by Stephen Hunt
One of the creatures leant forward to speak into a box on the desk, its beak warbling. Others were watching this scene, the session broadcast to a select group of rulers who could not be present, sent out like a punch card message coded and carried across the Jackelian crystalgrid. ‘Oceanic evaporation has increased by six per cent since the last reporting of my department, four per cent higher than the predictions we had been supplied with by the Department of Adaptation.’
Another of the creatures stiffened at so public a rebuke.
‘Our remaining plankton farms at the south pole are now reporting ninety per cent harvest failure, despite the successful seeding of the latest heat-resistant strains.’
‘Then your new strains of plankton were obviously not nearly heat resistant enough,’ hooted the council member who had been singled out for criticism a moment earlier.
Sharp beaks clicked angrily at each other, but Molly’s vision lacked the means to translate so quickly.
‘There is another way,’ announced one of the creatures. There was something about this one. Molly probed and got back the answer. This creature was the source of the secret recording of these events, the one who had passed it on to hands that would have been regarded as outlaws by the others within this chamber. ‘We can make a truce with the faction of the healers. They have a plan to regenerate the heart of the world, to inject the core with modified bacteria to begin to clean the atmosphere, to—’
‘For shame,’ hissed the giant bull creature whose entry had started the meeting. ‘Do we have a hundred generations of life left to us to wait for such a wild scheme to bear fruit? Our land is dying now. To hear such defeatist anti-science sentiments from one of our own council. Our people strive to master base nature, not surrender to it. Would you invite disease back into our world as well? Would you take the cells of predators from our zoo’s refrigerated vaults and release extinct killers back into the land? Would you turn off our sky control and allow superweather systems to ravage the surface without check?’
‘You can see about you what wonders our industry has wrought,’ argued the dissenter. ‘When land temperatures climbed burningly hot we adapted our bodies to live under our oceans, but now even the seas our grandparents swam in, the seas we have farmed for centuries, have dwindled to a barren desert with a shrinking lake at its centre. This chamber once rested secure on the seabed and now look at it.’ The dissenter raised a tentacle to point at the ceiling. ‘The walls of our sanctuary hum with the buzz of insects swarming over stagnant water. How shall we adapt our bodies to survive next? Will we become sand serpents wriggling through the wastes of the dunes? Is that the fate you wish for the children of our mighty civilization, to hunt rodents through the deserts we ourselves have wrought, only dimly remembering that they were once masters of machines and the keepers of ancient wisdom?’
‘There is food enough,’ said the giant bull. ‘You know of what I speak. Food enough to last our people for the handful of generations we require to lay the plans to reach our final sanctuary.’ As the creature tapped the desk in front of him, the image of a blue sphere flickered into view, bands of white clouds swirling above seas and green landmasses.
Molly focused in closer on the rotating globe. A verdant, ocean-covered celestial sphere. Green fields. Oh sweet Circle! Catosia hadn’t fallen to a horde of polar barbarians. Quatérshift hadn’t been invaded by the bear-pulled sleds of any northern warlord. These invaders were from one of the celestial spheres neighbouring the Earth – a devastated dead world of sand and dunes. Dunes … all the images of Kaliban produced by Coppertracks’ observatory rose up at once. Kaliban. As if confirming her epiphany, the vision running across her mind shifted to a scene of black cones lifting away from the endless wastes on beams of light, great shell-like vessels to cross the celestial darks and burrow into the poles of their new home – the valuable polar territories, always the last land to heat up and lose its life-giving moisture while the world’s bounties were depleted. Locusts and despoilers, indeed.
Molly’s vision started to shift onto something new, but the scene fragmented before it fully formed, broken by Purity’s scream as the window looking out at Tock House’s inner courtyard shattered, the dark shape that had been pressing its face to the pane judging its prey located.
