The Court of the Air j-1

by Stephen Hunt

  Damson Davenport found it hard to keep up with the others — they had been equalized longer than she had and were used to the flat, dull way everything looked in their new bodies. She was continually reaching for things on the mill bench and missing them, or knocking them onto the floor. It was the nice cup of caffeel at the end of the day she missed most. The coke they fed into their boiler chutes might burn for days in their sorcerous new forms but she still remembered what it was like to taste things, to have an appetite. The work leaders boasted that they had eliminated hunger — well, that was true, in a way. And she missed the peace of sleep too. She could only rest for an hour or so in this new body and when she woke up from the dreamless respite she hardly felt refreshed at all.

  ‘Keep up with the line,’ shouted their company’s work leader, banging her iron back with his punishment wand. ‘Compatriot Davenport, you are slowing the column. Can you not take Compatriot Carker as your example? What a fine worker she is, what a fine example to the people she serves.’

  Compatriot Carker had found the measure of how to trot in her new body. But then Harriet Carker was a Grimhope loyalist, one of the first to be equalized — the daft fool had volunteered for this existence, had been one of the subterranean renegades who had set up the flesh mills down below in the outlaw realm.

  It was so hard to tell the equalized apart — the loyalists from the conscripts. You learned to watch what you said and to whom. Damson Davenport had only tasted the pain stick once and it was enough to cow her tongue. The rumours of a resistance, the rumours of a counter-revolution, had been denied by the company leaders. But then they had interrupted the evening reading of Community and the Commons to deny them. They might have sliced her up and stuffed her into this shambling new body of metal and flesh, but they had not cut away her common sense. She could see the fear in the eyes of the brilliant men. She could see the upside down Vs — the lion’s teeth — that had been scrawled on the walls of the streets; she could see the distant smoke and hear the fighting.

  ‘Halt,’ shouted the company leader. They were outside the Circlist cathedral on the Lilburne road, Third Brigade troops lined up and guarding the doors. What could be inside, wondered Damson Davenport? The practice of Circlist worship was a pain-rod offence now; the company leaders had made that clear. Wagons were drawn up outside, dozens of them with canvas covers concealing their valuable cargo.

  ‘Form up,’ shouted the company leader to the column of equalized workers. ‘Eight each to a wagon. Then we pull them to Parliament Square. After we have delivered the wagons we will return to this street — there will be more wagons waiting for us. This will be our duty until we are reassigned back to the cannon works.’

  The royal we, thought Damson Davenport, as the company leader climbed up to the top of one of the wagons while his equalized compatriots did as they were bid.

  ‘These wagons are meant for horses,’ said Damson Davenport. It came out before she realized she had spoken.

  ‘They’ve been eating them,’ whispered the metal-flesher behind her, voicebox set on low. ‘I heard the brilliant men complaining that it is the only meat left in Middlesteel now.’

  Damson Davenport glanced around. Thank the Circle the company leader had not heard the uncommunityist exchange. To gossip was to steal exertion from the cause — they had been warned against that too. A mixture of Third Brigade troops and brilliant men escorted the large convoy, holding their rifles ready as they marched. A small glimmer of hope rose in her. If they were being guarded, then there was still something to guard against in Middlesteel.

  Gates on a barricade with the muzzles of galloper cannons protruding out were heaved back outside Parliament Square. A squat black building had been raised in the centre of the square, its stacks venting oily black smoke into the snow-pregnant sky. Damson Davenport noticed the rubble of the statues that had been smashed to make way for this new structure. Something else had been added recently too — a tall stone cross which had been driven into the ground outside the entrance to the House of Guardians, a figure strapped to it howling like a banshee, his screams carrying across the cold space of the square. Above the figure being punished a crimson-filled jewel boiled as snowflakes fell across it and turned to steam.

