God of Clocks

6

Dill removed the stricken arconite's armour while it lay immobile and took it for himself. Like all Maze-forged creations, the blood-soaked metal plates exhibited a primitive consciousness. They were fiercely reluctant to release their grip on the fallen automaton's bones. Dill persuaded them by brute force. He wrenched the sections free, revealing arrays of hooks on the undersides that writhed like cilia, and then pressed them against his own limbs and torso.

Rachel watched from the stoop outside the Rusty Saw tavern. She heard scratching sounds as the hooks attached themselves to Dill's ribs. The metal itself seemed to wail quietly. Pulses of green light raced along his newly fitted arm bracers and over his armoured chest, like a swarm of fireflies amidst the fog.

In moments, Menoa's arconite had been stripped bare. Its body formed a great dark peninsula of bone and metal upon the forest track, stinking and hissing smoke like something expelled from the heart of a volcano.

Dill picked up his opponent's massive cleaver and shook mud loose from its blade. He then stooped and lifted the building, holding it so that its foundations rested upon that enormous blade. Rachel clung to the doorjamb for support, her hair blowing wildly about her face. More of the Rusty Saw's earthen island crumbled away and fell to the ground in dull thumps. A clamour of broken glass and shouts went up inside the main saloon as the building pitched and slid several feet across the cleaver's smooth metal surface. Rachel felt herself rising rapidly into the sky. Dill's armour-clad torso swept past her like a shower of dull green stars.

And then they were moving again, carried north in great sweeping strides.

Rachel stepped inside to find the woodsmen crowded around every table, while still more of them squatted around the edges of the room or sat on the staircase. Conversation was muted. They seemed content to brood darkly over recent events. Oran himself sat drinking beer at a table in one corner, with a whore perched on his knee. He saw Rachel and nodded to her. Meanwhile, Abner Hill leaned on the bar, glaring at his unwelcome customers while his young wife struggled through the throng and cleared glasses from the tables.

Mina approached, cradling her tiny dog in her arms, and drew Rachel aside. “They're furious at Hasp,” she whispered. “They all saw how he tried to betray us.” She glanced at the men around her. “Rachel, there's even been some talk of taking matters into their own hands.”

“Gods, we don't need this, Mina. Where's Hasp now?”

“He's barricaded himself in the pantry,” she said. “If anything, he's even drunker than before. It's only a matter of time before one of Oran's men does something foolish.”

Rachel sighed. “I'll speak to Oran. We need more space, more room to breathe. And we need to keep these men busy. Will you come with me?”

Oran's eyes were glazed with drink, but he made space for the two women at his table by ordering one of his lieutenants to move. Then he pushed the whore away and told her to fetch them all a fresh jug. “Have some beer,” he said, filling two cups with frothing liquid.

Rachel accepted the drink. Mina left hers on the table.

Oran raised his own cup. “To Rys,” he said, “the architect of our victory.” Some of the men at nearby tables joined in the toast.

Rachel hesitated, then took a sip. “I seem to have missed Rys's involvement in all this.”

“The god of flowers and knives is subtle,” Oran explained. “Yet his influence is apparent in all events. It's like this sorcerous fog in the way it pervades the state of Coreollis.”

“You grant him omnipotence, then?”

“He speaks through me!”

To Rachel this outburst seemed unwarranted. Oran's expression had suddenly become dark, his eyes shadowed as he leaned forward. His skin looked moist and varicose, as with a man under extreme duress, while the axe scar on his forehead appeared to throb in the dim yellow light like a hot metal plate. He bared his teeth. “This is Rys's land,” he continued more quietly, “and we are his agents here.”

Rachel glanced at Mina. The thaumaturge was watching the man carefully.

Oran slumped back in his chair and took another long gulp of beer. “I have doubts about our destination,” he said. “Why should we be seeking Sabor before we locate Lord Rys? I reckon we should return to Coreollis.”

Rachel was losing patience with him. She was just about to explain that Rys had, by all reasonable accounts, died in Coreollis, but Mina preempted her.

“Cospinol told us that Lord Rys trusted Sabor and Mirith to find a way back into Heaven,” the thaumaturge explained. “While Rys fought the Mesmerists in Pandemeria and Skirl, his brothers explored more… esoteric options. If we agree that Rys destroyed his own palace as a ruse to trick King Menoa, then it's likely he's left Coreollis entirely.” Her glass-sheathed hand now curled around her cup. “The battle has moved from the city of flowers, Oran. We'll find Rys at Sabor's castle in Herica.”

The woodsman gave Mina an indignant look. “You think you can guess our Lord's intent?” he growled. Then he spat on the floor and moved his face very close to hers. “Listen to me, witch. Rys sent you here in answer to our prayers. The arconite carried you from his own city. Do you think that was merely coincidence? Now, why shouldn't we simply take your gold and use it to execute his will?”

Basilis growled.

Oran started to speak again, but was interrupted by the arrival of the tavernkeeper's wife.

Rosella Hill set a fresh jug of beer upon the table. Her golden hair had spilled out from its ribbon, and white makeup smeared her powdered forehead and the back of one wrist. Avoiding the eyes of everyone present, she began mopping up spills from the table with a cloth.

