by Stephen Hunt
‘Anchored to what end?’ asked Purity.
‘None that is good,’ said Hardarms.
‘A lifting room!’ exclaimed Molly. ‘I cleaned enough vents in the capital’s pneumatic towers to know what you can use a cable like that for. You run supplies and material up and down its length.’
‘A lifting room that can travel high into the heavens and beyond,’ said Purity in disbelief. ‘Now there’s a thing for one of your novels, Molly.’
‘Such a colossal undertaking,’ said Coppertracks, allowing a tone of wonder to sound from his voicebox. ‘The minds that are capable of such a feat of engineering … we must appear as savages to them.’
‘They may have arts that are not yet known to us, brother slipthinker,’ said Hardarms, ‘but it is they that are the savages. I have seen these slats. Bestial things with no sense of living within the harmony of the great pattern. They have no code, they have no honour. They are naught but a dark flame that will burn all of creation to stay afire.’ The knight extended a trembling manipulator hand out to Coppertracks and the steamman bent close to hear the warrior’s whispered words.
‘How can we fight them?’ said Molly, the desperation of their pathetic little cannon put into perspective against the incredible might of such an enemy. ‘How can we fight creatures that can construct moons out of iron and craft bridges between the celestial spheres themselves?’
‘With what makes us alive,’ said Hardarms. ‘With passion and imagination and the compassion we feel for our fellow living creatures in the great pattern. With what makes us different from them; and with her.’ The dying steamman warrior pointed at Purity. ‘That was the message King Steam asked me to relay to you three softbodies. That you will save us, Purity Drake, and that you, Oliver softbody, are the key.’
‘But I’m a nobody,’ said Purity. ‘I’ve a price on my head. I could barely survive an attack by a couple of slats.’
‘You are Jackals!’ Hardarms’ vision plate briefly flared with his old light. The steamman seemed to shrink back in his bed. ‘Pray – the Loas grant that be – enough.’ At last he fell silent, that great steamman warrior, Hardarms, captain of the Pathfinder Fist; the visor above his darkening vision plate slid down to seal his skull in the final reflex of a creature of the metal.
Purity looked at Coppertracks. ‘What did he whisper to you?’
‘He gave me his true name for his funeral rites,’ said Coppertracks. He looked at Molly. Had his keen vision seen her receive the ring from Hardarms? ‘And he said that we should not trust Lord Starhome. He is only partially a steamman and his systems will revert to feral ways with each week he spends outside the Chamber of Swords beyond the civilizing influence of the people of the metal.’
‘You have to let me come with you now,’ demanded Purity. ‘You heard what King Steam told us. If there’s a way of beating the Army of Shadows on Kaliban, I can help us find it.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Molly, trying not to sound dispirited. Oliver was the key, Purity was their last hope. And Molly? She was a riderless knight who merited only King Steam’s sympathy now. ‘We have to get our damn cannon working first.’
Before Lord Starhome went wild. Before the Army of Shadows came across the country’s borders and found them defended only by private fencibles old enough to be Molly’s grandparents.
Before the end.
Duncan Connor took the heavy riveting gun from Commodore Black, the submariner looking perfectly at home among the other burly navvies and hulking engineers putting the finishing touches to Timlar Preston’s cannon. The strange gargantuan snail-shell, cast from iron, wound its way around the forest floor amid the flash of welding torches and the hammer of machines. There was no rifling inside the iron tubes welded together to form the cannon’s massive spiral. Instead, its barrel had been lined with rubber panelling to form a vacuum, steam engines drawing out all air from inside.
Timlar Preston’s plan was for Lord Starhome to be loaded onto an ammunition cradle above the heart of the spiral and then slid down into a breech to be injected inside the airless cannon. Once inside, the steamman craft would be fired out with a great detonation – the cannon’s power augmented by an additional series of blasts from firing rings, chasing the craft all the way around the spiral. Pressure from the blast would build up in the barrelling behind Lord Starhome at an exponentially increasing rate, riding the vacuum in ever wider slingshot circles around the cannon, until, finally, the shell would pierce the membrane at the muzzle of the barrel with a velocity so fearsome that Lord Starhome would be flung free of the pull of the Earth – into the dark void in which the steammen swore their strange artefact could fly. All the way to Kaliban and the homeland of the Army of Shadows.
