by Stephen Hunt
Purity was retreating to the far side of the bedroom but the intruder wasn't after the ragamuffin – it flung itself at Kyorin, lashing at a shield of energy cast by the traveller, invisible save where the beast's claws struck, sparks flying off. Molly dived for her sideboard and her purse gun as Kyorin and the beast rolled across the floor.
Molly was pulling her pepperbox-shaped pistol out of the drawer when two other eyeless fanged faces appeared hissing at the broken window, one of them poking its own big black pistol through into the room. The realization that these things hunted in packs struck Molly like a lead cosh as she fumbled for a crystal charge to prime her gun. Don't feel the fear, don't feel the – a shadow lengthened across the room and the two beasts clinging to Tock House's wall disappeared with a wet slap.
'About bloody time.' Molly snapped the purse gun shut and shot Kyorin's attacker in the back, dead in its spine. Its head turned slowly towards her and she saw the blood running down the thing's fangs. Green blood.
Kyorin had stopped struggling; his shield broken under the storm of claw strikes. With a yell of anger, Purity grabbed a poker from the room's cold fireplace and ran at the beast. The creature didn't even look around at the girl as it batted her and sent her flying across the floor. Molly broke her pistol, ejected the shattered charge and reached for another shell. On the creature's back a bubbling froth of blood had congealed as hard as stone, closing the wound. A purse pistol was no thunder-lizard gun, but even so – she had just shot this thing square in its spine. No street thief in Middlesteel could have taken such a shot and survived. The creature turned the eyeless plate of its skull towards her and raised its hand, wagging a finger disapprovingly – the scalpel-sharp talon flashing in the half-light, a coughing rasp laughing mockingly at her. Circle on a stick, the damn thing was sentient. How lethal did that make it?
In the corner Purity pulled herself to her feet. She was a game young bird, tougher than she looked, obviously. Molly squeezed the trigger and her pistol's clockwork mechanism struck the fresh charge, but there was no explosion. Misfire! No time to clear it. Arms outstretched, the creature leapt at her, an arc of death springing across the bedroom. Only to meet a wall of flesh as the taut bare-chested form of Duncan Connor slammed the beast off balance. It rolled over and brought both its long muscled arms up, fingers twitching like miniature sabres, marking the location of its new prey with a series of sonar clicks out of its throat. Duncan charged first, roaring his anger and scooping a knife-long shard of broken glass from the floor. Springing forward, the beast tried to regain the advantage of the fight, but it wasn't used to this. Prey ran, prey begged for life, it didn't attack first.
The ex-soldier drove a foot down into the creature's knee, ducking under its sweeping claws and seized the beast from behind. There was a quick flash of glass as Duncan slashed the creature's throat. The beast stumbled forward, the sudden fountain of blood slowing almost immediately as it congealed rock-hard. But whether it was healed enough to resume its attack was left to conjecture as Commodore Black kicked open the bedroom door.
'Hello, my bucko.'
The multi-barrelled deck-sweeper that had once graced the conning tower of the commodore's u-boat jolted with an eruption like a cannon and the creature was shredded and thrown across the room, flailing onto Molly's bed. The beast tried to move, spitting out a few guttural words in a language Molly didn't recognize – but then the words' meaning formed in her mind like an echo of the alien tongue. It was counting, reeling off a line of numbers before growing still. How could she possibly understand what this terrible creature was saying, and what did the sequence of numbers mean?
'That's a blessed ugly thing you've let into the house to disturb my sleep this night, Molly Templar.'
Molly waved her diminutive purse pistol at the commodore by way of thanks and looked over at Kyorin, his body half-concealed by the kneeling form of his ragamuffin companion. Tiny sparks of the vision from Molly's joining with the foreigner flickered in her mind as she bent down beside them both.
'Please,' Purity begged, tugging at Kyorin's sleeves. 'Don't leave me. You'll be fine, you'll see.'
Molly ran a hand along the claw gashes marking Kyorin's chest. It was a miracle he was breathing at all.
'I should have been able to save him,' cried Purity. 'I killed a political officer when I didn't even mean to. So why couldn't I save him from the slat when it smashed the window?'
