The Iron Ghost

by Jen Williams

  ‘That could be what we need at the moment,’ said Barlow in a small voice. ‘The better to advance the repairs to the city, to get people where they need to be.’

  ‘No. Repairs will happen, people will heal, in their own time. We need to be armed. Come on, I want to go up to the pit now.’ Tamlyn strode for the stairs, and Barlow scurried after her. ‘I need some fresh air.’

  They took a pair of werkens up through the northernmost gate. Tamlyn’s was her smallest werken, a solid, plodding model too square and blocky to look like any particular four-legged animal. Barlow rode a similar, smaller version, the main bulk of it hidden under piles of furs and a huge, sturdy saddle. Nodded through by a pair of guards with their faces hidden within thick fur hoods, they entered a small patch of evergreen forest, quickly turning off the main path and heading straight into the trees. Here and there Barlow could see signs that other werkens had been this way: heavy prints in the hard earth, broken branches. She had been back and forth herself several times in the last few days, mainly ferrying messages to those masons Tamlyn considered trustworthy enough to work on her secret project, and they were few enough in number.

  Eventually the trees began to thin out, and they came to a space where the world suddenly fell away, revealing a newly excavated quarry. A handful of men and women moved around on the few werkens they had been able to spare. The earth and stone they had torn through, with feverish impatience, was still raw, and looking at it made Barlow feel uneasy. Under Tamlyn’s orders they had also erected a huge wooden screen, so that anyone randomly approaching the secret quarry from the city would not be able to see what they were working on.

  Tamlyn, leaning forward over her mount, peered down into the hollow. She wore her hair tied back and Barlow was concerned to note how pale she looked. Her cheeks were gaunter than they had been, and her eyes glittered constantly with an emotion Barlow couldn’t read.

  ‘We found a rich vein of Edeian here,’ said Barlow into the silence. ‘There’s that, at least. Kerryn thinks that it may be of better quality than the stone we’ve been taking from the main quarry, although I suspect it’s a little early to know that.’ Barlow paused, thinking of Yun. He had been a workshy man, mostly, but the timbre of the stone had been his passion. He would have been able to tell them about the rock, but he had died screaming in a cocoon of flames. Barlow squeezed her eyes shut briefly. ‘We’re getting the pieces we need, at least.’

  ‘Large enough?’ asked Tamlyn.

  ‘Large enough, yes,’ said Barlow. ‘It’s certainly that.’

  ‘Come on.’ Tamlyn led them down a wide path, hard dirt beaten flat by werken feet, until they were in the belly of the quarry. The men and women working there stopped when they saw them approaching, and Barlow saw a mixture of emotions on their faces; pride, at the sight of the Mistress Crafter, and fear, for losing both her nephew and niece had not improved Tamlyn’s already unforgiving nature. Barlow was also fairly sure she spotted a few faces that looked angry, mistrustful. They have families to keep safe and homes to rebuild, thought Barlow, and we have them hidden in the woods working on Tamlyn’s latest crackpot idea.

  They reached the wooden screen and passed through the small gate built into it. As they emerged through to the other side, Barlow took a slow breath; the sight of the thing always gave her a yawning feeling in her stomach.

  ‘There it is,’ said Tamlyn, and for the first time there was a hint of warmth in her voice. ‘It will be the pride of Skaldshollow.’

  Initially, it was difficult to see, if you didn’t know what you were looking for, but if you stared at the raw rock long enough, it would suddenly emerge, like a face hidden in the bark of a tree. A straight line here, an arching curve there, grey rock riddled with veins of pale green Edeian. A huge lump of rock rested just in front of them, twice as tall as a man and three times as long. And that was just its hand.

  ‘It’s something, all right,’ said Barlow, taking her hat off and turning it around in her hands. ‘It’s certainly something.’

  48

  ‘That’s great, Yerry, a good find. Do you want to put it over there with the others?’

  The child edged in through the door frame, eyeing Ip warily. No older than seven, and under a layer of dirt that must have taken months to accrue, Yerry was a ghostly scrap of a child. In that dirty face her eyes were very wide, already filled with a mixture of fear and agonised curiosity. Bezcavar remembered that look fondly, from so many followers.

