The Court of the Air

Chapter Twenty-One

Brigadier-general Shepperton stared up at the lone aerostat floating over Fulven Fields on the outskirts of Middlesteel. ‘What is Admiralty House playing at? We can’t move into position without cover from the navy — I don’t know what’s the matter with our bally aerostats today. Where are those damn loafers from signals?’

Major Wellesley turned on his skittish sixer, the horse unsettled by the ranks of shining metal bodies taking to the field in the low hills opposite; they had no smell and the horses of the riding officers had been spooked all morning. ‘Sir, none of our scouts have managed to locate a crystalgrid station that wasn’t fired last night by the Carlists.’

The major glanced up at the aerostat. It was an old Guardian Prester class, due to be decommissioned at the royal armoury and manned mostly by retired RAN types and a handful of enthusiast volunteers from the Middlesteel chapter of the Lighter than Air Society. A bunch of tail spotters in the fin-bomb room. Wellesley shuddered and prayed that they would remember which army below stood on their side.

A riding officer galloped at full tilt from the north, reining in at the last moment in front of the staff officer’s table. ‘Brigadier-general, sir, Admiralty House is burning. Spoke to one of the staff there, said some of the Admiralty Board were feybreed, fey wearing the bodies of the Sky Lords. Quite a to-do in the city, sir, shifties everywhere, barricades and Carlists manning them. Makes getting about rather tiresome.’

‘Where’s your hat, man?’

‘Shot off, sir.’

‘Draw a new one from the commissionaire,’ ordered the brigadier-general. I won’t have my boys looking unkempt, what what. Jack cloudies have let us down badly this time, ships of the line sitting around Shadowclock like a school of useless bally skraypers. There’ll be questions asked in the House.’

Wellesley winced. They had already told the brigadier-general twice that the House of Guardians had fallen early on in the Commonshare’s assault. It was pure luck the Middlesteel Rifles had been out of their barracks when the nighttime attack had begun.

‘Sir,’ said Major Wellesley, pointing to the neat lines of their troops. ‘Now we have confirmation that the RAN won’t be operating in support, might I suggest we look at our dispositions again?’

‘You may not, sir,’ said the brigadier-general. ‘The new pattern army has not lost a battle since it was formed by Isambard Kirkhill. Our order of battle has been tried and tested over centuries by some of the finest military minds produced by Jackals.’

Wellesley shifted irritably in his saddle. ‘With respect, sir, our current disposition is intended to involve close coordin ation with the high fleet. We have a single aerostat — our formation requires at least a squadron of the line. These fellows are not the colonial farm boys we saw off last year.’

‘Shifties, major,’ said the brigadier-general. ‘Shifties and a criminal rabble of Carlists. They will come at us in the same old way and we shall beat them off in the same old way. This is not the time to dabble with new thinking, major. I do not require more than a single aerostat to see off a bunch of damn shifties and a mob of traitors who have crawled out of the undercity.’

Wellesley started to reply, but seeing the look on the brigadier-general’s face thought better of it. This was turning into a nightmare. From the moment they had received word that Fort Downdirt had been overrun to sighting the Quatershiftian lines being dug in outside the capital.

The brigadier-general turned to the riding officer who had just come in. ‘You sir, lieutenant I-have-no-hat-sir. Ride over to the other side of the column and bring me one of the worldsingers. I want to know what feybreed are doing running around Admiralty House. And will someone please find me the Special Guard.’

‘There, sir,’ pointed a staff officer. Blazing through the sky like a comet, the Special Guardsman sailed in a lazy arc over the battlefield, overflying the Commonshare’s columns of troops and rows of cannon, before twisting off to head towards the Jackelian forces. With a shock of wind that nearly lifted off their shakos and tricorn hats the Special Guardsman halted above the ground in front of their map-littered folding table.

‘About bally time,’ said the brigadier-general. ‘Did you not receive the written orders I sent Captain Flare?’

‘We did,’ said the guardsman.

‘Then, sir, perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me where in the Circle’s name the guards’ companies are today?’

