Hasp was watching the dark scenery rush past. “Promise me something,” he said.
“What?”
“Don’t ever let that girl in the slave pen become a Mesmerist.”
“I think that’s unlikely to happen. Let’s walk slowly. Be ready.”
“Is that an order?” he asked, dryly.
“If you like,” she said.
They worked their way back from the coal tender through the staff accommodation cars. The coal-shovelers, pressure engineer, and driver who made up the midnight shift were still asleep in their cots on either side of the central passageway, snoring like bulls. Harper swept her Locator over the men, but registered nothing unusual. Two stewards and a cook were playing at cards at a low table in the second bunk-wagon. Harper nodded a greeting to them, but didn’t linger.
Beyond this, they came to Carrick’s private quarters where a frost-glass wall divided the chief liaison officer’s suite from a sixty-foot-long corridor. Harper slipped inside the room she shared with her new boss.
Hasp followed close behind.
Dark opulence defined the suite. Gold thread fringed heavy wine-coloured drapes along the exterior wall. A tall Ellonese wardrobe stood at the far end of the room beside a mirrored dresser with claw-shaped ivory handles. Shelves on the interior wall displayed Carrick’s collection of melodiums, those sumptuous golden music boxes he had brought with him from his Highcliffe home. She knew every one of the tunes intimately.
Harper scanned the walls and finally the bed: a wide high-sided cot smothered in red silk and gold pillows. Her position in Hell had been determined by success or failure at given tasks. Now her rise through the ranks of the Pandemerian Railroad Company might be measured by the quality of bed linen on which she rested each night.
I could buy you a house of your own in the city, a private place.
Why had Carrick pursued her with such enthusiasm since her return from Hell? He’d never shown much interest in her while she’d been alive.
She sucked in a temporary breath of life from her bulb, thinking of the bed she’d once shared with Tom.
Hasp leaned on his shiftblade and glared around at the room with distaste. Harper noticed the frayed pile where the ragged tip of the angel’s sword pressed into Carrick’s ermine rug, and couldn’t suppress a smile. The chief would probably have a fit when he saw it.
“I’m reading something,” she said finally. “But it’s faint, a residual echo.”
The angel sniffed, and his forehead creased. “This room smells rotten. Your demon has been here.” He picked up one of Carrick’s melodiums and examined it.
Harper couldn’t smell anything unusual. “I don’t think it’s a demon,” she said. “My Locator didn’t recognize it.”
Hasp grunted. “It’s a demon all right. Just not something your device has encountered before. Do you think you’ve witnessed everything there is to see in this world? There are old and powerful things lurking in places that the Mesmerists never imagined. But those things stay away for a good reason—you know why?”
She shook her head.
“Because there’s nothing for them here. They don’t seek power, and they don’t need to creep into this world like stray dogs to lap at spilled blood.”
“Then why is it here?”
“How should I know?” He gave her a humorless smile. “Your Mesmerist toys aren’t going to bother this thing much. You won’t be able to damage it with a Screamer, I warn you. This intruder is a warrior.”
“Like you,” she said.
The smile left Hasp’s face. His eyes darkened and the mechanism behind his skull made a low crackling sound. He released the melodium, which clattered to the floor and began a chiming tune. Hasp glanced down at it for a moment, and then crushed it beneath his glass-sheathed heel.
“Careful,” Harper said. “Your armour is more fragile than you think.”
Hasp kicked the broken pieces away.
The engineer gazed blankly at the scattered fragments of the music box, thinking. Beyond the Veil all known demons and shades haunted only those dark places of the world: the black city of Moine, Spire Nine back on Cog Island, the old whaling station down at Nigel’s Folly before Rys’s rain had flooded Pandemeria—places where battles had been fought and men had died. They came like flies in the wake of murder. The Mesmerists had long known that portals into the Maze could be opened only with the blood of the dead. But what could have caused such a powerful entity to manifest here? If it had no interest in blood…
“It was summoned?” she said.
Hasp’s smile was almost warm. “Clever girl. Now you’re beginning to understand. You have a saboteur aboard. Someone or something doesn’t want us all to reach Coreollis alive.”
“But who would gain by disrupting the peace treaty?”
“Only those with no future to lose.”
A vision of Tom came to her then: as one of many sailors boarding the tender that would take them out to the Karlsbad, the last god-smasher-class warship to sail for Larnaig. Menoa had constructed the huge vessel from a single archon’s soul. The Mesmerist Veil smothered the drowned city that was once their home. Crowds of onlookers had jostled on the temporary wharfs and pontoons built around the ever-shrinking islands of Highcliffe. Red waters sloshed against the piles under her feet. She remembered seeing the spire of Cog Cathedral, the only part of that great building which had remained above the rising waters. Somebody had contrived a way to make the bells ring, and they were clamouring now. Tom laughed, waving from the deck. He called out above the noise:
If I end up dead, you better ask Menoa to return my ghost. I’m not spending eternity in Hell with all these bastards. You should hear their awful jokes.
