The Rise of the Iron Moon

by Stephen Hunt

  CHAPTER NINE

  Purity stumbled through the trees, her legs numb from walking, her discomfort anaesthetized by the complete aching tiredness she was swimming through. Oliver was a constant by her side. It was almost like having her brother back alive with her: the shared madness – the voice inside their heads – a kinship nearly as thick as blood. And they could both sense the presence of the Army of Shadows, the slats’ leathery black globe-like craft suspended under buzzing blades whisking through the cloudy starless night, dropping off scouts to hunt down the survivors from the Highhorn camp.

  The two of them might have already cleared the forest if it wasn’t for the necessity of continually doubling back on their tracks. Blind though the slave soldiers of the Army of Shadows were, they were possessed of a keen enough sense of smell to keep their hunting packs hard on Purity and Oliver’s trail. Purity doubted if they had any inkling of what she and Oliver really were – but the foe had obviously been stung by the existence of the hidden cannon, a level of engineering far beyond what they had expected from their prey in the kingdom. Survivors might possess knowledge of that engineering, knowledge that the slats didn’t want reaching any of the other nations of the continent before they, too, were conquered in turn.

  Oliver hadn’t said any more about where they were going, the dire fate he had mentioned; but right now, Purity hardly cared – she would settle for half an hour of sleep and the guarantee she wouldn’t be ripped to shreds by the talons of one of their pursuers before she awoke.

  ‘Are we going to die?’ she asked Oliver.

  ‘If we do, we’ll have a lot of company. The entire land’s dying. They’re making a corpse of Jackals.’ Oliver took Purity’s arm and pushed the sleeve up, allowing the drizzle to touch her skin. Her arm itched as the rain fell upon the white flesh. ‘That flying citadel has infected the rain here. This is just the start. We must go on.’

  ‘I’m tired.’ Purity tried to shut out the sight of the red haze of moonlight smudging the rain clouds above the canopy of pine. Corruption in the heavens, corruption in the rain. Just the two of them to stand against it all, two kestrels, flying against the full fury of a storm. What difference could the two of them make?

  ‘Why me?’ Purity yelled her rage up at the iron moon. ‘Why did this have to happen? What have I ever done to deserve this?’

  ‘It had to be someone,’ said Oliver, quietly. The look of resignation on his face shocked Purity to silence. What did she look like to him? She almost felt ashamed.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ said Oliver. ‘I was given these two pistols by a Circlist reverend. He had been the Hood-o’the-marsh before me. He and I were connected, just like the Circlists believe all of us to be connected. Connected by the guns, or the land, or by our humanity. That’s why we’re going on. Because we have to. Because if we don’t, nothing else will.’

  She followed him. Purity and Oliver left the forest behind and trekked across the heath.

  Hours became days.

  It was strange, Purity mused, it was like the end of the world – as if the kingdom had been emptied. They hadn’t met any other survivors from the camp since they had thrown off their pursuers.

  Highhorn had been an isolated stretch of the country even before the war, and when they came across villages and roads they found them abandoned. Once the two of them had seen a valley filled with a dozen house-sized slugs, slowly devouring the trees of a pear orchard, a trail of hexagonal plating excreted in their wake. The slugs emitted a diffuse crimson steam that rose in vapours, trailing languidly towards the sky. No wonder the days had become an intermittent twilight, a crimson-toned gloom as the enemy’s creatures set about their work – converting the land into useful resources. Even the enemy’s soldiers seemed to have vacated the countryside. There was the occasional wasp-like humming in the distance to mark the passage of one of their leathery flying globes, but no more sightings of their flying citadels, no more pursuit by the eyeless monstrosities that marched under the enemy’s banner.

  Oliver and Purity might have been the only ones left alive in this strange, empty landscape.

  Purity came to a stop. ‘I wish we could find some food, a cottage, anything.’

  Oliver pointed to the north. ‘The nearest small town is that way, about a day’s walk. But it’s empty, the Army of Shadows must have reached it.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Because if it was otherwise there would be people there,’ said Oliver. ‘And I would feel their evil. We’ll stop and rest a while. I can make a poacher’s fire. If I build it right it won’t give off much smoke.’

