by Danie Ware
‘The hard way?’ Caph wrenched his wrist free. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it.’
The first strike knocked him clear across the room, slamming him into the back wall with a twisting crunch that shot pain through his spine and shoulders. The curtain tore and billowed to the floor. His ears thundered, but it didn’t matter.
The drug in his blood – the metal, whatever the hells it was – was pure adrenaline, granting him this fantasy, this dream he’d had a hundred times. He came back to his feet, elated and gleeful – the high had blown his mind wide open.
Molly was grinning at him, almost as if they shared this, this ecstatic violence.
But Caph didn’t care. He struck again, slamming one fist into Ganthar’s rigid stomach.
It was like hitting a wall.
And Molly’s reactions were fast. He smashed Caph in the belly and sent him rolling, coughing, into another curtain.
‘Nice try, sweetheart.’ His broken teeth distorted his voice, but he stood blood-mouthed and grinning. ‘You’re missing something. The drug you’ve taken – I was its test subject, the only person strong enough. All that time I was scrubbing the stonework. It’s been in my system for years. Granting my dreams.’
‘Anatar just said you’d gone mad.’ Caph rolled back to his feet. His face flamed with pain; it beat in his ears. Barely aware of his own strength, he picked up the metal bench, threw it, picked up the next one, threw that, picked up the third… his shouting roared round the room.
Molly slammed the first one out of way, yanked his head sideways from the second. The third one hit; with a sudden ‘oof’ of breath, he doubled over and fell back, the bench clattering to the floor. Bouncing metal rang from the walls.
Caph followed it. Faster then he’d moved the last time, he was across the room with his full weight behind a side-on body slam, taking Molly back and over. They hit the floor together in a tangle of limbs.
Ganthar was swearing, spitting blood and fury. Struggling to get his feet under him.
With a gesture that was pure, focused hate, Caph slammed an elbow into his face, another, hitting hard on his already broken nose and teeth.
But then the monster really detonated.
Molly was back on his feet, too fast to follow. He crouched, all blood-spattered silk, his expression twisted with absolute darkness. As Caph got up, one hand shot out, grabbed him by the throat and slammed him sideways, hard, into the painted wall. Caph choked, struggled, but the hand on his neck was like a claw, the arm like a girder.
He gagged, gasped and fought. Ganthar was crushing his windpipe; he choked for air and life.
Propelled by the drug that was screaming round his system, the raised knee was hard enough to make Ganthar buckle, his eyes bulging. He let go, and Caph was away, past him and turning, looking for a weapon, anything to slam this bastard into the middle of next week.
Curtains.
Benches, now scattered.
Snake.
He could feel the hit pounding and he knew that it was fading now – whatever it was, it was fleeting and he was teetering at its very peak. Any second now, his strength and focus would ebb as he came down the other side.
Crash.
Come on, think!
Molly was advancing across the room, slamming benches out of his way. His hand closed on the front of Caph’s jacket, throwing him bodily backwards into the steel strut behind. It was a scornful gesture, derisive – the gesture of a man who knew he’d already won.
But as he paced forwards to finish this once and for all, Caph ducked under the first blow, came up with an armful of tumbled curtain. His fist smarting from the steel impact, a crunching elbow in his ribs made Ganthar grunt, pace back, and the curtain went into his face with a flurry of heavy fabric.
And Caph followed it.
Knowing he was on borrowed time, knowing he had only until the drug in his blood ran down, he rammed one shoulder against Molly and propelled him backwards across the room, slamming him into the strut on the far side. The great steel serpent shook at the collision. While Molly fought the curtain, swearing under the weight of the fabric, Caph did the only thing he could do.
He held him back with one hand on his chest, pinning him to the wall and the steel and the curtain behind him.
And the other one hit him in the face.
Again.
Again.
His broken fingers couldn’t take the punishment; on some level, he knew what this was costing but he was beyond caring. Every flicker of indignation, of rage and guilt and failure and blame were all raging into focus, and that focus was the pain in his right hand as his fingers splintered with the force of the blows.
