“Second, they have no need for food or sleep. You’re not going to be able to stake out a god’s favorite chop house or flophouse in case he turns up of an evening.
“Third, there are only four things that will even inconvenience a god, should you manage to track one down. The first is another god. The second is an artifact created by another god. The third is a demon lord. The fourth is an artifact created by one of the Archmages who lived before the Cataclysm. That’s the situation we find ourselves in. The sooner you stop beating the bushes for some crazed but mortal killer, the sooner you’ll have a chance, however small, to deal with the real threat.”
Kluge raked his fingers through his short hair, then stared out the window at gray streets for a time. The stress was etching its way into his long, horse-like face with amazing speed. I almost felt sorry for him.
“You need to inform Morno,” I told him. “He needs to appeal to the Crown. Somewhere in Coroune, I’m sure, there’s a vault. In that vault there’ll be a strongbox, and in that strongbox, there’ll be an artifact whose existence is known only to a select few because its power is so devastating.”
“You know that for a fact, do you?”
“Call it an educated guess, leavened with fervent hope. The gods created lots of weapons with which to kill each other during their wars, and not a few were left lying on this battlefield or that. Somehow such things always find their way to the high and mighty.”
“Even if you’re right, and assuming I’m not dismissed from my command on suspicion of insanity, and even if we found a way to force the killer into the open, no help would arrive before the next round of murders. Or perhaps even the one after that,” Kluge said.
The carriage pulled up at the Crack’d Tower just then, sparing me the necessity of a dismal reply.
Jessep helped me out of the carriage, and I took a gander at the surroundings. I’d seen more pleasant rubbish heaps.
The structure itself was a good forty feet in diameter and eight stories high, an oblong of black stone that did not blend in the slightest with its surroundings. The crack it was named for was visible on the southern face of the tower, running from the foundations to perhaps halfway up the length of the tower. At its base, the crack was wide enough to stick a fist in, though it narrowed as it climbed.
The Crack’d Tower stood in the center of a weed- and refuse-choked lot that was easily an acre. It was a testament to the place’s dark history that no one had tried to claim the land; the Spindles was the heart of industry in Lucernis, and every square inch of it was devoted to the making of goods. And money, of course. For this place to stand, unencroached-upon, for three centuries was extraordinary. From what I could tell, even the businesses that bordered the cursed lot were of the less savory neighbor sort – tanneries, dyers and at least one pitch maker, if the stench of urine, chemicals and tar was anything to go by.
“This way, revered,” Kluge prodded me, motioning to the tower.
“I know which damned way the tower is, Kluge. It’s nearly as big as your sense of self-importance, and equally hard to miss.” I hate being interrupted when I’m wool-gathering.
“Don’t mind him, commander,” Jessep said. “He’s just cranky because he rushed off and didn’t get his morning tipple.” He took hold of my arm and started me towards the tower.
“Gods know I need something to make you bearable of a morning, boy. If there’s anything more repulsive than a morning person, I haven’t come across it yet.”
The doorway was missing its door. We paused inside for a moment, to let our eyes adjust to the gloom, and our noses adjust to the stench. Urine, shit, vomit, pissed-on cookfires, stale beer and wine, rotting food – the interior of the tower was an odious assault.
“The reason I saw no need to highlight the first murder’s location is that vagrants have inhabited the tower, off and on, for decades. The discovery of corpses here isn’t a shocking occurrence.”
“Where was the body found?” I asked.
“At the top level.”
“Fucking hells. Of course it was. Lead on, Kluge.”
A set of basalt steps was built into the wall on the left. There was no hand rail. Kluge called forth a mage light and led the way, and Jessep kept close behind me, ready to haul me back if I looked to be in danger of going over the side.
Each floor above ground level boasted one room, with an opening at the center of the floor and ceiling forming a shaft from the bottom to the top. For ventilation, I supposed, but then who could know with certainty what the hells a mage really does anything for? He certainly hadn’t provided any safety features to keep people from falling to their deaths, either on the stairs or around the shaft.
