God of Clocks (39 page)

Mina exchanged a glance with Rachel. Basilis curled around her foot and growled. Dill's body seemed to darken, but his eyes remained calm.

“One of you will kill me shortly,” Menoa said, “but I'll bear whoever does it no grudge. Tell me, Sabor, how many times has this moment happened?”

“You asked me the same question last time,” Sabor said.

“Forgive me if I'm a bore. Do you always reply?”

“This is the second time that I'm aware of, Alteus.”

“But this time is different, isn't it? I have allies here. Men from my own future.”

“From many futures.”

“Then ultimately all the gods fail?” His gaze fixed on Hasp for a long moment, before returning to Sabor. “Will you tell me—?”

“They're dead, Alteus. Your half brothers, Rys, Hafe, Mirith, Ulcis, and Cospinol, all dead.”

Menoa nodded. “I see. How dreary for you to have to keep explaining it all to me. These temporally removed agents of mine have proved enlightening, but they lack any real depth of knowledge.” His gaze returned to Hasp, who was standing directly behind the god of clocks. “Kill Sabor,” he said.

“Wait!” Sabor threw up his hands.

Hasp cried out in protest, but his sword swept upwards in one stroke with enormous strength behind it.

Dill leapt suddenly at Hasp, but his ghostly body passed straight through the Lord of the First Citadel without resistance. Bewildered, he wheeled back round just as Hasp's blade tore through Sabor's mail and into the flesh of his back.

The god of clocks started forward, as though he had been punched, his mail shirt hanging in bloody ribbons from his back. Pale-faced, he half turned towards his glass-skinned brother. Nobody moved. Even the traitor Garstone wore a look of shock.

Hasp next thrust the weapon into Sabor's neck.

The god of clocks fell.

Hasp was breathing hard, his broad chest rising and falling rapidly. His red eyes stared wildly out of his dirt-streaked face.

Menoa said, “Now kill the thaumaturge.”

Rachel had been waiting for this moment for three thousand years. She
focused.

The world around her slowed until even the light seemed to hesitate, pushing in vain against the motes of dust trapped in its rays. Her heart and lungs stopped. She saw Mina's brows rise a fraction, Hasp's feverish gaze swinging towards the thaumaturge. The hairs on Basilis's back moved slowly erect, even as his jaws twisted into a growl.

How to move Mina out of danger without breaking that glassy skin of hers?

Rachel considered Hasp. She could shatter his armour in an instant, trading the god's life for that of her friend. Or she could risk Mina while trying to save both of them…

A sliver of drool began to drip from Basilis's jaws. Could the Penny Devil act in time to save his mistress? Rachel didn't know the answer, and she didn't understand thaumaturgy enough to rely on it.

Hasp was slowly raising his sword.

Better to disarm him first and buy the others some time. Let Mina meanwhile conjure another one of her ghastly forests. Or Dill…?

Why had he not been able to possess Hasp?

Because Hasp was a god? Because he had already consumed so many souls during his long life? Or did his Mesmerist armour simply protect him from incorporeal attack? Rachel didn't know, but she couldn't count on her friend.

She walked forward and pressed the palms of her hands against the flat of the blade, steering it, pushing it gently sideways out of his fist. His grip was ferocious. Too much force and she would break his fingers.

She took her time.

Near the top of Hasp's swing, she managed to pry the sword free. The hilt moved outwards from his palm, and hung for a moment in the air.

Now Mina.

Basilis had coiled himself to pounce, and Mina was only now starting to flinch away from the anticipated blow. Hasp himself had yet to notice that his sword had left his fist.

Rachel turned and pushed Mina backwards, applying as much force as she dared. At normal speed, she hoped it would represent little more than a hard shove.

She turned back to Hasp.

His arm was still rising. The sword had begun to turn in the air. Rachel took the weapon firmly by its hilt and eased it back towards her, careful not to move so quickly as to break her own bones. She steered the blade past Mina's ear, turning it, and brought the edge of the blade across Oran's neck. The woodsman's carotid artery parted. Blood would flow in just moments.

