I didn’t particularly want to get into that longboat. I know that might seem obvious—but the characters in Mary’s books always seem to relish the chance to plunge headlong into danger, so sometimes I feel like I need to be clear on the matter.
I didn’t want to get in the longboat. I didn’t want to drift down into those moaning ruins. I certainly didn’t want to fight my way through the ghosts of Galtir for the dubious privilege of facing down Wraithwood and his machine.
But in at least one respect, Barsby had done me a favour. The memory of his militant cowardice remained freshly imprinted on my mind—a reminder that made my stomach turn every time I considered turning back at the last moment.
Courage is an airy, indistinct idea. Contempt is much stronger and more certain. Sometimes, contempt for the person you don’t want to become can get you through those times when courage otherwise falters.
I held silent as we unmoored the longboat from the Rose, floating our way through an expanse of dead farmlands outside of Galtir. I fixed Barsby’s scornful expression in my mind as we approached the capital’s eastern walls. I reminded myself that there wasn’t really any point in running.
Old craters dotted the ruined fields around us, peppered with the corpses of warships, outflyers, and armoured ground vehicles. Wandering wisps huddled in bombed-out, hastily erected fortifications as we passed. Most of them were probably doomed civilians—but at least a few of them might have been members of the Coalition’s ground forces. That angle of attack had failed spectacularly… and now, I had a good idea of why it had failed.
From the ground, I fully appreciated the leviathan task that the Coalition’s ground forces had faced. The city’s walls were impossibly tall and intimidating, even in their ruined state; the fractured stone now looked like a great expanse of mangled teeth, set into the mouth of some alien giant. The slums outside of the urban centre had fallen quickly to Coalition control, but the older parts of the city that crouched behind these walls had been desperately beyond their power.
Today, however, the cracks in the stone offered a glimpse of the city’s ultimate downfall, glowing in the distance like an azure coal. There were no walls in the north-eastern portion of the city—it was as though a giant had taken an enormous bite out of the area, leaving the city exposed.
Only the skeletal frame of the Sovereign Majesty had survived its demise. The formidable craft’s corpse sat nestled in a glowing nest of sharp, towering glass and aether-scorched earth. Once, the area surrounding the wreckage had been tightly packed with buildings; now, the empty space where they should have been was an obvious gaping wound. Nothing at all grew at the centre of that crater—but near its edges, scorched earth slowly gave way to scrub grass, which soon gave way in turn to thick grey fields of overgrown ruins.
Much closer to where we were, a few fragile buildings breached the tall grass—as though some divine hand had chosen them to survive, seemingly at random. Behind us, the pattern continued, until the city gradually began to exist.
Those ashen fields weren’t entirely empty, of course. The air above them teemed with flickering shades. The distant aether-ghosts replayed their last moments over and over, entirely unaware that the buildings they’d once inhabited were no more. From a distance, their individual forms blurred together like unnerving stars to form macabre constellations. More of them filled the buildings beyond, lighting them from within like ghoulish lanterns.
The sheer number of echoes was staggering. Pelaeia had been terrible—but the sheer scale of the destruction there barely compared.
“They should never have flown that ship over the city,” Mr Finch murmured behind me. Subdued horror tinged his voice. “What were they thinking?”
“They were thinkin’ they couldn’t possibly lose,” Lenore said grimly. Her tone was flat and tired, as she took in the carnage that surrounded us.
The Caliban’s warning klaxons danced at the back of my mind, distracting me. I rubbed uncomfortably at the old, faded scar on my palm where the drop-line had bloodied my grip.
Aesir had navigated us to the edge of the city in silence, with a pale cast to his features. But he spoke now, gesturing ahead. “We’re close enough tae start splittin’ hairs,” he said. “Which way are we goin’?”
I forced myself back to the present, breathing in deeply. “Syrene?” I asked. “We could use a fresh heading on Strahl.”
I didn’t receive a response, precisely—but Aesir’s eyes flickered to the longboat’s controls, where there was a compass set into the panel. Even from where I stood, I could tell that the arrow on that compass was pointing slightly off from north.
“Please tell me that isn’t pointing us where I think it’s pointing us,” I groaned softly.
“Yer no’ far off,” Aesir said, with a hint of bleakness in his voice. “We’re definitely headed intae the city. An’ I think we’ll be passin’ through that big crater. We’re no’ pointin’ right at the centre, though, fer what it’s worth.”
I rubbed at my face. “Small mercies,” I mumbled.
“Is there any reason Wraithwood would be in that area in particular?” Miss Hawkins asked slowly.
I wracked my brain, trying to piece together what I’d learned about the battle in the days afterwards. “I think there was fighting on the ground, up to the northwest,” I answered, furrowing my brow. “Coalition forces established a foothold. They nearly breached the wall. Imperial forces converged to force them back.”
