“Leave them be,” demands Rasce, “or I shall crush you!” It’s bravado – he spent all his power on that catastrophic miracle. He doesn’t have the strength for another invocation, not at this range.
“HURRH,” laughs Rat-through-Silkpurse. “RUN, LITTLE MAN. WE WILL EAT YOU.”
The ghouls close on him, snarling, baring their teeth. Rat’s hunger glowing in all their eyes.
He runs.
Baston, too, runs.
It’s said that no one, except maybe the eldest of the ghouls, knows every path through the Wash. The old city of Guerdon is layered thick with previous incarnations of the city, wormed through with tunnels and secret passageways, ghoul-runs and back alleyways. The streets are only one way to traverse the Wash; there are other ways, above and below. Guerdon plunges underground, following the buried rivers through old sewers, cellars, measureless labyrinths. Guerdon soars skyward, reaching for the heavens with stairs, ladders, walkways and gutter-paths, buildings that lean so close together a man can step from one window to its opposite neighbour without breaking stride. String all these secrets together, and the freedom of the city is yours.
Can’t catch a Guerdon ghoul, they say.
Baston’s no ghoul, but tonight he runs like one. Hauling himself up the side of a building, wriggling in through an attic window. Crossing to a drainpipe, shimmying down the pipe to the ground, slipping in through a coal chute on the far side, coal cellar to a passage that runs under the next street to emerge in the toilets of an inn, up the stairs to the common room, shove through the crowd, out the back door, then doubling back, down Shabber’s Close, crossing back towards Sumpwater, then up again, racing up the stairs in a tenement block, heart pounding, lungs burning.
If he had Rasce’s gift, if he had Spar Idgeson guiding him, then he would know what awaited him behind each door, or around the next corner. He doesn’t.
If he was faithful to the gods of Ishmere, then maybe Fate Spider would bless him with luck. He’s not.
But these are his streets. He runs through familiar alleyways, climbs walls he climbed as a child, Karla daring him to go higher. The occupation has changed the Wash, warped it almost beyond recognition in places, but there are still patches of the old city, and there always will be.
Baston runs, always one step ahead of his pursuers. The forces chasing him change. The Tallowmen are first, of course, monsters out of his adolescent nightmares, wax horrors that flicker fast on his heels. Faster than he can run, so he has to be clever. He leads them on a dance, using the Tallowmen’s hesitation to cross into Ishmeric Occupation Zone to avoid capture. But it’s dancing over a pit of snakes – the Wash is now full of Ishmeric sentries and monsters. He exchanges one set of pursuers for another, with umurshixes chasing him down alleyways, spider-sentinels combing the rooftops for him. Where he can, he pits one set against the other, Tallowmen spitting hot wax at the Ishmeric sentries who bar their way.
He’s not going to make it. He never really entertained any hope of escaping alive. At best, he hopes he can buy time for the other thieves to escape, buy time for Rasce to complete his assault on the Fog Yards. While the Tallowmen are chasing Baston here, they won’t be fighting there.
He hopes his death will buy time for Karla, too. He really wants to have one last conversation with her. To shout at her for plotting behind his back, for not trusting him. He wants to hug her, make sure she’s all right. He wants to see her, one more time.
Temple bells ring wildly. The priests are closing in. He turns down another alleyway, scrambles over the gate at the end, drops into a stable-yard. He runs, leaping over the murky green-scummed waters of a drinking trough, then vaults up on to another roof. He can maybe get to Lower Queen’s Point from here by following the canal, then down to the docks, then loop back towards the New City.
Baston stumbles as the coins in his pocket suddenly become heavy as millstones. A curse of Blessed Bol, the trade-god of Ishmere. He topples from the roof, gold coins pulling him over, like he’s got a landslide in his pocket. He rips the lining with a knife, lets the coins smash through a wall and splash into the canal. Off to his left, the roaring of another umurshix.
Go right, then. Away from the harbour, back into the free city. Doubling back towards the lithosarium.
He runs, lights of Tallowmen keeping pace with him, wax bastards following the line of the border.
