Iron Angel

shake. “Dill?”

The angel opened his eyes, and jerked away from her with a start. But then he seemed to realize where he was, and his panic subsided. “A terrible dream…” He sighed, running a hand through his lank hair.

“The same one?” she asked.

He nodded. “I dreamed I was this room. The walls were my skin and bones, the windows my eyes. My blood ran through wooden veins in the floorboards. My nerves…I could feel you walking through me, and…” As he looked up at her, the colour of his eyes darkened from white to grey. “Meer? Was he here?”

“He just left.”

Dill stared at his own hands for a long time. “I dreamed of him, too.”

“The Mesmerist?”

“He was outside this room, outside me, but searching for a way in. I couldn’t see him, but each time I peered out of the window I spotted something odd: a house that hadn’t been there before, a new pontoon in the harbor, a crooked tree. Are there any trees in Sandport?”

“No,” Rachel admitted. “And there aren’t any trees out there now. It was only a dream.”

Her friend’s nightmares had been consistent since his return from Hell. He dreamed of becoming the environment around him, whether it was a room in Sandport or a petrified glade or a sandy hollow in the Deadsands. And in each case the same shape-shifting figure waited nearby, disguised as a part of the wider surroundings. Dill had started calling him the Mesmerist, though he could not say why.

“You need to eat something.” She handed him the bowl, noticing now that it contained little more than milk. “And we should consider leaving here soon. I don’t know how much longer we can trust Meer.”

Dill looked exhausted. “Where will we go?”

“As far away from the Spine as possible. The missionary ship Herald’s Voice left Clune two weeks ago and should arrive in port any day now. With Spine martial law now in place, it may well be the last temple ship to sail out into the Yellow Sea. The missionaries have a settlement in a village called Baske, one hundred and twenty leagues east of the Pocked Delta. If we can get the Herald to take us there, we’ll be safe.”

“Would the priests shield us from the Spine?”

“They might shield you,” she said. “You’re a fugitive, but you’re still an angel, and I can’t imagine many of Deepgate’s priests support the Spine’s recent rise to power.” She thought for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure they’d protect you.”

“But what about you?”

An airship droned somewhere overhead. Rachel listened to it for a moment, but was distracted by another, closer sound: a ruckus in the street outside. She went back to the window.

A gaily painted box-wagon, pulled by an ox, was rumbling along the wharf in front of the tavern. It had a red roof and yellow slatted sides, and boasted wheels with garish green and gold spokes. Emblazoned across the nearest side were the words Greene’s Magical Circus: Witness all the fearsome horrors of Iril! A crowd of people jostled around it, following its progress towards the center of town. Rachel realized that it must have disembarked from one of the barges at the deepwater dock that lay out of sight around the harbor peninsula. Curious. Normally that dock was used exclusively by Deepgate’s Military to bring troops downriver from its outlying airship ports. Had the wagon originally arrived by airship? Or had it merely stopped to pick up cargo from one of the airship ports? Then she spotted a scrawled notice pinned to the rear of the wagon, and her breath caught.

See the slavering shape-shifting Maze demon here tonight!

The crowd of followers chattered with excitement. Groups of barefooted children ran ahead of the wagon, shrieking and clapping and chasing one another. Rachel sat on the windowsill and watched as the wooden vehicle wound its way up the hill behind the tavern wharves and disappeared in the knot of lanes around Market Square.

Traveling magicians and freak shows were not unheard of in Sandport. So-called shamans and thaumaturges sometimes arrived from Clune and Dalamoor with a veritable cornucopia of disturbing objects preserved in pickle jars. Yet Rachel had never heard of anyone claiming to have possession of an actual demon before. A shape-shifter? The timely relevance to Dill’s recurring dreams seemed too unlikely to be merely a coincidence.

“I’m going out,” she said to Dill.

But the angel had fallen asleep again.

By the time Rachel reached Market Square, the sun had fallen behind the low houses and the sky gleamed like gold fish scales. The wagon driver had almost finished setting up her sideshow in the center of the square, where a rude stage of crimson boards had been erected beside the wagon. A small crowd had gathered on the brown flagstones around it, while others stood further back in the shadows of the surrounding houses. Flies buzzed around the fringes of the quadrangle, where fruit from the weekly market festered in the gutters and Sandporters sat on their own doorsteps and sipped fig wine. The wagon driver had evidently conscripted two burly men from the audience to unload a large crate from the rear of her vehicle, and now stood to one side, petting a small dog cradled in her arms. As the crowd looked on, the two helpers manhandled the crate up some steps and onto the stage under the woman’s direction.

Rachel scanned the crowd of onlookers for likely pickpockets, before she remembered that she didn’t have any money. Smiling, she returned her attention to the unfolding spectacle at hand.

The wagon driver was young and slender and wore her dark brown hair in thick curls that tumbled heavily over her narrow shoulders. Her oval face and dark eyes suggested Dalamooran origins, yet her skin was lighter than that of most northern desert dwellers. She wore a vibrant, if somewhat garish, rainbow-coloured dress adorned with beads of glass.

Once her hired help had finished positioning the box and stepped down, the woman placed her puppy on one of the wagon’s running boards, and then turned and raised her hands to settle the crowd.

“Hello,” she called out in a cheerful voice. Her accent sounded Deepgate. “My name is Mina Greene and I have come to Sandport to bring you magic, horror, and wonder! If you are amazed by what you see here this morning, make sure to tell your families and your friends. And if what you see sickens or appalls you, then tell them anyway. Just be sure to tell someone.”

A laugh from the crowd.

“And please return after dusk, for what you are about to see is only a little glimpse of my circus. I’ve traveled to the ends of the world looking for monstrosities, and later tonight I’ll present them for your pleasure.” She sounded like a child reading from a script she’d prepared. “I’ve got ghosts and mazewights trapped in amber, and the corpses of unspeakable demons from the darkest depths of Hell, even the bones of gods and stone monsters from under the earth.”

One of the onlookers yelled, “Yeah, we seen all that last year,” which triggered more laughter.

Mina Greene frowned and stamped her foot. “Yes, the stitched-together things-the fakes. Jars of mermen and spider babies, the pickled oxen calves. You’ve seen it all here, haven’t you?” She seemed to realize that she’d lost her composure, and made an effort to control her temper. “But today I’m showing you the real thing. Not tricks or lies, but living, breathing demons…” She ended with a dancerlike flourish. “Behold the horrors of the Maze!”

She lifted the lid from the crate, then reached inside and fiddled with an interior clasp or lock. The crate’s four side panels fell away like opening flower petals, revealing the fleshy thing inside.

Rachel watched from the fringes, her face partially concealed by a silk scarf, as a gasp went up from the crowd. Several people backed away from the abomination on the stage. Then Rachel saw clearly what had caused the commotion, and she felt her stomach buck.

“This monster was captured in Deepgate four nights ago,” Greene called. “The Spine Avulsior allowed me, a humble show-woman and entertainer, to display it here so that I might make you aware of the dangers of the Maze. Look at its limbs, see how it weeps and suffers. This is what happens to heretics and blasphemers.”

Had the Spine hired her to preach their message for them? Rachel wondered if Mina Greene believed a word of the Avulsior’s lies, or if she’d just agreed to work with him in order to obtain this poor wretched creature.

It looked vaguely like a child, but Rachel could not see precisely how its twisted arms and legs connected to