Legends and Liars

by Julia Knight

  Not before the screams rang out, along with the shouts, the exhortations to run, the sounds of men and women gagging. Vocho very nearly lost his meagre lunch himself. The guards fled from the wall, drenched in blood, and not all of them headed for the safety of the Shrive. At least half made for the docks and the lure of the sea.

  In the chaos no one remembered to close the door of the Shrive.

  Vocho needed absolutely no encouragement to leave the bloody square. He and Dom headed for the open door. They only just made it before the sizzling started. The blood on his hands grew warm, then hot. He frantically tried to wipe it off with a sleeve that was itself soaked with blood, before he gave up and ripped the tunic off. It steamed where it landed and then burst into flames.

  The pair of them stamped on their tunics to put out the flames and gave each other a look.

  “We need to be quick,” Dom said. “Come on.”

  Guards ran to and fro inside, some clearly panicked, some more stoical. Many of the guards lived inside the Shrive with their spouses and children. More than one was packing his family up to take them to the docks. No one paid them the least attention.

  “Where?” Vocho asked.

  “Could be anywhere! But Eneko has a twisted sense of humour. I know where we’ll look first–the cell Bakar escaped from before.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “I’ve an inkling.”

  They sped down corridors crowded with people and on into others that were echoingly empty apart from the cries of the prisoners trapped behind their cell doors.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Petri woke to a gentle shake and sat bolt upright, bringing a lance of pain to his eye socket that dragged a groan from between clenched teeth. He blinked hard and tried to make sense of his surroundings, work out where he was. Who he was.

  Dark again, but not so dark he couldn’t see anything. A faint light outlined a room far larger than he’d been used to. The air didn’t feel right for him to be back in his last cell. Besides, someone had shaken his shoulder.

  “Petri?” A gentle voice, one he’d known well for many years until it had twisted into madness. “Petri, is that you?”

  He lay back down again and shut his eye, trying not to imagine Eneko’s delight at this final torment.

  “Petri, it is you, isn’t it? I always said I’d know you with my eyes shut,” Bakar said. “Or maybe you’re part of this odd dream. Yes, maybe. So strange, but the colours are very pretty. I dreamed I went quite insane, you know. Or maybe I’m dreaming that I’m not. It’s all so hard to tell. Petri?” Bakar’s voice broke on that last. “Petri, please say something so I know I’m not imagining you.”

  He thought of saying nothing–what could he say to the man he’d betrayed as surely as with a blade in the back? But there was a glimmer there of the man he’d once known, before madness had eaten away at him. Before madness had eaten them both perhaps, because Petri couldn’t be sure he was still sane.

  “You’re not imagining me.” He struggled to sit up and was rewarded with a shaft of pain so fierce it robbed him of breath.

  “Clockwork God be praised!”

  And that was enough to snap the slender thread that kept this Petri linked to the old one, who’d dreamed of being noble and good. “Fuck the Clockwork God!”

  A shocked silence followed, but Petri was past caring–about Bakar, treason, the Clockwork God and what was good for Reyes. Even Kass. He didn’t care about any of them or what they thought of him, because caring would hurt worse than his ruined hand.

  “Petri, I—”

  “Shut up!” A strip of light bled under the door and down its hinge. Petri moved across it, and Bakar flinched back at the sight, trembling. The sour stench of sweat filled the cell. Petri wondered if Bakar was still mad, took a look into the watery eyes that darted everywhere, and knew the answer was yes. “The Clockwork fucking God had me end up like this. The only comfort is truth, you say. Well here’s some truth for you. I plotted your downfall because I wanted, very badly, to be out of that palace, away from the rails you and your god put me on. Everything mapped out, my whole life, and why? Because you said so, no more. Well, I wanted to be alive, not clacking along like an automaton. I wanted what you promised and never gave, that’s all, and then I ended up like this. I never wanted you harmed before, but I do now. Right now I would happily kill you.”