It was a mad, daring dream. Yet Duncan had faith in Timlar Preston’s plans. Decades before, during the Two-Year War, Preston had hit upon the same innovation that was to cost Duncan his position in the Corps of Rocketeers. No more explosions through the crude mixing of explosive fuel, but a controlled detonation, spraying the highly corrosive and combustible blow-barrel sap into a mixing chamber using hardened glass nozzles. Where Duncan had envisaged a new generation of long-range rockets being developed by the state armoury of the kingdom, Preston had refined the notion of a wave-front cannon, a simple iron tube that could accelerate a shell so fast it could escape the very grasp of the world itself. Preston had originally dreamed of using his creation to send a party to the moon, with explorers wearing diving costumes and brass tanks of air inside water-filled shells to survive the detonation of the cannon. But the Two-Year War had put an end to Preston’s peaceful ambitions as surely as Duncan’s radical ideas of warfare had derailed the career of the once lauded Connor of Cassarabia.
Duncan Connor pushed the head of the heavy riveting gun against the iron face of the barrel and squeezed the trigger, the coiled pipe back to the pressure drum jumping off the dirt like a snake that had been stepped on.
Commodore Black inspected the cleanly sunk rivet with satisfaction, pulling a fresh bolt from the sack slung over his shoulder. ‘As neatly done as any navvy back in the submarine pens of Spumehead could manage.’
Duncan held onto a strut and looked down the scaffold. To the right, one of the engineers from Quatérshift had stopped fiddling with the components of an injector ring as Paul-Loup Keyspierre talked at him.
‘There’s something not quite right about yon one,’ said Duncan.
‘His foreign accent, is it?’
‘No, it’s the way people react to him, all the staff who arrived at the project from Quatérshift. Just look at that scientist, Jared. How still and pale he is. I’ve seen simple farm laddies and lasses being given their first lumps by a drill sergeant with less fear than that on their faces.’
‘Ah well, he’s the skipper of their boat, right enough. Back across the border Keyspierre would have the power to strip a man of his position and send work-dodgers off to organized communities. That’s the power to starve you and your family, or imprison you in a living death – until you’d come to welcome the real article when it moved you along the Circle.’
‘It’s more than that,’ said Duncan. ‘It’s a different sort of fear. And then there’s his daughter. She stalks about like a panther.’
‘She’s sleek lines, that Jeanne, I’ll give you that,’ said the commodore. ‘But the terrors of the revolution have been raising ladies mortal resilient across the border, that’s all there is to the girl’s manner. Compatriot Keyspierre and his daughter are decent enough salts at heart. Jeanne was quick enough to save me back in Quatérshift, when one of the Army of Shadows’ giant slugs was about to transform the iron in my blood into another wicked brick for their city.’
Duncan said nothing, but he seemed to cling onto his doubts.
Having finished with the scientist working on the firing ring, Keyspierre walked down along the curve of the cannon to stop underneath the scaffold where Duncan and the commodore were working.
‘Co
mmodore Black, I see that your contribution to the effort here stretches beyond your rather curious specialist knowledge of the channels off my nation’s coastline.’
Duncan noticed the man’s voice was deep and smooth, his Jackelian accent very nearly flawless.
‘Just doing my bit, Compatriot Keyspierre,’ said the commodore. ‘A bit of Jackelian elbow grease to help chivvy this mortal fine piece of engineering along to completion.’
‘Grease being applied to a scheme generated by the inspired minds of the glorious revolution,’ said Keyspierre.
‘But cast,’ Duncan called down, ‘from Jackelian iron. Aye, much the same as the barrel on a redcoat’s Brown Jane. Your people are not strangers to our rifles, I believe.’
