by Mur Lafferty
Kate fought the urge to laugh. “No, really, there are two floors above here, and that’s where we’re headed. If you could just point us toward the door.”
The priest frowned. “No one goes to the forbidden temples. The Messenger and the Sun have no priests, no pilgrims. Their worshipers are many but those who observe are few. The temples in Meridian are for show; that is all. But why worship those when you can revel in the glory that is Ishmael with me?”
Kate glanced at him, losing her amusement quickly. “Divine inspiration, call it. Now listen, if you don’t show us the door to the upstairs, we’ll make one.” She let her godhood seep out in her voice a bit with the last sentence, and the priest stepped back.
“There is no door, I- I was told by the Head Priest of Ishmael that the floors above are just for show. I don’t know anything!”
Kate snorted. “Useless.” She walked around the perimeter of the room, touching the wall as she went. Something resonated in the corner opposite the doorway.
"Alicia, we’re going,” she said. She concentrated briefly and then the wall dissolved, opening up a dark corridor. She smiled at the dumbstruck priest, whose impressive erection had wilted. “Excuse us, please.”
Alicia joined her and they walked into the dark stairwell.
“What are you looking for, Lady?” Alicia asked.
“I don’t know exactly. But I’ve got to go with my gut. And my gut says we need to go to the sun temple.”
The top of the stairwell had no door, but Kate simply made another hole in the wall, dissolving the concrete and metal in front of them.
Kate barely had time to register the large empty room made completely of gold except for one small, open window, and the small thin man inside, before he ran at her, screaming, his fists balled and his eyes wild.
Kate raised her hand and he fell down face first, sobbing and screaming. Kate ran to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “Barris. Barris. What is wrong?”
The god of the sun curled up into a fetal position and she pulled his slight form so his head was in her lap and stroked his golden hair as he cried.
CHAPTER NINE
“It’s been so long. There was the world, and then there was this room, and then there was me,” he said, once he composed himself.
“You are a god, and yet you’ve been imprisoned here since the beginning of time?” Kate asked incredulously.
He nodded, sniffling. “I was aware of only a few things. Who I was. What my responsibility was. And who you were. I knew you were responsible for keeping me here.”
Kate gritted her teeth. “Why do people keep blaming us for shit? Barris, to me, the world has been alive for exactly two days and three nights. I’ve barely had time to find my footing before a sun god attacks me in a city that doesn’t even sit on the ground. I have no idea what’s going on or why it’s my fault.”
“You made this. You made us.”
Kate shook her head again. “It wasn’t conscious. We are not that cruel. I promise. But if you’re a sun god, why are you imprisoned? I figured you’d be super powerful.”
He glared at her, his golden eyes glinting through his tears. “I am. But all my power goes into keeping the sun burning. Why I have a physical form, I’ll never know.”
Kate felt her stomach turn over. “I can guess… but later. I can get you out of here, if you want.” It went against her better judgement, but she couldn’t keep this being imprisoned. “But first I need to know some things. Why are you imprisoned and no one else is?”
“The others are imprisoned as well. Just not here. Except for Gamma. Sometimes she knocks on my floor and I knock back. She’s as trapped as I am.”
“Do you know where the others are?”
“Persi is in the South, I think. Among the wild dinosaur herds. Ishmael is below the sea. Cotton is in Dauphine. Prosper is in Lathe. And Fabrique is in Lathe as well.”
“Fabrique?”
“Goddess of clockwork.”
“And they’re all imprisoned.”
“Yes.”
Kate sat back and ran her fingers through her hair. It made sense - this world without gods. But who had imprisoned them? Who had influence here? And she had a sick feeling in her stomach of the fate of Cotton the Moon Goddess.
“Come on. Let’s get free the Messenger and then -” she paused just as Huginn whizzed through the window. No sooner had the tiny bird given its report that she groaned. “Oh crap. Daniel.”
Alicia gasped. “James?”
Barris nodded. “Fabrique.”