  In the dim light he could just make out the pale blur of Bakar’s face, the trembling hands raised to his slack mouth, the shock and disgust and pity there. That would be how everyone looked at him now. Even Kass… Even Kass. He was a ruin and wanted to take it out on whoever came to hand.

  “I only ever wanted this city to be fair, equal,” Bakar whispered. “You know that, Petri.”

  A brief pang at that, soon squashed. “Fair? You call this fair? You call all you’ve done in this city, all you’ve done to make the poor poorer, taxing them into starvation while the clockers have ended up richer and more debauched than the old nobles ever were. Giving them an imaginary god to believe in, reading their prayers. You call that fair, Bakar? How about keeping me chained to your side, never letting me even breathe? Eneko was right about one thing: life isn’t fair. And your precious clockwork universe is a crock of shit.”

  “How dare you! Guards!”

  “Your guards won’t save you now. Don’t you know where we are? Do you think we’re still in your palace? We’re in the place you spent all that time before, the place you said would never be used again, until it was, until you started sending people here to die. The Shrive, Bakar. That’s where you are. You got out before, but you had your sanity then. I’d be surprised if you could find your way out of your own shirt now.”

  Bakar scrabbled about on the floor, digging his fingers in between the flagstones, sending tufts of rotten straw every which way. He muttered under his breath and every few seconds looked up at Petri with his mad watery gaze before he went back to scrabbling.

  Petri got as comfortable as he could against the wall and shut his eye. The muttering grew louder, and stranger. Petticoats and periwinkles, flags and taxes. Bakar suddenly stopped and Petri opened his eye. For a brief second Bakar looked utterly sane, then the mouth slackened again, and he launched himself at Petri, his hands surprisingly strong as they reached his throat.

  Petri had been strong once, but not any more, not after what Eneko had done to him. It took all he had for his one hand to wrench Bakar from him and smack him soundly across the mouth.

  Bakar shuffled away, blood on his lip, muttering about murder and betrayal.

  “Believe me,” Petri said. “I will kill you if I can for this. For all of it. The Clockwork God can spin me into cogs and gears if he likes, but I will kill you.”

  Bakar subsided into a corner, still muttering. Petri settled back against the wall. There would be no sleeping now, not chained up with a madman. Not until someone came to let them out, if they ever did. Instead he kept his eye open and his head full of whirling red-tinged thoughts.

  She hadn’t come. She’d abandoned him to this. They all had, everyone.

  He had nothing left except what he could claw back for himself, and that clawing would be the sweetest satisfaction of all.

  He started humming in the dark.

  Kacha, trailed by Cospel, made it to Soot Town easily enough. Away from the gates everywhere was quiet, waiting. Usually the factories and smiths would be full of bustle and noise, the air choking with the smoke that gave the area its name. Today the furnaces were cold, the hammers still. A few faces poked out of doorways as they passed, quickly withdrawn into shadowed whisperings. Cospel nodded in the direction of one of the smaller factories, a place which specialised in bespoke clockwork goods for a hefty price. Alone in the silence, it hummed with activity.

  “They weren’t letting no one in or out, miss. Course, they might now that things have gone tits up.”

  The gate was locked, but the two of them scrambled over in moments. No one
stopped them. The other side was a courtyard full of heaps of scrap, a tangled pile of rusting cogs, a large metal bin full of contraptions that had failed in the casting process, a graveyard of bent gun barrels and twisted winches. Behind that was an open door and noise.

  A head poked around the door, caught sight of them and disappeared, slamming the door behind it. No amount of rattling or thumping would open it, so finally Kacha beat on the door and shouted, “Open up in the name of the guild!” Cospel gave her a look but she shrugged. “Well we are. Sort of.”

  The door cracked open and an eye peered out. “Guild’s already here, so bugger off.”

  She didn’t have the time or patience for this, so she shouldered open the door, ignoring the pained squeak of whoever she’d just squashed behind it, and strode into the room beyond.