Oran stared up at her with hot glazed eyes. “All things are sent to us by Rys,” he muttered. Then he drained the last of his cup, set it down on the table, and grabbed her wrist. “You know what I'm talking about?”

Rosella said nothing. She wouldn't even look at him.

The tables around them grew quiet. Rachel could sense the tension amongst Oran's men. She glanced over at the bar, where Abner was now busy scrubbing the polished counter, his full attention fixed on the task at hand.

Oran maintained his grip on the woman's wrist. With his free hand he lifted the jug and refilled his cup. “If Rys intended that you serve me,” he said to her, “or that you sit and drink with me, how could we argue with his will?” He pulled her towards him and breathed heavily through his nose. “Stay here a while. The witch will give you her seat.”

Rachel stiffened, but then she felt Mina's hand clutch her knee under the table-a warning gesture. The thaumaturge slipped out of her seat, and said, “Thanks for your time, Oran,” then, “Rachel, would you help me find some blankets? We should sort out bedding for all our civilian guests.”

Oran gave them a dismissive wave.

Rachel felt heat rise on her neck, but she followed the thaumaturge back through the crowded saloon towards the rear door. The militiamen watched them go, except Abner Hill, who was still furiously scrubbing at his bar with one white-knuckled fist.

When they reached the back hallway, Rachel whispered, “I should just kill him.”

“And all two hundred of his men?”

The assassin snorted. “I know how to make it look like an accident. I could do it tonight.”

“No.”

“We're losing control, Mina. Oran is trying to usurp our authority, and Hasp is so fragile he could snap at any moment.” Her voice rose. “We've got two hundred men and a drunk of a god all locked up in a fucking inn.”

Mina shushed her, opened the back door, and urged her outside. A gust of wind cooled Rachel's face, but then the stench of death filled her nostrils. It was still hours before dawn, yet Dill's stolen armour illuminated the building and its earthen island and even the surrounding forest in soft green radiance. She heard the distant thud of his footsteps crashing through the vegetation below.

There was little space left. Two yards of compacted earth were left to form a ledge along this side of the inn, although firewood stacked under the eaves took up most of this area. Dill's fleshless fingers curled up over the edge of the mud foundations like the remains of white stone arches. The hilt of his giant cleaver extended into the night air like a battered metal bridge.

Mina set Basilis down, and the dog padded away to urinate against the woodpile. “The remaining arconites now know where we are,” she revealed. “I can sense nine of them within the reaches of my fog: six to the south, one east, and two west of here. They're converging on us.” She looked out into the night as though she expected to see imminent evidence of their approach. “Those nearest are holding back and waiting for the others. It seems they won't challenge us singly.”

Rachel felt a headache creeping up on her. The wound on the side of her head irritated her. She looked back up at Dill, at his vast and uncertain form in the mist. How could such a giant be so vulnerable?

“But we're nearing the Flower Lakes,” Mina went on. “I can sense a large settlement just north of here, a lakeshore trading town built around a harbour. It looks like they export timber and coke. And it's well guarded, too. There's a palisade wall manned by local militia.”

“More locals?”

“These soldiers vastly outnumber our current friends. Recruiting new forces would dilute Oran's influence and provide us with the makings of an army.”

“Or start a war between their two factions,” Rachel said. “Besides, where are we going to put all these people?”

Mina smiled. “We need to steal a bigger building.”

“Not a chance, Mina. If you intend to-”

The thaumaturge's smile abruptly withered. She squeezed her hands against the sides of her head and let out a sudden wail of pain.

“What's wrong?” Rachel reached over to comfort the other woman, but Mina shook her away.

“Didn't you feel that?” she said.

“Feel what?”

“There was a…an earthquake? Gods, I don't know what it was! Like a crack appearing in the fog, a crevasse that ran from one side of the world to the other. Everything jolted. Every-thing-”

A sudden uproar came from the inn. Rachel heard the sounds of smashing glass and heavy objects being thrown to the floor, men shouting and cursing-and, above it all, Hasp roaring, “Cowards!”

“Oh, god,” she said, turning back to the inn. “Stay here, Mina.”

There had been a scuffle inside. Tables and chairs were overturned. One of Oran's men lay unmoving on the floor, blood seeping out from his gut. Two more were rising to their feet not far away, while most of the remaining warriors huddled back against the walls. The Lord of the First Citadel had discarded his robe and stood stark naked in the center of the saloon. Blood pulsed through the transparent etched scales and metameric plates across his body, and stumps of muscle and bone visible under glass protrusions on his shoulders indicated where the Mesmerists had removed his wings. In one fist he gripped an axe.

Hasp wheeled and staggered sideways. He lifted the axe and swiped at the air. A few of Oran's men laughed. The warriors who had risen from the floor circled around the glass-armoured god to flank him. One of them carried an iron-banded club, while the other gripped a long knife.

Oran remained seated at his corner table, with one thick arm around the innkeeper's wife standing beside him. Rosella Hill looked flushed and disheveled, her skirts lifted around her thighs. She suddenly pulled away from her captor and Oran let her go.

Rachel drew her own sword. The Coreollis steel was heavier than the layered Spine weapons she was used to, but it was sharp enough to open throats. “What's going on here?” she demanded.