Eventually we made it to the top floor, at a considerable cost to my energy, comfort and mood. Kluge brightened his mage light to augment the natural light that filtered in from the hole in the center of the roof, and Jessep dragged over a chair whose back was in splinters for me to have a rest on. I scanned the room while my lungs slowly stopped thinking they were dying by torture. It was a dismal little room, windowless and airless, with a darkly stained mattress in one corner and a cracked chamber pot in another, and fuck-all else.
Kluge was considerate enough to wait for my wheezing to subside before he said what was on his mind.
“I’ve been over this room, thoroughly, both with my mundane senses and with magesight. What is it you think I might have missed, revered?”
“I honestly don’t know, Kluge. Anything, everything, nothing. When you looked before, it was with the assumption that the killer was mortal, if unnatural. Now that you have to at least consider it was Nematos, look again. Why would he choose this place to start up his monthly death count once more?”
“The original occupant was a murderer, wasn’t he?” Jessep asked.
“Yes,” Kluge replied. “Feklin the Mad murdered children by the score here.”
“Why? Was he a daemonist?”
“No,” Kluge told him. “I’ve never heard it said he did it for any reason other than that he liked doing it. He was just a monster.”
Jessep’s question made a tiny little bell go off deep in the recesses of my mind.
“Kluge, was Feklin a Lucernan by birth?”
“I’m not his biographer, revered, but I don’t believe so. He was a foreigner, as I recall.”
“He wouldn’t happen to have come from Imria, would he?”
“I can’t say for sure. It’s possible.”
“Is there a way to the roof?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because it used to be Imrian practice to dedicate temples by inscribing the name of the god it was dedicated to at the highest point of the structure.”
Kluge frowned. “I’ll need your chair, revered.”
I stood, with Jessep’s help. “You’ll need Jessep as well,” I said to Kluge.
“What for?”
“Can you read Old Imrian? Because he can. Also, he just loves climbing about on rooftops. I can barely keep him off the temple’s roof most days, I tell you. He’s like a mountain goat.”
Kluge looked at me dubiously. Jessep looked at me murderously.
“Well go on.”
Kluge dragged the chair over to a corner of the room and stood on it. He muttered some magely cant, arms raised, and one of the slabs in the ceiling gave a groan. He made a waving gesture, and the stone slid away, revealing more gray winter sky.
Kluge sprang up and got hold of the edge, then levered himself through the hole with difficulty. Then he turned around and put a hand down to help Jessep through as well.
Just as Jessep’s sandaled feet disappeared, I heard something from the lower levels of the tower. I took a cautious step towards the shaft to look down.
I didn’t see who pushed me. It was just a hand in the dark, slammed right between my shoulder blades. One moment I was standing on the edge of the shaft at the core of the Crack’d Tower, and the next I was falling to my death. I didn’t even ha
ve time to curse.
And then suddenly I wasn’t falling. No more death breeze ruffling the wisps of hair I had left. In fact, judging from the strangely frozen look of my robes, and the frozen state of my body, time itself had suddenly stopped. My cane, suspended in midair near my head, was another clue. Experimentally, I tried to clear my throat. It worked. Naturally, cursing came next.
“Gorm on a stick. All right, who’s there?”
The gloom of the shaft coalesced, part shadow and part ink in water, and not really either of those things. A face emerged, dusky bronze with eyes like bright stars. A sharpish nose. A mouth sewn shut.
“Oh, it’s you,” I sniffed. “What the fuck do you want, secret-monger?”
“Aren’t you surprised it isn’t the murder god?” he asked.
“No. He gets his jollies with a knife, not a shove from behind. What do you want?”
“You seem to be in a predicament. I thought you might appreciate a little help.”
“What’d be really helpful is if you hid that mouth of yours. It’s just a brutal offense to my eyeballs.”
