The Rising (The Alchemy Wars) (18 page)

Now Élodie’s father noticed Longchamp, too. The chandler said, “Élodie, you won’t have to deal with the captain much longer. Once I speak to the king about this ridiculous conscription lottery we’ll be out of the guard before the end of the day—”

Visser’s expression changed as he realized that Longchamp was no mere parishioner, no mere civilian. His face twisted into something between a scowl and a plea. The apprehension vanished from his eyes to be replaced by something glassy and hard.

“No, please,” he moaned. His voice carried a peculiar warble, as though he struggled to suppress a seizure.

Son of a pox-ridden whore.

Longchamp crossed the last few yards almost at a trot. Still smiling, he laid a hand on Visser’s shoulder. Gently. “I’m so pleased to see you, Father. Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t remember me—”

Zacharie turned to address Visser. “Father, have you been
selected in the lottery, too?” To Longchamp, he spat, “You are shameless! Now you dare to go after
priests
?”

Élodie said, “Father, quiet!” She meant her own father but the confusion stoked the wild look in Visser’s eyes.

The chandler laid his hand on the priest’s other arm. “Don’t worry. The king will end this once he hears of the outrageous—”

Visser laid his palms on their chests, as if blessing them. He crouched.

Shoved
.

Next thing he knew, Longchamp was tumbling through the air while Élodie yelled, “Papa!”

And then the screaming started.

Longchamp’s pick ripped a furrow in the brown grass around the fountain as he skidded to a hard stop against the basin. His breastbone ached like he’d been kicked by a horse. He righted himself just in time to see the much smaller chandler ragdoll against a cloister column. Zacharie Chastain flopped to the ground, unmoving, arm folded behind him as though one shoulder had become a loose hinge.

Longchamp launched into a sprint, yelling, “Everybody on that bastard, NOW!”

Brandishing his truncheon, Sergeant Chrétien tossed the satchel aside. He fought upstream against the stampede of panicked petitioners, but the current battered him, slowed him. The two uniformed guards bellowed for people to clear out. They drew their own weapons and followed close on the sergeant’s heels, shoulder-checking people out of their path. Longchamp was vaguely aware of somebody close behind him, maybe Simon, and of a few other guards in civilian garb struggling against the throng.

Visser turned to flee, but Élodie grabbed his wrist. God bless the foolish lamb; she was actually trying to apply her training, trying to be a lion, focusing on the enemy and not on her
wounded parent, trying to put an armlock on the priest. But she was too green even to try this on a regular day with a regular miscreant. But this was not a regular day and Visser was not a regular scofflaw and she was the only person in arm’s reach of the priest.

The taste of sour milk filled Longchamp’s mouth.
We didn’t train her for this
. “Chastain, get out of there!”

Strong as she was, the priest knocked her aside as though her muscular arms were made of dandelion fluff. She gave a wordless yell of terror and surprise.

She was strong for her size. But Visser was impossibly strong for a human being.

Visser is not what he seems
. So said Berenice.
Then what
is
he
?

Longchamp crossed the garth at a dead run. The quadrangle seemed to stretch, elongating like streamers dribbling from a ladle of honey, keeping the melee out of reach. It was happening all over again. People were going to die in this square because the guards weren’t prepared. Because Longchamp hadn’t prepared them. And this time they didn’t carry glue guns or bolas or even hammers and picks. Those were weapons for fighting Clakkers, and surely they couldn’t be expected to bring such to bear for the capture of a single elderly priest? Surely?

Chrétien wound up to smash the truncheon across the back of Visser’s head. The priest spun so quickly he became a blur—

—(
Jesus Christ and Holy Mother Mary and all the saints, he moved like a
machine)—

—and caught the weapon in his outstretched palm. There was a dull, meaty
crack
like the snap of bone, but he didn’t react. Visser yanked the baton from Chrétien’s grip. Élodie tackled the sergeant. Visser’s counterstrike cleaved the air a hairbreadth over their heads with an audible
whir
. In the same motion the priest released the baton to send it winging at Longchamp. Longchamp dove aside. The very tip clipped him,
knocked him breathless. The deflected truncheon spun across the courtyard to smash against the fountain. The maple rod shattered into sawdust and shrapnel. A network of dark fractures spiderwebbed the plaster and marble.

Longchamp ignored the burning in his chest. Crossed the last few yards. Spread his arms to grapple with the priest-thing. Visser crouched again. Longchamp hurled himself at the priest.