Left, the line of the Newtown Wall like a dark wave ahead of him. The streets ever more familiar as he climbs up the hill towards Hog Close. Back towards his childhood home. Behind him, the whispering of a spider-sentinel. He can feel it extend feelers into his mind, probing his thoughts. Knowing what he’s going to do before he does it.
He tears off his wedding ring, kisses it, then flings it aside. Lets his memory of Fae go with it, the ring holding the best part of his soul. He feels the awful attention of the spider turn aside for a moment to follow the ring’s arc, giving Baston a chance to turn again, dodge down an alleyway into Hog Close.
The close is dark as he enters it. Curtains drawn in every window, except for his mother’s house which is just lightless and empty. He runs through the little back garden, brambles tearing at his ankles. The place gone to ruin since his mother left. The Newtown Wall at the back of the garden is as tall as he remembers it, unclimbable. He remembers, one summer afternoon, when his father Hedan and a few other worthies of the Brotherhood tried to climb that wall. They were all drunk, laughing, betting on one another, and none of them made it all the way to the top.
Baston starts to climb. Blind, in the dark, his fingers searching for handholds in the stone. Hauling himself up by brute force. The spider-sentinel is close now, long hairy legs carrying its phantasmal body over the roof of the house – but the Ishmeric Occupation Zone ends at the top of the wall, and he seems to have lost the Tallowmen for now. If he can just get to the top of the wall…
Climb. Don’t think. Don’t hesitate. Run, little mortal, before the gods see you. You cannot endure their gaze. You cannot survive their presence.
His hand finds the parapet. He pulls himself over, takes one gasp of air, then rolls and runs again. He’s not clear yet. The spider-sentinel’s climbing after him, risking a brief trespass into the free city in order to capture him.
Baston races down a steep stairway on the Newtown side, runs into the clean, quiet streets. Newtown’s feigning sleep, the whole district hiding under the covers, pretending that if they can’t see the plumes of smoke from the Fog Yards or hear the gunfire from the Wash, then everything’s still normal in Guerdon. He runs, every muscle in him burning, until he comes to one small house, one anonymous door.
A moment later, the spider moves down the street. Picking its way carefully, legs delicately planting themselves down with sinister intent. Hairs vibrating to the thoughts of those nearby, tasting the dreams of the lucky sleepers, the mounting terror of the wakeful. It stops outside the same door. Eight eyes glitter as it probes the mind it finds inside that house, scanning the thoughts for any trace of the fugitive.
Nothing. The spider withdraws, fading into nothingness. Ishmere dares not risk a breach of the Armistice tonight, not when fate is in flux, and the trail of the fugitive has gone cold. He did not pass this way.
Inside the house, the greatest actress of her generation smiles, beckons her son to emerge from his hiding place.
“And, scene,” says Elshara.
Rasce runs. The chamber – the ancient temple of Black Iron – beyond has been shattered, the ceiling torn asunder by a spear of stone. Liquids cascade down from breached tanks on the levels above. He steps over corpses so blasted or encrusted with stone dust that he cannot tell what they once were. Human or Tallow, friend or foe, all anonymous in death. Even the ghouls don’t want these bodies.
He moves on. There are knots of survivors, thieves and Eshdana, stumbling around in shock. He shouts at them to find their way upstairs to the yliaster vats. A thief stares at him in confusion. “It’s death up there.�
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Rasce ascends. The spear of stone becomes a staircase for him to climb to the next level. More bodies. More dead thieves, killed by something with claws and teeth, something strong enough to snap necks.
He pushes on through this battlefield, following the sounds of fighting – and, more and more, the sounds of chewing. Broken glass crunches underfoot. Twice, he has to retrace his steps. It becomes harder to see, and his second sight is no use here. The stone he’s conjured from Spar’s pebbles is wrong, somehow, and it’s like looking through melted glass.
He comes upon a body lying on the ground, a figure hunched over it. He raises his knife, assuming the second figure is a foe, but, no, it’s one of the thieves, looting the remains.
“Where is—” Rasce begins, but the thief scrambles to her feet and runs without looking back, jumping over the corpse.
He recognises the dead man, although he’s never laid eyes on him directly. It’s Mandel himself, his throat cut. His beard is matted with blood. His fingers have been cut off to get at the rings he wore. The golden sigil of the alchemists he wore around his throat is gone, too.
