The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  Sen wondered at how much he had missed, in such a short time.

  "Mare went to sea," he said. His voice sounded strange, teaching the Abbess something in her own office. "She followed me the night I left, and helped me. Then she went away."

  The Abbess nodded. "She never came back. Alam did though. He was resolved on a new course, though also sad. I think you turned him away."

  Sen felt the weight of that. "I did. I wasn't ready."

  The Abbess leaned forward, peering closer at him. "But you are now, aren't you?"

  * * *

  They walked the night grounds together, across the browning summer grass and round the pond. Warm drafts gusted fresh white hawkenberry petals between their feet. They talked about Sharachus, who had once hidden in these grounds, and watched over Sen from above.

  "I thought at times I caught sight of something near you," the Abbess said, "a dark presence, but I always feared it was part of Avia's prophecy, some harbinger of the Rot."

  "He was a protector," said Sen. It seemed strange to speak of Sharachus, here in the Abbey. "He was half-mad perhaps, but he saved me many times. You couldn't have known that."

  "But Avia did," the Abbess said. "And she chose to keep it secret, like so many things. I often wonder why she did not tell us more plainly what to do."

  Sen laughed. "It would have been much easier if she'd just told us our roles at the start."

  The Abbess smiled. "Perhaps. But consider this, an answer I came upon when you were but an infant, memorizing the stars all through the night. Had she directed you at every step, what then would you have learned? At every task she left it to you. Would you have become the young man you are today, if she'd simply left you a note explaining every step in her plan?"

  Sen pondered that, as they crisscrossed the sun-weathered grass. His mind wandered over past times, too-brief summer days spent throwing Cuttlebones with Alam and Gellick. If Avia had told him to befriend them, if he'd known then why he'd need them, would their friendship have been as strong? Or had her way been more effective? It was distasteful, but perhaps the Abbess was right.

  "Now you need them," she said, interrupting the train of his thought. "The others. It's why you've come here, isn't it? To find them."

  Sen toed a divot in the grass, where once they'd used to set the Cuttlebone spike. Was he so transparent? "Yes. But not only that."

  The Abbess patted his shoulder. "I know that, Sen. You're a good boy, and I'm glad to see you. As for the children, well, they certainly weren't easy to find the first time. Mare kicked and fought like a landshark."

  Sen chuckled. "Of course she did."

  "She bit me here," said the Abbess wistfully, holding out her arm. The chitin was dented, something he hadn't noticed before. "Strong teeth for an Induran. Only Sister Henderson had the way with her."

  They continued on through the graveyard, past Sister Henderson's grave, where they paused for a long moment, before continuing on along the wall.

  "Alam's in Jubilante," she said, as they met the chalk path to the gates. "We placed him in a dormitory there. He was keen to move on with his life, after you left. You know Gellick's address, on Coxswold Street, from his stories of Prince Coxswold." She smiled gently, as they both recalled Gellick's numerous stories, many of which had been invented by his parents as simple ways to remember certain important details. When the Prince ate thirty-eight magical apples, or met thirty-eight beautiful maidens, or climbed thirty-eight mysterious beanstalks, that meant his address was 38 Coxswold Street.

  "Feyon was distraught after what she did," the Abbess went on. "Her life was a fairy tale in so many ways, Sen, except of course for the tragedy of her sister. We did not know about that; her parents hid it from us even after the Adjunc came, until Feyon herself told me. I cannot think she truly wanted you to die, or Sister Henderson either. She was merely moved by a child's sense of spite."

  "But Sister Henderson died. That was real."

  "She did," agreed the Abbess. "And Feyon tried to kill herself a month later. You wouldn't know that. I went to see her at her parents' request, and found her sitting in a dark room on her own, all her once fine things torn, as gaunt as Alam, broken inside. She attempted it that night, a sharp blade to the throat, after I left. Only her father's vigilance kept her alive."

  Sen didn't know how to feel about that. It didn't fit with the Feyon he remembered. It was just sad. "Is she all right now?"

  "I don't know. During my visit I tried to give her some sense of purpose, and in turn she did a grave thing. Forgiveness is hard to earn. It cannot be handed down from above."

