The Court of the Air j-1

by Stephen Hunt

  Now then. Something had tugged it back awake. One of the invisible threads it had spun, tripwires to warn it of possible discovery. One line in particular called out to it. Follow it back. See what was blundering about. Ah, the last active file was being accessed. So, only one left now. Its creator had been busy while it slept. A ripple of simulated amusement; it seemed the business of removing the targets had provoked a little curiosity in someone.

  The query was good by Jackelian standards, but it still reeked of inelegance — long where it should have been short. Trace the operator function. A head of department — except the head of department had not been recorded entering Greenhall today. Well, it could hardly expect whoever was responsible for this to fly under their true colours, could it — so analyse the pattern signature of the instruction set, match for similar queries, cross-reference back to operator access, re-trace the operator function. An engine man on the payroll, a cardsharp. Copy the staff file, home address, good.

  Now there was a second query under the same operator account, but this one had never been composed by a softbody mind, never in a thousand years. Not a line of wasted Simple in the search — elegant, beautiful, like the peal of a perfect bell. Briefly it regretted it could never meet the author of this punch card. A steamman, obviously; and a creature with some style about him too. What a waste it would be to have such an intelligence terminated. The steamman should have kept his olfactory array safely out of its creator’s business. Too late for regrets now.

  In one of Greenhall’s many crystalgrid towers, a hand dipped lazily down into a deck tray and fished out the next card in the queue. It was easy duty, this tower only dealt with automated requests. Flour supplies at Fort Downdirt running low — restock now; automatically coded up by the transaction engines. No need to try and interpret some old woman’s shakily written ink-stained birthday greetings to her son like the public station operators had to. Which was just as well for the man. Because if the card runner had translated the cryptic message on the punch card he was handling and tried to report it, his corpse would have been found drifting in the sewage of the Gambleflowers the next day.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Oliver was at the bottom of a sea. Sometimes he would rise towards the surface and the press of the depths would ease. He would be close enough to the light to hear the voices. A strident tone, someone complaining. ‘I’m an architect — not a vet.’

  Then it was gone. At other times he would hear singing. Strange melodies, inhuman but perfect. Not words though. Some sort of code. Then he would sink again into a hall of perfect blackness. It was peaceful, timeless, until a white dot appeared at the end of the hall. It grew bigger, taking form — unpleasant form.

  The Whisperer.

  ‘Oliver,’ it hissed. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘This isn’t a dream,’ said Oliver. ‘I’m not dreaming.’

  ‘Focus on me, Oliver. Stay with me, you’re in a coma. Your body has nearly died twice in the last week.’

  ‘I feel so light, Nathaniel, like I might float away.’

  ‘You’ll float away forever, boy. You’ve been poisoned. Thetwo slave hunters from Cassarabia had some kind of toxin gland in their teeth — the architects think it originates fom a poisonous eel.’

  ‘Architects?’

  ‘You’re in the Steammen Free State, the mountains of Mechancia. King Steam’s own surgeons are trying to save you.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Oliver. ‘Whisperer, you look sick yourself, thinner — those wounds on your side…?’

  ‘My food’s been off the last few days,’ coughed the Whisperer. ‘And I walked into a door; but you should see the door.’

  Oliver lay down on the hall’s infinite floor. ‘Let’s sleep then. Always better after sleep.’

  ‘Don’t sleep,’ shouted the Whisperer. ‘Oliver, stay with me. You sleep and you’re not going to wake up. Your body isn’t fighting off the infection well enough — the poison isn’t fey, it isn’t worldsinger magic, so your body doesn’t care, the part of you that’s from beyond the feymist curtain doesn’t give a damn about a mundane infection.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Oliver. ‘It’s time for a rest.’

  ‘Don’t care was made to care,’ said the Whisperer, grabbing Oliver’s arm. ‘Well jigger it, you’re going to die anyway.’

  Something leapt out of the Whisperer’s body and into Oliver’s arm, as if his limb was being dipped in acid. Screaming, Oliver tried to roll away.

