Iron Angel

9

Silister Trench, the soul in possession of Dill’s body, remained surly and irritable during their trek from the temple, flapping his injured wings occasionally and moaning about the incessant pain in his shoulders. Rachel ignored him. She had other things to worry about. It was dark, they were in the Warrens, and the entire district was seething with the dead. Phantasms crawled through the shadows of derelict tenements all around them, half-seen figures in queer dark raiment. The air felt damp and had a vague red tinge to it, as though a fog of blood had settled upon the city. Faint voices drifted from the empty shells of buildings like the last bounce of an echo, but Rachel could not hear their words clearly. Sometimes she thought she heard growling, and occasionally sobbing.

A canopy of smoke blanketed the sky, its underbelly lit by colourful fires from the industrial districts. Angry red, yellow, and black streaks fumed and tumbled between the towering silhouettes of tenement blocks. Now and then a concussion rang out, shaking ash from the chains on which the buildings were suspended. The air reeked of sulphur and fuel, and other bitter chemicals Rachel couldn’t identify. She tried not to breathe in deeply, but her lungs soon began to sting.

They trudged up Lye Street, where the crumpled remains of Barraby’s watchtower stood silent and shuttered at the top of the hill, stark against the turbulent sky; then they turned left onto the narrow lanes around Farrow Wynd, scaling a heap of rubble and shattered barrels blocking Candlemaker Row. To the north, blue and green lights flashed across the heavens, followed by an upwards rush of dazzling silver stars, and moments later Rachel heard the boom and crackle of another poison cache exploding.

“What is this infernal labyrinth?” Trench said.

“You don’t remember?”

“Why should I remember?” he snapped. “I’ve never been here before.”

“It’s the Workers’ Warrens,” she explained, but his ignorance didn’t surprise her. Devon had taken souls for his elixir from all over the city. If this displaced soul had come from a noble family, he would scarcely have ever ventured down here. She watched him scowling up at the heavens, where the sky still churned with ash and smoke and tiny smouldering particles. Black shapes flitted through the widespread destruction around them.

Something odd then occurred to Rachel.

Were the ghosts actually keeping their distance from them?

Deepgate’s priests had long regarded phantasms as dangerous, there having been too many stories of citizens who had been possessed or driven to madness by such spectres. Yet these spectres seemed content to leave Rachel and Trench alone. She spied them constantly out of the corner of her eye, and heard their strange whispered chatter, but they had so far not ventured close.

Why?

Eventually the pair reached a granite and iron-link bridge, which spanned a gap of thirty yards between Ivygarths in the north and Summergarden to the south. Flint pendulum houses surrounded them at all heights, all hanging cradled within a confusion of metal ropes below two massive foundation chains. A hard white deposit crusted everything; it creaked beneath their boots and formed pale clumps on the chains themselves. Rachel could almost imagine she was wandering through a winter forest. To the east of the bridge, a vast section of the city had fallen entirely from its foundation chains and sloped away into the red haze, suspended now only by the thinnest lacework of iron and cracked sapperbane. This, she knew, was the Taptack Acres, a district of Summergarden where tenements had been heaped one upon the other to house factory workers. On the opposite side, the nearest pendulum house hung directly from one of the links that still supported the bulk of this quarter. It was a dwelling of a style common among the industrial elite: in each case a vulgar mass of flint which tapered towards the top like a teardrop. Thin steel-link bridges connected the master’s and the servants’ doors to a network of intervening walkways which disappeared off into the gloom.

Trench was by now walking several yards ahead of her, his cassock starkly black against the pale surroundings. Still grumbling and cursing to himself, he remained heedless of his surroundings-until a crossbow bolt thudded into the ground just two inches from his feet, and stopped him in his tracks.

They were there among the pendulum houses: twenty or more assassins that Rachel could see, and only the gods knew how many more she couldn’t yet spot. The crossbow, that weapon of choice for Spine, was naturally much in evidence.

How did they manage to get ahead of us?

Rachel cursed herself for not pushing on faster. The route they had been forced to take through the city had been tortuous, unfamiliar to her, yet the Spine themselves would be well acquainted with the extent of Deepgate’s destruction. Now this exposed bridge made a perfect place for an ambush. If she tried to run, they would shoot her down before she covered two yards, and there was no chance of close combat here, either. Resistance would only lead to their slaughter, but that may have been what the Spine intended all along.

