God of Clocks

5

Oran ordered his militiamen out of the Rusty Saw tavern, but most were already drunk, and some were off whoring and could not be found.

Oran regained order through threats and violence. He raged at them. He fought with two and broke one man's nose. His shouts of anger finally silenced the ruckus in the saloon.

“It is Lord Rys himself who commands you to stand and fight here tonight,” he yelled. “I have his authority in this and all matters.”

Rachel sensed resistance amongst the militiamen. Veiled glances and muttered curses passed amongst them. They had heard this speech, but clearly they did not fully accept his authority.

But they had even less liking for Rachel-and no respect. Their dark gazes evinced contempt for the assassin. After all, she had brought Menoa's Twelve upon them.

In a quiet voice Oran said to her, “They know this battle cannot be won. All of them expect to die tonight, so they would rather spend their new-won credit on whisky and whores.”

They're afraid. But Rachel chose not to voice her thoughts.

The men now assembled on that cold overcrowded strip of earth outside the log building. All were armed. A few had taken up coils of ropes and the iron hooks used to scale mundane defenses, palisades and the like, but these implements did not rest comfortably in their hands. Many still drank from bottles or simply stood in the glow of the upstairs windows, gazing mutely at their own shadows.

Mina came out of the inn a moment later, clutching her dog to her chest and stroking its ears. The troubled expression on her face was enough to tell Rachel the result of her latest consultation with Basilis.

“No great plan, Mina?”

Mina shook her head. “Basilis has no power to influence this thing. Its soul is hidden from us.” She hesitated, then set her dog down on the ground. “Menoa tricked us at Larnaig. We managed to free Dill because the Lord of the Maze wished us to do so-and now we face the consequences of our actions.” She sighed. “He used us like puppets, Rachel. Basilis is furious about it, and yet he's reluctant to commit himself to a fixed plan of action until he understands the king's motives. My master does not want to be fooled again.”

“What do you think?”

“I think we don't have a choice. If Menoa is steering our actions, then we risk helping him in whatever we do. But if we do nothing at all, we die.”

Dill carried them onwards, the tiny island of humanity cradled in his dead hands. The smell of Maze-forged bones and metal filled the night. His gait spanned swaths of dark forest, heels pounding the earth, a deep rhythm that seemed to stir an unspoken presage in the hearts of the waiting militiamen.

Doom, doom … Doom, doom.

Now Rachel could hear the noise of the pursuing arconite clearly. She turned to Mina. “We'll make a stand now. I'll tell Dill to set us down.”

“Wait.” Mina bit her lip. “Rachel, I think there's a way we can beat this thing. I just need to get inside its head.”

“In what way?”

“Physically!”

Rachel understood. If the construction of Menoa's arconite mirrored Dill's, then they would find within it a chamber containing the trapped soul of an angel. “Shit, Mina, we'll have to get inside its jaw.”

But by then they had run out of time, for Menoa's arconite was already upon them.

The automaton came crashing out of the fog. In its Maze-forged armour it was far bulkier than Dill. Dull green soul lights lingered around the edges of its bracers, cuisses, and greaves, like the remnants of some queer electric storm. It moved stiffly and unnaturally, issuing gouts of steam from its shoulder joints. Its ironclad limbs were darkly spattered with human and Mesmerist gore from the killing field at Larnaig. Half of its skull had been burned black by some unknown inferno. In one massive gauntlet it held a steel cleaver the extent of a city wall.

Oran's men fell back cursing and gasping as the stink of the creature fell upon them: an odour of the dead, of those tens of thousands slain at Larnaig and Coreollis. The arconite brought with it the stench of war.

“Dill,” Rachel cried, “set us down.”

Dill turned and stooped and set the inn down roughly upon the forest track. The Rusty Saw's timbers creaked in protest. One corner of the building tilted and sank into its now-crumbling island, forcing great clumps of earth aside. Oran's militiamen leapt down, carrying ropes and axes, and spread out into the trees on either side.

Dill stood and faced the other arconite.

The automaton paused. It stood back in the fog. Its metal armour, though dark with blood, grease, and soil, was limned by a queer green radiance-like a star-festooned fortress emerged from the moonlit clouds. Its useless wings reared up behind it like great tattered sails. Engines ticked within its cuirass and scorched skull. Smoke gusted from its joints and uncurled around the naked vertebrae of its neck. With a massive shriek and groan of metal, it took a step forward and swiped sideways with its cleaver.

Dill moved to intercept.

The earth around them shuddered.

Dill met the other automaton's blow with his open palm. The concussion bleached all sound from Rachel's ears except for a shrill painful monotone. She saw men on their knees on the ground with their hands pressed against the sides of their heads. For several heartbeats she heard nothing but the sharp whine inside her own skull…

… Until she became aware of movement again, of the frenzied crunch of shattered trees and bushes, the screech of grinding metal. Somewhere in the dark skies overhead the two arconites fought. The moon vanished and then reappeared, as Menoa's great warrior grabbed Dill's neck and shoved him back. Dill retreated, his heels ramming craters into the earthen road on either side of the displaced inn. Voices cried out in the fog all around-women, howling children, all fleeing the Rusty Saw, scrambling away through mud and mist. Shadowy figures loped through the surrounding forest as Oran's men closed on the intruding arconite.

Mina tugged Rachel's arm, whispering urgently, “Tell him to bring it down.”

Rachel looked up. She could make out little but vague shapes looming in the mist, the flicker of green light around armour and bone, the flash of the enemy's monstrous cleaver. Another massive concussion shook the ground. Someone screamed in terror.

“Dill!” Rachel cried over the voice, “knock the bastard's feet from underneath it. Topple it.”

