The stone ship looks as tattered and broken as she feels. They race north again with the rushing tide, passing the Bell Rock, passing Shrike, chasing the bloody wake of Pesh. The city flows out of the horizon, the encircling headlands embracing them on either side as they cross the harbour.
Rat carries her towards the launcher. A pair of ghouls work on fixing the machinery. They have a bag of spare parts, looted from some alchemist’s foundry. The launch mechanism is comparatively simple, and they don’t need to aim the weapon accurately anyway. It’s just a dilute phlogiston charge, big enough to spit the ugly warhead into the air.
There, on the rail, is the god bomb. Its surface is scarred and pitted, criss-crossed with hideous welts where the alchemists welded the fragments of the bomb back together. This weapon was made from the wreckage of the House of Law bell.
This bell. This was the one that found her, that recognised and initiated her. That broke and remade her.
When she presses her palm against the wet, rough metal, she can hear the god screaming. A wordless shriek, a never-ending loop of universal loathing and hatred. The insatiable soul-hunger of the carrion god as it consumes itself. The god in the bomb eats itself whole over and over again, oscillating a billion times every second. But gods cannot die.
Suffer, thinks Cari. The fucker deserves it.
She almost regrets that they’re going to end the god’s torment.
The Erevesic.
Terevant claims the sword. On the rooftop in the Wash, his hand closes around the hilt.
On the Erevesic estates, he walks until he comes to the mansion. The house of his ancestors is crowded with the honoured dead. His grandmother stands at the threshold, beckons him onwards. Olthic’s waiting there.
On the rooftop, Terevant springs up. The power of the sword flashes through him. Strength and grace beyond anything he’s ever known. A thousand Erevesics consider the battlefield through his eyes, judge the moment to strike. A thousand Erevesics lend him their skill with the blade, fortify his soul with theirs. He leaps, jumping across the city like a flea, the sword in his hand a blazing brand.
“I have to know,” says Terevant to his brother, “what happened?” As he asks, Olthic’s memories become his. The taste of whisky in his throat. He’s standing in the study in the Haithi embassy, putting on his old fighting gear, drunkenly proud that it still fits. Celebrating his defeat. The cheers of the army when Olthic captured the Ishmeric flagship at Eskalind blending into the cheers of the Festival crowd. He puts the sword down on the desk to pull on his hauberk.
And then they ambush him. Anonymous embassy clerks, little grey-faced men he’d paid no attention to before. Daerinth’s men, knives in hands. And in from the courtyard, skull gleaming in the moonlight, comes Edoric Vanth. Faithful beyond death, here to collect Haith’s half of Daerinth’s secret bargain.
Olthic fights them off. Overpowers half a dozen men, dodges faster than the dead. If he can get to the sword on the desk, he’ll have the full powers of the Erevesic, be able to defeat them all with ease. He throws himself across the room, his fingers straining for the hilt.
Almost touching it.
But not quite. He never sees who kills him, never knows which of the dozen attackers got lucky and can claim the glory.
“I lost,” says Olthic, unable to keep the note of wonder from his voice. “I never lost before. Everything I set my mind to accomplish, I did. Every battle I fought, I won. Until I came to Guerdon.”
The vision shifts. The attackers vanish, and it’s just Terevant and Olthic in the study. Olthic sits in a chair by the fire. “You know, I studied the history of Guerdon when I came here. The military history, the only sort I had patience for. It’s curious–Guerdon’s been conquered before, many times, but the conquerors never prosper here. An ill-fortuned prize, this city.”
He shrugs, then reaches forward and clasps Terevant’s hands. “Shall I take it from here, brother?”
The Erevesic whirls across the sky. His leap would carry him onto the span of the Viaduct, if it still stood. Instead, he lands on the roof of a city watch tower. Pesh’s war-saint looms above him, a hundred feet tall. She’s marching towards the host of defenders who block her path. Keeper saints, alchemy-armed riflemen, a motley gang of rogues–and a thin line of bone. House Erevesic’s troops do not flinch as Pesh roars at them. Do not break when she swipes at them with her claws, rending the hillside and slaying dozens with every blow.
