Preparations for a Feast
In the dark heart of Cospinol’s great wooden skyship they boiled
a demigod. Her wings and legs had been broken with hammers to
fit them inside the iron cooker – a witchsphere now strengthened
to resist steam at high pressure. It was clamped in a mighty vice
set upon a brazier. A lead pipe fed carbolic water in through a
nozzle in its panelled shell. Another pipe channelled the
demigod’s spirit to a glass condenser, for collection.
For fifty days the slaves had pumped water and stoked the brazier
while red shadow-figures loomed over them like some
infernal puppet show. Centuries of heat had blackened the planks
behind the cooker and its flue. Steam issued from valves and
moiled these tarry bulkheads, but the workers neither perspired
nor complained.They moved with the mute efficacy of men long
used to this task. All around them the Rotsward juddered and
pitched, her joints sorely tested by her captain’s desperate flight
westwards.
The slaves observed sparkling liquid gather in the condenser
flask like a colloid of starlight, and then creep up the glass and
cascade back down in furious scintillations. It whispered to itself
in voices edged with madness. They paused to study the vice
clamps each time the cooking sphere shuddered or boomed.Yesterday they’d brought back their hammers and laid them out on the floor where they could be reached in a hurry, poor weapons as they were. And then they added more coke and curried the furnace with blasts of air from bellows. The booming sounds intensified as Carnival continued to kick at her pressurized prison from within.
A boy with hooks for fingers watched the stewing process from
a crawlspace above the chamber ceiling, his small red face afloat
in the gloom up there.Why didn’t the demigod just die? He had
never seen Cospinol’s workers take so long over a boiling. Only
after the light had bubbled clean out of her would they tip out the
water from the sphere and let him fill his kettle. The black tin
vessel was the only one of his six possessions that he had not
stolen, and he glared at it now as if apportuning blame. It
remained mournfully empty.
He looked on for a while longer then scratched another line
into the ceiling joist, joining up four vertical gouges with a long
diagonal.Then he turned and wriggled back down the passage in
the direction he had come.
Smoke from the burning city below the skyship had leached
freely into her tattered wooden hull. Air currents buffeted her
endlessly. She rolled and creaked; she sounded as though she
would not survive for much longer.The boy hummed a fragment
of a battle march he had once heard, repeating the same notes
over and over again just to block out the other frightening sounds.
He blinked and rubbed his eyes with his sleeve. His shirt smelled
of brimstone. He crawled onwards, deeper into the maze of filthy
ducts and passageways.
Urgent voices came from the stern: the god of brine and fog
himself, clearly angry; and a woman with a strange soft accent.
The hook-fingered boy wormed around another bend and found
a place where he could peer down through one of the many perforations in the floor.
‘. . . the assassin saw everything,’ Cospinol was saying. ‘Coreollis is levelled, Rys’s palace reduced to ashes by some unknown cataclysm. Are my brothers dead or simply scheming?’ He paced before a bank of windows at the far side of the room, his crab-shell armour clicking with each step. Lank strands of guano-coloured hair fell back from his noble face and rested in the hollow between his wings. Behind him the windows framed nothing but fog, crosshatched by the dim lines of the Rotsward’s gallows. ‘All Rys’s
Northmen are now slain or have fled,’ he went on, ‘Pollack’s Outcasts, too. The war was over when King Menoa released his arconites.’
A female voice responded: ‘The war is not over, Lord Cospinol.
Have some faith in providence.’
The hook-fingered boy adjusted his position over the hole to
see who had spoken. Directly underneath his hiding place sat a
woman in a cowled grey robe, red gloves clutching a tiny scrag of
a dog to her chest. But then the boy peered closer and saw that
the gloves weren’t gloves at all: the woman had glass scales for
skin.
A Mesmerist witch?
Cospinol halted his pacing, his pinched expression evidence of
this verbal lash against his pride. ‘Whose providence? My mother
Ayen’s?’ he snapped. ‘Or were you referring to my missing brothers?
Are they truly lost or just scheming? It matters little. Mirith
is a mad coward and knew nothing of warfare. Rys, Hafe and
Sabor possessed some skill on the battlefield, but they were all in
Rys’s bastion when it fell. Likely their souls are now lost in Hell.
And Hasp is useless to us,’ he looked away from the woman. ‘No
offence intended, Hasp.’
From up here the boy could not see the room’s third occupant,
but the reply sounded gruff and fierce. ‘I am well aware of my
value to you, Cospinol.’
The woman, too, glanced back at the hidden speaker, and then
returned her gaze to the old sea god. ‘Your own providence, Lord
Cospinol. You must seize control of this wayward situation.Many
of Rys’s Northmen fled the battlefield at Larnaig. Hafe’s troops
are now leaderless and there are militia abroad.Tens of thousands
of men, armed and ready to fight.’
Cospinol threw up his arms. ‘To what end? Menoa’s arconites
cannot be killed.We learned that in Skirl.’
‘If you do not recruit them, Menoa certainly will.’
