The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1)

by Michael John Grist

  He rose and touched the Molemen either side. At once he felt their cold minds through the lens of King Seem; steely with discipline, organized, filled with a thousand tortures meticulously sorted like rows in a ledger table. He knew them, understood them, and into each drove a pulse of his own remembered pain like a misericorde spike, cracking the unfeeling façade open.

  They screamed, terrified and stricken with the sense of pain for the first time in their lives, their bodies locking rigid. Daveron felt the new sensation flooding through them, infecting their every memory, rendering them utterly helpless. Their rifles fell to the stone along with their bodies, the cannon they had attended standing idle.

  Others leapt to man their places, but Daveron met them smoothly, with every touch driving home the spike Sen had given him, had taught to him on that long night, breaking open their regimented minds with the truth of a butcher's work.

  As the Balast ranks thundered closer he moved swiftly down the bridge, cannon to cannon, disabling his brothers with every touch, dropping them in fits to foam and whimper, so not a single cannon shot rang out.

  Traitor.

  Halfway down Gilungel shame welled up at the depth of his betrayal. He heard the endless thrum of the Balast Hax drawing near behind him, and felt the pain as their vast stone bodies burst through the wooden blockade at the bridge mouth and rattled the bridge underfoot, crushing his fellows and driving their senseless bodies along with cannon and Adjunc splashing into the Levi.

  So many would die because of him. He took the shame and used it, running ahead and forcing it out with every touch, leaving Molemen in paroxysms of complex emotion and pain like they'd never imagined, while the Balast charge crashed closer.

  "The Rot is coming, and the Saint must rise!"

  They stared at him as he went by, Molemen and Adjunc both, but none understood what was happening or what he was doing. They could never have dreamt of the path he had taken, as no Moleman had ever done as he had before, reversing the gains Awa Babo once made on their behalf.

  Only near the end of the bridge did they finally react, seeing the influence his touch had. They disregarded a lifetime of allegiance, and their flintlock fire rang out with puffs of smoke that marked pain in his body. He couldn't keep track of how many hits he took, instead he used the pain of their shots, pushing it out ahead like a battering ram to clear the way.

  At the bridge end he burst through their final lines and flung himself to the side, just as Gellick smashed through the end bastion wall behind him. His Balast torrent stampeded on behind, clad in dust and thunder, trampling all who stood in their way. In fleeting glimpses through their tumultuous mass he saw Feyon's vivid blue skin leading her army on. Lying on the cold flagstones of Galabriel district, he felt the life leaking out of him from a dozen wounds, but still he strained to see until at last came Mare.

  She galloped by atop a gray flour-milling pony with a bloody misericorde in each hand and burning vengeance in her eyes, eviscerating any Adjunc that lurched near. There seemed to be a kind of blue light flaring around her, and Daveron wondered if this was the Saint, finally beginning his rise in her. Wreathed in it she was glorious, like a goddess torn raw and bloody from the depths of myth, and he loved her for it.

  Then she was gone in a flash, unable to see him in the darkness, charging on with the misshapen throngs of Indura scampering behind.

  For a time the ruck of rumbling bodies continued, then faded, and Daveron lay still. He listened to the twitching of dying Adjunc nearby, and the groans of his brothers on the bridge, feeling the change as their minds reshaped to understand pain. He had infected them all.

  Reaching to his chest, he saw blood on his palm. How many holes? He counted them methodically, as though they were a penance. Four. Four shots was a lot, but perhaps they weren't deep. He coughed blood, and laughed. Was it too much?

  A sweeping tongue of black fell, striking Gilungel Bridge and plowing down through stone into the water, answered an instant later by a blinding flash of light and a blast as the last cache of cannon powder blew.

  Shrapnel rained everywhere. The tongue reeled back. The rising fireball lit everything in stark and vibrant color. The bridge was wrecked, and shreds of Molemen red tubing hung everywhere, along with tufts of brown fur and tails, the crushed bodies of his brothers lying intermingled at the bridge edges with the gray flesh of Adjunc, mogrified together at the end. It sickened him, then was gone as the light winked out.

