by Julia Knight
They were cuffed, had their swords taken and then the two of them were shoved out into the street. It wasn’t far to the Shrive, and the road was dark. The door gaped open ahead of them, and Kacha recalled the time she and Vocho had watched Novatonas’s execution, when Bakar had been dragged off into this doorway. It had looked then like the gate to the hells. The Clockwork God had no concept of hell or heaven, but she was old enough to remember the gods before him and it still looked like the gate to the hells.
Inside was little better. They passed through a series of clanking gates, where the guards checked they had no hidden weapons, keys or anything else likely to cause them problems, before they were herded down, always down. The walls stopped being dressed stone and became rough, ancient and running with damp. Still they went down, until Kacha was sure they must be far underground. Finally, after what seemed like miles of corridors, the guards opened a door with a heavy key, removed their cuffs and shoved them in before locking the door behind them.
Dom slumped down in the rancid straw while Kacha looked in every corner that she could – the only light came from a tiny grilled window. Sadly the Shrive was far too efficient at what it did and there was nothing to give her hope, nothing at all. Finally, she went to the window. The damp was worse out there, coating her face with its chill. It smelt earthy, and on the edge of hearing she could make out both a rushing noise and a regular clack-clack-clack. The light came from a high lamp fitfully illuminating a path that looked nothing like the corridors they’d come down.
“The river,” Dom said behind her. “That’s how Bakar got out. Twice he escaped, and no one else even managed once. That’s where he found the waterwheels too, and figured out how the clockwork was running, found the Clockwork God’s broken heart and mended it. Looked at it and thought this is the logical way. The old king always said he was gods-blessed, you see. Do you remember that? No, too young, I suppose. He said he was gods-blessed, and that’s why he was king, and what he said was an order from above. People believed it too, or pretended to anyway. Made a stupid kind of sense, because of course the gods wouldn’t allow anyone but their favoured to be king. Bakar changed all that. Science he called it. Observing the world and using that to determine how it worked, rather than listening to the gods. He saw those waterwheels, saw the movements of all the things they run and wondered. What if there are no gods watching us? Rational thought says that’s just the human ego talking. Why would any god watch over a wretch like me, or a poor docker’s kid like you? Surely they’ve more important people to watch over? Or more important things to do. But if the world was like the clockwork, what if whoever created us wound it, provided it with its own waterwheel, and left it to run on its prescribed rails? What if no god watches us, and all we have are our own observations of the truths of the universe?”
Dom was pacing now, more alive than Kacha had ever seen him. Who the hells are you? Now he had dropped his act he didn’t seem to be able to shut up. She wondered how long he’d kept all this in.
“Of course he was smart enough to give people a god to believe in anyway, only one that was more logical. After the first time he escaped, when he first saw the wheels and realised, he went to Ikaras University, where the Great Fall wasn’t as bad, and they say there are records that go back two thousand years. That’s as may be – I never saw any. Anyway, that’s where I met him, hanging on every word of Novatonas, helping him with all his new and exciting machines, the movements and cogs and gears, the philosophy too. Novatonas had come to it through his own observations on the world and how it worked. A brilliant man. Until Bakar came.”
He paused for breath, and Kacha managed to get a word in. “That’s very interesting, but what’s it to us right now? We’re sitting in a cell, and I know I’m probably never going to get out.”
Dom held up a hand. He was smiling, something like his old, twittery self, and it had her puzzled.
“He escaped twice – the second time after Novatonas was executed for heresy, which I was about to get to.”
“All right, he escaped twice, which would be very useful if we knew how.”
“We do. Or rather, I do. He came to Novatonas to learn, he said. I was already there, studying. Some fellow feeling between us, or so he thought. He had had to leave the guild – couldn’t pass his master’s – and it rankled no end. Still does, and one reason he pushed Eneko so, why he had him spied on after the revolt and brought in to answer for himself whenever he did anything at all out of the ordinary. When Bakar recognised me—”
“Why should he recognise you?”
