The Iron Ghost (41 page)

‘No need to be alarmed.’ Sebastian jogged up the slopes, waving in what he hoped was a friendly manner. ‘We weren’t expecting anyone.’

As he drew closer, he saw that the man was indeed a Ynnsmouth knight – he wore the colours of Ryn, green and yellow silk in tatters across his back, and an enamelled badge at his throat very similar to the one Sebastian wore. His hair was blond and cropped close to his head, and he had a blond beard, secured at the end with a silver cuff. His plate and leathers were burnished and covered in mud.

‘By the peaks of Ryn, I thought I was the only one left.’ The man looked very pale in the moonlight, and then he grinned. ‘I hardly dared to hope I might find one of my brothers here –’ He paused, looking Sebastian over. ‘Forgive me, but you appear to have suffered some difficult times yourself.’

Sebastian nodded, smiling. The other knight would no doubt be wondering why he was so scruffily attired. Very soon he would be wondering many things.

‘It has not been easy,’ he said. ‘Where have you come from? Who are you?’

The knight took a step backwards, obviously eager to reach the sanctuary of the old temple.

‘Sir Michael, of the Order of Ryn,’ he said, looking around. Sebastian could see him taking in the tended slopes, the weapons racks. ‘I have travelled up through Relios. It has taken some time. Everywhere I go I hear that my brothers have suffered greatly.’

Sebastian nodded. ‘You were not at the battle of Baneswatch, Sir Michael?’

Michael shook his head, his face creasing into bitter lines. ‘Alas, no. I was on the border of Creos when the Citadel fell, delivering a message to an official there for the Lord Commander. I fought, when the lizard women came –’ He paused, shaking his head. ‘I was injured, and taken in by a kind woman and her husband. I have been asleep for months, healing, and eventually I was well enough to make this journey.’ He shifted, half turning towards the temple and its warm lights. Out of the corner of his eye Sebastian could see that the door was open, and a figure was standing there. ‘I had thought this place would still be abandoned. May I have your name, brother? And how you came to survive such times?’

‘It’s a long story.’ Sebastian put an arm round the knight’s shoulders, subtly trying to turn him away from the temple. ‘It is my task this evening to walk the perimeter. Perhaps you will accompany me?’

Sir Michael shook him off. ‘I would much prefer to take a moment’s rest at the Temple of the God-Peak. I have been travelling for weeks.’ Sir Michael was looking at him with open suspicion now. ‘What member of the Order does not offer rest and food to his kin?’

His hand strayed back to the dirk at his belt again, and this time he drew it. Sebastian took a step forward, his hands held out in front of him in a gesture of peace, already knowing it was too late. There were figures streaking down the lawn towards them.

‘What you will see now will seem very strange – alarming, in fact,’ he said quickly, ‘but you must not panic. Please. I can explain everything.’

Sir Michael, hearing the footsteps behind him, turned to see three brood sisters running down the slopes towards him. With a cry he drew his short sword in his free hand and the first brood sister fell to the ground, her guts open and steaming. The other two, whom Sebastian belatedly recognised as Umbellifer and Pelenor, stood dumbfounded. Neither of them were armed, and their golden armour had long since been discarded.

‘Please, stop.’ Sebastian grabbed hold of Sir Michael’s arm but the knight pulled away with surprising strength. In the dark the green blood on his sword looked black.

‘They have infected our most holy places!’ Sir Michael brought down another blow, this time catching Pelenor across the throat. Next to her, Umbellifer stumbled away, her hands held up in front of her.

‘We have sworn an oath,’ she said, her eyes very wide. ‘Never to take another human life.’

But Sir Michael wasn’t listening. He barged past her, intending to head for the temple itself. Sebastian drew his own sword and went after him, not quite fast enough to catch hold of the smaller man.

‘Ephemeral!’ Sebastian bellowed, not knowing where she was but suddenly desperate to see her face. ‘Get them out of there!’

It was too late. Sir Michael flew up the steps and into the temple’s main room, where around twenty brood sisters waited, confusion evident on every face. Sebastian caught him up and stumbled in behind him.

‘He has the blood of my sister on his sword!’ The Second stepped forward, her brow furrowed. ‘I can smell it. Who is this human?’

‘Listen, we all need to calm down.’ Sebastian tried to step around Sir Michael, trying to block his way into the room, but the young man brandished his sword.

