The Court of the Air

by Stephen Hunt

  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 Quatérshift 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.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Commodore Black had been maudlin ever since Oliver had turned them back from the walls of Tock House. ‘Has it come to this, then? A company of Commonshare oafs billeted in my fine house. Draining my cellar and packing everything of value in their knapsacks for their journey home.’

  ‘They were waiting for us,’ said Oliver. ‘Tzlayloc will have our blood codes posted with every patrol in Middlesteel.’

  ‘Ah, lad, do not say that. Let’s make a run for the coast and leave Jackals to Tzlayloc and his cohorts.’

  Oliver shook his head. There was no distance far enough to make them safe if Jackals fell to the Wildcaotyl. So they had crept past the outside privy and into the back yard of the only house in the capital where Oliver imagined he might receive a half-friendly welcome. He tried the back door. Locked.

  ‘Let me pass, lad. I have a small talent with locks.’ The commodore picked up an old nail nearly covered over by the snow and started to lever it gently into the door’s mechanism. ‘Listen to the canny tumblers clicking, this is a better lock than the door it stands in, Oliver.’

  ‘Not a talent that I would imagine comes in useful often on an underwater boat?’

  ‘Poor old Blacky, pursued for his family name with nothing but a gallows or a cell in the royal breeding house waiting for him. You would acquire a knack for picking locks too if you were in my sea boots.’

  With a clack the door opened into a darkened room. The whole place looked deserted, just the smell of blow-barrel sap and gun oil to welcome them.

  ‘Step forward,’ said a voice. ‘Run and I’ll cut you down.’

  ‘Mother?’ said Oliver. ‘It’s me, Oliver Brooks. Phileas’s son.’

  A small oil lamp lit up with a strike of its igniter. Mother Loade was sitting in an armchair with a barrel-sized gun pointing at them – the same kind of pressure repeater he had seen the steammen knights carrying around Mechancia. No range, but deadly this close.

  ‘Where’s Harold, boy.’

  Oliver pointed a finger to the ceiling. ‘Snatched.’

  She tutted. ‘So naughty Harold’s luck finally ran out. Not that it matters much now.’

  ‘We tried out front first, Mother. Your shop sign’s down and the windows are boarded up. If I hadn’t seen your adverts in the back of Field and Fern I wouldn’t have been able to find your place.’

  ‘Why do you think that is, boy? My useless husband ran for the coast when the shifties showed up and my apprentices have all disappeared. Right now all my trade is good for is a place on a production line in an armaments workshop.’

  Oliver flicked his eyes enquiringly towards the ceiling.

  ‘I got a penny note from my son before the crystalgrid went down. One word. Bedtime. Do you know what that means, boy?’

  ‘Blessed Circle,’ said the commodore. ‘Oliver, this damson you have brought old Blacky to in our hour of need, she’s not what I think she is, is she? This damson’s with the Court, isn’t she?’

  Mother Loade looked at the commodore. ‘You, I don’t know.’

  ‘Run silent, run deep. That’s what your little crystalgrid message means. Like a boat being hunted by a Jackelian aerostat. Except this time around it’s the shifties doing the hunting. And all the wolftakers and whistlers doing the hiding.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘That’s just a little bit more than you should know. Are you trade?’

  ‘Ah lass, poor old Blacky is no player in the vicious games run by you and your friends. He’s only the poor fox, hunted down without mercy by the wolftakers for the unhappy accident of his birth.’

  ‘Well dearie, now there’s three of us that don’t want to be questioned at a barricade or checkpoint—’ she stopped as she saw Oliver taking off his coat, eyes widening at the brace of pistols holstered at his side.

  ‘I kept your knife,’ said Oliver.

  ‘Sweet Circle,’ she whispered. ‘They really exist.’ She extended a hand and Oliver passed one of the pistols over. Mother Loade held the gun, her hand trembling as she marvelled at the silver engraving, the carefully rendered lions of Jackals, their malevolent patina.

  ‘I never thought I would see one of these.’ She looked up at Oliver. ‘I can’t protect you now, boy. Not for your father’s memory. They’ll come for you, eventually.’

  Oliver took back the pistol and slid it into the holster. ‘Harry didn’t know about these, did he?’

  ‘He’s not a weaponsmith,’ said Mother. ‘And he never did have much time for legends. But the Court of the Air has weaponsmiths, boy. From places you wouldn’t even believe. They will understand, they will know. They always do.’

  ‘They have other things to occupy them right now,’ said Oliver.

