The Iron Ghost

by Jen Williams

  ‘Aye, I know. You’re right,’ said Truss, frowning slightly. ‘It just seems like I’m wasting my time up here. He isn’t coming back, or at least, if he is, he won’t just walk up to our front door. I should be down there, helping to rebuild, or drilling with the troops.’ Reaching down to his belt again, he passed the flask of grut across to Ninnev, who took a grateful sip. She passed it back with a nod. ‘Sitting here, staring out at nothing all day. Just doesn’t seem like the best use of me and my werken, if you see what I mean.’

  Ninnev shrugged, as though she wasn’t quite inclined to agree one way or another. Despite everything, it was still difficult for them to question the Mistress Crafter’s orders.

  ‘Out of interest, what makes you think he isn’t coming back?’ she asked eventually.

  Truss glanced behind her, looking down into the city. He could see the grey forms of werkens moving slowly up and down the streets, looking like drowsy beetles from here.

  ‘Why would he?’ he said. ‘We’re prepared now. We’re an entire city, with an army behind us and a force of war-werkens. He won’t take us by surprise again, and he is just one man. I don’t care how much magic he has, he is just one man.’

  ‘One man, over three hundred dead,’ pointed out Ninnev.

  ‘We let him in –’ He paused, swallowing the rest of that sentence. She let him in. ‘Who could have predicted that?’ He shook himself abruptly. ‘Bloody hell, but it’s cold up here.’

  Ninnev smiled. ‘Spoken like a native Skald. Do you have water in your veins like the Narhl?’

  Truss laughed. ‘I’ve grut in my veins, mostly.’

  There was a scrabbling on the wooden trellis that led up to the lookout post and a small, dirty head appeared over the ladder. It was a girl of about twelve years old, her hair cut close to her scalp. Her face was smeared with dirt and she wore a miserable collection of rags and furs. There was a bulky-looking pack slung over her back.

  ‘What’s this, then?’ asked Truss, bemused. ‘Have you come to take over from me, little one? Got sharp eyes, have you?’

  Ninnev rolled her eyes at him. ‘It’s just one of Sal’s little brats,’ she said, waving a hand dismissively. ‘Here to sell you hot bread and questionable meat, if I’m any judge.’

  Truss shook his head at her and turned to the girl. ‘Is that it, little one? Have you brought something to save me from starving to death? Ninnev here would happily watch me fall off my werken with hunger.’

  The girl just looked at him blankly, impervious to his light tone. She was probably simple, he reasoned. Sal often took in wastrels like that: orphans left behind by tragedy, or children that had simply been forgotten by everyone else.

  Ninnev huffed with annoyance. ‘Well, speak up or get back down that ladder, girl. The top of the wall is no place for a lost child.’

  The girl seemed to react more to Ninnev’s tone, and she stuttered into action. Coming over to them she shouldered off her pack and pulled out a package wrapped in brown cloth. Truss caught the faint but unmistakable aroma of freshly cooked bread. His stomach rumbled in response.

  ‘Bread, is it? Do you not talk, girl?’

  She looked at him, eyes wide, before looking down at the stones beneath her feet and shaking her head.

  ‘Ah, well, I’ll take it. Go nice with a bit of warmed grut, I suppose. How much?’

  Glancing back up she held out her free hand with three fingers pointing up.

  ‘Three bits?’ grunted Truss, glancing at Ninnev. ‘I see old Sal has been raising her prices. What, she got more brats to look after these days?’

  Ninnev frowned at him.

  ‘I expect she has,’ she said pointedly. ‘Over three hundred dead, remember.’

  ‘Oh. Oh yes.’ Truss rummaged in a pocket, bringing out a handful of small copper bits. ‘Here, kid, take this.’ He leaned down as far as he could from the saddle of the werken, and the girl reached up. When her thin white fingers touched his he shivered compulsively. It was a little like being glanced by an ice-spear. ‘There’s five bits there, and give my regards to Sal.’

  The girl shoved the pennies into a hidden pocket, before passing up the package of bread.

  ‘Go on now,’ said Ninnev. ‘I think you’ve made enough of a nuisance of yourself.’

