The Iron Ship (9 page)

The man’s feet twitched, one shoe fell off. A trickle of urine ran from his stockinged foot, his last statement on the sorry condition of mortality.

The crowd roused itself and gave a ragged cheer.

Who this man was, and what he did—these things are not important. He was gone from his life and so from our story. He will not be back, save but briefly.

Two well dressed gentlemen near the back of the crowd though, they
are
important. They were there to watch the hanging, but not to see the man die.

They hung back from the throng under the projecting upper storey of a shop, sipping hot wine from horn cups. Their clothes marked them out as men of a higher degree than the rabble around them.

They were at once within and apart from the crowd, as is always the way of the rich among the poor. This one’s Garten, the other Trassan. A pair of brothers among the siblings I mentioned. Garten was shorter and slimmer than Trassan, who was taller and stouter. Garten wore the stiff formal clothes of a bureaucrat—a long tunic belted at the waist, capacious sleeves, a round collar, the cloth stiffened into wide pleats below his waist. He wore sober hose of black underneath, and shoes that still shone despite the ordure caking the cobbles of the square. His top hat took his height up over Trassan’s, who had the bigger physique. His badges of office were silver and bright, declaring him to be an officer of the Admiralty under the patronage and protection of Duke Rommen Abing, and therefore in favour with Prince Alfra. Otherwise his clothes were sober grey of very fine cloth. He wore a fur coat cast over his shoulders and pinned at the throat, his arms out of the sleeves as is the fashion of the moment. This was not part of his guild clothing, but it was cold, and therefore excusable. Unusually for a bureaucrat he wore a gentlemen’s sword at his side. Others in his vocation frowned at this. His carrying of the weapon was not technically incorrect. Garten was a goodfellow, albeit of the newer blood, and so entitled to wear the blade even if bureaucrats traditionally did not. No one spoke openly against it; Garten Kressind was uncommonly skilled with the weapon, as I see some of you know.

His brother Trassan was an engineer, a clever, quick-minded man when it came to mechanisms and power to output ratios and suchlike, a little duller of thought when it came to many other things, as is the way with focussed minds. He could rarely find his hammer, or his shoes, or his mistress, and therefore had many spares of each. But he was ambitious, and that was why he had met with his older brother the day before another brother’s exile and a threeweek before their sister’s second wedding. If their father had known of it, he would have approved of this subterfuge. Trassan wore clothes that once, several iterations back in their ancestry, would have been practical, but had bled out much of their utility under the scissors of fashion. The leather apron he wore was too flimsy for work, the heavy boots overly heeled, the hat too broad and too feathered, his goggles were a decorative hatband of brass and glass that would not have protected the eyes of a rat.

He had, of course, more practical versions of these garments, but on the street all men of means are expected to wear the costume of their profession, and he was no different.

“That was a bad death,” said Trassan. “A very poor speech.” His words rode clouds of steam from his mouth.

Despite the various trades they had undertaken and their individual ways of thinking, the Kressind siblings were more similar than different, and each enjoyed moving oratory in their own way. Both were disappointed. “Give him credit, it must be hard to speak out over a crowd like this, staring the end in the face,” said Garten. This was the way between them. One spoke, the other disagreed, sometimes in jest, sometimes for devilment. Only rarely were their disagreements sincere enough that they came to blows. They were uncommonly close as a family. However, they as rarely agreed immediately.

“Other people manage it,” Trassan said. “It’s not like he’s going to get another chance. That would spur me on to better efforts. This is not one of Guis’s plays. There is no rehearsal.”

“You’re being harsh, brother. The man was about to die.”

“And now he is dead. Proves my point don’t you think?” Trassan shrugged. “Those gallows aren’t up to much either.”

He pointed out the various failings of the equipment, and suggested improvements. His brother was interested, although not as interested as Trassan. The crowd was breaking up, giving a clearer view of the corpse turning at the end of its rope. Only a handful of people were staying for the ghosting. There had been many ghosts that day, shrieking their way into the afterlife. Even marvels, alas, pall through familiarity.

