Chapter Three: Chasing Prophecy (Never a Good Idea)
And when the Unwritten Times shall come upon us,
Then shall Prophecy itself hang in the balance.
He will hold in his hand the Key of the Gates,
And Darkness will hold sway over the land.
– Annals of the First Age
I slip in through a window I've used previously, but to my surprise the small sitting room is empty of its usual occupant. It's also a great deal neater than the last time I saw it. Gone are the drifts of notes, the maps and diagrams pinned to the walls, the stacks of books about City history and legend. A glance around shows the books put away on the bookshelves, and a new secretariat stuffed full of neatly arranged papers. I slip over to it and tug out a paper far enough to recognize it as familiar. I'm faintly relieved: it would have been a little worrisome if the man had completely abandoned his forty-year obsession.
The soft sound of footsteps in another room draw my attention from the note. I slide it back into its place and slide myself into a shadow. He's never tried to arrest or attack me before, but I'm not relying on that now. He is, after all, a Hammerite priest.
A sturdily built man of about fifty enters the room, carrying an oil lamp in one hand and carefully balancing a book and a mug of tea in the other. He sets all three down on the low table between the armchairs, then leaves the room again. I remain still, watching. Inspector Drept seems years younger than the last time I saw him, looking more his age than the obsessed, worn-down old man who first set me on the Hag's trail. He moves like a man given a new purpose in life.
I'm a little surprised to discover that this pleases me.
Drept returns with a plate of biscuits, and spends some time fussing over the arrangements of food, drink, and book. I wait until he is settled, then move silently over to the other armchair.
In our previous meetings, I had noted that Drept–unlike most of his very excitable brethren–is supremely unflappable. Perhaps hunting for a supernatural killer across forty years will do that to a man; I don't know, having never tried it myself. Regardless, when he looks up and notices me sitting in the chair across from him, he only starts slightly. Then he closes his book around one finger and says, in his slow, formal way: "I had not expected to see thee again, my shadowy friend."
I raise my eyebrows, though I doubt he can see much of my expression in the shadows of my hood. "Odd choice of word for a Hammer," I comment. "'Friend.'"
"Art thou not my friend?" he asks, sounding a little surprised. "Didst thou not assist me in mine quest, and slay the Hag that murdered the friend of my childhood?" He rises, and I tense, but he only leaves again for the other room, returning a short time later with another mug of tea, which he sets down near me. I eye it uneasily.
"'Tis not poisoned," says Drept, noticing my hesitation. He sounds faintly amused. Nettled, I push my hood back and reach for the tea.
"I'm still a thief," I remind him.
The other man smiles a little. "There are worse things to be in this world, my friend. And the debt I owe thee for destroying the Hag is greater than any treasures thou might have stolen."
Well, I've always known that Drept was strange, even for a Hammer. The fact that he did not reach for a weapon the first time he met me probably ought to have been a pretty clear indication.
"I didn't actually kill the Hag myself, you know." I don't know why I'm trying so hard to convince him he shouldn't call me 'friend.' After all, I came here to get information out of him, not persuade him that his duty is to arrest me and throw me into Cragscleft Prison.
"No, but thou didst defeat her, and leave her powerless, to meet justice."
I snort, and take a sip of the tea. It's quite good, much better than the brand I can afford. "If you can call getting torn apart by a mob 'justice.'"
"I would," says Drept flatly. "Perhaps not the justice of law and the land, but justice nonetheless. I believe even the Builder would not see it otherwise, for it was His hand that guided thee to me."
I wonder, briefly, if he was part of the mob that took Gamall that night, and just as quickly decide I really don't want to know. "I need a favor," I tell him, setting the mug aside. Getting too comfortable here would be a mistake.
"Of course," he replies evenly. "I suspected thou might. If it is within my power, I shall grant it thee."
I raise an eyebrow. "You don't even know what I'm going to ask."
"Thou wouldst not ask me to betray my faith, Garrett."
He sounds awfully sure of that, and a childish part of me wants to contradict him by asking just that. But I've wasted enough time here already, and Drept is too valuable to alienate out of petty annoyance. "When you were hunting the Hag," I say, "Did you come across anything else strange?"
Drept frowns. "What dost thou mean by 'strange?'"
