CHAPTER NINE
Purity stumbled through the trees, her legs numb from walking, her discomfort anaesthetized by the complete aching tiredness she was swimming through. Oliver was a constant by her side. It was almost like having her brother back alive with her: the shared madness – the voice inside their heads – a kinship nearly as thick as blood. And they could both sense the presence of the Army of Shadows, the slats' leathery black globe-like craft suspended under buzzing blades whisking through the cloudy starless night, dropping off scouts to hunt down the survivors from the Highhorn camp.
The two of them might have already cleared the forest if it wasn't for the necessity of continually doubling back on their tracks. Blind though the slave soldiers of the Army of Shadows were, they were possessed of a keen enough sense of smell to keep their hunting packs hard on Purity and Oliver's trail. Purity doubted if they had any inkling of what she and Oliver really were – but the foe had obviously been stung by the existence of the hidden cannon, a level of engineering far beyond what they had expected from their prey in the kingdom. Survivors might possess knowledge of that engineering, knowledge that the slats didn't want reaching any of the other nations of the continent before they, too, were conquered in turn.
Oliver hadn't said any more about where they were going, the dire fate he had mentioned; but right now, Purity hardly cared – she would settle for half an hour of sleep and the guarantee she wouldn't be ripped to shreds by the talons of one of their pursuers before she awoke.
'Are we going to die?' she asked Oliver.
'If we do, we'll have a lot of company. The entire land's dying. They're making a corpse of Jackals.' Oliver took Purity's arm and pushed the sleeve up, allowing the drizzle to touch her skin. Her arm itched as the rain fell upon the white flesh. 'That flying citadel has infected the rain here. This is just the start. We must go on.'
'I'm tired.' Purity tried to shut out the sight of the red haze of moonlight smudging the rain clouds above the canopy of pine. Corruption in the heavens, corruption in the rain. Just the two of them to stand against it all, two kestrels, flying against the full fury of a storm. What difference could the two of them make?
'Why me?' Purity yelled her rage up at the iron moon. 'Why did this have to happen? What have I ever done to deserve this?'
'It had to be someone,' said Oliver, quietly. The look of resignation on his face shocked Purity to silence. What did she look like to him? She almost felt ashamed.
'I'm sorry.'
'Don't be,' said Oliver. 'I was given these two pistols by a Circlist reverend. He had been the Hood-o'the- marsh before me. He and I were connected, just like the Circlists believe all of us to be connected. Connected by the guns, or the land, or by our humanity. That's why we're going on. Because we have to. Because if we don't, nothing else will.'
She followed him. Purity and Oliver left the forest behind and trekked across the heath.
Hours became days.
It was strange, Purity mused, it was like the end of the world – as if the kingdom had been emptied. They hadn't met any other survivors from the camp since they had thrown off their pursuers.
Highhorn had been an isolated stretch of the country even before the war, and when they came across villages and roads they found them abandoned. Once the two of them had seen a valley filled with a dozen house-sized slugs, slowly devouring the trees of a pear orchard, a trail of hexagonal plating excreted in their wake. The slugs emitted a diffuse crimson steam that rose in vapours, trailing languidly towards the sky. No wonder the days had become an intermittent twilight, a crimson-toned gloom as the enemy's creatures set about their work – converting the land into useful resources. Even the enemy's soldiers seemed to have vacated the countryside. There was the occasional wasp-like humming in the distance to mark the passage of one of their leathery flying globes, but no more sightings of their flying citadels, no more pursuit by the eyeless monstrosities that marched under the enemy's banner.
Oliver and Purity might have been the only ones left alive in this strange, empty landscape.
Purity came to a stop. 'I wish we could find some food, a cottage, anything.'
Oliver pointed to the north. 'The nearest small town is that way, about a day's walk. But it's empty, the Army of Shadows must have reached it.'
'How can you tell?'
'Because if it was otherwise there would be people there,' said Oliver. 'And I would feel their evil. We'll stop and rest a while. I can make a poacher's fire. If I build it right it won't give off much smoke.'
An hour after Purity and Oliver left, a scout for the Army of Shadows was bent over the remains of their fire, its eyeless black head pushed up against the stones, sniffing at the ashes through a cluster of breathing folds. Its fangs clicked together in anticipation. Not old at all. And from the scents heading off, there were a couple of fine meals waiting for its pack.
Not for the first time, Molly wished that the ugly mood inside Lord Starhome would prove as mutable as the hull of their half-steamman craft. Once the crushing ferocity of the launch had been replaced by the strange waterless floating of their voyage, the shell-shaped ship had started to metamorphose, his living metal flowing into a new shape that was half-manta-ray, half bat. Lord Starhome was rapidly growing larger around his passengers. Sucking up the dust and grit of the celestial darks and incorporating it into his fabric. When they reached Kaliban, the expedition might be travelling in a craft a hundred times as large as the shell shape Lord Starhome had assumed to survive his ancient impact with the mountains of Mechancia – if the members of the expedition managed not to kill each other before they arrived.
Molly was coming to regret having opened her cockpit to the others she had inadvertently kidnapped for the voyage.
'I, sir, am invested with the authority of the House of Guardians,' insisted Lord Rooksby. 'I have full command of this expedition by order of parliament.'
'You carry no authority over any compatriot of the sovereign people of the Commonshare of Quatershift,' retorted Keyspierre.
His daughter Jeanne nodded vehemently by his side. 'The launch of this vessel was made possible only by the sweat and genius of the Institute des Luminaires and the ruling committees of our people.'
Commodore Black pointed towards the back of the craft where Coppertracks had vanished into the storage hold with Duncan Connor. 'You might as well decide on Coppertracks as the skipper of our expedition, for this craft belongs to King Steam and we're on steammen soil by the nautical laws, while your parliament of shopkeepers and congress of the mortal committees of Quatershift falls further away with each hour we travel.'
'A ridiculous suggestion,' said Rooksby.
Lord Starhome's disembodied voice sounded around them. 'Am I merely a chattel, then?' He showed his displeasure by allowing the field of artificial gravity he had recently created for them to fluctuate, the expedition members briefly subjected to a twinge of nauseous flotation.
'That's enough,' said Molly to Lord Starhome, who was showing worrying tendencies towards independence. As the craft grew larger, the percentage that was steamman – that owed any loyalty to the Free State – was being diluted. Molly fingered the control ring Hardarms had given her. How much longer until they were left riding a wild, masterless stallion through the endless night?
'We do not need to be lectured by you, Jackelian,' said Keyspierre's daughter, pointing an accusing finger at Molly. 'If it was not for your reckless interference we would be on a properly equipped and outfitted vessel of exploration, with trained soldiers to protect us instead of your gang of misfits and sightseers.'
'This is my expedition,' snapped Molly. 'I received foreknowledge of the invasion by the Army of Shadows. My gang of misfits got Timlar Preston back alive and saw my cannon completed, and without us amateurs, you-' she waved at the two shifties '-would be meat for those monsters' larder in your corrupt little compatriots' paradise, while you-' she pointed at Lord Rooksby '-would be on a clipper on the other side of the world blundering about looking for the Army of Shadows' non-existent homeland.'
'Aye, Molly has the size of it,' said the commodore. 'And more to the point, if it wasn't for her small blessed act of piracy back in the kingdom, the Highhorn cannon would have had a test shell loaded when the Army of Shadows came calling to destroy it, and we would all be sitting around its ashes toasting our bread in its fires, if
