The figure’s voice deepens, their tan hands stretching against the fire. ‘I’m the omen, Shroud. Thell is an omen you made for yourself. If you want to stop a godkiller, you need to build a god.’
They stand and walk to the edge of the escarpment where the wind bites the skin. Their robes bowing back against the night, red and yellow and red again.
‘Do you remember how to build gods, Shroud?’
And Shroudweaver does, deep in his heart. But he waits for the answer anyway.
‘You build a god the same way you kill an empire – piece by bloody piece.’
The figure beckons him to the edge of the mountain, where the wind howls like a mourner.
Their arm is warm along Shroudweaver’s shoulders, where ice flickers in gouts of pale fire.
‘This is why the dream carried you here, Weaver. If you want a god to stop the godkiller, you need a composite. You need the biggest god-stitching your pallid hands have ever seen.’
They push on Shroudweaver’s shoulders until he is leaning outover the edge of the scoured field beneath the Stump. It opens up below him like a mother’s arms. The grass and roots falling away into pits of dark earth that writhe with bones.
‘We put them all here, Shroud. You and I. If you want to build a god, come to Thell.’
Their voice lowers. ‘We have all the pieces you will ever need.’
Shroudweaver tries to answer, but his voice emerges in that tower room, clipped with sleep.
Shipwright shushes him, holds him close, and in his dream, the figure does too. Their lips are dry and warm against his, their arms strong and firm.
The wind howls, and the clouds part to spill the light of the moon across their face.
And it is gold, and it is broken, and it is familiar. It has one eye, then two, then none. It smiles at him with the face of a friend, and an enemy, then kisses him again, as you might kiss a child, or a corpse.
‘Come to Thell and build me a god, Weaver.’ Its strong arms wrap around him, and the push is stronger still, sending Shroudweaver out, over the battlements and down into the bone-filled dark.
The song of the earth rises to meet him, and he screams, so much louder in that small, whitewashed tower room, that smells of gull and sweat, and Shipwright. He is sitting, wrapped tight in sheets and white as chalk. He tries to speak, but his mouth is full of the memory of bones, the dry weight of earth.
Softly, firmly, she places a cup of cool water in his hands.
‘Take it easy, skinny. Just a dream.’
He looks at her and she flinches, sees something in him that scares her. And he watches as she kills it, packs it away, and puts her arm around him.
‘Not just a dream, eh?’ she sighs. ‘Well, under the circumstances, I can probably let you take another huff.’
She leans her head into him. Her hair falls over his face like a curtain and he breathes deep. And for the second time that night, even as distant geese kiss the rim of the moon, he sleeps.
13
the power of the gun doesn’t lie in powder, barrel or stock
it fires from the flicker in your heart as you thumb the trigger.
—Drill Hall Maxims, Coglifter
They wait for him in a quiet room. It is unprepossessing, in the way that only men desperately concerned with status can make a room unprepossessing.
A servant closes the door behind him with a soft click. Even the latch doesn’t want to make a fuss.
Fallon wants to make a fuss, to ripple the water. Instead, he stands in the wan light from the bullseye glass that frames the hall and waits.
There is a low curved table and six chairs. The leather on some worn near to fading and on others, ruddy as blood. He marks the spacing between the chairs, marks the carving on their backs, and the less official marks where daggers and nails have scratched boredom into the wood.
