Iron Angel

PROLOGUE

Saltwater fog had engulfed the old galleon for as long as her crew could remember. The briny air had warped her joints and planking, eaten holes in her decks and bulkheads, and turned her interior into a dank, rotten hive. Everything creaked, dripped, and groaned in the gloom. Even the throne upon which Cospinol sat had wasted, its once finely carved surfaces now reduced to so much mulch.

The old god was wearing his best armour, but the layers of hardened red crab shells had cracked and tarnished millennia ago and no amount of paint and glue had been able to restore the suit to its former glory. His wings slumped from his shoulders like the tattered grey and white sails this ancient vessel had once possessed. His eyes peered out through a bedraggled net of his own hair as he studied the axe in his hand.

“My Lord?”

This corruption would be the end of him. Like the wooden axe handle in his fist, his vessel, the Rotsward, could only barely support her own weight. She would not survive another century. Her bones had atrophied, her skin had split, and now things moved through the dank spaces in her belly that had no right to be there. Cospinol lifted his eyes from the axe and listened for the patter of small feet.

“My Lord?” The slave girl kneeling before him clutched the hem of her smock. “Your brothers are here.”

Cospinol made a dismissive gesture. A child sniggered in the passage outside the captain’s cabin, and then a shadow darted past an open gap in the nearest bulkhead.

The old god raised his axe. “This runt has been pestering me for days,” he growled. “I intend to have the little bastard’s head on a plate before they arrive.” He rose from his throne and took a step towards the source of the sound. Planks sagged under his shell-plated boots. Looking down though a hand-sized gap in the floorboards in one corner of the cabin, he noticed a much larger hole in the Rotsward’s outer hull. A small figure clambered through this and slipped out into the fog beyond, followed by a chittering mass of living red crabs. “The boy is a damned spider,” Cospinol muttered. “How is he able to climb underneath my ship?”

“He has hooks for fingers,” the slave girl said.

“Hooks? Since when?”

She shrugged.

The sea god grunted. “This infestation is a conspiracy. The last thing I need is for my brothers to find Mesmerist scum loose aboard this vessel. How do you imagine that will look?”

She made no reply.

“Those bastards might even try to supplant me,” Cospinol went on. “They’ll say I’m harboring the enemy, then call a vote and have me expelled from my own dominion. They’ve been eyeing the RiotCoast for centuries, just waiting for an excuse like this.”

“The war in Pandemeria keeps them fully occupied, my Lord.”

Cospinol opened one of the cabin’s rear windows and looked down upon the Rotsward’s stern and rudder. He could see little beyond the vague outlines of the scaffold that enveloped his entire skyship, the great floating nest of yards and ropes all wreathed in fog. A gull hopped along one of the timber spars and then took off, circling down towards the ground far below the hull and scaffold, until it disappeared entirely in the grey mist. Cospinol could see nothing of the landscape down there, but he supposed the Rotsward must be drifting somewhere to the west of Pandemeria. “Evidently not occupied enough,” he said, “as they’ve left mortal generals in charge of their armies while they traveled out here.” He closed the window again. “Besides, what does a dead girl know about the war? You weren’t Pandemerian, were you?”

She lowered her head. “No, my Lord. I lived and died in Brownslough.”

The god nodded. “Hafe’s realm. I suppose you’re one of the lucky ones. Just be thankful that Pandemeria is far from here, lass.” He wandered across the cabin to inspect the banquet table beneath the stern windows: the white linen napkins; the silver platters, cutlery, goblets, and candlesticks-all far too ostentatious for his simple tastes. He picked up a knife, wondering how his slaves had restored the blade to such a high sheen, before he noticed a rash of black spots along one edge. Not even his best-kept silverware had survived the slow decay.

This endless fog was to blame, that dismal pall of brine on which Cospinol looked out every day, and which tumbled behind the windowpanes even now. Yet the god did not dare expose his vessel to the sun of this world.

Not yet.

“Where are they?” he grumbled. “What’s taking them so long?”

“My Lord…” The girl’s chin sank even lower to her chest. “Your guests brought something overland with them. It is being hoisted up here now. Your Lord Brothers chose to oversee the operation from the Rotsward’s yards.”

“What is it?”

“I do not know, my Lord. They found it in Pandemeria.”

Cospinol felt suddenly uneasy. Nothing good had ever come out of that war-ravaged land. Whatever Rys and the others had discovered would undoubtedly have some wicked purpose. He sighed and made for the door, beckoning his servant after him. “Let’s go and see it then.”

