Campbell, Alan - Iron Angel

by Campbell, Alan

  “You’ve changed,” she muttered.

  He ignored this, continuing, “Nothing should be able to live in that queer water, but some things do. Fish from the old rivers and canals; animals from the woods. The trees still grow, but not in the same way they did before. People, too, maybe. The combination of Rys’s rain and the Mesmerist Veil did strange things to the land here.”

  “People?”

  “The engineers who raised and rerouted the track swear it. They say the farmers are still down there, alive…but altered.” He was silent a moment, then he shrugged. “I’ve never seen anything like that. A lot of workers drowned during the reconstruction. I suppose the survivors are superstitious.”

  She nodded.

  The Eleanor rattled across another bridge. Far below, a clump of farm buildings huddled around an earthen courtyard, the scene apple-tinted and woozy under twenty fathoms of water. Dark windows looked out over submerged fields and dykes and scraps of queasy woodland. Harper spied an old steam tractor, and the carcass of some large animal now soft with white eels, and shivered at the thought of anyone still living down there.

  What did they farm?

  “I brought you a refill.” Carrick held out a flask of blood. “I noticed you were getting low.”

  She just stared at it.

  “I’m sorry.” Carrick’s smile looked ugly and desperate. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? An apology. Well, there it is.”

  “It’s not enough, Jan.”

  The lines around Carrick’s eyes pinched. “I’m asking for a second chance. You could do a lot worse than me. I was serious about the house in Highcliffe—a place of your own.”

  “As your own personal whore?” She snorted. “I’ll think about that offer if Menoa ever turns me away from Hell.”

  Carrick spat into the water below.

  Harper glanced back at Observation Carriage One. The Eleanor had had enough spare glass aboard for the midnight shift to repair most of the shattered windows, but many of the rest of the panes remained empty. Someone had suggested they cover these up with paper or squares of linen, but Carrick had insisted those patches would spoil the look of his train. Harper sighed. Either way, the passengers would not be happy. They were bound to complain. “Somebody summoned it,” she said. “If you’d only let me interview the passengers, Jan.”

  “I’m not getting into this again,” he replied. “I’ve told you what I think.”

  “The slaves, at least…” Harper suggested.

  “Out of bounds. We had one death already of suspected plague. You’re not even to mingle with them.” She opened her mouth to argue (what proof did he have that the man had died of plague? He was old and crippled), but Carrick went on, “And I don’t want you going near that glass bastard until we arrive at Coreollis. I’m not having you tinkering with his goddamn head again. He’s obstinate enough as it is.”

  “What I did to the parasite has nothing to do with his behavior. Hasp has been fighting the implant every step of the way. You’re the one being stubborn here.”

  “You admit he’s dangerous?”

  “Of course he’s dangerous. I didn’t want him released in the first place.”

  The lines around Carrick’s mouth tightened. “You’d better go sweep the train again before the guests get up,” he said. “I don’t want any more surprises on this journey.”

  Harper turned away from him. “I was leaving anyway. The air stinks here; I don’t want to breathe it too long.” She walked back towards the stairs which led down into the carriage below.

  Carrick called after her: “I’m not a bad man, Alice. You hear me? I’m not a bad man.”

  The engineer quickened her pace. It scared her to think that he might be right.

  “And I know why you’re here.”

  She hesitated at the top step.

  “I’ve seen the soulpearl you wear under your uniform,” he went on. “Do you think I don’t know why you hide it? Why you always clutch it when you’re upset? Why you take it off at night before you come to bed?”

  She turned slowly. “A lot of people collect souls.”

  Carrick chuckled. “What soul? That pearl is empty. The holding patterns are there, but there’s no glow, no ghost inside.” He studied her for a long moment before his eyes narrowed. “Everyone knows what happened to your husband—the real story, not that bullshit the PRC put out.”

  Harper made a dismissive gesture. “I bought the jewel at the Garrison Market. It’s fake.” She shrugged. “But I liked it; I thought it looked pretty.”

  “I’ve seen fakes before,” Carrick said, “and that isn’t one of them. You are wearing one hell of an expensive jewel, Alice. How many times did you have to open your legs before you could afford it?” He bared his teeth and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Or did you just fuck Menoa? He certainly fucked you.”

  “Don’t…” She glanced over her shoulder as if expecting to find the king there. He had remained at Cog Portal, yet his presence seemed to haunt the train.

  Carrick’s tone became contemptuous. “You think I’m any worse than your husband?” he shouted. “I survived the war, Alice. Tom didn’t, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You should thank Menoa for keeping that coward in Hell.”

  Harper stormed down the stairwell, her heart pounding like the train’s own wheels. When she reached the observation lounge she glanced up. Carrick was leering down at her through the transparent ceiling. She wanted to hide, but she couldn’t think of anywhere to go. Her world was made of glass.

