The Court of the Air

Onestack pointed to his silver-domed head. ‘The mechomancer who put me together lacked the skill to do anything else with my sight. I remember from my old bodies what it was like to see in colour, though. I think I sometimes thoughtflow in colour, especially red. Apples are red, aren’t they?’

Molly nodded. Silver Onestack opened an iron door to his spherical main body, exposing a maze of crystals, boards, silicate and clockwork mechanisms. ‘I went to King Steam and begged him to give me back my sight the way it was before, but he refused. He said the law forbade the people of the metal to deactivate me, but he would not suffer the undead to be given succour or repair.’

Something about the workings seemed out of place to Molly. A wrongness that she could feel inside her as a tangible ache. She reached inside Onestack’s open hatch, repositioning boards and switching valve groups.

‘Molly softbody, desist,’ the steamman protested. ‘It is forbidden for those outside the people of the metal to tamper with our bodies.’

‘What is this?’ demanded Slowcogs, rolling into the loft garret. ‘This is an offence in the eyes of Steelbhalah-Waldo. Molly, you must cease this violation immediately.’

Molly withdrew her hands and shut the casing plate. ‘Onestack was broken. I could not bear it.’

Onestack’s voicebox sounded in amazement. ‘The floor is brown! Dried fungus wood. And Molly softbody, your hair is red – as red as any apple. I can see in colour again. By all the saints of the Steamo Loas, you have restored my vision glass to see in colour!’

‘How can this be?’ Slowcogs asked. ‘Molly softbody, you are no mechomancer or draughtsman from the hall of architects.’

‘It just looked wrong,’ Molly explained. ‘My hands knew what to do.’

Silver Onestack spun his head to look at Slowcogs. ‘Slowcogs, has Molly softbody read the wheels?’

‘In the controller’s presence,’ said Slowcogs. ‘The pattern of Gear-gi-ju was revealed to Redrust.’

‘I just knew what to do,’ said Molly. ‘I have always had an affinity for such things.’

‘This is no normal affinity, Molly softbody,’ exclaimed Silver Onestack. ‘Oh Slowcogs, you fool of an old boiler. To bring this softbody down here, of all places. This nest of villainy and chaos. You should have sent her to King Steam with an escort of steammen knights to guard her precious soul.’

‘What are you two old steamers talking about?’ said Molly.

Silver Onestack’s tripod of legs had collapsed his large spherical body onto the floor. ‘What a turning of the pattern this is. A foolish old boiler and a walking corpse to protect her.’

‘I can bloody well protect myself,’ said Molly. ‘It’s all I’ve been doing since I could walk.’

Molly was about to demand an explanation when a fierce banging sounded on their door. Onestack arched up like a spider and opened a skylight to peer down into the street.

‘Who is it?’ asked Slowcogs, his voicebox volume on low.

‘The committeewoman for our street and the others nearby. A political, an informer.’

Other men and women in crimson cloaks were walking up and down the street smashing on doors. ‘Rouse yourselves, compatriots,’ shouted the woman outside. ‘Mandatory loyalty display in the main square. Our district has been selected. It is a glorious day.’

‘We must go,’ said Onestack. ‘The brilliant men will search all the buildings. Any malingerers will be executed.’

Out in the street dozens of locals had spilled out from their quarters, more arriving every minute, green hoods hiding their faces in shadow. The only sound was the dull thump of workshop cutting machines from the next street over.

‘Come,’ said the committeewoman. ‘Come.’

Everywhere they went red-hooded figures were rousting the citizens of Grimhope out from their homes. The woman led them through the subterranean streets to Grimhope’s central square, built on a scale to rival Middlesteel’s Hope Park – but with the unfinished patina and dust of recent construction hanging over it. Standard bearers holding aloft flags – red fields marked with a gold triangle – marched out to look over the scene. The subdued disposition of the people in the square was replaced by an electric anticipation. More and more townspeople were arriving, until an outlaw host enveloped the granite flagstones.

Molly had to cling onto Slowcogs’ iron hand to stop her being separated from the steamman by the crush of the rally. Silver Onestack sat in front of them like a beached slipsharp, his tripod of legs partially retracted inside his body.

‘Is he here yet?’ one of the crowd asked Molly.

‘Who?’

‘Tzlayloc,’ said the outlaw townsman. ‘Who else?’

‘There,’ called one of the mob. A figure had walked out onto the podium, throwing back his crimson hood. He slowly raised his arms and a hush fell over the crowd.

