Out of the Drowning Deep, page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Leave us a Review
Copyright
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by A. C. Wise and available from Titan Books
Wendy, Darling
Hooked
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Out of the Drowning Deep
Print edition ISBN: 9781803369822
E-book edition ISBN: 9781803369839
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First edition: September 2024
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
© A. C. Wise 2024
A. C. Wise asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
For Scott Andrews. This book is inadvertently his fault.
1
The sky above the Bastion deepened into the green of an old bruise. One moon slashed a sickle-cut, another waxed full, the third crept up from the horizon, a chain of stars looping all three. Atop the most crumbling and unloved tower of the once-glorious Mecca, now broken open to the sky, Scribe IV tilted his head back and tried to guess where Heaven’s Ark Station stood in its orbit at that moment.
It would be easy to find out, satellite relays pinpointing the station with near-perfect accuracy. But when so many great questions had been answered – the nature of gods and angels, the shape of the universe – Scribe IV chose to find mystery wherever he could. However small. He craved wonder, and the possibility that at any moment he might experience uncertainty, be surprised.
It was like the aging shield that protected the open tower from the worst of the elements. It shuddered occasionally, making the sky beyond it seem to shimmer, but he chose to see beauty, rather than flawed technology that needed to be replaced. And in the same way, it was vastly preferable to guess every now and then, rather than having every stray pondering answered in nanoseconds with the mere flick of his fingers.
“Sir?” A voice in the doorway; Scribe IV turned to the Page shifting from foot to foot on the threshold. “The Chatelaine reports all preparations are complete and ready for your final inspection, though she still doesn’t seem happy about it, sir.”
Dominic paused, waiting to see if Scribe IV would take the bait. He decided to indulge the boy. “Oh? Why do you say that?”
“I don’t think she approves of the Pope, sir,” Dominic said. “And I don’t think she’s happy about the conclave.”
“That may be,” Scribe IV said, “but even if so, that is none of our business, is it?”
The gentle reprimand appeared to leave Dominic a little crestfallen. He’d clearly been prepared to gossip, but Scribe IV always endeavored to model good manners for the boy when he could. Whether the Chatelaine did or did not like the Pope – much like Scribe IV’s own opinions on the Chatelaine – was not an appropriate topic for discussion.
“Please proceed with your report,” Scribe IV prompted.
Dominic brightened. He took pride in his duties, which Scribe IV appreciated.
“His Holiness is settled in. The Bastion is ready to welcome the rest of the conclave.”
“Thank you, Dominic,” Scribe IV said. “You’ve done very well.”
He inclined his head to the boy. As the youngest member of the Bastion’s sparse staff, Scribe IV too often saw Dominic treated with dismissive impatience, as if his age made him a burden, always underfoot. He did whatever he could to counterbalance that – extending patience, kindness, and the same level of courtesy he accorded to the rest of the staff, whether or not they deserved it.
“And the tea service was brought to His Holiness’s room exactly an hour after his supper, as he requested?” Scribe IV asked.
“Yes, sir.” Scribe IV saw the boy suppress an urge to fidget. “I heard Johanna, I mean the Chatelaine, say she wanted to put the tray together herself while I was in the kitchen. Seb was just about to give me an extra shortbread but she yelled at me for being in the way even though I was trying to help.”
Dominic looked regretful over the lost shortbread, and resentful over his treatment. Scribe IV couldn’t blame the boy. There were times he wished he’d been programmed for less politeness, so he could tell the Chatelaine exactly what he thought of her and the way she treated those she saw as her inferiors.
The best he could do was take an occasional, bitter pleasure in sending her and the other members of staff he considered rude on errands through the network of tunnels winding under the Bastion. While he never sent them anywhere truly dangerous, into the collapsed lower sections for instance, the storage areas were bad enough. Even those who didn’t believe the tunnels were god-haunted had to contend with the dark and the damp. Since so many members of the human staff were determined to dislike him, Scribe IV felt he might as well give them a reason. The tunnels were just one of their battlegrounds.
Dominic, on the other hand, was always thrilled to run errands in the tunnels. They were the perfect place for a boy his age to burn off energy, not to mention the most exciting thing about the Bastion, as far as the Page was concerned.
Even though they complained, Scribe IV knew both the Chatelaine and the Head Butler often left small shrines and prayers down in the dark. He found keys left behind like offerings, as if the Chatelaine’s god would hear her more clearly in a place that had once been so holy, that echoed with so much faith.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” Dominic asked.
