Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

Rachel liked the view, too. It allowed her to see who was approaching the tavern. Swapping it for a cramped, windowless cell lacked any appeal. “Are we inconveniencing you here, Olirind?” she asked. “I wouldn’t want to your business to suffer because of us.”

“No, no, no,” the small man replied. “Business is fine. Don’t concern yourselves with that. I was only thinking of your security.”

Yet Rachel had noticed a difference in Meer’s attitude of late. As the days had passed, his lighthearted remarks had increasingly hinted at his fragile financial situation, his responsibilities to his regular guests, and how pleased he was to be able to offer his two stowaways the finest and most expensive accommodation on the south bank in repayment of his debt of honour. Rachel suspected he was beginning to consider that debt paid. The steadily diminishing quantity of fish in the chowder he brought them each day suggested as much.

Nomad blood might run in his veins, but Meer had become a Sandporter at heart.

“Just a couple more days,” she said. “Then we’ll be out of your hair for good.”

The proprietor tutted. “I wouldn’t hear of it. Let the boy recover in his own good time.” Grinning again, he headed for the door. “I shall continue to deflect persistent guests with the skills for which I have become famous. Enjoy your breakfast.”

“Thank you.”

Once he had gone, Rachel took one of the chowder bowls over to the bed and gave the young angel a gentle shake. “Dill?”

The angel opened his eyes, and jerked away from her with a start. But then he seemed to realize where he was, and his panic subsided. “A terrible dream…” He sighed, running a hand through his lank hair.

“The same one?” she asked.

He nodded. “I dreamed I was this room. The walls were my skin and bones, the windows my eyes. My blood ran through wooden veins in the floorboards. My nerves…I could feel you walking through me, and…” As he looked up at her, the colour of his eyes darkened from white to grey. “Meer? Was he here?”

“He just left.”

Dill stared at his own hands for a long time. “I dreamed of him, too.”

“The Mesmerist?”

“He was outside this room, outside me, but searching for a way in. I couldn’t see him, but each time I peered out of the window I spotted something odd: a house that hadn’t been there before, a new pontoon in the harbor, a crooked tree. Are there any trees in Sandport?”

“No,” Rachel admitted. “And there aren’t any trees out there now. It was only a dream.”

Her friend’s nightmares had been consistent since his return from Hell. He dreamed of becoming the environment around him, whether it was a room in Sandport or a petrified glade or a sandy hollow in the Deadsands. And in each case the same shape-shifting figure waited nearby, disguised as a part of the wider surroundings. Dill had started calling him the Mesmerist, though he could not say why.

“You need to eat something.” She handed him the bowl, noticing now that it contained little more than milk. “And we should consider leaving here soon. I don’t know how much longer we can trust Meer.”

Dill looked exhausted. “Where will we go?”

“As far away from the Spine as possible. The missionary ship Herald’s Voice left Clune two weeks ago and should arrive in port any day now. With Spine martial law now in place, it may well be the last temple ship to sail out into the Yellow Sea. The missionaries have a settlement in a village called Baske, one hundred and twenty leagues east of the Pocked Delta. If we can get the Herald to take us there, we’ll be safe.”

“Would the priests shield us from the Spine?”

“They might shield you, ” she said. “You’re a fugitive, but you’re still an angel, and I can’t imagine many of Deepgate’s priests support the Spine’s recent rise to power.” She thought for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure they’d protect you.”

“But what about you?”

An airship droned somewhere overhead. Rachel listened to it for a moment, but was distracted by another, closer sound: a ruckus in the street outside. She went back to the window.

A gaily painted box-wagon, pulled by an ox, was rumbling along the wharf in front of the tavern. It had a red roof and yellow slatted sides, and boasted wheels with garish green and gold spokes. Emblazoned across the nearest side were the words Greene’s Magical Circus: Witness all the fearsome horrors of Iril! A crowd of people jostled around it, following its progress towards the center of town. Rachel realized that it must have disembarked from one of the barges at the deepwater dock that lay out of sight around the harbor peninsula. Curious. Normally that dock was used exclusively by Deepgate’s Military to bring troops downriver from its outlying airship ports. Had the wagon originally arrived by airship? Or had it merely stopped to pick up cargo from one of the airship ports? Then she spotted a scrawled notice pinned to the rear of the wagon, and her breath caught.

See the slavering shape-shifting Maze demon here tonight!

The crowd of followers chattered with excitement. Groups of barefooted children ran ahead of the wagon, shrieking and clapping and chasing one another. Rachel sat on the windowsill and watched as the wooden vehicle wound its way up the hill behind the tavern wharves and disappeared in the knot of lanes around Market Square .

Traveling magicians and freak shows were not unheard of in Sandport. So-called shamans and thaumaturges sometimes arrived from Clune and Dalamoor with a veritable cornucopia of disturbing objects preserved in pickle jars. Yet Rachel had never heard of anyone claiming to have possession of an actual demon before. A shape-shifter? The timely relevance to Dill’s recurring dreams seemed too unlikely to be merely a coincidence.

“I’m going out,” she said to Dill.

But the angel had fallen asleep again.

By the time Rachel reached Market Square , the sun had fallen behind the low houses and the sky gleamed like gold fish scales. The wagon driver had almost finished setting up her sideshow in the center of the square, where a rude stage of crimson boards had been erected beside the wagon. A small crowd had gathered on the brown flagstones around it, while others stood further back in the shadows of the surrounding houses. Flies buzzed around the fringes of the quadrangle, where fruit from the weekly market festered in the gutters and Sandporters sat on their own doorsteps and sipped fig wine. The wagon driver had evidently conscripted two burly men from the audience to unload a large crate from the rear of her vehicle, and now stood to one side, petting a small dog cradled in her arms. As the crowd looked on, the two helpers manhandled the crate up some steps and onto the stage under the woman’s direction.

Rachel scanned the crowd of onlookers for likely pickpockets, before she remembered that she didn’t have any money. Smiling, she returned her attention to the unfolding spectacle at hand.

The wagon driver was young and slender and wore her dark brown hair in thick curls that tumbled heavily over her narrow shoulders. Her oval face and dark eyes suggested Dalamooran origins, yet her skin was lighter than that of most northern desert dwellers. She wore a vibrant, if somewhat garish, rainbow-coloured dress adorned with beads of glass.

Once her hired help had finished positioning the box and stepped down, the woman placed her puppy on one of the wagon’s running boards, and then turned and raised her hands to settle the crowd.

“Hello,” she called out in a cheerful voice. Her accent sounded Deepgate. “My name is Mina Greene and I have come to Sandport to bring you magic, horror, and wonder! If you are amazed by what you see here this morning, make sure to tell your families and your friends. And if what you see sickens or appalls you, then tell them anyway. Just be sure to tell someone.”