Chapter 6
Next morning I should’ve gone to prime in the basilica and prayed for the good of my soul, but I didn’t. Partly because I haven’t got one, partly because Svangerd never misses prime if she can possibly help it.
Instead, I went back to the More Joy in Heaven to collect something I’d hidden in the rafters of the hayloft. I got there and found a small crowd, the sort you tend to get when there’s been a fire or a murder.
“What happened?” I asked someone.
“There’s been a killing,” she said, with her eyes shining; a short, round-faced woman carrying a basket of fish. “It’s horrible. Blood and bits of bodies everywhere.”
“Let me through,” I said loudly, “I’m a priest.”
I pushed through the crowd and went inside, where I saw the innkeeper and his son, talking to a watch sergeant. They turned and looked at me. “That’s him,” the innkeeper said. “That’s the man.”
Not cheerful words to hear in context, but I was too overwrought to care. “What happened?” I asked.
“You sure?” said the sergeant. The innkeeper was sure. So was his son.
“Don’t even think about it,” I told the sergeant. “I’ve got a cast-iron alibi, not to mention benefit of clergy. What the hell happened here?”
So they arrested me and took me to the watch house, which was annoying. But I had the satisfaction of dragging Vitimer’s personal chaplain down there to vouch for me and give the sergeant a talking to he would never forget, after which he was only too pleased to answer my question.
At some point during the night, a person or persons unknown had climbed up on the roof of the hayloft and effected an entrance by ripping off the tiles.
Accommodation being scarce in Choris because of the council, the innkeeper had already relet the hayloft, and the new tenant was up there when the intruder intruded.
At which point the sergeant’s grasp of Watchspeak lapsed and he started talking like a human being.
He’d never seen anything like it before, he told me, and before he got into the watch game he’d been a soldier.
Every bone in the poor fucker’s body was broken, and his head ripped off and squashed flat, like someone fucking huge had trod on it.
Then he looked at me, and asked me if I was the man who’d killed the monster, up at the basilica. The chaplain had just told him that, but I guess he wanted it confirmed.
“I didn’t kill it,” I said. “A bell fell on it. I was lucky.”
He looked at me. I got the impression he was religious, like Svangerd. Most people are.
“I need to see the body,” I said. “And the hayloft.”
First the hayloft. There was a huge hole in the roof, and three rafters had been ripped out and flung down into the stable yard.
One of them was a rafter I had a particular interest in.
I poked about in the straw, then went down to the yard and hunted around there, on my hands and knees in the mud and horseshit.
No, nobody had moved or taken anything, so far as the sergeant knew. Why would they?
No trace of the box.
Next the body. The sergeant told me the name the man had given the innkeeper when he paid for his lodgings: Brother Naso.
A common enough name-in-religion, in honour of Saint Naso of Perimadeia, one of the first martyrs.
Identifying the head wasn’t going to be easy, since the face was now three inches wide, but it was bald.
I confess it didn’t ring any bells, but the body was that of a short man.
Being in way over my head has become something of a way of life for me, ever since I left the Mesoge and took to religion, scholarship and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
My father didn’t want me to leave, but he insisted that I should go.
I’d have a chance of a better life, he said, make something of myself.
Also, I could send money home. I don’t think he’d grasped the bit about poverty in the vows, or he didn’t believe it.
My brothers were glad to see the back of me.
There were only so many mouths that our little scrap of land could feed, and I was the least useful and productive member of the household.
Usually in the Mesoge infant mortality takes care of problems like that, but all my father’s children survived. Just our luck.
On balance, I’ve always been glad I left and went to the big city and became who I am.
On balance, if I had my time over again, I don’t think I’d have chosen the church militant, even though that would mean I’d never have met Svangerd.
But I didn’t really have much of a choice.
My talents, such as they were, led me inevitably into the path I’ve been following ever since, and here I am.
Even so. There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the squashed mess I’d seen reassembled on a trestle table in the back parlour of the More Joy was the short man, soi-disant representative of the Loyal Opposition.
Even in that state, I recognised him the moment I saw him.
In which case, I had a horrible feeling that Svangerd was right. All this shit was about me.
