I saw a poster as I went down to the docks.
Advertising for people to join the Priest’s Union. The banner at the top just said “SAILING TO A BRIGHT FUTURE”, in all capital letters. Below was a rather well done depiction of the docks, on a shining bright day. There was a shining lighthouse in the distance that looked like it was made of crystals, done up in white, red and black. A buxom woman in a toga with flowing golden hair, the goddess Hylyss, was blowing wind into the sails of one ship, whilst a man made of iron, the god Anchorhold, was wearing a cartoonish smile and patching up a hole in another ship’s hull.
All the sailors were smiling, the ships were clean, and the sky was a sunny blue.
The poster was torn and dulled from dampness, and about a quarter of it was hidden behind another poster advertising a bordello. Looking up at reality, the sky was a dull smoggy grey, a mixture of actual clouds and factory smoke. Hells, half our ships didn’t even use sails any more, they were upgrading over to engines, and I didn’t see any of the workers smiling.
I was looking for Frank, which meant talking to the dock workers. I had no idea how many were unionised, but I figured most of them. It was easy to find them, hauling crates onto and off ships, preparing berths, arguing with captains about pay and harbor clerks about how quickly it’s reasonable to expect a hundred crates of squid gonads or whatever to be moved out of a warehouse before they start to stink up the place.
But it wasn’t just a matter of approaching them at work, they’d tell me to piss off, they’re busy. I waited for about lunchtime instead, dived into a bar. Honestly I picked one at random, the Scrimshaw Turtle.
I’d like to say I picked the one that looked least like I’d get stabbed in it, but any bar that looked like that was a bar for chartered sailors, state employees. There was nowhere with day laborers in it that didn’t look at least a little stabby. Figured I was being smart by at least going for one whose name was about death and violence rather than tits and dicks, hopefully that skewed the odds of what kind of harassment I’d receive, at least.
The Scrimshaw Turtle’s main draw was, well, a huge turtle skeleton carved in swirling patterns in the center of the room. It occupied a table and a few men were eating beside it in the little bit of space left on the far end.
The bartender looked like a ginger beard with arms coming off the sides. I could barely make out the shape of him under there at least, his face and body was covered with scruffy red hair which ran all the way down to the ground. He grunted when I approached the counter.
“I’ll take a beer ‘n’ some broth. I’m going to guess it has turtle chunks in it, right?” I tried to smile, come off friendly. He gave me a long, unwelcoming look in reply. He grunted. He didn’t seem to appreciate the joke.
“Aheeeh-” I chuckled awkwardly. He did pour me the drink though, and the broth. He didn’t tell me what was in it, but at least it smelled pretty good.
Well, it smelled okay, but I had low standards.
I handed him a couple crowns, sat down on one of the bar stools. I was fairly sure my clothes were the cleanest thing in the building, so I tried to sit lightly on the wooden seating.
“I’m uh-” I tried to start up a conversation. Nobody else seemed to be coming in to distract him, luckily. “I’m looking for Frank?”
The barkeep stared at me in reply. Then turned his head so slowly I thought I could hear it creak, eyes staring at somebody in the back of the room. For a moment I thought I’d found him already, started to get excited, but he was looking at somebody I didn’t recognise, guy with an eyepatch.
“That’s- Frank?”
The bartender nodded very, very slowly. It was almost agonizing waiting for the answer when I was sitting here, increasingly aware of how out of place I was.
And increasingly aware that Frank was a pretty common name. I probably needed to be more specific.
“The uh- the Dock Union leader. With the uh, the Liberation Society? That Frank, not-”
Heads turned when I said that. They tried to be subtle, but I knew the pair by the turtle were looking. Same with the eyepatch guy. The barkeep didn’t reply, just looked at me with deep blue eyes that seemed to be staring into my soul.
I kept waiting for him to say something, and he kept not saying anything.
“...Is uh- he- uh, not- aheh… I need to ask him some things about the-” I tugged at my collar and sipped from the beer, trying to hide my anxiety. I tried not to chuckle inappropriately as I started to feel the looks being sent my way get increasingly unfriendly.
Right, Frank was currently being chased down by the guard and the Union. If they were his friends, they would probably assume I was trying to arrest him.
If they weren’t, uh, well, I was still very alone, acting very naive, and oh nine Chartered Gods, heavens and hells, how much money did I have on me? It wasn’t a lot, but I was wearing a big purse. It probably looked like a lot.
“If he’s not here I’ll just-” I stood, quickly, pushing my drinks away. “I’ll just go, shall I?”