I hesitate. What do I mean? I'm really not sure. Telling Drept about my little...episode at the Stonemarket Library–or about the Keepers in general–isn't something I care to do just yet. "I'm not sure," I finally tell him. "Anything to do with...prophecy, or prophets." Remembering the freezing morgue, the mutilated corpse, and the woman who coaxed answers from it I added, "Or the Guardians."
The Inspector's puzzlement congeals into something like shock. "What knowest thou of the Guardians?" he demands. For the first time, he sounds a little suspicious.
"Not a lot," I admit. "Ghost stories, mostly."
"There seems aught else any have heard," Drept agrees, relaxing slightly. He falls silent then, obviously thinking my question over. "I have spent much of my life combing the histories of this City," he says in a thoughtful voice. "Though always with mine obsession in mind." His eyes twinkle a little, self-deprecating–yet another trait that marks him as truly odd for a man of his faith. "I knowest that I did find many strange asides within the histories, but I fear, Garrett, that I cannot recall them directly to memory." I don't think I allow the stab of disappointment I feel to show on my face, but something must leak through, because Drept adds: "But it should be only a matter of a few days' searching to find them again. I believe I can recall where I read strange things that had naught to do with the Hag, if I but give it some thought." He gestures, a little vaguely. "Although I have found occupation to fill the hours I once spent seeking justice for Lauryl, my days are not so full that I cannot aid thee. As I have said, I owe thee a great debt, Garrett, and I will do what I can to aid thee."
I shift uncomfortably in the chair, wishing I understood why the insistence that he owes me bothers me so much. Time was, I'd have been thrilled to have a Hammerite owe me a huge favor...
Actually, they once had. I probably could have asked for anything short of their greatest relics. I know they expected me to demand a small fortune, from the comments I'd overheard. And the only thing I'd taken in payment was the mechanical eye, to replace the one the Trickster had torn from me.
Unsettled at this realization, I get to my feet. "I'll be back in a couple of days, then," I tell Drept. I am aware of a pressing need to be somewhere–anywhere–else right now. I slip to the window, then pause, my unaccustomed need for clarity suddenly overriding my good sense. "Drept...listen. You don't owe me. I was after the Hag already; you just pointed me in the right direction, and put a name to my enemy. I didn't do it for you. Or Lauryl." There is a bitter taste on my tongue at this last, which I know for a lie. Lauryl's sad, desperate, and above all dead little face still haunts my dreams. I'd done what I could for her, but it had been too little, and decades too late. It doesn't matter, somehow, that she'd been murdered years before I was born. "I did it to save my own skin." That much, at least, is true. For a given value of truth.
But Drept's smile is disturbingly smug as he rises and turns to face me. "I have heard tales, friend Garrett," he says. "Whispered here and there, if one but knows how to listen. Tales of the thief who tricked the Pagan god, and brought about his avatar's destruction when he sought to tear down the sheltering walls of civilization. Whispers that 'twas a thief who turned the madness of the Mechanist Karras and his Soulforge against him, saving all in this City and perhaps beyond when Karras would have murdered all living and left only machines. And I know of myself 'twas a thief, not Inspector Drept, who braved the horrors of the Hag's night and orchestrated her defeat."
My jaw aches, and I force my hands to unclench. "You shouldn't believe every tale you hear, Drept," I whisper.
"Perhaps I shouldst not," he agrees, amiably. "Still, I think I know what sort of heart it is that beats in thy breast. I wonder, Garrett... Dost thou?"
Damn Drept, anyway. I'm still furious three hours later, with a pack of angry guard-dogs (and not a few guards) chasing me up to the rooftops of Lord Ardeth's mansion with a bag of valuables at my belt. At the moment, my fury with Drept and his damned clear-eyed sight is subsumed by fury with myself, for allowing his words to goad me into something so entirely childish as an unplanned, impulsive job–and, even worse, allowing my own unease and anger to make me careless. Honestly, if I get caught by this bunch, I'll deserve to hang.
Although, I'd love to know just when it was Ardeth invested in guard-dogs. Last I heard, the man was terrified of anything remotely canine. It's possible his weariness at getting robbed every other month finally outweighed his phobia. It's also probable that the gossips have been talking about this sudden change in policy.
And I–who spent the last month chasing down the means for defeating supernatural hags and evading supernatural assassins out for my blood–haven't kept up on the gossip, and my lack of knowledge is about to bite me in the ass. Literally, if I'm not quick.
