The Gutter Prayer, page 34
She finds a valve and turns it. The tank gurgles, the hose convulses and then the fire-quenching slime cascades down onto the courtyard, a high-pressure spray like a waterfall crashing onto rocks.
The Tallowmen don’t even get a chance to scream. They just stop. The slime snuffs them all out in an instant. They fall in droves, crumpling to the ground to be entombed in the slime. Escaped thieves slog through the green-foam drifts, making for the still-open gate. There are still Tallowmen down there—she can see their lights clustered at the entrance to the tallow-vat factory, where they gather at the open door, snarling and slashing at their foes but unable to set foot outside.
She hears Spar shouting below, marshalling the thieves, telling them where to run.
Cari leans back against the cool metal of the tank, grinning. She’s done it. The hose goes limp as the tank runs dry.
Then the first Tallowman appears at the top of the ladder. Its grin is hideously bright as it steps over the hose, almost daintily avoiding the little chemical pools. Cari slashes at it with her knife, but it’s too fast—candle fingers close on her hand, pinning her. There’s another Tallowman, and another, both grabbing her and holding her down.
A woman follows the trio of Tallowmen. Middle-aged, with reddish hair, and a dress that really isn’t suited for clambering around rooftops. The wind catches it, threatening to drag her off the edge and hurl her down to the courtyard below, so she holds tightly to the railing.
She raises her voice—it’s rich and cultivated, commanding but not unkind. “Carillon Thay?” The woman doesn’t seem surprised. “My name is Rosha. I run the guild. I need to talk to you. If they let you go, will you promise not to do anything foolish?”
Cari nods, and the Tallowmen release her. They stay standing around her with their heads bent at weird, inhuman angles to keep their candle flames sheltered from the sudden wind.
“I know about you, Carillon. About your connection to the bells. Do you know what they are? They’re the remnants of the Black Iron Gods. The church defeated them and captured them. Recast them as bells to imprison them.” The woman Rosha takes a step towards Carillon, hesitant as though she’s scared of her. “We’re approaching the same problem from different ends, Carillon. I’ve found a way to destroy the Black Iron Gods, to do what the church couldn’t manage. To safely dispose of their power. You can help. Help me. It will free you from these visions, and I’ll make you rich.”
Cari glances at the courtyard below. “You turn people into these candle-fuckers.”
“I won’t do that to you. Or to your friends. Ah.” Rosha pauses for an instant, as if she’s listening to something Cari can’t hear. Cari spent a few weeks as a part of a theatre troop, and she recognises the look—Rosha’s being prompted by someone. Some voice in her ear. “Your friend Spar will have the best treatment for his condition. All the alkahest he needs. As for your crimes—I own the city watch, dear, you don’t need to worry about them.”
“And in exchange? What do you need me for?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Fucking try.”
Rosha gestures with her hands. “You’ve travelled. You’ve seen the Godswar—not directly, I believe, but you know how horrible it is.”
She’s right. Guerdon’s an island of sanity compared to some of the things Cari has heard about, in lands where the gods have gone mad with terror or bloodlust.
“You can imagine what it will do to this city if it comes here. We’ve developed a weapon that can strike directly at the gods. Kill them in the spiritual realm instead of massacring their worshippers in the physical. It’s so much cleaner. But I need you and your connection to the Black Iron Gods to draw out their power, to optimise the yield. We conducted a test firing a few days ago, and the results were positive but at the low end of our projected effectiveness. It was enough to destroy a demigoddess, but with only a dozen or so bells we need to get them up to pantheon-yield as soon as possible.”
“You blew up the Tower of Law to get at the bell inside.”
Rosha spreads her hands wide, indicating that she was a victim of circumstance. “The church refused to listen. We had to take drastic action to protect the city. Guerdon’s neutrality is precarious—the war’s getting too close for us to stay out forever. We need those weapons.”
“You did this to me. These visions only started after that fucking Tower fell on me.”
Rosha shakes her head. Her hair is weirdly unaffected by the wind, as if it’s glued to her head. Not a strand out of place. “No, Carillon. The incident, ah, anointed you, but you were born to this power.”