Passing a letter to the brigadier-general the guardsman saluted then sped off into the sky, looping back towards the capital. Brigadier-general Shepperton read the note, holding onto it for far longer than it should have taken to digest the message. Then he handed it up to Wellesley on his horse.

Major Wellesley read it for the benefit of the staff. ‘The guard will not fight for you. The guard will not fight against you. This is a hamblin war. Let us see how well Jackals fares without our intervention. Flare.’

‘Can they do that?’ piped up an officer.

From the left flank the riding officer returned with a worldsinger, his purple robes almost the same shade as the brigadier-general’s fuming cheeks. ‘You man! There’s a mutiny in the guards — what have you fellows in the order been doing about it?’

‘I have had reports, brigadier-general,’ said the worldsinger. ‘Sendings.’

‘I’m not interested in how much of that damn wizard’s snuff you’ve had up your nose, man, or if you’ve been playing chess on the spirit plane with the god-emperor of Kikkosico. Facts, sir, I need facts.’

‘The torcs on their neck do not respond, the control hex is there but it no longer works. Brigadier-general, the order no longer has command over the Special Guard.’

‘The Circle you say!’ swore the brigadier-general. ‘This is most irregular, wouldn’t you say?’

Grass spurted up in front of them as cannons in the enemy line opened fire.

‘I do believe that was purposefully aimed at us,’ shouted the brigadier-general.

‘Bad form,’ agreed one of the general staff.

Major Wellesley kicked his horse towards his men below. He rode so fast that he did not notice that the cloud drifting towards Jackals’ last remaining aerostat was not rain but a swarm of insect-like outlines.

The battle for Middlesteel had begun.

When she woke up the ceiling was moving, a sea of black rock sliding down and away from her. A stretcher-like affair of old mining stays and canvas lashed together by cable supported her stiff back. Things looked wrong. She was only seeing out of one eye. Her hand touched her face, feeling the swollen cheek blocking her right eye’s sight — and shouted in agony.

‘Molly,’ said a voice, ‘Are you conscious?’ The roof’s motion halted, plunging her stomach into nausea.

Molly’s good eye managed to catch sight of what had been dragging her: some kind of steamman — but it looked badly formed, hull plates were missing and exposed machinery twisted and turned through open spaces, an unholy rattling coming from the thing’s belly.

‘Is this the undercity? Where are my friends?’

‘They are dead, we think, Molly softbody,’ said the steamman. ‘There was an explosion, very large, most of the mine came down. But the enemy was protecting the atmospheric — we survived in the maintenance tube.’

‘We?’ Molly looked around. None of her companions were with her. Dead? Nickleby and the commodore, the warrior from Mechancia and his strange fey friend, even her deadly nemesis from Quatershift. No. No. But her last memory came back to her. The steamman knight throwing himself on top of the crystal grenade that had been tossed towards them — the explosion — the ground opening up beneath her feet, falling as an avalanche of rock pelted her sides. Then nothing. Her friends really were murdered. She was alone again, everyone who tried to protect her cut down. No wonder her mother had abandoned her on the steps of Sun Gate; she had obviously had a premonition of what her fate would be if she tried to look after her cursed child.

She might have been crying for hours before she felt one of the pincers of the steamman adjusting the torn fabric that had been pulled over her.

‘Molly,’ said the steamman. ‘Molly softbody, do you not recognize us?’

Her tears burnt like fire on her bruised cheek. ‘Have we met?’

‘We never thought we would see you again, Molly soft-body. After Grimhope, the repair room.’

‘Repair-’ she looked at the steamman, the shape of the hull pieces and the timbre of the voicebox. Some of the parts so familiar. But how?

‘It was straightforward, Molly softbody. The Hexmachina came to us and showed us how to join our bodies. Silver Onestack did not care, as he was already a desecration. But Slowcogs did not want to live that way, until the girl from the paintings opened his vision plate. Showed him the routes that would be travelled by the world if we did not combine. What would happen to you, Molly softbody.’

