Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

The Hound Master laughed. “You always underestimate yourself, Mina,” he said. “You summoned a guardian from the Forest of War without my help. You killed one of your fellow captives without my help. And didn’t you place a piece of your soul inside the arconite without my help? All you have to do now is reach out to it.”

“I can’t!” she protested. “The Mesmerists changed me. My soul is all muddled up and… sore .” She almost stomped her foot down, but thought better of it. “Besides, I’d feel more comfortable if you were there with me.”

Another laugh issued from the tree.

Hasp said, “This is a new form for you, Basilis. Didn’t you used to be a dog?”

“Hasp…” The tree sighed. “Why are you not in Hell?”

The god grunted. “The Mesmerists caught us both. They assumed she was my woman.”

“Your woman ?” Basilis growled.

“Relax,” Hasp said. “She’s not my type.”

Mina felt suddenly cross. It wasn’t that she liked the god-not in that way. But for him to have a type that didn’t include her seemed desperately unfair. The floor lurched again and she slid a yard to the left. She reached out to grab the heart tree’s roots, but Basilis withdrew them. A low snarl came from the demonic tree.

Oh, no.

“Hasp and I both happened to be looking for Dill,” she said quickly. “That’s all. I’m sorry I left you alone in Cinderbark Wood, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to sneak into Hell undetected. Deepgate’s Portal was already teeming with Mesmerist shades. You know I’ll come back for you just as soon as I can.”

The steamship plummeted. In the iron gloom of her belly, The Pride of Eleanor Damask heaved and groaned against the chains binding her wheels and axles to the hold’s deck. Steel links stretched and warped. The glass carriages ground against one another, straining to be free of their shackles.

Basilis’s voice sounded like thunder. “I am no longer in that poisonous forest,” he rumbled. “And I am no longer alone. A Spine woman and her companion found my physical form in Cinderbark Wood. They brought me to Cospinol, who has delivered us by skyship to Coreollis. While you were in Hell, Mina, I have traveled across the world. Now I am in Rys’s own palace, not two leagues away from you. From here we can watch the arconite’s approach across LakeLarnaig.”

“Woman?” Mina said. “What woman ?”

The demon chuckled. “She is no thaumaturge, Mina.”

Another jolt sent blood sloshing against the slave pen wall. Mina slipped, but one of Basilis’s roots writhed across the floor and curled softly around her wrist, dragging her back towards the tree. Even Hasp was gripping the demon’s roots. But the Northmen were still fearful of the apparition and would not approach it. They fell and hit the wall hard, cracking their scales. While these unfortunate soldiers tried in vain to stop their lives pouring out, Mina clung to her demonic master.

“Now reach out for the splinter,” Basilis said. “Show these poor frightened gods what a Penny Devil and his guardian can do.”

“I need your help to see it clearly.”

“Very well.”

Mina envisioned herself in the Forest of Eyes-the first of her master’s three aspects to survive his expulsion from Heaven. A scrawl of black trees surrounded her, as dense and tangled as a thicket of thorns. The twisted boles and branches glistened as countless eyes within the bark turned towards the thaumaturge.

Mina strolled up to the nearest tree and peered into one of its eyes. She frowned and then looked into another, and another, while millions more stared down at her.

“Help me, Basilis,” she cried.

But the eyes just mutely blinked.

Harper’s knees struck the deck as the steamship hit the surface of LakeLarnaig with a boom. The hull pitched violently and a shower of icy water drenched the hurricane deck, soaking her and everyone else. Edith Bainbridge screamed and stumbled backwards, but Jones and Ersimmin, who had both somehow remained upright, caught her between them. The other passengers had fallen into an un-seemly jumble of silk frills, fans, and hankies.

Carrick remained to one side of the group, still cowering, with both of his arms wrapped around a wooden life preserver. The deck righted itself, groaning, then rolled over in the opposite direction. Water rushed up the hull below, and subsided in a sucking wave of froth as the steamship rocked to a gentle halt.

“I will sue, I will sue, I will sue.” Edith’s hair hung in a limp black net across her face, framing dark tears of eyeliner beneath her shock-wide eyes.

“Calm yourself,” Jones said. “It’s not over yet. Listen!”

Harper tilted her head. An odd humming, crackling noise was beginning to build; it seemed to thrum along the ship’s iron banisters and reverberate through the bulkheads. She checked her Locator.

“A door opening?” Jones ventured.

Harper studied the device, trying to make sense of what she was reading. The silver needle shifted and bounced between ideographs, resisting her attempts to isolate a source of this burgeoning spiritual energy. “It is the same thing as before,” she said. “This energy isn’t coming from Hell or Earth. There are portals opening and closing everywhere, but they don’t lead to the Maze.”

“Is that possible ?”

She clenched her teeth. “It’s as if something is searching the ship.” Her gaze traveled the length of the deck where green and black flames flickered and diminished, lingering around the iron nails in the planks. The cold fire leapt from the deck and licked the metal balustrades and fixtures, burning nothing but exuding an ancient and earthy odor.

“It smells like a forest, ” Harper said.

The passengers were backing away from these weird fires, covering their noses against the stench, as the Sally Broom rocked back and forwards on the surface of the lake. Harper watched as the flames poured between the rails of the balustrades and cascaded down the hull to where the submerged hand of the great bone automaton was slowly releasing its grip of the floating vessel.

Harper raced to the side of the ship. “It’s going for the arconite.”

Jones’s whiskers twitched. “Sabotage?”

“What else?”

“Please lower that device,” said a voice from behind.

The engineer turned to see Isaac Pilby standing inside the door to the saloon. He had unsheathed his sword and now held it out: a white weapon with a polyhedral crystal pommel set in a nest of silver. With a twitch of the blade he indicated that he meant the engineer to stop what she was doing. Harper complied.

“We’ll wait here a few moments,” Pilby continued.

Harper noticed that the tip of the little man’s blade was covered in fresh blood. “What have you done?”

Pilby gave her an apologetic smile. “There were too many staff aboard this vessel for my comfort. Doubtless many of them were agents of King Menoa.”

“Who the hell are you?” Harper asked.

“Look at the colour of my blade,” he said. “This weapon, unlike so many of the others present here, is not an affectation. I make no concessions to fashion. And my name is not Pilby.”

The sound of crackling came from the waters below as the arconite lifted its arm above the level of the deck. The bones of its hand and wrist were now wreathed in green and black flames.

The lepidopterist glanced up at the automaton, then back at Harper. “I am the First of Cohl’s Shades,” he said. “I am the White Sword.”

“Damn mercenary!” Jones exclaimed. “How much is Rys paying you to sabotage this mission?”

The White Sword shrugged. “Stay on your knees.”