'Every land needs collaborators,' laughed Tallyle.
'It seemed such a small thing to buy the survival of the Commonshare,' announced Keyspierre, shrugging his shoulders in that particularly Quatershiftian way. 'Giving your nomad friend vegetables laced with an isotope that would allow my new compatriots to track us all the way back to the great sage's location.'
'You've been working with the Army of Shadows since the city,' said Molly in disgust, the truth dawning on her. 'They caught you back there, didn't they? You and Jeanne both.'
'I warned you all once that I was here to make sure the Commonshare was preserved at any cost,' said Keyspierre. 'I found no allies in this land capable of resisting the Army of Shadows' legions. Only a dying race of pacifists that wasn't strong enough to cast off the enemy's yoke at the very height of its powers, let alone now. Sometimes, little author, the only way to destroy your enemy is to make them your friend.'
Commodore Black was trying to rise to his feet. 'Kill you, you mortal shiftie piece of-' He was shoved back down.
'Make them your friends, man?' roared Duncan Connor. 'The commodore was right about you all along. You numpty! Your nation will be made into nothing but a stable of wee slaves and pets.'
Keyspierre went red in the face and grabbed Duncan's travel case, smashing it open across the floor. 'I will take no lessons in strategy from a bloated u-boat tar or an asylum inmate!'
Bones scattered across the floor and the nearest slats seized a couple of femurs and started gnawing at them. Connor of Cassarabia screamed abuse and tried to flail past the circle of slats surrounding him, but they beat him to the ground too. The last word on his lips was a girl's name: Hannah.
Carnivore Tallyle went over and dragged Duncan's unconscious body to where the great sage was quivering, unseated. Tallyle took the dead nomad's pack and removed the queen ant's pheromone tube, tossing it to his slats. 'Cut the clothes from the sage and this human, spray their skin with the contents of that tube, then toss them outside, naked and with no supplies or water.' Tallyle looked down on the terrified sage, whose ancient body looked shrunken and shrivelled without his floating carriage. 'I liked the false ants, that was uncommonly clever of you, Fayris Fastmind. I had to execute a couple of my slats just to get the others to come near your fake colony. Your ant machines are all destroyed, though. You and your bone-collecting friend can go outside and meet some of the real ones now.'
Molly's stomach heaved as the great sage was dragged out whimpering behind Duncan Connor's dazed form; the smell of what was left of Sandwalker's corpse filling the room.
Tallyle jabbed a finger towards Molly, the commodore and Coppertracks and barked orders at his slat soldiers. 'Take the three Jackelians back to the last city. Then seal this dusty useless place off from the world.'
As the slats pushed Molly past Tallyle, the corrupted Kal leant in and seized her by the face. 'You're the future, are you? The future tastes good.'
Molly was losing the ability to understand the Kal tongue, she realized, now that Kyorin's memories had been erased from her mind. She was forgetting their complex singsong cadences. She became aware of this as the corridor the slats were pushing her along turned into a tight tunnel curving past a series of riveted metal doors. Coppertracks was pushed alone into the first cell, the steamman complaining that the space was too small for him as soon as he saw it. A scowling Commodore Black got the second cell, shouting obscenities at the slat soldiers as they threw him inside. Then Molly was forced into the third compartment. A strange alien voice sounded from a grille in the room's ceiling. What was it saying? But it was no good. Kyorin's burden had passed, taking its blessings with it. As had Molly's mission. She had failed. Failed her friends, failed poor, dead Sandwalker. Failed the Hexmachina and failed all of the Kingdom of Jackals. The poorhouse girl sunk to her natural level, a cell – not for stealing a handkerchief or dipping a wallet. But for conspiring in the murder of her entire world.
Molly didn't know whether to laugh or cry when the first of the transparent pipes pushed out of the wall and began filling her cell with a thick yellow liquid. Soon she was wading though the thick gloop, then it was up to her chest. Was this the traditional method of execution on Kaliban? Drowning in a cell little bigger than a cupboard? You would think Keyspierre could have tipped his new allies off about a nice clinical Gideon's Collar, a quick bolt through the neck from one of his nation's execution machines.
Molly was panicking and smashing on the transparent crystal panel set in the door, but nobody was coming. Finally the liquid flowed into the last inch of air remaining under the cell's ceiling and she was enveloped. She was drowning.
Duncan Connor turned over in the sand, the raging sun filling the sky and burning his naked body. There was Fayris Fastmind curled up on one of the dunes behind him, the great sage's pale wrinkled body free of robes too. Duncan stifled a gag as he smelled his hand. A right good reek. As if someone had pissed on him after they had beat him to insensibility.
Duncan could just make out the slope of the mountain in the distance, billowing columns of smoke coming from the hidden entrance they had used to enter the great sage's domain. Not so great now, unable to walk and moaning from the aches of age without the medical machinery in his chair to help coddle his ancient, creaking body. So much for the great sage's fake ant colony, too. Sealed shut on them, no doubt blasted away by the explosives of the Army of Shadows.
‹Papa, Papa!›
Thank the Circle! Hannah lay scattered across the dunes behind him, along with, he discovered, a tauntingly empty water canteen.
'Did the slats gnaw on you, lassie?'
‹They did,› Hannah cried. ‹There were monsters, terrible monsters. Chewing on my legs and arms. Some of them wanted to eat you too, while you were unconscious, but I told them they could bite on me instead.›
'You're a good lassie. You did the right thing, you saved my life. Brave wee thing, I'm proud of you. Now we can both get out of here.'
He broke the empty canteen's strap and used it as a harness to tie Hannah to his chest. Then he limped across to where the great sage lay.
'Leave me,' begged the ancient Kal, his mind-voice as faint as a whisper.
'Don't be a daftie, man.' Duncan bent down to scoop up the great sage's body, as light as a feather.
'We have been sprayed,' said the great sage. 'Sprayed with the pheromone of an ant queen. Leave me here and you might have a chance. They'll come for me first if I'm not moving.'
'Aye, I heard much the same story from Sandwalker when we were trying to reach you,' said Duncan. 'But those ants aren't so hard. I killed one when it tried to fly away with my daughter. Back in Cassarabia, the womb mages grew real kelpies inside the wombs of their slaves. You've never had a shufty at a sandpede or a Cassarabian flying lizard, have you? They're real monsters.'
'Who were you talking to over there, do you have a communications device inside your body?'
'It's called my mouth, man. Do you not have eyes to see? Hannah is coming with us too and I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk about my lassie. You've been in the sun too long, great sage. But I'll carry you out of here just the same.'
Clicking mandibles interrupted the great sage's bemused reply, a forest of fluttering antennae rising from behind the dune followed by the giant form of an enraged queen ant.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Molly's journey, nauseous-inducing and timeless in the grasp of the yellow gel, ended much as it had started, with a muffled shuddering, the oblong of light behind the cell door flickering with the violence of the craft's
