by Stephen Hunt
Molly pointed to the First Guardian's desk. 'That badge you've just covered up with papers on your desk. If you're collecting, we've recovered something a little more substantial from the wreckage of the Court of the Air. Or should I say, someone.'
'You see,' said Carl towards his butler. 'I told you it's always worthwhile making time for old compatriots.'
'Let me explain just how far away we are from the old days,' said Molly. And Carl listened as she shook the foundations of his world.
When Oliver and Molly left the First Guardian's office, a sea of uniforms was being ushered into the largest of the cabinet rooms. The crimson jackets of the Jackelian New Pattern Army, the dark blue of the Sky Lords of the Admiralty, House Guards generals weighed down with braid and medals and a scattering of cyan-uniformed Quatershiftian liaison staff – as incongruous by their presence as anything the pair had ever seen.
Molly waited for the hourly toll of Brute Julius – the bell tower that arrowed out of the House of Guardians – to quieten before speaking. 'Do you think he will help us?'
'The Court of the Air had an inkling of what they were facing towards the end,' said Oliver. 'You could see by the way that hyena in a butler's jacket reacted, that the Court had communicated some of their suspicions to the First Guardian.'
'Maybe it was a mistake me coming with you,' said Molly. 'Everyone in that room knows that I sparked off the celestial fiction genre.'
'Just one of us would have been easy enough to write off as a case for the asylum, but both? And you could see how pale the political crusher went when I told him I was on the Court of the Air when it was attacked. There isn't a nation on this or any other continent capable of taking the wolf-takers down. The great game is changing and I can feel the fear of the unknown eating away inside them.'
Molly lifted her copy of the list Timlar Preston had composed for the First Guardian. The names of the scientists from his old cannon project team at the Institute des Luminaires, in the event that any were still alive after the purges and famines of the terror in Quatershift. As well as the location of the abandoned mine where Timlar had hidden the parts for a weapon unlike any other during the dying days of the war. 'Now all we need is the time to build Preston's cannon.'
'The three greatest armies on the continent fighting as allies… you'll have your time.'
An ancient image rose unbidden within Molly – more of a feeling than anything concrete, another of Kyorin's unwanted gifts to her. The Army of Shadows' raw, rapacious savagery. Kyorin's people had built a great civilization, but the Kals' gentle instincts had made them so many cattle at the abattoir when the masters had fallen upon them.
'I'm not so sure.'
'The steammen are coming,' said Oliver, speaking the words with the reverence of a prayer. 'And Jackals has never lost a war when the Steammen Free State has been fighting by our side.'
Another of Molly's memories rose. One of her own this time, of her old steamman friend Slowcogs, who had given his life to save hers; and she had to choke back a tear. 'Have we had a good life?'
'Define good.'
'After we beat Tzlayloc and his revolutionaries, it felt as if I could do anything, achieve anything. And in my own way I suppose I have. I escaped the poorhouse. I have a living now that many would envy. Wealth. Friends who would die for me. Yet here we are a few years down the line and I'm not even sure if I know what I'm doing. Gambling everything on an escaped slave's vision. When every instinct inside me is screaming at me to run away as far and as fast as possible. What in the Circle's name are we doing here?'
'The best we can,' said Oliver. He lifted his coat and patted the two pistols that had appeared by his side. Molly shivered. The guns hadn't been there when they'd entered the First Guardian's office.
'I used to think I owned these,' said Oliver. 'But now I know that it's the other way around. And we both belong to the kingdom; the pistols' reports just an echo of the lion's roar. I know exactly what I'm doing here. I'm here to protect Purity Drake. I'm the key to keeping her alive.'
'What does that make me?' asked Molly. 'Some lonely old spinster who desperately wants to live out the plot of her last novel while the world is razed to the ground around her?'
