He looks up at her. ‘All swords get coated in blood, Shipwright.’
She nods. ‘So you were a broker, a blackmailer, a spy. All those things. With the help of this god?’
Heartshamer nods.
‘So what happened when Crowkisser killed them?’
His fingers move to the slack side of his face, his ruined eye. ‘Initially? I reacted … poorly. I don’t know how to communicate what I felt. The sense of loss. Many of my friends went mad. Gnawed their own tongues off in the dark of night. Dug their entrails out looking for a missing glow of golden light.’
His eyes tighten. ‘Or just neatly dropped themselves into the sea to end the silence.’
He pauses for a second, his breathing ragged. It takes a moment for it to stabilise. Fallon reaches towards him, but he bats it away.
‘I was lucky, I suppose. There’s a woman that works for Fallon. She found me. Kept me from the worst of it. Taught me how therest of you lived without a voice in your head.’
He laughs, bitterly. ‘In time, I returned to the only thing I knew. Buying and selling information. Gathering those little knives back to my chest.’
He looks at Fallon. ‘Recently I’ve been directing my enquiries more specifically, however. Towards Crowkisser. Towards the world she destroyed.’ He waves the cup at Shipwright, his movements loosened with anger. ‘You need to know how that world worked if you’re going to fix it.’
Shipwright frowns. ‘I think Shroudweaver would be better placed than me.’
The cup slams down on the table. ‘Hardly. He’s rather at the root of the problem, wouldn’t you say?’
Heartshamer runs his fingers through his hair. ‘My apologies. Rationally, however, he has a southern perspective, influenced by the teaching at the Aestering. I –we, want someone with a more … impartial, viewpoint. Will you listen to what I have to tell you?’
She nods. ‘OK, but you know that he’s my priority. Always.’
Heartshamer’s voice softens. ‘I do. That’s why you need to know this, for his sake, as much as ours.’
He stands stiffly. ‘Let me tell you about our kind parasites then, Shipwright. Our strange world.’
His hands move horizontally, one above the other. ‘I don’t know what they teach you over the sea, but know this. The world falls in layers one atop the other.’ His hands move apart. ‘Above us, beyond the clouds and the stars, the home of the gods. Our golden gods.’
He sucks his teeth. ‘But the gods did not work without symbiosis. They sought something in our souls. Or our bodies. Perhaps our blood. Our life. I’ve never been able to truly tell.’
‘Remora,’ Shipwright murmurs.
Heartshamer shoots her a look. ‘What?’
‘Scavenger fish,’ she says. ‘They latch onto other, bigger fish, take scraps from them, but they keep their host strong. Keep its blood clean.’
Heartshamer frowns. ‘That’s distressingly accurate. I may never forget.’
His fingers harrow his hair again. ‘So, remora. The gods. They take, but they also give, for they are bound this way.’ He holds up a finger. ‘One cannot occur without the other.’ He shakes his head, ‘However, they make no promises not tochangeus in the process. A host for the gods becomes stronger. Age wearies them less. The burdens and failures of the flesh can be made anew.’ He sits, scratches at his socket. ‘You miss it once it’s gone.’
Shipwright nods. ‘And you gave back to your god in turn?’
Heartshamer hums affirmatively. ‘Every host does. The cost was simple. Your blood, and space within your mind.’
His eye glints. ‘This was how I plied my trade. That act of sharing opened my ears to the endless voices of everyone else’s gods as they chattered to one another across the miles.’
He smiles. ‘A wise person, a canny person might have learnt to play this web of sound, to sift information from it, rolling their attention from conversation to conversation. Learning the thoughts of distant peoples, politicians, kings and beggars and spies.’
He shoots a glance at Fallon. ‘A very clever person might use this information to advance their station, theircity, their nation.’
He coughs. ‘The very cleverest would do nothing of the kind, but would hoard their secrets like whispering treasures, waiting for the day when a dagger needed to twist in the hearts of men. The very cleverest would do this. In effect, the man you see before you. Heartshamer. Me.’
‘Modest,’ Fallon murmurs.
