by Chris Paton
This will be hard for Luise, Hari thought as he watched her as she stared at the being that was her brother but a short time ago. Hari took a step towards her but stopped when she touched the palm of her hand to her forehead as if she was in pain. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped when he recognised the look on her face. It was the same each time she had been contacted by the strange demon during the time they had stowed away on The Flying Scotsman. Luise looked up and confirmed Hari's assumption with a quick nod of her head.
“He is here,” she said. “And in some danger.”
“Khronos?”
“Yes. We must hurry.”
“If you know the way, Miss Luise, the djinni and I will follow.”
“I do,” she said. “It's this way.” Luise waited for a troop of Cossacks to pass before crossing the street and heading for a passage between two wooden houses – the occupants followed her approach from the safety of the first floor windows.
“And what about me and Kettlepot?” Emilia said. She knuckled her fists upon her hips.
“Too dangerous,” said Hari and nodded for the djinni to stay close. He took a step forwards and bumped into the massive frame of the emissary. The girl, he noticed, wore a satisfied smile on her lips as she walked beside Luise towards a side street. “All right,” he said and waited for the emissary to back off. “Just stay out of trouble.” Emilia stuck out her tongue and then ducked into the passageway behind Luise.
Hari struggled to orientate himself as they weaved between the buildings, darted across streets during lulls in the exchange of bullets between the Cossacks and the Germans, and climbed over and around crates and obstacles used to barricade some of the narrower streets. The djinni smoked above the ground at a steady pace behind Hari, while Luise, Hari noticed, was too intent on following directions to be distracted by her brother's mythical transformation. It is for the best. Perhaps later I can help her understand what has become of him. Thoughts of releasing the djinni from its human vessel worried Hari and, as they continued in a winding direction towards the river, he became increasingly concerned that releasing the djinni might leave Jamie so weak and sickened that he might die. He was barely alive when I found him in the pit, Hari remembered. So thin. Hari's thoughts flashed out of his mind at the sound of blistering missiles striking the buildings on the street at the end of the latest in a string of passageways Luise had led them down. She stopped as something struck the building ahead of her. Hari drew his kukri and jogged to the front of the group.
“Khronos?” he whispered as he drew close to Luise.
“Yes,” she said and pulled Emilia close. “Stay here while Hari and I go and have a look.”
“Kettlepot will...”
“Yes, I am sure he will protect you,” Luise said. “But I want you to stay here until we need you and Kettlepot. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Emilia said and leaned her back against the wall. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned her head away only to look up again as the djinni wafted past her.
“I will come,” it said.
“Yes,” said Luise. Hari thought she would say more, but the words seemed to die on her lips.
“Come,” he said and rearranged his robes for fighting. “Let's take a look.”
Khronos stood in the middle of the street. He raised his right hand and a ball of demonlight grew in his palm. He threw it at a building directly opposite Hari, before lifting his left hand and repeating the attack on the building. It seemed to Hari that the demon was in no hurry, and, as he studied the attack, Hari realised that each strike caused a wall of light to flicker across the building's facade. After another three strikes of demonlight, he could see that the wall was diminishing.
“There is a field of energy protecting the building,” he said. “But it is weakening.”
“Abraxas must be inside,” said Luise.
“Then we must help him.” Hari turned to the djinni. “Are you ready?”
“For what, little man?”
“One last fight.”
“Him?” it said and pointed at Khronos.
“Yes, but he is not a man, but a demon.”
“Aren't we all?” the djinni said. Its eyes blazed as its chest began to swell.
“Truly,” said Hari and pressed his hand on Luise's shoulder to guide her out of the djinni's way. The space within the passageway stifled as the djinni grew, an orange hue flickering across its body as it hurled itself out of the passage and charged towards Khronos.
