Foreign Devils (37 page)

Its jaw lolled open in death and its eyes had the vacant, milky gaze of statuary. Its chest was riddled with glyphs and intaglios of scarring, all etched on the paper in scarlet ink.

‘That all seems right,’ I said, pointing at the creature’s left shoulder. ‘And here.’ Its abdomen. ‘But this is all wrong, though I can’t tell you how it is,’ I said, indicating the right shoulder with my finger.

Samantha rubbed her lower lip and nodded, thinking. ‘He’s modified the locus warding to something else. You can’t remember any details?’

‘No, it was dark in the warehouse, and I was bound.’

‘You look the worse for wear. Let me get you some wine.’ She poured some – her secretary was absent – and offered us both cups. I downed mine quickly, but Fisk ignored his.

‘I’m almost as curious about the stretcher that’s been assisting you as I am this
daemon
-gripped one. I would not have thought either was possible, if it was anyone other than you telling me of these events.’

‘It’s true,’ said I.

Samantha’s eyes brightened and she actually rubbed her hands together. ‘Fascinating,’ she said. ‘What else can you tell me about Beleth?’

‘He seemed a little wasted,’ I said. ‘But as smug and bloodthirsty as ever.’

‘He did not always wear that so openly,’ she said. ‘He seemed to all the world simply an engineer—’

‘You can’t be blamed for not knowing the depths of his mendacity,’ I said. And she nodded wordlessly.

‘He had an infant with him,’ Fisk said, abruptly. ‘Why would Beleth have an infant?’

‘What?’ Sam said, shocked. ‘An infant? Surely you must be joking?’

I shook my head. ‘They had me in a carriage. A woman with a Medieran accent gave succour to a baby.’

At that moment, Sam’s whole aspect changed. Her face went pale, her mouth opened and then closed silently. Her wine glass fell to the floor, shattering.

‘Oh my—’ she said.

‘What is it?’ Fisk asked. ‘I thought that sounded bad.’

Quickly, she stood. ‘Help me,’ she said, and raced over to her desk and began dumping papers into a leather satchel.

‘What’s going on?’ I said.

‘No time,’ she said. ‘Oh, gods help us, no time—’

‘Sam! What’s going on?’

She stuffed more papers into the bag. ‘Beleth. He’s going to summon something.’

‘What?’

‘Something tremendous.’

‘Can we stop it?’

She gave a helpless laugh. ‘We don’t even know where he is. He has an
infant!’
She looked shaken to her core. ‘We must flee Harbour Town.’

‘Hold on. Hold on,’ Fisk said, making patting gestures with his hands. But Samantha had dashed to the wall and began pulling a cord there. In a moment her secretary, Wacher, came into the workroom.

‘Saddle two of the best horses and sound the alarm. We have to get out of here,’ Samantha said.

‘What? Why do we—’

Sam made a chopping gesture with her hand. ‘Just do it.’

The secretary nodded, looking terrified, and dashed off.

Fisk grabbed Sam’s arm to slow her mad dash, to calm her, maybe, and she looked down at his hand and then at his face. ‘Let go. There’s no time for discussion,’ she said clearly and without rancour. He let go. She slung the satchel over her shoulder and then walked to the centre of the room and kicked aside a colourful Bedoun rug that lay there. There was a small but very ornate skein of wardwork carved into the stone of the floor and then laced with silver so that the scorch marks were still visible. At the centre of the warding, a keyhole. She withdrew the key from a chain around her neck, inserted it in the keyhole and turned. A metallic clack sounded and suddenly the stone rose and kept rising with an odd silence, as if on greased pneumatic cylinder. When it was waist high, a small chamber in the stone became exposed – this too encircled in warding and hidden behind a webwork of silver beads suspended in a fabric. It was a clever thing, the beads, forming a ward of pure metal, guarding the opening into the stone and fixed at the corners, but Sam whipped out her knife and sliced it open, cutting easily through the fabric. Reaching her hands inside, she grasped something and pulled it free. A box, also warded to the nines.

‘Your old companion, Fisk,’ she said. ‘This building is stone, and so completely warded it would take a titanic
daemon
to breach the walls by force – as far as I know. But Beleth might have some trick up his sleeve and he wants this back.’

‘The
daemon
hand?’ Fisk asked, pale.

‘The Crimson Man, Belial himself,’ she said, nodding. ‘And he’s coming with us.’

