The Court of the Air

Chapter Twenty

Someone was standing in front of the light at the end of the tunnel. Molly stepped forward apprehensively. She had no idea how she had got here — although she knew there were things that had happened to her that she should have been able to remember.

The silhouette of the figure beckoned her; as she got nearer it became more detailed. It was a girl. Someone who should be familiar, someone Molly knew, a figure in the corridor of a house at night. Tock House, the name leapt at her. Something had happened at Tock House, the thing she should be able to remember. Confused, she peered closer at the girl — less ghost-like, more solid, but still as silent as a mime.

Molly tried to speak with her voice, but nothing came out. That was not the way to communicate with this apparition of … a steamman, Silver Onestack. That name brought more flashes of memory images. But the girl was her spectre now, not the steamman’s. She fair glowed, giving off warmth that comforted the pain in Molly’s heart.

‹Is this a perfect moment?› Molly asked, finding the right register to communicate.

The spectre just smiled and pointed at the light.

‹For me?›

The girl nodded.

The light grew, enveloping her, freezing her with its clarity. Then it grew dim and she was on a mud floor in a cave-like cell. The hardness of the floor, the stiffness in her bones and the tingling she felt on her skin — this was real.

‘Molly,’ said Nickleby.

She rolled over. The pensman and Commodore Black were in the cell with her.

‘I-’ she could not finish her words, choking and coughing.

‘Ah, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘That’s it, cough it out. We were dirt-gassed and you the lightest in weight of us all. It was cut mortal thin though, or we would have left our lungs back at Tock House.’

Molly looked around the cell. No beds, a night pan — more for the guards’ comfort than theirs, she suspected. Metal bars joined the ceiling to the floor; the back of the room was a slope of rock.

‘Where is Aliquot?’

‘He wasn’t with us when we woke up,’ said Nickleby. ‘I think he must have slipped past them in the fighting.’

‘Aye, either that or gone down with Tock House,’ said the commodore. ‘Dirt-gas could scrub his crystals. That’s the way you take a boat too, when she’s on the surface and you want to board her easy. Cut her hull and pump her full of gas, have the sailors running around like rabbits in a warren; then you send down the stoats.’

‘He can seal off the air flues to his boiler system, run cold. Coppertracks could last hours without needing air.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the commodore. ‘But it still leaves us here, hanging like hares in the larder. Waiting for our precious necks to be sliced.’

Molly pressed her face to the bars. She thought she had heard the footsteps of someone coming.

‘But who is to be doing the slicing?’ asked Nickleby.

A voice came down the corridor. ‘A good question, to be sure.’

It was Count Vauxtion, a party of black-clad toppers at his heels and a woman, her grey hair tied into buns. Count Vauxtion looked at the woman. ‘You can confirm her blood machine record?’

‘I can,’ she replied. ‘She is the genuine article. I am already preparing arrangements to pay your finder’s fee.’

‘She has a name,’ spat Molly, pressing her face to the bars. ‘Are you the one paying for my head?’

‘I am just the assessor, m’dear,’ said the woman. ‘You would be surprised how many disfigured corpses have been handed in to me from unscrupulous sources who are only too happy to claim the money on your scalp without doing the actual mug-hunting.’

‘Blessed hard to come by an honest murderer, then,’ said the commodore.

‘Quite,’ said the woman. ‘But the good news is that we both get paid our commission now.’ She turned to one of the toppers. ‘Unlock the door. If the girl gives you any trouble, kill these two bumpkins. If these two give you any trouble, you can still kill them — but cut off one of the girl’s ears first. She doesn’t need to hear to be of use to our employer.’

The count turned to an old craynarbian standing behind them and indicated they would depart, but the assessor raised her hand. ‘The contract says “to the satisfaction of the patron”, Compatriot Vauxtion. I have yet to hear him express that satisfaction.’

‘You appear better informed than I, madam,’ said the count. ‘I was not even certain that the patron was a him.’

‘Smoke and mirrors, hmm?’ said the female assessor. ‘Well, allow me to satisfy your curiosity. You will find him a fascin ating fellow, I believe.’

The craynarbian retainer leant close and whispered something to Count Vauxtion and he nodded. Molly was prodded in the back by a topper and she and her two companions were led down a corridor past empty cells. At the end of the passage a pair of double iron doors was unchained and opened.

Molly gasped. She had been expecting the basement of some rich lunatic’s mansion in Middlesteel — not this. Wide steps sweeping down to a landscape littered with broken ziggurats; the crimson light of Chimecan crystals in the cavern ceiling, painting the landscape in an eternal twilight. Most of the ruins were wild, overgrown with spiked fungus spheres and flat, red cavern grass like a sea of fire. Paths had been cleared through the undergrowth, boxes of equipment piled behind wire fences. On the other side of the ruins she could see a tent city stretched out in ordered rows, the light from human buildings and the hum of industry. She had come full circle.

‘The undercity!’ said the count.

‘Ah, yes, you came down on the private atmospheric line, didn’t you?’ said the assessor. ‘A little deeper than you realized perhaps.’

‘The outlaws of Grimhope didn’t raise the fortune sitting on my head,’ said Molly.

‘Obviously not,’ said the assessor. ‘But we are a long way from Grimhope, m’dear.’

‘This is a mortal bad turn,’ whined Commodore Black. One of the toppers shoved him to silence with the butt of his carbine and Nickleby had to help him back to his feet.

As they rounded the nearest of the ziggurats Molly passed by a line of shambling steamman walking out from the tent city. Something about the creatures was wrong. She could see it in their zombie-like walk — see it in the unnatural uniformity of the bodies — the metal equivalent of a womb mage’s organic breedings.

She got closer and one of the steamman stopped in the line. ‘Molly!’ the voice grated from a voicebox in the metal skull. ‘Molly, is that you?’

Molly stopped. ‘I-’

‘Molly, it’s me. Sainty, from the Sun Gate workhouse.’

Molly studied the poorly riveted machine life. ‘But you are…’

‘They did this to me!’ Sainty’s voice was hard to understand through the hisses and metallic popping. ‘They were looking for you, but they took us away — the ones they didn’t murder like Rachael. They peeled us into slices and jammed us into our new bodies. Most of the Sun Gate house is down here. With the others, with the-’

A man wielding a button-encrusted wand strode towards them and the girl who had been Sainty fell down to her metal knees, a fizz of agony whistling from her voicebox. ‘No talking among the equalized. Two minutes of pain as punishment.’

One of the toppers grabbed Molly by the arms as she tried to lash at the overseer who moved behind the safety of his column of shambling metal slaves.

‘You jigger, leave her alone. It was me that started the talking. What are you doing to her — what have you done to my friend?’

‘She is serving her purpose,’ responded the overseer. ‘When you have been equalized you will understand. Now move on or I shall increase this compatriot’s punishment level further. And hope that you are not assigned to my brigade after you have undergone the conversion.’

‘If she lives long enough to get a new body I believe she will count herself fortunate,’ said the assessor.

‘Come, lass,’ said Commodore Black, watching the guards restraining Nickleby. ‘These black-hearted cavern demons are in no mood to show us a drop of mercy. Help your friend as best you can by leaving her be.’

Pushed and shoved by the toppers, the three of them stumbled after the assessor. She led them across the ruined city and into the centre of the overgrown metropolis. They approached the largest of the ziggurats down a cracked boulevard lined by limb-like black stone lamps, light crystals long dead but recently superseded by gas lanterns lashed to their heads by wire ties. Up to the central stairs of the ziggurat. It had not looked so high from street level, but Molly quickly found her legs aching, having to rest at the caprice of their guards’ need to pause for a breath.

From the stone-hewn treads she could look down across the entirety of the ruins. To the right there was a yawning pit circled by scaffolding and wooden ramps where the activity of the resurrected Chimecan city seemed to be concentrated, legions of the dull metal bodies of human-steamman hybrids filing down into the darkness, the distant thump of machines and the whistle of steam engines venting pressure to the dance of spinning regulators. Behind them was the wall of the grotto where their cell had been buried, carved figures stretching from the floor to the mist-shrouded ceiling in an extended procession of monstrosities. Bare-breasted warriors from the race of man — both male and female — with dome-like crystal helmets and the folded legs of locusts. Molly saw Count Vauxtion following the course of her gaze; the ancient statues and the new mine works. From the look of curiosity on his face, her implacable hunter obviously had as little idea as the rest of them what was going on down here.

There were guards at the top of the ziggurat, wearing red cloaks and robe-like uniforms. Brilliant men. So the bullyboys of Grimhope were in on this place’s forbidding subterranean machinations. She should have expected no less. The assessor moved through the soldiers’ ranks and there, seated on a throne, was the dark-haired leader of Grimhope, lord of this broken place.

Molly, the commodore and the pensman were dragged in front of his throne.

‘Tzlayloc!’

‘Compatriot Templar,’ said the rebel lord. ‘So much nuisance in the form of one young damson, it hardly seems possible you have put me to this much trouble.’

‘You know him?’ said Nickleby.

‘Silas, he’s the King of Grimhope. You pulled me out of his capital in the Duitzilopochtli Deeps.’

‘A temporary parting only, it seems,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘If I had but known you were my guest then … but you do not appear so sure, compatriot pensman?’

‘I’m a little older than Molly,’ said Nickleby. ‘Old enough to remember when there was an exemption on real-box pictures being published in the penny sheets. Pictures of the leaders of the Carlist uprising, Jacob Walwyn.’

