This warrior was leaner and quicker than the first, and his eyes simmered with rage. He had already lifted his knife to the height of his shoulder, bunching his muscles to cut down diagonally. The steel shone white-yellow behind his fist. A thread of saliva extended from his jowls, and his lunge had already gathered significant momentum. Rachel could not steer his body from its course without considerable risk to herself.
She broke his arm instead.
A chop to his wrist shattered the carpal bones there. The assassin then gripped the man's knife between her thumb and forefinger, and pulled it back in the opposite direction of the intended swing. She sensed his tendons and muscles rip. The agony would not hit him for another few moments, not until after he realized that the blow had missed.
The assassin felt her heart beat again, and again, and then suddenly quicken to a crescendo.
Oran still posed a threat, but for Rachel time had run out. Her heightened perception returned to normality with a crash. She lost control of her limbs and collapsed. A barrage of sound assaulted her, disjointed cries and groans and the pounding of boots. Oran yelled for order. Somewhere a woman screamed.
Rachel lay on the floor, her nostrils full of the smell of wood and dirt. Saliva dribbled from her slack lips. From here she could see the woodsman whom she'd first disarmed. The heavy club had landed precisely where she'd intended, crushing his skull. Now he lay in a pool of expanding blood.
She felt hands upon her.
A woman's voice cried, “Leave her alone!”
Mina? I told you to stay outside.
Rachel felt herself being turned roughly onto her back. A savage visage loomed over her, its cheeks and neck clad in bloody glass, its eyes as black as the abyss. Hasp bared his teeth, and his whisky breath spilled over her. His expression was one of rage and desperation and misery. “I don't want your fucking help,” he growled. And then he drove a fist hard into her stomach.
The assassin doubled up in pain, gasping as she felt the wind rammed out of her. Mina was yelling somewhere nearby; men were laughing and shouting. Hasp snarled. He punched her in the guts again, and again, then raised his glass fist above her face, piling all the strength of his upper body behind the coming blow.
Rachel closed her eyes.
“We are not killers for hire,” Anchor said.
Mr. D's strange wheeled box rolled back a few inches along the aisle, and knocked against one of the cabinets packed with bottled souls. Glass clinked together. The box's occupant spoke through its dark mouth slit: “I think you should let your friend decide that. After all, she is the would-be purchaser.”
Anchor could see Harper's mind working. Worry creased her brow; her eyes frantically searched the floor as if an answer to her dilemma might appear there. She was actually considering Mr. D's indecent offer: one of his bottled souls in exchange for the murder of two strangers.
“For my own security the contract must be signed in blood,” said Mr. D. “I find that purchasers are much less likely to renege on the deal when such a document remains in the hands of a thaumaturge. The threat of vengeful blood magic tends to keep people focused on their side of the bargain.”
Harper said, “Gods help me… I'll do it.”
Anchor was shocked to see her fall apart so quickly. This woman was no murderer. She didn't even yet know whom Mr. D expected her to kill.
He recognized desperation when he saw it.
“Excellent!” said Mr. D.
“Hell, no,” Anchor said. “I won't let you bully her.”
“She has agreed, sir.”
Anchor faced Harper. “Whose soul do you want to buy?” he asked. “Is it family? A lover?” He saw from her pained reaction that he had struck upon the truth. “A husband, eh?” He turned to the nearest cabinet, flung open the doors, and dragged out two fistfuls of soul bottles.
“That's robbery, sir.” Mr. D's wooden enclosure rumbled forward in a threatening manner. A strange glutinous slopping sound came from within. “Do you know who I am?”
Anchor thrust the bottles towards Harper. “Use your mesmerist devices. Find him.”
She sobbed and shook her head weakly. Her gaze moved back and forth between Anchor and the proprietor.
“Do it,” Anchor said.
Harper fumbled in her tool belt. She took out one of those odd silver contraptions, a slender device packed with crystals and covered in etched glyphs. It made a sharp, tinny noise, and then started to whine. The engineer shook her head. “Not those,” she said. “But he's here in this place somewhere.”
“Your husband?”
“Tom. His name's Tom.”
Anchor uncorked one of the bottles and brought it to his lips. A tiny amount of liquid dribbled down his throat…
… and then the memories of the soul contained in that liquid rushed into him.
A stage … Gaslights and applause … Sitting on the edge of a bed watching a dying woman… The smell of sweat, the weight of a man lying on her back… Wheeling downhill on a heavy wooden bicycle …
Mr. D laughed. “Now you've gone and done it. You've just consumed another person's soul.” His box squeaked forward on its wheels. “Your own mind, such as it was, is about to disappear.”
Anchor grunted, and then upended two more bottles. He felt strength pouring into him, even as fresh memories assailed him.
… Alone in a desert watching a campfire … A wailing woman, her face bleeding from his blows… Maggots squirming in the body of a dead dog…
The tethered man threw the empty bottles aside, and grabbed more from the shelves. “What about these?”
Harper scanned them, shook her head.
“He's not changing, Mr. D,” Isla said.
… shooting gulls with arrows… a rowdy tavern… a brother's hug… watching a small boat set out across misty waters…
“I can see that, Isla. Please unlock the Icarate cages.”
“But Mr. D…”
“Do it, child.”
Empty bottles rolled across the floor. Anchor kicked them aside and wrenched open another cabinet. Mr. D's box retreated down the aisle, its little wheels squawking. Isla scampered ahead of it, disappearing through a curtained doorway at the rear of the emporium.
Harper was staring at her device. “He's here, John.”
Anchor was drunk with power and memories that did not belong to him. His thoughts spun.… a pier ablaze … an old man crying … gutting a rabbit… He wheeled around, then staggered over to the cabinet beside Harper and ripped its door clean off its hinges. The Rotsward's rope followed after him, snagged on the doorjamb, and then wrenched it clear off the wall.
Harper withdrew one of the bottles from the cabinet.
Anchor blinked and shook his head. The emporium was spinning around him.… kissing a girl dressed in a steel suit… sex in a moss-green gazebo … a knife clutched in bloody fingers… He grabbed the bottle from Harper, uncorked it, and lifted it to his mouth.
“John!” she cried.
He stopped, with the bottle resting against his lower lip. He could almost taste the first drop of cool liquid.
“Sorry.” He lowered the bottle, and handed it to her.
Harper replaced the cork.
Behind you! Cospinol had remained silent for so long that the god's sudden outburst in Anchor's head startled him. For an instant he thought that the warning had come from one of the souls he'd just consumed, before he recognized Cospinol's deep tone. The madman's loosed his Icarates.
Two of Menoa's hellish priests were shuffling through the curtained doorway at the rear of D's Emporium. They wore queer armour composed of bulbous ceramic plates like pale fungi spattered with darker rot. Green sparks dripped from these protrusions, bursting against the floor around their white boots. Uncertain buzzing sounds issued from their copper mouth grilles. Their black eye lenses were broken, but nevertheless fixed on Anchor.