But Rachel had another destination in mind for the sword. She had so little time available while
focused
that she couldn't afford to wait. She wrapped both hands around the weapon's hilt, now steering it past Menoa himself, and then clove it down through the thin wooden door beside him. The rope and planks gave way without any resistance. Pieces of the door began to slide to the ground.

Rachel pushed through the falling fragments, and stepped out into Heaven.

Anchor had brought Mr. D's customers, an entire city of them, to confront the Lord of the Maze. The city's buildings housed demons, and they shambled or crawled across the surface of Hell, consuming canal walls under their foundations and dislodging cornerstones from Menoa's own queer structures, causing them to howl.

The Riot Coast giant himself stood grinning upon the top of the long metal hull of Isla's subsurface vessel. Alice Harper had found a deck chair from somewhere, and now reclined in it, studying another one of her infernal Mesmerist devices and scanning the bottled soul she had taken from D's Emporium. Dozens more bottles rolled about inside an overturned cabinet they had found amongst the wreckage. They weren't as refined as the soulpearls Anchor was used to, but they were a hell of a lot better than nothing.

“Any luck?” Anchor said.

She made a noncommittal gesture. “He's intact and he's dreaming,” she said. “But I still need to find a host for him.”

“Is that the Ninth Citadel?” Isla asked excitedly, peering out from behind Harper's deck chair. “It's really big, isn't it?”

“Aye, I thought it might be,” Anchor replied. “Menoa strikes me as that sort of god.”

Isla wrinkled her nose in distaste.

All around the submarine rumbled the vessels of other demons who had collected souls for Mr. D. Harper had said that they were some of the oldest and most powerful creatures she'd ever scanned, but you wouldn't have thought it to look at them: wiry old men and carefree children, weak-eyed scholars and dizzy maidens, they seemed ill-equipped to take their ships to war. Anchor had protested, but Harper insisted on engaging their help. They were willing enough to fight, though, and Anchor couldn't deny them that right.

Mr. D's customers were another breed altogether. Demons grown fat from their years of trading at that strange emporium, these creatures wore castles like men wear clothes, towers and canting stacks of stone and glass of every shape. They had fashioned these environments for themselves from living memories, and now moved them by will alone. The ground shuddered wherever they passed. Icarates and Soul Collectors fled through the passageways ahead, many of them falling under a bow wave of rubble.

Anchor turned to Harper. “It would be good to have seen Hasp's castle here. Was it as grand as these?”

“Grander, and more dangerous,” the engineer replied. “He fled farther than anyone thought possible, and then turned the building against Menoa's hunters. I'd never seen anything like it.”

“Ha!” Anchor took another bottle from the cabinet, uncorked it, and drained its contents. The soul within the liquid soon took the edge off his appetite, restoring him to full vigour. He felt
strong
again.

“You shouldn't drink so much,” Isla said.

“I know that, lass.” He tossed the empty bottle away. “This is gut-rot.”

But it was strong gut-rot, and that's all that mattered to him right now.

The vanguard of this bizarre and rambling army smashed through yet another wall, the metal vessels ploughing into a compound full of dark barrow-shaped structures. Here the Icarates had mounted resistance.

Men in bronze plate armour threw spears up at the intruding constructs. Gladiators, they were, by the look of them, part flesh and part metal. Anchor had seen the arenas where Soul Collectors gathered. At a run, they broke around the
Princess,
looking for a weakness, a place to scale her smooth hull. The submarine slid ever forwards, tilting up over one of the barrows and then slamming down again. Harper's deck chair slid to one side, but she grabbed hold of the cabinet to stop herself from falling any further. Anchor took Isla's hand.

“I won't fall off,” she said.

“No, but I might.”

She grinned and held on to him more tightly.

“Here.” Harper handed one of her Mesmerist devices up to the big man. “I've adapted this Screamer to rattle Menoa's soul. He'll try to change you, and he'll succeed unless you're fast. You'll have less than a heartbeat to activate the thing. It should disrupt his concentration enough to let you get closer.”

“How long do I have?”

“I don't know. Moments only. But you won't surprise him twice.” She looked up, past him. “Iolites, John.”

