Hero at the Fall

‘I tripped,’ Sam said. He groped around for a moment in the dark before his hand closed on something, and he held it up to the light. It was a gleaming bronze face. I drew back without meaning to. An Abdal. Or part of one. The eyes were blank and sightless. It was just a piece of a machine, I reminded myself. It was nothing without the spark of fire lighting it, without a word in the first language marked across it, giving it life.

‘We’re under the palace,’ I said out loud. ‘We’re close.’ I stretched my hand out backwards, searching for the stone wall. It met hard metal instead.

‘The walls are lined with iron.’ When I said it out loud, my voice echoed against the metal unsettlingly. ‘Seems like the Sultan’s been hard at work since we were last here.’

In the faint light of the wire, I saw Sam reach up and lay a hand flat against the stone ceiling. He could reach it, but just. ‘So we’re trapped,’ Sam said, too cheerily. ‘Excellent.’

‘Not trapped,’ I said. I nodded at the path marked out by the wire. ‘Just one way to go.’

We moved more carefully after that, picking our way forwards in the dim light. The further we went, the more discarded pieces of Abdals there were. Bronze and clay hands and torsos. Early tests. Experiments that hadn’t quite worked before Leyla got it right. There was an articulated leg that reminded me of the one she had made for Tamid. And then there were those that looked almost whole, metal men slumped on the floor like discarded dolls or tired soldiers. The light glanced eerily off one of them. ‘Sam.’ I grabbed his arm, making him jump. ‘I think that one just moved.’

Sam looked where I was pointing. ‘A trick of the light,’ he said. But he took hold of my hand all the same, leading me forwards a little bit more quickly. I heard a small whirring sound as we passed another.

‘That wasn’t a trick of the light,’ I said to Sam. And then the Abdal sat up.

We staggered back as the thing started to drag itself to its feet like a broken puppet being pulled up by its strings. We ran, bolting down the tunnel, following the wires. As we dashed past another metal body it moved, too, seeming to snap to attention. I stopped as we passed by another, pulling my knife out as I did. In one violent motion I prised the bronze cover off the back of its foot and drove the knife through the word that gave it life. I tried to wrench the knife back out, but it was caught in the mess of gears and wires that lived under the Abdal’s skin.

‘Amani.’ I heard Sam say my name, and even as I looked up I realised there was another Abdal coming towards us, blocking us off straight ahead. Sam had his gun out. Three quick shots, but the thing didn’t even falter. Instead it raised its hands towards us in an inhuman imitation of Noorsham blessing his people back in Sazi. I could feel the heat swelling around it as it prepared to burn us.

We turned to run the other way. To retreat. The light from the wire dashed across the gleam of bronze behind us. Two more Abdals were closing in on us, slowly raising their hands. The heat around us was building. We were trapped.

For once, Sam didn’t have anything smart to say. I just felt his hand, looking for some comfort, his fingers squeezing mine. Something hard pressed against my knuckle. The ring that Zaahir had given me.

The ring that was supposed to save me when I released Fereshteh and turned the machine off.

I thought of Zaahir back in Eremot and the way he’d simply extinguished the Abdals’ flame with a touch. His last gift was not meant for this. But the Abdals were getting closer. Inching towards us, the heat building to an almost unbearable point.

I wrenched my hand out of Sam’s death grip, flinging it towards the wall instead.

The glass smashed.

And I felt a shockwave, an emptiness, a void. Like a wind that swept up the fire of the Abdals and then snuffed them out, sucking all the air out of the space. Smothering them.

As one, they dropped like ragdolls, falling to the ground.

Sam stared at me. ‘What just happened?’

It doesn’t matter, I tried to say. Except that wasn’t true. It did matter. I glanced down at the shattered ring in my hand. Now whatever magic had been in that ring had fled, and I was left with nothing to face the sheer power of Fereshteh. I had no way of freeing him except the words I had used to free Zaahir.

But before I could answer Sam, I heard the sound of distant footsteps. Of metallic feet scraping along stone. There were more. And they were coming. We weren’t there yet.

‘We have to go,’ I said.

And then we were running again, bolting down the metal and stone corridor. We didn’t make it far before we crashed into another wall. The end of the tunnel. The bright wire passed through a tiny gap, disappearing to the other side. To the machine. Our hands slammed into cold metal.

Now I was sure I could hear noise behind us. The whirring of gears, and something that sounded terribly like the slap of metal feet. I banged my fist angrily against the metal.

‘What do we do?’ I turned around, desperately looking at Sam. But he wasn’t looking at me. His hand was flat against the ceiling. And then he was reaching through, the edge of his fingertips disappearing through the stone above us. ‘I can’t reach that,’ he said, ‘but I think I can get you through.’

I blinked at him for a moment, not understanding. He could lift me through the stone. But he wouldn’t be able to follow.