******
They clattered down the stairs, Barris lighting up the dark stairwell. They stopped at the next level down to free the Messenger, but Kate balked and looked at Alicia.
“Was there a hole here when we came up?”
“No, Lady,”
“Someone must have followed us and freed her,” Kate said.
“Or captured her,” said Barris.
“Shit,” Kate said. She peeked inside the Messenger’s prison. It was much like Barris’s - consisting of a bright, empty room.
“We have to rescue her,” Barris said.
“Yeah, we have to rescue them all,” Kate said. “But I think we need to make sure Daniel and Fabrique don’t kill each other. What’s the fastest way to Lathe?”
Alicia thought. “I don’t think there are many zip cords down in the middle of the city, so we’d have to take the gondola or zip back to the zeppelin dock and then take the zip from there.”
Kate looked at the window, which was merely an ornate hole in the wall. She wondered what power existed to keep the Messenger inside, and if it was still there. She could sense nothing.
“The fastest way to go is down,” she said, and grabbed them both. Neither Barris nor Alicia had time to protest as Kate lifted them and took a running jump toward the window.
******
The explosion that Daniel set off when he forced open a hole in the House of Mysteries took him a bit by surprise, but he was pleased at his instinct to protect James, who didn’t have any sort of divine protection. They were blown backward off the building, and Daniel had a moment to think that he was pretty lucky to have done this in Lathe, where he was two feet above the ground, instead of Meridian, where he was a couple hundred feet up. Still, the ground was hard and he was putting most of his divine will into keeping James safe.
Daniel was bleeding from where his head had hit the ground, not to mention where the black glass had cut his face and hands, but James got to his feet unharmed. He stared at the hole with wide eyes, and Daniel thought fast on how to calm him down. He looked around - no one had paid them any attention. “I guess people here are used to explosions, huh? Think we took out a workshop?”
James grinned hesitantly and they approached the smoking hole in the black building. Daniel hopped onto the base of the building and peered into the gaping wound. He squinted through the smoke and thought he saw a glint of copper and heard the click of clockwork when something grabbed him and pulled him in. He didn’t even manage to get out a cleverly phrased epithet before he was dunked into a vat of bluish liquid. A few whirring sounds and a lid was secured.
Daniel panicked. He thrashed around in the liquid before he realized that as a god, he didn’t really need to breathe. He calmed down a little and peered out through the glass. A blue haze colored the room, but he could see a workshop crowded with gears and cogs and springs and tools and machines and a very small, very angry woman with very curly hair who stood right in front of the vat, apparently yelling at him.
He blinked at her. Lady, you’ve locked me in a jar of I-don’t-know-what and then yell at me? You think you might be going about this all wrong?
Beyond her was the thing that had grabbed him - a massive mech-suit that looked like it comfortably seated a small woman. She was pointing at it now, and then back at Daniel. He tried to nod encouragingly. Yes, you did catch me with the big scary suit. You are clearly the dominant god here. It’s clear I�
�m not a threat and I’m sorry I blew a hole in your wall. Can you let me go now?
She continued to yell at him, and he sighed - internally, anyway - and started to feel around for a way out. The top was bolted pretty tightly to the jar. He pushed his divine will against it, like he had done to open a hole in the wall, and nothing budged. He tried a shape-change, no dice.
Fuck.
He peered back out of the glass to get a better look at the furious woman, and his heart nearly stopped as she turned from him to focus on the young face of James, who had stuck his head through the hole.
******
Kate wondered as she and the god and the zeppelin pilot did a free-fall past the temples, how many people committed suicide in Meridian. Or just accidentally fell to their deaths. Barris screamed all the way down, which annoyed the hell out of Kate. He was a god. Immortal. Alicia, the mortal, clung to Kate tightly but did not scream.
They passed through the misty cloud that separated the two cities and began to slow. Kate couldn’t sense Daniel at all but she followed Huginn’s path to where she had last seen Daniel. The three of them touched down on the rocky street, and Kate told the others to wait for her. She left them, Alicia's face creased with worry and Barris looking around in wonder, and leapt lightly through the gaping hole in the black glass building.
