Iron Angel

by Alan Campbell

  At a second horn blast from beyond the gorge, Harper heard the hiss and squeal of the Eleanor’s brakes. Carriage linkages compressed beneath her, then took up the strain again with a series of clanking jolts. The mist pumps exhaled, turning the air momentarily red and coating the surrounding rocks. The rhythm of the train’s pistons slowed. Through the billowing smoke ahead, Harper glimpsed the walls of a keep rising above a slope of black mud and quarried rocks. Flanked by two musketeers, a Company signalman stood behind the parapet on the roof of the building, waving a red flag.

  The railway line branched here. The old line turned east and followed a sloping shelf cut from the rock of the Moine Massif, a gradual descent that took it down to the abandoned village of Larnaig at the water’s edge four hundred feet below. The new line was much shorter, and more dangerous.

  Harper couldn’t drag her gaze from the red flag, which struck her as some dim portent of doom. They had a saboteur and a murderer aboard. Wouldn’t the perilous descent to Lake Larnaig provide the perfect moment for foul play? Harper studied the passengers carefully, searching for any emotion or expression which might betray a hidden agenda.

  She saw nothing suspicious.

  While the murderer was most likely to be one of Menoa’s own ambassadors, the saboteur need not be a passenger at all. She glanced back along the train. Stewards were busy inside each of the carriages, wrapping up loose and breakable items and stowing them away in preparation for the descent. The vague shapes moving inside the frost-walled accommodation cars would be more staff, performing this same task with the passengers’ belongings.

  Finally the train huffed free of the ravine and out into the base of a quarry abutting the northern edge of the Moine Massif. Here the railway line which had brought them all the way from Cog Terminus finally came to an end, halted by a precipitous drop of four hundred feet down to Lake Larnaig itself. Crescent cliffs of ochre rock formed a basin between the slopes of Ialar Moor on one side and an ancient Arnic burial site in the shadow of Rael Canna Moor on the other. The unremarkable keep Harper had glimpsed earlier squatted to the left of the tracks among slopes of weatherworn scree, mud, and great wet mounds of anthracite. Opposite this, the flooded imprints of boots marked paths between hummocks of crushed limestone and shale, and sumps where old steam-diggers had been left to corrode in pools of orange rainwater.

  The last excavations undertaken here had undermined the burial site itself, exposing the tunnels and chambers the ancients had burrowed in the clay subsoil. Someone had even packed these openings with lime to discourage Non Morai from gathering where the dead had once lain. Harper wondered vaguely what the workers had done with the bodies they’d unearthed. The remains of four cairns squatted above the cliffs, the tumbled mounds of stone patched with white lichen.

  Ahead, the smoke cleared to reveal the end of the railway line. The Larnaig Ferry had already built up a head of steam; her funnels were pumping cords of white and grey smoke into the clouds. A pre-revolution eight-decked paddle steamer, the Sally Broom was a hulk of sepulchral metals. Ornate steel passenger decks clung to her superstructure like drapes of cobwebs, all lit by yellow oil lanterns which shuddered to the thump-thump-thump of her engines. Ten or so of her crewmen were busy at winches, lowering a wide gangway in the vessel’s stern which led into her hold. Chains rattled, and then the gangway boomed down, slamming neatly into an indentation in the quarry floor. The steel tracks now led all the way into the ferry’s hold—a cavernous space large enough to swallow The Pride of Eleanor Damask and all of her carriages.

  Harper’s gaze traveled out beyond the lip of the quarry to where the bulk of the old steamship appeared to float, impossibly, in open air four hundred feet above Lake Larnaig, and it took her several moments before she was able to reconcile her preconceptions of the landscape with the sight of the four enormous skeletal fingers gripping the hull.

  The arconite held the steamship in one bony hand, her stern pressed against the uppermost edge of the cliff.