  Third Brigade soldiers pulled the canvas covers off the wagons, revealing the cages underneath. In Damson Davenport’s chest the calculation drums ground in shock. The cages were filled with people, once-fine clothes ripped and soiled by confinement in a space a Jackelian would not have wished to keep a street hound in. There were old men, families and children, the school uniforms of the private academies ruined by weeks of sleeping and living in them. The strangest thing of all was how quiet they were. They were just standing there, resigned. Why weren’t they angry? These were the city’s quality — they were used to the finest food and the finest accommodation Middlesteel had to offer. Now they had been reduced to gaunt figures without enough spark to spill even a tear for their own predicament.

  Soldiers unlocked the cage walls and pushed the dirty prisoners to form a line leading towards the squat structure. Behind her the company leader was talking to one of the brilliant men. After the conversation was over, the leader came over to Damson Davenport and cut her out of the team pulling the wagon. ‘You are slowing the wagons down, compatriot. You are not yet used to your beautiful new form, so I have decided to show compassion to you. You will be working on the Collar’s boiler for the rest of today.’

  The Collar? So, that is what a Gideon’s Collar looked like. He led her to the middle of the square, over to the furnace being stoked on the back of the construction. Inside the building she could hear the crack of the bolts as they fired. One every five seconds. Quick, painless, humane. Clearly the product of an advanced society. Damson Davenport looked down at the fuel being fed into the furnace by the equalized workers. ‘These are books, Compatriot Coordinator.’

  ‘Supplies of coal have run low, Compatriot Davenport,’ said the company leader, indicating the snow. ‘Your concern does you credit — but the books are an adequate fuel source and you will not find any copies of Community and the Commons among them.’

  Of course, there was only one book for the land now. She took a shovel from the company leader and joined the others digging out piles of books and tossing them into the flames of the furnace. She did not feel the heat from the furnace, but then she did not feel the cold either; she knew what the temperature was, her body could tell her that. She just did not feel it. Piercing screams from the figure on the cross nearly made her spill a blade full of tomes onto the snow. ‘Who is that?’

  One of her co-workers turned his voicebox in her direction. ‘The King.’

  ‘The King? But he is dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘The new King.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ She looked at the distant figure writhing on the cross. She must have missed the coronation festival. Everyone back home had so been looking forward to that — she had been building up a little store of rotten fruit for weeks in her room, just so she could throw it on coronation day. Bitterly disappointed, she went back to feeding the fires of the Gideon’s Collar.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Glass grenades hurled by the riders blew apart the barricade on the bridge, horses arrowing through the cordon to join those who had already leapt the line of bayonets. Oliver slashed down with his blade, the hex-heavy knife forming itself into the perfect simulacrum of a curved sabre. In front of him the gypsy witch twirled a whip of fire across the nearest Third Brigade trooper. Oliver ducked the rifle bullet coming towards his skull, pulling a belt pistol out and killing the marksman. To his left he deflected a bayonet with the flat of his sabre, and then turned a boot to kick the soldier down to the ground.

  It was strange fighting on horseback, the weight of the sixer striking fear into the hearts of the soldiers on the ground, the height making it easy for him to slice down, but raising him into the line of fire at the same time. With a cry of vengeance the gypsy
witch launched herself off the mount and fell into the melee like a flaming comet. The Commonshare had driven her off her lands in Quatershift and the invaders would pay a blood price for trying to repeat their purges in Jackals.

  Oliver looked over the bridge rail and saw the commodore’s tub floating down the watery green surf of the Gambleflowers unmolested by the troops on the bridge. He did not hesitate but pulled himself forward on the horse and took control, kicking its flanks forward and surging out of the scrum. Oliver galloped past a knot of wounded Third Brigade men being pulled back by their compatriots, abandoning the fight behind him for the city. Soon he was into the heart of Middlesteel, windows iced over and dark, the few people out scrabbling for food disappearing as he charged past.

