God of Clocks

4

Shadow people crouched over her. She saw white eyes and teeth in the darkness. She feared she must be in a Spine dungeon in Deepgate's temple, because she could smell blood and she was hurting, and that meant there must be priests nearby to bless and sanction her torture.

She passed out.

When Rachel woke again, she was lying on her back on a narrow camp bed, her neck propped upon a soft pillow. Her arms and legs felt as heavy as the lumber joists in the ceiling above her. A sudden sharp pain in her head made her cry out. Gazing up at the wooden ceiling, she realized that she must now be aboard the Rotsward, for the whole room seemed to loll drunkenly backwards and forwards before it settled again.

“How are you feeling?”

Rachel turned her head to see Mina sitting on a chair. They were in a musty bedroom she vaguely recognized. A dim grey light filtered through the gauzy window drapes. Rachel felt so nauseous she thought she might vomit.

“This isn't the skyship?”

“What do you remember?”

“An inn… We can't stay here, Mina. The arconites…”

“They're still behind us.” Mina stood up and approached the bed. “You badly needed rest, and we decided it would be more comfortable for you here.”

Rachel winced as a jolt of agony split her skull. “That man shot me,” she said. “Gods, Mina, I saw it coming. I tried to focus, but the missile came too fast. I've never…” She breathed. “I've never seen one of those weapons triggered before.”

“Fired,” Mina explained. “A flame ignites powder inside the musket and the explosion sends a lead ball out of the barrel, like in a cannon. We developed weapons like that in Deepgate over three hundred years ago, before the Church of Ulcis managed to stifle all the research. Abner Hill fired this one directly into your face.”

Rachel tried to touch her wounded head, but Mina stopped her.

“The musket ball grazed your skull,” the thaumaturge continued. “Either he has a lousy aim, or you managed to focus fast enough to save yourself. It's just a flesh wound, so leave the bandage alone. If it doesn't get infected, you'll probably live.” She took a glass of water from a bedside cabinet and held it under Rachel's chin. “Drink,” she ordered.

Rachel sipped. “Where is he?”

“Hill? He's upstairs with his wife. Hasp wanted to kill him, but I think I talked him out of it. These people know this land much better than we do. They've set us on the right path now.”

“Where's Hasp?”

Mina hesitated, then shook her head. “He wants to be left alone right now. He has some issues he needs to deal with.”

“And how's Dill?”

“Huge and ugly, but he'll be pleased to know you aren't dead.”

Rachel pulled away the blanket and swung herself over to the edge of the camp bed. The room reeled around her. She groaned. Her limbs still felt like slugs of metal-the aftereffects of focusing. The Spine technique had quickened her reactions to superhuman levels, but now her exhausted muscles were paying the price of such forced exertion. She had moved as quickly as any Spine assassin could, but not fast enough to dodge that musket ball.

“Take it easy,” Mina advised.

“Sure, just as soon as I've had words with the proprietor.”

Mina helped Rachel to her feet and then supported her as she staggered out of the bedroom and into the saloon. There were empty bottles strewn everywhere; an overpowering stench of whisky filled the air. Most of the tables and chairs rested in heaps against the back wall or around the base of the staircase. It looked like a squall had swept through the room.

They climbed the stairs and Mina led Rachel to one of the guest bedrooms. She unlocked the door.

Abner Hill and his wife sat side by side on the bed. The young woman glanced at Rachel and then turned away quickly and bit her knuckle to stifle a sob. Her long golden hair tumbled over her face, hiding her tearful eyes.

Rachel frowned. The woman who'd attacked her had had orange hair. She remembered it distinctly. “You came at me with an axe?” she said. “It was…” She winced as a sudden ache throbbed inside her skull. “It was you, wasn't it?”

The wife sniffed, and made no reply.

But her husband glared up insolently at the assassin. “You can't keep us prisoners in our own place,” he said. “You gods-be-damned Mesmerist brigands.”

He spoke with such a thick Pandemerian accent that it took Rachel a moment to be sure she'd understood him correctly, yet she did not recall that he'd had very much of an accent at all when she'd first encountered him. “We're not Mesmerists or thieves,” she said at last. “You might have at least asked before you tried to shoot my head off.”

“Really? And I suppose that's not an arconite outside either?”

She saw his point.

Abner Hill glowered at her. “You arrive in Westroad inside the jaw of that damn monster, then break into my property and come sauntering up my own stairs, all armed like you mean me harm. That's why you got a bullet in your head, woman.” He bared small yellow teeth. “Now you say you're not thieves and yet I've sat here and watched you steal from me bold as brass.”

“What did we steal?”

The man adopted an expression of disbelief. “That bullet must have knocked the wits from you. What did you steal? You stole every last damn thing I own. You stole my business and my gods-be-damned home!”

Rachel looked at Mina, who shrugged.

She walked over to the window. In the mists a hundred feet below, the tops of trees swept past like the peaks of waves upon a dismal green sea. Dill was still carrying the whole building.

“It's more comfortable than living in his mouth,” Mina said.

The assassin hung her head. “I'm sorry,” she said to the man who had tried to kill her. “I'm sorry this has happened.”

Some time later Rachel was lying on her bed when Mina came in with a pot of tea from the kitchen, Basilis snuffling about her feet. The assassin must have slept for a while again because it had become much darker outside and shadows crouched in the corners of her room. Vague recollections of a dream remained, in which Rachel had been arguing with an orange-haired woman over a broken mirror, but the details were elusive, already fading. The pain in her head had settled to a dull but ever-present throb.

