Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

Two thugs dressed as redcoats dragged Purity Drake's bruised and bleeding body closer so he could get a better look at the prisoner.

'I'm flattered,' said the chief, sizing up Purity. 'Most of the occupants of this miserable little town are trying to scale the walls to get out every night. But you, my fancy, you actually have the temerity to try to scale my fort's walls to face me.'

'What do you want done with her?' asked one of his thugs.

'I don't suppose you can converse on any learned subject with distinction – music, contemporary theatre, any literature other than penny dreadfuls? No? Circle forbid I should actually find any source of diversion here.'

Purity spat a gob of blood onto the floor from her swollen mouth. 'Did that amuse you? Let's talk about you dying, you hairless slug.'

'Not on my rug, you filthy young ruffian,' sighed the chief, averting his eyes in disgust. Two of the bruisers in his court of convicts ran forward, vying to be the one to clean away the mess. 'You know, your voice puts me in mind of a singer at the capital's pleasure gardens, Fanny Thornhill – I never cared much for her arias. A little too strident for my taste.'

One of the chief's men came into the chamber ill-dressed as a county constable, pushing Cam Quarterplate and his apprentice Watt in front of him.

'You should not have done this wicked thing, Watt,' quivered the steamman.

'I assure you,' said the chief, 'he should have done.' He pointed down at Watt. 'May I presume, my fancy, that this is the part of our sad play's script where you beg me for money or a position in my little fighting force of felons?'

'I just want my ma back,' said Watt. 'You've got her here in your cells.'

'Good grief,' said the chief, lifting his stovepipe hat to rub at a rash on his bald pate. 'The tastes of some of my brutes. I do hope she's fairer in complexion than you.'

Purity struggled in the grip of the guards, trying to lunge at Watt. But they were too strong, and Purity had taken quite a beating when they captured her scaling the sea fort's walls. 'You jigging little foot-shodder, you said you would help me!'

'You, you're as mad as a bag full of weasels,' laughed Watt. 'Waving some rusty old sabre about and raving on about how you're the true ruler of the kingdom. You were going to get yourself killed anyway, now at least I can use you to help get my family back.'

'I believe I'm currently occupying the position of the last ruler of Jackals,' said the chief. 'Monarch of the ruins and rubble and rats and all else that is crude and base. That is all that is true here, now the veil has at long last dropped away from civilization's unsightly face. But I'm afraid there's only room for one chief. Bring that foolish little thing towards me.'

The thugs forced Purity forwards and down to her knees while the chief rummaged in a black surgeon's bag by the side of his makeshift throne. 'Kill or cure, it's an old quandary. Now, here I have the very thing I gave my third wife. A connoisseur's choice.' He grabbed Purity by the cheek and stuffed something inside her mouth, then closed her nostrils until she choked and swallowed it.

He held his hands out regally, one of the thugs running over to clean them with a hot towel. 'That's a very rare fungus called Shadowjack's Kiss. When it is dried and crumbled, a few grains of it mixed with mercury can cure the sweating sickness.' He waved Purity away from his presence. 'Bed her down in the cells. She'll begin to suffocate in an hour when her throat is too distended to admit air into her lungs. Make sure one of you dogs calls me to the cells to observe the girl's symptoms well before she goes purple. She'll only have five minutes of really first-rate choking for me to see before her end.'

Purity tried to say something, but she was still coughing and gagging from the slimy, foul-tasting toadstool. Her tongue was heating up as if someone had rested a hot poker on it.

The chief indicated Watt. 'I also have a prescription for our little one-legged cobbler. Take him down to the cells with the girl, find the little snitch's mother and make him watch while you cut her throat, then you may cut the young rascal's for his troubles.'

The chief's thugs dragged Purity away with the two cobblers, the young apprentice struggling and screaming in anger at his betrayal while the court of convicts laughed, jeered and poked at them on the way out.

'Well,' said the chief, as his three prisoners vanished. 'You can't do right by doing wrong, can you?'

'And the old steamer…?' asked a guard.

'He's saved us the trouble of rounding him up with the others,' said the chief. 'The blue-skin who arrived with the slats brought fresh instructions. All steammen inside the walls to be held ready in chains for transport by the time the next quota is due.'

His lieutenant looked surprised. 'They can't bloody eat them too, can they?'

'I rather think they are displaying the instincts of a mechomancer in this matter,' said the chief, drawing an imaginary scalpel blade through the air. 'I'm sure they'll tease a few of King Steam's secrets out of the people of the metal before the last of them has been dissected.'

The chief nudged the woman chained by his feet and she brushed back her elaborate coiffure and picked up the book she had been reading aloud, Purges, Physics, Clysters and other Allied Sciences.

'Read on from page two twenty, my fancy, cutting for stones.'

One of the henchmen coughed nervously.

'Speak,' commanded the chief.

'We're a little shy on our quota this week. We could always pass the cobbler's lad to the slats…'

'Oh really, is that all?' The chief waved his underling's concern away and indicated to the woman that she should continue reading. 'I have faith that there will be more people banging at the town's gates by tomorrow. The fecundity of the filthy poor, breeding, always breeding. If there is one thing there is always an abundance of in this doleful life, it's the sight of the great unwashed masses befouling your doorstep. Trust me on that.'

Trust him. After all, he had once been one of Middlesteel's most distinguished doctors.

Abolt of electricity flashed down the dunes and erupted behind the expedition, showering Molly in sand, making the red haze they were running through sputter with dispersing energy like crackling popping on a roasting pig.

The sand had never seemed so untraversable as Molly desperately tried to keep up with Commodore Black and Coppertracks over the slow, sucking dunes. Anything but fall back alongside Keyspierre. If Molly slipped out of sight of the others for a moment the shiftie would try to murder her, she could see just how he would arrange it. So easy. Trip her and push her face into the sand, strangle her and leave her corpse to be claimed by the shifting sands or fried to ashes by the lightning storm. Just another victim of the Beast, like Coppertracks' decapitated drone.

Poor Molly Templar, so unfortunate, dying on the expedition she had been the catalyst for. An adventure too far for the foolish author and her friends, overreaching her talents, overestimating her resources and fortitude. Just a sad little workhouse girl made good whose luck had finally run out. But would there be anyone left in Jackals to mourn her? No! Keep hold of the line; don't lose sight of the others.

Around Molly the dust haze was thickening, coalescing under the fury of the Beast's pizo-electric whipping, almost a sandstorm now. Shelter, her burning mind's Kal instincts screamed at her. No, don't dig down. To camp inside the maw of the Beast would be to invite disaster, death from the wild scourging energy. Molly flinched as there was a triple crack, a wave of bright light flaring ahead of her, geysers of sand blowing back from the Beast's assault. Then she was walking over cracking glass, the sand-flash so fresh it was still hot. Steam from the slagged sand assaulted her nostrils and a wave of nausea lurched inside her. It smelt like hog's pudding – barley and pig's offal baked inside pastry. But that was just a trick of her nose, surely, her senses distorting everything? Molly bent over and began to vomit. This was no good. How much water was she expelling out of her gut along with her last meal? The expedition was almost out of water now, and food too.