Terevant throws himself at her back, stabbing with the sword. She senses him, whirls around, moving with feline speed and grace despite her gargantuan size. A massive paw swipes at him, and he catches it just like Olthic would have, his left hand seizing a hank of her blood-matted fur, swings himself around so he lands on her forearm, and he drives the sword deep into the wrist of the goddess.
Divine ichor sprays across the rooftops of Guerdon. Her divine gaze, the heat from every sacked and burning city, blasts him, but he parries it with the sword. Leaps again, landing on her bare breast, hacking at her collarbone, her throat. Pesh stumbles back, her feet tangled in rubble. She nearly topples backwards, but rights herself, landing cat-like on all fours.
The remaining Haithi forces charge. Their captain is in the fray, and the dead answer. The Vigilant move as one, perfectly disciplined, immune to fear or doubt. Riflemen fire through the ranks; their comrades do not flinch, for they have fought side by side for decades, and they know each other’s every thought. The dead men attack the goddess, hewing at her wounded forelimb, her snarling face.
From Holyhill come the Keepers. Flowers bloom in the rubble, and as each blossom opens, a hand emerges from each one, and in every hand is a grenade. Saints hurl lances of sunlight and spears of lightning. Pesh roars in pain as her tawny flanks are raked with holy fire.
From the New City come a motley band of saints, monsters, mercenaries and brigands. Stone Men wade through the floodwaters to hurl chunks of rubble. Sellswords, veterans of the Godswar in other lands, sneak through the ruined city, ambushing the divine monsters. Refugee saints, escaped from Hark, draw on the power of distant pantheons one last time to defend their adopted home.
Battle is joined, and Pesh welcomes it. This is war, and war is holy.
The goddess draws closer to her saint. More of her power flows into this mortal focus, this living weapon.
Terevant jumps up and attacks her again, driving Pesh back. A hail of blows from the Erevesic sword, pushing her back down Mercy Street.
Her wounds heal. She is magnified.
War, she roars, and the Keeper saints remember that Haith has long been the enemy of Guerdon. War, she roars, and the city watch turn on the criminals and illegal saints. They turn on one another, all against all.
War, she roars, and her gaze is an artillery barrage.
War, she roars, and the sun becomes a bloody heart. She reaches up and tears it from the sky, plunging the city into darkness, lit only by muzzle-flashes and the leaping flames.
War, she roars, eternal and holy.
Carillon aims the stone ship. Rat yowls and lights the fuse.
The shock of the launch cracks the keel of the stone ship, and their unlikely vessel buckles, breaks. Dissolves. They fall into the water, but Carillon’s a strong swimmer. As she surfaces, surrounded by wet, dog-paddling ghouls, she realises that the constant psychic pressure of her connection to the Black Iron Gods is gone. That call, that unspeakable presence that’s haunted her all her life, that forced her to leave her aunt’s house at Wheldacre and run away across the seas–it’s gone. There may still be two Black Iron Gods, but they’re locked in their prison under her New City, far away beyond stone walls and Spar’s protective presence, and they cannot reach her.
She’s free.
The god-bomb rocket arcs across the city. Its trajectory brings it over the dome of the Seamarket, over Venture Square, into the heart of Guerdon. Carillon sighted along Mercy Street, and the rocket flies true.
There is no explosion. No
blast. No flare of light or thunderous report.
Just nothing.
Annihilation.
CHAPTER 54
The historians would, in time, reconstruct the events of that day.
Survivors speak of a sickening, unnatural peace–they had no desire to lay down their guns or cease fighting, but the alternative was, literally, unthinkable. War was an unknown thing in Guerdon that day. Those who tried to continue the battle found themselves stymied, palsied, like old, old men who had forgotten all the steps of some intricate performance. Even if they could remember the music, they could not dance.
When the fertility goddess of the valley of Grena was destroyed, the valley lost all its vitality, all its spirit. Slowly, animals and plants from outside the valley–creatures sacred to no god–crept in, colonising the margins.