  With its feet lost somewhere in the swollen lake four hundred feet below and its skull hovering like a moon in the gauzy sky, the bone-and-metal colossus remained completely motionless, hunched low over the lip of the Moine Massif as though it had rusted solid while inspecting the connections between the railway line crossing the quarry floor and the steamship it held in its skeletal grip. Grease glistened on the cogs and pistons visible between its knuckles and on the many shafts and hydraulic rams in its forearms and spine. Countless souls swam in its chemically altered blood. It had two engines: one, the size of a locomotive shed, occupied its skull and controlled the movement between vertebrae and hence the flex of the spine; the second, much larger engine was housed within the ribcage and gave power to the automaton’s reinforced limbs. It had wings in proportion to its torso, yet they were tattered and useless, as thin as the clouds that now enveloped them.

  There was a collected intake of breath from the passengers, and then Jones said, “Good grief.” The old reservist had taken an abrupt step back. “Up close it’s so…” he shook his open brolly at the sky, “…big.”

  “The automaton is modeled on the form of the controlling soul,” Harper explained. “It’s less stressful for a spirit to accept a form it considers natural. Its size was merely dictated by what was possible. The larger the arconite, the more damage it can cause.”

  “You mean this machine was once an angel?” Jones asked.

  She nodded. “Dill was one of the guardians of Ulcis’s temple in Deepgate. We caught him in Hell.”

  “Dill?” Jones laughed uneasily. “It suits him, I suppose.”

  A horn sounded inside the easternmost keep, drowning out the passengers’ chatter. The signalman on the roof of the building lowered his red flag below the level of the parapet and The Pride of Eleanor Damask shuddered to a halt. Steam hissed from brake-piston pressure valves beneath her carriages.

  “…until recently,” Carrick was answering a question from one of the group. “And yet the king thought this way would be smoother. He feared the constant movement would shake the ship too much and damage our captives. It’s only a short distance across the lake to Coreollis.”

  “It’s hideous for a reason,” Edith whispered to one of her companions. “To strike terror into Rys’s Northmen.” She waited until the other lady nodded, before adding, “The king told me he might make more if this one is successful.”

  Harper said nothing. King Menoa had already constructed twelve other arconites. All he required now was enough blood to release them from Hell.

  Carrick grinned. “Even the gods cannot match our strength,” he said. “With warriors like this, Pandemeria will become the dominant world force. Menoa has given us a future.”

  A laugh from down in the quarry distracted Harper. The train driver had hopped down from the engine and was now chatting amicably with two Company officiators in slate-grey uniforms who had strolled out from the keep to meet him. One of these men had apparently made a joke. After the officiators’ release forms had been completed to their satisfaction, the driver tipped his cap to each of the two others in turn and then climbed back aboard the train. At a wave from one of the uniformed men, the signalman on the keep raised his red flag again. The Pride of Eleanor Damask jolted, and then huffed forward, closer to the edge of the cliff where the Larnaig steamer waited in its cradle of bones.

  Harper gazed up at the arconite as the train inched along. Rain slicked the broad expanse of cranium and dripped from ridges in the guano-spattered skull. The eye sockets were deep caves full of wheeling gulls and dark machinery. Hydraulic tubing veined naked bones everywhere, while metal vats, valves, ramrods, and camshafts, all slick with black grease, crowded within the chest cavity.

  A rumble shook the carriages. The glass train began to inch across the iron gangway into the hold of the Sally Broom.

  “Condensers,” the driver shouted from the engine cab.

  A locomotion engineer threw a switch on the control panel besi
de the driver, turning on the Eleanor’s condenser pumps. A furious clattering came from the train’s engine; the clouds of steam above her stack dwindled to a wisp.

  “We’re rerouting the exhaust,” Carrick explained to the passengers, “and condensing the steam back into water.”

  “It’s very noisy,” Edith complained.

  “True,” the chief admitted, “but preferable to venting so much hot vapor into an enclosed space. The mine trains in Moine and Cog use the same system.”

  The arconite did not move as the locomotive, the tender, and then the leading carriages were swallowed by the steamship’s cavernous hold. Three of the ship’s crew appeared on the gangway, bending low to check the steel links where the sections of the Cog railway joined those of the Sally Broom’s deck. A dank, rusty darkness engulfed the passengers as the Eleanor rumbled further inside the vessel. The sound of the condensers became louder, rattling between bulkheads.