  Sen nodded. He couldn't imagine silly Feyon, all noise and curls, trying to kill herself. It seemed too dark.

  The Abbess went on. "As for Daveron, he is at his father's yard in Belial, working toward his fealty and the King's red. Mare you know better than I."

  They stood in silence for a time, framed by the gates. Sen looked back at the Abbey grounds where he'd lived the whole of his life. Everything was different now, and he didn't know if he'd ever come back again.

  "Thank you," he said, looking into the Abbess' Sectile eyes. "For everything you did."

  "Allow me one more," she answered, drawing a thick purse from within her robes. She held it out to him, clanking with heavy coins.

  He shook his head. "I already took far more than I should."

  She smiled. "And what use will it be to us, if the Rot does as you say? I still have eyes, and can see it growing in the sky. Is there much need for gold in the darkness beyond? I think not. Take it."

  She pressed it into his hands, and cowled her wings about him in a warm brown cocoon. She kissed him on the forehead, like she hadn't done since he was a little boy, and whispered in his ear. "Sister Henderson would be so proud of you, Sen. As am I."

  He turned to leave before she saw the tears in his eyes.

  ALAM III

  They had pissed on Alam's bedding, because he was a Spindle.

  "Spittle," they called him, as he rinsed and wrung it out on the roof that night. "Spittle, why don't you lick it clean, that's what your caste does."

  He ignored them. Every day since the first he'd ignored them, because he had to save his energy for the fights he could win, and there was no point in fighting them here, no way to win against this part of the system of caste.

  "That's Indurans," he mumbled under his breath. "Not Spindles."

  Collaber, the Joist who led them in most of it, smacked him in the head for even speaking.

  "Shut your rat-caste tongue," he said, "wear your hat." One of the others tossed him the section of drainpipe they'd cut. It was a humiliation meant to accentuate his low-caste Spindle physique. He was already far taller than any of them, even Collaber, who as a Joist was fat and round-headed. Wearing it made him a fool in their eyes.

  Not to him. He wore it with pride. He was not ashamed of his caste, of having a long frame and long fingers like his father, so he put it on, and as always they laughed. Collaber mimed him walking an Ogric's walk, as though his long limbs were out of control. They laughed more, but it was already late and this was old sport, so gradually they filtered away, leaving Collaber and Alam alone on the roof.

  On the first day, hard in the winter, they had fought and Alam had beaten the shorter boy soundly, rubbing his face in the smoke-gray snow, but that had only made it worse. It hadn't changed his caste nor how the rest of them treated him.

  "You don't belong here, Spittle," Collaber said, standing before him on the roof. "You never will. When will you understand that?"

  He spat on Alam's feet and left.

  Alam returned to wringing the bedding. The ammonic water stung as it ran over his broken fingernails. The arch-scrivener was a Pinhead who hated Alam just as much as Collaber. He'd made him carve his letters into a slab of wood using his nails all day, because he'd made one mistake on a piece of flypaper.

  "That paper's worth more than you, Spindle," he'd said, in front of them all. "You
don't even merit a quill."

  So the wood, and his nails. There was no choice, so Alam did it. Blood had spattered out as his nails cracked and tore, but he'd continued on, until all the other scriveners were watching, until the Pinhead himself grew faint and made him stop.

  Now they throbbed, but it was worth it. He was not weak, no matter what they said.

  Back in the dormitory he laid down on the hard wood, setting his drainpipe hat beside him. Without his bedding it was lucky summer had come, or it would be a very hard night. He closed his eyes to sleep, completely unaware that Sen was watching.

  * * *

  Sen went by the Gilungel Bridge, shadowing the path he'd taken in Feyon's brougham. Jubilante sat in a curve of the Levi's eastern flank, a bramble's nest of alleyways and trade-shops rising and falling at precarious inclines with the lower foothills of the Roy. Once it had been a cotton-spinning district, though now many of its redbrick warehouses had been re-purposed as town houses for the rich, on the doorstep of the King's district.