“Many of the Imperium’s finest soldiers were there,” Mr Finch observed quietly. “I believe they were caught in the area when the navy bombarded it with aether. There must be an entire company of echoes there.”
I shuddered at the idea. In Old Pelaeia, even the terrified echoes of innocent civilians had posed a mortal danger to us. I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would be to face a trained, professional army of aether-ghosts with Wraithwood at its helm.
“We need to move quickly,” I said, with renewed urgency. “Let’s keep heading north until the wall gives out, and enter the city from there.”
“Aye-aye,” Aesir murmured. He shot the compass in front of him one last wary look, before turning the longboat to follow the wall.
With every minute we travelled northwards, the blue glow of those gathered echoes grew stronger. Every once in a while, I felt the telltale tingle of aether against my skin as a breeze teased past me from that direction.
“Is it, ah… safe to cut across those fields?” I asked nervously.
“Oh, probably so,” Mr Finch assured me, in a voice that sounded less than absolutely certain.
“Most likely,” Miss Hawkins agreed, with a nervous undercurrent in her tone. “Well. As long as we don’t linger there too long.”
“Yes, we wouldn’t want to be there for long,” Mr Finch added quickly. “I meant to add that qualification, of course.”
Silence fell upon the longboat for a split second, as the rest of us contemplated this exchange.
“—but some precautions wouldn’t go amiss, I’m sure,” Mr Finch said finally.
“One should always take precautions when possible,” Miss Hawkins mumbled worriedly. She rummaged through one of her many armoured pockets to produce a sizable tin, snapping it open and shaking out a handful of large grey tablets into her palm. Hawkins offered them out to each of us, as Mr Finch retrieved a similar pouch from his person.
Lenore raised her eyebrow dubiously at the pill in her hand. “What are these?” she asked.
“Iron tablets,” Mr Finch explained helpfully. He swallowed his own pill down with only a faint grimace. “They’re a common remedy for intense aether exposure. They should help absorb any ambient aether in your body.”
I inspected my pill with a frown. “I’ve never heard of that before,” I said.
Mr Finch adjusted his spectacles with a hint of worry. “They’re normally only for emergencies,” he admitted. “I expect you’ve never been exposed to potentially lethal levels of Seelie aether before.”
“Potentially lethal levels of Seelie aether?” I repeated faintly. “Is that what we’re discussing?”
Aesir lifted his metal hand from the wheel in order to offer back his palm. The moment that Miss Hawkins gave him one of the tablets, he tossed it back casually. “Oh, sure,” he said. “Ah tried to repair a busted core once. Put me down fer almost a week. Learned tae love tha taste ae iron.” He glanced back at me briefly. “Bottoms up, Blair.”
I popped the pill hurriedly into my mouth. The metallic taste made me choke—whereupon I made the ill-advised decision to pull my flask and chase it down with some whiskey.
For future reference: Iron and whiskey do not go well together.
Once I’d finally finished coughing and wiped the tears from my eyes, I realised that Miss Hawkins hadn’t taken a pill of her own. “What about you?” I croaked. “Are there not enough tablets?”
Miss Hawkins shook her head slowly. “I can’t afford to take one,” she said grimly. “It will interfere with my aethermancy. I’ll part the aether around us with my will as best I can. That will have to suffice.”
Aesir slowed the longboat as we approached a large gap in the wall.
The world beyond that wall might as well have been Arcadia. Through that aperture, I saw up close the things I’d previously glimpsed. Hundreds of wisps huddled in the air, casting such bright light that I had to slide my goggles back on. Frightened whispers cascaded past us in a jumbled susurrus, too tangled up to make out any individual words. Tall, aether-bleached grass hissed on the breeze, glimmering with bright blue veins of aether.
I tasted aether on the air. It popped against my skin, soaking into me with a heady, dizzying sensation. Pressure leaned upon us, as though predicting an oncoming storm.
Miss Hawkins lifted her left arm, activating the shield focus upon it. The device whirred briefly, and the pressure around us lifted noticeably. Bright flecks of aether coagulated in the air and then darted away, brushed aside like gleaming snowflakes.
The aether-veined grass before us parted too, folding away to the ground.
Miss Hawkins blinked at the sight, clearly alarmed. I worked my mouth for a few moments, searching for words.
“That is not normal,” I managed finally.
“It is not,” Miss Hawkins confirmed faintly.
Mr Finch fumbled for his pouch, shaking another iron tablet into his palm and shoving it into his mouth.
I cleared my throat nervously, taking in the wavering sea of echoes just ahead. “Miss Hawkins,” I said, “I don’t believe you ever told us what happens if a shade does touch us.”