One huge ironclad heel thumped into the ground ten paces from Rachel. Mina stumbled and fell. Rachel grabbed her grey cassock roughly and pulled her aside as branches rained down upon them both. The assassin slipped in the mud, her wrist striking a rock buried in the clay. She dragged Mina into the darkness beneath the trees as great shadows moved across the heavens. Behind her rose a wall of blood-soaked metal. Sounds of weapons rang out from somewhere nearby, followed by another momentous clash as the arconites exchanged blows. Green lights rippled and flashed through the canopy overhead, like chemical fires.

Mina's sorcerous mist rolled and broke across the area around the track and the inn, glowing in the moonlight as though imbued with some spectral energy of its own. Rachel caught glimpses of the scene: Dill's bone limbs moving amidst columns of rank red metal, the roots of upended trees reaching from banks of wet earth, crushed bodies lying half buried in the mire or trapped under dark masses of smashed boughs. Through a break in the fog Rachel spied a score of Oran's woodsmen advancing upon the intruding automaton with ropes, trying in vain to bind its shins to trees. The great bone-and-metal limbs shifted again. She heard death cries, and then yells of rage and grief.

“What's happening back there?” Mina cried.

Rachel shoved her on, into the dark forest. “I don't know. But we need-”

A sudden clash of metal stole her words. She looked back, her ears ringing. The two giants now stood locked together, struggling in the mist. Dill's heel slid backwards and exploded through a dirt bank. Clods of earth spattered the inn and the forest canopy beyond. He turned, twisted, and thumped his foot back down. Oran's voice sounded distantly, barking orders at his men. A woman wailed somewhere to the south. The green lights in the sky moved suddenly, violently, and then seemed to topple.

Menoa's arconite fell.

Vast wings flashed across the heavens. A blast of dank air tore through the forest. The automaton struck the ground with such force that it threw Rachel off her feet. She landed in soft earth, mud and humus filling her mouth and nostrils. The bandage had unraveled from her head and now hung in loose loops around her neck. She spat out dirt.

Mina was now crouching against an earth embankment, panting heavily. Back in the clearing around the inn, Oran's woodsmen let out a roar of triumph. Rachel could see little through the trees but vague green lights pulsing in the mist. She extended a hand and helped the thaumaturge to her feet. “Hurry,” she said. “We might only have a few moments. I don't know how long Dill can keep that big bastard down.”

A strange scene greeted them as they left the forest gloom. Menoa's arconite had fallen headlong along the track, just beyond the Rusty Saw, with one arm trapped underneath its cuirass, and its vast mothy wings bent over at a shallow angle. Its huge metal cleaver rested against a nearby tree like a toppled monolith. Dill knelt on the giant's back, crushing one of its wings under his shin, while gripping its neck in his fist as he pinned it to the ground. He had forced its blackened skull down into the mud, and it lay there motionless, stinking of death and wreathed in gouts of its own engine smoke.

Enraged and emboldened with whisky, a group of Oran's men had climbed upon the arconite's back to probe for weaknesses in its armour with their axes. As Rachel hurried under the fallen giant's wing and around its shoulder, she noticed the whorls and scrawls etched in those metal plates: esoteric looping designs that again reminded her so much of the hull of the Tooth that had cut through Deepgate's chains. And yet this construct was very much from Hell.

Mina noticed Rachel's puzzlement. “Heaven and Hell have more in common than most would suspect,” she advised. “Remember that Ayen and Iril were once lovers. They came from the same unknown place.”

“What about King Menoa?”

Mina shrugged. “That's a more difficult question to answer. Menoa has been in Hell since the very beginning. Whether he was once human or not, I don't know, but he got close enough to Iril to betray him. I suspect there's a family connection somewhere.”

They hesitated at the front of the stricken arconite's skull. Ranks of yellow-black teeth confronted them like an impenetrable wall. The colossus stared out at nothing, seemingly dead but for the hiss of steam and the tick of machinery inside its armoured torso. One of its great ragged wings twitched, but Dill held the creature fast, his own towering body looming like a great bone citadel in the fog. Fifty yards away, the enemy's cleaver slipped sideways from the tree trunk that had temporarily halted its fall, crashing to the ground.

Rachel clutched her nose. “This monster stinks worse than Deepgate's Poison Kitchens,” she said. “Devon himself couldn't have concocted a fouler stench.”

Mina shrugged. “It's just rotting blood.”

“Lovely. So what now?” Rachel asked. “You still want to get inside it?”

“Into the skull,” Mina confirmed. She examined the giant's visage for a moment, noting how the metal plates had been welded into the base and sides of the jaw. Its teeth were too closely set to permit them easy access inside its maw. “Dill, can you smash a way in?”

In answer Dill raised his free hand. The bony fist hovered in the sky for a moment, and then dropped like a boulder. He struck Menoa's warrior hard on its chin. The impact drove the creature's jawbone a foot deeper into the soft earth. A sound like a crack of thunder echoed far across the forest.

Mina shirked away from the blow.

Rachel winced and clutched her forehead as the noise of that concussion faded. The musket wound on the side of her head throbbed with renewed vigour. “Darkness take me!” she cried. “You could have warned us, Dill.”

And yet Dill's attack had failed to damage the fallen warrior. Both his fist and the arconite's teeth remained unmarked.

Rachel stared at that huge blackened skull and said, “Force its mouth open.”

Dill obeyed. This time he gripped his opponent's chin and wrenched its jaw open. A gap of several feet appeared between the columns of teeth.

Rachel and Mina approached, then stopped to exchange a glance. The assassin shrugged, and then climbed inside first.

The darkness was almost complete. Rachel stood at the inner curve of the arconite's maw, trying to see something, anything, in that miserable gloom. Almost no illumination penetrated through the gap behind her, but for a faint sliver of moonlight. The air smelled subterranean, yet as rotten as the bloodiest Mesmerist earth. She heard Mina climb through to join her and then felt the thaumaturge's cool glass-scaled hand in her own.

