Iron Angel (10 page)

Caulker rose stiffly. “Indebted,” he said.

“Good. Yes, this is what I mean. But come; let’s talk more of this scarred angel and her companions. I will buy lunch: hearty food for sailors such as us. Crab salad, I think, with chowder and strong fishbeer.” He slapped his huge belly. “You can recommend a good quiet place? A nice broth shop where we can speak?”

The cutthroat thought of all those restaurants, taverns, and broth shops in the better part of town: the many establishments from which he’d been ejected for filching and cursing and fist-fighting over the years. And then he lifted his eyes from the giant, up the monstrous rope, past the seething red crabs and the climbing form of yet another dead assassin, to the creaking, gabbling wooden skyship which filled the heavens over Sandport.

“One or two places spring to mind,” he said.

7

THE WORST ASSASSIN

W
HO
ARE
YOU?” she asked.

The angel’s head lolled drunkenly, and Rachel was answered only with a mocking red grin. Dill had bitten his tongue during his torture. Except…this person wasn’t Dill, she reminded herself. He leered at her through the young angel’s eyes, but there was nothing in that savage expression which belonged to the friend she formerly knew.

Rachel blamed herself. She had given him angelwine, filled him with a cocktail of other souls which had now bubbled to the surface. But if Dill was still in there, she would pull him back.

“I asked you a question.”

The angel sniggered and spat a gob of blood on the floor. “I think I’m intoxicated by your beauty,” he slurred. “Or is it from the pain? I’ve not felt my nerves burn like this for a thousand years.” His tongue lolled over his teeth. “It’s quite something.” He tried to rise from the pallet, then collapsed back again.

“It’s the dogweed they’ve given you,” Rachel said. “Try to concentrate. Look at me. Who are you?”

“Who am I?” He fumbled for her breast, but she pushed him away. “Who am I, you ask? Gods…who
am
I? The scourge of every filthy Mesmerist? My message! Where am I?”

“You’re in a Spine torture cell in the temple. You’ve been drugged.”

“Ohhhhh…” He shook his head. “That means nothing to me. Come here, woman.” His bloody hands reached for her.

She slapped him away again.
This is useless
. She needed him lucid and able to walk without stumbling if they were going to get out of here alive. Rachel got up and went over to where the corpse of the Spine master lay crumpled against the wall. Most of the poisons in the old man’s apron had been smashed during their fight, but she still searched through them thoroughly. There had to be something she could use to bring the angel round. The Spine employed an extensive array of drugs during the tempering process, and not all of them were designed to disorientate and confuse the victim.

When she found the tiny green vial, she almost kissed it.

“Take this,” she said, trying to place the bottle in his hand. “Just a sip.”

He waved his arms wildly in protest, and then gave her another wet grin.

She hissed. “Open your mouth.”

“Open yours, sweetling.”

Rachel squeezed the angel’s jaw hard, forgetting for the moment that the jaw did not belong to the person in the cell with her, and tipped a little of the clear liquid down his throat.

“Rrrrrrr.” He screwed up his face and spat.

“There,” Rachel said. “Now we might be able to have a proper conversation.”

She could see the drug working. The angel convulsed once, then gagged, then he sat up. He stared hard at her for a few moments, his black eyes full of loathing, then said, “You’ll pay for that.”

“I rather think you’ll thank me for it. Who are you?”

“None of your damn business. Where is this place?”

“Answer my question and I’ll answer yours.”

He snorted, but then he noticed the five Spine corpses strewn around the chamber and stiffened. Now he glanced back at her, warily. “I am Silister Trench,” he said.

Trench? It was an unusual name. Rachel did not think she’d heard it in Deepgate before. “That’s a start,” she said. “There are a hundred things I need to ask you, Trench, but this is not the place to do it. I’ll make this simple: If you value that body you’re currently occupying as much as I do, then you’ll come with me now. There are more assassins in this place than I can count, and they all want to stick needles and other pieces of metal into you.”

“And who are you?” he asked.

“I’m the worst of them.”