They left the captain’s cabin and took one of the aft companionways up to the quarterdeck. From here Cospinol could look out across the Rotsward’s upper decks.

Fog wreathed the skyship on all sides. In Heaven she had been a square-rigged galleon made for salt seas-but her keel had not split waves in over three thousand years. Her mainmasts were missing: the tough oak had long since been cannibalized for vital repairs to other parts of the ship. Now her remaining tattered sails hung limply from the main starboard and larboard yards, far out beyond the ship’s sides. To reach these, the Rotsward’s crew were forced to clamber like ants among the lattice of greasy beams around the hull-a perilous task in the ever-present fog-with nothing but sky between them and the ground so far below.

Work was under way amidships. Two of the crew were resting, exhausted, against the larboard winch handles, while six others wrestled a loaded net onto the deck. This net contained a spherical and dully metallic object, like an oversized cannonball-and just as heavy, judging from the way his crew were struggling with it. Cospinol looked around for his brothers, but couldn’t see them anywhere.

The Rotsward’s crew wore the same queer assortment of clothes they had died in. They had once been sailors on the seas below, hailing from Oxos and Meria, and a dozen other human ports. Now their pallid faces evinced grim determination as they laboured to free the sphere from its net.

“What is that thing?” Cospinol mused.

A harsh laugh came from above him. “It is the key to your freedom, Cospinol!”

The sea god turned his gaze upwards to see his brother, Rys, flying down to join him on the quarterdeck, his great white wings cutting through the fog. His mirrored steel plate gleamed like freshly minted coins, while the naked scimitar and many tiny blades in his silver belt shone with the brilliance of starlight. He wore a cloak of Battlefield Roses, as red as the bloody ground from which they had sprouted-and just as poisonous. The god of flowers and knives looked every inch the champion-and Cospinol hated him for it.

Then, from out of the misty sky behind emerged the others: Mirith, Hafe, and Sabor. These three gods remained a respectful distance behind their elder brother: Hafe obese and sweating under cauldrons of copper armour; dour, grey-haired Sabor in his dark suit of mail; poor mad Mirith in the motley of tin plates, leathers, and garish velvets that Rys had given him to wear. It seemed that even their wings had grown to complement the stature of each god. If an ox could fly, its wingspan would resemble Hafe’s, while Sabor had the look of a rook, and Mirith’s wings were lopsided and stitched with tiny bells.

Rys landed lightly on the quarterdeck. “This floating gaol continues to amaze me,” he said. “How do you keep it from completely disintegrating about you?”

Cospinol noted the insult in his brother’s choice of words. Of all the five gods present, only Cospinol himself still lacked the power to leave his stronghold. This detail had forced the others to come here, and Rys would not be pleased about that inconvenience. “The Rotsward is tougher than she looks,” he said darkly.

“As are you, brother,” Rys said. “You appear so frail one wonders how you are able to remain upright without assistance, and yet somehow you stand here before us, tall enough to be mistaken for an equal.”

The whole skyship gave a sudden lurch as Hafe landed with a mighty thump beside the god of flowers and knives. Sabor set down lightly a short distance further back, before Mirith landed with a clash of tiny bells and a whoop of glee.

Rys glanced over his shoulder and said, “Don’t feel disheartened, Cospinol, for I am now surrounded by cripples.”

“I am no cripple,” Hafe protested.

“This airboat pitches and shudders with every beat of your fat heart,” Rys remarked. “Your very presence here is likely to bring this whole sorry vessel crashing down out of the sky.”

The god of dirt and poison’s face reddened. “It’s not my fault,” he grunted. “This ship is rotten. A flock of gulls could tear it to shreds.”

Mirith sniggered behind his hand, then gave a ridiculous jester’s bow. “But I am a cripple.”

“And a lunatic with it,” Rys agreed. “Yet we find ourselves in this floating wreck partly because of your uncanny foresight.”

Cospinol’s mood darkened further. He was about to respond when a commotion from amidships distracted him. Rys’s strange metal sphere had come loose from its net and rolled away, knocking a crewman to the deck and crushing his chest. The sailor wailed in agony while his companions struggled to roll the object off him.

“Be careful with that,” Rys yelled.

“Perhaps,” Cospinol suggested, “they would be more cautious if you explained exactly what that object is. It is a Mesmerist weapon, is it not?”

“Much more than that,” Rys said. “Come, brother.”

