Iron Angel

by Alan Campbell

  A door to Hell lay deep in the abyss below this very city, in the darkness below Ulcis’s palace. The god of chains had warned her of its existence. The things down there would tear you to pieces, he’d said. Had last night’s phantasms found a way through this door? Were they refugees driven from the Maze?

  Or advance scouts?

  Rachel shuddered. The gloom down there was as darkly crimson as a well of blood. They are making demons for the war to come, Dill had said in the temple antechamber. A red veil heralds their coming.

  A sudden, loud creaking sound came from behind her and, with a pang of dread, Rachel turned away from the window. A thin crack had appeared along the interior wall of her cell, just an inch above the edge of the floor, and now five yards long.

  Shit.

  The spire was clearly breaking up.

  A tremor convulsed the room. Broken furniture shifted, settling deeper into the sunken floor that had formerly been a ceiling. The crack widened suddenly to the width of a finger, and shot through another five yards of stonework, instantly doubling in length. Now it stretched along two of the walls.

  Rachel gazed in horror.

  So this is how it was to end for her? She would return to the abyss after all: one more skeleton on Ulcis’s mountain of bones. And Dill, up in the cell above, would join her soon. A profound sense of melancholy struck her. The young angel had never shown signs of growing weary of her failure. But now? How could he forgive her now? She buried her head in her hands, exhausted.

  And she waited.

  Another rumble. The crack opened another inch, tracing a jagged line on a third wall as the mortar between its stonework split.

  A sudden anger gripped Rachel. She rose and jumped up and down on the floor, stamping her weight down, kicking the now useless pile of smashed furniture to one side. Why shouldn’t it be over now? Why did she have to sit here and patiently wait for the end to come? Could she not at least be in charge of her own destiny?

  Rachel picked up the chair leg she’d set aside in readiness and smashed it hard against the floor. Then she deliberately drove it deeply into the widest part of the crack, trying to prise the gap further apart. Nothing happened, however; the hanging tower would split under its own weight or not. Her efforts made no difference.

  Suddenly she paused, breathing heavily, still staring at the piece of wood in her fist. Then she looked at the mound of debris…at the tapestries, at the broken furniture, and the heavy iron chandelier.

  Gods below! How stupid I’ve been!

  Rachel moved quickly. She snatched up a corner of the nearest tapestry and dragged it clear of the pile. About two yards wide and twice as long, it depicted a battle scene of archons and heathens, like most of the others in the temple. The cloth was ancient; the weave thin, frayed, and undoubtedly priceless. Good. Next she pulled out pieces of furniture, jagged panels, drawers, part of a bed, a chair back curved like a lute, kicking most of this stuff aside. She needed something to use as a grapple.

  The sound of rending stone drove her to greater urgency. Along the wall, the crack had widened again.

  The chandelier! She grabbed at it and pulled, but it was secured to the floor by a yard of stout chain. She heaved, then let it drop again when it refused to budge. No time to mess with it. With the stout wooden leg in one hand, the U-shaped chair back in the other, and one end of the tapestry bundled under her elbow, she rushed to the inside corner of the room, beneath the erstwhile door. She wedged the chair leg between the rough cornerstones where the two walls met, four feet above the crack and the same distance below the door, then stepped back and kicked it securely into place. Then she pulled down on it, testing this makeshift perch with her weight. It moved a little, settling into the rough stonework on either side, then held firmly.

  Another crack. The gap now traced a line around all four walls. At its narrowest, it was as thin as a hair, but closer to the window it was large enough to push a fist inside. The floor could fall away at any moment.

  Rachel hooked the chair back over her wooden perch, then, still holding on to the tapestry, hopped up beside it. She still had to fashion a rope, but reasoned that it was better to undertake that task while sitting safely above the disintegrating floor.

  The weave parted with disturbing ease. It was almost rotten. Rachel considered fetching another tapestry—there were two more that she could see—but then rejected that idea. The floor had already become too dangerous to risk setting foot upon again. She’d have to make do with what she had. She separated the cloth into six long strips which she then draped over her makeshift seat for fear of losing them. Next she plaited two lengths of rope from three strands each, tied them together, and then bound one end to the curved chair back and the other to her perch. This would give her a long enough line to swing beneath the wall once the floor fell away. With a bit of luck she could then snag one of the stairwell wall sconces on the opposite side and pull herself up.

  Until then all she could do was wait.

  So she held the rope firmly, and waited.

  And waited.

  After several hours Rachel began to feel foolish. She eased herself forward, keeping most of her weight on the wooden perch, and pressed the toe of her foot gingerly against the floor. It felt solid, unyielding. Still gripping the rope, she carefully placed her other foot beside the first. Still no movement.

  She then gave the floor a gentle kick.

  Nothing alarming happened.

  So she slid fully down from her seat and stood there, clutching the rope.

  She jumped.

  And then leapt again, bringing all of her weight down to bear upon the floor. The sound of her wooden heels striking stone resounded through the chamber, before the room settled to silence again. Rachel sighed deeply. She tied the rope around herself and sat down on the floor. It was already becoming very gloomy outside.

