Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

'Plenty starving across the border in Quatershift eating grass soup these days,' snorted Harry. 'But you're right, this one is no shiftie agent.'

Harry didn't mention the headaches the Order of Worldsingers were experiencing in Jackals, all those little acts of sorcery going wrong, misfiring with unexpected results. He could feel it himself, the change in the earth. Like a bird following the magnetic paths of navigation to the wrong destination. Geopathic stress was what the Court's experts called it. The world was turning, always turning. But where were they going to end up? Maybe there would be more answers when the three of them returned to the Court of the Air and really got to work on the corpse.

'Bundle him up.' Harry indicated the strange body. His two crows did as they were bid.

'But are you for the good or the worse, that's the question?' whispered Harry.

And more to the point, who in the Kingdom of Jackals wanted the blue man dead in the first place?

Purity returned from the vendor with a handful of apples and a couple of pears, and Kyorin nodded his approval at the girl's selection.

'You'll need to eat more than fruit if we're going to keep on walking across the city all day again. There's an eel-seller over there and his jelly looked fresh…'

'My digestion is not very steady where fish are involved,' said Kyorin. 'Let's eat while we walk. It's important we keep moving.'

'If these people from your kingdom are after you, why stay in the capital? I'm getting tired of diving into the crowds every time I see a crusher. I think there's still enough money left in your pocketbook for a couple of berths on a narrowboat up north. We could travel back to your land.'

'I would not be welcome in my home,' said Kyorin. 'I am a slave and I have slipped the collar of my masters.'

'A slave!' exclaimed Purity, spitting out pieces of apple. 'I thought you were a prince, a noble in exile with assassins on your trail to ensure you couldn't return home to reclaim your throne.'

Kyorin devoured his pear, even finishing off the core and pips. 'Nothing so grand or romantic, I fear. Of the two of us, you are the one with a royal birthright. At the very best, I could only be considered a revolutionary… to those who pursue me I am a mere piece of disobedient chattel, to be destroyed for my treasonous inclinations.'

'More reason to be off and out of Middlesteel.'

Stopping in the shadow of a shop window, Kyorin pulled out a waxy white stick and, as he had done so many times before, rubbed his exposed skin with it. Face, neck, hands. 'My hunters are creatures called slats, they track by scent. Luckily for me, they prefer to hunt at night- they are eyeless and see using the noise they project from their throats. There are so many people here, so many strong smells. Even without the cover of my masking stick, your capital is the safest place for me to hide.'

'You sure you're come down from the north, not up from the south? I'd love to go south. They say that the caliph has given sanctuary to Jackelian royalists in the past to tweak parliament's nose.'

'You may use my remaining tokens of exchange to book a passage to this nation by yourself,' said Kyorin. 'It would be best if you headed as far away from the north as you can. You should travel south, travel there and keep on going.'

'And how long would you survive in Middlesteel alone with no coins?' asked Purity. 'You need me to buy things for you. I've seen you covering your mouth when you talk to people, so they can't see how you speak without moving your lips. Everyone thinks you're lying to them.'

'Quite the opposite, young sage. I carry the seed of truth within me.'

'Along with half a kilo of pear seeds. It's the truth I'd like from you myself,' said Purity. 'What are you really doing here? You're not just on the run from these hunters, are you?'

'I escaped here to see if your people would be able to help overthrow the masters' rule. My people are called the Kal, and we have been subject to occupation by the masters for so long we have almost forgotten that there was a time when we were not slaves. Our culture is suppressed; if we are even caught teaching our young to read we are executed. We hoped that the people of the Kingdom of Jackals might help free us from this yoke.'

'We don't do that,' said Purity. 'It's the Jackelians' oldest law, dating from long before parliament made the kings hostage. No empire, no interference with our neighbours' concerns. We can act only in defence of the realm, never in aggression.'

'I rather approve of that law,' said Kyorin. 'But I am afraid my mission to your land will soon become an irrelevancy. My masters will be at your borders shortly and from what I have seen during my travels here, your nation will not be able to withstand their might.'

'You are mistaken, sir,' Purity protested. 'Jackals is the strongest nation on the continent. There is no one who has attacked us who has not lived to rue the day.'

'I wish I was mistaken,' sighed Kyorin. 'But I know better, as I believe do you. Your bare feet feel the power of your land throbbing; can you not feel the sickness spreading underneath you?'

'I-' Purity hesitated. This runaway slave had the measure of her. That was exactly how it felt, like a wrongness in the earth, spreading inexorably slowly beneath the bones of the land; the woman's voice in her skull, her strange madness, whispering to her of the disorder in the land.

'What you feel is no illusion,' explained Kyorin. 'The beastly slats that pursue me may need flesh to dine on, but my masters need life itself. Their machines will drink the life from your land. At first your worldsingers will notice small failings of their sorceries as the leylines grow weaker, then your people will grow listless and uneasy as the connection with the soul of your home dwindles, and then, when enough of your power has been made theirs, your strength weakened, then will my masters' slave armies appear. Legion upon legion of slats. Some of you will be made slaves in turn, some of you will be farmed for your flesh, the majority of your population will be culled down to a manageable number.'

'That will not stand,' insisted Purity.

'You are a sage,' said Kyorin. 'You are a living conduit for your land and she is screaming her rage through your mouth. But your rage will not be enough, just as it was not enough for my people when we faced the masters' fury.'

'But there must be a way to fight your masters,' said Purity.

'Perhaps, but it is not to be found here. There is one among my people who can help, one of the last of our great sages to evade capture. He was meant to send me word of how to defeat our masters; this I was to pass on to your people. But the party travelling to me across the wastes with his secrets was betrayed and ambushed. Only one rebel survived, a desert-born nomad. He escaped to your kingdom alongside me, but I suspect my simple friend was lax with the use of his masking stick. The hunters caught up with us and murdered him.'

'If you have a way of stopping your masters, why has this great sage of yours not used it in your own land to free your people?'

'The same thought occurred to me,' said Kyorin. 'Possibly such a weapon will not work for our people. Perhaps its deployment was judged too late to be of use to us now. Activating it will almost undoubtedly involve the use of violence that is not permitted to my people. Or the whole tale may just have been a fiction by my own side to encourage me to infiltrate the expeditionary force to your kingdom in the hope that powerful allies could be found here.'

'Allies don't come more powerful than the Jackelian navy,' said Purity.

Kyorin smiled. 'It will take more than your airships to lift the oppression of the masters from the Kal, or to stop them claiming your nation as their territory.'