‘Dear sweet Circle,’ said Molly, reaching out to feel the warm metal of the steamman. ‘Slowcogs, Silver Onestack, you repaired yourself.’

‘We are joined, young softbody, fused by the will of the Hexmachina. We have violated the law of the Steamo Loas, cannibalized our own flesh, but she is of a higher order and we would do it again. Do it again to save you, Molly.’

‘I would not have asked you to do this,’ said Molly.

‘We know.’ The ruined steamman began to pull at the stretcher again. ‘And that is why we must.’

Molly felt a wave of gratitude towards the brave ramshackle steammen who had suffered so much on her account. ‘Circle’s turn, thank you…’

‘…Silver Slowstack. Both of us have been stripped of our true names now, but this is our chosen common designation.’

‘Slowstack, where can we go? Jackals is being invaded, the undercity has fallen to the same evil. There’s nowhere safe for us to run to. When they sense I am still alive they will come after me again.’

‘She is approaching, Molly softbody. Warmed by the oceans of lava no longer, she climbs towards us and we must venture down to convene with her. The Hexmachina, Molly. She needs an operator. She needs you!’

Outside the palace the sounds of fighting had grown sporadic. There were still fires burning across the city, but most of them were the result of the surprise attack the previous night — crystalgrid stations taken offline, grenades tossed through the windows of police stations, the barracks of the Sixth Foot and the Guardian Horse Guards stormed.

It was a novel experience for Prince Alpheus to stand on the balcony and watch the city without having to endure a shower of rotten fruit and stones from the street. In the square below rows of people knelt facing the palace, a strange keening sound humming in their throats. It had started snowing last night and flurries of white flakes were still falling on the people in the square. Middlesteel was used to fogs from the mills and the dirty miasma of industry, but snow in the heart of summer?

Bonefire came out onto the balcony and looked over Captain Flare’s shoulder at the crowds. ‘What’s a man to do to get some sleep around here? Who the hell are they — that’s a Circlist mantra, isn’t it?’

‘They’ve been chanting for nearly an hour,’ said Prince Alpheus. ‘The first ones arrived from the morning congregations before the shifties started shutting down the churches. They were crying for help, begging at the gates for the Special Guard to come out of their barracks.’

Bonefire pointed to the cart of purple-robed bodies piled by the gate. It was amazing that there were still worldsingers in Jackals who thought that the suicide torcs on the guards’ necks actually worked. ‘Let them go to the order and beg for help. See if their hamblin magicians can beat off the shifties without the guards’ assistance.’

‘They’re not chanting for you,’ said the prince to Bonefire. ‘They’re chanting for me.’

‘You!’ Bonefire laughed.

‘The old legend,’ said Captain Flare. ‘The sleeping kings. When Jackals is threatened the first kings will waken from underneath the hills of Elmorgan.’

Bonefire started laughing so hard tears rolled down his face. ‘The pup? The pup is going to save them? Oh that’s good.’ He stretched his arm out and fired a volley of blue pain-fire towards the chanting crowd. ‘Chant louder, you filthy hamblin jiggers. I can’t hear you.’

Flare slapped his arm down. ‘That’s enough, Bonefire.’

‘What do you care? Let them dance a little before we leave this bloody prison.’

At one end of the square a line of equalized soldiers appeared, metal shoulders covered in snow. Marching forward they surrounded the chanting Jackelians in a corner of the square, beating to death with a flurry of iron fists any that tried to flee past their lines. Carts loaded with large wooden boxes were pulled into the centre of the square, blue-uniformed Commonshare troops unloading them into the space that had been cleared.

A shiftie officer stood on one of the wagons, a Commonshare worldsinger by his side, amplifying his voice as it filled the square. ‘By order of the First Committee of the Commonshare of Jackals, any gathering of three individuals or more not licensed by prior arrangement with the First Committee shall be classified as counter-revolutionary activity. Secondly, by order of the First Committee of the Commonshare of Jackals, the Circlist philosophy has been classified as an uncommunityist activity and is henceforth banned. The punishment for violation of either of these two rulings of the people is excommunication from the commonality and fellowship of the state.’