They had reached one of the entrances to the House of Guardians, the two redcoats on duty there stamping their boots as Molly and Oliver walked past. Outside, mounted cavalry waited behind the sharp black railings of parliament. A crowd of Broken Circle cultists knelt beyond in Parliament Square, humming a meditation that sounded more like a mass moan of pain. Their numbers were swelling every day, now; more and more of the population convinced that the end of the world was nigh. That the Circle was finally breaking. Maybe the cultists were right. On Molly and Oliver's side of the railings brightly clothed hussars cantered up and down nervously. No looting yet. No riots yet, just that damn rhythmic keening.
Molly raised a hand to shield her eyes against the sunlight. There it was, just to the left of the sun. Ashby's Comet. A baleful red eye behind a thin skein of clouds. 'I hate the sight of that thing.'
'If your friend Coppertracks is right, we had better get used to it,' said Oliver. 'The comet's become another moon now.'
'A cursed ugly one,' said Molly. She looked out at the crowd. It was almost obscene. They looked as if they were praying. The Circlist faith was degrading into superstition and myths of the end-time. How much longer until they started raising false idols to save them from the Army of Shadows and the dark auguries in the sky? How much longer until the Jackelians started believing in gods again? Molly ran up to the railings. 'The new moon's just a piece of loose bloody rock! Caught revolving around us by the attraction of our world's mass. I can show you Coppertracks' formulae to explain everything you see up in the sky.'
The moaning of the cultists just grew louder.
'Get off your knees, you're Jackelians, you're-'
A hussar kicked his stallion in front of her. 'Don't go disturbing them, now, there's a good damson. They're jittery enough this afternoon.'
'They're a disgrace,' said Molly. 'What do they think they're doing? How can you allow them to do that outside parliament's gates?'
'It's hard enough to keep our lads from deserting and joining them at the moment,' said the hussar. 'If trouble breaks out in the capital now, it'll take more than the flats of our sabres to turn them aside. Go home, damson, and make sure you have a stout lock on your door, that's my advice.'
'Come on,' said Oliver, tugging Molly's sleeve. 'We'll go down to the river and hail the sixpenny boat.'
Passing under the shadow of Brute Julius the pair arrived before the low iron profile of an iron gunboat moored alongside the House of Guardians' embankment, its disc-shaped cannon turrets turned towards the opposite side of the river.
Oliver nodded towards the armed sailors on deck across from them as he waved for a riverboat to stop. 'Ready for war?'
'Yes,' said Molly. 'Ready for war. Again.'
Commodore Black touched Oliver's sleeve and pointed to the dark silhouettes emerging onto the shale of the Quatershiftian beach, men and women clambering over large boulders as they left the silent pine forest behind them and headed for the line of dinghies. The commodore pulled a rag off his lantern to show the figures the way through the night. There were about twenty people coming out of the tree line. Burly red-coated marines from the Fleet Sea Arm were holding the craft down in the surf behind Oliver and the commodore, rifles shouldered, waiting for the advancing refugees to board the dinghies. The foreign scientists were exactly where the shifties had promised they would be gathered, with the Army of Shadows currently showing little sign of intervening in the Kingdom of Jackals' attempt to spirit away some of Quatershift's best brains for its gunnery project.
They were a ragged gathering, these refugee scientists, led by a silver-haired man staring thankfully towards Oliver and the commodore with an odd-looking face that managed to be senatorial, proud and ugly at the same time. A lithe-legged beauty accompan
ied the Quatershiftian man, at least half his years, looking stunning despite her standard revolutionary citizen's garb.
'I am Paul-Loup Keyspierre,' said the shiftie. 'Head of the Institut des Luminaires of the People's Commonshare of Quatershift. As requested by the First Committee, I and my daughter, Jeanne, have been scouring the country for every engineer and scientist who worked on the old cannon project with Timlar Preston during the Two-Year War.'
'There's not many of you here,' said Oliver. 'I was told by Timlar Preston to expect maybe forty or fifty people.'
'You have those who are still breathing, compatriot,' retorted Jeanne, her short dark hair ruffled by the fierce wind off the sea. 'In case you have failed to notice, our country is dealing with a full-scale invasion. There may be others on the antique staff list we were given who are still alive, but if they are, they have been completely lost in the confusion of the fighting.'