The sun had already gone into the west, painting the smog in the sky mauve by way of farewell. The great round bulk of the Twin loomed large above the rooftops and factory chimneys, the spires and domes, the derricks and cranes and crenellations of the city beyond the square. The Twin was dark and unknowable, the Twin scowled at the proceedings as if it disapproved. The Twin blotted out half of the birthing stars. The White Moon ran before it, bright and terrified. The Red Moon trailed it, as if building the nerve to make its oblique dash across the Twin to the safety of the horizon. Bashful stars hid in the clouds.

Garten laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “There! There he is!”

Aarin Kressind stepped onto the gallows, robed in green and gold. He had his hood up, and his hands were held deep into his trailing sleeves. A bareheaded acolyte, bearing the ceremonial chest and candlestick of the ghosting, shivered behind him. He had an uncommonly memorable face, all nose and eyes. Guider Kressind’s more uncanny servants were kept out of sight. You know of what I speak.

“He doesn’t seem cold, not like that deacon of his,” said Garten.

“Pasquanty? That rat? Aarin told me he wears a fur vest under that get-up,” said Trassan.

Garten gave a snort of laughter. Those immediately in front of him in the crowd turned and scowled. Levity was inappropriate at a ghosting. The living on the scaffold got little respect, but the dead were another matter.

Guider Kressind went through the eleven lines of release as the corpse of the man was brought down and laid upon a white sheet on the boards. Candles were lit and snuffed out in the proper order, the chest of souls opened and closed. The Guider went to the head of the man, and bent forward. He removed his hands from his sleeves with a flourish, revealing many rings of no small value. His hood he cast back, showing the white orb of his ruined eye. He put his face close to that of the corpse and made three sharp intakes of breath, followed by one long, sucking inhalation. Then he stood straight, replaced his hands in his sleeves, took a step back and waited. Few saw the strain on his face, but it was there, a tremble to his limbs from the effort. Ghosting is not what it used to be. Harder, some say.

Have you ever seen a ghosting? The nature of the era dictates the need for it is lesser, although violence and great sorrow still require it be done according to the old rites. Those ghosts that refused to go present the likes of Guider Kressind with a stiff struggle. Green and silver light crept from the dead man’s nose and mouth, questing tendrils at first, which twined and pulled themselves into a rising cloud of thready vapours. Aarin exhaled his held breath upon them, and they condensed into a loose image of the dead man. He glared at the crowd, then streaked skywards with the shriek of the departing.

“Not a bad job,” said Trassan. “Quick, no fuss.”

“Do you mind, goodfellows?” said a woman. “Show some respect to the Guider and the dead!” It was not the Karsan way to speak out so, a gentle tutting and a rolling of the eyes were the norm. But they were being rude, so fair play to the woman.

Garten smiled. He was a sensible man, overly thoughtful and sometimes prone to vacillation because of it, but in the company of his kin a different, somewhat rakish, side emerged. “That’s not a Guider,” he said. “That’s our brother.”

Trassan and Garten watched Aarin step down from the scaffold.

“You must agree,” said Trassan to the woman, who was now tutting and rolling her eyes in the aforementioned manner of the Karsans, “that he did the ghosting well.”

“A fine ghost,” agreed Garten. “Shall we go and talk with him?”

Trassan shook his head. “He’s busy. We’ll likely all meet tomorrow anyway to see Rel away.”

Garten handed his wine cup back to the vendor and puffed out a plume of steam. “Let’s go and eat then. Then we might discuss this proposal about which you have been so close-mouthed.” Garten said this with a smile, but his brother’s reticence to say why he had wanted this meeting had started to annoy him several days ago.

“Naturally, a man must eat, but later,” said Trassan. “If we are quick, we still have time to head to the museum. I wish to see the Old Maceriyans’ god before dinner.”

“How many times have you seen him? Dozens. Mother dragged us all round that place too many times to count.”

“She did. But the truth is, I want to ask him a question.”

Trassan had a marvellous new device with him, a tiny timepiece no bigger than his palm, but as accurate in marking the time as any market clock. He consulted this ‘watch’ as they walked toward the Royal Museum of Karsa. By his reckoning they had time for a quick drink and still make the exhibit he wished to see, so they stopped and had three. Per Allian’s water pipes and sewers had made the water safe enough to drink, but Trassan held the old distrust of it and drank only beer. For health reasons, he insisted. A respectable attitude.

