Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

“Leave.” Hasp jerked his arm away from her. “I have warned you…”

Harper ducked inside the slave pen. “They want you upstairs,” she said to Hasp. “Bring your shiftblade. Let’s go.”

The blood pulsing within the angel’s glass armour seemed to quicken even more. He trembled, his eyes blackened, and he snatched up his weapon. “Odd,” he growled, frowning at the blade with an expression of distaste and confusion, as though he’d just picked up a river snake and was trying to work out why. “Odd that I should recognize your voice.” He stared up at her. “Menoa has changed your form since the last time we met.”

The engineer nodded. “Alice Harper.”

“You were a serpent.”

Harper studied him a moment, then said, “I order you to drop the weapon.”

At once, Hasp released the shiftblade. The sword cracked against the glassy floor. Most of the slaves flinched away from the sound-all except Mina, who was watching intently.

Hasp winced. “I see nothing has changed.”

“The parasite in your skull,” Harper said slowly, “will obey any of King Menoa’s servants. Even the weakest of them could order you to slay yourself-” she inclined her head “-or your woman there, and you would be forced to comply without hesitation.”

Hasp glanced at Mina, but said nothing.

“If you try to resist it,” Harper said, “it will eventually kill you.”

The god’s massive shoulders bunched under two dozen plates of overlapping glass; tubes flexed; cords in his neck pushed against his transparent collar. “Before or after I reach Coreollis?” he said.

The engineer looked away. “It’s agitated because it has been removed from Hell. That’s why it’s causing you so much pain. I can stop that from happening.”

“My thanks.”

“Then you’ll come upstairs with me?”

Hasp snorted a laugh. “As long as you don’t order me to.”

The engineer crouched down beside him. She rummaged in her tool belt, and after a brief moment brought out a slender silver device about the size of a pencil, which she twisted at various places along its length. The tool crackled and then made a high-pitched whining sound. “Lean forward,” she said.

Hasp obeyed, and Harper inserted the device into a tiny slot at the back of his skull. “Tell me if this hurts,” she said, “or if you begin to feel dizzy.” She inhaled from her bulb again and then, gently, blew into the device. After a moment she paused and said, “You may experience a brief moment of confusion, some bright flashes of colour at the edges of your vision, unusual sounds or smells. If you think you’re going to pass out, tell me at once.”

The god gasped, and then bared his teeth, “Get that…thing out of my mind!”

Harper withdrew the device, and stood up. “It’s done,” she said. “The demon is calmer now. But you’re going to have to stop resisting it.”

“Stop resisting it?” Hasp pressed his fist against his breastplate, at the place where the blood spread from his heart in a crimson web across his chest, and took several deep breaths. “If I don’t resist it I’m dead anyway. When Rys learns that his own brother has become a tool, a weapon to be used by any of his enemies…” He shook his head. “Tell me, Alice Harper, what would you do?”

The engineer looked down at him with an expression that might have been pity. She shrugged. “I’d make friends with a Mesmerist.”

Hasp’s grunt was almost a laugh. He reclaimed his shiftblade and stood up. “You want me to kill something, I presume.”

From inside the slave pen, Mina Greene tried to follow the angel’s progress along the corridor and up the stairs to the lounge, but she soon lost sight of him among the confusion of glints and glimmers within the train. She glanced down at Hasp’s sketches, now strewn across the floor amidst the fragments of his broken pencil. She gathered up the sheets of paper, then flopped down and leafed through them.

Each sketch was different, but of a similar subject: stone keeps and towers of every shape and size, round or square, tall or stubby; each with battlements and high turrets, narrow windows and thick iron portcullises, deep moats and stout drawbridges. Mina tossed the drawings away. Ultimately they were all boring. Hasp sketched nothing but castles.

Hasp strode into the music carriage, and into the center of a circle of cold stares. The humans fell silent as he entered. His armour shifted and clicked, the blood-filled plates rasping over one another and over his skin, splitting the light from chandeliers and reading lamps into a mirage of rainbows. Since Menoa had imprisoned him inside the suit, Hasp had learned to ignore the physical discomfort. His body had hardened and no longer pounded with infection. But he had yet to grow accustomed to the profound sense of vulnerability.

He hated the Mesmerists for that feeling, and hated those who assisted them. Without his parasitic conscience he would happily have murdered every one of these odious bastards. They knew it, of course; he could read it in their flushed faces and their ridiculous affected postures of ease, in the way they toyed with their jewelry, soulpearls, or weapons. They were thrilled, frightened, entertained. The web of blood around the god’s heart seethed and boiled inside its glass prison.

These people had sold their souls for power.

All five of the men had armed themselves, two with crystal Mesmeric blades-the other three, including King Menoa’s chief liaison officer, with shiftblades similar to Hasp’s own. The women flocked behind in a breathless hush of fruit-coloured silk. Fans wafted over jewels and powdered necks.

Easy enough for him to snap…

A furious buzzing behind the angel’s ears sent spikes of agony deep into his cranium. Menoa’s demon had sensed the direction of Hasp’s anger. His left eye now flickered uncontrollably; his fist crushed the grip of his shiftblade. In a hot blur he saw the women back away, pressing themselves closer to their own reflections in the walls of the music carriage. Harper approached, an apprehensive frown creasing her brow.

The chief liaison officer, Carrick, gripped his shiftblade like a man who wanted people to think he knew how to use it. But Hasp had never met a human with any real talent with the blade. It took a long time in Hell to master the necessary mental skills to use such a weapon. Carrick raised his chin. “Hasp,” he said, and then paused to moisten his lips. “Kneel.”

Hasp fought to resist the man’s instruction. He bit down hard, summoned every shred of willpower, pushed back, struggled like a man trapped beneath a rockfall…

…and found himself kneeling on the floor, gasping.

“You see?” Carrick gave a theatrical wave to the assembled guests. “You are perfectly safe. Menoa’s parasite is irresistible.”

A handsome man in a dark suit spoke up: “He doesn’t look particularly dangerous to me. He’s wearing slave skin, for god’s sake. One prod with a sword would crack that wide open.”

“That’s true, Mr. Lovich. And yet the king was good enough to exhibit him at the Highcliffe Fair. Not one of the reservists who sparred with the archon survived the encounter. He showed remarkable skill with a shiftblade.”

“This is a foolish idea.” This came from an older, more heavily built man with white whiskers. “We’ll reach the portal in minutes. Let’s put this monster back in his cage and let Menoa decide what to do with the intruder.”

From somewhere Hasp found strength. He surged to his feet, his fist taut as iron on the hilt of his shiftblade, and bared his teeth at Carrick. “Try that again and I’ll rip your head off, reach inside your throat, pull your insides out and stuff them back into your empty skull.”