Oran's gaze fell upon her naked weapon, then he eyed her without apparent interest. “This abomination killed one of my men,” he said.

“You provoked him?”

The woodsman picked up his blade from the floor and rose from his seat. In that dark smoke-filled corner of the saloon he looked as filthy and feral as a wild man. Mud spattered his banded leather armour and clotted his wild grey hair. His eyes smouldered with a feverish light. The scar on his forehead seemed to throb. “Rys sent Hasp to Hell for a good reason,” he said. “He should have had the decency to remain there.”

Hasp's full attention was now focused on Oran. The god was grinning like an imbecile, ignoring the two men now edging towards him from either side.

Oran made a subtle gesture with his head.

As Rachel heard a simultaneous intake of breath from Oran's two soldiers, she focused…

… and the world around her stopped.

A dead silence encompassed the saloon. Candle flames and oil lanterns abruptly ceased to flicker. The light dimmed and yet intensified, becoming simultaneously tarry and harsh. Black particles of smoke waited, perfectly motionless, in the air. On either side of Hasp the two approaching woodsmen were just preparing to lunge. Rachel detected the tiny motions that evinced the coming changes in the stance of each: the slow curl of the lips, the tightening of tendons in their necks as their shoulder muscles began the process of lifting their weapons.

She considered Oran. The militia leader, too, was primed for violence, and his stance suggested that he might throw the heavy blade he wielded. There were plenty of other weapons around him to replace it.

Three targets. Forty paces between them. Rachel didn't know if she could move that far while focusing. Any exertions she made now would leave her collapsed and vulnerable afterwards, at the mercy of every able-bodied fighter in the saloon.

The assassin had little choice.

She moved. Ten careful paces towards the first attacker. As Rachel walked, she kept her body as fluid as possible, considering every muscle, the position of her arms and shoulders relative to the stance she wanted to achieve. At this speed, abrupt motions might injure her, while halting was dangerous. Her target had not yet fully raised his club. He was powerful, heavy, burdened by layers of banded armour. She pressed her shin beside his leg and took hold of his club and turned, lifting the weapon gently while easing her body into his bulky shoulder.

He began to topple.

Rachel let go of the club. She could not hope to wield it at this speed. His fingers released their grip on the weapon. Now the heavy baton crept upwards through the air. Rachel nudged it twice with the back of her hand, altering its trajectory so that it would crush his skull when he finally hit the ground.

He continued to fall. The club was still rising, turning end over end. Its bulky iron tip swung through a layer of smoke and began to descend towards the warrior's head.

Rachel's heart gave a long slow beat. She had not stopped moving. Her body flowed on beyond her defeated foe and then past Hasp. The Lord of the First Citadel stood frozen in the center of the saloon, his black eyes fixed on Oran. Cracked lips framed his yellow teeth. Rachel noted the tiny glass veins within the breastplate of his hideous armour, the stubble on his naked jaw. She took another two steps and reached her second target.

This warrior was leaner and quicker than the first, and his eyes simmered with rage. He had already lifted his knife to the height of his shoulder, bunching his muscles to cut down diagonally. The steel shone white-yellow behind his fist. A thread of saliva extended from his jowls, and his lunge had already gathered significant momentum. Rachel could not steer his body from its course without considerable risk to herself.

She broke his arm instead.

A chop to his wrist shattered the carpal bones there. The assassin then gripped the man's knife between her thumb and forefinger, and pulled it back in the opposite direction of the intended swing. She sensed his tendons and muscles rip. The agony would not hit him for another few moments, not until after he realized that the blow had missed.

The assassin felt her heart beat again, and again, and then suddenly quicken to a crescendo.

Oran still posed a threat, but for Rachel time had run out. Her heightened perception returned to normality with a crash. She lost control of her limbs and collapsed. A barrage of sound assaulted her, disjointed cries and groans and the pounding of boots. Oran yelled for order. Somewhere a woman screamed.

Rachel lay on the floor, her nostrils full of the smell of wood and dirt. Saliva dribbled from her slack lips. From here she could see the woodsman whom she'd first disarmed. The heavy club had landed precisely where she'd intended, crushing his skull. Now he lay in a pool of expanding blood.

She felt hands upon her.

A woman's voice cried, “Leave her alone!”

Mina? I told you to stay outside.

Rachel felt herself being turned roughly onto her back. A savage visage loomed over her, its cheeks and neck clad in bloody glass, its eyes as black as the abyss. Hasp bared his teeth, and his whisky breath spilled over her. His expression was one of rage and desperation and misery. “I don't want your fucking help,” he growled. And then he drove a fist hard into her stomach.

The assassin doubled up in pain, gasping as she felt the wind rammed out of her. Mina was yelling somewhere nearby; men were laughing and shouting. Hasp snarled. He punched her in the guts again, and again, then raised his glass fist above her face, piling all the strength of his upper body behind the coming blow.

Rachel closed her eyes.

“We are not killers for hire,” Anchor said.

Mr. D's strange wheeled box rolled back a few inches along the aisle, and knocked against one of the cabinets packed with bottled souls. Glass clinked together. The box's occupant spoke through its dark mouth slit: “I think you should let your friend decide that. After all, she is the would-be purchaser.”