“Have you noticed anything odd recently?” she said, turning to Mina.

The young thaumaturge just stared at her. “We're in a building carried by a four-hundred-foot-tall golem, with twelve more giants in pursuit,” she said. “Does that count?”

“Did Abner's wife change the color of her hair? I mean, since I've been unconscious.”

Mina's brows rose. “Oh, you meant really odd things? Someone dyeing their hair?” She adopted an expression of mock thoughtfulness. “No, I don't think Mrs. Hill has been anywhere near a vanity cabinet since we met.” She poured tea into two glasses. “Her name is Rosella, and she's desperately afraid of that big creep.”

“I'm sorry,” Rachel said. “I know how ridiculous it sounds. My head has been playing tricks on me recently.”

Mina grunted. “Strange,” she said. “Have you bumped it recently? Or been shot in the face at all?”

Rachel smiled.

Mina handed one of the glasses to Rachel and watched while the other woman drank.

The brew tasted strong and bitter. Rachel swallowed and then inhaled deeply of the vapours rising from the glass. “Abner was right,” she said. “We stole his entire livelihood.”

“Think of it as a loan,” Mina said. “As soon as we've saved his life and the lives of everyone else in this world, we'll let him have his property back.” She set her own empty glass down on the floor beside the teapot.

Rachel frowned at the glass for a moment. “When did you drink that tea?” she said.

“Just now.”

“But…” Rachel felt suddenly confused, as if her thoughts had become knotted. She hadn't even seen Mina lift the glass. Rachel had barely just accepted her own drink. She glanced down to find an empty glass clutched in her own hands. It felt cold.

Had she blacked out?

“Besides,” Mina went on, “Hasp pointed out that if we expect to recruit soldiers from Rys's disbanded army, then we need a base of operations. He wants to use the building to entertain our would-be allies.”

Rachel was staring at her empty glass. Evidently her injury had affected her more than she'd realized. She set the glass on the floor beside the bed and then leaned back and closed her eyes. “I'm tired,” she said. “I think I need to sleep.”

“Finish your tea,” Mina said. “It's good for you.”

Rachel felt the warmth of the glass in her hand. The tea's bittersweet aroma cut through her muddled thoughts with a welcome sharpness. “What?” She opened her eyes again. “Sorry, Mina, I must have drifted off.” She took a sip of the hot liquid.

Mina drank from her own glass. “Menoa's parasite won't leave him be,” she said. “The last I knew he was sitting on the pantry floor with a bottle of whisky, as drunk as any man or god could be.”

“Were we talking about Hasp?”

“You asked.”

“Yes. Sorry, do you want me to speak to him?”

The thaumaturge shrugged. “You can try.”

Rachel sighed. She seemed to have lost track of this conversation somewhere. She could hardly recall what they'd been speaking about at all. Her head continued to throb, but she felt slightly more alert now. Mina's tea had cleared her thoughts. She eased herself up against her pillow, then swung her legs out of the bed. “Thanks, Mina,” she said. “I'll take him some of this tea.” She topped up her glass and then stood up unsteadily.

“Are you all right?” Mina asked. “You look very pale.”

Rachel shrugged. “I'm Spine.”

In the cracked Pandemerian Railroad Company mirror behind the bar, Rachel glimpsed her own reflection again. She looked even thinner and more gaunt than usual, like a spectre lingering in that dark room, the ghost of some long-forgotten war. The bandage around her head had been fashioned from blue-and-white checked cloth. She brushed her fingers against the dark smear of blood above her right ear.

Somebody had cleared away all the bottles and righted one of the tables and two chairs, setting them in the center of the saloon. The building lolled gently from side to side and she heard the muted crash of trees from below. She went into the kitchen.

Hasp sat on the pantry floor with his back propped against the door frame. Four empty whisky bottles rolled back and forth across the floorboards near his feet. Clutching a half-full bottle in one fist, he raised it to his lips and drank, then looked up at her with darkly shadowed red eyes.

“A god walks up to a bar,” Rachel began. “And the barkeep says, sorry, we don't serve gods in here. And the god says, why the hell not? And the barkeep says, because the last one pissed all over my begonias.”

“Trying to… make the fucking thing drunk,” Hasp said, tapping the bottle against his head. “But the little fucker is more… has more tolerance than I do.” He lowered the bottle, sloshing yet more whisky on the floor.

“You want some tea?”

The god grunted.

Rachel downed half of her glass of tea and set it down on a convenient shelf. The drink was cold and foul-tasting, and she wondered why she'd brought it here at all. Her gaze wandered over the dusty tins and pickle jars and a box of old potatoes, carrots, and turnips. “Mina says we're following some sort of trail.”

“Woodsmen,” Hasp explained. “Rys's shit-head reserves. Never came to Coreollis when he summoned them.” He dragged a hand across his stubbled jaw and tried to spit; a glob of saliva remained on his chin. “Probably on their way to Herica, like us… abandoned their settlements when the peace treaty turned sour.” He grunted. “Either news of our glorious fucking defeat reached them fast, or they watched the battle at Larnaig from the cover of their forest. Cospinol's gold is only going to hire us idlers and cowards.”

“It's a fresh trail, so we're likely to catch up with them soon.”

Hasp sniffed. “You want me sober, eh?”

“Civil, anyway.”

The god set down his whisky bottle. “I'm not…” He stared glassily into the corner of the room for a long while. “I'm no more than this fucking parasite in here.” He glared up at her. “Understand? That's what Menoa has left you. If he had killed me, then there'd be nothing, but now there's less than nothing… a burden. I'm going to betray you with this fucking… little piece of Hell in my brain.” He bared his teeth and slammed the whisky bottle against the floorboards. The bottle smashed, but his glass-sheathed fist remained intact.