Hawkins fixed her grey eyes uneasily upon the blurry, glowing figures. “All echoes are, at their core, a pattern of intense lingering memories,” she said. “Tatterdemalions mask that core with a physical form, but shades simply… are their emotions.”
I swallowed. “By which you mean… we’ll experience what they did, just before they died?”
“Yes,” Miss Hawkins replied softly. “That is what I mean.”
I remembered belatedly the way that Hawkins had unravelled after dissolving the fetter in Pelaeia. I died a dozen times on that mountain, she’d said.
Miss Hawkins was a trained aethermancer with an iron will. And yet, the ghosts of Pelaeia had still broken her. I harboured absolutely no illusions about how well the rest of us would fare, under the same circumstances.
“Take us in, Mr MacLeod,” I said, in a voice far steadier than it had any right to be.
Aesir pulled the longboat around uneasily, taking us through the gap with greater care than I was used to in his piloting. The field of aether-bleached grass parted around the vehicle, silently giving way before our aethermancer’s will as we moved.
Past the walls, Aesir settled into a grim concentration, balancing his awareness between the dashboard in front of him and the harrowing course ahead. Shades pressed in around us in ominous flickers of aether. The echoes here were already extremely active; the Majesty had plummeted from the sky around sunset… and the last bit of daylight was slowly outrunning us as we made for the western walls.
There were so many aether-ghosts. The way forward was choked with them. More than once, Aesir was forced to swerve as echoes rose from the depths of the grass, running up flights of stairs to buildings that were now long gone. I’d already instinctively feared them—but now I couldn’t help being aware that each one represented a different terrible death, just waiting to claim me.
No one dared to speak, as Aesir guided us through that field of shades. We all knew what would happen if we distracted him.
To Aesir’s credit, we were almost halfway across that broad expanse before we lost control of the situation.
At that point, the sun had finally dipped below the horizon. Even as its light faded, new shades kindled like candles in the darkness.
Several glowing forms unfolded before us, weeping softly. Aesir brought the longboat up abruptly, barely avoiding a collision. One of the echoes hovered less than a foot away from me. The shade reached out imploringly towards something just behind me. I backpedalled swiftly—but as the sharp tang of aether teased at my nostrils, I found myself stumbling and sneezing.
Lenore caught me by the shoulder as Aesir reversed the longboat, backing away from the slowly manifesting knot of echoes.
“Reckon you’re allergic to ghosts, Cap’n?” she asked. There was a forced lightness in her tone. We’d all become aware that a darker undercurrent was creeping into the whispers that surrounded us.
“I’m definitely allergic to pollen,” I told her, in a slightly stuffy voice. “Maybe that one’s carrying flowers.”
“Hold ontae yer hats!” Aesir called back in alarm. “Ride’s about tae get bumpy!”
My hand went instinctively to my head—but of course, I’d left my hat with Little, back on the ship. That was probably for the best, I thought dimly, as the longboat swerved to avoid another throng of shades that had abruptly appeared behind us.
The sudden shift flung several of us across the boat. Someone screamed. Someone else (probably Lenore) started cursing.
Despite Aesir’s quick reaction, there was little he could do about the shade that suddenly appeared inside the longboat.
I had only a split second to understand what was about to happen, as eerie blue light flickered at my feet, and the sharp prickle of aether slammed into me full-force.
* * *
The tall, swaying grass was gone. The whispering echoes had gone silent.
I was sitting at a window, looking out over the city. Cramped buildings and overly officious Imperial banners blocked much of the view—but I could still see the war-torn sky above me. I stared up at it with a glass of whiskey in my hand.
The fear had finally left me. My fate was entirely out of my hands, and I was too tired to worry about it any further.
Maybe I won’t have to go to work tomorrow, I thought distantly. Well—someone had the thought. I wasn’t entirely certain it was me. Wouldn’t that be something, if the Coalition bombed Jessamina’s shop but left me in one piece? Might serve her right.
The idea was briefly hilarious. I turned it over in my mind as a terrible explosion burst across the sky, lighting up the world around me like a second sun.
That bright, terrible star plummeted for the northeastern part of the city. I don’t know how I knew, in that moment, that I was going to die. I just felt it, all the way down to my toes, as I lifted the glass to my lips. Heat surged against my skin—
* * *
—and suddenly, my breath was gone. Something had knocked it out of me in a very physical way, wrenching me free of the memories that had briefly overtaken my senses.
The sharp tang of ozone cloyed at my mouth. I coughed and spat, trying to disgorge the taste of ghost that still choked me as I stared up at the sky from the floor of the longboat.