‘You have an astute eye,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘But Walwyn is dead. That naive student of Benjamin Carl breathed his last during the uprising, his blood running in the gutters alongside the rest of the Carlists when their hearts and methods proved ineffectual to the tasks that history demanded of them. They were soft while their enemy was hard, so they were broken by their own weakness. Believe me, that is not a mistake Tzlayloc intends to make.’

‘If you are my patron,’ said Count Vauxtion stepping forward, ‘and you are satisfied that I have completed my commission, then I shall take my leave. I fear I find Jackelian politics rather tedious.’

‘Compatriot Vauxtion, how good to finally see you without the distortion of a mirror crackling between us. Your words wound me. I am sure you follow the politics of your adopted land as closely as you did at home. You have proved a most capable mug-hunter,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘But then you did come highly recommended.’

‘Recommended by whom?’

A figure in a plain blue military tunic weighed down with medals moved out from behind the line of guards, worldsingers at either side, their robes cut in a foreign style. The sword arm of Count Vauxtion’s craynarbian retainer rattled in anger at the sight of the broken boxer’s nose and brutish features. ‘Captain Arinze!’

‘Citizen-Marshal Arinze now,’ retorted the officer. ‘But I hardly expect you two to be familiar with the uniforms of the people’s army; the cut has been updated quite a bit since you escaped from the Commonshare.’

‘Another damn shiftie,’ said Molly, her stare moving between the count and the marshal. ‘This whole place is filthy with them.’

‘Oh, but the count isn’t a Quatershiftian any more, young compatriot,’ said the officer. ‘He forfeited that right when he fled over our border. You recall your speech to the general command on the night before the last battle and what I advised you then, don’t you, count? It seems I chose the winning side after all, old man. And now it is I that carry the marshal’s baton while you have been serving under my command in a manner of speaking, given it is the Commonshare’s gold that has been paying to assist our compatriots across the border. You’ve kept your title but lost your country, old man. I hope the bargain has been worth it.’

‘While you have kept your uniform but lost everything that once made it worth wearing,’ spat the count. ‘A bargain which I am sure you feel well made.’

‘Well made indeed.’ The marshal waved at the soldiers and they lugged forward a chest. ‘But let it not be said we are not men of our word. I said the Commonshare would fund our compatriots’ activities in Jackals and so we will. Enjoy the money while you can, compatriot; soon it will be as much of an anachronism as your title and the soiled remnants of your estate. A society of equals needs no currency save our devotion to the cause.’

The commodore’s eyes widened when he saw the fat bags of guineas lying in the chest. ‘Are you blessed fools? What does your monstrous realm want with this needy lass and a weary submariner like poor old Blacky?’

‘We require only the good will of our neighbours,’ said the Quatershiftian soldier.

‘That is a courteous way of saying it is his payment for a corner of Jackals,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Nothing too grand … everything from the border south to Comlonney in a sixty-mile strip. That includes an equal share of Shadowclock and the celgas mines of course.’

‘You belong in an asylum, Walwyn,’ said Nickleby. ‘The navy isn’t going to sit back and watch the Commonshare lower their cursewall, form up and march across the border. You’ll bring down another Reudox on the poor devils’ heads. There’ll be hundreds of thousands of Quatershiftian corpses lying dead in their cities as the price for your insane war.’

‘You write very well,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘I have always thought so. With your left hand I believe?’

The pensman’s guards seized Nickleby and hauled him forward. ‘However, I found your pieces a little too flowery for my taste. Let me show you what I am about to do to Jackals’ beloved Royal Aerostatical Navy.’ He slid out a sabre from a guard’s belt and whipped it down across Nickleby’s left arm, the severed hand tumbling out to land at the marshal’s feet. ‘Difficult to concentrate isn’t it,’ said Tzlayloc as the pensman screamed, clutching his bloody stump. ‘Of course, to make my point properly I should have cut off your head, but then there wouldn’t be enough left of you to undergo the equalization.’

He pointed at the fiery pit behind them and the guards dragged Nickleby towards it, thrusting the bleeding remains of his arm into the coals. The pensman was unconscious by the time his wrist had been cauterized.

Tzlayloc caressed Molly’s cheek as she swore at the rebel leader. ‘Don’t worry, Compatriot Templar. He shall have a new metal hand soon enough.’

‘Have you horrendous swine no blessed compassion?’ shouted Commodore Black.

‘My compassion is for the people suffering under the tyranny above ground,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Not war criminals and propagandists from the old regime. I see you are shocked, commodore. I know all about you and your friends — we have plenty of brothers and sisters in the engine rooms of Greenhall. And you must have done worse in your time as a science pirate, Samson Dark!’

Molly looked in confusion at the commodore.

‘You’re touched in the head,’ said the commodore. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I will admit, your fake blood code and the new face your back-street worldsinger gave you had our compatriots in Greenhall puzzled, Captain Dark. But Greenhall is not the only institution to track the ancient bloodlines.’ He beckoned with a finger and a figure dressed like a Jackelian country squire came forward, his waistcoat bulging tight over a muscular chest. ‘I believe you know our compatriot from the Court of the Air.’

Commodore Black flew at the figure in a frenzy, but the target of his fury became a blur, tripping the submariner and allowing the guards to seize his arms and restrain the bear of a man.

‘Wildrake,’ yelled the commodore, struggling, ‘stand these beasts down and let’s you and me get to it.’

‘You have become flabby, captain,’ said Jamie Wildrake. ‘Your pectorals are a disgrace to a fighting man. But you are to be congratulated on the length of time you have had to let them go to ruin. Fourteen years and the Court were convinced you had died with the rest of your fleet on the island.’

‘Commodore,’ said Molly, ‘what in the Circle’s name is he talking about?’

‘Commodore is it now?’ said the wolftaker. ‘Such a lowly title for the Duke of Ferniethian. You have been hobnobbing with the last of the Jackelian aristocracy, little street girl. The royalist buccaneers had been a thorn in our side since the end of the civil war. But until Dark came along they were disorganized, breeding like sea snakes in their ancient stolen boats. Samson Dark united the squabbling emigre families and moulded them into a formidable menace to the trading routes.’

‘It took your filthy treachery to sink us,’ said the commodore. ‘There wasn’t a Jackelian skipper fit to tilt a sea lance against us.’

‘You can’t betray a cause you don’t believe in,’ said Wildrake. ‘As our present masters of Jackals are about to discover.’

‘You’re a crusher?’ said Molly. ‘And you’re working with these jiggers?’

‘He’s the worst of all crushers,’ said Commodore Black. ‘There’s a whole nest of them in the sky, watching us like we are blessed ants, reaching down to stamp us out when they see us scurrying the wrong way.’

‘Then you should applaud what I am about to achieve, Dark,’ said the wolftaker. ‘What your nobles in exile couldn’t accomplish in five hundred years of futile raids and a trail of plundered burning merchantmen. No more parliament — the corrupt legacy of Kirkhill torn to pieces.’

‘There is no finer compatriot in all of Jackals,’ said Marshal Arinze, stroking Wildrake’s back as if the wolftaker were his child. ‘A true son of the revolution, a shining example of how a brother can have his eyes opened by the truth and renounce the uncommunityist tenets of his birth. Just look how solid his body is now. He is a sword of right-thought, a blade for us to plunge into the heart of the people’s enemy.’

‘You traitorous bloody jigger,’ hollered Molly. ‘Your perfect neck is going to end up swinging on the end of a rope at Bonegate.’

Marshal Arinze backhanded Molly’s face, slapping her to the ground. ‘I wish I had the opportunity to find you a place in one of our camps, girl, open your eyes to the truth of Carlism — you who were born with so little, you who should have been a natural soldier in our cause. But you have another way to serve.’

‘I won’t serve you. You and your shiftie friends are going to be slaughtered,’ said Molly. ‘The moment you come across the border our people will bury your whole dirty army, just like we always do.’

Tzlayloc laughed along with the marshal, sweeping his arm down to the ravine where his legions were toiling. ‘But our neighbours from Quatershift won’t be coming over the border to aid us, Compatriot Templar. They will be coming under it. This city isn’t the only secret the ancient shades of Wildcaotyl have shared with me. They have led me to the deepest atmospheric tunnel routes, half ruined and collapsed with age, but nothing that a dedicated force toiling for their freedom, striving for an equal society, could not clear. Your tyranny of shopkeepers and mill masters is about to tumble before the truth of the revolution, Compatriot Templar. In a few days I will have a brigade of the people’s army ready to march onto Middlesteel’s own doorstep. This time the events of the age will not find us wanting. We are not the lenient philosophers and sentimental combination families that fell to Jackals’ guns fifteen years ago. We have a purity of purpose.’

Molly was trembling. It sounded mad, but her heart told her that the decades-long bloodbath in Quatershift was about to be exported to her home. The old empire’s atmospheric lines — they must have cleared near two hundred miles of tunnels to get to the border with the Commonshare.

‘Search within yourself, young compatriot. You know it is true. And once we have purged the RAN of its patrician leeches we will unleash our eager jack cloudies on the rest of the continent. The complacent mechomancers of the city-states, that fat godhead in Kikkosico, King Steam’s cold intelligence, all will be overthrown by our new army of light. We will sweep away the antiquated kingdoms of this land and replace them with our perfect new union.’

Molly kicked the chest of money, rattling the bags of coins inside. ‘Why have you been hunting me, Tzlayloc? I haven’t got a place in your sullied new land.’

