He lifted the building again, more gently this time, and looked back in through the open doorway. Mina had halted halfway up the stairs, but Hasp and Rachel were nowhere in sight. Most of the tables and chairs had slid away, gathering like flotsam against the far wall. Dozens of bottles still rolled this way and that, spilling whisky across the floor. The smell of alcohol wafted out. The whole building creaked ominously.
Dill could not restrain himself. “Where is she?” he roared. His voice resounded across the heavens, metallic and hideously loud even to his own ears. The thaumaturge's dog began to bark frantically, still inside Dill's mouth.
Mina pressed her ears. “Try not to speak, Dill. Your voice tends to carry. Hasp is looking for her now. Hold on, I can hear…”
And then the Lord of the First Citadel came striding back down the stairs, holding Rachel's limp body in his arms. The former assassin was bleeding profusely from a wound in the side of her head.
Alice Harper sat on the edge of her bunk while the skyship plummeted towards the surface of Hell. The whole cabin creaked and whistled around her. She kept her gaze averted from the single tiny porthole, focusing instead on the array of instruments and their tiny accoutrements laid out on her narrow mattress. To keep herself occupied she made an inventory.
One Screamer. One Locator. Spare Mesmeric and parasitic foaming crystals. A knot of seeker wires in three states of agitation. Soul oil. Three phials of murderers' blood to feed the Locator and the Screamer. A silver screwtwist with a level-three shape-shifting head. Pincers and other tiny torture implements for keeping the instruments obedient. A Bael-Lossingham adaptive whistle from Highcliffe. Spirit lenses.
Her soulpearl.
Bathed in the bloody light from the window, this small glass bead seemed to emit a fierce radiance of its own—as if it could actually sense, and was reacting to, this new environment. That was impossible, of course. Only the Screamer, Locator, and screwtwist were sentient. The pearl itself was empty.
Harper clutched it to her chest and closed her eyes, listening to the winds of Hell bawling outside the skyship. A million leagues of rotten, cackling labyrinth might lie between this vessel and King Menoa's great living fortress, but she could not feel safe. The Lord of the Maze would have countless spies looking for them.
For her?
She dared not dwell on such thoughts. Menoa had previously taken a personal interest in her suffering, repeatedly breaking his promises to return her husband's soul to her.
The Locator made a tinny trumpeting sound.
Harper opened her eyes, picked up the device, and watched the silver needle dance between the glyphs etched into its metal display panel. She had instructed it to search for one particular emotive frequency—and now it was announcing its success.
“Too soon,” she said. “I don't believe you.”
The Locator crackled. To Harper it sounded like a tiny metallic laugh. Was the machine teasing her? She had never known it to lie before.
The needle wagged back and forth like an admonishing forefinger, then settled on a glyph shaped like a teardrop falling from a crescent moon. The Locator whined and then trumpeted again.
“Tom can't be here,” she said. “The odds are…”
What were the chances? Harper had spent more than one lifetime in Hell searching for her husband, yet all her efforts had been in vain. To pick up his emotae now, at the very moment she had arrived back in the Maze, was too much of a coincidence for her to blindly accept. She sensed someone else's hand in this.
Menoa?
She shook the Locator roughly. “When did he get to you?” she cried. “Did Menoa order you to do this? Don't lie to me!”
The little device wailed.
Abruptly Harper stopped shaking it. With trembling hands she pressed the Locator against her cheek, feeling its warmth against her cold dead skin. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to hurt you.” She stroked the device, then sniffed. She stared down at the glyph again. Could Tom really be somewhere nearby?
She went over to the porthole and looked out.
Cospinol's fog had vanished. Down here there was no natural sun to injure the god or his vessel, and the skies outside burned like smouldering coals. The Maze below stretched to the limits of her vision, glistening black and red.
Harper clutched the Locator in one hand and with her other hand dragged her cold fingers across the porthole. She left neither fingerprints nor smudges on the glass. Her keen eyes, long accustomed to searching for Iolites and other transparent spies in the skies of Hell, detected something odd—vague movements, like very faint shadows flitting across the heavens.
