by Stephen Hunt
Purity brushed the bolts of fire aside with her blade, turning them on its mirrored surface, as light as air in her hands, using it as instinctively as breathing. There was something reassuring about its unearthly heft. Only when the slats had closed with them outside the stone circle did Purity realize what it was – holding the blade was like holding Oliver’s hand. He had become the blade itself and if he had once been a shade of death stalking across the land, in her hands the sword felt as if it was capable of so much more.
Samuel Lancemaster leapt forward by her side with a roar and headbutted one of the attacking slats, twisting his spear as if his weapon was the sail of a windmill. It was then she saw why Jenny Blow and Jackaby Mention hadn’t bothered to produce weapons when the slats had surrounded them. Jenny Blow opened her mouth and started projecting a banshee scream, the force of it cracking into the slimy black chitin- like chests of the attacking slats, hammering them off their clawed feet. In amongst their ranks Jackaby Mention ran at a speed so fast he had turned to a blur, only briefly visible in the seconds between slowing down to kick and strike at the slavering slave soldiers.
Whatever the slats had been expecting to face on top of the hill, it wasn’t this! Also lost to sight was the long-in-the-tooth druid – but then Purity located him, the old fox trying to hide behind the stones in the centre of the circle – stumbling and cursing as the slats came at him, his fighting style a curious mix of retreating and simultaneously turning to fling the sorceries of the worldsong at his pursuers. His silver hair tossed flaring under the night sky as wild sparks of wizardry hissed and recoiled around the inside of the stone circle. It was like watching a drunken pugilist weaving among a gang of toughs, landing blows and avoiding their flashing fists by his chance, clumsy stumbles. Except these fists had talons attached to the fingers, one of the clawed hands lashing past Purity’s face as she weaved back herself.
Jenny Blow arched her head around, the gale from her throat sweeping the slats trying to circle her into the side of one of the stones. Samuel Lancemaster strode into the space that had been created, casually lashing out with the butt of his spear and nearly breaking a slat in half. He was big, but his strength went far beyond his size; the fey bandit seemed able to strike with almost superhuman strength, the blunt trauma of his spear strikes killing with a single blow every assailant that came at him. At least, Purity never saw any of the slats get back up to have a second attempt at him.
As quickly as they had come at them the storm ended and they were standing alone under the shadow of the stone circle, Purity’s blade twitching in her hand like a diviner’s rod seeking water. Corpses littered the slope around their feet while the blur that was Jackaby Mention slowed to a standstill in front of them. His marsh leathers were crisped with a sheen of ice.
‘Where is Ganby?’
‘I am here,’ a voice sounded behind one of the stones and the old druid appeared, brushing mud off his breeches. ‘I have seen off the last of them.’
‘Did you enjoy your rest, old man?’ snorted Jenny Blow.
Purity hoped so. When the Army of Shadows realized how many slats had vanished, this part of the country was going to get very dangerous indeed. They would have to leave here as quickly as they could.
Purity ran her hands along the shelves of the abandoned village’s sole shop, emptying the contents stored there into a sack. Each tumble and crack of can upon jar brought back the memories. The attack upon the hill, slats leaping up towards the ancient stone circle. Her sword humming in her hand, sucking up the bolts of fire from the heat-agitation weapons of the beasts. Drinking fire from the air. And then there were the four Bandits of the Marsh. Awoken from the dark corridors between the worlds and full of surprises. Like Jenny Blow, who could tell the sex of a hare a mile away with her thin nose, Jenny who had remarked offhandedly that it had been she who had taught King Steam to fight with the modulations of his voicebox. The ancient fighting art of the steammen knights. Did they really owe all their martial skills to this short, barrel-chested female bandit?
Just four. Four out of two hundred Bandits of the Marsh. If only she had been stronger, could have struck the stone with more of her might. Kept the portals between the stones open for longer, awakened more of the sleepers.
Samuel Lancemaster poked his head around the door to make sure Purity was all right. She could hear the fire crackling in the back room’s hearth, dry broken furniture feeding the flames.
