Trust him. After all, he had once been one of Middlesteel's most distinguished doctors.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Abolt of electricity flashed down the dunes and erupted behind the expedition, showering Molly in sand, making the red haze they were running through sputter with dispersing energy like crackling popping on a roasting pig.
The sand had never seemed so untraversable as Molly desperately tried to keep up with Commodore Black and Coppertracks over the slow, sucking dunes. Anything but fall back alongside Keyspierre. If Molly slipped out of sight of the others for a moment the shiftie would try to murder her, she could see just how he would arrange it. So easy. Trip her and push her face into the sand, strangle her and leave her corpse to be claimed by the shifting sands or fried to ashes by the lightning storm. Just another victim of the Beast, like Coppertracks' decapitated drone.
Poor Molly Templar, so unfortunate, dying on the expedition she had been the catalyst for. An adventure too far for the foolish author and her friends, overreaching her talents, overestimating her resources and fortitude. Just a sad little workhouse girl made good whose luck had finally run out. But would there be anyone left in Jackals to mourn her? No! Keep hold of the line; don't lose sight of the others.
Around Molly the dust haze was thickening, coalescing under the fury of the Beast's pizo-electric whipping, almost a sandstorm now. Shelter, her burning mind's Kal instincts screamed at her. No, don't dig down. To camp inside the maw of the Beast would be to invite disaster, death from the wild scourging energy. Molly flinched as there was a triple crack, a wave of bright light flaring ahead of her, geysers of sand blowing back from the Beast's assault. Then she was walking over cracking glass, the sand-flash so fresh it was still hot. Steam from the slagged sand assaulted her nostrils and a wave of nausea lurched inside her. It smelt like hog's pudding – barley and pig's offal baked inside pastry. But that was just a trick of her nose, surely, her senses distorting everything? Molly bent over and began to vomit. This was no good. How much water was she expelling out of her gut along with her last meal? The expedition was almost out of water now, and food too.
A figure emerged out of the sand haze, like a sketch from the Middlesteel Illustrated News. A pieman opening his barrow to expose the hot charcoals at the bottom of his iron box.
'I don't want hog's pudding,' heaved Molly as the seller indicated his fare.
Molly screamed. It was Purity Drake's head lying inside the pie-seller's barrow, human limbs piled alongside. The slats, the slats were devouring Purity, consuming everything Molly cared about in the kingdom.
The lines of the pieman's sketch danced and reformed into Keyspierre's face. He was shaking her. 'Compatriot!'
'The pieman's fare,' said Molly. 'It was human meat.'
'Your line, compatriot.'
Molly looked down. The guide cable she was holding was smoking at the end, unconnected to the rest of the expedition. That last lightning strike must have sheared it. Sweet Circle, she was alone with Keyspierre, the others blundering ahead somewhere in the sand haze, still following on behind Sandwalker.
Molly slipped out her knife. 'Purity was trying to warn me.'
Keyspierre stepped out of the way as Molly lunged at him, the blade passing through the space his chest had been occupying a second ago. 'Not going to cook me, not going to chew on my ribs, you jigging shiftie scum!'
'You've lost your mind, woman!' Keyspierre caught Molly's wrist and moved to one side, twisting her around and making the knife fall out of her hand; but she had seen what he was doing and had slipped the treacherous Quatershiftian agent's own blade out of his belt with her other hand. She slashed at him with it, cutting his arm, then tossed the knife into her right hand and went for his gut before he could register the switch. He wanted to cook her flesh, but it was going to be his organs lying spilled on the sands. Then she was tumbling through the air. The damn secret policeman had second-guessed her move, converting her movement into a – she thumped down hard on the sand, Keyspierre's weight smashing onto her back before she could get up.
Keyspierre pushed Molly's face down into the blanket of sand, his left hand reaching around to encompass her neck, strangling her. Choking sand spilled into her mouth and she tasted salty grit as she lost consciousness. Salt. Salt to season Molly for the fire the Quatershiftian agent was going to cook her flesh over.
Purity was dragged along the damp dripping length of the sea fort's dungeon level, the old supply cellars fastened with iron chains around the doors, faces of human produce pressed up against the bars or sprawled inside, paralysed by the criminally insane doctor's drugs. That was one thing you could say about an army of convicts, they knew how to lock down tight the unfortunates who were to be the slats' fodder.
Purity could feel her throat swelling, the muscles burning around her neck, growing increasingly numb as the poison the chief had stuffed into her worked its bile inside her.
'Shall we toss her in with the sailors from the Spartiate?' one of Purity's escorts asked the turnkey.
'No, chief wants the crew kept to themselves, in case we turn up some fuel later. Chuck her in with the rest of the meat.'
'She won't be shipping out with the Army of Shadows,' explained the guard, twisting Purity's arm further behind her back to stop her from thrashing. 'She's only got until the end of the hour. She's been 'cured' right enough by him upstairs.'
'Best we keep her fresh, then.' The turnkey beat a rifle butt against the door's bars, making the few prisoners that were on their feet retreat in fear. 'Back, you vermin. You might be dinner, but we've got dessert here, and we'll be wanting her out again in a bit.'
Watt and Cam Quarterplate were being shoved along the corridor a few steps behind Purity.
'When my friend opens the dungeon door, you point out your ma, just as quick as you like,' threatened the appren-tice's guard, waving a knife in front of the two cobblers. 'Otherwise you'll find out what else this is good for cutting off before you croak.'
'But my ma's your wife, that's so,' spat Watt, who had taken some lumps on the way down the sea fort's steps himself. 'My dad gave her a little of the hey-jiggerty while you were locked inside Bonegate Gaol.'
Watt was slammed against the wall and the guard was about to make good on his threat, but Purity was close enough to Cam Quarterplate now. She gestured in the air and her maths-blade leapt out of the steamman's vertical stack, her sword glowing white-hot from the superheated exhaust of Quarterplate's boiler heart. There was a brief burning agony as Purity seized the grip before she used its power to transmute the heat into a flash of blinding light. Watt had his eyes closed, and, as agreed, his master had flipped the cover of his vision plate down – but for the guards, that flash was the last thing they were going to see.
Purity hardly needed the part of her that was Elizica of the Jackeni to show her the thrusts and steps of the dance – the feathery burden of the maths-blade curving and twisting and carving. When she was finished, six men lay dead at her feet. It took a second more to direct the sword's force along her own body and isolate the swelling tide of the poison making her throat muscles bloat and turn purple. Her blade passed the chemical signature of the ascomycete toxin through her mind and she twisted at its bonds, snapping the chains of the chemical as easily as if she was breaking a necklace of daises.
Then silence apart from the cries of the seagulls flying on the other side of the fort's thick walls. Outside the dungeon door the two cobblers were staring at Purity in shock. The way she must once have looked at Oliver Brooks, the Hood-o'the-marsh, before the strange young man's existence had been joined with the land and her terrible blade.
'That was vengeance,' said Purity, shaking.
'That much was clear, Purity softbody,' said the steamman.
'How did you know?' asked Watt, looking at the deadguards at his feet in horror. 'How did you know this scum wouldn't send me and old Cam back to the town for turning you in?'
'I had a life of people like the chief telling me what to do,' said Purity, sadly, 'back in the Royal Breeding House. That's just how his kind use power, when they have it.'