War in Guerdon is like that. Those at the epicentre of the blast cannot even conceive of conflict. The wounded pass away peacefully, unwilling to fight for life. Lifelong soldiers become gentle as newborn lambs. Further out, the effects are attenuated. There is still half-hearted skirmishing between the Guerdon navy and the remaining krakens, and while the thieves of the New City might hesitate for a moment, they still cut a throat given a chance. Still, many lose their minds–the absence is like a phantom limb, a wound in their souls.
Outside invaders carry their notion of war with them, filling the conceptual void. The reinforcements from Haith bring with them Haith’s war, bone discipline and tradition. In Maredon, the watch still remembers how to guard Guerdon’s borders and her reclaimed seas.
In the approaching Ishmeric fleet, the priests of Pesh frantically offer sacrifices to their shattered goddess, trying to coax her back into existence. Maybe, given time, they could remake her–or maybe some other Ishmeric deity of conflict will be born. Perhaps High Umur will couple with Cloud Mother, and they will spawn a god of heavenly wrath.
Unable to kill one another in this bizarre ceasefire, the survivors jockey for position. Columns of Haithi soldiers march into Guerdon’s northern suburbs, advance towards the heights on Holyhill. More Kraken-waves lap against the shore, carrying reinforcements from the fleet into the Wash.
But before the fighting can begin again, before the combatants remember how to fight a war, the sky fills with dragons.
“Land there,” says Eladora, pointing to the courtyard outside parliament. She has to shout to be understood over the rushing wind, but the Ghierdana pirate sees her gesture, and transmits the instruction to the dragon. They circle down over the ruin of the Wash, while other dragons perch on the spires of Holyhill, or fly low over the docks. They position themselves between the lines, between Haith and Ishmere.
Flames rumble in their throats, but they hold their breath back. Eladora dismounts unsteadily, her legs stiff and aching from the long flight across the ocean from Lyrix. She tries to speak, but her throat is raw from shouting. “Tell them,” she says weakly.
The dragon smiles like a crocodile, and advances into parliament to tell the city the price of salvation.
It is something of a civic miracle that the election for parliament is held as scheduled, under the circumstances. While the fighting was, for the most part, restricted to the parts of the city nearest the harbour, it still speaks of Guerdon’s bloody-minded resilience that the citizens emerge from their shelters and queue amid the rubble to cast their votes. The occupying forces watch with bemusement at the exercise of the franchise. The Haithi dead are impassive; the Ishmerians pronounce it ungodly; the Lyrixians gamble on the outcome.
The gamblers are disappointed. It’s a hung parliament; none of the parties win a majority. The vote is split almost perfectly in three between Kelkin, the alchemists and the church.
Still, something must be done. The first votes in this new parliament are among the most important in the city’s long history. They must vote on the recognition of the king, on relief for those who lost everything in the war, and–most pressing of all–they must vote on the Armistice of Hark.
In coffee shops and taverns, in smoky backrooms and in salons in Bryn Avane, in Kelkin’s drawing room and the Palace of the Patros and the guildhalls, the politicking begins again. Slow at first, then feverishly quick, factions racing to take advantage of the new order. The city transformed yet again, but it’s still Guerdon.
Still eager to sell you your dreams while picking your pocket.
Eladora is not part of the horse-trading. She is not welcome at the tally-houses when the votes are counted; she does not go to the party at the Vulcan after the results are announced. She is rarely seen on the streets; no one is sure where she stays. She gives no interviews to the newspapers, she makes no statements.
She is seen most often in the University District, helping repair the damage to the library, but she vanishes for days at a time. Rumours fly in some circles that she is in secret negotiations with Lyrix, or with Haith, or that she has reconciled with her mother and has been engaged to King Berrick, or that she has been arrested for sabotaging the machine at Hark and will soon be executed for treason.
On a rainy evening three weeks after the election, Eladora’s reading is interrupted by a knock at the door of her hotel room. She closes The Bone Shield–she’s nearly done, only a few short chapters left–and walks barefoot across the spartan room. The hotel’s in Glimmerside, in a neutral area between the Haithi-occupied territory on Holyhill and the Ishmeric region down in what used to be the Wash, but folk are now calling the Temple Quarter. Neutral territory this close to the occupied zones isn’t always safe.