Paul-Loup Keyspierre gently motioned his daughter to silence. 'Our new compatriots from the west haven't seen how bad things are here now, they cannot be expected to understand the nature of the enemy and the difficulties we have faced finding as many cannon workers as we have.'
'We'll take the time to deepen our understanding as soon as we've got your eggheads safely back to our blessed u-boat,' said Commodore Black. He waved to the Jackelian marines and they pushed the crowded dinghies out into the surf and began to row back towards the low black hull of the submersible. 'There may not be much moonlight tonight, but I don't want to leave parliament's tub sitting on the surface any longer than I have to.'
Paul-Loup Keyspierre glanced around. 'This is an old smuggler's beach, yes? It is good that it is out of the way, but the lack of moonlight won't help you, compatriot u-boatman. The Army of Shadows hunt and fight at night as well as they do during the day.'
'This landing may have seen a little smuggling in and out of it,' admitted the commodore. 'The odd barrel of brandy lifted from your fine nation by plucky fellows, although admittedly somewhat in contravention of parliament's wishes and the laws of your revolution. But we'll leave the fighting to the brigades of your people's army if we can. They're trained for it and I doubt if they need the help of old Blacky when it comes to battling the Army of Shadows.'
Oliver unfurled a map while the commodore lifted his lantern over the crinkled surface, revealing a province of northern Quatershift printed on the paper. 'We didn't just choose this beach because it's out of the way. Timlar Preston buried the components of his prototype cannon inside a worked-out mine five miles inland of here; he salted the parts away when it looked like the Two-Year War was swinging our country's way, when the RAN was raining fire-fins down around your mills and weapons factories.'
'I told you something was not right here,' said Jeanne to her father. She pointed back to the tree line and a handful of Quatershiftian soldiers appeared leading a train of pack mules. 'The animals weren't requested at the rendezvous point because these so-called allies of ours have suddenly forsworn roast beef for mule meat.'
'So I am to trust you with the lives and fates of Quatershift's greatest minds,' said Keyspierre to Oliver and the commodore, 'but I am only to be told of these buried components when you arrive to steal them away from my people?'
'We didn't quite know whose country it was going to be when we arrived here,' said Oliver. 'And the Army of Shadows appears to have enough force on its side that we didn't need half the parts for Timlar Preston's prototype cannon falling into its hands.'
'Old habits die hard it seems, my new friends,' said Keyspierre, a tinge of sadness in his voice.
'Your First Committee has agreed to the construction of the cannon deep in the kingdom,' said Oliver. 'Well away from the fighting.'
'Well away for now, compatriot,' said Jeanne. She drew a sharp-looking dagger out of her belt and made a cutting motion across her throat. 'When you are fighting the Army of Shadows, the front line has a way of quickly shifting well beyond your control; but you will see.'
Oliver rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache developing. 'I don't need to see. I can feel them here. The creatures moving about, their hunger…'
'Don't you pay no mind to the fey lad,' said the commodore. 'Our friends back home are already hard at work on the cannon with your countryman, Timlar Preston. You get yourselves to the u-boat and we'll all be on our way to see the blessed project soon enough.'
'No, I am coming with you to retrieve the weapon's components,' announced Keyspierre. 'I have been charged with the success of this project and if there are pre-milled parts for the old prototype still in existence, they will be key to the rapid construction of a working cannon.'
Oliver was about to protest, but Keyspierre cut him short. It seemed there was a hard edge to the middle-aged scientist – but then, it would have been reckless indeed to underestimate anyone who had raised themselves to the top of Quatershift's institute of science in the maelstrom of revolutionary politics. 'I have spent longer than you have avoiding the Army of Shadows' creatures, young man, searching for all the staff your parliament requested. It may feel a little less like Jackelian looting if it is I who takes away the prototype cannon's components. Quatershift never completed the great cannon in time for the war between our two nations. I will not lose the chance to turn such a weapon against our new common enemy.'
'Take the lass to the dinghy, then,' said the commodore.
'I stay with my father,' insisted Jeanne. 'All are equal in the Commonshare, compatriot sailor. I am not some Jackelian maid who needs cosseting with silk dresses, expensive fragrances, or soft cushions for a coach ride.'