“Easy!”

Hasp lifted his transparent gauntlet and stared at the blood flowing inside it. “Tougher than it looks, isn't it?”

“Don't test it, Hasp. We need you alive.”

He snorted and wiped his nose. “Alive?” He mumbled something under his breath, then let out a sigh. “My head…”

“It'll hurt a lot more tomorrow.”

“Good. That'll punish the little fucker.”

It had grown almost dark by now, and the god sat sprawled on the pantry floor, stinking of whisky, his robe disheveled and his eyes hidden in caves of shadow. His neck and arms gleamed as dully red as tools from a surgeon's table. Rachel searched the shelves and then went back into the kitchen and pulled open drawers until she found some tallow candles and a taper. She looked for flints but found none.

“We need light. I'll go and see if Mina has something we can use to get a fire going.”

But the Lord of the First Citadel was snoring.

The moon had risen and it glowed dimly within its own misty halo by the time Dill stopped walking. Rachel and Mina were seated before the big potbelly stove in the main saloon, eating the remains of a stew that Rachel had made for Abner and Rosella Hill, when the swaying building became totally still. Silence crept in with the cold breeze.

The inn began to rise quickly into the sky.

“He's seen something.” Rachel glanced over at the thaumaturge.

Mina sniffed the air. “Refugees,” she replied.

The two women set their bowls down upon the floor and picked up candles and walked over to where the arconite's great grinning face looked in at them from behind the open doorway. Rachel stepped outside and Mina followed.

Three or four yards of hardened earth surrounded the inn, as though the building had been built upon a tiny island adrift in a sea of fog. Dill's skeletal fingers curved up over the precipice, as pale as boles of dead birch. He had lifted the building close to his skull, and his eyes gazed down at them blankly, like holes in the sky itself. The inn glowed like a beacon in the night sky behind Rachel, its windows and doorway ablaze with yellow lights. The scent of the green pines mingled with the odour of hellish chemicals leaching from the arconite.

Rachel heard a woman cry out in the distance.

“Set us down, Dill,” she said.

Dill did not move.

“I need to speak to them, Dill.”

Mina stood to one side, frowning, then she shook her head. “They're attacking our arconite's feet with axes.”

Rachel shot her an inquiring look.

“Not a chance of damaging him,” the thaumaturge said.

Rachel turned back to the face in the sky. “I can handle a group of woodsmen.”

The great skull tilted forward. Gold coins fell through his teeth. Then Dill stooped and lowered the building, and its earthen island, towards the ground.

A flurry of arrows greeted them as the Rusty Saw descended towards the woodsmen, their shafts hissing by in the mist. Rachel spied the refugees' caravan encamped along the forest trail ahead. A line of ten or so canvas-covered wagons had been left in the middle of the road, but scores of hide-covered tents crouched amongst the trees on either side-enough to sleep two or three hundred men. Campfires flickered amongst webs of branches and green needles, throwing shadows after hurrying men, illuminating the white eyes of horses and pack mules that snorted and struggled wildly against their hobbles.

A group of men was hacking at Dill's feet with axes-arcs of red steel in the glow of the firelight. They were as broad and fair as Rys's Northmen but wore a much simpler armour of lacquered wooden segments strapped to their torsos. Their women scattered, rushing goods and children away from the wagon train, slipping in the muddy ditches on either side of the track. Babies wailed in their arms. A horse reared against its reins tied to a running board; the wagon gave a jolt, and the animal fell in terror. Dogs barked and loped at the heels of fleeing men. Someone kicked a branch from a fire, raising a burst of sparks and embers amongst the trees.

The assassin took a deep breath. “Stop!”

A man came at Rachel with an axe, tails of hair flying behind him. She broke his teeth and then threw him, slamming his body to the ground. “I said stop!” The sudden exertion left her lightheaded and reeling; she struggled to disguise her frail condition.

Mina had bitten her lip. She was backing away towards the inn doorway, muttering promises to her devilish little dog.

“Don't do it, Mina,” Rachel cried. “Not here.”

The thaumaturge stopped. Her eyes widened, staring beyond Rachel.

Rachel turned and grabbed a second man's upraised arm and dragged it down so as to bury his axe in the mud. She stove her elbow into the wooden panels lashed around his guts and then tipped his unbalanced body forwards. A third and fourth attacker stormed up the banks of the earthen island still clutched in Dill's hand. Rachel raised her hands. “We're not here to fight.”

They grinned and reached for her, then pulled back, as if teasing. The taller of the two unwound a coiled rope lasso from around his palm and elbow. The light from the inn danced on his black-lacquered armour. His companion stroked his beard down, thrust out his tongue, and then raised his knife.

“We're here on Cospinol's orders,” Rachel said. “Here to recruit those still loyal to Rys to fight the Lord of the Maze. I need to speak to your captain.”

“Captain's busy,” said the shorter man. His wooden armour clicked as he lunged for her with his knife. At the same moment his companion threw his rope, aiming a loop at Rachel's head. Rachel caught the rope and wrapped her arm around it and yanked hard as she sidestepped the clumsy knife blow. She kicked the smaller man off balance and pulled his companion closer. “You're wasting my time,” she said. “We're not your enemies.”

The tall man looked uncertain now.