Purity held up one of her finds. ‘Ham.’
Samuel grunted. ‘More canned victuals.’
‘Back in the Royal Breeding House this was currency.’
Samuel shook his head, perplexed. ‘Your land is a strange one, lady. The nobility held as prisoners by their own council. King and queen kept only as symbols.’
Purity took the bag through to the back room, tossing it next to the supplies they had found in the cottages of the abandoned village. It was a good haul. The people must have moved out very fast. Evacuated by the county constabulary or – well, the alternative did not bear contemplation. ‘Only the old nobility, the royalist cause. You won’t find any of the Lords Commercial inside the Royal Breeding House.’
‘And these Lords Commercial,’ said Ganby Meridian, his silver beard tinged yellow by the firelight. ‘They are given their titles by your parliament of shopkeepers, or by your hostage-queen?’
‘Neither,’ said Purity. The conversation was making her uncomfortable, calling forth too many memories of the patriotic songs and lessons she had been forced to learn by rote in the cold school chambers of the fortress where she had grown up. ‘They are decided by the tables and logs of Greenhall, the treasury office of the Guardian Chancellor. You are automatically granted a title after you have paid a certain amount in taxes to the state; the rate varies and is voted on each year by parliament. The more money you pay, the higher your precedent in the lists.’
‘Hmm,’ groaned Ganby, the disapproving noise rumbling at the back of his throat.
‘Is it so different, Ganby Meridian, from the queen we placed on the throne of the Jackeni, or the council of druids deciding who would rule among the stag lords?’ asked Jenny Blow.
‘To become a druid took years of hard study and mastery of the worldsong. You had to prove yourself worthy of tasks as weighty as selecting a new ruler. My ostler I would trust to care for my horse, my smithy to shoe her. But to look inside the heart of the person I would call Sovereign? I am not sure I would trust such a matter to my ostler or smithy.’
Samuel smiled and tossed the leg of a table into the fire grate, sparks spitting against his silver breastplate. ‘Has Ganby mentioned he was a druid long before he joined our ranks?’
‘Yes,’ added Jenny Blow. ‘Before his crimes and knavery saw him thrown out and drawn towards the margins of the marsh’s waters as an outlaw.’
‘Pah,’ said Ganby. ‘If I ever stopped lying, I would disappoint you. These are strange new days indeed. Queens who are mutilated and kept in chains, councils of standing chosen by those who have none, and a faceless legion of monsters walking the world. Fighting those gill-necks from the kingdom below the waves seems as a blessing in comparison to this new war.’
A knot of anger tightened inside Purity. ‘My friend Oliver gave his life to free you for this war.’
‘Not just us four,’ said Jenny Blow, pointedly.
‘That’s enough,’ said Samuel. ‘We four answered the call and you speak to the true queen of the Jackeni, that much you must know.’ He knelt down in front of Purity. ‘My spear is your spear, as it was for Queen Elizica.’
And what a spear it was. By activating a hidden control, Samuel could collapse the weapon into a nasty weapon shaped like a knuckle-duster
that could smack bricks out of a wall. When he was thinking, he would sometimes snick the spear out to its full length and then swing it back to its fist-sized shape, rattling the air with the noise of the spear’s reorientation.
‘A queen without boots,’ pointed out Jackaby Mention from his chair, wiping his lips with relish as he set about the contents of one of the tins.
Purity looked across at the brooding black bandit. ‘You wear no shoes either.’
Jackaby raised his bare toes and wiggled them. ‘I meant it as no insult. I run faster when I have none and I like to feel close to the bones of the world, the earthflow.’
Ganby drew Purity to one side. ‘They mean no harm by their words. They are touchy around normal people.’
Purity wasn’t sure if she should feel flattered or frightened that they considered her normal. ‘You mean those who aren’t fey?’