The god led the others down the quarterdeck staircase to the wide mid-deck, where the remainder of the Rotsward’s crew had freed their trapped comrade, and were now jamming blocks of wood under Rys’s sphere to keep it from rolling away again.

Cospinol now saw that the sphere was comprised of ill-fitting metal plates, triangles and trapeziums loosely bolted together so that a network of gaps ran between them like the broken earth in a dry riverbed. The metal shone dully, like old pewter, yet each panel was heavily dented and scratched, as though the globe had spent much time rolling across rough terrain. A faint geometric pattern could just be discerned behind the scrawls.

Rys approached the globe and ran a finger lightly across the surface of one of these metal plates, as though tracing the outline of some obscure esoteric design. Then he pushed the panel inwards. It clicked once, and then sprung back out like a flap on its hidden hinges.

Behind the open panel was a face.

Cospinol stepped closer. The visage appeared human at first: an old woman with creased skin, a flat nose, and blind white eyes. But then her mouth opened to reveal a snakelike black tongue and three stubby yellow glass teeth. She gave a sudden desperate wail.

“Close the sphere! The sun burns us so!”

“There is no sun here,” Rys growled. “Be silent, hag, until I give you permission to speak.”

Cospinol’s eyes widened. “You found a witchsphere?”

Rys nodded. “My soldiers discovered it after the battle in Skirl. This thing had been observing the conflict for its master.”

“Menoa’s dogcatchers will be searching hard for this.”

“Let them search,” Rys grunted. “It is far beyond their reach now.”

The hag inside the sphere cried out again. “Traitorous dogs! We curse the sons of Ayen. We inhaled your blood in Skirl and in Pandemeria, and now we will exhale it in Deepgate. You have no more men to throw against us.”

“Silence!” Rys slipped a knife from his belt and plunged it through the open panel into the interior of the sphere. The hag screamed and spat blood at him, but the handsome god only twisted his blade and pushed it in deeper, until the wailing died away.

Wincing, Cospinol turned away from the gruesome sight. “I see your talents of persuasion remain as keen as ever,” he said to his younger brother. “But what did the witchsphere mean? How can the Mesmerists hope to attack Deepgate?”

Mirith giggled manically. “All is not well on the other side of Hell.” His tin-plate armour rattled like beggars’ cups as he danced away across the Rotsward’s deck.

Rys wiped blood and spittle from his face. “Mirith is more astute than he appears,” he said to Cospinol. “His madness masks a cunning mind.” He faced the old sea god, his eyes grim, and said, “Ulcis has been slain.”

So startling was this news that Cospinol actually laughed. “Slain?” he snorted. “A god slain? Impossible.”

“It is true,” Rys insisted. “Mirith had a spy in Deepgate, a hell-walker by the name of Thomas Scatterclaw. He stole through the Maze to confirm this witch’s tidings. Ulcis’s death has left a second door to Hell unguarded. Now King Menoa’s forces are gathering behind it.”

Cospinol hissed. “But how could this have happened? How did our brother become so lax?” he asked. “How could he allow the Mesmerists to get a corporeal assassin into this world? How did they kill him?”

“They didn’t,” Rys said. “The god of chains died at the hand of his own daughter.”

“His daughter?” Cospinol stared at him in disbelief. “He had a daughter? And he let her live?”

The god of flowers and knives nodded. “His folly has put us all in grave danger. The battle at Skirl has decimated our forces. We cannot spare the troops necessary to halt a second Mesmerist incursion. The portal beneath Deepgate lies wide open, and the lands around the abyss are undefended. Ethereal entities are already rising from Hell and moving into the chained city within a veil of bloody mist. Icarate shape-shifters will follow soon, and then the full force of the Mesmerist horde will pour out of the Maze at their heels. They will corrupt the Deadsands as they have corrupted Pandemeria.”

While Cospinol considered this grim turn of events, Rys returned his attention back to the witchsphere. The hag inside was gurgling pitifully now, choking on her own blood. Rys closed the panel and then opened another flap on the top of the globe. A second hag peered out: a woman even uglier and more ancient than the first. Her single white eye lolled in a skull-like face as black as burnt oak. “Mercy for my sisters!” she cried. “Let us return to Hell, son of Ayen.”

Rys grinned. “When you have told my brother all you know,” he said.

“We have told everything,” the hag wailed.

“Tell him.”