‘My people,’ the voice boomed across the open space. ‘I look across you all assembled here and I see an army of equals – of brothers and sisters – of compatriots standing with a common purpose.

‘Look at the person next to you. There are no mill-owners here. No landlords or kings or guardians. Nobody to call you tenant or subject or slave. And why is that?’

‘Because we are equal,’ the crowd yelled back.

‘Everything here belongs to the commons – to you,’ the man called Tzlayloc rumbled. ‘And compatriot, everything that is you belongs to the commons.’

The crowd screeched their approval. Molly could not believe the speed at which the rally had turned from an apprehensive flock to a mob running at fever pitch. It was as if a glamour had been cast over the crowd.

‘When another man, another woman, gives you the right to vote, says they give you freedom, they are making you a present of that which you already have – that which you were born with. And by so doing they make a grateful slave of you.’

‘We are not slaves,’ someone yelled back.

‘No. No, we are not. Compatriots, we stand together, a perfect commonshare. No poppy taller than the next, stealing the sun, casting their neighbour into the shadow, sucking up the goodness of the earth while letting their neighbour wither and die. Are we equal?’

The crowd roared in near-perfect unison: ‘We are!’

‘Compatriots, let me show you our heroes of society, those who lead by example.’

At his signal, a man hobbled onto the stage, one of his legs glinting steel in the red subterranean light. ‘Many of you know me,’ said the newcomer. ‘I am Ikey Solomon, once the fastest dipper in Middlesteel. And when the crushers finally came to take me away and transport me to the Concorzian colonies, I ran all the way down to Grimhope.’

The crowd cheered his defiance.

‘But I was not equal. I could run from one end of the Deeps to the other in eight hours, and then drink a yard of ale. Not one of you people here today could match me.’

The crowd murmured darkly at his incorrect boasting.

‘So I have had my left leg equalized. Look.’ He raised the limb from the ground. ‘The bones have been fixed with steel pins. I am equal in my speed to you. I am the Commonshare – and you are me. Now when we run, we shall run together, not against each other!’

The crowd went into an apoplexy of delight at Compatriot Solomon’s sacrifice.

‘Compatriot, you have shown the way,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘But he is not alone. Step forward, Sister Peggotty.’

A short woman came though the crimson-hooded honour guard, holding the hand of a boy – no older than nine or ten years in Molly’s estimation.

‘There are many of you here, who might have once frequented the gambling pits on Stalside,’ she began. Laughter sounded from the crowd.

‘Those that did would have seen my son play the boards there … two jump-stones, chess, round circle’s move. In the old days, the pit owners used my son like a magnet to empty the pockets of the desperate and the addicted. They called him a prodigy – able to beat any of you at a game of skill or chance. Exploited him like an angler’s lure. But look at him now …’

The boy stared uncomprehendingly out at the rally, drool running down the left side of his chin.

‘Compatriots, now he has been cured. Equalized. Now he is one of us. By the grace of our own renegade worldsingers his mind has been adjusted. Why, any of you could play him at a game of your choice and beat him as oft as not.’

The mob roared their approval.

‘Which of you here will show your devotion?’ exclaimed the mother. ‘Which of you will show your love for your compatriots?’

A young girl pushed her way past Molly. ‘I will! Tzlayloc, take me. I am beautiful and it is nothing but a curse to me. Scar my face with acid from the workshops.’

‘No.’ A giant of a man rose out of the crowd. ‘Tzlayloc, look how strong I am. Make me equal, cut off one of my ugly beef-hooks of an arm.’

‘Compatriots.’ Tzlayloc waved the supplicants back down. ‘Your willingness to join our Commonshare is a credit to you all. But not everyone shares our beliefs. While we live free down here our brothers and sisters still toil under the yoke of Middlesteel’s barons of commerce and the false idolatry of a sham ballot every four years. Bring forward the corrupt ones, compatriots.’

The red-cloaked soldiers – the brilliant men – moved forward with two struggling figures in white togas.

‘These evil leeches …’ Tzlayloc’s voice echoed off the square’s walls. ‘These two evil leeches come to visit us from as far away as the city-states of the Catosian League. Why? To benefit from us! To profit.’

There was a collective rush of breath from the crowd.

‘Please,’ one of the Catosian traders begged. ‘Last year you needed high-tension boilers from us for your mills, parts and plans for automatics. We brought them to you. For mercy’s sake, let me live. I have a family who need me, three girls and a baby boy.’

