by Stephen Hunt
Molly gritted her teeth as one of the medical machine’s syringe needles plunged into her newly bared arm.
‘This really is such a waste of my time,’ muttered the scholar, then she turned to scream angrily at her slats, the pair of soldiers hungrily clicking as they watched the operation. Molly’s thrashing was exciting their feeding instinct. ‘Shut up and get out! Get out, both of you, you’ll have what’s left here when I’m finished and not before.’
What would be left of Molly? A platter of slops for the masters’ beasts.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Purity and Commodore Black watched Jackaby Mention pacing the small feeding pen, the bandit stopping every few seconds to stretch his heavily muscled legs, working out the frost cramps. Purity stood by the door and gave a sad little wave to Watt, who had been imprisoned in the cell opposite along with the rest of the Jackelians who had survived the raid on the beanstalk. The cobbler lad held up a paper-wrapped parcel behind the bars. Her shoes? Sweet Circle. Of all the stupid things to have survived the raid. But there wasn’t enough room between the bars for Watt to squeeze them through and toss them across the corridor to her. Purity tried to suppress a sad laugh. When the masters came to the cell to cut her up like Molly, it looked like she wasn’t going to be able to die with her boots on after all.
The commodore rubbed angrily at his beard, ‘Ah, poor Molly and Coppertracks, is this how it is to end for us? All the tenants of Tock House to be murdered by a race of perfect wicked giants, cut up like anatomy show cadavers under the spotlights of a Lump Street theatre.’
‘Where’s Duncan? Did he not make it?’ asked Purity.
Commodore Black shook his head. ‘The brave, luckless lad. I watched the slats toss him out of one of their wicked flying globes, lobbed down onto the sands of Kaliban, naked and smeared with the scent of terrible ants as tall as the trees back in my orchard. His fate was no kinder than the one the Army of Shadows has in store for us.’
‘I will not go quietly,’ said Jackaby. ‘Not when the wind itself envies my heels.’
‘The wind may envy them, lad,’ said the commodore. ‘But it’s the slats and their giant masters that’ll have them off you before the day is out. And I’ve seen the slat guards coming by here, eying my grand belly and arguing over which of them is going to have me for their roasting spit.’
‘Our cell door,’ said Purity. ‘You showed me how to pick locks back at the house. All the stories, Jared, the ones you told me about how you broke your friends out from the prison on the lost land of Camlantis. Can you not get us out of here?’
‘I’ve tried, lass,’ sobbed the commodore, ‘but poor old Blacky’s genius with locks has met its match in what the Army of Shadows have done to this doorway’s seals. Break us out? I don’t even understand the basic principles of what they have running on this mortal clever lock. There are no moving parts, nothing to pick, no transaction-engine drums rotating inside it with codes to break. I’m like a fish drifting through the engine room of a wrecked u-boat, gazing at the expansion-engine scrubbers and wondering what manner of marvel it is that lies before me.’
‘Then we are dead,’ said Jackaby.
‘That we are, lad. But I have one last story for you, Purity, before I move along the Circle,’ said the commodore. ‘And it’s one that I should have told you when we first met at Tock House. A tale I spent every day walking across the hot merciless sands of Kaliban begging the gods of fate for the chance to recount to you. It seems that fickle fate has thrown me that chance, in return for my brave old bones being given to the slats to chew on.’
Purity listened as the commodore explained about his involvement in the royalist rebels’ plot to free a prince from the Royal Breeding House, her mother’s part in the scheme, and how the man who had worn the title of the Duke of Ferniethian had left a lover he thought was dead behind in the escape attempt. Left her with a child swelling her belly.
‘Your father was no fortress guard,’ finished the commodore. ‘He was a fat fool of a royalist u-boat commander who went back to Porto Principe before its fall, went back not knowing he had a darling daughter alive and in the hands of parliament’s dogs.’
Purity was rocked by the news.
All these years, treated like dirt by the other prisoners at the breeding house, called a prison guard’s bastard. And she had been the daughter of the Duke of Ferniethian all along. She had a father!
‘I would have done anything for your blessed mother and I would do anything for you.’