‘So it once was,’ snorted Keyspierre, the nostrils of his large nose flaring. ‘I can see how well our cannon is polishing up. A pity we did not have a few of these formidable devices completed during the Two-Year War. Who knows which way the winds of fate would have blown if we had been able to shell the House of Guardians when they were debating the continuance of their war against us.’
‘An interesting question, for sure,’ said the commodore.
Keyspierre nodded, before starting to walk away. ‘Quite. But we speak of the past, when it is the future both our countries needs to look to now. Please do pass my compliments on to the noble workers helping complete this most ingenious feat of gunnery.’
‘They must have a different set of history books across the border,’ bridled Duncan as the man left their earshot. ‘I was sure it was the laddies in Quatérshift who invaded us during the Two-Year War.’
‘As I recall, most of their books were fed into the fires on the boilers of the shifties’ steam-driven execution machines during the purges.’ Commodore Black looked at the figure of the departing institute official. ‘Ah, well. All friends together now, eh?’
Radford and Sykes lengthened the run of the nets alongside their shallow-draught fishing keel. It was usually such easy work this far from the estuary, where their competition was few and far between. The Gambleflowers splintered into a dozen channels around the marshland of Monymusk before reforming into a single course that snaked all the way out to the coast. The marsh was usually thick with insects and the river crabs, and the fish and birds that fed on them. But something was scaring the fish off today, with the result that the pair’s nets had been empty each time they hauled them back on board.
Sykes cast an eye at the lonely fish still flopping about the catching crate on their foredeck. ‘It’d be nice to have some friends for Mister Trout here. Some companions, so that we’ll have something more to show for the day’s labours than an ear-wigging from Damson Sykes when I get back home.’
‘Never seen anything like it,’ said Radford, pulling his leather hat down tight against the chill marsh air. ‘Empty, today.’ He nodded to the east where the river cut through Middlesteel. ‘You expect bad waters down by Old Reeky; but then when the capital’s mills have got a stink on, the fish all head up to us. Look at the bugs flitting over the water. Got to be something wants to bite on them today.’
The lines holding their net seemed to judder at his complaints and both men began to haul the net in. ‘That’s more like it.’
Sykes winced. ‘Is we stuck? This is heavy, Circle it is.’
The pair of fishermen heaved at the lines until the pulley began to run again and the net lifted up. They swung the catch over and down onto their foredeck.
It landed with a heavy slap and Sykes advanced on it, scaling knife in hand. ‘What’s this, then?’
Radford sucked his breath in as the wash of water dragged blackened cloth away from the sodden mass under the net and revealed the pale white stretch of a human hand against their boat’s boards. ‘It’s a floater!’
Sykes bent down to loosen the net from around the body. ‘Poor unlucky bugger. Ain’t seen one of these for years, not since I worked the six-penny boat in Old Reeky.’
Radford watched his friend uncover the corpse. ‘Must have come down with the morning tide from the sea. Wonder if this is the fellow that’s been putting off our fish?’
Sykes tapped the flat of his knife thoughtfully against his bushy beard. ‘Now then, I think we knows him. Last week. Don’t you remember? He came down to the docks, wanting to know if there were any inns with spare rooms left in Sheergate. One of the carriage folk wanting to travel on to Spumehead for passage out to the colonies.’
‘I think you may be right,’ said Radford. ‘He was a flush jack with his pocket book. Bit too full of himself for my taste.’
‘Have to be a dreadful severe sinking right off the coast for him to roll in this far with the tide, mind.’
‘Could be so,’ said Radford. ‘Steamers have been running full to Concorzia for weeks, putting out dangerously low on their waterlines from what I been told.’
Radford was bending over to help Sykes clear the corpse entangled in their net when their little boat jolted to port, a pitter-patter rain of thuds pushing their hull back into the marshy reeds of the bank. Trying to keep their balance, both men dropped the tangled netting and swayed to the other side of the boat.