  The train thundered on through the conical black hills, climbing steadily, crossing bridges and causeways between islands until the ground rose at last to meet the edge of the Moine Massif. From her viewpoint at the rear of the train Harper watched the landscape unfold. White froth still clung to the rocks and grasses in places, a sour indicant of the extent of the waters’ retreat, but the landscape beyond remained untainted and naturally bleak. To the north, clear streams still chuckled and bounced down the slopes of Moine Moor. A dun heather moorland swept southwards towards Helmbog and the distant peaks of the Fossil Mountains, where the low sun could be seen gleaming like a copper penny in the pale sky. Ancient maps named that land Benecoir or Bencora. But most people knew it simply as Brownslough; Hafe’s realm.

  The king’s army stayed on the Red Road, which had been regularly bloodied so as to maintain a direct road to the front lines. They could not dare leave that trail. Only the arconite wandered further afield. It had climbed onto the massif and now paced the border of Brownslough.

  During the war, the Pandemerian Railroad Company had posted pickets along the borders of Hafe’s realm. King Menoa had been warring with Hafe’s brother Rys, after all. Harper rolled her empty soulpearl between her fingers as she recalled those early days: the incessant rain, the distant flashes across the horizon, the raging seas around the Highcliffe wharfs and pontoons. The wind had seemed to carry the booms of resonance cannon from halfway around the world. She closed her eyes, pressed the pearl against her chest.

  The god of dirt and poison had not retaliated. He’d killed those diplomats the PRC had sent out to parley after the war, and yet he’d kept his own armies close. It seemed Hafe was quite content to let his brother Rys do the fighting.

  Gods were always difficult to predict. What devilry would they be up to now? Hafe sat in Brownslough and grew fatter. Cospinol’s great skyship would be patrolling the seas beyond the Riot Coast, hunting any ships who ventured too close to his domain, while Sabor watched the sand grains trickle through his castle in the Charrel Mountains. Mirith never strayed far from his elder brother, Rys, of course, following that handsome god like a loyal puppy. And Hasp brooded in the Eleanor’s slave pens even now.

  Only Ulcis had been slain, murdered by an unknown assassin in Deepgate.

  Harper clutched her soulpearl again.

  If one god could die, why not two?

  By midday the moor had become a blanket of cerise heather an
d white flowers rising towards the mountains all around. Pools of still water mirrored the vast blue sky, turning partially submerged boulders into islands hovering in their own pockets of air. The train pulled its banner of smoke in a long curve around Ialar Moor and through the Ialar Pass to where the coke-oven funnels of the town of Moine rose above the moorland beyond. Here the Eleanor stopped to refuel at the depot coal stage, and two strange things happened.

  Edgar Lovich was butchered in his sleep. And the Eleanor picked up an unlikely passenger.

  As much to stretch her legs as to avoid the clouds of coal dust which would inevitably descend around the train, Harper took a stroll out across the locomotive yard. She was careful not to stray too far from the train, and to take a full bulb of mist with her, for the sun would quickly sap her strength. Being dead had distinct disadvantages in the world of the living.

  She envied the arconite Menoa had constructed from the angel Dill. Powered by a fragment of the Shattered God, it had been able to leave the Red Road, following the train across the plateau while the troops forced to march only on bloodied ground lagged far behind. The smoke from Menoa’s war machines still stained the southeastern sky, but the distance between the Eleanor and the king’s army had stretched. Now the arconite towered over the town of Moine, its vast wings covering most of the southern sky. The foul waters from the Portal Lake had dried to a brown crust on its bones, but it did not need this blood or any mist or crimson earth to survive here.

  Menoa had used a fragment of the Shattered God to create the arconite, and then butchered countless souls to temporarily widen the portal so that it could leave the Maze. He had unleashed a warrior capable of destroying entire cities and armies. Free from the confines of the Veil, this single great automaton was worth more to the king than his entire horde. The rumble of coal came from behind as the Eleanor’s crew refilled her tender from the stage. Moine had been a mining settlement before the war, but Rys’s rain had lifted the water table, swelling the town’s tar pits past bursting. Now the noxious overflow had rendered the place uninhabitable. The PRC had cleaned up the yard itself, but the streets and lower walls of the workers’ houses and coke factories had been abandoned to the viscid black liquid. Away from the train, an eerie silence blanketed the spoiled town, broken only by the sigh of a hot breeze and the occasional slap of a tin shutter against a brick wall. Moine, more so even than Cog Island, was a city for ghosts. Harper was startled when she heard a very human cry for help.

  The shout had seemed to originate behind one of the old engine sheds which ran parallel to the main track. She stepped over the auxiliary rails and walked around the building to investigate.

  Parts of the yard’s outer wall had collapsed, leaving only a chain of slender brick islands connected by rubble. This broken wall formed a promontory of sorts, jutting out across Moine’s lake of tar to stop some five yards short of the cleaned concrete surface of the yard. A thin-faced man in a white suit was sitting there, waving a white parasol. Evidently he had reached the wall by climbing through the shell of one of the coke factories bordering the yard, and then walked along its uneven summit only to reach a place where he could not proceed any further without soiling his fine clothes on the thick black gloop all around. He wore a sheathed clockwork sword at his hip, and circular blue lenses over his eyes which now turned to face Harper.