The hag moaned. “Our master is building a second arconite, even greater and more powerful than the first. Forged of bone and iron and leashed to the soul of a powerful archon, it will move in sunlight and walk freely across unblooded earth.” Her face twisted into a hideous sneer. “It will crush the remnants of your armies like ants!”

Rys set about her with his knife. All the time the smile never left his face.

The god was panting when he finally finished with the witchsphere. “So far the Mesmerists have been confined to Pandemeria,” he said, “simply because they cannot survive for long without drawing power from blood. In order to remain in this world, Hell’s creatures must walk upon the red earth of battlefields or upon land already saturated by the Menoa’s bloody mists. But these arconites…” He balled his fists. “We could not kill the first one, Cospinol.”

“And when the second one leaves Hell,” Cospinol said, “you will lose your hold on this world.”

“We will lose our hold,” Rys said.

But that wasn’t true. Cospinol owned none of the wealth or kingdoms his brothers possessed. He had been trapped in this rotting ship for three thousand years, wreathed in fog to hide himself from the destructive power of the sun. Only Ulcis, the eldest of all the goddess Ayen’s sons, had been similarly trapped-hidden beneath the earth while he harvested souls to join Rys’s army. But now Ulcis was dead, leaving Cospinol as the last of the gods to remain imprisoned.

“What has become of Ulcis’s reservists?” he asked. “The hordes he harvested from Deepgate?”

Sabor stepped forward. “Their flesh is lost,” he said. “The Mesmerists will have already used their blood for their own purposes.” Everything about the god of clocks was grey: his skin, his feathers, his hair, even his eyes. To read his shadowless expression, one required a degree of patient concentration. No wonder Sabor chose to wear black: a single item of coloured raiment might distract the viewer’s eye and doom any conversation. Sabor continued in dull, authoritative tones. “Yet their souls remain in this world.”

Cospinol frowned. “How?”

“Ulcis’s daughter did not spill her father’s blood. She merely displaced the essence of it.”

“She drank the fat sod,” Rys confirmed. Cospinol could not help but notice a glint of satisfaction light in Rys’s eyes. Should the mother goddess’s sons ever reclaim Heaven, Ulcis’s death left only Cospinol in line for the throne before Rys-a thought the old sea god found suddenly unnerving.

Hafe slammed a fist against his copper breastplate. “You bastards do nothing but talk,” he boomed. “When do we eat?”

Cospinol’s slaves brought tray after tray to the captain’s table: corpse crabs from GobeBay and steamed kellut from Oxos; squid and cuttlefish and bowls of pink prawns. The god of brine and fog had chosen the very best from his larders for this occasion, but now he had no appetite. While his brothers ate and chatted, Cospinol brooded in silence.

Ulcis was dead, his army lost, and his untimely departure had offered Menoa’s hordes a second route out of Hell. Rys’s armies had been decimated at Skirl. The survivors had retreated to Coreollis in a desperate attempt to defend that stronghold against Mesmerist attacks from the Red Road. Even if the god of flowers and knives could spare enough of his troops to make a difference, would they be able to travel to Deepgate in time to halt this new incursion?

Cospinol doubted it. He began to suspect why his brothers were really here.

Rys spat at one of the serving girls. “This food isn’t fit for a dog,” he announced. “Fetch us something edible. Bring us a bowl of the soulpearls your master hoards.”

She bowed and hurried away, without even a glance at Cospinol.

Mirith sniggered. “Bowls of souls,” he said. “Better than this filth. The dead can’t cook.”

Hafe grunted in agreement without raising his face from the platter of eels he was devouring. Sabor glanced up at Rys, and then quickly back to his own plate, yet Cospinol noted the dark look of disapproval in the grey god’s eyes.

Rys set down his fork. “Your slaves are tediously slow,” he said to Cospinol, “and your whole skyship stinks of corpses, gull shit, and brine. Tell me, brother, do you enjoy living in such squalor?”

“I survive.”

“But it’s hardly a life,” Rys commented. “Don’t you tire of roaming the skies like a vulture, picking up the souls we leave behind? Wouldn’t you rather sail a real ship upon a real sea? You must yearn to feel the sun on your face again, the wind in your hair. Would you not prefer to stand beside your own brothers as an equal?”

Cospinol said nothing.

The serving girl returned with a small bowl full of soulpearls. The tiny glass beads glimmered faintly in the gloom, while the whorls and loops etched into their surface seemed to writhe like threads of darkness. Cospinol tried to hide his dismay-he could not afford to squander so much of his hard-won power. Yet he dared not oppose Rys.