Daniel, James, and a short woman sat at a workbench with tools and half-built inventions pushed aside to give them room for cookies and milk. Daniel was soaking wet, but otherwise unharmed. He waved at her.
“Hey, babe. Come meet Fabrique. She’s a god too. Did you know this world’s gods are all imprisoned?”
“What the hell happened? Huginn said you were in trouble!”
“I was,” Daniel said, pointing to a tall blue tank in the corner of the workshop. “I would have drowned, but luckily I remembered I was a god.” He took a bite of cookie.
Kate sighed. “And?”
“She thought we had locked her up. She was understandably pissed. But James came in and told her what was going on. I was lucky to have him around.”
Fabrique stood. Her curly hair was held back by the brass goggles that were perched on her head. “I stored him in my collection of chaos energy. He was put in stasis and had no power. I was going to keep him trapped there for as long as I was trapped, but that child came in. He’s a smart one.”
Alicia crawled through the hole, saw her son, and ran to him and grabbed him, hugging him tight. James struggled against her, clearly embarrassed.
“Mama, I’m okay, please!”
“Your child is blessed,” Fabrique said. “The god Daniel saved me, but James saved him.”
“What are you doing in here?” Kate asked Alicia. “Where’s Barris?”
With James still crushed to her chest, she looked at Kate. “Barris is insufferable. I’d rather face unknown danger with you than sit safely with him.”
Kate swore. “What did he do?”
“He’s just whining. He whines more than the twins do.”
Kate looked out of the still-smoking hole as Fabrique got more glasses and plates to serve the newcomers. Barris was sitting in the middle of the road, tears streaming down his face. He glowed brighter than ever in the dim city.
“What’s going on?” Kate asked.
“I’m free. I can finally be free. And now I can see in person everything I only saw as the sun. Which, of course, was nearly everything, but I couldn’t experience it.”
“Oh, that’s why you knew where all the other gods were,” Kate said. “So tell me. Where is the Messenger god? Who took her?”
Barris stared at her blankly, then laughed. “I am very stupid.” Kate silently agreed with him. “In my excitement I forgot to look. She was taken by the priest of Ishmael, he’s sold her to the pirate ship Fera.”
Kate stared at him with wide eyes. “And you’re telling me this now.”
“Oh, an Idea Emporium, can we go there?”
CHAPTER TEN
Daniel flew Alicia back up to her zeppelin so she could pick up the rest of her family and take the ship down to pick up the others. Barris demanded to visit the Idea Emporium, and Fabrique agreed to come with them to rescue the Messenger, but wanted to pack a number of her inventions. “You don’t know what you’re going to need in rescuing the other gods. Especially from pirates.”
“Pirates are bad, I’m sure, but with four gods, how is this going to be an issue?” Kate asked. “I hate to be full of myself here, but we are kinda powerful.”
“Pirates aren’t gods, but they aren’t mortals, either. They live in the Dark,” Barris said, bouncing impatiently. “They are influenced by chaos energy and the Dark Beast. Can we go now?”
Something unpleasant ran down Kate’s spine. “The Dark Beast?”
“Yes. The Dark Beast. It’s bad. It gives them skills that they likely shouldn’t have. It makes them formidable. I haven’t seen everything they’ve done - the Dark tends to hide them from me - but they do things that even chaos energy shouldn’t allow them. Can we please go to the Idea Emporium now?”
Fabrique grinned at Kate, and she sighed. “May I leave James here to help you pack?” The clockwork goddess nodded and kept sticking devices into a carpetbag that really shouldn’t have held them all.
Kate took Barris by the arm and said, “Okay, sun god, let’s go.”
After the House of Mysteries had been blown open, the gods found no need to hide themselves. The citizens of Lathe stood in the center of the city, staring open-mouthed at the House of Mysteries. Kate looked around, grinned at them, and said, “Where’s the Idea Emporium your sun god is so eager to see?”