People trapped behind the line of equalized troops cried out in fear and anger until the more vocal complainants were beaten down with sabres and rifle butts. Most of them had read enough in the Middlesteel penny sheets about the early days of the revolution across the border in Quatershift to recognize the euphemism used by the Carlists when they shoved members of the old regime through a Gideon’s Collar. Excommunication from the commonality and fellowship of the state.

Bonefire watched the erection of the massive meat-processing machine in the centre of the square in fascination. ‘They’ll let us go down and watch, you think?’

‘Those are Jackelians,’ said Prince Alpheus. ‘They are our people.’

‘We are your people now, pup. They are hamblins. I can go down and get them to throw a few jinn bottles up at you if you need reminding.’

‘Come on, Alpheus,’ said Flare. ‘We need to check the stores for when we travel south.’

‘Let the pup stay,’ called the Special Guardsman as they left. ‘I used to watch them give jiggers the rope outside Bonegate when I was a lad. It never did me any harm.’

Outside, the Commonshare’s military engineers raised the frame of the Gideon’s Collar with the ease that comes only from practice.

Damson Davenport peered out of the door’s peephole at the Quatershiftian soldiers. They banged harder. She opened the door and they cuffed it aside before she could take it off its chain, breaking the lock and seizing her while a line of soldiers ran into the rookery’s hall.

‘We’re not quality on this street, young man,’ said Damson Davenport. ‘I work in the jinn house over on Sling Street, not the palace of bleeding Greenhall.’

‘Quiet, old woman,’ said the soldier, pulling her out towards a gypsy-sized caravan drawn by a train of four horses, a mobile blood machine pouring steam into the sky. The rumours were true, then. In the street the Jackelians were being herded into one of two groups guarded by metal-fleshers. Her neighbour Mister Kenwigs had told her that those metal things used to belong to the race of man once, but that did not seem likely.

They took a sample of her blood and then made her wait for the results. What were they testing for? The wagon was not large enough to contain the records of everyone in Middlesteel. It had to be the new required-citizen register — guardians and silks and famous Jackelians. Nobody on this street would be on that list. If only they did not find the girl. Shouts sounded from inside the rookery and Damson Davenport’s worst fears were realized. Poor Cru’brin. Everyone in the crumbling tenement had known the young craynarbian from when she was an infant. It did not take long for them to drag her out, still wearing the tattered red uniform of the Sixth Foot. Better she had been slaughtered with the rest of her company or had disappeared into Shell Town. Hiding with her mother had been madness.

A tall officer appeared by the wagon. The craynarbian’s captor jumped up and hastily saluted him. ‘Marshal Arinze.’

The marshal ignored them and walked up to the struggling deserter, followed by another soldier, his blue uniform cropped at the side to display his muscled arms. There was a boy who loved himself, tutted Damson Davenport. Too many days down the muscle pits with a mirror in his back pocket.

‘Harbouring enemy troops,’ said Marshal Arinze. He called to the soldiers pulling the weeping people into the street. ‘Compatriot sergeant, burn this building down. There shall be no relief given to the enemies of the people.’

Swearing at the marshal, young Cru’brin tried to break free of the leather straps binding her sword arm. The troops struggled to hold her.

‘Compatriot marshal, if I may…’

‘Compatriot Colonel Wildrake?’

‘Let me show these counter-revolutionary criminals the power of the Commonshare, the superiority of our forces.’

Arinze rubbed the colonel’s arm with a worried look on his face. ‘You do not need to continually prove your loyalty to the revolution, compatriot colonel. You have advanced our cause in Jackals more than any brother save Tzlayloc himself.’

‘Look at her, compatriot marshal, her scrawny shell. What kind of muscles can she have under that armour? My lats are falling towards the corpulent without a test worthy of the name.’

Arinze sighed. ‘Hold the burning, sergeant. You, compatriot private of the Sixth Foot. You shall have a chance to prove the worth of this decadent city of yours. You see before you a gladiator of the Third Brigade. If you can beat him in a match I will spare your entire street from punishment.’