“There should be a crawl space at the back of the mouth,” Mina said. “Somewhere on the left. It ought to lead into the soul room in the skull.”

Hand in hand they edged forward. The bony floor gave a sudden lurch, and then settled once more. The air smelled of oil and scorched meat. Their footsteps echoed back from the unseen walls. Rachel realized she was gripping Mina's hand more tightly, perhaps dangerously so, given its fragility. She relaxed her grip.

After some searching they found the narrow passageway. A dank, metallic odour came from within. Rachel knelt and ran her hands over the bone lip around the opening. It was large enough for her to crawl inside. But just as she stooped to enter it, the arconite spoke.

“These are the words of Menoa's Prime,” it said in a thunderous yet clear and inflectionless voice. “The Lord of the Maze commands you, Hasp, to kill the two women within his arconite.”

Rachel stopped. “Shit,” she said.

Mina pushed her onwards. “Hurry.”

“How drunk was Hasp?”

“Not drunk enough.”

Even within the confines of this strange bone warren, Rachel heard Hasp howl. His cries rang out into the night as the parasite in his skull usurped his will. Unable to resist that command, the Lord of the First Citadel would now be coming for them.

Rachel scrambled on through darkness, feeling the way with her hands. After a moment she spied a faint light issuing from around a corner ahead. The arconite's soul room? She hurried on, with Mina close behind.

The layout of the chamber was identical to the one they'd found inside Dill. A glass sphere sat amidst arcane machinery under a multifaceted crystal ceiling. Illumination came from within the sphere, where there floated the soul of an angel.

Rachel swallowed her revulsion. Unlike Dill, this thing appeared to be ancient, its flesh corrupted to the point of utter desiccation, its wings mere broken shards of bone. Some scraps of armour still clung to its fibrous muscles, but did little to cover its nakedness. It did not seem to be aware of them, but rather floated in the center of its globe and stared inwards as if dreaming.

Another terrible cry came from outside the chamber, much closer now.

“Whatever you think you can do to damage this thing,” Rachel said, “do it now. Hasp will be here in seconds.”

Mina placed her hands against the sphere, then recoiled abruptly. “Gods,” she whispered. “Oh, god, oh, god.”

“What is it?”

The thaumaturge simply shook her head. “Guard the entrance to the chamber,” she said. “Try to hold Hasp back. Kill him if you have to.”

If I can. As drunk and vulnerable as the god now was, Rachel doubted she'd be able to delay him by more than a few moments. Just buying them that short amount of time could cost her her own life.

She returned to the passageway as Mina began whispering in a low singsong voice. The thaumaturge's soothing tones filled the chamber. Another terrible howl came from outside the skull. Hasp was getting close.

Rachel drew the simple blade she had taken from a dead soldier in Coreollis. She crouched at the entrance to the chamber, listening carefully, and waited.

And waited.

After another long moment she heard a low wail issue from the night outside. It sounded more melancholy than the previous cries, but still Hasp did not appear. Rachel crawled through the passageway back into the cavern of the arconite's maw. She could just make out the gap between its jaws as a smudge of grey in the black-ness. She waited again for ten rapid heartbeats, then strode over and peered outside.

The Lord of the First Citadel met her gaze with red and miserable eyes. Rachel's instincts readied her for battle, before she fully comprehended the scene, and her heart steadied. Hasp was trapped, unable to attack her. Dill had caught the god in the bone cage of his down turned fingers.

Rachel gazed up at the immense Maze-forged automaton that had once been her friend. He had shifted position, maneuvering himself so that his knees pinned down Menoa's great warrior more firmly, pushing its useless wings to one side. He still held the other arconite by its neck, but had driven his free hand down into the earth to form the prison that had snared Hasp.

Hasp slumped to his knees. He picked up a whisky bottle from the ground and poured two inches of the foul liquor down his throat. Then he crawled forward and tried to squeeze his shoulders between the bars of his impromptu cage. His cassock had parted, revealing his chest, and his glass breastplate smouldered like a furnace in the night. He tore at the ground beyond Dill's fingers with bloody red gauntlets.

“Hold him there, Dill,” Rachel called out, turning away. “Thank the gods you still have your wits. Just hold him fast!”

She returned to the soul room to find Mina pressing up against the glass sphere. The thaumaturge had her eyes closed and was whispering urgently to the ghost inside. She didn't even turn around as Rachel approached.

“Hasp is indisposed,” Rachel announced.

Mina held up a hand, continuing to whisper for a moment longer, then she took a deep breath and turned away from the sphere. “I can't get through to it,” she said. “This angel's soul has been too badly corrupted. It shares Menoa's chaotic vision.”

“Can we break the sphere?”

The thaumaturge shook her head. “These materials were forged in the Maze, so their strength isn't limited by the physical properties of this world. Their power is derived from those fragments of Iril that Menoa bound to each angel's soul. Matter thus became a con-sequence of will, and Menoa has simultaneously reinforced and subjugated this angel's will.” She thought for a long moment. “This sphere isn't glass. It isn't even real. The angel's soul is little more than a vessel to hold the power Menoa placed there. To damage an arconite, you'd have to convince the arconite that it can be damaged. And that isn't going to happen, not with Menoa's tentacles lodged in the thing's mind.”

“But Dill isn't like that. He has free will.”

The thaumaturge snorted. “Don't go telling Dill he could be damaged. If he stops believing he's invincible, then we're really in trouble.”

“But, in theory, we could free Dill's soul from its own prison?”

A dangerous smile came to Mina's lips. “Now why would you want to do a thing like that, Rachel Hael?”

Rachel said nothing.