  “I require assistance,” he said. “Would you be kind enough to help me?” He inclined his head at the tar separating him from the engineer. “It’s rather undignified, but I suppose I’ll have to be carried.”

  Harper folded her arms. “Who are you? What are you doing out here?”

  He gave a wan smile and a smooth bow. “Isaac Pilby, renowned lepidopterist, published poet, and lately an unwitting tourist. My guide, having reneged upon our deal in the field and demanded an additional—exorbitant—fee in order to have his entire village employed as porters, stole my luggage and my butterflies, before abandoning me over there.” He flapped a hand in the general direction of Ialar Moor. “I walked all morning before I saw the smokestacks of this wretched place. With so much industry, one would have expected to find civilization.” He shook his parasol. “Instead of cafés, I find a town knee-deep in some ghastly pollutant.”

  “Tar,” Harper said. “It stinks but you’re safe enough. I doubt it’s more than an inch deep. You might lose your shoes, but it won’t do you much harm.”

  “It may be shallow,” Pilby said, “and it may be safe. But it is filthy. I have traversed this town from one side to the other in leaps and bounds to minimize the damage to my suit and shoes, and I have no intention of soiling them now. These brogues were handmade in Skirl, you know?” He gave a small shrug, then adjusted his lenses. “You’ll just have to carry me over.”

  Harper was about to reply, when she heard a clicking, whirring noise behind her and turned to see the glittering figure of Hasp approaching. Sunlight blurred through the extremities of the angel’s transparent armour and gave him a flame-red halo. His brow crinkled beneath his glass half-helm, folding the tattoos above his brow. “Refueling is finished,” he growled, his gaze flitting between Harper and the stranded man. “They sent me to find you.”

  “Who did? Carrick?”

  He nodded.

  “An hour ago Carrick forbade me or anyone else from going anywhere near you.”

  “Some of the ladies,” Hasp said, “thought my armour would look splendid in the sunlight. Your boss obliged them, and then took the opportunity to demonstrate his power over me. Sadly, I remain compelled to obey the orders of Menoa’s lackeys, so here I am. Who is this idiot on the wall?”

  “Isaac Pilby,” Harper said. “He collects butterflies.”

  The angel studied the man for a moment. “Let’s get back, then.”

  “Excuse me,” Pilby called after them in a high voice. “I say! Excuse me?”

  The angel and the engineer kept walking.

  “You can’t leave me here,” the lepidopterist protested.

  The Eleanor’s rear carriages came into view as Harper and Hasp neared the corner of the engine shed.

  “Wait!” Pilby yelled after them. “Listen! I have a magic stone.”

  “Oh, that’s funny,” Harper muttered. She faced Hasp. “How are you feeling now?” The angel’s eyes had remained the same dark, brooding grey since she’d last seen him. “Have you suffered any dizziness since…?” Since Carrick had forced him to murder.

  “I’m fine,” Hasp said, in a tone that suggested he wasn’t.

  A shrill voice came from behind them. “I can pay. That’s what it’s about isn’t it? Mercenaries! You’re no better than Cohl’s Shades. Very well, you’ve made your point, now name your fee.”

  “The chief enjoys power,” Harper said to the glass-armoured god. “That’s why he orders you to do these things. But your resistance to his commands will kill you. If you obeyed without question, without thought, he’d lose interest and you might stand a better chance of reaching Coreollis alive.”

  Hasp grunted. “If I obeyed without question or thought, then I wouldn’t deserve to live.”

  Harper sucked in mist from her rubber bulb. “What would you do if you were free?” she said, offering the bulb to Hasp.

  Hasp glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes. “I’d try to kill Menoa.” He shrugged. “In this armour, I’d pose no threat to him, but it would be a worthy end.”

  The engineer was silent for a while. “I joined the Mesmerists for one reason,” she said at last. “My husband Tom was an officer in the King’s Reservists. After he died at Larnaig, I begged for an audience with Menoa. I wanted to convince him to give me Tom’s soul.” She remembered the months of pleading with Carrick at the Cog Island Liaison Centre. “I was rising quickly through the special engineering branch of the PRC, working on adapting Mesmerist technology to work in this world. It wasn’t easy—we had to engineer solutions for metaphysical devices the king could simply will into existence in Hell. Carrick re
fused to pass on my requests to meet Menoa, but after I had a breakthrough with the first Locators, the king actually asked to see me.”

  “He thought you had potential?”

  “The special engineering branch was crucial to the War Effort, and I was a crucial part of the branch. Once the king had heard my plea, he agreed to return Tom’s soul in exchange for a guaranteed term of service.”

  “And he reneged on that deal?”

  “He applies his philosophy of change to everything, including his promises. I soon learned that I couldn’t trust him.” She paused. What she was about to say, she had never told another person before. “So I went to Hell myself to find my husband.”

  Hasp nodded. “You’re not the first to try it.”

  “But of course Menoa expected me to try just that. I ended up working for him in Hell instead.” She sucked in another long breath of mist from her bulb. “And now I’m back here, and I’m dead, and I’d like someone to kill that bastard for me. Do you know anyone strong enough to accomplish such a feat?”