  The girl nodded rapidly, retreating so swiftly that she almost went backwards off the wall. Their last sight of her was her short brown hair being tousled by the wind as she made her way back down the ladder, and then she was gone.

  ‘Old Sal must be raking it in now,’ said Ninnev, ‘with all these extra hands.’

  Truss shifted in his seat. His arse was still frozen, but the warm package of bread in his hands had brightened him a little.

  ‘Ah, you’ve a cold heart, Ninnev,’ he said mildly. ‘I hope she’ll be all right. Poor little mouse looks like she’s been through a lot.’

  Ip scrambled down the ladder, holding the face of the woman in her mind as she did so. A small insult, perhaps, but Bezcavar was much in the mood lately to make note of small insults.

  Once the girl was back on the icy ground she ran, weaving in and out of men and women slowly making their repairs to the city, around werkens trudging here and there with carts full of building supplies. It was important to keep moving. If you looked like you were on your way somewhere, people were less inclined to look closely. The watchers on the wall had been fooled easily enough; to these people she was just another orphan child, a victim of Joah Demonsworn’s brutal attack.

  Joah. At the thought of him Ip’s face creased briefly into a scowl.

  Where is he? What is he doing? Bezcavar could feel his mind every now and then, a slippery, dark-red faceted thing linked to its own consciousness, but he had always been so difficult to read – in a way, his mind was the opposite of Siano’s. Where the young assassin had been all cold surfaces and chilly reflections, Joah was a bewildering honeycomb of thoughts, ideas, passions. The demon could never touch it for long without becoming lost.

  He was greatly taken up with something, that was for certain, and it involved the pompous Lord Frith, but the demon could tell little more than that.

  He needs to hurry up, whatever it is, Bezcavar thought. I can’t hide out here for ever.

  Leave, then. It was Ip’s voice, her real voice, so rarely heard now. In truth, the demon was startled to hear it. Why don’t we just go?

  And travel across the frozen wastes by ourselves? Your child’s body could not live through it, as well you know.

  We are clever, together, replied Ip. We could find supplies, a map. If you would just let me come forward a bit . . .

  Enough. Bezcavar let its true shape surface inside the child’s mind, just for the barest moment – something monstrous and blind surfacing from the darkest part of the ocean – and felt Ip scuttle back to her hiding places. It is not your place to question me.

  Ip fell silent then, and Bezcavar was glad.

  Rounding another corner, they came to Sal’s hovel, a low draughty building that the other children said had once been a butcher’s shop. Certainly there were strange, dark stains on the stones and the place seemed to perpetually smell of blood and mouldering flesh. Sal herself was sitting on a stool by the front door, a basket full of wrapped loaves on her lap, her bony hands wrapped around the rim in a vice-like grip. She was a withered prune of a woman, half lost inside the dusty black robe she wore, but her skinny frame hid a particularly vicious kind of strength; she may have looked ready to drop dead at any moment, but old Sal could clip a child around the ear with deadly accuracy, and her well-placed pinches always left colourful bruises. Ip could testify to that herself.

  ‘There you are, my newly minted pain in the arse.’ Sal was well spoken, her voice sharp at the edges. Not for the first time Bezcavar wondered who she really was, and where she’d fallen from. ‘What have you got for old Sal?’

  She reached out and grabbed hold of Ip’s forearm, squeezing until it was painful.

  ‘Her
e.’ Hurriedly, Ip reached into her pocket and held out the copper bits she’d made that day. Sal snatched them up, offering her a brief, snaggle-toothed grin.

  ‘No messing about from you, is there, my little earwig? That’s what I like to see. Any talk from around the town? Anything we should know from up on the wall?’

  ‘They’re bored,’ she said. ‘Waiting to see what will happen. They’re trying to be prepared.’ Not that that will help them, when Joah returns.

  ‘Well, Bestina,’ Sal crooned the name as though she knew very well that it was false, ‘you’d best get below before we’re all murdered in our beds, hadn’t you?’

