Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

His news seemed to alarm the siltempters, the little cheetah-cloaked one scampering back, squealing as it clutched its sound baffles.

‘Calm yourselves,’ called the prince. ‘Of course this hairless monkey knows of the Hexmachina. Even a softbody can press his ears to the dirt and feel the throb of power of the holy of holies within the earth. There are two Hexmachina left — and we have one of them!’

The commodore looked doubtfully at the broken thing they had captured — or preserved — inside the amber-like cube. If this was their talisman, it showed none of the raw power of the thing he had seen intervene in the invasion of Jackals when the god machine had tossed Quatershift’s demon allies back through the pit of hell they had crawled out of.

‘We have not come for your treasures,’ said Billy Snow. ‘We are bound for Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo and the ruins of Camlantis.’

‘Pah,’ said Prince Doublemetal. ‘The realm of that brooding cabbage who rules over the creepers contains nothing but ancient dust and rubble. Do you really expect me to believe you are not in service to King Steam and his minions?’

‘Your ancient enemy has nothing to do with our voyage,’ insisted Billy. ‘Have you not discovered as much from Ironflanks?’

‘Ironflanks,’ said Prince Doublemetal. ‘Dear Ironflanks. He is almost family to me. Let us see what he has to say.’ He clicked his iron fingers and a heavy frame was lowered from one of the temple levels above, Ironflanks hanging limply from the mesh, his shredded safari suit clinging to his body like peeling flesh. ‘Not that I would be inclined to believe too much of what he says. Poor exiled product of the Free State. Desperately trying to amass enough money to pay a mechomancer from the race of softbodies to extract the superior components we so kindly donated to his inferior architecture the last time he was our guest.’

Ironflanks’ telescope eyes extended weakly out — oil dripping like drool from his head. Too weak to speak in a higher language after hours of torture, his voicebox emitted a pitiful squawk of static in machine language.

‘You see,’ said Prince Doublemetal, refilling his goblet with oil from his pool. ‘You see how ungrateful he is. We brought him into the fold, gave him components from our holy bodies and how does he repay us? He escapes from his cage and goes running back to the mongrel traders of Rapalaw Junction. Could they help you, weak little fool? Would King Steam lift a finger to correct the “corruption” of your architecture? It pains me, Ironflanks. My own components sparking inside you, my own design imposed on your pattern and how do you repay your new father? You reject me for that weak monarch of compromise, that ruler of the maybe and the middle way you foolishly call sovereign in the Free State. Tell me that you were not coming here in search of the Hexmachina again, tell me you do not recognize the armour of the steammen knights you once dared to lead here now adorning the bodies of my warriors.’

Instead of answering with his voice, Ironflanks extended two fingers out from one of his manipulator arms and made the shape of the inverted ‘V’ — the lion’s teeth, the traditional Jackelian gesture of defiance.

‘There, do I lie?’ Prince Doublemetal sighed with regret; sad his words had been borne out. ‘An ingrate. But there are better ways of getting to the truth. Where is my tosser of the cogs?’

‘Here, your highness.’ An emaciated siltempter emerged from the shadows of the chamber, a dark cloak covering his tall, mantis-like body. As he loomed closer, the commodore saw the cloak was a patchwork map of different skins — pard, sleekclaw, craynarbian — oiled and shiny. A tripod of legs clacked him across to the bath of oil. Prince Doublemetal topped up his goblet and passed it to the shaman. As he did so the siltempters behind the expedition officers seized the arms of the softbodies, vice-like fingers clamping their iron tightly around muscles, giving the commodore and his friends not an inch to squirm.

‘Which of these do you require to perform the ritual?’

‘I have no preference, your highness,’ said the shaman.

‘Take the craynarbian woman, then. I never tire of hearing the crack of their shells.’

Gabriel McCabe struggled in the grip of the metal apes binding his arms, trying to stop them dragging the engineer away. ‘Let T’ricola go — if you have a challenge, let me face it.’

‘A challenge?’ laughed the shaman. ‘Do you know nothing of Gear-gi-ju? We do not require your sport to invoke the Steamo Loas!’

‘I have seen the rituals of Gear-gi-ju,’ said the commodore. ‘Coppertracks draining his own oil and throwing his cogs to read the future in their patterns.’

The shaman lifted the goblet of black liquid his prince had passed him. ‘Here is our oil — holy sap of our bodies — it has been filtered through each of us here. But Lord Two-Tar does not come riding for such as this, though it still be required for the calling.’

Prince Doublemetal waved a languid pincer hand in the direction of Gabriel McCabe. ‘Take the big one at his word, then. Keep the craynarbian woman for the thunder lizards — she will be mauled as well under their jaws as she will in the calling. You’ll get more system juice out of the giant, besides.’

‘Gabriel!’ T’ricola cried as the metal savages dragged the first mate away from his friends. Gabriel struggled with all his strength, but the beetle-shelled machines held him tight and dragged him towards an altar, pushing his spine down to the stone. The strongest man in Jackals was no match for the strongest siltempter in Liongeli. Leather straps were lashed down across his arms, chest and legs. When they were finished the nearest siltempters started lurching around the altar, forming a drunken circle, their voices chanting in the machine language. Whether activated by their dark hymn or by an unseen switch, a stone block in the ceiling began to crunch down, lowering inexorably towards the first mate.

Prince Doublemetal’s amused laughter drowned out the shouts of anger from the struggling officers. Now the purpose of the blood-encrusted rivulets in the altar had become clear, the channel at the foot of the stone leading to a stained granite basin where goblets could be filled with the oil — or blood — of their sacrifices.

Gabriel McCabe was staring in terror at the crushing press only a foot above him, the gap closing every second, when Billy Snow broke free of the grip of his captor, the ape-like machine turning in the air as if it had become the cog in an invisible machine. The blind sonar man moved his feet as if he was following the footsteps of a dance that had been sketched onto the chamber floor, gracefully avoiding the frenzied wave of sharp-edged siltempters reaching and thrusting for him with their spears. His cane had split open, expelling a shining swordstick that licked out, severing steel limbs and opening iron chests with deft flicks. Where Billy Snow danced the warriors fell back, clutching their metal bodies, crystals sparking fire and tubes pumping dirty oil onto the floor.

He was almost at the altar, his blade raised to plunge into the stone control panel, when a steamman with a large pepper-pot gun connected by tubes to his boiler came out of the crowd, a hail of darts pin-pricking the sonar man’s legs. Billy Snow collapsed, paralysed by the wicked poison on the dart-tips. The last look on Gabriel McCabe’s face before the press bore down on him was one of incredulity at the blind sonar man collapsing by his side — as if he had glimpsed the metamorphosis of his friend into a deadly butterfly. Then the rock ground down and there was a brief, horrific scream, followed by a sickening wet crunching sound, the first mate’s blood draining out in a dark river down the channels of the altar.