‘She is our queen,’ said Jackaby, not quite approving as the commodore and Purity embraced.
‘She always was mine,’ said the commodore. ‘But here we are. I have been given my chance to make amends, but it is to be cut short by a crew of monsters strutting about their mortal iron moon, monsters who intend to make us as dead as their land.’
Purity stepped back. ‘I am the land and the land is eternal.’
The two men in the pen rushed forward as Purity doubled up in pain.
‘Lass!’
‘The sword,’ said Purity, pushing them back. ‘I can feel it at the foot of the beanstalk.’
And she could. It was burning, embedded inside the near indestructible anchor cable securing the beanstalk to the ground; showing her a possible way to destroy the iron moon, destroy the Army of Shadows once and for all.
Purity turned to Jackaby Mention. ‘We must get out of here.’
‘But how, my queen? Your sword is lost to us, your power with it.’
Purity looked at Commodore Black, looked at her father. ‘There is more power in the human heart and the imagination of a child than there is in any stone circle or blade.’
‘You sound like Ganby,’ said the bandit. ‘But words have no magic to release us from these four thick walls.’
‘Four walls, containing the first queen of Jackals,’ growled Purity, ‘and the last queen of Jackals. I am no longer a prisoner of parliament to be beaten to silence. I have the blood of Alicia Drake and the House of Ferniethian in my veins; the lineage of Elizica of the Jackeni, knighted by the touch of the Hexmachina. What is the Army of Shadows compared to that? Shadows are banished by any light strong enough to shine.’
‘Lass!’ shouted Commodore Black. ‘Your hands!’
They were glowing, with the same glow as her maths-blade. Purity sliced at the air, experimentally at first, then faster, leaving scratches in the ether. Jackaby and the commodore fell back, the heat growing intense, furnace light cutting the confines of the cell.
‘And I have the Bandits of the Marsh sworn to awaken in my land’s hour of need!’
Hotter, hotter. The commodore yelped as Purity sculpted a gate of fire across the air. Slat guards were howling in the corridor, attracted by the light of a sun burning inside one of their food pens. Purity pushed up with both hands and the blazing gate she was making slid back into the cell door, killing the slats outside in a spray of molten metal as the door and walls disintegrated. Her gate kept on going, disin-tergrating the cell door of the feeding pens opposite. Then it stopped. It was another door now, a portal into the hall of ages where the Bandits of the Marsh slept.
Jackaby barked in surprise as the first figures began to emerge from the gate. ‘Jed Highaxe, Vela Hisstongue, Burnhand Luke!’
They came. Over a hundred and ninety Bandits of the Marsh, dipping their heads to Purity, recognizing their queen as she recognized them. A sea of spears, tridents, swords, armour and mist-twisted flesh. She knew them this time. The worst of the Kingdom of Jackals and the best of the Kingdom of Jackals. Purity gasped for breath as she let the gate dwindle into a spark dancing on the screen of her eyes. She hadn’t been strong enough before. But she had been looking in the wrong place. She had been looking out into the world, not into her heart.
Purity turned to one of the bandits, a blonde woman with an eye patch. ‘Emmaline Leap. I have two friends in peril but not enough time to save them and play havoc against those who have invaded Jac
kals.’
‘With your permission.’ The bandit placed her hand on Purity’s forehead and closed her one good eye. ‘Yes, I see them within your memories, a creature of steam and a woman and they are – I have them. An ogre of a woman is holding your two friends fettered. She tortures them in … inside a moon of iron?’
Purity’s eyes narrowed. No, torture at least had a point. To the Army of Shadows, Molly and Coppertracks were unwanted butterflies with wings that needed tearing off. ‘You know what you must do, Emmaline.’
‘I do not have the strength to jump more than thrice within an hour,’ said the bandit. ‘You may yet need me …’
‘My friends need you more than I.’ Purity looked at Commodore Black. ‘Please go with her. I can spare two.’
‘Don’t make me leave you again, lass.’
Purity touched her father’s outstretched hand. ‘Time has betrayed us, in every sense of the word. I need to close the rift into the past and they’ll send every slat they have to try to stop me. You can still save Molly and Coppertracks.’