  The Rookery Spire held together all afternoon. The crack in the wall did not lengthen and floor did not fall away from underneath the waiting assassin. She watched the red mist darken further outside the window. Somewhere overhead the sun would be dropping low in the sky, casting the shadow of the abyss’s rim over Deepgate. The ghosts would return soon, and now Rachel’s cell had a broken window.

  She tried calling out, but nobody came. So she watched the door and waited, flipping the glass-shard knife between her hands.

  Eventually, a key rattled in the lock.

  Rachel tensed. She’d have one chance at this. The Spine would be wearing leather armour, which might be enough to deflect or break her fragile blade. Better if she aimed for the neck. If she could sever the carotid artery, death would come quickly.

  The door opened.

  Rachel lifted her arm to throw, but stopped.

  A child stood in the doorway, a boy of about nine or ten, holding a water bladder. He was painfully thin and pale, dressed in a sleeveless brown jerkin and breeches, a cheap imitation of a Cutter’s training armour. His short red hair had been hacked roughly, probably with a knife, but it must have been beautiful once. Puncture marks and bruises marred his arms, evidence of Spine torture, and his eyes were as empty and haunted as any Adept’s. He hardly seemed to see her. They had tempered him.

  “You must not approach the door,” he announced in a high clear voice. “I will throw you the water, and you must catch it. If it bursts there will be no more water for you today.”

  Despair swamped Rachel. She had a clear shot at the boy’s neck. The glass blade remained steady in her hand. Yet she hesitated. A child? Had the visitor been an Adept or even a Cutter, it would already have been too late to make a throw. But this boy obviously lacked the training and reflexes to react to this situation. He had been ordered to deliver water, and instructed on what to say. All he could do was obey.

  “You must be ready to catch this,” he repeated, holding out the bladder.

  Rachel felt the weight of the glass blade in her hand. She knew the position of the artery in the child’s neck.
In her mind she watched herself throw the dagger, saw it flash across the room and bury itself into his flesh. She imagined the jetting blood, the wet, gurgling sounds he would make as he fell. It would be an easy throw, over in a heartbeat. Then she’d be free, and able to help Dill.

  The child had been tempered, hadn’t he? He was one of them.

  Rachel threw the knife.

  Dill had not slept. The phantom battle-archon had remained outside his window all night, tapping his cutlass against the glass. This simple persistence had evidently taken a lot out of the intruder, for his body had faded as the night wore on, becoming more gaseous and more insubstantial with each blow. When dawn finally came, the ghost had returned to the abyss, then little more than a shadow of his former self.

  But he had managed to make a crack in the window.

  Dill studied the broken pane for the hundredth time, and with mounting apprehension. Shades should not be able to affect the physical world around them, and certainly not the blessed glass that protected the Church of Ulcis. In fact, no spirit had damaged the temple in three thousand years. Yet this dead warrior had managed a remarkable feat, seemingly determined to reach Dill at any cost.

  But why?

  And there was something else worrisome. Of all the ghosts Dill had seen that night, this armoured phantom was the only one to have now returned to the abyss.

  Now Dill was exhausted, and the crimson mist outside was growing dark again. The chain-and-burr cuffs cramped and chafed his wings, sending jolts of pain through his shoulders whenever he moved. Broken feathers now covered the floor of the cell.

  Time passed, yet nobody came to check on him, or to bring him food or water. Once he thought he heard a child crying out somewhere below him, but it might just have been a rook squawking. He must have slept because it was suddenly much darker. The tall windows shone dully, bathing his cell in a queer red radiance. Outside, the ghosts were again rising from the abyss: more of them this time.

  And then the phantom archon returned.

  He floated outside Dill’s room, his huge wings entirely filling the window frame. His body was solid, more corporeal again, and his eyes gleamed with malice. He raised his cutlass before the cracked pane and struck it hard.

  The glass finally shattered.

  Dill instantly heard a howl, like a powerful gale. The archon’s form warped and faded until it became as thin as a plume of smoke. Curling and twisting, the smoke then began to flow through the broken window into the room. In a dozen heartbeats, the ghost had re-formed. His wings unfolded behind him, trailing wisps of red mist, and he stared down at the young angel with terrible eyes.

  “You should have opened the window,” he said in a voice like leaves blowing through a forest. “And that way saved us both some pain. This meeting has cost me dearly.”

  Dill did not realize he’d been backing away until own his wings brushed against the wall. He stammered, “Who are you?”

  The battle-archon’s eyes narrowed. “My name is Silister Trench,” he said. He exhaled slowly, releasing drifts of red smoke from his nostrils. “I am the champion of the First Citadel and commander of Hasp’s Archons.” He gave a small bow, and his hand settled on the hilt of his cutlass. “I am your great-grandfather’s great-grandfather, or something similar—the exact details of our family connection are not important. Needless to say, I am one of your ancestors, and your ancestors have need of you now.” He started towards the young angel. Crimson vapors rose wherever his boots touched the floor.

  “Wait,” Dill cried. “I don’t understand. Why…?”