Some advice when dealing with gods who want to do you a favor: Never give the bastards an inch. Never admit you owe them anything, or they will own you.
“Is it a custom of yours to insult someone who offers aid?” Bath asked. “It seems rather self-defeating.”
“I’m an old man. It’s my privilege to be insulting to anyone, any time.”
“Old as you are, you are still an infant in terms of the elevated,” he said.
“Well, all you gods are eternal children. Emotionally, you’re toddlers who don’t mind stooping to war, plague, famine or worse when you don’t get what you want. Which is my polite way of telling you to go fuck yourself, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I don’t actually care.”
“I know.”
“You realize you’re perilously close to making my point for me, don’t you?”
“Am I?”
“Fucking hells. What do you want, Bath?”
“At the moment, I want to make sure you don’t break all those fragile bones of yours. It’s rather a long fall, and the landing is... unyielding.”
“Oh, thanks for that astute observation. Just get to the offer.”
“Offer?”
“You’re about to make me an offer I can’t refuse. You know it and I know it. So make it already.”
“All right. I save you from being shattered, and you keep certain information regarding the identity of the killer to yourself.”
“Yeah, fuck you.”
“It was worth a try.”
“It was a piss-poor try.”
“All right then, save yourself. But then how are you going to explain your lack of being dead? It seems to me it’s getting increasingly hard for you to keep your secret.”
“Meh. I’ll just say you saved me.”
“Now that’s just needlessly convoluted.”
“No, convoluted is you pushing me from a great height in order to save me, in order to blackmail me into not telling anyone that your bug-fuck crazy sibling has broken his chains and is intent on gaining his powers back so he can reassume the mantle of the god of murder. At which point he’ll literally have murdered every living soul, by the by. How am I doing on my wild-sounding yet eerily accurate assumptions?”
He smiled that sickening smile of his. “Pretty well. Not perfect, but not bad.”
“What did I get wrong, then?”
“Why would I care if you told anyone? It isn’t as if there’s a mortal in this city who could stop him, even if you make them aware of the situation. Even if they believe you.”
“You just said you wanted me to keep the killer’s identity a secret.”
“Not exactly.”
“You’re giving me a headache, Bath. Do you care if people know the murder god is loose on the streets of Lucernis or not?”
“I do not. I prefer that no-one knows he is my brother, however.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s a matter of public record.”
“And you are the record-keeper. No-one in these latter days remembers my connection to him except you.”
“Gorm on a stick. I think you’re embarrassed of him, not that you shouldn’t be. On the other hand, you’re the fucking god of secrets. It’s in every particle of your being to keep things in the dark. So who knows what your motive really is.”
He stopped smiling. Those starlight eyes of his got a little brighter. “Lhiewyn det Sardeth, I am the god of secrets, and I know you far better than you will ever know me.”
“Well then you know I’m getting a little sick of floating here, with my robes practically up around my waist. Maybe you get your jollies seeing my hairy old balls exposed, but it’s not really what I consider fun. And fine, I won’t tell anyone who the killer’s big brother is.”
“Have a nice landing, then,” he said, and disappeared. Time unfroze. I plummeted.
“Asshooooo-”
Bath had arranged for two especially thick mattresses to appear at the bottom of the shaft, stained and smelling convincingly of cat piss, vomit, and other, less savory fluids. I was quite sure they hadn’t been there when we entered.
I landed on my back, at just about the only possible angle that kept me from breaking any limbs. The landing still hurt like hells, but all I suffered was a few bruised ribs, and a cracked tooth and a mouth full of blood when my jaw snapped shut on the impact. Kluge and Jessep agreed, when they reached me, that it was a miracle I hadn’t ended up in worse shape. Jessep was uncharacteristically solicitous, helping me into the carriage with special gentleness, and fetching clean water for me to rinse my mouth out. Kluge, on the other hand, fixed me with those deep-set eyes of his, and his entire expression seemed to say he knew there was more to the story than me tripping, and falling, and fortuitously landing on a pair of mattresses. He probably knew that they hadn’t been there when we’d entered as well as I did.