“When we were in Hell,” Mina went on, “Hasp allowed Dill to absorb power from another piece of the shattered god. Menoa used that fragment to transform Dill into his thirteenth arconite. Dill is far more vulnerable than this warrior, but he's stronger, too. The very fact that we're now standing in this skull is evidence of our friend's superiority.”

“Because he believes in himself?”

Mina shrugged. “And because Hasp trained him.”

Rachel sighed. “Well, he can't hold this monster down forever.”

From behind them came a scuffing noise, as of someone moving through the crawl space located between the jaw and the soul room. Rachel wheeled suddenly and held out her arm to warn Mina to back away.

Oran crawled into the chamber, then stood, frowning at the bizarre machinery. He saw the two women. “What the hell are you two doing in here?” Then he noticed the sphere and hissed. “What is that?”

“The soul of this machine,” Mina explained. “An angel of the First Citadel.”

The woodsman approached. He stared at the ghostly figure floating within the glass, then at Rachel. “My men are drinking again. Is this really the victory they believe it to be?”

“It's an impasse,” Rachel said, “for as long as Dill is able to restrain this thing. But we don't know how to destroy that sphere.”

Oran grunted and raised his steel hack. “Stand aside and let me try.”

Rachel glanced at Mina, who simply rolled her eyes.

The big woodsman took up a stance before the glass globe. He hefted his rude blade and brought it down in a ferocious swing against the glass. The impact tore the weapon from his grip and sent it clattering away into the shadows. But the glass remained completely unmarked.

Oran bent over, red-faced, wringing his hands.

“The angel knows it is indestructible,” Mina explained. “Paradoxically, it's that very belief that makes it so. This whole…” She swept a glassy hand across the room. “… construction, this machinery, the engines, they're all functionally meaningless. They exist solely to create an illusion of power and strength for the soul to adhere to. The golem sees itself and believes that this physical form requires a power source, and so Menoa has given it simple engines, pistons for muscles, and chemical blood to move its hideous limbs. None of this is actually required, and yet none of it can be physically destroyed. The whole creature is a bizarre paradox of faith and form and uselessness.”

Oran scowled at her. “Your witch-speak means nothing to me, woman. My men are out there now binding the creature's limbs with rope.”

“A complete waste of time.”

“Then what do you suggest? Exactly what are you doing in here?”

The thaumaturge looked away. “I was trying to plant doubts in its mind, to challenge its faith in itself and thereby weaken it. I attempted to persuade it that it could be defeated.” She lifted her gaze back to him. “But I failed, because its master has corrupted its will.”

Oran growled, “What about its instincts?”

“What do you mean?”

He grunted. “In conflict, a warrior follows his instincts, woman, and those instincts are driven by naked fear and rage, not by wits or will. A charging aurochs can rout armed forces easily strong enough to take it down. The death of a leader destroys morale and hope. It all stems from fear. Most battles are not won by skill alone, but by the control of men's instincts.” He spat at the glass sphere. “Hasp could have told you that. If you want to defeat that thing, scare it out of its wits.”

Rachel nodded. “He's right, Mina. Its soul is naked before us in there, and that makes it vulnerable to fear. If it perceives danger, it might react instinctively. Menoa might control its consciousness, but-”

“All right,” Mina snapped. “I get it.” She glared at Oran. “What do you suggest, then?”

The woodsman crouched and examined the lower curve of the globe. It stood upon four small crystal pedestals. He rose and walked around it, then kicked one of the supports. Then he dragged a hand across his stubbled jaw and said, “Burn it. Cook the fucking thing in its own pot.”

So his men brought jars of lamp oil and animal fat from the Rusty Saw's own supplies. They filled the arconite's mouth with firewood collected from the surrounding forest. They built a pyre under the soul sphere and drenched it with the oil and fat. And then they lit it.

Flames licked the glass. Black smoke pooled under the concave ceiling and soon began to fill the whole chamber. And within its glass globe, the arconite writhed and mouthed screams in silent terror.

Rachel watched in horror. “Can it really feel heat through the glass?” she asked Mina.

“No,” she said. “It merely thinks it can. But that's good enough for us.”

They retreated back along the crawl space before the air became unbreathable. Oran's men came last, piling more wood and oil into the soul room as they backed out. Soon the whole chamber blazed like the belly of a kiln. Back in the jaw Rachel stood with the others and watched the entrance to the low passageway through which they had crawled, while the fierce red glow cast their shadows high across the interior of the arconite's maw.

They climbed out into the cool night.

At Rachel's instruction, Dill released the automaton. He shifted his great bulk, moving his knees slowly from the fallen giant's back.

“It's working,” Mina said. “As long as that fire keeps burning, its Icarate master can't relay its thoughts through the angel's soul. The arconite can't function.”

“We're torturing it,” Rachel said.

“Technically it's torturing itself. We're just giving it the means to maintain its own illusion.”

Rachel turned away in disgust. “Don't even start that shit with me, Mina.”

The thaumaturge laid a hand on her arm. “We need to keep it burning, Rachel, for as long as it takes to get away from here.” She turned to Oran. “Two or three volunteers should be enough to keep the fire stoked. If we allow the flames to die, that thing is just going to get up and come after us again.”

The woodsman chose three volunteers from the men who had assembled around them. They would be paid in gold and left with enough provisions for a week. Only after that length of time would they be permitted to abandon the fire. They asked for whisky but Oran refused to give them any. “You'll get drunk and fall asleep and the fire will die. Keep it burning until we're long gone. When we see you next, every last man of us will be buying you a glass.”

The men clasped arms and Oran left them to their hellish cave, where they had promised to keep the soul of an angel in agony for the good of their fellows.

Now, with one plan under way and the majority of Oran's people returning to the Rusty Saw, the assassin and the thaumaturge turned their attention to Hasp.