A space was cleared for the craynarbian deserter and Colonel Wildrake, the marshal momentarily distracted as his soldiers dragged a man with a red beard up towards the commanding officer’s entourage.

‘You’ve got the wrong man!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve done nothing. I just row a boat on the estuary. I ferry people up and down the Gambleflowers, that’s all.’

‘Compatriot Meagles,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘Secretary of the Middlesteel Four-poles Union. His blood code is confirmed by the required-citizen register.’

‘The Union is a proscribed organization,’ said the marshal. ‘You have been encouraging uncommunityist tendencies among the people. Unproductive tendencies. The people must labour to advance their cause, not spend their days as idlers tossing balls of leather at pieces of wood on the grass.’

‘It’s just a bit of a lark,’ begged the boatman. ‘We always go to the inn afterwards for beer and jinn. Please, you can come too, you and all of your soldiers.’

Arinze slapped him to stop the blubbing, then raised his voice for the benefit of the Jackelians being rounded up in the street. ‘Four-poles is banned, debating sticks is banned, summerpole dancing is banned, the singing of “Lion of Jackals” is banned, membership of political parties is banned. You shall work hard in the service of the people as equals and the community will serve you each well in return.’

One of Arinze’s troops indicated the boatman. ‘Processing group thirteen?’

‘A Gideon’s Collar is too good for him. A visible example must be set. Take Compatriot Meagles to the boulevard at Rollfield and hang him from one of the lamps alongside the corpses from the House of Guardians.’

In front of the rookery Wildrake had stripped down to his trousers, and the soldiers who had been oiling his muscles stepped back. It was freezing in the street and Wildrake rubbed his biceps as the bite of the cold wind dug in. He nodded at the troops holding the craynarbian and they released her into the shadow of the street. She was at the height of her youthful vigour, sword arm sharp enough to slice a sapling oak in half, but still looking scrawny on her meagre army rations. Not that you could judge, of course — craynarbian muscle groups worked in different ways, and she was at least strong enough to march with one hundred pounds of shell underneath her infantry knapsack.

Her manipulator and sword arms sprang open and Wildrake pivoted on a single leg, slamming his boot into her left knee. It crunched and she howled. Low tolerance for pain — all that armour they carried — they were simply not used to it. The turncoat Jackelian could almost see the rote drill moves the Sixth Foot had instilled in her. She was not even worth moving into witch-time for. Wildrake grinned as he ducked under her slashing sword arm, slipping behind her and circling her with his arm.

His muscles bulged underneath his skin, swelling with the force he was applying to her thorax. Better than bench-pressing ninety pounds in a muscle pit; the agony was electric. Her shell started to crack, his biceps burning crimson in the cold. The Third Brigade troops looked on in amazement. They had faced craynarbians on the border with Liongeli, but they had never seen the likes of this. There was a sound like a squeaky floorboard being stood on, then a crack as he burst her chest armour. Pieces of shell were sticking out of Wildrake’s bleeding arms but he stood over the gurgling Jackelian soldier, roaring with the thrill of victory as the Quatershiftian troops cheered his feat of strength.

Damson Davenport turned away in horror — then she realized that the technician by the blood machine was addressing her.

‘It’s your lucky day, compatriot. You’re not on the list. Mill duty — you’re assigned to the cannon works being put up over at Workbarrows.’

She took the numbered chit he handed her. ‘Your queue number. For equalization. Next.’

Damson Davenport watched the laughing troops leaping over Cru’brin’s corpse and tossing burning torches into her rookery. She suspected the falling sleet would put the flames out before the fire cart ever showed up now.

A cry went up among the soldiers — ‘Remember Reudox! Remember Reudox!’

People were still inside the tenement and the Third Brigade opened fire on the poorly dressed Jackelians as they tried to flee the burning building. A few men and women jumped out of windows on the second storey, some clutching young children. The metal zombies in the street surrounded them where they landed, thrashing the burning bodies with their metal arms until they stopped moving.