‘Listen to these philosophers,’ Tzlayloc mocked. ‘To feed their families they would suck our blood. Is that not the excuse of the vampires on the surface? Just a little trade, just a little blood – work for me, not for each other. Work for me, not for the commons. Make me fat. Make me rich. Let me show you a new philosophy, men of Catosia.’

Tzlayloc drew an obsidian-handled knife – the blade sharpened stone. His crimson-hooded retinue dragged the two traders to an altar where they were arched back and strapped thrashing and sobbing to the stone. Tzlayloc thrust aloft the knife.

‘In life, you leeched blood from the people you should have cared for. Now, in death, your sacrifice will strengthen the people’s sinews and advance their cause. Xam-ku, Father Spider, hear my prayer – let the sacrifice of these two rats caught with their snouts buried in our grain bins swell your power and speed your return. Too long have we laboured under the yoke of slave master and merchant and market without the light of Wildcaotyl to guide us.’

‘Look away, Molly softbody,’ advised Onestack.

Molly did, but she couldn’t shut out the screams echoing from the walls of the square as Tzlayloc carved the traders’ beating hearts out of their still living bodies. Tzlayloc held the still pulsing organs above the crowd. ‘Xam-ku, feel the nourishment of their souls.’

The crystals in the cavern ceiling came alive with lightning, crimson fire arcing between the stones above them. Down in the square the crowd chanted their saviour’s name.

‘The old gods of Wildcaotyl have not fed in a long time,’ said Slowcogs.

‘I can feel their hunger,’ said Molly. ‘Welling up beneath the ground. The souls spilled are like the taste of meat for a slipsharp that hasn’t fed in a thousand years.’

Blood from the two limp bodies was coursing down channels in the stone. ‘In death,’ Tzlayloc bellowed, ‘these two corrupt vampires have made the sacrifice to their companions they were never willing to make in life. Behold, I have found their centre, and it nourishes the commons.’

Molly tried to turn away from the scene, but the press of the chanting mob was too fierce.

‘Our compatriots in Quatérshift feed such as they into the Gideon’s Collar, but in their admirable drive for efficiency, they have forgotten the wisdom of our ancestors. Wasting good souls which could be dedicated to Xam-ku,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Yet in Middlesteel above, the streets still throng with the oppressors of the people, the enemy inside our walls, withholding paradise from the hands of the starving, the propertyless and desperate. Shall we make a land of equals? Shall we free the people?’

‘Yes!’ the crowd roared.

‘Shall we pull the selfish bloodsuckers down into the gutter and thrash them until the streets of Middlesteel run red with their blood?’

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ the crowd howled.

‘Now you see,’ whispered Silver Onestack. ‘Now you see why you were wrong to come here. Grimhope has died. This rotting carcass of a city is all that is left of the legend.’

Slowcogs bowed his head. ‘Forgive me, Silver Onestack. I did not know.’

‘No,’ said Molly. ‘This is not your fault, Slowcogs. I was meant to come here. I have seen this madness before, or something like it.’

Slowcogs’ head sunk in shame. ‘There is a song in your blood, Molly softbody, and the memory of your cells points the way you must travel.’

But where have I seen this before? Molly asked herself as they drifted away from the square. Where?

Molly and the two steammen had only just arrived back at Onestack’s lodgings when the political organizer who had dragged them to the rally appeared at the door. She banged on the front of the workshop. ‘Token day, compatriot metal, token day.’

Silver Onestack opened the door. ‘Enter, compatriot soft-body.’

‘Such a gathering, compatriot metal. Such a show of equality. The day is coming when the dogs on the surface will whine under the weight of our boots, surely it is.’

‘Surely,’ Silver Onestack mouthed.

‘Your ledger, compatriot.’

Onestack led the way into the room at the back of the workshop, picked up a dusty book of accounts and handed it to the woman, saying nothing as she leafed through the last few pages. ‘Excellent, compatriot metal. The communal share is now set at ninety per cent. The state will receive its share now.’

‘So much?’ said Onestack. ‘I have two assistants now. The girl must eat. We need boiler-grade coke.’

‘Careful what you say, compatriot metal,’ warned the woman. ‘Those words smack of shirking and defeatism. Your talent with matters mechanical has kept your position on the reserved list, but the mills are hungry for labour too.’