The god still sat within the bone cage of Dill's fingers. Mud stained his ragged cassock and spattered his glass bracers and greaves. His coalred eyes seemed unable to focus on anything but the empty bottle in his hand. Rachel noted with irony that he had merely passed the cheap liquor from that glass container into another. He looked old and sick, perilously close to death. Yet some of the earlier rage had now left him.

“Hasp?” Rachel said.

He closed his eyes and his head slumped forward. “Let me out,” he moaned.

“We can't do that yet.”

Hasp gazed down at his bottle. “I don't…” He sniffed and rubbed his forehead. “… feel compelled to do anything violent.”

“How do I know that? The last order you-”

His head snapped up. “The last fucking order urged me to kill the women within the arconite. But you're not inside it anymore.” He took a heavy breath and then his head fell back into his hand. “All the whisky in the world,” he said, “doesn't dull the fucking thing's claws. I would have broken your necks.” His fingers made vague shapes in the air and then he let out a miserable sigh. “And I would still be trying, if the parasite had any wits of its own. If you've any sense, the pair of you should kill me now.”

Mina's brow creased. She looked at Rachel.

“Let him go, Dill,” the assassin ordered.

Dill hesitated.

“Let him go!”

Dill lifted his hand, freeing Hasp. The god remained on the ground for a moment, then picked himself up. He didn't look at either of the women, but slouched back towards the tavern with his head held low. Ranks of Oran's men parted before him, falling silent as the glass-skinned warrior passed.

Anchor fell from the Midden and into the strange, gulping funnel. He sensed pressure on his chest as the living iron constricted around him, but then it released its grip, and he plummeted.

The spirits who had been guided here by the Non Morai reacted fearfully to the big man's presence. A gale tore at him, full of their rushing whispers. Golden motes of light and curved metal walls flashed upwards.

He dropped past windows and portholes through which he barely glimpsed rooms. They passed in the blink of an eye, like sudden memories.

Anchor came to an abrupt halt as the rope attached to his back snapped taut, a sudden jarring that tore the breath from his lungs. Somewhere overhead the Rotsward had come to rest against the mouth of the funnel. The big man hung there for a few moments, gazing down at the horizontal beams of light that crisscrossed the dark shaft below. He could not see the bottom. He glanced up and spied a similar sight: Light from many windows cut across the narrow space, illuminating dust motes and lozenges of the rusty shaft interior.

He wrung his hands together, swung himself over to the side of the shaft, and smashed a fist through the nearest window. Beyond lay a room no larger than a cupboard, full of old boxes and chests. Something wailed and shuffled deeper in the shadows, but Anchor paid it no heed. He took a deep breath, then pulled himself further down the shaft, breaking more windows to make handholds for himself.

From overhead came the sounds of crumbling stone, rending metal, and screams. Anchor just bulled his muscles and dragged the Rotsward even further down through the living fabric of Hell. The landscape above would move, or be destroyed. He didn't care which.

After a while he began to hum an old shanty he'd once been taught by Pandemerian fishermen off the Riot Coast. The rhythm of the song matched his exertions. Heave the anchor, pull her up, he sang in his head, smash that window, pull me down. Chunks of bloody masonry from the Maze above fell constantly, battering his harness and shoulders. Smash that window, pull me down.

Eventually he reached the bottom. Here the shaft opened into a larger chamber below, a metal sphere perhaps fifty feet across. Anchor heaved in enough slack from the Rotsward's rope to allow himself to drop down into that gloomy space.

He landed on a pile of detritus that had been shaken loose by the skyship further up the shaft. Four circular steel doors, one at each compass point, offered potential exits from the chamber, but only one of them was open. In this doorway stood a little girl.

She was about eight years old and painfully thin, dressed in a stiff black dress with white ruffs at the neck and wrists. Her huge blue eyes regarded Anchor from under a burst of blond hair. In her sticklike arms she cradled an odd-looking spear, with a glass bulb at the rear and a fragment of clear crystal at the business end. This weapon made an intermittent crackling sound, like footsteps on gravel.

“You're not a ghost,” she said.

“No, lass.” He beamed at her. “I'm John Anchor.”

“What you doing in my ghost trap?”

“Your ghost trap?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Mr. D's ghost trap, I mean. You're not even supposed to be here anyway. Why have you got a rope on your back?” She jabbed her spear at the mounds of rubble all around him. “And what's all that stuff there? Mr. D won't be pleased about that at all.”

“Where is Mr. D?”

“Back in the shipyard, of course,” she said. Suddenly she blinked. “You're not here to trade for those Icarates, are you?”

Anchor raised his brows. Had she meant trade on behalf of the Icarates? Or did she actually expect him to trade something in exchange for Menoa's priests? Was it possible that this Mr. D could be holding Icarates as hostages? Anchor was curious. And what did the girl mean by the shipyard? This whole operation clearly had nothing to do with King Menoa. “The Icarates?” he replied. “Yes, I am here to trade.”

Now she looked uncertain. “Maybe I don't believe you.”

Anchor shrugged. “Why else would I be here? Mr. D won't be very happy if we keep him waiting, will he?”

She bit her bottom lip and looked at the rubble again. “All right,” she said. “Let's go then. You'll need to leave that rope behind because otherwise I won't be able close the Princess's door.”

“The rope stays,” Anchor said.

She glanced back nervously, then shrugged and walked away.

He followed her out of the chamber, ducking inside the open doorway, but then stopped when he saw what awaited him on the other side.

It almost looked like the interior of an airship envelope. A series of concentric steel rings ran along the inside of a long metal hull that tapered to points at both ends. Anchor was standing at one of the narrow ends. In the center of this enormous space a complex clockwork engine squatted amidst a tangle of pipes. The engine ticked steadily as its many wheels and shafts rotated. Various metal racks stood amongst the pipes, each holding what appeared to be coloured glass bulbs. Anchor shook his head. It could almost have been an airship. And yet the entire floor was covered in grass.