“We offered you the chance to take the ash,” Rasce says, choking on the dust, trying to find his bravado, but he has the horrible feeling that even though Mandel’s lying there dead at his feet, the old alchemist still knows more than he does.
Near Mandel’s body, he finds another corpse, burned beyond recognition. The slightest touch causes the remains to crumble and blow away on the hot winds that rush through the tunnels. Stepping out of the path of the swirling dust, Rasce stumbles over a heavy ledger, discarded in the chaos. He’s seen it before, too, through other eyes – it’s the ledger held by Mandel’s scribe. Rasce kicks it over, discovers to his confusion that it’s a scrawl of incomprehensible arcane glyphs. Khebeshi, maybe.
It’s irrelevant. A distraction. He kicks the ledger into a puddle of some caustic slime that drips from the ceiling. He hurries down the corridor, but the double doors at the end are sealed with fresh spell-wards so strong that his dagger cannot even scratch them. The stone spears that impale the fortress have not penetrated this inner vault either – some tremendous act of sorcery deflected them, preserving the contents of the vault. Rasce steps back, dumbfounded. He tries to imagine what treasure might be worth such defences – but there’s no time to linger.
The yliaster vats. He has to get to the yliaster vats. Has to do as Great-Uncle told him. The vats will be on the surface. Turn back. Find a way up.
He finds another staircase, climbs to a saner level. The basement of the alchemical works, a realm of pipes and wires and storage vats. All ruined by his miracle. He hurries on through the devastation. More bodies. Is this what war is like from the ground? It’s not right for him to have to see all this. He has to get up, get out to the air. He won’t stay trapped in this tomb.
More stairs, more corridors. He tries one way, finds the door hot to the touch, and the glow of flames visible beneath. He backtraces, finds another, trying to remember the route the Tallowman took in his vision, but everything’s changed. He’s broken this place, rewritten it. Everything’s rubble and broken metal now, smoke and stone dust. He’s not even sure if he’s looking out through the eyes of his body, or if he’s watching himself.
He clambers up another set of stairs, passes through an arch, and suddenly he’s outside, in the great courtyard of the fortress. Burning metal towers above him, impaled on stone spikes. Everything encrusted with white dust. He glimpses patches of night sky through the pall of smoke.
“My lord! Over here!” A Lyrixian accent. One of the Ghierdana emerges from the smoke, his face hidden behind a breathing mask. “We’ve found their yliaster warehouse!”
“Who are you?”
“Gallerus.”
Gallerus. A distant cousin. Blood of the Dragon.
Rasce clasps him on the shoulder. “Great-Uncle will be pleased!”
Behind the mask, Gallerus beams with joy.
Rasce follows Gallerus through the burning courtyard. Someone thrusts a gun into his hand, and he puts it to good use. There are Tallowmen scaling the outer walls of the compound, hidden by the smoke. Rasce can see them through the stone, triangulate his shots from a dozen angles. He snaps off a few rounds, splattering the waxy heads of the monsters.
The yliaster warehouse. Rows of casks, stacked high. The Eshdana plant explosives, tuck sticks of jellied phlogiston amid the casks. Dangerous work, with all the world on fire. Someone should put up a red flag, thinks Rasce, and the thought is so funny he starts laughing. He can’t breathe in this smoke. He’s getting light-headed, but how can that be, when he’s got a whole city in his head?
“Burn it all!” Rasce giggles.
He reloads the rifle, ducks down into the cover of a shattered storage tank. More Tallowmen crawl over the walls. He fires at them, holds them back while the Eshdana work.
Gallerus, brave soul, moves forward with a burning brand to light the fuse. “Once I light it, get clear!” he shouts. “Back down to the shaft!”
Then a Tallowman breaks through. The thing flings itself down from the parapet, landing heavily atop Gallerus. His head smashes into the ground, cracking his breathing helmet and the skull underneath. More Tallowmen converge on the warehouse, scuttling from all angles now. Knives go in and out, spilling more blood on the floor. The blood of the dragon.
No one crosses the dragon.
Rasce levels the gun. He sees through the stone, letting him precisely aim one perfect shot, targeting the phlogiston charges.
The fire consumes him, just as it did the towers in the New City.