Down the river, thousands of bodies drifted face down with the tidal waters, as if a forest of humanity had been felled and loggers were moving the harvest downstream. Blackened, burnt clothing; men, women, children, all dead. Sykes reached down into the water and pulled out a sodden blue sailor’s cap floating by to inspect its name badge. The Jackelian Navy Ship Excellent, one of the huge ironclads that had been guarding the harbour entrance at Spumehead. It appeared there would be no sudden influx of new colonists arriving in Concorzia after all.
Both men were so intent on watching the horrific migration of death following the tide towards the capital, that they failed to notice that the swelling mist rising behind their backs was tinged with veins of crimson, an ominous reflection of the blood-filled waters of the Gambleflowers. In fact, it took Radford and Sykes minutes to hear the hollow bony clicking deadened by the fog. And by the time they saw the hulking black silhouettes of a legion of slats cutting through the cover, it was too late for either of them.
Two new burnt, torn-up bodies joined the black tide and bloody waters heading down towards Middlesteel.
Molly could see that the camp commander, Colonel Buller, was getting irritated – possibly due to the pressure he was under to deliver a successful test firing this afternoon – especially considering almost everyone involved in the project was thronging around the spiral-shaped cannon as if a festival day had been declared – whether their schedules of work said they should be labouring right now, and whether they were invited or not. Everyone was desperate to see whether the great contraption – this bastard fusion of Jackelian engineering and Timlar Preston’s Quatérshiftian genius – was going to live up to their hopes or blow apart in an explosion that might put a volcano to shame.
The colonel leant over the wall of the firing station, a platform built on stilts like a tree house with a panoramic view of the organized chaos below. ‘Sergeant, clear those work-shy layabouts away from the firing rings – filling the reservoirs is dangerous enough work as it is, without being jostled by malingerers.’
Soldiers from the Jackelian Corps of Engineers pushed back the navvies that were getting in the way of the careful work of filling the glass-lined fuel reservoirs. Molly approved of the commander’s caution. When it came to dealing with the volatile explosive liquids needed to drive their engine of gunnery, human error would be enough to scupper the whole project.
‘He’s in a snappy mood, today,’ said Purity.
‘I’m afraid we won’t get too many chances to do this,’ said Molly. ‘Timlar Preston has calculated that the force of any more than four firings will wreck the cannon’s barrel beyond use. Two test firings to calibrate, one live, and one left in reserve: that’s all the chances we’ll have.’
Molly should have resented Purity, but try as she might, she couldn’t.
The young escaped royalist had been filled with the power of the land, just as Molly’s own connection with the power she had taken for granted had been snapped. She had been as young and eager as Purity, once. But this was the way of all things. Youth faded. Cynicism deepened. When Molly looked in her mirror to brush out her red coils of hair she saw lines on her forehead that she found hard to recognize sometimes.
‘Well, manners don’t cost anything,’ said Purity.
Yes, she saw more than a little of who she had once been in the young Purity Drake. ‘I hope you’ve been busy building up a stock of rubber lining for the cannon, young damson. Because after today’s test firing it’ll all need to be re-laid for the next attempt.’
Purity wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘I go to sleep in my bunk and all I can smell is blessed rubberized sheeting.’
Molly smiled. ‘You’ve been spending too much time with the commodore.’
A uniformed engineer came into the firing station and saluted Colonel Buller. ‘We have the blank shells on the loading turntable, sir. I’ve finished testing them, and I can report they match Lord Starhome’s dimensions and weight exactly: we are now ready to fill the first shell with sand to approximate the flight crew.’
‘Fill it with sand equal to ten people’s weight, captain,’ said the colonel, pointing to a turntable mounted above the spiral-shaped cannon where Lord Starhome and a series of blank shells rested in metal cradles.
‘Ten!’ Molly started. ‘I wasn’t planning to take passengers—’
‘Apart from me,’ interrupted Purity.
Colonel Buller looked surprised then vexed. ‘I thought Lord Rooksby had told you…’
‘Told me what?’ Molly demanded.
‘You are not to be allowed into the craft on the day of the launch. The party to Kaliban is to be headed by Rooksby. Parliament felt that you were too close to this project and your motives may have been tainted by your association with one of the foe’s natives.’