The Gutter Prayer, page 28
Kelkin sneers. “If some Haithi spy can steal a giant bell from the middle of my city without being noticed, then to hell with it, I’ll hand over my house keys right now.”
“All right, I don’t know. But then the third bell, the Bell Rock, that one they get right. The freighter breaking its mooring looks like an accident, and the poison cloud hides them while they get the bell. Then another blast to destroy the lighthouse completely. If anyone bothered to sort through the wreckage …”
Wreckage. The carts of hot metal on their way through Glimmerside. Dredger complaining about the guild and their prices. The phlogiston bomb, expertly modified—
Jere slams his fist into the table, startling the dog, who starts howling again outside the door. “It’s a damn salvage operation! The whole thing—they’re extracting something dangerous but still useful from the bells. Gods below, Effro, it’s the alchemists’ guild.”
Kelkin doesn’t speak. He stands, starts pacing.
Eladora feels frozen. Even from her sheltered position in the university, she knows the power and reach of the guild. Their wealth funds half the university’s departments. Their trade in weapons fuels Guerdon’s economy. Their City Forward party has a majority in parliament. They own the newspapers, the printing presses, the hospitals. They make alkahest and the other cure-alls and reagents that modern medicine and thaumaturgy depend on. Guerdon’s navy doesn’t sail anymore—it’s driven by alchemical engines and armed with alchemical guns. They make the Tallowmen. If they’re the ones attacking Guerdon, she’s not sure what can be done. Who can stand against them?
This must be what the Godswar feels like—to have the great invisible forces that hold up the world suddenly turn mad and cruel.
She raises her hand, fighting the fear that she’s betraying Professor Ongent’s trust. The thought that she’s about to make trouble for Jere doesn’t occur to her. “There’s something else. My cousin, Carillon. She’s … connected to the bells. I think she might be a Black Iron saint.”
“That’s not—oh, to the abyss with it!” Jere gives up on trying to interrupt. “She’s the thief girl I arrested at the Tower of Law, Kelkin. She’s another Thay.”
Kelkin grimaces, but there’s no sign he’s surprised.
“She had some sort of seizure while in custody, said she had a vision. Professor Ongent took her off my hands—he thought she might be useful to his studies. She didn’t know anything useful about Heinreil, so I didn’t think she meant anything. I swear I didn’t know she was involved in this mess until …”
“Until when?”
Jere runs his hand through his hair, winces. “Until she broke Idge’s son out of my jail. I’ll get them back, I’ve got men on it, but—”
Kelkin stares at him.
“Look, I’ll find her, all right. I just need more time.”
“There isn’t anymore time.” Kelkin sighs, picks up his glass, moves back to the fire. Weighing his words. Then he speaks.
“This doesn’t leave the room, understand?” demands Kelkin.
Eladora nods.
Kelkin begins, “I met Jermas Thay in the seminary …”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It took a dose of alkahest injected straight into Spar’s spine before he could feel his legs again. With a second, he was able to stagger to a chair. A third got him down the stairs of the Bull. He took a fourth when they were nearly at Mother Bleak’s barge, and insisted on having a fifth to hand before he would go aboard. Cari had found some back-alley alchemists who supplied the drug at a hideous mark-up—quadrupled, no doubt, because they needed to get Spar off the streets before someone tipped Heinreil or the watch or the thief-taker off. They could get money off Tammur, she thought, but they’d have to do it quietly, not advertise Spar’s weakness.
The barge looked very small and fragile in the dawn light when they arrived. Mother Bleak wrinkled her nose at the sight of Rat, but said nothing and instead fussed over Spar, helping him lower himself onto a few cushions that she spread on the floor, ignoring his protests that he was made of stone and a cushioned floor felt no different from a bed of nails to him.
They slept, exhausted, Cari curled on the bench, Spar lying on the floor. If Rat slept, he did so in the fashion of ghouls, outside on the deck, eyes open and staring into the darkness of the little cabin. The city awoke around them, gulls crying overhead, shouts from the docks and the markets. Fishermen returning from up the coast, maybe, discovering the city’s newest tragedy as they came to docks empty of people, coated in the yellow stains left by the poison cloud.
