by Stephen Hunt
‘No more fuse, mother?’
‘His time has gone. I am afraid he rather over-reached himself.’
‘My fault no doubt, I did rather goad him. As for my soul, I am who I am. Part of you was briefly human once — human enough to take a lover from the race of man — you must remember change, evolution.’
The Lady of the Lights drew a circle in the air, sparkling motes that faded beside the miniature stars that revolved around her orbit. ‘The system exists to accommodate change. Change, even at the end of all things, is the only real constant.’
‘I hope I did not disappoint you.’
‘No Oliver.’ She smiled. ‘Quite the opposite. You astonished me.’
‘Will I see you again?’
She was fading away, the trees and moonlight visible through her white robes. ‘In another thousand years, perhaps. Your people are always running into trouble, always choosing to believe in the wrong things.’
Oliver sighed. He would not be around in a thousand years. But Jackals would, and the guns would, and they, they would remember.
Master Saw walked with the leader of the council of seers, their conversation echoing down the corridors of Mechancia. They were almost at the chambers of education; the playful sound of the young steammen’s nursery bodies a cheerful counterpoint to the endless stream of business which being regent brought.
‘There is no margin for error in this decision,’ said Master Saw.
‘Nor would the Loas allow it,’ said the council leader. ‘The cogs of Gear-gi-ju have fallen the same way for weeks — I myself have been ridden by Zaka of the Cylinders and Adjasou-Rust, and they both concur. It has been obvious for a while which body King Steam has settled in. You must see it, Master Saw, even a venerable old fighter like yourself.’
‘Yes,’ said Master Saw. ‘The ancients in the hall of the dead whisper his name; the slipthinkers find it scattered in the great pattern when they grow ill from information sickness. It is a wonder his name does not spontaneously slip into the hymns of the people.’
He nodded to the educator who greeted them at the doors to the level. Two children in nursery bodies raced past them, their tracks skidding along the marble floor, oblivious to the presence of the three adults.
‘Delay long enough and I am sure that too will happen,’ said the council leader. ‘Ah, there he is. Such a serious child.’
The seer, the educator and Master Saw stopped. The young steamman was at a table, paper spread out in front of him, concentrating so hard he had not noticed the adults or the other nursery bodies at play.
Master Saw had his suspicions. The cracked soul board that had been passed to him by the softbody girl four years ago on the bloody battlefield of Rivermarsh, the soul board that had belonged to the desecration, the one that would have been scrubbed and recycled by the birthing chamber. By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, he would dearly love to know where that particular soul board had ended up.
‘What is that thing he is doing called?’ asked Master Saw.
‘It is a form of visual representation,’ said the educator. ‘Like writing or the plans schema of an architect. You need to stare at it for quite a while, but if you look long enough it starts to make sense. You can see a picture among the strokes and marks. He has been teaching the other children how to do it, too.’
Well, King Steam had always been different, eccentric in many little ways.
‘The softbodies do this, do they not?’
‘Yes, master,’ said the educator, passing the steamman knight one of the sheets of paper. ‘They call it painting.’
Master Saw looked at the paper, trying to resolve the mass of colours and detail into an image. There was something there, something elusive. He tried to think of the script of writing, of the steamman iconography that might bring meaning to the representation. It was hard work indeed.
‘The slipthinkers are very impressed,’ said the educator proudly. ‘Especially our people in Jackals who have more familiarity with such things. We have noticed similar representations on some of the walls and floors of the palace; we may have had such an art in the past ourselves but lost it during the coldtime.’
The child looked up at the adults, noticing them for the first time. ‘My pictures are in colour.’
Master Saw patted the child’s head. ‘That much I can see, young person.’
Master Saw took the sheet of paper away with him. He would look at it a little each day. The steamman knight would follow the advice he so often dispensed on the floor of the dojo — with enough time and practice you could master any challenge, any puzzle. Things would become clear in time.
Fladdock stepped over the body of the old man to gaze out of the barred window at the passing boots of the citizens of New Albans. The recently installed Leveller government in Jackals had not made much of a dent in the flow of convicts sentenced to the boat, or for that matter to his own fate — a month on a rotting prison hulk bobbing in the waters of the Gambleflowers, followed by the long transportation to Concorzia in the stinking holds of a merchant steamship.
Most of the convicts were half Fladdock’s age, street children who had only stolen to stay alive. Far easier prey for Middlesteel’s crushers than the slicker professional criminals that ran with the flash mob. With the exception of the crooked old corn-chandler sleeping at his feet, Fladdock was now the oldest transportee in the cell awaiting the appearance of a colonist farmer to purchase his papers. Fladdock had certainly had his eyes opened since being sentenced for his admittedly incompetent attempt to dip that swell’s wallet on Haggswood Field. Eight years’ labour and transportation for touching the smooth leather of some quality’s wallet — hardly a fair exchange.
‘Tell us a story again?’ asked Gallon, hopefully.
Fladdock nodded kindly to the young boy. Who would have thought the mere ability to read would see him appointed as the official librarian of the motley group of convicts? He picked up the torn penny sheet which one of the passing settlers — probably an ex-convict — had passed through the bars, and brushed down its front cover. The MiddlesteelIllustrated. Four weeks old, the saltwater stains showing where it had been carried over as ballast in one of the clippers lying off the bay of New Albans.
Fladdock would have preferred one of the more relevant local news sheets, but beggars could not be choosers — and transportees had to be even less selective, it seemed.
‘Which story would you like me to read, Gallon?’
‘Something from the pages with dancing and rich people!’ piped up Louisa the Dipper. ‘Like the one about the ball at Sun Gate.’
‘Boring,’ said Gallon. ‘Give it a rest, girl. The crime and punishment pages. They’re the best!’