She took the trio of spirit lenses from her bunk, shuffled through them, and lifted the darkest one up to her eyes. Seen through the tinted glass, the crimson sky became green. The vague shapes she had seen earlier suddenly clarified and became immediately recognizable.
“Shit,” she said.
4
THE WOODSMEN
Shadow people crouched over her. She saw white eyes and teeth in the darkness. She feared she must be in a Spine dungeon in Deepgate's temple, because she could smell blood and she was hurting, and that meant there must be priests nearby to bless and sanction her torture.
She passed out.
When Rachel woke again, she was lying on her back on a narrow camp bed, her neck propped upon a soft pillow. Her arms and legs felt as heavy as the lumber joists in the ceiling above her. A sudden sharp pain in her head made her cry out. Gazing up at the wooden ceiling, she realized that she must now be aboard the Rotsward, for the whole room seemed to loll drunkenly backwards and forwards before it settled again.
“How are you feeling?”
Rachel turned her head to see Mina sitting on a chair. They were in a musty bedroom she vaguely recognized. A dim grey light filtered through the gauzy window drapes. Rachel felt so nauseous she thought she might vomit.
“This isn't the skyship?”
“What do you remember?”
“An inn… We can't stay here, Mina. The arconites…”
“They're still behind us.” Mina stood up and approached the bed. “You badly needed rest, and we decided it would be more comfortable for you here.”
Rachel winced as a jolt of agony split her skull. “That man shot me,” she said. “Gods, Mina, I saw it coming. I tried to focus, but the missile came too fast. I've never…” She breathed. “I've never seen one of those weapons triggered before.”
“Fired,” Mina explained. “A flame ignites powder inside the musket and the explosion sends a lead ball out of the barrel, like in a cannon. We developed weapons like that in Deepgate over three hundred years ago, before the Church of Ulcis managed to stifle all the research. Abner Hill fired this one directly into your face.”
Rachel tried to touch her wounded head, but Mina stopped her.
“The musket ball grazed your skull,” the thaumaturge continued. “Either he has a lousy aim, or you managed to focus fast enough to save yourself. It's just a flesh wound, so leave the bandage alone. If it doesn't get infected, you'll probably live.” She took a glass of water from a bedside cabinet and held it under Rachel's chin. “Drink,” she ordered.
Rachel sipped. “Where is he?”
“Hill? He's upstairs with his wife. Hasp wanted to kill him, but I think I talked him out of it. These people know this land much better than we do. They've set us on the right path now.”
“Where's Hasp?”
Mina hesitated, then shook her head. “He wants to be left alone right now. He has some issues he needs to deal with.”
“And how's Dill?”
“Huge and ugly, but he'll be pleased to know you aren't dead.”
Rachel pulled away the blanket and swung herself over to the edge of the camp bed. The room reeled around her. She groaned. Her limbs still felt like slugs of metal—the aftereffects of focusing. The Spine technique had quickened her reactions to superhuman levels, but now her exhausted muscles were paying t
he price of such forced exertion. She had moved as quickly as any Spine assassin could, but not fast enough to dodge that musket ball.
“Take it easy,” Mina advised.
“Sure, just as soon as I've had words with the proprietor.”
Mina helped Rachel to her feet and then supported her as she staggered out of the bedroom and into the saloon. There were empty bottles strewn everywhere; an overpowering stench of whisky filled the air. Most of the tables and chairs rested in heaps against the back wall or around the base of the staircase. It looked like a squall had swept through the room.
They climbed the stairs and Mina led Rachel to one of the guest bedrooms. She unlocked the door.
Abner Hill and his wife sat side by side on the bed. The young woman glanced at Rachel and then turned away quickly and bit her knuckle to stifle a sob. Her long golden hair tumbled over her face, hiding her tearful eyes.
Rachel frowned. The woman who'd attacked her had had orange hair. She remembered it distinctly. “You came at me with an axe?” she said. “It was…” She winced as a sudden ache throbbed inside her skull. “It was you, wasn't it?”
The wife sniffed, and made no reply.
But her husband glared up insolently at the assassin. “You can't keep us prisoners in our own place,” he said. “You gods-be-damned Mesmerist brigands.”