When Cari wakes Mother Bleak is gone, but the smell of hot curry from the pot on the stove fills the little room She shakes Spar awake, calls Rat in. Serves breakfast at twilight. Spar manages to stand up on his own, but can’t manage to lever himself into position to sit on the bench. His spine’s frozen again, and once again they’re out of alkahest.
Rat breaks the silence.
“It’s the poison, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” says Spar.
“Shit,” curses Cari. Without Spar, there’ll be no rallying point for opposition to Heinreil. Spar’s popular in the Brotherhood in his own right, but, more importantly, he’s Idge’s son, a symbol of how things used to be.
She doesn’t let herself think of Spar actually dying. Doesn’t think that her only real friend in the city might possibly leave her all alone, exposed to the incomprehensible wordless fury of the bells. She has to focus on practicalities, cling to them, or she’ll be lost. “All right. It’s all right. We can work this. There’s got to be an antidote.”
“There isn’t. Yon said there’s no counter-agent.” Spar closes his eyes. “He said there was no way to tell how fast the poison would work. He said it could take weeks, but that it’d probably be a lot less.”
“How quick?” asks Rat.
“A few days, maybe.” And then, in a low voice. “Sorry.”
“This isn’t your fault,” says Cari. “Heinreil fucking did this, and we’re going to pay him back. Don’t you dare apologise for that—”
“That’s not what I’m sorry about. I’m sorry I didn’t insist that you get on a ship and leave, Cari. I’m sorry I let you drag Rat back into this. I’m sorry that I ever entertained for a bloody moment that this was a good idea, any of this, that I could—”
“Could what? Could take what you wanted? Could be who you were born to be?” Cari springs up from her seat. “What did you think was going to happen?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You thought you could be master! You thought you could make this city better, right?” Cari’s eyes sting with angry tears.
“Yes. And I shouldn’t have.”
“For fuck’s sake, Spar! What’s the point of just lying there?”
Spar shrugs. “I thought I was sick, and that I’d turn to stone and die. Turns out, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.” He sighs. “I just wanted to leave something behind. Some legacy. But it’s not going to happen.”
“That’s just …” Cari seethes, trying to find the words to convey just how frustratingly stupid her friend is being.
“Cari,” cautions Rat quietly, “this isn’t about you or your … situation. Or your plans. It’s Spar’s decision.”
“I never said it was about me,” says Cari.
“All this happened because of your visions,” hisses Rat. “Not the poison, but all the rest, Spar going after Heinreil, trying to take over the Brotherhood. If he’d rested after getting out of prison, then maybe he wouldn’t have got worse. Everywhere you go, things go to hell. I look at you, and I see …” His voice trailed off into a growl.
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“For ‘this,’” echoes Rat. “You don’t even know what this is. Sainthood? From what gods? Who do you think is sending you these visions, Carillon? Why you?”
“It’s the bells. They’re dead gods.”
“They’re not dead,” whispers Rat. “The ghouls know.”
“Enough!” says Spar. “None of it matters. None of it matters. Rat, leave her alone, and drop the mystic ghoul nonsense. It doesn’t suit you. Cari, maybe he’s right—that professor tried to find out what’s going on with you, and you ran. You went up to the Holy Beggar, and tried to find Heinreil rather than anything else. It’s not a tool or a gift. It’s … I don’t know what it is, but neither do you.”
He’s trying to drive her away, Cari decides. He thinks she’s not strong enough to watch him die, to watch him calcify cell by cell, limb by limb, until he’s nothing but a few living organs in a tomb of stone. It’s a horrible way to die, and he’s right, her instinct is to run away. But that Cari died when the Tower of Law fell on her.
Bells ring very far away, but she’s not sure if they’re in her memory or out in the city.
“I know someone who can help,” she says.
