“I’m sure the staff have wrapped up everything breakable.”
“Not the slaves.”
“Oh.” Jones’s face fell. “I see what you mean.”
Ersimmin had caught hold of Edith Bainbridge, who was now beating the pianist with her fan. “Get off me, you lout. It’s going to drop us! I must find a life preserver.”
For a few moments the ship remained motionless in the arconite’s grip. Harper leaned out over the balustrade and peered back along the hull. Beyond the vessel’s stern, the wet brown cliffs of the Moine Massif sank a sheer four hundred feet down to the calm waters. A blizzard of gulls skirled around the ship. The arconite’s skull turned slowly, then moved closer until its yellow grin filled the sky above them. Harper’s Locator gave out a sudden shrill tone.
“What is it?” Jones asked.
She stared hard at the device with a growing sense of dread. Its fluctuating needle darted back and forth, between both ends of the scale. Crystals pulsed fiercely inside.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “The Locator doesn’t know. It’s panicking again.”
The reservist kept one hand on the hilt of his sword. “Another uninvited guest?”
She shook her head. “It might just be the proximity of the—”
But just at that moment another massive jolt unbalanced the passengers. Still gripped in the automaton’s skeletal hand, the ship began a sudden rapid descent.
“Cruel heavens!” Jones cried. The old man’s white hair lashed about his face as the ship dropped closer to Larnaig’s waters. “Do we need to descend quite so briskly?”
“I expect that need has little to do with it,” Ersimmin replied. The pianist had extricated himself from Edith. Now like his reservist colleague, he appeared to be quite relaxed—an observation which could not be extended to encompass the other guests. “From the expression on our host’s face,” Ersimmin went on, inclining his head towards Chief Carrick, “it seems that we are currently experiencing yet another of his teething problems.”
Carrick was clutching the deck rail with both fists, his face a curdled, off-white colour. Most of the passengers had found something to hang on to now. The gentlemen had grabbed the saloon bulkheads or deck balustrades; the ladies clung to the gentlemen.
The steamship shuddered again, and then tilted sharply towards the bow. Several passengers stumbled. Plates toppled and smashed within the saloon.
Ersimmin’s voice radiated calmness. “I’m beginning to understand why the Mesmerists hired our railroad company to support the War Effort,” he said to Jones. “They make terrifying soldiers, but they haven’t quite got the hang of transportation matters.”
The jolt had sent two Northmen crashing into each other, shattering their glass-scaled skins. Mina’s feet slipped out from under her on the slick floor, and she struggled to push herself back up onto her hands and knees. Her hands were now wet and red. Oil lanterns stuttered in the deep gloom of the ship’s hold, throwing lances of light through the transparent carriages.
“Wasn’t this what you wanted?” Hasp cried. “A quick return to Hell.”
“I asked you to kill me,” she replied. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“An unusually biased form of suicide. Still, there’s a glut of fresh souls here. Time for some thaumaturgy, if I’m not mistaken?”
“How did you know?”
“I’ve known from the start.”
She wrinkled her nose.
The slave pen lurched again and another of Rys’s former soldiers crashed against the wall. His glass scales cracked at the wrists, elbows, and head; his life poured out of him.
Mina muttered a prayer: an appeal to her guardian, Basilis, the Hound Master of Ayen. She made sigils in the bloody floor:
One red soul for the Forest of Eyes,
A second for the Forest of Teeth,
The third to rot in the Forest of War,
If you’ll aid your servant now.
Hasp grunted. “It’s been a while since I’ve witnessed blood thaumaturgy and longer since I’ve seen that bastard Basilis. This’ll be fun.”
The stink from the Forest of War greeted Mina’s nostrils as something moved within the red pool on the floor, then reached out roots and branches, growing until it filled the space before her. This was Basilis’s heart tree, a manifestation of Ayen’s Hound Master himself.
Those Northmen who were still alive to witness this apparition now scuttled away to the far corner of the chamber, their eyes wide with fear and horror.
A deep voice rolled out from the tree: “These are weak souls, thaumaturge.” Basilis’s arboreal manifestation dripped and shuddered. “As thin as memories.”