  More tongues hammered down nearby, each thundering so hard the vibrations hurt in his belly, until at last the heavens sliced open in a stinging torrent of rain.

  But it wasn't rain. It was something black and oily, like the Rot's saliva, hungering for its meal.

  "For the Saint!" he cried out into it, as the bitter black sluiced his blood down to mix with the blood of his brothers, as his pain became the pain of a hundred, a thousand spread throughout the city. Were the Bodyswells coming as planned, were the Allswellmen on patrol? "For Saint Ignifer and Mare!"

  ALAM VI

  Across a dark part of the Levi in a stolen Induran flatboat, Alam entered Jubilante unseen. He passed The Soul's printworks flanked by the melted press machines, now blackened piles of metal slag. Dark clouds loomed forebodingly overhead as he entered his dormitory.

  There were other scriveners milling in the hallway, the boys he'd lived with for so long, poring over an old and ragged copy of The Saint. They turned as he came in, taking in his filthy clothes and ink-slathered face with slow spreading shock. Their heads turned to Collaber, who was sitting on the stairs with a page of his own, reading and rereading the story about Sharachus.

  He didn't notice Alam until the others fell silent. When he finally looked up, seeing Alam and the gearsmith's ratchet held in his long hand, his expression twisted from confusion to one of naked aggression.

  "What in the King's name are you doing here, spittle? You don't belong."

  Alam looked at him, then round at all their angry, scared eyes, remembering that this was how it used to be. He'd only been away for a handful of days, but that time spent with his friends had so thoroughly driven away the awful years he'd spent amongst these boys that it barely felt real. They were like cartoons, belonging in a woodblock print of The Saint, a piece of his past with no claim to his future. He looked in Collaber's eyes and spoke in a clear, loud voice.

  "I need you all to leave."

  Collaber stood up and spat at Alam's feet. "You need what? You have no right here at all, spittle. Get out, before we tear you in pieces."

  Alam raised his ratchet. "I need you to leave now."

  Collaber laughed cruelly. "What are you going to do with that, fix a clock?"

  There wasn't time. Alam strode up to him in two swift steps and drove the ratchet hard against his gut. A spray of breath and spit shot from his mouth, a gasp of surprise came from the others, and he doubled over. Alam brought his knee smoothly up to meet Collaber's face. There was a crunch and the boy's head whipped back, dropping him flat to the floor.

  The others gasped and jerked backward. None of them moved to fight in Collaber's place. Alam looked into their eyes and saw fear. They were already afraid because of The Saint; rich boys in Jubilante who only stood to lose out in the revolution, and now here was this Spindle they'd tormented for years, looking like a devil from the night.

  They ran their own calculations, thinking about their futures, their caste loyalty, but ultimately none of them wanted to risk a ratchet in the face over Collaber.

  "Get out," Alam said, even as Collaber gasped on the floor at his feet.

  They didn't go.

  A few of them murmured for him to stop, quiet voices half in shock. Despite the fear, they still needed their jobs at the scrivenry. Without the King's fealty they would be nothing, would be sent home in shame.

  Alam turned Collaber with his foot, then kicked him in the face. The boy's nose crunched and blood slashed across the floor. His breath became a wet snuffle and he trie
d to roll himself away, but Alam kicked him again in the head, stilling him at once.

  He looked round at the others.

  They were terrified now; their faces pale, edging back against the walls. These brave boys who had pissed on his bedding, beaten him in his bed, slathered his face with ink, and seen him tormented by their scrivener tutors for years, these boys were afraid they might die. Perhaps they thought this was the first coming of the revolution.

  Which was as it should be.

  "Run away," Alam hissed at them. "All the way home."

  They did. The first few went slow, as if trying to maintain some grip on their pride, but it soon became a stampede. Nobody wanted to be left alone with the crazy Spindle and his ratchet.

  When the hall was empty, Alam bent to Collaber and lifted his chin. Blood ran down his nose where Alam's knee had broken it, and he was still wheezing from the blow with the ratchet.

  "I hit you with the flat," he said quietly. "Your stomach is not pierced, maybe just a few ribs broken. Now get out of here."