The endless wash of blue aether-light that had surrounded us was gone. In its place was a swiftly dissipating red haze, curling off into the air like steam. A familiar rotting scent tickled at my nostrils as Miss Hawkins clutched at her right hand nearby, choking down pained breaths. Something burned white hot at her palm, clashing with the Unseelie aether she’d expended.
“We’re clear,” Aesir managed shakily. “At least fer now.”
I struggled warily up to my knees. “Sound off,” I said breathlessly. “Is everyone all right?” The words slurred a bit on the way out, but I’m fairly sure they caught my meaning anyway.
Miss Hawkins gritted her teeth as the flash of aether at her hand slowly faded. “I’ll be fine… in a moment,” she managed. “I let off some Unseelie aether to scatter the echoes. Galatine always reacts poorly to that sort of thing.” She flexed her fingers with a wince, rubbing at her palm.
“Goodness, that was a rough ride!” Mr Finch gasped from the floor. “I don’t believe I’ve broken anything, at least.” He stumbled upright, nudging his spectacles back into place.
“M’fine,” Lenore slurred. Her tone was unconvincing; I turned and saw that she’d leaned herself heavily against the side of the longboat, clutching at her face. A nasty-looking gash at her brow had spilled a sheet of blood across her features. Mr Finch stumbled towards her, swiftly kneeling again next to her.
“What about you, Blair?” Aesir asked. “Thought ye brushed a shade.”
I shuddered at the reminder. “It… could have been worse,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I moved to Lenore’s other side, letting myself worry over her condition instead. “You look somewhat less than fine,” I told her, as Mr Finch dabbed at her head with his handkerchief.
“I’ve had worse,” Lenore told me darkly. “Stop motherin’ me.”
The red haze of Unseelie aether had chased away most of the nearest shades, leaving a tangled mess of them behind us. Belatedly, I realised that we had nearly reached the edge of the crater; more time had passed during my brush with the shade than I’d expected. Ruined buildings loomed ahead of us, offering somewhat more structure to the shades that flickered in their windows.
Suddenly, I became aware that the last inhabitant of the longboat was now physically present, folded up into a corner of the vessel… and she had not responded to my inquiry.
Syrene’s unnaturally thin form trembled in place. Given her obvious distress, I would have expected to feel her emotions radiating from her… but for the first time I could remember, I felt nothing at all in the dead air between us.
I stared at her for a moment, trying to process what I was seeing. Though Syrene was clearly alive and moving, my instincts told me that she was surely dead—the emotions that she wore around her like a mantle were more her than the malleable wooden form that she animated.
I reached out a hand towards her, very slowly. “Syrene?” I whispered. “Are you all right?”
The faerie didn’t reply.
I repeated the question again, with growing trepidation. This time, Syrene raised those black, unblinking eyes to my face.
“I am… afraid,” Syrene whispered back.
The words sent a strange chill down my spine.
I had seen Syrene afraid before, the first time we’d encountered Unseelie aether. I knew that it was possible. But I had never, not once, heard her use the word ‘I’.
“There was a… battle,” Syrene murmured. “I was here, but—but we were not.” The cadence of her speech was suddenly different. Her head tilted with an unusually nervous quality. I felt a flare of emotion sputter to life again between us—a fluttering sort of panic—but it was muffled and confused.
“You touched a shade,” I whispered.
Syrene’s thin form thrashed abruptly against the side of the longboat. Leaves fluttered from her hair, spiralling to the floor. Desperate fury trickled out of her, still struggling to fully manifest. “It. Won’t. Let. Go,” she hissed. Her voice trembled in my mind. “We cannot pull it apart. We cannot… tear it out of me. Us! Tear it from us!”
I glanced sharply back at Miss Hawkins. “How can she still have a shade inside her?” I asked. “I thought you scattered them.”
Hawkins stared at the faerie in horrified fascination, still clutching at her right hand. “I don’t feel any sort of lingering presence,” she replied, clearly shaken by the idea. “I think the shade is gone, Captain.”
“No!” Syrene hissed, snapping her head up to look at us. “It is here! Take it from me, drive it out!” Her tone soon descended into a soft whimper, though, and she deflated. “I am alone. Why am I alone?”
I wasn’t strictly certain that Syrene could shed tears. If she could, then she would surely have been doing so now. Long wooden fingers reached up to grip her head as she rocked herself back and forth.
I had never really given much thought to Syrene’s use of pronouns. I’d considered her choice of ‘we’ to be a cultural quirk, in rather the same way that goblins in Morgause tended to use the third person. But for the first time, it now occurred to me that the ‘we’ might have been literal.
The Envoy was supposed to be the bridge between Avalon and the Seelie Tuath Dé. For the last few years, though, Syrene had never left the Iron Rose. If she wasn’t going back and forth to Arcadia in order to consult with our creators, then… perhaps they were always with her, in a sense.
