Iron Angel (40 page)

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 machine. 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.”

“I’m sure the staff have wrapped up everything breakable.”

“Not the slaves.”

“Oh.” Jones’s face fell. “I see what you mean.”

Ersimmin had caught hold of Edith Bainbridge, who was now beating the pianist with her fan. “Get off me, you lout. It’s going to drop us! I must find a life preserver.”

For a few moments the ship remained motionless in the arconite’s grip. Harper leaned out over the balustrade and peered back along the hull. Beyond the vessel’s stern, the wet brown cliffs of the Moine Massif sank a sheer four hundred feet down to the calm waters. A blizzard of gulls skirled around the ship. The arconite’s skull turned slowly, then moved closer until its yellow grin filled the sky above them. Harper’s Locator gave out a sudden shrill tone.

“What is it?” Jones asked.

She stared hard at the device with a growing sense of dread. Its fluctuating needle darted back and forth, between both ends of the scale. Crystals pulsed fiercely inside.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “The Locator doesn’t know. It’s panicking again.”

The reservist kept one hand on the hilt of his sword. “Another uninvited guest?”

She shook her head. “It might just be the proximity of the—”

But just at that moment another massive jolt unbalanced the passengers. Still gripped in the automaton’s skeletal hand, the ship began a sudden rapid descent.

“Cruel heavens!” Jones cried. The old man’s white hair lashed about his face as the ship dropped closer to Larnaig’s waters. “Do we need to descend quite so briskly?”

“I expect that need has little to do with it,” Ersimmin replied. The pianist had extricated himself from Edith. Now like his reservist colleague, he appeared to be quite relaxed—an observation which could not be extended to encompass the other guests. “From the expression on our host’s face,” Ersimmin went on, inclining his head towards Chief Carrick, “it seems that we are currently experiencing yet another of his teething problems.”

Carrick was clutching the deck rail with both fists, his face a curdled, off-white colour. Most of the passengers had found something to hang on to now. The gentlemen had grabbed the saloon bulkheads or deck balustrades; the ladies clung to the gentlemen.

The steamship shuddered again, and then tilted sharply towards the bow. Several passengers stumbled. Plates toppled and smashed within the saloon.

Ersimmin’s voice radiated calmness. “I’m beginning to understand why the Mesmerists hired our railroad company to support the War Effort,” he said to Jones. “They make terrifying soldiers, but they haven’t quite got the hang of transportation matters.”

The jolt had sent two Northmen crashing into each other, shattering their glass-scaled skins. Mina’s feet slipped out from under her on the slick floor, and she struggled to push herself back up onto her hands and knees. Her hands were now wet and red. Oil lanterns stuttered in the deep gloom of the ship’s hold, throwing lances of light through the transparent carriages.

“Wasn’t this what you wanted?” Hasp cried. “A quick return to Hell.”

“I asked
you
to kill me,” she replied. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“An unusually biased form of suicide. Still, there’s a glut of fresh souls here. Time for some thaumaturgy, if I’m not mistaken?”

“How did you know?”

“I’ve known from the start.”

She wrinkled her nose.

The slave pen lurched again and another of Rys’s former soldiers crashed against the wall. His glass scales cracked at the wrists, elbows, and head; his life poured out of him.

Mina muttered a prayer: an appeal to her guardian, Basilis, the Hound Master of Ayen. She made sigils in the bloody floor:

One red soul for the Forest of Eyes,

A second for the Forest of Teeth,

The third to rot in the Forest of War,

If you’ll aid your servant now.

Hasp grunted. “It’s been a while since I’ve witnessed blood thaumaturgy and longer since I’ve seen that bastard Basilis. This’ll be fun.”

The stink from the Forest of War greeted Mina’s nostrils as something moved within the red pool on the floor, then reached out roots and branches, growing until it filled the space before her. This was Basilis’s heart tree, a manifestation of Ayen’s Hound Master himself.

Those Northmen who were still alive to witness this apparition now scuttled away to the far corner of the chamber, their eyes wide with fear and horror.

A deep voice rolled out from the tree: “These are weak souls, thaumaturge.” Basilis’s arboreal manifestation dripped and shuddered. “As thin as memories.”

“They’re still souls,” she retorted. “And I didn’t have to kill them myself. I need your help, Basilis. We need to do something about Dill.”

The Hound Master laughed. “You always underestimate yourself, Mina,” he said. “You summoned a guardian from the Forest of War without my help. You killed one of your fellow captives without my help. And didn’t you place a piece of your soul inside the arconite without my help? All you have to do now is reach out to it.”

“I can’t!” she protested. “The Mesmerists changed me. My soul is all muddled up and…
sore
.” She almost stomped her foot down, but thought better of it. “Besides, I’d feel more comfortable if you were there with me.”

Another laugh issued from the tree.

Hasp said, “This is a new form for you, Basilis. Didn’t you used to be a dog?”

“Hasp…” The tree sighed. “Why are you not in Hell?”

The god grunted. “The Mesmerists caught us both. They assumed she was my woman.”

“Your
woman
?” Basilis growled.

“Relax,” Hasp said. “She’s not my type.”

Mina felt suddenly cross. It wasn’t that she
liked
the god—not in
that
way. But for him to have a type that didn’t include her seemed desperately unfair. The floor lurched again and she slid a yard to the left. She reached out to grab the heart tree’s roots, but Basilis withdrew them. A low snarl came from the demonic tree.

Oh, no.

“Hasp and I both happened to be looking for Dill,” she said quickly. “That’s all. I’m sorry I left you alone in Cinderbark Wood, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to sneak into Hell undetected. Deepgate’s Portal was already teeming with Mesmerist shades. You know I’ll come back for you just as soon as I can.”

The steamship plummeted. In the iron gloom of her belly,
The Pride of Eleanor Damask
heaved and groaned against the chains binding her wheels and axles to the hold’s deck. Steel links stretched and warped. The glass carriages ground against one another, straining to be free of their shackles.

Basilis’s voice sounded like thunder. “I am no longer in that poisonous forest,” he rumbled. “And I am no longer alone. A Spine woman and her companion found my physical form in Cinderbark Wood. They brought me to Cospinol, who has delivered us by skyship to Coreollis. While you were in Hell, Mina, I have traveled across the world. Now I am in Rys’s own palace, not two leagues away from you. From here we can watch the arconite’s approach across Lake Larnaig.”