Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

Carrick was gazing back along the ever-lengthening curve of steel track behind the train, to where the Mesmerist Eye towered over the concrete terminus building. The twin wheels, set back to back on opposing axles, revolved gradually in opposite directions. Even from this distance, the hourly shift-change klaxons could be heard blaring out across the drowned city. Crowds of administrators would be disembarking the lowest of the twelve Workwheel office gondolas, their own weight having helped to drag the mighty steel spokes through another 180 degrees. Now they would receive their food parcels and begin the long climb up the central scaffold to the uppermost gondola of the Sleepwheel. Other workers, their satchels full of paperwork and candles, were already leaving the bottom of the Sleepwheel to join them on the scaffold for their own ascent to the top of the Workwheel. In this manner the Pandemerian Railroad Company powered the machines in their Highcliffe laboratories, while maximizing return from the food issued to their staff.

“Another one jumped last week,” Carrick said. “I’ll never understand these people. They’re given a good job, decent food, and soft bunks. They get plenty of exercise, and the best damn view on CogIsland. And what do they do? Spit it all back in the company’s face and take the big leap.”

“Their lives are a constant uphill struggle,” Harper said. “Don’t you ever feel like that?”

Carrick pulled away from her suddenly. “Only with you,” he said, turning to face the bright curve of glass carriages stretching ahead of them. The train was now thumping across the NewSillBridge above what had once been Knuckletown Port District. Down below, the former bridge could still be seen below the murky waters, the stanchions and girders now furred with red weeds. “I need you back inside now,” he said. “We’ve had complaints of something dead aboard the train. God-awful gibbering noises coming from the heating ducts in car C, down near the slave holds. Likely it’s just a ghost one of the passengers brought aboard, so be gentle with it. If you send it screaming back to the Maze, I won’t be the one who has to tell them.”

Harper nodded and turned to go.

“Alice,” Carrick said. His teeth looked strangely bright in the uneasy light. “You will be gentle with it, won’t you?”

To reach car C, Harper had no choice but to walk through the crowd gathered in the music carriage. The party was in full swing and most of the guests appeared to be drunk or well on the way. The pianist saw her and broke abruptly from the waltz he was playing into a crescendo of notes that reached towards a climax as she approached, halting abruptly the moment she reached him.

“A toast,” he said loudly, for the benefit of the room. “To the first woman to return from Hell still wearing lipstick. I give you CogCity’s most beautiful corpse.”

The crowd closed in on Harper and she found herself pinned by the attention of a roomful of well-dressed gentlemen and ladies: the frocks all puffs of almond-, orange-, and rose-coloured silk, the suits in rich dark hues of plum and whalehide. The men wore snub-nosed pistols or Mesmeric rapiers at their belts, the blades sheathed in white leather, as had been the fashion since Adelere’s adaptation of Cohl’s Shades had become the most talked-about play in Highcliffe. Glasses were raised, as was a voice from the back of the room: “Did you say most beautiful, Ersimmin? Which among the dead do you rate second to her?”

The pianist played a dramatic flurry of notes. “Perhaps I should have said most human, ” he said. “Our resurrected dead have lacked that quality until now. But you shouldn’t dismiss all of them out of hand, Mr. Lovich. Menoa’s hordes aren’t all fangs and blisters. In fact, there’s a pretty little sloop lying on its side in Covenant Square . I’ve had my eye on it for a while.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t play that tune every time I speak,” the other man said.

Ersimmin said, “It’s from a famous play, you know.”

The other man sighed. Harper thought he looked familiar, but couldn’t immediately place him.

A young woman in a puffy peach dress and black elbow-length gloves sauntered up to Harper. A fat necklace of soulpearls looped her powdered neck. “I think it’s disgusting,” she said. “Do we really need to plunder Hell for workers? Aren’t there living people who can do her job just as well? No offense, dear; I’m sure the Maze was lovely.”

This elicited a chorus of stifled shrieks and giggles from the younger ladies present, a collected frown from the older women, and a unanimous expression of bemused innocence from the gentlemen, each effected with various degrees of skill.

Harper realized she was staring at the woman’s soulpearls, and lowered her eyes. The speaker had half a hundred of them, there, on display like ordinary jewelry for anyone to see.

A collector, then.

King Menoa had already rewarded this one well.

“Excuse me.” Harper moved to push on through the crowd.

An elderly, white-whiskered man in a crimson suit extended an arm, blocking her way. He wore an extraordinarily fine Mesmeric sword at his hip, the pommel an exquisite knot of silace and crystal, the sheath an alabaster spike to match his mustache. “Please…Miss Harper, isn’t it? Won’t you stay and join us for a drink? My name is Duncan Jones.” He gave a curt bow. “I served with your husband in the King’s Reservists. Damn fine young man. We fought together at Larnaig.” He paused a moment, his cheeks flushing. “I’m sorry about what happened. This must be a difficult journey for you.”

“How can it be difficult?” said the woman in the peach dress. “Demons don’t have feelings, Mr. Jones.”

“She’s not a demon, Edith.”

“Why? Because she still has breasts?”

Another flurry of giggles swept through the younger ladies. Jones’s face reddened further; his whiskers twitched. Several of the other gentlemen had the decency to look embarrassed, but not, Harper noted, Ersimmin. The pianist was grinning.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Edith went on, “if she’s come from Hell then she’s earned that title.” She eyed the heavy flask and rubber bulb attached to Harper’s belt. “Don’t let her appearance deceive you. This woman breathes human blood, just like the rest of those foul creatures.”

Harper was already beginning to feel woozy. The mist pumps had not been switched on in here, and the air in this carriage was too thin for her dead lungs. But the young lady’s words had stung her, and she resisted inhaling a breath of mist from her bulb.

“Please let me pass,” she said.

“Feeling faint, dear?”

“Leave her be, Edith,” Jones said. “She doesn’t look well.”

The young lady raised her chin and gave the old reservist a supercilious glance, but she stepped aside to let the engineer pass.

Harper didn’t meet her eyes for more than an instant. She’d possessed a temper once, but it had dried up long ago. She left the music car as Ersimmin began to play a new tune, each note perfectly timed to match her rapidly retreating footsteps.

Car C boasted a lounge of gilt-edged pastel furniture, plush recliners and low tables, and scattered reading lamps fashioned like jelly-fish. It was currently deserted. Reflections of the room bounced back from the etched glass walls and gave the impression of a multitude of identical lounges placed side by side, but behind those phantom copies Harper spied the dark shapes of buildings and abandoned demon ships in Knuckletown slipping past. She didn’t have much time. The train would soon be pulling in to its first stop.

The human passengers were about to meet their hellish leader in the flesh.