Me, for crying out loud. But the evidence was beginning to pile up. The attack on the way to Choris, the box, my father. And now, apparently, a second walker.
Vitimer sent for me. “It can’t be the same one,” I told him. “It’s not physically possible.”
He looked at me. “The power of Evil is very strong,” he said. “If it can raise the dead, it can reassemble a dead body from ashes and seawater.”
“With respect,” I said, “no, it can’t. We know about these creatures where I come from.
Over the years we’ve learned a great deal about coping with them, and the proof of that is, there are still people living in the Mesoge.
I did everything the way you’re supposed to, and I added a touch of my own, dumping it in the sea.
This can’t be the same walker. Therefore, it must be a different one. ”
“Two monsters.” He hadn’t wanted to hear that, and he was used to hearing only what he wanted to hear. “Is that normal?”
“No,” I said. “It’s in these creatures’ nature to be solitary. And they don’t take revenge when one of them gets taken down, or anything like that. Revenge is a by-product of love, after all. Walkers don’t love anyone.”
He thought about that for a moment. “In that case,” he said, “how do you account for the fact that the monster came looking for you, in the place where you were known to be staying?”
Only of course it wasn’t about that. “I don’t know,” I said.
“You say that these monsters don’t take revenge,” he said.
“But, by your own admission, everything it did, or they have done, is anomalous. You say they’re confined to the Mesoge, and here we have one, or two, in Choris.
You say they’re solitary creatures, but you also say there must be two of them.
You say the first one is dead, but—” He shrugged.
“Would you at least accept,” he went on, “that you were the target of this second attack?”
No. “Yes,” I said, “I suppose I must have been. What do we know about Brother Naso?”
“He was the delegate from the exarchate of Galmso in southern Permia,” he said.
“His credentials are in order. He attended most of the debates, and his voting record is entirely orthodox. Delegates who spoke to him describe him as friendly, well-informed, somewhat garrulous. Other than that—” He made a vague gesture.
“He held no elevated rank and had made no significant contribution to the council. It therefore seems overwhelmingly likely that he was not the intended target.”
“With respect.” There’s a limit to how often you can say that, but never mind. “Are you saying that an agency capable of using Mesoge walkers as its tools wouldn’t know that I’d moved from the inn to the basilica? I don’t think Evil makes that sort of mistake.”
Stupid of me to say that. I knew the real reason, but I couldn’t tell anyone.
I should have kept my mouth shut and looked blank.
“No,” he said, “I must confess, I find that rather extraordinary. But so much of these events is beyond rational explanation. I can only assume that the mistake lay with the creature itself, not those controlling it. But that’s merely a guess. ”
He’d run out of things to say, and I’d said everything I was prepared to, so nobody spoke for a while. Then he said, “What do you think we should do?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I replied. “If you’re right and it’s me he’s after, I should get out of Choris straight away, before anybody else gets hurt.
Or I could stay here and fight it, though I really don’t see what I can do that someone else couldn’t do better.
Maybe if it kills me it’ll be satisfied and go away.
I’m not exactly in prime fighting trim, but even if I was, I don’t suppose it’d matter. ”
Maybe he’d been hoping I had something useful to suggest. “It would be catastrophic if we had to abandon the council,” he said.
“It would send an appalling message, that Evil is capable of disrupting the exercise of the true faith.” He lifted his head and looked at me.
“You’re a man of learning,” he said. “I assume you’ve heard of Saloninus’ razor? ”
I nodded.
“The most likely explanation is liable to be the truth. I find that the most likely explanation for these events is that Evil is trying to sabotage the council. Therefore the council must go ahead, at all costs. I confess I can’t account for Evil’s fixation with you, unless there’s something about yourself that you’ve neglected to tell me.
” Pause. I did my big stone face. “I can only think that you attract it, or them, like a magnet, because of your Mesoge heritage. That in turn would suggest that Evil’s control over it, or them, is not absolute, and that it or they have a degree of self-determination.
That I’m prepared to accept. Evil is, as we know, imperfect in all things, by definition.
Therefore it follows that it must be imperfect in competence. ”