Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

'This is the great bastion of the Army of Shadows?' said Rooksby, his voice disbelieving, looking at the glitter of the overlapping domes. 'The slums of Whineside seen from the top of Tavistead Hill are a more imposing sight.'

'Oh, there were many more of them, once,' said Molly. 'But as the land's bounty has been exhausted, the Army of Shadows' numbers have been controlled down to what you see here.'

'There are enough of their spawn in Quatershift,' said Jeanne, 'and they seemed plentiful enough to me as they overran our territory.'

Keyspierre glared at his daughter. 'You are coming close to voicing defeatist sentiments, compatriot daughter.'

'I saw the gnawed bones of our people outside Courau, compatriot father,' said Jeanne.

Keyspierre's face went red at the tone of insolence in her voice and for a moment Molly thought that he was going to strike her, but he obviously thought better of disciplining his daughter in front of them. 'Try remembering that when you see the faces of the monsters responsible for their deaths.'

'These Kals, sir, are cowards,' said Rooksby. 'With so few of the enemy's number left here, why have the natives not risen in revolt? If only we had the marines along that were meant to be here. Just a handful of them and we could have seized this pathetic hovel. Damn these Kals' eyes.'

'You'll be able to measure their bravery soon enough,' said Molly. 'If we can meet up with Kyorin's comrades.'

There was a location that burnt particularly bright in the jumbled buzz of memories that was Kyorin's legacy to her. Outside the walled city, a place where the slat soldiers rarely came. She found it easily by the presence of the seventy-foot high cacti, their leaf sails – vast moisture traps – slowly rotating. Taps had been drilled into them, but the queues of Kals had thinned out now that the previous day's collected water had slowed to a mere trickle through the plants' veins.

Molly led the four of them into the shadow of one of the emptied cacti and bade them wait cross-legged. It was ten minutes before one of the water-keepers left his plant to come over to them.

'Are you sand-born?' he asked using mind-speech. 'If the slats hear that nomads are travelling close to here and begging for water they will-'

'We are travellers,' said Molly. 'From afar.'

The water-keeper stepped back, gasping as he saw Molly's lips opening and closing to form the words.

'What did you say to him?' Rooksby demanded, watching the shocked water-keeper hustle back to his cactus and beckon his apprentices closer.

'You'll know soon enough.'

'What have you done, now, you foolish woman?' hissed Rooksby. 'Is it not enough you had to drag us here without the soldiery to finish off the Army of Shadows…'

'We'll find out soon enough if Kyorin still has friends here among the oasis regulators,' said Molly.

'This is not how such things are done,' said Keyspierre.

'I bow to a Quatershiftian's greater knowledge of how informers and the secret police work,' said Molly. 'But as I'm the only one here who can communicate in their language, we'll do this my way.'

Molly's way proved adequate, for when one of the water-keeper's assistants returned, it was with a female Kal, her face uncovered by the enveloping white headscarves the rest of them were wearing. She knelt before Molly and pressed the skin of Molly's forehead with her thumb. Molly felt a gentle tickle inside her skull, then the headache of Kyorin's memories rising. Molly winced in agony as the female Kal withdrew her thumb and rubbed it with her forefinger. There was a smudge of blue dye where the sweat of Molly's forehead had made the theatrical face paint moist.

'Clever,' said the woman. 'But do not bring your blue faces too close to any slats. They have very good nasal receptors and your scent is, I suspect, different enough from ours.'

'We are friends of the slave engineer Kyorin,' said Molly. Her head throbbed with pain. There was something about this female that was causing Kyorin's memories to thunder inside Molly.

'That much is clear. Why else would the residue of his soul burn hard inside you?' said the woman. 'And you use old speech. Keep your lips closed when we get inside the city. I shall do such communicating as may be required.' She looked at Rooksby and the two shifties and repeated her words in Jackelian.

'You understand us!' said Keyspierre.

The woman sighed, leading them away from the oasis and towards the city. 'It's quite unnerving seeing someone with blue skin speaking like a slat, all fangs and tongue and teeth. Yes, I understand Jackelian, Quatershiftian and about a dozen more of your languages. One of my family received training for a position on the expeditionary force.'

'You are our compatriots, then,' said Jeanne. 'You are fighting the Army of Shadows.'

'We resist their aims,' said the Kal, bitterly. 'While also serving duty as their slaves and food source. I am not sure if the former outbalances the latter. It would have been better if one of the plagues that followed the loss of our medical technology had wiped us out entirely, then the masters would have starved to death before they ever reached your home.'

'Does your cell's revolutionary tradecraft allow us to know your name, compatriot?' asked Keyspierre.

'Why not? If I am caught with you we are all dead anyway,' said the Kal. 'My name is Laylaydin.'

'Are you taking us to meet the great sage?' said Molly. 'Kyorin said the sage has a way of defeating the Army of Shadows.'

Laylaydin shrugged. 'So it is said. But he does not live in the city. The nomads in the deeps of the desert wastes hide him. He would not survive for long here in Iskalajinn with the slats' nose for uncovering saboteurs and detecting resistance to their occupation. You shall be taken to a place of safety until we can send for one of the sand-born to take you to the great sage.'

Molly stopped as she noticed that the palm-like trees that had so far lined their path had given way to glass-slag crucifixes, the emaciated dead bodies of Kals hanging upside down from each cross.

'They were part of the resistance?' whispered Molly.

Laylaydin shook her head. 'No, look, their bodies do not bear the torture marks of interrogation. These are petty criminals. The ones on the left were caught teaching the young to read, while the ones hanging opposite were exposed indulging in a ritual sharing of ancestral memories using mind-to-mind contact. Technically neither crime carries the death sentence – that would be too wasteful of the Army of Shadows' dwindling food stocks – but you have to survive more than five days on the cross to be cut down. It is so hot now that it is very hard to survive five days.'

Rooksby looked as if he was about to gag at the sight. 'Damn you for sheep. How can you let the Army of Shadows treat you like this? You Kals might almost be part of the race of man, save for your cyan-coloured skin. Why do you not fight them?'

Laylaydin looked pityingly at the Lord Commercial, exposing her wrists from underneath her robes. There were two great ugly weals of flesh where the nails had been driven through them. 'I lasted the five days up there for birth crimes.'

Birth crimes. Molly rubbed her temple at the pain of the memory rising inside her. 'Your children…'

'They were fed to the slats as sweetmeats after they were found to have passed the threshold for powers of the mind. The masters require their cattle to breed true. My blood code carries a recessive pattern of how our race once existed, which is why they sterilized me when they cut me off the cross – so I could not have any more children quick of mind with the potential to be raised as sages. Our streets are ahead, please, you must walk in silence now.'

Molly and the others needed little encouragement to do so.