‘That’s the beauty of it, compatriot,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Everyone has an equal place in it — but you, my dear compatriot, you have been marked for a special place in our new order. No false modesty now. We found the ruins of a blood analyser in your new lodgings and I know all about your little visit to raid the memory of the Greenhall engine rooms. I think you understand well enough what you are now.’

Behind Molly the count’s retainer was filling an old army pack with the bags of Jackelian guineas.

‘Compatriot Vauxtion,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Before you depart, I took the liberty of cancelling your steamer berth for Concorzia. Your services are going to prove exceptionally useful for me in the coming months. There are going to be many people that need hunting down — Guardians, the lords commercial and Circlist council members. The colonies could not begin to appreciate a killer with your unique talents.’

Vauxtion did not look happy, thought Molly. But if he had any doubts the tight-lipped assassin was wise enough not to express them in front of Tzlayloc.

‘There’s an illness inside you, Tzlayloc,’ said Molly. ‘I don’t need the blood of some ancient fighter running through my veins to see it either. You’re one sick scurf.’

‘Such valuable blood it is too,’ said Tzlayloc. He pressed a stone sphere in his throne’s arm and part of the floor began to crunch back, folding as a dais rose up into the artificial crystal light of the cavern. On top of the dais sat a slab-like black cross, a stone surface veined with a network of silver channels. The head of the cross expanded bulb-like into a hollow gem bigger than any jewel Molly had seen before — its crystal walls filled with bubbling blood. Blood that seemed alive, tentacles of it lashing against the walls, struggling to rise up before splashing back down formless into the crimson sea.

Fear held Molly in place, a terror so complete she was paralysed. This gem was all that remained of her distant kinsmen and women; the victims of the Pitt Hill Slayer, their souls and blood intermingled in a tortured scarlet sea of despair.

‘I have a throne for you,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘By my side you will become the sainted mother of our cause, Compatriot Templar.’

‘Leave her be, you jigging abominations,’ shouted the commodore. ‘Lass, lass your poor unlucky blood.’

Tzlayloc laughed. ‘Take this fat idiot of an aristocrat and his war criminal friend back to their cell. Have them both measured for the blessing of equalization. I see no reason why a duke should not toil alongside our brothers and sisters in the armament mills. But do not fret for my young sister’s blood, compatriot duke. She is the last of her kind. Unlike her kith and kin I do not require her carcass to be drained.’

‘What do you require?’ asked Molly, her throat drying up.

‘Your agony, young compatriot. I need your pain to be milked for as long as I can make you last. Your pain will set us all free.’

Oliver’s head cleared to a familiar buzzing, the hum of darting spheres of radiance, miniature stars of intelligence circling her orbit. The Lady of the Lights. He glanced around. His surroundings had frozen — Steamswipe lying nearby shattered on the dirt floor, two men he did not recognize sitting forlornly on their side of the iron bars keeping Oliver and Steamswipe prisoner. Time had stopped, insects frozen in mid-flight around one of the men’s wounds.

‘Oliver,’ said the Observer. ‘Oh my Oliver, what are you doing here? This is not the path you were to follow. Who will lead your people to safety now? You must survive the end of all this, we need you. Your way has become critically fused with the failure of the yin, the way of offence.’

‘I never liked being the fall-back plan,’ growled Oliver. ‘It looks like your favourite knight is exercising that much vaunted free will you claim to value so much.’

‘What is the matter with you, Oliver? There is something else inside you. I can feel it. Your pattern has become corrupted.’

‘Life is full of surprises, isn’t it, mother,’ said Oliver. ‘If you want to stock a breeding zoo to assuage your guilt over writing us off, find someone else to do it. I’ll die fighting here before I set a foot through the feymist curtain again. I belong to the race of man and this realm is my home. I have had enough of running and hiding to last me a lifetime. No more!’

‘So, you’ve worked it out then?’ sighed the Observer.

‘Yes. Your “deal” with my father,’ said Oliver.

‘I needed to experience your existence from your people’s perspective,’ said the Observer. ‘So I left what you might call a shadow of myself here — an echo of that which I am. A mortal shadow. A little too mortal, as it transpired, carrying the urges and passions of your flesh. Things did not end well for her, did they?’

‘You’ve seemed to make the most of your mistakes, mother,’ said Oliver, bitterly.

Oliver knew he should be feeling something for this goddess, some connection; but, oddly, he felt only a void inside his soul. Was it the pistols anaesthetizing him? No. Even if they had never found him, he knew he would feel exactly the same. It was like discovering you had been sired by the gusts of the north wind. You could feel love for a person. But for a concept? What could you ever hope to feel towards a concept?

‘Oliver,’ pleaded the Observer, the desperation evident even on her ethereal face. ‘You’re dooming your kind. You are their last hope for survival. I need your kind to survive, I need you to survive.’

‘Then you should have left a sacred young boy in the realm of the fast-time people,’ said Oliver, ‘and never have taken me to Jackals.’

‘It’s not too late, child. You’re in the hands of the enemy’s servants now and this position is doomed. Soon the last barriers of containment will fall and the enemy will arrive. The Wildcaotyl will want to invite in far worse things. They will want to recommence their terrible scheme to subvert this realm. When that happens the forces that stand behind me will commence the erasure of everything that supports your existence. You can still lead any fey that will follow you to safety.’

‘You do what you feel you have to. Just know that when you try, it won’t only be the darkness beyond the walls of the world you’ll be facing,’ said Oliver.

‘This isn’t you,’ said the Observer. Her body was starting to vibrate, shaking in and out of focus. This was not the smooth fading of recall Oliver had witnessed before. She was changing, her spheres of light pulsing in alarm. She reached out to her lights imploringly. ‘Stop them — I still have time — I must-’

Her form grew larger, changing, a chrysalis becoming a butterfly. Even her lights were mutating, shifting from bright spheres to malevolent clusters of spikes that rotated around their new master in rapid loops. It was like the shadow of a bear given life. No features, just a black mass of biped-shaped darkness. A single red eye like a line slashed across its head turned to look at Oliver and take in the cell, its senses flowing over Oliver and stretching out across thousands of miles in the shavings of a second.

‘You’re it, are you?’ said the Shadow Bear. ‘She’s had a thousand damn years and you are the best she could cobble together. It’s a wonder I wasn’t called in earlier.’

The Observer’s words out on the cold moors echoed in Oliver’s mind. ‘I will be removed, Oliver. No more nails. No more damage limitation. You will be assigned something very dangerous with a very short fuse instead.’

‘The fuse, I presume?’ said Oliver.

The Shadow Bear glared around the cell, but its gaze was extending across nations. ‘What a bloody mess. You haven’t looked after the shop at all, have you?’

Oliver laughed, the strangeness of the sound echoing around the frozen timescape. ‘What in Circle’s name do you know about living in real life?’

‘That’s new,’ said the Shadow Bear. ‘No wonder you spooked her into calling me in, but it’s not nearly enough to save you. Personally speaking, if it was me, I would scurry away down that rat tunnel she laid the last time there was trouble here.’ It pointed an angry finger at Oliver. ‘I was made for this. After you smears of water and meat have royally rogered up, I might even hold off from bringing this place down, just so I can tarry a little with the enemy. It has been a bloody age since I had some fun.’

Oliver thrust his face to within an inch of the featureless silhouette of the Shadow Bear. ‘Best you start burning then, short little fuse. I would imagine you have a lot of things to do.’

The Shadow Bear shook its head in disgust. ‘Man, did she ever go native.’

It vanished like it had never been and time became fluid again.

There were moments when the pain became so intense that it did not even hurt, when the burning fire eating away at Molly’s skin grew hot enough for her suffering to transcend the capacity of her nerves to signal their agony. Those brief interludes of cold calm were disrupted when the cross of stone she was strapped to sensed her ascension and shifted the pattern of pain, making it a line of dancing impaling spikes or the crushing grip of a mountain squeezing her down. It was so clever, the ebony slab. It could sense when her mind was about to shut down and splinter into schizophrenic shards to isolate her from the torrent of suffering. Seconds before her mind collapsed the cross would suddenly turn itself off, leaving her senses drifting in the warm cavern air, nothing to watch but the play of Chimecan lantern crystals as they dimmed and flared with the surges of earthflow.

‘It is said that it can become addictive,’ said Tzlayloc. How long had he been standing there, watching her writhe and yell? ‘Such a clever artifice from the coldtime. The stone is as much a surgeon as it is a torturer; it can keep you alive for years, breaking you and then mending you. The beauty of it is that it’s all in the mind. It’s like a microcosm of life — giving you a little pain, holding out the promise of a little pleasure — or at least a respite from your grief.’

It was difficult for Molly to focus, even when the cross-shaped slab was waiting for her to recover. She tried not to bite her tongue as she replied, ‘What do you want? I’ll give it to you, just let me off this.’

‘This isn’t what I want,’ said Tzlayloc, the man who had once been Jacob Walwyn. ‘Please do not think that. But it is necessary. You are the last operator, Compatriot Templar. What you feel is what the Hexmachina feels — there are no other operators for it to draw upon, for it to distribute its senses among. When I torture you, I torture it.’

‘I haven’t even met the Hexmachina,’ sobbed Molly.

‘Oh, but I think you have.’ Tzlayloc stroked the crystal walls of the gem behind Molly, the blood of her family amplifying her suffering as a lens focuses light. ‘Like the rest of your distant relatives. I wager you see things at night, in dreams. A young child perhaps?’

