Chapter 54
Three sifts of coarse powder for burning.
Two sifts of fine powder for incision.
One man with a hand steady as an oarsman’s drum.
—On the Preparation of Necessary Flames,
Chapter 6: Burners and Concussives
The gun fits together seamlessly, the pieces interlocking like snakes.
Slickwalker lets his hands fall on the clasps and triggers, runs them over the buckles, the stock, the long smooth barrel which rests across his legs.
He traces its lines, lets his fingers linger on the curves, the angles. It hums faintly beneath his gloves.
Astic is quiet in the morning light. He leans back in his chair, lets the smell of the city fill his ribs. Fish oil and wet wool, tallow and beer.
It’s getting colder. The warm ghost of summer still clings to the roof tiles, chased by cats who coil through chimney smoke and washing lines. But it’s getting colder.
He can see it in the sea, the green of the coast falling to black.
In the lines of the fishermen, woven tighter, weighted heavier, plumbing the depths to bring up the thick, grey octopuses that come to feed on boat scraps.
Pots to catch crabs shelled with barnacles, the wood soured and twisted by fast, harsh currents.
A good season for hunting, on the edge of autumn, the air clear and cold. Everything that moves pulsing against the landscape, the hills filled with heartbeats.
He pulls a rag from his pockets, oils it, rubs it over the gun. It smoulders gently, thin threads eaten by movement, by metal.
He hasn’t seen Crowkisser in two days. She’s up in the hollow of the temple, he suspects, on her knees in the ruins, sifting the rags the long men have brought in and stringing them into prophecy. She’ll be cold and hungry, her fingers scraped raw, her nails chipped.
She’ll have fallen, and her skull will have hit the slabs wetly. Her eyes will have turned inwards and she’ll have thrashed, white and bloody and crying.
The crows will have come to cover her. Soon, he’ll go and minister to their marks. The sharp cuts left by their feet. He’ll rub the bare spots where they’ve taken her hair. He’ll hold her as she coughs up meat.
She’ll be scared. The patterns are filthy, complicated. She can’t look too long at them. Makes her feel sick. Makes her scratch at her pale skin. Makes her chew her lips ragged. Makes her hold onto him like a drowner.
He knows she’ll pull through, fight through the twisting.
She’ll pick rope, and rot and blood. She’ll swallow it down and cough the world back up to find the patterns they need to succeed.
Nothing stays hidden. It’ll fill her. Prophecy from bone to tail, until she can flit under the gaze of the eye in the south, like a shadow, like a slip, feet in a stairwell, the click of a door just closed.
Beautiful. Subtle. Unstoppable.
It’ll fill her. The hot weight of seeing. She’ll come to him later, lambent eyed, black and glowing. Ravenous for skin. Kissing like a cannibal. Arching her back. A priestess of cats, of corners, of secrets.
And he’ll hold her. He always holds her. She’ll fit against him, all her secret angles that only he knows. His hands against her sides, chasing away the knots and the cold. Dry lips against temples where her pulse runs thready.
Eventually, she’ll fall. Empty herself in gasps and heartbeats.
Take the space at his side, press her skull into the curve of his arm.
She’ll sleep. And he’ll hold her. Watch her chest rise and fall.
He’ll tell himself it’s worth it. That they’re doing a good thing.
And for a few ragged moments, it’ll be true.
Of course, things are not that simple. There are prices to be paid.
He sets the rag down, takes his gloves off, and presses a palm to the barrel of the gun.
As always, it eats him, scorching his flesh, licking at him with terrible, acrid speed.
His palm vanishes into a ragged hole, the blood blackening, smoking, swallowed.
He grits his teeth against the familiar pain.
The gun purrs and stretches. He watches it realign, becoming sleeker, darker. It pulses with an oil-slick hue, and the air smells of hot metal, copper, lemon.
It eats him down to the bone and he watches it work. When it’s done, he turns to the city and raises his hand to his face. He imagines he can see Crowkisser through the hole, between the slats of bone, hung with meat and blood.
She’s safe. They’re all safe. Because of the gun, the shadow and the crows. Because of him. Because of what he gives.
He flexes his fingers, watching the naked struts dance in his hand. Behind them, people are opening shops, raising shutters, lifting canopies. Children stir, scuff sleep-grit from their eyes, are pulled reluctantly into outstretched jumpers.