Ganthar was struggling, fighting to push his weight from the wall, fighting to free his head and shoulders and vision of the curtain, fighting to rid himself of this fucking maniac that was intent on beating him to a bloody pulp – but the curtain snagged on the snake and he tangled himself up in it and the blows just kept coming.
Caph became aware that the roar of fury and rage was his own.
That – and that his right hand was a gnarled ruin.
The red-covered figure that was Dion Ganthar slid slowly to the floor.
Bloody hells…
Caph backed up, the last of the drug leaking form his system and leaving him suddenly cold and empty, a hollow wind blowing though his heart.
He cradled his shattered hand across his chest; could barely frame the word. ‘Ganth?’
The body at his feet stirred, struggled with the curtain.
‘Hells…’ Caph dropped to one knee beside him, still ready to jump if he had to.
But Ganthar was beyond fighting back – he was broken, his face a twisted contusion of bruises, his teeth splintered and ragged, tearing at his lips. One eye was closed, the other swelling shut. Blood ran down both sides of his shattered nose.
He spat, ‘Go on then. Finish it. If you’ve got the balls.’
Sharp shards of agony were shooting up Caph’s forearm. He looked at the clawed ruin of his right hand as though seeing it for the first time. He said, ‘You know I can’t…’
‘You useless little shit.’ Molly sneered through red-streaked teeth. ‘I broke your fingers, ruined your future, burned your family. You hellsdamned coward…’ He dissolved in coughing, holding his broken ribs.
‘I’m a lot of things,’ Caph told him. ‘But I’m not a coward.’ Twisted between a righteous sense of absolute justification and an odd, old compassion, Caph stared down at him. ‘Maybe it’s just your turn to live broken.’
Molly glanced at him, a flash of fire in the still-open eye.
He moved too late.
His wrist was caught and he was over, cheek on the stone, arm behind his back and his every nerve yowling with pain from the wrist up. He rolled, but it was too late, Ganthar was on his feet and his boot slammed down on Caph’s back, pinning him, spitting to the cold floor.
He heard a voice, dark and deep and hot, say, ‘He’ll do. Bring him.’
*
In the blurred, red haze of awakening, Caph found sharp bites of pain, pinning him down like a hundred tiny metal bolts. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. He was held fast with a thousand closed claws, welded by his very flesh to the bench beneath him.
The pain was everywhere; in his face, in his body. It made no sense.
His consciousness was thin, a wisp of awareness along the edge of a blade. He was cold; there was cold against his bared back and cold in the air that wreathed about him. He could smell the rusty tang of blood, smell sweat, smell old stone and new metal. The harsh rasp of his breathing echoed all wrong. He had no idea where he was.
When he tried to open his eyes and sit up, sharp teeth bit into every muscle and sinew, ripping him as he moved
What--? Shock stilled him; new blood streaked his skin.
His lips tore as he tried to cry out. Blood filled his mouth and ran down the sides of his face. He choked, tried to cough – and it tore again.
For a moment, panic closed like jaws.
‘Be still.’ The words were deep and feminine, the voice familiar. There was a warm hand on his bare shoulder. The touch made him shudder, but it drew him back from the brink.
With an effort, he ground his vision into focus.
Bloody hells.
His breathing was harsh; he swallowed repeatedly. His throat burned raw, but he could see…
The room was impossible.
The walls over him were broken, splintered into fragments by almighty metal snake-roots that broke through the stonework, sliding over and under each other, shattering in their strength. They spread out and everywhere; a powerfully knotted web-work of seething, living metal.
Between them, the vaulted roof was aging and cracked, dust trickling as if it needed to escape. There were balconies in the wrong places, jagged like teeth; side-corridors that twisted at eye-wrenching angles, their ends lost in lightlessness. For a pained, hazed moment, he wanted to be dreaming, drugged, lost in some impossible nightmare.
