live. There are cogs down there the size of houses that will chew a man to pieces at the change. Axles the size of trees, movements the size of this guild. It is truly a thing of beauty and a sight to inspire the lowliest of men. The priests tell us it was their arrogance that made him strike them – us – down, his sorrow for doing so that killed him, that no man should look upon it in case he is tempted to follow that pride, that arrogance. The priests lie. They tell us one thing from one side of their mouths, and yet they aren’t just priests. They go into the bowels of the movement to tempt themselves against wanting it, to test themselves, oil the gears and clear the debris and prove that even though the city moves, the old god is dead. So they say. But I know the truth. A hundred days and nights I spent in the workings of the city, feeding on the scraps that fell through at the change. A hundred days and nights contemplating the truth of the cogs and the beauty of that truth. I know, because I found the secret. The Clockwork God gave it to me in my hour of need because it was written in the movement.”
He beckoned to a youth at the front of the mob, who looked up at him with adoration and handed him a bag. Bakar spread his arms again, the billhook in one hand, and the crowd roared like a lion, deafened Petri with its intensity.
“This is how I know that the king is not gods blessed. This is how I know the Clockwork God is not dead.”
He stepped forward, and all the crowd fell back before him, some bending to one knee. Petri found he was holding his breath, found also that he wanted to believe this, needed to. Needed something more to believe in.
Bakar opened the bag with a flourish and brought out something complicated made of what looked like gold and silver and rubies. A pretty thing to be sure, but not something to make a revolution over. Then Bakar stepped up to the dead Clockwork God and opened – to a scandalised gasp – the plate on his chest with a little silver key.
Where? How? Petri could feel the questions flow around him. No one could get into the dead god. Many had tried and all had failed. Except the golden-haired Bakar. He turned an eye Petri’s way and smiled, a smile that would burn in Petri’s memory for years. No matter how he turned it over in his mind, that smile always came back to utter belief and serenity. And serenity, that was what Petri had never had, what he craved.
The gold and silver contraption went into the god, the door closed, the key turned. For long minutes nothing happened, and murmurs grew in the crowd and in Petri’s heart. His father had forbidden him the new gods and the old dead god, everything that might have given him some semblance of belief. But now the Clockwork God moved. Its head came up, its arm came around, fingers pinching as though trying to grab something.
There was silence broken only by the clicks and clanks of the god as he moved. Bakar stepped forward and laid something on his plinth. The god bent down to pick it up, seemed to read the scrap of paper before solemnly opening the compartment in his chest and putting it inside.
Bakar turned back to the crowd, his face alight, arms raised. “The only comfort is truth! And only the clockwork can show us the truth, if we learn to read it right. That’s what the Clockwork God means, that’s what the Castans lost, why their empire fell. They forgot about the truth behind the world, the clockwork that runs us all, and sought only fancies and lies, sought only to imitate. All our futures are written in the movement, and he has given it to me to see it. The king will fall, and we will rise, all according to our gifts, according to what the god has planned for us in his workings.”
The crowd came to life slowly, men and women creeping forward to touch the god, to look at Bakar with wonder.
“Clever trick,” Eneko growled, his voice sounding harsh after Bakar’s smooth tones.
“No trick, Eneko. No trick. Now where do you stand?”