Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘What have you done with our scout?’ Veryann demanded as she stepped out. ‘Why have you separated Ironflanks from our company?’

The small steamman danced in amusement. ‘Ironflanks is an old friend and now he is an uneasy rider.’

‘Uneasy rider? Are you talking about the Steamo Loas, is Ironflanks being ridden by one of your blessed spirits?’ said the commodore, shuddering. The steamman gods had always made him nervous. Ever since one of the Loas had ridden Coppertracks and his warrior mu-bodies on the Isla Needless, driving off an attack of the rock-like creatures that bided there. The steammen gods were fickle things and numerous — you could never tell which of them might come calling when invited in during the Gear-gi-ju rituals.

The commodore’s question seemed to tickle the little metal creature, steam shrieking out of his stacks. ‘Once a Loa, once a Loa, you fat hairless monkey.’

There were no more half-answers forthcoming and the exped ition officers were led into a passage deep into the jungle covered by steel netting over arched girders — the rib bones of a mechanical whale holding out the press of the forest. Billy Snow had been right, there was something animal-like about these things. They had a strutting gait quite unlike that of the calm, meticulous steammen found back in Middlesteel. Their path through the jungle led them to a rocky hillock, a crumbling temple carved into the rock face. Whoever the original architect of the construction might have been, their artifice had been chiselled over and carved out with new statues and bas-reliefs — crudely done, but obviously remade into the form of steammen.

‘I thought your people lacked an eye for art,’ muttered the commodore.

‘Not to be confusing us with the people of the metal in your monkey land,’ said the guide. ‘We follow the true path of Lord Two-Tar.’

‘And I’m sure a fine path it is too,’ said the commodore. ‘But how about you let us leave now, rather than be bothering about a miserable small band of travellers just making their honest way through Liongeli?’

‘But you are our guests,’ giggled the little creature. ‘We have a duty to entertain you. Or is it the other way around? It is so easy to be confused.’

Inside, the temple corridors were lit — barely — by jagged green crystals wired to chemical batteries in braziers, the steam and fizz of wild energy lost as the sound of drums grew louder. The officers were jabbed forward into a wide shadowed chamber under the centre of the hill, straight into the middle of a frenzied celebration — creatures of the metal ducking and turning in front of a pit filled with red molten coals. Many of the wild steammen had worked themselves into a manic frenzy and were detaching limbs — arms, legs, vision plates, voiceboxes — and fixing them on a spiked totem pole, then grabbing other pieces of assembly and pressing their new components into the burning coals before thrusting them into their empty sockets and continuing their dance. As a result of this insane limb-trading some of the tribesmen were loping on arm pincers or swinging legs from their shoulder sockets.

The expedition members found themselves in front of a pool containing the same black oil that had filled the prison pit. A steamman luxuriated on his back — almost corpulent in his design, a massive belly slick with oil, round lines broken by a brush of golden metal curls running down the side of his frog-like mask of a face.

Raising a goblet spilling with oil, the bathing steamman seemed to toast them. ‘So, these are the hairless monkeys that were on Queen Three-eyes’ supper menu? Mark me, they hardly look fit to be an appetizer for the thunder lizard.’

‘And don’t think we are not grateful to you for rescuing us,’ said the commodore. ‘You can have the thanks of old Blacky before we continue on our way in peace.’

‘Silence!’ The guards struck their prisoners with their needle-lined fists. ‘You do not address Prince Doublemetal without his permission.’

‘Well. Perhaps this fat ape might give Queen Three-eyes a few mouthfuls before he is made deactivate,’ mused the corpulent steamman. ‘Though in truth, I grow weary of what sport there is in seeing thunder lizards rip apart softbodies. It is all over so quickly. What do you think of that, fat little monkey, do you think that you might run fast enough to last more than a few seconds in the pit?’

‘I’m a great one for running,’ said the commodore. ‘I’ve something of a royal title myself and it’s made me a mite unpopular back in Jackals, although I have found the steammen back home to be a little more forgiving in that regard than the race of man.’

The chief of the wild things sat up and oil dripped off the gold curls moulded onto his chest assembly. ‘Oh ho, do not dare compare the siltempters with the people of the metal, my noble-titled monkey friend. We have advanced far beyond their meagre ambitions. We call Loas that they shun, receive wisdom that their slaves’ boiler hearts are too small to contain. We change our own bodies, swap parts as it pleases us — why, I even allow the most courageous of my siltempters to function with cogs and crystals that have once been part of my own august being!’

‘Very wise,’ agreed the commodore.

Prince Doublemetal raised an arm out of the bath and pointed it accusingly at the expedition members. ‘What do you want with the sixth?’

‘The sixth?’ said Commodore Black ‘There’s only five of us.’

‘Do not play games with me, you portly softbody scum!’ roared the prince. ‘I know why you have defiled our realm. Has King Steam sunk so low that he now sends such as you to continue the war between our two people, to steal our relics? Does the Free State have no more steammen knights brave enough to travel to our land?’

The commodore looked at Veryann, T’ricola and Gabriel McCabe, but it was clear they had no idea what this mad frog-faced machine was talking about. Billy Snow held to his silence, grimly.

‘You’ll have to forgive me, your highness,’ said Commodore Black. ‘The steammen back home don’t really talk about your fine kingdom out here in Liongeli — save a passing mention with a little trepidation.’

‘And well they should fear us. They have memories long enough to remember the schism between the siltempters and the steammen, even if it has faded from the frail minds of meat and water possessed by your kind.’ Prince Doublemetal gestured to his warriors. ‘Let these filthy softbody liars see the sixth they have come stealing into our realm to seize. Let them tremble at its splendour.’

At his urging a section of the floor rumbled back, a platform rising slowly into the chamber. Mounted like a jewel in a coronet on the platform was a cube of the same material that had been sprayed around Queen Three-eyes, imprisoning the thunder lizard. But this confinement glue held no organic creature — instead, a battered white globe was set immobile inside — a machine — the material of its spherical skin quite unlike anything of this world, save where its surface had been blackened and scarred, and there it resembled a copper-coloured lava.

‘Behold, the sixth,’ said Prince Doublemetal. ‘Tell me now you have no idea what this holy of holies is. Let me hear the lie tumble from your lips. Let me hear that you were not paid by King Steam to rob the siltempters of this glory of ours.’

‘I have never seen such as this before,’ said Veryann. ‘Although it is obviously damaged, a war machine — perhaps part of a steamman fighting frame?’

‘Sweet Circle preserve me, but I have seen one of these terrible things before,’ whispered the commodore. ‘And heard a little more of it from my Molly back at Tock House. Something like this appeared during the battle of Rivermarsh and helped break the army of demons conjured up by that madman Tzlayloc. Seven of them, there were. Seven Hexmachina to preserve the world. But I thought they were all dead, all save Molly’s one curled up sleeping snug in the veins of the world deep below Middlesteel.’