  Yerry took the cat’s skull she clutched in her small hands and placed it carefully at the foot of the shrine. Already Ip’s small band had amassed a reasonable collection of bones and skins, all placed neatly around an old wooden crate. Ip herself had saved up a few scrounged pennies for a single candle, which she liked to light when all the children were there, so that the warm light ran sickly over old, yellow bone.

  It was almost too easy.

  Too long sneaking from place to place, too long with no suffering committed in the demon’s name, too long living in fear of discovery. Tiresome, human concepts like fear were damaging to a demon, sapping Bezcavar’s vitality. It had been fine while Ip was a guest of Tamlyn Nox, able to order small atrocities to order – Ip’s lips twitched into a faint smile at the memory of Nuava and her knife – but without that and without a shrine, Bezcavar’s grip grew weaker and weaker. Eventually, Ip had been forced to take a chance, falling in with Sal and her scruffy band of orphans and strays, but within that unlikely setting, Bezcavar had discovered something new: children were curious, and children could be cruel.

  It had started with a few stories, whispered into the ears of the younger children. They were so starved of attention that they drank it up, listening raptly, and then asking questions. Bezcavar told a good story too: about a wandering spirit, a being of wild magic, who needed the attentions of children to survive. The spirit needed strange things, Ip would tell them, and sometimes asked that they do strange things, but it was all to the good. And perhaps there had been the occasional promise of unspecified power – what orphaned child did not dream of having the means to live their own life? And Bezcavar had let a little of its own power seep through, bending the right minds just enough.

  In no time at all Ip had many of the younger children living at Sal’s ramshackle hovel scurrying around at her whim, and gradually, gradually the power was starting to come back. Yesterday, Bezcavar had convinced three of them to carve small cuts into the palms of their hands – an initiation, Ip had called it.

  ‘Very good.’ Ip crossed the room and straightened the skull with one finger. She had claimed the cellar as her own and no one had objected; the spiders and the black mould meant that she had it largely to herself anyway. It was, the demon reflected, a particularly apt place for a shrine; when the building had been a butcher’s shop animal corpses had been strung up in the dark to keep them cool. Bezcavar could still feel the echoes of their pain, distant but pleasing.

  Yerry stared up at Ip, caught between terror and a seven-year-old’s need to ask questions.

  ‘It will be ready soon, and we can make offerings to the spirit. Won’t that be fun?’

  Yerry nodded rapidly.

  ‘Playing in the muck again, Bestina? That seems about right to me.’

  Ip turned to see the boy Mikas. He stood at the top of the stairs, regarding them both with a look of disgust tinged with amusement, before making his way casually down the steps. Inwardly, Bezcavar cursed. Yerry was already hiding behind Ip, one small fist curled into her rags.

  ‘Shows what you know, Mikas.’ Ip stood up straight. She was still a few inches short of him, despite their similar ages. ‘What I know would turn your hair white.’

  Mikas laughed and shoved past her, deliberately barging her with his shoulder. Ip stumbled back.

  ‘What are you building down here in the dark? A doll’s house for all the little babies?’

  He stepped up to the shrine, peering closely at the old bones the children had carefully a
rranged.

  ‘It’s for the wild spirit,’ piped up Yerry. Ip looked at her in surprise. The child’s face was set into grim lines of defiance. ‘If we bring things for the spirit, it will give us power.’

  Mikas snorted. ‘It’s a load of old shit, is what it is.’ He reached out with one hand and tugged sharply on one of the toughened skins they had used to cover the crate. A number of old bones, a few still with scraps of sinew plastered to the ends, scattered onto the floor. Ip jumped forward to try and push the boy away, but he threw a fist at her, almost absentmindedly, and smacked her square on the ear. Ip cried out and staggered away, one hand pressed to her head.

  ‘It’s not healthy, playing down here with this stuff,’ said Mikas. He lifted his boot and carefully stamped a few errant rat skulls into powder. ‘I’m doing you a favour, really.’

  ‘No!’ cried Yerry, and amazingly she ran towards the shrine herself, trying to save the bones, but Mikas just pushed her away.