Something black and heavily muscled swung through the gap. Molly stared dumbly at the creature for a second, frozen by the splintering of the vision that had been filling her head and paralysed by the shock of the brute’s sudden appearance. Taller than a man by a head, the bipedal creature appeared both rangily thin and densely muscular at the same time, moving across the floor with the deadly predatory grace of a flicked whip. The intruder’s skin was dark and oily, covered in chitin-like plates and glistening like a blood-wet blade, the slyly darting skull a flat, shockingly eyeless oblong of bone, a fanged mouth leering under a cluster of nostril slits. It moved on all fours like the killer apes Molly had idled afternoons away watching in Middlesteel Zoo, but quicker, long talons on its fingers clicking on the floor where they briefly gashed the wood. The womb mages of Cassarabia were said to be masters of growing horrors inside the wombs of their slaves, and if they had captured a demon and crossbred it with a mantis and a bat – then spiced the mix with the instincts of a shark given legs – something like this thing might have puddled out of some poor unfortunate’s thighs in the caliph’s slave pens.
Purity was retreating to the far side of the bedroom but the intruder wasn’t after the ragamuffin – it flung itself at Kyorin, lashing at a shield of energy cast by the traveller, invisible save where the beast’s claws struck, sparks flying off. Molly dived for her sideboard and her purse gun as Kyorin and the beast rolled across the floor.
Molly was pulling her pepperbox-shaped pistol out of the drawer when two other eyeless fanged faces appeared hissing at the broken window, one of them poking its own big black pistol through into the room. The realization that these things hunted in packs struck Molly like a lead cosh as she fumbled for a crystal charge to prime her gun. Don’t feel the fear, don’t feel the – a shadow lengthened across the room and the two beasts clinging to Tock House’s wall disappeared with a wet slap.
‘About bloody time.’ Molly snapped the purse gun shut and shot Kyorin’s attacker in the back, dead in its spine. Its head turned slowly towards her and she saw the blood running down the thing’s fangs. Green blood.
Kyorin had stopped struggling; his shield broken under the storm of claw strikes. With a yell of anger, Purity grabbed a poker from the room’s cold fireplace and ran at the beast. The creature didn’t even look around at the girl as it batted her and sent her flying across the floor. Molly broke her pistol, ejected the shattered charge and reached for another shell. On the creature’s back a bubbling froth of blood had congealed as hard as stone, closing the wound. A purse pistol was no thunder-lizard gun, but even so – she had just shot this thing square in its spine. No street thief in Middlesteel could have taken such a shot and survived. The creature turned the eyeless plate of its skull towards her and raised its hand, wagging a finger disapprovingly – the scalpel-sharp talon flashing in the half-light, a coughing rasp laughing mockingly at her. Circle on a stick, the damn thing was sentient. How lethal did that make it?
In the corner Purity pulled herself to her feet. She was a game young bird, tougher than she looked, obviously. Molly squeezed the trigger and her pistol’s clockwork mechanism struck the fresh charge, but there was no explosion. Misfire! No time to clear it. Arms outstretched, the creature leapt at her, an arc of death springing across the bedroom. Only to meet a wall of flesh as the taut bare-chested form of Duncan Connor slammed the beast off balance. It rolled over and brought both its long muscled arms up, fingers twitching like miniature sabres, marking the location of its new prey with a series of sonar clicks out of its throat. Duncan charged first, roaring his anger and scooping a knife-long shard of broken glass from the floor. Springing forward, the beast tried to regain the advantage of the fight, but
it wasn’t used to this. Prey ran, prey begged for life, it didn’t attack first.
The ex-soldier drove a foot down into the creature’s knee, ducking under its sweeping claws and seized the beast from behind. There was a quick flash of glass as Duncan slashed the creature’s throat. The beast stumbled forward, the sudden fountain of blood slowing almost immediately as it congealed rock-hard. But whether it was healed enough to resume its attack was left to conjecture as Commodore Black kicked open the bedroom door.
‘Hello, my bucko.’
The multi-barrelled deck-sweeper that had once graced the conning tower of the commodore’s u-boat jolted with an eruption like a cannon and the creature was shredded and thrown across the room, flailing onto Molly’s bed. The beast tried to move, spitting out a few guttural words in a language Molly didn’t recognize – but then the words’ meaning formed in her mind like an echo of the alien tongue. It was counting, reeling off a line of numbers before growing still. How could she possibly understand what this terrible creature was saying, and what did the sequence of numbers mean?