The Tallowmen chuckle at that. Rosha frowns in irritation, waves them back. “Everything can change for you, Carillon Thay. Help me. You can awaken the energies in the bells more efficiently than the methods we’ve been using, coax the Black Iron Gods into partial wakefulness before we remake them.”
Carillon opens her mouth to speak, but before she can say anything the bells on Holyhill sound the hour. Cari braces for the vision that builds at the edge of her perception, but then the world tears right in front of her and Miren is there, between her and Rosha.
Without hesitating, he drives his knife right into Rosha’s chest. Stabbing again and again, wildly, penetrating her a dozen times. There’s no blood, and the guildmistress seems unharmed. Miren then slashes her throat open, and white wax flows from the wound. She gurgles something, but all that comes out of her mouth is more white wax. Rosha takes a step back and falls off the edge.
The Tallowmen advance on Miren. He’s fast, but there are three of them, and there’s nowhere to run. He’s dead if Cari doesn’t do anything.
So she charges forward, ducking between the Tallowmen. Grabs Miren’s hand, shouting at him. He doesn’t react fast enough, and the Tallowmen close in. There’s only one way out.
Cari steps off the edge, pulling Miren with her.
They’re both falling now, falling after Rosha. The guildmistress splatters on the courtyard ahead of them, shattering like a dropped candle. No organs, no blood—just a wax duplicate of a woman.
The vision engulfs Cari at the same time as Miren wraps his arms around her and jumps.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Come on! Come on!” Rat slithers down from a rooftop and darts over to Spar’s side. The Stone Man’s right leg can no longer bear his weight, so Rat helps support him. “You’ve been cut,” he adds, seeing the deep wound in Spar’s chest.
“It’s nothing.” The flow of blood has mostly stopped. Little chips of stone white against the red. Soon, the wounded flesh will petrify entirely. Of course, if they’ve nicked a lung, then that whole organ will go soon, too. Spar has to remain philosophic about this—the poison will kill him in a few days anyway.
The pair stumble downhill as quickly as they can, down steep alleyways towards the harbour. In the distance, the whoops and shouts of freed thieves, running through the streets to the safe anonymity of the Wash, leaving trails of alchemical foam behind them like broken chains.
They come to a jetty. Twilight has closed in around them, making footing treacherous. Spar hesitates at the edge, mindful of the suddenly deep waters. Rat pulls a small lantern from beneath a pile of rags, lights it and waves it in a bobbing pattern. It’s answered by a matching signal from one of the boats out in the bay.
Spar staggers, leans against a cast-iron capstan. He knows that he should stay standing, keep moving to ensure his leg doesn’t seize up again, but he’s exhausted. Adrenaline becoming heavy as lead in his veins.
“I saw what you did,” says Rat. “They’ll be telling that story for years.”
“What else could I do?”
Rat shrugs. “Most folk could just walk away. Say that horrible shit happens. I’m a corpse-eater, dependent on a certain degree of fatalism, you know? But …” The ghoul licks his tongue over his teeth, then extends his hand for Spar to shake. “But that was brave. And stupid. Mostly brave.”
Spar accepts the handshake, careful not to squeeze too tight. He can barely feel the pressure of Rat’s fingers on his, and could not distinguish between the ghoul’s scaly, clawed hands and those of a soft-skinned woman. “I owe Cari after that. Everyone does. Did you see her get away?”
“Aye.” Rat seems about to say something more, about Cari and Miren and the boy’s literally miraculous rescue, but the noise of an alchemical engine approaching makes conversation impossible. The motor launch pulls up alongside the jetty. Mother Bleak’s grandson Yon at the helm; he borrowed the boat from the salvage yards, insisting that it wouldn’t be missed. There are three other thieves on board, Tammur’s lads, and there, huddled in a blanket, eyes twinkling with excitement, is an old man who must be Professor Ongent.
No sign of Cari or Miren. If things had gone according to plan, they’d be here, too.
Spar slumps on board, nearly capsizing the launch. One of the thieves yells at him to crawl to the middle, but doesn’t dare touch a Stone Man. Spar drags himself over, ends up next to Ongent. The boat engine roars, and they’re pulling away out into the bay.