  Oliver whispered to the horse using gypsy words that came to him — and the mare increased her speed. He smelled Hawklam Asylum before he saw it, the bonfire smell of the cursewall on the hill, the air shimmering as flecks of snow drifted into its shield. There was a normal wall first, to protect the citizens of Middlesteel from blundering through the worldsinger’s barrier. Not entirely necessary. Anyone who was not put off by the evil whine it made was probably past caring. Oliver let his perception extend through the asylum gatehouse, his senses spreading and diffusing across Hawklam Hill; but lacking control he started being pulled part, diffusing himself too wide. With a wrench of concentration he pulled himself back together again, reassembling the jigsaw of his consciousness. He had touched the worldsingers inside and he had tasted their minds, noted the subtle differences. The Jackelian order had been reinforced with Quatershiftian sorcerers. Their mastery of the worldsong had created more in common between them than any differences of nation, politics and race. All over Middlesteel the Jackelians were fighting for their freedom, but up here it was business as usual. The wild fey had to be contained, that was something both sides agreed on.

  In his anger Oliver had not noticed that he had climbed the boundary fence and wandered through the cursewall, leaving a hole in the shimmering barrier. He felt the thrum of the leylines in the bones of the earth, six great currents of power crossing at the top of Hawklam Hill. The mound had been a place of power and superstition for as long as Jackelians had lived in these lands. Ancient religions had raised standing stones here, spilt blood here, tracked the dance of the stars and buried war chiefs here. So much earthflow, so much power.

  The front door of the asylum was a steel barrier as thick as the hull on a submarine war craft; they had sealed Hawklam when the invasion started. No fey to escape during the fighting.

  Oliver rapped on the door with the hilt of his witch-blade and a viewing slot opened, the grooves of a man-sized portal visible within the larger black barrier.

  ‘How did you get up the hill?’ a voice demanded. ‘The gate-house has not admitted anyone.’

  ‘Who do you serve?’ asked Oliver.

  ‘What?’ The voice on the other side sounded confused.

  ‘I would like to know,’ said Oliver. ‘The order of world singers served the old kings, then it served the House of Guardians. In Quatershift it served the monarchy then the Commonshare. So I would like to know, is there anyone you jiggers won’t whore yourselves out to, to protect your privileges and station?’

  A jailer pushed the worldsinger on door duty away and looked through the sally port. ‘Clear off you young idiot. If you make me open this door I’ll beat you to within an inch of your life and toss you back in the street.’

  ‘I will give you one chance,’ said Oliver. ‘Bring the feybreed Nathaniel Harwood to me. Bring him to me now or I will take him from you.’

  ‘You’ll take the back of my hand from me, boy.’ The jailer shouted back to his colleagues, calling for reinforcements. ‘You think we’re bloody Bonegate? We don’t have a visiting day — we don’t let gawpers in to see the prisoners dance in their cages for a penny a poke.’

  ‘I haven’t come to see him dance,’ said Oliver, cutting out a circle in the barrier with his witch-blade, the black steel hissing. The metal fell back before the kick of his boot with a clang like a cathedral bell. ‘I have come to see you dance.’

  He dipped through and into a firestorm of spells, chants and curses, a fury of energy tossed at him by a semi-circle of worldsingers. Oliver let them throw their sorceries at him, the leylines throbbing as the power of the land was manipulated and twisted against his body. The energies grew thinner as their assault expended its force, the anger and confidence the sorcerers felt slipping away to be replaced by surprise, changing to fear as he filled the entrance hall of the asylum with his laughter. Their attack faltered and stopped.

  ‘Oliver Brooks!’

  Oliver saw the figure at the other end of the hall. ‘Inspector Pullinger. Here I was visiting one old friend and instead I find two.’

  ‘I was right,’ spat Edwin Pullinger. ‘I was right all the time about you.’

  ‘I took your advice, Inspector. I came to Middlesteel to join the Special Guard. But they seem to be collaborating with the shifties, as do you. Does that make me the last honest guardsman?’

  Jailers in hex-covered armour were running up behind Pullinger, tugging out toxin clubs from their belts. ‘I always knew you were a dirty little fey boy,’ said the worldsinger. ‘One of the ones who would never let themselves be controlled.’

  ‘My father was a wolftaker, my mother was a demigod and my fate is my own. For you I am the hand of justice.’