  He helped Collaber up, supported him to the door, then dropped him into the street. Some of the others were standing there now, gathered in a ragged half-circle, their metal quills held in their hands like knives.

  "I'll kill the next one of you," Alam said, looking at them one by one. "Who will it be?"

  None of them moved.

  "What's wrong with you, Alam?" one of them asked. He was a Febrile, barely a caste above Alam, and perhaps they'd been friendly once. Not cruel at least. The Febrile had merely stood by while the others had had their way, probably always fearful he might be next.

  It made Alam sad to think about that. He couldn't blame this boy more than any of them, born to this system of caste. It was not even about blame, now.

  "Just go home."

  "We have shifts," said the Febrile. "We'll be whipped, or cast out."

  Alam pointed at Collaber, groaning on the cobbles. "Would you rather this? Or something far worse?" He held up the ratchet.

  One of the boys shook his head, turning to the others. "Arch-scrivener will understand. It's not worth dying for." He started away. The others followed, all but one, Jeyfries, Collaber's friend.

  "You're dead, spittle."

  Alam smiled. "I know. Now take your friend and run along with the rest."

  He did, leaning in to help Collaber up then hurrying away over the cobbles. Alam knew he wouldn't go far. None of them would. They feared the arch-scrivener too much, feared damage to their careers more than the revolution, more than one mad emaciated Spindle. They'd regroup at the street-end, let Jeyfries talk them into fighting, and gather weapons. He wouldn't stand a chance. But in the time that would take, he'd already be on the next Ogric cart to the Aigle and gone.

  Back in the dormitory he washed the smudge of sweat and ink from his face and hands. He stripped off his bloodied, torn old stovepipe suit, and replaced it with the one spare he kept in the small chest at the foot of his cot. At the door he tapped the tall pipe hat into place on his head.

  He was a Spindle, and it was time he walked tall.

  Out of the dormitory, he waited as the Ogric cart drew up for the ten o'clock shift. A hard storm wind was blowing now, rubbing damp and thick over his sallow cheeks. The time was coming. As if in answer to that thought, there was a movement of black in the sky and something erupted down by the river, sending a sudden flare in the revelatory gas supply that briefly illuminated the whole street.

  In that frozen moment of light he glimpsed Jeyfries and the others creeping up the street in the shadows of nearby buildings, carrying gutter-beams and crowing bars over their shoulders. It made him want to laugh. On the dark side people were fighting for their lives, and here they fought for the King's good grace. But then, perhaps the two were not so very different.

  A kind of thunder crashed like grinding gears above, as the Rot began its assault. Alam watched tongues unfurling from above as the old shift of scriveners filed out of the Ogric cart, already half-asleep, entering the dormitory without realizing it was empty. Alam climbed into the cart alone and sat back as the Ogric began to tug him away. Jeyfries and the others were too slow.

  They trundled up into the Roy. As they drew near to the Aigle, Infantrymen stopped the cart several times for inspection. He showed them his mark of the King and they let him go on. He arrived at the Aigle as it was already turning, the deep sound of its gyrations echoed by the rolling thunder of tongues drumming down on the city.

  He hurried up the ramp to meet the Pinhead arch-scrivener in the archway at the top, with the clock overhead already run halfway through its sixty-second allotment. The Pinhead was pale-faced and clearly exhausted, and stared at Alam wide-eyed, then back down the empty ramp to the carriage.

  "Where are the rest?"

  "Fled," Alam said. "They mistook the lightning for cannonfire, and thought The Saint's rebels were nearing."

  For a moment fear played across the Pinhead's small, churlish face, and he looked to the Adjunc flanking the entrance. There were five of them, along with hundreds of infantry spread throughout the gardens; enough to secure the ramp. It was reassuring, as was the constant revolve of the Aigle, with him lodged safely inside. No one could break through Mjolnir metal.

  "Are they?" the Pinhead asked, squinting into the darkness down the King's road, "Nearing?"

  Alam shook his head. As if to punctuate the lie, a vast crack of black split the sky, and the Pinhead startled, trembling as the tongue slashed down beyond the Gutrock obtrusion. An instant later it began to rain, a lashing downpour that thrummed off Alam's stovepipe hat like a drumbeat, trickling a strange oily grit down the nape of his neck.