Astic wakes slowly, grudgingly, uncharmed by the cold.
With the thumb of his left hand, Slickwalker fingers the gun. It folds in on itself, quick and clever, becoming nothing but a shard of black, a promise. He slides it over his back, feels it nestle into the clasps there. For a moment, its weight feels like her hand and he half-turns, expecting.
Three years now, with her always on the edges of his world, waiting for the next touch, the next word.
Crowkisser. What was there but Crowkisser?
Slickwalker knew there had been a time before her.
Somewhere deep down, he knew it. But his mind was not interested in such things.
When he woke, he saw the curve of her cheekbone in the half-shadow.
When he slept he felt her breath against his lips. When he killed, he saw her as she wept.
She had given everything for the people of this world. And they cursed her for it. Everything, and they stepped around her like a mad dog.
Everything and they hushed their voices and doused their lights.
Everywhere but here. Over the last few years, the people of Astic had finally come around, finally realised how Crowkisser kept them safe. And after Astic, the Rim villages followed, one by one, as the cost of life alone on the edge of the south became too much to bear.
Behind him, he hears the wet slap of the first boats hitting the morning water as they put out to sea. Rhythm. Astic thrived on rhythm, and so did she. Every night, between those blasted pillars, her hands slick with blood and feather, her hips lifting in desperate hope.
Every night, she tore herself down to find the patterns. Every night she built herself back up from scraps.
And she was winning. She’d gleaned fragments of their enemies’ movements, snatched from the wind, teased from the beaks of crows. Plucked from the forest’s thorns.
Enough to send him to Hesper at the exact moment Shipwright and Shroudweaver had docked. To menace Fallon and flush them out, after months of hiding and running.
It was a pity he hadn’t been able to kill the old bull, but his visit had served its purpose, and confirmed that Crowkisser’s visions were true, that the pair were in Hesper. Less pleasantly, it had confirmed that Shroudweaver could still stitch together a god in a pinch.
His side aches at the memory of Shipwright’s fists; the bruise is gone, but the guts and bones underneath are slower to mend.
Yes, Shroudweaver could still stitch a god, and it seemed as if he was still as ruthless in his choice of host. Slickwalker smiled a little at that.
Interesting how quickly the pair had rushed to defend their old friend. Crowkisser would use that, he was sure. She had an eye for the weaknesses of others. It had worried him at first, until he’d seen the truth of their work; how much better life was under her, free from the gods.
He watches the boats skim out to the horizon and cast their nets, the arms of their crews slashed against the light.
It will soon be time for him to head northwards, on the trail of the crows.
Not that Kisser wasn’t confident in her prophecies, but she valued certainty, corroboration; eyes that were still in a human head.
Behind him would come their army. All the able-bodied from Astic, and the others that would join them from the Rim villages, Dryke, Vantage, Fallow.
Not much, all told. Maybe three or four hundred bodies, but she seemed certain they would be enough.
All of those fisherfolk were confident enough in her, that was for sure.
It didn’t mean they could get by alone, however. That’s where he came in.
His heart lifts a little at the thought of it.
He loved scouting, nothing in his head but his own thoughts, his own body moving at his command.
Climbing trees, fording rivers, the earth opening out around him like a puzzle to be solved.
The whole army at his back, waiting on his word, for the safe routes, the clear places, the pure streams. It gave him a sense of purpose.
Then home each night, flitting through shadow to her bedroll, her arms. Her approving words.
He checks his supplies one last time. The pain in his hand is already easing, just the steady itch of new flesh creeping across the bone, pulled tight by shadow. A useful gift, another token of Crowkisser’s esteem.
He watches the waves a moment more. The light is particularly bright this morning, bright enough that he can almost imagine catching a glimpse out west to the spires and the stilts of the Heron Halls. Not that he’s ever seen them, just heard stories. But maybe someday.
In the far distance, something big breaches. A glimpse of white flesh and a finned, sinuous body that slaps the water hard enough to send the echoes racing to shore. The fishermen shout in return, their voices high and eerie, sending their song back out to sea.
His heart thrills from the strangeness of it. The sea both terrifies and delights him. He’s glad they won’t be fighting on it again; that might be a little too much.
Even taking down the Volante had stretched his nerves to the limit, his heart beating like a six-tap drum. No, best they weren’t on the sea.