  “Room” didn’t do it justice. Her step faltered for just a second before she recovered herself. A vast expanse greeted her, full of the heat of furnaces, ringing with the noise of clockwork hammers and the shouts of the men working them, overflowing with the scents of sweat and hot metal. Smoke obscured the far end of the room, but what she could see was enough. Eneko had had a plan, sure enough, and here was where it was being born.

  Black-smudged faces turned to look at her, but she gathered all the arrogance a duellist could muster and ignored them, striding towards a man dressed in a guild tabard over lace cuffs and breeches that no doubt had once been white but were now sullied with streaks of soot. He turned towards her with a frown, and she was surprised to note she didn’t know him–she thought she knew everyone in the guild. A tickle of apprehension flickered in her gut.

  Someone whispered in his ear, and his eyebrows rose for a moment before he walked towards her. No hand on sword yet, but the threat of it was there in the way he moved. He was a swordsman right enough.

  “Yes?” he asked when they met in the middle of the room. A tall man, older than her by some way, but he looked like age had hardened him to a point rather than softened his edges as it did some people. His face was like a slab of blackened oak that had weathered centuries, and his eyes were chips of grey flint. “Kacha, I’m given to understand. You must excuse me; I’ve been working elsewhere for quite a time. I am also told that I should execute you. Some matter over a priest?”

  She raised an eyebrow of her own. “You are aware of what’s going on outside?”

  “Eneko is defending the city, as any good guildsman should.”

  “Technically, yes. Specifically, no, because he’s not Eneko any more. Now there are two magicians trying to blow the crap out of the city, one of whom is Eneko. Sort of. Whichever one wins, we get a magician in charge. You look old enough to remember what that was like. Fancy seeing it happen again?”

  She was gratified to see that hard face blanch. He whipped round and called into the general gloom and fug. Two more guildsmen sauntered up with a sneer for her and a grudging nod for him. She knew these ones all right.

  “Shouldn’t we kill her?” one of them said to the older guildsman. “Eneko said—”

  “Maybe later.” The older man twitched with impatience. “You two, go take a look at what’s happening at the gates and report back. Go on. What are you waiting for–the end of the world?”

  They turned to go, but not without more sneers her way. One leaned in and whispered to her, “Your bloke, he screams ever so pretty. But he doesn’t look so pretty now.”

  The sight in Eneko’s rooms flashed in front of her mind, of Petri’s blood-soaked hair, the knife and the brazier. Made sense Eneko hadn’t been alone. Secretive yes, but Eneko liked an audience–adoring guildsmen to look up to him, to keep secrets with him. Liked to use those secrets to bind them to him. Petri’s blood all over, and a hot knife…

  Her sword slashed a line across the guildsman’s face, chin to brow. Bone showed under the sudden blood and the man howled as he put a hand to it, tried to gingerly press the flap of his cheek back into place.

  “Neither are you,” she said. A glance at his friend, who’d drawn his own sword. “I’ll kill you later, if you like. Be my pleasure, because it’s been a trying day and I’m just itching to take it out on someone. But first do as the man says.”

  They glanced behind her and evidently got a signal to leave, right now, and they went, trailing blood and curses. She looked about, saw a few more duellists with drawn swords. She’d have to watch her back later, but for now a growl behind her settled them.

  “Just as I was beginning to despair of the youth of today,” the older man said with a snort. “Pair of little shits, those two. Like to boast they’re Eneko’s favourites. Like a few other things a bit too much as well. Sadistic bastards, the pair of them. You just leave it between them, as a good duellist should.”

  That last was aimed at the other duellists in the shadows as she turned to face him.

  “My name’s Esmuss,” he said. “I used to run the border guards between Reyes and Ikaras until Eneko recalled me for some reason. Do I look like I’m old enough to retire? Don’t answer that. I could have held a fucking army at the Neck, but no, he gives the post to some spotty little oik who promptly lost half the guard to Ikaras, and here we are, facing an army with fancy bastards like that on our side.” His gaze slid to the still ansty-looking duellists. “That goes for you lot too. Swords down, thank you, or you’ll have me to answer to, and I still have enough in me to slice you all to fucking ribbons.”

