Iron Angel

Ninth Citadel. I have one head. One head only.

And then she was through.

She found herself standing in a grey chamber on the opposite side of the wall. Her blurred vision came into focus, and she quickly examined her own body-checking herself thoroughly. Nothing seemed to have changed; even the grey cuffs of her Mesmerist uniform appeared to be identical to before. She clamped her hands against the sides of her head and breathed a sigh of relief. Just one head this time.

The chamber before her was almost identical to the last one, a grey cube fifty paces to a side. Mesmerist constructs writhed in all four walls, their hungry gazes even now turning towards her. Only the ideogram in the floor was different, the geometric shapes and numerals referring to the second of the Mesmerist Laws of Foundation. These esoteric patterns encircled a solitary blue-lipped mouth, no larger than that of a human’s maw. It was licking its lips.

Harper approached it as it called out: “In the seventh faction of the first third. Elevation one ninety, moving from blue to red.”

“Where is Menoa, Speaker?”

“King Menoa, to you. Be silent, soul. I am attempting to configure the third parallel into the third bank, moving three hundred armoured suits and associated worms from Cog Island Portal to the Middle Green Nine Line out with the fringes of the Red Road. How much blood must be infused into the Pandemerian earth? How much has already been absorbed? King Menoa wishes to know these things.”

“Since when do Speakers think?”

“The war effort presses us all. I have assumed additional functions to further serve our Lord.”

“Then don’t neglect your primary function. Tell me where our ruler is, or I’ll let him know you delayed an important message.”

“What message? I will relay it through the walls and floors to him now.”

Harper snorted. “It won’t make any difference. Menoa won’t turn you into anything else. You’ll stay a floor forever.” She smacked the heel of her boot against the outer circle of the ideogram. “How does it feel to have people walking over you?”

The floor’s voice rose to a shrill cry. “I support the Ninth Citadel and those who dwell within it!”

“Then tell me where Menoa is!”

Its blue lips pinched together. “Our Great Lord, Creator of All in Hell, is now pacing across the thirtieth balcony on the canal side of His glorious citadel. He maintains His most recent, most beautiful form of black glass and jewels and-”

“The thirtieth balcony?” Harper gave a huge sigh, then put her hands on her hips and stared at the countless hands and teeth of those constructs embedded in the nearest wall. The thirtieth balcony was close to the very top of the citadel. “This is going to hurt like hell.”

“An inappropriate metaphor,” said the floor. “This is Hell, and so-”

She ground the toe of her left boot into its mouth to shut it up, leaving it gasping and bleeding, then wandered over to the outstretched hands in the nearest wall.

Two arms, two legs, two hands, two feet, ten fingers, ten toes. One head.

Harper passed through sixty-two rooms and climbed one hundred and four stairwells to reach the king’s balcony. She counted every step, trying to burn her progress into her memory lest the citadel trick her on the way back out. It enjoyed visitors too much, she feared, and was inclined to keep them here for longer than was strictly necessary. The long journey tired her, and she found that her concentration waned somewhat in the upper chambers. By the time she located Menoa, she had lost two fingernails and developed a curious grating sensation in her left knee, as though the joint had been subtly altered.

These were small changes, however, easy to remedy after she had had some rest. Most importantly, her uniform remained precisely the way it should be.

The Mesmerist ruler stood beside the parapet of the sweeping red balcony, gazing out across Hell. The crimson sky smouldered behind him, casting liquid shadows across the smooth ridges and indentations of his black glass helmet. He stood about nine feet tall today, more or less the same height he’d been since Harper had been in his service, yet his glass armour warped gradually as light and shade passed over it. Even as Harper watched, Menoa’s breastplate flowed, changing from the face of a catlike beast to the grimacing visage of a hanged man. Spikes grew out of his shoulder plates, and then shrunk back inside again, as though following the rhythm of his breathing. His gauntlets rested on the parapet before him like huge dark claws.

Harper could see bloodmists rising through the air behind him, those great fuming funnels of vapor exuded by the king’s Processors. The balcony itself glistened in this living mist. Part flesh and part mechanical, the whole floor beneath them throbbed with mute pleasure-evidently this part of the Ninth Citadel was drawing power from the bloodmists. From somewhere below came sound of machinery and screams, all mingled with the low, rhythmic chanting of the Icarates.

The king’s glass mask did not turn to face his servant. He spoke in a low, distant voice. “You have located the angel?”

“The dogcatchers picked up his scent briefly,” she replied. “He manifested somewhere west of the Lower Blaise Canal Area, but then vanished beneath one of the Soul Middens.” Most of the souls from Deepgate were falling into the Middens, and she had instructed the Icarates and their packs to search that area first. “It’s only a matter of time until we find him.”

“The First Citadel knows he is here. His ancestors will be searching for him.”

“We’ve seen no trace of any other archons in the area,” Harper said. “Perhaps the ongoing siege has restricted their influence so far from their fortress?”

“No.” King Menoa turned abruptly.

For a heartbeat Harper thought she glimpsed the face behind his mask-soft golden eyes, high arching cheeks like those of a porcelain doll, and beautiful bloodred lips-but then the glass turned as black as an Icarate’s throat.

“He is much too valuable to our enemies,” Menoa said. “The First Citadel is determined to unravel the mechanism by which the angel escaped Hell. There was no portal open when he first died, nothing but a rotting body for him to return to, and yet he somehow returned to the same flesh.” The king traced a claw across the chin of his mask. “He is the last of them, and yet he is somehow different from them. They will risk everything to understand him.” The mask’s glassy eyes stared through her, revealing nothing of the real eyes inside. “Look for their warriors below the Middens. These archons have been growing castles in unlikely places.”

She bowed. “I will seed the area with Screamers to detect unnatural vibrations. The packs will assuredly flush him out.”

“The packs have failed me before.”

“And you altered them, my Lord.” She swallowed. “Severely. They will not dare to fail you again.”

Menoa must have noticed the quiver of repulsion in her voice, for he turned sharply to face her. “You are from Pandemeria, aren’t you?” he said.

The king’s question startled her. He had never acknowledged her past before. “I am,” she said. “I was, I mean-”

“And you wish to return to the living world?”

She hesitated. “If it pleases you to send me there, my Lord.”

The king was silent a moment. “Do you enjoy the form you occupy?”

Harper chose her words carefully. “It allows me to serve you.”

The king made a sign in the air with his gauntlet. At this unvoiced command, a witchsphere rumbled out onto the balcony from one of the citadel doors, its metal panels shining dully under the bloody skies. It rolled across the floor towards the king, stopped, and then began to turn itself inside out.

Harper looked away. She heard the click of panels opening, followed by a hiss and then the brutal sound of snapping bones. When she glanced up again, the sphere had become a tangle of hag’s skin and filthy hair, full of eager white eyes. “King Menoa,” it said with a sigh.

“Consider the strengths of adaptation,” Menoa said to his engineer. “Your current form serves me well enough, yet another might serve me better. Take your own country for example.” He turned to the witchsphere and