She slips a handgun into the pocket of her dressing gown before going to the door. She looks through the spy hole.
A skeleton grins back at her.
It’s, ah, Terevant Erevesic, says the dead man.
CHAPTER 55
I wanted to see you before I left, he explains.
“You’re returning to Haith, I take it?” Eladora examines the skeleton who sits awkwardly in the armchair opposite, crossing his bony legs as he fiddles with a teacup. He’d poured himself a cup without thinking, and now he clearly has no idea what to do with it.
No, actually. I–I joined a mercenary company. The Company of Eight. I’m shipping out this evening.
“After what you saw, you’re going back to the Godswar?” she marvels.
I killed a goddess, you know. Sort of. I hope my reputation proceeds me. Gives me an edge when fighting other deities. Terevant laughs. No–it would be awkward to go back to Haith. There are, ah, political concerns.
“So I understand.” In truth, she’s only read hints in the newspapers, as she’s cut off from Kelkin and the flow of intelligence. There are reports, though, that the current bearer of the Crown has taken hemlock, and that a new bearer will soon be chosen. Several of the Empire’s remaining colonies are in revolt, too, as the Houses recall their troops to secure Old Haith. The new bearer of the Crown will rule over a much diminished realm, but–potentially–one that can better endure the Godswar.
Lyssada’s name has been mentioned in newspaper reports from Old Haith.
It is said in Haith that the dead do not love in the way the living do. I’m not sure if I agree. I don’t think the living love the same way twice, either. I’ll go back one day, maybe–with fresh eyes. He touches his empty eye socket. So to speak.
“If it’s not too personal a question—”
Not at all.
“You had the Erevesic sword. You could have died Enshrined, could you not?”
Faithful to the last, mutters Terevant to himself. Yes, I had the sword, thanks to you. I was the Erevesic, and it was… glorious. But I saw the rocket coming in, and… I didn’t know how the god bomb would affect the phylactery. So, I quelled the blade. I closed the connection to the mortal world, as best I could, to protect the souls within.
He lifts his kitbag, and she sees the hilt of the ancient weapon protruding from it.
“It’s… magically inert?” She shivers, suddenly cold. She has
n’t seen Carillon since she returned.
No. My ancestors’ souls are still in there, but they need a living host to contact them. It was the only way to shield them from the blast.
“You’re the last Erevesic.”
Maybe.
He puts the teacup on a desk, pokes it with a bony finger, watches the ripples.
My mother and my younger sisters–they were lost when their ship was attacked by a kraken. They’re most likely dead, but–well, one virtue of this Armistice is that one can actually talk to the Ishmerians. And bribe them. They took prisoners from that ship, apparently. Maybe…
“I wish you luck.”
Thank you. I wanted to thank you again. And give you this. He reaches into the kitbag, hands her an ornately written piece of paper. A bank draft. Not exactly a king’s ransom, but enough to keep you for a while. I’m told you’re no longer employed by the Industrial Liberal party. What have you been doing with yourself, since?
Eladora glances at the pile of papers and notes on the writing desk. She closes The Bone Shield and hands it back to the skeleton. “Reading and thinking.” She stands. “I’ve been cooped up in here for days. I’ll walk you down to your ship and see you off.”
The second visitor comes scratching at her door one evening, like a stray dog. A defrocked priest, out of favour with the Patros, out of allies, out of tricks. He tries to threaten her, extort money from her; Eladora counters with an offer of employment.
She can use him, soiled as he is.
Another visitor, this time in the dead of night. Carillon. She doesn’t knock–Eladora wakes from a nightmare to see a figure sitting on the end of her bed.
“Don’t be scared,” says Cari, “it’s me.”
Eladora isn’t scared. She no longer fears Miren’s knives, no longer fears the vengeance of the Black Iron Gods, at least for now. She pushes the memory of the bargain she made with them away, locks it away in an otherwise empty iron safe that she buries in the darkest recesses of her mind.
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