Her ghost — the young spirit at Tock House — was the Hexmachina?

‘I have seen it in dreams myself,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘And its real body too, glimpses of it scuttling about the tunnels. I went deep, Compatriot Templar, after the uprising. Even Grimhope was no protection for Jacob Walwyn, with mug-hunters and outlaws willing to risk the free city to turn me in for the bounty on my head. I went further and deeper than any since the fall of Chimeca. Crawling through rubble falls and shinning down air stacks, past the bones of tomb robbers, past the dust and armour of Chimecan legionnaires who had stayed at their posts to the bitter end.’

‘I drank from underground lakes that haven’t been seen for a millennium, ate the mushrooms the old empire grew to save their people from starvation. Even the wild stock the locust priests kept for themselves. Some of their machines are still breathing down there, living machines made of meat, some of the same sorcery which survives weakly diluted over in the dunes of Cassarabia.’

Molly screamed as the slab decided her body was fit enough for another burst of agony.

‘I am sorry, compatriot,’ said Tzlayloc, ‘but you are the key. Can’t you feel it? Xam-ku is almost with us now and Toxicatl, all the shadows of Wildcaotyl. Your agony is unstitching the prison your ancestor and his ill-advised creations sealed them in. Soon the Hexmachina will be able to stand it no more and will be drawn here to try to save you — and we shall tear it to pieces.’

She could see the outlines of the old ones etched in the air, their hungry mandibles clicking in anticipation, awakening memories of ancient clashes against the filthy powerful parasites. Seven holy machines and a band of desperate warriors from every race on the continent locked in a deadly battle to win their freedom. The old evil was back, but its presence was not yet permanent. It would take the Hexmachina’s destruction and the feast of souls the leader of Grimhope was planning to consolidate its hold. Hearts tossed into the pyres of Chimecan rites; for what need did the equalized have of beating meat in their chests? Equals required no passion for jealousy, no striving for betterment, no hope to feed their dreams. Their mean was set for them and fixed in their brave new bodies for Tzlayloc’s brave new world.

Molly’s spine arched on the slab, her cries carrying across the ruined city. ‘You can’t trust the old ones,’ she managed through clenched teeth.

‘They are a force, nothing more,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Our belief is their manna, our devotion their sustenance. As a gale drives a windmill so we shall harness the Wildcaotyl as the tailwind behind our cause. It is an eminently practical arrangement. They gorge on our souls and there are so many souls for them above ground that will not be missed. Counting-house masters, mill overseers, emperors and every other uncommunityist vampire who has been feeding on the people since the wheel of history began turning. Turnabout is fair play, is it not? They have gnawed at our sinews for long enough. Now it is our turn to make a meal out of them.’

‘Don’t — do — it,’ Molly begged.

‘Think of it, Molly Templar. Our compatriots in Quatershift have been running the unproductive leeches of their land through Gideon’s Collars for a decade and producing nothing more than compost for their farms. But with the gods of Wildcaotyl melded with the revolution there is nothing that we will not be able to achieve — no enemy we cannot cut down. We shall create a perfect reign of equality that will last for all eternity.’

Molly screamed as she burned. ‘Please!’

Tears rolled down Tzlayloc’s face. ‘I shall make you a saint, Molly. I shall raise temples to you, the poor street girl who gave her life to seal our perfect world. Your suffering is worth that, is it not, surely you must want to help us?’

Her pain drowned out the rest of his words.

Count Vauxtion sat as he had done for the last hour, in his chair with the chest of money in front of him. A bag of Jackelian guineas had been lined up in neat piles across the shine of his varnished tabletop and the count reduced one column of coins, building up another and then repeating the exercise … a game of chess without end.

‘I believe you have the means to retire now, sir,’ said Ka’oard.

‘Yes,’ said the count. ‘Although I suspect we will find a paucity of berths available in the direction of Concorzia if we should try the stats or the paddle steamers.’

‘Perhaps one of the old tall ship skippers, sir. Or a tramp submarine boat. And they do not yet control Jackals. There are the ferries to the city-states and the Holy Empire. If it came to it, my clan connections could no doubt secure us safe passage through the worst of Liongeli. If we got to one of the Saltless Sea ports along Crayorocco we might sail out to Thar. I have always wondered what it might be like to travel to the east, sir. And I doubt if they will be watching the jinn road south.’

‘Cassarabia?’ the count started laughing. ‘An old man sitting on an adobe roof in the shade of a palm tree, chewing leaaf and trying to remember what it was like to drink wine without the taste of sand in it. This is not about Tzlayloc’s continued patronage, old shell. This is about the application of power. But his people are only watching me. You can still go to the colonies, there’s no point both of us rotting here while this place falls apart.’

‘I do not believe I would care for that, sir,’ said the craynarbian. ‘I have grown rather fond of this silly bumbling nation. They have the power to overrun the whole continent, but they would rather potter about their gardens cutting their hedges into fanciful shapes, slap each other with debating sticks and stop every hour to brew a pot of caffeel. Jackals deserves better than what happened to the old place, don’t you think? Besides, sir, without you things would appear rather dull.’

‘Well then,’ said the count. ‘I am a good hunter but I fear I will make for rather poor prey. So what is to be done?’

The craynarbian retainer proffered a tray. ‘I don’t think this is a matter of power at all, sir.’

Count Vauxtion stopped building his tower of coins. ‘Then what — ah, I see, you kept it after all.’ He picked up a polished thin blade from the tray. Ka’oard watched his master’s eyes sparkle as he handled the fencing sabre. The command to throw the blade away thirty years ago was the only order on a battlefield the old retainer had ever disobeyed.

‘I believe, sir,’ said the craynarbian, ‘that this is a matter of honour.’

On top of the ziggurat the rulers of Grimhope trembled and wished they were any place except here. They had never seen Tzlayloc in such a murderous fury.

‘Why?’ he screamed at them, pointing at the limp sweat-covered figure secured to the Chimecan torture slab. ‘Why does the Hexmachina not come? She has been on the slab for two days. Her agony has been exquisite — but I see no Hexmachina!’

There was a nervous shuffling among the locust priests. They had embraced the old religion with gusto, their minds filled with the power of the ancient texts that Tzlayloc had brought back from his strange odyssey to the underworld. But now some of them were wishing for the relative anonymity of an equalized shell that their compatriots had enjoyed.

‘Compatriot Templar is not the last operator,’ said one of them. ‘It is the only explanation.’

‘We always knew there was a danger of this,’ piped up one of the priests at the front.

Tzlayloc stabbed a finger at the red-robed figure that had spoken. ‘You are the guardians of the new order, the shepherds of equality — and this is the best counsel you can offer!’

‘It is a matter of probabilities,’ said one who had been an engine man at Greenhall. ‘A new descendant of Vindex with the talent to control the Hexmachina has emerged, or they might have been here all the time with their blood code unrecorded. Some of the distant parishes are tardy with their registrations.’

‘But the operators always come here,’ shrieked Tzlayloc. ‘Always! Drawn by the last of those infernal machines. Wake your transaction engine pet up; set it on the Greenhall records again. If there is a new operator you will find them. I need their blood and I need their pain.’

‘What of this one?’ said the locust priest, pointing at Molly. ‘We can drain her blood for the vat.’

Tzlayloc hit the locust priest in the face, knocking him to the ground. ‘Fool of a shepherd. Look at her; she is perfect — abandoned by the tyranny, a ward of the poorhouse, brave and beautiful. She has more fight in her than a dozen brilliant men. If there is another operator they will most likely be of the same ilk as the other catches of the Pitt Hill teams — burghers, councillors, silks and the indolent brood of the oppressors. Would you have us raise statues to some young martyred quality worth ten thousand guineas a year?’ He caressed Molly’s soaking red locks. ‘No, she is perfect. Throw her back in the cells, give her food and let her recover. We shall decide which operator feeds the vat and which gets the cross after we uncover the identity of the new talent.’

The locust priest Tzlayloc had admonished grovelled at the leader’s feet. ‘Let me lead a force into the tunnels to track down the Hexmachina, Compatriot Tzlayloc. Let me find the filthy device and destroy it for the cause.’

‘No,’ said the rebel king. ‘Perhaps I have been too hard on you, compatriot shepherd. You have read from the texts I recovered, but you have no idea of the cunning of the Hexmachina, how deep it swims now, whispering murmurs of affection to the molten dirt. It scampers through tunnels so deep the crystals that controlled the earthflow have long since melted there. You have no conception of the heat down below and there are other dangers besides lava surges. Just hearing the echoes of the Hexmachina muttering to itself would drive you mad. No mug-hunter, topper or soldier of the cause could hunt the ferocious thing.’

He placed a kindly hand on the kneeling priest’s head. ‘No. We shall have to bait our trap again. I cannot afford to waste the lives of those loyal to the cause.’ Tzlayloc drew out an obsidian dagger and sliced the priest’s throat. ‘Not when the guarantors of the revolution hunger for the souls of those too foolish to lead the people to freedom.’

With almost indecent eagerness the other locust priests fell upon their brother, holding him down while Tzlayloc carved the heart out of his chest. ‘Xam-ku, Toxicatl,’ he called. ‘Cruatolatl and Bruaxochima.’