‘Please, now, Purity, don’t make me choose between them and you.’
‘Many years ago, when you were trying to spirit a prince out of a cold fortress, what would my mother have said to you about duty if you had faltered?’
‘Duty,’ wheezed the commodore. ‘Always the hard weight of duty for our cursed family. Oh my poor Alicia, dead in parliament’s hands. And now you, I can’t …’
‘I have my people to protect me,’ said Purity, indicating the Bandits of the Marsh. She took a spare sabre from one of her followers and pressed it gently into the commodore’s hand. ‘And you have no choice at all.’ She nodded at Emmaline Leap and the woman grabbed Commodore Black.
‘Say it once, lass. Just let my poor mortal ears hear it.’
‘Good luck,’ said Purity, ‘Father…’
With a sulphur flash the bandit woman disappeared, the commodore winking out of the feeding pen alongside her. Only a small cloud of red smoke was left behind to show he had ever stood there.
‘It is always hard,’ said Jackaby Mention, seeing the tear in Purity’s eye, ‘leaving your family when you go to war.’
‘I fear the hardest part is yet to come,’ said Purity. She addressed the Bandits of the Marsh who now filled the corridors around the feeding pens, giants mingling with the surviving Jackelians from her raid on the beanstalk. ‘I wish I had more time to speak with you. You all left your families for me, some of you have left your age. But now you have stepped into a new age and face an enemy who has also crossed the halls of time. You are in an iron moon filled with wonders and horrors. There are soldiers that are blind walking blades wearing their dark bones on the outside of their hides, giants with a beauty matched only by the fierce emptiness of their souls, blue-skinned beasts that would suck on your veins. They have violated Jackals and there are more of them than we can possibly fight and best in any battle today.’
One of the bandits raised a fist. ‘It wouldn’t make a good tale for the fireside if it were otherwise and my axe has woken up with quite a thirst!’
‘Then it’s time for me to warm my hands on a still-born star,’ shouted Purity. ‘And time for your axe to drink its fill.’
Purity looked at them, a handful of free Jackelians and the wild cheering fey bandits.
Two ancient powers were about to clash.
A new legend for the world to forget across the ages, whichever side won.
An arm swung down from the dissection array, printing a cold ink outline above Molly Templar’s heart, a grid of numbered lines. A smaller arm capped with a flower of rotating scalpels was about to strike down into her chest when a buzzing from a console close to Coppertracks’ trapped form interrupted the scholar.
Tutting, the giant woman raised the cutting arm and walked across to look at the readout. ‘Finally!’ She twisted a lever on the console and summoned a Kal wearing a white toga decorated with a golden helix on his chest. ‘I have just relayed the key that will activate the looking-glass gate up to the hangar where the abomination ship is held. Ensure my bomb is signed out of the armoury and transported safely to the hangar. If there is even a dent on the bomb’s casing when it gets there, I will flush your miserable life into the vacuum.’
The scholar’s assistant left to do her bidding and she turned and twisted a knob, the vice around Coppertracks’ skull flowering open but leaving the rest of his body still locked down. ‘I told you I would tear your secrets out of you, abomination, one memory at a time.’
‘You are a sentient race,’ begged Coppertracks, his voicebox uncovered enough to speak. ‘Consider the morality of what you are doing.’
‘Your people are nothing but a virus replicating in metal,’ said the scholar. ‘But I will let you survive long enough to see our bomb make a tomb of your people’s home. It is the least I owe you for your assistance in their extermination.’
Coppertracks emitted a sob.
‘Simulated emotions,’ sneered the scholar, going back to the dissection slab. ‘Let us see what you make of this animal’s screams when I open her up. Do you have a simulacrum of pity for your so-called friend?’
The rotating blades were dipping towards Molly’s heart when sirens in the laboratory began to clang, a strident sound. There was a flash of light and sulphur in the room, the commodore and a blonde woman in marsh leathers appearing as if they had been borne into existence by the lightning clap.