  Knowing that hesitating would earn Ip a bruise, she turned away and headed through the shadowed doorway. Inside were a few dirty rooms linked by a corridor, and scruffy children lurked in every doorway. Most of them eyed her with distrust, or plain boredom; most of them were too hungry to care about the latest addition to Sal’s orphans. Ip headed past them to the steps that led to the cellar, and walked down into the gloom; something about the dark and the smell of old blood comforted Bezcavar. In the corner, three children whose names Ip did not know were playing a game with stone markers. As she watched, one of them obviously lost, skimming his stone off into a dusty corner, and the other children merrily punched him on the arm, hard enough for Ip to see tears start in his eyes. That’s the thing with children, thought Bezcavar, watching as the older two found that the game of beating the loser was more fun than the game of stone markers, they are so open to the idea of cruelty they barely even have to think about it.

  Standing apart from them in the shadows, Ip’s face split into its first genuine smile since Joah had vanished.

  Little demons, every one.

  45

  ‘Let me see her!’

  Frith barged Sebastian aside, and he was still strong, despite how ill he looked. Sebastian drew away. Wydrin was lying on a pile of blankets they’d thrown down, her eyes shut, her hands open with the palms facing up. Always pale, now she was a sister to the snows that lay about them. Every freckle stood out on her face with alarming clarity.

  ‘Fetch me my silks. Now.’ Frith glared at them all, his grey eyes fierce. ‘You must have some left?’

  Sebastian, glad for his hands to be doing something, rummaged through one of their bags until he came up with a handful of long fabric strips, all inked with mages’ words. Frith snatched them from him, dumping all but one on the ground. Mendrick stood facing them, his stone body utterly still. Prince Dallen cleared his throat.

  ‘My friend, I am sorry, but surely—’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Frith. He tied the remaining strip around his hand and immediately a warm orb of pink light grew from the centre of his palm. Laying his hands on her chest, the pink light grew, flowing around her body like thick honey.

  ‘She’s not breathing,’ said Nuava in a low voice. ‘I’ve checked. Her blood is still.’

  Frith ignored them all. The light grew stronger, until the hill was bathed in rosy light. Wydrin did not move.

  ‘Come on,’ muttered Frith. He was shaking with the effort of it now, the first droplets of sweat forming on his forehead. In the strange pink light his eyes were lost in hollows of shadow. ‘Wydrin, please. Come on.’

  Sebastian knelt back down and placed a hand on her forehead, pushing her hair back from her brow. Her eyelids did not so much as flicker.

  ‘Frith,’ he said, hating himself for speaking, hating himself for saying anything at all. ‘Frith, I don’t think—’

  ‘Shut up.’ The pink light blazed with sudden brilliance, a strange grapefruit sun in the middle of that cold place, before suddenly winking out and throwing them back into the gloom. Frith fell backwards, gasping and trembling.

  Wydrin lay utterly still.

  ‘Frith, I don’t think there’s anything we can do,’ said Sebastian. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No,’ said Frith, and now his voice was a broken croak. ‘I won’t allow it, I won’t.’

  ‘Look at that.’ Nuava came over and knelt on the blankets next to Wydrin. She took one of Wydrin’s cold hands in her own and held it up to them. The chip of green Heart-Stone in the palm of her hand was glowing, on and off, like a heartbeat. ‘I’ve never seen one do that before. What do you suppose it means?’

  Sebastian looked over to Mendrick, who was still standing without moving, his green eyes apparently fixed on Wydrin’s inert form.

  ‘I think it means that there’s nothing we can do.’

  Wydrin opened her eyes. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

  She found herself lying on her side, her limbs curled up as though she were trying to deflect a blow. Around her there was a grey darkness, and underneath, a shining web of green light, shifting and trembling. It was holding her up, she realised. Without it she’d be lost in the void.

  ‘Mendrick? Are you there?’

  ‘I am.’ His voice was faint, but all around her.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘You are dying, I believe,’ he said, in his utterly calm voice. ‘But I caught you before you went. The thread between us wasn’t completely severed.’

  ‘Oh.’ She tried to move, and the web shivered alarmingly. She felt very weak. ‘Well, thanks for that. Now what?’

  ‘You must decide if you wish to go back,’ he said. ‘You must decide if you have the will to go on living, or—’

  ‘Of course I bloody do!’ Wydrin tried to sit up again and the net of green lights swung and pulsed. ‘What sort of bloody question is that?’