Leaving the temple was surprisingly easy. There were so many newly tempered acolytes that none of them had yet learned who anybody else was. In the Spine leathers she stole from a supply room, Rachel looked like any other Adept. She was allowed to pass unchallenged. A cassock she snatched from one of the old priests’ quarters served to cover the angel’s blood-caked wings and his disfigured hands. No one thought to question an Adept leading a hunchbacked old priest out into the city. Of late the Spine had taken to traveling with priests for holy protection at night.

Dusk was barely upon them, but the roiling smoke clouds overhead brought darkness early to Deepgate. Rachel hesitated at the temple exit. The sky fumed black and crimson, and she could see yellow and green chemical fires burning in the east, sending torrents of silver sparks up from the Scythe. The sound of explosions rumbled over the city. Red mist veiled the ruins of Bridgeview and Lilley, and shadows moved silently among the chains.

The consciousness inside Dill tried to move the young angel’s wings, and let out a gasp of agony. “My flesh is bruised and raw,” he complained. “My wings…Your ignorant assassins have damaged me.” The Spine chain-and-burr cuffs had bitten deeply into the muscles and tendons behind his shoulders.

“They’re not your wings,” Rachel muttered as she stared at the burning city. Deepgate teemed with ghosts from the abyss, countless thousands of them. Shades capered among the twisted metal and rubble like wisps of living darkness. She half heard sighs and shouts and cruel laughter: intangible voices hiding among the crack and rumble of stone, the creaking chains, and the roaring fires. Would that she had a real priest with her now. A holy man might keep Iril’s shades at bay, protect them against the madness of the abyss. These phantasms would cajole and torment them.

And worse?

If she believed the priests’ tales, then yes—much worse. The Church of Ulcis had gone to great lengths to protect Deepgate against Iril’s influence. Yet here it was in the streets before her, undiluted and dangerous.

She could turn around and go back into the temple, a crumbling hive full of Spine assassins who might well have discovered her escape by now, or she could set off into that uncertainty stretching before her.

“Let’s go,” she said.

8

TO ASK A GOD ONE QUESTION

G
ULLIVER FANK, PROPRIETOR and pot boss of the Canny Crab in Red Menace Street, seemed decidedly reluctant to admit Anchor and Caulker into his establishment.

“You have no tables?” the cutthroat asked again. “None at all? Looks quiet enough inside.”

Fank stood and fidgeted in the doorway of his shop. A rangy old man with a loose neck and spotted hands, he worried a wooden ladle with a cloth while he spoke. “Alas, no,” he said. “Fully reserved this morning, sirs. It’s the fog, I suppose.”

Caulker raised an eyebrow. “The fog?”

Fank shrugged. He seemed determined to avoid looking at John Anchor, or at the massive rope which struck skywards from the big man’s harness. “The fog always brings more customers. You know how it is…the sailors don’t sail, civilian airships stay grounded. Everyone’s stuck in town, so our business picks up.”

“Well they ain’t stuck in your place,” Caulker persisted, peering over the other man’s shoulder at the empty tables and chairs. He was enjoying this. That bastard Fank had thrown him out on his arse on more than one occasion and banned him the last time. All for pilfering a copper double tip from one of his tables. “We could take a seat and move if anybody turns up,” he said amiably.

Fank failed to suppress a wince. “I really am most terribly sorry, sirs. It is simply not possible.”

Anchor stood behind the cutthroat with his huge arms folded across his harness and a wide grin on his face. His eyes gleamed with mischief. “Always this same problem for me,” he boomed. “Never can find a table in good broth shops. It is my colour, yes? You don’t like the dark skin?”

“Gods, no,” Fank said quickly. “It’s not that at all.” He rubbed briskly at his ladle, still avoiding the other man’s eye. “We have a…uh, policy regarding patrons bringing rope inside the shop.”

“Ah!” Anchor cried.

“Rope?” Caulker asked. “Since when did you have a policy about rope?”

“Since this morning,” Fank admitted.