“You must be Spar,” shouts Ongent into Spar’s ear. “Carillon talked about you! It’s very good to meet you!”
Spar nods, unsure what to say. Ongent works with Jere the thief-taker, and Spar guesses that he said a sight more about the Stone Man than Cari ever did. Cari knows when to keep silent.
“Miren described your proposal. It’s going to be interesting!” continues Ongent. “Applied thaumaturgy! Have you ever read the Transactional Analysis of the Khebesh Grimoire?”
The boat slides through the dark waters, lightless and unseen. There’s no sign of pursuit from the Alchemists’ Quarter, nor from the city watch. They’ve got lucky; no need to break out the stolen weapons hidden beneath tarpaulins on the launch. Yon steers the boat across the bay, aiming at Dredger’s yard at the seaward end of the Wash, to the left of St. Storm’s spire.
As they approach the dock, a searchlight stabs out at them. A dozen armed figures wait for them on the docks, silhouetted against the blinding light. Most are unrecognisable, but the one in the centre is inhumanly bulky in his armour. Dredger, the yard owner.
“That’s my boat, Yon,” he calls. “Kindly park it before I cut your fucking fingers off, you little thief.” Yon pales, glances back at Spar for guidance. Dredger hefts an alchemical cannon so big that it wouldn’t be out of place on a warship.
“Try running. I’ve been wanting to test-fire this fucker.”
Yon hesitates. The launch bobs up and down, a few feet from the dock.
“I don’t know if you lot are working for Heinreil or Tammur,” continues Dredger, “and I don’t care. Into the fucking barrel of black lye with you all. Whichever boss will buy you a new skin, that’s the one to follow.”
One of Dredger’s men points at Spar, says something too quiet for anyone else to hear, but it’s clear he’s recognised the Stone Man.
“You in the back! Stand up. Stand up, I say!”
Spar stands. The muzzle of Dredger’s cannon moves to point straight at Spar’s chest.
“So it is! The son returns! Don’t worry, I’m sure they have your old cell ready. Yon, if you’ve got the other one on board, the runaway girl, then maybe you’ll get to keep a thumb or something.”
“Ah!” Ongent struggles to his feet, ambles forward. “Mr. Dredger, is it? We have a friend in common. I am Aloysius Ongent, Professor of History. We both work, I understand, with Mr. Taphson. May I have a word?”
Dredger gestures. Yon brings the boat close to the shore, and two of Dredger’s men step forward, ready to lift the professor out of the boat and deposit him on the dock. As Ongent shuffles towards the rail, he stumbles and falls against one of Tammur’s men. From his perspective, Spar sees the professor’s grab something from the thief’s belt, but the sleight-of-hand is hidden from Dredger. Spar doesn’t move, conscious of the gun trained on him. The weapon looks big enough to kill him, even now.
They take the professor out of the boat. The little old man looks absurdly small and fragile next to the armoured bulk of Dredger, a crumbling wooden shanty-hut next to a wheezing, smoke-belching factory. Spar catches the name Taphson again, and mutterings about money. He’s trying to bribe Dredger, which might have worked for a lesser offence, but not for this. Dredger’s irritated, he starts to shove the professor away—and Ongent moves nimbly, sidestepping and slipping a knife in between Dredger’s armour and one of the tubes that run over its surface.
In that snake-like strike, Spar sees a real family resemblance between Ongent and Miren for the first time.
The professor doesn’t cut the tube, but he twists the knife so that it’s raised, exposed, ready to be cut with the slightest pressure. When one of Dredger’s guards moves towards him, Ongent raises and clenches his hand in an arcane gesture—there’s a sudden thrill in the air, a crackle of power—and the guard freezes mid-step, eyes bulging in sudden terror as the spell holds him in place.
“No,” says Ongent, “I insist that I recompense you for the use of your little boat. In fact, we are done with it, and we now return it to you. Intact, as you can see.” He waves his clenched hand at the boat, a gesture indicating that Spar and the others should disembark immediately. Yon and the thieves flinch as the glowing fist points at them. “Come along, gentlemen. Be quick about it.”
