Anchor grunted. “It is not many,” he said. “Come to the Riot Coast. We have enough land. We have big party, for a month or more. Six thousand, eh?” He thought for a moment. “You can fish, no problem, make homes. My people will help you. If you want you can have an island. We have lots of islands. Good hunting, too-pigs, fowl, garren, and bears.”
Ramnir smiled. “A generous offer,” he said, “but I doubt your people would welcome so many.”
“You don’t know Riot Coasters,” Anchor replied, smiling again. “Very hospitable. If I’m not there, you tell them, John Anchor said it is fine for you to stay.”
Caulker felt physically sick. Was the black giant offering sanctuary to this rabble of scum? Surely Anchor must have another motive. Were the Riot Coasters cannibals? Would this month-long party involve a lot of fires and cauldrons? The cutthroat had heard of such things in his seafaring days.
The Heshette warrior clasped the giant’s shoulder, but said nothing.
Anchor was actually drawing a map now. Using his finger, he sketched out the outline of a coast in the hard sand. “This is your land here,” he said. “This is the SandSea, yes? The yellow waters. All this, all around.” A few feet away from this he drew some small round shapes. “These islands we call the Tail of Smoke. Big mountains there, bad smell.”
The Volcanic Isles. Caulker recognized them from charts he’d seen. Deepgate’s missionary ships had visited those islands.
“Now look here.” Anchor had drawn another coastline, at least twice as far away again as the Volcanic Isles, but on the opposite side. “This is Pandemeria. High Meria, here…Brownslough, and the RiotCoast.” He made lines in the sand, dividing up the continent. The last squiggle appeared to be a peninsula at the very southern tip of the land mass.
Caulker did some calculations. Pandemeria lay several hundred leagues beyond the furthest island to which missionary ships had sailed: on the far side of the StrakebreakerSea, as it had come to be known after the loss of so many expeditions. The waters were said to be so wild and empty that most salt sailors feared to venture near them. Yet new lands meant trade, and profit. And if John Anchor had crossed them…
Had his own god’s airship carried him? Caulker wondered if Cospinol would accept another passenger, but the thought of begging a lift on such a gruesome mode of transportation made the cutthroat flinch. Boundless profit or not, he’d have to think about that one.
“You need ships,” Anchor said. “Strong ships. Very dangerous seas here and here.” He drew wiggles all across the StrakebreakerSea, almost dividing it in two. “One time there was a great battle here, many ships sunk. Then Iril opened a big door under the water and something escaped.”
“A monster?” Caulker asked. He had been so caught up in Anchor’s map, he had quite forgotten about the Heshette.
“No,” Anchor looked thoughtful, then frowned. “More like a piece of Hell, like something the Mesmerists would make.”
“The Mesmerists?” Anchor had mentioned them before. “These people who came to Pandemeria?”
“They come to Pandemeria, but they are not people. Big problem with them in the east. You’ll see them soon, I think. They will come here too now.” He looked sternly at Ramnir; his brow creased, and he stabbed his finger in the center of the first land mass he had drawn to indicate the Deadsands. “Big door to Hell opens, the Mesmerists come out. Same in Pandemeria, same in Deepgate. Much blood.”
The horseman met the giant’s gaze. “Why are you here, John Anchor? What is attached to the other end of that rope?”
Anchor gave a deep sigh. “I go to Deepgate for two reasons,” he said. “One: I kill someone. Maybe she is an angel, maybe a demigod, no matter. This part is easy. The other task…” He flexed his shoulders. “This part is not so easy.”
Over the next hour he explained about the god whose skyship he dragged behind him.
“Cospinol will try to seal the breach under Deepgate. Many things to consider, many dangers. It is a problem for you if my master fails. You have no other gods here, no great armies to fight the Mesmerists. Much of this land will become Hell, I think.” He nodded his head and stabbed his finger into the sand again, pointing to the distant land he’d drawn across the StrakebreakerSea. “If I don’t come back from Deepgate, it is safer for you to find ships and go here.”
Poison and acid fell from the sky. The greasy, colourful rain spattered the Deadsands, hissing and smoking wherever it fell. It pummeled the clumps of blue and green ash, reducing them to smouldering mud, and it struck the top of the leaning groyne under which Rachel and Trench were trying to hide. But while there was just enough space under the narrow shelter for the assassin to keep all but a few drops from striking her knees, it was a different matter for Trench.
Rachel tried to pull him as much under the iron overhang as she could, but it was useless. His wings were too large. There simply wasn’t space for them under the metal canopy.
He continued to scream as the lethal rain burned his feathers and tendons.
“Lie down!” Rachel yelled. “There isn’t room! We’ll cover your wings with sand.”
The assassin tried to push Trench down while she scooped up sand and threw it over him, but he struggled against her. He was panicking, fighting her, oblivious to everything but his own pain. In blind terror, he shoved her out from under the groyne and tried to squeeze himself further into the gap where she had been. Even then he could not fit his wings in fully behind him. He wheeled around and tried to back up against the tilting barricade, but now his head and neck were exposed.
He screamed again.
Lying outside where Trench had shoved her, Rachel was fully exposed to the caustic downpour. Drops pattered against her armour, and the smell of singed leather filled her nostrils. She scrambled back under cover. A heartbeat later the piercing pains in her back and thighs told her where acid had eaten through to her flesh. She rolled on the ground, and shoveled sand over her thighs.
By the time the rain stopped, the stench of seared flesh and feathers hung thickly in the air. Trench lay on the steaming ground, hissing quietly through his teeth. His wings-Dill’s wings, Rachel reminded herself-now looked like black mulch. All of his feathers had burned away, leaving tattered skin full of black-rimed holes and glistening white bone.
A vast plume of white smoke had risen above the abyss and now covered the sky like gauze. The darker red and black clouds had been torn apart and blown far across the wasteland. All around Rachel the Deadsands hissed and shimmered in painfully harsh sunlight. Wisps of foul-smelling steam drifted from the tops of dunes, while shards of bright metal glinted where they had descended and lodged in the sands. All trace of the colourful ash had been dissolved in the acid shower.
“I had forgotten what real pain was like,” Trench said through clenched teeth. “I’m sorry for putting you in danger, Rachel Hael. I behaved shamefully.”
“Forget it,” Rachel said. She knew there was nothing in the field kit to ease his pain. The Spine did not consider such drugs necessary. She could do nothing but watch him suffer.
Somehow he managed to stagger upright. Scraps of his chain-mail shirt slid from his back and shoulders, revealing swathes of blistered red flesh beneath. Pieces of skin fell from his ruined wings. “The world has changed since I was last here,” he wheezed. “What could have caused such an explosion?”
“Fuel,” she suggested. “I don’t know…Everything our chemists ever invented they stored in the Poison Kitchens.”
“The Veil has disappeared,” Trench observed.
She could hardly bear to look at him. Even now smoke continued to rise from globs of poison sticking to his eviscerated wings. Sunlight shone through the bloody fans of bone and skin. His face had paled yet his eyes raged darkly.
“Let us survey the damage,” he said.
They walked back towards the edge of the abyss. The angel limped slowly, painfully, but Rachel slackened her pace to match his. She was afraid to offer him support, afraid even to touch his seared flesh.
The journey took an age, but finally the pair drew near to the southern edge of the steaming chasm. To the east of them the tin bunkers of the reconstruction workers’ settlement gleamed brilliantly, yet it appeared to be deserted. Rachel could see no trace of life in the dusty streets, only the metal skeleton of an airship, its polished
