Inside there was no representation of him – the statue by the guild was the Clockwork God in people’s minds. He moved and clanked and took people’s truths to his metal heart to power him, so they said. Instead, inside the church were a hundred, thousand, other things. Offerings to him, and some to the duellist, who people said was his age-old consort back when Reyes was part of an empire. Since the Great Fall the Clockwork God had been sleeping, waiting for people to be able to understand him. They might have said that he forgave them for believing in other gods while he slept, but the Clockwork God didn’t forgive or condemn, he collected truth and made sure the world carried on in its prescribed motions.
The church whirred and whizzed with the sound of clockwork under the light of a thousand lamps. Toys, hammers, grinders, buzzing trinkets of all shapes and sizes. Skittering around the edge were uncountable numbers of the little votives the smaller clockers sold, intricate and shining, like golden spiders scurrying to build their webs.
At the centre of the church was a marvel that still, even now, amazed her: the tree. Made of beaten gold and silver, it shone in the flickering light, the leaves moving in a non-existent breeze. Bronze birds sang in the branches, and one, a tiny little thing all decked out in brilliant blue lapis lazuli to mimic a real trunkwalker, pattered up and down the golden bole of the tree, taking people’s truths, they said. Taking them from the roots of the tree to the crown, where the Clockwork God could find them.
The rest of the church was just as fine. The walls were covered in moving murals that depicted the Clockwork God’s rise all that time ago and how he’d died when the Castans no longer understood his purpose, how he caused their empire to fall for their arrogance; how he’d chosen Bakar, shown him the way to work the gears and read the truth in his movements. Kacha wasn’t so sure, but it seemed as good a thing to believe in as any, and plenty of people did believe, or wanted to at any rate. A few kept to the gods she’d been brought up with, the false gods the priests now called them, invented by man to fill the void after the Clockwork God died. Only a few, and they did it in secret.
She stepped over the spidery votives as they scuttled across the floor, and went to find a priest. There were several about, winding up offerings, taking votives and truths, dispensing advice. A younger priest turned towards her with a smile when she approached. “Can I help you?”
“I was wondering, could I talk to you for a minute?”
She was staring at Kacha’s face oddly, especially at the scar under her eye. Kacha ducked her head, but perhaps too late. Still, the priest said nothing about it. “Certainly. Over here perhaps, where it’s more private.”
The priest was young, too young to have had to make the choice between the old gods and the resurrected Clockwork God, a choice that had led to a revolt among the clergy and a few of them joining the king and nobles in the bloody square before the Shrive. It had only taken one or two executions for the rest to see which way the wind blew. Some embraced the Clockwork God like he had never been away, others doubtless merely pretended and the rest made themselves scarce or found a new profession.
This priest had ochre skin with a flush of sombre pink on her cheeks, inky hair that kinked all ways and was barely held in check by a white band, dark eyes lidded against the light or perhaps only against troublesome thoughts and a mouth that looked like it could keep secrets. She exuded calm and the impression that whatever you told her would be shared with no one but the Clockwork God. She led Kacha to a cubicle set aside for just this sort of thing. Two chairs, a small table with a jug of water and some glasses. The priest sat down, fiddling with the mark of her profession which dangled from a chain around her neck, a ball that moved and clicked and slid and wound so that if you looked too long your eyes went strange.
Kacha sat too, and the priest didn’t wait for her to start.