Cari takes the same route as a week ago, although she is not the same woman. Down to Phaeton Street Station, and a rattling train ride over Glimmerside to Pilgrim Street. She kicks herself for dumping the student robes; she sticks out among the crowds of students on this train, like an alley cat amid a flock of pigeons. A Tallowman twists its neck around to stare at her as she passes, head rotating like an owl, jointless and rubbery.
Desiderata Street is empty, closed off. The hole in the road is gone, scabbed over with fresh concrete, but the street’s houses are all abandoned and boarded up. A bored watchman patrols up and down, coughing, huddled in an overcoat against the chill of the night.
Professor Ongent doesn’t actually live here, though. He just owned the house, kept it for the use of his son and his students—and his lab animals. He lived closer to the university. Cari takes to the mews and alleyways behind Desiderata to make her way up the slope towards the grey towers of the university.
This isn’t how she wanted to do it. After she left Bleak’s houseboat, she found a safe place to hide and waited until the turning of the hour, when the bells rang. Demanded they show her Ongent, but they didn’t cooperate. She saw the professor in a small room, but it was like looking through broken glass as it was being forced into her eye. Fragments that made her bleed when she looked at them, the vision cutting into her. He’s alive, but she couldn’t guess where. Last time she looked, he was in a jail cell in Queen’s Point, but she figured they’d have let him go by now. In Cari’s experience, the quality don’t stay in prison.
At this time of night, the university campus is quiet. A few lights burn in high windows, but all the libraries and lecture halls are locked up. She pauses outside the window to the professor’s office, remembering the experiment. The thaumaturgic skull exploding in her hands, the feeling that she was a dam holding back immense powers. Now, she wants to repeat the experiment, use that power.
Saints are supposed to be able to heal people with a touch, according to Aunt Silva’s stories.
Cari’s not a very good saint, but she can improvise.
A cough, the flare of a cigarette in the distance. Across the lawn, in the shadows of the medical school, someone’s watching her. She glimpses a thin face, balding, a big silver ring on one hand. She keeps walking, adding a little sway to her steps like she’s a bit drunk. Just some student taking a short cut across campus back to her dormitory.
She turns the corner around the side of the history department. The side door that leads to the stairs that goes up to Ongent’s office is shut and locked. She keeps walking, hears the crunch of footsteps behind her. She keeps moving, but she reaches for her weapons.
Her hand closes around her knife.
Her mind reaches out. The bells aren’t ringing right now, but she’s found that she doesn’t always need that. The powers that have blessed her, tried to claim her, are always out there, in their roosts or prison cells across the city, and she can rattle their cages if she concentrates.
She stumbles.
It’s like she’s in two places at once.
She’s walking along by the side of the history building, hand brushing against the rough stone wall to keep her balance in the darkness, but she’s also watching herself from the top of Holyhill, from the bell tower of one of the cathedrals. So far away, but she can see with perfect clarity through the darkness, through the intervening buildings, see her tiny fragile body like a flickering white flame, and the dark shape approaching from behind.
She’s never seen him before, but she’s seen him before. A flash, a trailing memory. He’s talking to Ongent. In the jail cell at Queen’s Point. Interrogating him. The professor full of bravado at first, then hunched, flinching. The man doesn’t hit him. Doesn’t need to. He has leverage.
The trailing edge of the vision: he’s got a gun. She can taste the bitter chemicals in their chambers, feel the shape of the bullet.
“Carillon Thay,” he calls out, and it brings her back to her body, as surely as naming a demon binds it to a single form in the stories Aunt Silva used to read her at night. She grips her knife tighter and breaks into a run. The archway ahead runs through the old seminary, over to the main quadrangle. There’ll be people. He won’t dare shoot her there.
He’s running, too, thumping footsteps close behind her, coat billowing like wings, but she’s faster. The arch opening before her, with its promise of safety.
The second watcher steps out right in front of her from his hiding place in the shadow of the archway. She bounces off his chest. Hard rings of mail armour beneath the coat. He catches her before she can go sprawling on the ground, hands grabbing her forearms like manacles, spinning her around.
The first man, the interrogator, slows down. The gun goes back in his pocket.
“I haven’t done anything,” she protests.