I backed away slowly, not breaking eye contact. I grunted as I walked backwards into a loose chair, nearly stumbling, but recovered quick, eyes darting around.
I was almost back to the door, almost free.
A hand touched my shoulder. “Hey, no trying-”
I screamed, managed to jerk myself away and turned to run. I was already basically at the door, and breached into dim sunlight immediately. I didn’t stop running until I was around the corner, out of sight of the bar. My heart was pounding, I was breathing hard, put a hand to a wall and just bent double, waiting for my body to calm down.
Was I followed? No, I wasn’t followed.
That… had gone well. Wonderful information gathering exercise. First thing I learned, a lot of people are called Frank.
And I’m not good at interacting with dockers.
I took a little something from my pockets, a little snack, chocolate in a wrapper. It tasted warm from my body-heat and was already half melted, but it was still enough to calm me down. Good enough to convince my brain I wasn’t immediately about to get jumped again. Gave me a good chance to gather myself.
Somebody was bundled up in the dank little alleyway I’d found myself in. Curled up under discarded newspapers as a blanket, probably trying to sleep. I only noticed him once I’d calmed myself down.
Absurdly, I almost wondered if he knew where Frank was. But it’d be borderline cruel to wake the poor guy. I made my way back out of the alley, quiet as I could manage, not wanting to disturb him.
It occurred to me I had a better way to find Frank than just trawling bars and asking people at random.
I probably knew a few people around here, after all.
I did some work with food banks and soup kitchens, charity run. I bounced between organizations since they came and went, but it meant I knew some of the regulars, and even if I tended to mostly work in the Caravan Quarter, well, workers went where the work was. And a lot of workers down at the docks had needed that kind of help at some point in their lives.
It was just a matter of figuring out who could help.
It didn’t take me too long to find somebody. The guy’s name was Hobson. I didn’t know him that well and hadn’t seen him in a year or so, but he’d talked about his pregnant wife every time he came in for food, said he’d quit a job as a sailor to be with her and not found a replacement in time. I’d heard he’d got a job working customs checks, and indeed I found him checking boxes piled up on the quayside after a couple hours of looking and asking around.
“I’m a government worker, man, I’m not allowed to join a union. How would I know where he is?”
I waited for him to have a break before pulling him aside, and we talked as he sat on one of the barrels he was searching earlier. I stood a little behind him, using him to block the occasional salty spray of waves against the docks. The damp had been a relief from the summer heat at first, but now it was getting on my nerves.
“Well, you probably know people who do. I’m nearly an outsider here, at least tell me who I ought to be asking?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly reticent. “Come on, you’ll get me in trouble. Guard’re looking for him, right? Half- half my job’s not getting stabbed by smugglers, so - well, who d’you think’s probably hiding him? Of course I could, but-”
I lit up at that, beaming. And yet, I fought the excitement down. He had a point, I got why he was concerned.
I needed to know, but I couldn’t just-
“Look, I- this is important to me. You know I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t need this. I want to know- well, first of all, if he really did it. I- I knew Raspe, you know.”
“Oh, shit, you did?” He opened up a little at that, looking at me in surprise. “I’m so sorry, man, I had no idea.” He softened, voice turning sympathetic. He pursed his lips, glanced over his shoulder like he was expecting to be overheard, before saying “Just- promise me you don’t tell anybody I know this?”
I nodded, firmly. “Of course. I never told anybody about what you said about putting up with your wife’s cravings, did I?”
“Hey!” He hissed, turning red as a tomato. He laughed right after though, and I joined him. I bet he’d forgotten about that, too. It really had been years, and yet chatting with him still felt comfortable as ever.
“Fine, fine.” He sighed. “I can introduce you, even. There’s a place they probably have the guy hidden, if he’s with the Liberationists and gone to ground. I- those guys only ever want to get illicit stuff out of Eccless, not in, so they ask me for help sometimes and I don’t risk my job over it so much. I know the passcodes that’ll get you in. You can say I sent you and it should keep them from hurting you. Just don’t tell anybody, like, official, about this, okay?”
—
I was around the back of a warehouse in the early evening. A few boxes were piled up against the wall, simple unmarked wood, no sign of what was actually inside them. I could feel cold radiating from them though, like they were full of ice that somehow hadn’t melted in the sweltering summer sun.
A stray cat was curled up on top of one of them, lounging in relief from the heat. She was watching me with caution, and I didn’t want to get scratched. I was very, very careful as I approached, keeping from looking at her directly, movements slow.