The head of the Four-poles Union, Meagles, was being dragged down the street, his feet trailing two furrows in the snow, still yelling that the shifties had the wrong man, his cries drowned now by the screams of those trapped inside the damson’s old home.

‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ She shivered, pulling her shawl tight. Part of her wanted to go up to the metal things, to the soldiers of the Third Brigade, and beg them to stop. Tell them that they were the people of Middlesteel. No different from any of the soldiers, but for an accident of geography and birth. No different from them, their mothers, their sisters, their friends. That they could all be compatriots together if they just tried a little harder. But she knew what would happen if she did, and she discovered that as often as she had thought her pains and aches would one day be over with the long march of her old years, she still wanted to live just a little longer. It did not seem like cowardice at all, just common sense.

A thought occurred to Damson Davenport, the kind of random silly thing that the mind throws up to distract itself from a scene too repulsive, too atrocious to observe.

‘Excuse me, what is equalization?’

Tzlayloc smelt the cold fresh air of the House of Guardians’ quad with satisfaction. Once he had dreamed of being elected to this place, of erasing the grinding poverty of Middlesteel, of changing things. The shattered plinths where statues of Isambard Kirkhill and other famous parliamentarians had once stood certainly bore testimony to his desire for the latter. It was a pity that Hoggstone had not been captured when they surrounded the palace of democracy. Now every lamppost in Parliament Square was occupied by a Guardian swinging on the end of a noose, his committee would have to consider doing things the Quatershiftian way and running the First Guardian through a Gideon’s Collar when they arrested him.

Everyone had to move with the times, as the sacks being piled in front of the altar constructed in the centre of the quad testified. Tzlayloc stopped an equalized worker with blood from a sack leaking down the dull metal surface of his — or her — perfect new body. The earlier metal-flesher models had retained traces of the compatriot’s gender in the voicebox assembly. An inequality his mechomancers and flesh mages had paid for. It was amazing how advanced their hexes and mechanisms had become after he had sacrificed a few of them.

‘Where is this sack from, compatriot?’

‘Equalization mill of victory nine, compatriot,’ buzzed the outlaw metal-flesher.

Tzlayloc dipped a hand in the sack: hearts, hundreds of them, but so few were still beating. Some of them had been removed almost a day ago. They would be fresher once the equalization mills above ground were completed. Right now they were relying on the few factories of liberation they had raised around Grimhope. ‘Splendid. Throw them on the altar fires, compatriot. Incinerate the last vestiges of the sins of difference. Now you are free. Free of greed and lust and pride — free of the master’s yoke and all the mills you labour in shall belong to you!’

The equalized outlaw grovelled at Tzlayloc’s feet. ‘Bless you, Compatriot Tzlayloc. A thousand blessings upon you.’

Tears rolled down Tzlayloc’s cheeks. ‘On your feet, brother. You need grovel to no one now. You are who I do this for. Your words mean more to me than I can express.’

He looked at the ring of locust priests shepherding the fumes from the pyre into the air. Tzlayloc could see the darting insect outlines circling the column of smoke. Stronger now, more powerful every hour. They were the perfect allies. Staunch, unstoppable and dedicated, each willing to die without hesitation so that their brothers behind them might advance forward.

He raised a hand and called to all who would hear. ‘I see a perfect world, compatriots. A world where we run not against each other as competitors, but together, as friends — as brothers and sisters. Each of us equal. Each of us perfect.’

The equalized were slower to chant his name now than they had been when they wore their old unequal forms, but slowly the mantra rose to fill the quad. Tzlayloc nodded, hiding his disappointment. They had only just begun, after all. Their understanding of the equalization process would develop with practice, would advance further still when the Steammen Free State was absorbed into the Union of Common shares which Quatershift and Jackals planned. The mean would be raised. Every year there would be an equality more prosperous, more shining. Every year they would move forward. Together. Always together.