As brothers meeting after long apart, they drank immoderately of the stronger type of ale. They became rowdy, and this was not acceptable. They were forced to relieve themselves in an alley, and then to run for the museum to make the last admission. By the time they reached the bottom of the building’s broad stairs, they were panting. They giggled and shoved at each other as they scraped their boots free of mud. A pair of young ladies were hurried along past them by their chaperone. Garten, more decorous than his brother, nudged Trassan in the ribs at this. They feigned sobriety as they ascended the stairs, approached the paybooth, handed over their money, and went inside.

Perhaps it was the hush of the place, or the weight of history pressing down from every brick of the building. Whatever the reason, once the brothers were in the main body of the hall they behaved in a manner more fitting to their station. They walked rapidly along the main hall’s central exhibit, an aisle of bones lined by soft, velvet ropes, as if such a boundary could delimit this age of reason, keeping it uncontaminated by the savageries of the past. They walked by the remains of extinct creatures. A complete skeleton of a horse, that beast of burden of the ancients, then on by a pair of elephantine skulls of animals hunted out for use in forgotten wars thousands of years gone by. A modalman’s four-armed skeleton reared up, ivory in the gaslights. There were plaster dummies of men from the Years of Woe arranged in vignettes of desperate combat. In the museum, their time of endless war is grouped alongside the horrors of the elder days. A fitting comment on that uncivilised age.

The brothers came to the Maceriyan gallery. A broad, high arch of patterned brick and stone led from the main hall to the museum’s most prized exhibits. The guard looked annoyed as they walked under the arch. His hand dropped from the grille that would shut it for the night, which he had been about to pull closed. Other visitors were heading for the exit, the museum’s cleaning staff were already beginning the laborious task of polishing its marble floors. The brothers were late. Only minutes remained before the closing bell would chime.

Garten glanced at the relics of Old Maceriya and Pre-Maceriya as they went by, things dragged from the earth by archaeologists these last one hundred years. Machines of unknown purpose stood upon plinths, their parts locked by corrosion. Statues missing a leg, or an arm, or a head, were carefully presented on iron rods. Monumental sculptures crowded alcoves fifty feet high. Glass cases showed off the personal effects of the nameless dead, each one carefully pinned, numbered, and annotated in the careful hand of antiquarians.

The lighting was low in the museum, and getting lower as various side galleries and individual rooms were shut up and their lamps doused. The galleried windows along the tops of the walls were dark. The air was musty and unmoving, as dry as that of a tomb. The ghosts of the Maceriyans were long departed, and the building had been properly warded in any case, but Garten could not put aside the fear that if they lingered too long in the hall, he and his brother would be lost to the ancient dead, forced to join them in procession night after night. An earth tremor set the exhibits a-rattling, doing nothing to lessen this impression.

The odd noises that precede the closing of any large building prompted Trassan to stride faster. His shoes squeaked upon the floor. His pocket watch was in his hand, its protective clamshell open. He frowned at it every third step or so, as if the lateness of the hour was its fault, and not his for insisting upon another drink.

They went past a lofty side hall which housed a massive pediment taken from the temples of balmy Ferrok and reconstructed in Karsa’s hall of antiquities. Decorated by an elaborate frieze, it was regarded widely as the museum’s greatest artefact. The brothers spared it no thought, and headed for the resting place of the world’s putative last god. Although we all know another resides in Perus, and a couple more besides.

Trassan came to an abrupt halt. The case—in truth a sizable room walled with glass—was empty. The glimmer lights inside were out. Bottles and clay amphorae were scattered on the floor, just visible in the dark.

On the ornate framing of the case, in large letters, was written: ‘Eliturion, God of Wine and Drama’.

Trassan was disappointed. He cast about until he spotted a sorry looking man pushing a wide broom up the gallery. “Excuse me!” he said. “Where is the Maceriyan god?”

The man looked up from the floor slowly, as if he had not raised his head in months. “Yes, goodfellow?”