“When he recognised me, he thought I’d feel the same. Being the only person ever expelled from the guild after he’d taken his master’s. Until you and Vocho, that is.”
Ridiculous. The only person before them to have been expelled after taking his masters had been… “Wait a minute. You’re Jokin?”
“Sadly, that is so. My name is actually Narcis Jokin Donat Chimo Ne Farina es Domenech. Bit of a mouthful, I think you’ll agree.”
Kacha ran a hand through her hair. It was a hell of a lot to take in. The guild hadn’t taught them much history bar the highlights, but Jokin, there had been whole lessons on him – how he’d been a brilliant student, formidable with a blade, how Eneko had taken him under his wing, made him guild master’s apprentice much as Kacha had been, how he’d then betrayed the guild, betrayed Eneko personally, by changing sides midway through a job, and how they must never do the same. Eneko had spent even longer on the subject with her, afraid she’d betray him as Jokin had.
“I hope you aren’t disappointed in me?” Dom said.
“What? No. Hells, how could I be? I got kicked out just the same as you did. Worse even, now I come to think about it. But how do you know how he escaped? And can we escape?”
“We’ll save the rest for another time, but Bakar thought I felt the same about the guild as he did, that we were fellow exiles. And he talked a lot when he was drunk, and he often was in those days. So he told me how he escaped. And can we? Not that way. You can though, if things haven’t changed too much. I hope perhaps you might then come back and rescue me.”
“I will if you ever get around to telling me how.”
His grin was really quite infectious. She told herself there was still a lot he hadn’t said, that she’d need to winkle out of him later. Like what was Jokin doing pretending to be a clocker’s idiot son, and why had he latched on to her and Vocho, and all manner of things. But for now she’d trust him. It didn’t look like she had much choice.
Dom winked at her, scrabbled about in the straw and found the drain. The grating was locked and it looked like rust had welded it to the stone of the floor. It also smelt worse than anything she could ever recall.
She looked at it and then at Dom. “You want me to go down there?”
“If you want to get out of here.”
“OK, fine. But it’s rusted to buggery and locked, which makes me think they’ve thought of people escaping that way.”
“Don’t they teach lock-picking at the guild any more?”
“Well, yes. But I was never very good at it. That was Vocho’s thing.”
“Mine as well. Especially seeing as Bakar told me exactly how the lock works and how it can be opened. He was a locksmith before he was prelate. Bet you didn’t know that.”
“In which case you’d have thought they’d have changed the locks.”
“The first time they didn’t know how he escaped. Like he’d disappeared from a sealed box. Total mystery. Besides, Shrive guards under the king weren’t noted for their forward planning, mainly because they got paid so little. Mostly they went with the ‘Keep ’em in large amounts of pain; they won’t think about escaping’ plan, which worked for most people.”
“But not Bakar?”
“He’s a very unusual man. Bakar is more perceptive than the old king, for all his faults. He pays by results. ”
All the while he’d been talking Dom had been searchi
ng across his tunic. “Ah! Here it is. These aren’t all for show, you know.” He unpinned a startlingly ugly brooch, revealing an extra-long pin with a weird twist at the end. “I knew this would come in handy. Bakar gave it to me. See the bit on the end? Best thing I’ve ever found for those more difficult locks. Really, he should have stayed in locksmithing; he was a genius.”
With that he began probing the lock. It didn’t seem to go very well because after a time he started swearing. “That should work. I don’t see why it hasn’t.”
“Because the man who runs the Shrive is the only man ever to have escaped it.” The voice startled them both. “He had all the locks remade to his own designs, and he keeps the keys. Not only that, he had the drains trapped. If you got through the grating, you’d only end up as mincemeat in some of the more dubious sausages down by the docks.”
The shadowy face at the grille in the door moved, a key turned in a lock and the door opened. Kacha wasn’t sure who she was expecting, but it wasn’t a smiling Eneko. He stepped into the cell, and Kacha was shocked at the difference in him. His hair had been sprinkled with grey all the time she’d known him, but now the darkness was streaked with white. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a month, and there was a tremor in his hand that had never been there before. She tried to think of something defiant to say, to show she wasn’t afraid, but the only words that came to mind sounded petulant and childish, so she said nothing.