“They’re still souls,” she retorted. “And I didn’t have to kill them myself. I need your help, Basilis. We need to do something about Dill.”
The Hound Master laughed. “You always underestimate yourself, Mina,” he said. “You summoned a guardian from the Forest of War without my help. You killed one of your fellow captives without my help. And didn’t you place a piece of your soul inside the arconite without my help? All you have to do now is reach out to it.”
“I can’t!” she protested. “The Mesmerists changed me. My soul is all muddled up and…sore.” She almost stomped her foot down, but thought better of it. “Besides, I’d feel more comfortable if you were there with me.”
Another laugh issued from the tree.
Hasp said, “This is a new form for you, Basilis. Didn’t you used to be a dog?”
“Hasp…” The tree sighed. “Why are you not in Hell?”
The god grunted. “The Mesmerists caught us both. They assumed she was my woman.”
“Your woman?” Basilis growled.
“Relax,” Hasp said. “She’s not my type.”
Mina felt suddenly cross. It wasn’t that she liked the god—not in that way. But for him to have a type that didn’t include her seemed desperately unfair. The floor lurched again and she slid a yard to the left. She reached out to grab the heart tree’s roots, but Basilis withdrew them. A low snarl came from the demonic tree.
Oh, no.
“Hasp and I both happened to be looking for Dill,” she said quickly. “That’s all. I’m sorry I left you alone in Cinderbark Wood, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to sneak into Hell undetected. Deepgate’s Portal was already teeming with Mesmerist shades. You know I’ll come back for you just as soon as I can.”
The steamship plummeted. In the iron gloom of her belly, The Pride of Eleanor Damask heaved and groaned against the chains binding her wheels and axles to the hold’s deck. Steel links stretched and warped. The glass carriages ground against one another, straining to be free of their shackles.
Basilis’s voice sounded like thunder. “I am no longer in that poisonous forest,” he rumbled. “And I am no longer alone. A Spine woman and her companion found my physical form in Cinderbark Wood. They brought me to Cospinol, who has delivered us by skyship to Coreollis. While you were in Hell, Mina, I have traveled across the world. Now I am in Rys’s own palace, not two leagues away from you. From here we can watch the arconite’s approach across Lake Larnaig.”
“Woman?” Mina said. “What woman?”
The demon chuckled. “She is no thaumaturge, Mina.”
Another jolt sent blood sloshing against the slave pen wall. Mina slipped, but one of Basilis’s roots writhed across the floor and curled softly around her wrist, dragging her back towards the tree. Even Hasp was gripping the demon’s roots. But the Northmen were still fearful of the apparition and would not approach it. They fell and hit the wall hard, cracking their scales. While these unfortunate soldiers tried in vain to stop their lives pouring out, Mina clung to her demonic master.
“Now reach out for the splinter,” Basilis said. “Show these poor frightened gods what a Penny Devil and his guardian can do.”
“I need your help to see it clearly.”
“Very well.”
Mina envisioned hers
elf in the Forest of Eyes—the first of her master’s three aspects to survive his expulsion from Heaven. A scrawl of black trees surrounded her, as dense and tangled as a thicket of thorns. The twisted boles and branches glistened as countless eyes within the bark turned towards the thaumaturge.
Mina strolled up to the nearest tree and peered into one of its eyes. She frowned and then looked into another, and another, while millions more stared down at her.
“Help me, Basilis,” she cried.
But the eyes just mutely blinked.
Harper’s knees struck the deck as the steamship hit the surface of Lake Larnaig with a boom. The hull pitched violently and a shower of icy water drenched the hurricane deck, soaking her and everyone else. Edith Bainbridge screamed and stumbled backwards, but Jones and Ersimmin, who had both somehow remained upright, caught her between them. The other passengers had fallen into an un-seemly jumble of silk frills, fans, and hankies.
Carrick remained to one side of the group, still cowering, with both of his arms wrapped around a wooden life preserver. The deck righted itself, groaning, then rolled over in the opposite direction. Water rushed up the hull below, and subsided in a sucking wave of froth as the steamship rocked to a gentle halt.