The demonlight in Khronos' right hand flickered as the demon turned, just a second before the djinni barrelled into him. Khronos slapped the demonlight onto the djinni's shoulder as they crashed into the ground. The missile blistered upon the djinni's skin and Hari caught his breath as the djinni's orange skin began to burn a fire red. Tendrils of demonlight snaked from Khronos' fingers. They twisted around the djinni's body like ethereal vines from a forbidden forest. The djinni roared, it grew to twice its largest size and snapped the vines from the demon's fingers. The demonlight tendrils fell to the ground, sparkling and crackling into the dust, and were gone. Khronos flexed his fingers for more but the djinni picked him up and hurled him across the street. The demon crashed through the blackwood timbers of a store and the djinni was quick to follow, leaping onto the side of the building and gripping the roof as it swung its body inside and disappeared from view.
“That's it,” said Hari. “Let's go.” He took Luise's hand and they ran across the street and stood by the door of the building with the failing shield of energy. The face of a tired old man bobbed at the window and the door swung open.
“Come in,” said a boy. The boy's thick Russian accent fooled Hari for a moment until Luise pushed past him and pulled him inside. The boy shut the door, only to pause for a moment as he spotted Emilia and her emissary between the buildings. “Molotok,” he said and Hari saw his eyes moisten in the light.
“Kettlepot,” said Hari and sheathed his kukri. “He is with us.” The boy nodded and closed the door, pausing at the last inch for one more look at the emissary. “We'll bring him over in a moment, but...” Hari paused as Luise called for help.
“Help me sit him up,” she said as Abraxas slumped within her grip. Hari kneeled down beside her and together they managed to lean the old man against the wall close to the door. “Abraxas?” Luise said and smiled. “I have waited a long time to meet you.”
“And I have waited a long time for you to come,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
“You are hurt.” Luise started to search Abraxas' body for bleeding.
“You won't find any wounds. I am weakened. It won't be long before I am too weak to live.”
“You can't die,” she said as she stopped searching. “I need your help.”
“Selfishness doesn't become you, Miss Hanover,” Abraxas said and chuckled. A jolt of pain flashed in his eyes and great crash from the building opposite caused him to start. “However,” he said, “I think the help you need is exactly the kind I wish to give. Together we can send Khronos back to the Passage of Time...”
“And seal it for good.”
“Yes,” Abraxas said and fixed Luise with a brief but intense look. “Forever.”
“What must we do?”
“First,” Abraxas said and shuffled into a more comfortable position. “We need to inscribe a sequence of khronoglyphs onto something made of metal. Just like you inscribed the cogs of your impediment machine...”
“With your secret and cryptic help,” said Luise.
“Yes, I wanted to help you,” he said and glanced at the blood staining Luise's jacket. “Did I?”
“Yes, for a while.”
“Good. But we will need something – copper is best.”
“Copper?” said Hari as he peeked through the window. As the building imploded before him, he watched as Kettlepot picked up Emilia and carried her to a more sheltered position. Hari swallowed a feeling of guilty negligence and opened his satchel. “I
have a copper plate.” He shrugged as he gave it Luise. “There was nowhere else to put it.”
“That will do,” said Abraxas. “Now, something to scribe with?”
“My toolkit,” Luise said and drew up her skirt. She paused at a gasp from the boy and then removed a bradawl from the leather garter. “I don't have a hammer,” she said.
Hari drew his kukri and tapped the bottom of the pommel. “Now you do.”
“Thanks.” Luise tugged her skirt to cover her leg and took the kukri from Hari. “What are the glyphs?” she said and waited as Abraxas took a ragged breath and began to describe them.
Hari stood up and walked to the door as Luise placed the copper plate on the floor and began hammering the first glyph – an hourglass with wings – onto the base of the plate. He held out his hand to the boy and introduced himself, releasing the boy's hand as the fighting in the street grew louder.
“Well, my young friend,” Hari said and opened the door an inch for a better look. “How good are you at running?”