As the crystals in the ceiling flared, black outlines of man-insects appeared fleetingly, the locust priests echoing the shouts of Tzlayloc in the excitement of the offering. The King of Grimhope pointed to the coals. ‘Fry the heart quickly. It loses its taste if it is left in the air too long.’

Two soldiers dragged the carcass of the lifeless locust priest down the steps of the ziggurat and along the wide subterranean boulevard. In the shadows of one of the buildings something watched and hissed to itself in two voices.

‘Another body. The old ones are stronger now.’

‘We can help, she said-’

‘-not yet time.’

‘We must time it right.’

‘So we must. Shhhh.’

It slunk back into the shadows, whispering to itself.

Molly woke up in the cell. It seemed inappropriate that after enduring so much pain for so long her body could now seem fresh, alive and unmarked. The commodore came over to her. ‘Ah, lass, I feared they might have driven you insane with their unholy tortures.’

‘Commodore; or should I call you Samson?’

‘Let that old name rest,’ said the commodore. ‘It has brought its line nothing but misery. In another world where Isambard Kirkhill never made his mischief I would have been proud to bear my noble title and partake of the luxuries that would have been mine. But in this world it’s better to be poor old Blacky, rather than an outlaw by a wicked accident of birth.’

She looked over at Nickleby who was asleep, sweating. He did not look well, clutching his bloody stump of an arm. There were two others in the cell. A large fierce-looking steamman and a boy with tattered clothing — perhaps a year older than her.

‘Who are they?’

‘Two bad turns, that’s for sure,’ said the commodore. ‘Our jailers swear he is feybreed and have posted Special Guards down the corridor to make sure he doesn’t escape. I think he’s been touched by the moonlight — but you should hear his blessed laugh. It’s like a demon cackling and he sits there and talks to himself sometimes.’ Black pointed to an open cell opposite their own; there was an ugly black gun-like thing and a rusty old knife sealed inside a crystal case, and a brace of more normal-looking pistols next door to it. The blade of the knife seemed to be writhing and twisting like a snake. ‘That dark gun is alive. Sometimes the boy and the steamman call out to it and you can just hear it answer back from under the glass. The boy’s friend is a vicious one for sure, not like our gentle old Coppertracks. Stay well clear of that hammer, lass, or he’ll split your pretty skull.’

Molly peered through the bars, trying to look down the walkway. She could not see anything. ‘Guardsmen. They should be smashing this bloody place up.’

‘They’re helping that devil of a revolutionary, Molly. No chance for us now, lass. Nickleby and me are to be measured up for metal suits in an hour. By tomorrow night we’ll both be fit for naught but mu-bodies for poor old Coppertracks. Clunking around these infernal caverns like metal ghosts, toiling like slaves for Tzlayloc and his mortal evil schemes.’

Molly hugged the submariner. ‘I’m sorry, commodore. This is my fault. You tried to help me and now you are both going to end up like Sainty and the rest of the Sun Gate workhouse.’

‘No tears for Blacky, now,’ said the commodore. ‘My stars have seen me cheating death since the day I was born on my ancient old boat. Better I perish down here than get thrown into the royal breeding house as a prize heifer expected to serve parliament’s cruel pleasure.’

Molly went over towards the four-legged steamman.

‘Leave him alone,’ said Oliver. ‘He’s in no mood to be a spectacle to a Middlesteel street urchin.’

‘Who are you?’ retorted Molly. ‘His mother? He’s in pain.’

‘Let me suffer,’ groaned Steamswipe. ‘I have failed the duty charged to me by King Steam for a second time. This fate is all I deserve.’

‘You are drawing too much power for your body-to-weight profile,’ said Molly, scooping up a handful of mud from the floor and shaping it over the rents in his stack. ‘And you are no good to King Steam lying here on the floor feeling sorry for yourself.’

Steamswipe breathed a sigh of relief, the red light behind his visor growing brighter. Molly popped a hatch in his belly armour and started to work on the steamman knight’s innards, her fingers pushing cogs back in place, adjusting boards and pulling out broken components.

‘You’re her,’ said Oliver. ‘You’re the plan of offence.’

‘Quiet,’ said Molly. ‘How can I work with you twittering on?’

Marching boots sounded down the corridor and Molly closed the hatch, hiding what she had been doing with her body.

Captain Flare appeared outside their cell, a boy by his side, the only one in the captain’s retinue not in a guardsman’s uniform. He looked familiar to Oliver, the subject of a hundred vicious caricatures by the penny sheets’ illustrators.

‘Dear Circle,’ said Molly. ‘Prince Alpheus!’

Oliver stood up. ‘Have you come to gloat? You couldn’t have taken me without half the guard at your back.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the captain. He held up a sheaf of papers. ‘I have your registration records, Oliver Brooks. The worldsingers did not know what you are and neither did Tzlayloc’s killers. You’re not a wolftaker; I have confirmation of that from the horse’s mouth. You seem to have wandered into all this by accident.’

‘When your friends murdered my family it was not an accident.’

‘It was the Court of the Air’s own people who did that. At least, the ones loyal to Tzlayloc.’

‘Why are you here, guardsman?’ said Molly. ‘You’re meant to be protecting us.’

‘I’m here to make an offer,’ said the captain. ‘As to the rest of it, I doubt you would understand, Damson Templar.’

‘I’m not interested,’ said Oliver.

‘You haven’t heard my offer yet,’ said Captain Flare.

‘They all sound the same after a while,’ said Oliver. ‘You’ve come to offer me the same thing that the worldsingers used to every week I was dragged into a police station to sign the county register.’

‘But with one significant difference.’ Flare tapped the torc around his neck. ‘The Commonshare’s worldsingers have removed the hex. The Special Guard are free — no more executions on the order’s whims, no more campaigns foisted upon us by the House of Guardians. We are free!’

‘Is that all?’ said Oliver. ‘You sold out cheap.’

‘Don’t be asinine, Oliver. We get our own grant of land. Judging by your choice of travelling companion you obviously came by the Steammen Free State. Why not the Feybreed Free State as well? We receive the southern uplands for our part in this. No one wants to live that near the feymist curtain anyway. We shall offer our children to it — we shall found a city of the fey. Free fey.’

‘I hope you are not planning to have families,’ said Oliver. ‘What we’ve got isn’t the winter fever. You can’t pass immun ity down a bloodline. The mist’s changes to your children’s bodies will kill eight out of ten you leave to the curtain.’

‘We shall learn, Oliver. We know nothing about the feymist — you are living proof of that. You spent your entire childhood inside the curtain. You can teach us how to survive.’

‘You’re a fool, captain,’ said Oliver. ‘Do you think your allies intend to allow the south of Jackals to become the fey-breeding capital of the world? They’ll use you to help smash the kingdom then show you the inside of a Gideon’s Collar the moment you are of no use to them.’

‘You could not defeat us,’ said Captain Flare. ‘And neither will they. We have fought for our freedom and we shall fight to keep it. Whomever we have to.’

‘Enjoy the illusion of it while you can, guardsman. I have seen inside the souls of those you call compatriot and they are rotten to the core.’

‘So much power and it’s all going to go to waste,’ said Flare. ‘The order should never have kept you at Hundred Locks. You should have been with us from the start. Now you are going to compound their error by dying down here. The wolftaker wants to bring in some of his associates to rip your mind to shreds, to see how many of his crooked friends you uncovered on the way to tracking us all down here. If you come with me as a Special Guardsman, Wildrake will have no choice but to content himself with your steamman attendant.’

‘If the price of my freedom is the subjugation of everyone else in Jackals, you can bloody keep it,’ said Oliver.

By the captain’s side the young prince stared at Commodore Black. ‘Why do you gawp at me so, old man?’

‘Ah, lad, we are related you and I. When Isambard Kirkhill rolled the rightful king off the throne, one of my great grandmothers many generations back was married to the King’s brother. In another world you would have been my nephew and I the Duke of Ferniethian.’

‘But it is this world I find myself in,’ said Prince Alpheus. ‘Shortly to gain the crown and lose my arms in the process.’

‘The House of Guardians’ wicked bargain for your pauper’s throne,’ said the commodore. ‘Dear lad, what in the Circle’s turn are you doing in this nest of monsters and villains?’

‘It is not only my jailers in the Special Guard who long to be free,’ said Prince Alpheus. ‘I do to boot — and so I shall be. Every notable in Jackals is swamping Middlesteel at this instant, waiting for the surgeon royal to raise my blood-spattered arms in Parliament Square like a flag up its pole. But my new compatriots are going to give the mob quite a different spectacle.’

‘Lad, they’re our people. Our fight is with parliament. Circle knows, I have suffered at their hands too, hunted down by the kingdom’s warships and aerostats, seen my brave friends, your family, slaughtered at the whim of turncoats and traitors. But our cause is to rule for the people, not over them. Otherwise we might as well take all the empty estates royal and turn them into mills stuffed with children earning a penny a day and run for election as Guardians.’

‘I wish you had met my father, Duke of Ferniethian,’ said Alpheus. ‘I think you would have become fast friends. Your cause is finished. The mob is an empty beast that would rather hurl jinn bottles at us every time a game of four-poles is rained off. They take guardsmen like Captain Flare here-’ the prince touched the captain’s arm ‘-the finest man I know, and put him on a leash that becomes a hangman’s rope if he pulls away too hard. There’s nothing and nobody in Jackals I have a care to rule for. When the war is over, I shall ask them for your life, duke. But that is all I shall do.’