He was caught in the roots – intestines – of the Cloudglass guardian. Raife’s servant and construction, his ultimate creation – the Builders’ metallurgical equations now given living form.
No-one else could have made this. Few would even have recognised it – but Caph knew exactly what it was.
He coughed gore, tried to turn his head, tried to breathe though lips that ripped further with every movement.
But knowing what it was didn’t answer the question…
What was he going to do with it?
Again, he tried to sit up.
This time, the pain was savage, claws ripping through skin and muscle and sinew, tearing red holes in his flesh and bringing him fully, sharply, to consciousness. He was apparently nailed to the metal bench beneath him; he looked as though a hundred clawed creatures had scrabbled over him and sunk their pincers in deep. Wet warmth streaked his flesh from a thousand cuts; he gagged, tried to spit and couldn’t.
Over him, the huge wrought knot of roots was moving, writhing and rasping one upon another as if each equation were happening simultaneously. The noise was soft, yet it set his teeth on edge; it raised his hackles and sent gooseflesh rippling from the claw-tips in his skin.
Beside him, a woman’s voice chuckled.
‘Caphen Talmar.’ Her voice was melodic; he knew it, but he couldn’t place it. Like the soft rasping of the metal coils, its echoes resounded faintly wrong. ‘Raife said you’d be an asset, but I honestly hadn’t realised quite what he had in mind.’ He heard the smile in her tone. ‘And I have to say – you’re perfect.’
Anatar. Sitting beside him.
On his other side sat Ganthar, his face undamaged, his smile back in place. He ran the backs of his knuckles gently down Caph’s scarred cheek. ‘Don’t fight it, Tal,’ he said. ‘It’ll go so much easier if you don’t fight.’
‘Raife’s ambition is considerable,’ Anatar said, smiling. ‘And you – you have a such a great future ahead of you.’
His eyes met hers, grey-cold.
But Anatar only smiled, cold, utterly bereft of conscience. ‘Please don’t misunderstand, Caphen,’ she said. ‘Like the house, this is necessity, not entertainment.’ She leaned forward and he was breathing her in, unable to help it. Her warm lips against his cheek, she said, ‘We can’t take the risk that a piece of you will remain.’
What?
Her closeness was suffocating. He tried to flinch away; wanted more than anything to turn his head and breathe…
Ganthar was still stroking his cheek.
‘Shhhh,’ he said. His caress moved down Caph’s throat and shoulder, his elbow and forearm.
To his left hand.
Carefully, he snapped the little finger.
Again.
Caph couldn’t help it, his body tensed, back arching and ripping the claws through his flesh. His mouth tore as he tried to cry out; his throat was filling with blood, his teeth were thick with it. He gagged, tried to sit up, to cough, to turn away – anything…
But each time he moved to avoid the pain, it tore his skin even more. He cried out, again, tore his mouth and filled his throat with blood…
Anatar still smiled.
Ganthar’s touch moved, caressing his hand; his expression still had that lop-sided smile that Caph remembered so well.
He wanted to defy them; he wanted to rip himself up from the bench and slam Molly backwards into the impossible walls. His hand was twitching like a trapped creature – the movements sent shrieks of pain as the claws tore again.
A muffled, wordless roar, I won’t let this happen again!
The concept of ‘helpless’ loomed large. The knowledge that he absolutely could not stop them, could not do anything to prevent this, was unreal – the pain and mockery would simply increase, layer upon layer until he could bear it no longer.
Ganthar’s touch moved to the next finger.
‘For as long as you fight us…’ Anatar’s voice was velvet; spinning his awareness to dark and confusion, ‘…the hurt continues. When you trust us and let go, all of this can stop.’
Molly broke the next finger, knuckle snapping with a sickening audible ‘crack’.
Caph surged again, ripped and tore again; again, the blood in his face and mouth and throat, again the disbelief and outrage. He was caught in a metal trap and had no way to free himself, no way to break out, no way to bargain, no route to freedom…
The twists and angles of the world around him were blurring in a bloody haze; darkness was encroaching from the very edge of his vision.