He spoke with such a thick Pandemerian accent that it took Rachel a moment to be sure she'd understood him correctly, yet she did not recall that he'd had very much of an accent at all when she'd first encountered him. “We're not Mesmerists or thieves,” she said at last. “You might have at least asked before you tried to shoot my head off.”
“Really? And I suppose that's not an arconite outside either?”
She saw his point.
Abner Hill glowered at her. “You arrive in Westroad inside the jaw of that damn monster, then break into my property and come sauntering up my own stairs, all armed like you mean me harm. That's why you got a bullet in your head, woman.” He bared small yellow teeth. “Now you say you're not thieves and yet I've sat here and watched you steal from me bold as brass.”
“What did we steal?”
The man adopted an expression of disbelief. “That bullet must have knocked the wits from you. What did you steal? You stole every last damn thing I own. You stole my business and my gods-be-damned home!”
Rachel looked at Mina, who shrugged.
She walked over to the window. In the mists a hundred feet below, the tops of trees swept past like the peaks of waves upon a dismal green sea. Dill was still carrying the whole building.
“It's more comfortable than living in his mouth,” Mina said.
The assassin hung her head. “I'm sorry,” she said to the man who had tried to kill her. “I'm sorry this has happened.”
Some time later Rachel was lying on her bed when Mina came in with a pot of tea from the kitchen, Basilis snuffling about her feet. The assassin must have slept for a while again because it had become much darker outside and shadows crouched in the corners of her room. Vague recollections of a dream remained, in which Rachel had been arguing with an orange-haired woman over a broken mirror, but the details were elusive, already fading. The pain in her head had settled to a dull but ever-present throb.
“Have you noticed anything odd recently?” she said, turning to Mina.
The young thaumaturge just stared at her. “We're in a building carried by a four-hundred-foot-tall golem, with twelve more giants in pursuit,” she said. “Does that count?”
“Did Abner's wife change the color of her hair? I mean, since I've been unconscious.”
Mina's brows rose. “Oh, you meant really odd things? Someone dyeing their hair?” She adopted an expression of mock thoughtfulness. “No, I don't think Mrs. Hill has been anywhere near a vanity cabinet since we met.” She poured tea into two glasses. “Her name is Rosella, and she's desperately afraid of that big creep.”
“I'm sorry,” Rachel said. “I know how ridiculous it sounds. My head has been playing tricks on me recently.”
Mina grunted. “Strange,” she said. “Have you bumped it recently? Or been shot in the face at all?”
Rachel smiled.
Mina handed one of the glasses to Rachel and watched while the other woman drank.
The brew tasted strong and bitter. Rachel swallowed and then inhaled deeply of the vapours rising from the glass. “Abner was right,” she said. “We stole his entire livelihood.”
“Think of it as a loan,” Mina said. “As soon as we've saved his life and the lives of everyone else in this world, we'll let him have his property back.” She set her own empty glass down on the floor beside the teapot.
Rachel frowned at the glass for a moment. “When did you drink that tea?” she said.
“Just now.”
“But…” Rachel felt suddenly confused, as if her thoughts had become knotted. She hadn't even seen Mina lift the glass. Rachel had barely just accepted her own drink. She glanced down to find an empty glass clutched in her own hands. It felt cold.
Had she blacked out?
“Besides,” Mina went on, “Hasp pointed out that if we expect to recruit soldiers from Rys's disbanded army, then we need a base of operations. He wants to use the building to entertain our would-be allies.”
Rachel was staring at her empty glass. Evidently her injury had affected her more than she'd realized. She set the glass on the floor beside the bed and then leaned back and closed her eyes. “I'm tired,” she said. “I think I need to sleep.”
“Finish your tea,” Mina said. “It's good for you.”
Rachel felt the warmth of the glass in her hand. The tea's bittersweet aroma cut through her muddled thoughts with a welcome sharpness. “What?” She opened her eyes again. “Sorry, Mina, I must have drifted off.” She took a sip of the hot liquid.
