by Stephen Hunt
And that left the three people she least wanted to infiltrate the last stronghold of the Army of Shadows on Kaliban with. Rooksby and the two shifties, none of whom showed any inclination to trust the instincts she had inherited from Kyorin. She barely trusted them herself, thanks to the unforeseen canyon they had nearly tumbled into. But right now, the runaway slave's decaying ghost was all they had to keep the expedition alive in the heart of the enemy's fastness.
***
Of all of the expedition members, Molly quickly realized that Duncan Connor demonstrated the most proficiency at moving through the fine soft sands in the white robes that Molly had dredged from Kyorin's memories and had made up in Middlesteel. There seemed to be a knack to travelling across the sands in a steady way without letting your boots be sucked down – without making each step a struggle to withdraw the sole. But then, Connor of Cassarabia had surely gained enough practice during the years when he had earnt that moniker. He had told them the Cassarabian name for the fine, sapping dunes they were wading over; melah. One of at least fifty names the warring, fractious tribes he had held the southern frontier against possessed for sand. And Duncan's knowledge stretched to more practical purposes, too. Tying up the belts and laces of the undulating white robes was second nature to him, leaving mere strips of blue-dyed skin visible under their headscarves.
Only Coppertracks moved without the protection of the Kal sand-traveller's garb. But then there was no disguising his iron body, and his two wide caterpillar tracks seemed far better suited to skimming across the sands than the long legs of the race of man. Each hour of travelling brought the colossal carving closer, rising higher and higher above them until the sun rotating through the purple sky dropped the face's shadow across them. The last inhabited city of Kaliban had been positioned so that its streets would be sheltered in the carving's shade at the full height of the midday sun. Now they were given the same protection from the rays of the furnace heat.
'Perhaps I should have stayed with the ship,' said Coppertracks. 'My hull is too burnished. I glint in the daylight for any scout of the Army of Shadows to see.'
And Starsprite's pleas had been so intense and plaintive, begging for company – so soon after her abandonment by her mother. But the young craft was as hidden as she could be and a great deal safer than any of the rest of them. They would be back, if they survived. Unless they convinced the Army of Shadows to build another cannon for them, the looking-glass gate stored inside Starsprite's hull was their sole way home.
As the expedition members moved towards the last city of the Kals, from time to time they would stumble over something partially hidden by the sands. An ancient reminder that Kaliban had been a very different place before its occupation by the Army of Shadows. It was in such a find that Molly left Coppertracks, Duncan and the commodore: a cracked-open dome, empty and half swamped by sand. But it would serve as shelter from the dust devils that whipped across the surface of the land, as well as the hunts of the slat patrols.
'Molly,' called Commodore Black. 'How long are we to leave you before we come looking for you?'
'We'll be back in two or three days at most,' said Molly. 'Stay here and mount a sentry. The slats prefer to patrol at night and Kyorin has memories of other things in the desert, experiments of the Army of Shadows' womb mages that have been released to exterminate the free Kal.'
Both Rooksby and the two shifties bridled at leaving behind their pistols from the supply crates, but Molly insisted. Kals did not own such things, nor would they have used them if they did. Nothing would give them away more quickly than if they were found carrying weapons.
The remaining four members of the expedition approached Iskalajinn at twilight, the sun setting behind the carving, revealing a glass-slag sprawl nestling against the rise of the face of Kaliban, low buildings spilling across the sea of dunes and then rising high on terraces set against the carving. The light of the furnace sky was slowly replaced by a green shimmer from the emerald geodesic domes of the Army of Shadows that rose on the far side of their slave city of tenements, thousands of hexagonal panels shining like insect eyes ripped from the skull of a mantis. Molly had a sense that the Kals were almost never allowed inside the comfort of the domes – and if they were, they were even more rarely ever seen again. But the thoughts bubbling out of Kyorin's memories suggested that he believed that there were gardens inside, running waters and a climate far more agreeable than the dire oven that their slaves laboured in. The Kals' whitewashed habitations were built of a quartz-like material, extracted by chemically processing the sand and moulded in blocks of narrow streets to protect against the sun, each dwelling topped by a long curved wind tower designed to funnel the slightest of winds down to the rooms inside and cool them.
