Tinkerer turned the lamplight back on the dying man, head angled in curiosity. “Why?”
The man fumbled for something in the pocket of his besmirched clothes, coming out with a small glass vial. “It’s time,” he rasped, holding the vial out to Tinkerer. “She’ll be coming . . . soon. Need to be ready.”
Tinkerer took the vial, Lizanne recognising the hue as he played the lamplight over it. Blue.
“Ready for what?” Tinkerer enquired, his voice betraying only mild interest, which Lizanne suspected concealed a raging curiosity.
The man grunted out a wheezing laugh, baring half-rotted teeth in what was probably his first smile in decades. “Escape . . . you little shit. What else?” He held out the vial. “Drink.”
Lizanne watched Tinkerer take the vial and lift it to his lips then hand it back to the dying man. “If you do happen to find the Artisan’s ghost one day,” he said, tipping the remaining Blue down his throat, “give them my undying hate.”
He leaned forward then, grunting with the effort, staring into Tinkerer’s eyes. The trance shifted again, the chamber fading into a black void, absent of light or sensation. Lizanne had experienced shallow minds before, mostly lacking in thought or imagination, but nothing as completely empty as this. She searched for Tinkerer but found nothing. Somehow, he had been removed from a memory in his trance. Then she saw something in the dark, a small bright glimmer in the void. It grew as she went to it and she saw it to be a metal box, spinning in the darkness, a box of gears and cogs that caught the non-existent light as it spun and spun. A box she had seen before. The solargraph-cum-music-box that had once belonged to Tekela’s father. The work of the Artisan’s very own hand that had set her and Clay on this path. The mystery they had spent many hours trying to unlock in Jermayah’s workshop.
The trance vanished. Lizanne found herself blinking into Tinkerer’s blank gaze. For a long moment neither of them said anything.
“Well?” Lizanne demanded as the silence stretched.
“That is all I can give you.”
“For your sake, I hope that is a lie.”
“I showed you all that I can.”
“There has to be more.”
“There is. But it is behind a lock I cannot undo. But now you know the key.”
The solargraph, she thought. The solargraph is the key. Everything always comes back to that damned box. “You know how it works?” she said, jaw clenched as she bit down on her frustration.
“No. But if you want the memories in my head, you will have to find it and make it work.”
Lizanne swallowed a hard, bitter laugh. “All those tales you had to tell me,” she said. “Of his days in Arradsia, his many discoveries. Of the women he loved and the men he hated. You don’t actually know any of it, do you?”
“No more than educated guesses.” He angled his head, frowning in marginal confusion. “I would have thought someone in your profession would appreciate creative dishonesty when demanded by necessity. You were always my only means of escape.”
She turned away from him, clenching her fists to stop herself reaching for her revolver. “You were expecting me,” she realised after taking a series of calming breaths. “That man, he said, ‘She’ll be coming soon.’ He was referring to me, wasn’t he?”
“I expect so. I believe it was a vision shared with him by his predecessor. But not one he chose to share with me. Out of spite, I suspect.” Tinkerer paused, raising his gaze to the cabin roof as a loud pealing cry sounded throughout the ship. “What is that?” he enquired.
“The ship’s siren,” Lizanne said, refusing to be distracted. “How could he possibly have known I would be there?”
Tinkerer’s eyes narrowed slightly in a gesture she had come to recognise as bemusement at the stupidity of others. “A question I pondered briefly until the answer became obvious, once all other possibilities had been discounted.”
Lizanne winced as the ship’s siren came again, three long blasts. He didn’t know, she thought, striving to concentrate. The Artisan knew, centuries ago . . . “The future,” she said as the answer came to her in a rush. “He saw the future.”
“Yes. Though quite how I do not know. I suspect the answer is locked away with the other memories.”
But she already knew the answer. White blood. Lizanne experienced a small moment of inner triumph stirred by at least knowing one thing he didn’t. The Artisan must have drunk White blood.
“That sounds urgent,” Tinkerer said as the siren sounded again.
“Stay here,” she said, rising from the bunk and moving to the door.
“What does it mean?” he enquired.
She paused to glance back at him, wondering if it might be better to get him to a life-boat whilst there was still time. But she knew it to be a desperate notion; they would scarcely be any safer adrift on the high seas than on a Protectorate battleship.
“Enemy in sight,” she replied. “If the guns start up, lie down on the deck. If the White’s forces seize the ship, I advise you to find the most efficient means of killing yourself.” With that she hauled the door closed and started off along the passageway at a run, making for the bridge.
CHAPTER 3
Sirus
Slaves we may be. Monsters we may be. But if we can be merciful, can we not love too?
Katrya’s words drifted through his head like the whisper of a morning breeze, kept deliberately faint by the fear he used to cloud the image of her death whenever it arose. But still it was hard not to dwell on the sight of her scaled, despoiled features, so vibrant at the end, glowing with triumph during that last instant before his bullet tore through her head. We can be merciful . . .
The words felt like the distant echo of a bad joke as he surveyed the city below, the view being preferable to the spectacle unfolding behind him on the roof-top. He could see neat columns of Spoiled moving through the streets towards their billets in the dock-side warehouses. Smaller parties were engaged in a methodical search of every house, workshop, shed and sewer for any Feros citizens who had survived the assault and so far escaped capture. Many of those doing the searching had been citizens themselves only days before and Sirus wondered how many sons or daughters had been dragged from their hiding-places to find themselves staring into the distorted visages of their parents.
He stood atop the imposing fortress-like tower that had been, until very recently, the headquarters of the entire Ironship Syndicate. The White had chosen to nest on the building’s broad flat roof, along with its clutch of adolescent kin. Also present was the Blood-blessed Mandinorian woman who had inexplicably arrived on a passenger liner the day after their seizure of Feros. So far, she was the only one of her kind not to face near-immediate slaughter upon entering the White’s company. Instead she had received instant elevation to the pinnacle of this monstrous army, something that Sirus found piqued his pride in no small measure, much to his self-disgust. Morradin had been quick with his taunts, sensing Sirus’s resentment with grating ease. General no longer, eh? Victory, it seems, brings no reward in the Legion of Flame. For such a self-interested soul the former Grand Marshal had a remarkable facility for divining the feelings of others.