  An hour after Purity and Oliver left, a scout for the Army of Shadows was bent over the remains of their fire, its eyeless black head pushed up against the stones, sniffing at the ashes through a cluster of breathing folds. Its fangs clicked together in anticipation. Not old at all. And from the scents heading off, there were a couple of fine meals waiting for its pack.

  Not for the first time, Molly wished that the ugly mood inside Lord Starhome would prove as mutable as the hull of their half-steamman craft. Once the crushing ferocity of the launch had been replaced by the strange waterless floating of their voyage, the shell-shaped ship had started to metamorphose, his living metal flowing into a new shape that was half-manta-ray, half bat. Lord Starhome was rapidly growing larger around his passengers. Sucking up the dust and grit of the celestial darks and incorporating it into his fabric. When they reached Kaliban, the expedition might be travelling in a craft a hundred times as large as the shell shape Lord Starhome had assumed to survive his ancient impact with the mountains of Mechancia – if the members of the expedition managed not to kill each other before they arrived.

  Molly was coming to regret having opened her cockpit to the others she had inadvertently kidnapped for the voyage.

  ‘I, sir, am invested with the authority of the House of Guardians,’ insisted Lord Rooksby. ‘I have full command of this expedition by order of parliament.’

  ‘You carry no authority over any compatriot of the sovereign people of the Commonshare of Quatérshift,’ retorted Keyspierre.

  His daughter Jeanne nodded vehemently by his side. ‘The launch of this vessel was made possible only by the sweat and genius of the Institute des Luminaires and the ruling committees of our people.’

  Commodore Black pointed towards the back of the craft where Coppertracks had vanished into the storage hold with Duncan Connor. ‘You might as well decide on Coppertracks as the skipper of our expedition, for this craft belongs to King Steam and we’re on steammen soil by the nautical laws, while your parliament of shopkeepers and congress of the mortal committees of Quatérshift falls further away with each hour we travel.’

  ‘A ridiculous suggestion,’ said Rooksby.

  Lord Starhome’s disembodied voice sounded around them. ‘Am I merely a chattel, then?’ He showed his displeasure by allowing the field of artificial gravity he had recently created for them to fluctuate, the expedition members briefly subjected to a twinge of nauseous flotation.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Molly to Lord Starhome, who was showing worrying tendencies towards independence. As the craft grew larger, the percentage that was steamman – that owed any loyalty to the Free State – was being diluted. Molly fingered the control ring Hardarms had given her. How much longer until they were left riding a wild, masterless stallion through the endless night?

  ‘We do not need to be lectured by you, Jackelian,’ said Keyspierre’s daughter, pointing an accusing finger at Molly. ‘If it was not for your reckless interference we would be on a properly equipped and outfitted vessel of exploration, with trained soldiers to protect us instead of your gang of misfits and sightseers.’

  ‘This is my expedition,’ snapped Molly. ‘I received foreknowledge of the invasion by the Army of Shadows. My gang of misfits got Timlar Preston back alive and saw my cannon completed, and without us amateurs, you—’ she waved at the two shif
ties ‘—would be meat for those monsters’ larder in your corrupt little compatriots’ paradise, while you—’ she pointed at Lord Rooksby ‘—would be on a clipper on the other side of the world blundering about looking for the Army of Shadows’ non-existent homeland.’

  ‘Aye, Molly has the size of it,’ said the commodore. ‘And more to the point, if it wasn’t for her small blessed act of piracy back in the kingdom, the Highhorn cannon would have had a test shell loaded when the Army of Shadows came calling to destroy it, and we would all be sitting around its ashes toasting our bread in its fires, if we had the mortal life left to do so.’

  ‘You, sir, are a fool,’ shouted Rooksby at the commodore, stalking away to one of the other cabins. ‘You are all fools. Lesser minds that don’t possess the wit to realize the consequences of what you have done.’

  ‘Your rebellious act of petulance may well have cost both our nations their future,’ said Keyspierre, withdrawing with his daughter down one of the corridors that Lord Starhome had formed in his starboard wing. The shiftie’s voice echoed back as he walked away. ‘I fear the imagination of a novelist will serve very little purpose against the strength of the foe’s might when we reach their home.’