And soared through empty air as the other man (
man?
) leaped a solid five yards to land atop the sloped roof of the empty funicular. His shoes—regular, ordinary shoes like any humble priest might wear—slipped on the icy metal. But Visser grabbed the edge with his unbroken hand to arrest his slide. Metal crumpled.

Longchamp tucked and rolled. Still climbing to his feet, he thrust an outstretched arm at the heliograph pillar, bellowing, “Somebody get on the flasher! Tell ’em to lock down the Spire NOW!”

Visser jumped from the funicular to the brise-soleil that shaded the Porter’s Prayer. The frost-slick polymer resin jounced slightly under his weight, but it held. It was the same material as the stairs themselves. He lost his footing and for a fraction of a second it appeared he might fall back into the quadrangle at the base of the funicular. But Visser wedged the fingers of his broken hand into the mortar of the Spire and curled his other hand around the outer edge of the stairwell. He crouched in that posture, motionless, for a few seconds.

Longchamp knew what it meant when a Clakker paused like that. It was calculating, finding the best path to its objective.

“Sprayers and bolas, NOW!”

Longchamp knew a pointless order when he gave one. They’d thought they’d be capturing a man. Not… whatever this so-called priest was. Visser looked like a man but moved like a Clakker. Would he give Last Rites to his victims?

Having righted himself, Visser started to move. He scurried up the helical ribbon of scarlet polymer that ran all the way to the top of the Spire. And the king’s apartments. But the frosty plastic offered no purchase. Visser moved in a crouched crablike scramble atop the canopy, outside hand ready to snag the edge of the awning, inside hand ready to crush stone and crumble mortar. Any normal human would have found it an untenable posture after a few strides and agonizing after a dozen. But Visser ascended faster than a healthy man at a dead sprint.

Chrétien, closest to the base of the stair, snatched a truncheon from one of the uniformed guards. He flung it at the figure scrambling atop the Porter’s Prayer. And an excellent throw it was. It whispered through the wintry air, spinning end over end, to impact Visser’s ankle with a wince-inducing
crack
. A blow like that should have felled anybody. But the thing in the priest body didn’t even slow.

Somebody else tried the same thing, throwing a truncheon at the priest’s face in hope of stunning him. But the pointless maneuver missed.

Visser’s ascent took him past the first curve of the spiral stair. He disappeared behind the base of the Spire. And when he made it to the top?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Longchamp’s mind raced. Turned inward, the sprayers on the outer walls could hit the lower reaches of the Spire. But it would be a tricky shot from so far away, and Visser would probably be too high and out of range before they could attempt it. What of the new steam harpoons? Rickety things with an unknown, untested maximum range.

Élodie and the other guards looked to him. “Sir?”

He grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her toward the heliograph station. He sent another guard to the inner wall.
“Run! I want sprayers and harpoons trained on the Spire fucking
yesterday
. Free firing!”

Just don’t hit the gantries…
If those came down, they’d never have time to rebuild before the siege began.

Visser emerged from behind the Spire. He’d already made two revolutions of the Porter’s Prayer and was beginning a third. He hadn’t slowed.

The nearest suitable weapons were hundreds of feet overhead: the stash of anti-Clakker ordnance kept in reserve as the king’s very last line of defense if the metal horde swarmed the inner keep and ascended the Spire. They had to get ahead of Visser.

He sprinted for the funicular. Sergeant Chrétien fell in alongside him. Longchamp wrenched the door open so hard he thought for a moment he’d warped the hinges. The steel floor of the car rang like an abused bell under the tromping of their boots. Chrétien elbowed the glass case for the emergency release. Glass tinkled to the floor. He wrenched the lever. Somewhere under them, a pump shunted water from the ballast tanks. The car shook like a hotblooded racehorse waiting for the gate to spring open.

The
chuff-chuff
of a goop thrower boomed across the inner keep. Longchamp wrenched his neck, turning too quickly to watch a glistening glob undulate through the empty space between the wall and the Spire. It disappeared overhead. He hoped to hell the gunners weren’t about to paralyze the keep with shit aim. Bad enough if they coated half the Spire—

A piercing steam whistle sliced through his worries.

“Hold on!” said Chrétien.

He yanked the emergency brake lever upright again. Élodie leaped into the car. It shot up before she landed, catching her off-balance and slamming her face against the floor. Longchamp hauled her to her feet. Her nose bled.