I’d had pretty specific instructions from Hobson.
I was fairly sure this was the place, from his description, but I still felt silly. It felt too cloak-and-dagger, like something out of a penny dreadful.
I let out a sharp, high-pitched whistle, then knocked thrice on the roof of the box. The cat didn’t jump out of the way or anything, just stood slowly and jumped down to the side.
Hobson hadn’t mentioned a cat. Was it a guardian of some kind or just… here?
I listened carefully. There was meant to be some kind of signal. I strained my ears and I thought I could just about hear it. Whispering, right at the edge of my hearing. Not from inside the box, I could barely put a direction to it, but it felt further away than that. Like being three rooms down from a loud party, I knew somebody was here, but not close.
I slowly lifted the lid off the box, placed it aside. It was packed with ice around the edges, but there was a hole in the middle. I couldn’t see a bottom, it must have gone into a tunnel or something.
Or- no. Wedged in the ice, packed in, was a tiny idol. Divine then.
Probably to keep me from breaking my legs as I followed the rest of the instructions. I clambered onto the box, closed my eyes, wrapped my arms tightly around myself, put my feet together.
And jumped into the box feet-first, and down into the dark.
My stomach lurched as gravity turned at a right-angle. Halfway into my fall, I felt a split-second of weightlessness followed by the feeling that I was falling, not feet-first, but forward. I clutched my stomach to keep my lunch from coming up. A few moments later, I felt another moment of weightlessness, and then I felt like I was falling up, not just throwing up.
The little hairs all over my skin stood on end. Being touched by divine magic felt like that sometimes, like static. Had to be the little god packed in the ice.
Light hit my eyes, blinding, as I was shot up out of a hole and into the open air. I’d been almost calm in the darkness but now I panicked, flailing. I wish I could say I’d landed gracefully, or even planted comedically on my face or something, but I managed to hit the ground on my side instead, bruising my ribs and pulling a muscle on my shoulder.
Took me a second to realise that the blinding lights were actually quite dim. I was in what I was pretty sure was the warehouse I’d just been out the back of. Rows of crates piled high like palisades ran from wall to wall.
And Frank was pointing a pistol at me whilst I lay there on the floor.
“The fook’re you doing here?”
I rolled over onto my back, aching in a good few places. Plus, I figured showing my belly would make me look less of a threat. Sat up real slow, making sure he could see my hands the whole time.
It wasn’t just him in here. He had people with him, of course he did, and he had-
That static against my skin somehow ramped up. I wasn’t being outright touched by divine energy, but it was so heavy here the air was almost oppressive.
There were dozens of them here. Hundreds.
That’s what all the crates were. They all had little windows. Little windows for hundreds of glowing pairs of eyes, hundreds of statues staring right at me.
There were four laid out on the ground around me, too. One was a wolf with a grotesquely human face, one a woman sat legs-crossed with twelve arms. One was simply a black obelisk that nonetheless glowed, and… Green John again, from back in the lecture theater.
“Good to see you too. I- Hobson told me how to find you. I want to-” The words died in my throat as I stared down the black barrel of Frank’s pistol. “Put that away, I just want to talk.” I tried weakly. “I got arrested too, you know…”
Frank paused, looked at me levelly. I didn’t want to get to my feet until he’d made his call, and sat there rubbing my aching shoulder whilst I waited.
“Told you not to trust him. Public servants always-” Green John grunted, eyes lighting a little brighter as he spoke.
“About as much a public servant as a sewer cleaner. ‘S cool. She ain’t carrying nuffin’?”
“NOUGHT BUT THE CLOTHES ON HER BACK AND COIN IN HER PURSE.”
The obelisk ‘spoke’ deep enough I could feel the rumble in my gut. That was enough for Frank though.
“Next time y’bring at least a dagger or somethin’, stupid t’be wandering into places like this, slip of a girl like you? C’mon, let’s get you up.”
He extended a hand to help me up, and it nearly crushed mine as he gripped it. I was still glad of the aid as I brushed myself off.
“Should we, uh, get a chair? I just- I don’t want to hassle, just want to ask… ask about what happened. The guard think you- I don’t actually think you did it! Probably. Maybe. But uh-”
“...Nah.” He shrugged. The words sounded final, for how casual they were. “We’re gonna stand here in a nice circle, ‘n once we’re done talking we’re dropping you back outside. You seem a nice enough bloke, but I ain’t giving you a tour of the place, yeah?”