  “I require your wings, your heart, and your blood,” Trench said. “My own form would soon fade under Ayen’s sun, and yet I have an urgent message to deliver to one in your world.” He held out his gaseous hands and peered through them at the other angel. “You see? This body is too insubstantial to survive here for long. It will only last long enough to provide a vessel to carry your own soul back to the Maze.”

  Dill glanced frantically about for escape. Grinning, the battle-archon bore down on him, his intangible armour wreathed in bloody vapor. There was nowhere to run to. The young angel dropped to his knees and cowered.

  “That’s it,” Trench said. “This will only hurt a little.”

  “A foolish and desperate maneuver.” The Adept peered over the lath of his crossbow, aiming the weighty stone tip of a bone-breaker at Rachel’s abdomen. “You might have killed the child.”

  Rachel looked up at him from the floor of her cell. “He moved at the wrong moment.”

  “Your skills have waned,” the other assassin remarked. “Any ordinary Cutter could have thrown the blade more accurately.”

  Her glass knife had caught the lad’s ear, grazing him just enough to draw blood. If the Adept had known that this was exactly Rachel’s intention, he might have been less dismissive of her skills. The boy had, of course, dropped the water bladder and run back to his masters. Subsequently, the Adept who’d brought her here had been forced to visit.

  “Why do you pretend you’ve been tempered?” Rachel asked. “Why keep up the facade?”

  “I do not pretend,” he snapped.

  She laughed. “Are you so afraid of the procedure?”

  “Be silent.”

  “I used to yearn for them to temper me,” she said, “but my brother wouldn’t sign the consent forms. He did this to hurt me. He knew I couldn’t cope with the strain of what my Spine masters expected me to do. I could never kill children. Yet you don’t seem to have a problem with morality, do you?” Suddenly she thought she understood him. “That’s why you don’t want them to temper you. The procedure would strip away your desires, deprive you of the joy you get from your work.”

  “My master died on the night he was due to temper me,” he said with a cruel smile. “Quite suddenly, and inexplicably. With all the recent confusion, the destruction of the city, nobody thought to confirm that he’d actually carried out the procedure.”

  “Bravo,” Rachel said. “It couldn’t have been easy to kill a Spine master.”

  The man inclined his head. “Over the years he had built up a resistance to every poison we stocked. I was forced to use less subtle methods.”

  “I’m impressed. What’s your name? It isn’t often I get to meet an Adept who actually remembers it.”

  “Culver.”

  “So, Culver, are you going to shoot me now, or take me away to be tempered?”

  He lowered his crossbow. “You’ll go under the needles eventually,” he said. “We need all the battle fodder we can get. Unfortunately we have rather a long backlog to work through.”

  “A shame,” she muttered, “because I’ll be dead by tomorrow.”

  Culver’s hard eyes narrowed. “Suicide is against Codex law. Any attempt would be punished by—”

  “By what? Death?”

  He did not answer.

  Rachel snorted. “Save your sermons. I’ve no intention of killing myself. Look over there, corpse face.” She gestured towards the broken pane, the glass she’d smashed to make her knives. Already there were ghosts rising through the dark red mist beyond. It would only be a matter of time until one of them noticed and came to investigate. “I’m afraid it broke,” she said. “Quite suddenly and inexplicably.”

  Culver cursed. “You stupid bitch. Did you want to get yourself possessed? The whole room will have to be blessed now.” He dragged a hand through his short hair, thinking for a moment, before he looked back at her. “Sod the waiting list,” he said. “We’ll temper you and the angel tonight.”

  The long slow death of the soul by torture. It was almost a relief.

  4

  A MAN WALKS INTO A BROTH SHOP

  FOG ALWAYS BROUGHT more victims to the Widow’s Hook. The damp grey air had filled the lanes around the broth shop for three days now, softening mud walls and wilting the eaves of gin dens and hovels until the whole neighborhood seemed about to sink back into the wet brown earth. In such weather newcomers easi
ly became lost in Sandport, and there had been no shortage of those recently: rich refugees who’d arrived by churchship after the chained city of Deepgate fell. Inevitably, some of these would wander into places they would have preferred to avoid. So when Jack Caulker heard the piper outside the Hook squawk out his warning medley, he leaned back on his stool, downed the last of his fishbeer, and gave the nod to Hammer Eric by the door.

  It seemed another stranger was about to venture inside.

  They had robbed and murdered nine so far—if you didn’t include the beggar woman, who’d had nothing worth selling but her long yellow hair—and dragged their bodies down to the river for the crabs to pick clean. And still the victims came. Few of Sandport’s barges or skiffs would risk sailing for Shale or Clune in this unholy murk, and so plenty of Deepgate’s merchants and nobles had been trapped here. So many had been turning up at the Widow’s Hook recently that Jack Caulker had been able to afford himself a room upstairs. Now he spent his nights in drunken stupor, swilling the finest fishbeers and raising a toast each time the fog bells rang out by the docks. By day he gorged himself on eel broth and chowder while he waited for the next job. He was growing fat around the waist and fatter in his purse. It was a nasty, immoral business, but somebody had to do it, and Caulker had paid the Hook’s proprietor a handsome sum to ensure that that somebody was him.

  He scraped his stool back, shared a grin with his accomplice, stood up, and froze on the spot—