Naked hope, barely disguised, turned the boy into a coiled spring. Since Johanna had shooed him away from making himself useful in the kitchen earlier, Scribe IV saw no reason not to let Dominic entertain himself or watch the rest of the preparations as he chose. While he’d never been young, Scribe IV had been new once and could recall the thrill that came with the prospect of a day unlike any other, a break from routine. The Bastion – part fortress, part library, part cathedral – was an all-but-forgotten waystation these days, a relic like Scribe IV himself. A pilgrim might spend the night, or a scholar visit to consult an obscure tome in person, but otherwise there was nothing here but the watchful moons, the endless boom of the tide, and the slow, inevitable march of entropy.
“Thank you, Dominic. Nothing further. You are free for the rest of the day,” Scribe IV said.
Scribe IV’s features had not been designed to convey warmth or fondness. His expression was now as it had been nearly a century ago, hammered into copper as serene, neutral and unchanging. The best he could do was incline his head again.
“Thank you, sir!”
Like a loosed arrow, the boy shot from the doorway, turning long enough to flash him a quicksilver grin before clattering down the stairs just ahead of gravity and dashing off through the Bastion’s maze of passages. Off to snatch gossip like a bird carried crumb – not to mention snatching a few actual crumbs as well, including the shortbread he’d been chased away from earlier. Seb would have kept it aside for him. The Cook had taken a shine to Dominic, even teaching him a few basic kitchen skills when he could convince the boy to stay still long enough.
Scribe IV listened to Dominic’s footsteps until he could no longer hear them. Had he ever lived that fast and bright? Unlikely, but once upon a time he’d wished to, longing for a blood-beating heart and breath in place of gears, to choose his destiny instead of being purpose-built. It was there in his name: Scribe IV – amanuensis, designed to copy holy books, to record prayers, and nothing more.
In his own way, he was as trapped as the Bastion’s human staff, though very few of them saw it that way. Scribe IV found peace and comfort in the Bastion, yet he might have sympathized with the staff, living their lives in a dying, crumbling ruin. Most had nowhere else they could go.
But so many of them took their bitterness, their disappointed faith, and turned it outward – resenting Scribe IV, seeing him as an object of disgust, or pity. A
As if he’d asked to be placed above them. Guardianship of the Bastion had fallen to him based merely on tenure. At the time he’d assumed oversight, the Bastion had been in the midst of its last great exodus; there’d been no one else to take the job. It wasn’t even an enviable position. The Bastion had been in decline for years; soon enough, Scribe IV would be guardian of nothing at all.
Which, on the surface, made it strange that His Holiness had chosen the Bastion, of all forsaken places, for a conclave of as many representatives of the fractured multitude of religions as he could convince to join him.
Scribe IV understood the symbolism. The Pope had chosen the Bastion for its history as much as its seclusion. It was on this spot, on the perilous cliffs above the sea, that the gods had first made themselves known. Definitive proof of angels and demons, of unnamed and eldritch horrors, of all the still-worshipped gods of Earth and all the forgotten ones – the animal-headed, the many-armed, the ineffable beings of light. They had all come together here for one brief, terrible, shining moment.
It should have ushered in a new age of peace – and it had briefly, before immediately unraveling again, humans being what they were. That was what the Pope sought again now. His conclave would take place in the Bastion’s Great Dining Hall, whose massive bronze doors and many stained-glass windows depicted that divine first meeting of the gods. Under all those watchful glass and bronze eyes, the Pope intended to propose the abolishment of all established religions.
He seemed to believe that the gathered clerics and priests, nuns and monks, mullahs and rabbis, would unanimously agree with him. That they would abdicate their roles, step aside and put religion directly back into the hands of the people. All churches, temples, synagogues and houses of worship would be left to rot. All holy offices, including the Pope’s own, would be dissolved.
It was an absurd idea. Scribe IV had experienced enough trouble simply getting the invited guests to agree on the inconsequential choice of a menu for the welcome dinner. Still, he admired the Pope’s sheer gall, his faith in the goodness of humanity, even if he fully expected the assembled priests, acolytes, vestal virgins and prophets to fall upon him for his words and tear him apart.
It wasn’t his job to question the Pope’s wisdom. His only job was to ensure the proceedings went as smoothly as possible – even if the success of the Pope’s plan, against all odds, would likely mean the end of the Bastion.
Scribe IV tried not to dwell on what would happen to those under his care then. As much as they resented him, he didn’t want to see the staff turned out into the universe’s uncaring cold. Many of them had never known any other life than this place, had been abandoned here as children – like Agnetta, like the former Head Chambermaid Justine, like Dominic. What else was there for them? Heaven’s Ark, like most stations, was highly selective about bringing new workers on board. The mining colonies around Ganymede would take anyone, as would the Junker ships salvaging scrap on an endless loop between the stars, but those were as good as a death sentence. At least in the Bastion, the staff were fed and clothed. If they were unhappy here, perhaps they had not closely considered their alternatives.
