Iron Angel

He lunged.

Rachel was unarmed. She turned into him, seizing his arm, and drove her elbow into his chest. Vials of poison shattered in his apron. Now she dragged him round with her, throwing him off balance. Droplets of poison and fragments of glass spun from him, all sparkling. She felt a jerk as his humerus popped out of his shoulder, then she turned him against the wall. Not too hard. She knew she had to judge the maneuver precisely. He was heavy; too much force and she would injure herself. The Spine master had the advantage of experience, yet his old bones would break more easily. The increased speed that came with focus would work against him during such physical combat. He knew enough not to resist, but to turn along with Rachel-yet he had neglected to consider his proximity to the wall. His face left a bloody smear on the bare rock.

She had underestimated him, but not by much.

One acolyte left: the old man with the shears. Rachel turned to face him.

But then the cost of her exertions caught up with her. Her body could no longer continue to function at such an unnatural speed. It began to shut down. Time slowed for Rachel, and with it her heart began to quicken, and quicken more. A thundering pain rose in her chest. She fell to her knees, shuddering in agony as her muscles paid the price she had exacted from them. Her limbs burned, turned as limp and useless as sleeves of skin. Her head swam. She inhaled great gulps of rank dungeon air.

The old acolyte gaped at the dead assassin next to him. Then he stared at Rachel, then at the Spine master, still sliding down the torture room wall. To his eyes, the battle must have been little more than a blur.

“You ghilled them?” he said, his toothless maw slurring. “How did you ghill them?”

Had he genuinely never seen a Spine focus before?

Rachel gasped. She struggled to move, but found the effort beyond her, and collapsed instead. Drool trickled from her slack lips. “I…”

“Stay where you are,” the acolyte said. “I summon the Masters.” He hurried for the door.

Rachel balled her fists and tried to crawl. One lousy acolyte. He would spoil everything she’d achieved. She managed to drag herself two feet across the torture room, and then slumped back down in agonized exhaustion.

The acolyte was in too much of a rush. On a floor slick with poison and blood, he slipped, not badly enough to make him fall, but enough to make him stagger. From somewhere Rachel found a last reserve of energy. Yelling, she lashed out a kick. Her boot struck him in the shin-a feeble blow, but strong enough to unbalance her opponent. The man fell backwards, arms flailing, and his head struck the floor with a crack. His shears clattered away into the shadows. Rachel could hardly believe it. She forced herself to move, heaving her limp body across the wet floor towards the fallen man. The acolyte groaned. Then, dazed but unharmed, he tried to stand.

But Rachel had already reached him. She dragged herself halfway onto his chest.

“What-?” The Spine torturer seemed confused. “Let go of me. You stay.”

Rachel’s lungs burned. The torutre room whirled around her. She couldn’t speak, and she lacked the strength to effectively pin him down. Her fingers scrabbled on the floor for something to use as a weapon. His shears? Too far away. There was nothing but fragments of broken glass and puddles of greasy liquid.

Poison?

She forced her wet fingers into his mouth, and heard him gag. Then she scooped up more poison and pressed it into his eyes. He struggled and bucked against her, crying out in agony. Again Rachel slid her hand across the floor, soaking her palm, and then smeared the toxic liquid across his lips, into his gums.

The whole world spun. Screams resounded through the torture chamber. Rachel couldn’t tell if they were nearby or from far away. She felt the acolyte convulse one last time beneath her before he finally went still.

When the pain passed at last, Rachel staggered to her feet. She retrieved the Spine master’s dagger and cut Dill’s bonds. He’d had his eyes closed the whole time, but when he opened them she saw that they were still black with rage. Rachel didn’t recognize who she was looking at.

The angel sneered, then lifted his mutilated hand and ran it roughly down the side of her face. “Aren’t you a pretty one?” he said.

6

THE ROTSWARD

Drawn from their houses by the sound of disaster, a crowd of fisher folk had gathered in the lane beside the wreckage of the Widow’s Hook. A few eager men were already picking through the damp piles of timbers, mud bricks, and shingles, perhaps searching for valuables or survivors. Another small group stood muttering around the pile of Spine corpses which Anchor had dragged clear of the broth shop. But most of them, like Jack Caulker himself, waited in a breathless circle around John Anchor and stared up into the fog above.

The tethered man was pulling more and more of his huge rope out of the sky. Down and down it came, yards and then miles of it, until the lane was buried under coils of hemp and Caulker began to wonder if the stranger had been tethered to the goddess Ayen herself.

Anchor worked patiently, humming a tune, as if he’d done this a thousand times before. And still there seemed no end to that monstrous line. The giant drew down length after length of rope, flinging great coils of it onto the ground around him. Some of the hemp now appeared to be sodden and rotten, rimed with salt, and brought with it the heavy odor of brine. The crowd edged backwards, uneasy. Caulker waited.

And waited……until the sky above Sandport began to grow dark. Something vast was descending over the town.

Now even those folks who had been eagerly sifting through the rubble stopped and peered up into the growing gloom. The stench of salt became acrid, like the odor from shrunken rock pools and rotting kelp. Caulker heard a warning bell clang wildly somewhere down near the docks, followed by another, and then yet another. Apparently Sandport’s lookouts had spied something in the skies above their heads.

The cutthroat still could not spot any details in the unnatural darkness-a pall which now stretched far beyond both ends of the fog-veiled lane, like a thundercloud-but he sensed the air around him stir. Some of the fisher folk let out cries of alarm; and suddenly those standing on the collapsed broth shop began to clamber hurriedly down from among the debris.

Caulker thought he heard noises far above, a sound which at first reminded him of squawking gulls. But then, as the giant continued to drag down his mighty rope, the cacophony grew louder and more distinct. Caulker realized he was hearing the wails and sobs of people: lots of them, some close by, other more distant; a chorus of suffering and despair that drifted down from the grey air and filled the streets of Sandport.

A broad grin spread across John Anchor’s face. He began to pull with renewed vigor at his tether. His humming grew louder, as if he sought to drown out the cries of woe overhead. The sky darkened further, the stench of brine brought tears to the eyes. Caulker thought he caught a glimpse of something in the grey gloom overhead- something swaying. But before he could identify the object, it vanished again, swallowed by shifting mists. The fisher folk were yelling in dismay now, backing away from the giant and his rope, their gazes still pinned on the lowering heavens.

Then Caulker finally saw what the stranger was dragging down from the skies, and his blood froze in his veins.

Out of the fog descended a great rope-tangled skeleton of wood. Like the rigging of an upended fleet of ships, the clutter of masts and yards formed a rude thicket of indeterminable width, breadth, and height. Rotting, salt- furred timbers sweated moisture. Seaweed hung from dripping lines. As Anchor continued to drag the thing down, more and more of the poles and spars appeared amid the fog, until they totally filled the skies over Sandport. Yet Caulker realized that this scaffold formed only the lowest fraction of a far bigger vessel. The shadow of something solid and phenomenally huge still loomed in the mists above.

It had to be an airship.

Finally one of the longest masts punctured the rooftop of a nearby building, and the whole construction jerked to a halt.

Caulker’s eyes widened. Among the rigging hung men and women and angels: a disparate army of warriors,