  Molly slumped back in one of the craft’s acceleration chairs. ‘Have I done the right thing?’

  ‘You were true to yourself,’ said the commodore. ‘And it’s the knowledge inside your head from that poor unlucky fellow Kyorin that we must look to, to guide us to the blue lad’s friends.’

  Molly bit her lip. If they still lived. If they could find them. If Kyorin’s people had a way of beating the Army of Shadows. If they could even understand the weapon and discover some way of using it against the enemy. Molly tried not to despair. It sounded so desperate when she thought about it, but the dead slave’s words had proven true so far. He had given Timlar Preston the knowledge the great inventor needed to finish the design of his wave-front cannon. Kyorin’s pessimistic predictions about the Army of Shadows had proven true at every vicious turn of the kingdom’s futile attempts at defending itself.

  ‘You didn’t even want me to go on this voyage,’ said Molly. ‘And now I’ve lumbered you and the others with the expedition too.’

  Commodore Black looked at the image of their home receding on one of Lord Starhome’s screens, a small blue sphere against a field of velvet night. Blue save for the northern pole, where a red infection seemed to be spreading out, smoky coils of crimson clouds obscuring the cancer eating away at their world. And above it all the ugly red coin of the iron moon. ‘Ah, poor Purity. I should have stayed to protect her. Coppertracks was right, and I am an old fool for not having settled matters honestly.’

  Molly was puzzled. ‘What did Coppertracks say?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ said the commodore. ‘My mortal wicked stars have given me the fate that I deserve, and that’s to be cast off on this perilous journey, into the heart of the enemy’s dark territory. As if facing their monstrous slat soldiers on the good soil of my home wasn’t burden enough. Now I must be thrust deep into a nest thick with their kind, where the Army of Shadows’ writ has run as law for an age. Even my bones will know no rest when they are lying bleached on their red deserts, so far from the Kingdom of Jackals and all that I hold dear. But I’ll accept the fate of a fool, if only the fickle lady of chance goes kind on our friends back home.’

  ‘We’ll save them, Jared,’ said Molly, ‘we’ll save them all. Oliver will look after Purity until we get back, and we’ll find a way of smashing the Army of Shadows. Kyorin said the answer lies on his home and that is where we must go.’

  ‘So it seems,’ said the commodore. ‘I shall stay here then and watch our home as it gets smaller, dwindles to a glint of light in the sky, and put my trust in a strange blue man fleeing the storm that now rages in Jackals. And put my faith in you, lass, who once saw us survive the undercity and the dark legions of Tzlayloc and his demon revolutionaries.’

  Molly left the commodore to his brooding. She was just a woman now, without the might of the Hexmachina to call upon. Lord Rooksby was right. A mere author of celestial fiction. How in the name of the Circle was she going to bring them back alive from this one? She felt as if she was spitting against a tornado. Picking her way down one of the ship’s new corridors, Molly went aft to find where Coppertracks had disappeared to with Duncan Connor. The canny steamman was up to something, but her instincts told her she would be better off not drawing attention to that fact in front of Lord Rooksby and the two shifties.

  Lord Starhome’s voice followed her as she walked down the craft’s passage. ‘How you softbodies achieve anything is beyond me. So fractious. Always arguing.’

  ‘We’ll work it out between us,’ said Molly.

  ‘While you are about your painfully slow cognitive processes, do you have any idea where you wish to be deposited on Kaliban?’

  ‘The face,’ said Molly. There was nowhere else. ‘Take us to the carving of a face. There will be a city nearby – the last city on Kaliban.’

  ‘Oh, my sensors can resolve plenty of cities on the surface,’ said Lord Starhome. ‘Mausoleums, mainly, they have the appearance of having been dead and empty for centuries. You organics certainly don’t know how to clean up your mess after you, do you?’

  ‘But there is a city near the face, with living people? Kyorin’s race and their masters.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the half-steamman craft. ‘Locating it is quite easy. I just have to follow the glow of dirty isotopes and the filthy concentration of pollutants.’