Anchor could see Harper's mind working. Worry creased her brow; her eyes frantically searched the floor as if an answer to her dilemma might appear there. She was actually considering Mr. D's indecent offer: one of his bottled souls in exchange for the murder of two strangers.

“For my own security the contract must be signed in blood,” said Mr. D. “I find that purchasers are much less likely to renege on the deal when such a document remains in the hands of a thaumaturge. The threat of vengeful blood magic tends to keep people focused on their side of the bargain.”

Harper said, “Gods help me… I'll do it.”

Anchor was shocked to see her fall apart so quickly. This woman was no murderer. She didn't even yet know whom Mr. D expected her to kill.

He recognized desperation when he saw it.

“Excellent!” said Mr. D.

“Hell, no,” Anchor said. “I won't let you bully her.”

“She has agreed, sir.”

Anchor faced Harper. “Whose soul do you want to buy?” he asked. “Is it family? A lover?” He saw from her pained reaction that he had struck upon the truth. “A husband, eh?” He turned to the nearest cabinet, flung open the doors, and dragged out two fistfuls of soul bottles.

“That's robbery, sir.” Mr. D's wooden enclosure rumbled forward in a threatening manner. A strange glutinous slopping sound came from within. “Do you know who I am?”

Anchor thrust the bottles towards Harper. “Use your mesmerist devices. Find him.”

She sobbed and shook her head weakly. Her gaze moved back and forth between Anchor and the proprietor.

“Do it,” Anchor said.

Harper fumbled in her tool belt. She took out one of those odd silver contraptions, a slender device packed with crystals and covered in etched glyphs. It made a sharp, tinny noise, and then started to whine. The engineer shook her head. “Not those,” she said. “But he's here in this place somewhere.”

“Your husband?”

“Tom. His name's Tom.”

Anchor uncorked one of the bottles and brought it to his lips. A tiny amount of liquid dribbled down his throat…

… and then the memories of the soul contained in that liquid rushed into him.

A stage … Gaslights and applause … Sitting on the edge of a bed watching a dying woman… The smell of sweat, the weight of a man lying on her back… Wheeling downhill on a heavy wooden bicycle …

Mr. D laughed. “Now you've gone and done it. You've just consumed another person's soul.” His box squeaked forward on its wheels. “Your own mind, such as it was, is about to disappear.”

Anchor grunted, and then upended two more bottles. He felt strength pouring into him, even as fresh memories assailed him.

… Alone in a desert watching a campfire … A wailing woman, her face bleeding from his blows… Maggots squirming in the body of a dead dog…

The tethered man threw the empty bottles aside, and grabbed more from the shelves. “What about these?”

Harper scanned them, shook her head.

“He's not changing, Mr. D,” Isla said.

… shooting gulls with arrows… a rowdy tavern… a brother's hug… watching a small boat set out across misty waters…

“I can see that, Isla. Please unlock the Icarate cages.”

“But Mr. D…”

“Do it, child.”

Empty bottles rolled across the floor. Anchor kicked them aside and wrenched open another cabinet. Mr. D's box retreated down the aisle, its little wheels squawking. Isla scampered ahead of it, disappearing through a curtained doorway at the rear of the emporium.

Harper was staring at her device. “He's here, John.”

Anchor was drunk with power and memories that did not belong to him. His thoughts spun.… a pier ablaze … an old man crying … gutting a rabbit… He wheeled around, then staggered over to the cabinet beside Harper and ripped its door clean off its hinges. The Rotsward's rope followed after him, snagged on the doorjamb, and then wrenched it clear off the wall.

Harper withdrew one of the bottles from the cabinet.

Anchor blinked and shook his head. The emporium was spinning around him.… kissing a girl dressed in a steel suit… sex in a moss-green gazebo … a knife clutched in bloody fingers… He grabbed the bottle from Harper, uncorked it, and lifted it to his mouth.

“John!” she cried.

He stopped, with the bottle resting against his lower lip. He could almost taste the first drop of cool liquid.

“Sorry.” He lowered the bottle, and handed it to her.

Harper replaced the cork.

Behind you! Cospinol had remained silent for so long that the god's sudden outburst in Anchor's head startled him. For an instant he thought that the warning had come from one of the souls he'd just consumed, before he recognized Cospinol's deep tone. The madman's loosed his Icarates.

Two of Menoa's hellish priests were shuffling through the curtained doorway at the rear of D's Emporium. They wore queer armour composed of bulbous ceramic plates like pale fungi spattered with darker rot. Green sparks dripped from these protrusions, bursting against the floor around their white boots. Uncertain buzzing sounds issued from their copper mouth grilles. Their black eye lenses were broken, but nevertheless fixed on Anchor.

“He can't be controlling them,” Harper said. “Icarates answer to no one but Menoa.” She backed away, sweeping her scanner across the approaching enemies, and then added, “John, their minds have been replaced. He's implanted new souls within them.”

Anchor stepped in front of her and folded his arms. “Go back,” he said to the Icarates. “I am in no mood to fight more cripples.”