I make it to the roof and from there I manage to lose my pursuit over the Thieves' Highway. I spend a couple of hours nevertheless ensuring I haven't been followed. By the time I reach my hideout, I'm exhausted, aching, and thoroughly disgusted with myself.
Recently, I've been forced to acknowledge certain personality flaws that have complicated my life these last few years. Most notably: the naivete and greed that led me to trust Constantine and his too-good-to-be-true job offer. My life went to hell the day I agreed to retrieve the Eye for him; everything I've done since has been damage control. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.
Unfortunately, I've also had to recently own up to the fact that I'm at least as good at deceiving myself as the Keepers were.
Sitting on the edge of my narrow cot, I rub a thumb over the key-sigil on my hand. I've spent a good portion of my life running away from the Keepers and the youthful rebellion and resentment that drove me to run in the first place. I'd joined them because I wanted three square meals a day and a roof over my head year-round, and they were the only ones offering. Back then, I thought I might do anything, learn anything, for such a luxury. If the Keepers had kept me ignorant, I might have been content. But they educated me, and with the education came everything else: pride, arrogance, resentment. With the resentment came anger: they forced me to see more of the world than I ever had before, and it was broken. If there's one thing a starving street urchin hangs onto, it's the idea that somewhere, far away maybe, but somewhere everything is perfect–and that there's a chance, however impossible, the urchin might someday get the chance to glimpse it. The Keepers shattered that illusion for me. I forget how, exactly, but I do remember that it seemed very important to me at the time.
I suppose everyone is an idiot when they're twenty.
I don't entirely regret leaving the Keepers, but it's proven damned hard to escape them. I haven't succeeded yet, and I've spent almost fifteen years running. Just now, though, I wish I'd stuck around a little longer, and gotten a better grasp on the prophecy business. Keeper prophecy has plagued my life for the last five years, but in the past the Keepers themselves had always been around to tell me about it, prod and poke me in the right direction (or, at least, the direction they wanted me to go), and occasionally try to kill me when their prophetic interpretations gave them the wrong idea about my allegiances. At this point, I'll even take another game of cat and mouse with the Enforcers if it means I might get a few hints at the end of it.
But maybe...I won't have to. I'm not completely ignorant of the prophecies. I'd done my time in the scribarium as a novice, and Artemus had given me access more than once not only to a hearing of the Interpretations but also to a few of the Books of Prophecy themselves. Part of Keeper training involves sharpening the memory; I'm rusty, to be sure, and I never came close to achieving the flawless recall some of the masters had, but maybe with a little work I can remember some of what I know. It surely can't hurt to try.
I pull off my hood and the leather pads that protect my joints, then pile my tools on the floor, weapons within easy reach. The mechanical eye I carefully remove, placing it on a dish I keep especially for it. (While I can, technically, keep the thing in more or less indefinitely, I learned the hard way that it isn't necessarily a good idea. Interestingly enough, skin will attach itself to almost anything, even metal.) I want no distractions while I attempt this; I never was that good at meditation.
I haven't improved, either. I lay down, but before I can get much further than the basics of preparing my mind, I fall asleep.
The sound of quill-tips scratching on vellum is a familiar one, a chorus that has formed the backdrop for the latter half of my childhood. I lean my forehead against the window-pane, the leading and the slick, rippled surface of the thick glass cold against my skin. I shift my weight, seeking with the familiarity of long habit the hollow in the embrasure stones that will ensure a more comfortable seat. No doubt thousands of rumps before mine had claimed this particular spot as their own, but for the time being I alone have staked it as my personal territory. My own private corner of the world.
But not, alas, entirely alone. Although no sound of footsteps comes to my ears, the hair on the back of my neck prickles, and I turn my head from the blurred view of the City below to focus on the dark-robed figure lowering a burning taper to a burnt-out candle. Soft light blooms, gilding the edges of the man's heavy hood, sparking a glint of silver on his right hand: the ring that marks him as a Senior Keeper. I stay where I am, knees drawn up beneath my chin.
"Garrett." Artemus' voice is soft–few within these walls speak much above a whisper. "Brother Lancion tells me you had a disagreement with Marcellus."
'Disagreement' is an understatement–I'd left the bigger novice with a swelling eye and blood dribbling from his nose–but that is Lancion's way. I once heard him refer to a Hammer Inquisitor as 'rather persistent.'
