Free CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness by Mike Allen Page B

dances and winter stillness, the red crackle of solstice bonfires and the smoke and clamour of war. Changeless through it all was the petrified stare locked on hers, stone fingers always reaching, never touching.
    She swayed, wincing as the briars that wreathed her hooked their barbs into newly soft skin. She shifted her arms, to extricate herself, and cried aloud when she saw the flat stump that ended her left arm above the wrist.
    A memory swam to the surface, of Yng’finail Reavers fighting the beast-headed slave warriors of Avalae, a massacre dance of iron blades on bronze, swirling about the plinths. A wild-swung halberd struck her wrist, splinters showering the wielder. She remembered the fractures spreading through her arm as the temperature fell and rose in the nights and days and weeks that followed until, with a crack one frosted morning, the hand tumbled from her wrist.
    Her breaths became sobs. The briars stabbed her anew. Moving slowly, whimpering at every tear of her skin, she freed herself from their embrace and shoved the mess of vines from her plinth. She sank down into a crouch, and shivered in the cold rain. The sounds of the restless city assailed her, disorienting. She crept her toes forward until they found the edge of the plinth, and clung there, vertiginous and confused.
    A flicker of lightning caught a glint of wet stone in the edge of the briar patch. With a yell, she leapt from the plinth, powered by muscles that did not know, yet, how to properly obey command. Hip, hand and stump met the cobbles. She lay, winded and gasping, staring up through the rain at the black silhouette of the tower that filled half the sky.
    When the breath had found its way back into her lungs, she rolled over and crawled to the spot where she’d seen her severed hand. She cradled it, cold and unfeeling against her breast.
    Her gaze strayed up again, to the statue of her mate, like her hand still etched in stone. He was all but featureless in the gloom. Higher still, to the balcony that marked the angel’s roost, where the mages of Avalae had summoned their fabulous winged beasts to take them hunting, once upon a time. She saw in her mind the angel’s latest, agonized return. The tower gate was closed, and there were no windows in its face to show if light and life existed within, except the balcony, and it was dark.
    A hand gripped her arm, hard fingers bruising new skin. A rough voice said, “’Allo, lovely.” Sniggered.
    She twisted, lashing out blindly with her stone hand. Her ears rang with memories of screams cut short, terrible sounds of fright and injury in the shadows at the plaza’s edge.
    The man retreated, cursing loudly, cradling a forearm bruised, at least, or fractured.
    She registered an answering shout from across the plaza. Another man, or several, she didn’t wait to see. Clutching her stone hand to her chest, she fled.
    She ran down well-lit streets, where the private guards of the well-to-do eyed the first nervous citizens ascending from the city below to come demand the angel’s counsel. All stopped to stare, amazed, at the naked woman who sprinted past.
    At the foot of the hill, the streets grew darker. She heard the grumble of larger crowds ahead. She slowed, clutching at the stitch in her side, and turned from the main avenue. The cold air burned her lungs, her legs shook and her uncallused heels ached from pounding on the cobbles.

    The doorways along this street were alcoved, the frontages colonnaded with the long bones of giants, the doors themselves shrouded in shadow. Blankets spilled into the rain from one, nearby. Shivering violently now, she crept over and reached with tentative fingers. She began to tug at the wet hem of the topmost blanket, then abruptly withdrew her hand. There was a body underneath the covers. She waited, but there came no cry of protest.
    She tugged on the blanket again, gathering it into her lap, ready to flee at the first sign of movement. Her hand touched an