by Julia Knight
He told himself afterwards that he’d not realised how close to the edge she was. He told himself that he’d not meant it, but he was lying, and inside the darkest part of him he knew it. His greatest lies were always those he told his inner self.
That part of him crowed when she fell and didn’t stop when her stumbling recovery pitched her over the edge and into the darkly rushing waters of the Reyes river. He stared at the spot where she’d gone over for long seconds by the ticking of the nearby Clockwork God before he scrambled after the rest down the steep bank to where thick green reeds clogged the water. Panic rose like a tide when he realised she wasn’t sitting up, spluttering in the shallows, wasn’t cursing his name as she clambered ashore. When he realised that the waters had closed over her like she’d never been.
Yet still he hadn’t been the first in the water. That had been Petri Egimont, naturally. He’d left the guild – no one would say why – so he wasn’t allowed within the walls, but he liked to come and see the sparring on the bridge sometimes, sitting silent and watchful and somehow reproachful, as though his leaving was their fault. Petri dived in as soon as he reached the shore, searching among the reeds and trawling the riverbed, coming up for breath and then diving again. Vocho stood staring at the spot where Kacha had disappeared before a splash of water revived him and he joined in, wading into the deeper parts by the bridge stanchions, calling Kacha’s name. He thrashed around for what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than a minute before he felt something on his leg. A hand.
When he pulled her out, she was coughing up lungfuls of water, cold as a week-dead fish but alive, and that was almost all that mattered. Almost, because he might not want her dead – there was that long-ago promise to Da, if nothing else, and he did love his sister when he remembered to – but he couldn’t still that dark little voice in his heart, telling him he had to beat her, had to be better, whatever it took, if he wanted Da to see him over the glow of the perfect Kacha.
She lay on the grass, coughing up water for a long time. Petri hovered at Vocho’s elbow, but he ignored the fool.
“You saved me,” Kacha said in the end, sounding surprised.
“What happened?” someone else asked, Vocho didn’t know who, but he cursed them in his head.
Kacha shook her head, sending water flying from her hair. “Tripped, I think, and too close to the edge. Should have been more careful. That’ll teach me, right?”
Vocho laughed with the rest of them, relief flowing from them all like the rush of the river. All except Petri, who watched Vocho with a care that made his heart miss a beat. He said nothing, did nothing overt, but it was plain all the same. Petri knew.
Chapter Fourteen
Kacha kept her head down in the tailor’s shop where she was hiding as two swordsmen went past. She worked her way further into the shop – it was the perfect place to hide for a little while, until any pursuit was gone. Rack upon rack of shirts in every imaginable colour were crammed against breeches, tunics, cloaks, dresses, scarves so there was barely room to pass between. She almost felt if she pushed far enough, she’d walk out into a different city under a different sun, and wished that she could. Maybe under another sun she could be another person: one who didn’t have to be perfect, didn’t get betrayed, wasn’t forced into being the sensible one whether she wanted it or not.
The shopkeeper came, shoving his way through his merchandise with practised ease, but she waved him away and pretended to browse, keeping an eye on the doorway and the street outside as much as she could.
What the hells was Petri about? It didn’t seem like him at all, not the man she knew. She needed to look at the papers again, somewhere quiet, and she needed some answers.
When Eneko had given her and Vocho that last job, he’d said the priest had “important business” to attend to and needed a small discreet escort. She hadn’t asked much more – for a long time she’d been doing as Eneko asked without question because she trusted him. While she’d lately had her suspicions about the dark jobs he gave her, she had no reason to wonder about a normal job like this. Vocho had just been happy with the price.
They hadn’t asked questions then, but it was time to start now. She pushed her way back to the front of the shop, cast a careful eye over the street, saw nothing to alarm her, no Petri or his men, and hurried to the one place that might be able to tell her what she needed to know.
The streets were quiet, eerily so, as though the population could feel some storm coming and had shuttered themselves away. She kept her hood up against a chill evening breeze dragging wisps of scrawny fog through the streets, and against any chance of being seen. The streets were empty but the church was crowded – it always was.
The church was a marvel, everyone said so, built soon after the prelate came to power on the ruins of a Castan temple to the Clockwork God, resurrecting his worship along with the god himself. The huge main doors ran on clockwork, linked to the same great waterwheels that powered the change o’ the clock, the bronze duellist at the guild and the Clockwork God that sat between the guild and the palace. Above the church door was inscribed “the only comfort is truth”.
Inside there was no representation of him – the statue by the guild was the Clockwork God in people’s minds. He moved and clanked and took people’s truths to his metal heart to power him, so they said. Instead, inside the church were a hundred, thousand, other things. Offerings to him, and some to the duellist, who people said was his age-old consort back when Reyes was part of an empire. Since the Great Fall the Clockwork God had been sleeping, waiting for people to be able to understand him. They might have said that he forgave them for believing in other gods while he slept, but the Clockwork God didn’t forgive or condemn, he collected truth and made sure the world carried on in its prescribed motions.