  “Oh, this is awful.” Edith’s exclamation had a hollow ring to it. “How are we supposed to see anything at all? There aren’t any windows!”

  Carrick had to raise his voice above the booming engines and the clacking of the condenser pumps. “We’ll alight as soon as the train is fully aboard. The ship has a splendid observation deck, for which the cooks have prepared a buffet lunch.”

  “It doesn’t look very splendid from here,” Edith retorted, sweeping an angry gaze across the orange puddles on the floor. “I don’t want to spoil my dress.”

  “I’ll stay here with you.” Isaac Pilby thrust out his chest and gripped the hilt of his sheathed sword. “We can avail ourselves of the Eleanor’s dining car.”

  “You shouldn’t even be here!” Edith cried. “And if you’re staying, I’m going.” She spun on her heel and stomped away across the glass carriage roof towards the stairwell.

  “I rather think you put your foot in it, old boy,” Jones muttered to Pilby.

  The lepidopterist gave the old man a withering smile, yet Harper thought she saw an odd hint of satisfaction in this expression. Had the little man wanted to stay here alone?

  When the hunting platform at the very rear of the train was finally aboard, the driver eased the locomotive to a stop. The Eleanor’s kitchen staff disembarked first. Guided by another two of the Sally’s crew, they carried oil lanterns and wicker hampers out across the hold towards a stairwell that would take them to the upper decks. Stewards mustered all of the passengers except Pilby—who had elected to stay—and then wasted no time herding everybody off in the wake of the picnic baskets. Harper refilled her bulb, then hopped down from the carriage as more men ran back to raise the ship’s gangway and to chain the train’s wheels and axles to steel hoops in the deck.

  The low drone of engines followed the guests up a carpeted stairwell, past boiler and crew decks. They emerged into a bright, if somewhat musty, saloon. The Eleanor’s stewards were already unpacking the buffet onto long tables set beneath the lines of portholes on either side of the spacious room. Orange flames puttered in the gasoliers overhead, casting a rich light over the tarred bulkheads and threadbare carpet. Hatches to port and starboard opened onto narrow grey metal passenger decks and the mist-heavy skies beyond, while a set of double doors in the bow had been flung open, giving access to a wide, wooden hurricane deck. The scent of freshly baked bread from the lunch tables mingled with the odor of burning coal.

  Harper wandered outside and peered over the hurricane-deck balustrade. Clouds of smoke from the Sally’s funnels blew across the edge of the Moine Massif, enveloping the arconite’s forearm up to its elbow. The engineer spied intricate patterns of loops and whorls etched into the massive bones—similar to those found on Ayen’s old construction machines. Seen to the starboard side of the steamship, a mass of heavy machinery filled the skeleton’s ribs. At its heart, a dull red light glowed.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Carrick called from the saloon, “if you will follow me outside, we’ll have a better view of the spectacle.”

  The passengers assembled on the deck behind her, but Harper didn’t turn away from the view. From this vantage point she could look far out across Lake Larnaig. Shafts of sunlight pierced the clouds in the west and dappled the silver waters far below. She leaned out and looked straight down the side of the steamer’s hull. Four hundred feet below, the waters had risen above the old mine depot at the base of the plateau. A stone quay with its cranes and mooring stanchions was dimly visible under the surface of the lake and clustered around the huge feet of the arconite lay a great red-brown heap of sunken ships and steam locomotives.

  “Carrick,” she muttered, “what are those?”

  The chief responded with an angry hiss, “Don’t make a fuss about them.”

  “I’m not making a fuss. I’d like to know why there’s a pile of wrecked ships and trains clustered around the arconite’s feet.” She counted the hulls of five vessels and as many locomotives lying half buried in the silt at the bottom of the lake. In each case, a section of the sunken trains had remained partially inside the hold of one of the ships, having apparently spilled out of it. “And I’d like to know why two—no, three—of the ships down there have the name Sally Broom painted on their hulls. I was under the impression that this was the only vessel to bear that name.”