He snorted. ‘Menoa will simply disband them, or murder
them.’
‘He’s not that much of a fool. Rys’s disappearance has robbed
these warriors of their leaders, their purpose, and their income.
How will they earn wages to feed their families?’
‘You really think these soldiers would actually turn traitor and
fight for their sworn enemy?’
‘They will unless they prefer to starve.’ She set the dog down
on the floor, whereupon it pissed and then sniffed at the pool it
had made. ‘Menoa uses lies and persuasion on people. In Hell he
turned the dead to his purposes, and he will do the same in this
world. Lord Cospinol, if you yourself do not recruit these men,
the King’s arconites will soon acquire a foot army at their heels.
We do not need any more foes.’
The sea god shook his head. ‘How can I be expected to maintain an army? They will devour the Rotsward’s stores like an infestation of weevils, and then empty my coffers of gold. And when we’re out of turnips and coins they’ll come looking for soulpearls, mark my words.’ He gave a short bitter laugh. ‘Yet I must employ these purposeless men simply to prevent them from being used against me – legions of combatants who are entirely useless against my real enemies.’
‘They cannot fight Menoa’s arconites, but they can still fight.’
‘Fight who?’ he exclaimed.
The witch’s dog growled, and nudged her leg. She picked it up
again. ‘Since we are defeated, ill-equipped and presently fleeing
for our lives, I propose we pick a fight with a new foe.’
Cospinol just stared at her, but a great gruff laugh came from
the back of the cabin. The boy could not see the room’s third
occupant, but he heard Hasp’s deep voice booming out; ‘I think I
see where this is going. Oh, Mina, you’ve offered us an end that
will shake history!’
The conversation went on, but the boy had lost interest.He was
watching a beetle crawl along the dank wooden passageway. He
stabbed his steel fingers down around it, trapping it in a cage.
The beetle tested its prison. The boy watched its antennae
moving, and its gossamer legs. He scooped it up and ate it, then
slouched back a bit and began to scratch a maze into the passageway wall.Then, bored with that, too, he crawled further down the rotting conduit into deeper gloom, and on through a ragged hole that snagged his sailcloth breeches. He found Monk waiting for him in a narrow gap between an inner bulkhead and the
Rotsward’s cannonball-chewed outer hull.
Monk claimed to be an astronomer, but he wore an old musketeer’s
uniform and looked like a gravedigger’s apprentice. He
squatted there with his filthy knees poking through the holes in his
breeches, like partially unearthed skulls. His eyes were as fat and
moist as globes of frogspawn, their black pupils trembling as he
searched the shadows. He clutched a wooden bowl and spoon.
‘Who’s that?’ he said. ‘Boy? Don’t skulk in the dark.Where is my
soup?’
The boy shrugged. ‘They’re still boiling her,’ he said.
‘After twenty days?’
‘Fifty days. She’s still kicking at the inside of the pot.’
Monk frowned and set down his bowl and spoon. ‘You could
kill me a gull,’ he muttered.
‘Ain’t any gulls here,’ the boy replied. ‘The air’s too smoky.
There’s crows, though, down there on the battlefield and in the
city.You can hear them from the lower gallows.’
Monk said, ‘I wouldn’t go to the gallows, not to hear no birds
cawking.’
The astronomer had been dead for a hundred and fifty years,
or so he said. He wouldn’t return to the Rotsward’s gallows, not
ever. Not after all the time he’d spent hanging out there on a
gibbet next to that wailing filibuster from Cog. Besides, they were
liable to just string him up again if he went outside, weren’t they?
No, it was best to hide in here, stay quiet, and keep our heads
down. Have to stick up for each other, lad. Share all the beetles
and birds’ eggs we find between us.
But Monk never found any beetles or birds’ eggs. He never left
his hiding place, never got up except to stagger down to the big
hole in the hull where he kept his musket and his battered old
sightglass.
Monk followed the boy’s gaze. ‘No stars last night,’ he said bitterly.
‘Maybe there aren’t no stars no more,’ the boy replied. ‘Maybe
they all fell down like Cospinol did.What if Pandemeria is now
full of gods, and the skies above are black and empty?’
‘I don’t think we’re in Pandemeria anymore,’ Monk said. ‘Last
I saw of the world was when they cut me from my gibbet to fight
at Skirl.’ His gaze now focused inwards on his own memories.
‘Needed us old veterans to stand against the Maze King’s first
giant,’ he said. ‘Guaranteed freedom for those who took up arms
against that thing.’ His tone became animated and mocking, ‘“No
more gins or nooses and that’s a promise.”’ He spat. ‘Fat lot of
use, anyway. You can’t kill a thing that can’t be killed. And we
couldn’t even see to shoot at it in this damn fog.’
Monk had been in Pandemeria during the uprising, attached to
Shelagh Benedict Cooper’s Musketeers. He said he’d read the
stars for Shelagh herself, and shot seven Mesmerists too.