That seemed… fair. I let out an anxious chuckle and nodded. “Okay, okay. Right, uh- so. Should you at least introduce me to the other-” I turned to both the rough-looking men and the gods besides him. He gave me a flat look.
“...No.”
He did not elaborate. He left me to fill the little silence, and I rubbed the back of my neck, awkwardly.
“Right, okay, uh- questions, yes. I’ve been… I don’t know if you know the Society of the Infinite Staircase? I’ve been talking to them. They- they think your god-in-the-box theory is wrong. If that’s true, then-”
Frank tightened his grip on the pistol. I had no idea why, but I knew I’d said the wrong thing.
“You’ve been talking to them?” He spoke very slowly, and very carefully. “What did they say?”
“They- they think the church is responsible? I- I didn’t really talk to a high-ranking member, just- just one of their engineers I think? I- Erwin Schreck?”
“He’s their second in command.” That statement hung in the air like a weight. I swallowed audibly. I had no idea why Frank was getting more and more pissed. Or well, I had one idea.
“Do- is there a problem with them? Should I not be talking to them? I swear, I don’t know- if there’s a grudge there, or…”
Frank jerked his head a moment towards one of his people. They rummaged in their pocket and withdrew a little logo pin, an inverted pyramid vanishing towards a star. It was lightly bloodied. “Found one of theirs wandering around one of our other hideouts. Trying to plant evidence we reckon, pack full’ve some rare monster shit, Grootslang horn? Hoping it’ll turn up on detection prayers, probably.”
“And who do you think was giving expert testimony in the papers about how it was us what blew the box up?” Frank finished for his companion, before snorting derisively. “Blew up. Didn’t blow up, shit was just gone.”
Him saying that took a little weight off my shoulders. Somebody else saying that made me feel a little less crazy, a little less isolated after what Raspe had said.
“Hey, she ain’t carrying anything like that, right?” Frank asked the little obelisk
“UNLESS THE GODBOX WAS MADE OF COIN AND SHIRTCLOTH, NO.”
He seemed to take that as evidence enough. Still, I got the picture now. “I’m not- allied. They’re trying to frame you? Why?”
And more importantly, they agree with the Liberationists that they don’t have the Godbox.
“‘Cause they’re utopianist morons who think anyone can be free whilst we have slaves on the basis of-” One of the other Liberationists, a scrawny looking Gnoll, spoke up. I hadn’t seen her back there: She had dark brown fur, and was hunched up in the corner. Like most of her people she’d be taller than any human if she stood up straight, but had a hunched back, feline face sticking forward from her upper torso.
“Suma, stop.” Frank sighed, shaking his head. “We have the same broad goals and the same broad beliefs. All are free or none. We appear to disagree on who constitutes ‘all’. We’d thought they’d keep their hostility to yelling slogans and pooh-poohing protests in the papers, but apparently not.”
I arched a brow. The same broad beliefs? I’d had the Staircase explained to me as a scientific movement, not a social one.
“They helped construct the Godbox. I’m, uh- I’m trying to do the same. Make a new one, or find the old.”
“Not interested. I mean, maybe I’d be interested in finding the goddess inside, but the box itself?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “It’s- how do you explain the warp in Raspe’s office yet? Or hells, anything else he did. I saw it working myself during testing, and-”
Frank rolled his eyes. “I dunno about no office-warp, or what you saw, lass. But it’s just common sense, ain’t it? Magic ain’t real, yeah?”
“Okay, but people also say that about the gods. They aren’t- they’re powered by belief and sacrifice, that’s all. Little thought-constructs, they don’t think, just parrot your expectations back to you. What’s the difference between what you think and-”
I paused as I realised that saying that in the middle of the, uh, believes-gods-are-sentient society may have been a mistake. But to Frank’s credit, he didn’t look angry. Just tired, all of a sudden. He probably had this conversation a lot.
“Look, you can just- some things you just know. You can see it. Get to know gods enough, and-” A pause, as he walked up to Green John’s idol. Put a hand on his head. “You know how this little fella came to us?”
I shook my head. Frank looked down to Green John, let him tell the story. Green John let out a sound that sounded like a breath. I looked around, and the other humans watching looked… solemn, respectful. I tried to adopt the same tone.”
“I’m a household-deity now, but back centuries ago, before the Charter, before the Union came to shackle the gods, I used to guard this small town, Delvesbrook.” His voice was quiet, soft. For once, it did sound like the voice of a god, like wind through trees, somehow. “Once I was god of just a single tree-trunk, but I met a woman, and we fell in love, and long after she passed I protected her descendants and her village.”
