parliament, about how every outbreak must be reported to the watch.
Eladora Duttin, writes Cari, and gives the address as simply the university.
“This perfume, too.” Cheap but not unpleasant, and necessary. The smell of the stagnant canal already clings to Cari’s clothes, marking her out. If she needs to move in other parts of the city without attracting attention, she may need to mask it. “And willowfyne. And a cup of water, please.”
Willowfyne is a common painkiller, for headaches and fevers. Cari’s shoulder still hurts, but what she really wants is water from the back room. The woman scowls, but obliges. She leaves the door ajar so she can keep an eye on Cari, and that lets Cari spy on her, too, marking the layout in case she needs to come back here and steal alkahest instead of buying it, to conserve her funds.
The apothecary comes back with a finger of water in a cup, and the all-important syringe. Cari stuffs perfume and alkahest into her bag, careful to keep the full syringe away from the one she took from the lithosarium, the one that still has a small residue of poison in it. Careful, too, not to let the apothecary see that. Cari feels she’s drawn too much attention already.
A Tallowman walks behind her down the street, dogging her footsteps so close that she can feel the candle heat on the back of her neck. Following her until she’s back down in the Wash.
Mother Bleak must be back. Condensation rolls down the inside of the windows of the houseboat, and when Cari opens the door she’s greeted by a wall of steam and Spar’s earthquake laughter. He’s still stuck on the ground, unable to move, but the old woman has propped him up on a box so he can sit up a little. Mother Bleak cleans around him, scrubbing every surface with a rag dipped in a bucket of scalding-hot water. Lined face as red-flushed as her scarlet headscarf, little silver rings in her nose jingling as she scrubs. She’s wearing an astonishing pair of black rubbery gloves that come up to her shoulders, the sort worn by glassblowers or foundry workers. Cari remembers seeing men wearing gloves like that down at the dockyards as they handled alchemical waste.
“Have you got it?” Mother Bleak snaps. “Give it here.”
Cari hands over the alkahest syringe. Expertly, Bleak twists off the cap, exposing the bright steel of the needle. Kneels down next to Spar.
“There’s another pair of gloves on the counter,” she tells Cari, “put those on and help push him forward.”
Cari kneels down next to her and puts her shoulder to Spar’s broad back. “It’s all right, I can manage.”
Bleak snorts, but doesn’t argue. The two of them together lever Spar’s dead weight forward and up, exposing a crack in his skin-paving. Bleak drives the needle through the softer crust without hesitation and presses the plunger home. Spar winces in pain, shudders, then lies back and smiles. “It’s good. It’s good. I can feel my knees. Give me a moment.”
“You’ve done that before,” says Cari to Mother Bleak.
“My husband, and one of my girls. Long gone away, now, but I still have the knack. You should be more careful, dear. It just takes a little touch to spread, and you might not have the cure to hand.” Mother Bleak puts the cap back on the syringe. “A scrap dealer used to pay two coppers for an empty one. Might be more now, with the war. Are you feeling better, Spar?”
Spar reaches down and takes hold of his right ankle, then pulls the leg towards him so the knee bends sharply. There’s an audible crack as pebble-like scabs crack, and little trickles of watery pus mixed with grit cascade down his calf. He smiles through the pain. “Like a new man.”
Satisfied, Mother Bleak starts to mop up the liquid. “There are some clothes there, too, for both of you. Cari, there’s stew on the pot there. Spar and I have already eaten.”
