by Stephen Hunt
‘Your uniform is noticeably out of date.’
‘It’s from the only book I owned before they buried me down in here. Duellists of the Court of Quatershift — it was my most precious possession. My father bought it for me during one of his sober weeks and there weren’t many of those. This uniform is the best, don’t you think?’
‘By far. The Third Brigade will think their king has come back from the grave to punish them for running him through a Gideon’s Collar.’
Snow was drifting in through the open doors of Hawklam’s entrance hall. The Whisperer nodded in satisfaction at the corpses littering the marble floor, his tormenters for decades laid out just as he had always imagined them. Oliver looked down the rocky hill at his horse, waiting beyond the gap in the wrecked cursewall. He was about to point it out, but the Whisperer was distracted. Oliver followed the direction of the fey creature’s gaze. The southern sky was filled with a fleet of aerostats, chequerboard hulls nosing through the almost luminescent snow clouds.
Wind whipped up Hawklam hill and the Whisperer had to shout to be heard. ‘The high fleet has been floated! But by-’
‘-whom?’ said Oliver. His senses extended out, through the rigid hulls, through the canvas gas spheres — into the newly equalized bodies of Jackals’ jack cloudies. Metal-fleshers, bent to Tzlayloc’s will by brilliant men and Quatershiftian officers with button-encrusted pain wands. Liberal doses of nerve fire flaying them for any perceived shirking or reluctance to attend to their orders; a pain more terrible than even the discipline of the RAN’s cat-o’-nine-tails.
Oliver did not need to answer the Whisperer — the whistle of tumbling fire-fins on Middlesteel’s towers and rookeries spoke for the intentions of those who were now masters of Jackals’ great navy, masters of the sky. Flowers of flame blossomed beneath the vessels, pneumatic towers to the south collapsing in clouds of steam as the heat boiled away their stability. Middlesteel was paying the price for its defiance, the ancient guarantor of their freedoms now turned against them to extinguish those same liberties.
‘By damn, they’re emptying their fin bays on Middlesteel,’ said the Whisperer.
‘Not emptying,’ said Oliver, looking to the east. ‘They need to save just enough bombs to stop King Steam’s army.’
The two of them scurried down the hill as Middlesteel burned at their feet.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Whineside Strangler’s laugh of triumph turned to a howl of pain as a golden nimbus flared up around Molly’s body, the field of darkness surrounding his hands boiling away as his fingers recoiled from her neck.
The second convict entered the chamber on hearing the strangler’s screams and Slowstack headed the man off using his steamman voice. Shards of the Chimecan weapon blew off under the impact of the steamman’s attack, but the convict only staggered back, then extended a fist, tendrils of black energy lashing out and whipping off Slowstack’s chest. Slowstack was knocked over on his tracks, a fizz of dark energy chasing around a tear in his chest hull, exposed crystals black with oil leaking from fibrous pipes as the steamman moaned in agony.
‘Slowstack!’ Molly was caught off guard as the Whineside Strangler threw himself at her golden nimbus, his black field blending in a dance of colours, clawed fingers piercing and trying to penetrate the golden energy swirling around her form.
‘The things I am going to do you,’ snarled the strangler, his words mangled by the fact his tongue had split into two bony mandibles, the smell of burning meat from his throat making Molly want to gag.
She bunched up the energy within her body, collecting it in a golden coil inside her as she rolled with the strangler on the floor.
‘Help me,’ shouted the strangler back to his partner. ‘Help me hold her legs down.’
His compatriot left Slowstack’s body and drifted over on eight black lances of energy, a spider’s crawl. Molly detonated the charge that had been building inside her. The strangler was blown off her body and thrown down into the pit of the Chimecan death instrument. He rolled down into the body of the thing, blood-red crystals raining onto him as he collided with the instrument.
Detecting the energy of the Wildcaotyl entity, the weapon started to hum, a bone-grinding noise that made the walls of the chamber shake, showers of masonry falling from the ceiling. It was a song the earth had not heard for a thousand years, the music of insects, dreadful shortened notes that surfaced as if they were dying. Molly could see the glow from the machine where it was missing components, where the Chimecans had run out of beloved family members to sacrifice to complete the monstrous thing.
