The Gutter Prayer, page 38
Cari interrupts him. “Upstairs room that you’ve fortified. I’ve seen it. Yeah, that’ll work.”
Spar shakes his head. “No. I’m not running or hiding anymore. We stay here and gather support until gutter court. People need to see I’m willing to stand my ground.” He swirls the coffee around his cup. “They need to see I’m able to stand, too. We’ll move to Hook Row when we’re ready.”
Shouts from outside. Running feet.
A ghoul. Not Rat; she’s wearing a veil and a white frock. Silkpurse.
“Heinreil’s here,” she says. “He says he wants to talk.”
It’s not just Heinreil, thinks Spar. He’s brought an entourage. He recognises some of the faces—old thieves, in good standing with the Brotherhood. The sort of people Tammur hoped to sway. Others he doesn’t know, but he guesses they’re Brotherhood, too, from other districts. The sorceress, Myri, is at Heinreil’s left hand. To his right, there’s a big man, dark-skinned, with two crescent-shaped knives at his belt. Heinreil’s replacement for the Fever Knight.
Spar realises that his side has unconsciously lined up in a mirror of Heinreil’s group, with Cari facing Myri, him facing the bodyguard, and Tammur opposite Heinreil, like this is Tammur’s challenge, not Spar’s. He needs to break that pattern, so he steps forward and crosses the room. The bodyguard tenses, draws those knives, but Heinreil waves dismissively and the guard steps back.
“Spar,” says Heinreil, “you’re moving well.”
“Like a new man.” Spar towers above Heinreil. He’s not sure if Cari’s magical cure has diminished his plague-granted strength at all, but he’s certain that he’s still strong enough to smear the master across the cobblestones.
“Thanks be to the gods.” Heinreil surveys the crowd opposite him. His eyes light on Cari, but keep moving, noting the faces arrayed against him.
“We shall settle this dispute at gutter court, master,” says Tammur loudly, addressing the whole room.
“I’m not here to settle anything. I just want a quiet word with some of you.”
Heinreil’s voice is low, mild, but somehow reaches every corner of the room. He reaches up and grips Spar’s shoulder. “We should have done this long before now, Spar. There’s always been a place for you in the Brotherhood. Your father’s place, even. We could have sorted all this quietly.”
“You poisoned me when I was in prison,” says Spar. He tries to keep his voice equally mild, but his throat turns his words into the grinding of stone.
“That’s a lie! Who told you that I gave the order?”
“You set us up in the House of Law! Rat and Cari and me. You sent us as a distraction, hoping we’d get caught.”
“The Tower was a mess, I’ll give you that. They were only supposed to crack the damn vault open, not bring down the whole building. The second team let you down, but they paid with their lives. And the way I’ve heard it, you could have made it out—Rat did—only you stopped to go back for Carillon, and she lingered to pull one of the guards from the fire.” Heinreil spins around and addresses Cari. Somehow, the conversation’s shifted from a private word between him and Spar into a stage play, a performance for the assembled thieves of Guerdon. “That’s admirable charity, Miss Thay, but not very wise.”
“You didn’t tell us about the second team,” growled Spar.
“No, I didn’t. I tell you what you need to know. I’m the damned guildmaster. And I’d have got you out of jail, too, once you came before a magistrate. I didn’t poison you, and I didn’t tell anyone to silence you, either. I watched Idge hold fast—and I have faith in his son.”
There’s cheering at that, from both sides of the room. Spar feels like he’s standing on quicksand. “You’re in league with the alchemists!” he shouts, and the room goes silent. “You blew up the Tower of Law for them. Maybe the Bell Rock, too—you planted the poison gas on that ship, the Ammonite, and your sea-witch magicked it out into the bay and ran it aground. How many died when the poison cloud rolled in? How many of our brothers and sisters got sent to the tallow vats?”
Heinreil’s face contorts in fury. All his bonhomie falls away, and he spits out his words. “I’m surprised you didn’t count ’em from the high ground you’ve made from the corpse of your father! Yes, I work with the alchemists. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s where the money is! I’ve put coin in the pocket of every one of you, haven’t I? Kept the Brotherhood going even when the city tried to break us, time and time again! Seventy-four thieves, that’s how many went into the tallow vats. It would have been one hundred and fifty if not for your fucking heroic gesture, and they’d have kept it at one hundred and fifty. Now they’ve got to come for us, you bloody idiot, now that you’ve hit them in their own bloody stronghold!”