A maniacal laugh came from the other side of the curtain. “No mood to fight? Do you think these souls will parley with you? These creatures have the minds of murderers and rapists, you big dolt-the very worst I've found during all my time in Hell.”

The tethered man grinned. “Now I am in the mood to fight.” He strode forward and grabbed the first Icarate by its neck and groin, hoisted the bulky armoured figure over his head, then turned and threw it out of the emporium window. The glass panes exploded outwards, as did a substantial part of the surrounding brick wall. The Icarate flew far across the cul-de-sac, spraying sparks, and came to a rest in a crumpled heap two hundred yards away.

The second Icarate hesitated.

Anchor seized it by the neck and picked it up with one hand. Its pale gauntlets crackled and fizzed and groped wildly at his arm, but he paid the thing no heed. Still hoisting the Icarate up before him, he ducked through the curtained doorway and stepped into the room beyond.

It was completely dark for a heartbeat, and then a flash of green light illuminated the room.

Mr. D's box stood before a semicircle of at least twenty cages stacked overlapping one another like two rows of bricks. Two of these enclosures had already been opened, and were now empty, but the remainder of them held hunched, bulky forms. Motes of green light burst from extrusions in their warped armour, intermittently dispelling the darkness within this windowless chamber. By this flickering light Anchor saw their copper mouth grilles, crusted with verdigris and red rust, and those dark circles of glass that served them as eyes.

Isla was wrestling with a key, trying to turn it to unlock one of the cage doors.

“Leave that be, lass,” Anchor said.

She glanced uncertainly at the tall box in the center of the room.

“He won't hurt you.”

Isla released the key. Mr. D's box remained completely motionless, its thin mouth slit facing Anchor.

Anchor realized he was still holding the struggling Icarate. He pitched it away, and heard it thump against the rear wall of the room. The priest's armour blossomed with a sudden cascade of green scintillations, before the whole suit dropped from sight behind the cages and went dark.

“What are you?” said Mr. D.

“John Anchor,” the tethered man replied. “I will make you a deal, yes? You give us Miss Harper's husband, and the little girl.” He paused for a moment and then nodded to himself. “So, do you agree?”

“Agree? Agree to what? What do I get out of the deal?”

Anchor frowned. He made a show of examining the room, and then the floorboards. “Ah,” he said at last. He slammed his heel down into one of the boards, shattering it, then picked up a fragment of wood. “You get this piece of wood.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

Anchor grinned. “It is my best offer.”

Mr. D snorted. “I don't know what sort of demon you are, but you can't threaten me. The body within this box cannot be harmed. Nor can you make me suffer more than I already do. If you leave, I will pursue you. I will bring Menoa's Iolite spies down upon you. I will-”

Anchor took hold of the box, turned it upside down, and set it back on the floor so that its wheels pointed at the ceiling.

“What?” Mr. D cried. “Turn me the right way up or-”

“John.” Harper was standing over the hole Anchor had just kicked in the floor, scanning it with her Mesmerist device. Her other hand still clutched the bottle to her chest. “I'm picking up the same signal we received in the portal, but it's much stronger here. We're right above the River of the Failed.”

“The ants' nest?” He peered down through the gap in the floor, but couldn't see anything except darkness. A faint meaty odour filled his nostrils. “Good,” he said. “We can smash our way down. Will you take the girl to her ship, Miss Harper?”

“Can't I come with you?” Isla said.

Harper crouched and hugged her. “It's too dangerous, sweetheart. Come on-” She stood up and took the girl's hand. “Why don't we speak to the other ships? I think there are better places in Hell for you all than this one.”

Isla glanced back at Anchor, who beamed at her. Reluctantly, she stepped over the Rotsward's rope and followed the woman out of the room.

As soon as they'd gone, Anchor said, “That little girl is powerful, eh?”

The great rope trembled at his back. Powerful! Nine Hells, John, that girl had more collected materiel in her vessel than any human ought to. It actually resisted you. I suspect that even Hasp's castle pales in comparison.

Mr. D snorted. “She's powerful because of her proximity to the River of the Failed. Why do you think we're down here? If you want to discuss this properly, please turn me the right way up.”

It makes sense, Cospinol said. Millions of lost souls, all heading for the sewers of Hell, converge here. That sort of power could be trapped and utilized by a strong will. Indeed, desperate souls might find such a will attractive, might latch on to it. That demonic little girl must act like a magnet for them.

“Are you listening to me?” Mr. D sighed, and then made an attempt to sound reasonable. “Listen, I promise not to pursue you if you turn me the right way up.”

What are you going to do about him?

“Nothing,” Anchor replied. “He can rot here.”

“Who are you talking to?” said Mr. D.

“My master,” Anchor said.

“Your master? Where is he? I want to speak to him.”

Anchor grunted. He crouched over the hole in the floor and began to widen it by ripping up more boards. After it was wide enough for him, he stopped and peered down into the darkness. A chill breeze blew up from below. He could not guess how deep the chasm went.

“Anchor?” Mr. D said. “I demand an audience with your master.”