But then a great murderous roar came from the door of the inn. Hasp stood there, naked but for his hellish blood-filled armour. He was blind drunk and brandishing a whisky bottle. In his other fist he clutched the same axe that Rosella Hill had swung at Rachel. He took a long slug of whisky and bellowed, “Fucking traitorous cowards! Too scared to fight with us at Larnaig!” He tottered forward down the stoop and almost fell. And then he lurched three steps sideways and looked at Rachel's opponent and lifted the axe again. “I am Hasp of the First Citadel and I'll murder every one of you bastards.”

Rachel glared at Mina. The thaumaturge merely shook her head in warning. Clearly, Mina didn't think it wise to interfere with him.

The man at the end of Rachel's rope backed away from the god, his eyes wide with horror. She dropped the rope, letting him go, and turned to Hasp.

Hasp swung his axe at nothing and then staggered forward again.

“Hasp,” Rachel shouted, “get inside before you kill someone and ruin any hope we've got.”

“Murder them all,” Hasp growled. “Bastard wood-chopping cowards.” His bleary eyes focused on her. “You've hurt your head. I should protect you from these… foes, young lady.”

“Protect yourself, you idiot. You're stinking drunk.”

Hasp gave her a lopsided grin that seemed to clash with the bitterness in his tone. “I have numbed the insect,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “Drank it into submission. The king's Mesmerists have no power over me here.”

“These are not Mesmerists, Hasp. They're Rys's men.”

“Rys?” He staggered sideways, then caught himself and looked at the fire-lit chaos all around him. “They should have fought with us at Larnaig.” He sat down on the ground and stared at the axe in his hand.

Four woodsmen had now scrambled up onto the ground surrounding the inn. They wore interwoven wooden plates over banded leather and carried either iron bludgeons or strips of steel, flat-hammered and honed into rude hacking blades. They began running towards the seated god. One cried out, “I speak for Lord Rys, you fucking demon.”

Rachel rushed forward to defend Hasp. “He is Rys's brother,” she yelled. “Lord of the First Citadel and Menoa's only enemy in Hell for three thousand years. What are your intentions, woodsmen? If you mean him harm, then you are a traitor to Coreollis and I will fight you here.”

The four hesitated.

“He's got a foul fucking mouth, girl.”

“That doesn't change who he is.”

The man who had claimed to speak for Rys now grunted. He was taller and broader than most of his comrades, yet as dark as a Heshette. His armour had been finely carved and painted with deep green lacquer. On his forehead ran a wide red scar, perhaps caused by the brim of a smashed helmet. He had narrow eyes, deep set on either side of a doubly crooked nose, and lines of corded black hair that fell upon his shoulders like the tails of a whip. He studied Hasp for a long time, then looked at Rachel.

“Why doesn't the arconite attack?” he said.

“Menoa doesn't control him.”

The woodsman raised a hand and shouted out above the din to the men attacking Dill, “Hold off! Ricks, Nine-inch, Pace, just stop your fucking racket so I can speak.”

The sound of clashing weapons subsided as the woodsmen ceased their attack and gathered around the Rusty Saw.

The man with the scar said, “My name is Oran, and this caravan is under my protection. Who the fuck are you people?”

The woodsmen had come from a bustling town called Ferris, four leagues to the south, Oran explained. Earlier today they had passed through Westroad, the very settlement from where Dill had plucked the Rusty Saw. Now his men were much amused to find themselves in the same damn tavern once more.

“We thought we'd drunk this place dry,” Oran explained. “And now we find it mysteriously restocked. That bastard Hill was hiding booze somewhere.” He sat at a table opposite Rachel and Mina, staring thoughtfully at his glass while a score of his woodsmen roared and laughed and slammed down drinks over at the bar. Orange light from the stove lit his darkly stubbled face and scarred forehead.

“What are your intentions?”

Oran glanced at his men, then back at Rachel. “How much are you prepared to pay?”

“Enough to keep your people from starving,” Rachel replied, “and to keep you on the right side of the war. The human side, I mean. Menoa might offer you more gold, but he'll expect your souls in return.”

His brow creased as he mulled this over, his scar forming new contours. “Two hundred and sixty men won't be enough to keep those things off your back,” he said. “I doubt ten thousand men could do it. Nobody has ever killed an arconite.”

She nodded.

“Then we're of no use to you.”

“We'll pay you anyway. Better to have allies against the unforeseen than to suffer enemies we needn't have.”

He continued to frown. “Two hundred and sixty men won't be enough to keep those things off your back,” he said again. “I doubt ten thousand men…”

Rachel felt an odd prickling sensation at the back of her neck, as if an unseen hand had brushed her.

“… ever killed an arconite,” Oran finished.

Rachel bit her lip, and stared at him for a moment. Was he just drunk, or being deliberately difficult? “You just repeated yourself, Oran.”

His frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

“I said we'll pay you anyway. Everyone needs to eat.”

He shrugged. “Your charity does us an injustice,” he said, “but I won't refuse it.” He reached a hand across the table.

Rachel hesitated. Was she reading too much into his apparent repetition? After a moment, she sighed, and leant forward to accept his hand.

As their palms clasped, the woodsman added, “We also require payment for our horses and mules. The animals won't follow this monster, nor any creature that stinks of the Maze. They'll need to be turned loose or taken to the stockyards at Himmish to await our return.”

“Or butchered?”

“My men will resist that. The mules… that's fine, but not the horses.”

She nodded. “We'll buy the horses from you. Do with them what you wish.”

“And the wagons?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Don't push me, Oran.”

“These wagons are all some of us have left. You can't expect families to abandon them without some recompense.”

“Those who wish to stay with their wagons are welcome to do so if they think Menoa's arconites might offer them a better deal. The rest will come with us to the foot of the Temple Mountains.”

