Iron Angel

inconvenience.”

Harper was shaking her head. “Sir,” she said. “I strongly advise against this. Company regulations require us to repel intruders by normal means.”

Jones agreed. “One monster on the loose is bad enough,” he said. “There’s no sense in upsetting the ladies any further by releasing a second one. Let me trade my pistol for a steel sword and I’ll help Miss Harper deal with our uninvited guest.”

Ersimmin laughed. “Company regulations? Miss Harper, may I remind you that I own a twenty percent share in the Pandemerian Railroad Company?” He turned back to Carrick. “What do you say, Chief? Shall we have a bit of sport to liven up the party? Would a thousand spindles make it worth your while?”

Now Carrick had a gleam in his eye. For the first time since the manifestation, he seemed composed. “Do it,” he said to Harper. “Let the glass bastard out of his cage.”

20

THE GOD IN GLASS

The constant clickety-clack of steel wheels on the rails below had begun to sound like a chorus of insistent voices, endlessly repeating the train’s destination: Coreollis, Coreollis, Coreollis. Mina Greene shuddered, pulled her thin blanket more tightly around her glass-plated shoulders, and looked down at the floor of the slave pen. It was as hard and transparent as the brittle scales the Mesmerists had given her in place of her old skin. Wheels and axles whirred in the gloom beneath the train. Sleepers, slag, and gravel blurred past.

The other slaves refused to move for fear of shattering their own transparent skins, and so she sat alone in the center of the low-ceilinged space. They seemed to be afraid of talking, too. As if words could shatter glass! More likely, they were wary of her proximity to the Lord of the First Citadel, which made Mina smile. They had a right to be nervous, she decided. He was a fearsome type.

“Hasp,” she said.

The god looked up, and a wheezing, clicking sound issued from the metal-and-bone mechanism clamped to the back of his skull. He frowned, then lowered his gaze and went back to whatever he was sketching. To keep the wounded god happy, the Pandemerian Railroad Company had given him paper and pencils.

Despite his current appearance, she still preferred to think of him as an angel. Menoa’s Icarates had removed his wings completely, cutting out the bones, muscles, and tendons from his shoulders, so that now he almost looked like a man: an old buccaneer slumped on the floor, all drooping jowls, patchy stubble, and a paunch. But the image of Hasp as a man was difficult to sustain, for his eyes constantly shifted colour. Sometimes to the colour of verdigris or gold; sometimes to the colour of the blood that flowed through his own ghastly armour.

Mina watched the god’s blood pulse through glass veins in his breastplate and shoulder-guards, out through the flexible, transparent pipes into his arm-and leg-bracers. She marveled at the blood looping around his neck where it branched into thin channels within his cheek-guards and half-helm, and she wondered how the Mesmerists could have engineered something so hideous and yet so beautiful: those cold-forged, metameric plates, spikes, and tubes were as magnificent as any sculpture to be found in a Dalamooran vizier’s palace.

The angel’s armour was much grander than the other slaves’ glass scales, and yet it was just as brittle. One hard tap with a sword would shatter it as easily as a wine flute. And it would be shattered soon, she suspected. The proposed handover, the peace treaty-all just more of Menoa’s lies. Their blood would stain the ground around Coreollis before the sun set tomorrow.

“Lighten up,” she said.

Hasp didn’t even look at her. His brow crinkled and he spoke slowly: “I preferred you in Hell. You talked less.”

Mina giggled and shifted closer to him. The curved panels on her legs and ankles clacked against the floor, but she didn’t care. “Kill me, then,” she said. She snatched up two of his pencils and rattled them against his glass-sheathed shin.

Hasp moved his leg away. “What’s wrong with you?” he growled. “If you want to die so badly then stand up and hurl yourself against the floor. I guarantee the fall will break your fragile skin.”

“But I want you to do it,” she cooed.

“Only because you know I can’t.” Tiny gears skittered somewhere inside the god’s neck, or perhaps in his brain. A smell of burning wires and scorched blood came from the implanted Mesmerist device at the back of his skull. He twitched, and his cracked lips contorted into a grimace beneath his transparent helm. “But keep annoying me and I might even try. This is a dangerous game you’re playing, lass.”

Mina examined one of the pencils, turning it over in her grubby hands. “It’s not a game.”

Hasp’s jaw tightened. His irises pulsed through a spectrum of colours and his hands clenched to fists. “Bastard Menoa,” he hissed. “I think he put a spiteful demon in my skull.”

“I like it when your eyes do that,” she said.

“Same thing happens to all angels on earth.”

“Do it again.”

“I’m not your pet, Mina.”

She sighed and dropped the pencil. “You’re so boring.”

“Then leave me alone.”

“Only if you help me break this.” She placed her hands against her chest.

A growling sound came from Hasp’s skull. His eyes shifted colour-grey to black to blue to red. “I can feel its teeth now,” he said. “You’re making the damn thing bite.”

Pumps sounded overhead, blowing more mist through valves into the slave pen.

Mina stifled a laugh.

“Enough,” he growled. He clamped his teeth together and went back to his sketch. “You are tormenting me simply because you can. What have I done to you? I sheltered you from the Icarates. I tried to defend you.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Then what more do you want from me?”

“I want you to kill me.”

The god hissed again. “So you can go back to Hell? You’ll end up back there soon enough without my help. What do you think will happen to you in Coreollis? Do you think Rys wants to be reminded of his failure?” He grunted. “My brother will sign Menoa’s treaty and then butcher us all.”

“Not you.”

“Especially me,” Hasp said. “I’m no use to him like this.” He turned his glassy hands palm up. “Rys will feed me to his garden and grow roses from my blood. And he’ll do it just to spite Menoa. This war was over as soon as my brother learned about the arconites. His memories of Skirl still haunt him.”

“I disagree. You’re more important to Rys than you think you are.”

He scowled. “You don’t know him.”

“What are you drawing?” She craned her neck to see, but Hasp turned away from her to hide his work. She pouted and smacked him gently. “Go on…” she said. “Just break my arm, a finger even. You wouldn’t even need to use your shiftblade.”

“Right now, I’d break your neck if I could,” he said.

But Mina knew it was a lie. The parasite in Hasp’s skull protected only Menoa’s servants. It did not care which of the king’s enemies the god killed. Hasp could have slain her easily, and yet he chose not to. And that was exactly why Mina persisted. The defeated god had been so horribly debased that she needed to keep reminding him who he really was. She couldn’t let him simply give up, for it would be too easy for him to end his own life.

Hasp was gazing at the shiftblade on the floor beside him, a weapon which could change its shape into any other. King Menoa himself had given it to him as a display of his absolute power over the Lord of the First Citadel. Shreds of muscle still clung to the steel blade. Someone in the king’s army had used it recently.

A sudden tremor ran through the god. His neck jerked violently before he was able to still himself, and the