The Iron Ship (56 page)

“This is your last chance! Return to your homes, or we will have no choice but to remove you by force! Some of you will die! Many of you will die!”

Alanrys’s monstrous mount pawed at the ground. Plumes of steam snorted from its nostrils.

“We will not be cowed! We will not live like animals!” shouted the demagogue.

“You bring this upon yourselves,” said Alanrys. He drew his sabre and held it high over his head.

“Lances!” he shouted. Three dozen guns were put up. Three dozen lance points dropped. The men of the second rank kept their carbines trained upon the crowd.

“Stand firm!” shouted the demagogue. Murmurs of assent grew in strength. The crowd swelled forward, seeming to grow in size.

Katriona was caught halfway between the crowd and the soldiers. Fifty yards of even ground separated them. If the dragoons charged, it would be slaughter. She turned from one to the other. “Stop! Stop! I will listen to your demands, I swear.”

“This night some of us may die!” called the demagogue. “But the world will take notice! We spill our blood in the names of all those who toil for selfish masters! Let the workers of Ruthnia unite! Today is the beginning of revolution!”

“As you wish,” said Alanrys.

Etwen’s resolve wavered. He lowered his cudgel. “No, wait—” he began.

“Fire!” ordered Alanrys. His arm dropped.

The blast of fifty ironlock carbines discharging simultaneously ripped the night in half. Glimmering trails of blue marked the passage of the bullets across the open ground. Katriona screamed as they found their marks in the crowd, punching men and women off their feet, blasting limbs from bodies, shattering skulls. The slain flew backwards with the force of the impact. The crowd shifted, moaning, a single creature dealt a grievous blow.

“Charge!” shouted Alanrys.

Bugles sounded. Dracons roared and sprang forward. Faced with the reality of its peril, the crowd disintegrated.

The dracons poured past Katriona, snapping and croaking, their riders holding their lances in deadly stillness, targets marked. Pennants she had once thought so bright and bold whickered murderously past her ears, each chasing a foot of sharpened steel.

The dragoons rode headlong into the crowd. Every spear accounted for one life. The impact of the charge bowled over dozens more rioters. Many died under the bladed claws of the dracons. The crowd screamed, a shrill and horrible noise from five hundred throats.

The real slaughter began.

The dragoons unsheathed their sabres, and lay about them. The dracons leapt high, bearing down fleeing men to the ground and ripping them to pieces. Workers scattered in all directions. Some hurled themselves into the filthy trickle of the Morthrocksey. Some ran as hard as they could for the railyards and the wall at the far side of the complex. Others dove into the alleyways between the factory sheds, tugging wildly at locked doors. Another group pushed past the line of dragoons, whose efforts to subdue the crowd had broken them up into small knots of two or three. These ran right at Alanrys’s second line.

“Reload!” Alanrys said.

“Goodlady Kat!”

A small hand grabbed her ankle. The dragoons fired. The bullet passed through her, but she was not wholly there, she was a mist, the bullet a breeze.

“Do not open your eyes, Mistress Kat,” warned Tyn Lydar. “Do not open your eyes, or you shall never return.”

“I am cold.”

“This place is not of the Earth.” Tyn Lydar’s voice was layered, a multiple of voices speaking as one. Like the crowd, one from a multitude. “Do not open your eyes.”

Kat did as she was told, keeping her eyes screwed shut, terrified they would flicker open. There was a sense of movement all around her, of presences that watched and waited.

She could still hear the battle, distant, but present. Screams. Gunfire. Isolated now, no longer massed volleys.

Carriage wheels clattered. Dogs bayed. She heard a familiar voice. It kindled warmth in her heart. She started forward. The fingers slipped from around her ankle.

“Goodlady!”

“Demion!” she called.

She followed his voice, flying faster as it grew louder. Demion was shouting, remonstrating with a soldier, not Alanrys. He mustn’t. Alanrys was dangerous, Alanrys...

Reality quivered against her, the membranes of being struck like a drum. She was readmitted, stumbling onto the cobbles.

Warmth returned, the fierce heat of burning buildings. The screams were loud once more, but few in number. Dracons croaked rather than roared. Someone was sobbing close by. She looked around her feet. There was no one there. And then there was. Tyn Lydar appeared. Tyn Lorl too, and Tyn Elly. The whites of Tyn Elly’s eyes were blood red. The collars of both female Tyn glowed dull orange, the scarves they wore around them gone to ash. The stink of burnt flesh came off them. Tyn Lorl lay upon the ground and did not move.