INTERLUDE II
By tradition, Keeper priests are burned, not buried or sent down the corpse-shafts. On another day, Eladora might have quibbled at using the university chapel in the Haithi Occupation Zone, but the whole city’s choked with black soot after the Fog Yard fires, so one more pyre won’t make a difference.
Sinter’s funeral is thinly attended. Eladora. Two old aunts, and a girl who worked in a tailoring shop Sinter owned. A man from the Haithi Bureau, bearing a private letter from the Crown of Haith, currently embodied by Lyssada Erevesic, but that’s all. It’s sadly fitting that a man like Sinter, a spymaster at the centre of so many plots, could vanish with so few traces. The only person who weeps is one of the aunts, and she cries because it’s not an official church service. Well, he was defrocked for proposing a mass slaughter, thinks Eladora, he’s lucky to get this much recognition. She wants to feel nothing. Sinter was a tool, at best; a callous, cruel fanatic. She wants to not miss him, to not feel horribly alone.
A door at the back of the chapel opens, and Alic Nemon slips in. He takes his place at Eladora’s side, and avoids looking directly at the shrine at the top of the room, where a statue of the Mother of Mercies stands, marble hands open in a gesture of welcome.
The eyes of the statue seem to stare directly at Alic; somehow, even though the stone face has not moved.
“Kelkin couldn’t get away?” she whispers to Alic, as the aunts haltingly sing the Litany of the Keepers.
“I shouldn’t be here,” murmurs Alic. “Kelkin’s taken ill. The healers are with him, of course. Are you all right? I know you weren’t injured in the attack, but…” Alic’s presence is warm, reassuringly competent, enfolding. Like being swaddled in webs. She has to watch that. The god wearing a human face is not her friend.
“I’m fine. Tell the Haithi and Ishmerians that it was an alchemical accident. Tell them it doesn’t threaten the Armistice.” The story has already gone out to Guerdon’s newspapers.
“The Haithi know the truth already, though, and my, ah, former counterparts will divine what happened.”
“The ghouls have recovered the Black Iron G-Gods.” The statue of the Mother of Mercies doesn’t move, but still, its eyes seem to flicker to stare at Eladora when she mentioned those dread gods. “Not ideal, but it seems acceptable. And the other relics stored in Mandel’s remain secure.”
/> “How can you be sure? The place looks like it got hit by dragon-fire. The lower levels are still inaccessible.”
“A family friend assured me the wards would hold.”
She takes a little pleasure in Alic’s look of confusion. She still has secrets even Fate Spider doesn’t know. Eladora examines the blackened fingernails on her hand, testament to her own use of sorcery. All things considered – her failure to hold the Ghierdana back behind the truce line considered – they, too, have escaped relatively unscathed. The Armistice remains intact. The city has survived.
“Mandel’s place is a ruin, and the whole of the Fog Yards are shut down. Venture Square’s in a panic, and the price of yliaster is twenty times what it was last year.”
Something of Kelkin is rubbing off on Alic, it seems. Worrying about the speculators and the moneymen.
“Nothing of importance, then,” clarifies Eladora.
“You don’t understand,” whispers Alic, loud enough to get a dirty look from an aunt. “This was sent to Kelkin this morning, straight from Guildmaster Helmont.” He slips her a note, and she reads it by the light of Sinter’s pyre.
“The alchemists are leaving.”
CHAPTER FORTY
The ceiling’s familiar to Rasce. He’s spent a lot of time, these last few weeks, staring up at that ceiling. Or staring down through it.
Lanthorn Street. He’s back at Lanthorn Street.
He’s not dead.
Panic seizes him, and his point of view flickers. He’s looking down at the bed now from above, and – to his relief – the body in the bed is still alive. His face is blistered in places, but no worse than it would be after a burning raid with Great-Uncle. The smell of the alkahest poultices on his bandaged skin is overpowering. His throat is very dry, and tastes of metal.
“Boss.”
Baston’s slumped in the chair by the bed.
“My friend,” croaks Rasce.
Baston frowns at that. “You survived.” Baston’s matter-of-fact delivery can’t quite conceal the awe in his voice. “The whole of Mandel’s burned, and you survived.”
The Broken God Page 49