  Coming there was a risk, as a boy with so many scars, but one he felt comfortable taking. There were more Molemen here, and the streets were better lit with revelatory lamps, and the Adjunc patrolled in ordered groups, but thanks to Seem, Sen could feel them all from a fair distance off. It gave him time and warning to take to the rooftops, to drop down into the sewers, to hide in places they never could find.

  He'd learned to navigate the dark-side well, and it seemed those lessons worked just as well in the light of the Roy.

  He found Alam's dormitory easily, a long brick building standing on a well-lit corner, once a lye storehouse by the faded lettering on its walls. Rusted latch-cranes still hung over its window hatches, framing dark interiors through which Sen glimpsed long rows of wooden cots. Upon them lay an assortment of mid-caste young men, Pinheads and Oriocs and Joists.

  From the edge of a slant-roofed loom factory opposite, he peered through each window in turn, tracking the sense of his friend until he picked out the long frame of the only Spindle there.

  There was no guard on the dormitory door so he entered with ease. Up the stairs, a ghost-pale Alpecite drifted by him, half-asleep, haunted by dreams of an inkless quill. Sen padded softly into Alam's dorm, went down to his bare wood cot, and looked down on his friend.

  Alam's cheeks were sallow and dark, like pock-holes in the Gutrock, while one near-emaciated arm lay bowed beneath his long thin skull. Sen squatted beside him, smelling burnt ink and the ammonia stink of urine. He saw clotted purple bruises on Alam's fingernails, which were splintered and cracked. He could feel the misery rising up even from his sleeping mind, equally mixed with an iron-hard core of stubborn resilience.

  He woke Alam with a light touch on his shoulder. The Spindle came to with a jerk, already defensive and angry.

  Sen held his hands up palm out. "It's me," he whispered. "It's only me, Alam."

  Alam's snarl faded to confusion, and he rubbed his red-rimmed eyes.

  "Sen?"

  Sen smiled, but Alam did not. Instead he looked about them, studying the sleeping figures either side, then abruptly rose to his feet. He seized Sen by the wrist and dragged him out of the room.

  Sen let himself be led, confused by the anger flowing through Alam. At a flight of rickety spiral stairs the taller boy shoved Sen ahead and up, so he climbed, emerging through a shack door onto a sheltered rooftop. It was lined with tin-chimney pots and circled with whitewashed low walls covered in scrawled writing.

  Behind him the stair-shack door closed and he turned, to meet a powerful shove from Alam that sent him staggering backward.

  "What in the Heart are you doing here?" Alam hissed.

  Sen recovered his footing, shocked by the sudden fury. Alam's face was pale and twisted with anger, just like the first moment they'd met and fought in the Abbey. It made Sen instantly wary.

  "What's happened?" he asked. "Why are you so angry?"

  Alam's eyes bugged. "Why am I angry? You realize if any of the idiots in there had seen you, had reported you, we'd both hang on the spike?" He shoved Sen a second time, harder still, driving him close to the roof's edge. "This is not your Abbey, Sen, where caste was a daydream very far away! This is where I live. Why in HellWest would I not be angry?"

  Sen didn't wait for the next shove to land. He drew one of his spikes smoothly, folded it around Alam's outstretched arm, and buckled the limb backward in a way he'd trained on but never executed, drawn from Delarante. Alam yelped and dropped to his knees as Sen pressed him down, bending the arm beyond the point of pain, until Alam's eyes flared wide, he gasped, and the bone began to creak.

  Then he let the grip drop and stepped back, shocked at how far he'd pressed it. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, sheathing the spike, "I just…"

  Alam held his arm close to his chest, swallowed hard, then stared up at Sen with tears of pain in his eyes. "You want to break my arm?" His voice broke on the last syllable. "I'll be whipped for this, Sen. I won't be able to write well for days. I only pushed you!"

  Shame bit at Sen's belly. It was the same as before, when he'd beaten Alam at the gates, as if the Spindle's own rage was a drug that he couldn't resist. Even in his own mind that sounded like an excuse, but what else explained it? "I'm sorry," he said again, "I didn't mean to…"

  "You did exactly what you meant," Alam interrupted, rising to his feet and brushing at his eyes with his sleeve. He reached into his tunic and drew a solid cog-ratchet from some inner harness, which he pointed at Sen. "We're not in your Abbey any more, Sen. Touch me like that again and you'll feel the sharp end, do you understand?"