A great flock of glass lizards flashed in the fierce red skies above. They were almost invisible: a swarm of scintillations—now like sunlight on a fast river, now like burning cannon powder—and Anchor heard the sudden crash of their wings.

Nearer than they look …

Anchor pushed Isla aside, and seized a crystal claw as one of the Iolites dived at his head. The winged lizard let out a shriek, a clash of chimes as it thrashed its wings against Anchor's shoulders. Anchor whirled the beast around his head and then threw it hard into the rest of the flock. Lights sparkled, and though he couldn't see individual creatures, he heard a smash as the Iolite he had hurled struck another. Fragments of glass showered the
Princess.

“John!”

Another of the winged demons was clawing at the harness on Anchor's back. The wood shuddered violently, but it was a construct of will and would not break while the big man remained alive inside.

Isla let out a wailing cry.

And then a sudden shriek pierced the musical tinkling of the Iolites' wings, followed by a concussion so intense that it compounded the air in Anchor's ears. Harper was holding up a second device, seemingly identical to the one she had given Anchor. Overhead, the Iolites shattered: Glass feathers exploded everywhere, catching the light from the red sun like puffs of blood.

“My other Screamer,” Harper said.

“One use only, eh?”

“No, but they take a few moments to recharge. Handy for Iolites and lesser constructs, but these won't put off Menoa's Icarates too much. The red priests will simply bend the Screamer's will to their own. The device then turns traitor and refuses to cooperate.”

“Give me my fists any time.” Still, he tucked the other Screamer into his wide belt, as a moment of freedom against the Lord of the Maze was better than nothing at all.

Their creaking, shambling revolution had reached the outskirts of what Anchor took to be the industrial quarters encircling the Ninth Citadel. Great hulking structures now loomed over Isla's metal ship. To the left and right the rest of the army continued to
rumble forward in a broad arc, punching through every obstacle in its path.

But here they met the bulk of Menoa's forces. Icarates and creatures of war waited in the flooded channels around the fortress itself. Thousands of humans, beasts, phantasms, and machines. And more…

Harper saw the red figures at that same moment: imitations of Cospinol's gallowsmen and slender angels. “Gods, John, we didn't account for this,” she said. “What the hell is the river doing
here
?”

“Protecting Father.” He drank another soul, threw the bottle away, and then slammed his palms together. “It is good for a better battle, yes?”

“They'll tear this ship to pieces.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than the king's creatures attacked. Icarates lashed whips that drove aurochs and human, shade, or demon warriors forward. Dogcatchers sniffed the air and gnashed their teeth, eager to be unleashed. The Non Morai had to be forced forward by their masters, but then howled through the air in a frenzied gale, their vapourous forms seen only when one did not look directly at them. The river men came more slowly, almost lethargically, loping through the shallow channels of their own god, red weapons and claws dripping.

Harper whispered orders to her Screamer.

Anchor grinned savagely. Then he ran forward along the
Princess's
hull and leapt down to meet his foes.

He landed up to his knees in the flooded thoroughfare and strode forward, pushing against the sucking mire. The Non Morai reached him first, screaming past on either side. Anchor flailed his fists at them, but struck nothing but air. The shades fell back, howling with manic laughter. When he looked at them directly, they vanished, only to gather again at the edges of his vision. Tall winged men with red smiles brushed their cold fingers against his arms, sending jolts of pain across his flesh.

“Damned things,” Anchor growled. “Like big wasps.”

He scooped up handfuls of the red water and threw it at the vapourous forms. It stuck to them like paint, revealing them wherever they hovered. He lunged, but they fluttered away in terror, no longer willing to engage with him. Whenever he met their eyes, they simply turned and fled.

The dogcatchers were more difficult to deter. A pack of these skinless demons came tearing down the channel towards him like wild beasts, their teeth snapping up at the dark giant. But these creatures were merely flesh and bone, or whatever passed for that here, and Anchor knew how to deal with them. He seized the first of them by its neck and broke it quickly, then hurled the corpse over the nearest wall. Another leapt at him, but met Anchor's fist. It dropped into the river with a splash, even as he tore the guts out of two more and turned in time to see the others loping away.

An armoured aurochs thundered towards him, a monstrous horned thing like the god of all bulls.