Molly did not need Slowstack’s faintly exclaimed warning; she turned and twisted the tendrils of black throbbing energy from the second convict, using them like the reins on a horse to toss the killer after his friend. Inside the pit the two convicts’ Wildcaotyl masters tempered the violence of their possession, fearful of damaging the instrument that when completed could summon their meta-gods.
She had no such compulsion. Watching the convicts floating and clawing their way up towards her, she reached inside the death instrument — its workings as cold and alien as the dreams of a locust. But even a device to crack the walls of reality had to be bound by the processes of this universe, the laws of mechanics. Her blood boiled inside her as she formed patterns, rolling through thousands of combinations of the hex-like keys that would unlock the weapon. She adjusted the pattern with each minor success, getting closer and closer to its activation cycle. The two killers were almost at the pit rim, their eyes dark and infinite, the human beasts within their hearts tempered now by the Wildcaotyl. They knew what she was trying to do — realigning the instrument, re-engineering the delicate forces within it. The wasps would protect the nest. Don’t look at them, focus on the task. She had a tune of her own to play.
The two killers cleared the rim and raised their hands to unleash a hell-storm at her, but she changed the pitch of the instrument, tuned the vibration to the Wildcaotyl riding these executioners. Behind them unearthly notes throbbed in the Chimecan device and the sheath of ebony energy that surrounded the killers was suddenly as insubstantial as meadow mist, wisps of force sucked towards the instrument. The Wildcaotyl spirits had consumed their host bodies. Without the black force feeding their muscles and reinforcing their frames the two convicts convulsed and fitted, the pain of the immortals’ withdrawal overwhelming.
Molly repeated the tune, watching the disruption of the apparitions with grim satisfaction. ‘You want to meet your gods, you filthy cockroaches? Tell the evil sods that Molly Templar says hello when you see them.’
The Chimecan engine vibrated wildly in its holding arm, the cloud of Wildcaotyl drawn into the blood-made mechan ism. It changed its ethereal pitch and finished with an almost human sigh. By the rim of the pit the two convicts lay sprawled, their bones turned to dust inside their skin, streaked black where the Wildcaotyl had burned them out. The Whineside Strangler would circle his fingers around the necks of no more victims in Middlesteel.
A warm breeze blew into the chilly chamber from the open door and Molly ran over to Slowstack, heaving his iron frame back onto his tracks. ‘Slowstack, can you hear me?’
‘We can,’ whispered his voicebox, the grill caved in and crumpled by the force of the convict’s attack. ‘We heard the song you played too. It was hideous.’
‘The Wildcaotyl thought so,’ said Molly. She looked around for anything she might use as a tool to work on the damage. There was nothing. She was stuck in the centre of the earth with the greatest engine of destruction the corrupt heart of the race of man had ever created, with not even a hammer to hand. ‘Stay with me, Slowstack. Don’t leave me down here in these halls alone. Please, not again.’
‘It is time for us to walk a different hall,’ said the steamman. ‘Our thread on the great pattern is coming to an end.’
Molly clasped the iron manipulator fingers of her friend. ‘I won’t watch you die again.’
‘W
e have been deactivate twice before, Molly softbody. It is easy. It is living as part of the great pattern that is hard. Do not mourn for us overlong.’
‘I am afraid, Slowcogs, Silver Onestack.’
‘Do not be afraid for us, young fastblood. We do not fear the darkness before we are made activate, why should we fear what may come after? We are notes in a song. The notes are played out and the song of the great pattern goes on forever.’
A pool of water was forming where Slowstack’s boiler was leaking and the light of his vision plate was fading. Molly was not sure how long she sat by his metal shell, empty of life now, before she felt the heat behind her. A white sphere hovered above the ground, the size of a bathysphere, a single silver eye sitting on its top. The face of a child appeared on the featureless white metal, like a real-box picture projected through a magic lantern.