The great knot of steel roots rasped and writhed.
Trust me, it said, trust me and let go…
His hands were shattered. Ganthar had beaten him. Proteus had gone. He’d lost his family. This was not torture; he had nothing left, nothing he could offer to make her stop.
In the end, all of his temper and outrage had come to this.
And it hadn’t been enough to let him win.
*
The world was still.
Cold.
Proteus lay on his side, his breathing ragged. His muscles felt like water, and his body ached. Emptiness curled like ash in the depths of his heart. When he tried to put his hand down to push himself up, the movement rang exhaustion though joint and bone.
The hand he moved, plain and pale and featureless, belonged to a stranger.
He said, ‘Lyss?’
His voice, too, was wrong. It had no accent, no character, no life of its own.
‘You’ve done it now.’ Lyss’ laughter sparkled like dust. ‘I think you broke.’
Broke.
The word was a judgement.
Proteus felt sick, drained. With an effort that nearly wrung a sob from his throat, he pushed himself upwards, rolling painfully into a sitting position. His body scared him; it moved oddly, flaccid and weak.
What am I?
He raised his hands to the light, and to his face.
His flesh was like wax, plain and cold; all his muscles lolled loose. He felt wasted, literally; his body wouldn’t move as he told it. His face had no personality, no angle, no age, no youth, no lines, no eagerness…
Like him, it felt hollow.
Lyss bobbed down to a crouch in front of him, crystal eyes and black hair. Her smile split her face like a wound. She said, ‘Do you know where you are?’
Confused, he looked up. The room was a swath of red curtains, one of which lay crumpled on the floor. The Cloudglass snake had coils down here and uprights thrust hard through stone walls. ‘Should I?’
Lyss gleamed like madness. ‘Turn around.’
Proteus twisted with a
n effort, and found himself staring at a dark and shattered image – a fragmented painting that he couldn’t quite…
Oh yes he could.
A great steel construction – the water clock. And there was fire, and figures, and the angular, dark shape of the fighting Austen, shattering the hellspirit into its scattered, broken pieces.
Trying to get his slack, lifeless legs to obey him, Proteus said, ‘So? What happens now? Do we fight some more, or does Artifice come and kill us all?’ He couldn’t stand up, had no way to fight back.
Lyss laughed. ‘She wishes us no—’
‘Lyssy.’ The word was soft and dark, female, affectionate, but still an order. Lyss glanced up, scrambled to her feet. ‘He came.’
‘Of course he did. He loves you.’
The slow tap of cane on stone preceded a pair of long, elegant legs. They stopped, black boots shining, and the silvered cane tip planted firmly on Proteus’s chest, pushing him back to the floor.
Wincing, he looked up.
Anatar – Lyss’s ‘Sahar’ – was blood-smeared and smiling, a sated urban hunter. Her hands were covered in it; it slicked her face and throat. She stepped forwards and stood tall, looking down. Lyss flanked her like an advocate.
‘Proteus,’ she said. ‘Our missing brother. You’ve led us quite the dance.’
He wanted to stand up, face her down, but he still didn’t have the energy to move it. He was too slow, too heavy.
She chuckled, said, ‘We’re finally here. All of us. What was broken…’ a flash of her glance took in the painting, ‘…will be reformed. What was rent, will be complete.’ Her words were a performance, compelling; they lit a deep red glow in the depths of his belly, a glimmer of need in his flesh. ‘A new body, a new beginning. There’s no need to fear us, or fight us. This is how it was always going to end. Austen won’t come, not now.’ Her smile was generous in victory. ‘And we have your Caphen.’
That gave him a spark of fear, the ability to sit up properly. ‘Caph?’ It was a stroke of horror, and of complete understanding – of course he had come, he was never going to do anything else. Silently, Proteus cursed himself for a fool – for not punching his lights out to ensure he stayed put. ‘Where is he?’
