God of Clocks

are much quicker than before, eh? Much stronger now. That is good.”

His red-haired companion was still studying the silver contraption in her hands. “She isn't an angel,” she announced. “I don't know what she is. The locator won't probe her. It's terrified of her.”

The big man laughed uproariously. “Impressive,” he said. “If she can terrify Mesmerist silver, then she can terrify the walls of Hell itself.” He cricked his neck and then crouched, holding out his arms as though he meant to catch her. “Now let me see that move again.”

She flew straight at him.

His arms closed around her.

She made a savage downwards kick at his knee and vaulted up out of his embrace, lashing her wings to gain height.

He grunted in pain.

Carnival flew up, twisted in midair, and dived down on him.

He was ready. He swung at her.

Her wings snapped out, stopping her descent. She allowed his fist to pass an inch from her face and then wheeled and kicked him in the jaw with the back of her heel.

His head snapped round, but he turned his huge body in time to save his neck from breaking. He groaned and then jerked around again to look up at her. “You are stronger than-”

Thrashing her wings to keep airborne, the scarred angel spun again, aiming her foot at his neck.

The big man ducked, moving his body at incredible speed. It wasn't nearly fast enough. Her heel connected with the side of his mouth, knocking him sideways.

He gasped, his huge chest heaving within its wooden harness. Sweat sluiced down his dark cheeks and mingled with the blood now leaking from one corner of his mouth. He backed away from her, pressing two fingers against his swollen lip. Then he withdrew his hand and stared at the blood there.

He gave her a bloody grin. “You are the first one ever to make me bleed.” He slammed his enormous hands together and growled. “Come on, then.”

Carnival flew at him again.

As soon as she was within range, her opponent launched a ferocious flurry of blows at her, aiming at her face, her chest, her neck.

She blocked them all. She saw him reach over her shoulder, grasping for her wing, and punched upwards into the base of his jaw. The blow connected with a loud crack. He grunted, but didn't otherwise react. He had a grip of her wing. Muscles in his shoulders bunched as he pulled.

Carnival sank her teeth into his neck. She tasted blood.

“John!” the red-haired woman screamed.

They were locked together. He huffed and grunted, his huge greasy body engulfing her as he wrenched at her wing. She smelled his sweat, the spicy odour of his skin. His muscles slid across her own. Her shoulder gave a sudden crack, and she felt the bone jerk loose from its socket. A spike of pain. She ignored it, tearing at his flesh with her teeth. Hot blood flowed over her jaw.

“Leave him alone!”

This cry had come from somewhere else. Carnival recognized the voice of the boy. For a heartbeat she hesitated, relaxing her grip on the giant.

With a roar, the huge warrior pushed her off.

Carnival splashed backwards through the shallow red waters, but remained standing. A dull throb had taken root in her broken shoulder.

Her opponent looked in bad shape, too. He took an awkward step backwards, sucking in great breaths of air through his nose. He had one hand clamped against his bleeding neck.

The boy was standing in the river, ten paces to one side of the giant. Red water coursed around his thin chest. He held his hands clasped together under his chin as if in prayer, the metal hooks splayed outwards like fans. “Please don't kill him,” he said.

Carnival returned her attention to the giant warrior. Her dislocated wing hung slackly against her back, the feathers trailing in the river. She clenched her teeth, reached behind her back, and pushed the bone back into its socket. She barely noticed the pain. Flexing her rapidly healing wing, she strode forward to finish off her enemy.

“No!” The boy rushed over and put himself between Carnival and her opponent.

“Get away from me, lad.” The giant grabbed the boy's upper arm and started to shove him to one side.

The boy changed.

Carnival halted as the child's skin began to flow like tallow from his bones. He closed his eyes and his head seemed to melt down into his shoulders. His flesh was reforming around the thin muscle of his upper arm where the giant held him, shrinking and changing colour. His bones clicked and cracked. In two heartbeats the whole of the boy's body had altered shape, hardened, and taken on a metallic lustre. He had ceased to exist in his previous form.

Instead of a boy, the warrior now clutched a sword.

A humming noise came from the device in the red-haired woman's hands. She glanced down at it. “It's a shiftblade, John,” she explained. “That child is a Mesmerist demon.”

John? Carnival looked at her opponent. They had given him another name in the poison forest, she now recalled. Anchor.

John Anchor frowned at the weapon in his fist. He swung his arm to cast the blade away, but threads of metal spun out from the grip and wrapped themselves around his wrist.

Anchor growled and tried to shake the sword loose. The metal threads tightened. It would not leave his hand.

“For the gods' sake, John,” the woman cried. “Sod your ridiculous principles and just use the damn thing!”

The big man ignored her. He seized the weapon's hilt with his free hand and tried to prise it loose. “Let go of me,” he growled. “This is not the way I fight.”

The shiftblade turned into a spear.

Anchor shook the long weapon furiously. He slammed it down against the water and put his sandaled foot halfway along the shaft and tried to snap it.

The demonic weapon let out a shrill cry. It changed from the spear to a short, fluted mace with elaborate silvered flanges and a grip cord of woven gold that coiled around the warrior's wrist like a serpent.

Anchor roared. “No swords, no spears, no bludgeons! I will not carry you.”

Carnival watched him struggle with the weapon. No matter how hard he thrashed his arm around, it would not release him. It changed shape again and again: to bows and clubs and punching shields. Each new weapon was more elaborate, more beautiful than the last, but Anchor would accept none of them.

He yelled at the red-haired woman, “Why is it doing this? Shiftblades feel pain. Since when do they choose to fight? Since when do they force themselves upon others?”

“Maybe it likes you, John.”

Carnival thought she understood. She recalled the boy's words in the skyship. Maybe John, after my father. The child did not look like the man, but then that child was a shape-shifter.

The shiftblade had stretched itself and become a broad steel shield with a sumptuous floral design in green and blue enamel that seemed to shine in the crimson gloom. In the world of men, such armour would have cost a presbyter's ransom, but Anchor simply beat at it with his fist, denting the brightly coloured metal until the shiftblade finally gave up. It released its hold on him.

The giant let out an angry roar. He wrenched the offending shield from his hand and threw it far across the River of the Failed. It spun away, flashing through the shafts of light descending from above, before disappearing into the distance.

The scarred angel looked at Anchor, and then she turned and gazed out in the direction where the shield had vanished. She tested her wounded wing, thumping it slowly, before she took to the air. And then she left the warrior and his red-haired companion and set out across the red river.

Ahead of her lay all of Hell.