‘You are harbouring these monsters here? Do you have any idea what they’ve done?’ His lips pulled back from his teeth in disgust. ‘You have betrayed us and tainted the god-peak.’

‘No, you must listen.’ Sebastian spread his arms wide, leaving himself open to attack. ‘You have to trust me. It is a long story, but you must hear it. Otherwise—’

‘I will cut you down where you stand!’

He took a step forward, as though to drive his blade through Sebastian’s midriff. In that moment, everyone seemed to move at once. Sebastian felt someone hit him bodily from behind, throwing him to the floor. His chin connected with the stones and for a few seconds his vision went dark. Rolling over onto his back, he saw Sir Michael still standing, his sword doing its bloody work as the brood sisters tried to subdue him. Not one of them drew a weapon against the man –
the oath, the bloody oath!
– and as he watched five, then six of the brood sisters fell, their green blood filling the air with its acrid stench.

‘Stop!’ Sebastian struggled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his head. Ephemeral was there, she and Havoc and Umbellifor trying to overwhelm Sir Michael with the press of their bodies, while the knight screamed at them, his face twisted into a rictus of horror. ‘Enough!’

Sebastian elbowed them aside and, unmindful of the knight’s blade, punched the smaller man across the jaw, taking some small satisfaction from the sound of tiny bones breaking. Sir Michael reeled on his feet, blood gushing from his nose in a red spurt, and then he went to his knees, eyes rolling up to the whites.

‘Enough,’ said Sebastian again. The temple smelt like a slaughterhouse. ‘Please, that’s enough.’

Tamlyn stood in the entrance to the werken chamber, utterly still, not breathing. It was dark, the only lights the glowing eyes of the werkens themselves and a pair of dirty oil lamps by the Heart-Stone chest. Two of her own werkens were in here, stored while she repaired them, and she could feel the solid presence of their stones.

All is quiet, she told herself. There is no disturbance in the Edeian.

Even so, she had found herself checking more and more often in the days after Joah Demonsworn’s attack. That pulse of awareness, the sense of dismay she’d felt in the Edeian after Joah had been awoken haunted her. Why hadn’t she acted then? If she’d been more vigilant, if she’d considered the Prophet with eyes unclouded by her own need to destroy the Narhl . . . And despite their best efforts, they had failed to find the girl. She had apparently vanished as completely as Joah Demonsworn had.

She shook herself and strode quickly into the chamber, walking past those werkens still needing repairs. Every other serviceable werken was up in the city now, helping to repair the buildings and the streets that had fallen into rubble. They had lost a great number of werkens in the attack, and those they had left were precious; that was why she was insisting on keeping them underground when not on active duty.

Her war-werken, the one shaped like a great cat, had been thrown against a stone wall, crumbling its right back leg into jagged pieces. She paused next to it, briefly inspecting her own handiwork; the witch’s porridge, as her soldiers called it, would need another day to set at least. Turning from that she went to the Heart-Stone chest, and slipping a key from round her neck, she opened it. Inside there was the final piece, the very last sliver of Heart-Stone. Their last chance.

The sound of footsteps caused her to turn rapidly. ‘Who’s there? Who is it?’ She shut the chest and locked it rapidly, her fingers fumbling slightly with the key.

Barlow came down the steps, her broad face creased into an expression of caution. The heavy-set woman had her fur hat in her hands again, and was turning it round and round.

‘You called for me to come, Crafter Nox,’ she said, glancing around at the damaged werkens. She was limping slightly – a slice of stone, blown from the side of a werken, had hit the woman in the leg. She had been lucky not to lose it. ‘I’ve just come up from the pit.’

Tamlyn took a slow breath to calm her beating heart. She realised she did not like being down here in the dark, and that in itself made her angry.

‘Yes. I wanted to ask you about our other project, Barlow. What progress have we made?’

Immediately Barlow looked as though she’d rather be somewhere else.

‘Oh. Yes. Well, it’s going well. As well as can be expected. I mean, we lost some of our best masons, and the new pit is not in the easiest location. And, frankly, we could do with more people.’ She paused, biting her lip.

Tamlyn shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. The fewer people know about this, the better.’

‘No one here will betray you.’

Tamlyn raised her eyebrows at that, and Barlow nearly dropped her hat.

