Campbell, Alan - Iron Angel

by Campbell, Alan

  Carrick stood in the center of the room, reeling, seemingly unsure of where to turn or who to speak to. He still had a flute of wine in his hand.

  Edith was shrieking. The colour seemed to have drained from her face to her thin chest, which heaved against the confines of her peach bodice. She had removed one of her gloves and clutched a bloody handkerchief in her naked fingers. A handsome man and his young wife, in matching raven-dark suit and frock, were attending to her. Harper now recognized the man as Edgar Lovich, an actor who’d made his fortune tramping the boards of Cog’s theaters before the war. Lovich was holding the young lady’s uninjured hand while his wife sought to inspect her wound. “Please, Edith,” she said. “I can’t help you unless you let me look at it.”

  “It took my finger off,” Edith cried. “It took my finger off!”

  “Let me see, then.”

  “What happened?” Harper demanded.

  Carrick wheeled to face her. “Where in hell have you been? While you’ve been off slacking, we’ve had a manifestation. Miss Bainbridge has been injured.”

  “What kind?” Harper made a point of staring at the drink in Carrick’s hand.

  “What?” The chief gaped at her.

  “What kind?” she repeated. “A dogcatcher? An Icarate? Was it one of the Non Morai? If I’m going to get rid of it, it would help if I knew what it was.”

  “What are you talking about?” Carrick said. “It manifested itself. Here. It smashed up the piano.”

  The actor’s wife had succeeded in extracting the handkerchief from Edith’s hand. Now she was examining the young woman’s bloody fingers. “It’s fine,” she said. “Just a cut. The piano wire must have caught your knuckle just here.”

  “The finger’s gone,” Edith moaned.

  “No, dear. Look…” She counted the fingers. “One, two, three, four, and five. All digits present and correct, see?”

  “It’s gone!” The young woman turned tear-filled eyes on Harper. “And it’s her fault. She’s supposed to prevent things like this from happening in here!”

  Harper let out a long breath. “Would somebody please tell me exactly what happened?”

  “Ersimmin was playing one of his new compositions,” Lovich said, “when this thing appeared from nowhere, destroyed the piano, and then vanished. Just like that!” He made a flamboyant gesture with his hands. “The whole incident was over in a heartbeat.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Hideous, utterly hideous. It was quite dark and…” He frowned. “Chunky.”

  “Seven hells, Edgar!” Jones exclaimed. “You make it sound like one of your wife’s muffins.” The former reservist approached Harper, his expression grave. “It was about five feet tall,” he said, “but bulky, powerful. Damn thing had muscles like the biggest navvy you’ve ever seen…and it was hairless, all covered in grey blisters.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t recall that it had a face as such…just blistered skin.”

  Harper frowned. “A blisterman?”

  “Bugger was armed, too,” Jones went on. “But not with a Mesmeric weapon. A plain stone hammer.” He lowered his voice. “It seems to have taken violent exception to Ersimmin’s playing.”

  “It had taste, at least,” Lovich muttered.

  Harper frowned. Such manifestations had become more common since the Cog Portal had opened. Demons could sometimes materialize in places where a lot of blood had been shed: the Cog Island plague pits, or in old temples to Iril. But this train was supposed to be clean. They hadn’t yet switched on the interior mist pumps.

  And why had it targeted the passengers? These people were King Menoa’s human delegates. They were under his protection, and they would remain so until he betrayed them.

  And then there was her Locator reading. For an instant she had detected something far more powerful than a simple blisterman. There were obviously gods at work here.

  “If it’s still on board it will probably be hiding in the train’s blood tank,” she said. “I’ll go there now. I can set off a Screamer and force it out.”

  “Splendid.” Ersimmin the pianist clapped his hands. “To the armoury, gentlemen. What do you say…ten spindles apiece, eh? The prize goes to the fellow who bags the thing?” He began to stride in the direction of the train’s arsenal.

  Harper called after him. “I’m sorry, sir. You can’t fire weapons in here. The carriages are made of glass. One shot could shatter a wall.”

  “Who cares about the carriages?” Edith howled. “Just shoot the damn thing.”

  Jones stepped forward. “She’s right, Edith. You must think of our other guests. How would it look if we arrived at Cog Portal with a shattered train? The king would not look very kindly upon us. Even you can see that, Ersimmin.”

  Edith buried her nose in the handkerchief.

  Ersimmin looked disappointed, too. “Hellish waste,” he muttered. “I can get a thousand spindles for a blisterman soul on the collectors’ market. But no, you’re right. It would be foolish to risk damaging the train.”

  Edith stamped her foot. “I demand that you turn this train around immediately. I require medical attention.”

  “It’s barely a scratch, Edith,” Jones said. “Let Miss Harper do her work. She’ll locate the thing and send it back to the Maze before you know it.”

  “Don’t hush me, old man,” the young lady retorted. “And don’t tell me to put my faith in this corpse. She did nothing to prevent the creature from appearing in the first place. Any living engineer would have caught it long before it had a chance to wreak havoc.”