‘That’s a blessed ugly thing you’ve let into the house to disturb my sleep this night, Molly Templar.’
Molly waved her diminutive purse pistol at the commodore by way of thanks and looked over at Kyorin, his body half-concealed by the kneeling form of his ragamuffin companion. Tiny sparks of the vision from Molly’s joining with the foreigner flickered in her mind as she bent down beside them both.
‘Please,’ Purity begged, tugging at Kyorin’s sleeves. ‘Don’t leave me. You’ll be fine, you’ll see.’
Molly ran a hand along the claw gashes marking Kyorin’s chest. It was a miracle he was breathing at all.
‘I should have been able to save him,’ cried Purity. ‘I killed a political officer when I didn’t even mean to. So why couldn’t I save him from the slat when it smashed the window?’
Slat? An ugly name for equally ugly creatures. ‘You tried,’ said Molly. ‘But that thing on my bed isn’t from the race of man. If it weren’t for my two friends here, everyone in the house would be dead right now.’
Kyorin’s eyes flickered open, glancing at Purity then sliding over towards Molly. Kyorin and Molly exchanged a glance – both of them knew he wasn’t going to make it.
‘You – must – travel to meet – the – great sage.’
‘Your home,’ said Molly. ‘You mean Kaliban, don’t you?’
‘Our joining – has – left – a mark on you. My brothers – and – sisters – will know you – now.’
‘Sweet Circle, fellow, I only write about travelling to the moon. I don’t actually own any airship that’s capable of making the flight!’
Kyorin coughed out a stream of green blood from his mouth as he forced a smile. ‘You can’t travel – to – Kaliban by dirigible. There – is only – one who – can help – you get there. He is – a – prisoner of – your – watchers in the air.’
The commodore shouldered the weight of his monstrously large gun. ‘Ah, no. You don’t mean who I think, do you? You can’t ask Molly to trust those rascals in the Court of the Air.’
‘Yes – your – Court. The man is – called – Timlar Preston.’
Kyorin’s back arched as his body began to convulse from the damage done to him.
‘Kyorin,’ Purity sobbed. ‘Use your power, use it to heal your body.’
‘I have no – power. Only – what I borrow – from your land. Home is – so far – away.’ Kyorin groaned as the pain grew too much, clutching the arms of the two women by his side. ‘The – face. The face. Set my – people free.’
‘What face?’ Molly asked.
Kyorin’s hand stretched out to feel the tears rolling down the ragamuffin’s cheeks. ‘Purity – Drake.’ The air expelled from Kyorin’s lungs.
Kyorin’s arm slumped down and he moved no more.
By the door Duncan Connor twisted the dial for the bedroom’s gas lamps, bright yellow light flickering into life and casting the two corpses into sharp relief. ‘Aye, and I used to believe garrison duty along the southern frontier was dangerous.’
Molly closed the traveller’s eyelids with her hand and as she drew it back she saw the pink dye staining her fingers. Reaching into her nightdress she withdrew a tissue and rubbed at Kyorin’s face, revealing his real blue skin underneath the paint – as bright as the cobalt waves of a cove. ‘Good grief, he’s blue! A blue man.’
‘Aye, he’s painted his skin to be able to walk among us,’ said Duncan. ‘He would have caused quite a stir if he hadn’t.’
‘I never knew,’ said Purity. ‘All this time with him and I never knew.’
‘Come on now, lass,’ said the commodore, moving Purity’s shocked form away from the corpse. ‘It’s no good you crying here. Your friend has moved along the Circle and that’s the way of it.’ Commodore Black choked back his surprise as he had a good look at the ragamuffin for the first time in the gaslight and saw her pinny with the golden crown so obviously ripped from it. Two royalists hiding under Tock House’s roof now, then, the commodore and Purity both, and a monster lying dead in Molly’s bed. Molly had experienced better nights. They all had.
A voice called up from the small quadrangle at the centre of Tock House. Molly carefully poked her head out of the broken window. Coppertracks stood surrounded by mu-bodies, his diminutive drones clutching everything from pitchforks to a blunderbuss. They were prodding at the dead bodies of two more slats; brothers to the beast lying blasted apart in her room.