The memories that Syrene had experienced were purely mortal, however—and very individual. What more terrifying possibility was there for a faerie like her than the idea of dying entirely alone?
For all of my complicated feelings regarding the Tuath Dé, and Syrene herself, I couldn’t help a stab of begrudging sympathy as I watched her grapple with that panic.
Very slowly, I reached out a hand towards her—keenly aware that I was dealing with a creature several times stronger than I was. I didn’t yet dare to touch her… but I left my hand extended just in front of her.
“Syrene,” I said softly. “I’m afraid too. We all are. But we’re not alone. We’re just… a little further apart than you’re used to, perhaps.”
I tried to radiate a calm sense of control. I didn’t have the first idea whether it would have any impact on her or not. Either way, Syrene dared to raise her eyes from her long fingers in order to stare at my outstretched hand.
Wooden fingers stretched out to close around my palm with exaggerated hesitation. As she touched me, an unsteady flicker of relief sputtered between us—still weaker than I was used to, but better than it had been before.
“We must… find Strahl,” Syrene murmured. The ‘we’ still sounded vaguely uncertain—but I recognised a desperate need in her tone now that had been obscured before.
“You miss him,” I said quietly. It would have been the most obvious thing in the world, had I been dealing with anyone else; until now, though, I hadn’t understood that Syrene saw Strahl as anything other than a duty.
“I miss him,” Syrene whispered.
I nodded minutely, forcing down a fresh surge of confused guilt. I didn’t want to know that Syrene was capable of genuine attachment. I didn’t want to understand the things that she would feel if Aesir tried to take revenge for the crimes that Strahl had helped perpetuate on his family and his people.
Syrene was capable of truly horrific things. And no matter how much I empathised with her, I reminded myself, she would never return the favour.
“Can you still give us a heading?” I asked the faerie. “Your connection to Strahl is working?”
Syrene uncurled her fingers from my hand. Her body melted slowly back into the longboat, branch by branch. This time, it had the sense of a child searching for a place to hide. Her strange eyes were the last thing that disappeared into the floor.
Silence had fallen behind me on the boat as I spoke with Syrene. I turned and saw the rest of its occupants watching me warily.
We all knew how much damage Syrene could wreak if she was of a mind.
Mr Finch cleared his throat quietly. “Captain,” he mumbled. “I’m no physicker… but I suspect that Miss Brighton is concussed. Could that pose a problem for our plans?”
“I still have a trigger finger and both eyes,” Lenore cut in. “I can take the shot.” She enunciated each word just a bit too clearly, as though to prove her point. Mr Finch had tied a white medical compress against her head in order to soak up the blood, but several flecks still smeared her face. She had a worrying wobble in her posture.
I cursed inwardly. Lenore Brighton was easily the best shot with a rifle I had ever met—but a concussed Lenore Brighton might well be a different matter entirely. We needed her to kill Wraithwood before he could react to our presence.
I bit back my initial panic, trying to focus on the woman in front of me. “You’re my gunnery chief, Miss Brighton,” I told her, very slowly. “I trust you to know your business. You also know what happens if we go ahead as planned and you miss that opening shot.” I met her eyes in the near-darkness. “Tell me you can do it, and I’ll believe you.”
Lenore’s eyes were slightly unfocussed. But I watched her draw a deep, steadying breath, forcing herself to think rather than respond. Several seconds passed between us.
“I can take the shot,” Lenore repeated, far more steadily. “As long as he’s not moving. I don’t know how much help I’ll be after that, once everyone else scatters… but I can bring him down.”
I nodded grimly. “Keep an eye on her bleeding, Mr Finch,” I said. “Aesir—we have a direction?”
“We do,” Aesir replied. His voice was subdued, and his eyes seemed evasive as he stared down at the compass in front of him.
“Let’s go slowly, if we can,” I said. “We don’t want to blunder into a Cinderwolf sentry.”
Hawkins lifted her shield focus again, testing it warily. The small amount of Unseelie aether she’d used must have finally burned away, as nothing seemed to react badly. Again, the ambient aether around us slowly parted, and the faint tingle on my skin lessened noticeably.
I stepped in closer to Aesir, lowering my voice. “Everything all right?”
Aesir pulled the longboat out, glancing around us in search of shades. With the sun entirely gone, new wisps had stopped appearing out of thin air—but there were still far too many of them in the city, and we had to choose our route carefully.
At first, I wondered if Aesir had instantly forgotten my question, given his fierce concentration on the way ahead of us. Eventually, though, he said: “Ye feel bad fer that faerie, Blair?”