She swiftly twisted the key again and the secret compartment began lowering itself again. ‘Come,’ she said, heading to the door. ‘It’s time to go. We may already be too late.’

There were bells ringing now, and many engineers in smocks and white robes running about, yelling at each other. One lovely young woman in a stained smock appeared in front of us, wild-eyed, saying, ‘Is there some breach? Is there an irrevocable
breach?’

Samantha swept past her. She said, brusquely, ‘Best act like it and evacuate. On my orders, Pavia.
Now.’

The young woman began to sob and rushed away, calling for a man named Artuo. We raced down warded hallways and past doors festooned in glyphs and finally came to the atrium.

‘Our mounts are out front,’ Fisk said.

‘Head north on Via Portus, straight from the front of this building,’ Sam said. ‘Wait for Wacher and me at the Campus Salaria. You know where I’m talking about?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Go,’ she said, pointing. ‘Our stables are around on the side. We must hurry.’

I opened my mouth but she waved her hand in my face and said, ‘Stop talking! Go!’ Then she turned and she and Wacher fled down another hall.

Fisk looked at me, gritting his teeth, and said, ‘Let’s high-step, Shoe,’ and trotted off.

At the horses, Bess chucked her head and brayed, as if she knew her normal drag-ass gait wouldn’t suffice today, and she kept up with Fisk’s horse without her usual grumbling and grousing. The citizens of Harbour Town looked at us warily as we blew down the cobbled lanes, horseshoes making a terrible clatter on the stones. Bess frothed and Fisk’s new horse blew air explosively from its nose and worked its frothed jaw around the bit when we climbed the rise to the Campus Salaria on the northern edge of the city. From there, the Via Portus became dirt and headed north through an unnamed neighbourhood of wooden shanties and shacks until it hit the bluffs that rose above the Big Rill’s delta.

The sun shone bright and warm, and from where we sat the smell of the sea came to us without the stink of city dwellings. There were legionnaires working through their
armatura
on the Campus Salaria ground, marching, drilling, while centurions bellowed inventive profanities at them. Across the Via Pontus was a small market where matrons – some with children, some of the younger ones more obviously gravid – worked through bins of potatoes and cabbages; beyond them, a butcher was slaughtering a hog which squealed unmercifully as they hoisted it up by the hind legs then put the tin tubs below it to catch the blood. It stopped squealing abruptly and the only sound then was of women murmuring and children laughing, the curses of the centurions and the pattering sound of blood as it filled metal tubs.

‘What do you think of this?’ Fisk asked. He was tight, and that meant he was angry and disgruntled. Toward me, toward the situation. I couldn’t tell.

‘I don’t know. Never known Sam to be mistaken.’

‘You
sure
you heard an infant squalling?’ Fisk asked. ‘You’d been knocked out. Sacked.’

‘I’m sure.’

Fisk spat. He twisted another cigarette as his horse moved sideways beneath him. This time, he lit it and gave the burning smoke to me and began to twist another. A small thing, but I couldn’t express how much it reassured me.

We smoked and watched the Via Pontus.

‘I’m sorry if I doubted, Shoe,’ he said. ‘I can be an ass.’

‘That legate’s badge might’ve gone to your head.’

He snorted. ‘Hardly. The only reason I wear it is, for me, it’s become an emblem of my connexion to Livia.’ He raised his arm and opened his hand. The nuptialis sectum – his wedding wound – was fresh. He’d used the Quotidian recently.

I thought of her, then, so far away.

‘She is well?’ I asked.

‘Livia is. Much has happened. Things with her are—’ He looked pained. ‘Strained. Once we are away, I will give you her letters.’

I nodded.

We could hear them coming before they came into view. Samantha, Wacher, and a few other engineers – along with a couple of burlymen guards toting Hellfire carbines – they raced along the Via Pontus until they came to the square outside the Campus Salaria. Sam had a harried look, and Wacher cut protective glances at her.

‘We must keep on,’ Sam said, pulling her horse beside ours. ‘There’s no time to rest.’

‘These cobblestones are shite for hooves, Sam,’ Fisk said. ‘We keep riding, hell-bent, we’ll end up—’

‘Hell-bent is exactly what’s about to happen, Fisk. If it doesn’t, I’ll gladly give you the silver pig we’ve got with us. It would be worth it.’ She looked back at the lower levels of Harbour Town, extended her hand, and pointed. ‘Look there. Out upon the bay.’