I watch Artemus warily for a moment, but when there is no outward indication that he's going to hit me (he never has, but I still keep an eye out), or even that he's particularly upset (though it's hard to tell, with Keepers), I shrug and turn my attention back to the scene out the window. The autumn rains have started, and through the rippled glass the City is little more than blurs and smears of light and shadow. It's almost beautiful.
"Physical confrontation was, perhaps, not the best solution," Artemus says, blowing out the taper. The sharp smell of burnt paper fills the air.
"Marcellus is a burrick-breathed taffer," I mutter under my breath.
"Perhaps," my mentor agrees, and though I cannot see anything of his face beyond a blurred blob reflected in the glass, I can hear a faint smile in his voice. "But Keeper Orland has expressed his dislike of...disturbances, in the scribarium."
Orland, I am fairly sure, would as soon see me back out on the streets, or possibly dancing a gallows jig. Two years since the Keepers took me in, and he has yet to waver in his dislike of me. The feeling, at least, is mutual. I shrug again, and only half-listen as Artemus begins his gentle lecture on keeping my fists to myself when I should be copying manuscripts.
And then...something shifts. For a moment, it is as though the rain-smeared view of the world outside the Compound suddenly transposed itself over my eyes. It passes, but I can no longer see quite right. There is something wrong with my left eye. I move in my window-seat, and realize that I no longer fit so well.
"You know that everything has changed." Artemus' voice seems suddenly closer, though he has not moved. I blink at the robed figure, and realize that his mouth is still shaping the words of the lecture, but that I can no longer hear the remembered words. I slip out of the window embrasure, and turn to face another Artemus standing only a couple of feet away. We are of a height, and, glancing down, I see not the child-limbs I had expected, but the thicker bones and muscle of an adult.
The twelve-year old is still in the window-seat, drawing patterns on the fogged glass and pretending to listen to his teacher. I turn back to Artemus. "What is this?"
"Memory." He shrugs, echoing my child-self's earlier gesture. "Dream. Whatever you like. Nothing can ever be the same, you know."
"I see you haven't become less cryptic in death," I remark. Part of me is hoping to provoke a reaction with this; another part of me–something more closely related to the child in the window–is hoping that Artemus will deny being dead. Talking to me in my dreams is not a talent he ever displayed in life, however.
"Death is but a door," he says. Cryptically. "Walk with me, Garrett." He turns away.
My first step lands on rain-slicked cobbles, and cold drops bite into the bare skin of my hands and arms. We're in Tercel Courtyard in South Quarter, the silent stone gargoyle staring down at us with blind eyes. I try not to look at it, though the memory of the stone claws raking across my back prods me. "Artemus–"
"You can feel it, can't you? The shifting of the tide. The pull of fate." Artemus lifts his arm, the dark sleeve of his robe falling away from a pale hand. He cups his palm to catch the falling rain. "The river flows, and the dam is broken." Water fills the hollow of his hand, spills over.
Had this encounter occurred in reality–had Artemus still been alive and seeking me out as he had done before–I might have interrupted at this point, protesting the unnecessary (and irritating) vagueness of his words, however poetic. Here, however, I don't seem to have control over my tongue, and I stay uncharacteristically silent, watching the water–which seems to have become an endless stream, pouring onto the cobbles–and waiting...but for what?
"The balance was restored," he continues. "But now it must be maintained, to allow stability. To allow everything to at last move forward in its intended path." He lifts his head, eyes glittering in the shadows of his hood. "History is written by the victors, you know. Truth is often something else entirely."
"I've noticed," I tell him dryly. "What I'm not noticing, here, is you giving me anything like a straight answer. Which is not out of the ordinary, I admit–but I was hoping for something a little better than the usual."
My old mentor smiles wryly. "This is a dream, isn't it? A memory?"
"You tell me," I growl.
"I cannot guide you anymore, Garrett," Artemus says. "The road is your own, now."
"Then why are you here, Artemus?"
"Because you needed guidance."
"You call this guidance? Really? How about telling me straight out what's really going on, then–like who carved up that Keeper, and what they're after."
"The road is your own," my old teacher insists. "I cannot give you answers you have not found. The prophet must take his place in prophecy."
I open my mouth to say something rude–and stop. I study him for a moment. "You're not really here, are you? You're not Artemus, not really, you're...part of my mind." This admission hurts more than I care to admit, and I swallow the sudden lump of pain in my throat. It settles somewhere in my chest, cold and hard.