  “Edith…”

  “No! I will not be patronized or belittled by you or anybody. I am not a child.” She spun to face Carrick, who still seemed to be in shock, and said, “Turn the train around this instant.”

  Carrick raised his hands. “Miss Bainbridge, please, if you—”

  “I will not be coddled by you, either, Chief Carrick. Do not forget your position here. My family could make life very difficult for you.” Suddenly she seemed to be on the verge of tears. “Why do you all have to be so cruel?”

  Lovich’s wife gave her a gentle hug.

  Ersimmin was frowning at his pocket watch. “Well, if we can’t shoot the damn thing, might I suggest a quick and practical alternative?”

  “Sir?” the chief asked.

  “Let Hasp out,” the other man said. “Let him dispatch it for us.”

  “That’s not a good idea, sir,” Carrick said.

  “Why not?” the pianist demanded. “He can’t harm us without a direct order. Menoa’s surgeons made quite sure of that. And I seem to recall that you gave us your personal assurance before we even stepped aboard the train.”

  Carrick fidgeted. “Impossible,” he said at last. “If Hasp were killed before the handover, his brother Rys would refuse to sign the treaty. Any chance of peace between Coreollis and Pandemeria would vanish.”

  “Killed?” Ersimmin said. “This is the god who single-handedly slew thousands of the Blind. Tens of thousands. And you’re worried about one demon? Hasp could kill this thing in his sleep.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, there’s too much at risk. I don’t have the authority to sanction this.”

  The pianist’s expression clouded. “I am giving you the authority, Mr. Carrick. We are due to arrive at the portal in less than twenty minutes—at which point our king will hand over the peace treaty and entrust us, his chosen Pandemerian ambassadors, with its safe delivery. How would it look if we turn up to greet His Majesty with a violent intruder already loose aboard this train?”

  Carrick looked even more uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” he muttered.

  Ersimmin said, “Chief Carrick, I will take full responsibility for Hasp’s release. The king will know that it was my decision. And I will of course compensate you handsomely for the inconvenience.”

  Harper was shaking her head. “Sir,” she said. “I strongly advise against this. Company regulations require us to repel intruders b
y normal means.”

  Jones agreed. “One monster on the loose is bad enough,” he said. “There’s no sense in upsetting the ladies any further by releasing a second one. Let me trade my pistol for a steel sword and I’ll help Miss Harper deal with our uninvited guest.”

  Ersimmin laughed. “Company regulations? Miss Harper, may I remind you that I own a twenty percent share in the Pandemerian Railroad Company?” He turned back to Carrick. “What do you say, Chief? Shall we have a bit of sport to liven up the party? Would a thousand spindles make it worth your while?”

  Now Carrick had a gleam in his eye. For the first time since the manifestation, he seemed composed. “Do it,” he said to Harper. “Let the glass bastard out of his cage.”

  20

  THE GOD IN GLASS

  THE CONSTANT CLICKETY-CLACK of steel wheels on the rails below had begun to sound like a chorus of insistent voices, endlessly repeating the train’s destination: Coreollis, Coreollis, Coreollis. Mina Greene shuddered, pulled her thin blanket more tightly around her glass-plated shoulders, and looked down at the floor of the slave pen. It was as hard and transparent as the brittle scales the Mesmerists had given her in place of her old skin. Wheels and axles whirred in the gloom beneath the train. Sleepers, slag, and gravel blurred past.

  The other slaves refused to move for fear of shattering their own transparent skins, and so she sat alone in the center of the low-ceilinged space. They seemed to be afraid of talking, too. As if words could shatter glass! More likely, they were wary of her proximity to the Lord of the First Citadel, which made Mina smile. They had a right to be nervous, she decided. He was a fearsome type.

  “Hasp,” she said.

  The god looked up, and a wheezing, clicking sound issued from the metal-and-bone mechanism clamped to the back of his skull. He frowned, then lowered his gaze and went back to whatever he was sketching. To keep the wounded god happy, the Pandemerian Railroad Company had given him paper and pencils.

  Despite his current appearance, she still preferred to think of him as an angel. Menoa’s Icarates had removed his wings completely, cutting out the bones, muscles, and tendons from his shoulders, so that now he almost looked like a man: an old buccaneer slumped on the floor, all drooping jowls, patchy stubble, and a paunch. But the image of Hasp as a man was difficult to sustain, for his eyes constantly shifted colour. Sometimes to the colour of verdigris or gold; sometimes to the colour of the blood that flowed through his own ghastly armour.

  Mina watched the god’s blood pulse through glass veins in his breastplate and shoulder-guards, out through the flexible, transparent pipes into his arm-and leg-bracers. She marveled at the blood looping around his neck where it branched into thin channels within his cheek-guards and half-helm, and she wondered how the Mesmerists could have engineered something so hideous and yet so beautiful: those cold-forged, metameric plates, spikes, and tubes were as magnificent as any sculpture to be found in a Dalamooran vizier’s palace.