A voice called down, “You have reached a place of redemption, Rachel Hael. Your journey ends here.”

She spotted her interlocutor as one of four Spine perched on the roof of the nearest pendulum house, sighting his weapon at her. Rachel braced herself, her muscles still weary from the strain she had put them under during the fight earlier in the temple. She doubted she’d be able to focus a second time quite so soon. And this time, anyway, the Spine would know what to expect. Nevertheless, she had little choice, and mentally she prepared herself.

A gust of air brushed her cheek, as though something had moved quickly through the air nearby. Somewhere far below, a chain creaked.

Carnival?

Rachel’s gaze snapped to the source of the sound just as a violent tremor shook the bridge, followed by a mighty rumble of rock, like in a landslide. The granite deck pitched abruptly upwards, then slammed back down. Its chains groaned under enormous pressure. Rachel staggered, fighting to keep her balance. She heard the snap and whine of cables, then the hideous clamour of shrieking metal, and finally a series of vast booming concussions. The air clouded with white ash, as thick as fog.

And then silence, but for a shrill ringing in Rachel’s ears.

She heard a voice: “Remain where you are. There has been a disturbance.”

A disturbance?

Rachel coughed. Her eyes smarted. She could see nothing but churning clouds of sediment thrown up by the pitching bridge-which meant that for the moment her enemies couldn’t see her, either. The whole deck continued to rock in its cradle of chains. Trench was nowhere to be seen; for all she knew he might have fallen to his death. “No shit,” she shouted back, to give them her position. “Some sort of disturbance. I’m not going anywhere.”

They would be aiming now.

Her Spine training demanded that she flee while she still had a chance of escaping from her foes in this murk. But they’d expect her to run, and would shoot ahead of her position. Instead, she took two steps backwards and sat down. Flying bolts whined through the air ahead of her. She heard them slam against the deck several yards away.

Now they would be reloading.

Rachel scrambled to her feet and ran. Vague grey shapes loomed around her, chains and pendulum houses suspended in the ashen murk. A darker shadow rushed by on her left side. She ducked, and sensed a large object dashing past, the air howling behind it. A storm of grit lashed the side of her face. She kept going, her eyes narrowed against the stinging dust.

A second barrage of bolts hit the deck behind her, though not nearly so many as before. But by then she was clear of the bridge: there were cobbles underfoot. She found a doorway, pressed herself flat against it, and waited, listening hard.

Among all of the creaking and groaning metal, Rachel heard other, smaller noises: wet, ripping sounds, and the snap of breaking bones. At times she thought she heard a dull soft whoomph like the thump of wings. Something unseen was butchering the assassins. She didn’t hear a single scream, but then Spine never made a sound when they died.

Had Carnival returned to help her?

But when the clouds of sediment finally thinned, Rachel could see no trace of the scarred angel, merely a scene of utter devastation. An eerie silence hung over the bridge and its surroundings. She could see no sign of the temple assassins. Indeed, most of those pendulum houses in which the Spine had been hiding were gone, lost to the abyss, their broken support chains now empty, creaking back and forth in the dusty gloom. On the opposite side of the bridge the Taptack Acres, that vast, crippled district, had also vanished. Freed of their heavy burden, the mighty foundation chains that had once sagged under the strain of all those streets and houses now loomed overhead. It looked as if a storm had ripped through this broken quarter of the city, and then abruptly departed.

“Carnival?” Rachel called.

No answer.

Could the sounds of slaughter have been Rachel’s imagination? Had the destruction been caused by nothing more than the parting of one weak but crucial support chain, a break that had sent a terrible shock wave through the entire district?

“Carnival!”

These silent chains offered no answers. Rachel glanced up at the pulsing, fire-lit sky and decided not to linger.

Trench had not gone far. In this warren of blocked and buckled streets he had chosen to flee down one of many dead ends. Rachel caught up with him just as he was leaving the mouth of this alley to retrace his footsteps. He was in no better mood than before: sour and scowling, his eyes as dark as murder. When he saw her he lifted his chin and glared at her with unmasked contempt.

“This wretched place will be the death of me,” he growled, jabbing a finger back in the direction from which he had come. “There are already Icarates in the city!”

“Icarates?”

“Mesmerist scouts,” he said. “Shape-shifters. The city is infested with them.” He dragged the back of his bleeding hand across his lips, then spat. “You must lead me out of here now. There’s little time left.”

