Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

Mina's brow creased. She looked at Rachel.

“Let him go, Dill,” the assassin ordered.

Dill hesitated.

“Let him go!”

Dill lifted his hand, freeing Hasp. The god remained on the ground for a moment, then picked himself up. He didn't look at either of the women, but slouched back towards the tavern with his head held low. Ranks of Oran's men parted before him, falling silent as the glass-skinned warrior passed.

Anchor fell from the Midden and into the strange, gulping funnel. He sensed pressure on his chest as the living iron constricted around him, but then it released its grip, and he plummeted.

The spirits who had been guided here by the Non Morai reacted fearfully to the big man's presence. A gale tore at him, full of their rushing whispers. Golden motes of light and curved metal walls flashed upwards.

He dropped past windows and portholes through which he barely glimpsed rooms. They passed in the blink of an eye, like sudden memories.

Anchor came to an abrupt halt as the rope attached to his back snapped taut, a sudden jarring that tore the breath from his lungs. Somewhere overhead the Rotsward had come to rest against the mouth of the funnel. The big man hung there for a few moments, gazing down at the horizontal beams of light that crisscrossed the dark shaft below. He could not see the bottom. He glanced up and spied a similar sight: Light from many windows cut across the narrow space, illuminating dust motes and lozenges of the rusty shaft interior.

He wrung his hands together, swung himself over to the side of the shaft, and smashed a fist through the nearest window. Beyond lay a room no larger than a cupboard, full of old boxes and chests. Something wailed and shuffled deeper in the shadows, but Anchor paid it no heed. He took a deep breath, then pulled himself further down the shaft, breaking more windows to make handholds for himself.

From overhead came the sounds of crumbling stone, rending metal, and screams. Anchor just bulled his muscles and dragged the Rotsward even further down through the living fabric of Hell. The landscape above would move, or be destroyed. He didn't care which.

After a while he began to hum an old shanty he'd once been taught by Pandemerian fishermen off the Riot Coast. The rhythm of the song matched his exertions. Heave the anchor, pull her up, he sang in his head, smash that window, pull me down. Chunks of bloody masonry from the Maze above fell constantly, battering his harness and shoulders. Smash that window, pull me down.

Eventually he reached the bottom. Here the shaft opened into a larger chamber below, a metal sphere perhaps fifty feet across. Anchor heaved in enough slack from the Rotsward's rope to allow himself to drop down into that gloomy space.

He landed on a pile of detritus that had been shaken loose by the skyship further up the shaft. Four circular steel doors, one at each compass point, offered potential exits from the chamber, but only one of them was open. In this doorway stood a little girl.

She was about eight years old and painfully thin, dressed in a stiff black dress with white ruffs at the neck and wrists. Her huge blue eyes regarded Anchor from under a burst of blond hair. In her sticklike arms she cradled an odd-looking spear, with a glass bulb at the rear and a fragment of clear crystal at the business end. This weapon made an intermittent crackling sound, like footsteps on gravel.

“You're not a ghost,” she said.

“No, lass.” He beamed at her. “I'm John Anchor.”

“What you doing in my ghost trap?”

“Your ghost trap ?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Mr. D's ghost trap, I mean. You're not even supposed to be here anyway. Why have you got a rope on your back?” She jabbed her spear at the mounds of rubble all around him. “And what's all that stuff there? Mr. D won't be pleased about that at all.”

“Where is Mr. D?”

“Back in the shipyard, of course,” she said. Suddenly she blinked. “You're not here to trade for those Icarates, are you?”

Anchor raised his brows. Had she meant trade on behalf of the Icarates ? Or did she actually expect him to trade something in exchange for Menoa's priests? Was it possible that this Mr. D could be holding Icarates as hostages ? Anchor was curious. And what did the girl mean by the shipyard ? This whole operation clearly had nothing to do with King Menoa. “The Icarates?” he replied. “Yes, I am here to trade.”

Now she looked uncertain. “Maybe I don't believe you.”

Anchor shrugged. “Why else would I be here? Mr. D won't be very happy if we keep him waiting, will he?”

She bit her bottom lip and looked at the rubble again. “All right,” she said. “Let's go then. You'll need to leave that rope behind because otherwise I won't be able close the Princess's door.”

“The rope stays,” Anchor said.

She glanced back nervously, then shrugged and walked away.

He followed her out of the chamber, ducking inside the open doorway, but then stopped when he saw what awaited him on the other side.

It almost looked like the interior of an airship envelope. A series of concentric steel rings ran along the inside of a long metal hull that tapered to points at both ends. Anchor was standing at one of the narrow ends. In the center of this enormous space a complex clockwork engine squatted amidst a tangle of pipes. The engine ticked steadily as its many wheels and shafts rotated. Various metal racks stood amongst the pipes, each holding what appeared to be coloured glass bulbs. Anchor shook his head. It could almost have been an airship. And yet the entire floor was covered in grass.

He plucked a blade of grass and sniffed it, then rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. Grass. A whickering sound from the front of the vessel made him look up. In the distance, just past the widest part of the hull, stood two ponies, a tan-and-white and a chestnut. The animals eyed him warily.

“What are we going to do about that rope?” The little girl was looking behind him, when her eyes suddenly widened. “Who's she ?”

Anchor turned to see Harper duck inside the open doorway. The metaphysical engineer stepped over the Rotsward's rope and looked up at the girl. “Hello,” she said. “My name's Alice. What's your name?”

“Isla.”

Anchor smiled at Harper. “Cospinol didn't warn me you were coming down.”

“You've been blundering through one soul or another since you jumped into that funnel,” she said. “I think he's worried about speaking through the rope. Too easy for someone to overhear him.”

“Thank the gods for small mercies, eh?” Anchor waited a moment to see if Cospinol would respond to his jibe. When his master remained silent he grinned wildly. Finally, some peace and quiet. He'd only had to come to Hell to find it.

The little girl had noticed Harper's tool belt. “Are you a Mesmerist?” she asked. “You've got a Locator, and a Screamer, and what's-”

“And you have a ghost lance,” Harper said, nodding at the girl's spear. “Where did you get that, Isla?”

“It's Mr. D's,” she said.

“Mr. D? Is he-”

“We're off to the shipyard to speak to him about those Icarates,” Anchor interrupted. “Isla is going to take us there now.”

Harper nodded slowly. “Right.”

Anchor stepped past the engineer and heaved the door shut behind her. The rope didn't break-but the door itself buckled. He got it closed, more or less, and forced the handle down into a bracket in the metal frame. Then, hoping that Isla hadn't noticed, he said, “All good and shipshape. This is a ship, yes?”