I winced at his back. “I do,” I admitted. “More from instinct than anything else. I’ve never liked seeing people upset.”
Aesir drew in a soft breath. “Ah feel bad fer th’ faerie too,” he murmured. “An’ ah hate her, as well.” He fell back into silence as he navigated us through ruined buildings, glancing past the wisps that lingered behind their facades. Then, he addressed the compass in front of him.
“Everyone in Pelaeia died afraid,” Aesir said, in a strangely even tone. “My maw died that way. Far as ah know, she’s still there, dyin’ e’ery night. Never had the courage tae go an’ check.” He turned the wheel of the boat gently, guiding us past a tumbled down wall. “‘fore we go an’ get ourselves killed, ah want ye tae know—that’s yer fault, faerie. Ah want ye to choke on that. It’s the least ye deserve.”
There was no obvious evidence that Syrene had heard him. But just behind us, I saw Hawkins glance away abruptly. The shield focus on her left arm wavered for just a moment, before she forcibly steadied its light.
“You’re not going to die, Mr MacLeod,” Miss Hawkins said softly. “I don’t intend to let that happen. And once this is over…” She stared down at her hands, choosing her next words carefully. “I understand that I might be the wrong person to help Pelaeia. But I’ll teach someone else to do it. Whoever you like. I’ll help in any way I can, until it’s done.”
For the first time since their confrontation on the ship, I saw some of the tension in Aesir’s shoulders loosen. He sighed heavily. “Ye took a lot a’ yellin’ fer things as wasnae yer fault, lass,” he admitted quietly. “Still angry ye lied. But ah know who deserves the blame, an’ we’re headin’ in their direction. Ye’re on this side o’ things, an’ no’ that one. So… ah’m glad ye’re here.”
I let out a small breath of my own at the statement. It was a tiny thing, while we were surrounded by so much horror… but the pressure in the longboat had tangibly lightened, right at the moment we most needed it to do so.
Miss Hawkins swallowed minutely. When next she spoke, her voice was thick with emotion. “I appreciate that,” she said. “And… I am sorry, for my part. I wish that I had been honest with everyone much sooner. It means more than I can say that I didn’t have to come here all alone.”
I arched an eyebrow at her. “Of course you weren’t coming here alone,” I said. “You booked passage on the nosiest ship in all of Avalon, Miss Hawkins. Besides… like it or not, you’re crew.”
Miss Hawkins blinked swiftly. The aether around us gave another tiny ripple. “Oh,” she said softly. “I… I am? I hadn’t realised.”
“Oh yes, obviously,” Mr Finch said, as he checked the bandage on Lenore’s head. “Consider yourself formally press ganged. There’s no escape now.”
“Mary started knittin’ you a scarf,” Lenore drawled. “Figured that was that.”
Miss Hawkins blushed visibly, clearly resisting the urge to hide her face at these assertions. I was reminded, again, just how many years I had on her—and how fully out of her depth she must have been, despite the air of control she so often exuded.
I took pity on her by clearing my throat. “I suppose we ought to quiet down before we get much closer,” I said. It was true. The endless ghostly whispers that surrounded us camouflaged an awful lot of noise… but it would be reckless to rely on that indefinitely.
The further we drifted away from the Majesty’s wreck, the more we found ourselves winding between empty, ivy-covered buildings. The cobblestone remains of old streets began to peek through the grass beneath us. Every so often, we passed the wreckage of a downed outflyer, crushed against the ground like a discarded toy. The shades here grew fewer and further apart… but I soon realised that this was because they’d been replaced by tatterdemalions.
Dead soldiers raced to reinforce the western walls, rushing through the streets in clattering squads. The ambient aether-light of the city flickered across their forms, revealing a far more ghoulish construction than that of Old Pelaeia’s tatters. Scraps of grey uniform fitted over old bones, where earth and stone had reinforced desiccated flesh. I caught flashes of unique horrors as they passed: a skull grinning out of a rusty Imperial helmet, with an ash-grey flower blooming from its eye socket; spent bullet casings for fingertips, grasping at a broken rifle. Most of the tatters still sported their old army boots—a circumstance which loaned an eerie familiarity to the cadence of their march.
Above that din, their voices rose—stronger and more certain than those of the shades we’d passed before.
“The gate hasn’t fallen yet! Move faster—pick up your feet!”
“Let’s show the navy they can’t win without us, lads!”
I watched the echoes pass us, holding my breath… but they were too focussed on their objective to pay us much mind. As the tail end of the troop finally trailed around the corner of a building, I glanced at Aesir.
“They’re headed to the western gate,” I whispered. “That’s our heading, isn’t it?”
Aesir nodded grimly. “Looks like they’re takin’ a side route,” he said.