Rachel studied him carefully. “Who are you?”

“Who am I?” His eyes flashed with arrogance. “I am the champion of the First Citadel, commander of Hasp’s Archons.”

Hasp’s Archons?

A chill clutched Rachel’s heart as she realized her mistake. The consciousness that now held her friend had never been one of the thirteen souls in Devon’s elixir, which meant that this thing could have come from only one place. The assassin felt her mouth go dry.

“You’re from Hell?”

He smiled cruelly. “The First Citadel is home to all angels who have died in battle in this world. My life ended nine hundred years ago in the service of your Church, and now I have returned to serve it once more. War has been raging in Hell for centuries. Our fortress is under siege. Many of us have already been taken by Menoa’s forces to the Ninth Citadel, where our souls are altered, smashed apart only to be changed into impure forms. I must deliver a message to one of Ayen’s sons before we are lost.”

“Where is Dill?” Rachel demanded.

Trench shrugged. “He’s in Hell. We merely required his body, not his soul.”

Rachel could only stare at Trench in numb shock. She had failed to protect the young angel on the mountain of bones, and then brought him back only for him to see his home and everyone he loved destroyed. She had failed him again in Sandport when the Spine captured him.

And now…?

She had failed him in the worst possible way. Iril had reached out and claimed him back. Everything she’d done had been for nothing. She’d lost him all over again.

She grabbed Trench’s shoulders. “How do we get him back?”

Disbelief clouded the impostor’s face. “Do you have any idea who you are assaulting?” His voice became ominously low. “I am a descendant of Callis, your own god’s Herald. You will bow before me.”

“Ulcis was never my god,” Rachel said. “I didn’t bow before him and I won’t bow before you.” She took hold of one of the angel’s damaged wings and twisted hard. “Now tell me how to get Dill back from Hell.”

Trench struggled against her clumsily, but his stolen body lacked the strength to resist. At last he stopped fighting. “We share the same enemy, Rachel Hael,” he said evenly. “Iril’s Mesmerists threaten your world as much as mine. But if they are defeated, the archons of the First Citadel will try to release Dill and return him to this body. However, if I fail to find help, and the citadel falls, your young friend is doomed to suffer more than you can imagine. The Mesmerists remake souls into whatever form suits their war plan. Your kind might face Dill on the battlefield one day-not as an angel, but as a monster or a bleeding sword or a warship: a sensate hulk of iron without even a mouth to scream his agony.”

She slowly released the angel. “Who are these Mesmerists?”

Trench flexed his wings and winced. “They were once Lord Iril’s elite,” he said. “They rose to power after Ayen shattered Iril in the War Amongst the Gods. Menoa is their leader, a self-proclaimed king and one of Iril’s former strategists. Since Ayen debased the Lord of the Maze, Menoa has assumed his former master’s role for himself. Now he controls vast swathes of Hell.”

“And you opposed him?”

“The archons of the First Citadel rejected this upstart king. We have been scouring Hell for the shattered remains of our rightful ruler, while Menoa gathered armies and crushed dissent. Yet many believe Menoa is already in possession of a piece of our shattered god. He became too powerful too quickly. Now all who oppose him are changed.”

Changed? “They’re coming here?”

“One of their scouts is crawling towards us as we speak.” He pointed back to the lane from which he’d emerged. “This is what awaits you if you linger here much longer.”

At first Rachel saw nothing, but then, slowly, she began to notice odd shapes in the ash covering the cobbles-like two hands dragging themselves across the ground, trailing roots of fine white dust. They appeared to be moving towards Trench and Rachel.

She took a step back.

“It is a low-rank Icarate,” Trench said. “A common shape-shifter. Yet it lacks the strength to become the shape the Mesmerists have chosen for it.” He searched the ground quickly, then picked up a fragment of flint and hurled it at the two hands. One of the dust-shapes burst apart, then quickly re-formed. But now one of the hands looked darker and more angular, more like the stone shard Trench had thrown at it. “There are probably hundreds of them around here, hidden among the chains and stones all around us.”

“Can you fly?” Rachel said.

Trench flapped his wings, then growled in pain. “I can walk.”

“Then let’s walk quickly.”

They hurried east towards the League of Rope and the rim of the abyss as flashes of light pulsed across the horizon behind them.