Oran looked doubtful. “We're Rys's men,” he said. “And Sabor will not look kindly upon us crossing the border into Herica. These two gods have respected each other's sovereignty for hundreds of years. Sabor might regard an intrusion now as an act of war. After all, you are luring Menoa's Twelve into his realm.”

“The Twelve would get to Herica eventually,” Rachel said. “We're going there to beg for Sabor's help while we still have a chance to achieve something. The god of clocks has been Rys's ally against the Mesmerist incursion. If he still lives, I don't believe he will view our presence in Herica in such an”-she chose her words carefully so as not to offend the woodsmen leader-“inflexible manner.”

Oran did not seem to be entirely convinced. Nevertheless, he accepted her proposal.

“We can't delay here any longer,” Rachel said. “Get everyone, and everything you can carry, into this inn.” She turned to the thaumaturge. “How much time do we have?”

Mina closed her eyes and inhaled. She frowned, exhaled, and then took another breath, her eyes moving rapidly under their lids like those of someone dreaming. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Get the people aboard now. Leave everything else behind except the weapons.” Her eyes snapped open. “One of the Twelve has picked up our trail.”

With the women and children taken into account, the refugees numbered almost four hundred. Despite Oran's shouted orders, they were not prepared to leave their possessions behind in the wagons. Men grabbed up tents and bundles of clothes or coils of rope and crates of woodcutter's equipment: axes, saws, and chisels. Young boys unhobbled the mounts and smacked their rumps and yelled at them to scram, while old women shouldered past with sacks of flour and meal, barrels and baskets full of salted meat or vegetables. A group of younger women stood out by virtue of their frilled lace frocks, rouged cheeks, and powdered faces, and by their apparent disdain for lifting anything heavier than makeup and jewellery boxes.

“Whores?” Rachel said.

Mina followed the assassin's gaze. “Pandemerian whores. They came here with the railroad to service the workers in Rys's logging camps.”

“Don't the woodsmen's wives object?”

“Rys sent those wives to brothels in Coreollis and Cog. That way the Pandemerian Railroad made twice the profit on their services.”

Rachel was aghast. “These men let Rys do that?”

Mina shrugged. “Men follow gods as blindly as dogs follow men. The god of flowers and knives drowned this entire land once, and they didn't object. Hasp ranted for a full hour about the situation while you were unconscious. I don't think he approves.”

The older women carried hides, water skins, and pots and pans, loading them all onto the ring of open ground around the Rusty Saw, before heading down to the road for more. The whores clambered up onto the earthen island, stumbling and shrieking and chatting amongst themselves. All of the children were already inside the building and most of these were howling in distress.

“How long now, Mina?”

“Minutes only.”

Rachel grabbed Oran's arm. “We're leaving now, with or without your people.”

The big woodsman leapt down the bank of earth and then stepped from the arconite's hand onto the forest track below it. He grabbed an old woman who was heading away from the inn, swung her round, and yelled at her to go back the way she had come. He then shouted, “Everyone who wants to live, get into that fucking inn. We're going now.” He moved amongst them, grabbing at the men and women who tried to return to the wagons, knocking packs of goods aside and shoving people back up towards the inn. A group of young boys took it upon themselves to assist him in this task, until Oran slapped one and bellowed at them all to get inside.

Rachel and Mina exchanged a look, then followed him down into the mob of people. They helped carry anything that could not be left behind, dragging baskets of desiccated beef and skins of water back up the slope between them.

As they reached the level part of the earth island surrounding the Rusty Saw, Mina shot a worried glance back down the road. “It's gaining,” she warned.

“Can you do anything to slow it?”

“I don't know. Basilis has the real power. I just channel it. I'll need to confer with him.” She pushed her way into the crowd. “Assuming these woodsmen haven't already eaten him.”

“Be quick.”

Oran joined the last of his people outside the Rusty Saw. There was now barely room to move amidst the jostling crowds surrounding the old building. He shouted at those near the edge to get inside, but the inn was already stuffed full of people and goods. From the upper floor issued a barrage of curses and protests, a voice that Rachel recognized.

“Abner Hill,” she informed Oran.

Oran grunted. “I'll deal with that bastard later. I don't suppose he's happy you commandeered his building?”

“My concern for his feelings diminished considerably after he shot me in the face.”

The woodsman laughed.

Rachel couldn't see any stragglers down on the forest track so she called out, “Get us out of here, Dill.”

And the huge bone-and-metal automaton raised his hands and bore skywards the lone building upon its great clod of earth. A chorus of shrieks and startled cries went up from the frightened passengers. Several unsecured sacks slipped over the edge of the arconite's palm and fell to the ground below, but by the time the women ran to save them, the goods were already lost.

They were now moving, fast.

The Rusty Saw pitched like a raft caught in a sudden swell as it rose further up into the night sky. An ocean of dark forest rushed below the building's foundations. Cold mist broke around her wooden facade. Her joints all creaked, and her shutters slapped against their frames. A windowpane snapped in two with a sound like a musket shot. To Rachel it seemed that the heavens themselves lolled around them. The crescent moon loped through misty darkness like a swinging lantern.