The prince and the guardsman left the prisoners to their fate, their footsteps echoing down the passage. Commodore Black sat down and sobbed. ‘So that is our cause then. A fool of a boy raised in an empty marble cage who has forgotten his duty. And us to be turned into metal slaves or tortured until death becomes a blessed relief.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Oliver. ‘We’re not going to live that long. They think they’re riding a tiger, but the reality is that the tiger is riding them.’

‘My, but you’re a cheerful one,’ said Molly. She closed the panel on Steamswipe’s belly. ‘There you are old steamer. You’re running at a level where you can cope with your broken stack. You won’t be able to smash down fortress walls and lift aerostats any more, but I wouldn’t want to stand in front of your hammer all the same.’

‘Truly the Loas ride you, young softbody,’ said Steamswipe, raising his centaur-like body on his armoured legs slowly, testing the weight. ‘You heal our race as if you were tutored inside the hall of the architects.’

‘Molly,’ coughed Nickleby from the floor. ‘Commodore, for the love of the Circle will one of you get my pipe out from my pocket.’

Oliver was nearest, so he pulled the battered wooden pipe out and filled it with mumbleweed while the pensman’s friends checked his left arm, bandaged with green cloth torn from his jacket.

‘So you have your story now,’ said Commodore Black. ‘The mystery of the Pitt Hill slayings. But the devils won’t be letting you out to Dock Street to write it.’

The pensman held up his mangled left arm. ‘Well, I never was much good at writing with my right hand.’

Molly grimaced as she saw the bloody stump Tzlayloc had made of her friend’s limb.

Nickleby looked at Oliver and Steamswipe. ‘I thought I had dreamed you, thought I was going to wake up back at Tock House.’

Oliver flicked the flywheel on the side of the pipe and sparked the weed into life. ‘You know, ever since I left Hundred Locks I have been waking up every day feeling the same way.’

Nickleby lay back in relief as the smoke started to lift out of the pipe’s head.

‘If you are a son of the mist, northern boy, how about you turn your fey nature on these bars,’ said Molly. ‘Melt them or walk through them or something.’

Oliver glared at her. ‘I’m the shield, not the sword. That’s your job. There’s Special Guard by the door — and I know you can feel the other things out there — the ancient ones.’

The commodore shook his head in despair. ‘Dear Circle, is it not enough that we are trapped down here without a mortal drop of jinn to warm our hearts, must we have terrible spirits to contend with too?’

‘Dear Circle is right,’ said Nickleby. ‘Jackals has had a millennium following the Circlelaw, a millennium prospering without the passion of gods to bend our knee to. Tzlayloc will return us to an age of Chimecan darkness.’

‘At least we are together,’ said the commodore. ‘Molly, it was your ancestor who crowned the first king of Jackals and until the civil war, it was my family that protected the realm from the return of monsters such as these. Our fates have led us here. We have done our mortal best and there is no shame in that.’

‘Someone is coming,’ said Oliver.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ said Molly.

‘I wasn’t using my ears.’

Flanked by two Special Guardsmen and diminutive in comparison, Count Vauxtion stood in front of the bars of the cell.

Molly spat at the bars. ‘I thought you would be spending your mug-hunting bounty by now, count.’

Count Vauxtion held up a sheaf of paper. ‘More work for the wicked. My benefactor has been very generous with his patronage. I dare say we will catch most of the splendidly distinguished names on this list when Middlesteel falls. Tzlayloc has his ancient atmospheric tunnel cleared now. The Third Brigade is arriving through it as we speak.’

Nickleby groaned. The Commonshare’s Third Brigade, their shock troops. As the revolution in Quatershift had raged the communityists had emptied the jails and conscripted political prisoners, murderers, rapists, thieves. The Third Brigade was where the worst of the devils had ended up, their name synonymous with the greatest excesses of a brutal civil war. They were demons in uniform.

‘You’re a true topper, count,’ said Molly. ‘A real piece of work.’

‘I am truly sorry, my dear. It gives me no pleasure to do this.’ He indicated the lock on the cell and one of the Special Guardsmen pushed back his cloak to reach for the keys. ‘The locust priests request your company upstairs for another of their holy services. Say goodbye to your companions, Molly. The war criminal and the sailor will be among the legions of the equalized when you return … and there are some truth hexers who want to pick through the minds of the boy and the steamman.’ He smiled coldly at Oliver. ‘If Molly survives the priests’ blessings, she may want to wipe the drool away from what is left of you.’

Oliver knew what was coming. The pressure on his hands increased, the weight of holding an anvil no one could see. With a click the door swung open and the hulking Special Guardsmen moved into position to cover the exit. The tallest of the two looked down in disbelief as a spot of blood appeared on his uniform, the sword pushing out of his chest. Oliver cut the second guardsman’s connection to the mist as the count slid his sabre out of the first and turning decapitated the other guard with a stroke so fast it barely registered. The others had not even noticed the brace of ornate duelling guns that had appeared in Oliver’s hands.

‘I doubt we can afford your rates,’ said Nickleby to the count. Count Vauxtion wiped the gore off his blade and reassembled the sword cane.

‘I had two sons once. They paid for you.’

‘That’s it?’ said Molly. ‘You spent all that time tracking me down for them and you’re switching sides just like that?’

‘I choose who I work for,’ said the count. ‘And I choose which commissions I accept. I warned Tzlayloc once that he would be well advised not to try and change the terms of my contract halfway through the job. He has, and now at least one of us is going to be very unhappy with that decision.’

‘Let’s be away, now,’ said the commodore. ‘Before these devils realize you have seen the error of your ways. We can toast your change of heart back at Tock House if your wicked crew of toppers have left any bottles in my cellar.’

‘I wasn’t lying about the Third Brigade,’ said Count Vauxtion. ‘And the walls of your folly aren’t thick enough to resist shot and cannon.’

‘You have not freed us to rescue us,’ said Steamswipe, leaving the cell and smashing the glass case where Lord Wireburn lay trapped.

‘About time,’ grumbled the holy weapon.

‘You need our swords,’ said Steamswipe, tossing Oliver’s witch-blade back to him. ‘I have faced your softbody nation on the field of honour often enough to recognize your cunning.’

‘You have a long memory if you can remember staring north from the Steamman Free State and seeing any field other than killing ones in Quatershift.’ The count sketched a map into the dirt of the floor with his cane. ‘This is the mine works on the floor of the cavern, this is the Jackelian terminus for the atmospheric line — under vacuum now. And this is the chamber where they store the blasting casks of blow-barrel sap, enough barrels to put a dent in a mountain. If we ignite it we can bury the entire invasion force in the tunnel under a thousand tonnes of rubble.’

‘They are your countrymen,’ said Nickleby.

‘I’m a Jackelian now,’ said the count. He held up the sabre and the long knife he had hidden inside his sword cane. ‘These are my debating sticks, don’t you know?’

Oliver loaded both his pistols. ‘Let us go and discuss politics with Tzlayloc then.’

Molly saw that the count had produced the gas gun she had seen him use in Grimhope, while the commodore and Nickleby liberated pistols out of the dead guardsmen’s holsters. Count Vauxtion led them across the lost city, the gas gun pressed into Molly’s back, Oliver suggesting paths through the dark overgrown buildings that avoided the Special Guardsmen and twisted fey things. Molly and her two companions from Tock House played the roles of mistreated prisoners to perfection, aided by the prop of Nickleby’s blackened stump of an arm. When brilliant men and the Commonshare’s skirmishers challenged them, the count flourished the letters of passage from Tzlayloc; that and the assassin’s menacing manner were enough to get them to the edge of the mine.

Bright engineers’ lanterns augmented the Chimecan crystals’ twilight inside the pit, the same style of lamps Oliver had seen in Shadowclock’s tall streets. The stink of badly vented steam-engine smoke and the bash of equipment rose from the pit. Metal legions of the equalized laboured below. They sang the outlawed songs of the uprising with their scratchy voiceboxes, the once-organic population of Grimhope and pressed miners of Shadowclock both toiling under the supervision of brilliant men.

On the pit’s sides the rickety scaffolding and ladders were being upgraded, replaced with reinforced ramps, strong enough to support the columns, cannon and sea of boots of the Third Brigade. The group had almost reached the floor of the pit when a shout sounded from the cavern above. Marshal Arinze.

‘Compatriot Vauxtion,’ shouted the officer. ‘Our Jackelian brothers want the girl back on the cross. Why are you down there?’

‘Keep moving to the bottom of the ramp,’ whispered the count, then shouted back up: ‘Tzlayloc wants the girl to see her companions undergo equalization in the conversion mills. He believes it will help amplify Compatriot Templar’s suffering on the pain device.’

‘Splendid,’ the marshal called down. ‘Now why don’t you explain to me how they are going to equalize that brute of a steamman warrior you have with you?’

He said something to his troopers and they began slipping crystal charges out of their bandoliers and unslinging their rifles. Upheaval erupted across the pit floor, shots crackling down as Steamswipe returned fire, rotating sunbursts searing the walls with plasma light. Equalized workers milled around, trying to work out where and why the sudden explosion of violence had interrupted their toil. A number of the press-ganged compatriots shuffled towards the ramps, trying to use the confusion as cover to escape; their overseers frantically worked their discipline rods and the equalized workers tumbled to the ground in anguish.