Summer sun shattered upon the swells. Seagulls wheeled and cried with desperate voices. The light was brilliant, and glaring. But shadows were visible.

Ships.

Big steamers pouring
daemon
burn into the sky. Some with sails. Some with ominous-looking black things on their prows. Cannons, maybe.

‘They’re not moving,’ Fisk said.

‘They wait. We must
go
.’ She looked at her entourage. ‘Come. With all haste,’ she said and wheeled her horse about and galloped north without looking to Fisk. As an engineer – it was true – she was incalculably more valuable than a legate, no matter how well connected, and so did not have to defer to his elevated rank.

‘Ia damn it, Shoe,’ he said. ‘There’s a whole city down there and they’re just running away. At least the garrison commander should be notified.’

Sam and her posse diminished, down the Via Pontus. I looked to the sea from our vantage. I turned to Fisk.

‘Feel free, partner. I’m not one to gainsay your lead,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll follow Sam, just to keep an eye on her. All this might be a joke and we can laugh about it—’

A shift, a tilt in the world.

The earth shook and suddenly a blazing sun erupted from below us, in the centre of Harbour Town. All of the Via Pontus, Campus Salaria, the market, the buildings became brilliant with light and harsh in shadow.

‘
Ride!
’ Fisk screamed.

I began to kick Bess, but she had already jumped into motion. I flailed backwards but kept my saddle.

There was a rumble and an unknowable sound, beyond the ability of human or
dvergar
and even stretcher to understand. A wind began to blow. But backward. Toward the light, as if we were being sucked in.

Bess scrabbled against the cobblestones. We flew down the lane, now made brilliant in the light.

Then the light died and there was a thunderous sound. Flames. The sound of fire roaring like all the world was aflame.

I turned, craning around to look behind as I rode.

Monstrous.

A
daemon
towering above the city, titanic. Rising and wreathed in flame as the friction of entering our world caused the waves of shock to radiate outward and unimaginable heat to pour off it.

Fisk spurred his horse on, rising in the stirrups. Bess gave a hooting sound, so hurried that she couldn’t haw properly. I might’ve been screaming too, I don’t know. In front of us, the cut in the bluffs that allowed us up the rise and the limestone markers and the wall that was the northern terminus of Harbour Town. Behind us, roaring and hot wind.

Our mounts hit the cut, barrelling and at full steam. Fisk jerked his reins to the right and yelled ‘
Here!’
pulling his horse into a washout in the side of the bluff. It wasn’t much. Bess came in behind, slamming into Fisk’s horse’s rump and spilling me to the rocky ground where I landed on my back, in a heap, just in time to witness the hot wind and fiery air whoosh into the gulley leading to the top of the bluffs overlooking Harbour Town.

I could feel my face becoming tight, skin burning. Bess’ tail began to smoulder and then caught fire. It was almost impossible to see, now, the air was so dry. The roaring we experienced before grew louder, and there were words in it, words no
dvergar
or human had ever heard before, nor any since, gods and numen save us. It shivered through my integument of flesh to bone. I could feel it in my teeth, behind my eyes.

Then Fisk was there. How I knew this I could not tell. I felt water on my face.

When I could open my eyes, the roaring had diminished, and Fisk was dumping the last of his canteen on Bess’ smoking rump.

‘Ia’s beard,’ Fisk said. ‘That Beleth son of a whore wants for a killing.’

When the hot wind had died away enough, we took stock. I had burns over half my face, skin bubbling, and on the backs of my hands. Fisk was burnt, but less than I had been – he’d dropped and hunkered down on the ground the moment he saw me fall, though the back of his neck was raw and some of his hair had been burned away.

Bess took the worst of it, poor girl. Her tail was gone and the little nubbin of flesh the tail had grown from was blistered along with her haunches. She was hawing bad, now, and I had to take her chin and rub her nose for a long while to quiet her before she would move.

We walked out and up the gulley, eyes streaming, and the whole world seemed wreathed in a yellow, noxious smoke. Leading Bess, we stumbled to the top, where the wind tore the smoke away into the pines. Standing not far away was Samantha and her posse, looking down on Harbour Town. She glanced at us as we approached. Her face was hard, unforgiving.

‘Of all the things he must answer for, this is the worst,’ she said.

Harbour Town was aflame, an inferno. The
daemon
was gone, but the city lay in ruins. No building had escaped unmarred, even the stone forums and temples.