Upon that cramped island it was too early yet for the conflict and arguments that must inevitably break out amongst such a crowd of people. Woodsmen positioned at the inn door herded those who would be herded inside, but the saloon floorboards were already protesting under the weight of hundreds: warriors in handcarved armour, honing blades or waxing bowstrings; greybeards singing of past glories and clinking glasses; gamblers already at their dice and bones; spinsters and shy young women with babes in swaddle, and whores slapping and nudging and laughing with the men; young boys crowd-weaving with beakers of whisky for their fathers and older brothers, or sitting listening under tables and peering up at the girls; children running up and down the stairs and shrieking loudly on the landing, and banging doors and then running from their grandmothers' curses. The stoves had been well fed and stoked, all the candles lit and lanterns burning till the windows blazed like openings in a furnace.

“I'm beginning to understand why Abner Hill hid his booze,” Mina muttered.

Rachel was trying to listen for their approaching foe, but she couldn't hear anything above the din from within the saloon. Fog shrouded much of the night beyond this tiny island of noise and light, though she spied the sheer dark cliff of Dill's torso filling the sky behind them. His forearms hovered in the gloom like vast and hellish barges made from bone.

As Oran glanced where she was looking, she beckoned him to follow her around the crowd still huddled outside the inn. A group of younger men was passing sacks of meal and bales of hide through one of the downstairs windows, while others dragged cords of firewood around to the rear of the building. Rachel slipped past them, heading towards Dill's wrist. Four whores sat on the stoop, drinking from earthenware bottles, and watched her pass.

“We need to get the rest of the women and children safely inside,” Rachel said. “And we need all your men out here, sober and ready for a fight.”

Oran scratched the scar on his forehead. “Won't make any difference whether they're sober or drunk,” he said. “They can't fight an arconite and hope to survive. But if they have to fight, then let them have a moment of revelry first.”

They reached the end of the island, where Dill's bony thumbs loomed before them like strange white gateposts. In the darkness overhead, Rachel could just make out her friend's massive jaw. She cocked her head and listened…

Regular thuds and crashes marked Dill's progress through the forest. But now Rachel could hear other sounds-like an echo of Dill's footsteps-issuing from the misty night close behind them.

Mina came and joined them. She had Abner Hill's musket propped against her shoulder, the barrel pointing skywards, the stock gripped in one slender glassy hand. “It's gaining on us,” she remarked.

“What did Basilis have to say?”

The thaumaturge shook her head. “This particular foe is beyond him.”

“Does Hasp know what's going on?”

“He's asleep on the pantry floor. I locked the door to stop anyone else from barging in. For their safety as much as his own.”

Rachel eyed the other woman's musket. “What do you plan to do with that?”

Mina shrugged. “I wasn't leaving our only hand-cannon in a saloon full of drunken men.” She shifted the weapon from one shoulder to the other. “Our guests let Mr. Hill and his wife out of their room. After screaming about the loss of his whisky, someone told Abner about the promised gold. Now he's serving the drinks himself and keeping tabs.”

Rachel sighed. She had no intention of using Cospinol's gold to get their so-called army drunk, but she didn't have time to deal with Abner Hill right now. “Can Dill outrun Menoa's arconite?”

“No. He's no quicker or stronger than any of them.”

Oran scratched at his stubble. “Then we fight and die here tonight,” he said, yawning.

Cospinol's will determined the buoyancy of his great wooden skyship, while Anchor's will determined his own impossible strength. During the thousands of years of their unlikely partnership both master and servant had achieved a balance whereby they worked together in harmony. The heavier the Rotsward became, the greater the strength Anchor found in himself to tow it behind him.

In the confusion after the portal snapped and Anchor found himself falling towards Hell, the accustomed harmony with the skyship took some moments to reassert itself.

The rope jolted against Anchor's back in midair, bringing him to an abrupt halt before propelling him skywards again. Behind him the Rotsward shuddered and toppled forwards, a great mass of interconnected masts and spars. Suddenly both man and skyship were weightless. The rope snapped taut again and then slackened. Anchor heard it whining behind his ear like a living thing. The Maze surged up to meet him at a sickening rate: the canals like bloody scrawls; the partially drowned temples, arches, and crooked steps; the mounds of rotting black masonry dumped into a crimson slough.

The vessel plummeted from the sky like some vast and ancient torture ship expelled from Heaven. Those warriors whom the Failed had not destroyed now glared feverishly about them and howled amidst the skyship's gallows. Thus exposed before Hell's fiery light they made a barbarous army indeed, blue-faced and ragged madmen plucked from so many forgotten wars.

John Anchor had slain every last one of them, and many of their souls now coursed through his veins. Corpses, bound to the Rotsward as thoroughly as he was. He could not gaze upon them for long before the cramps in his heart forced him to turn away.

The surface of Hell wheeled into Anchor's field of view: windows glittering in the curved side of a mound; open doorways creeping through obsidian walls; twisted iron pillars and redbrick facades; gurgling fissures; arches; stone; blood.

And then he hit.

Bloody stonework exploded under him. He plunged into a room and smashed through the floor below. Another room, another floor. Anchor gripped his knees against his chest and closed his eyes. He had the sensation of passing through pockets of air separated by parting membranes. Down and down he fell, like a cannonball dropped into a house of cards.

Deep underground he thumped heavily against a final solid surface and came to a stop.

Anchor groaned and opened his eyes.

He had fallen through twenty or more separate dwellings. Directly above him numerous layers of ragged holes formed a shaft of sorts, terminating in a distant circle of red sky overhead, where the end of the rope disappeared from sight. Each of the many levels of ruptured floorboards had already begun to bleed. Drips fell from the broken edges and cascaded down from room to room, spattering the floor around him. From overhead came the sound of moaning.

He sat up.