  Sen nodded.

  Alam stared at Sen a moment longer, then hawked phlegm and spat, hitting the rooftop at Sen's feet. "That's how welcome you are."

  For a moment Sen stared at the glob, trying to understand. It had only been two seasons, half a year, how had so much changed? "Is this because I left you?" he asked. "At the canal?"

  Alam snorted. "Heart's balls, your arrogance! No. It's because you're here now, and I don't want you."

  Sen could scarcely read anything from Alam, such was the chaos of his emotions. "Then I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have come like this, but I had to see you."

  "For what, Sen? Do you need some advice on Feyon, is that it, on life hidden away in the Roy?"

  Sen looked at the Spindle blankly for a moment. He couldn't have been more shocked if the Spindle had announced his plans to fly up to the moon. "What?"

  Alam snorted. "Don't play me for the idiot. I know what happened when you went to her palace. That night, that same exact night, Sen, she tore up the Abbey with Adjunc, while you were safely hidden on the roof."

  Sen frowned, missing the connections that brought them from that point to this one. "You know I didn't want that. You were there!"

  Alam let the ratchet hang down, but the intensity didn't fade from his eyes. "I know where you went after the canal, though. I know what became of Feyon. I'm sure it's been a nice life in her palace since then, all grapes and fatted cream."

  Sen blinked, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. "Fatted cream? What are you talking about, that's totally stupid! That ridiculous girl killed Sister Henderson, why would I want to live in a mansion with her?"

  "Because she's rich," snapped Alam, "and because she chose you. You think I don't know it's because of your scars? I'm sure you make a nice little doll in her collection."

  "Doll?" began Sen, then stopped, forcing himself to calm down. He'd earn nothing by meeting anger with anger. It was time he learned to deal with this. "You're completely wrong about this, Alam. I swear to you, I never went to her. I went looking for my mother."

  Alam laughed. "And I'm sure you found her, in Feyon's bed."

  Anger got the better of Sen and he sprang forward without thinking, shoving Alam as hard as he could. "Shut up! Just shut up and listen, will you? Listen to me."

  The punch swung hard and cracked dizzyingly off Sen's cheek. His neck jerked and he lurch
ed to the side, catching himself flat on the tarry surface of the roof. He hadn't seen that coming at all.

  "I'm warning you," said Alam, breathing heavily and shaking the ratchet. "Touch me again and you'll have some of this."

  Sen clamped a hand to his cheek, trying to press the pain away. He'd battled an ancient shape-shifting King in the ruins of Aradabar, and an extinct Scranth in an underground hall filled with massive statues with his own face, but neither had hurt like this. He bent over and focused on breathing, trying to stop himself from vomiting. At least the feeling of guilt was passing.

  "Good hit," he said.

  Alam laughed. "You're not the only one who can fend for himself. Though I'll probably get whipped for that, too. I think I've cracked a knuckle."

  Sen rolled over to sit on the floor, to stop the world spinning. "Can we just talk? For just a minute, please?"

  Alam shrugged. He didn't sit. "So talk."

  Sen tried to look up at him, but it hurt his neck. Instead he looked down at the lye-house roof. It was coated with more whitewashed tar, written with endless loops and swirls of calligraphic writing. This was where the scriveners came to practice, then. It looked like the millinery walls.

  "What are you even doing here?" he asked. "I thought you wanted to make your own manufactory?"

  Alam sighed, then his long legs folded under him as he sat down. "I did. I do. But the law on caste was always a restriction. My father thought he could bull through it, but…" he trailed off. "Carroway's not really a Spindle district, not without special dispensation from the King. One way to get dispensation is to serve at the King's pleasure for five years." He spread his arms. "So here I am."

  Sen frowned. "Five years? That's ridiculous. Couldn't the Abbess-"

  "The Abbess has no power, Sen," Alam snapped, his tone cold. "Even less than she ever did, after the Adjunc raid. She promised to fund my manufactory, but that won't get us past my caste. So, I'm taking this route."