'That much I can see, lass,' said the commodore. 'But you'll be equal in death if we come across the Army of Shadows' beasts.'
Jeanne flashed her dagger angrily at the commodore. 'Who do you think has been keeping my father alive as we've been hunting down every retired scientist and engineer in the occupied provinces?'
'I take your point, now,' said the commodore, flinching back from the blade. 'And it's sharply made.'
Jeanne looked with disdain at the commodore, Oliver, and the handful of red-coated marines left on the beach to help retrieve the prototype cannon components. 'Just keep up with us, Jackelian. Everything north of that pinewood forest is slat territory. Our people are getting used to staying out of reach of the slats' talons. I hope your soldiers are fast learners.'
The commodore watched Jeanne stalk away to the train of pack mules. 'Just a quick little smuggling run, you said, lad. I should be back in the Kingdom of Jackals, helping Coppertracks, Duncan and that rascal Timlar Preston lay down the barrelling for your blessed great gun. I'm a game fellow, but I'm getting too old for these mortal dangerous jaunts you seem so damn fond of dragging me into.'
'I bring you along because apart from me, you're one of the few who ever survives these little adventures,' said Oliver. 'You're damn unsinkable, old man.'
'Is that what I am? When my unlucky stars put me in the way of every bullet and blade our age has to offer.'
But the age wasn't finished with Commodore Black yet. There were sights of horror enough to haunt the group on their five-mile journey to the worked-out mine. Memories fit to torment the visitors to Quatershift for decades to come. The smallest of these barbarities were the cold remains of fires where the slat companies had camped, littered with the blackened bones of the captured citizenry. The shifties might have been starved for years by the failure of the revolution to produce a decent harvest, but there had been meat enough on their bones to satisfy the foot soldiers of the Army of Shadows.
The largest of the outrages was the ruins of the city of Courau, briefly visible from the brow of a forested hill where the party rested, what was left of the place spilling across a wide valley next door to a lake. Its outskirts had been completely flattened by the sweep of war, an inner core of buildings standing intact but still smouldering from the small weapons fire of the slats. Out of the wreckage a new Courau was rising, an evil green luminosity lightin
g up the rubble as massive domes were raised in the heart of the old town. Made of hexagonal panels, the domes looked like the eyes of giant insects, ripped out and embedded deep in the race of man's territory. Taking the commodore's telescope, Oliver saw long lines of Quatershift's citizens being marched into the city along the outlying roads, their bodies – many of them were naked – painted viridescent by the tainted light of their conquerors' eerie constructions.
'You can't see from here,' Jeanne told Oliver, 'but the slats have branded their prisoners on their foreheads. A single triangle means they are to be kept as slave labour and used to rebuild the city to the Army of Shadows' template, a double triangle means they are to be farmed. See to the right of the domes, the low glass structures that resemble greenhouses? They are pens where our people are fed slops and fattened. If you were watching during the day, compatriot Jackelian, you would see the slats pulling out the ones they intend to consume. If you were close enough, you could hear the screams of our compatriots begging for the slats to select someone else, anyone else, someone fatter or younger or older or healthier. Fighting each other to be at the back of the pens. The food pens are where the Army of Shadows keeps the children it captures. If you waited for morning you could watch adults throwing children forward when the slats come to select the day's cull, infants whose parents have already died and have no one left to protect them.'
'You see now why I came with you,' said Keyspierre, his voice like steel as he stared grimly towards the conquered city. 'There is no price I would not pay to lift the hand of this terror from our land. If the cannon the Hero of the People Timlar Preston tried to build during the Two-Year War will turn back this invasion, then I will construct it with my own hands if I have to, one rivet at a time.'
'Sweet Circle,' whispered Oliver. 'This is where their hunger leads… I felt it like a sickness in the north, but I had no idea.'
There was a tear running down Commodore Black's fat cheek, soon lost in the scrub of his black beard. 'Ah lad, I don't need to be fey like you to feel their evil. This is the future we are looking at, for everyone on the continent, unless we find a way to turn them back.'