He was in an elegant drawing room with tall sash windows and antique Pandemerian furniture. Two identical elderly women stood looking at him, their faces white with either powder or shock. Each looked like a mirror image of the other in their hummingbird-blue high-necked frocks. Knots of tightly bunched grey hair sat upon their heads like little skulls.

“Ladies,” Anchor said.

The twins looked at each other, then cupped their hands over their breasts and looked back at the intruder. “Are you the plumber?” said one of them.

“I don't think he's the plumber, Clarice,” the other woman replied. “Just look at him!”

Anchor stood, brushed dust and fragments of debris from his arms, and then stepped out from underneath the shaft to avoid the cascading droplets of blood. The two women took a step back from him.

The big man grinned. “No need to fear John Anchor, ladies. I've no quarrel with you.” He took a look around. “So this is Hell, eh?”

Cospinol had told him how the souls grew rooms around themselves like snails grew shells. This chamber must be one such place, a living, sensate extension of the spirits within. He nodded at the windows. Behind the glass lay a plain brick wall. “Your neighbours like their privacy, eh?”

One of the ladies said, “Neighbours? Don't be absurd. We don't have any neighbours. The Buntings isn't a tenement, sir. We have ninety acres.”

Her twin piped up, “No doubt he hit his head in the fall, Marjory.”

They shriveled their lips at him.

Anchor shrugged. He had no interest in undermining their delusion.

One twin glared disapprovingly at the hole in the ceiling. “Someone will have to repair that, you know.”

“My apologies, ladies,” Anchor said. “I'll go and fix it now.” With that he leapt up and grabbed the bloody edge of the hole and pulled himself up.

A large bed occupied most of this next room. Propped against pillows lay an enormous woman with masses of black and white hair extruding all about her head like the tendrils of some creeping fungus. Indeed the whole room evinced decay, for tongues of patterned wallpaper hung from the walls, and black mold spattered the skirting. A smell of vinegar lingered.

“I've been hurt,” she said. “Someone hit me on the head while I was sleeping.”

“Sorry, madam.” Anchor got to his feet. “That was me. I fell through your soul. The pain will go away after a while.”

“Have you seen Dory?” she said.

Anchor shook his head. “No, madam.” He jumped up and grabbed the floor joists of the room above.

“Dory said she'd come by, but I haven't seen her in ages,” the woman persisted. “I don't know what's become of her.”

Grunting, Anchor heaved himself up onto the next level. He looked down to see the twins still standing under the hole. He gave them a wave.

“Don't you go rummaging through the attic,” shrilled one of them. “Our costumes are up there, and they mustn't be unpacked. They're very fragile.”

“Who's that?” said the woman in the bed. “Dory? Is that you?”

So many potted plants filled the third room that it looked like a garden. Walls of naked brick supported trellises covered with green vines. Some old chests of drawers and wooden tables stood around the edges, but pots of yellow, pink, and red blooms adorned every flat surface and even the floor itself. At first Anchor thought the room was empty but then he spotted a young man curled up in the corner. In one hand he held a pair of shears, and he appeared to be unconscious.

Anchor walked over and crouched to feel for a pulse. Then he shook his head. These people were all dead, of course; if they had a pulse, it would be because they remembered having one and not because blood still flowed through their veins. Nevertheless he propped the young man up and gave him a gentle shake. “You all right, lad?”

The young man opened his eyes and peered at Anchor. “I must have fallen,” he said. “Where am I?”

“You don't know where you are?”

“No.”

“Good. Then I've done you a service.”

Anchor left him alone and went back to the edge of the open shaft. He looked up to see that some of the holes above him had already begun to close as the consciousnesses within began to reassert their influences upon their environments. Down below, the twins' room was sliding away at a walking pace, underneath the bedridden woman's chambers. Those two spinsters had evidently decided to move.

“John!”

Alice Harper's head had appeared at the uppermost entrance to the shaft. Now she was looking down at him. “Are you all right?”

“This is a very strange place,” he called back.

“Stranger than you realize,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

He clambered up through the remaining chambers with barely a glance at the occupants within, then swung himself up out into open air. A fierce gale slammed into him. Harper waited on a nearby stone shelf, from where she could see far across the Maze. Her red hair whipped about her pale face.

From up here Anchor could see that they were standing upon the summit of a strange conglomerate of souls. It looked as if an entire Pandemerian street had been compacted together into a rude lump. But this mass of dwellings altered shape continuously, as facades stretched and compressed against neighbouring stonework. It was crawling across the surface of Hell, devouring walls under its shifting foundations. In its wake it left a shallow trench of subterranean rooms now ripped open and exposed to the flooded labyrinth surface, as streams of blood rushed into these open wounds and gurgled down through any spaces revealed amidst those smashed quarters.

Harper turned her head away from the force of the wind. “Can you hear them?” she said.

“Hear who?”

“The voices in the wind.”

Anchor listened. After a moment he heard what sounded like human voices-very faint-amidst the howling air, as though the wind had carried the cries across a great distance. He could not make out what they were saying, nor even catch enough of their words to recognize the language.

Harper reached into her tool belt and took out a black circular lens. “Non Morai,” she explained. “See for yourself.”

Anchor peered through the lens, and into what looked like another world entirely. Seen through the dark glass disc, the crimson landscape appeared green. Winged creatures filled the skies, batlike figures with gaunt faces and red grins. They swarmed around paler yellow lights, like wisps of glowing lace, and they appeared to be herding these lights towards the surface of Hell.

He yanked the lens away, and the scene returned to normal-naught but an empty red sky. Yet when he raised the glass disc again, the winged figures and their gossamer charges reappeared, wheeling in their thousands against the verdant heavens.