“Dead,” said Tyn Lydar. “Dead, dead, dead.” She stared accusingly at Katriona. “One less of those who are too few to begin with.”

“Katriona!” called Demion. “I came as quickly as I could.” He took her upper arms in his hands. “What happened?”

“The... the workers. A riot. It was the concessions I gave to the Tyn, but I think there was someone...” She pulled away from him. She looked over the fallen. The wounded cradled the dead. There were body parts strewn across the ground, and blood, black slicks of it glinting in the light of her burning factories.

There.

She pulled from Demion’s grip, ran to where the demagogue lay fallen. A bullet had taken his shoulder, leaving a bloody mess in its place. The parallel claw-strokes of a dracon had opened his belly. One hand was draped on this wound, fingers in the flow of blood pulsing from it. He lay in a lake of his own fluids. Incredibly, he was still alive. Demion was at her shoulder.

“Kuh... Kuk... Kuh...”

She lifted his head. His blood soaked warmly through her sleeve. “Do not die! Please. Stay with us here. Do not let your spirit go. If you remain, I will do my best to see your demands are met. I did not know, I swear I did not know.”

He mouthed something, she leaned in closer.

“Only because you chose not to know.” His voice was a breath, barely audible.

Something wriggled against her ear. She jerked back.

The flesh of the man’s face writhed as if infested with worms. His head snapped from side to side and he cried out.

“Hold on!” she cried. “Please! Someone help!” But people sat in the gore of their fellows, and none came to her. When she looked back to the man, she gasped with shock.

Holdean Morthrock was in her arms.

“Holdean!” Demion’s exclamation was as explosive as a gunshot.

Holdean smiled at Katriona viciously. Blood welled from the corner of his mouth. “You got what you deserved.” He coughed. A flood of dark fluid rose from his lips. The bleeding from the claw mark to his chest was easing.

“Why did you do it?” she said. “How?”

He held a palsied finger to his bloody lips, and died.

Katriona turned questioningly to her husband. He stared back at her, uncomprehending. He pulled her to her feet.

Reptilian croaks and rattles broke the eerie calm. The dragoons were returning. Their sergeants and lieutenants barked orders. The reptiles were hard to control with air so heavily laden with blood. A soldier rode past, wrestling with the reins of his dracon. His features contorted with the effort.

One dracon lay dead, scales opened by industrial knives. A soldier limped past, supported by two of his colleagues. One of them stared ahead, face white, mouth hanging open. His eyes were as dead and flat as those of the survivors of the massacre. A trooper on foot fought his mount, attempting to close the muzzling plates of its chamfron. Red jaws snapped at his face.

A woman’s wail cut across the street, rising, falling.

Etwen was being led across the square in chains. Two of Alanrys’s men had him by the shoulders, their dracons being led by two more behind them.

Etwen stared Katriona dead in the eye. “Our conditions are poor. Giving the Tyn that treatment, it made them angry.”

“Hold a moment!” said Demion as the soldiers made to drag him on. “Why was Goodman Holdean agitating you?”

“Holdean?” said Etwen.

“The demagogue,” said Katriona.

Etwen looked blank.

“The rabble rouser, man!” said Demion.

“The philosopher? That weren’t Goodman Holdean, that were a new man. Only been here a few weeks, but he had big ideas. Made us think we could get something. More fool us.” He looked to the floor.

“I promise I will look into it. I will listen to your grievances.”

“You won’t be listening to his,” said Alanrys. “He’ll be hung in the morning. Take him away!”

“Please look to my children!” called Etwen as he was dragged off.

“I will,” said Katriona.

“How very large-hearted of you,” scoffed Alanrys. “Here I am putting down a gross act of civil disobedience for your benefit, and you are offering to tend to their hurts. You should throw them out on the street, or others will follow in his footsteps, mark my words. But you never did know what was good for you Katriona. Perhaps next time we meet, you will learn your lesson properly.”