“Some real sustenance at last,” Rys said. He scooped up a handful of the priceless beads and tipped them into his mouth before handing the bowl to Hafe. The fat god took most of the remainder for himself, then slid the container across the table to Sabor.

The god of clocks said, “No, thank you.”

“You refuse power?” Hafe asked.

“It is not your power to offer,” Sabor replied.

Rys snorted. “Sabor’s quaint sense of honour will be the end of him one day. His own swordsmen slay wounded Mesmerists on the battlefield, rather than leave them to the slow suffering they deserve.” He nodded at Hafe. “Cospinol can always fashion more pearls. Give the dregs to Mirith.”

Mirith lifted the bowl with both hands and upended it into his mouth. Then he giggled and shook his lopsided wings to make his bells chime. “Even these souls taste like brine.”

“Enough!” Cospinol rose from his seat and glared down at Rys. “I am the master of this vessel,” he hissed, “and while you are aboard you will treat me with respect.” His thin chest heaved beneath his shell breastplate. “You speak of arconites and fallen gods, and a new threat to your forces from the west. Do you take me for a fool? You wouldn’t have come here unless you needed my help. Yet you evade the question and continue to mock me at my own table.”

Rys scraped his seat back and stood up. He slapped Cospinol hard across the face.

The old god recoiled, his cheek burning with the blow. The slaves stopped what they were doing, and the ringing in Cospinol’s ears diminished to a profound silence. Everyone was staring at him.

“Get out,” Rys said to the slaves.

They left.

The god of flowers and knives strolled over to the cabin windows and gazed out at the fog. “I will forgive your outburst,” he said. “I realize life has been hard for you here, Cospinol…trapped aboard this skyship, denied the freedom we four have won for ourselves.” He almost managed to sound magnanimous. “But I am prepared to help you change all that. We would like for you to join us as an equal-to have the honour of standing with us, shoulder to shoulder, against Hell’s armies.”

How generous of you. Cospinol’s cheek smarted. He felt bile rise in his throat, but he said nothing.

Rys went on, “Only after we have defeated this Mesmerist threat to our lands here on earth will we be able to storm the gates of Heaven and reclaim our rightful inheritance.” He smiled. “But you must prove yourself worthy first. This war with Hell threatens everything we have achieved thus far. Since our mother Ayen crushed our uprising in Heaven we have struggled back from the brink of oblivion. Our father Iril was shattered, the pieces of him scattered throughout the Maze. Do you think he can help us?” Rys shook his head. “Iril’s dissolution gave this upstart King Menoa the opportunity to claim the title of Lord of the Maze for himself.”

He sifted through a platter of shells, then wrinkled his brow in disgust. “And now there is no more room in Hell. The Mesmerists must extend their bloody Maze into this world.” He gave a deep sigh. “If his creatures win, mankind faces the same oblivion Ayen sought to bestow upon us.”

“And if you win,” Cospinol said, “mankind faces slavery.”

“A kinder prospect, surely?”

Cospinol ground his teeth.

Rys stared at him for a while, then finally shrugged. “After our victory, you can take as many slaves as you like. Keep them alive for all I care. Just don’t breed with them-don’t make the same mistake as Ulcis. One demigod loose in our world is quite enough.”

“It was never our world,” Cospinol said.

Rys ignored this. “Take your skyship to Deepgate,” he said. “And seal this new portal before the Mesmerists can gain a foothold there. While our enemy’s attention is focused on the chained city, the flow of demons into Pandemeria will cease. This will be the best chance we’ve ever had to attack the Mesmerists and drive them back into Hell.”

Cospinol gave a grunt of derision. “You make it sound so simple, Rys. Yet you expect me to risk my life to secure your freedom when I remain imprisoned? What do you have to offer? A vague promise of solidarity between us? You’ll betray me as soon as the Mesmerists are defeated.”

“You prefer oblivion?”

“If I am doomed to die aboard this ship, at least I’ll die knowing that you have failed.”

The knives in Rys’s belt glittered. “But we intend to offer you the means to free yourself.”

Cospinol shifted his gaze between his brothers, looking from Rys’s hard stare to Mirith’s drooling grin; from Hafe’s sweat-crumpled brow to Sabor’s darkly serious frown. How could he trust any of them? “Explain.”