  ‘Does that get the old fey juices flowing, Oliver? Still want to sleep?’

  Darkness everywhere, nowhere to run. Oliver tried to struggle free of the Whisperer’s grasp, but the creature seized his ankle and another bolt of agony flared like a sun in his leg, muscles bursting and burning.

  ‘This isn’t biological, Oliver, just you and me, a little fey horse-play. The kind of japes that got me buried alive in Hawklam Asylum all those years ago.’

  Scrambling for freedom, Oliver’s body started convulsing, daggers of pain thrusting in at him from all directions. ‘Please! For the love of the Circle … the pain, you’re killing me.’

  ‘You and me both, Oliver,’ the Whisperer laughed. ‘In for a ha’penny in for a guinea. Let’s see just how much excitement that perfectly formed man-suit you hide in can take, shall we?’

  Sinews erupted, flesh smoking, the black hall breaking up as cracks of red pain ran up its ebony walls. Crimson silhouettes poured from Oliver’s mouth, angry red traceries of demon-shapes vomiting out from his throat. They swarmed like hornets, twisting around and diving towards his fey assailant. The Whisperer swayed, falling back; part of his arm had vanished, boiling away into steam. ‘Took long enough to bloody arrive, didn’t you?’

  Driving up like magma from a volcano, Oliver rode the pain, higher and higher, his hall of peace falling away as he was propelled into a room of white stone, his back arching, soaked in sweat.

  Oliver lay panting on a slab-like table. White. In fact, everything seemed white, pure clean light pouring into the room from a glass ceiling. Snow-frosted mountains outside were the only sign he had not been expelled from hell and gobbed out into heaven. Coughing, Oliver clawed at the mask on his face — a yellow mist-like substance smoked out of it and it tasted like Damson Griggs’s carrot broth.

  His leg seemed heavy; glancing down, he found what looked like a massive spider sitting on his ankles — the unexpected sight of which made the half-delirious Oliver scream.

  ‘Calm yourself,’ said a voice. ‘It’s only a mu-body.’

  A steamman came into view, light gleaming off his polished shell like a dozen star glints. ‘You are in the hall of the architects, young softbody — I am what passes for an expert in comparative medicine.’

  ‘This is Mechancia, then?’

  ‘Indeed it is. Your friend carried you in,’ said the steamman. ‘Lucky to be activate, you are. Your body was infected by the bite of a creature warped by biomancy, your system juices poisoned at a very basic level; similar to crystal blight in my own people. I was in the process of developing a filter to clean your juices when your biology eventually rejected the poison on its own. This is not a capability I was aware your race possessed. Your traders bring me copies of the journals of your Royal Institute — but I have never read of such an advanced case of self-healing.’

  Oliver remembered the Whisperer burning his body. He wiped away the sweat that was pouring down into his eyes. ‘I had some help.’

  The steamman tapped the drone sitting on his leg. ‘Indeed you did. There is a test filter inserted in your ankle. I can leave it in — it will dissolve harmlessly in time — or this healer can remove it if you prefer to wait a day.’

  ‘Leave it in,’ said Oliver. ‘I want to see Harry.’

  ‘Your friend is meeting with the court,’ said the architect. ‘You must rest.’

  Oliver tried to swing himself off the table, but he collapsed back, as weak as a newborn.

  ‘We are at quite an al
titude here. Apart from your system-juice poisoning, your softbody biology will require time to adapt to the thinness of air in the city.’

  ‘Please, Architect …’

  ‘Architect Goldhead,’ said the steamman. ‘My skills as a fastblood healer may have previously been limited to journal reading, but even I can see that you need recovery time and nourishment, young softbody. Please to lie down, or with a heavy boiler I will command my drones to bind you to the table.’

  Oliver’s stomach had set to rumbling at the mention of food. ‘Nourishment would be very welcome, Architect Goldhead.’