‘I have never seen such a strange-looking creature,’ the steamman’s voicebox carried up at its maximum volume. ‘Molly softbody, are you and the others safe?’
‘Quite,’ answered Molly. ‘Come on up, old steamer. Those things down there look dead enough and we could do with your help in here. And you—’ she turned from the window and announced to the air ‘—you took your damn time getting here.’
A figure stepped out of the shadows behind her four-poster bed. ‘Please, there were two of them and they took a lot of killing.’
‘According to the penny dreadfuls, the Hood-o’the-marsh has had a lot of practice recently.’
‘Few who didn’t deserve it,’ said Oliver Brooks. The two guns at his side flashed their approval with a wicked patina.
‘Oh, this is a bad turn,’ said the commodore. ‘We’re in the eye of the storm, now, if you’ve come back to us, lad.’
‘Not in the eye yet,’ said Oliver. ‘The storm is sweeping towards us from the north this time. I’ll take that as a thank you for killing those two monsters outside.’ He pointed to Kyorin’s corpse. ‘Was your blue-skinned friend really serious about Kaliban? And what did he mean when he said the face?’
‘He was serious enough to give his life bringing us the warning. And he was talking about his face,’ said Molly. ‘Or one very like it. How about it, Jared, you helped me and Coppertracks present to the Royal Society, doesn’t his face look familiar to you? Think about the slides …’
Commodore Black sucked in his breath. ‘You’re right, lass. No wonder his mug looks familiar. His face is the face on Kaliban, the mortal great carving from the observatory slides.’
‘You wanted to know who on Kaliban was signalling to Coppertracks,’ said Molly. ‘The message in a bottle we heard. It was Kyorin’s people. I think they’re slaves, a subject race, and their masters are the ones toppling Catosian city-states and taking over Quatérshift.’
‘Kaliban!’ said Duncan Connor, the meaning of Molly’s words finally dawning on him. ‘You’re saying yon fellow and his ugly kelpie both travelled here from another celestial sphere? Surely this is whimsy?’
‘You served in the New Pattern Army,’ said Molly. ‘Have you ever heard of a horde of polar barbarians capable of overrunning a Catosian force defending their own gates?’
Duncan sighed. ‘No. If it weren’t for the Royal Aerostatical Navy protecting us, we’d probably be a member of the Catosian League ourselves. There is no lord of the
north with barbarians enough to storm one of the league’s fortress cities.’
‘But you can’t be travelling to Kaliban, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘These creatures might have the skill of crossing the void, but we surely don’t. It’s too dangerous.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ spat Purity. ‘However dangerous the journey is. If it means paying back the jiggers that killed Kyorin.’
Duncan shook his head. ‘Listen to the commodore’s words. Even if you’re right, the battle will be here in Jackals. Whoever this Army of Shadows are and whatever land they hail from, their forces are almost at our borders. The high fleet of the RAN is preparing to sail, the regiments are mobilizing. War is upon us and it will be fought here on our doorstep.’
Molly thought of the mighty Hexmachina, trapped in the centre of the world like a fly in amber. Even the power to slay gods was not enough to deal with the invaders. ‘No, I don’t think we can fight them and win using airships and rifles. What Kyorin showed me in his vision was hideous. The invaders’ rulers are ancient, masters of a very old science that has bent all of creation to its will, every other race fit only to serve as their slaves or their sustenance.’ She pulled a blanket off her bed, covering up the slippery black muscles of the beast lying slaughtered there. ‘This slat is one of the masters’ own children, twisted into the perfect killing machine by their womb mages. These masters have no care for their own seed, let alone other races’ lives. And there are entire armies of these things moving around in Catosia.’
‘I feel the pressure of their evil, growing stronger each day,’ said Oliver. ‘Like a headache. To the north. Running to the east now, too, in Quatérshift.’
‘Can we call these slats evil?’ asked Molly. ‘Beasts like this are only what they were bred to be. But their masters, they’ve made their choice, and they’ve chosen our world as their new home. The knowledge of defeating them lies in their old land. Kyorin’s masters have consumed it and discarded it like an old apple core, but somewhere among the ruins of Kaliban the answer to stopping the invasion is to be found. That’s what he came to tell us.’