'This is the great bastion of the Army of Shadows?' said Rooksby, his voice disbelieving, looking at the glitter of the overlapping domes. 'The slums of Whineside seen from the top of Tavistead Hill are a more imposing sight.'
'Oh, there were many more of them, once,' said Molly. 'But as the land's bounty has been exhausted, the Army of Shadows' numbers have been controlled down to what you see here.'
'There are enough of their spawn in Quatershift,' said Jeanne, 'and they seemed plentiful enough to me as they overran our territory.'
Keyspierre glared at his daughter. 'You are coming close to voicing defeatist sentiments, compatriot daughter.'
'I saw the gnawed bones of our people outside Courau, compatriot father,' said Jeanne.
Keyspierre's face went red at the tone of insolence in her voice and for a moment Molly thought that he was going to strike her, but he obviously thought better of disciplining his daughter in front of them. 'Try remembering that when you see the faces of the monsters responsible for their deaths.'
'These Kals, sir, are cowards,' said Rooksby. 'With so few of the enemy's number left here, why have the natives not risen in revolt? If only we had the marines along that were meant to be here. Just a handful of them and we could have seized this pathetic hovel. Damn these Kals' eyes.'
'You'll be able to measure their bravery soon enough,' said Molly. 'If we can meet up with Kyorin's comrades.'
There was a location that burnt particularly bright in the jumbled buzz of memories that was Kyorin's legacy to her. Outside the walled city, a place where the slat soldiers rarely came. She found it easily by the presence of the seventy-foot high cacti, their leaf sails – vast moisture traps – slowly rotating. Taps had been drilled into them, but the queues of Kals had thinned out now that the previous day's collected water had slowed to a mere trickle through the plants' veins.
Molly led the four of them into the shadow of one of the emptied cacti and bade them wait cross-legged. It was ten minutes before one of the water-keepers left his plant to come over to them.
'Are you sand-born?' he asked using mind-speech. 'If the slats hear that nomads are travelling close to here and begging for water they will-'
'We are travellers,' said Molly. 'From afar.'
The water-keeper stepped back, gasping as he saw Molly's lips opening and closing to form the words.
'What did you say to him?' Rooksby demanded, watching the shocked water-keeper hustle back to his cactus and beckon his apprentices closer.
'You'll know soon enough.'
'What have you done, now, you foolish woman?' hissed Rooksby. 'Is it not enough you had to drag us here without the soldiery to finish off the Army of Shadows…'
'We'll find out soon enough if Kyorin still has friends here among the oasis regulators,' said Molly.
'This is not how such things are done,' said Keyspierre.
'I bow to a Quatershiftian's greater knowledge of how informers and the secret police work,' said Molly. 'But as I'm the only one here who can communicate in their language, we'll do this my way.'
Molly's way proved adequate, for when one of the water-keeper's assistants returned, it was with a female Kal, her face uncovered by the enveloping white headscarves the rest
of them were wearing. She knelt before Molly and pressed the skin of Molly's forehead with her thumb. Molly felt a gentle tickle inside her skull, then the headache of Kyorin's memories rising. Molly winced in agony as the female Kal withdrew her thumb and rubbed it with her forefinger. There was a smudge of blue dye where the sweat of Molly's forehead had made the theatrical face paint moist.
'Clever,' said the woman. 'But do not bring your blue faces too close to any slats. They have very good nasal receptors and your scent is, I suspect, different enough from ours.'
'We are friends of the slave engineer Kyorin,' said Molly. Her head throbbed with pain. There was something about this female that was causing Kyorin's memories to thunder inside Molly.
'That much is clear. Why else would the residue of his soul burn hard inside you?' said the woman. 'And you use old speech. Keep your lips closed when we get inside the city. I shall do such communicating as may be required.' She looked at Rooksby and the two shifties and repeated her words in Jackelian.