‘There’s a real story in here at the back,’ said Fladdock. ‘Not just news, but a piece of fiction. It’s called a serial. Just like the kind of tale you would find inside a penny dreadful.’
‘I know what a chuffing serial is,’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘But that’s no bleeding good, is it? We’ll have missed the start of the tale and none of us will ever know how the story ends up either; we’ll be stuck on a farm on the plains sweating in some nob’s field.’
‘That’s a pity,’ said Fladdock. ‘I read it myself yesterday and it’s rather good, something completely new in fact. People are calling it celestial fiction. It’s all about a group of aeronauts who travel by airship to one of our moons and find very different creatures living up there. It’s all the go back in Jackals; it’s written by a woman too.’
‘A woman?’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘Can I see a picture of her?’
‘There’s no line illustration of the author,’ explained Fladdock, showing the girl the pages. ‘But the name reads M.W. Templar. When you find a story where the writer is using initials instead of a first name, the chances are the author is a female … you see the stories often sell better if the readership don’t know the novelist is a woman.’
Fladdock failed to mention the fac
t that he knew the author personally. And she was definitely a woman.
‘Read the real stories. With the murders and the stealing,’ demanded Gallon.
‘Again?’ sighed Fladdock. ‘Alright, we’ll stick with the real murders and stealing for now, but only if I can read Louisa the serial afterwards. What story do you want me to start with?’
‘The broadsman who took a knife in the gut after they found him cheating at cards,’ suggested one of the other convicts, a craynarbian youngling with a missing arm.
‘No,’ said Gallon, a serious look settling on his gaunt face. ‘The Hood-o’the-marsh story. The one where the Hood-o’themarsh escapes twenty crushers after hanging the mine owner, the jigger that left his workers to die in the cave-in because it cost too much to save ’em.’
‘You are a turnip, Gallon,’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘There’s no Hood-o’the-marsh. It’s just a name radicals use when they want to put a scare into the quality.’
‘He is bleeding real!’ shouted back Gallon. ‘His stories are always in the sheets. They say he has two pistols that shine like devil fire and he only kills at night when he becomes invisible; they say that he can whistle down lashlites from the sky to rescue him when the crushers have him cornered!’
‘My granddad used to tell me stories about the Hood-o’themarsh that he was told by his granddad,’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘Leaaf addict is this Hood? Ghost is he? You still waiting for your Midwinter presents from Mother White Horse? Maybe they’ll be delivered here tomorrow, Gallon.’
Their impromptu reading was interrupted by a clanking at the door of the cell, followed by a colonial guard admitting a gust of fresh air into the fetid holding chamber. ‘On your feet now my lovely boys — you’ve got some respectable visitors.’ He glanced at the old craynarbian waiting in the doorway behind him. ‘Well, fairly respectable anyway. Two gentlemen farmers after extra hands. Prisoner Fladdock, you in here?’
Fladdock stood up.
‘Your lucky day, young fellow my lad. One of the cattle owners scanning the transport list spotted your blood code and reckons you’re her second cousin twice removed or some such tosh. She’s bought out your contract.’
‘Lucky jigger,’ someone muttered.
Fladdock nodded, feeling the scrubby beard on his cheeks. About time. The blood code was no more real than his name, no more real than his face — which still felt distorted and swollen when he touched it. He was constantly amazed that the other convicts could not see through the results of his visit to the back-street worldsinger. The farmer picking up his paper could conceivably be his second cousin twice removed, though. Royalists had been finding the wide-open plains and deep forests of Concorzia more than accommodating for generations.
Did Commodore Black’s face still feel like this after all the years since his own trip to the worldsinger? Fladdock might have asked if he had known what the effects were going to be like. The cunning old sea dog had been right on the money about one thing. With the forces of the old country still unrelentingly shaking trees to try and turn up Prince Alpheus, the easiest way out of Jackals was with a bona fide prison record turning on the drums of a transaction engine at Greenhall and a free transportation under the crushers’ noses courtesy of the office of the colonies. They had declared the former king dead. They could never afford to be proved wrong.
The guard turned to the old craynarbian. ‘And how many hands will you be requiring today, Mister Ka’oard?’
‘Just the ones in this chamber,’ said Ka’oard.
The guard groaned. ‘Not again. You can’t keep on doing this, sir. It is causing tensions among the other landowners. These jacks are meant to be serving labour, not rolling for fish in the waters of one of your streams. Someone in town told me you’ve even engaged a couple of tutors for these scruffs out at Vauxtion Valley. My lovely boys need to be taught how to harvest and cut down lumber, not master their letters. You realize there’s a shortage of labour here now? Just how much money have you got to be spending, driving up the price of convict contracts?’
‘Oh, there’s a few of your very fine Jackelian pennies left yet, I think,’ replied Ka’oard.
The guard sighed in exasperation and waved Fladdock out, passing him over to the cart driver that had been sent to collect the young man.
Fladdock stepped forward, handing the battered news sheet down to Gallon. ‘Keep it, Gallon. Keep it for when you’ve mastered your letters.’
The colonial guard pocketed the customary tip sent by Fladdock’s new master and looked over at the craynarbian. ‘It’s not like the old days anymore, Mister Ka’oard, when you could ride for months without bumping into one of your neighbours. You could breathe back then, you could really feel alive. Those are the times I was born with and they were damn good years too. But those days are gone out here.’
Blinking in the sunlight, Fladdock glanced back at the remaining convicts, flexed his two perfect arms and grinned. Then he was gone.
‘Yes,’ said Ka’oard. ‘You are quite correct. I don’t believe these are the old days any more. But they will do.’
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-06ec20-87ce-e14c-ac9f-ad75-44de-c2964c
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 08.04.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.46, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.3 software
Document authors :
Stephen Hunt
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