  ‘I have already alerted our embassy staff,’ said the architect. ‘They have much experience with preparing your food organics in the ways prescribed by fastbloods.’

  Meals cooked by a race that could not taste? Well, judging by the sounds coming from his stomach he was not going to complain.

  Oliver spent two more days in the surgery of the steamman architect. Not allowed visitors, the only company he kept was that of the voiceless spider-like medical mu-bodies and their master. Oliver would watch the architect’s gleaming over-sized gold skull nodding silently in thought as he busied about the room.

  He had plenty of time to contemplate the mountain vastness of Mechancia from the large clear windows in the surgery. The city’s mist-shrouded buildings rose from the mountains like pearl coral, railing-protected paths twisting around the slopes, wide stairs carved out of stone. At night he could hear high winds rustling a thousand prayer flags, colourful streamers stroked by the wind as chimes made of steammen bones pealed and tinkled to the wind’s rhythms.

  During the day, Oliver would watch steammen children in their borrowed nursery bodies climb the stairs to open-walled platforms on the peaks opposite the hall of architects. There they would sit in ordered rows and sing in their bizarre machine code, ancient hymns to the Steamo Loas and their ancestors: Steelbhalah-Waldo, Sogbo-Pipes, Legba of the Valves.

  Sitting in his bed in the hall Oliver saw things he had only dreamed of while a prisoner of his registration order at Hundred Locks: processions of steammen mystics dancing and whirling at dusk, the fearsome gun-boxes — house-sized steammen carefully climbing the stair paths on two legs, massive cannons ready to repel any invaders foolish enough to assault this mountain fastness.

  On the third day he was judged well enough by the king’s surgeon to see Harry. Architect Goldhead led Oliver through the halls and onto a bodiless walking platform waiting outside — its stacks well adapted to the high altitude, leaving a thin ladder of smoke trailing in the cold air as it trotted Oliver and his minder through the steep streets of Mechancia. None of the mountain paths seemed crowded and the walking platform rarely had to sound its whistle, steammen stepping easily out of its way when they saw the transport coming. Mechancian society did not appear as mixed as that of a Jackelian city to Oliver’s eyes, but they still passed the occasional craynarbian or Jackelian trader; coal men mostly, wrapped in warm fur coats with trains of mules spilling black coke dust from their heavy panniers. Their jogging transport had to squeeze through many of the narrow streets, whitewashed buildings on either side rising as high as the walls of a canyon — red pagoda-style roofs elevated into the drifting ribbons of fog. Steammen at some of the windows waved as they passed.

  ‘Is Harry close?’ Oliver asked the architect.

  ‘He is still at the palace,’ replied the steamman.

  It was freezing in the exposed walking platform and Oliver dug his hands into his fur coat’s pockets. No wonder so much of the Steammen Free State’s territory consisted of these mountains on the roof of the world — there were few other races in Jackals that would willingly abide in these craggy heights.

  Their path broadened away from building-flanked streets, taking them out to a weighty suspension bridge crossing the air to Mechancia’s royal citadel. An ivory river of fog flowed underneath the iron bridge. On the other side two shield-stone doors on rollers stood open, protected by a gun-box, its nose a stub-cannon dipped down to smell out threats. A row of steammen knights stood to attention in its shadow, metal centaurs with heads like barb-beaked hunting birds. They might as well have been statues, so still did they stand duty — only the flags on poles clipped to their backs crackling and moving in the breeze. Its passage already approved, the walking platform jounced through the opening and into the citadel.

  Oliver stared at the large open halls they passed, full of kneeling steammen singing the same machine noise hymns he had heard while he drifted in and out of his fever-wracked consciousness.

  ‘They sing in praise of our ancestors,’ announced Architect Goldhead, following the direction of Oliver’s gaze. ‘It pleases the spirits to hear their achievements and lives honoured by the people. Are not all of our achievements built upon the shoulders of those who have preceded us in the world?’

  Oliver remembered the corpses of steammen knights rising out of the mud in Jackals. ‘I believe I might owe them a vote of thanks myself.’

