Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

A clamour rose from the crops, a clucking of rattle-like clicks, followed by a storm of white furred bodies leaping towards the men.

‘Wild pecks,’ said Slowstack, his head tracking the hunting cries of the lizard mammals.

Attracted by the blood frenzy more packs of the albino creatures were pulling themselves from the neighbouring harvest pits and drumming the flagstones with the wicked-looking claws on their right feet. They were clever, cleverer than the outlaws of Grimhope had realized. Molly could feel the waves of information contained in that drumming. These packs nested in the tunnels, near-blind, but all too aware of the value of the crop of meat tended by the Chimecan automatics. Nothing must be allowed to intrude on their rightful territory.

In the plantation they had climbed out of, a shockwave of energy blasted out, setting the crops burning, the bulb heads exploding in the heat. One of the hunters had fallen, the forces of his Wildcaotyl possession scything out in his death throes. The other would be snowed under by the albino killers before long.

In the heat of the deep caverns Molly’s clothes were going to dry out quickly. She would be sweating again too, soon. ‘Let’s press on, Slowstack.’

Prince Alpheus was dragged shouting to the cross and strapped onto the cold stone. ‘Leave my arms alone, we had a deal — I helped you jiggers.’

‘And so you shall help us again,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘And you need not worry about us removing your arms, compatriot. Symbolic gestures were needed when the old regime required the passions of the mob to be diverted. I have more direct ways of controlling their fervour.’

The prince tried to turn his head to look at the crystal full of bubbling blood. ‘What’s that? What are you doing?’

‘It is a lens to amplify your nerve endings. Now be silent, lest you wear yourself out. You will need all of your strength soon. As it is, I suspect you will not last as long as my darling girl.’

‘You said you would set me free!’

‘I did, didn’t I?’ said Tzlayloc. ‘And by a strange twist of irony, compatriot, it is you who will set the people free with your blood.’

‘I am not a royal any more,’ sobbed Alpheus. ‘I abdicate — I told you I would. You can have the throne. I just want to go to the Fey Free State.’

‘It is not your royal blood which I require,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘How curious that Greenhall has no record of there ever having been a joining between the House of Vindex and your line, and more curious still that no one with the blood curse ever surfaced in the royal breeding house before. Still, that is what comes of letting you filthy vermin interbreed without proper supervision.’

‘What blood curse? I am not under any curse. Let me go, please, for Circle’s sake.’

‘The symbolism of your place in history shall be different,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Not a valorous angel of the proletariat giving her life for the cause. Instead, the last peg of tyranny who needed to be dragged down to seal our courageous new realm.’

The locust priests finished securing Alpheus to the stone cross and nodded to the Chairman of the First Committee.

‘I want to leave the palace,’ screamed Alpheus. ‘I want to leave Middlesteel.’

‘You are not in Middlesteel any more, compatriot. When we are finished we’ll find you a suitable place at the museum, stuffed, next door to an example of a mill owner. The last King of Jackals, uncrowned.’

‘Please, you promised-’

Tzlayloc looked at the locust priests. ‘By all means stop his whining. My head is starting to ache with it.’

The priests traced sigils on the activation glass and Alpheus’s howling filled the subterranean chamber.

‘That’s better.’

Behind the prince the blood of the last of the operators boiled in fury, joining him in his agony. Tzlayloc nodded in satisfaction. Somewhere below, that filthy machine would be writhing in suffering too. Even if poor Molly Templar had not yet given her life to the cause, there were only two operators for the Hexmachina to distribute its essence between. One fleeing for her life, the other having his life crushed out of him.

His smugness turned to dissatisfaction as he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the blood crystal. He was getting corpulent. He looked at the locust priests and noticed for the first time that so were they. It was all the run-offs from the equalization mills; that and the harvest of hearts from the new Gideon’s Collars. With so many offerings to the Wildcaotyl it was hard to resist sampling some of the nourishment. For a moment the consideration that it was an inequality for him and the shepherds of the faith to have so much briefly suggested itself to Tzlayloc, but then the thought passed. Theirs was a heavy vocation with heavy demands — their bodies needed a heavy fuel to keep them in the condition that the revolution required of them. It was strange, though, how the more he ate the hungrier he became. He would have the Chimecan device moved to Parliament Square, into the light, Tzlayloc decided. He would feel better when he could watch the agony of the last monarch of Jackals from the windows of the House of Guardians.

Alpheus’s scream changed pitch as the machine sought to surprise him with its ingenuity, varying the play of torture across his body. Tzlayloc ruffled the prince’s hair. So short, so lank and dreary compared to Compatriot Templar’s long fiery tresses. Everyone was doing his and her bit. Everyone had a purpose in the new order. Even a filthy royalist.

Relieved of their weapons, Oliver, Hoggstone and Commodore Black sat in a chamber made surprisingly homely given its location in a long-abandoned atmospheric station. Only the presence of the outlaws armed with old rifles and crossbows pointing at them gave away the fact that they were not sitting in a gentleman’s library.

Benjamin Carl wheeled himself into the room and navigated his wheelchair up to a table adorned with an old double-headed brass oil lamp. His head shone in the light, a slight silver tonsure all that was left of the ageing revolutionary’s hair.

‘Now then, fellow,’ said the commodore. ‘Do you plan to torture us? I see no wicked thumbscrews on your table.’

‘Torture? I used to regard having to listen to Hoggstone’s Purist friends campaign from the stump as torture. No, I thought we might have a nice pot of caffeel. Damson Barbary, if you would be mother.’

The girl who had betrayed them ducked out of the library, returning with a steaming porcelain pot and four cups.

‘Time has been kind to you, Carl,’ said Hoggstone. ‘For someone I believed was dead up to a couple of weeks ago. Apart from the bath chair…’

Benjamin Carl slapped the iron spokes of his wheels. ‘Age didn’t put me in here, First Guardian. Some rogues more or less on your side of the political debate abducted me. I had to jump from a round black aerostat and the landing was not kind to me.’

‘The secret court? And here’s me thinking they were an old politician’s tale spun to keep me on the straight and narrow. You always did have a devil’s luck, Carl.’

‘They’re real enough.’ The old revolutionary indicated the walls of his domain. ‘And you’re sharing my luck now, First Guardian. You in your pauper’s rags smelling of garbage, while the Third Brigade strut around Middlesteel’s avenues in parade formation.’

‘The Commonshare are your children, Carl. Does your heart swell with pride when you see what they have accomplished?’

Benjamin Carl swivelled his chair to pull out a book from one of the shelves. ‘ Community and the Commons , a first edition. Priceless on the black market since you banned it.’ He hurled the book at Hoggstone. ‘You tell me, you Purist cretin, you tell me where it says in here that we should set up camps to steal children and raise them away from their parents, that we should line up the people of a nation in the shadow of a Gideon’s Collar, that one state should invade another, that we should employ a mob of ruffians to kick down doors and drag people to flesh mills. You find where I wrote that!’