'You understand us!' said Keyspierre.
The woman sighed, leading them away from the oasis and towards the city. 'It's quite unnerving seeing someone with blue skin speaking like a slat, all fangs and tongue and teeth. Yes, I understand Jackelian, Quatershiftian and about a dozen more of your languages. One of my family received training for a position on the expeditionary force.'
'You are our compatriots, then,' said Jeanne. 'You are fighting the Army of Shadows.'
'We resist their aims,' said the Kal, bitterly. 'While also serving duty as their slaves and food source. I am not sure if the former outbalances the latter. It would have been better if one of the plagues that followed the loss of our medical technology had wiped us out entirely, then the masters would have starved to death before they ever reached your home.'
'Does your cell's revolutionary tradecraft allow us to know your name, compatriot?' asked Keyspierre.
'Why not? If I am caught with you we are all dead anyway,' said the Kal. 'My name is Laylaydin.'
'Are you taking us to meet the great sage?' said Molly. 'Kyorin said the sage has a way of defeating the Army of Shadows.'
Laylaydin shrugged. 'So it is said. But he does not live in the city. The nomads in the deeps of the desert wastes hide him. He would not survive for long here in Iskalajinn with the slats' nose for uncovering saboteurs and detecting resistance to their occupation. You shall be taken to a place of safety until we can send for one of the sand-born to take you to the great sage.'
Molly stopped as she noticed that the palm-like trees that had so far lined their path had given way to glass-slag crucifixes, the emaciated dead bodies of Kals hanging upside down from each cross.
'They were part of the resistance?' whispered Molly.
Laylaydin shook her head. 'No, look, their bodies do not bear the torture marks of interrogation. These are petty criminals. The ones on the left were caught teaching the young to read, while the ones hanging opposite were exposed indulging in a ritual sharing of ancestral memories using mind-to-mind contact. Technically neither crime carries the death sentence – that would be too wasteful of the Army of Shadows' dwindling food stocks – but you have to survive more than five days on the cross to be cut down. It is so hot now that it is very hard to survive five days.'
Rooksby looked as if he was about to gag at the sight. 'Damn you for sheep. How can you let the Army of Shadows treat you like this? You Kals might almost be part of the race of man, save for your cyan-coloured skin. Why do you not fight them?'
Laylaydin looked pityingly at the Lord Commercial, exposing her wrists from underneath her robes. There were two great ugly weals of flesh where the nails had been driven through them. 'I lasted the five days up there for birth crimes.'
Birth crimes. Molly rubbed her temple at the pain of the memory rising inside her. 'Your children…'
'They were fed to the slats as sweetmeats after they were found to have passed the threshold for powers of the mind. The masters require their cattle to breed true. My blood code carries a recessive pattern of how our race once existed, which is why they sterilized me when they cut me off the cross – so I could not have any more children quick of mind with the potential to be raised as sages. Our streets are ahead, please, you must walk in silence now.'
Molly and the others needed little encouragement to do so.
Travelling north along the cobbled country road with the woods on either side for cover, Purity was unnerved by how empty the landscape seemed to be. Where they passed through a village, the houses were abandoned, possessions tossed about in the yards, gates unlatched and banging in the breeze. It couldn't have been more than a week or two since the Army of Shadows invaded, but already nature was reclaiming the gardens. Weeds rising from in between paving stones, once manicured lawns overgrown, brown leaves lying curled and uncollected.
Occasionally they came across the corpse of a horse by the side of the road, the saddle removed and its rider fled. Ridden to death in an attempt to escape the advancing slats? The gates by the toll cottage were unmanned, the little wooden boxes where pennies were dropped for the upkeep of the roads rattling full and uncollected. The road that Purity and the four Bandits of the Marsh were currently following rose up a hill before twisting down into a long valley, its floor covered in a yellow-green mist.
Purity made to go down the valley path, but Jenny Blow laid a hand on her shoulder. 'No, that is no mist, it smells unnatural – a false odour to it.'