Professor Burns was delighted to see them, and seemed not at all intimidated that gods were in his store. Kate found the realization of a store where one purchased ideas perplexing, and said so.
“Ah, my Lady, in Lathe there is nothing more valuable than ideas.”
“And what coin do you deal in?” Kate said. She was pretty sure she could produce money, but Lathe might work differently.
“Oh, Lathe works on a barter system. Money works here, for those of us who do business topside, but anything from a vial of chaos energy to a kilo of titanium will work nicely.”
“So ideas are expensive.”
“Mine, yes. But they deliver.”
She bent and peered at the little boxes. Some were woven of reeds, some decorated with beautiful red and black lacquer, and others, wooden boxes from little coffins to intricate puzzle boxes. “How do you, uh, use them?”
“When you need an idea, you simply take the top off and hold it to your ear. It whispers itself to you. The ideas come in flavors of domestic to battle to business to creative invention. As you might expect,” he gestured to a large display case of empty-looking corked vials, “those are our biggest sellers.”
“Wow. How are these made, anyway?”
He puffed himself up. “Trade secret, I’m afraid.”
Kate groaned. Barris had filled his arms with tiny boxes and approached the counter, beaming.
“I’ll take a military idea, please. And whatever Barris wants. How much?”
Professor Burns looked at them each. He frowned for a moment. “Is… could there be any doubt of your divinity? Could you be cleverly disguised spies from Doctor Yamato?”
Kate narrowed her eyes. “Barris, make the sun go out.”
Barris looked up at her over his treasure. “What?”
“Make the sun go out.”
“You’ll want me to turn it back on again, right?”
“If people keep doubting our divinity, maybe not.”
“If you say so,” he said, and screwed up his face.
“No no,” Professor Burns said hurriedly. “That won’t be necessary. I apologize, my Lady. The cost for these ideas would be, ah, a blessing from each of you. Good fortune on my house from the Lady Kate, good fortune on my life from the Lord Barris.”
“Huh. Not on the shop?”
Professor Burns gri
nned. “The shop needs no blessing. I am quite successful. My wife is ill and my son blames me. Two blessings can’t hurt those situations.”
Kate nodded. She placed her hand on his head and felt the shattered pieces of his life knit slowly back together. Barris just grinned broadly and the room became lighter for an instant.
“Thank you, Professor. Oh, and for your lack of faith, I’ll be sending an apprentice to you in eleven or so years. Take her in and teach her everything you know. She’ll be your heir.”
“But… my son,” he said, and trailed off.
“Your relationship with your son will improve after this, but he’s not an idea man. He’ll find lucrative business in mining - he’ll discover a vein of an ore as-yet undiscovered and it will revolutionize tinkering. But he’s no idea crafter. No, look for a girl named Kelly to continue your legacy. And don’t forget.”
Professor Burns smiled slowly and bowed. “Thank you, My Lady. I’ll remember this day forever. And I will be ready for Kelly when she comes of age.”
Fabrique and James were waiting outside the shop. They stared with the crowd at the building. “It was my prison. And I am loathe to leave it,” she said, as Kate and Barris approached.
“If your prison is all you know, the outside can be scary,” Kate said. “Are you worried about leaving your workshop open?”
Fabrique stared at her. “These are my people. They know this house is a part of me. They know it is a holy place. They may visit, but I will know if they’ve stolen or harmed anything. They know my leaving is temporary.”
“Then let’s go.”
They headed out of town, people bowing whenever they saw them. Kate liked Fabrique at once, despite the fact she’d tried to imprison her man. The small, no-nonsense woman with the impossible brown hair and goggles was definitely someone she wanted on her side.
Daniel, Alicia, and the rest of the kids picked them up outside of town. Fabrique spent some time talking with Alicia about the airship while Kate and Barris and James set up bunks for the newcomers. Kate didn’t mind sharing the captain’s bunk with the two other gods; it wasn’t as if she and Daniel could have sex on the hammocks anyway.