‘Can you not save him again?’ Molly asked the Hexmachina.
‹Where there is life and will, I can show the way for the life metal. But he has passed beyond my reach. Slowstack is in the hymns of the people and the toss of the Gear-gi-ju cogs now.›
Molly wept, adding her tears to the pool of water from Slowstack’s boiler.
‹There are two soul boards inside his chest cavity fused together as one. Break them out, Molly Templar. Slowstack would wish them returned to the halls of Mechancia.›
She did as she was bid, the crystal boards as light as air. Had they weighed more when he was alive?
‹Stand in front of me now, child of Vindex. There is work to be done.›
Radiant with a golden luminosity, Molly stepped forward, two rivers of light flowing away from her chest, the beams joining together in a helix that slowly rotated between herself and the Hexmachina. From the sphere a similar golden beam extended out and encircled the helix, joining with it, twisting in joy before retreating back inside the Hexmachina.
‹Operator, you are recognized.›
Flowing back like quicksilver the front of the sphere formed an opening, a dazzling white space inside moulded like a handmade glove for Molly.
‘The enemy is powerful,’ said Molly, hesitating. ‘And there were seven of us before. Seven operators, seven Hexmachina.’
‹That is so,› said the Hexmachina. ‹But the Wildcaotyl have not changed in a thousand years, Molly. They believe they are so perfect that they would freeze us alongside themselves for cold eternity in amber. But we are capable of change, you and I, and the enemy fear that most of all. I have spent a millennium listening to the secrets of the earth whispered to me by my lover. Growing stronger, cleverer and wiser. And you, Molly, you are remarkable. Perhaps one Hexmachina and one operator will be enough this time.›
Molly pulled herself into the Hexmachina and the door reformed behind her. It was like floating in a sphere of water and she felt the surge of her blood as their two bodies merged, her senses extending in ways her mind could never have imagined, the taste of sounds, the colour of the throbbing veins of the earth, tiny details in the walls of the chamber opening up as if the stone had been placed under a microscope. It was all vibrations, all music, the song of the great pattern that Slowstack had talked of. There was something else. Great pain. The Hexmachina was trying to shield her from it, but their link was too strong — their body was being stressed by a shocking agony.
‘What is that?’
‹There is another operator, Molly. Tzlayloc is torturing him as he tortured you, to weaken me, to goad me into the Wildcaotyl’s trap. But I still have two operators to distribute my consciousness over. His work is agony, but it shall not incapacitate my function.›
‘There’s an anthill rising in my lawn, old girl. Let’s go and step on it.’
A lance of light speared into the ceiling of the chamber from their body and the Hexmachina rose into the sea of fiery earth that began pouring down over the Chimecan’s apocalypse trumpet. The malign device collapsed as the sea of magma filled the pit, brimming over and sliding across the two dead convicts, melting the shell of the steamman that had been Slowcogs and Silver Onestack.
Iron and liquid earth joined with a hiss and the Hexmachina’s lover reclaimed the scar that had been driven into her heart.
The streets that had been so empty under the occupation were now packed with Middlesteel’s inhabitants, the rookeries and towers emptied of their panicked residents as the aerostat bombardment levelled the capital. The Third Brigade and Grimhope’s revolutionaries had withdrawn, leaving the roads to the hysterical refugees. Oliver was glad that the Whisperer was maintaining his human form; the true sight of him riding on the back of Oliver’s gypsy mare would have caused a panic all of its own. At the other end of the street a group of riders appeared, Mad Jack and a company of his irregulars. Oliver urged the sixer through the crowds, the press of panicked Middlesteelians making her difficult to control.
‘Major Dibnah,’ shouted Oliver. ‘Where’s our army?’
‘Falling back,’ called the riding officer. ‘Old Guardian Tinfold must have delivered his invite. The Free State’s army has forded the Gambleflowers and is joining up with parliament’s forces. We’re going too. There’s nothing to do in Middlesteel but hide inside the atmospheric stations and take a drubbing.’