Kluge wasn’t stupid. He was just well out of his depth.
“Did you find an inscription?” I wheezed as we rolled and clattered back to the Street of the Gods. My battered ribs made it painful to breathe, but it wasn’t like there was an alternative.
“We did,” Kluge answered.
“Well? What did it say?”
Kluge kept his mouth stubbornly shut, so after a moment Jessep answered for him.
“It said ‘Dedicated to Nematos, Heart-Piercer, Life Ender, He-Who-Is-Chained. May His Dark Glory Envelop the World.’ And yes, it was in Old Imrian.”
I sighed. “It’s always a pleasure to be proven right.”
“Even when it means you’ll eventually be murdered in your bed by a mad god?”
“I said always and I meant always, whelp.”
“You do have an iron grip on your priorities, master. Speaking of which, do you still want to stop for breakfast?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to have a lie-down. The fall didn’t kill me, but it did kill my appetite.”
BACK AT THE TEMPLE I went straight to my mat. As much as I hated to admit it, I was just too damned old to be running around the city, climbing hells-high staircases, or being pushed from great heights. Stubbornness could get you remarkably far, and overcome a long list of infirmities, but not indefinitely. And there was always a reckoning.
I slept the rest of the day away, awakening only as night fell. It took me a long time to reach a vaguely vertical position, much longer than normal. Everything hurt. Bath hadn’t liked being blackmailed; that was the subtext of our whole encounter, I now realized. He wanted me to keep my mouth shut about his little brother, and he wasn’t above extracting a little petty revenge while he was at it.
I grunted. The gods were like that.
I hobbled my way to the kitchen, where Jessep had already prepared a nice chop for himself and a bowl of gruel for me.
“Who’s the high priest around here, and who’s the acolyte?�
� I huffed.
“If you want to eat a pork chop with a cracked tooth, I can cut it small for you, master.”
I growled in his general direction and sat down at my accustomed place at the kitchen table. And started spooning up gruel.
We ate as we usually did – quickly and in silence, and without much in the way of table manners. When we were finished, he cleared the table and I poured out two glasses of port. Neither of us liked it much, but it was cheap, and had become an evening ritual. It was cold enough for once that the kitchen fire was welcome warmth rather than oppressive necessity, and so we sat there for a time.
“Do you really think there’s some god-killing weapon in Coroune?” he eventually asked me.
“I give it even odds,” I replied. “But I don’t think they’ll even consider using whatever they have until the death toll edges into the thousands, and panic sets in.”
“Even then, they would still have to find Nematos.”
“True.”
“I kept the temple closed today while you rested, and searched for everything I could find on him.”
I gave a grunt. There’d have been little enough. Nematos had been imprisoned quite early during the Age of the Gods.
“There’s no rite of summoning, or supplication, or anything like that for him. No record of formal worship at all.”
“Well, stupid as people are, I suppose that’s an encouraging sign.”
“It occurred to me that the Crack’d Tower might even be the only place in the world that could be considered a temple to Nematos. Which could be why he came here when he got free of wherever he was imprisoned.”
“You might well be right. There’s no way to prove it, but it makes sense.”
“So maybe he would notice if someone were to, um, do something to it. And take offense. And show up.”
I gave Jessep a sidewise glance. “You have a nasty, sneaky, reckless turn of mind, lad. I find myself forced to approve of it.” I held out my glass and he clinked the rim of his against mine. He was obviously pleased with himself.
“Of course, if your theory about the tower being his temple holds true, then we almost certainly violated it today, and have already drawn the murder god’s attention. I guess we’ll find out in two more nights.” I held out my glass to toast again. All I got was a glare in return.
The Last God Page 9