  Swords went down. The duellists shuffled back into the shadows. A brief reprieve from retribution perhaps.

  Esmuss looked her up and down and nodded.

  “I’ve been away a while, and life’s hard up in the mountains, where we don’t practise our manners much, but if you’re anything to go by maybe you city guildsmen aren’t all soft as this sorry lot. Now, how about you tell me what’s going on, and then we can see what to do? Because something’s going on I don’t know about, and I’ll be buggered before I let a magician run this city again.”

  Half an hour later they were sitting in an office commandeered as Esmuss’s base of operations. Invoices, blueprints and rubber stamps sat in a sad heap in one corner, and a map of Reyes had taken their place on the desk, held down with a pair of evil-looking daggers.

  Esmuss shook his head over it and what she’d just told him.

  “Knew he was up to something when he called me back from the border. Crafty bastard, Eneko always was. Cheated when he sparred, I know that. But sometimes devious is what you need in a leader, and the guild did well under him. He sent me to the border because we, huh, didn’t get along.” He fingered a scar on his neck. “Not at all. But I ran that border well; he couldn’t deny that. So why call me back just when I’m really needed? Then dump me here overseeing a damned factory when there’s a war going on?”

  “What are you making here? He’ll have had a plan, we’re counting on that.”

  He looked up at her from under beetling brows. “Plan? Oh yes, he has a plan. Stupidest thing I ever heard. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He led Kacha and Cospel back into the vast room. Twisted skeins of metal spun into new shapes loomed out of the smoke as they passed, but it was what lay at the end that stopped Kacha in her tracks.

  Against the far wall were a number of Clockwork Gods. Exactly like the one outside the guild, down to the last rivet.

  “What the…”

  “We’re to wait for his signal from down by the gates–you noticed he turned the towers off, left the gates open? To draw the Ikarans into a nice confined space, the square behind the towers. I don’t suppose we’ll get a signal now though. Maybe we should just set them going anyway. “

  “Set them going? What do they do?”

  Esmuss grinned at her and nodded to a man fiddling with one of the gods with a spanner. He touched something at the rear, and the god came to life, whirring and clanking forward, its arms swinging like giant clubs, its eyes utterly dead. It unnerved her more than she could say.

  “A regiment of these
and an opposing army’s going to have a tough time, especially when Eneko meant to shut the gates behind the Ikarans and leave them trapped with this lot. They’re far in advance of anything we’ve ever made before. Eneko must have been working on them secretly for weeks, months, years maybe. In a little dive down by the river, they were, all nice and hidden until he got us to bring them up here. And that makes me wonder. Bakar would never allow them, would he? Blasphemous to make an image of the Clockwork God. So Eneko knew, or hoped, Bakar would be deposed. Expected an invasion when Reyes hasn’t been at war for, what? Centuries? This is all part of his plan. I just don’t know why exactly.”

  Kacha thought she might, but that wasn’t the worry right now.

  “Are they ready? And what makes them go?”

  “Ready as they’ll ever be. We were just waiting for the signal. And actually I don’t know what it is that makes them go–neither do any of the men working here–except it’s some sort of clockwork heart with something else in there powering it. Magic, if I’m any judge, and no one seems able to work out if that makes the automatons really alive or just very complicated. I know what the new parts look like though. Here.”

  He handed over what looked very like a clockwork heart. She’d seen one before, hadn’t she? Once for real, a clockwork heart belonging to a madwoman, and then the plans they’d found in Sabates’ safe.

  “You’re right, you won’t be getting a signal now,” she said. “I say we set these things going. We let them flatten the Ikarans and we concentrate on the magicians. Worry about the rest later.”

  “Funny. Just what I was thinking.”

  Vocho was out of breath long before they made it to the cell they were heading for.

  “How is it,” he panted, “that you know your way around the Shrive so well?”