'What does your nose suggest?' asked Samuel Lancemaster, resting against his spear as if it were a lamppost.
'War gas,' replied Jenny Blow. 'A barbarian's weapon. Does the Army of Shadows possess such filth?'
Purity shook her head. 'I don't know – I didn't see the slats use gas when they attacked us at the Highhorn camp. But our redcoats do and the Royal Aerostatical Navy have gas shells in their fin-bomb racks.'
'There may have been a battle below,' said Ganby.
'I could run through the valley,' suggested Jackaby Mention. 'Fast enough that I wouldn't have to breathe it. Find out what lies below.'
'No,' said Purity. 'If that's dirt-gas it will burn your skin off – and the Circle knows what the Army of Shadows is capable of producing.'
'Then I shall clear it away,' said Jenny Blow, taking a deep breath, her chest expanding to an unnaturally large size.
'Allow me,' said Purity, drawing out her maths-blade. 'You'll be gusting that back onto the Jackelian highway.' And she needed the practice.
Ganby nodded in approval and Purity held out the sword, pointing it towards the valley. She could feel the composition of the gas through the sword, heavy and complex, a name rising into her mind from the blade that meant nothing to her – dichlorodiethyl sulphide. But she could see the chain of bonds stretching out inside the cloud, ladders and ladders of particles, all connected. She felt the throb in her hand and visualized the bonds realigning, millions upon millions of them, reforming and changing their shape, becoming harmless celgas – the rare substance that floated the hulls of the RAN's airships. Within seconds the newly transformed lighter-than-air cloud was rising, clearing the valley below and revealing a terrible sight.
'I am glad to see that our practice sessions are bearing fruit,' said Ganby.
Purity wasn't. She would have been better off leaving the valley shrouded. Bodies littered the road snaking through the valley, grey dots scattered across the way. Horses. People. Overturned carriages.
'A gas assault,' said Samuel Lancemaster in disgust. 'There is no honour in war fought by such methods.'
It was no better at close quarters, the figures below twisted into hideous shapes, white foam hanging out of their bloated lips. Everywhere there was a terrible garlic reek. These people were refugees by the look of them, carts and wheelbarrows piled with precious possessions. Not much to look at really – mantelpiece clocks, a few prize gardening tools, bundles of clothes and – then Purity saw her. She stopped in shock. It was Emily from the Royal
Breeding House, lying on the flatbed of an overturned cart, her eyes crying tears of dried blood and staring up sightlessly towards the cold autumnal sky. Purity bent over to look across at the other bodies. There were Flora and Edith from Dorm Five, the two young duchesses stretched out across the grass. More familiar faces sprawled along the side of the road.
'There are bodies in uniform up here!' called Jackaby Mention. 'Are these your soldiers?'
'Second Mounted Rifles,' said Purity, looking at the corpses. 'They were often assigned duty at the fortress.' She had nearly said home, but the Royal Breeding House hadn't been that, even when she had still been a prisoner of its halls. How many times had she wished a terrible death down on Emily's head for all of her torments? Egging the other royalist prisoners on to single Purity out for her madness and fits. But this… Parliament must have been evacuating the house's stock south, not wanting a repeat of the invasion by Quatershift, when the shifties and their revolutionary allies in the kingdom had run half the old order through their steam-driven killing machines. Her mother. Her brother. It looked like the premium on the old royalist bloodlines was about to rise even higher. If the House of Guardians were left a land to reconvene over.
'There is something wrong here,' said Ganby.
'You always say that, old man,' said Jenny. 'Any excuse to run away.'
Ganby pointed to two bodies locked together. One was a redcoat of the Second Mounted Rifles, his face covered by a neckerchief to protect against the fumes before he had been overcome. His bayonet had been stuck through the chest of another soldier wearing a Jackelian uniform, but not from a regiment whose insignia Purity recognized. Save for the bayonet thrust, this soldier would have lived: his face was covered by a gas mask with brass goggles concealing his features.
'These travellers were attacked by their own soldiers,' said Ganby.