I didn’t interrupt. Just listened. Part of me wanted to kneel to meet the idol at eye-level, but in the back of my head I could just imagine one of the Priests from when I was younger telling me off for showing undue deference outside what was mandated in the god’s contract. Gods served man, after all.
“After the Charter, I’m still guardian deity for Delvesbrook. Restricted by contract to being in one idol at a time but, well, god, no travel time, and they don’t need me at the minute..” He let out a mirthless, immobile chuckle. “But I kept doing something gods aren’t meant to: Keep falling in love. Not- not like a philanderer, one every thirty, fifty years. In the old days I’d have a proper marriage ceremony, if the girl were willing, but now-”
His voice cracked. He went silent. The idol didn’t move, there was no shift in his expression, but he sounded pained. The light faded from his eyes, for a moment I thought he’d abandoned the idol entirely. Then he came back.
“Good thing I found out about the Liberationists. They help… arrange rendezvous. Enough prayers and belief so the Union can’t just rewrite my history ‘til people forget I ever loved a human, and then so do I as a result.” He paused, must have read my expression. I immediately thought that he was contradicting himself, if he can be made to forget just because humans do, of course he doesn’t have thoughts outside our beliefs. Just like when he changed his answer back at the lecture theater, too. It was a reflexive thought, even if his story made my heart ache, a little, I couldn’t quite turn my brain off like that.
Frank, though, Frank’s expression was thunderous. For a second I thought he was angry at me, but instead he put a hand tightly over Green John’s shoulder, clasped it around the hard wood.
“You listen to a dozen stories like that and tell me they can’t suffer, Alex. You know it when you see it ‘n you can’t deny it no matter what the official research says. They can think, they can feel, they can hurt without us doing it for ‘em. Whole country’ve people wanting him not to fall in love and wanting him to just be a good little worker, ‘n he does anyway.”
I wasn’t convinced. I really did think he’d contradicted himself, and at any rate, he was saying what Frank expected him to, wasn’t he?
I still couldn’t look Green John in the eye though. Couldn’t meet that challenge.
“That’s what I thought.” Frank grunted. “God-in-the-box, I’m telling you, only way it could’ve happened. We probably would’ve liberated the lad or lass if we’d known, but we didn’t.”
Which… I sighed. “Okay, I’m not- getting anywhere here, am I? Look, tell you what. You tell me if you find the Godbox, I’ll tell you if I find the god inside, hm?”
“Sounds like a deal, lass.” Frank’s expression softened a little. “Hey, I’ll grant you, the whole magic box idea? I almost want it to be real, yanno? It’d do a lot’ve good, I get that.”
“I’d appreciate that, I think.” I smiled at him. That was enough, for now. Not really hard evidence, but knowing the Staircase were more involved than just as friends of Raspe’s mattered. Having allies helping look mattered. If I could clear these people, I’d like to. We both wanted the Godbox to turn up, in that sense.
Still meant my only real next step was to go talk to the Church, but hey. Knocking off all the factions one at a time, interview everybody who might know anything. Then work out where to go next.
There was an awkward moment of silence. That was about all the questions I had, so I turned back towards the hole I came in via.
“Guess I’ll be going. Thanks for, uh, not killing me. Do I just jump in, or-?”
“Hold on.” Frank took a step forward, I wasn’t facing him but I could feel his shadow pass over me. I froze up.
“Yeah?”
He hadn’t ever quite holstered his gun. I watched the shadow of his hand as he raised it, not quite straight at me, just held it in his hand, pointed at nothing in particular, but very very… there.
“I ain’t gonna threaten you, Alex.” He holstered the gun, but after brandishing it like that, I couldn’t help but feel threatened. He’d done that before holstering for a reason. “But you understand how many people you’ll hurt if you blab about this place, right? Even if you don’t think the gods can suffer, the folks trying to hurt ‘em can. And the bright-eyed church lads what think they’re maintaining law and order, who try coming in here to stop us? They can definitely suffer. You know that, right?”
I went cold at that. I nodded very, very slowly. I understood the threat. I didn’t turn back to face him. Couldn’t look him in the eye either, now. The guy was more than a head taller than me, and I could only imagine what he’d do to somebody if they actually wanted to hurt him.
I tried to imagine anything else, as I jumped into the hole, and found myself a moment later lying flat on my face outside the warehouse.
The cat from before pawed at me gently, apparently annoyed I’d removed her favorite resting spot.