The Iron Wyrm Affair

Chapter Sixteen Not You, Too

The Blackwerks rose, spines of black metal corkscrewed with heat and stress. Clare’s skull felt tight, confining. There was simply too much illogic here. The cinders, for one thing – there was no way the fires of the Wark could produce this much matter. Yet it had to come from somewhere. And the rats – something so small should not be Altered. Their eyes glowed viciously, and they scuttled with quick, oily movements.

The young Altered boy walked ahead of them, whistling, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Every once in a while he performed a curious little hop-skip, but to no rhythm Clare could discern. Miss Bannon’s tension communicated itself through her grip on his arm. If this was a promenade, it was one through a Hellish underworld where every angle was subtly skewed.

As soon as the thought arrived, the squeezing of his skull ceased. He began seeking to catalogue the precise measurement in degrees of every angle, calculating the inconsistencies and attempting to apply a theory to them. It was difficult mental work, and he was faintly aware of sweat springing up on his brow, but the relief of having a task was immense.

A pair of huge spiny gates, their tops tortured by unimaginable heat, stood ajar. Ash piled high on either side, drifting against a gap-toothed brick wall. A painted tin sign proclaimed Blackwerks, and the Altered boy minced through the gates, turning and giving a deep bow. “Enter, w’ships, Ladyname be bless’d. Step right inna the Werks.” Two stamps of his left foot, his boot heel ringing against cracked cobbles, and he danced back into an orange glow.

The cavern of the Werks rose, its entire front open and exhaling a burning draught. Machinery twisted inside, cauldrons tipping and pouring substances he did not care to think too deeply on. Wheels ticked, their toothed edges meshing with others, huge soot-blackened chains shivering, clashing, or stretched taut. The cinderfall intensified here, Clare was glad of his hat. Somehow the falling matter avoided Miss Bannon, and the witchlight behind them made everything in the circle of its glow keep to its proper proportions. He wondered what effort it cost Miss Bannon to keep that sphere of normalcy steady, and decided not to ask.

A slim figure resolved out of the heatglare, gliding forward.

What is this?

It was a woman. Or perhaps it had been once. Long swaying black bombazine skirts, stiff with ash, smooth black metal skin, an explosion of ash-grey horsehair held back with jet-dangling pins. Its arms were marvels of Alteration, metal bones and hands of fine delicate clockwork opening and closing as it – she rolled forward. The face was also blank metal and clockwork, the nose merely sinus caverns; the eyes were hen’s-egg rubies lit from within by feral intelligence.

Miss Bannon squeezed his arm again, warningly. Clare stared.

The thing’s mouth – or the aperture serving it as a mouth – moved. “Prima.” The voice held a rush and crackle of flame, and the skirts shuddered as whatever contraption was underneath them encountered an irregularity in the flooring.

That dress was fashionable a decade ago. He caught sight of a reading-glass dangling from a thin metal chain, hiding in the skirts. Does this thing read? How long ago was it human? Does it have any flesh left?

“Mehitabel.” Miss Bannon nodded, once. “I have come for what I left.”

A rasp-clanking screech rose from the thing’s chest. It took Clare a moment to recognise that rusted, painful sound for what it was.

Laughter.

The hideous noise cut off sharply, and the boy who had led them here stepped back nervously, like an unAltered horse scenting the metal and blood of the pens. The thing called Mehitabel turned its head, servomotors in the neck ratcheting with dry terrible grace. The wretched imitation of a human movement made Clare’s dinner writhe.

Perhaps my digestion is not as sound as it could be, he noted, and found himself clutching at Miss Bannon’s hand on his arm. Patting slightly, as if she were startled and he meant to soothe. His throat was tight.

Emotion. Cease this.

But his feelings did not listen.

“Oh, Mehitabel.” Miss Bannon sounded, of all things, saddened. “Not you too.”

“You do not know your enemies, sorceressss.” Rust showered from the thing’s elbow joints as it lifted its arms. Its mouth widened, a spark of glowing-coal red dilating far back in its throat. Miss Bannon stepped forward, disengaging herself from Clare with a practised twist of her hand, and the witchlight intensified behind them, casting a frail screen of clear silver light against the venomous crimson of the Werks. Machinery shuddered and crashed as Mehitabel’s body jerked, and Miss Bannon yelled an anatomical term Clare had never thought a lady would be conversant with.