The tethered man sighed and lowered himself into the gaping hole. It was utterly dark down there. He felt a lattice of iron beams around him, jutting from brick facades, but there was enough space to climb down between it all. “An audience?” he called back, flexing his shoulders as he took up the strain of the Rotsward's rope. “It is no problem. Cospinol will be along in a moment.” Then he gripped an iron strut and began to drag himself down into the abyss.

Eventually John Anchor ran out of Maze. The girders and facades he had been using to drag himself down terminated suddenly. He broke through a floor and found nothing below but air. So he pulled in a mile or so of slack rope, and then jumped.

He fell for a long moment and landed in at least four feet of thick, cloying liquid. His head went under and then he came up again, spitting and gagging. He wiped his eyes, but could see nothing but a red blur. The stink of fouled meat filled his mouth and nostrils, and he spat repeatedly to try to remove it. The floor underneath the waters felt as smooth as skin. He heard echoes of his own coughs and gasps, the slosh and gurgle of fluid.

When he stood up again, the liquid flowed sluggishly around his belly and seemed to tug him in several directions at once. He rubbed sticky fluid away from his eyes, and then blinked them open.

He was in a space without walls, an immense gap underneath the twisted iron and redbrick roots of Hell. The base of the Maze formed an impossible ceiling overhead. Without any obvious means of support, the leagues of cluttered stonework and metal filled the heavens like a massive bank of thunderclouds. Rays of light fell from countless windows in the dwellings overhead, dappling the surrounding landscape.

The ground beneath was uneven and treacherous. Narrow channels of crimson water looped and spiraled and twisted back on themselves in an endless scrawl. Ribs of raised fleshy material separated the waterways, and in the patchy gloom, the swamp seemed to stretch to eternity. From all around came the constant sound of dripping, as the blood trickling down through Hell reached this open space and fell like rain.

A beam of harsher light flashed across the waters just to the left, revealing their dark, bloody colour, before vanishing once more. An instant later the same light reappeared overhead as Harper climbed down the Rotsward's rope. She was lowering herself down through a rift in the ceiling, and a wandlike crystal device gripped between her teeth proved to be the source of illumination. She stopped, dangling a few feet below the ceiling, and then shone the wand around her.

The Icarate cages had fallen nearby, and most of the twenty enclosures had toppled over and now lay on their sides, partially submerged, while four still stood upright on the raised banks. Long shadows reached out from the bars as Harper swung the light across them.

Every one of the cages was empty.

Anchor looked around for Mr. D. The proprietor had probably fallen somewhere nearby. After all, most of his collapsed emporium lay scattered around here. Cabinets and bottles bobbed in the red waters. A moment later, a smile came to his lips as he spotted Mr. D's strange wheeled box rolling across one of the raised banks, heading away into the darkness.

The metaphysical engineer swept her beam beyond the cages. The circle of light caught flashes like sparkling rubies, illuminated pockets of rippling water, and veins throbbing within a low, muscular bank. Falling droplets flashed in the gloom. And then the beam settled somewhere behind Anchor.

Harper let out a startled gasp. “John,” she said quietly, “we've found our ants' nest.”

Anchor turned to look.

They were standing in the water. Wet red figures like rude sculptures of men had risen up from the shallow depths and now stood motionless and glistening under the glare of Harper's wand. Anchor estimated there to be a hundred or more of them. He couldn't detect any eyes in those faces, but he noticed mouths and teeth.

Harper called down, “The waters are sentient. These creatures are not individual souls. They're extensions of the river itself, parts of the god of the Failed.”

Anchor faced the figures. “Hello.”

The figures spoke together in one fluid whisper. “Are you an Icarate?” Echoes hissed through the conduit like a breeze, so that it seemed like the air itself had spoken.

“Do I look like one?” Anchor replied.

They hesitated. “What do you want here?”

The rope at Anchor's back thrummed, and his master's voice sounded in his head:

Don't mention Menoa, Cospinol warned. This is treacherous ground. Ask it to grant us passage under Hell to the Ninth Citadel. We're seeking the source of the Icarate infestation.

Anchor relayed his master's words.

The figures were silent for a while. Finally they said, “You bring me food.”

Anchor frowned. He couldn't be sure if this was a question or a statement-or what it referred to.

“I think it means the gallowsmen,” Harper said. “If it can sense all the souls aboard the Rotsward, it would certainly regard them as sustenance, a veritable feast.” She untangled her legs from around the rope and slid further down. A foot from the surface of the water she hesitated and tightened her grip on the soul bottle clamped to her breast. Then she let go, plunging into the river up to her chest.

She faced the big man, her expression full of awe. “A river of disassociated dead,” she muttered. “John, this is vaster than I ever imagined. It could become anything.”

She cupped a hand in the water, raised it to her lips, and took a sip.

Anchor grimaced at the sight.

Cospinol spoke through the rope: It can have the damned gallowsmen if it lets us pass. Tell it we want an alliance. Tell it we're itsfriend. It ate those bloody Icarates we brought down with us, for god's sake. We need to spend time with it, and talk to it.

Anchor relayed the message.

The figures waited for another long moment. Finally they said, all together, “Follow me.”

The tethered man watched as, one by one, those glutinous figures slowly sank back into the River of the Failed. “Follow you where?” he inquired, but in that vast darkness only the echo of his own voice answered.

