Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

A laugh from the crowd.

“And please return after dusk, for what you are about to see is only a little glimpse of my circus. I’ve traveled to the ends of the world looking for monstrosities, and later tonight I’ll present them for your pleasure.” She sounded like a child reading from a script she’d prepared. “I’ve got ghosts and mazewights trapped in amber, and the corpses of unspeakable demons from the darkest depths of Hell, even the bones of gods and stone monsters from under the earth.”

One of the onlookers yelled, “Yeah, we seen all that last year,” which triggered more laughter.

Mina Greene frowned and stamped her foot. “Yes, the stitched-together things-the fakes. Jars of mermen and spider babies, the pickled oxen calves. You’ve seen it all here, haven’t you?” She seemed to realize that she’d lost her composure, and made an effort to control her temper. “But today I’m showing you the real thing. Not tricks or lies, but living, breathing demons…” She ended with a dancerlike flourish. “Behold the horrors of the Maze!”

She lifted the lid from the crate, then reached inside and fiddled with an interior clasp or lock. The crate’s four side panels fell away like opening flower petals, revealing the fleshy thing inside.

Rachel watched from the fringes, her face partially concealed by a silk scarf, as a gasp went up from the crowd. Several people backed away from the abomination on the stage. Then Rachel saw clearly what had caused the commotion, and she felt her stomach buck.

“This monster was captured in Deepgate four nights ago,” Greene called. “The Spine Avulsior allowed me, a humble show-woman and entertainer, to display it here so that I might make you aware of the dangers of the Maze. Look at its limbs, see how it weeps and suffers. This is what happens to heretics and blasphemers.”

Had the Spine hired her to preach their message for them? Rachel wondered if Mina Greene believed a word of the Avulsior’s lies, or if she’d just agreed to work with him in order to obtain this poor wretched creature.

It looked vaguely like a child, but Rachel could not see precisely how its twisted arms and legs connected to its torso. She couldn’t even be sure it was human. Parts of it appeared to be fashioned from the same wood used to make the crate. It was like a knot of muscle and bone intermingled with white-pine joists. Watery, weeping eyes lolled madly in its hairless skull. Clearly it was distressed. A pitiful wail issued from its drooling mouth, and Rachel turned away in abhorrence and shock.

How could the Spine stoop to this?

Rachel began to thread her way back through the crowd. But the show was not over yet, for worse was still to come. Mina Greene lifted her hands again and addressed the audience. “This horror, when left alone, tries to mimic its environment. You can see how it has copied the crate. It’s like a seed that doesn’t know which plant to become. Now watch closely.”

“No!” The thing on the stage wailed in a voice made thick by saliva. “Please don’t do this.”

Rachel glanced back to see Greene stooping over the thing and whispering something to it. What she saw next stopped her in her tracks.

The creature’s shape began to change. Its limbs grew longer while its head sank like a bubble of pink mud back into its neck. As the crowd looked on in amazement, its torso swelled and split into two amorphous lumps. These then stretched and flattened, the skin darkening all the while. In moments, the creature began to resemble something else entirely.

Cries of disgust and alarm went up from the audience, and then suddenly there was complete silence. Nobody in the crowd uttered a word.

The thing on the stage had finished its transformation. The hideous knot of muscle and bone had disappeared. In its place stood an ordinary wooden chair. Greene scraped it forward and then sat down in it. “You all have these in your homes, right?” she said. “Chairs, I mean, not demons. Well, don’t try this with them.” She produced a knife hidden under the folds of her gaudy dress, then stabbed it into the wooden seat between her thighs.

Blood dribbled from the damaged seat and spattered against the stage underneath it, accompanied by an eerie sound, like the distant echo of a scream. From the chair? The shape-shifter was still conscious?

“This is how demons are formed,” Greene said. “It’s a type of Mesmerism, and there are things in the Maze who use such techniques to mould your souls into any form they like.” She paused for a moment, and Rachel saw her glance at a small prompt card pinned to the side of her wagon. “The Maze of Blood is aptly named,” she went on in an overly dramatic voice, “for its halls and corridors exist as incarnations of living souls. The dead don’t wander Hell; they are the bricks and mortar from which it is built.” She rose from her chair and made another flourish with her hands. “Thus Iril is both the Maze and the shattered god who lives within it. Similarly, when this pathetic creature died, it became forever a part of the Maze-a living, breathing, thinking piece of Hell.” She paused, observing the silent audience. “So, have you seen a show like this before?”

Rachel pushed on through the crowd and hurried back to the tavern. With Spine agents about, she had risked much by attending such a public spectacle. The show-woman’s words echoed in her mind. It is a type of Mesmerism…there are things in the Maze who use such techniques to mould your souls into any form they like .

Had the young angel been a victim of this unholy Mesmerism himself? And what had it done to him? She tried to shun gruesome possibilities, but the image of the weeping creature onstage gripped her imagination.

A part of the Maze-a living, breathing, thinking piece of Hell.

Walking briskly back through the darkening lanes, dodging streams of brown water thrown from the doors of the mud-brick houses on either side, Rachel wondered how Mina Greene’s demon had come to be in Deepgate at all. Wraiths and shades were known to haunt the darkest parts of the chained city, but those were ethereal: phantasms attracted by past violence and shed blood. Yet this shape-shifter had been corporeal. If it was truly what the show-woman had claimed it to be…

Perhaps the recent death toll had caused a larger or more permanent rift to open between the chained city and the Maze of Blood? After all, tens of thousands had died when Alexander Devon had brought his monstrous machine to Deepgate’s doorstep. Rachel didn’t much care what would become of the crippled city. When she’d seen it last, it looked all but ready to collapse into the abyss beneath it.

“Miss Hael!”

The former assassin almost collided with Olirind Meer as he emerged from a side street. Sweating and disheveled, as though he had been running, he now stopped short, startled by her presence. “What are you doing here?” he inquired in tones which verged on panic. “It’s almost dark. Why aren’t you in your room?”

“Keep your voice down, Olirind, please. I had to go out. There was something I needed to do.”

The tavern proprietor glanced behind him, then back at her. “Quickly now,” he whispered. “You must come back with me at once. There are Spine everywhere.”

With barely another look in his direction, Rachel strode on ahead of him. “You can’t be seen with me,” she reminded him. “I’ll speak to you later.”

Leaving Meer standing bemused at the junction, she hurried back to the tavern.

Dill was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his sword, when she entered the room. He hadn’t touched his bowl of chowder. “I feel better now,” he said. “I’m sorry I’ve been distant lately.”