Col Buchanan - Stands a Shadow

‘Then we’d have a real uprising on our hands. Like in our fathers’ and mothers’ times, when the priests last thought they could take the bread from the mouths of the working people. They must allow us to make a living. Even the priests concede that much.

‘Besides, it’s fear of what we could lose that has led us here in the first place. All those times we should have stood together and we didn’t. And always because they threatened to bring in slaves to replace us, or even to move the factories elsewhere. I work more hours on the presses than I spend at home. So does my wife and our eldest sons. And still we can barely clothe and feed ourselves, let alone make the arrears on our rent, or pay for medicine when the children are sick. We have to do something, for kush sake.’

Swan smiled; not at the words, but at the glib inscription carved in the lintel above the door.

Better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Her brother, loosening his neck muscles by her side, pointed to something in the shadows above the writing. It was a carving of two hands clasped together and entwined in barbed wire.

‘They call themselves the Bastards of Saint Charlos.’

‘Saint Charlos? Never heard of him.’

‘No, you wouldn’t have,’ Guan replied. ‘His name was outlawed twenty-five years before we were born. He was a priest of the old religion, back when the city was still a monarchy. He lived and worked here in the Shambles along the east bank. Gave all his money to the poor. Worked to set up these respite houses. They remember him as a saint for it.’

‘You see? This is why I’m so glad that you’re my clever brother. Otherwise, I’d have to read all those dull books myself. Tell me then, in your wisdom… Why do these chattel call themselves bastards?’

‘Charlos had an eye for the women. It was said that half the children of the district were his illegitimate spawn.’

Swan laughed at that, more loudly than it warranted, while her brother watched her with a bemused frown.

The voices beyond the door fell to a deathly hush.

‘Shall we?’ she asked him.

‘After you.’

Fifty faces were turned to the door as Swan stepped through it. Eyes widened as they saw her priestly robe and her smooth skull; even the crying infant in the lap of its mother blinked at her through its tears.

Swan snapped her fingers loudly, and the infant stopped crying with a startled jerk.

The room was packed from wall to wall with seated men and women, the air thick with the heat of so many bodies pressed so closely together.

How can they sit like this, in each other’s stench?

‘We’re looking for Gant,’ her brother declared, loudly. ‘Please show him to us.’

Nobody moved. The man standing at the front of the room wrung his hands in dismay.

‘Are you Gant?’ Swan asked him.

He looked to the others for support, and Swan noticed a few men along the sides reaching beneath their coats for weapons.

‘Who wants to know?’

It was a man standing by the shuttered window, his arms folded across his burly chest. He had a pipe in his mouth, and a peaked cap on his head cocked over one eye.

‘I do.’

‘And you are?’

‘They call me Swan.’

‘Well, Swan, they call me Gant. And this is a peaceful assembly. We’re doing nothing wrong here.’

Her brother snorted. ‘I would say that planning dissent amongst your fellow chattel is very wrong indeed.’

Chairs began to scuff against the floor. People were standing, moving back towards the walls. A handful of men were taking up positions around them.

‘No trouble,’ Swan said with her empty palms raised. She nodded to the man Gant. ‘Good evening to you, then. Or what remains of it.’

Slowly, with caution, they both backed out of the room, their task here complete. Swan took a final glimpse of Gant’s curious expression then pulled the door closed behind her.

Instantly, her brother broke a bonding stick in half and used it to seal the door in its frame. The door handle rattled; someone trying to open it.

The voices grew loud again on the other side.

Swan and her brother hurried down the stairwell, racing each other. The Respite House was a tall building with many floors and rooms. Perhaps it had been an hostalio in its time, or one of the famous brothels of the district. People had scattered from the stairs and the landings when they’d first seen the two of them go up. Now, mutters sounded from behind closed doors, children’s cries stifled suddenly. Swan broke her own bonding stick in half, and helped Guan close the main exit of every landing as they descended, sealing each one in turn.

Her brother wouldn’t meet her eye as they did it.

Outside in the cobbled street, a stinking breeze was blowing down the narrow stretch of the Accenine – the only river on the island of Q’os – and amongst the twisting, diabolical streets of the slums that were the Shambles. The fumes from the nearby steelworks caught in the back of her throat, dark smokestacks pouring their affluence into the evening sky. Guan worked quickly to seal the main front door while Swan thrummed to her inner music, and observed the figures scurrying from the sight of their robes.

She stared at the distant Temple of Whispers above the skyline, a tall, warped sliver amongst smaller skysteeples. It was more brightly lit than before. She knew that the second night of the Caucus must be starting by now; felt a moment’s relief that they did not have to be there again tonight.

Much closer, on the opposite bank of the fast river, the Lefall family fortress stood in a brilliance of focused gaslights. Barges were filling up with soldiers along the quayside: General Romano’s own private troops, shipping down to the harbour for the fleet’s departure tomorrow. Swan still had to pack, she recalled, and see to it that her new house-slave understood how to care properly for her animals.

Guan nudged her side, and she returned to the business at hand.

He took out his pistol and stood watch as she lifted one of the unlit brands they’d left leaning against the wall. Swan aimed her own pistol at it and fired.

The oil-soaked wood ignited and a blue-orange flame sputtered in the breeze. Quickly now, Swan ran the torch along the side of the wall, leaving a trail of fire that quickly climbed upwards where they’d splashed it with oil.

She circled the building, leaving her brother where he stood, passing the two other doors they’d already sealed. By the time she returned to him, the entire structure was sheathed by flames.

Banging on the front door now. People trying to get out.

‘Remind me again: why aren’t the Regulators handling this one?’

‘Because, sister, the Matriarch’s family owns half the linen mills in the Shambles. No doubt she wanted the job done right.’

The sounds of panic were starting to compete with the roaring of the flames. Shutters were being thrown open across the building, people hanging out amongst spumes of smoke.

‘You think this will work?’

‘Maybe at least they’ll stop banging on about rights for a while. To hear their talk, you’d think that rights were handed to each and every one of them when they were born.’

Someone shrieked, and then a smoking body landed before them with a thud against the cobbles with a thud. More people began to rain down; crack crack crack went the splintering of their legs.

Swan hopped back as a skull spattered its contents out across the street. She stared at the gory mess in fascination.

A baby was crying close by. She spotted it amongst the moving bodies, still wrapped in the arms of its broken mother. For all she knew, it was the same infant she’d seen in the room at the very top.