Commodore Black was near enough to the dissection slab for him to grab the scalpel-tipped arm about to slice Molly apart, struggling against the strength of the device. The giant scholar abandoned the controls and pulled a pistol out of her belt, stumbling back and dropping the gun as the bandit slammed into her. There was another flash and they both disappeared, the giant’s legs reappearing embedded in the iron wall of the laboratory, briefly flailing as the scholar impossibly tried to coexist with the matter of the wall, then kicking towards stillness as she expired. The Bandit of the Marsh stood panting just underneath the giant’s gently trembling feet.
It took only a second for the commodore to open Molly’s restraints and then she twisted the knob to free Coppertracks from the vice.
‘They’ve been giving you a mortal terrible poking about, old steamer,’ said Commodore Black, pulling Coppertracks free of the floor clamps and helped him close his exposed panels.
‘My people!’ said Coppertracks. ‘The Army of Shadows is going to detonate something terrible in the heart of Mechancia using the gate we brought.’
‘I saw the hangar,’ said Molly. ‘They have Starsprite up there. That’s where the bomb’s being taken.’
‘Let me have your memory,’ requested the female bandit, coming towards Molly. ‘I can jump you there.’ Molly flinched back.
‘Please Molly softbody,’ begged Coppertracks. ‘My people’s survival hangs in the balance.’
‘It won’t hurt,’ said the bandit.
‘The last time I believed that I ended up with an extra soul floating inside my head.’ But Molly let the bandit woman press a finger against her forehead.
‘I have it. A great chamber looking out onto the heavens – and, well take me for a fancy piece, we really are inside an iron moon!’ The look of wonder on the Bandit of the Marsh’s face turned to surprise as she looked down at the steel tip of a sabre rising up out of her stomach.
‘Oh!’
Keyspierre pushed the bandit’s murdered body off his sword and flashed the new pair of fangs hanging out of his mouth. ‘I thought it must be you when I heard the sirens go off. You Jackelians are so predictable.’
Commodore Black pulled Molly back and raised the sabre his daughter had given to him. ‘They haven’t changed you so much, shiftie. You were a filthy beast before and your dirty friends have only formalized things with your wicked new set of teeth.’
‘The masters trust only the hunger, as they should. I was coming down here to retrieve the little author’s slops so I could toss the
m as gravy into your cage. Then I was going to discover what a doltish fat Jackelian sailor tastes like.’
Commodore Black danced back as their sabres met. ‘You’ll be finding it a lot like biting on cold steel, you shiftie scum.’
‘Please, my people!’ shouted Coppertracks from the sidelines as the commodore met the full force of Keyspierre’s swinging sword. There was little subtlety in this duel. It was murder being done here. The commodore’s hatred of the secret policeman matched with the Army of Shadows’ hunger for human veins to rip into. Steel cracking as they smashed at each other, each trying to find a weakness in the other’s guard.
‘Go,’ spat the commodore through gritted teeth as he turned a sabre thrust. ‘I’ll take this filthy wheatman down. Get to the ship and stop the blessed bomb being pushed through into King Steam’s palace.’
Molly and Coppertracks tried to slip past, but the ballet of steel between Commodore Black and Keyspierre was impeding the only exit to the laboratory. Keyspierre hissed in derision at them. They were stuck fast.
‘Always choosing the side of the underdog,’ laughed Keyspierre. ‘How typically Jackelian. The Army of Shadows will take your land however you choose to die, and it will be my people feasting on your descendants.’
Molly cast around desperately. There had to be something, some weapon she could use. The duelling pair blocked her way to the scholar’s pistol, but there … the dissection slab. She slipped behind the console, trying to work its arms.
‘The feast at the revolution’s table is coming to an end,’ called the commodore over the noise of the sirens, stamping down and turning aside another thrust. But for all his bravado the old u-boat man was weakening. Keyspierre was younger, faster and had all the strength of the hunger, not to mention the training of expert duellists in the Quatérshiftian secret police behind him.
‘We shall see.’
‘You’ll find out what those sirens are sounding for, and it’s not for us. It’ll be the House of Ferniethian that brings your revolution to an end,’ wheezed the commodore, falling back. ‘My house. My daughter.’