“Let’s give them a loose follow,” I murmured. “It’ll take a bit longer, but the echoes will give us some cover.”
Aesir’s guess turned out to be correct. The tatters took a winding route through several half-crumbled alleyways, eventually emerging into the shadow of the western gate.
And then… they stopped moving entirely.
The shouts and stomping feet had ceased. Instead, a great crowd of dead soldiers stood in empty silence, staring sightlessly at the open gate.
Our longboat came up short behind the echoes, unable to progress any further.
“What are they doing?” I hissed softly.
Miss Hawkins shifted her way closer to the front of the longboat, peering out at the ghosts. “It’s the machine,” she whispered. “The more advanced model pacifies echoes within a small perimeter. It makes the work safer.”
Mr Finch frowned and adjusted his glasses, squinting past the silent tatters. “Without an aethermancer’s active will, that would require further engineering,” he murmured. “Given the range involved, I would probably use—”
“—yes, pylons,” Miss Hawkins finished for him. There was an odd amiability to her voice, despite the tenseness of the situation. “They’re connected to the main machine with tubing, in order to draw Unseelie aether. It’s far more corrosive than we estimated, though; the tubing won’t last long before it needs replacing. I wonder if Gideon knows that.”
I looked at Aesir and gestured just behind us, towards a building with far fewer shades. He pulled the longboat back into the shadows there, tucking us behind the remnants of a wall.
I returned my attention to Miss Hawkins. “It should be fairly simple, then, to sabotage those pylons,” I mused softly. “If we did… the echoes would behave normally again?”
Hawkins nodded. “It’s hard to predict what they’d do under their own power, though,” she warned. “We don’t know how they’ll interpret all of this, or who they might see as an enemy.”
“They’re Imperial soldiers,” Lenore muttered. Her voice still held a trace of a slur from her concussion. “I’d wager good money they’ll follow Wraithwood an’ his silver sword, if we test ‘em.”
I grimaced at the statement. Much as I’d hoped for an extra distraction, I couldn’t fault her logic.
“All right,” I mumbled. “Miss Hawkins, Mr Finch, Mr MacLeod—let’s get the prototype unloaded here. Once Miss Brighton takes out Wraithwood, they won’t be able to turn any of these echoes on us. Miss Hawkins… do you think you can bring yourself to control a few of those tatters? Just long enough to destroy Wraithwood’s machine.”
Hawkins hesitated visibly. I watched a series of deeply conflicted emotions cross her face. “Under any other circumstances,” she said slowly, “I would refuse. But… the echoes don’t understand what that machine will do to them, if it survives. I can reconcile myself to giving them a fighting chance against it.” She met my eyes grimly. “I can fight the other machine’s control… but it would be easier without those pylons. Removing just one or two of them would be ideal. If we sever the tubing, it will bleed off the Unseelie aether they need in order to function.”
The disconcerting image of a New Havenshire constable with his face melting off elbowed its way to the forefront of my mind. “If I cut the tubing, won't the Unseelie aether, uh... explode everywhere?” I asked warily.
Miss Hawkins pressed her lips together. “The tubing is half an inch, and not as intensely pressurised as those canisters were,” she said slowly. “But… the severed tubing will leak some Unseelie aether, by definition. We’ll need to be careful.”
I nodded shortly, despite the uneasiness this caused in my chest. “I’ll worry about that part,” I reassured her. “You have enough on your plate.”
As the other three started carefully unloading the prototype, I glanced at the surrounding buildings, searching for a vantage point that might give us a better view beyond the gate.
“There’s an old clock-tower about two blocks east of us,” I whispered to Lenore, pointing in its general direction. “Does it look like it might be a decent perch?”
Lenore followed the gesture, craning her head to consider the possibility. “Good odds,” she said. “Depends how they’re set up and how much cover they’ve got. It’s worth climbing up there to see.”
I clambered down from the longboat and offered my hand to Lenore. She accepted the assistance with a dainty air, though I felt her waver slightly on her feet. Light faded further into shadow as we went, and my eyes adjusted further to the gloom; Lenore leaned a bit more heavily upon me, relying on my sharper sight to avoid tripping over the rubble in our path.
The clock-tower was overgrown, but otherwise still sturdy-looking. I couldn’t see any evidence of recent entry—nor did there seem to be any shades glowing from within. No one in their right mind would have tried to hide in a clock-tower with outflyers raining from the sky, I reflected silently.
The stairs inside were still intact—but the climb was hard on both of us. By the time we reached the top, my legs were complaining, and Lenore’s breathing was a bit heavier than usual.
I led Lenore towards the shattered glass clock face, helping her down to her knees. From our current vantage point, I could see another clump of glowing echoes in a plaza just beyond the western gate. I pulled out my spyglass and squinted through it, trying to make out the details.
