by Stephen Hunt
Amelia’s eyes were glazed with the power of the radiance. It was home. They were going home.
Bull smashed the lever to blow the lake water out of the main ballast tanks, trying to trigger an emergency surface, but the control deck was no longer responding to his directions. Something else was in control, and it sure wasn’t him. Behind Bull, the waldo arms screamed as the engine began to put its springs under intolerable tension, the dial hands under every circle of crystal on his instrument panel turning in angry loops, the craft shaking the slaver fit to rattle his teeth. They struck the plane of rainbow energy and the field flowed through the reinforced walls of the bathysphere as if they were made of glass. It was dissolving the walls of the craft – so bright, pain plunging directly into the back of his skull.
Bull yelled and tried to cover his eyes with his arms. Anything to deaden the pain. The last sound he heard was Amelia laughing like a possessed demon.
Cornelius rolled over. Something was wrong. His arm had no weight. It felt like a feather by his side. Blinking his eyes open, he watched the walls of the cell focus into view, the dark shadow by his side solidifying into Septimoth. An alien noise faded out of the range of Cornelius’s hearing, the lashlite tucking the bone-pipe of his dead mother back into his belt, halting his mediation song to the gods of the holy winds.
Cornelius tried to speak but his throat was sore and a gargle came out instead.
‘Rest yourself,’ said Septimoth. ‘You were gassed.’
Cornelius could remember nothing. ‘How?’
‘We were inside the brig of a submersible and you tried to escape, running a bypass on a transaction engine lock with your arm. Our captors detected the attempt and flooded our cell with a poisonous vapour. I held my breath as long as I could, but the gas got me eventually.’
‘My arm!’ It was coming back to Cornelius now. The flood at their hidden rooms in the old Middlesteel Museum. Being captured by the divers and taken into a small river submersible. Their housekeeper lying unconscious in the brig with them. ‘Where are we – what have they done with Damson Beeton?’
‘She was gone when I woke up,’ said Septimoth. ‘We are no longer on the submersible. There is no movement or pressure differential in the atmosphere here. We are being held on land now, I think. Yesterday the soldiers took you away and when you were returned here your arm had been tampered with.’
‘Naturally.’ A disembodied voice echoed around the cell. ‘Your artificial limb was far too dangerous for us to let you keep it as it was designed. A work of some craftsmanship, by the way. My compliments to whichever mechomancer you patronized.’
Septimoth nodded towards fluted trumpets in the four corners of the cell. For listening in and talking, both, but Cornelius didn’t need to see the face to recognize the voice.
‘Robur!’
‘Indeed. I am glad my people had a chance to find the hidden store of Furnace-breath Nick masks on your isle, otherwise I would never have known who to thank for my liberation from Quatérshift.’
‘You’ve a strange way of showing your gratitude,’ said Cornelius.
‘I am grateful,’ said Robur, ‘not suicidal. Your friend’s talons are still as sharp as an eagle’s, even if I have tensioned down the strength on your false arm. I removed the weapons and lock picks and all the other gimcracks that had been packed inside it, too. Who would have thought you could fit so much inside such a confined space?’
‘What have you done with Damson Beeton?’ Cornelius demanded. ‘For your sake she had better still be alive.’
‘Hah,’ Robur’s voice snorted. ‘You keep an odd household, Cornelius Fortune.’
‘She’s just an old woman,’ said Cornelius. ‘She has no part in this. You can let her go.’
‘That “old woman” killed five of Middlesteel’s finest and most expensive toppers on your island,’ said Robur. ‘If I had to choose whose cell to be locked up in, I’d take my chances with you and your flying lizard over that old crone any day.’
A panel in the wall slid back, revealing an abacus with a hundred rails, thousands of tiny squares hanging on the copper tubes beginning to spin, forming an image. It was a Rutledge Rotator, a transaction-engine screen – still rare outside the engine rooms at Greenhall – Cornelius had briefly considered stealing one to go along with the engine he had rebuilt in Middlesteel Museum. The image on the wall of flickering squares revealed a woman held upright in a prison frame, her mouth gagged and her eyes blinded by a leather mask.
