The Iron Wyrm Affair

With the thought, consciousness returned to the Rider. For a moment she hesitated, trembling, on the threshold, nameless and irresolute. It seemed an eternity she had been riding, following the scentless trail of treachery borne on gryphon wings. Did he know she followed? Quite possibly; she was loud enough to be heard counties away.

Between one heartbeat and the next she was through the door, the memory of being merely a cup to pour meaning into mercifully evaporating. Even a sorcerer’s finely tuned mind could not stand such a violation. Best it were forgotten, and soon.

A white sword coalesced at the eastern horizon. The grey light intensified, and the sound of waves crashed back and forth. Khloros, understanding her human need, intensified its speed again. It was graceful even in its desperate shambling, its armour and barding and flesh, bones and metal unravelling into pure æther. It burst into colour – the page written upon, the pallid light broken into its constituent parts.

The crystal wave clustered around the Rider, dead hands outstretched and fingers turned to vapour.

She fell.

Sunlight. Warm as oil against her cheeks, striking her sensitised eyes even through protective lids. She lay on chill dampness, various bits digging into her back and hair and skirts. She did not dare open her eyes, simply lay where she was for a few breaths, taking in everything she could of the space around her.

Morning chill, a damp saltbreath of the sea a distance away, flat metal tang of riverwater closer. The sunshine came in dappled patterns – she was under leaves. A faint breeze rattled them. What was that sound? It was not waves or the groaning crash of rent earth. It was not the hoofbeats of Khloros, and it was most definitely not her own voice.

Cries. The clacking of razor beaks, a voice raised high and furious in sonorous chant. A shuddering ran through the damp, hard ground underneath her.

What?

Sense returned. Every inch and particle of her savagely abused body hurt. To open the door to Discipline was never undertaken lightly. Things could happen to those whose will was not honed, and Discipline took a hard toll on the body as well as the mind. Emma Bannon sat up, blinking furiously, and found herself in a ragged ruin of a dress, her corset stays snapped and dark curls knocked loose, the morning dew gilding bracken and bramble. To her left a rocky hill rose, choked with vines. It was from the top of that hill that the sounds were pouring, screeches and nasty grindings.

She staggered upright, tearing herself free of clutching greenery. Her knees threatened to give; she silently cursed at them. That gave them some starch, but only some. Her rings ran with sparkling light – Tideturn had come while she lay senseless, and she carried a full charge of sorcerous force. It stung, like the touch of sun on already reddened skin.

She took stock. All in all, she was reasonably whole. The black stone at her throat was ice cold, her rings on numb fingers sparked with charter symbols, and her earrings quivered against her neck, brushing dew-damp skin. If she did not take pneumonia from lying on the cold ground for however long, it would be a miracle.

That’s Llewellyn up there. She shook herself, cast about for a path. None was apparent.

Oh, isn’t that always the bloody way. Where am I? God alone knows where, with a mad Prime above and the fate of Britannia at stake, and not even a goat track in sight.

“Bloody f—king hell,” she muttered, and other words more improper, as she turned in a full circle. The clashing and scraping and cawing above her was mounting in intensity.

Well. There is nothing for it, then.

She waded through the bramble to the base of the hill, set her hands to the rough grey stone poking out through moss and vine, and began to climb.

Chapter Thirty-Five Don’t Touch the Contacts

Sigmund swore, hit the mecha’s froglike head twice with the spanner. The resounding clashes filled the cavern. The glow-rocks were dimming. “There. Try now.”

Really? Banging it with a spanner? Sigmund, I am disappointed in you. Clare, strapped into the mecha’s chest, sighed and shook the jolting out of his bones. Each time Sig banged on something, he was half afraid he would end up skullsplit, sagging in the mecha’s straps and buckles.

He curled his fists around the handles, turning his wrists just slightly so the metal plating had full contact with his skin. “I don’t think it’s going to—”

Golden glow burst from the circle over his chest. The small logic engine sputtered, and Clare was so surprised he almost sent the mecha tumbling over backwards. Ratcheting echoed, capacitors hummed. Clare’s concentration narrowed. The equations ran smoothly, ticking below the surface of his conscious mind, as tingling ripples slid up his arms.

Ha!

He had solved the equations. It was now close to child’s play to bend the mecha to his will. It took two steps forward, obedient instead of fighting him, and one impossibility followed another.

Around the cavern, humming clangour rose. Golden discs, hanging slackly in the chests of the slumped mecha, flashed blue-white. Aha! The variance, that’s why they’re responding to this one. Must be a redundancy built into their capacitation metrics. There’s bound to be several that weren’t within the large engine’s tolerances but are within mine. Drop in the bucket, but still jolly good.

“Clare?” Valentinelli sounded nervous.

“It’s all right,” he called. The words echoed internally, feedback mounting, but he dumped the superfluous noise with a repeating equation. Once one had the trick of it, surprisingly easy. “Climb into a mecha, but don’t touch the contacts!”

Valentinelli’s reply was unrepeatable, and Clare laughed. The fierce white-hot joy of logic took him, a razor- edged glow. “Onward!” he yelled, as the mechanisterum homunculi began to stamp. “Onward to Londinium! But don’t touch the bloody contacts!”

To run with iron pistons for legs and a burning globe of logic for a pumping heart, faster than a thoroughbred or a sporty carriage, faster even than a railcar. To watch Londinium grow on the horizon, under a pall of smoke rising into the sky like a column of God’s guidance, while metal legs tirelessly carried one forward.

This was joy.

Sigmund whooped almost the entire way, drunk with the exhilaration of speed. Valentinelli, his pocked face set and alarmingly pale, hung in the straps, jounced about like a Red Indusan papoose. The assassin had spent the last hour desperately seeking to avoid touching anything, not just the contacts.

Clare, overjoyed by the wind in his face and the logic humming through his bones, found himself laughing again.

They were half a mile from Londinium when it suddenly became more difficult to move. The equations tangled, snarling against each other, and sweat sprang on Clare’s brow as he fought air gone suddenly glass- hard.

Oh no you don’t.

The will pressing down on them was immense, and backed by a much larger logic engine, one powered by a core far more powerful than the tiny one at Clare’s chest. But that much strength was clumsy, and created so much interference it was relatively easy to divert the force of its attack.

He had wondered if the mecha he had control of would respond to the larger logic engine’s soundless call once they were awake. It appeared they would not – unless the mentath controlling the spider solved the riddle of the variances.

Clare devoutly hoped he would not.

And now the other mentath knew he was here. Clare’s attention became fully occupied, his small band of a dozen mecha slowing, Sig finally catching the idea that something was amiss.

Carry that over, dump the quad, string those together, there’s the weakness, let it replicate,