  ‘Take us there,’ said Molly. ‘That’s where this fight will be settled.’

  ‘Fight?’ The sneer was audible in Lord Starhome’s voice. ‘Like two drunkards brawling over a half-empty bottle of jinn. You should stay on board me, little ground hugger. I could show you such sights: rainbows glistening off the water particles of the Wormwood Nebula, the seventy sun system of Leo A, all the wonders of the cosmos.’

  Molly twisted the control ring on her finger. At times, the tracery of circuits on its golden surface burned fit to scald her skin. It was taking more and more of the ring’s failing power just to keep the ship in check. ‘Stay on course for Kaliban.’

  ‘Of course,’ muttered the craft. ‘Of course. So futile. The races of your home will be murdering each other long after you and I have died, and that’s an immensely long and full life for me. It’s just a good thing you people breed like bacteria in a bog down there. Always more bodies to throw into the fray if you wait a generation or two.’

  ‘Kaliban,’ ordered Molly. ‘Just take us there.’

  She could hear Duncan Connor talking to Coppertracks up ahead, and rounding the corridor, she found the two of them in among the boxes of supplies that had been half-packed when Molly had stolen the craft. Along with something else stowed at the aft of the hold. It appeared to be a looking-glass, circular and as tall as she was, but there was something strange about its surface – a quicksilver movement, flexing like water, distorting what it mirrored. And the circular looking-glass was mounted on top of a sphere held up by six iron legs that might have been borrowed from a metal spider. Coppertracks was fiddling with the sphere, adjusting something, but the whole thing looked wrong, out of place. The senses that once allowed Molly to pilot the Hexmachina, the weirdness in her blood, called out to her that here was something that should not exist in their world.

  ‘What are you doing with that? It’s a machine, isn’t it? So dense, so many parts packed in at such a small level …’

  ‘The others aren’t behind you, lassie?’ asked Duncan.

  ‘They’re off sulking,’ said Molly. ‘Or in Rooksby’s case, probably busy detailing written charges against me seeing as he’s parliament’s chosen head of our little excursion.’

  ‘That insidious mammal,’ said Coppertracks. ‘A life in politics would at least have spared the Royal Society his divisive presence, even if it would have done little to advance the principles of Kirkh
illian democracy.’ The steamman closed the panel on the sphere, passing a small set of tools to the single mu-body that had been on board at launch. ‘Your affinity for matters mechanical serves you well, Molly softbody. What you see here is our second gift from King Steam, almost as precious to my people as Lord Starhome himself.’

  ‘It’s like this, isn’t it?’ said Molly, indicating the hull of the void-faring craft. ‘It’s not truly of the people of the metal.’

  Coppertracks’ crystal skull dome flared in concurrence. ‘One of the advantages of cycling his soul through the great pattern on the path towards eternity is that King Steam has picked up many a strange curio down the ages. Do your symbiote senses tell you what this is?’

  Molly held her hand out in front of the circular looking-glass. ‘It – it is a door. But how can that be, and where does it lead?’

  ‘Imagine you held the very stuff of existence and sliced it in two,’ said Coppertracks. ‘Two halves of a membrane that stays connected no matter how far apart you then separate the two parts.’

  Molly reached out and touched the surface of the looking-glass. It felt cold, wet, like water and oil mixed. But when she pushed on the surface, nothing happened, it was a solid. ‘A doorway. Then this machine has a twin, two looking-glasses connected.’

  ‘Its twin resides in the deep halls of Mechancia,’ said Coppertracks. ‘Within King Steam’s palace. The sphere sitting beneath the mirror contains a grain of contra-matter that can open the doorway, though not for more than a minute – so great is the tension between the two membranes. The energy needed to equalize each brane-field quickly destabilizes the mirror and destroys it beyond use. We may travel through it only once.’

  ‘This is how King Steam intended for us to get home,’ said Molly.

  ‘Rooksby and those two shifties mustn’t ken about this until we’re ready to tell them,’ said Duncan. ‘They would want to use the doorway immediately, go back to King Steam’s land for a properly resourced expedition. I don’t trust any of those three dafties not to abandon the voyage and leave the rest of us to hang.’