We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Out of the Drowning Deep, a new science fantasy novella by A.C. Wise, publishing with Titan Books on September 3rd.
Scribe IV is an obsolete automaton living on the Bastion, a secluded monastery in an abandoned corner of the galaxy. When the visiting Pope is found murdered, Scribe IV knows he has very little time before the terrifying Sisters of the Drowned Deep rise up to punish all the Bastion’s residents for their supposed crime.
Quin, a recovering drug addict turned private investigator, agrees to take the case. Traumatized by a
bizarre experience in his childhood, Quin repeatedly feeds his memories to his lover, the angel Murmuration. But fragmented glimpses of an otherworldly horror he calls the crawling dark continue to haunt his dreams.Meanwhile in heaven, an angel named Angel hears Scribe IV’s prayer. Intrigued by the idea of solving a crime with mortals, xe descends to offer xyr divine assistance.
With the Drowned Sisters closing in, Scribe IV, Quin, and Angel race to find out who really murdered the Pope, and why. Quin’s missing memories may hold the key to the case—but is remembering worth what it will cost him?
The pinging alert took an insistent hammer to Quin’s dream, smashing it to pieces.
“Fuck off.” He pulled the thin pillow over his head and folded it around his ears.
“Voice command not recognized.”
“I said fuck… Never mind.” Too late; he was awake.
He threw the pillow across the room and sat up, slapping the alert into a pillar of light projected from the table beside his bed.
“To any unaffiliated investigator…”
A surge of adrenaline shot through him. Quin was fully awake now. If he could scoop this job before anyone else…
He needed the credits, gods knew.
“… Bastion…”
The Bastion, where in days of old, gods were raised.
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A ringing in his ears swept the rest of the message away. Something approaching panic gripped him, though he couldn’t think why.
Where gods…
He shook himself, focusing. The message repeated, text scrolling around the image like a halo, a variety of languages spoken and written, morse code pulsing like a heartbeat. He squinted at the image in the light, the message’s sender.
An automaton. An old-fashioned word for an old-fashioned model of synthetic being, but it fit. Its delicate face, a hammered mask of serenity polished to a high shine, a frame wrought like the bones of a human skeleton, revealing between them the delicate inner workings of crystals, wires and gears, couldn’t belong to anything as crude as a bot. It had to be an automaton, a mechanical wonder from another time. A relic surpassed by other forms of AI, nanites and super-computers, but also lovely, made for the sake of beauty as much as efficiency. Not just a highly intelligent machine, but a creation meant to honor the gods. Or to mock them, depending who you asked.
Scribe IV. Quin read the designation and a tattered memory surfaced from the recesses of his mind. The case of a missing child who’d claimed sanctuary at the Bastion, maybe five, six years ago—hadn’t he met a Scribe IV then? He’d been working steadily at the time, but not always sober. The details were hazy, a result of the pixie dust, or the simple ravages of time. Or—
Quin cut the last branch of thought off before it had a chance to bloom. He’d been clean three years now. Following that line any further would only bring the temptation to slip back into old habits. Bad ones.
He composed a hasty reply—his fee and the terms of his standard agreement—and fired it off.
The reply bounced, as if it had struck a wall. An attempted diagnostic brought a squall of sound—unsound—crawling up his jawbone, curling with loving brutality around the base of his skull, drawing headache tears to his eyes.
“The fuck?” Why call for help and then slam up a firewall blocking all replies?
Unless the signal jam came from elsewhere. Quin didn’t need more than one guess at who that might be. The Sisters of the Deep, claiming whatever mystery lay in the Bastion for their own. Rumor had it they’d been after control of the Bastion for years. This—whatever it was—might just be the excuse they needed to seize it. Their justice would be swift and wouldn’t look like justice at all to any eyes but their own.
“Fine. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way.” Because someone telling Quin not to only made him want to dig in harder.
Prayer, pure and simple. The surest way to get an angel’s attention, to goad or compel them into action. And most importantly, a form of communication the Sisters couldn’t lock down.
Quin set an incense cone to burn, and folded himself onto the floor, palms resting on his thighs, eyes closed. Once his prayer had been heard by the angels, it would also be conveyed to and recorded by the Bastion’s Scribe. Not the most secure communication network, but Quin was aiming to be overheard. Who else but an automaton in a rotting outpost on the edge of a dying world even paid attention to prayers anymore?
Who else would be listening specifically for his prayers, except—
No. He wouldn’t even let himself think it; he’d promised Lena.
Mind clear. Breath—in, out. Focus on intent. He didn’t want to invite attention, only convey a message. Mind clear. Don’t think about anything. Don’t think about—
—the chapel. Light oozing through scant cracks in the boards sealed over the window to keep—
Breath—in, out, shallower now. Quin fought to bring it back under control. Ignoring the sweat prickling under his arms, panic wanting to rise like the Sisters’ tolling, buzzing, crawling jamming signal that still echoed in his bones. Hold it together. Remember to breathe. Shut out the thud of his pulse and the—
—aisle between the worn pews, knees bruised with supplication,palms together as in prayer, but the litany in his mind only don’t notice me, don’t notice me, don’t notice me, lest the god of his father—
Quin’s eyes snapped open, his breath drawing incense unwittingly into his lungs, leading to violent coughing. His eyes watered for a different reason now, washing out the last memory of the Sisters’ denial of his message. Washing out whatever else had tried to come through, tried to crawl up from the part of his mind that remembered his nightmares. Because that’s all it had been. A nightmare. The images went skittering back into those dark corners, and Quin breathed out.
There was no way to know whether his prayer had gone through, or who else might be listening. All he could do was hope. A use for faith in a world of concrete proof, after all.
Excerpted from Out of the Drowning Deep, copyright © 2024 by A.C. Wise.