Tzlayloc helped the worker to his — or her — feet, and helped to carry the heavy sack of bleeding organs across to the flames. ‘I wish I could burn my filthy unequal form away, compatriot. But the Wildcaotyl requires the soiled mantle of flesh to work through, not the perfect symmetry of your flawless beautiful body.’

‘The people understand your sacrifice, Compatriot Tzlayloc,’ said the worker, tumbling the hearts into the fire. ‘You who lead the flock must sacrifice most of all.’

Tzlayloc noted the courtiers and their military escort standing at the other end of the quad. More work. Even sleeping just a couple of hours a night and relying on the Wildcaotyl to purify this weak dirty body, the demands on his time seemed only to expand. But he would prove equal to the task. He had to. Tzlayloc picked a blackened heart off the pyre and chewed at it. ‘The people will nourish me, compatriot. As they always do.’

He went over to the courtiers and they parted as he walked onto what had once been the floor of the House of Guardians. The benches had been ripped out to feed the pyre in the centre of the palace of parliament. In their place was a wide round table where all could sit as equals. Of course, Tzlayloc could not claim credit for that idea. Had not one of the first kings come up with something similar?

Both of the locust priests he had dispatched had returned from their errands. So much the better. He looked at the one who had once been an engine man. ‘The Greenhall records?’

‘They were trying to overload the boilers when we took Greenhall, Compatriot Tzlayloc; destroy the engine rooms. But my card daemon had got into the pressure controls and was frustrating their efforts.’

Tzlayloc drummed the table in anger. Greenhall functionaries making decisions without authorization from the House of Guardians? Someone had picked a dangerous time to develop a sense of initiative.

‘You have done well, brother. We could not control Jackals without controlling the transaction engines.’ He turned expectantly to the locust priest newly returned from the atmospheric tunnels.

‘The summoning went as planned, Compatriot Tzlayloc, and your intuition proved correct. The Wildcaotyl could only scent the echo of three souls in the ruins — the steamman warrior, the war criminal Nickleby and the traitor Vauxtion. There is no sign of Compatriot Molly Templar, the feybreed or the duke of Ferniethian.’

‘The last two are an irrelevance,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Flare and his twisted friends are the only ones who will mourn the fey boy, and our fat duke and his family have been on the run for six generations — we could hang him outside Bonegate and his oily body would slip off the rope.’

‘But Compatriot Templar…’

‘Yes. My beautiful, brave little girl. On the run again, and no count of Quatershift to track her down for our cause this time. I should have expected no less of her.’ He turned back to the old engine room hand. ‘Your search for the second operator?’

‘With all the resources of Greenhall at my disposal the search was a lot easier than hiding my pet in the drums the first time around. This blood code has only been registered recently. I believe you will understand why when you see the name.’ He passed a folded punch card to Tzlayloc. Tzlayloc read the name of the second operator, the recipient of the foul Hexmachina’s blood curse.

The locust priest had expected Tzlayloc to fall about laughing as he had done himself at the irony of the name, but instead the leader of the First Committee placed the card gently on the table. ‘Oh, Molly. My darling sainted Molly Templar. Now I am going to have to do away with you, you foolish girl. You have lost your place in the pantheon of the people.’

‘I have the names of Compatriot Vauxtion’s associates,’ said the locust priest. ‘Some of them are no doubt competent enough in their trade.’

Tzlayloc smiled. ‘Compatriot Templar is no longer running from us. I fear she is running towards something now. The Wildcaotyl has fed well in the last few days — let us try a new type of hunt.’

He waved at the guards and his soldiers marched in with six men. He recognized the oldest of the six from the illustrations that had dotted Middlesteel’s walls during the reign of the Whineside Strangler. The criminal had done well to survive Bonegate all these years. He sported red welts around his neck where they had tried to hang him three times. How foolish was that rite of Jackelian justice. Survive the rope three times and have your death sentence overturned. Tzlayloc tutted and indicated the six should be escorted outside to the quad. The three-hangings rule was inappropriate in the age of the Gideon’s Collar. Nobody ever got a second chance at the collar.