“I’m really quite pleased to see you,” he said to Kacha. “Really. I’d hoped that somehow I could discover your innocence, that I could bring you back into the guild without Bakar wanting your head. But it seems we’ve both discovered more than we expected.”
“You certainly didn’t seem too worried about my innocence when the guards came for me before, or when me and Voch had to run for our lives. In fact I seem to recall you tried to hand me over.”
Eneko shrugged. “A guild master has to play a political game, I’m afraid. I couldn’t be seen to support you, not with Bakar watching my every move. Especially as I knew that Vocho was guilty and couldn’t be sure you weren’t too.”
“You could have asked?”
Eneko laughed at that. “Not so simple, Kacha. You should know that. After all the little jobs you’ve done for me over the years. It’s never simple, is it?”
That snapped her mouth shut. All those jobs, the ones he’d persuaded her were for the good of the guild, the good of the city, the right thing to do. Legitimate jobs, he’d said, just ones that needed to be done quietly. They weren’t an assassins’ guild but sometimes a job required them to act like one, secretly at least, and only for certain employers. He told her he’d look after her, and he had. Until he hadn’t.
“What is it you want?”
“I’m fond of you, Kacha, more than fond. Besides, you were exemplary at your work. Quick, quiet, efficient, no bragging, didn’t ask awkward questions, perfect. As good as Dom ever was and like my own daughter in many ways. I want you back in the guild, if I can, but without your grandstanding fool of a brother. If you’re innocent, you could be of great help to me in the coming months, which promise to be interesting if not brutal. Licio and his pet magician are out to get rid of the prelate, that much I do know. Who am I to stop them?”
He spread his hands, all innocence, and Kacha recalled all the times he’d railed against Bakar, how much he’d hated him for his humiliations.
“You’re just going to let it happen? What about all your talk of the guild being for Reyes? All those lessons on ethics?”
“What’s more ethical, Kacha? A prelate whose whole rule is based on the lie of a god he doesn’t believe in? A boy-king under the influence of a magician? Or a guild ruling Reyes in truth for its people?”
Kacha stared at his face, so familiar but now seeming the face of someone else. “The guild ruling… You ruling, you mean.”
“Naturally. All those dark jobs you did for me were to remove support for Bakar one small step at a time. Did you really think they were anything else?”
She stared at him as though she’d never seen him before, and maybe she hadn’t. Not this side of him. “The dark jobs were for the good of Reyes, you said. I was killing slavers and the like. For the good of Reyes, that’s what you said.”
What he’d said, and she’d blindly believed him. Because he was like Da, because she needed someone to be perfect for, or what was the point? She’d believed him, made sure not to question him, ignored all the little signs that now, in a flash of understanding, had grown big as elephants. The way Petri twitched every time his name came up, how Eneko had sidestepped any questions she asked, Bakar’s needling of him, hatred of him. She’d been blind to it all because she’d wanted to be. The last part of what she thought she’d known, thought she was, crashed around her ears. She’d been murdering people for Eneko’s ambition.
He moved closer, and was that real compassion in his eyes?
“Kacha, listen to me. You were the one. Always. My Kacha, helping me make this city great again. Ridding it of everything that’s weakened it since Bakar came to power. I couldn’t have done any of it without my perfect Kacha.”
“Funny,” Dom said behind her. “You used to say that to me. And you’ve missed out a whole section about your own foray into slavery. Or how when I found out, you destroyed me.”
A flash of irritation passed over Eneko’s face. “More to it than that, wasn’t there, Jokin? Don’t paint yourself as blameless.”
“Slavery?” Kacha backed away from Eneko, from his reaching hand, the sorrow in his eyes.
His wise voice, that patient one she craved and so at odds with his words. “Not really – though some would say otherwise. Bakar and Petri, maybe. No more slavery than a guild education. They had better lives than those I took them from.”