‘Quite. In our age the druids made sacrifices to keep the killing, changing clouds of the feymist at bay – children were bound and cast into the feymist curtain. Most died, but some did not.’ Ganby indicated his three companions. ‘Those that survived the changes of the warping mist were considered cursed and hunted without mercy by the land’s tribes. Where else could they hide but the great marsh? They have little love for the affairs of mortals and as loyal as they became in the end to Elizica and her lion throne, I fear they see only a little of her in you.’
‘I wish there was none of her in me,’ said Purity. She picked up the sword from the stone circle. ‘And I wish that I hadn’t been given this.’
Ganby rubbed his beard thoughtfully. ‘I remember another young woman standing before me, saying the same thing about a trident she had retrieved from a lake.’ He sighed. ‘We slept for an age to reach this strange new time, when she said she would need us again. That was not easy for us, nor for you to be the one to receive us. Let us see if we can make it worth the while for both of us …’ He took Purity’s sword from her, carefully weighing it two hands. ‘Do you know what this blade is?’
‘Sharp,’ said Purity. ‘And the sword contains a little of the essence of my friend Oliver … and of the Hexmachina.’
‘They are facets of it,’ said Ganby. ‘You have described it a little, but they are not what the sword is. It is a maths-blade, a tool to manipulate the worldsong.’
‘Maths?’ said Purity. ‘You mean sums and adding up? What does that have to do with sorcery and the worldsong?’
‘Everything,’ said Ganby, his hand sweeping out to encompass the room. ‘All that you have seen, all that you will see, everything that you are, these are all mathematical constructs. The song of the world is composed of notes, the notes are composed of waves and strings, and they can be modelled and manipulated by an adroit mind. When you change the factors of an equation, you change its outcome. The worldsingers’ training allows them to tap into the flow of power within the earth and change the equations that underlie the world, by hand, spell and mind.’ He indicated the other bandits sitting around the fire and handed the blade back to her. ‘The fey carry some of that ability innately. Your sword is a tool that allows you to manipulate reality. It cuts through stone so easily because it can change the equations of existence that define how matter should interact with its surface.’
‘More than a sword,’ whispered Purity.
‘An essential truth,’ said Ganby. ‘I would never have shaped it as a sword myself. When you give someone a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail. I would have made it a book, or perhaps a slide rule.’
‘What can I do with it?’
‘What can you not?’ Ganby indicated she should hold the sword out. ‘A start would be to tear a hole in the veil of the world and free our fellow Bandits of the Marsh from their sleep of ages. You managed to do it for the four of us.’
‘But there was power in the circle of standing stones,’ said Purity. ‘Helping me. I could feel it flowing through me. The power of the god machine, the Hexmachina.’
Ganby waved his hand impatiently as if this were a mere trifle. ‘Pah, there is more power in the human heart and the imagination of a child than there is in any stone circle or blade. You can use the sword. Just feel the lingering aura of our sleep and then reach to the place where the energy is connected. Tear a rent towards it using your blade.’
Purity clutched the pommel of the sword and symbols started to flow down the flat of the blade. She could feel the connection the old wizard had spoken of. Thin tentacles of else-when connecting the four bandits to the place where they had slept away the centuries. Spinning the blade, she tried to cut a portal in the air, reach the sleeping place. Instead of a rent forming, the arcs of her blade left scratches of golden light hanging in the air, shrinking and diminishing before the threads blew away like candle smoke.
‘I can’t do it,’ said Purity, frustrated, proffering the blade back to Ganby. ‘You’re the great druid, you open the gateway for your friends to come through.’
He took the sword out of her hand, gripping it properly in a fighting stance, the symbols creeping along its surface disappearing, the blade’s silver brightness darkening. It had died in his hand. ‘You see, just a cold length of metal. Something to bash away at an enemy’s helm with. I could never get Elizica’s trident to work for me either. This is not my sword.’ He passed it back to Purity. ‘It is yours.’
Purity took a few more swings to the same negligible effect. The maths-blade was becoming heavier where once it had seemed so light. ‘I can feel it, the place you came from. But I don’t have the power of the stones to channel through the blade to break across to it.’