‘They said we was to join the Third Brigade,’ spat the Whineside Strangler.

‘That pleasure is reserved for your compatriots back in Bonegate,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘I have duties a little more deserving of you and your colleagues’ special talents.’

‘As long as we don’t go back to the gate,’ said the killer.

‘You will never see the cell walls of a prison again.’

Above the mountain of smouldering hearts the cloud of smoke had begun to be shaped by the locust priests’ chanting, tendrils reaching out like the mandibles of an insect. Unnerved by the display of dark sorcery, the six men shuffled uneasily, the cloud swaying hypnotically in front of their faces. Then, as if the cloud had made a decision, spears of smoke darted up the six convicts’ nostrils, flowing into their skulls, draining all the smoke from the pyre as the men stumbled around, mouths open in the rictus of a silent scream.

Tzlayloc looked on in appreciation. The six’s bull-like bodies had survived the hell of life sentences in Bonegate and now they swelled still further under the power of the Wildcaotyl, frames expanding, clothes rippling and tearing while their muscles bulged out at aberrant angles, as if fragments of broken bricks had started rising out of their skin.

The Whineside Strangler turned to Tzlayloc, his irises swirling black with the smoke that had filled his skull. ‘I am remade.’

‘So you are. You know what you must do.’

‘The Hexmachina must not find an operator. If the fissures are sealed, I — we — they will dissipate. The operator must die.’

‘Yes,’ said Tzlayloc sadly. ‘Molly Templar must die. For the sake of the people get to her well before she reaches that filthy machine. Get to her before you in turn become the prey.’

Looking at the pile of burning hearts, the Whineside Strangler was gripped by a terrible hunger, unlike any of the pangs his old self had felt in Bonegate. ‘That is not enough nourishment.’

‘There will be more,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘We have only begun emancipating the people from their old unequal flesh. And there will be sacrifices too — not all of the old regime are dangling on lamps in the square outside. I have our priests looking at converting a Gideon’s Collar — replacing the bolt with an obsidian blade and adding a claw which can tear out a heart while it is still beating.’

‘I distrust them. Machines,’ hissed the Strangler.

‘That is understandable, but we live in a brave new world now. These machines will work for us. It takes a locust priest half an hour to feed you the single soul of an unproductive. When we have a collar converted we can feed you a hundred or more in an hour.’

The Strangler flexed his fingers, looking at the way the nails had extended into talons. ‘Flesh is reliable. It can be controlled. Always so much flesh here. Breeding, multiplying.’

Tzlayloc smiled. The Wildcaotyl were primitive, primordial, almost child-like. Harnessing them was like harnessing the power of the land itself. He had become the ultimate worldsinger, tapping a force that made the unreliable currents of earthflow look as ephemeral as morning dew. The Wildcaotyl had nourished the Chimecans for a thousand years and now they would become the foundation stone for a global union of commonshares. He picked up the punch card from Greenhall. A single name. If it had been anyone else. If only Compatriot Templar had not fled, rejecting the destiny he had planned for her. Tzlayloc crumpled the paper. There were some things even the forces of the revolution could not control.

Undetected by Tzlayloc or his allies, the Shadow Bear stood in the corner of the chamber seething — but not about the unholy amount of energy he was having to draw down to remain in stealth in the presence of the enemy. It was the name coded on the card. That name was outside the order of things by such a wide degree, his predecessor might as well have left him a note that said ‘unauthorised intervention: sorry’.

It was unthinkable. They were the rule-set. Rules did not break themselves. Down that road madness lay. Yet there it was, the name on the card. The Observer could not have known how things were going to develop down here to the level of detail necessary to make an unauthorized intervention of such delicacy. She could not have known he would have to wait now, investigate the threads of this, could she? There was all his fun thrown out of the window. A little beating for the enemy well out of sight, then he would have got to close this place down and remove all evidence of playtime with the Wildcaotyl and the greater darkness they wanted to invite into reality. Tearing the wings off insects was such fun too.

He began the process of erasure.

Hell. They were all going to die anyway.