The giant smacked his hands together. “No matter,” he said. “Bring a table outside. We will sit in the lane. Two bowls of chowder, hot beans and bread, crab salad, cold fishbeers.”

Fank glanced up into the heavens, then seemed to shrink. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Chowder, beans, bread, and…yes, of course.”

Once the cutthroat and his guest had installed themselves at the hastily positioned table and had taken their first sips of fishbeer, Anchor said, “Now, my friend. You are telling me the scarred angel did not ever arrive in this town?”

“People would have noticed,” Caulker said evenly. “Not much goes on in Sandport without the whole town finding out about it. When any decent-looking woman turns up, they post a notice on the board outside the Mudlark. And you’re talking about an angel here, a witch who drinks the blood of innocents at darkmoon. Trust me, tongues would wag.

“But she can’t be far away. The Spine caught Carnival’s two friends in Olirind Meer’s Tavern not long ago, the same pair who originally left Deepgate with her. A temple warship destroyed half the building with a gas bomb to get to them.”

“These friends…Where are they now?”

“The Spine took them back to Deepgate for tempering. They’ll be locked in a temple torture cell by now.”

“Deepgate?” Anchor beamed. “I had planned to make visit there also. There is a small thing I must do there for Cospinol. We go to the chained city and speak to Carnival’s two friends. Maybe they know where she is hiding.”

Caulker hesitated. He didn’t want to march into Deepgate if he could help it, not with all those poison fires burning out of control and the Spine rounding everybody up for tempering—not to mention all those ghosts which had taken to haunting the place at night. It would be better if he could kill Anchor somewhere in the Deadsands. There were many dangers in that desolate wasteland, places where an unwary traveler might find himself in serious trouble. One such location sprang to mind.

“It might already be too late to speak to her friends,” he said truthfully. “We don’t know what the Spine have done to them. I reckon Carnival is holed up in the Deadsands somewhere, out of sight but still near to her prey.” More likely the angel had flown hundreds of leagues away by now, but he wasn’t going to suggest this to Anchor, not when the big man had on him a pouch of soul-infused jewels.

“The Deadsands? This is the desert between here and Deepgate?”

Caulker nodded.

“Good. We walk to Deepgate through the desert, all the time looking for Carnival. Killing two boars with one stone, yes?”

“Birds,” Caulker corrected. “Two
birds
with one stone.”

Anchor gave him a puzzled look. “Not in the Riot Coast. Tell me, Jack, you know these Deadsands well?”

“As well as any other man.” This at least was true: Jack Caulker had spent enough time robbing merchants in his youth to know all the old bandit trails and boltholes well enough. He wasn’t overly fond of the sand itself, but could find his way between the occasional water springs if need be. “Why are you hunting her, anyway?” He glanced up into the fog and then lowered his voice. “What does your god want with
her
?”

The big man beamed. “No need to whisper, friend. Cospinol hears everything I hear. But he never listens, so it is no problem. My master wants this angel because she drank his brother, Ulcis.”

Caulker sputtered into his beer. “
Drank
him?”

“Yes, drank. Like a cheese.”

The cutthroat frowned. He was about to ask Anchor to expound, but then thought better of it.

The other man gave a roar of laugher, then slammed his tankard down on the table. “She slaughtered half his army, then drank him. What a feat! No wonder Cospinol seeks her. Her blood contains many souls.”

The massive rope on Anchor’s back thrummed. The giant paused, his ear cocked towards the sound, and then leaned close to Caulker and whispered, “He says I speak too much.”

“He’s listening to us now?”

“Yes, you want to ask him a question? He will answer one question for you. Cospinol knows many things: the tides, the stars, why the moon circles the earth. He understands the hearts of men and why his mother, the goddess Ayen, closed the gates of Heaven. And he knows what the Mesmerists are planning. Sometimes he even knows things that have not yet even happened, but mostly he’s wrong about those.”

“Um…” Caulker blinked. What question to ask of a god? He might not get a chance like this ever again. “Well…” he said, thinking hard. “Well, I suppose…” He rattled his fingers on the table. “All right, then, how and when will I die?”