  ‘You are too dangerous to have a torc burned around your neck,’ said the sorcerer. He pulled out a snuffbox and inhaled a pinch of purpletwist. ‘And now Jackals is operating under the laws of a Commonshare we no longer have to adhere to the tedious restrictions of the charter the House of Guardians forced on us.’

  ‘The law of the mailed fist,’ said Oliver in disgust. ‘The rule of do as you will. Then we are both free of the laws that used to bind us. Your worldsong can’t touch me. That is my power, inspector. I am not touched by the feymist. I am the feymist.’

  ‘And for that you will die.’

  Pullinger’s jailers had their toxin clubs ready. There must have been fifty of them in the hall now. The witch-blade trembled in Oliver’s right hand, the metal at the tip of the sabre flowing out and down on both sides of the blade; the hilt reforming and cracking upwards with the noise of breaking bone. The weapon was still unnaturally light — even as a double-headed axe. The part of his father’s soul that had been imprinted on the weapon was satisfied with the choice. Oliver tried to shut out the wickedness in the jailers’ souls; he felt their sins as an ache — the beatings, the sorcerous experiments, the fights they would make the fey enact just so they could gamble on the outcome, whole lifetimes of casual cruelties.

  Twisting and squirming in his hand, the witch-blade knew a way to shut out the evil. ‘Come then, proud men of Hawklam Asylum. Show me how I might die.’

  ‘More power to the boilers,’ cried the locust priest.

  In front of Damson Davenport the Gideon’s Collar was shaking on its platform’s legs, the processing machine’s engine working beyond its tolerances. Every few minutes a shiftie worker in a leather apron would toss out a sack that would slap down on the snow, leaving a puddle of blood behind when one of the brilliant men hauled it off to the palace.

  Damson Davenport had stopped hearing the cries of the young king on the cross. By focusing on the work of tending the furnace she could avert her eyes from the wagons and cages being hauled into Parliament Square and emptied of soiled families, the fine-dressed prisoners pushed into line with rifle butts and sabres and pikes.

  The important man — the one they called Tzlayloc — came out of the gates of parliament, a phalanx of guards and locust priests in his wake. He had been in and out of the House of Guardians all day like an excited child waiting for his Midwinter gift-giving. Distracted, Compatriot Davenport nearly tripped up over one of the other equalized workers stoking the boiler furnace. There were six of them now feeding the Gideon’s Collar.r />
  Tzlayloc walked over to one of the sacks of hearts. ‘Faster, compatriots. We are so close now.’

  Close to what? she wondered. Their overseer hurried over to the leader, and from all the nodding Damson Davenport knew their service in the shadow of the collar was going to get even more frantic. A Third Brigade riding officer galloping out of the snowstorm interrupted their overseer’s act of obsequiousness. She heard snatches of the report. Counter-revolutionaries, steammen knights, First Brigade reinforcements.

  Tzlayloc howled with rage. She had no trouble hearing his instructions. ‘Cancel the Special Guard’s orders to march south. Have them form for battle and bring me Flare.’

  His retinue closed in and there was a flurry of commands in the wake of the cavalryman’s departure, the leader’s minions rushing off to do their master’s bidding. Suddenly Tzlayloc dropped to the ground, screaming. Damson Davenport thought he must be having a stroke. All that shouting and hurrying about. It was no wonder. But then she realized his cries sounded more like an exclamation of ecstasy.

  A tearing noise sounded and in the air above Parliament Square a fissure appeared, colours she had never seen before leaking out of the rip.

  ‘Xam-ku,’ shouted Tzlayloc. ‘Xam-ku!’

  Black tendrils snaked out of the fissure, snowflakes turning to steam as they touched the arms waving and flexing in the air, moving like the legs of a spider emerging from its hunting hole. Two of the tendrils reached down to Tzlayloc, stroking him gently as he moaned in pleasure. His body was changing, swelling and rippling as the darkness from the fissure slithered its way into his form, leaving Tzlayloc trembling — and not from the cold of the strange winter that had frozen Middlesteel. Around the head of the First Committee his locust priests had fallen to their knees and were chanting in a language she did not recognize.