The Iron Wyrm Affair

digging in with another tortured sound. The tongues flickered. “You are dead.”

“Not yet, wyrm.” Emma set her boots more firmly. “Where is it?”

“It isss not here.” Heat lapped Mehitabel’s sides, her flexible ribs heaving bellows-like.

“Where is it?” Emma’s hands clenched, pressure enfolding the wyrm. She bore down. The sensation was different from the crunch-crushing of metal – slippery and armoured, giving resiliently and struggling to escape. The dragon could make another simulacrum, but its trueform was also vulnerable – especially to an angry sorceress who knew its name.

That was also what it meant to be Prime – to pronounce a name of such power without your tongue scorching and your eyes melting in hot runnels down your cheeks. Some were of the opinion that only a Prime’s overweening pride shielded him from such agony. Others said it was the size of the ætheric charge Primes were able to carry. None had solved the riddle, and Emma’s own research was inconclusive at best.

Had Mikal taken the mentath away? She hoped so. This much concentrated sorcery was dangerous, and what she was about to do with it doubly so. And they had a chance to escape Mehitabel’s flashboys and the other dangers of the Wark now, while she held the wyrm captive.

The dragon hissed, lowering its head. Its teeth were slashes of obsidian, each one with a thin line of crimson at its glassy heart. “One came and relieved me of the burden. Shake in terror, little monkey—”

Emma’s fists jerked. Mehitabel howled, a gush of rancid oily-hot breath pushing Emma’s hair back, wringing scalding tears free to paint her cheeks, snapping her skirts. When the wyrm was done making noise, Emma released the pressure. But only slightly, her concentration narrowing to a single white-hot point.

“Names, Mehitabel. Who came, and for whom?”

“I will kill you for thiss. You will dieeeee—” The word spiralled up into a glassine screech.

Her own voice, a knife through something hot and brittle. “Names, Mehitabel! Truenames! Or we learn the look of your insides, ironwyrm!” The force of Tideturn would start to fail her soon. The cameo was a spot of molten heat at her throat, and her rings glowed, finally scorching away the last of the kidskin on her fingers. The fire opals, shimmering charter symbols rising through their depths, popped sparks that hung restlessly for too long before dropping with languid grace.

Mehitabel gasped. No flame without air, Emma recited inwardly, and another chant filled her throat. This one was low and dark, a single syllable of the language of Unmaking, and before she had finished the first measure the dragon was thrashing against her hold as its ruddy glow dimmed.

When the dragon was limp but still burning, a sullen ember, Emma halted. “Names.” She sounded strange even to herself, harsh and brutal. “Truenames. Now.”

“Llewellyn,” Mehitabel hissed. “Llewellyn Gwynnfud.”

This does not surprise me. “Who else?”

“One of our—”

Oh, you are not about to play a riddling game with me. “Name, Mehitabel. Truename.”

“A fat man, and sstupid. Graysson was the only name he gave—”

A chill knifed through her, her sweat turning to clammy ice. “Who else?”

“An Old One.” Mehitabel chuckled. The sound was a scream of tortured iron. “Him you will not ssorcer so eassily, monkey-bitch.”

The chant rose again. Her focus was slipping. Holding even a young wyrm was difficult, and she still had to escape the Wark. The silver witchlight behind her blazed, her shadow cut of black paper on the fine, soft ankle-deep ashfall.

Mehitabel thrashed, gasping soundlessly. Molten metal slopped against the crucible’s sides. “Who?” Emma demanded again, when the dragon had quieted. There was precious little time left. Her arms trembled, and did her legs. A crystalline drop of sweat traced down her cheek; her hair was damp. Hot beads of blood welled between her clenched, smoking fingers, soaking into the shredded remains of her gloves.

“Vortisss,” Mehitabel hissed. “Vortiss cruca esssth.”

That’s not a name. But Emma’s hold slipped for a single heartbeat; Mehitabel slid free –

– and arrowed straight for her tormentor, head snaking, wings shedding globules of molten metal, jaws held wide.

Chapter Seventeen It Discommodes Me

One moment the sorceress stood, slim and composed, between Clare and the abominable metal thing. There was a curious sensation, as if a thunderstorm threatened, the fine hairs all over his body standing up and a queer weightless vertigo filling him. Mikal was a shadow flicker in his peripheral vision, there and gone in less than a flash.

Then, confusion. The shock knocked him to the ground, foul heat showering over him in a gush of rank oily sweat. His hat went flying, and he had the pepperbox pistol free as soon as his head cleared, searching for somewhat to use the weapon upon.

The reptilian thing thrashed as Mikal leapt aside, his blades painting vermilion streaks through gouts of falling ash. The cavern was full of motion, tattered flashboys with gleaming Alterations seething like ants, the workers – scarecrow figures in shapeless grey smocks and draggling frocks, dull-eyed and vacant – crawling forward with odd jerky grace. The only still point was the sorceress, flung face-down in a drift of ash like a doll. Cinders gathered on her limp, bleeding hands, her gloves scorched and tattered, flesh flayed almost to bone.

Clare made it to her in a scrabbling scramble, as the reptilian thing gave out a choked terrible sound and Mikal’s blades flashed again.

She was astonishingly light. Clare slid an arm under her, the ash smoking along his jacket sleeve. She coughed, her eyes welling with tears that streaked the soot on her face, and he congratulated himself. At least she would not suffocate.

A flashboy in a scarlet jacket leapt. Clare’s arm jerked, the pepperbox pistol’s first barrel spoke, but the crack of it was lost in massive, ear-grinding noise. The flashboy folded down, his Alteration – an arm that was no longer an arm, but a scythe of bone and iron – sending up one last bloody gleam before he fell into ash and the rest hesitated, uncertain, their eyes shining with pinpricks of mad red intelligence.

Just like the rats. Shudders worked through Clare’s frame, but he ignored them. Three shots left, then we shall be forced to improvise. A thud rocked the entire Blackwerks, molten metal splashing in high scorching arcs, and he found himself dragging the sorceress’s limp form towards the entrance, where a draught of cooler air poured the snowflake cinders into the Werks’ maw. An instinctive move, the body seeking to protect itself, but that was acceptable because logic tallied with it, and—

The sorceress woke, her dark eyes snapping open and her ribs expanding as she drew in a long, gasping breath. Another massive crash shook the Werks. The cameo, askew at Miss Bannon’s throat, filled with silvery radiance.

Mikal shouted, a wordless challenge, and Miss Bannon blinked. She stared up at Clare, her gaze so blank and terrible he wondered if she recognised him at all. A pin tumbled from her hair, losing itself in thick ash.

Her lips shaped a word under the noise. He had no trouble deciphering it.

Mikal?

Tension invaded her. She scrambled to her feet, and Clare did as well, though the ground quaked. The mob of flashboys and workers was now pressing close, streaming through the twisted machinery, intent on the sorceress – and by extension, on Clare himself.

This will become quite unpleasant very quickly. As if it was not already unpleasant enough.