The crashing ceased. Mehitabel’s metal body froze, in stasis.

“I may not know my enemies,” Miss Bannon said softly, her hands held out in a curious contorted gesture, fingers interlaced. “But I am Prime, little wyrm, and you are only here on sufferance.”

The metal thing shuddered. There was a flicker of motion, and Clare’s blurted warning was lost in a draught of scalding air. Mikal was suddenly there, smacking aside Dodgerboy’s hand with contemptuous ease, the slender gleam of a knife flying in a high arc to vanish into the ash outside. The Shield made another swift motion, almost as an afterthought, and the Altered boy flew backwards, vanishing into a haze of red light and confused, whirling cinders.

“Sufferance?” A low, thick burping chuckle rode the rush of hot stinking air out of the Werks. The voice was terrible, a dry-scaled monstrous thing approximating human words over the groaning of metal and crackling of flame, the sibilants laden with toxic dust. “Oh, I think not, monkeychild. You are in my home now.”

The witchlight blazed, sharp silver brilliance. “Mikal.” Miss Bannon’s voice cut through the thing’s laughter. “Take him. And run.”

The descant scorched her throat, her focus splitting as the great twisting metal thing fought her hold. Her left hand cramped, burning as she held the rope of intent, the force clamped over Mehitabel’s simulacrum fraying at the edges. She had to choose – the trueform or the metal echo, layers of the physical and ætheric vibrating as sorcery spread in rayed patterns, the Wark quivering as she forced its sorcery to her will.

I will pay for this later. A Greater Word rose within the fabric of the chant, weaving itself between the syllables. It settled on the metal form, which buckled and curled like paper in a fire.

A massive wrecked scream rose from Mehitabel’s unseen trueform. That must sting.

But it freed Emma to bring her focus back to a single object, white-hot sorcerous force running through her veins. The Blackwerks seethed with running feet, shouts. Mehitabel’s flash-boys and the antlike workers who crawled through the heat-shimmering cavern began to appear, flickering unsteadily through the cinderfall.

Emma’s hands shot out, sorcery crackling between them. She squeezed, smoke rising from her rings and the scorched material of her gloves, and Mehitabel shrieked again. The flashboys froze, workers dropping where they stood. The chant died away now that Emma had her grip.

“I can crush flesh just as easily,” she called, the words slicing through snap-crackling flame and shuddering metallic clanking. The simulacrum’s face continued melting, runnels of liquid iron sliding down, its unfashionable dress a torch. “Even your flesh. Where is it, Me-hi-ta-beh-ru-la gu’rush Me-hi-lwa?” The foreign syllables punctured tortured air; Emma’s throat scorched and her eyes watering as she accented each in its proper place.

Hours of study and careful tortuous work had suddenly returned its investment. Mehitabel had obviously never guessed that Emma might uncover her truename, much less use it.

A wyrm would never forget, let alone forgive such a thing.

The Blackwerks … stopped.

Sparks and cinders hung in mid-air. The burning simulacrum was a painting, flames caught in mid-twist, its face terribly ruined.

A huge, narrow head, triple-crowned and triple-tongued, rose from a crucible of molten metal, snaking forward on a flexible, black-scaled neck. The eyes were jewels of flame, matching the now-cracked rubies of the simulacrum, and leathery wings spread through the cinderfall, their bladed edges cutting through individual flecks and sparks held in stasis.

The tongues flickered, smoke wreathing the wyrm’s long body in curiously lethargic veils. Mehitabel held the Werks out of Time’s slipstream, her wings ruffling as they combed slumbering air. The heat was immense, awesome, the cup of metal holding the lower half of her body bubbling with thick tearing sounds. She turned her head sideways, one ruby eye glinting, but Emma leaned back, fingers burning, the thin fine leash of her will cutting across the dragon’s snout.

They are the children of Time, her teacher had intoned long ago. They are of the Powers, and their elders sleep. We should be glad of that slumber, for if those wyrms awakened they would shake this isle – and plenty more – from their backs, and the Age of Flame would return.