Slat? An ugly name for equally ugly creatures. 'You tried,' said Molly. 'But that thing on my bed isn't from the race of man. If it weren't for my two friends here, everyone in the house would be dead right now.'
Kyorin's eyes flickered open, glancing at Purity then sliding over towards Molly. Kyorin and Molly exchanged a glance – both of them knew he wasn't going to make it.
'You – must – travel to meet – the – great sage.'
'Your home,' said Molly. 'You mean Kaliban, don't you?'
'Our joining – has – left – a mark on you. My brothers – and – sisters – will know you – now.'
'Sweet Circle, fellow, I only write about travelling to the moon. I don't actually own any airship that's capable of making the flight!'
Kyorin coughed out a stream of green blood from his mouth as he forced a smile. 'You can't travel – to – Kaliban by dirigible. There – is only – one who – can help – you get there. He is – a – prisoner of – your – watchers in the air.'
The commodore shouldered the weight of his monstrously large gun. 'Ah, no. You don't mean who I think, do you? You can't ask Molly to trust those rascals in the Court of the Air.'
'Yes – your – Court. The man is – called – Timlar Preston.'
Kyorin's back arched as his body began to convulse from the damage done to him.
'Kyorin,' Purity sobbed. 'Use your power, use it to heal your body.'
'I have no – power. Only – what I borrow – from your land. Home is – so far – away.' Kyorin groaned as the pain grew too much, clutching the arms of the two women by his side. 'The – face. The face. Set my – people free.'
'What face?' Molly asked.
Kyorin's hand stretched out to feel the tears rolling down the ragamuffin's cheeks. 'Purity – Drake.' The air expelled from Kyorin's lungs.
Kyorin's arm slumped down and he moved no more.
By the door Duncan Connor twisted the dial for the bedroom's gas lamps, bright yellow light flickering into life and casting the two corpses into sharp relief. 'Aye, and I used to believe garrison duty along the southern frontier was dangerous.'
Molly closed the traveller's eyelids with her hand and as she drew it back she saw the pink dye staining her fingers. Reaching into her nightdress she withdrew a tissue and rubbed at Kyorin's face, revealing his real blue skin underneath the paint – as bright as the cobalt waves of a cove. 'Good grief, he's blue! A blue man.'
'Aye, he's painted his skin to be able to walk among us,' said Duncan. 'He would have caused quite a stir if he hadn't.'
'I never knew,' said Purity. 'All this time with him and I never knew.'
'Come on now, lass,' said the commodore, moving Purity's shocked form away from the corpse. 'It's no good you crying here. Your friend has moved along the Circle and that's the way of it.' Commodore Black choked back his surprise as he had a good look at the ragamuffin for the first time in the gaslight and saw her pinny with the golden crown so obviously ripped from it. Two royalists hiding under Tock House's roof now, then, the commodore and Purity both, and a monster lying dead in Molly's bed. Molly had experienced better nights. They all had.
A voice called up from the small quadrangle at the centre of Tock House. Molly carefully poked her head out of the broken window. Coppertracks stood surrounded by mu-bodies, his diminutive drones clutching everything from pitchforks to a blunderbuss. They were prodding at the dead bodies of two more slats; brothers to the beast lying blasted apart in her room.
'I have never seen such a strange-looking creature,' the steamman's voic
ebox carried up at its maximum volume. 'Molly softbody, are you and the others safe?'
'Quite,' answered Molly. 'Come on up, old steamer. Those things down there look dead enough and we could do with your help in here. And you-' she turned from the window and announced to the air '-you took your damn time getting here.'
A figure stepped out of the shadows behind her four-poster bed. 'Please, there were two of them and they took a lot of killing.'
'According to the penny dreadfuls, the Hood-o'the-marsh has had a lot of practice recently.'
'Few who didn't deserve it,' said Oliver Brooks. The two guns at his side flashed their approval with a wicked patina.
'Oh, this is a bad turn,' said the commodore. 'We're in the eye of the storm, now, if you've come back to us, lad.'