But then the currents eddying around him shifted and strengthened in one mighty surge. The channel in which he stood began to flow purposefully in the opposite direction.

Harper stumbled, but Anchor grabbed her and held her firm. She clutched the bottle and light wand to her chest as the crimson waters bubbled and frothed around her shoulders.

Carried by this new force, the empty Icarate cages slid away into darkness.

Anchor pulled the engineer close to him. “Don't lose your bottle,” he said.

She laughed. “Was that supposed to be a joke?”

He frowned. “The water is very high. Your bottle might go whoosh”-he made a sweeping gesture with his hand-“and then you will lose your husband's soul.”

“Never mind,” she said.

Anchor began to heave the Rotsward's rope down towards the hungry river. “These gallowsmen aren't going to like this,” he said. “Nobody likes to be eaten. I know this from experience.”

But Harper wasn't listening to him. She was hugging her bottle and crying.

They waited in that same cramped crawl space above the boiling room for hours, until the slaves finally finished their shift at Carnival's brazier, only to watch in frustration as four more slaves appeared to take their comrades' places.

Monk crawled away from the hole and then dragged the boy close to him so that he could whisper in his ear. “Gods damned waste of time,” he said. “Why didn't you tell me they never leave her alone?”

“I did,” muttered the boy. He thought it rather unfair that Monk was putting the blame on him. The whole thing was the old man's idea in the first place.

The astronomer stretched out his legs and winced. “You'd think they'd be too busy smashing up Hell to stay at their brazier.” He drew a hand across his stubbled jaw. “What we need,” he decided, “is some sort of diversion.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know! Ship isn't moving, is it? Gives you the chance to slip outside and do something unexpected. Take an axe to the hull-that'll soon get the bastards running.”

“You can't break the hull,” the boy replied. “No matter how rotten it gets, you can't break it, not even with an axe. I know that much.”

Monk frowned. He seemed ready to argue, but then the whole vessel gave a sudden lurch and began to creak and groan. “We're moving again,” he said. “They've eased the pressure on the hull. We're going deeper into Hell.”

In the chamber below them, Cospinol's slaves toiled at the brazier, shoveling coke and working the bellows and checking the contents of the condensing flask. Ghost lights whirled inside that glass tube and gave off a fierce illumination. Dull thuds continued to issue from the cooker as the scarred angel kicked at her tiny iron prison.

Hidden in the crawl space, the two conspirators waited.

After a while the hook-fingered boy heard the old man snoring. He had fallen asleep again. Lying there on his side in that confined wooden space, he looked like something that truly belonged in a coffin. His forehead was the colour of ancient bone, and tufts of wild hair sprouted from his cranium like scraps of dry moss. The boy thought about piling him down through the hole. It would be fun to see the slaves grab him and string him up again. Gallowsmen were supposed to stay outside the Rotsward.

But Monk was interesting in his odd way. The boy liked it when he talked about Pandemeria, the battles with the Mesmerists, and the first great automaton. And Monk knew how to get that pressure cooker open. The boy decided to wait until after he'd drunk some of the angel's essence.

He left the old man sleeping and crawled back through the sky-ship's maze of conduits. Once he reached the outer hull, he slipped out through one of the many gaps in it and onto the great scaffold that surrounded the vessel.

Now that the fog had gone, he could see the gallowsmen clearly. Most had moved to the outer reaches of the wooden matrix, ready to break down Hell's facades. The boy scuttled along one long spar and then leapt onto another one. He jumped again and his metal fingers gripped one of the empty nooses. He swung, let go, and landed next to a huge vertical timber that acted as a support column. Numerous ropes dangled around him, but these were for hoisting up debris and he couldn't risk using them, so he climbed down the timber itself. The Rotsward's hull diminished above him.

He wanted to see exactly where the ship was going.

In no time at all he neared the lower edge of the skyship's scaffold. The whole vessel sat atop what looked like a huge crushed labyrinth. A vast network of rooms with torn-open ceilings stretched away into the gloom on all sides, the scene illuminated in places by gallowsmen with flaming brands. The Rotsward's lowest spars had pierced the floors below, and many men were working down there, moving through the rooms or ripping up great chunks of stone, tiles, and wood, and loading it into baskets to be dragged up to the skyship's decks. They would squeeze the living energy from this detritus and manufacture soulpearls to feed the god of brine and fog.

Crunch.

The scaffold jerked and sank further into the maze. The boy heard men and women howling. He climbed down even closer and saw that most of the rooms were occupied, but the gallowsmen were not loading the people up. They were butchering them instead.

Crunch.

Another jolt, and the Rotsward descended again. Floorboards shattered. Walls toppled. Scores of dwellings crumbled down into the ones below. Cospinol's slaves were working flat out to save as much matter as possible, but they could only recover a fraction of it. The rest simply dropped away, falling upon the unwitting denizens below.

The armoured gallowsmen moved over this devastated landscape like a swarm of strange metal insects, entering houses through corridors wherever possible and climbing over debris where the damage was too great. They used their eclectic armaments against any souls they encountered. An old woman sitting at a loom turned when a metal-suited soldier leapt down beside her. She smiled and then died on his sword, before he put his boot to her chest and slid her corpse free.