Mina drank from her own glass. “Menoa's parasite won't leave him be,” she said. “The last I knew he was sitting on the pantry floor with a bottle of whisky, as drunk as any man or god could be.”
“Were we talking about Hasp?”
“You asked.”
“Yes. Sorry, do you want me to speak to him?”
The thaumaturge shrugged. “You can try.”
Rachel sighed. She seemed to have lost track of this conversation somewhere. She could hardly recall what they'd been speaking about at all. Her head continued to throb, but she felt slightly more alert now. Mina's tea had cleared her thoughts. She eased herself up against her pillow, then swung her legs out of the bed. “Thanks, Mina,” she said. “I'll take him some of this tea.” She topped up her glass and then stood up unsteadily.
“Are you all right?” Mina asked. “You look very pale.”
Rachel shrugged. “I'm Spine.”
In the cracked Pandemerian Railroad Company mirror behind the bar, Rachel glimpsed her own reflection again. She looked even thinner and more gaunt than usual, like a spectre lingering in that dark room, the ghost of some long-forgotten war. The bandage around her head had been fashioned from blue-and-white checked cloth. She brushed her fingers against the dark smear of blood above her right ear.
Somebody had cleared away all the bottles and righted one of the tables and two chairs, setting them in the center of the saloon. The building lolled gently from side to side and she heard the muted crash of trees from below. She went into the kitchen.
Hasp sat on the pantry floor with his back propped against the door frame. Four empty whisky bottles rolled back and forth across the floorboards near his feet. Clutching a half-full bottle in one fist, he raised it to his lips and drank, then looked up at her with darkly shadowed red eyes.
“A god walks up to a bar,” Rachel began. “And the barkeep says, sorry, we don't serve gods in here. And the god says, why the hell not? And the barkeep says, because the last one pissed all over my begonias.”
“Trying to… make the fucking thing drunk,” Hasp said, tapping the bottle against his head. “But the little fuc
ker is more… has more tolerance than I do.” He lowered the bottle, sloshing yet more whisky on the floor.
“You want some tea?”
The god grunted.
Rachel downed half of her glass of tea and set it down on a convenient shelf. The drink was cold and foul-tasting, and she wondered why she'd brought it here at all. Her gaze wandered over the dusty tins and pickle jars and a box of old potatoes, carrots, and turnips. “Mina says we're following some sort of trail.”
“Woodsmen,” Hasp explained. “Rys's shit-head reserves. Never came to Coreollis when he summoned them.” He dragged a hand across his stubbled jaw and tried to spit; a glob of saliva remained on his chin. “Probably on their way to Herica, like us… abandoned their settlements when the peace treaty turned sour.” He grunted. “Either news of our glorious fucking defeat reached them fast, or they watched the battle at Larnaig from the cover of their forest. Cospinol's gold is only going to hire us idlers and cowards.”
“It's a fresh trail, so we're likely to catch up with them soon.”
Hasp sniffed. “You want me sober, eh?”
“Civil, anyway.”
The god set down his whisky bottle. “I'm not…” He stared glassily into the corner of the room for a long while. “I'm no more than this fucking parasite in here.” He glared up at her. “Understand? That's what Menoa has left you. If he had killed me, then there'd be nothing, but now there's less than nothing… a burden. I'm going to betray you with this fucking… little piece of Hell in my brain.” He bared his teeth and slammed the whisky bottle against the floorboards. The bottle smashed, but his glass-sheathed fist remained intact.
“Easy!”
Hasp lifted his transparent gauntlet and stared at the blood flowing inside it. “Tougher than it looks, isn't it?”
“Don't test it, Hasp. We need you alive.”
He snorted and wiped his nose. “Alive?” He mumbled something under his breath, then let out a sigh. “My head…”
“It'll hurt a lot more tomorrow.”
“Good. That'll punish the little fucker.”
It had grown almost dark by now, and the god sat sprawled on the pantry floor, stinking of whisky, his robe disheveled and his eyes hidden in caves of shadow. His neck and arms gleamed as dully red as tools from a surgeon's table. Rachel searched the shelves and then went back into the kitchen and pulled open drawers until she found some tallow candles and a taper. She looked for flints but found none.