'Not in the eye yet,' said Oliver. 'The storm is sweeping towards us from the north this time. I'll take that as a thank you for killing those two monsters outside.' He pointed to Kyorin's corpse. 'Was your blue-skinned friend really serious about Kaliban? And what did he mean when he said the face?'
'He was serious enough to give his life bringing us the warning. And he was talking about his face,' said Molly. 'Or one very like it. How about it, Jared, you helped me and Coppertracks present to the Royal Society, doesn't his face look familiar to you? Think about the slides…'
Commodore Black sucked in his breath. 'You're right, lass. No wonder his mug looks familiar. His face is the face on Kaliban, the mortal great carving from the observatory slides.'
'You wanted to know who on Kaliban was signalling to Coppertracks,' said Molly. 'The message in a bottle we heard. It was Kyorin's people. I think they're slaves, a subject race, and their masters are the ones toppling Catosian city-states and taking over Quatershift.'
'Kaliban!' said Duncan Connor, the meaning of Molly's words finally dawning on him. 'You're saying yon fellow and his ugly kelpie both travelled here from another celestial sphere? Surely this is whimsy?'
'You served in the New Pattern Army,' said Molly. 'Have you ever heard of a horde of polar barbarians capable of overrunning a Catosian force defending their own gates?'
Duncan sighed. 'No. If it weren't for the Royal Aerostatical Navy protecting us, we'd probably be a member of the Catosian League ourselves. There is no lord of the north with barbarians enough to storm one of the league's fortress cities.'
'But you can't be travelling to Kaliban, lass,' said the commodore. 'These creatures might have the skill of crossing the void, but we surely don't. It's too dangerous.'
'I'll go with you,' spat Purity. 'However dangerous the journey is. If it means paying back the jiggers that killed Kyorin.'
Duncan shook his head. 'Listen to the commodore's words. Even if you're right, the battle will be here in Jackals. Whoever this Army of Shadows are and whatever land they hail from, their forces are almost at our borders. The high fleet of the RAN is preparing to sail, the regiments are mobilizing. War is upon us and it will be fought here on our doorstep.'
Molly thought of the mighty Hexmachina, trapped in the centre of the world like a fly in amber. Even the power to slay gods was not enough to deal with the invaders. 'No, I don't think we can fight them and win using airships and rifles. What Kyorin showed me in his vision was hideous. The invaders' rulers are ancient, masters of a very old science that has bent all of creation to its will, every other race fit only to serve as their slaves or their sustenance.' She pulled a blanket off her bed, covering up the slippery black muscles of the beast lying slaughtered there. 'This slat is one of the masters' own children, twisted into the perfect killing machine by their womb mages. These masters have no care for their own seed, let alone other races' lives. And there are entire armies of these things moving around in Catosia.'
'I feel the pressure of their evil, growing stronger each day,' said Oliver. 'Like a headache. To the north. Running to the east now, too, in Quatershift.'
'Can we call these slats evil?' asked Molly. 'Beasts like this are only what they were bred to be. But their masters, they've made their choice, and they've chosen our world as their new home. The knowledge of defeating them lies in their old land. Kyorin's masters have consumed it and discarded it like an old apple core, but somewhere among the ruins of Kaliban the answer to stopping the invasion is to be found. That's what he came to tell us.'
'Talking of travelling to Kaliban might make a grand tale for your new fashion in novels,' said the commodore. 'But how are you going to get there? Will you have these monsters give you a berth on one of their terrible ships of the void?'
'No,' said Molly. 'It's a one-way trip for them here. They're fired across the celestial darks in shells that ride beams of light.'
'Shells,' said Duncan, a realization dawning on him. 'Shells. Timlar Preston, that was the man our blue friend mentioned. You ken who Timlar Preston is, don't you? He's a damn shiftie scientist.'
'Cannons,' said Oliver. 'Very big ones from the Two-Year War. The war Timlar Preston nearly won for Quatershift.'
'It simply can't be done, lassie,' said Duncan. 'Trust me, I've been fired out of cannons and I've ridden up on rockets with my sail rig and anything that could lift you that far and fast would kill you. You can't travel to Kaliban shot out of a great cannon shell – the physical shock of it will pulp your wee body into jam.'