  ‘You’re all just stupid babies,’ said Mikas again. He pushed at the broken bones with his foot, before walking back to the stone steps. ‘If I catch you playing with this stuff again, I’ll pull your tongues out.’

  Ip watched him go. Inside her, the dark cloud that was Bezcavar boiled and seethed. This was all new, this world of children, this hierarchy of the strong and the wilful. There was too little power now, too few offerings, but that would change. Bezcavar was used to waiting.

  ‘He broked it,’ said Yerry tearfully. She was picking up the bigger pieces and gathering them into her lap. ‘He’s so mean, breaking our stuff.’

  The cat’s skull was still in place on top of the box, and Ip looked into its blank eye sockets thoughtfully.

  ‘Don’t worry, Yerry,’ she said, ‘soon we’ll break him.’

  49

  ‘You have quite the problem here.’

  Sebastian and Frith stood in the cellar of the mountain temple, some distance from the unmoving figure of Sir Michael. They had tied him to a chair, and now he slumped forward, letting his bonds hold him up. Sebastian wasn’t sure if he was truly asleep, or feigning it.

  ‘We cannot let him go,’ said Sebastian, already tired of the words. He’d had the same discussion over and over in the last week. ‘We’d have a screaming mob on our hands in a matter of days.’

  ‘And I assume you will not kill him.’

  Sebastian glanced up at Frith’s face, but there was no anger or cruelty there, just a considering look.

  ‘No. There has been enough death, on all sides. He killed eight of the sisters when he came here, because I hesitated, and because I made them swear not to take another human life.’

  Frith raised his eyebrows. ‘They kept that oath?’

  ‘The sisters seem to take these things quite seriously. They do appear to be developing their own sense of honour, for what it’s worth. Although that’s not to say that some of them wouldn’t like to see this man dead.’

  Sir Michael grunted and shifted on his seat. The blood under his nose had dried to a hard brown crust.

  ‘The Second,’ said Frith. ‘She is the one that wants him dead the most, yes?’

  ‘You have noticed that?’

  Frith nodded. ‘She speaks of it often when you are not close enough to hear. I would keep an eye on that one, Sebastian.’

  Frith had arrived the day before, swooping down out of the sky on his black griffin. He had greeted Sebastian with the half-smile that was as warm as he ever got, and then announced that he would stay for a few days before flying back to Litvania.

  Sebastian shook his head. ‘I do not blame her. Sometimes . . . half the time I think she’s right. That the brood sisters’ nature is not something that I can change. My influence will not be enough.’

  ‘Are you sure you should even be trying?’

  Sebastian opened his mouth to ask what he meant by that, but Sir Michael spoke into the brief silence.

  ‘Abomination.’ He leaned his head back, glaring at them both from under swollen eyelids. ‘Consorting with demons. Devils. Bringing them here to violate our sacred spaces.’

  ‘You are awake, then?’ Sebastian frowned. ‘I have some food here for you, if you’ll take it.’

  ‘I will not give you the satisfaction. Abomination.’

  Sebastian sighed. ‘I have heard that one before.’ He turned to Lord Frith, who was watching the bound knight closely. ‘Shall we go up for some air?’

  Outside, the day was filled with bright sunshine and it was unseasonably warm. Frith’s griffin was sitting on the grass with its great black paws crossed in front of it, like an enormous and deeply unlikely cat. Its wings were folded along its back, and the sun painted rainbows across its oily feathers.

  ‘I have missed this old fellow,’ said Sebastian. He held out his hand to the griffin, and it briefly pressed the curve of its beak into his palm. ‘He gives me hope somehow.’ He grinned uncertainly. ‘Perhaps I am desperate for hope from any quarter at this point.’

  ‘I think Gwiddion likes it here,’ said Frith. He stood with his arms crossed, but Sebastian couldn’t help noticing that Frith’s robes now sported a small embroidered griffin next to his family’s tree sigil. ‘The air is so clean.’

  ‘It is good to see you both.’ Sebastian turned back to Frith. ‘It truly is. Did Wydrin send you?’

  Frith nodded once. ‘She was worried about you, but has business herself at Crosshaven at the moment. Apparently, now I am an errand boy to fly around checking up on people.’