“You admit that you sold us out,” shouts Tammur.
“I tried to buy your safety! One hundred and fifty was the price I had to pay to ransom the rest of us.”
“And there it is,” says Spar. “Selling people. Selling us out. And you say you put coin in the pocket of all of us, like a few pennies are recompense for all the sufferings. My father wanted the Brotherhood to provide for the common folk. He saw that Guerdon was becoming ruled by greater forces, by craft guilds and churches and—”
“It’s always been that way,” says Heinreil. “And you’re a fool if you think it can change.”
“And he wanted the Brotherhood to be better than that. If the city wouldn’t reform, then stealing was the only way to give people what they deserved, to get their fair share of the city’s wealth. How many here—how many here think they have their fair share? How many here think the Brotherhood benefits them?” The room erupts in shouts, cheers, roars of approval or jeers of condemnation.
“Let’s settle this now!” Tammur waves his hands for silence. “I call for a vote on who should lead. Speech! Speech!” He’s playing kingmaker—or is he hoping for a tie so he can be crowned as a compromise?
“All right.” Someone fetches a box for Heinreil, so he can be seen above the crowd. He’s a head shorter than most, whereas Spar’s inherited his father’s lanky frame. A few voices in the back cheer as Heinreil climbs up, but far more are calling Spar’s name, and even Myri and the others who arrived with the master look subdued.
“You know me. You know what I’ve done for you. If you think I’ve steered us true through the bad times, then vote for me. If you think I’ve done you wrong, or that children’s stories of a city where we’re all merry outlaws giving to the poor will serve you better, then vote for Spar.” Heinreil stops, as if he’s about to step down, then adds. “I knew Idge. I was there when they hanged him. And thank the gods they did, because if he’d stayed master we’d all have ended up in the noose or the vats. Great man, great thinker he was. But he was a fool, and if you follow his son, you’re fools, too.”
A few cheers, quickly swallowed by the voices calling for Spar. He steps forward, suddenly nervous. His tongue feels like it’s turned to stone. He turns to look at the crowd. Thieves he’s know all his life, thieves he grew up with. Strangers, newcomers to the city who arrived with nothing, and turned to the guild to survive. Those who’ve always been poor, and others who’ve slipped down into the Wash, cast down as the wheel of fortune turned and brought the alchemists up.
All of them look to him to speak for them, to fight for them. That was Idge’s vision—to put a knife in the hands of the poor, to make the struggle a fair one.
Fragments of Idge’s manuscript float through his mind, and he grabs them, starts reading out loud. He has no idea if what he’s saying makes any sense at all, but he keeps talking until the crowd drowns him out.
“IDGESON! IDGESON! IDGESON!”
Blood pounds through his veins unhindered. He feels as though every inch of him is afire. Their cheers are alkahest to his soul, dissolving his fears, restoring new life to calcified dreams.
The crowd surges past him then, towards Tammur and the tallies.
Cari slips out of the crowd as soon as the speeches begin. Heinreil’s presence here discomfits her. She was ready to face him at the gutter court in a day or two, when she had time to prepare. Her instinctive reaction to a surprise is to run away, and she can’t run away now. Not when Spar’s putting her plan into action. So, she flees as far as she can without leaving the hall, to the fringes of the crowd. Keeps an eye out for Rat or Miren; she wouldn’t put it past Heinreil to have some sneak in the crowd here to stab her, and she’s not armoured like Spar.
The silencing of the bells took her edge away. Now she’s ragged and unsure. Spar’s voice rises above the roar of the crowd, talking about how he’ll fight back against the alchemists’ guild, take back the city from them, but she can’t judge the mood of the crowd. Even if they win here, though, she’s not sure if that’s enough. The Wash is already on Spar’s side, but the Wash isn’t the whole city. There are more thieves in other parts of the city, and they might still be in Heinreil’s pocket.
