The Iron Wyrm Affair: Bannon and Clare: Book 1

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “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.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It Discommodes Me


  One moment the sorceress stood, slim and composed, between Clare and the abominable metal thing. There was a curious sensation, as if a thunderstorm threatened, the fine hairs all over his body standing up and a queer weightless vertigo filling him. Mikal was a shadow flicker in his peripheral vision, there and gone in less than a flash.

  Then, confusion. The shock knocked him to the ground, foul heat showering over him in a gush of rank oily sweat. His hat went flying, and he had the pepperbox pistol free as soon as his head cleared, searching for somewhat to use the weapon upon.

  The reptilian thing thrashed as Mikal leapt aside, his blades painting vermilion streaks through gouts of falling ash. The cavern was full of motion, tattered flashboys with gleaming Alterations seething like ants, the workers – scarecrow figures in shapeless grey smocks and draggling frocks, dull-eyed and vacant – crawling forward with odd jerky grace. The only still point was the sorceress, flung face-down in a drift of ash like a doll. Cinders gathered on her limp, bleeding hands, her gloves scorched and tattered, flesh flayed almost to bone.

  Clare made it to her in a scrabbling scramble, as the reptilian thing gave out a choked terrible sound and Mikal’s blades flashed again.

  She was astonishingly light. Clare slid an arm under her, the ash smoking along his jacket sleeve. She coughed, her eyes welling with tears that streaked the soot on her face, and he congratulated himself. At least she would not suffocate.

  A flashboy in a scarlet jacket leapt. Clare’s arm jerked, the pepperbox pistol’s first barrel spoke, but the crack of it was lost in massive, ear-grinding noise. The flashboy folded down, his Alteration – an arm that was no longer an arm, but a scythe of bone and iron – sending up one last bloody gleam before he fell into ash and the rest hesitated, uncertain, their eyes shining with pinpricks of mad red intelligence.

  Just like the rats. Shudders worked through Clare’s frame, but he ignored them. Three shots left, then we shall be forced to improvise. A thud rocked the entire Blackwerks, molten metal splashing in high scorching arcs, and he found himself dragging the sorceress’s limp form towards the entrance, where a draught of cooler air poured the snowflake cinders into the Werks’ maw. An instinctive move, the body seeking to protect itself, but that was acceptable because logic tallied with it, and—

  The sorceress woke, her dark eyes snapping open and her ribs expanding as she drew in a long, gasping breath. Another massive crash shook the Werks. The cameo, askew at Miss Bannon’s throat, filled with silvery radiance.

  Mikal shouted, a wordless challenge, and Miss Bannon blinked. She stared up at Clare, her gaze so blank and terrible he wondered if she recognised him at all. A pin tumbled from her hair, losing itself in thick ash.

  Her lips shaped a word under the noise. He had no trouble deciphering it.

  Mikal?

  Tension invaded her. She scrambled to her feet, and Clare did as well, though the ground quaked. The mob of flashboys and workers was now pressing close, streaming through the twisted machinery, intent on the sorceress – and by extension, on Clare himself.

  This will become quite unpleasant very quickly. As if it was not already unpleasant enough.

  The Shield shouted again, and the wyrm made a sound like half-molten metal tearing and bubbling. The sorceress threw out her hands, fingers flashing in a complicated gesture that ended in a contorted fashion Clare recognised as a faintly obscene gesture more suited to a hevvy or a dockmancer than a lady of quality.

  Miss Bannon was becoming more and more interesting.

  Sorcery crackled, a rain of crimson sparks bleeding from her pale fingertips, and the sorceress leaned as if pulling a heavy weight, her body arched and a word bursting free of her lips. Blood spattered from her flayed hands; Clare winced, his throat tightening with something suspiciously like fear, raising the pistol. Two more shots. Perhaps its menace would keep the gathering crowd back.

  He needn’t have bothered. For Miss Bannon moved, flinging her arms, her skirts swaying, and the long, black-scaled body of the wyrm was tossed aside like a wet sheet, directly into the crowd of flashboys and workers.

  The Shield moved smoothly back, his curious glove-soled boots shuffling lightly through accumulating ashfall, and glanced back at them. His yellow irises glowed, and his lean face was bright with a fierce, devouring joy.

  Shouts, screams, the wyrm’s cheated howl. Mikal reached them, nodded once, ash crowning his dark hair and that terrible happiness glowing through his entire body. Miss Bannon turned, smartly, and her bloody hands were full of a low reddish light, somehow cleaner than the Wark’s glow.

  The light pooled between her fingers, and she cast it at the floor. Smoke roiled, puffing up, and Clare understood they were to flee.