‘Behind you,’ warned Molly as a wave of loyalist equalized shambled towards Steamswipe brandishing picks and pressure cutters. The steamman knight sang to Lord Wireburn in machine tongue and the holy relic poured forth a jet of blue fire, Steamswipe spraying the line from left to right and back again. Screams from the human-machine hybrids died as their voiceboxes exploded in the unearthly fire, a shower of molten metal and charcoaled flesh raining back on the advancing children of the revolution.

Lord Wireburn was smoking in the knight’s manipulator arms, the dark oil which slicked his surface fully burnt off. ‘Suffer not these abominations to live, Steamswipe. Eradicate every last one of the filthy outrages.’

‘Close quarters,’ barked Count Vauxtion. Their rear was being rushed by a mob of overseers, unarmed except for their discipline rods. Nickleby and the commodore were frantically reloading from their stolen bandoliers as Oliver raised both pistols and discharged them at the scaffolding joins. High above soldiers plunged into the air as a section of the ramp gave way, an explosion of iron pipes and dust rolling out into their attackers. Both blades from Vauxtion’s cane were in his hands as he stepped lightly through the sudden dust storm, flicking his sabre and long knife like butterfly wings, cutting throats and slitting sinews.

Tucked in Oliver’s belt the witch-blade shivered with delight; here was an enemy it could engage without the pain of trying to penetrate fey-twisted muscle. Oliver stepped forward and was engulfed by the cloud of rock dust, the witch-blade grown sword long. He moved with a stamping, twisting gait, the hilt of the witch-blade grasped with both hands, sweeping up, sweeping down, a single cut through a body each time. Oliver could hardly see his attackers’ faces; they were merely shadows in the dust, their angry bellows cut off as they went down. The part of him that had not died at Hundred Locks was glad he couldn’t see the look of contorted astonishment on their faces as the witch-blade sucked the life from them.

He could see the expression of horror on Molly’s face though, as the dust cleared and he and the count stood among a sea of fallen brilliant men, three blades slicked with gore. Somehow her disgust mattered to him more than it should.

‘An ancient fighting style,’ said the count. ‘I was not aware it was even taught any more.’

Oliver dipped down and wiped the blood off his witch-blade onto a corpse’s jacket. A slippery blade is a dangerous blade; the words arrived in his mind as if from his father. Steamswipe galloped for the tunnel that Vauxtion had sketched out for them, Oliver and the count taking the rear as their three companions sprinted in the shielded lee of the steamman’s hull, round shot pinging off his armour.

Someone was shouting at them from above as they reached the shelter of the tunnel mouth, a woman’s voice. It was the assessor; her livid words mangled by the row of kneeling Quatershiftian scouts discharging their rifles. Vauxtion stuck out his hand and Oliver tossed him one of his pistols, the count falling to one knee and turning sideways, gun bucking once. The assessor fell forward lifeless onto the rank of soldiers, spilling one of the troopers into the pit mouth.

‘Remind me to tell Ka’oard to engage a new agent.’

Tunnels split out in front of them in all directions and they pushed past bewildered workers — equalized and human — following the count’s lead. Molly added to the confusion, shouting warnings of raids by the crushers and tunnel collapses, floatquakes and failing Chimecan roof crystals. Tremors ran through the floor of the mine system, lending authenticity to her warnings.

‘An atmospheric capsule,’ said the commodore. ‘The blessed shifties are coming through. If we don’t bring the tunnels down soon we’ll be facing a brigade full of the rascals down here with us.’

Count Vauxtion pulled a spherical detonator cap from his pocket. ‘Be cautious, there will be guards outside the blasting store.’

Oliver frowned. He could not detect any soldiers around the corner. Steamswipe rounded the corner of the tunnel to find a steel door blocking their passage.

‘There is nobody here.’

‘So much the better,’ said the commodore. ‘Let’s set your blessed charge and be away from here before it does its lethal work.’

Steamswipe lifted Lord Wireburn and hosed the locked door with blue fire, melting the barrier with the precision of a Middlesteel watchmaker. Pushing into the blasting chamber’s cavernous interior they halted. It was empty. Four solitary glass-gilded barrels lay piled in the centre, an equalized worker about to load one into a two-wheeled handcart.

‘Where are they?’ shouted the count. ‘Where’s the blasting store?’

‘Compatriot,’ grated the equalized worker, ‘this is the blasting store.’

‘The blow-barrel casks,’ said Vauxtion. ‘This chamber was piled high with blow-barrel casks yesterday evening.’

‘They have been shipped back to mill twelve,’ said the worker, the calculation drums in his chest turning hesitantly as he tried to summon the words. ‘The glass blowers have been out of sap for charge manufacture for days. The mine-works committee said you did not need the barrels in here any more, time for bullets they said.’

Commodore Black kicked the handcart over. ‘Our stars. Our unlucky stars.’

‘Soldiers,’ said Oliver. ‘Coming into the tunnels after us. We cannot afford to be dead-ended in this chamber.’

‘Tell me we can get out of here,’ Molly said to the count.

‘I was not planning to die down here,’ said Count Vauxtion, slipping the detonator sphere back in his pocket. ‘This complex is a termite mound, there’s tunnels all around us and the higher ones connect to the old copper mine above. There are airshafts that come out in Middlemarsh Forest.’

‘With our mortal luck the Third Brigade will have parked their ammunition train over them,’ said the commodore.

They dared the mine passages again, passing equalized gangs blissfully unaware of anything except the hollows in the rock that they were working on and the equipment they were dragging behind them, ignorance which turned to panic when the Commonshare’s skirmishers darted through the corridors in pursuit of the intruders.

Steamswipe overturned three wagons of rubble waiting to be pulled out on a rail. An instant blockade. A tongue of cyan flame licked out from Lord Wireburn, sending the soldiers behind them scattering. Molly ducked her head into a side passage and then tried another opening down the tunnel. ‘One leads up, one leads down.’

Bullets cracked past as Nickleby tried to reload his pistol one-handed. ‘I can hold them here.’

‘With me by your side,’ said Steamswipe, loosing another burst of flame. ‘I could slay the entire army of the Commonshare in these tunnels and I would not think it too much.’

Molly pushed the commodore down the tunnel towards Oliver. ‘I’m not leaving anyone here. We can smash the ladders in the shaft behind us, the shifties don’t know these tunnels any better than us.’

‘He has a point,’ said the count. ‘If a couple of us stay and hold the tunnel-’

Molly heard the glass sphere as it rolled down the corridor towards them, two hues of liquid capped by a clockwork head rotating in towards the crystal. Someone shouted ‘grenade’ and Steamswipe cast himself on top of the crystal explosive, the detonation lashing the steamman warrior into the wall of the tunnel, lifting everyone else off their feet. The burning knight crumpled into the wooden tunnel support, snapping the stay as an avalanche of rock rained down around them.

Oliver got to his feet. Blood was pouring from his head where a rock had glanced off it. Commodore Black rose out of the haze of rock powder. ‘Sweet mercy!’

They had been cut off from the others by the rock fall. There was a small chink of light from the lanterns on the other side of the cave-in — their side had fallen into darkness.

‘We’re here,’ Oliver shouted through the small crevice.

On the other side of the rock fall Nickleby and Count Vauxtion picked themselves up from under the layer of tunnel wreckage and shouted back. Steamswipe’s head and chest were visible; the rest of his body lay trapped under a huge rock. The ceiling had collapsed in front of them too; the barks of the Commonshare skirmishers muffled beyond their pocket of tunnel.

‘Lass!’ shouted the commodore. ‘Molly! Is Molly with you, Silas?’

‘She’s not here.’

Commodore Black stared at the mass of rock. ‘Sweet Circle. Molly, Molly!’

Oliver pulled the submariner away from the rock fall as he frenziedly tried to pull at the rubble and rocks. ‘I can’t sense her under there, commodore. I can feel the Third Brigade passing through in the atmospheric capsules below us, but I can’t sense Molly.’

‘Lad, she might be unconscious under there. Trapped in a pocket of air.’

‘She could be, but better if she isn’t. A company of miners with blasting barrels and drills would take a day to shift this. If she woke under there and she wasn’t dead…’

‘Oh lass, my poor lass.’

Nickleby placed his face near the fissure in the rock fall. ‘We are trapped in here. Steamswipe is pinned down and near deactivate. The tunnel fall at the other end is lighter. We might be able to dig out that way although I suspect we are going to find half the Third Brigade waiting for us.’

‘I doubt they have waived the brigade’s rules on prisoners since I faced them with the remains of the royalist army,’ said the count. ‘Soldiers who accept a surrender are to feed the prisoners out of their own allocation of rations.’

‘There is another way,’ rumbled Lord Wireburn from the tunnel floor.

Count Vauxtion picked up the holy weapon. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I contain within my shell the stuff of anti-life, a grain of a primordial energy superior in explosive force to a forest of blow-barrel trees. I can lower the walls of containment to this power and release my life force in a single burst.’

The commodore climbed up the rock fall to speak through the gap. ‘Silas, you’ll not survive that. Dear Circle you can’t leave old Blacky and the lad down here on our own, scrabbling about in the dark like rats in a trap.’

‘Get away, Jared,’ called Nickleby through the cranny. ‘As far and as fast as you can. We’re going to bring down the roof on the Third Brigade after all.’

‘No Silas,’ wheezed the commodore.

Oliver pulled at the submariner’s jacket. ‘We have to climb as high as possible.’

‘You tell Broad,’ shouted the pensman. ‘You tell him when they publish the story on the Pitt Hill murders that I want the by-line. It’s not to go to anyone else. It’s my damn story.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ promised the commodore, as he and Oliver scrambled along the passage and into the darkness. ‘And you’ll get the whole blessed front page too.’

