At the end of the road the two grand statues of Gorgon and Demogorgon stood, old and new images superimposed atop one another-now they were worn beyond recognition, now rendered in exquisite detail, two vast figures decked in armor but they were not men at all, not indige or sharpsie, but something else, something strange, something incomprehensibly alien. They were gone, empty space where statues once stood, and they returned, all points along the timeline existing at once.
Some small part of Beckett’s mind was lucid somehow, despite the shock and the staggering amount of drugs he had imbibed. It was sure that he had gone quite permanently mad, that the rest of his mind was damaged beyond repair and would never be quite the same again. And it wondered how even the least among the daemonomaniacs could withstand even the barest touch of the infinite mind of the Daemon, the omniscient but unthinking mind that knew every speck of dust, every atomie of the universe. Sublimation into the aethyr would be a mercy.
Gorgon and Demogorgon stepped aside as Beckett approached, or else the road widened as he came near the palace and forced them apart, or else they had never truly been there in the first place. Beckett walked or stumbled, he could not say which-perhaps he floated, buoyed along by the strangeness that burned in his veins-through the main square which now was crowded with open faces that looked upon him with concern. Was it now? He was not sure but supposed it must have been. Hundreds of faces looked at him, and scattered among them were those hideously flesh-colored spots of blankness that were Anonymous John.
Beckett ignored them and no man made a move to stop him. He wondered at this only briefly, until the lucid flash in the back of his mind pointed out that he still carried his gun in one hand, and had somehow regain his coroner’s shield, which he now waved about. Men fell away like water before the prow of a ship and Beckett wandered as in a dream up the stairs and into the galleries that surrounded the square. These were meant for diplomats and advisors, ministers and members of parliament, the wealthy scions of Esteemed Families, but no one tried to eject him from these honored rooms. He ignored the moustached men in their clean suits, cavorting with their wives and mistresses. Ignored the Crabtree-Daiors and the Rowan-Czarneckis and the Wyndam-Crabtrees, the Daior-Vies and the Ennering-Vies and the Rowan-Vies. Sadness may have touched his face as he passed by the Vie-Gorgons, a sympathy for their mutual loss; even through his delirium, Beckett felt the bitter sting in his heart still when he thought of Valentine, saw Raithower House a frozen eruption in the midst of the city, but the old man was consumed now.
Consumed with the desire to see the source of that strange hand, consumed by the need to follow the sound of turning gears, the gears of the great royal Clock that thundered beneath him, the gears that turned in the heads of men and women, the gears that grew louder and faster and more frenetic, more dangerously swift, the deadly high-pitched whine of a machine on the brink of self-destruction. Beckett staggered, bereft of any more personal will, carried instead by the aggregate power of his visions, into a private gallery with no chairs, only a low table on which sat singed folders filled with clippings from the broadsheets. A gallery that looked out upon the podium where the Emperor, against all tradition, would offer his Invocation three days after the first day of summer. A gallery where Beckett found the mind made of turning gears that was behind it all, behind every movement of the cities innumerable tiny cogs.
The source of the horrors he had seen, men murdered, destroyed by heresy and science, all designed and directed by a cold, dead hand. The monster that had seized the Empire by the throat. The thing that owned the name, the last name signed in the Black Library’s book.
Mr. Stitch.
Thirty-Nine
Some five hundred years before the present day, during the first Gorgon-Vie dynasty, Owen II Gorgon-Vie officially broke from the Goetic Church at Canth, and established himself as the First Voice of the Church Royal. This new church was identical to the old church in virtually all respects, save two fairly significant ones: the first was that Owen II had the final say on all matters of theological discussion within the Trowth Empire; the second was that the many tithes that had previously been sent to the Holy Convocus of Canth would now be sent directly to the royal treasury. It was a very controversial arrangement, and the only person that could be said to be thoroughly pleased with the situation was Owen II himself, who was now both temporal and spiritual Emperor, and required to answer to no higher authority but the divine Word itself.
This arrangement was scandalous, outrageous, and completely unacceptable to the many Esteemed Families, yet, peculiarly, none of them saw fit to change the policy when their own scions had control of the Imperial Throne. So, the Emperor’s position as head of both church and state persisted well into the present day, where it formed the basis of the Coroners’ authority to pursue and execute heretics-ever since that venerable branch of the royal guard was established by Adelwulf Vie-Gorgon and Mr. Stitch a hundred years prior.
The Emperor had very few specific duties in his position as de facto Convocus, leaving most questions of grammar and the Word to the Subvocum of Vie Abbey. He did, however, appear once every year on the first of summer (or later, in the case of repeated assassination attempts-a situation that occurred, perhaps, more often than might be thought healthy), to deliver the Invocation to the people of Trowth.
By tradition, any free citizen was permitted to attend the Invocation, and hear the Emperor bless the city and the Empire, calling for the favor of Divine Providence on himself and therefore, by extension, his people. Though some emperors were more public figures than others, all emperors must, at some time, present themselves for the Invocation.
Even William II Gorgon-Vie, outrageous tyrant that he was, did not dare risk Divine Disharmony by banning the public from this most sacred of events. He permitted the citizenry-men and women dressed in their finest clothes (some clothes, obviously, were finer than others), indige and trolljrmen, even a scattering of therians filled the square, blessed themselves, looked up to the balcony from which the emperor would appear. As was custom, even the beggars were permitted inside the palace walls for this, which was how a sickly old man, dressed in rags and with a matted, disgusting beard-a man who smelled very much like he’d spent time rolling in an open sewer-was permitted into the crowd that gathered before the Emperor.
William II Gorgon-Vie’s one break from tradition was a concession to security-twenty-five Lobstermen, on guard, encircling the square and looking down on it from the galleys above. They each carried a long-pin rifle, and eyed the crowd with ichor-envigorated eyes, fully prepared to gun down anyone that behaved suspiciously. It was generally felt, among the Emperor’s advisors, that this concession should be sufficient.