‘Power is not channelled through the blade,’ said Ganby, sadly. ‘It is channelled through the one that wields it. And you have everything that you need to wield it, save the belief that you can. That you deserve it.’
‘But that’s the thing. I’m not sure I do. I certainly never asked for this.’
‘Yes, your ancestor was tutored as a princess of battle from the age she could first walk,’ said Ganby. ‘I am sorry to ask so much of you so quickly, Purity Drake. Time will bring you what you need.’
Purity looked out of the back room’s window, the iron moon gazing back down, a rusty squinting eye. ‘How much of that do we have left?’
‘There will be enough time and enough battle, both.’
Purity nodded. Yes. There was an entire continent full of monsters to practise her new maths-blade against.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Molly picked herself up from the jolting deck and shouted to be heard above the roar of the re-entry flames outside. She might just have a way to stop them burning up above Kaliban! ‘Coppertracks, can you join cables with the ship?’
‘The craft is steamman enough for us to share our minds.’
‘Starsprite,’ Molly called, ‘make yourself ready.’
A silver cable extended like a tentacle from the wall. ‘My skin is hardening outside, a shield of ablative polymers forming. It feels better now. We’re finally clearing the mesosphere for the stratospheric envelope. I can see it. Do you think my mother knew this would happen? Do you think she loved me just a little?’
‘Coppertracks has a trick for you that you can’t call upon by instinct,’ said Molly, watching the ship’s cable snake towards a port opening in her steamman friend’s chest. ‘Your turn, old steamer. The sail-rider rig we cut Duncan out of at Tock House; show your young relative here the schematics for it. Starsprite, when you have the plans, peel off part of your hull to form the rig’s sail triangle.’
The fire inside the crystal dome of Coppertracks’ transparent skull began wheeling in eccentric patterns while the transfer was in progress, the steamman giving a little whistle of alarm from his stacks at just how fast the newly born craft was absorbing his wisdom. Fast then faster, then it was over. Above them, the roof of their pear-shaped capsule started to flow downwards, stopping just short of their heads, their porthole elongating and moving in front of the craft’s nose –
quicksilver sails lashed by the wind-shear growing into existence outside; one sail above them, two smaller stabilizer canopies to either side. As soon as her new wings had fully formed, the young craft began to roll, arrowing down in a spin.
‘How do I control myself?’ screamed the craft.
‘Form the sail rider’s control bars and pulley system inside here, down by your nose,’ ordered Molly. She glanced at Duncan Connor. ‘This calf of a craft might not have a clue about how to make a landing, but how about one of the wild boys of Dennehy’s Circus?’
Duncan looked pensively at the control bars, guide lines and deflexor handles forming in the front of the young ship. Outside the porthole, the brilliant red arc of Kaliban’s continents and waterless seabeds curved out before them. ‘This is a wee bit higher than any sail rider ever attempted a touchdown from.’
Molly tried to ignore the rattling of the newly formed struts as Duncan climbed over the scattered supply bales to slide into the control rig. She screened out the nervous mutters of Lord Rooksby – was that a Circlist meditation he was repeating? – disregarded the cold, angry eyes of Keyspierre and his daughter. Duncan Connor had possessed skill enough to land his burning rig in Tock House’s garden, the only survivor of the Army of Shadows’ annexation of the Jackelian skies. And here they were now, tumbling down over the enemy’s old home. It was a calculated risk, but she wasn’t going to give up now. Not after coming this far.
Molly turned as a crack sounded behind her. Commodore Black was rummaging through the supplies, emptying the contents of each crate onto the floor. Then he found what he was looking for and with a grunt of satisfaction pulled out a bottle of medicinal whisky. ‘Let us say a thanks to the board of supply’s clerks back in Highhorn, for they saw fit to outfit us with the very thing to calm our nerves. Along with—’ his hand swept the debris of his scavenging ‘—this other junk.’