She called back to Tom as the tender cast off:
You think I’m going to spend my life saving up for a soulpearl? She had laughed with him. Don’t you dare get yourself killed. We can’t afford it.
That had been the last time she’d seen her husband. For all King Menoa’s promises, the soulpearl next to Harper’s heart remained empty.
The melodium lay in pieces scattered across the rug. Harper suddenly realized that Carrick would be furious at the loss of such a precious toy. She felt like destroying the rest of them then, snatching them off the shelves and hurling them against the wall. But she needed Carrick’s help. She needed to stay firm.
They had a saboteur aboard the train?
“Can you kill this demon?” she said to Hasp.
“Perhaps. But I’d rather not be ordered to do so.”
“Fine.” She closed her eyes a moment, breathed deeply, and focused on what she had to do. “Just…please don’t kill any more dogs.”
“Are there any more dogs aboard?”
“No.”
“Then there shouldn’t be a problem.” The angel’s gaze lingered on Harper’s uniform, at the place where her hidden jewel rested against the hollow of her neck.
Harper shrugged off his stare and raised her Locator again. “Let’s keep moving.”
Observation Car One was a misnomer, at least at night, for the transparent carriage shimmered like the inside of a Mesmer crystal, the myriad light blotting any view of the dark landscape rushing by outside. Aether lamps made twinkling constellations on the many glass facets, while a spiral staircase of clear composite triangles led up to a viewing dome and an open terrace where passengers might stroll and take the air, weather permitting. Red plush chairs surrounded tea tables on which vases of pink and white roses had been artfully arranged. But even the heady odor of flowers could not wholly disguise the smell of the Pandemerian Railroad Company’s chemical antiseptic.
A twitch of movement on her Locator brought Harper to a halt. She adjusted the device before sending two full-spectrum pulses out in opposite directions. Then she changed her position and repeated the process. The needle fluctuated unevenly between both ends of the scale. “The device is still confused,” she whispered. “But I’m reading something…a loca
l disturbance. It might be hiding in here.”
Hasp slouched over his shiftblade and looked bored. “It smells like it’s here.”
Harper altered her position, and went through the procedure one more time. Finally she halted to one side of the stairwell, and slipped a Screamer from her tool belt. The delicate skeletal globe murmured in her hand, its Mesmer crystals sensing the proximity of uncontained spiritual energy. She twisted one hemisphere of the Screamer against the other, engaging the clockwork timer.
“Eight seconds,” she said.
Hasp shrugged.
“Six seconds.” Quickly, she checked her Locator. “No change. If it’s here, then it should manifest when I trigger the Screamer.”
The door opened and Carrick strolled in. “Harper? For god’s sake, I’ve been searching the whole damn train for you. We’re pulling into the portal station now. The guests are furious. This”—he batted a fist in the direction of Hasp—“glass-wrapped bastard killed a passenger’s nephew’s pet. They’ll be discussing lawsuits as soon as they can figure out who to sue. And the mess…” He stopped when he realized her full attention was on the Screamer in her hand. “What the hell are you doing? What’s that thing? Haven’t you caught this demon yet?”
“Almost,” Harper said.
“Almost isn’t good enough,” he said. “Do you think the PRC pays you to almost do your job? You’d better find the fucking thing now, or you’re finished.”
“Two seconds,” she said.
Carrick’s temper reddened his face. “Not two seconds,” he snarled. “Now!”
“If you say so.”
The Screamer screamed. The interior of the observation car blazed with crimson luminance as furious bolts of Maze-light crackled and flashed between its glass-paneled walls. There was a sense of building atmospheric pressure, a violent snap, and then the air thickened with an earthy, rotten stench. The sphere in Harper’s hand glowed white. She dropped it, wincing—its metal frame was burning hot. Carrick stumbled backwards, shielding his eyes, and knocked over a tea table. Hasp hefted his shiftblade. Harper backed away, gagging at the dense odor, while loops of Maze-light whirled and pulsed and contracted into a bloody knot, and then vanished with a pop.
Something remained in its place.
Shorter than Hasp, but twice his bulk, the demon hunched over a stone hammer which looked heavy enough to level a mountain. It looked like a blisterman, but bigger. Grey sacs of skin covered every inch of its naked body; they were inflating and contracting like lungs. It was wheezing—but Harper could not discern a mouth or nose in its face, just pinprick eyes which stared out from the tumescent flesh. The enormous muscles on its shoulders and arms glistened and steamed with red fluids born of forced manifestation.
It turned to Hasp and said, “I am in pain. Why have you done this to me, angel?”
“Not me, soldier,” the archon replied. “I’ve no quarrel with you.” His eyes were fading to a somber grey. “You have been the victim of a clockwork incantation. Technology, these people call it.”