Now Sabor rose from the table. “Ulcis had feasted for three thousand years,” the god of clocks explained. “He had harvested enough power to leave his abyss, yet he was murdered before he could realize his escape. The souls in his veins have now passed to his daughter, Carnival. Her blood would provide you with enough power to leave the shelter of the Rotsward.”

Cospinol felt his heartbeat quicken. Three millennia of souls for the taking? If Sabor was speaking the truth, and Cospinol could capture this girl and harvest her blood, then he would be free of his prison at last. He would feel the sun on his face again.

“The witchsphere is capable of guiding you towards her,” Rys said. “It is my gift to you.”

Mirith sniggered. “Beware of lies, Cospinol.”

Rys wheeled on the crippled god, a silver knife already in his fist. “Don’t test me, Mirith. You rely too much on your fool’s face to shield you.”

The crippled god jerked away from the blade. His chair fell back, striking the floor, and Mirith rolled backwards out of it wings over heels. He squawked and came to rest on his rear.

Hafe boomed a laugh.

Rys turned back to Cospinol. “Why should we betray each other when mutual cooperation benefits us all?” he growled. “Seal the portal under Deepgate while we fight the enemy in Pandemeria. Kill the girl and use her power to shed this rotting carapace. Then join us as an equal.”

An equal? Like poor Mirith?

The sea god realized now how much his younger brother needed him. Rys’s armies could not withstand an assault from a second arconite; he had no choice but to offer Cospinol the demigod’s power in payment for his aid. “The daughter…Carnival,” he said. “She’s already murdered one god, and she’ll be vastly stronger now.”

“She’s savage and untrained,” Rys said. “No match for your slave…” He gestured at the floor. “What do you call him? The barbarian who drags this ship?”

“Anchor.” Cospinol barely noticed Hafe’s guffaw in response to this. “You suggest I use my slave as an assassin?”

“He is already an assassin,” Rys replied. “How many has he killed for you now? A hundred thousand? Half a million?”

“More.”

Hafe chuckled. “Half a million souls!” The god of dirt and poison thumped one fist against his huge copper breastplate. “And you call me greedy? Goat’s balls, that human slave has eaten more souls than the Maze.”

“Indeed,” Rys agreed. “While we fostered legions to break free of Ayen’s bonds and win our own kingdoms on this world, our brother has invested the bulk of his power in one single mortal.” His eyes narrowed on Cospinol. “And yet he himself remains weak, trapped here aboard his own airboat. It seems he has been feeding the choicest morsels to his pet.”

Cospinol’s shoulders slumped. “It’s the weight,” he explained. “The corpses…I take their souls, but the dead refuse to leave my ship. They cling to the rigging, masts, and yards; they wander the decks and haunt my steps. I hack them off the gunwales, send them screaming to the ground below, but they always return. Each new cadaver slows the Rotsward further, and so my giant needs greater and greater strength to pull the ship behind him. I must give him his share of souls or else remain grounded and helpless.” He sighed. “Ayen was clever in her choice of prison.”

“Our mother’s cunning was evident in the design of all our gaols.” Rys flashed his teeth. “Yet we escaped ours long ago, while you remain here and starve.”

“I do not starve,” Cospinol snarled.

“But you are a prisoner.” The god of flowers and knives leaned closer. “A slave.”

Cospinol’s heart filled with despair. Rys was right: he was a slave, as pathetic as the hook-fingered boy who clambered through the rotting spaces of his skyship’s belly. This floating wreck offered him no future. Yet with the Mesmerist witchsphere to guide him, he might find the power to be free of his skyship…

“I’ll do it,” he said at last. “I’ll travel to Deepgate and seal the portal. I’ll kill the girl and return to Coreollis.”

Whatever happened now, Cospinol had joined his fate to that of mankind: if he failed, he faced oblivion at the hands of the Mesmerists; success would only bring him slavery under Rys’s rule. To be truly free, he would have to defeat both his enemies and his own brothers.

Rys must have seen something in Cospinol’s expression for he said, “Do not think about betraying me, brother.”

Cospinol placed a hand against his stinging cheek. The decaying skyship creaked and shuddered around him. He sensed the impossible weight of the great vessel, the legions of dead clinging to its greasy timbers, and he envisioned his slave striding across the ground so far below, dragging it all behind him. If Cospinol could leave the Rotsward, then Anchor would also be free.

“Your barbarian is strong,” Rys said. “But even he would be crushed under the tide of our combined armies.”

Cospinol allowed himself an inward smile.

You haven’t seen the bastard fight.