For his part, Scribe IV had found something like peace in his quiet and strange existence. He was obsolete, like the Bastion. Time had moved past him; he and this place were perfectly suited to each other. Under the green sky, above the booming surf, he could forget about the speed of technology, the speed of human life, and cling to the illusion that mysteries still existed. Most days, he could convince himself that he was content, that this crumbling existence was enough.
* * *
Precisely nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds after Scribe IV dismissed Dominic, a scream echoed through the Bastion.
Scribe IV levered himself up from his desk, away from the quills and ink pots, tools of his trade. One of his quirks – digital paper with its re-usable smart ink had replaced the need for the originals, but he preferred the old ways. He felt the weight of age in his finely wrought bones, in the gears and the wires of him, as he descended from his tower to see about the noise.
He nearly collided with the Chatelaine at the foot of the stairs.
“What happened?” he asked.
The Chatelaine shook her head, eyes wide, lips pressed into a thin line. Her fingers knotted in a complex pattern that drained the blood from them – a nervous gesture, or an arcane prayer. Keys chimed around her waist, every shape, every size, sewn all along her sleeves and stitched to every available scrap of her clothing.
“Show me,” Scribe IV said.
The Chatelaine ducked her head, not out of respect, but as if trying to escape being seen by something terrible. Had she been coming to find him, or had she been running away?
She led him back the way she’d come. Scribe IV’s steps – his feet molded in the approximation of human bones, but much less flexible – rang on the stone.
The Chatelaine stopped, gesturing to the Head Chambermaid, who sat on a narrow wooden chair someone had dragged into the hallway. The Head Butler stood beside her, one hand on the distraught woman’s shoulder, the barest tips of his fingers resting against the fabric of her uniform, as if he feared her distress might be contagious.
Johanna, the Chatelaine; Anna-Maria, the Head Chambermaid; and Marius, the Head Butler. Each had been at the Bastion for over fifteen years now, and all reported directly to Scribe IV. Only Anna-Maria had any staff left under her – Agnetta, the Chambermaid. Not that it stopped Johanna from issuing orders to everyone around her, as if the Bastion were hers to control.
Scribe IV wondered at the three of them, clustered together in this hallway. It made him uneasy. He assumed Anna-Maria had been the one to scream. Perhaps the other two had simply followed the sound, as he had.
“What happened?” Scribe IV repeated his question, crouching to bring his face level with Anna-Maria.
He recognized the room she sat outside. He wished he did not.
Anna-Maria didn’t look up. He set his fingers under her chin as gently as he could, giving her no choice but to look at him.
Her eyes widened. She had never liked him, found his presence, his guardianship of this place, profane.
“I thought the boy had stolen something, the way he ran,” Anna-Maria said.
The boy – she meant Dominic.
“I only went inside to see what he might’ve nicked. I thought the room must be empty and that’s why he was there – but then I saw the body.”
Unease became dread, ticking down each brass knob of Scribe IV’s spine.
“Nothing’s been touched,” Johanna interjected.
She took up a position at Anna-Maria’s other shoulder. There was something possessive and defensive in the gesture, meant to convey that the three of them were a united front against him.
Johanna held Scribe IV’s gaze, chin lifted. Metal shivered on metal, keys ringing along her sleeve. She made no offer to unlock the door for him, no move to hand over a key. Humans and their little games of power.
Scribe IV knew for a fact there weren’t enough doors in the Bastion for that many keys. The Chatelaine had made her station her own religion.
During the age of splintering, some dug harder into established religions, renewing their faith and devotion to their old gods. Others sought to raise up new gods, thinking if they could attach themselves even to something as simple as a key and imbue it with enough belief, that key would eventually become a god, and they would be favored in the new god’s eyes.
Scribe IV had seen the tail-end of that age. It wasn’t only inanimate objects that were raised, but people too. He’d seen mortal flesh and carven masks made divine, wicked men and empty vessels of blown glass elevated, seemingly without rhyme or reason. He’d seen the disastrous and tragic results of forced divinity. And he’d seen the glory when true divinity took hold.
Scribe IV wondered if the Chatelaine’s keys had ever answered her prayers; whether she, in fact, felt divine.
He straightened, joints slow to respond. “What happened to the boy?” he asked.
Johanna shook her head, lips pressed thin again. Anna-Maria also remained silent. Either she didn’t know, or didn’t believe he deserved an answer. Scribe IV rarely regretted his lack of breath, but the urge to sigh was almost overwhelming.