  “I’m rather curious about that, too,” Jones murmured. The old reservist had joined them and now stood beside Harper with his hand resting lightly on the grip of his rapier. He was peering intently down at the submerged hulks. “Those steamers look badly damaged. One might assume that they’d been dropped from a great height.”

  “No,” Carrick began, “I can assure—”

  “What’s that, old boy?” Ersimmin now wandered over to stand beside Jones. He looked down. “Oh, my!” he exclaimed. “That’s rather unnerving, isn’t it? You know, I did hear a rumor that another arconite had been constructed before this one.”

  “The Skirl demon,” Jones confirmed. “I don’t think it was an arconite, though. Nobody in the Liaison Centre will talk about it.”

  Carrick shifted uncomfortably. “There’s no truth to those rumors.”

  “What have you boys spotted now?” Edith Bainbridge’s frock rustled across the hurricane deck. She peered down and frowned. “What are those?”

  The chief tried to guide her away, but she resisted, an expression of distrust now forming on her thin face.

  “Sunken ships,” Ersimmin said, “and locomotives.”

  “Ships?” Edith was still frowning down at the wreckage. “Why would so many ships sink there? Is there a reef?”

  Ersimmin chuckled. “No doubt that’s it, Edith.”

  “The stewards are now ready to serve,” Carrick announced.

  But Edith Bainbridge, whose mind had finally grasped the implications of the scene below her, suddenly shrieked, “Good grief! Stop the descent, stop the descent!” She reeled, turning the full extent of her wrath on Carrick. “What in the name of Cog’s dungeons do you mean to do to us? Kill us all? Open the doors, I’m getting off this ship right now!”

  The other guests rushed over.

  “Miss Bainbridge,” Carrick said. “There were some initial…teething problems with an earlier automation. But I can assure you that these have now been fixed. There’s really no danger at all.”

  “So there was an arconite at Skirl,” Jones muttered to Ersimmin.

  “And it would seem to have passed this way,” the pianist replied.

  Edith stabbed a gloved finger at him. “Those are not teething problems…” Her shrill voice rose above the sound of the steamer’s engines. “That is a graveyard, and I am getting off before this vessel ends up down there, too.”

  At that moment a horn blared in the quarry behind them and, after a heartbeat, was answered by a blast from the Sally’s own foghorn. Harper felt a shudder run through the hurricane deck and looked up to see a forest of piston shafts and wheels turning inside the arconite’s ribcage. Gulls scattered, screaming, around the huge machi
ne. The red light at the heart of the engines darkened, and started to pulse.

  And the bone and metal automaton raised its vast grinning skull above the quarry and straightened its spine. Its thin wings unfolded, extended, and cut through the clouds, shedding sheets of water. The steamship trembled again, then lurched. Harper sensed her Locator murmuring against her hip. She slipped the device from its holster, wound it quickly, and studied the wavering needle for a moment before relaxing. She had registered nothing more than a surge of power from the fragment of Iril inside the arconite’s heart.

  The sound of metal scraping on rock came from the rear of the Sally Broom, followed by the shouts of men:

  “Lines clear!”

  “Raise the gangway.”

  Chains rattled; the steamship trembled. The huge engine inside the arconite’s ribcage was churning furiously now, pumping chemically altered blood through its metal veins. Its heart-light throbbed, brighter and faster. Dark walls of gears chattered. Piston shafts moved in its arms; camshafts turned, quickening. A mighty hiss came from the skull, and Harper felt the air stir. She clutched the rail of the hurricane deck.

  In one monstrous hand, the arconite lifted the steamship—locomotive, passengers, and all—away from the edge of the Moine Massif plateau and out into the open air.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Carrick shouted over the clamour of working metal, “let us return inside where we can enjoy the descent in comfort.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Jones exclaimed. “This is too good a sight to watch through any porthole windows.”

  The ship lurched violently and then halted. Her funnels gave a massive groan as they strained against the body of the ship. Harper stumbled, but the old reservist grabbed her. “Our gigantic friend needs to learn gentleness,” Jones remarked. “Another movement like that could break this vessel in two.”

  She caught her breath. “I hope that didn’t shatter some of the more fragile glass inside.”