“I will sue, I will sue, I will sue.” Edith’s hair hung in a limp black net across her face, framing dark tears of eyeliner beneath her shock-wide eyes.
“Calm yourself,” Jones said. “It’s not over yet. Listen!”
Harper tilted her head. An odd humming, crackling noise was beginning to build; it seemed to thrum along the ship’s iron banisters and reverberate through the bulkheads. She checked her Locator.
“A door opening?” Jones ventured.
Harper studied the device, trying to make sense of what she was reading. The silver needle shifted and bounced between ideographs, resisting her attempts to isolate a source of this burgeoning spiritual energy. “It is the same thing as before,” she said. “This energy isn’t coming from Hell or Earth. There are portals opening and closing everywhere, but they don’t lead to the Maze.”
“Is that possible?”
She clenched her teeth. “It’s as if something is searching the ship.” Her gaze traveled the length of the deck where green and black flames flickered and diminished, lingering around the iron nails in the planks. The cold fire leapt from the deck and licked the metal balustrades and fixtures, burning nothing but exuding an ancient and earthy odor.
“It smells like a forest,” Harper said.
The passengers were backing away from these weird fires, covering their noses against the stench, as the Sally Broom rocked back and forwards on the surface of the lake. Harper watched as the flames poured between the rails of the balustrades and cascaded down the hull to where the submerged hand of the great bone automaton was slowly releasing its grip of the floating vessel.
Harper raced to the side of the ship. “It’s going for the arconite.”
Jones’s whiskers twitched. “Sabotage?”
“What else?”
“Please lower that device,” said a voice from behind.
The engineer turned to see Isaac Pilby standing inside the door to the saloon. He had unsheathed his sword and now held it out: a white weapon with a polyhedral crystal pommel set in a nest of silver. With a twitch of the blade he indicated that he meant the engineer to stop what she was doing. Harper complied.
“We’ll wait here a few moments,” Pilby continued.
Harper noticed that the tip of the little man’s blade was covered in fresh blood. “What have you done?”
Pilby gave her an apologetic smile. “There were too many staff aboard this vessel for my comfort. Doubtless many of them were agents of King Menoa.”
“Who the hell are you?” Harper asked.
“Look at the colour of my blade,” he said. “This weapon, unlike so many of the others present here, is not an affectation. I make no concessions to fashion. And my name is not Pilby.”
The sound of crackling came from the waters below as the arconite lifted its arm above the level of the deck. The bones of its hand and wrist were now wreathed in green and black flames.
The lepidopterist glanced up at the automaton, then back at Harper. “I am the First of Cohl’s Shades,” he said. “I am the White Sword.”
“Damn mercenary!” Jones exclaimed. “How much is Rys paying you to sabotage this mission?”
The White Sword shrugged. “Stay on your knees.”
“There are a hundred of these arrogant bastards out there,” Jones explained to Harper. “Cohl’s mercenaries fight with weapons coloured in shades between black and white. The Black Sword and his counterpart, the White Sword, are the most skilled warriors in each one of the two disciplines of Kiril and Yen, while those in between kill one another for better weapons and thus better ranks.”
“I see you’ve watched Adelere’s play,” the White Sword remarked.
“I watched Edgar Lovich play you onstage!”
“Badly, I fear.”
“And you killed him because of that?”
“Alas, someone beat me to it.”
“What do you want?” Jones said.
“Just let the thaumaturgy work without interference.”
The flames had now risen to the arconite’s shoulder, and the great bone giant stood wreathed in green and black fire. In this unnatural light, Pilby’s face seemed much harder than it had previously looked. His laconic smile evinced an utter lack of fear, a confidence in his own abilities that exceeded arrogance. “Many entities, mortal and immortal, sought to prevent the release of this arconite into the world,” he said. “That has failed, so now they must try to control it.”
“And which of them do you serve?” Jones said. “Rys, I suppose?”
Pilby gave a nod.
