Iron Angel

Slowly, the engineer tilted her glass head.

“Then you saved me some honour,” Hasp remarked. “We archons generally like to fight our own battles. How many of the Blind remain for me to kill?”

“Two hundred thousand.”

The god grunted. “Enough to make a good song of this day.”

“You know they won’t kill you.” Hasp would suffer a far worse fate than death. “Where is the angel who fell from Deepgate?”

“I slew him. His soul gave me the strength to rattle this little army of Menoa’s.”

She knew he was lying, but said nothing. Her sceptre would soon locate her quarry.

The god extended his wings, now thin and ragged and clogged with grime. He took a step forward on trembling legs. He could hardly stand upright. Then he scratched the tip of his sword through the pile of rubble on which he stood, sketching a line in the dust.

His eyes narrowed on Harper again. “I see a starving woman trapped inside that Mesmerist thing,” he said. “She wears the uniform of a Pandemerian engineer, but she doesn’t look happy to be in there.” With some effort he raised his sword. “Come here and I’ll set her free.”

Harper didn’t move. All around her the Legion of the Blind clambered over piles of their dead comrades as they crept nearer to the diminishing castle and the solitary archon standing in its doorway.

“Two hundred thousand!” Hasp yelled. Wincing in pain, he hefted his blade high over his head, spun it, and brought it crashing down through the skull of the nearest demon.

Then he staggered back and leaned against the doorway, sucking in desperate gulps of air. “That’s one,” he cried.

Clutching their rescued eyes, Menoa’s horde crawled closer.

18

THE SOUL COLLECTORS

Dill’s feathers were sodden and clogged with gore. He couldn’t now have flown even if he dared to risk it. He was slumped in a shallow pool, gasping for breath and gazing up at a black shape flitting across the sky.

Another one of Menoa’s spies?

Walls hemmed him in on three sides. He had found an alcove off one of the Maze’s countless canals. But there was no shade here. And no sanctuary. Faces peered out at him from the stonework.

Trust the walls, Hasp had said.

Dill found it hard to follow that advice. The Mesmerist dogcatchers seemed to pursue him wherever he hid. Most often they came when the mists grew dark, the time Dill had taken to calling night. He’d hear their clickety- clack teeth and he’d be forced to flee again, dragging his leaden legs through the sucking red fluid. It flowed always from the broken buildings, the ones the Icarates had smashed through.

Sometimes Dill crawled through the rooms the Mesmerists had destroyed and left empty, the shattered, bleeding houses and apartments-but the memories he had in those places weren’t his own, and they frightened him.

Where was Hasp now?

In the seven days since he’d fled, there had been no sign of the god or his castle. Had it only been seven days? Time had no meaning here. Often the days lasted much longer than they should have. He might have been running for a month, or a thousand years. The Legion of the Blind had not pursued him. Had they captured Hasp or presumed Dill to be dead?

Either way, there were other dangers.

A doorway was following him.

He had encountered it that morning. A rectangular gap between two square columns, it had seemed to offer a way through a wall separating two parallel canals. Pits in the stone lintel had the appearance of tiny eyes, while longer gouges opened and grinned like mouths. It had whispered to him as he passed.

Step through. Quickly, little crow.

Dill had stepped through only to find himself back where he had started. Somehow the doorway had turned him around. In his confusion, Dill had splashed a hundred yards along the canal before he realized he was retracing his own path. The doorway had laughed and slid along the wall until it was out of sight.

But now, as the shadow in the sky moved out of sight, he heard the doorway’s voice again. And it wasn’t speaking to him.

It’s up ahead. A hundred yards on the left. A little white crow. Follow me, hurry.

Dill peered out of the alcove. Three Icarates flanked a sphere of human bones which they rolled through the shallow waters between them. They were hurrying along the canal towards Dill’s hiding place. Their anemic armour fizzed and lit up faces in the surrounding dark stones, forcing ghosts to blink and look away. The doorway moved ahead of them, revealing flooded rooms and passages as it slid along the wall. Fluid gushed over its threshold like water over a weir.

There he is!

Returning to the open canal terrified Dill, but there was no other way out. He fled the alcove and ran from the Mesmerist priests and their sphere, thick fluids sucking at his feet.

The doorway raced ahead of the Icarates, zipping along the canal boundary wall until it reached Dill. It kept pace with him, and through it Dill saw yet more roofless ruins, canals, and sumps beyond the wall.

Step through me-I’ll help you to escape, it teased.

“Leave me alone.”

The doorway cackled wildly, then slid back along the wall the way it had come. Dill glanced over his shoulder. The Icarates were gaining on him.

The canal opened into a wide circular space. From here, dozens of narrower channels branched out in every direction. Dill chose one at random and hurried down it. The channel split in two; he took the right fork. A hundred paces further the passage divided again. Now Dill turned left. He tried to vary his route but keep his progress in the general direction of the First Citadel. Although he could not see the great building itself, the skies over it were dark with the smoke from King Menoa’s war machines.

Finally deep inside this labyrinth of channels, Dill ducked into another alcove, and slumped against the far wall, exhausted. For a long time he listened hard for the voice of the errant doorway.

Nothing.

But then he heard other sounds. From the other side of the wall came the rumble and splash of something rolling through shallow water, followed by the aetherlike crackle of Icarate armour.

Dill had taken a long and twisted route only to end up mere yards from his pursuers. Now only a foot of stonework separated him from the Mesmerist priests and their cage of bones. He heard them pause on the other side of the wall.

Dill froze.

Where was the doorway?

Something metal clicked. There was another pause. A low hum. And then Dill heard the bone-cage move on again. He breathed.

He turned around to find the doorway facing him. It occupied one of the side walls of the alcove, and its tiny dark eyes all seemed to be fixed on the angel. As soon as Dill saw it, it cried out:

Back here! The white crow is hiding here!

The doorway slid around the alcove, moving to the rear wall where it now formed an opening between the angel and the channel in which his pursuers were approaching.

They came through the doorway with tridents.

Dill backed away as two Icarates stepped into the alcove. Sparks burst from their armour and showered the