The scarlet twists of the Porter’s Prayer fell away like autumn leaves. A flash of fire and steam atop the inner wall launched a harpoon at them. What first looked like a sliver they would outrun swelled into four feet of black iron traveling faster than their car. He couldn’t see where the harpoon hit the Spire, but they felt it. The tracks shook; outside, the stairs bounced like a spring.

The shadow of a gantry crane flashed over them. Chrétien jerked his chin at Longchamp’s pick and hammer, still dangling from his pack. The captain was the only one of the trio carrying weapons: an awkward fact that couldn’t be overlooked in the confines of the car. Aside from hurting Visser’s feelings, just what in the hell could they do to the rampaging whatever-the-hell he was?

The quaver in Chrétien’s voice betrayed his attempt at nonchalance when he said, “The king will probably make you a baron this time, if you can do it again.”

Longchamp shook his head. “We take Visser alive if at all possible. I want to know what he knows.”

The Spire shook again. Another impact, this one close enough to knock them off their feet. The sergeant looked up, at the oncoming track. “Oh, shit—”

The funicular slammed into the harpoon that had just pierced the Spire. The car tried to wrap itself around the iron spear. The sudden deceleration launched all three occupants against the ceiling. And then to the floor, where they landed in a heap.

The hammer tried to knock a new hole in Longchamp’s head. It was a miracle the pick didn’t impale him. Chrétien’s head slammed against the floor; he stopped moving. Élodie moaned. All three of them had been lacerated by flying glass. Blood slicked the canted floor, and ran in rivulets toward the
door swaying like an unlatched gate over a two-hundred-foot drop.

Somewhere nearby, metal groaned. A shudder, and then the car dropped a double handspan. A talus crash echoed from below, followed a moment later by the
clang-bong
of an iron harpoon striking hard earth: The impact had levered stones from the Spire. And probably wrenched the tracks loose.

The car shuddered again. The funicular threatened to tear free of the tracks, and the tracks free of the Spire.

Longchamp mounted the ladder affixed to the uphill end of the car and opened the emergency exit hatch. The car vibrated; metal squealed. Longchamp climbed out. He scanned the naked stone of the Spire, the wildly jouncing spiral of the cloister stairs, the shattered stone and warped steel rails of the funicular tracks. They were near the top, several turns of the stair above the pigeon roosts. The guns had fallen silent. The lower stretches of the Spire were coated in random patches of lime-green epoxy. Above that, the Spire bristled with harpoons. Each marked a spot where the gunners had missed their target.

Where was that Goddamned priest? Below or above?

No time. Longchamp hooked a knee around the safety rail and leaned inside. “Get him up to me.”

Élodie stood, levering the concussed sergeant to his feet.

“I can stand,” he said, sounding drunk. He blinked and squinted, as though unable to focus his eyes.

“You can’t climb, and I don’t have time to be gentle.”

Together Longchamp and Élodie got him balanced atop the car, just across a narrow gap from the Porter’s Prayer. He lost consciousness halfway through the transfer.

An icy wind whickered through Longchamp’s beard. It numbed his face, his fingers. It was frequently windier atop the Spire than at ground level, and now the wintry air buffeted
them while they perched precariously on icy metal and slick polymers. It turned every motion, every shift of weight, into a measured gamble. Longchamp couldn’t remember the last time somebody had used the emergency exit hatch to climb from the funicular to the stair. Nobody had ever done it while hauling an unconscious casualty across.

A harpoon streaked through the empty space between the wall and the Spire. It flashed through Longchamp’s peripheral vision for an instant before impacting the Spire several twists below them. The tower shook like a quaking aspen in the throes of autumn. Longchamp slipped. His boots slid toward the edge of the Porter’s Prayer and the long drop to the courtyard below. The bottom fell out of his stomach; his bowels turned to water. Impelled by muscle memory and fear, he grabbed the pick dangling from his rucksack, detached it, and brought the diamond tip down at the brise-soleil with all the strength of his outstretched arm. Longchamp’s heart tried to climb up his throat, but then the pick pierced the polymer sheath and arrested his slide with a hard jerk to his shoulder. A moment later the teakettle
whoosh
of a steam harpoon gave them belated warning of the incoming shot. Longchamp lost his grip on Chrétien. The limp sergeant slid toward the drop. Élodie, ankle hooked around the rungs of the funicular’s escape ladder, caught him.