Iron Angel

could he allow the Mesmerists to get a corporeal assassin into this world? How did they kill him?”

“They didn’t,” Rys said. “The god of chains died at the hand of his own daughter.”

“His daughter?” Cospinol stared at him in disbelief. “He had a daughter? And he let her live?”

The god of flowers and knives nodded. “His folly has put us all in grave danger. The battle at Skirl has decimated our forces. We cannot spare the troops necessary to halt a second Mesmerist incursion. The portal beneath Deepgate lies wide open, and the lands around the abyss are undefended. Ethereal entities are already rising from Hell and moving into the chained city within a veil of bloody mist. Icarate shape-shifters will follow soon, and then the full force of the Mesmerist horde will pour out of the Maze at their heels. They will corrupt the Deadsands as they have corrupted Pandemeria.”

While Cospinol considered this grim turn of events, Rys returned his attention back to the witchsphere. The hag inside was gurgling pitifully now, choking on her own blood. Rys closed the panel and then opened another flap on the top of the globe. A second hag peered out: a woman even uglier and more ancient than the first. Her single white eye lolled in a skull-like face as black as burnt oak. “Mercy for my sisters!” she cried. “Let us return to Hell, son of Ayen.”

Rys grinned. “When you have told my brother all you know,” he said.

“We have told everything,” the hag wailed.

“Tell him.”

The hag moaned. “Our master is building a second arconite, even greater and more powerful than the first. Forged of bone and iron and leashed to the soul of a powerful archon, it will move in sunlight and walk freely across unblooded earth.” Her face twisted into a hideous sneer. “It will crush the remnants of your armies like ants!”

Rys set about her with his knife. All the time the smile never left his face.

The god was panting when he finally finished with the witchsphere. “So far the Mesmerists have been confined to Pandemeria,” he said, “simply because they cannot survive for long without drawing power from blood. In order to remain in this world, Hell’s creatures must walk upon the red earth of battlefields or upon land already saturated by the Menoa’s bloody mists. But these arconites…” He balled his fists. “We could not kill the first one, Cospinol.”

“And when the second one leaves Hell,” Cospinol said, “you will lose your hold on this world.”

“We will lose our hold,” Rys said.

But that wasn’t true. Cospinol owned none of the wealth or kingdoms his brothers possessed. He had been trapped in this rotting ship for three thousand years, wreathed in fog to hide himself from the destructive power of the sun. Only Ulcis, the eldest of all the goddess Ayen’s sons, had been similarly trapped-hidden beneath the earth while he harvested souls to join Rys’s army. But now Ulcis was dead, leaving Cospinol as the last of the gods to remain imprisoned.

“What has become of Ulcis’s reservists?” he asked. “The hordes he harvested from Deepgate?”

Sabor stepped forward. “Their flesh is lost,” he said. “The Mesmerists will have already used their blood for their own purposes.” Everything about the god of clocks was grey: his skin, his feathers, his hair, even his eyes. To read his shadowless expression, one required a degree of patient concentration. No wonder Sabor chose to wear black: a single item of coloured raiment might distract the viewer’s eye and doom any conversation. Sabor continued in dull, authoritative tones. “Yet their souls remain in this world.”

Cospinol frowned. “How?”

“Ulcis’s daughter did not spill her father’s blood. She merely displaced the essence of it.”

“She drank the fat sod,” Rys confirmed. Cospinol could not help but notice a glint of satisfaction light in Rys’s eyes. Should the mother goddess’s sons ever reclaim Heaven, Ulcis’s death left only Cospinol in line for the throne before Rys-a thought the old sea god found suddenly unnerving.

Hafe slammed a fist against his copper breastplate. “You bastards do nothing but talk,” he boomed. “When do we eat?”

Cospinol’s slaves brought tray after tray to the captain’s table: corpse crabs from GobeBay and steamed kellut from Oxos; squid and cuttlefish and bowls of pink prawns. The god of brine and fog had chosen the very best from his larders for this occasion, but now he had no appetite. While his brothers ate and chatted, Cospinol brooded in silence.

Ulcis was dead, his army lost, and his untimely departure had offered Menoa’s hordes a second route out of Hell. Rys’s armies had been decimated at Skirl. The survivors had retreated to Coreollis in a desperate attempt to defend that stronghold against Mesmerist attacks from the Red Road. Even if the god of flowers and knives could spare enough of his troops to make a difference, would they be able to travel to Deepgate in time to halt this new incursion?

Cospinol doubted it. He began to suspect why his brothers were really here.

Rys spat at one of the serving girls. “This food isn’t fit for a dog,” he announced. “Fetch us something edible. Bring us a bowl of the soulpearls your master hoards.”

She bowed and hurried away, without even a glance at Cospinol.

Mirith sniggered. “Bowls of souls,” he said. “Better than this filth. The dead can’t cook.”

Hafe grunted in agreement without raising his face from the platter of eels he was devouring. Sabor glanced up at Rys, and then quickly back to his own plate, yet Cospinol noted the dark look of disapproval in the grey god’s eyes.

Rys set down his fork. “Your slaves are tediously slow,” he said to Cospinol, “and your whole skyship stinks of corpses, gull shit, and brine. Tell me, brother, do you enjoy living in such squalor?”

“I survive.”

“But it’s hardly a life,” Rys commented. “Don’t you tire of roaming the skies like a vulture, picking up the souls we leave behind? Wouldn’t you rather sail a real ship upon a real sea? You must yearn to feel the sun on your face again, the wind in your hair. Would you not prefer to stand beside your own brothers as an equal?”

Cospinol said nothing.

The serving girl returned with a small bowl full of soulpearls. The tiny glass beads glimmered faintly in the gloom, while the whorls and loops etched into their surface seemed to writhe like threads of darkness. Cospinol tried to hide his dismay-he could not afford to squander so much of his hard-won power. Yet he dared not oppose Rys.

“Some real sustenance at last,” Rys said. He scooped up a handful of the priceless beads and tipped them into his mouth before handing the bowl to Hafe. The fat god took most of the remainder for himself, then slid the container across the table to Sabor.

The god of clocks said, “No, thank you.”

“You refuse power?” Hafe asked.

“It is not your power to offer,” Sabor replied.

Rys snorted. “Sabor’s quaint sense of honour will be the end of him one day. His own swordsmen slay wounded Mesmerists on the battlefield, rather than leave them to the slow suffering they deserve.” He nodded at Hafe. “Cospinol can always fashion more pearls. Give the dregs to Mirith.”

Mirith lifted the bowl with both hands and upended it into his mouth. Then he giggled and shook his lopsided wings to make his bells chime. “Even these souls taste like brine.”

“Enough!” Cospinol rose from his seat and glared down at Rys. “I am the master of this vessel,” he hissed, “and while you are aboard you will treat me with respect.” His thin chest heaved beneath his shell breastplate. “You speak of arconites and fallen gods, and a new threat to your forces from the west. Do you take me for a fool? You wouldn’t have come here unless you needed my help. Yet you evade the question and continue to mock me at my own table.”

Rys scraped his seat back and stood up. He slapped Cospinol hard across the face.

The old god recoiled, his cheek burning with the blow. The slaves stopped what they were doing, and the ringing in Cospinol’s ears diminished to a profound silence. Everyone was staring at him.

“Get out,” Rys said to the slaves.

They left.

The god of flowers and knives strolled over to the cabin windows and gazed out at the fog. “I will forgive your outburst,” he said. “I realize life has been hard for you here, Cospinol…trapped aboard this skyship, denied the freedom we four have won for ourselves.” He almost managed to sound magnanimous. “But I am prepared to help