The demon cocked its head for a moment, as though trying to digest this unfamiliar word. The blisters on its skull puffed in and out, hissing faintly. Finally it said, “I am named Flower. I am trapped in this place. I heard noises. This is not the Forest of War.”
“You are aboard a steam locomotive bound for Coreollis,” Hasp said, “in the country of Pandemeria.”
“Those names are unfamiliar to me. What is a steam locomotive?”
“A vehicle propelled by burning the souls of old earth spirits.”
The demon nodded.
“Be wary, soldier.” Hasp indicated Harper and Carrick with a nod of his head. “These people will order me to kill you, and I am compelled to obey them. If you are slain in this world, your soul will go to Hell.”
Flower turned its pinprick eyes on Harper. “I do not wish this to happen. Send me home.”
“I can’t,” she said. “Not until we discover who summoned you. Tell us his name.”
“I do not know it.”
Carrick had retreated to the end of the carriage. The chief’s face was slack and bloodless, but he found his voice at last. “Get rid of it, Harper.”
“Hold on,” she said. “We need to know who brought it here.”
His expression soured. “What are you gabbling on about? You brought it here.”
“No,” she snapped. Why could the chief liaison officer not understand the most fundamental concepts of soul traffic? “I pulled it out of hiding, forced it to manifest. I didn’t summon it. It was already on board the train, remember?”
“Well, send it back to Hell before the passengers get a whiff of it.”
“It isn’t from Hell! We don’t know—”
“I don’t care!” Chief Carrick yelled. “I want it out of here now. It’s dangerous.” He turned to Hasp. “Kill it.”
The angel flinched and his glass armour flashed with pools of reflected aether light. His eyes suddenly darkened. The sound of clockwork came from his neck. He gave a grunt of pain, raised his shiftblade, and stepped forward.
“Wait,” Harper said. “I order you to leave it alone.”
Hasp staggered, then hesitated, his sword wavering.
“Kill it,” Carrick snarled at him. “Kill it now. That’s an order.”
Blood surged in a red web through the angel’s breastplate. The parasitic mechanism in his head chattered furiously, and then shrieked. Hasp hissed and took another step forward, eyes churning from black to red to black again. Teeth clenched, he lifted his weapon again.
“No,” Harper cried.
Carrick spat the order through his teeth, “Kill it!”
“I do not wish this,” the demon said.
The angel took a ferocious swing at the blistered creature, but Flower leapt back easily, now whirling its great stone hammer above its head.
“Stop it,” Harper yelled at Hasp. “That’s an order.”
Carrick grabbed her and clamped his hand over her mouth. “Kill it!” he yelled.
Hasp roared in pain. He brought his shiftblade back up, changing it from a sword to a heavy bone club, and then swept it down, aiming for the demon’s skull. The demon parried the blow with the shaft of its hammer. Petrified bone struck stone with a sound like a detonation. The concussion blasted half of the carriage windowpanes into shards. Bright fragments of glass exploded outwards into the night. Wind rushed in.
The demon had twisted its hammer and driven the angel’s club down, pinning it against the floor. “I do not wish this,” it said.
“Gods!” Hasp hissed. “I…don’t…” He slammed the heel of his free hand into the creature’s face, sending it hurtling backwards. Flower crashed into a cluster of chairs and a tea table, smashing them to fragments. A vase of roses fell and shattered.
“Watch the furniture!” Carrick roared. He had a manic grin on his face; his eyes shone with violent lust. “Don’t smash anything else, angel, or I’ll make you pay for it. I’ll make you suffer so badly you’ll think this is a pleasant dream.”
Harper struggled to break free of his grip, but he was too strong.
Hasp reeled, screwed up his eyes, then snapped them open again and gasped. The blood quickened and seemed to glow like molten iron inside his glass armour. Rose petals skirling around him, the angel advanced again.
Flower had already risen. The blisters on its face had burst and now wept clear fluids over its chin, but the demon didn’t appear to have been injured. It hunched low, twirling its hammer again, its tiny eyes locked on the approaching opponent.
Harper tried to grab Hasp as he passed, but her fingers found no purchase on his smooth arm-bracer. The armour felt red-hot where she touched him. She twisted away from Carrick. “Hasp, I order—”
Carrick silenced her with a punch to her stomach and then wrestled her against him. Harper felt the wind go out of her. She tried to reach the bulb in her belt, but couldn’t move her arms against the chief’s grip.
The angel advanced.
Hasp swiped at Flower, and again the demon danced away—surprisingly quickly for such a bulky creature. The hammer shot out, but Hasp diverted the blow by changing his club into a shield. A second violent concussion shook the observation car. Facets shattered and rained down around them. Fresh torrents of wind screamed through the carriage. “I do not wish this,” Flower said.
“Don’t break the glass,” Carrick yelled at Hasp. “I order you not to smash any more fucking windows!”
Campbell, Alan - Iron Angel Page 34