'And its end the perfect tragedy,' said Keyspierre. 'But you have since been taught the concept of cruelty well enough from the Army of Shadows. We travelled here to find allies, not sheep willing to step meekly up to the farmer's knife.'
'You came because of the rumours that the great sage has a way of defeating the masters,' said Laylaydin. 'But first we would know that you are fit to receive it.' Laylaydin indicated the largest of the circles of sitting natives to Molly. 'Your friends' weak minds could not survive our sharing, but your mind is different, Molly Templar.'
'I have machines in my blood,' said Molly, sitting down in a place that had been made for her. 'I was an operator of the Hexmachina, the last of my land's god-machines.'
'It is said that our own veins once bubbled with such machine-life,' said Laylaydin. 'But the masters feared our longevity, quick minds and the other abilities our machines gave us, and burnt all traces of the life metal from our bodies. We are mere shadows of our ancestors now, cripples bred into cattle to sate the appetites of the masters' slat armies.'
'But you can still share memories with each other.'
'Yes, but we end up nailed to the cross when we are caught doing this,' said Laylaydin.
'Or worse,' added Molly.
The skin of the Kal next to her had been darkened to near indigo by the sun and he still wore his dusty desert robes bound tight. 'You speak lightly of such things.'
'As lightly as a nomad walks across the dunes.'
'Perceptive, too,' said the Kal. 'Well met. Yes, I am your guide. My name is Sandwalker. I have come out of the salt flats and would suffer the fate of all free Kals if I was discovered inside the last city.'
'Your accent is different from Laylaydin's.'
The Kal wiped his hand on his white pantaloon-like trousers before taking Molly's. 'I only shared the learning of your tongue this morning. Your words still come hard for me. I will grow fluent as I practise more.'
Molly started. Since this morning! She had already received an inkling of what it was like to be part of a network of living minds from Kyorin, but here was the example made flesh. What miracles had the Kal civilization accomplished during its heyday? How far had they fallen to end up here, mere farm animals and slaves?
Laylaydin sat down in the group, and with the circle of hands complete, Molly felt the pain she associated with Kyorin's memories abating, subsiding to such an extent that it was only now that she realized the dead slave's gift to her had become a constant dull throb within her. Memories began flashing past. Drawn out of her like grubs pulled from an apple with a set of tweezers. Kyorin on a dock in Middlesteel, leaping into a river with slat hunters firing darts at him, running sodden through the cold streets, communicating with Timlar Preston inside the cells of the Court of the Air, being helped by Purity Drake. On the run together with the young royalist. Then the images accelerated faster still, Molly's own recollections this time. Flashes of the Hexmachina, the war she had once fought against the demon revolutionaries so many years ago, the cannon construction at Highhorn and her three friends waiting for her in the ruins outside Iskalajinn.
Molly caught only brief glimpses of the minds of the others sitting in the circle as they probed her memories. Why were the Kals being so careful not to show her their own histories and pasts?
'Enough,' said Laylaydin, releasing the hands of the two Kals sitting to either side of her. 'Oh, my Kyorin, all that way for this.'
'What is it?' said Molly. 'There's something you're not telling me. Why weren't you sharing your thoughts with me? What have you got to hide?'
'To put it simply, your mind is already full,' said Laylaydin. 'Kyorin gambled that your symbiote machinery would be able to handle the weight of all his memories driven into you so fast, but I fear your mind is not as sophisticated or evolved as ours. Have you been experiencing headaches?'
'I-' Molly considered lying, but what would be the point? 'I have.'
'The machines inside your body are concentrating around your brain, trying to cope with the weight of his knowledge. But they are burning up under the strain. Your mind is cooking inside your skull, Molly Templar, caught in a vicious circle. The more machines die in your blood the fewer there are to carry the load and the faster those remaining burn up. I am so sorry, but my life-mate filled you with his soul and the vessel of your body is too weak to be able to carry it.'
'Take the memories out of me,' Molly struggled to keep her voice calm. 'Your damn husband put them in, you can take them out of me.'
'We eased your pain as much as were able when we were joined, but such cleansing is merely a balm on your wounds. We are unable to clear you of the remains of Kyorin's soul.'
'We are unable,' said Sandwalker. 'But there is one who can help you. The great sage is not like us; he is what our people once were before the occupation. He could unentangle the pathways of the mind of even someone as strange as you who have travelled so far to stand by our cause.'
Rooksby and the two shifties were staring at Molly with horror, as if her condition might be contagious. She had to bite back an insult. 'We were going to see the great sage anyway. Now we have two reasons to go.'
'You must stay here, compatriot,' insisted Keyspierre. 'Let our Kal compatriots care for you while we travel to seek the weapon and your cure. Are we to travel through the desert bearing you on a stretcher? Your presence will only hinder the prospects of the expedition succeeding.'
'Not a chance,' snapped Molly. 'I'm going with you.'
There was a rise of excited voices at the far side of the chamber.
'Tallyle! You're alive,' said Laylaydin, spotting the Kal who was walking down the steps to the chamber. 'We heard that all of the engineers working at Processing Ten were fed to the slats when the station was decommissioned.'
'Not all of us,' said the Kal, shaking hands with the other natives eagerly pressing in around him.
'This is our leader,' said Laylaydin, proudly. 'The infiltration of the Jackelian scouting force was his plan.'
'And the allies we hoped for have arrived just in time,' said the Kal.
'In time for what?' asked Molly.
'Why, to feed my hunger,' replied the Kal, a pair of deadly pearl-white fangs sprouting from his jaw, his tongue whipping out obscenely to lick at his lips.
Purity came to the clearing where the Bandits of the Marsh were holding the captured slat just in time. Hanging in the air like a conjuring trick while Ganby stood by muttering a spell, the captured slat was watching Samuel Lancemaster heat the edge of his spear inside a fire. A blaze that Jenny Blow was encouraging to iron- foundry heat with her breath.
'What are you doing?' demanded Purity.
'We have our prisoner,' said Samuel. 'Now we are going to begin our interrogation.'
Purity looked at the spear tip glowing orange in the fire. 'You can't do that.'
Ganby reached out to tap the hard black chest of the slat. 'This bone armour doesn't stretch all the way around its body. These slat creatures are like craynarbians, the joints of the legs, arms and neck have soft areas to allow their limbs to bend.'
'We might have grabbed the wrong creature,' said Jackaby, appearing behind Purity in the clearing. 'The blue men aren't the slaves we believed. One of them attacked the young queen, sporting a set of fangs that makes a lie of their fruit-grazing diet, unless they have apples in their land that fight back like bears.'
'Now that is interesting,' said Ganby. 'From chattel to soldier with one small lie uncovered. Clever, like the gill-necks when they invaded. How many stories did we hear about them which turned out to be lies they had spread to sow confusion among the tribes? But it makes getting the truth out of this one all the more imperative.'
'You can't torture the slat,' said Purity. 'It's our prisoner, you can't treat it like-'
'Like it would treat us if our positions were reversed?' said Ganby. 'Nobody has a taste for this, but it is necessary. You should go if you find it unpleasant.' He turned to the prisoner. 'Now, my friend, Jenny Blow heard you giving orders to our people in our tongue, so I know you can understand what I am saying to you.'
All the Bandit of the Marsh got for his trouble was a stream of guttural chattering from the slat's fang- encrusted mouth, the same language Purity had heard in Molly's bedroom from Kyorin's killer.
Samuel withdrew his burning-hot spear from the fire. 'Let me help you remember our language,