‘We’re holding your wolftaker friend hostage to ensure your cooperation. If you try and escape again, the gas we flood her cell with won’t be a somnic. It will be something far more lethal.’
Cornelius’s eyes widened. ‘A wolftaker?’
‘Did you really imagine your activities would escape the attention of the Court of the Air?’ Robur asked. ‘How typically Jackelian – a secret police so secret that even your political masters live in fear of them, the lethal shepherds of your conscience – truer guardians of Jackals’ much vaunted democracy than the politicians who wear that name in parliament. You must have looked like a wolf to the court, Cornelius – the Sun Deity knows, you looked enough like a wolf to the new rulers of Quatérshift. Even at Darksun Fortress your name was legend, the prison guards lived in fear of a visit from you. But as happy as the Court was for you to be making mischief for their ancient enemy across the border, I still don’t think they trusted you; so it seems you and your winged friend got your own shepherd to ensure you didn’t start preying on the wrong flock.’
Septimoth looked over at his friend. ‘Damson Beeton was recommended to our service by Dred Lands as I recall.’
‘So she was.’ Cornelius cursed his own stupidity. And the proprietor of the Old Mechomancery Shop along Knocking Yard was so perfectly connected into the heart of the Jackelian underworld, so perfectly equipped with illegal equipment and banned lore. The Court of the Air could look a long time before they found such a well-connected informer in Middlesteel – except that they obviously hadn’t needed to.
‘The watchers in the sky,’ said Septimoth. ‘My people avoid that cold place where they dwell. Perhaps it was to be expected. You always warned me that the Court could be monitoring us.’
‘You must have thought you were very clever,’ said Robur. ‘Your little palace of tricks hidden under the waters of the Gambleflowers. We use submersibles where we can to avoid their gaze ourselves, as it happens.’
‘Dear old Damson Beeton. Well, if the Court of the Air was using me to do their dirty work for them, then I was using them in exchange,’ sighed Cornelius. ‘They let Furnace-breath Nick flit back and forth across the cursewall like a wine merchant pushing bottles of brandy in a cart. But who is your “we”, mechomancer, who are you working for?’
‘So you were using them, were you, eh? A privateer, not a pirate – an admirably practical attitude. As for myself, you might say I am now working for the greater good of the race of man.’
‘Not Quatérshift, then,’ said Cornelius.
‘You dare ask that!’ Robur’s voice exploded in anger. ‘After you saw the conditions they had me living in at Darksun Fortress. I could tell you things, Jackelian, the crimes I saw in that place and others like it, before. The things those monsters did to families that had fallen out with the First Committee and their revolutionary barbarians. To my friends, to their own supporters in the end …’
‘Save your breath, I have already seen the blessings of the revolution,’ said Cornelius, ‘as has Septimoth. I didn’t lose my arm in a milling accident – it was cut off as a punishment, then tossed into the fertilizer pit of an organized community not so very different from your camp.’
‘Then you know, you understand.’ It sounded like Robur was crying.
‘Yes,’ said Cornelius. ‘I know. So, mechomancer, who is it paying for the greater good of the race of man, these days?’
‘That I think you also know. Shall I confirm it for you?’
&n
bsp; ‘Abraham Quest,’ hissed Cornelius.
‘Yes, indeed. When the Catgibbon passed on word of an old friend of hers returning from the dead with an interest in missing steammen, it wasn’t too difficult to match her description to a reclusive hermit with no obvious means to show for his wealth suddenly showing up at Whittington Manor brandishing a party invite. Compte de Spééler – the Count of Thieves. That little wordplay may have cost you your life. Your methods are both hasty and unsound.’
‘My methods saved your life,’ said Cornelius.
‘That is the main reason why you and your companion are still alive,’ said Robur. ‘We are working on the same side, really. You in your small limited way. Myself in mine – but my methods are played on a grander stage. You are never going to change the Commonshare by slaughtering Carlists and the revolutionary leaders one by one. Your horror – as effective as it is – can never equal the great terror the revolution has imposed on Quatérshift. What is a single angel of death dropping from the sky, one agent of vengeance, what is that compared to the constant fear of the knock at the door in the middle of the night by the Commonshare’s thugs? What is the terror invoked by the voice changer in your mask compared to the screams of your neighbours as their children are fed into a Gideon’s Collar?’