Ersimmin the pianist had been watching all of this from a few yards further back along the passenger deck. “Preposterous,” he called, walking over. “Your weapon isn’t even white. Ivory, I’d guess. Compare the shade to my own.” He drew his sword.
Pilby’s eyes flicked to the other man’s blade, then back to meet the pianist’s gaze. “Yours is a fake,” he said.
“No,” Ersimmin said, “it isn’t.” He lunged at the smaller man.
Steel clashed.
Pilby foiled one attack, then a second, but the third thrust took him in the neck.
The self-proclaimed First of Cohl’s Shades gurgled once, then crumpled to the deck, his lifeblood pouring out between the fingers now clamped over his throat.
Ersimmin picked up the fallen sword and compared it to his own, examining both weapons closely. Finally he nodded to himself. “His blade is darker. Old Pilby was labouring under a misapprehension.” He slipped a handkerchief from his suit pocket and wiped his own sword clean of the other man’s blood. “This business can get confusing, what with so many weapons of a similar luster in circulation. One can never really be sure one has achieved true mastery.”
“Then you’re the White Sword?” Harper said.
The pianist gave a curt bow. “I’m more confident of that title now, although I can’t be certain until I have faced the remainder of Cohl’s Shades. I’ve heard of one Kirillin warrior who has collected twenty-two blades already.” He shrugged, and appeared to stifle a smirk. “Almost as many as myself.”
Jones helped Harper up. “How many of you bloody mercenaries are on board?” he asked. “I suppose Lovich was another one?”
“Hardly.” Ersimmin snorted. “He was just a terrible actor with a painted blade—an embarrassment to all of Cohl’s Shades. There was no need for me to challenge him to a fight.”
Harper inhaled deeply from her bulb. So this was the man who had ordered Hasp to kill Lovich? She was about to demand answers from him when her Locator shrilled.
Ersimmin eyed the device in her hands. “King Menoa foresaw difficulties, so he hired me to protect this mission and to allow you to do your job, Miss Harper. Can you stop this sabotage?”
/> “I don’t know,” Harper admitted. And, truthfully, she didn’t know if she wanted to stop the sabotage. The loss of an arconite would be a tremendous blow to Menoa. In a small way it would be revenge for what had happened to Tom. But if she failed Menoa now, she might never get close to him again. And she could not predict what the automaton would do if it were freed from the king’s influence.
A whisper of steel. Jones had drawn his own rapier from its sheath and now swept it in an arc from his hip towards the pianist’s neck. Ersimmin parried, before lashing out a fist at the side of the older man’s head. Jones ducked, striking the other man hard in the chest with his elbow. The pianist recoiled. Jones pushed his blade deep into the other man’s heart.
Ersimmin’s body slumped to the deck atop Pilby’s corpse.
“Arrogant bastard,” Jones muttered. He put one foot on Ersimmin’s pelvis and heaved the bloody sword free of the other man’s chest.
For a moment Harper stared at him in shocked silence. “Don’t tell me you’re…”
“The White Sword?” Jones picked up the pianist’s handkerchief and wiped his own blade clean. The metal shone a dull stony colour. “No. I suppose I’m actually somewhere in the mid-greys.” He grabbed both Ersimmin’s and Pilby’s discarded weapons and tossed them over the side of the ship into the lake below.
“Aren’t you supposed to hold on to those?” Harper asked. “In order to ascend the ranks?”
The old man grunted. “I’m just in it for the money. The moment you possess a pure white or black sword, then every one of Cohl’s Shades comes after you. Besides…” He hefted his own grey blade. “This one is just as sharp as the others.”
Edith Bainbridge stepped forward, raising her chin. “Mid-grey!” she shrilled. “This puts an entirely new perspective on our arrangement, Mr. Jones.” Her eyes became small and hard. “I was under the impression I had hired a grand master of Kiril, and yet you appear to be little better than a common cutthroat. Mid-grey indeed! You have misled me, sir.”
Jones shrugged. He glanced up at the automaton and then turned to face Harper. “I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “But I can’t let you stop this process. It seems that Pilby and I unwittingly shared the same contract. Had Ersimmin not slain him, there would have been no need to reveal my identity.”