Vermishank was wailing as they wrestled. “Let me go!” he screamed. He had had no plan, had struck out in fear of his life and found himself committed to a murderous attack. It could not be undone. He could do nothing but scrabble for purchase inside Isaac’s chest.
Behind them, David fumbled for his key.
Isaac could not pull Vermishank’s fingers from his chest, and Vermishank could not push them any further in. They stood, swaying, tugging at each other. Behind them the confusion of voices continued. Lemuel had stood, had kicked away his chair and was feinting to find a vantage point for a clean shot. Derkhan ran over and pulled violently at Vermishank’s arms, but the terrified man curled his fingers around the bones of Isaac’s chest, and with every pull Isaac screamed in pain. Blood was spurting from Isaac’s skin, from the imperfect seals where Vermishank’s fingers punctured his flesh.
Vermishank and Isaac and Derkhan wrestled and howled, spraying blood across the floor, fouling Sincerity, who bolted away. Lemuel reached over Isaac’s shoulder to shoot, but Vermishank tugged Isaac around like some grotesque glove puppet, knocking the pistol out of Lemuel’s hand. It hit the floor some feet away, scattering its black powder. Lemuel swore and dug urgently for a powder-case.
Suddenly a shrouded figure stood by the clumsy fighting trio. Yagharek threw back his hood. Vermishank stared into his hard round eyes, opened his mouth at the garuda’s great predatory birdface. But before he could speak, Yagharek had plunged his vicious curved beak into the flesh of Vermishank’s right arm.
He tore through the muscle and tendons with speed and vigour. Vermishank shrieked as his arm blossomed with ragged flesh and blood. He snapped his hand back, withdrawing it from Isaac’s flesh, which resealed imperfectly with a wet snap. Isaac growled with agony and stroked his chest. It was slick with blood, the surface misshapen, pocked and still bleeding from Vermishank’s hand.
Derkhan had her arms around Vermishank’s neck. As Vermishank clutched the bleeding ruins of his forearm, she hurled him away from her into the centre of the room. The construct rolled out of Vermishank’s way as he staggered and fell, fouling the boards with gore, screaming.
Lemuel had primed his pistol again. Vermishank caught sight of him aiming and opened his mouth to beg, to wail. He held his bloody arm up, trembling, supplicating.
Lemuel pulled the trigger. There was a cavernous cracking sound and an explosion of acrid gunpowder. Vermishank’s cry stopped instantly. The ball hit him right between the eyes, a textbook shot from close enough range to pass through him and take the back of his head off in an efflorescence of dark blood.
He fell back, his broken skull smacking dully on the old boards.
The particles of gunpowder spun and tumbled slowly. Vermishank’s carcass shuddered.
Isaac leant back against the wall and swore. He pressed his chest, seemed to smooth it down. He fumbled at it in an ineffectual attempt to repair the cosmetic damage Vermishank’s intrusive fingers had done.
He emitted livid barks of pain.
“Godsdamn!” he spat, and eyed Vermishank’s body with loathing.
Lemuel held his pistol idly. Derkhan was trembling. Yagharek had withdrawn, stood watching the proceedings, his features dim once more in the shadows of the hood.
No one spoke. The fact of Vermishank’s murder filled the room. There was unease and shock, but no recrimination. No one wished him alive again.
“Yag, old son,” croaked Isaac eventually. “I owe you.” The garuda did not acknowledge him.
“We have to . . . we have to get this out of here,” said Derkhan urgently, kicking Vermishank’s corpse. “They’ll be looking for him soon.”
“That’s the least of our worries,” said Isaac. He held out his right hand. He still held the paper he had taken from the construct, now bloodstained. “David’s gone,” he observed, pointing at the unlocked door. He looked around. “He’s taken Sincerity,” he said, his face curling. He threw the paper to Derkhan. As she unfolded it, Isaac stomped over towards the skittering construct.
Derkhan read the note. Her face hardened in disgust and outrage. She held it up so that Lemuel could read it. After a moment, Yagharek stalked over and read it over Lemuel’s shoulder, from inside his hood.