“Who did?”
He shook his head as though he was dealing with a child who couldn’t hope to understand the complexities of life outside the nursery. “Won’t you take my word on it? Trust me and come back. Come home.”
With every word he was crushing every dream she’d ever had of the world, so that now maybe she could see it as it was – ugly as sin under its patina of beauty – but at least this was truth. “Not this time.” She’d had enough of trust turning round to bite her to last ten lifetimes. “Tell me all of it.”
He seemed to crumple then, his face sagging, his eyes looking even older. He reached out a hand towards her shoulder, then seemed to think better of it. “I’ve loved you as a daughter. And like a father I wanted you to think well of me. That’s all. I sent them to Ikaras. Without them, they could never have built such a trade in sugar, in coal and iron, never got the wealth they have now, and as for the people themselves, they’d have died down on the docks most likely, starved to death in an alley somewhere. Others serve the king, his nobles, feed me information. Some pass on information from me to the king there. Ikaras owes me, and they know it, and maybe when the time comes, I’ll have an ally there. A slow, subtle move to power it was going to be, with a sudden fall of the sword at the end. For the good of Reyes. Licio has hastened things on for me, though. Using Vocho to kill the priest was inspired. Maybe I can use the coming confusion to my advantage. Our advantage, Kacha. When the guild comes to power, I’ll need a woman with a sword at the ready. Just say the word, and you can be out of here, back in the guild, back where you belong.”
Oh, it was tempting. Tempting to give in, to go back to what she knew, what was comforting. Get out of this cell with her head still on her shoulders. But this… He’d used her for his own revenge against Bakar. He’d sent people off to slavery in Ikaras, had her kill people for his own ends. He’d lied to her, betrayed her. She’d thought he was like her da, but he was just out for what she could give him, out for himself. Just like everyone else.
Everyone had betrayed her, everyone. She had nothing and no one to fight for any more, except herself. No Da, no Voch, no Petri, not even Eneko, the rock she’d built herself on, ha
d always wanted to prove herself to, had craved praise from. She had no one to be perfect for any more, and the thought was vibrantly liberating. She owed no one anything any more either, no loyalty or perfection or obedience.
The kick in the groin caught even the experienced Eneko off guard and surprised Dom into stillness for just long enough. Long enough to wrench the knife from the hidden sheath where she knew Eneko kept it. Long enough to slash the belt that held his sword and grab it. Long enough to make for the door. Dom started forward, but he wasn’t quick enough, not to catch an enraged Kacha. Neither were the two duellists waiting outside, or perhaps they might have been if Kacha hadn’t surprised the first by grabbing his shirt and giving him a headbutt that spread his nose over his face, before she threw him into his companion. She didn’t wait for anything, not to give anyone an extra kick to be sure, or for Dom, who was calling her name a few steps behind.
She was going to find Vocho, rescue him this one last time, and then they could all go to hell, every last one of them.
Interlude
Six months earlier
Vocho had watched Egimont sneak into the guild the previous night, wary and watchful. He watched him now, as he left at dawn, with a spring in his step and a funny little smile on his lips. For a long time Petri hadn’t been allowed inside the guild for no reason that Vocho knew of except he’d left under a cloud. Now he was Kacha’s guest, and she had clout, so he was permitted into her private quarters at least, if not exactly welcomed elsewhere. He made damned sure to keep out of Eneko’s way, Vocho noted.
He sauntered out of his nook in the corner of a tower and followed Petri down the steps that led to the grassed-over stone arch that served as a bridge to the city. The sun was barely above the walls and everything was still dressed in grey and purple with a hint of gold. Petri seemed in no hurry and was even humming to himself as he reached the greensward where Kacha had fallen in the river all those years ago. Afterwards Eneko had built a wall, waist high and topped with a railing, so it wouldn’t happen again. Petri stopped there and looked out at the mists curling about the bridge and the stretch of river that flowed down from the mill race under the Shrive.