  The angel’s armour was much grander than the other slaves’ glass scales, and yet it was just as brittle. One hard tap with a sword would shatter it as easily as a wine flute. And it would be shattered soon, she suspected. The proposed handover, the peace treaty—all just more of Menoa’s lies. Their blood would stain the ground around Coreollis before the sun set tomorrow.

  “Lighten up,” she said.

  Hasp didn’t even look at her. His brow crinkled and he spoke slowly: “I preferred you in Hell. You talked less.”

  Mina giggled and shifted closer to him. The curved panels on her legs and ankles clacked against the floor, but she didn’t care. “Kill me, then,” she said. She snatched up two of his pencils and rattled them against his glass-sheathed shin.

  Hasp moved his leg away. “What’s wrong with you?” he growled. “If you want to die so badly then stand up and hurl yourself against the floor. I guarantee the fall will break your fragile skin.”

  “But I want you to do it,” she cooed.

  “Only because you know I can’t.” Tiny gears skittered somewhere inside the god’s neck, or perhaps in his brain. A smell of burning wires and scorched blood came from the implanted Mesmerist device at the back of his skull. He twitched, and his cracked lips contorted into a grimace beneath his transparent helm. “But keep annoying me and I might even try. This is a dangerous game you’re playing, lass.”

  Mina examined one of the pencils, turning it over in her grubby hands. “It’s not a game.”

  Hasp’s jaw tightened. His irises pulsed through a spectrum of colours and his hands clenched to fists. “Bastard Menoa,” he hissed. “I think he put a spiteful demon in my skull.”

  “I like it when your eyes do that,” she said.

  “Same thing happens to all angels on earth.”

  “Do it again.”

  “I’m not your pet, Mina.”

  She sighed and dropped the pencil. “You’re so boring.”

  “Then leave me alone.”

  “Only if you help me break this.” She placed her hands against her chest.

  A growling sound came from Hasp’s skull. His eyes shifted colour—grey to black to blue to red. “I can feel its teeth now,” he said. “You’re making the damn thing bite.”

  Pumps sounded overhead, blowing more mist through valves into the slave pen.

  Mina stifled a laugh.

  “Enough,” he growled. He clamped his teeth together and went back to his sketch. “You are tormenting me simply because you can. What have I done to you? I sheltered you from the Icarates. I tried to defend you.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Then what more do you want from me?”

  “I want you to kill me.”

  The god hissed again. “So you can go back to Hell? You’ll end up back there soon enough without my help. What do you think will happen to you in Coreollis? Do you think Rys wants to be reminded of his failure?” He grunted. “My brother will sign Menoa’s treaty and then butcher us all.”

  “Not you.”

  “Especially me,” Hasp said. “I’m no use to him like this.” He turned his glassy hands palm up. “Rys will feed me to his garden and grow roses from my blood. And he’ll do it just to spite Menoa. This war was over as soon as my brother learned about the arconites. His memories of Skirl still haunt him.”

  “I disagree. You’re more important to Rys than you think you are.”

  He scowled. “You don’t know him.”

  “What are you drawing?” She craned her neck to see, but Hasp turned away from her to hide his work. She pouted and smacked him gently. “Go on…” she said. “Just break my arm, a finger even. You wouldn’t even need to use your shiftblade.”

  “Right now, I’d break your neck if I could,” he said.

  But Mina knew it was a lie. The parasite in Hasp’s skull protected only Menoa’s servants. It did not care which of the king’s enemies the god killed. Hasp could have slain her easily, and yet he chose not to. And that was exactly why Mina persisted. The defeated god had been so horribly debased that she needed to keep reminding him who he really was. She couldn’t let him simply give up, for it would be too easy for him to end his own life.

  Hasp was gazing at the shiftblade on the floor beside him, a weapon which could change its shape into any other. King Menoa himself had given it to him as a display of his absolute power over the Lord of the First Citadel. Shreds of muscle still clung to the steel blade. Someone in the king’s army had used it recently.

  A sudden tremor ran through the god. His neck jerked violently before he was able to still himself, and the pencil in his hand snapped in two. He let out a long sigh and tossed the broken fragments away. “Two hundred thousand,” he muttered. “And I manage to slay less than thirty.”

  “You gave up.”

  He grunted.

  Mina slouched back from him. The other slaves remained motionless, breathing gently. She recognized none of them, and none would meet her eye. Crystal chandeliers trembled in the lounge abov
e them, illuminating the thin glass scales covering their faces and necks. Perhaps she ought to have spoken with them before this, but what was the point now? They had accepted whatever fate would befall them. Now they simply sat there and counted their own breaths. So she thought about her father instead, bumbling about their house in Lye Street

  , chattering about the badlands north of Deepgate and all the gold he hadn’t found and all the lead that he had. He had been a big man, like Hasp. And in all his life, she had never seen him give up.