Chapter 33
Arkhangelsk
Arkhangelsk Oblast
July, 1851
The man with the strange knife, Nikolas remembered, was called Hari. He couldn't remember the name of the woman who kneeled by the side of Abraxas, and used the knife to tap strange drawings into a copper plate, but he did know there was nothing more he could do for Abraxas. And I have a friend who needs me, he thought as he edged closer to the door. Hari said something to him, but Nikolas only smiled, nodded, and hoped that it wasn't anything important. The woman called Hari over to her and Nikolas saw his chance. Without a word, he slipped through the open door and into the street.
If he hadn't been preoccupied with thoughts of freeing Molotok from the slow vortex he was trapped inside, Nikolas might have been impressed by the devastation the two combatants had wreaked on the street. The street itself was pockmarked with impact craters, and the facades of the buildings, stores and some homes, hung from the roofs, while the space immediately in front of each building was littered with glass and splinters. The sounds of battle rumbled out onto the street and Nikolas ran to escape it as the djinni shot out of a roof, shedding tiles and timbers, as the demon cast great fireballs of demonlight after it.
Nikolas ignored the battle and the crackle of blistering energy and ran, his chest tightening upon his lungs, towards the familiar figure of an emissary crouched over a girl in the mouth of an alleyway. Nikolas wheezed to a stop and stared at the emissary. Like Molotok, this one moved in a casual manner, and Nikolas knew it shared some affinity with his own emissary.
Nikolas pulled his gaze from the emissary as the girl spoke. Her voice was lighter than the woman's but her words were no less difficult to understand. Nikolas shrugged and pointed to the emissary instead.
“I need his help,” he said. “I have a friend who is trapped in time and I want your emissary to try and pull him free.” Nikolas flinched at the sound of a building crumpling behind him, but he didn't move. He held out his hand towards the emissary and waited for it to take his.
The girl spoke again as she crept out from beneath the emissary's protective stance. Nikolas heard the word Kettlepot and he noticed how the emissary reacted to the word. The girl said the word again, and Nikolas realised it was the emissary's name.
“Kettlepot,” he said. “Will you help me?”
The emissary lifted its hand and wrapped it around Nikolas'. It swivelled its cylindrical head from the girl and then back to Nikolas and nodded slowly. The lodestone behind the grille faceplate glowed, and Nikolas recognised it as a yes, something he had seen Molotok do a hundred times or more. But before the emissary released his hand, it turned him to face the girl and Nikolas let go of the emissary to introduce himself.
“Emilia,” said the girl and Nikolas smiled. His chest tightened again but it felt different to when he was short of breath from running. Sort of the same, but different – the girl, with tangled locks of hair framing her face, caused Nikolas to catch his breath and he wondered if she was a demon. Certainly, the power she had over him felt unnatural, but not altogether unpleasant. She smiled and said something, tapping his hand as she did so. Nikolas realised he had not let go, and he pulled his hand free quickly and remembered what he needed.
“My friend is in trouble,” he said. “I need your help.” Emilia nodded as if she understood, and Nikolas pointed towards the river. “This way,” he said and began to run, as fast as his lungs would let him, away from the battle. There was a moment when he thought they weren't going to come, but the clank of the emissary confirmed that the girl had decided to follow him. And where she goes, thought Nikolas, the emissary will follow. Just like mine.
Nikolas led the girl and her emissary back onto the street outside the administrator's building. It wasn't far and he managed to control his breathing, although the sight of Molotok slow-wrestling inside the vortex hurt in another way altogether.
“Everything about today seems to hurt,” he said and beckoned for the girl to follow him. He stopped when he could feel the effects of the vortex lapping at his skin and smoothing the errant hairs beneath his cap. He held out his arm to stop the girl going any closer. Nikolas imagined her to be the curious type, and he knew how dangerous that could be. The emissary began to fidget and Nikolas interpreted its movements to be some form of distress and concern for one of its own kind.
“It's the Şteamƙin,” Emilia said in a hesitant and heavily accented Russian. Nikolas didn't understand the last word she said, but he raised his eyebrows at her sudden ability to speak his language, however badly. “Cossacks,” she said and pointed in the direction of the gates.