  From the front door a banging sounded, Mother jumping in her chair. Oliver extended his senses and his heart sank, a shiftie officer and a company of the metal-fleshers stood in the street. Commodore Black peered through a crack in the boarded-up window. ‘Blessed troops in the passage behind the shop too.’

  Mother waved at the rifles racked on the shelves. ‘Who would have thought the Carlists read Field and Fern too? We’re blown. What do you think the punishment for possession of a private armoury is?’

  Oliver slid two glass charges from his bandolier. ‘I don’t believe the new courts will favour transportation.’

  ‘Already tried that.’ Mother Loade walked down the corridor, trailing an accordion-like pipe from her steamman gun back to her pressure stove. ‘I’m too old for this nonsense.’

  ‘Open up,’ commanded the voice from outside the door. ‘In the name of the Jackelian Commonshare.’

  ‘Don’t worry dearie,’ shouted Mother Loade. Her giant steamman weapon began to whistle like a kettle. ‘I’m about to open up for you.’

  She pushed a lever up on the weapon and it screeched with a noise like a saw blade tearing through a log. The door shattered in half, covering Oliver, the commodore and Mother in a back-blast of splinters. Mother kicked away the two halves of the door hanging from its frame. When she pushed the lever back on the gun there was a rain of metal balls from the weapon’s canister as the gun’s gravity feed kicked in, reloading.

  The officer had been thrown to the other side of the street, his blue uniform turned into a mess of crimson rags.

  ‘Welcome to Middlesteel, dearie.’ She turned to the equalized revolutionaries and hefted up the pressure repeater. ‘And as for you lot, you’re a bloody disgrace.’

  ‘Mother, no!’

  Oliver dragged the commodore back into the shelter of the shop as she triggered the heavy weapon, the storm of pellets hosing across the metal-fleshers; the revolutionaries were thrown back, death by a thousand cuts as balls ruptured iron and pierced their buried organs, the blizzard of ricochets cracking windows in the street and raising clouds of brick dust. The sawing noise cut off. Mother was lying face down in the street and Oliver ran over to her. Rolled her over. She was bleeding from a hundred ricochet wounds, her eyes fighting to stay open. ‘I’ll tell your father when I see him, dearie, before I move along the Circle.’

  ‘I know you will.’ He could barely hear her. She raised a liver-spotted hand to rest on Oliver’s pistol, the gun seeming to feed her the energy she needed for one last whisper. ‘Don’t trust them – Oliver. Never – trust – the – Court of – the Air.’

  She was gone. He lowered her down, her back staining the snow red. Black shouted a warning. The troops from around the back of the shop had found their way to the front of the street. Oliver heard whistles. They sounded like crushers, but he doubted any constables from Ham House would be responding to the call.

  Oliver staggered back towards the shop. Commod
ore Black wanted Mother’s gun, but first he had to prize it away from her dead fingers. He dragged the pressure repeater and its pipe back through the doorway. Equalized revolutionaries with pikes trotted down the street towards them, following their Quatérshiftian officers.

  ‘Sorry, lad,’ said the commodore. ‘I think this is our last stand.’

  Oliver sighed. Mother would keep glass-lined casks of blow-barrel sap in her cellar next door to the tools of the glass blower’s trade. They could blow them, follow Steamswipe’s example and take a street’s worth of the jiggers with them.

  ‘I’m sorry too, commodore. We should have run for the coast, hidden among the crowds of refugees.’ Oliver felt tired, like he could sleep for a thousand years. In a few minutes he would have an eternity of peace.

  ‘None of the would have, could have, should have now, lad. They’ve chased you down for your fey blood as they’ve chased old Blacky down for the royal claret that runs through my veins. Let’s sell it to them blessed dear.’

  The witch-blade was in Oliver’s fist, extending out like a lizard’s tongue, feeding him shadow memories of his father facing a hunting team of toppers. Commodore Black rested the smoking pressure repeater on the shop’s counter and covered the entrance. The battle cries of the enemy were getting nearer. Oliver checked both his pistols were loaded, the heat from the steamman gun warming his face.

  Harry Stave was in a Court cell, what was left of his mind ripped to shreds by the wolftakers’ truth hexing. Steamswipe and Lord Wireburn were walking the halls of the Steamo Loas. Oliver could almost feel their shades standing beside him.

  ‘I’ll see you soon.’

  The enemy was upon them, filling the passage, breaking down the boarded windows of Loade and Locke’s establishment.

  ‘Send us the Third Brigade,’ Oliver shouted above the saw-scream of the commodore’s gun. ‘Send them all.’