The church whirred and whizzed with the sound of clockwork under the light of a thousand lamps. Toys, hammers, grinders, buzzing trinkets of all shapes and sizes. Skittering around the edge were uncountable numbers of the little votives the smaller clockers sold, intricate and shining, like golden spiders scurrying to build their webs.
At the centre of the church was a marvel that still, even now, amazed her: the tree. Made of beaten gold and silver, it shone in the flickering light, the leaves moving in a non-existent breeze. Bronze birds sang in the branches, and one, a tiny little thing all decked out in brilliant blue lapis lazuli to mimic a real trunkwalker, pattered up and down the golden bole of the tree, taking people’s truths, they said. Taking them from the roots of the tree to the crown, where the Clockwork God could find them.
The rest of the church was just as fine. The walls were covered in moving murals that depicted the Clockwork God’s rise all that time ago and how he’d died when the Castans no longer understood his purpose, how he caused their empire to fall for their arrogance; how he’d chosen Bakar, shown him the way to work the gears and read the truth in his movements. Kacha wasn’t so sure, but it seemed as good a thing to believe in as any, and plenty of people did believe, or wanted to at any rate. A few kept to the gods she’d been brought up with, the false gods the priests now called them, invented by man to fill the void after the Clockwork God died. Only a few, and they did it in secret.
She stepped over the spidery votives as they scuttled across the floor, and went to find a priest. There were several about, winding up offerings, taking votives and truths, dispensing advice. A younger priest turned towards her with a smile when she approached. “Can I help you?”
“I was wondering, could I talk to you for a minute?”
She was staring at Kacha’s face oddly, especially at the scar under her eye. Kacha ducked her head, but perhaps too late. Still, the priest said nothing about it. “Certainly. Over here perhaps, where it’s more private.”
The priest was young, too young to have had to make the choice between the old gods and the resurrected Clockwork God, a choice that had led to a revolt among the clergy and a few of them joining th
e king and nobles in the bloody square before the Shrive. It had only taken one or two executions for the rest to see which way the wind blew. Some embraced the Clockwork God like he had never been away, others doubtless merely pretended and the rest made themselves scarce or found a new profession.
This priest had ochre skin with a flush of sombre pink on her cheeks, inky hair that kinked all ways and was barely held in check by a white band, dark eyes lidded against the light or perhaps only against troublesome thoughts and a mouth that looked like it could keep secrets. She exuded calm and the impression that whatever you told her would be shared with no one but the Clockwork God. She led Kacha to a cubicle set aside for just this sort of thing. Two chairs, a small table with a jug of water and some glasses. The priest sat down, fiddling with the mark of her profession which dangled from a chain around her neck, a ball that moved and clicked and slid and wound so that if you looked too long your eyes went strange.
Kacha sat too, and the priest didn’t wait for her to start.
“I know who you are. Kacha. Your brother killed Sendoa.”
She sat very still, waiting. No point denying it, after all. If she had to, Kacha could get out of here with no problem.
A sudden smile from the priest. “You aren’t your brother though. While the guild still wants you found, the church has no quarrel with you even if the prelate does. All your truths are well kept here; nothing goes beyond these walls except to the Clockwork God. What is it you were wanting?”
“Sendoa. I… I’m not sure whether Vocho killed him.”
The priest raised an eyebrow. “Not sure?”
Something about this priest, with her calm smile and attentive look, made Kacha want to spill it all out, every last thing. It’d been inside too long, and she’d no one to tell it to. “I don’t think… OK, maybe he did.” The first time she’d really admitted the possibility to herself. “Maybe he did, but that’s not Vocho. He’s not a killing sort of man, unless he has to on guild business. Only then, I swear. But…”
“But you aren’t sure?”
She sat in silence for a long moment. Vocho was her brother, and she loved the annoying little sod, but… It always came back to but. Still, there was something more to this. Something Vocho hadn’t told her, perhaps didn’t know himself.
“You know they held a trial in his absence?” The priest offered her some water, but she declined with a shake of her head.
“They did?”
The priest reached out and patted her hand like she was about to tell Kacha someone was dead and was sorry about it. “Your brother killed him, there can be no doubt. For money, it looks like. Did you know about the gambling debts?”
“What?”
And then the priest told her the rest.
Interlude
Twelve years earlier
Kacha knocked on the door and waited.
She’d been in Guild Master Eneko’s rooms often enough before, but there was something about his note that had set her senses on edge. He’d used a note for starters, when it was more usual to send one of the first years, who took turns being messengers when they weren’t drilling basics or learning to read. Yet today a note via a boy she knew could hardly read yet. The note hadn’t said much – a summons to Eneko’s quarters with an aside that she tell no one where she was going. She’d folded the paper into little squares, hidden it in the pocket of her breeches and made for Eneko’s just past the dinner bell, when everyone would be in the mess.
It was probably nothing, but her hands were jittery as she answered the soft “Come in.” Maybe nothing – and maybe something.
Eneko stood watching out of his window, his back to her. Beyond him the sun was setting and faint cries wound up from the harbour along with the smell of salt and fish. The smell of home, though she’d tried to forget it. But it seemed that Eneko always smelled of the harbour, and of rich pipe smoke, even though he never smoked it.