There, pushing through the crowd, is Heinreil’s bodyguard. Cari draws back into cover, worried that he might attack here. but he’s there just to open a path through the throng. It’s Heinreil who sidles up beside her. The man has slumped, become smaller than he was when he walked in here. He looks very, very tired.
Her own knife is in her hand. His ribs are just there.
A truce, she reminds herself.
“Ach, Cari,” says Heinreil. “Is it true you can see everyone’s secrets?”
“Pretty much.”
“Not mine, though.” Dangling from his finger is her amulet, her mother’s amulet, on its silver chain.
Cari wore that amulet around her neck for twenty years, never letting it go for an instant until Heinreil stole it from her. Now, though, she sees it as if for the first time. Beneath the worn enamel, it’s made from some dark metal she was never able to identify. It burns dark in her sight, blazing with hidden power. She knows that it awoke at the same time she did, that it somehow shared in her baptism at the Tower of Law.
She snatches for it, but he’s faster, and it vanishes inside his shirt. “I thought so. I may not have your gifts, but I knew there was something off about you when I first caught your skinny carcass stealing from me. I know all about you, Carillon Thay.”
“You don’t know anything. If you did, you wouldn’t be dealing with the alchemists.”
“And what are you dealing with? You know where your visions come from, I think. We both made deals with devils.” He sighs, rubs his head. He looks exhausted. “I didn’t want this, you know. I loved Idge, and I took care of his son. They wanted to throw him out of the guild when he got sick. I stopped that. His sickness doesn’t mean he’s not useful. I mean, look at him. Look at him! Less than two weeks, and you’ve wounded me. That’s a credit to you both.”
“Give us another week, and we’ll take you down.”
“Counter-proposal. You convince Spar to withdraw his challenge. Blame Tammur for giving you bad advice—that’s got the virtue of being true. Spar becomes my right-hand man, takes the Fever Knight’s place. I’ll protect you. We work together, get back—”
Spar finishes his speech, and the cheer is deafening. Tammur stands on a table, waves his arms and calls for a vote. The crowd surges forward, casting tokens into a pot. Little squares of black cloth for Heinreil. Stones, predictably, for Spar.
“And who’ll protect you?” says Carillon. “Here’s my proposal—give me back my amulet, and maybe we’ll be merciful.”
“That’s that then.” Heinreil shakes his head. “Can’t say I didn’t try.”
He turns away from her, walks slowly towards the front door. Something terrible is going to happen, realises Cari, and she chases after him, knife in hand. Heinreil’s bodyguard catches her, throws her against the wall. There’s shouting, a scream. The bodyguard expertly pins her, one hand gripping her wrist so tightly that it goes numb in a flash, and she drops the knife. A curved blade against her throat. Foul breath in her ear. “Speak and you die, witch.”
Then the call goes up. “Jacks! Jacks!” Through the front door, through the side door, wriggling in through windows, a waxy army, a tide of tallow. Hundreds of Tallowmen swarm into the tenement, so many that the few thieves watching the door are overwhelmed in an instant.
They blinded her for this, Cari realises. If the bells of the city hadn’t been silenced, she might have seen the Tallowmen marching down from the Holy Beggar church, been able to warn Spar and the other thieves that the tenement wasn’t safe anymore.
“Don’t move!” shouts Heinreil to the thieves, “For fuck’s sake, don’t fight ’em, or they’ll kill you where you stand. Everybody, fucking stay still.”
Hundreds of pairs of eyes look to Spar. Fight, or …
It’s not just thieves and cut-throats here, though. It’s everyone who lives in the tenements, people like Mother Bleak and her grandchildren. The Cafstans. Others, wholly innocent. They’re under the knife, too. Spar bows his head, extends his hands, and two Tallowmen spring forward. They bind his stony hands in cords of alchemical rope.
Another Tallowman stalks through the crowd. Shit, she recognises this one—his features were hardly distorted at all by the tallow vats, but his beard is now a solid mass of carved wax, and his right arm is weirdly smooth and featureless, like a baby’s flesh.
Jere the thief-taker. Now Jere the Tallowman. He takes Cari away from Heinreil’s bodyguard. He opens his mouth as if to speak to her, but all that comes out is a hissing noise and a spray of milky-yellow liquid that stings her eyes. She tries to break out of his grasp, but there’s no escape. She looks around, praying she’ll find something, some edge she can seize to her advantage. Rat to lead a counter-attack, or Miren to teleport in and steal her away. Or Ongent to throw some of his sorcery around.