He tips his hand, and the water empties from it. "If you like."
I don't like, but I keep this opinion to myself. After all, I was the one who set out to dredge up information from my own brain. Somewhere, sometime, I had encountered something in the Keeper histories about this 'balance.' Something that now strikes me as false, history written by the victor–and this is how my mind seeks to bring the information to the surface.
"Open your eyes," suggests Artemus.
Why had I recalled that particular day, midway through my twelfth year? The fight with Marcellus, the lecture...neither event had been of any significance. Even now, I couldn't recall why I'd hit Marcellus, or even what he looked like beyond 'bigger than me.'
Not the fight then. What had I been working on earlier, in the scribarium?
Even as the thought enters my head, I find I am no longer in the rainy courtyard. Instead, the soft smell of old leather and gently decaying paper fills my nose. I'm standing behind a boy of twelve, still undersized and scrawny for his age, bent over his work at a high desk. He is copying out a book of glyphs, brow furrowed in concentration beneath his unruly dark hair. His hand is steady, however, and I know–because the boy is me–that he is better at it than many of his fellow novices, even those that are years older. That he even manages to read–if not entirely comprehend–most of the glyphs he is transcribing.
I move closer, and lean over the boy-Garrett's shoulder to look at the book he is copying. Memory stirs. It was one of the Keeper histories, more than three hundred years old. I had secretly been a little excited to be allowed to copy it; none of the other novices in my group were good enough with the glyphs or steady enough in their calligraphy to be entrusted with such a book. I remember, too, that I was still concealing from my teachers just how much of the glyph-language I already knew–more than many of them would have liked or approved. It's possible Artemus knew, or at least suspected, but as in later years he trusted me even then. As I have so many times before, I wonder why this is so.
Now, in the shadows of my own memory, I read again the pages I copied so many years ago. Then I had only understood the bare bones of it, enough to recognize it as an account of a conflict between the Keepers and some other power. Enough to know that the Keepers had won. With the eyes of an adult now, and the deeper knowledge of the glyphs earned through bitter experience, I read again the account:
"...and the Keepers did call upon the power of the Greater Glyphs, drawing down terrible storms of destruction upon the dead-speakers, and the necromancers who dared call themselves the protectors of the gates did fall and their secrets were utterly exposed. And the Keepers destroyed their strongholds and cast down their numbers, and drove the few that were left from the City to be lost in the wilderness.
"And the Keepers alone took up the mantle of the guardians, as it had been foretold."
I raise my eyes from the yellowed vellum pages to see Artemus standing again before me. Below us at the desk, the boy continues his work, oblivious.
"Do you see it now? The imbalance?"
"I..." I pause. "I don't know."
"You must open your eyes," Artemus insists. "You must learn to see, Garrett. You know what you are. You must admit it, and accept." Around us the scribarium begins to fade, and I feel myself beginning to fall.
"No, wait, Artemus–"
I wake up, the hard slats of wood beneath my thin mattress biting into my back. I am grasping at the empty air, trying to bring back a dead man to advise me. I can almost hear his voice through the ringing in my ears.
You must accept it. The balance must be maintained, Keeper.
As it happens, I'm not any fonder of taking maddening orders from Keepers even when they are, presumably, my own unconscious mind disguised as a Keeper. Ignoring myself is a lot harder, however. I can't exactly get away, and however frustrating my little attempt to gain information from my own mind was overall, I can't claim that it was a waste of time and pretend nothing happened.
I'm sure now that asking Inspector Drept to find me information on the Guardians was the right course of action. If I've learned one thing these last few years, it's that the more something seems to be 'mythical' or 'legendary' the more likely it is to be real and about to make my life a misery. I'd seen a woman who called herself a Guardian. She'd no reason to lie: she'd been talking to a corpse at the time, entirely unaware of the living thief eavesdropping.
I wish I knew what 'the balance' really means, though. It was a beloved phrase amongst the Keepers, generally providing an excuse to sit on their collective hands and do nothing. But while I may accept that I'm tied tighter to the Keepers' fate than I'd like, I doubt very much that my innermost thoughts have adopted Keeper protocol, even if they do present themselves to me in the shape of Artemus. Whatever 'the balance' is, it's a call to action, not apathy. As to what I am...well, Artemus is wrong there. I'm Garrett the master thief, and nothing more.
I don't want to be anything more.