‘One death at a time is all I need,’ said Cornelius, ‘to slake my vengeance and give me a little peace at night.’
‘There we are, then,’ sighed Robur’s disembodied voice. ‘You are looking to punish those who wronged you, one grave at a time. I am looking to change society so that such evil can never be allowed to take hold again. You crudely treat the symptoms; I wish to eradicate the disease itself.’
‘There speaks a mechomancer,’ said Septimoth, his wings shivering in anger. ‘The race of man treating the sum of the world like a machine that can be fixed by tinkering with its components, by providing a different instruction set for the transaction engine.’
‘My talents will help usher in a new age,’ said Robur ‘An age where the crimes the Commonshare inflicted on my people in Quatérshift will never be repeated.’
‘The Carlists were infected by the same meme,’ said Septimoth. ‘I heard identical noises from your monkey throats, even as the Commonshare practised genocide against the people of the wind when we would not turn from the old ways. I trusted your kind’s grand intentions once. I shall never do so again.’
‘You are not going to usher in a new age by robbing the decaying remains of steammen from their graves,’ Cornelius interrupted. ‘I fail to see how that is going to topple the regime in Quatérshift.’
‘Of course you fail to see it, you dolt,’ said Robur. ‘And I am afraid I will be unable to enlighten you for a few days yet, as unlike you, I am anything but hasty. All will be revealed in good time.’
‘What about us?’ said Cornelius. ‘Do we have a place in your shining new society?’
‘We shall see,’ said Robur. ‘We shall see.’
The speaker in the ceiling fell silent.
‘Well, what do you make of that?’ Cornelius asked Septimoth.
‘I think, on reflection, we should have interviewed more than one candidate for the position of maid-of-all-works when we set up home in Jackals.’
‘Robur was fishing,’ said Cornelius. ‘He wanted to find out if we’re working with the Court of the Air. He’s worried how much the Court might know about his little game.’
‘Let us hope the Court knows more about his schemes than we do,’ said Septimoth, ‘for both our sakes.’
Cornelius did not reply. The last time he and Septimoth had been held captive it had been he who had come up with the plan to escape: his brains and freakish assassin’s face to break them free, Septimoth’s wings to carry them to freedom. But Robur was not a blunt instrument like an organized community inside the Commonshare. And relying on the old woman lashed to a frame in the cell next door and her deadly celestial employers to rescue them wasn’t much of a plan. If that was what they were relying on, then they truly were in trouble.
Blood-bats circled the cage at night, making passes that carried them uncomfortably close to Commodore Black. The commodore ignored the squeals of the large rodents as T’ricola massaged life back into Billy Snow’s legs, the paralysis toxin finally losing its effect. Ironflanks was with them now, and while no one wanted to speak of it, the absence of valiant Gabriel McCabe – the strongest man in Jackals no more – still hung over them like a ghost at the feast.
‘You are an unusual sonar man,’ Veryann said to Billy as she looked down on the bats sweeping through the petrol mist beneath them. ‘One who fights uncommonly well for a blind man. And a submariner.’
‘I crewed my way across the oceans to Thar when I was younger,’ said Billy. ‘They know a thing to two about blade work and empty fist fighting out there. You can even study the skill at their monasteries.’
‘Did they also smith witch-blades at their monasteries?’ Veryann asked.
‘It was considered something of an art,’ said Billy.
‘Quiet, Billy,’ said T’ricola. ‘Your throat muscles are as weak as every other part of your creaking body. You need to rest.’
‘I can rest when I’m dead,’ said the sonar man.
‘That fate will come soon enough,’ said Commodore Black. ‘Along with the wicked spectacle the mad prince of this jungle hell is planning for us.’
‘At least the end will be quick,’ said Ironflanks. ‘The five of us pitted weaponless against a kilasaurus max. It will be quick.’