  Sebastian smirked at this. ‘She mentioned a job when she was here, somewhere out at the Horns. Is that still happening?’

  ‘It has already happened,’ said Frith. He uncrossed his arms and plucked an errant leaf from among the griffin’s feathers. ‘When it became clear that you weren’t going to get away from here easily, we decided to do the job by ourselves.’

  Despite himself Sebastian felt a stab of sadness at that. ‘Oh. How did it go?’

  Frith shrugged. ‘A man living out on one of the smallest islands had come across some sort of enchanted amulet, and set himself up as a king of sorts. He was using the amulet to steal children – it could summon violent spirits, this amulet. There was a fight. I dealt with the spirits, and Wydrin killed him. It was fairly straightforward.’

  Sebastian nodded. Across the training slopes the remaining brood sisters were going through their exercises. Was it his imagination, or did they seem more listless today? He saw one or two looking over to them, and he could not read the expressions on their faces.

  ‘Is everything all right with you two?’ The question was out before he even knew he was going to ask it. ‘I mean, it’s impossible to tell with Wydrin, but you know she is practically a sister to me.’

  Immediately Frith scowled, looking much more like the tortured lord who had led them into the forbidden Citadel of Creos.

  ‘As far as I know there is nothing wrong with Wydrin at all. She is . . . as she ever is.’

  Sebastian nodded, pursing his lips, and the expression on Frith’s face softened a touch.

  ‘I have some responsibilities at Blackwood Keep. It is not easy to combine my responsibilities as Lord of the Blackwood with . . . everything else.’

  Sebastian nodded. ‘Well, I’m glad you had the time to come and see me, at least. It’s good to see a friendly face.’

  Frith smiled, although it was a small, cold thing. ‘That is all to the good. Although I doubt that Wydrin will be pleased with what I have to tell her.’

  ‘We must kill him. It is us, or them.’

  The Second stood behind Sir Michael, one clawed hand held perilously close to his bared throat.

  ‘I told you not to come down here,’ said Sebastian. The man was stinking now, a sour smell of urine and old sweat. Whatever it was they were going to do, it would have to be soon.

  ‘You cannot tell me what to do, human.’

  Sebastian sighed heavily. ‘That’s true, I can’t. I can only advise you, I suppose. But
you followed me from the battlefield at Baneswatch, so you must think something of what I say.’

  The Second faltered, her hand drawing away. ‘I do not understand you,’ she said eventually. ‘The blood of the dragon runs in your veins too, but you resist it.’

  ‘That’s just not true.’ Sebastian ran a hand over his face. ‘There is a link between us, and I know that is difficult for you to understand, but—’

  ‘I understand completely. I know you feel it,’ said the Second. She came and stood in between Sebastian and the bound knight, her dirty hair hanging in her face. ‘I know you feel the need to hunt, and to kill. I saw it in your face when we chased the wolf. I saw it in your eyes.’

  Sebastian shook his head. ‘You’re mistaken. Besides which, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does matter!’ The Second stepped right up to him, close enough for him to smell the dried blood in her hair. She had been hunting again. ‘How can you seek to command us, as she did, when you will not accept your own nature? You turn away from everything that we are, and do not even try to understand.’

  ‘I am not like you.’

  The Second’s pupils contracted to thin black slices, and her nostrils flared. After a moment she grinned, revealing her pointed teeth.

  ‘I can smell the lie on you,’ she whispered. ‘And because you continue to try to convince yourself of that, eight of my sisters died by this man’s hand.’ She gestured roughly over her shoulder. ‘Because you convinced them to take your ridiculous oath. Because you asked them to deny their nature. Because you deny your own.’

  Sebastian looked at her for a long moment. ‘We are not killing this man,’ he said. ‘And I ask you not to come down here again.’

  The Second hissed. ‘Then you doom us all.’

  She stalked away from him and up the cellar stairs.

  Later, Ephemeral came and found him. He was sitting on the grass slopes, letting the blue crystal globe Crowleo had given him roll from one hand to the other. He had spent some time looking into its depths, filled with the memory of the voice of Isu, but had found little comfort there.