  There was a moment’s silence from Mendrick. Wydrin pressed her fingers against one of the strands of light, watching as it shone through her palm, revealing the bones inside. She tried not to think about the yawning darkness below the web.

  ‘Humans are so concerned with moving about and living,’ Mendrick said dryly. ‘I am not sure I understand it. Everything comes to the same end, eventually.’

  ‘Yes, but not right now. I have things to do.’

  ‘In that case, I will push you back,’ said Mendrick. ‘Be ready.’

  It was like being thrown into the ocean fully clothed. The shock of the cold air and the warmth of her own body hit her all at once and Wydrin jerked violently, gasping for air. The small group of people all gathered round her cried out as one, and then there was a lot of shouting from Sebastian.

  ‘By Isu! Give her some space, get back!’ Completely ignoring his own advice he knelt in the snow and grabbed her, squeezing her into a backbreaking bear hug. ‘Wydrin, you’re alive!’

  She smacked him weakly on the back. Behind him Nuava and Dallen stood together, joint grins on their faces, while Frith knelt in the snow next to her, his eyes wide with shock.

  ‘I’m alive all right, although you’re squeezing it back out of me, you big idiot.’

  Sebastian held her at arm’s length. ‘How do you feel? What hurts? Are you warm enough?’

  ‘I feel quite good considering how dead I was a moment ago, and my head hurts like a bastard, and I’m freezing bloody cold. What happened to Joah?’

  ‘The mage fled,’ said Dallen, ‘in some sort of infernal machine. He still has the Heart-Stone.’

  ‘He struck you with a bolt of lightning,’ said Frith. She turned to him and was alarmed to see that he looked even worse than he had in Joah’s Forge; his cheeks looked hollowed out and his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. He also appeared to be shaking slightly. ‘It must have stopped your heart. I couldn’t – I couldn’t bring you back.’

  Wydrin glanced over to where the werken stood.

  ‘My link to Mendrick saved me. It stopped me from falling.’

  There were a few moments of silence. Wydrin saw the confusion on every face and sighed inwardly; there was no easy way to explain such things.

  ‘How is that possible?’ asked Nuava. ‘We’ve never noticed such a benefit before.’

  ‘Wydrin’s link to the mountain-spirit is very deep,’ said Prince Dalle
n. He looked pointedly at Nuava. ‘I strengthened the link myself, in order to prove that the being you call a werken was a thinking, feeling entity. It appears this link prevented Wydrin’s soul from leaving her body.’

  ‘Never mind all that now,’ said Wydrin. She tried to sit up. ‘We have to get after that bastard, before he does any more damage.’

  Sebastian laid a heavy hand on her arm. ‘There is a lot we have to talk about. We need to hear from Frith about what exactly Joah has been up to all this time, and you need to eat something and have a rest.’ He glanced at the young lord. ‘You both need some food and rest.’

  Later, when all the talking was done and Frith could barely see through his headache, he excused himself from the campfire and walked some distance away, trying to ignore how the cold wind cut through him like a fine blade. He walked until he found a likely spot and then, using the word for Force, focussed down to a blunt shape, he dug a shallow grave before wrapping the body of Gwiddion in a piece of his own cloak. He held it for a moment; it felt so light, like it was made of air and feathers. It hardly seemed possible that the griffin had once carried them across oceans: ever fleet, never tiring.

  Wydrin appeared out of the evening’s darkness; she was as quiet as a cat when she wanted to be. He looked up at her.

  ‘I cannot just keep him in my pocket.’

  Wydrin nodded, and knelt beside him. They sat in silence for a few moments.

  ‘He was a good griffin,’ she said. ‘I mean, not that I knew that many, obviously.’ She cleared her throat. ‘He always smelt . . . he always had this particular smell. Like flowers from far away, and the sea.’

  Frith placed the pitifully small bundle into the hole, and covered it over with dirt.

  ‘Here.’ Wydrin reached behind her and plucked a jagged piece of rock out of the snow. She placed it carefully on top of Gwiddion’s makeshift grave. ‘At least we’ll know he’s here.’