Crunch.

Two warriors suddenly reacted to a new breach in the floor of a large stone dwelling. A young man in rich finery looked up in time to see their spears fall before his twitching body left red stains across his tiled floor. Four others were meanwhile dragging a screaming woman from her tiny brick cell.

These men were the dead from a thousand armies, the corpses of those warriors Anchor had slain since the day he first hitched the Rotsward's rope to his harness. No two were alike. They wore battered mail, plain plate, or enameled armour in bright yellows, greens, and blues-mercenaries and woodsmen in banded leather; archers with bone or yew bows; knights in steel, wearing colourful plumes; thieves, hooded gangers, and way-trappers. Some fought like brawlers with iron fist spikes; others used skinny blades in exotic flowing styles that the boy did not recognize. Blue-skinned and distended from years in their gins, these butchers moved in force through the steadily crumbling labyrinth.

Crunch.

Why were they killing these people in the Maze? Could these souls not be better used by Cospinol? The blood of those slain was now being wasted. Their essence mingled with the blood from the walls and floors, and leaked down into the depths of the Maze.

To where?

The slaves harvested scraps of living stone and wood, but they would not touch the corpses. The whole bloody scene felt like a giant sacrifice.

Crunch.

The scaffold dropped again. But this time something unusual happened.

The ground gave a sudden rumble, and great sections of it simply fell away. Several gaping chasms appeared amongst the network of interconnected rooms, corridors, and rows of brick partitions. The Rotsward appeared to have broken through into a vast cavern. The boy could see nothing down there except impenetrable darkness, but he heard the unmistakable sound of rushing water.

There was a pause.

And then John Anchor heaved on the rope again.

The Rotsward broke her way through the base of Hell. The network of gallows shuddered and groaned, and then suddenly dropped twenty fathoms. The lowest spars struck something solid, and the whole skyship came to an abrupt halt.

At that point, had the boy not shaped his own fingers to grip his environment, he might have lost his hold on the wood and fallen. Cospinol's gallowsmen were not so lucky, however. Dozens slipped from the greasy timbers and plummeted. To the boy's surprise, most of them landed in water.

It was an entire maze of waterways separated by low, greasy banks. Its layout reminded him of the old spiral patterns that the ancients had painted on rocks back in Brownslough: a single line looping back on itself again and again, to form a labyrinth. Like the lines of a finger, the channels did not intersect each other. They were all part of the same river.

Debris rained down, sending up thick gouts of liquid. Islands of rubble formed quickly. The waterways were shallow, not even reaching as high as a man. Brands fell from the scaffold and hit water, fizzling out, or else landed on banks and islands and threw wildly flickering shadows across the landscape. By the light of these torches, the boy saw that the watercourses were as thick and red as blood.

A sacrifice?

A great cheer went up from the gallowsmen. Those still left on the scaffold were now climbing down towards these subterranean shallows. Even the slaves abandoned their baskets of debris to join them. Those warriors who had already fallen splashed around and roared and laughed and drank their fill of the waters. Some of them climbed upon the islands to reclaim brands, their armour darkly stained and dripping. They hollered and clashed blades against their own armour, and then knelt on the shore to sup. Evidently Cospinol had promised them a feast.

The boy glanced up.

In the torchlight, the base of Hell looked as gnarled as the thickest forest. Around the rift created by the skyship, twisted iron girders extended like black roots through the brickwork.

The Rotsward's main hull sat lower than this ceiling, but her upper scaffold still remained lodged in the Maze above. There was not enough room here to fully contain her great size. Bloody streams still trickled down through her joists and spars, and also from the edges of the well John Anchor had made by dragging the skyship down here.

The boy returned his gaze to the shallows, hoping to spot the tethered man. Torches moved over the waters and over the islands between the skyship's masts, but the spaces between them remained dark. Anchor was nowhere to be seen, so the boy looked for the great rope instead.

It had curled around one of the scaffold's lower joists, a few hundred yards away, and was tightening, drawing in slack as Anchor pulled on it. The boy peered in the direction of the rope and spied a faint aura of white light receding in the distance. The Rotsward would soon be moving horizontally again.

He had to tell Monk. This celebration might be the distraction they needed. While Cospinol's gallowsmen and his slaves feasted, they could sneak into the boiling room.

But just as he was about to turn and climb back up the scaffold, he spotted the red figures rising from the water below.

She was drowning and had been drowning for months or years or perhaps even centuries. Carnival could not remember how long she'd been trapped in this hell. Scalding water filled her eyes, her mouth, and her lungs. It flayed her skin. Her wings and legs had been broken once, but now they had healed, though the bones had reset themselves in awkward positions. That made kicking at the inside of her prison difficult.

But she kicked again anyway, as there was nothing else for her to do. The pain gave her strength. She savoured it and used it, compressing the agony up inside herself and then releasing it with another vicious blow to the walls of her container.

She felt, however, that she was growing weaker by degrees. Thescalding water seemed to sap the very life from her. She wondered if she would die. On one level the idea of an end to her suffering was appealing, as it offered her some consolation, a hope of peace. At the same time it enraged her. Someone had put her in here.

And so she lashed out again.

This time she felt the wall of the container give.