  ‘Yes indeed, Oliver softbody. The capital has been abuzz with word of what happened to you and your companion on the border. The last time the Loas intervened in the affairs of fastbloods so directly was … well, a very long time ago. I fear it augurs difficult times ahead.’

  The words of the Lady of the Lights drifted back to Oliver. We are fast moving beyond the point where a little extrawattle and daub around the edges is going to keep the rooffrom leaking. Oliver said nothing. Did a warm room in Seventy Star Hall and his quiet lonely life of reading books really seem so bad now? Surely boredom was better than having the weight of the world dropped down on his shoulders?

  Their walking platform came to a halt by a pair of tall red columns and the architect stepped off the steamman transport — beckoning Oliver to follow him. Beyond the columns was a chilly open hall, its floor a soft golden wood — surely precious material in these harsh rocky climes.

  ‘Your companion and Master Saw are to give a demonstration,’ whispered Architect Goldhead, his voicebox at its lowest volume. ‘A display of the fighting arts.’

  In the middle of the hall stood the disreputable Stave, facing a three-legged steamman with dozens of skeletal arms, many tipped with blades, maces and bludgeons — wrapped in cloth for the sparring match. Young steammen in nursery bodies sat silently at the other end of the hall, curiously waiting to see how this soft-looking animal would match up to one of their own race.

  ‘Master Saw is the Knight Marshal of the Orders Militant,’ said the architect. ‘To spar with him is a great thing — your friend must have impressed Master Saw at his meetings with the court.’

  ‘Or annoyed him,’ said Oliver. ‘He probably stole King Steam’s crown.’

  Architect Goldhead seemed shocked by the suggestion. ‘Surely not. It has been whispered that your friend is a worldsinger, that he can fight in witch-time.’

  ‘Watch and see,’ said Oliver.

  Master Saw tipped his needle-nosed head towards Harry and the wolftaker gave a small bow back. What followed was almost too fast to watch — both man and steamman speeding into a single blur of spinning fury, blows striking out, blocked and returned in a dance fought at a tempo at the edge of human comprehension. The metal soldier fought in a frenetic windmill style, his weapon limbs arcs of destruction. Harry seemed to be using his animal suppleness to bob, kick and punch, giving ground when the steamman advanced — yet hardly seeming to retreat an inch — circling and flowing around the soldier.

  After a minute of watching the bout it seemed hardly to be a combat at all — the two contestants so synchronised in their forms it was more like a piece of choreographed dance; more art than violence. Mesmerised by the display, when the peal of a bell sounded, Oliver jolted upright. It was the end of the bout. The young man would have been hard pressed to say afterwards if it had lasted two minutes or thirty. Harry was sweating so much he looked like he had been swimming when he bowed to the steamman, while steam was rising off Master Saw’s overwo
rked boiler which glowed red with the additional energy he had been consuming.

  Master Saw dipped his helmet-like head. ‘The form of water; a good choice when fighting metal.’

  ‘So I was taught, knight marshal. Although fire beats water.’

  Master Saw raised his bandaged weapon limbs. ‘Even the knights steammen do not use flame weapons in a sparring match.’

  Harry Stave spotted Oliver and walked over to where he was standing. ‘Lad! You had us bleeding worried for a while. They only let me see you the once and you were in a right old state.’

  ‘It seems your lack of faith in our ability to heal your friend was unfounded,’ said Architect Goldhead.

  Harry glared at the metal creature and led Oliver to the side of the hall where they could not be overheard. ‘I found a human doctor who works on the traders hurt on the mountain paths, landslides and falls, but he was a leaafer — struck off back home without a doubt. I figured you would have a better chance with shiny skull and his friends, once I convinced them you didn’t want metal limbs.’

  ‘I’m okay now, Harry.’

  ‘Good lad. I’d rather not have to face your father when I move forward on the Circle and explain to him why I let his son die on the lam with old Harry.’