Lilith Saintcrow: The Iron Wyrm Affair

Pleased, Clare made a noise of assent. Valentinelli handed his glowrock cage over and edged into the small passageway. If there were more guards below, he did not wish to be blinded. It was a good idea. But they did not have to go far. The narrower passageway terminated at a wooden platform. Two frail guardrails over a pitch-black pit, with the wooden struts of a ladder showing.

“Oh, Scheisse .” Sig’s voice struck the edges of the pit, and a faint echo drifted back up.

“Cheer up, Sig. Man only dies once, you know.”

Valentinelli’s humourless snigger echoed as well. “In that case, signor , you go first.” But he shouldered the mentath aside with a small spitting sound of annoyance, grabbing the third glowrock cage and producing a handkerchief. In a trice the cage was tied to his torn waistcoat, and he tested the ladder with commendable aplomb. “Safe enough. Twenty guinea, definitely not enough.”

The climb down was more arduous mentally than physically. Sig, sweating and muttering awful imprecations under his breath, nearly wrenched one of the ladders free, he trembled so violently. Every twenty feet or so the ladder would end, resting on a trigged platform of warped wood. The glowrocks’ shimmer intensified as they descended, and Clare was seeking to calculate just what sort of foul air they might encounter in the depths when Valentinelli hopped off the ladder and on to solid ground. The Neapolitan sighed, a not-quite-whistle, and lifted his glow-rock cage.

A vast chamber tunnelled out of rock greeted them. It was mostly empty, but the scuffs on the dusty, dirt-grimed floor were fresh. To Clare’s left, the other half of the large hoist-lift rested in a carven hollow. The sides and floor of the cavern were unnaturally smooth, almost glassy. The cavern’s roof was ribbed like a cathedral’s vault, but the ribs were odd. Almost … organic.

Where did the workers who built this all vanish to? For a moment he had an odd mental vision of them seeping through the cracks in the floor, metal become liquid and returning to earth’s embrace. He shook it away, annoyed at the fancy.

Sig let out a bark of relief when his boots touched firm ground. Great pearls of sweat cut tracks through the ash on his face. “Archie. I hate you.”

“Ha!” Clare’s cry of triumph shattered the stillness.

Scattered on the floor of the cavern were a few bipedal mecha of the sort they had seen in the warehouse near the Tower. They slumped, curiously lonely, and from the way they all faced toward the deepest darkness at the back of the cavern, Clare could imagine the serried ranks that must have stood here before awakening to the invisible call.

“Ha!” he repeated, and actually bounced up on his toes. “As I suspected! Some of them did not receive that call, Sig. You and I are going to mechanister them, and then we will take them to Londinium.” The only response his revelation garnered was frank, open-mouthed stares from his companions. “Don’t you see? We will have mecha of our own!”

“Mad,” Valentinelli muttered. “You are mad .”

Sigmund, on the other hand, stared for a few more moments. Then a smile spread over his broad face. “ Du prächtiger Bastard! ” He clapped Clare on the shoulder hard enough to stagger the mentath. “Only if I take it to workshop after. Ja? ”

“Sig, old man, if we make this work, you will have a multiplicity of mecha carcasses to pick over at your leisure. We haven’t much time; let us see what they have left us.”

The first thread of grey on the eastern horizon was a silver ribbon under a heavy door of ink. It whipped the Khloros into a frenzy of speed, the countryside below running like a sheet of black oil on a wet plate. The Rider leaned forward, spiked helm nodding and armoured shoulders shaking with effort. The door of her Discipline was closing, and she could not stop it.

The tide of the dead who rode with her foamed in the dark-clouded sky, a crystal tracery of flung sea-waves. Under the shadow of Khloros and Rider they rose like smoke from graveyards and ditches, fields and rivers, and joined the procession. The things they rode were vaguely horselike, or they ran in empty air, spirits whole as they had been while living or terribly disfigured as they had been at life’s ending. The drowned and the murdered, the beaten and the lost, the starved and the gluttonous, they ran in the Khloros ’s wake.

This was why Endor was held in caution. Who could trust a man or woman who held congress with such a crowd? Or a Prime who could bring the Khloros to a night’s unlife?

The Pale Horse arrowed down. The silvery ribbon in the east became fringes of grey. It lashed sensitive flanks, scored smoking weals in piebald, stitched-together horseflesh. The armoured barding sought to protect the sorcerous skin underneath.

It does not matter. The journey is at an end .

With the thought, consciousness returned to the Rider. For a moment she hesitated, trembling, on the threshold, nameless and irresolute. It seemed an eternity she had been riding, following the scentless trail of treachery borne on gryphon wings. Did he know she followed? Quite possibly; she was loud enough to be heard counties away.

Between one heartbeat and the next she was through the door, the memory of being merely a cup to pour meaning into mercifully evaporating. Even a sorcerer’s finely tuned mind could not stand such a violation. Best it were forgotten, and soon.

A white sword coalesced at the eastern horizon. The grey light intensified, and the sound of waves crashed back and forth. Khloros , understanding her human need, intensified its speed again. It was graceful even in its desperate shambling, its armour and barding and flesh, bones and metal unravelling into pure æther. It burst into colour – the page written upon, the pallid light broken into its constituent parts.

The crystal wave clustered around the Rider, dead hands outstretched and fingers turned to vapour.

She fell.

Sunlight. Warm as oil against her cheeks, striking her sensitised eyes even through protective lids. She lay on chill dampness, various bits digging into her back and hair and skirts. She did not dare open her eyes, simply lay where she was for a few breaths, taking in everything she could of the space around her.

Morning chill, a damp saltbreath of the sea a distance away, flat metal tang of riverwater closer. The sunshine came in dappled patterns – she was under leaves. A faint breeze rattled them. What was that sound? It was not waves or the groaning crash of rent earth. It was not the hoofbeats of Khloros , and it was most definitely not her own voice.

Cries. The clacking of razor beaks, a voice raised high and furious in sonorous chant. A shuddering ran through the damp, hard ground underneath her.

What?

Sense returned. Every inch and particle of her savagely abused body hurt. To open the door to Discipline was never undertaken lightly. Things could happen to those whose will was not honed, and Discipline took a hard toll on the body as well as the mind. Emma Bannon sat up, blinking furiously, and found herself in a ragged ruin of a dress, her corset stays snapped and dark curls knocked loose, the morning dew gilding bracken and bramble. To her left a rocky hill rose, choked with vines. It was from the top of that hill that the sounds were pouring, screeches and nasty grindings.

She staggered upright, tearing herself free of clutching greenery. Her knees threatened to give; she silently cursed at them. That gave them some starch, but only some . Her rings ran with sparkling light – Tideturn had come while she lay senseless, and she carried a full charge of sorcerous force. It stung, like the touch of sun on already reddened skin.