The Iron Wyrm Affair

A pair of huge spiny gates, their tops tortured by unimaginable heat, stood ajar. Ash piled high on either side, drifting against a gap-toothed brick wall. A painted tin sign proclaimed Blackwerks, and the Altered boy minced through the gates, turning and giving a deep bow. “Enter, w’ships, Ladyname be bless’d. Step right inna the Werks.” Two stamps of his left foot, his boot heel ringing against cracked cobbles, and he danced back into an orange glow.

The cavern of the Werks rose, its entire front open and exhaling a burning draught. Machinery twisted inside, cauldrons tipping and pouring substances he did not care to think too deeply on. Wheels ticked, their toothed edges meshing with others, huge soot-blackened chains shivering, clashing, or stretched taut. The cinderfall intensified here, Clare was glad of his hat. Somehow the falling matter avoided Miss Bannon, and the witchlight behind them made everything in the circle of its glow keep to its proper proportions. He wondered what effort it cost Miss Bannon to keep that sphere of normalcy steady, and decided not to ask.

A slim figure resolved out of the heatglare, gliding forward.

What is this?

It was a woman. Or perhaps it had been once. Long swaying black bombazine skirts, stiff with ash, smooth black metal skin, an explosion of ash-grey horsehair held back with jet-dangling pins. Its arms were marvels of Alteration, metal bones and hands of fine delicate clockwork opening and closing as it – she rolled forward. The face was also blank metal and clockwork, the nose merely sinus caverns; the eyes were hen’s-egg rubies lit from within by feral intelligence.

Miss Bannon squeezed his arm again, warningly. Clare stared.

The thing’s mouth – or the aperture serving it as a mouth – moved. “Prima.” The voice held a rush and crackle of flame, and the skirts shuddered as whatever contraption was underneath them encountered an irregularity in the flooring.

That dress was fashionable a decade ago. He caught sight of a reading-glass dangling from a thin metal chain, hiding in the skirts. Does this thing read? How long ago was it human? Does it have any flesh left?

“Mehitabel.” Miss Bannon nodded, once. “I have come for what I left.”

A rasp-clanking screech rose from the thing’s chest. It took Clare a moment to recognise that rusted, painful sound for what it was.

Laughter.

The hideous noise cut off sharply, and the boy who had led them here stepped back nervously, like an unAltered horse scenting the metal and blood of the pens. The thing called Mehitabel turned its head, servomotors in the neck ratcheting with dry terrible grace. The wretched imitation of a human movement made Clare’s dinner writhe.

Perhaps my digestion is not as sound as it could be, he noted, and found himself clutching at Miss Bannon’s hand on his arm. Patting slightly, as if she were startled and he meant to soothe. His throat was tight.

Emotion. Cease this.

But his feelings did not listen.

“Oh, Mehitabel.” Miss Bannon sounded, of all things, saddened. “Not you too.”

“You do not know your enemies, sorceressss.” Rust showered from the thing’s elbow joints as it lifted its arms. Its mouth widened, a spark of glowing-coal red dilating far back in its throat. Miss Bannon stepped forward, disengaging herself from Clare with a practised twist of her hand, and the witchlight intensified behind them, casting a frail screen of clear silver light against the venomous crimson of the Werks. Machinery shuddered and crashed as Mehitabel’s body jerked, and Miss Bannon yelled an anatomical term Clare had never thought a lady would be conversant with.

The crashing ceased. Mehitabel’s metal body froze, in stasis.

“I may not know my enemies,” Miss Bannon said softly, her hands held out in a curious contorted gesture, fingers interlaced. “But I am Prime, little wyrm, and you are only here on sufferance.”

The metal thing shuddered. There was a flicker of motion, and Clare’s blurted warning was lost in a draught of scalding air. Mikal was suddenly there, smacking aside Dodgerboy’s hand with contemptuous ease, the slender gleam of a knife flying in a high arc to vanish into the ash outside. The Shield made another swift motion, almost as an afterthought, and the Altered boy flew backwards, vanishing into a haze of red light and confused, whirling cinders.

“Sufferance?” A low, thick burping chuckle rode the rush of hot stinking air out of the Werks. The voice was terrible, a dry-scaled monstrous thing approximating human words over the groaning of metal and crackling of flame, the sibilants laden with toxic dust. “Oh, I think not, monkeychild. You are in my home now.”

The witchlight blazed, sharp silver brilliance. “Mikal.” Miss Bannon’s voice cut through the thing’s laughter. “Take him. And run.”

The descant scorched her throat, her focus splitting as the great twisting metal thing fought her hold. Her left hand cramped, burning as she held the rope of intent, the force clamped over Mehitabel’s simulacrum fraying at the edges. She had to choose – the trueform or the metal echo, layers of the physical and ætheric vibrating as sorcery spread in rayed patterns, the Wark quivering as she forced its sorcery to her will.

I will pay for this later. A Greater Word rose within the fabric of the chant, weaving itself between the syllables. It settled on the metal form, which buckled and curled like paper in a fire.

A massive wrecked scream rose from Mehitabel’s unseen trueform. That must sting.

But it freed Emma to bring her focus back to a single object, white-hot sorcerous force running through her veins. The Blackwerks seethed with running feet, shouts. Mehitabel’s flash-boys and the antlike workers who crawled through the heat-shimmering cavern began to appear, flickering unsteadily through the cinderfall.

Emma’s hands shot out, sorcery crackling between them. She squeezed, smoke rising from her rings and the scorched material of her gloves, and Mehitabel shrieked again. The flashboys froze, workers dropping where they stood. The chant died away now that Emma had her grip.

“I can crush flesh just as easily,” she called, the words slicing through snap-crackling flame and shuddering metallic clanking. The simulacrum’s face continued melting, runnels of liquid iron sliding down, its unfashionable dress a torch. “Even your flesh. Where is it, Me-hi-ta-beh-ru-la gu’rush Me- hi-lwa?” The foreign syllables punctured tortured air; Emma’s throat scorched and her eyes watering as she accented each in its proper place.

Hours of study and careful tortuous work had suddenly returned its investment. Mehitabel had obviously never guessed that Emma might uncover her truename, much less use it.

A wyrm would never forget, let alone forgive such a thing.

The Blackwerks … stopped.

Sparks and cinders hung in mid-air. The burning simulacrum was a painting, flames caught in mid-twist, its face terribly ruined.

A huge, narrow head, triple-crowned and triple-tongued, rose from a crucible of molten metal, snaking forward on a flexible, black-scaled neck. The eyes were jewels of flame, matching the now-cracked rubies of the simulacrum, and leathery wings spread through the cinderfall, their bladed edges cutting through individual flecks and sparks held in stasis.

The tongues flickered, smoke wreathing the wyrm’s long body in curiously lethargic veils. Mehitabel held the Werks out of Time’s slipstream, her wings ruffling as they combed slumbering air. The heat was immense, awesome, the cup of metal holding the lower half of her body bubbling with thick tearing sounds. She turned her head sideways, one ruby eye glinting, but Emma leaned back, fingers burning, the thin fine leash of her will cutting across the dragon’s snout.

They are the children of Time, her teacher had intoned long ago. They are of the Powers, and their elders sleep. We should be glad of that slumber, for if those wyrms awakened they would shake this isle – and plenty more – from their backs, and the Age of Flame would return.

Mehitabel’s head jerked back and she glared, one clawed forelimb sinking into the edge of the crucible and