But there’s no sign of Miren, and Ongent’s exhausted after healing Spar. And Rat’s not here. She glimpses a hooded figure in the back of the crowd, then two, three more, but they came in with Heinreil. They stand back with their heads bowed, not getting involved.
More guards arrive—Tallowmen again, but dressed in the livery of the alchemists’ guild, not ragged tunics of city-watch blue worn by the rest. They’re the honour guard for Guildmistress Rosha. She follows them in, seemingly none the worse for having been stabbed and shoved off a building by Cari less than twenty-four hours earlier. Jere drags her along and drops her to the ground in front of Rosha.
Heinreil comes forward. As he passes Cari, he shrugs, as if to say what else could I do? She’s close enough to hear what he says to Rosha.
“The bargain stands, right?” he says to her. “One hundred and fifty total for the vats, and I’ll throw in Cari here as recompense for Spar’s foolish attack on your guildhall. But you let me choose, and the Brotherhood stays. You’ll call off your Tallowmen and end the curfew.”
“Our bargain was made under very different circumstances, Heinreil. You must see that. When I first hired you, I needed to work in secret and avoid the attention of parliament, the watch and the church of the Keepers. Now …” she spreads her arms, indicating the scope of her triumph, “the church is in disarray, the watch is mine and no one is left in parliament to oppose the wisdom of my policies.”
“Don’t do this, Rosha,” mutters Heinreil, glancing to his left.
“I think I must,” she says, “after all, it would be terribly negligent for me to allow a notorious criminal like the head of the Brotherhood of Thieves to go free. It’s only fitting, really. The last nail in Effro Kelkin’s coffin.”
“Don’t. You’ve got what you want. You’ll get the fucking Black Iron Bells, and good riddance to them. Take your victory and walk away.”
“I thought you understood, Heinreil. It’s a new era. All the old powers are obsolete.”
“Ah, well.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small. Not the amulet—it’s a worn stick of chalk. He flips it into the air, lets it fall to the grounds and break into a dozen shards at Rosha’s feet. “Ah well,” he says again, and then, under his breath: “Myri.”
Cari tenses—Myri, she knows from her visions, is Heinreil’s sorceress. The alchemists have their own counter-magics, though, dampening rods and ablative wards, so one spell caster isn’t going to have any effect.
At the back of the room, the hooded figures shuck off their cloaks. Crawling Ones, every one of their ten thousand wormy mouths chanting an incantation. Lightning crashes through the crowd. Gobbets of hot wax explode, followed by sprays of red blood and meat as some unlucky thief gets in the way. The air is thick with sorcery.
It’s not one spell caster. It’s a crawling host of them, and they make Ongent’s display at Desiderata Street look like a child throwing firecrackers.
A blast hits Tammur, and the old thief splits like an overstuffed sack, his fat belly bursting and his bones cracking as the spell smashes through him. Cari’s half blinded when Guildmistress Rosha turns into a pillar of flame. Rosha doesn’t scream as the blue fires engulf her, she just stands there glaring until her wax eyes slide down her cheeks and her head flops over into her shoulders.
The heat from the blast softens Jere’s fingers, and Cari manages to wrench herself free. She runs forward, dodging around the bonfire that used to be Rosha. Unable to see, searching for the cooler air outside. It’s like the Tower of Law again, she thinks as she stumbles forwards. Again, Heinreil’s trapped her in the flames. Hands grab at her, but she slips free. She gets a fleeting glimpse of Heinreil reaching for her, shouting at her, but she slashes at him with her knife and—joy of joys—she cuts him and he stumbles back. Other pursuers—Jere?—keep after her, though, so she puts her head down and sprints blindly, leaping over dismembered and splattered limbs, over dying thieves.
Somewhere in the carnage behind her, she hears Spar roaring. The cheers of the crowd have turned to screams, but he’s taking charge, telling people where to run. There’s a wall of burning Tallowmen and spell-flinging Crawling Ones between her and Spar, though, no way for her to return to his side.