Reinforcing his words the shadow of an aerostat passed overhead, causing a stampede among the refugees for the cover of the street’s buildings. Screams sounded from the crush by the doors, people scrambling and slipping over the litter of looting.
‘Dirt-gas,’ shouted a refugee. ‘Dirt-gas!’
Mad Jack turned his steed and delivered a kick to the man’s head, knocking his stovepipe hat to the ground and sending him sprawling. ‘Bloody fool. They’re not loaded with gas-fins. Can’t kill a steammen regiment with dirt-gas.’
Oliver spurred his horse through the gap in the crowds in the middle of the street. ‘This way, major.’
‘Good fellow. The First Guardian has sent word for everyone remaining to follow the Third Brigade out to the east. If we can make a scrum of it with their troopers, the aerostats won’t be able to target us without killing their own regiments.’
‘Yes,’ said Oliver. ‘When the aerostats finish here they’ll head east.’
Mad Jack looked up at the sky. ‘They’re not handling well at all today. Must be shifties on deck. All the same, it’ll be a bloody business when they catch us out on the field. Our regiments aren’t used to sitting under the sharp end of the RAN.’
After the shadow of the airship passed, the throng of citizens returned to the streets as thick as ever. Oliver despaired of clearing the city. He could feel the dense pressure of the Wildcaotyl and the heavy mass of evil that moved across the land as the Third Brigade marched to war with the steammen.
Sitting behind him on the horse the Whisperer growled in frustration. ‘Now I know why you didn’t bring a saddle; you weren’t going fast enough to need one.’ He shut his eyes and imagined an aerostat floating above the streets, dark creatures like devils capering across the fin bays, flying so low that its weapon hatches barely cleared the spires of the Circlist church behind them. With terrified shrieks the refugees stampeded for cover. The cavalry company looked around them in confusion. The Whisperer had not extended the illusion into the riders’ minds, but they understood well enough to take advantage of the space that he had cleared.
‘I have a feeling this aerostat is going to follow us all the way out of Middlesteel,’ said Oliver, their horse galloping after Mad Jack and his irregulars.
With their way cleared by the escaped feybreed they managed excellent time to reach the city markers — the marble globes carved with the portcullis of the House of Guardians. Oliver could see trails of smoke out beyond the low hills of the east downs, towards Rivermarsh. King Steam’s assault on the Quatershiftian legions had begun.
‘They’ve abandoned their lines,’ said Oliver, pointing to fresh ramparts and trenches that had been dug outside the city, now lying empty and unmanned in the snow.
Mad
Jack frowned. ‘Then it’s true, the Special Guard have gone over to the shifties to fight. Those fellas fight better in the open than in the confines of the rookeries. Circle, this is a damn bad turn. Now the Commonshare has the two things that have always swung victory our way: our stats and the guard.’
Mad Jack saw the faces of his riders and realized he had voiced the doubts that they felt themselves in this unequal war — their resolve was crumbling.
‘We have something they don’t,’ said Oliver, raising his voice loud enough that everyone in the irregulars could hear. ‘We fight as free citizens of Jackals, not slaves of a king or a first committee or a caliph.’ He pulled one of his belt pistols out and the lion of Jackals on the handle seemed to suck in the light of the afternoon, drawing down rays of sunlight that rotated, blinding the troops with a brilliance they had never known before. ‘We will not suffer the heel of tyranny, we will not bend our knee to unworthy gods, we will not see an evil without striking it down, and we will not pass meekly into the long face of darkness that is endangering our land. Because we are Jackelians — and our soul of freedom can never, never be conquered. Not as long as one free Jackelian has the heart to say, “No! I think my own thoughts. I choose my own leaders. I select my own book of worship and my law shall be the law of the people, not the whimsy of any bully with a sabre sharp enough to slice a crown off the previous brute’s head.”’
At the back of the column a lone voice started singing, the words trembling and slight in the cold wind. Then a second voice picked up the tune, and a third, the song rising in intensity as it rippled through the company. ‘Lion of Jackals’. The song grew louder, louder than the wind of the land; loud enough to drown out the thunder of falling fin-bombs behind them and the cannon clap in front.