He plucked a blade of grass and sniffed it, then rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. Grass. A whickering sound from the front of the vessel made him look up. In the distance, just past the widest part of the hull, stood two ponies, a tan-and-white and a chestnut. The animals eyed him warily.

“What are we going to do about that rope?” The little girl was looking behind him, when her eyes suddenly widened. “Who's she?”

Anchor turned to see Harper duck inside the open doorway. The metaphysical engineer stepped over the Rotsward's rope and looked up at the girl. “Hello,” she said. “My name's Alice. What's your name?”

“Isla.”

Anchor smiled at Harper. “Cospinol didn't warn me you were coming down.”

“You've been blundering through one soul or another since you jumped into that funnel,” she said. “I think he's worried about speaking through the rope. Too easy for someone to overhear him.”

“Thank the gods for small mercies, eh?” Anchor waited a moment to see if Cospinol would respond to his jibe. When his master remained silent he grinned wildly. Finally, some peace and quiet. He'd only had to come to Hell to find it.

The little girl had noticed Harper's tool belt. “Are you a Mesmerist?” she asked. “You've got a Locator, and a Screamer, and what's-”

“And you have a ghost lance,” Harper said, nodding at the girl's spear. “Where did you get that, Isla?”

“It's Mr. D's,” she said.

“Mr. D? Is he-”

“We're off to the shipyard to speak to him about those Icarates,” Anchor interrupted. “Isla is going to take us there now.”

Harper nodded slowly. “Right.”

Anchor stepped past the engineer and heaved the door shut behind her. The rope didn't break-but the door itself buckled. He got it closed, more or less, and forced the handle down into a bracket in the metal frame. Then, hoping that Isla hadn't noticed, he said, “All good and shipshape. This is a ship, yes?”

“She's called the Princess,” Isla said. “And she's not a ship.” She giggled, and then ran over to the massive engine, and began to pull levers. “Mr. D made her for me,” she called back. “He calls her a submarine.”

Anchor looked at Harper. “I've heard of buildings moving through Hell, but what's a submarine?”

She shrugged. “I've no idea.”

The Princess was a vessel, Harper soon came to realize, able to sail through the very fabric of Hell. She moved through living stone and iron as easily as if through water, her tapered hull pushing the flesh of the Maze aside and allowing it close again in its wake. Her single engine was of a design Harper had never seen before. For fuel it burned the dead.

Before engaging the engines, Isla had connected glass bulbs containing phantasms to four inlets in the engine's housing. The terrible vessel had already sucked in the first of these souls and somehow used it to propel herself forwards. Her exhaust was located in the rear. Harper pinpointed it by listening to the screams of agony it emitted.

Her engines rumbling steadily, the Princess ploughed a course under the surface of Hell. As far as Harper could tell, nobody was navigating. Either the ship herself knew where she was going, or someone outside the vessel was able to direct her.

Isla didn't seem in the slightest bit concerned. As soon as the engines had started she ran to the front of the submarine to play with her ponies. The two animals ambled across the grass floor beside her, cropping.

Anchor was crouched beside the engine with his back to Harper, peering into its complex workings.

“Have you ever seen such a vessel, John?” she asked.

He didn't turn around or acknowledge her.

“John?”

She approached him, and saw that he was gripping the engine housing so tightly that the muscles in his arms looked as solid as marble. His eyes were closed and sweat glistened on his brow. “Are you all right?” she said. “John? What's the matter?” She noticed blood trickling down his forearm from one of his palms. “John! You've hurt yourself.”

“No,” he grunted. “Get away.”

“What-”

His eyes flicked open, his neck snapped round, and he hissed, “The Rotsward.”

Harper suddenly understood. The Princess lacked the power to drag Cospinol's ship on her own, so Anchor was feeding the vessel's engines with his own indomitable will. She glanced again at the tethered man's bleeding hand, and realized that it was pressed over one of the engine's intake ports.

How many souls were pouring out of him to power the ship?

“What's wrong with him?” Isla had appeared behind Harper, sitting on one of her ponies. “Is he sick?”

“He doesn't like traveling in ships,” Harper said.

“Mr. D is like that, too. He never goes anywhere outside the shipyard. He never even leaves his stupid box.” She blushed. “Don't tell him I said that, will you? He gets really angry sometimes.”

Harper steered the girl and her pony away. “Let's give John some peace, will we? Why don't you tell me all about Mr. D?”

For the next few hours she kept Isla occupied at the front of the vessel, while Anchor remained at the engine, feeding his tremendous power into its arcane machinery. The little girl didn't have very much to say about Mr. D except that she collected souls for him, but he never liked the souls she brought back and so he always sent her out again for more. Isla thought he was looking for one soul in particular, and she thought that was sad.

And Alice Harper, clutching her own empty soulpearl, agreed with her.

The submarine finally slowed and came to a halt. Anchor released his grip on the engine housing and slumped to the floor. He smeared his bloody hand against his thigh and took a deep, shuddering breath. A slack length of rope meandered over to the rear of the hull, where it had jammed tightly between the door and its frame, but outside the vessel this same rope would form a taut line back to the Rotsward. For hours they had dragged Cospinol's sky-ship under the surface of Hell.

Anchor breathed a heavy sigh of relief. His heart continued to pound. Alone, he could have pulled the Rotsward for days without tiring, but this strange vessel had drawn hungrily upon his power. With trembling fingers he dug out three soulpearls from the pouch tied to his belt, and then tipped them down his throat. He felt his heart rate slow.

“We're here,” Isla announced. “This is the shipyard. Come on, I'll show you. Mr. D keeps the Icarates in his shop.”