Demion stood straight, chest out. “Look here! I think you better leave. If I see you near my wife or our business again, I will personally see that you are brought up on charges. The name of Morthrock carries weight in powerful circles, Alanrys. My father is owed many favours still. Do not provoke me into calling them in.”

Alanrys slapped his gloves into his hand. Both gloves and hands were caked in blood.

“The lapdog barks,” he said. “Very well, I shall leave your factory in your hands, courtesy of the 3rd Karsan Dragoons. I expect thanks shall be forthcoming later.” He snapped a bow, and went to gather his men.

People ventured in from outside, searching for sons and husbands. Fire engines arrived, four teams from different firehouses. Their firechiefs ignored the carnage around them and began arguing about who would take the job.

“Oh for the love of the departed gods! All of you, put out the godsdamned fire and you’ll all be paid!” shouted Demion. “Get on with it or we’ll lose more than the two mills!”

He left Katriona for a moment and went to remonstrate with them. By now both factory sheds were fiercely ablaze. An explosion sent a mushroom of fire into the sky. Her heart was as heavy as stone.

Demion returned.

“Alanrys is right,” she said. “Father is right. This is what happens when a woman steps outside the bounds of her rightful station.” Katriona wept freely. Demion embraced her and she sank into his arms.

“That is not the case, my love. This is what happens when the established order is challenged. The sex of the challenger has nothing to do with it.” He cupped her face in his hands. “The truth is, you are brave enough to do it, I am not. We will triumph over this adversity, you will see.”

She nodded. She opened her mouth to begin speaking of improvements in the workers’ conditions of both races but surprised them both by kissing him passionately and deeply.

He pulled back, astonished. “I...”

“Don’t say anything. Please.”

He cleared his throat. “We should get you home. I must call in the physics to tend to the wounded, and the Guiders or we will have a second disaster on our hands. So much violent death...”

“I am staying with you,” she said.

“Are you sure, my dear?”

She took his hand. “We shall do this together.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The Twin and Mansanio

T
HE COUNTESS OF
Mogawn sat in a high leather armchair in the centre of her orrery. The heavenly spheres clicked overhead, round and round and round, dancing in a wooden sky.

The fires of the Twin were growing in frequency and anger. There was an answer why. Why could she not see it?

Am I to be alone forever?

She chased the thought away angrily. Now was not the time. She stared at the Twin. Was the model correct? While she had sat there, hundreds of years of celestial movements spun by. The gearing was complex. Each model world was designed to follow a path as the real spheres would, changing their cycles gradually in reaction to the proximity of others. This incremental stacking of variables produced complex patterns that she could not have predicted. That was why she had built the machine. She had laid out the pieces of the puzzle and set them in motion, now she watched it for hours, trusting it to solve itself.

The precession of the Earth, perhaps? The subtle wobble of the axis under the influence of the other spheres? Twenty times the Earth went around the bronze sun. A sun cast at her bidding! How droll, she thought rancorously. The Earth shifted slightly in its gimbals. She stared down at the equations scribbled over the papers in her hand. That might make a difference to the weather, the net input of energy from the sun to various quarters of the polar regions would vary. So much heat, it had to go somewhere. But how could that lead to the downfall of two, maybe more, civilisations in the flush of their art? A global shift? She thought no. No evidence. Nothing empiric or magick to suggest something of that scale.

With each accelerated year described by the orbs, the Twin came closer and closer to the Earth. It clunked as the chains propelling it shifted on its gears. Of course the machine was limited but...

Everything was limited. She was limited. How could she hope to hold the dance of the spheres in her mind? Some men respected her for her mind. She had learned early in life that was no substitute for a pretty face. Wealth and beauty were what men craved; succession was what the parents of men craved. These things could meet in happy confluence. Happy for the suitor, and sometimes the bride. Mind rarely came into that. Best to be beautiful and rich. If one were stupid or narrow of vision, so what? If not rich, then the next best thing was to be beautiful and poor. Then it paid to be intelligent. A pretty, clever women could go where she would with a hatful of empty promises and the occasional distasteful compromise, no matter her initial station. Poor, beautiful and stupid was a bad combination, and ended in misery. A man could forgive an intelligent, beautiful woman her own opinions, especially if she added her wealth to his. If ugly, rich and stupid, nobody cared. A prize chased solely for advancement, doomed to an unhappy life, but never alone. Ugly, rich and intelligent?