Alan Campbell - God of Clocks

The boy resumed his human shape. A few yards to his left, a huge pile of debris shifted suddenly, and then collapsed. The great rope that had pulled the Rotsward slithered across one of the raised banks between waterways, and then it stopped.

Far across the flooded landscape John Anchor stood beside a woman with red hair. He still wore his harness, but now his rope connected him to nothing but debris. Then the boy saw movement close by. A small winged figure was pushing through the waters in the direction of the tethered man.

Anchor didn't notice the skyship's demise-probably because destruction had always followed in his wake. He had learned to tune out the sound of devastation. And he didn't immediately become aware of the slackening pressure against his harness because the weight of the Rotsward was not something he had ever paid much attention to.

It was Harper who noticed it first.

He was grimly trudging through a warm current when she suddenly grabbed his arm and whispered urgently, “John.”

“What?” He turned, and then frowned. The rope lay slackly across the mire behind him. He stared at it for a long moment before lifting his gaze to the scene beyond.

The Rotsward was in pieces. Debris covered the flooded ground for half a league behind him. Wafers of hull sat half submerged in the red channels. Thin lines of rigging rope stretched from one patch of detritus to the next, linking odd arrays of items: clothing, furniture, window frames, painted crockery, a horsehair mattress, several unidentifiable iron drums, and a silver tea tray.

The air remained still and silent. Nothing moved out there.

“He's dead,” Anchor said. “My master is dead.” A surge of panic came over him, although he could not say why. He stared at the rope and then he looked at the wreckage again. Had anything survived? He scanned the horizon, searching for larger parts of the Rotsward's hull. There was nothing to be seen but broken wood.

“Cospinol is dead,” he said again. He felt numb from head to foot. For the first time in years he noticed the weight of the harness on his back. He also noticed that his mouth was dry. “I'm free,” he said. But the words had a cold ring to them. They sounded odd to his ears.

Harper straightened up. She was gazing across the wreckage, as if looking for something. Her fingers tightened on his arm.

Anchor saw her, too. He wasn't surprised. From the moment he'd seen the broken skyship he'd known. She was now wading towards them through the bloody waters.

“She's an angel,” Harper said.

“Her name is Carnival.”

Rachel allowed the watchtower rider to escape-a decision that threatened their plans and placed them all in greater danger. From the airy heights of their vantage point behind Dill's teeth, she watched the horseman disappear into the fog-shrouded woods. The assassin, however, didn't get much chance to dwell on possible outcomes, for their immediate situation suddenly became a whole lot worse.

“Stop this march or we kill Hasp.”

A small group of woodsmen waited on the stoop of the Rusty Saw tavern in Dill's hands, looking up at them. Oran himself had barked the demand. He'd finally realized the leverage he held over his exiled employers.

“Well, it was only a matter of time,” Mina said. “I suppose we could tell Dill to rip the roof off that building.”

Rachel shook her head. “It's too late now,” she muttered. “I'd have risked it before, but we don't know what's going on in there right now. One blow could break Hasp's armour.” Her jaw still ached from the punch Hasp had delivered, and the musket ball wound above her ear continued to gnaw at her. If she'd been thinking clearly, she would have told Dill to free Hasp before the woodsmen ever thought of using him as a hostage, but she had hoped that they weren't smart enough to consider such a plan. After all, Hasp had tried to kill Rachel and Mina, so he must have seemed as much of an enemy to the two women as a friend.

She shouted down to them, “Kill the bastard if you like. I'd do it myself if he wasn't Rys's brother.”

Oran laughed at that. “I know my lord's will,” he said. “In this case, I'd be doing him a favour.”

“Nice try,” Mina said, “but he has a point. Our glass friend is a liability to his living kin. If Rys survived Coreollis, he'll be more likely to reward the man who slays Hasp.”

Rachel rubbed her head. This whole land was beginning to grate on her. It seemed backwards and hostile, and she hardly knew who to trust anymore. She had also sustained more injuries from her supposed allies than from her enemies.

She stepped back from the wall of teeth and considered their situation. Oran knew he could not attack the arconite himself, and his threats to burn down the Rusty Saw had been nothing but bluster. Rachel and Mina had the gold, and an ally powerful enough to crush the soldiers at any moment, should they choose to do so. And yet they were prisoners up here.

Oran had Hasp.

“I'm surprised at you, Mina,” Rachel said. “You haven't ever suggested we let them kill Hasp.”

Mina pouted and gave a look of indignation. “I like Hasp.”

The assassin sighed. “The whole point of recruiting help was to prevent Menoa from using them against us. And now I've turned these bastards against us anyway. The Mesmerists couldn't have done a better job of it if they'd tried.”

“Hasp put you in a difficult position.”

“He put himself in a difficult position. And now I have these bruises to thank me for getting him out of it. How long until we reach this settlement on the lake?”

“We're moments away, although it would seem entirely sensible to avoid the place altogether. We're not likely to find any friends there now.” She shrugged. “Should I also remind you that we now have eleven arconites in close pursuit of us? Or would that just be confusing the issue?”

Rachel leaned against the inside of Dill's incisor and peered out through one of the gaps. The air smelled fresh and cool. The sun had risen behind them in the southeast, and filtered through the white mists ahead, where branches laced the fog like gossamer. The forest was mostly deciduous here and had been thinned recently. There were still signs of recent logging: stacks of freshly cut logs and piles of smaller branches. Wide trails crisscrossed the grey-green earth underneath the cradled tavern. A reflection flashed across the steel blade of Dill's cleaver. Down below, one of the woodsmen on the stoop moved suddenly.

An arrow struck the edge of the incisor, glanced off, and hit the roof of Dill's mouth. It dropped, landing just inside the row of huge teeth.

Rachel flinched. She heard laughing from below, and then Oran yelled up: “You have until we finish this to come down.” He held up a bottle of whisky. From up here Rachel was unable to tell how much drink was left in the bottle. “And then we're going to start peeling the glass armour from your drunken friend.” They moved back inside the inn.

A second arrow struck the edge of the incisor and ricocheted off. But this time there were no archers around to fire it. All of Oran's men had gone back inside. The arrow bounced off the roof of Dill's mouth and fell in exactly the same place as the first one.

Rachel stared down at the thin wooden missile. There was only one arrow there. “Mina?” she said. “Did you see one or two arrows hit the roof?”

The thaumaturge was sitting further back, her head resting against the inside of Dill's jaw. She yawned and stretched out her arms. “Two, why?”

“Because there's only one here now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean two arrows flew up through that gap, but there's only one here now. And it's not just that. I've been seeing strange things for days now… memories that don't match up with reality, moments in time that repeat themselves. They're like defects, as if reality… or even time itself has somehow become fractured.” She watched the other woman frown. “Dill experienced the same vision you did-of the world cracked open.”