  His lungs were afire and his ribs seized with a giant gripping stitch. Clare wheezed, leaning against the alley’s wall, desperately seeking to regain his breath. The ashfall had intensified, a soft warm killing snow. At least they would not freeze to death here, but suffocation was a real danger.

  Mikal examined the sorceress’s hands, his fingers tapping and plucking while charter-symbols bled from his flesh to hers. Clare did not wish to observe the way her rent flesh was closing, in violation of physical laws. He also did not wish to observe Miss Bannon’s pinched, wan little face. The silvery witchlight had vanished, and so had most of the sphere of normalcy; every angle was off by a random number of degrees and the falling cinders obeyed no law that he could find, except the law of downward motion. Among these annoyances, the least was Miss Bannon’s face.

  “That is all I can do.” The joy had left Mikal’s lean features. His coat was torn and the ash in his hair turned him prematurely grey.

  “We must escape the Wark.” Miss Bannon closed her dark eyes, leaning wearily against the same wall propping Clare up. “She will have her eyes about soon.”

  “Which route?” Mikal did not let go of her hands, examining her palms critically. The cuts had been deep and were still flushed and angry-looking, despite the soft foxfire glow of charter sorcery stitching the flesh together.

  “West.” Bruised circles stood out underneath Miss Bannon’s eyes. Her skirts were tattered, and there was a smudge of ash on her cheek. Still, most of the falling cinders avoided her; the grit clinging to her hair was perhaps from lying face-down on the Blackwerks floor. “Borough or Newington. Probably the former; but both pass by the gaols, and that is not her purview. At least, not while Ethes is present.”

  “Very well.” The Shield finally let her blood-masked hands drop. “We shall not be free of pursuit for long.”

  “Oh, I know.” A curl fell in her face; she wrinkled her proud nose. “The mentath?”

  “Well enough.” Mikal didn’t even spare Clare a glance. “Do you need—”

  “No, Mikal. Thank you.” She finally opened her eyes. “Mr Clare. Thank you, as well.”

  His breathing had finally eased somewhat, and the stitch was slowly retreating. “Most … diverting.” The pressure behind his eyes mounted another notch as he sought to find some pattern in the random angles, or the spinning flakes of ashfall. “Though I would very much like to exit this district, Miss Bannon. It … discommodes me.”

  “You have survived your first encounter with a dragon. They affect the orderly progression of Time most strongly, and the illogic you are seeing is a result of her presence.” Bannon shuddered. “I will not take either of you to task for not fleeing when I gave the word.”

  “Good.” Clare swallowed, hard. An illogic so strong it could affect Time itself? The very notion caused an uncomfortable sensation within the cage of his ribs. I could live quite comfortably for the rest of my days without another such experience. Still, having an explanation for the warping and strangeness helped. “For I believe we did very well indeed.”

  Mikal’s head tilted. “Feet,” he said, softly. “Small, and large.”

  “Newington it is.” Miss Bannon straightened. The remnants of her gloves fluttered as she plucked gingerly
at her torn skirts. “Come along, gentlemen. There is no time to waste.”

  The streets of the Black Wark trembled slightly, like a small animal. The buildings stood blank-faced, no light in any of the infrequent, often broken windows, their holes stuffed with various fabrics and papers to keep the elements at bay. Warehouses leaned against each other, slumping dispiritedly under the caustic unsnow. The roofs were steeply pitched, and the only sound was the kiss-landing of cinders or the sudden whispering slide of ash off a roof edge, landing with a soft plop on the street. The gaslamps here were infrequent, wan, sickly circles of orange glow pulled close about their stems.

  Clare blinked away ash and followed the swish of Bannon’s ragged skirts. He fixed his eyes on the draggled hem, cloth behaving very much as cloth should. A certain relief at the sight loosened the tightness inside his ribs and the iron band around his temples.

  “How far?” Miss Bannon whispered.

  “Three streets, I think.” Mikal’s footsteps were soundless. “The rats. Dodger, possibly. I do not think I killed him. Perhaps one or two others.”

  “She expected me to move in a different direction.” Miss Bannon sounded thoughtful. “Which one, I wonder.”

  “Passing close to Horsemonger is also dangerous. Not to mention Queensbench.” Mikal, soft and equally thoughtful. Well, Clare thought. He obviously respects her ability. That is most heartening.

  “Ethes is no trouble, and Captain Gall even less. But I see your point.” Miss Bannon halted. “Mr Clare? Are you well?”

  It was becoming more difficult to draw breath. “Well enough. Damnable atmosphere here.”

  “Oh, good heavens.” She half turned, snapped her fingers, and muttered a word he could not decipher. Immediately, the ash shook itself free of his hair, whirling away, and he no longer felt as if he were breathing through a damp woollen blanket. “Better?”