'Quite correct,' announced Coppertracks, rolling into the room, his train of mu-bodies clambering nervously around the bedroom. How long had the steamman been listening there? 'But King Steam has something that could see you there safely.'
'Now don't you be encouraging Molly in her damn fool scheme,' begged the commodore. 'Tossing messages at Kaliban with your mad tower of science is one thing. Shooting our good friends out into the wicked night is quite another. Save your travels to the moon for your novels, Molly.'
A wave of bile rose in Molly's throat and she yelped, nearly falling onto the bed on top of the cold, wicked thing lying there. Oliver caught her and steadied her back to her feet. 'I sensed something flaring inside your mind. Are you all right?'
'My mind.' Molly felt quite nauseous. She glanced angrily at Kyorin's corpse. So many voices, the cries of the dead, the memories of those that had passed into the beyond. 'I do believe this runaway slave dumped everything he had into my skull when he heard the slats at the window. Sweet Circle, it feels like a million thoughts and memories welling up inside me.'
Molly wanted to kick the slave's corpse. Kyorin had done what he believed necessary for the survival of both their races, gambling that the ancient machine life that swam through Molly's veins was powerful enough to absorb the full exchange of their intimate mental sharing.
'He wouldn't have hurt you,' Purity protested. 'It was not his way.'
Molly gritted her teeth. A little knowledge was meant to be a dangerous thing, but how about an entire fallen civilization's store of knowledge floating inside her skull? That remained to be seen. 'Remind me of that again, girl, when I'm sitting in the barrel of the cannon your friend wanted us to build.'
'How are you going to get Timlar Preston out of the wicked Court of the Air's hands?' asked the commodore. 'Ask them nicely?'
'Leave that to me,' said Oliver. 'I know an agent who isn't going to have too much of a choice about helping us.'
'Take a long spoon to sup with those devils, lad! You don't have to be doing this,' insisted the commodore.
'Yes we do,' said Molly.
But even as she said the words she knew how mad they sounded. How desperate was their last hope. All she had to do was free Timlar Preston from the Court of the Air's clutches; and having held him a prisoner for so many years, the Court must be convinced the mad genius was still a deadly threat to the kingdom. Then she had to convince the Jackelian authorities, distracted by the danger of imminent invasion, to help Preston build the mightiest cannon the race of man had ever constructed to fire her at Kaliban. When the government asked why, she would have no answer save the slim hope that a dying runaway slave's last words might be
ar fruit on a dead world which had already been conquered, spoiled and discarded by the enemy. And all this coming from a celebrated author of celestial fiction.
Damn. Molly would be lucky to avoid being dragged off to an asylum.
Harry Stave's boots echoed down the corridor of the Court of the Air's prison sphere. Behind him, Oliver Brooks pushed the handcart with a body on it – the passenger lying horizontal, his face hidden by a bulbous rubber mask regulating the timed release of sleeping gas.
'You could help me push the cart, Harry.'
'And how believable would that look?' asked the agent of the Court. 'Besides, it would be an inversion of the natural order of things. Some are born to push, others are born to lead.'
'Old times,' muttered Oliver.
'If only,' said Harry. 'I think I preferred the old days. In fact, right now, I preferred last year.'
'You'll be telling me next that you'd have helped me for "old times' sake",' said Oliver.
'Who knows? But on balance, I would say the blackmail helps. It always helps.'
'I might not fully understand the hollow replica of the Kingdom of Jackals you've got turning on the transaction-engine drums of your little metropolis in the clouds,' said Oliver, 'but I know the basics well enough to recognize that such a model only functions when all the variables are known. How broken is that thing right now?'
'Broken enough for me to let a scrote like you walk around the Court of the Air.'
'I thought that was what the Court wanted,' said Oliver. 'Me up here. Your people have been trying to catch me for years now.'
'Unknown variables,' sighed Harry, looking across at where his old friend's brace of pistols lay concealed within their double shoulder holster. 'And the Hood-o'the-marsh is one of the biggest of them all.'