The knife at Dredger’s neck tube doesn’t waver.
Dredger makes this gurgling sound, like he’s dying, and Spar wonders if the professor’s hand slipped in the darkness, cut something vital. Then he realises that it’s the alchemist’s laughter.
“Fuck it,” says Dredger. “Tell Taphson he can bill me. Go on.”
A climbdown to save face. Spar allows himself to imagine Heinreil making a similar concession to preserve the Brotherhood, but it’s more likely the old bastard will cling to power for as long as he can. That’s a problem for tomorrow, though, so he turns his attention to the more pressing issue of getting out of the launch without capsizing the whole thing. His right leg is completely immobile now, and his left shoulder’s locking up, too. He ends up leaving the impression of his right hand in the dock as he drags himself out, fingers sunk into its tarry surface. A sneak-thief he’s not. The impressions start to fill with rainwater immediately.
Ongent keeps up his dotty old academic routine, talking to Dredger as though he doesn’t have a knife at the man’s throat, like he’s not holding a guard in invisible chains.
Spar comes up beside him and takes the gun away from Dredger.
“The Brotherhood done business with you in the past, sir, and I don’t think either of us want to change that arrangement. Like the professor says, we’ll pay for the rent of your boat, and walk out of here making no trouble. All right?”
Dredger’s eyepieces clack and whir as he examines the Stone Man. “You can’t even walk, boy. Your word won’t count for anything in a day.”
“It counts tonight.” Spar ejects the alchemical cartridge from the gun, a little glass ampoule of phlogiston cradled in wood and spiralled with dampening runes. He hands gun and shot back to Dredger—a gesture of respect—and then limps across the yard towards the exit, and the streets of the Wash.
They march back to the tenement block, which has become a headquarters for whatever this thing is, this thing with Spar at its head. A splinter Brotherhood, a memorial to Idge’s ideals, a shelter from the city’s chaos. An ongoing wake for the Fever Knight, maybe. Spar has to move slowly down the alleyways, dragging his lame leg, stopping every few minutes to catch his breath or to meet some supporter.
Rat runs back and forth, carrying messages from Tammur and the other thieves. He can make the journey in a fraction of the time, racing over rooftops. Most of those who escaped the tallow vats are on their way down here, swelling the ranks of Spar’s supporters. Some of Heinreil’s henchmen have switched sides—they can’t be hoping for a better deal under Spar, so they must have decided that change is in the air. It smells like the sulphurous residue of the Bell Rock cloud.
Rat returns again, tells Spar that Cari’s back ahead of them. Carried out of danger by Miren. Rat growls as he delivers the news, making his opinion of Carillon’s new lover clear. Spar feels an unexpected spike of jealousy. Loneliness kills Stone Men quicker than the plague does. Driven mad by the inability to touch, to feel another’s touch, they stop talking precautions and get injured. Or go to the Isle, or just give up and walk into the ocean. Intimacy of any form was something else stolen from him by the disease, another part of his life frozen and broken by the plague.
Cari, in her strange combination of self-centred heedlessness and kindness, hadn’t feared him. No matter how often he or the city reminded her to treat him as a walking infection, a stony cancer that could destroy her, she persisted in treating him as a friend. (He wonders now, briefly, how much of her strangeness can be attributed to her connection to the bells, to the Black Iron Gods. The waking visions are new, but he cannot count the number of sleepless nights he spent pacing, listening to her cry out in her troubled dreams.)
He didn’t dare embrace her—she may not have feared the Stone Plague, but Spar long ago vowed never to pass on this curse to another living soul if he could avoid it; even when doing enforcement for the thieves’ Brotherhood, he was careful, even solicitous, of those he threatened. If he ever delivered a beating, which was seldom needed given his strength, he was always careful to keep his stony hide away from broken skin. He never embraced Cari. Maybe, he thinks, he should have.
He takes the pain of jealousy and loss and cherishes it as he walks; his heart, at least, has not yet turned to stone.
They come to the bank of the canal and turn left, following the stagnant waters down towards the harbour. They pass the blackened ruins of Mother Bleak’s houseboat. The Fever Knight’s grave.
