at the spatter of droplets she had created, liking the contrast of crimson against the yellowing plaster.
‘What are you doing?’ Guan asked her as he stopped by her side. ‘Are you high?’
‘Only a little. Stop worrying, brother. It keeps me sharp.’
Together, the two priests stepped over the corpse and stopped before the door. A gabble of loud voices came from the other side of it. She could hear a baby crying half-heartedly.
‘Please people, one at a time! Milan, I saw you raise your hand first.’
‘I only wanted to say, if we do call off this plan of action then we should do it for deliberate reasons, not because we’re afraid of what they’ll do to us.’
‘But, Milan,’ came another voice. ‘During the week of the Augere? They’ll murder us where we stand for disrupting the holy week like that.’
‘And who would work the mills and steelworks along the Shambles then?’ a woman replied. ‘Or do you think they’d be content to lose their profits while they trained a new workforce?’
‘Pish!’ shouted another. ‘In the mills they could turn around a new workforce within a few weeks. That isn’t the point here. The point is they’re vulnerable during the Augere. All these pilgrims gathered from around the Empire. All these representatives of the Caucus. The whole world is supposed to be celebrating the unity of Mann this week. One big happy Empire, with all of us waving our flags and feeling like we’re part of it like the good sheep they teach us to be. And meanwhile, behind closed doors, they make their latest deals for squeezing us even further. No, they won’t like it one bit when we show them up by taking to the streets. But if they want to settle quickly, without a bloodbath in front of everyone, they’ll have to consider our terms.’
‘We aren’t here to discuss a revolution, Chops. What if they wait until the pilgrims have left, then burn us all alive in the Shay Madi for sport, like they do with the homeless, and then fill the factories with those poor souls who really are true slaves?’
‘Then we’d have a real uprising on our hands. Like in our fathers’ and mothers’ times, when the priests last thought they could take the bread from the mouths of the working people. They must allow us to make a living. Even the priests concede that much.
‘Besides, it’s fear of what we could lose that has led us here in the first place. All those times we should have stood together and we didn’t. And always because they threatened to bring in slaves to replace us, or even to move the factories elsewhere. I work more hours on the presses than I spend at home. So does my wife and our eldest sons. And still we can barely clothe and feed ourselves, let alone make the arrears on our rent, or pay for medicine when the children are sick. We have to do something, for kush sake.’
Swan smiled; not at the words, but at the glib inscription carved in the lintel above the door.
Better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.
Her brother, loosening his neck muscles by her side, pointed to something in the shadows above the writing. It was a carving of two hands clasped together and entwined in barbed wire.
‘They call themselves the Bastards of Saint Charlos.’
‘Saint Charlos? Never heard of him.’
‘No, you wouldn’t have,’ Guan replied. ‘His name was outlawed twenty-five years before we were born. He was a priest of the old religion, back when the city was still a monarchy. He lived and worked here in the Shambles along the east bank. Gave all his money to the poor. Worked to set up these respite houses. They remember him as a saint for it.’
‘You see? This is why I’m so glad that you’re my clever brother. Otherwise, I’d have to read all those dull books myself. Tell me then, in your wisdom . . . Why do these chattel call themselves bastards?’
‘Charlos had an eye for the women. It was said that half the children of the district were his illegitimate spawn.’
Swan laughed at that, more loudly than it warranted, while her brother watched her with a bemused frown.
The voices beyond the door fell to a deathly hush.
‘Shall we?’ she asked him.
‘After you.’
Fifty faces were turned to the door as Swan stepped through it. Eyes widened as they saw her priestly robe and her smooth skull; even the crying infant