Three roads converged upon the plaza on the other side of the gatehouse. Each road had been hastily blockaded with rusted, hulking vehicles. A jumble of shades and tatterdemalions stood behind the blockades, silently staring down another flickering company of ghosts on the other side—all of them equally limp and docile.
“I think there’s some Coalition echoes down there,” I murmured to Lenore. “The Imperial echoes we were following would probably be fighting them now, if not for those pylons.”
Glass crunched nearby as Lenore set her rifle down, using its scope to get a better look.
“There they are,” she murmured. “Near the statue in the plaza.”
I scanned the spyglass slowly across the scene until I picked up the landmark.
The first thing that caught my attention was the machine. Though I’d known the one we had was just a prototype, I was still surprised at how big the other machine was. The top of it was nearly flush with the eyes of the platformed statue in the square—some important-looking historical figure I probably should have recognised, but very much did not.
A small circle of familiar figures in greatcoats and gas masks ringed the machine. I counted six Cinderwolves—though I knew there were likely more, somewhere out of sight. At the centre, standing next to the machine, was a terrifying form in dirty grey, still wearing that twisted mask. Wraithwood had sheathed his left arm in new foci, all currently attached to a skein of midnight threads. The tapestry of power shuddered uncomfortably around him, quivering like an unsteady breath.
“I’ve got him,” Lenore muttered tightly. “He’s stationary. Good view.”
I shifted my spyglass slightly… and caught sight of a haggard-looking figure, a few feet to Wraithwood’s right. Strahl had been forced to his knees, with his hands bound behind him. The aether-light of the surrounding echoes flickered upon his pale, blue-veined face, highlighting a harsh black bruise where Wraithwood had backhanded him. The Cinderwolf gorgon stood just behind him, with a pistol carefully trained on his figure.
I didn’t blame them. I knew what Strahl could do, even with his hands tied.
The sight of the man I’d once called my bosun struck me with fresh confusion. My first reaction was an instinctive surge of relief. Though I’d known that Strahl was still alive, given Syrene’s continued bond with him, I hadn’t been at all certain what condition we would find him in. I was even more relieved, somehow, to see him treated with such obvious wariness. Now that I had Strahl physically before me, it was easier to believe that the man I’d come to know wasn’t entirely a lie.
“I count six Cinderwolves,” Lenore told me, interrupting my train of thought. “Three pyroclasts.”
“That was my count, too,” I agreed quietly. “We have to assume there might be more. They… could be back on the Erebus.” I didn’t place much confidence in the assertion.
“I’d have ‘em on perimeter,” Lenore murmured. “Not too far out, though. It’s too easy to lose someone to all these shades.”
I suppressed a shudder at the reminder. “All right,” I said. “We can do this. I can’t make out those pylons in the middle of all those echoes, but they’ll be more apparent once I’m on the ground. I’ll head back down—”
I cut myself off abruptly as a darting shadow caught my attention, just at the edge of the spyglass. Something had skittered through the press of echoes, using them as cover. I very much doubted I would have seen it, if I hadn’t been looking down at the scene from above.
“What was that?” I hissed.
Lenore scowled into her scope. “What was what?” she asked.
“Something just moved through the echoes,” I told her. “Something fast.”
The figure moved again, swift and sinuous. I followed its movement to the edge of the square, where one of the pyroclasts had set themselves up by a barricade.
All at once, a pair of wicked, long-fingered hands lashed out, violently yanking the aethermancer down into the crowd of tatters.
Blood spattered. The poor sod didn’t even have time to scream.
“Uh oh,” I managed faintly. It only occurred to me now, well past the time when it should have done: I hadn’t seen Syrene in the longboat when I’d left with Lenore. I’d assumed that she was still merged with the vehicle… but perhaps that wasn’t true, after all.
“Uh oh?” Lenore repeated slowly.
“It’s Syrene,” I said. “She’s going after Strahl.”
One of the other pyroclasts called out in confusion, searching for the one who’d gone missing. The aethermancer had been nearly in plain view—and now, he was simply gone.
“She’s going to send them running for cover,” I told Lenore urgently. “Take the shot. Now.”
Something rolled away from the crowd of echoes, clattering against what remained of the old cobblestones. I didn’t dare to turn my spyglass upon it. I was pretty sure it was the pyroclast’s armoured head.
This is why I don’t like plans. They never seem to survive for long.
Shouts went up among the Cinderwolves. Ugly reddish-black aether surged abruptly around Wraithwood’s form; the threads at his fingers pulled taut, and a hundred echoes snapped to attention.
Lenore took one breath. Exhaled.
And pulled the trigger.