Nickleby passed his pipe over to Count Vauxtion to relight. ‘Do you smoke?’

‘I prefer brandy,’ said the count. ‘But you can’t raise a decent vintage in Jackals. You lack the soil.’

‘Yes,’ said Nickleby. ‘I remember the brandies that used to come over from Quatershift. Haven’t seen one in years. No flask on me, I’m afraid. Not even jinn.’

Red sigils had appeared on Lord Wireburn’s oily surface, sweeping down in a circular pattern like a clock. A hum of static was streaming from Steamswipe’s voicebox, as if the life of the old warrior was leaking out into the stale air of the cave-in.

‘That sounds like a tune,’ said Count Vauxtion.

‘He is approaching deactivation,’ said Lord Wireburn. ‘He is singing to the Steamo Loas. Calling their blessing. He remembers only the low-level languages now; too much of him has been destroyed. He has asked me to apologize to you for not being able to sing a little in your tongue. So you also might know their blessing.’

‘How long do we have left?’ asked Nickleby.

‘Three minutes perhaps,’ said Lord Wireburn. ‘The barriers I am bypassing are not intended to be lowered lightly. It is only the wisdom of my dotage that allows me to override the constraints of my architecture.’

From the other side of the light rock fall came the sound of rubble being removed. Count Vauxtion pulled his delicate sabre from his cane and rested it on his knees.

‘I doubt if they will get through in time,’ said Nickleby.

‘I shall keep my sabre to hand in case,’ said Count Vauxtion. ‘Some of the Third Brigade are no doubt talented diggers, the number of ditches they had to shovel while convicts…’

‘Of course,’ said Nickleby. ‘Well, I with my pipe and you with your sabre. I would say we are both content.’

* * *

Outside in the mine pit a vortex had formed, a tornado of black energy whirling around and sucking Commonshare soldiers, brilliant men and equalized into its maw. Hands clung desperately to the side of the excavation, as tools, rocks and clothes were pulled up towards the putrid-smelling whirlwind.

A terrified soldier ran towards Marshal Arinze, his rifle forgotten, shouting appeals to the sun god that the Commonshare had long since banned. He pushed past the officer and lifted into the air as Arinze shot him in the back. ‘Stay at your posts, compatriot soldiers. Hold to them fast.’

By the officer’s side two of his worldsingers tried an invocation but a coil of darkness whiplashed out from the pit; piercing their foreheads; and they collapsed back, steam boiling from a tiny hole in each of their skulls.

Tzlayloc appeared and the marshal grabbed at him. ‘Compatriot, my people are being slaughtered in there.’

Tzlayloc laughed, pointing to the whirlwind speeding up. ‘You have such little faith in the cause. Your soldiers are not dying, they are being saved — they are feeding the Wildcaotyl.’

As he spoke the whirlwind exploded towards the cavern roof, six separate storms of insects darting and twisting around each other. The citizens of Grimhope and their allies covered their ears as a hideous chattering filled the cavern, drowning out the terrified screams of the troops below.

Each cloud looped around and plunged down into the excavation, heading for a single tunnel. Miners and their masters broiled as the stream of insect-shaped energy swept down the chambers and towards the source of the force that was being revealed below ground. At the rock fall the Wildcaotyl were hurled back. A wall of translucent silver outlines was standing sentry beyond the frantically digging soldiers and miners — the Steamo Loas safeguarding their chosen champion. The Wildcaotyl apparitions hissed in rage through tarantula-like fangs. These thin vapours of steammen deities were lesser spirits; they could devour the knight’s death guard, but not in the few seconds they sensed was left on Lord Wireburn’s flickering display.

Turning as one, the Wildcaotyl poured down the airshafts and found the rubber curtain of the atmospheric terminus. Beating through the station valves they splattered against the walls, mile after mile of the vacuum-filled transport tunnel sprayed with a trembling skin of unholy energy. Then they waited, ignoring the whisper of atmospheric capsules speeding past.

Stones tumbled down from the rock fall exposing a small triangle of space between two boulders.

‘What can you see?’ a voice sounded on the other side of the obstruction.

Count Vauxtion smashed his fist into the nose that pressed itself up to the space, shaking his hand in pain as the soldier on the other side of the caved-in rock fell back.

‘You should have impaled him with your sabre,’ said Nickleby.

‘There speaks a true jack cloudie,’ said the count. ‘Warfare is more than pushing fin-bombs out of an aerostat bay. Sometimes it feels good to close with the enemy with nothing but your bare hands. It is a matter of honour.’

‘Yes,’ said Nickleby. A line of pale lifeless faces looked up at him accusingly from a dead street, the cards with the names of the places the corpses had been discovered hung around their necks. ‘A matter of honour.’

Shouts of anger sounded on the other side of the rock and the thud-thud of the engineers and soldiers clearing away the fall grew louder.

The pensman glanced down at Lord Wireburn cradled in his arms — the crimson light flickering across his face as the sigils rotated around. Would the holy relic be able to fire now if the Third Brigade engineers broke through? He doubted it.

‘What say you?’ Vauxtion called out through the gap. ‘What say you of honour, my compatriots, my countrymen? Is there any honour still left in our beautiful home, or has it been crushed under the boots of the Third Brigade? Has honour yet to be allocated by committee 4302, or was the last of it marched into a Gideon’s Collar to pass away under the blow of a steel spike?’

The muzzle of a gun pushed through the gap and Vauxtion seized it, striking the weapon back into its owner’s face before pulling the rifle through into their chamber. He caressed the ugly black gun’s lines, checking the crystal charge loaded into its barrel. A look of disappointment settled on the count’s face. ‘Functional, at best. A tool for intimidating farmers and menacing bakers’ boys. There is more workshop artistry in a Jackelian redcoat’s Brown Jane, more craftsmanship in a lady’s purse gun.’

Vauxtion tilted the rifle through the gap and discharged it, the retort of the charge echoing around the small space like thunder. Nickleby coughed and waved the pungent smoke away with his mumbleweed pipe. The count tossed the empty gun contemptuously onto the floor.

‘I do apologize,’ said the count.

‘Think nothing of it,’ said Nickleby. He drew a deep breath on the pipe. ‘These are rather difficult times.’

‘Quite. You realize that when the bludgers on the other side of the rock were my soldiers, we never would have been squirming around under the dirt like thieves digging into your basement. We would have marched across the border in the same old way, marched like men, then battled your new pattern army with our king’s military trinity: cavalry, infantry and artillery. By the glory of the sun and all that is holy we would have fought like devils.’

‘And we would have seen you off in the same old way,’ said Nickleby. ‘With the red-coated scrapings of the gutter, the threat of the lash on their back and the promise of a large tot of jinn when it was all over.’

Vauxtion smiled and nodded, then turned his attention back to the rocks tumbling down on their side of the divide.

The pensman heard the scraping of an iron manipulator hand behind him.

‘Ni.c.kle.by, h.ear m.y wo.r.d_s.’

It was Steamswipe, half-crushed, half-decapitated. Somehow the knight had managed to regain enough of his functions to communicate in the higher languages.

‘We a.r e a.ll c.lo.se to d.e.ac.ti.v_atio.n. The K.eep.er of th. e Et_e.rn.al Fla_me w.ill cle.an.s.e u.s all.Y.ou m.u_st sing. S_ing t.o p.lea.se th.e Loas.’

‘I am afraid I wouldn’t be much good at the hymns of your people, old steamer,’ said Nickleby. ‘I simply don’t have the voicebox for it.’

‘T_he.n yo.u m.ust in.to.n.e the ma.nt.ra of y.our k_in_d. O.ur ti.me i.s at an e_n_d.’

The pensman shrugged.

‘Oh, please no,’ said Vauxtion.

On the other side of the rock face the troopers and engineers halted their clearance work.

‘What’s that sound? Do you hear it?’

‘They are singing,’ replied one of the equalized workers. ‘They are singing “Lion of Jackals”.’

The whole cavern shuddered, as if the world had bounced the lost underground city a foot into the air. Crystals embedded in the cavern ceiling shattered, raining down the dust of ancient machinery onto the shakos of the Commonshare’s skirmishers. Equalized revolutionaries briefly halted then continued to the schedule of their work rota as if nothing had happened. Tzlayloc extended a hand down to Marshal Arinze and the soldier picked himself up.

‘The Third Brigade is here compatriot marshal. The revolution has arrived in Jackals.’

Commodore Black stared down the shaft they had just scaled. It had collapsed, filled in by an avalanche following the quake. A minute earlier and they would have been inside there.

‘The tunnels still stand,’ said Oliver. ‘I can feel the troops in their atmospheric carriages. Murderers and killers. Thousands of them.’

‘Silas? Your friends?’

Oliver shook his head.

‘Silas Nickleby, you dear blessed fool,’ wept the commodore. ‘Silas and Molly, both dead. All for nothing, all for nothing. I warned him what would happen. You heard me tell him. The scrapes that old goat got me into. What am I going to do without the impetuous fool? An army of the worst slayers in history nipping away at our heels. There’s nobody left, lad, just us. What have we got left?’

Oliver’s shadow swelled in the dirty tunnel like a living thing, his brace of pistols glowing with a light not cast by the tunnel lanterns. He lifted the bandolier of crystal charges off Black’s shoulder. ‘Forty bullets.’