‘Never saw the stars neither,’ he went on. ‘None of us could
leave the fog without just melting away into Hell.We started to
fade as soon as they lowered us from the Rotsward’s deck, and
when our feet touched the ground we were nothing but ghosts on
the battlefield, spectres dragging muskets we could hardly lift.We
were about as effective against the Skirl arconite as a fart blowing
round its heels.’
‘Because Cospinol ate your eternal souls?’
Monk nodded. ‘Because he did that. He even took the stars
away from me.’
‘I don’t want to leave anyway,’ the boy said. ‘I like it here.’
‘You like tormenting the god of brine,’ Monk observed. ‘He’ll
chop your head off if he catches you.’
The boy just grinned. ‘Then I’ll make myself a new head, a
metal one.’
‘Shape-shifters,’ Monk sighed. ‘You all think you can do what
you like. How are you going to make yourself a new head if you
don’t have a mind to imagine the shape and feel of it, eh? It’s not
like forging those fancy new fingers of yours.’ He made a chopping
motion with his hand. ‘One deft shnick and that’ll be the end
of you. Cospinol won’t be bothered about losing one soul to the
Maze, not when he has so many hanging in his gibbets already.’
The boy shrugged. He hadn’t thought of that.
‘Don’t see why you can’t change yourself into something useful
for once,’ the astronomer said. ‘Something to help your old friend
Monk pass the time.’ His eyes narrowed, the pupils like pinholes
into some cruel realm of night. ‘A weapon, maybe . . . or something
softer.’
‘I’m not a shiftblade!’ the boy cried. ‘I’m not like them.’
The old man chewed his lip. ‘No, you’re a good lad who brings
his friend Monk kettles of soup. Except there’s no soup because
that scarred angel just won’t die in her cooker. Fifty days? What
the hell is wrong with her?’ He looked at the boy. ‘You wouldn’t
be holding out on me?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t be lying to your old friend Monk?’
‘No.’
‘So you won’t mind if we go take a look together?’
‘But . . .’ The boy took a moment to assemble his jumbled
thoughts. ‘You don’t go anywhere.’
‘And you were counting on that?’The old man surged forward
and grabbed the boy by the nape and dragged him back down
through the sloping inner space of the hull, his grey hair as wild
as a busted cord of wire.
The boy panicked and began to change into something else, he
hardly knew what, but he felt his bones began to wilt.
Monk punched him in the face. ‘None of that,’ he growled.
‘You’ll keep the bloody shape you were born with, for once.’
The shock of admonishment emptied the young shape-shifter’s
mind. He scrabbled against the inner bulkhead, his fingers scraping
gouges in the wood. But Monk simply stuffed him back into
the narrow conduit and pushed the boy ahead of him like a clot
of rags. ‘Which way now?’ he demanded. ‘Larboard or starboard?’
Not knowing, the boy turned left, and they bumped and
shuffled onwards in a noisy brawl of knees and elbows.
Once they reached the crawlspace Monk shoved the boy aside
and peered down through the spyhole. The brass buttons on his
epaulettes shone dully in the light of the brazier below, while the
hooked tip of his nose glowed like a torch-heated spigot. He was
silent for a long time.
The boy looked at the kettle on its hook above the spyhole, and
then he looked at the astronomer’s head.
‘A witchsphere,’ Monk whispered. ‘And they’ve reinforced it.’
He frowned. ‘Witchspheres don’t open from the inside and they
don’t break.They were designed to contain a whole world of torment.’
His frown deepened. ‘So why bother to reinforce it?’
From the chamber below came a mighty boom. Steam blasted
up through the gap.The astronomer flinched.
‘That’s why,’ the boy said.
Monk stared into the shadows for a moment. ‘She just kicked
at that like a babe in a womb.’
‘Told you,’ the boy said.
The old man rubbed condensation from his brow.With a grim
expression he went back to studying the cooker below. ‘The vice
plates have been arranged to keep pressure on those core panels,’
he said. ‘But those braces set against the top curve haven’t been
welded properly.Witchsphere metal won’t take welds. That’s the
weakest point. Come here, boy, look where I show you.’
The boy did as he was told. He saw the witchsphere clamped
in its vice over the brazier, the hot coals, the pipes, wheel-valves
and a whole nest of steaming iron braces. Cospinol’s slaves were
shovelling coke and pumping in air through leather bellows.White
light boiled inside the condenser flask and threw long mechanistic
shadows across the floor.
‘Those plates are held together by bolts through opposing corners.
You can see where they fused the nuts into the flanges.That’s
just normal steel.’ The astronomer scratched his chin. ‘But the
braces are only fixed at their outer ends, and those joints have
already started to rust in this steam.A good whack with a hammer
would break through them quick enough.’
‘But she’ll get out.’
Monk looked back down at the witchsphere for a long moment,
chewing his lips again. ‘The sphere will leak enough for us to fill
our kettle, before the slaves reinforce it again.That’s all.’Then he
shrugged. ‘But if she gets out, she gets out.’ He grinned. ‘That’s
what they call someone else’s problem.’