Mehitabel’s head jerked back and she glared, one clawed forelimb sinking into the edge of the crucible and digging in with another tortured sound. The tongues flickered. “You are dead.”

“Not yet, wyrm.” Emma set her boots more firmly. “Where is it?”

“It isss not here.” Heat lapped Mehitabel’s sides, her flexible ribs heaving bellows-like.

“Where is it?” Emma’s hands clenched, pressure enfolding the wyrm. She bore down. The sensation was different from the crunch-crushing of metal – slippery and armoured, giving resiliently and struggling to escape. The dragon could make another simulacrum, but its trueform was also vulnerable – especially to an angry sorceress who knew its name.

That was also what it meant to be Prime – to pronounce a name of such power without your tongue scorching and your eyes melting in hot runnels down your cheeks. Some were of the opinion that only a Prime’s overweening pride shielded him from such agony. Others said it was the size of the ætheric charge Primes were able to carry. None had solved the riddle, and Emma’s own research was inconclusive at best.

Had Mikal taken the mentath away? She hoped so. This much concentrated sorcery was dangerous, and what she was about to do with it doubly so. And they had a chance to escape Mehitabel’s flashboys and the other dangers of the Wark now, while she held the wyrm captive.

The dragon hissed, lowering its head. Its teeth were slashes of obsidian, each one with a thin line of crimson at its glassy heart. “One came and relieved me of the burden. Shake in terror, little monkey—”

Emma’s fists jerked. Mehitabel howled, a gush of rancid oily-hot breath pushing Emma’s hair back, wringing scalding tears free to paint her cheeks, snapping her skirts. When the wyrm was done making noise, Emma released the pressure. But only slightly, her concentration narrowing to a single white-hot point.

“Names, Mehitabel. Who came, and for whom?”

“I will kill you for thiss. You will dieeeee—” The word spiralled up into a glassine screech.

Her own voice, a knife through something hot and brittle. “Names, Mehitabel! Truenames! Or we learn the look of your insides, ironwyrm!” The force of Tideturn would start to fail her soon. The cameo was a spot of molten heat at her throat, and her rings glowed, finally scorching away the last of the kidskin on her fingers. The fire opals, shimmering charter symbols rising through their depths, popped sparks that hung restlessly for too long before dropping with languid grace.

Mehitabel gasped. No flame without air, Emma recited inwardly, and another chant filled her throat. This one was low and dark, a single syllable of the language of Unmaking, and before she had finished the first measure the dragon was thrashing against her hold as its ruddy glow dimmed.

When the dragon was limp but still burning, a sullen ember, Emma halted. “Names.” She sounded strange even to herself, harsh and brutal. “Truenames. Now.”

“Llewellyn,” Mehitabel hissed. “Llewellyn Gwynnfud.”

This does not surprise me. “Who else?”

“One of our—”

Oh, you are not about to play a riddling game with me. “Name, Mehitabel. Truename.”

“A fat man, and sstupid. Graysson was the only name he gave—”

A chill knifed through her, her sweat turning to clammy ice. “Who else?”

“An Old One.” Mehitabel chuckled. The sound was a scream of tortured iron. “Him you will not ssorcer so eassily, monkey-bitch.”

The chant rose again. Her focus was slipping. Holding even a young wyrm was difficult, and she still had to escape the Wark. The silver witchlight behind her blazed, her shadow cut of black paper on the fine, soft ankle-deep ashfall.

Mehitabel thrashed, gasping soundlessly. Molten metal slopped against the crucible’s sides. “Who?” Emma demanded again, when the dragon had quieted. There was precious little time left. Her arms trembled, and did her legs. A crystalline drop of sweat traced down her cheek; her hair was damp. Hot beads of blood welled between her clenched, smoking fingers, soaking into the shredded remains of her gloves.

“Vortisss,” Mehitabel hissed. “Vortiss cruca esssth.”

That’s not a name. But Emma’s hold slipped for a single heartbeat; Mehitabel slid free –

– and arrowed straight for her tormentor, head snaking, wings shedding globules of molten metal, jaws held wide.