‘I mean only, uh, Mistress Crafter, that we, that the masons and I, we are all dedicated to protecting Skaldshollow.’ She took a breath, apparently deciding to lead the conversation down a different path. ‘Your plans are extraordinary, as ever, and we follow them as best we can, but you are the Crafter.’

‘Yes,’ said Tamlyn, ‘I am. And Nuava was to have been, after me . . .’ She trailed off, turning back to look at the Heart-Stone chest. The Heart-Stone was gone, and now Nuava too. They hadn’t found her body amongst the others, but Tamlyn felt in her bones that she was dead. As dead as her brother.

Barlow cleared her throat. ‘Crafter Nox?’

Tamlyn turned back. The weight of the stone above their heads was oppressive, and she was tired of being in the dark.

‘Continue the work,’ she snapped, ‘we must be ready for further attacks. Have them working at all hours, if necessary.’

‘Crafter Nox.’ Barlow looked as though she were trying to swallow something bitter. ‘The thing is, wouldn’t we be better off sharing around the last shard of Heart-Stone? Creating as many werkens as possible from what we have left?’

‘They would be small,’ said Tamlyn. ‘Small things, powerless. Good only for hauling heavy loads.’

‘That could be what we need at the moment,’ said Barlow in a small voice. ‘The better to advance the repairs to the city, to get people where they need to be.’

‘No. Repairs will happen, people will heal, in their own time. We need to be armed. Come on, I want to go up to the pit now.’ Tamlyn strode for the stairs, and Barlow scurried after her. ‘I need some fresh air.’

They took a pair of werkens up through the northernmost gate. Tamlyn’s was her smallest werken, a solid, plodding model too square and blocky to look like any particular four-legged animal. Barlow rode a similar, smaller version, the main bulk of it hidden under piles of furs and a huge, sturdy saddle. Nodded through by a pair of guards with their faces hidden within thick fur hoods, they entered a small patch of evergreen forest, quickly turning off the main path and heading straight into the trees. Here and there Barlow could see signs that other werkens had been this way: heavy prints in the hard earth, broken branches. She had been back and forth herself several times in the last few days, mainly ferrying messages to those masons Tamlyn considered trustworthy enough to work on her secret project, and they were few enough in number.

Eventually the trees began to thin out, and they came to a space where the world suddenly fell away, revealing a newly excavated quarry. A handful of men and women moved around on the few werkens they had been able to spare. The earth and stone they had torn through, with feverish impatience, was still raw, and looking at it made Barlow feel uneasy. Under Tamlyn’s orders they had also erected a huge wooden screen, so that anyone randomly approaching the secret quarry from the city would not be able to see what they were working on.

Tamlyn, leaning forward over her mount, peered down into the hollow. She wore her hair tied back and Barlow was concerned to note how pale she looked. Her cheeks were gaunter than they had been, and her eyes glittered constantly with an emotion Barlow couldn’t read.

‘We found a rich vein of Edeian here,’ said Barlow into the silence. ‘There’s that, at least. Kerryn thinks that it may be of better quality than the stone we’ve been taking from the main quarry, although I suspect it’s a little early to know that.’ Barlow paused, thinking of Yun. He had been a workshy man, mostly, but the timbre of the stone had been his passion. He would have been able to tell them about the rock, but he had died screaming in a cocoon of flames. Barlow squeezed her eyes shut briefly. ‘We’re getting the pieces we need, at least.’

‘Large enough?’ asked Tamlyn.

‘Large enough, yes,’ said Barlow. ‘It’s certainly that.’

‘Come on.’ Tamlyn led them down a wide path, hard dirt beaten flat by werken feet, until they were in the belly of the quarry. The men and women working there stopped when they saw them approaching, and Barlow saw a mixture of emotions on their faces; pride, at the sight of the Mistress Crafter, and fear, for losing both her nephew and niece had not improved Tamlyn’s already unforgiving nature. Barlow was also fairly sure she spotted a few faces that looked angry, mistrustful.
They have families to keep safe and homes to rebuild,
thought Barlow,
and we have them hidden in the woods working on Tamlyn’s latest crackpot idea.

They reached the wooden screen and passed through the small gate built into it. As they emerged through to the other side, Barlow took a slow breath; the sight of the thing always gave her a yawning feeling in her stomach.