to, where the girl was, or how I was going to get out of here. The Badge was everywhere. Although none of them could see me, I could hear them calling out to each other, tightening their search. The machine-voice was still booming incoherently over the cacophony of the awakened factory. I got to my heels, squatted and drew my revolver. At least I still had that. I looked up, into the eyes of the iron girl.
She was hidden in the lee of a particularly large machine. It was all boiler and flywheel, the moving parts safely on the other side of the engine. She was folded neatly into the gap below the tank. It must be terribly hot there, but she didn't seem to mind. What she did seem to mind, however, was my attention. It seemed like she was glaring at me, through those matte black lenses. Impossible to tell, really.
I yelped and stood, bringing the iron up to fire. She was on me in a breath, slapping the revolver to the side and striking across my chest and legs. Treated me just like she had the control panel, each movement as if she had choreographed and practiced it her whole life. Fist came down on my leg moments before I was able to balance on it, elbow against my throat a heartbeat before I could yell, knee striking forearm once, twice, each blow disrupting my aim just enough to keep the barrel of my gun away from her. I fired anyway, but the blast did more to distract me than to bother her. Finally she set her heel behind my leg and shoved me in the hips and shoulder, and I was impossibly overbalanced. As I went down she snatched the pistol from my flailing arm. I was on my back, looking up at my own pistol.
She stood there for a moment. I finally detected the slight movement of breath in her chest. So she was alive, at least. A pleasant change, considering the last day. When she was done glaring down at me, she flipped the revolver in her hand, slapped the chamber open and emptied the shells harmlessly onto my face. Then she brought her hands together, did something complicated, and when she spread her arms again the pieces of my revolver scattered across the floor. Like a party trick. With her hands still wide, she backed away. Right into Wilson's tackle.
The anansi came over the top of the big boiler she had been hiding under, the six long, thin limbs that sprouted from his back carrying him up and over the cast iron dome. His regular hands were empty, and his clothes looked a little charred. Must have been working on the door when the Badge made their appearance in force. The din of the factory drowned out the sound of his approach. He pounced, as only a spider can.
He hit her in stride, and they went down in a heap of legs and iron. She rolled to her feet, but Wilson swiped them away, first one then the other. She did this odd hopping dance, regaining one foot as he took the other, three or four times as he kept striking and she kept recovering. It would have been funny if not for the look on Wilson's face, the frustration and fear. Finally he gave up on unbalancing her and turned his many-armed attention to doing the girl harm. Eight arms in all, six tipped in sharp talons, two hard as rocks. Something about anansi bones made them super dense. For all that Wilson was a tall, skinny, bookish looking guy, he was incredibly strong. And that strength came out and he struck with the six arms that hung over his shoulders, each one darting in, only to be brushed aside by the girl's close defense. She didn't move an inch more than she had to, deflecting each attack with armored forearms or the knife-edge of her hands. Each talon that flashed past her whipped back to strike again, to be deflected again, to whip back again. It was dizzying to watch.
The iron girl was moving backwards, herded by the ferocity of Wilson's attack. Smoke was getting heavy in the air. Something was burning, and not just scraps of sheet and cranky gearshafts. I rolled heavily to my feet, abandoned the dissected remains of my stolen revolver, and tried to find something that could make a difference in the dazzling melee that was going on before me. Needn't have worried. I heard a shout and looked up to see Wilson drawing back, bloody on the tip of one of his talons. His eyes were on fire with hungry triumph. The iron girl's sleeve was torn, the dark tan skin beneath gashed open. Wilson howled and redoubled his attack.
Several more blows landed in the next few breaths. The iron girl was tiring, pushing the attacks farther away than was absolutely necessary. Hard to imagine using this word to describe the nearly mechanical precision of her actions, but she was getting sloppy, and Wilson was taking advantage.
It was the Badge that saved her, and nearly finished us all. The two combatants were making enough noise now to draw the attention of even the most casual of patrolmen; the guys coming at us in riotplate were not terribly casual. They ignored me and set up a firing line on the other side of the assembly track. They couldn't have had more than an obscured view of the fight, but it was enough to convince them this was one of those 'shoot first, questions later' kind of situations. They shot.
I mentioned the boiler. It was big, iron. Incredibly old. Iron enough that the first two slugs did nothing more than flake rust and dimple the skin. Old enough that the third, fourth and tenth slugs went inside. Inside, where the fire was. The fire came out. Rapidly.
Wilson and the iron girl both turned their heads when the first shots impacted the boiler. Situational awareness, they call that. I saw them looking concerned, and I've been around Wilson enough to know that his concern is my concern. When the acrobats-militant flipped out of the way and threw themselves to the ground, I did the same. The fire washed over me in a sheet of angry heat. It treated the rest of the factory poorly, including those riotplated Badgemen.
It was all noise to me. Screaming, tearing metal, the rapid rush and roar of consumed air and guttering fire. Engines tearing free of their moorings to bounce playfully across the floor. More screaming. Wilson pulled me up, shook me. Looked concerned when I opened my eyes. He was talking but I couldn't hear anything over the din of the factory. I looked around the floor. Dimpled concrete where there had been machines. Fire where there had been Badgemen. Nothing where there had been an iron girl.
He shook me again. I got the idea. We had to go. Now.
Chapter Six
I was in worse shape than I thought. It took Wilson's help to get me through the wreckage of the factory floor to the ladder that led up to the catwalk. The building was still surrounded. We might have made it out in the smoke and the confusion, but the Badge was keeping the fire brigade away from the flames, so they were pretty serious about the cordon. Don't know why they wanted us so badly.
Wilson got me to the ladder and followed up to the roof. Sections of the steel sheeting had already fallen in, and pillars of smoke were climbing out of the building. We crawled carefully to one of the alley-side edges and peered down. Badge, all over the place.
'I can make the jump,' Wilson said, as if there was ever any doubt. 'You?'
'I don't know,' I said. My leg was numb, and something was throbbing in my hip. Probably nothing broken, but still. Pain. That would have been embarrassing. Broken hip, jump like my great aunt Ada. 'I'm pretty banged up.'
Wilson looked nervously around the building. More of the roof was collapsing, more smoke pouring out. Clouds of cinder swirled up from the shattered skylights, like swarms of burning insects. I thought of the dry husks that littered the floor down there, and the eruption of maker beetles from the body. This was going to lead to some weird dreams, I could tell.
'They're not going to let us off the roof any other way,' Wilson said. I realized he'd been talking for a while. 'So either we jump, or we signal them and surrender.'
'Or we do both,' I said. He gave me a look.
'You take the mask and get out of here. Keep it away from the girl. I can't help but think that she's the one Crane was expecting.' I rolled over onto my back and closed my eyes. 'I'm going to stay here. Turn myself in to the Badge. We haven't really done anything wrong.'
'You think that matters to the Badge?' Wilson asked.
'No. But it'll matter to the Council. If anyone can talk their way out of something like this, it's me. And honestly, there are some people in the Council I'd like to talk to. Some questions I'd like to ask.' I rubbed the ash out of my eyes and grimaced. 'Some folks in that chamber know more than a little about things Celestean.'
'You sure you're going to be okay?'
'Oh yeah. Ruined my leg, almost got eaten by a bunch of dead river people, talked to a man full of insects, discovered an ancient and possibly homicidal artifact.' I gave him a big thumbs up. 'I'm going to be great!'
