Hasp was breathing hard, his broad chest rising and falling rapidly. His red eyes stared wildly out of his dirt- streaked face.
Menoa said, “Now kill the thaumaturge.”
Rachel had been waiting for this moment for three thousand years. She
The world around her slowed until even the light seemed to hesitate, pushing in vain against the motes of dust trapped in its rays. Her heart and lungs stopped. She saw Mina's brows rise a fraction, Hasp's feverish gaze swinging towards the thaumaturge. The hairs on Basilis's back moved slowly erect, even as his jaws twisted into a growl.
Rachel considered Hasp. She could shatter his armour in an instant, trading the god's life for that of her friend. Or she could risk Mina while trying to save both of them…
A sliver of drool began to drip from Basilis's jaws. Could the Penny Devil act in time to save his mistress? Rachel didn't know the answer, and she didn't understand thaumaturgy enough to rely on it.
Hasp was slowly raising his sword.
Better to disarm him first and buy the others some time. Let Mina meanwhile conjure another one of her ghastly forests. Or Dill…?
Why had he not been able to possess Hasp?
Because Hasp was a god? Because he had already consumed so many souls during his long life? Or did his Mesmerist armour simply protect him from incorporeal attack? Rachel didn't know, but she couldn't count on her friend.
She walked forward and pressed the palms of her hands against the flat of the blade, steering it, pushing it gently sideways out of his fist. His grip was ferocious. Too much force and she would break his fingers.
She took her time.
Near the top of Hasp's swing, she managed to pry the sword free. The hilt moved outwards from his palm, and hung for a moment in the air.
Now Mina.
Basilis had coiled himself to pounce, and Mina was only now starting to flinch away from the anticipated blow. Hasp himself had yet to notice that his sword had left his fist.
Rachel turned and pushed Mina backwards, applying as much force as she dared. At normal speed, she hoped it would represent little more than a hard shove.
She turned back to Hasp.
His arm was still rising. The sword had begun to turn in the air. Rachel took the weapon firmly by its hilt and eased it back towards her, careful not to move so quickly as to break her own bones. She steered the blade past Mina's ear, turning it, and brought the edge of the blade across Oran's neck. The woodsman's carotid artery parted. Blood would flow in just moments.
But Rachel had another destination in mind for the sword. She had so little time available while
Rachel pushed through the falling fragments, and stepped out into Heaven.
Anchor had brought Mr. D's customers, an entire city of them, to confront the Lord of the Maze. The city's buildings housed demons, and they shambled or crawled across the surface of Hell, consuming canal walls under their foundations and dislodging cornerstones from Menoa's own queer structures, causing them to howl.
The Riot Coast giant himself stood grinning upon the top of the long metal hull of Isla's subsurface vessel. Alice Harper had found a deck chair from somewhere, and now reclined in it, studying another one of her infernal Mesmerist devices and scanning the bottled soul she had taken from D's Emporium. Dozens more bottles rolled about inside an overturned cabinet they had found amongst the wreckage. They weren't as refined as the soulpearls Anchor was used to, but they were a hell of a lot better than nothing.
“Any luck?” Anchor said.
She made a noncommittal gesture. “He's intact and he's dreaming,” she said. “But I still need to find a host for him.”
“Is that the Ninth Citadel?” Isla asked excitedly, peering out from behind Harper's deck chair. “It's really big, isn't it?”
“Aye, I thought it might be,” Anchor replied. “Menoa strikes me as that sort of god.”
Isla wrinkled her nose in distaste.
All around the submarine rumbled the vessels of other demons who had collected souls for Mr. D. Harper had said that they were some of the oldest and most powerful creatures she'd ever scanned, but you wouldn't have thought it to look at them: wiry old men and carefree children, weak-eyed scholars and dizzy maidens, they seemed ill-equipped to take their ships to war. Anchor had protested, but Harper insisted on engaging their help. They were willing enough to fight, though, and Anchor couldn't deny them that right.
Mr. D's customers were another breed altogether. Demons grown fat from their years of trading at that strange emporium, these creatures wore castles like men wear clothes, towers and canting stacks of stone and glass of every shape. They had fashioned these environments for themselves from living memories, and now moved them by will alone. The ground shuddered wherever they passed. Icarates and Soul Collectors fled through the passageways ahead, many of them falling under a bow wave of rubble.
Anchor turned to Harper. “It would be good to have seen Hasp's castle here. Was it as grand as these?”
“Grander, and more dangerous,” the engineer replied. “He fled farther than anyone thought possible, and then turned the building against Menoa's hunters. I'd never seen anything like it.”
“Ha!” Anchor took another bottle from the cabinet, uncorked it, and drained its contents. The soul within the liquid soon took the edge off his appetite, restoring him to full vigour. He felt
“You shouldn't drink so much,” Isla said.
“I know that, lass.” He tossed the empty bottle away. “This is gut-rot.”
But it was strong gut-rot, and that's all that mattered to him right now.
The vanguard of this bizarre and rambling army smashed through yet another wall, the metal vessels ploughing into a compound full of dark barrow-shaped structures. Here the Icarates had mounted resistance.
Men in bronze plate armour threw spears up at the intruding constructs. Gladiators, they were, by the look of them, part flesh and part metal. Anchor had seen the arenas where Soul Collectors gathered. At a run, they broke around the
“I won't fall off,” she said.
“No, but I might.”
She grinned and held on to him more tightly.
“Here.” Harper handed one of her Mesmerist devices up to the big man. “I've adapted this Screamer to rattle Menoa's soul. He'll try to change you, and he'll succeed unless you're fast. You'll have less than a heartbeat to activate the thing. It should disrupt his concentration enough to let you get closer.”
“How long do I have?”
“I don't know. Moments only. But you won't surprise him twice.” She looked up, past him. “Iolites, John.”
A great flock of glass lizards flashed in the fierce red skies above. They were almost invisible: a swarm of scintillations-now like sunlight on a fast river, now like burning cannon powder-and Anchor heard the sudden crash of their wings.
Anchor pushed Isla aside, and seized a crystal claw as one of the Iolites dived at his head. The winged lizard let out a shriek, a clash of chimes as it thrashed its wings against Anchor's shoulders. Anchor whirled the beast