“I know all about Cossacks,” Nikolas said. “My father fought them in the skirmish war. They are bloodthirsty and cruel, and he said they treat their horses better than their children, or something like that.” Nikolas paused as he noticed the blank look on Emilia's face. He pointed instead at Molotok. “Can your emissary pull him out?” he said and mimicked the action of reaching into the vortex and dragging something out. The skin on his hands prickled and he drew them back to his sides.
The emissary moved and Nikolas heard the girl say something like be careful before it clanked closer to the vortex, its steps growing longer and slower the closer it got. Nikolas held his breath as the emissary pushed its arms inside the spinning vortex. The emissary's arms started to shimmer, and, after what seemed an age, Molotok appeared to notice and move its hands towards Kettlepot's. Nikolas' lungs demanded air and he breathed, ignoring the tears beginning to well in his eyes. He shivered at the light electric touch of the girl's hand as she closed her fingers around his.
“It's all right,” she said. “It's going to all right.”
Nikolas' body reeled with anxiety for his friend and the strange emotions he encountered the closer he stood to the girl. He scolded himself with thoughts that he should only be thinking of Molotok, but he allowed himself a smile as the girl's emissary took its first step backwards, away from the vortex. It took another step and Nikolas saw that its elbows were free, while its forearms shimmered in Molotok's grip. The emissary took another slow step backwards and step by step it dragged Molotok into the street. Nikolas slipped his hand out of Emilia's and ran to embrace his emissary, running his hands across the blistered blue paint and the deep scars scored in Molotok's armour. The lodestone in Molotok's head glowed as it made deliberate movements, shaking off the cloak of slow time as it looked at Emilia, her emissary and then Nikolas.
Nikolas let go of Molotok and wiped the tears from his cheeks. He turned to Emilia and her emissary and opened his mouth to speak, but the words caught in his chest and the effort squeezed another round of tears out of his eyes.
“You are welcome,” Emilia said and she hugged him.
Nikolas' thoughts whirled and he fought hard to focus, but the smell of the girl's hair tickling his nose and the closeness of her body sent his own trembling.
“Are you all right?”
she said and stepped back.
“Yes,” he managed to say, but the sound of soldiers arriving from the docks by the river prevented him from saying another word. He took Emilia's hand and pulled her towards a wall. The emissaries clanked behind them and hid as best they could while Nikolas and Emilia crouched in hiding.
“Germans?” said Emilia and Nikolas nodded. She looked at his hand grasping hers and he moved to let go but she held him tight.
“Yes,” he said and looked at her for a moment before turning his attention back to the soldiers. They were heading for the administrator's building, Nikolas realised and his heart faltered as the familiar figure of Rutger Venzke stepped out of the doorway, flanked by heavily armed soldiers, but no emissaries. Venzke barked commands in German as the soldiers approached, and it was then that Nikolas realised they had prisoners cuffed between them.
“Uncle Vlad,” he said and gasped as he recognized Vladimir's face, the Poruchik's head and shoulders towering above the Germans.
“Who?” said Emilia.
“My uncle. He works with my father. He's not my real uncle, but I like to call him that...” Nikolas paused as he recognised a shorter man walking alongside a woman who looked like a Cossack. Nikolas let go of Emilia's hand and ran into the street. “Papa,” he called and stumbled. Nikolas picked himself up and ran towards the soldiers. “Papa. It's me. Papa.”
“Nikolas,” said Stepan.
Nikolas watched as his father tried to get free of the soldiers only to fall to the ground as one of them hit him in the stomach with the butt of his musket. Stepan dropped to his knees as Vladimir and the Cossack woman fought with the soldiers. Nikolas ignored the stab of pain in his chest as his lungs protested. He ran forwards, suddenly filled with a fierce fire that burned all the brighter as he heard not one but two emissaries as they clanked alongside him, increasing in speed as they charged towards the soldiers. The Germans standing in front of their prisoners fired their muskets and the street was filled with the crack of gunpowder igniting in the pan and the dull thwack of lead bullets as they bounced off the emissaries' armour.