  The Pinhead held out a hand and caught black droplets in the palm of his hand.

  "What's happening?" he asked.

  "Lightning," Alam said, trying to calm the man, watching the timer tick down. "Just lightning and rain, under a black sky. The others mistook it too. But the time is counting, arch-scrivener. Should I not come in?"

  The Pinhead looked at him. Alam knew he was needed; there would be hundreds of war orders to sign and stamp, requisitions to write, affirm, testify, and with only one scrivener they would be hard-pressed to complete even the most vital of them. Still, the Pinhead mistrusted him.

  Alam pulled from his jacket a small dark object, like an oblong ball of cloth that quickly grew sodden in the dark rain. The others had helped him, when there'd been time. Sticking up from it was a rusted silver needle. "I sewed all the millenicruxes, a thousand times a thousand, as you said. I couldn't come back until it was done."

  The Pinhead eyed him a moment longer, then sniffed. The Aigle was already starting its turn, and the rain was splashing on his feet. "In then," he said, and stood aside, "smartly, if you please."

  As Alam darted in, he caught a hint of distant shouting on the wind, carried through the rain. It sounded like, "The Saint." Once he was through he spun and shoved the Pinhead with all his strength, out through the portal just as the wall sealed off behind him.

  For a moment there was only silence, in the black metaled entrance space. No sound of the Pinhead wailing on the other side. No sound of the tongues landing. Only the panting of his own breath.

  But he had heard something, just before the Aigle closed. He ran. If it had been the cry of their forces drawing near, there was no time to spare. He dashed down metal corridors with his footsteps clanging all around, slicking the strange black rain from his face. Probably they'd already charged the bridges and were stampeding into the Roy, which meant he was late, and now it fell to him to make up that time. If the Aigle could not be shucked open then The Saint would crash uselessly against its flanks, the Balasts unable to dent the ancient Mjolnir metal. Death would rain down from the ramparts, the revolution would break, and Sen would be left standing alone and adrift on the mountaintop.

  He almost ran past the gear-chamber, as it was in a different place than before. Catching onto the door's jamb he yanked himself
to a halt and pulled himself in. Inside there were two Mogs who looked up at the noise, their beady black eyes twitching. One of them opened its mouth to say something, and Alam hurled the ratchet.

  It took it on the side of the head with a meaty clonk and it dropped to the floor. The other shrieked then ran, and Alam closed the gap between them in second, dodging round one of the pistons on a down-stroke to clasp the Mog round the throat. It kicked and wiggled, but didn't have the strength of a regular Moleman. Within fifteen seconds it stopped struggling and went limp.

  Alam dropped it, then stood in the middle of the Aigle's brain, gasping and looking around. Red-orange shadows rippled round the room with the constant pumping of the pistons. Sweat burst out on his brow in the sudden heat, and for the first time in three years he stood close enough to touch a gearing contraption much like the ones he'd left behind in Carroway.

  Yet this one was immense. It filled the hall, more complex than any he'd seen before. The walls were a dense conglomeration of gear-wheels of all shapes and sizes, toothed and bitted and runged at a dizzying range of orientations. Here a forest of axle-flies seemed to interweave like the threads of stories on the millinery walls; horizontal, vertical and diagonal, mixed in with penny-weight tuning scales, copper-coil capacitants, steam funnels with bright brass levers. Here the system was studded with huge displays metered with a thousand gradations he didn't recognize, and tiny dials with only two colors, and bristly mills of bronze slowly turning like a lathe, spiked with the code for complex actions, all of them so closely packed they seemed solid, though every part was moving.

  As he looked over the network of clockwork he thought of Feyon battling up over the bridge and toward the Roy, tearing a path through Adjunc-held territory so Mare could burst through it, charging for the turning bulk of the Aigle, for the turn he had to control, and it all came to this. In moments Molemen would be alerted by the Pinhead and send a phalanx, which would come here first to lock the revolve down and seal off the palace. He had seconds only, and he had no idea what to do.