He ignores her. Steps forward and shoves his hand down her top, gloved fingers roughly grabbing at her neck, collar, breasts.
“Fuck off!” she starts to say, but a hand closes across her mouth.
“Doesn’t she have it?” The second one, the one holding her, is surprisingly soft-spoken. Hot breath on her ear as he holds her, pinned down. The only thing she can think they might be looking for is her amulet.
“Get her inside,” orders the first man. Cari is dragged to a door in the archway tunnel. It opens onto a corridor. More university offices, the theology department. They force-march her down to the third door, push her inside, follow her in, lock the door behind them.
“Where’s Professor Ongent?” demands Cari.
“The alchemists took him. He’s an idiot. He should have brought this to the professionals.”
“And that’s you?” asks Cari.
“We’ve been doing this a long time,” says the interrogator, looking around the office. A heavy desk, a few cabinets, some chairs, a fireplace with a rug in front of it. “Over here.”
Cari doesn’t move, so the second guy twists her arm behind her back. Pain. A kick, and she’s down on the rug.
The interrogator takes out his gun. “If you’d just stayed away from Guerdon … Gods forgive me.” He aims the gun at her forehead. Grotesquely, the other man breaks into quiet song, a hymn to the Keepers that Cari recognises from her childhood. A prayer.
The door smashes open as someone throws themselves against it, full-force. A dark shape, small, male, that’s all she sees. The interrogator’s aim wavers, just enough, for Cari to duck forward. The gun goes off just behind her, deafening her. A thunderbolt at the back of her skull.
Her knife is in her hand, and she slashes with it. The gun falls to the grate, suddenly splattered bright red. Next to it, fingers. The interrogator doesn’t even blink. His boot catches Cari square in the chest. Ribs crack and she goes sprawling in the corner, winded.
Sees her rescuer and the second guy wrestling.
Miren. It’s Miren. His stiletto knife stabs, once twice thrice, but, like the interrogator, the other man is wearing armour beneath his coat, and isn’t cut. He’s double Miren’s size, too, so when it becomes a wrestling match it’s all over. He grabs Miren like he did Cari, picking the boy up like he’s a child, and slams him into the desk. Miren goes limp.
“Do them both,” orders the interrogator. He picks up his gun with his good hand and sticks his maimed one into his coat.
The second guy also draws an alchemical pistol. He closes the broken door to muffle the sound of the shot.
Miren slides off the table, groaning and lands next to Carillon. He grins. His hand grabs hers.
And they vanish.
Kelkin clears his throat and starts to talk. It’s not like his speeches in parliament, which are peppered with fire and venom. His voice is low, confessional. Eladora has to strain to hear him.
“Back then, the Keepers ran everything in the city. Keepers, feh. They kept Guerdon in the dark ages. Other religions were banned. Taxes for the upkeep of church roofs and saints’ tombs. We were like Old Haith’s little brother—a backward theocracy.
“I was blind to it. I came here to be a priest, can you believe that? I was clever enough, I suppose, for a spotty stammering boy, but the only book in the village I came from was the Testament of the Keepers, so I knew nothing. I entered the seminary with the full intent of becoming a faithful Keeper and perpetuating the church’s wise and beneficent policy of keeping Guerdon in chains.
“That lasted one week. They let you into the library after your first week.”
Eladora smiles at that—she remembers the thrill of her own library key, of all that knowledge opening up to her. Jere’s watching Kelkin and not paying attention to her so, greatly daring, she steals another glass of the brandy.
“The library then, by the way, was only a shadow of what it is now, but I was still able to read beyond the approved texts. They opened my eyes, and I wasn’t the only one. There was a whole generation of us, young and clever and stupid at the same time. The city was ready for change. The old order was starting to melt away, and we swam in the meltwater.
“I stopped going to sermons on the virtues of the gods and started attending meetings with free-market theologians, traders, thaumaturges, transmuters, radical reformers. There were whispers out of applied theology that they’d made great advancements in alchemy, but that the Keepers had banned them from continuing their research. We started protesting, demanding they lift the ban.