The commodore laid a hand on the steamman’s shoulder. ‘For the love of the Circle, can’t you be telling the prince that you have changed your mind and that he’s a fine fellow who should be letting his new friends go on their way?’
‘You mistake him for one of my kind,’ said Ironflanks. ‘Doublemetal and his siltempters haven’t been part of the Free State for many thousands of years. They worship the foulest of Loas, Lord Two-Tar and his minions, and the Lord of Deactivation has driven all compassion from the siltempters’ boiler hearts for those whose threads are woven alongside their own in the great pattern.’
‘The prince said you escaped from this place once before,’ said T’ricola. ‘Can you not break the cell’s locks and get us out of the pit?’
‘That was an age ago,’ said Ironflanks. ‘And I had help. I was a knight steamman, ranked errant among the Order of the Pathfinder Fist. I led a party of knights here – King Steam had heard rumours that the siltempters had captured one of the last remaining Hexmachina, a wounded and nearly deactivate model. We were to find it and free it. But we had not realized how the jungle had changed the siltempters over the millennia. They had grown into monsters here. They slaughtered us, those who did not run. A few of us survived, tortured while our architecture was violated by the same prince that King Steam had once cast out of Mechancia by his own hand.’
‘But still you escaped,’ said Commodore Black.
‘It was Bronzehall who broke the codes on our lock in the temple’s torture rooms,’ said Ironflanks. ‘He was a sly one, Bronzehall. A knight of the Commando Militant with a hundred ways to demolish any construction, and a thousand more to break into it. He was one of the last of us to die when we were pursued through the jungle by the siltempters, the only steamman other than I not to be recaptured.’
‘What happened to him?’ Billy Snow asked.
‘We had almost reached Rapalaw Junction when the components the prince had violated our architecture with began to change our bodies. When Bronzehall realized how badly he had been afflicted, he could not bear the shame.’
‘A warrior’s death,’ said Veryann.
‘Yes, a warrior’s death. If we had succeeded in bringing back the Hexmachina, then perhaps King Steam would have helped us, instructed the hall of architects at Mechancia to do what they could to restore our bodies to the righteous pattern. As it was, banishment and the isolation of the unclean was to be my reward.’
‘You
are still a steamman,’ implored the commodore. ‘Can you not help me break this cunning transaction-engine lock?’
‘Bronzehall could,’ said Ironflanks, ‘but not I, my softbody friend. I wish that I could, but I am as much a part of the jungle now as I am of the metal, which is why Liongeli’s dark realm speaks to me at night and fills my thoughtflow with the whispers of the canopy.’
Commodore Black stared forlornly down towards the bubbling lake of oil. ‘Then I will tease the blessed thing open myself. My genius versus the mocking black boiler hearts of the siltempters. Let us see if Prince Doublemetal is as canny as he thinks he is, the lord of the loons, filing down his rivets like a walking razor and crushing the bones of honest travellers that fall into his clutches.’
‘Let me help you,’ offered Billy Snow.
‘I know machines,’ said T’ricola. ‘I’ll take over from you when you tire.’
The commodore bent down to examine the lock, the sonar man and the chief engineer of the Sprite by his side. It was a race against time. Only a few hours remained until dawn splintered the star-filled night and ushered in their appointment with the thunder lizards in the fighting pit next door.
‘Oh, this is clever,’ said the commodore. ‘This lock is a work of art. The codes on this merciless thing are resetting themselves every few minutes – at random intervals, too, as best as I can see. You come up with a system to crack the lock and the wicked thing changes the game halfway through.’
‘What good will springing the doors do?’ said Ironflanks, pointing to the steaming oil below.
‘We can climb our cell’s tether,’ said Veryann, ‘or swing ourselves cage by cage to the edge.’
‘Let me try, let me try,’ the commodore muttered to himself, making wincing noises and grumbling as the lock matched its cunning with his. T’ricola observed his work while Billy Snow listened to the tumble of the mechanism inside, learning the clicks and clacks that preceded the apparatus resetting itself.