‘My apologies, compatriot softbody,’ said Onestack. ‘Perhaps you could put a word in for us with the committee of supplies for two extra food chits.’

The woman’s tone softened as Slowcogs handed over a bag of coins. ‘I know your contribution to the commons is hard, compatriot metal. But the struggle always is. Your gift to the cause is helping us forge hammers of freedom to strike down the tyrants and leeches.’

‘We’ll eat well when the tyrants are struck down,’ said Molly.

The woman failed to notice the sarcasm in Molly’s tone. ‘You’re not old enough to remember the famine of Sixty-six, young compatriot. I lost my husband at Haggswood Field when the crushers charged us. My young ones died of hunger when I was locked away in Bonegate for breach of the riot act, nobody in my lodgings with the food or the inclination to feed them. Everything I ever valued and loved was taken away from me by the quality of Middlesteel. All except my freedom. One day we’ll see the light of the surface again, compatriot, and the day will be ours.’

‘I doubt it,’ said a green-hooded figure coming down the stairs leading up to Onestack’s loft.

‘What! How did you get into my workshop?’ Onestack demanded of the intruder.

The figure leant on a cane and Molly felt a sinking feeling strike her stomach.

‘Perhaps you forgot to lock your door?’ said the figure removing his hood. It was him. The refined old killer from Fairborn and Jarndyce; somehow the topper had caught up with Molly, even down here in Grimhope. ‘But then one imagines the concept of a propertyless state rather negates the need for locks, would you not agree, compatriot?’

‘Which district are you from?’ spat the political. ‘And who are you to question the word of the revolution?’

‘Why the district of Vauxtion,’ said the old gentleman. ‘And once I carried a marshal’s baton. So I do hope you will forgive my small observation that the earnestness of your hod carriers is not going to prove much of a shield against navy fin-bombs falling from a Jackelian airship.’

‘What are you rambling about, old goat?’ said the woman. ‘There is no Vauxtion district in Grimhope.’

‘I see, damson, that your knowledge of geography is as tired as your rhetoric. Vauxtion is – or should I say, was – a province of Quatérshift. No doubt it bears a drearier label now. Area twelve of the Commonshare, or a similarly tedious designation. Something of a personal inconvenience for myself, given that I bear the title of the Count of Vauxtion.’

‘An aristo!’

He placed his cane on the workshop counter and was walking slowly towards the woman. ‘Indeed, an aristocrat. Although rest assured, your Carlist colleagues in my land have done their best to rid themselves of my kind. I saw my retainers, wife, children and grandchildren marched into a Gideon’s Collar by a mob of your self-righteous compatriots.’

The political at last recognized the old man’s air of menace and broke for the front room. As she did so a pepperbox-nozzled gas pistol appeared in the count’s hand, and as quick as it did, the woman was collapsing to the floor within a cloud of vapour.

‘A tip for you, damson,’ said the count, standing over the corpse. ‘The best way to evade famine is not to seize the breadbasket of the continent, leave her fields un harvested for two years of revolution, then fire a bolt through the neck of every disfavoured soul who knows anything about agriculture.’

Slowcogs powered towards the old assassin from behind, wheels spinning over the fungus-wood boards. In one smooth movement Count Vauxtion knelt and drew a double-barrelled harpoon gun from his back, the black claw smashing into Slowcogs’ mid-body. Sidestepping, the count watched Slowcogs trundle to a stop by the workshop door, hissing steam from his punctured boiler heart soaking the floor.

Molly was immediately by Slowcogs’ side as the count covered her with his gas gun.

‘I am sorry, Molly softbody,’ wheezed Slowcogs. ‘I have failed you.’

‘No, Slowcogs,’ said Molly, tears welling in her eyes. ‘This is my fault. I led us down here.’

‘Oh, please.’ Count Vauxtion threw a set of rusty Gear-gi-ju wheels on the floor. ‘You might as well blame Guardian Rathbone station’s controller. Do you know how difficult it is to torture a steamman mystic? They can shut down their pain centres at will. I had to find a specialist to break your friend down to a state where he was willing to tell me where to find you.’

‘You softbody barbarian,’ cursed Silver Onestack. ‘May the Steamo Loas blight you for your evil.’

Count Vauxtion casually shot one of Onestack’s legs off with the remaining barrel of his harpoon weapon. With only two sides left on Onestack’s tripod the ponderous steamman bowled over, beached in his own workshop. He tried to stand, slipped, then lost consciousness, his valves overwhelmed by the pain.

