with hammers and crowbars, smashing at the brick and stonework to create some more space around her scaffold ends. They broke windows and tiles, and ripped out doors and joists and lintels, passing the lot back up their ranks towards the
“They're trying to ease the pressure on the ship,” Monk observed. “In case Hell decides to try and spit the whole vessel back out.”
The boy lifted his gaze from the sightglass. “How do you know?” he asked. He'd taken a liking to querying Monk's assertions. “Maybe they're just looting all that stuff. Bits of souls and all that. Cospinol can boil it all down and make soulpearls.”
The astrologer's face turned red. He raised a hand to strike the boy, but then seemed to think better of it. “Don't get smart with me, son,” he said. “They're easing the pressure, I tell you. The Maze is
“Maybe we could steal some of those bricks,” the boy said, “and boil them up ourselves.”
Monk grunted. He unfastened his breeches, then, clinging on to the edge of the hole in the hull, he pissed down through the gaps in the scaffold. Steam rose from the arc of urine. The astrologer let out a sigh, then shook himself. “Them bricks won't give us much sustenance,” he said. “We'd be better stealing a soul from inside one of them rooms. Or using the distraction to loosen the bolts on that angel's boiling pot.” He refastened his breeches and turned to face the boy. “I'll bet them slaves have gone and left their prisoner alone.”
“They never leave it alone,” the boy said. “You're just afraid to go out there on that scaffold in case the gallowsmen get you.”
“I ain't afraid of nothing,” Monk said. “I'm just being smart. A few drops of that scarred angel's essence would sate you for a hundred years.” He ushered the boy back inside the
“Aren't you coming, too?”
“ ‘Course I'm coming. Someone's got to tell you which welds to crack and which bolts to loosen.” Monk grunted. “Don't want to let the bitch escape now, do we?”
6
Dill removed the stricken arconite's armour while it lay immobile and took it for himself. Like all Maze-forged creations, the blood-soaked metal plates exhibited a primitive consciousness. They were fiercely reluctant to release their grip on the fallen automaton's bones. Dill persuaded them by brute force. He wrenched the sections free, revealing arrays of hooks on the undersides that writhed like cilia, and then pressed them against his own limbs and torso.
Rachel watched from the stoop outside the Rusty Saw tavern. She heard scratching sounds as the hooks attached themselves to Dill's ribs. The metal itself seemed to wail quietly. Pulses of green light raced along his newly fitted arm bracers and over his armoured chest, like a swarm of fireflies amidst the fog.
In moments, Menoa's arconite had been stripped bare. Its body formed a great dark peninsula of bone and metal upon the forest track, stinking and hissing smoke like something expelled from the heart of a volcano.
Dill picked up his opponent's massive cleaver and shook mud loose from its blade. He then stooped and lifted the building, holding it so that its foundations rested upon that enormous blade. Rachel clung to the doorjamb for support, her hair blowing wildly about her face. More of the Rusty Saw's earthen island crumbled away and fell to the ground in dull thumps. A clamour of broken glass and shouts went up inside the main saloon as the building pitched and slid several feet across the cleaver's smooth metal surface. Rachel felt herself rising rapidly into the sky. Dill's armour-clad torso swept past her like a shower of dull green stars.
And then they were moving again, carried north in great sweeping strides.
Rachel stepped inside to find the woodsmen crowded around every table, while still more of them squatted around the edges of the room or sat on the staircase. Conversation was muted. They seemed content to brood darkly over recent events. Oran himself sat drinking beer at a table in one corner, with a whore perched on his knee. He saw Rachel and nodded to her. Meanwhile, Abner Hill leaned on the bar, glaring at his unwelcome customers while his young wife struggled through the throng and cleared glasses from the tables.
Mina approached, cradling her tiny dog in her arms, and drew Rachel aside. “They're furious at Hasp,” she whispered. “They all saw how he tried to betray us.” She glanced at the men around her. “Rachel, there's even been some talk of taking matters into their own hands.”
“Gods, we don't need this, Mina. Where's Hasp now?”
“He's barricaded himself in the pantry,” she said. “If anything, he's even drunker than before. It's only a matter of time before one of Oran's men does something foolish.”
Rachel sighed. “I'll speak to Oran. We need more space, more room to breathe. And we need to keep these men busy. Will you come with me?”
Oran's eyes were glazed with drink, but he made space for the two women at his table by ordering one of his lieutenants to move. Then he pushed the whore away and told her to fetch them all a fresh jug. “Have some beer,” he said, filling two cups with frothing liquid.
Rachel accepted the drink. Mina left hers on the table.
Oran raised his own cup. “To Rys,” he said, “the architect of our victory.” Some of the men at nearby tables joined in the toast.
Rachel hesitated, then took a sip. “I seem to have missed Rys's involvement in all this.”
“The god of flowers and knives is subtle,” Oran explained. “Yet his influence is apparent in all events. It's like this sorcerous fog in the way it pervades the state of Coreollis.”
“You grant him omnipotence, then?”
“He speaks through me!”
To Rachel this outburst seemed unwarranted. Oran's expression had suddenly become dark, his eyes shadowed as he leaned forward. His skin looked moist and varicose, as with a man under extreme duress, while the axe scar on his forehead appeared to throb in the dim yellow light like a hot metal plate. He bared his teeth. “This is Rys's land,” he continued more quietly, “and we are his agents here.”
Rachel glanced at Mina. The thaumaturge was watching the man carefully.
Oran slumped back in his chair and took another long gulp of beer. “I have doubts about our destination,” he said. “Why should we be seeking Sabor before we locate Lord Rys? I reckon we should return to Coreollis.”
Rachel was losing patience with him. She was just about to explain that Rys had, by all reasonable accounts, died in Coreollis, but Mina preempted her.
“Cospinol told us that Lord Rys trusted Sabor and Mirith to find a way back into Heaven,” the thaumaturge explained. “While Rys fought the Mesmerists in Pandemeria and Skirl, his brothers explored more… esoteric options. If we agree that Rys destroyed his own palace as a ruse to trick King Menoa, then it's likely he's left Coreollis entirely.” Her glass-sheathed hand now curled around her cup. “The battle has moved from the city of flowers, Oran. We'll find Rys at Sabor's castle in Herica.”
The woodsman gave Mina an indignant look. “You think
Basilis growled.
Oran started to speak again, but was interrupted by the arrival of the tavernkeeper's wife.
Rosella Hill set a fresh jug of beer upon the table. Her golden hair had spilled out from its ribbon, and white makeup smeared her powdered forehead and the back of one wrist. Avoiding the eyes of everyone present, she