“I spotted them shortly after we left the portal,” Harper said. “They're steering souls here, to this particular part of Hell.”

Anchor had encountered Non Morai before, but never in such numbers. On earth such phantasms often haunted scenes of violence, battlefields and places where men had been murdered. Human thaumaturges sometimes employed them to gather souls. “Why? Is Menoa behind this?”

The engineer looked doubtful. “Menoa uses Iolites for aerial work and his Icarates to collect souls,” she explained. “Besides,” she pointed down towards a point on the surface of Hell, “there's that to consider.”

Anchor looked. At first he couldn't see what Harper was indicating, but then he spotted it. The Midden on which they stood was creeping away from a strange object on the surface of the Maze. It looked like an iron funnel rising from a crush of bloody stonework. Its huge maw, almost large enough to swallow a house, expanded and contracted continuously like a mouth. He raised Harper's spirit lens again and saw a swarm of Non Morai flitting around that opening, guiding soul lights inside.

“Why bother to travel far across Hell when there are countless souls trapped in the walls all around here?” Harper said. “These Non Morai are capturing newly arrived spirits-the souls who haven't yet become part of the Maze.” She continued to watch as the queer opening consumed scores of lights. “When Menoa wants souls, his Icarates simply smash up swaths of the Maze and take them. Whoever or whatever built that funnel is being a lot more subtle. It's like they don't want to draw attention to themselves.”

Anchor grunted. “Then why drag us here?”

“When the portal broke, the Non Morai would have rushed to claim all those newly released souls. We just happened to be caught up in their gale.”

The tethered man lowered the spirit lens and grinned. As far as he was concerned, this could be regarded as an act of aggression against the Rotsward, and was therefore justification for a battle. However, he doubted that Harper or Cospinol would agree to a de-tour. They had bigger boars to fry. “Wouldn't take us long to go down into that funnel and have a look,” he said.

She looked away, shrugging, but to Anchor it seemed that she was feigning indifference. Did she actually want to go down there?

The Soul Midden jerked under Anchor's feet, and then tilted gently backwards. He peered down over the forward facade in time to see the base of the great creeping conglomerate flow up over another one of the low Maze walls. Stonework rippled, and broke into an irregular arched colonnade. The columns between these arches bent and then stepped, insectlike, over the wall, reforming into a solid facade on the other side. The Midden consumed a huge chunk of the wall and then moved on, ever further from the strange funnel.

A shudder ran through the great skyship rope, and Cospinol's voice entered Anchor's thoughts. No, John. As confident as I am in your ability to defend us, I see no reason to seek trouble. We don't know what's down there.

Anchor grunted. “Well, we can't ride this thing all the way to the Ninth Citadel.” He stomped a heel down. “At this rate, it could take centuries, even if we could be sure we're going the right way.”

“Time moves at different speeds here,” Harper said. “A century here might pass as a day on earth, or an eon. But you're right about finding the right direction.” She plucked one of the many silver and crystal Mesmerist devices from her belt and studied it. After a moment she looked up and nodded towards a point on the horizon, lying beyond endless whorls of black stone, broken temples, and conical ziggurats. “The Ninth Citadel lies over there.”

“Then let's go.” Anchor flexed his huge shoulders against the rope. “Breaking the portal gave us a good advantage, eh? King Menoa cannot even be sure we made it into Hell.” He grinned. “We can catch him with his trousers down.” He made to climb down the side of the Midden.

Harper stopped him. “John.” She inclined her head to some point beyond him.

Anchor turned.

The Rotsward filled the entire sky above, like an impossible wooden city, a vast crosshatched nest of rotting timber and ropes woven around the dark heart of the skyship's hull. Cospinol's gallowsmen hung there in the thousands, their queer assortment of armour shining dully in the riotous crimson light. Many had been slain by the Failed, and some ropes held naught but heads or torsos or pieces of unidentifiable flesh. Those few hundred who had been cut loose and survived the battle in the portal now clambered amidst the joists or hung onto upright beams to keep themselves from being blown clear. The Non Morai gales formed a vortex around the mountainous vessel, a raging torrent of air that seemed to be full of fleeting shadows.

“Not what I would call relying on the element of surprise,” Harper observed.

Anchor frowned. It was true-Menoa would see the Rotsward coming from some considerable distance away. After a moment he shrugged. “Ah… well,” he said. “Let the king prepare his resistance in advance. I suppose it is only fair.”

The rope at Anchor's back trembled, and he heard Cospinol's voice. Ask Harper how deep that funnel is likely to go. Could it lead us down to the River of the Failed?

The tethered man passed the question on to the engineer.

Harper avoided his eye, perhaps trying to hide something in her expression. “The River of the Failed flows underneath Hell,” she admitted, “and any pit is going to take us nearer.”

So be it, Cospinol said. John, take the Rotsward underground. We're going to parley with a river.

Anchor looked down into the gulping funnel. “It's going to be a tight fit,” he said. “Much destruction in our wake.” He slapped his big hands together and beamed.

Cospinol sighed in his servant's mind.

Harper slammed her Mesmerist device into her tool belt, then gestured angrily towards the surface of the Maze. “Hell is alive, John,” she said. “You'll destroy thousands of souls if you try to drag Cospinol's ship through its very fabric. Assuming such a feat is even possible.”

Anchor frowned. “Possible?” he muttered. “Strength is merely will. Anything is possible.” He gave a grunt of decision. “And if Hell is alive, then it can get itself out of my way.”

He leapt from the side of the Midden, dragging the great skyship down towards the funnel, and the living, thinking interior of Hell.