Anchor got the submarine door open with a little help from his shoulder. The skyship rope whizzed out past his feet, as the Rotsward took up the slack. He stepped out into a passageway lined with red brick. The Princess's circular hatch had fused into one wall of this corridor. Similar doors occupied both sides of the passage-way, dozens of them, retreating back into darkness to Anchor's left. Evidently this dock was used by other vessels. The rope trailed away in this direction, but the skyship itself was not in sight.

To the right, the docking corridor led to a much larger space awash with green light. Through the opening Anchor could see the tops of gaslights, the source of the luminance, and what appeared to be the facade of a shabby hotel. A painted sign above the door proclaimed:

D's Emporium. Rooms for Rent. Souls Bought/Sold.

“I don't believe this,” Harper said. “Renting a room in Hell is tantamount to taking possession of another person's soul.”

Isla ran ahead towards the opening. “It was Mr. D's idea,” she said. “He owns the hotel, and the shop, too. That's where the Icarates are.”

A strange chime issued from Harper's belt. One of her Mesmerist instruments, Anchor supposed. The engineer fumbled for the device and adjusted something, silencing it. Then she set off down the corridor after the little girl.

“Are you watching all this, Cospinol?” Anchor muttered to the rope. Then he shook his head and laughed. “A hotel in Hell. I wonder how much Mr. D charges for a room, eh?” He flexed his shoulders, took up the strain, and marched on, dragging the rope behind him. From far behind came the inevitable sound of breaking stone.

He arrived in a vaulted underground cul-de-sac, where the gaslights burned with a sickly verdant hue, illuminating the crumbling facades of half a dozen tired old buildings on either side. Planks had been nailed across almost all of their windows and doors. Only the hotel at the far end looked ready for business. Its doors had been flung wide open and faced the opening through which the three travelers now passed.

Harper lifted one of her spirit lenses to her eye. “This place is swarming with Non Morai,” she noted. “They're watching from the derelict buildings.”

“Is it a problem?” Anchor said.

She shrugged. “You're a demigod and I'm a corpse. You can't blame the Non Morai for hiding.”

“What about the child?”

“That little demon?” Harper said. “It's her they're most afraid of.”

As they wandered down this unlikely underground street, Anchor became aware of a deep rasping sound from behind. He stopped, and looked back over his shoulder. The buildings on either side of the road had retreated slightly back into the surrounding walls, revealing a yard of scraped cobblestones where their foundations had been a moment ago.

“They're afraid,” Harper said.

“Don't worry about them,” Isla said. “They always come and go. There's only so much room for them down here, and Mr. D rents the empty spaces out. He has hundreds of customers, you see. He says Menoa… shortchanged them.”

“Buildings come here to visit him?” Anchor asked.

“They come to trade,” Isla confirmed, “but they're always complaining about the Mesmerists, especially King Menoa. At least, the people inside them do. So they come here and buy souls and grow stronger, and then they just slide back into the Maze. Sometimes they don't come back for ages, but you're not allowed to hurt them because they're Mr. D's special customers. He says there's going to be a revolution and he's going to be the…” she thought for a moment, “duly elected representative of the free state of Hell.”

Anchor shook his head.

Harper grinned. “Hell is an endless, living, breathing city, John.”

“And Menoa pissed it off, eh?”

“He's been harvesting the Maze for millennia,” she said, smiling again. “I'm not surprised there's an underground resistance movement.”

But a revolution? Of houses?

Isla leapt up three steps onto the stoop of the hotel and shouted in through the doors, “Some guests here to see you, Mr. D! They've come about the Icarates.” She disappeared inside. “Mr. D! Where are you?”

Anchor and Harper followed her into the hotel. The skyship rope rasped up the steps behind them.

This level of Mr. D's Emporium had been given over entirely to the business of buying and selling souls. Shelved cabinets packed every available inch of wall and floor space, while bottled ghosts packed every available inch of cabinet shelf space. To negotiate this wooden maze, Anchor had to turn sideways and squeeze between the rows of shop furniture. The Rotsward's rope followed in his wake, dragging splinters from the floorboards.

“Mr. D? Where are you, Mr. D? Oh, there you are!”

Anchor heard a squeaking noise coming from the rear of the Emporium. He spied movement in the shadows, and then an object that he had at first taken to be a part of the furniture turned and rolled down an aisle towards them. It was a tall wooden box set on four small brass wheels. A slit, the width of two fingers, had been cut into the front panel at about chin height, but Anchor couldn't see anything inside except darkness.

The box continued to roll, of its own accord, down the aisle until it reached them. Then it stopped. A moment later, Isla padded between the rows of cabinets after it. “This is Mr. D,” she said.

Anchor looked at the box. He glanced at Harper.

“Pleasure to meet you,” she said.

The box remained motionless.

Isla kicked one of its wheels. “Say something, Mr. D. They've come to buy the Icarates.”

A wheezy voice issued from the box: “You've been misled, Isla, dear child. These two are not soul collectors, renegade or otherwise. They are actual physical forms, substance rather than meta-substance.” A soft wet pop, like the sound of a bubble bursting on the surface of hot soup, terminated the unseen occupant's sentence. He gasped. “They're from the living world.”

“Like you, Mr. D?” Isla said.

“Indeed,” said the man in the box. “You two aren't really here to buy my Icarates, are you? And you're certainly not agents of Menoa. After all, you're both still human.”

“Menoa didn't send us,” Harper said. “We were simply caught up in the storm your Non Morai created.”

“I see,” said Mr. D.

“Who are you?” Anchor demanded.

The box rolled back an inch. It creaked round to face Anchor more squarely. “I was a scientist,” Mr. D replied, “and now I am a collector and a tradesman of sorts. I rent rooms and sell personalities.”