She stood waiting quietly and at last Eneko turned with a faint smile. “Sit,” he said. “You aren’t in trouble.”
One reason for her jitters left, to be replaced by another, happier reason. The final test, when a journeyman became a master. They said it sometimes came like this – the test was different for everyone. But she was only fifteen, had only passed her journeyman’s a year ago. Still, she knew she was good, maybe even good enough. Eneko kept an eye out for her, watched her practise, gave her advice and praise, and she strove to be perfect for him and for Da. She had to be. If she wasn’t perfect, she was nothing.
She sat and tried not to jiggle her legs. Eneko sat down behind his desk and looked at her long and hard, in a way he never had before. She’d been in here so often that the other masters had commented, whispering she was Eneko’s favourite. She’d had a few barbed comments to that effect in the halls, but nothing she couldn’t handle – years of sparring and duelling, ignoring their taunts as they tried to unnerve her, had left her almost impervious. But all those times he’d never looked at her like this.
Eneko picked up a little statue and turned it, over and over, in one hand, an exercise to loosen the muscles in his wrist after a long-ago injury and something he did when he thought.
“Do you trust me, Kacha?”
She frowned, and her legs stopped jiggling. This wasn’t how a test should go. “Yes,” she said finally.
“Really? Why is that?”
The answer came smoothly enough. “Because you’ve always looked after me. Always.”
“Because you miss your da?”
The knife edge of it, dulled by years, still surprised her. She wanted to lie, to say no, but Eneko always knew her lies, just like she always knew Vocho’s. “Yes.”
He nodded, still thinking perhaps. “Do you think I keep secrets? Think closely.”
She didn’t need to. “Of course. You run the guild. There must be secrets – jobs not meant for all ears, the real identity of some clients. Some things are only for masters to know.”
He smiled as though his faith in her had been tested, and she’d passed. “Many secrets. And what do you know of debt?”
She didn’t need to think on that at all. “To pay it.”
“Would you like to know a secret and help me pay a debt?”
She restrained herself from an outburst, barely. “I’d be honoured, Guild Master.”
“Eneko, if you like. I think you’ve earned it. Or are about to.”
The jitters were back, worse than ever. Only masters got to call the guild master by his given name. She was good with a blade, and she knew it, but was she ready for this? She was honest with herself about that doubt and how Vocho would howl unfair but knew she wanted it anyway.
Eneko kept his eyes on hers as he spoke, and she couldn’t have torn herself away if she tried.
“You remember the day – your birthday – on the wall? A bad day for the guild. Meant I had to ask a few favours. From people I shouldn’t have, and didn’t want to, though I was left little choice. A magician.”
That made her catch her breath. They’d all heard about what had happened that day up at the palace, how many had died trying to rid the place of magicians. Men vaporised where they stood, women dying, children screaming. They’d heard, but Kacha didn’t know anyone who’d seen it, and so part of her – the hard part Vocho called it because he didn’t understand – wouldn’t believe it.
“The magician saved my life that day, all our lives perhaps, by telling me what was coming so I could prepare. And in return I helped him escape. But I still owe him. And now I have notice he wants to collect on that debt.” Eneko’s lips twisted like he’d just bitten into a lemon. “This is a job I’d rather never take, but a job I have to do, and yet is almost impossible for me now. And if I don’t pay…”
She started to protest, but he waved it away. “I’m getting old. Not too old to be guild master but too slow for this kind of job. So I need someone I can trust. Someone I’ve been thinking might take over from me when it’s time. Will yo
u do it? Remember – only if it seems good to you.”
She almost couldn’t breathe – to be guild master after Eneko… “Of course.”
“You can’t tell anyone. Not even Vocho. Everyone has secrets as they pass into adulthood. Now so have you. Here, let me show you the job.”
He spread out detailed plans for an assassination. Not unheard of but not usual either and something she’d hoped to avoid for as long as she could. But… master. Guild master.
All the training, the drills, the lessons, had been leading to this one thought. Could she kill a man, not accidentally in a fight but in cold blood? Could she show Eneko just how perfect she was? She had no idea, but she knew the thought of it made sweat sting her eyes. Especially if it was for her own ambition. If she couldn’t, she didn’t belong in the guild. If she could, what did that make her? The endless struggle, Eneko had called it once, and had also said that the battle was only lost when you stopped struggling – anyone who killed without question was lost.
Eneko showed her the point far above a factory where she could wait, could hide for her mark to come. Showed her just how easy it would be. And he told her who the man was: a clocker, owner of a sweatshop down by Soot Town, a hellish place that Kacha and Vocho always hurried past on their rare days out. And a father, brother, husband, son, though not a good one from what Eneko laid out here – mistresses galore, a dying mother left in poverty when he was rich. Other things too – the slaves that passed through his hands, got from no-one-knew-where, sold on to no-one-was-sure-who, though Ikaras seemed a fair bet – their sugar plantations, the trade the whole country depended upon, couldn’t operate without slaves. One reason the prelate always baulked at negotiating with them. She wondered whether these things were true, or if they were, whether Eneko laid them out because he thought she wouldn’t do the job otherwise. She wondered how little he knew her – or how much.