Serachin. Further to our meeting. Enclosed is payment and instructions. Der Grimnebulin and associates will be brought to justice on Chainday 8th Tathis. The militia will apprehend him at his residence at 9 o’clock in the evening. You are to ensure that der Grimnebulin and all working with him are present from 6 o’clock onwards. You will be present during the raid, to avoid suspicion falling upon you. Our agents have seen heliotypes of you, in addition to which you are to wear red. Our officers will do everything possible to avoid casualties, but this cannot be guaranteed, and your clear self-identification is crucial.
Sally.
Lemuel blinked, looked up.
“It’s today,” he said, and blinked again. “Chainday’s today. They’re coming.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Isaac ignored Lemuel. He was standing directly in front of the construct, which moved almost uneasily before his intense gaze.
“How did you know, Isaac?” shouted Derkhan, and Isaac raised his finger and jerked it at the construct.
“I was tipped off. David betrayed us,” he whispered. “My mate. Been on a hundred damn benders with him, done drinking, done riots . . . the fuck sold me out. And I got tipped off by a damn construct.” He poked his face right into the construct’s lens. “You understand me?” he whispered incredulously. “You with me? You . . . wait, you’ve got audio inputs, haven’t you? Turn around . . . turn if you understand me . . .”
Lemuel and Derkhan glanced at each other.
“Isaac, mate,” said Lemuel witheringly, but his words petered out into astonished silence.
Slowly, deliberately, the construct was turning around.
“What the fuck is it doing?” hissed Derkhan.
Isaac turned to her.
“I’ve no idea,” he hissed. “I’ve heard of this, but I didn’t know it could actually happen. It’s had some virus, hasn’t it? CI . . . Constructed Intelligence . . . I can’t believe it’s real . . .”
He turned back and gazed at the construct. Derkhan and Lemuel approached it, as, after a moment’s hesitation, did Yagharek.
“It’s impossible,” said Isaac suddenly. “It doesn’t have an intricate enough engine for independent thought. It is impossible.”
The construct lowered its pointer and backed away to a nearby pile of dust. It dragged its spike through it, and spelt out clearly: It is.
At the sight, the three humans hissed and gasped.
“What the fuck . . . ?” yelled Isaac. “You can read and write . . . you . . .” He shook his head, then looked up at the construct, hard and cold again in a moment. “How did you know?” he said. “And why did you warn me?”
It was quickly clear, however, that this was an explanation that would have to wait. As Isaac waited intently, Lemuel glanced up at the clock and started nervously. It was late.
It took a minute, but Lemuel and Derkhan convinced Isaac that they had better flee the workshop now with the construct. They had better act on the information they had been given, even if they didn’t understand where it had come from.
Isaac protested weakly, tugging at the construct. He denounced David to Hell, then marvelled at the construct’s intelligence. He screamed rage and cast an analytical eye on the transformed cleaning engine. He was confused. Derkhan’s and Lemuel’s urgent insistence that they must move infected him.
“Yes, David is a godsdamn shit. And yes, the construct is a godsdamn miracle, Isaac,” hissed Derkhan, “but it’s going to be a wasted one if we don’t leave now.”
And in an infuriating, tantalizing end to the matter, the construct spread the dust out again as Isaac watched, and carefully scrawled: Later.
Lemuel thought quickly.
“There’s a place I know up in Gidd where w
e can go,” he decided. “It’ll do for tonight, and then we can make plans.” Derkhan and he moved quickly around the room, gathering useful items into bags they pilfered from David’s cupboards. It was clear they would not be able to return.
Isaac stood numb by the wall. His mouth was slightly open. His eyes were glazed. He shook his head incredulously.
Lemuel glanced up and saw him.
“Isaac,” he yelled. “Go and sort your shit out. We’ve less than an hour. We are leaving. Get off your arse.”
Isaac looked up, nodded peremptorily and stomped up the stairs, to stop and stand still again at the top. His expression was of bemused and miserable disbelief.
After some seconds, Yagharek came silently after him. He stood behind Isaac and peeled back his hood.