‘Hardly a barbarian,’ Count Vauxtion said to the immobile steamman. ‘The controller described you as a mad old boiler scratching art with peck blood and fungus water, but he lacked the sensitivity or the reference points to adequately describe your works. They are magnificent, steamman. As one artist to another, I shall leave you your arms and sight. Call it a professional courtesy. I have taken the liberty of taking one of your miniatures as payment; the scene of the girl against the canyon wall.’

Molly took a step towards the stairs, but the gas gun was instantly pointing at her. A rubber pipe from its handle dangled like a cobra from the count’s sleeve. ‘Please, Molly. My commission requires you to be delivered alive. And there are no chimney stacks in Grimhope for you to shin up.’

‘Alive!’ Molly spat. ‘An invitation to supper would have been cheaper.’

‘Not to mislead you, my sweet. I have the feeling my present patron will not be leaving you in that state for long.’

‘You tell my stepfather to go to hell.’

‘Stepfather?’ The count seemed amused. ‘Perhaps, although I doubt it. My current patron prefers to hold to his anonymity, so I can’t speak as to his motives or cause. Not that it really matters. I do not participate in causes any more. I spent most of my life following that course and all it bought me was a cemetery full of friends, family and fallen comrades.’

‘Let me help Slowcogs,’ Molly implored.

The count shook his head. ‘You are too slippery a catch, my dear. And I aimed for your friend’s boiler. Put your hood on and say your goodbyes. Bear in mind anyone you try to warn on our journey out of Grimhope will be dead before you close your beautiful lips, as will you. My patron will pay more for you alive, but dead will do almost as well.’

Molly tried to reach out to the steamman as the count pushed her towards the door. ‘Slowcogs.’

‘Follow your pattern, Molly softbody,’ whispered the dying metal creature. ‘Wherever it may take you.’

Standing outside, Molly tried to punch the topper. ‘You’ve bloody killed him.’

‘I led twenty thousand of my own soldiers to the slaughter at Morango,’ said the count. ‘And I loved them. One more, one less – just a number, Damson Templar, just another number in a forgotten ledger no one is numerate enough to read anymore.’

Producing a key, the count locked the door to the workshop. In the street a fat man approached them, puffing. ‘Is compatriot metal not in?’

‘The excitement of the rally was too much for him, compatriot,’ said the count. ‘He is taking the rest of the day off.’

‘But there’s a broken extraction belt at mill twenty! What shall I tell my committeeman?’

‘Tell him?’ the count, said. ‘Tell him that compatriot metal is currently putting a couple of his legs up for a while.’

Getting into Grimhope with a well-known boiler like Silver Onestack had been relatively simple. The crimson-hooded guards blocking their path showed that leaving with Count Vauxtion was not going to be so easy.

‘Papers of travel, compatriot,’ said one of the soldiers.

‘There have been reports of a pride of pecks attacking the farms,’ said the count. ‘Productivity will suffer. The committee demands answers.’

‘Pecks are always dragging off spore hands, compatriot. We’d have more luck farming the black-furred little buggers instead. But it’s your papers of travel I need to see if you want to go on a picnic with bright eyes here.’

‘But of course,’ said the count. He reached inside his cloak as an explosion lifted the roof off a mill in the bottom of the valley.

‘Sweet Tuitzilopochtli!’

‘Stay here,’ the sergeant shouted at one of the men. ‘The rest of you with me. It could be counter-revolutionaries from the Anarchy Council.’

Count Vauxtion smiled at the remaining guard. ‘And where would any good revolution be without its counter-revolutionaries?’

‘You stay put, compatriot,’ scowled the guard. ‘Until we’ve sorted out what’s happening in town you ain’t going nowhere.’

‘Hardly very fraternal, compatriot,’ said the count, bending down to pick something up from the cavern floor. ‘As for the mill, I think you’ll find someone rather carelessly turned the water system off on one of the boilers. See here, a worm.’

‘Do I look like I bleeding care?’

Molly tried to pull away, but the count pushed her back. ‘It’s a matter of philosophical niceties, compatriot. My own personal form of equalization, although where I come from it’s called a vendetta.’ Vauxtion’s hand shot up and a blast of gas spurted into the guard’s face. The brilliant man collapsed to the ground as if an axe had felled him and the count tossed the worm contemptuously on his body. ‘See, compatriot. I have made you equal to both my family and these toiling gardeners of the soil. May the worms enjoy the meal.’