“Souls, you mean?”

The box remained motionless.

“You collect souls and sell them?”

“Do you have a wife, sir?” said Mr. D. “No? A brother, then? A sister? Isn't there anyone who annoys you? Anyone you know who would benefit from a change of personality?” Another wet sound came from the box, this one like tripe slopping against a butcher's slab. The box's occupant let out a long ragged breath. “Please excuse me, sir. I am not a well man. I'm afraid I have a rather… unusual condition. But don't let that put you off. My emporium contains every type of soul. It is a simple procedure to pop open a bottle and thereby insert one mind into the physical body of another.” He made a gurgling sound. “Excuse me.”

“What procedure?” Harper asked. “What do you mean?”

The box squeaked back on its wheels and then rolled forward again, changing its angle so that the slit in the front now faced the engineer. “I'm talking about possession,” Mr. D said. “Wholesale. Isla, fetch one of the specials for this woman. Section fifty-eight, bottle eleven, the red section.”

Isla peered out from behind the box and blinked. Then she scampered away, retrieved a bottle from the back of the shop, and hurried back with it. She held up the bottle for Harper to inspect.

Harper took the bottle.

“Such a good vintage,” said Mr. D. “The gentleman in this bottle was a great leader, a kind and intelligent man. He fell to his death in a terrible accident during a great battle. Somewhat older than you, and not particularly handsome, I admit, but that doesn't mean anything. Looks aren't part of the package I offer. It's up to you to find some muscled dimwit and then persuade him to drink down this soul.” A slavering sound came from the box, followed by a sharp rapping noise. “Do you know what this would be worth up there… in the living world?”

Anchor had had enough. This boxed lunatic couldn't help them in their fight against Menoa. He was nothing more than a trader of slaves. “Let's go now,” he said. “We have a long road ahead, eh?”

But Harper held up her hand. “How much?” she said. “How much to buy a soul?”

“Ha!” said Mr. D. “I knew you were interested the moment I saw you walk into my shop. You want the aeronaut, then? I can make you a very good deal.” The box began to turn away.

“Not him,” she said. “I want to… look around.”

The box stopped. The slit in its face crept round to face Harper again. Mr. D's voice issued from the darkness within. “Someone in particular, is it?”

She looked at the floor.

Anchor frowned. He recalled the chime her Mesmerist device had made when they'd first arrived here. Had she been searching for one of these souls all along? He faced Mr. D. “Answer her. How much for a soul?”

“That depends,” said Mr. D, “on the soul.”

“What do you want? Gold?”

“What a strange notion,” replied Mr. D. “Whatever would I do with an immutable physical substance down here?” He let loose a sudden hacking cough, and the whole box shuddered on its wheels. “Please excuse me again. No, I simply require the purchaser to sign a contract, promising me certain services, and a small token to act as security, of course, just to ensure that the purchaser doesn't de-fault on the contract.”

“Tell me what you want,” Harper said.

The box rolled forward. “I'd like you to kill some people for me. Nobody you know, just some old friends of mine. You've probably never even heard of the city where they come from. I doubt it even exists now.”

“What city?” Anchor said.

“A place called Deepgate,” said Mr. D.

“There,” Monk said.

The hook-fingered boy peered through the sightglass in the same direction as the old man's pointed finger. Brands flared away down in the darkness where the Rotsward's outer scaffold pressed against a towering facade. The skyship had been dragged straight down into Hell, and then pulled horizontally for many hours. Now that John Anchor had halted his progress, Cospinol's slaves worked alongside his gallowsmen with hammers and crowbars, smashing at the brick and stonework to create some more space around her scaffold ends. They broke windows and tiles, and ripped out doors and joists and lintels, passing the lot back up their ranks towards the Rotsward's hull.

“They're trying to ease the pressure on the ship,” Monk observed. “In case Hell decides to try and spit the whole vessel back out.”

The boy lifted his gaze from the sightglass. “How do you know?” he asked. He'd taken a liking to querying Monk's assertions. “Maybe they're just looting all that stuff. Bits of souls and all that. Cospinol can boil it all down and make soulpearls.”

The astrologer's face turned red. He raised a hand to strike the boy, but then seemed to think better of it. “Don't get smart with me, son,” he said. “They're easing the pressure, I tell you. The Maze is living. All these homes might realize it's best to work together. I've seen it happen before, whole Middens crawling across the top of the labyrinth. Buildings on the move.” He nodded to himself. “Aye, strange things can happen when a group of souls all get the same idea.”

“Maybe we could steal some of those bricks,” the boy said, “and boil them up ourselves.”

Monk grunted. He unfastened his breeches, then, clinging on to the edge of the hole in the hull, he pissed down through the gaps in the scaffold. Steam rose from the arc of urine. The astrologer let out a sigh, then shook himself. “Them bricks won't give us much sustenance,” he said. “We'd be better stealing a soul from inside one of them rooms. Or using the distraction to loosen the bolts on that angel's boiling pot.” He refastened his breeches and turned to face the boy. “I'll bet them slaves have gone and left their prisoner alone.”

“They never leave it alone,” the boy said. “You're just afraid to go out there on that scaffold in case the gallowsmen get you.”

“I ain't afraid of nothing,” Monk said. “I'm just being smart. A few drops of that scarred angel's essence would sate you for a hundred years.” He ushered the boy back inside the Rotsward. From the shadows under one of the bulkheads he pulled out a rag-wrapped bundle and untied it, revealing an old wrench, a hammer, and an iron spike. Monk weighed the hammer in one fist and then handed it to the boy.

“Aren't you coming, too?”

“ ‘Course I'm coming. Someone's got to tell you which welds to crack and which bolts to loosen.” Monk grunted. “Don't want to let the bitch escape now, do we?”