“Grimnebulin,” he whispered as softly as his avian throat allowed. “You are thinking of your friend David.”
Isaac turned sharply.
“No fucking friend of mine,” he countered.
“And yet he was. You are thinking of the betrayal.”
Isaac said nothing for several moments. Then he nodded. The look of horrified astonishment returned.
“I know betrayal, Grimnebulin,” whistled Yagharek. “I know it well. I am . . . sorry for you.”
Isaac turned away and walked brusquely to his laboratory space, began shoving bits and pieces of wire and ceramic and glass seemingly at random into a huge carpet bag. He strapped it, bulky and clanking, to his back.
“When were you betrayed, Yag?” he demanded.
“I was not. I betrayed.” Isaac stopped and turned to him. “I know what David has done. And I am sorry.”
Isaac stared in bewilderment, in denial and misery.
The militia attacked. It was only twenty minutes past seven.
The door flew open with a massive sound. Three militia officers came hurtling through into the room, their battering ram flying out of their hands.
The door was still unlocked from when David had fled. The militia had not expected this, and had tried to break down a door which did not resist them. They fell, sprawling and idiotic.
There was a confused moment. The three militia scrabbled to stand. Outside, the squad of officers gaped stupidly into the building. On the ground floor, Derkhan and Lemuel stared back at them. Isaac looked down at the intruders.
Then everyone moved.
The militia outside in the street recovered their wits and rushed the door. Lemuel flipped David’s huge desk onto its side and hunkered down behind the makeshift shield, priming his two long pistols. Derkhan ran towards him, diving for cover. Yagharek hissed and stepped backwards from the rail of the walkway, out of sight of the militia.
In one slick movement, Isaac turned to his laboratory worktable and scooped up two huge glass flasks of discoloured liquid, still spinning on his heels, and hurled them over the rail at the invading officers like bombs.
The first three militia through the door had regained their feet, only to be caught in the shower of glass and chymical rain. One of the massive jars shattered on the helmet of one officer, who hit the floor again, motionless and bleeding. Vicious shards bounced off the others’ armour. The two militia caught by the deluge were still for a moment, then began to shriek suddenly as the chymicals seeped through their masks and began to attack the soft tissues of their faces.
There was still no gunfire.
Isaac turned again and began to grab more jars, taking a moment to pick strategically, so that the effects of the cascading chymicals were not entirely random. Why don’t they shoot? he thought giddily.
The wounded officers had been pulled out into the street. In their place, a phalanx of heavily armoured officers had entered, bearing iron shields with reinforced glass windows through which they stared. Behind them, Isaac saw two officers getting ready to attack with khepri stingboxes.
They must want us alive! he realized. The stingbox could kill, easily, but it could also not. If deaths were all that were desired, it would have been far easier for Rudgutter to send conventional troops, with flintlocks and crossbows, than such rare agents as humans trained in stingbox.
Isaac hurled a double salvo of trow-iron dust and sanguimorph distillate at the defensive huddle, but the guards were quick, and the jars were shattered with twitching shields. The militia danced to avoid the dangerous gobbets.
Each of the two officers behind the shield-bearers spun their jagged twin flails.
The stingboxes themselves—metaclockwork engines of intricate and extraordinary khepri design—were attached to the officers’ belts, each the size of a small bag. Attached to each side was a long cord, thick wires swathed in metal coils, then insulating rubber, extendible more than twenty feet. About two feet from the end of each cord was a polished wooden handle, one of which each officer held in each hand. They used these to whirl the ends of the cords at terrible speed. Something glimmered almost invisibly. At the tip of each tendril, Isaac knew, was a vicious little metal prong, a weighted clutch of barbs and spikes. These tips varied. Some were solid, the best-made expanded like cruel flowers on impact. All were designed to fly heavy and true, to puncture armour and flesh, to grip without mercy inside torn flesh.
Derkhan had reached the table and was huddling by Lemuel. Isaac turned to grab more ammunition. In the moment of silence, Derkhan raised herself quickly on one knee and peered over the tip of the table, taking aim with her great pistol.
