Mesmerist Veil was growing with each passing day, staining the western skies like a bloody gauze. Caulker’s bones grated in the saddle. Sand stung his eyes. And the flies! A buzzing cloud of insects kept pace with the party, as if they, too, were fleeing the crimson pall.
Ramnir sent riders far and wide to spread news of the exodus, and soon other tribes came along to join the group. By the time the party reached the sea their numbers had swelled to more than eight hundred: streams of refugees, including women and children, mingled with herds of thin goats and ranks of leather-faced horsemen. Warriors from a score of tribes gathered on Longlizard Point, a long low peninsula stubbled with tough ochre grasses. Beyond here, the Coyle emptied into the Yellow Sea beyond, carving dozens of channels through the Pocked Delta mud. It was low tide, and birds strutted across the grey expanse, plucking at tube worms.
Waves rushed and crashed against the rocks on the seaward side of the peninsula, lifting flecks of spume into the air.
Caulker dismounted on the lower slopes of the peninsula and wandered up the cracked rocks to join Anchor and Ramnir. The two men were staring out across the fog-heavy sea.
“-are you confident?” Ramnir was saying.
“Yes,” Anchor replied. “Easy.”
“Confident?” Caulker inquired. “About what?”
The Heshette leader spat and said nothing.
“Ramnir is interested to see how we will cross,” Anchor said. “It is a long way to Pandemeria from here.”
“And how exactly
“Swim?” The giant shook his head. “John Anchor does not know how to swim.”
“Then
Anchor beamed. “Confidence!” he exclaimed, striding back towards his followers.
For the rest of that day, the Heshette and their animals were hoisted up into the
Ramnir indicated that the cutthroat should be next in the basket, but Caulker wouldn’t hear of it.
“I’ve been with Anchor since the start,” he said, “and I’ll stay until the end. You have goats waiting.”
The Heshette leader reached for his knife, but Anchor stopped him. “Go and look after your people,” he said. He grinned and slapped his belly. “And we all need goats. Meat is more important than insults, yes?”
The other man smiled. “See you in Pandemeria, John Anchor.”
Once Ramnir had been taken up to the foggy skies, Caulker was left alone with the tethered giant.
“Why do you hate these people so much?” Anchor asked. “It is bad for you. Enemies creep up behind your back with a knife.” He made a stabbing motion. “Friends watch your back. Why make enemies and not friends?”
Caulker snorted. “I know what these people are like. Had you spent more time in Sandport you would have seen them for yourself. They wallow in filth and lethargy, poor as dirt. Their children run through the streets like rats.”
“Rats are clever. They know when to leave a sinking ship.”
“Animal cunning. You shouldn’t have offered to take them with you.” He watched the foaming waves break against the base of the peninsula, inhaling the scent of them. How did Anchor plan to cross? He could only think of one way. “That water’s deep,” he muttered, “and cold.”
“Here is your basket,” Anchor said.
The cutthroat climbed inside the wicker frame and clutched the rope. “Don’t trust them, Anchor,” he called out as he ascended into the fog.
Down below, the giant merely laughed. He rolled his massive shoulders, and then hopped down the rocks towards the shore. Then he leaned back and sucked in a long, long breath.
From up inside his basket, Caulker watched the Adamantine Man leap into the sea. He disappeared beneath the dark blue waters, with only the huge rope above water to reveal his progress.
Till the fog closed under him, Caulker saw that rope cut a path through the waves, moving slowly and steadily away from land.
PART TWO
15
Only top-ranking metaphysical engineers were permitted to ascend to the highest level of the Ninth Citadel. The House of Faces, as it had come to be known among the Icarates, had many separate rooms, but not one single window or doorway intervening between them.
Alice Harper stood before an entire wall of Mesmerist constructs. The creatures looked like thin grey men half buried in the stone and mortar, a scrum of naked bodies reaching from floor to ceiling, yet Harper knew that this scene was deceiving. There was no stone or mortar in the House of Faces, only the flesh of incarnate souls. Their arms reached out towards the engineer, beckoning her closer to their yawning mouths. This particular wall was composed of more than threescore of living creatures, but it was hard to be sure. Constructs often shared limbs with each other. Harper suspected the way through this wall would undoubtedly be painful.
“Let me pass,” she said. “I have business with King Menoa.”
The wall writhed. Many voices hissed, “Step forward.”
“Open a doorway, then. Let me walk through.”
“No. Step forward.”
Harper shivered. She really hated the process of moving from one room to the next within the House of Faces. Nevertheless, the wall seemed unlikely to cooperate, and she did not wish to make her regent wait. She stepped up to the wall, allowing the sharp fingers to drag her closer to its scores of waiting teeth.
The constructs ripped her to shreds. Harper tried not to scream-the agony would pass momentarily, she knew-but she could not help herself. The wall took delight in her cries, tearing at her flesh more vigorously as it stuffed pieces of the engineer into its countless mouths.
For a brief moment she was lost in a red haze. Her displaced soul drifted through a dark space. Was it the inside of the wall? She felt other consciousnesses jostling with her own, older and more savage minds trying to reshape her from their own desires or memories. Harper shunned these alien influences, fighting to remember who she was and why she was here.