The rope trembled again. Caulker thought he heard distant shrieks and manic laughter from high up in the fog; he sank deeper into his chair. The question had been the first thing to come into his mind, but now he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the answer.

Anchor listened for a moment, then laughed heartily. “Cospinol doesn’t know the answer to this. Now he’s angry. He says you asked the wrong question.”

Caulker felt somewhat relieved. “Can I ask him something else?”

“No.” The big man bent forward again. “Listen, friend Jack. You want to live a long time, yes?” He waited until the other man acknowledged him. “Good. I understand such a desire. Me, I have lived longer than any man on this world—longer even than this scarred angel I hunt. It is my reward for collecting souls for Cospinol—” He jerked a thumb upwards. “But these days there are so many bad men. The world is rotten like an orange. Most up there are blackhearts, scoundrels, and thieves. Wicked wicked souls.” He shook his head, and his tone became serious. “Cospinol knows I won’t eat bad souls, so he feeds me only the good ones. Gives me more strength to pull his ship, you understand?”

Caulker nodded.

“But if I am to eat any souls, I must then kill
good
men.” He gave a deep and weary sigh. “And I do not like to do this. I do not like it at all. I want to be free of this harness…this skyship. Is very heavy now. I want go back to the Riot Coast, make a farm, and marry a woman.” At this, his eyes became a little distant, and he smiled sadly. “So this one I hunt…this Carnival. Very strong angel; the blood of a god in her veins. Enough souls to let Cospinol leave the
Rotsward
and walk free under Ayen’s sun.”

“And if Cospinol is freed, then you are, too?”

“This is the truth.” Anchor extended his big black hand. “So we make deal? You lead me through this desert to Deepgate. Help me find me the one called Carnival, and I forget the soul you owe me. We become good friends. Agreed?”

What choice did the cutthroat have? He was indebted to a man who’d killed six Spine Adepts with his bare hands, and then brought a building down on top of them all. Caulker would have to lure Anchor into a trap before he could steal his treasure. Yet even that prospect was beginning to lose its allure. If this floating god, Cospinol, really heard and saw everything, he might not look favorably upon the murder of his servant—not to mention his only means of locomotion.

Caulker shook Anchor’s hand.

Gulliver Fank appeared and cleared away the bowls, stacking them against his chest, while still studiously keeping his eyes averted from the giant’s rope. “Can I get you anything else, sirs?” he muttered. “No? I imagine you’ll be keen to get on your way. May I say what a pleasure it has been to have you both here?”

“How much is the price for this meal?” Anchor asked.

“Two doubles, sir.”

“I have no coin,” Anchor said. “You accept salt, yes? Good Riot Coast salt.” He scraped back his stool and rose, flexing his huge shoulders, then began to drag down his rope from the sky. “It is up here somewhere.”

“No!” the broth shop boss squawked. He waved his free hand frantically while clutching the tower of bowls with his other. “I mean…please accept the meal for free, on the house, no charge. Really, it’s the least I can do!”

Anchor grinned. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “Everywhere I find the same generosity! He is a good man this one, Jack Caulker. Without men like this I would go hungry for sure.” His huge chest heaved with laughter. “Now I must make piss. Where is the privy?”

“Broken, sir,” Fank said. “The drain is blocked.”

The giant’s brow furrowed. “Same problem everywhere.” He swept an arm to indicate the world at large. “Bad plumbing, always bad plumbing. Same on Cog Island and the Merian ports, Coreollis and Oxos. All the drains blocked. One day I find a plumbing man and ask him why this happens.”

Caulker couldn’t decide if the giant was serious or not.

The broth shop proprietor brightened a little. “You could try the facilities at the Cockle Scunny,” he said, pointing down the lane and nodding eagerly. “That place on the corner. I know the gentleman who runs it quite well, and he’s just had his pipes overhauled. I’m sure he won’t mind if you make use of them.”

“So be it,” Anchor said, turning to Caulker. “Come, my friend, we go now.” He slapped his hands together and flashed his broad smile. “I make piss, and then we go to kill an angel.”