She pulled the trigger. At the same instant, one of the officers let fly with his stingbox.
Derkhan was a decent shot. Her ball flew into the viewing window of one of the militia shields, which she had judged its weak point. But she had underestimated the militia’s defences. The porthole cracked violently and spectacularly, whitened completely with shards of glassdust and a crack-lattice, but its structure was interlaced with copper wire, and it held. The militiaman staggered, then stood solid.
The officer with the stingbox moved like an expert.
He swung up his arms at the same moment in sweeping curves, flicking the little switches in the wooden handles that allowed the cords to slide through them, releasing them. The momentum of the twirling blades took them flying through the air in a flash of metallic grey.
Cord unravelled almost without friction from inside the stingbox, through the air and the wooden handles, slowing the blades hardly at all. Their curving flight was absolutely true. The jagged weights flew in a long, elliptical motion through the air, the curve shallowing rapidly as the cables attaching them to the stingbox extended.
The buds of sharpened steel smacked simultaneously into each side of Derkhan’s chest. She screamed and staggered, her teeth gritting as the pistol fell from her spasming fingers.
Instantly, the officer pressed the catch on his stingbox to release the pent-up clockwork within.
There was a sputtering whirr. The hidden coils of the motor began to unwind, twirling like a dynamo and generating waves of weird current. Derkhan danced and spasmed, agonized yells spurting out from behind her teeth. Little bursts of blue light exploded like whiplashes from her hair and fingers.
The officer watched her intently, twiddling the dials on his stingbox that controlled the intensity and form of the power. There was a violent, cracking jolt and Derkhan flew backwards against the wall, collapsing to the floor.
The second officer sent his sharp bulbs over the edge of the table, hoping to catch Lemuel, but he was flattened hard against the wood and they flew harmlessly around him. The officer pressed a stud and the cords rapidly retracted back into a ready position.
Lemuel stared at the stricken Derkhan and hefted his pistols.
Isaac bellowed in rage. He hurled another vast pot of unstable thaumaturgic compound at the militia. It fell short, but burst with such violence that it splashed onto and over the shields, mixing with the distillate and sending two officers screaming to the floor as their skin became parchment and their blood ink.
An amplified voice burst through the
door. It was Mayor Rudgutter’s.
“Stop these attacks. Be sensible. You aren’t going to get out. Stop attacking us and we will show mercy.”
Rudgutter stood in the midst of his honour guard with Eliza Stem-Fulcher. It was highly unusual for him to accompany a militia raid, but this was no ordinary raid. He was stationed across the road and a little way along from Isaac’s workshop.
It was not yet completely dark. Alarmed and curious faces peered from windows up and down the street. Rudgutter ignored them. He took the funnel of iron away from his mouth and turned to Eliza Stem-Fulcher. His face was creased in irritation.
“This is an absolute bloody shambles,” he said. She nodded. “Well, however inefficient they are, the militia can’t lose. A few officers might be killed, regrettably, but there’s no way der Grimnebulin and his cohorts are getting out of there.” The faces peeking nervously from behind windows all around suddenly annoyed him.
He raised the loudhailer sharply and yelled into it: “Get back into your houses immediately!”
There was a gratifying flurry of curtains. Rudgutter stood back and watched as the warehouse shuddered.
Lemuel dispatched the other stingbox-wielder with one elegant and careful shot. Isaac hurled his table down the stairs taking two officers with it when they had tried to rush him, and now he continued with his chymical sniping. Yagharek was helping him, at his direction, showering the attackers with noxious mixtures.
But this was all, could not but be, doomed valiance. There were too many militia. It helped that they were not prepared to kill, because Isaac and Lemuel and Yagharek had no such constraints. Isaac estimated that four militia had fallen: one to a bullet; one to a crushed skull; and two to random chymico-thaumaturgic reactions. But it could not last. The militia advanced on Lemuel behind their shields.
Isaac saw the militia look up and confer for a minute. Then one of them raised a flintlock rifle carefully, aiming it at Yagharek.
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