Part 31 (1/2)

But, in truth, she is a little bit afraid of him. In the Engine, the engineer has something that is just beyond her understanding. A gateway to magic, when magic is a forbidden thing. A route aside from the Fade, not alongside it. Yet she calms this fear with the knowledge that this is the Fade's work they are doing a the destruction of a false G.o.d, daring to accept the term deity.

'The fight is almost over,' the priest says. 'I have sent word back to the generals that we will establish the Engine here.'

'Good a place as any,' the engineer says. He licks his finger and holds it to the air, looks through spread fingers inland and then back out to sea. He grins. She knows he is toying with her.

'You'll not grin when this is over,' the priest says. 'When your Engine is planted, perhaps you will stay with it.'

The man's face grows grim. 'You think any of us will be allowed to stay?' he asks.

'What do you mean?'

He chuckles. He is twisting wires together, connecting thin, membranous tubes to the Engine's side. He is a few steps away from her, but she can smell his sweat over the scent of roasting flesh. The battle made them closer together than ever; them, and the Engine.

'What it will release,' he says. He pauses, looking at the machine as if it is something he loves, and hates. Then he nods at her hand beneath her robes, buried in the wet warmth between her legs. 'It's already been talking to you.'

'I ...' the priest says, preparing outrage. But the engineer is right.

'A few moments,' he says. 'The Engine where we made land is already awake.'

'How do you know?'

'Don't you know?' All humour has left his voice. He sounds like a man resigned.

'What will happen?' the priest asks softly. It is her first, and last, expression of doubt and concern.

'The Engine comes alive.' The engineer works on in silence, and the priest's fingers dance to the Engine's silent song.

The third Engine moves north. Its journey has been an easier one a no Skythians have yet found it, and the three Blades accompanying it have nothing worse than rough terrain to contend with. The wagon bearing the Engine has already lost two wheels, and repairs take time. But the priest is happy because the G.o.ds of the Fade are with him, and the Engine is his friend.

He prays to each G.o.d in turn, as he does every day, and has done every day since he can remember. He whispers exhortations, but he also tells them about himself, grasping reality by making himself real to the G.o.ds. His thoughts and fears, excitements and yearnings, all are whispered up amongst and behind his prayers. People have long since stopped listening to this priest because they think him mad, but he barely notices that lack of attention. The G.o.ds attend him. They welcome his voice. Soon, they will answer.

Because he can sense them waiting within the Engine. This, the construct of their victory over false G.o.ds, will soon gush forth the magic that they forbid because it is so close to them. The priest is certain of this, just as he is certain that they do not disapprove of him thinking so. They whisper to him, and he is their familiar.

The engineer works around the Engine as they travel. Triangulation, resonance, prashdial wavelength ... the priest cares nothing for these, and he and the engineer have never spoken. Sometimes he prays for the engineer, but it is a lonely prayer. Their worlds are far apart.

The Engine sings inside, and the priest hears its song as echoes of the Fade.

It was only Leki's presence that prevented Sol from ordering the slaughter of their prisoners. While the remaining Spike soldiers a there were less than thirty out of the forty-nine who had marched this way with him a gathered the Skythians together and disarmed them, Sol sat with his wife. Tamma remained close by, keeping watch on the man Sol had punched unconscious. He was tied up. The thing with which he had killed Deenia was on the ground between Sol and Leki.

Everything was changing, and so much going wrong.

'I don't know who you are any more,' Sol said.

'You can say that? You're the one who attacked me!'

'I only pulled you from the horse.' Leki did not reply. 'I thought you were dead, Leki. Then I saw you, with him, and you started saying things that made no sense-'

'I'm the person I always was,' she said. 'But I'm aware of so much more.'

'The person you were served the Ald, and the G.o.ds of the Fade.'

'No,' Leki said softly. 'I was always Arcanum first. And ...' She glanced away from him, eyes dancing with fire.

'Maybe Cove was right about you.'

'The General?' Leki asked.

'He called you an amphy witch.' Leki did not reply. Sol went on, 'So maybe it is your arcane arts you place before everyone, and everything else.'

'Can't you speak to me as your wife?'

'I feel like I'm married to lies.'

'No,' Leki said sadly. 'No lies, Sol, I promise. The truth has power and weight.'

Sol stood and kicked the bone-thing before him. It did not roll as far as it should have, as if it were much heavier than it actually felt.

'You have to believe me,' Leki said.

'Why? A threat, Leki?'

'You forget. I've seen it.'

'And you forget we're here to kill it.' Sol was conflicted, confused, and both emotions fed his anger. He had killed so many so recently, yet he wanted now to kill more. His blood was up. That unconscious b.a.s.t.a.r.d would be first, as revenge for Deenia, her face smashed back into her brain by the bone-thing. And then some of the prisoners.

And then Leki? His wife, for her betrayal of their cause? If he took her back with him, she would doubtless face banishment from Alderia anyway. Banishment back here. Perhaps he should leave her here, killed by his loving hand. If he acted quickly, maybe the memory of the woman he had loved might still survive.

'You still love me too much to kill me,' Leki said. She was smiling, one hand splayed in the blood-slushed snow, finger pressed into the muddy ground.

'You'd dare read me, floater?' As he spoke the word, a pang of shame made him turn away. There was silence for a precious heartbeat, and then Leki spoke.

'You're such a fine soldier,' she said to his back. The words were so loaded they hurt.

'I'm a loyal soldier!' Sol snapped. The distance between them was growing. He wished she had never found them, even if that meant the battle would still be raging. He held up that thing and the Skythians fell to their knees. Sol glanced back at Leki and the fist-sized object, pale in the reflected firelight. I should kick it into the fire.

His wife was lost to him. He loved her so much, and yet a stranger sat before him now, loaded with lies and corrupted by the land she had come here only to visit, not to be absorbed by. Its false G.o.d had made a disease of her mind. She shunned the Fade, and the mere idea of that sent a s.h.i.+ver down his spine a Sol was never an obsessive, but he was a devout Fader because that was how he had been brought up, the life he had lived.

His skin was stiff with dried blood, his hip burned and raged where he had taken an injury, his fingers were open to the bone where a sword had slipped across them. Yet the greatest pain nestled deep within his chest.

'There are no G.o.ds but the Fade,' Sol said. He drew his pistol and walked past Tamma, kneeling beside the bound man and pressing the barrel against his chest.

'Sol!' Leki cried out, and in that one word Sol heard so many admissions that it made the pain in his own chest heavier, and deeper than he thought he could carry.

'Oh by all the f.u.c.king G.o.ds of the Fade ...' Tamma said. Her voice dripped awe and terror, and when Sol looked up past the fire he dropped his pistol, fell onto his rump, pus.h.i.+ng himself back across the wet, cold ground.

Beyond the fires, where snow still lay relatively untouched outside the battlefield, something emerged from the shadows of the trees. Something huge, and pale, and impossible.