The Gutter Prayer: Book One of the Black Iron Legacy by Gareth Hanrahan

Author:Gareth Hanrahan [Hanrahan, Gareth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780356511511
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

INTERROGATION OF PRISONER #9313.

I: State your name for the record.

P: Aloysius Ongent.

I: Address?

P: The old seminary.

I: But you are also the lessee of number eight, Desiderata Street?

P: Yes.

I: Occupation?

P: I hold the Derling Chair in History at the University of Guerdon.

I: Do you practise sorcery, professor?

P: I dabble, a little. I have a licence, of course, and all the paperwork should be in order.

I: You dabble. You would not consider yourself a powerful adept.

P: I wouldn’t consider any human a powerful adept, these days. Sorcery has moved on. The work done on reification in the last two centuries means that it is vastly safer and more convenient to approach sorcery through physical means – alchemy, fetishes, aetheric engines, proxiates, vat-grown adepts and the like – than it is to attempt spells using old-fashioned methods. The average journeyman in the alchemists’ guild, for example, can command sorceries that dwarf almost anything attempted in—

I: You would not consider yourself a powerful adept, then?

P: No.

I: Three nights ago, you were on Desiderata Street. Tell me what happened that night.

P: How many more times must I go over this? This is, by my count, the sixth time I’ve been asked that question. Seventh, actually. Twice by the watch, once by Jere then by some little fellow from parliament, then another time by the watch, then by Magistrate Qurix yesterday morning – and she said that I’d be free to go after that. Why am I still here? Are you from the watch, or . . . ?

I: Seventeen people vanished on Desiderata Street, Professor. Twelve Tallowmen were damaged beyond repair, and twice as many were maimed. You will be answering these questions for a long time to come, either here or elsewhere. Tell me what happened that night.

P: Oh, for heaven’s sake. I was dining in the staff common room at the seminary, when my son Miren arrived and warned me of a disturbance—

I: Why did he go for you, and not call the watch?

P: The Tallowmen were already there. He assumed I would be needed in the aftermath, not that I would have to actually, well, intercede.

I: What did he tell you?

P: That there was a brawl going on in the street outside between the Tallowmen and an intruder.

I: Did he tell you what the intruder was?

P: No. He didn’t know what it was.

I: You are the professor of history at the university.

P: Yes.

I: Do you know what it was?

P: No. Should I?

I: “For there hastened from the deep places the unmaking, and they swallowed the hosts of the living, and took from them the hame of form, and offered up their souls to the Black Iron Gods.”

P: Pilgrin’s translation, isn’t it? I’ve always preferred Mondolin’s, myself. “And from the deeps they called the Ravellers, eaters of form, who fell upon the armies of the blessed and caused great confusion, for those who fell rose again in semblance, for they were hollow shells.” Do you mean to say that the creature was one of the fabled servants of the Black Iron Gods?

I: You tell me.

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