Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Hoggstone picked up the book and waved it back at Benjamin Carl. ‘The words might not be in there, Carl, but that’s what it takes to impose your perfect beehive of a society on people who are born on their own, die on their own and live their lives by the one and one.’

‘We may be born on our own into the world, Purist, but there’s no immutable law of nature that connects a piece of land or strings a birthright to a swaddling. We are born into a world that belongs to all of us equally.’

‘That’s just a fancy letter of marque for a highwayman, Carl. Your community is a licence for those who have spent their lives idling to ride up to the farmer breaking his back in the field and demand a fair share of the harvest at the point of a sabre.’

‘I’m wasting my time with you, Purist,’ shouted Carl.

‘Give me back my debating stick, sir, and I’ll give you the lesson your people didn’t have the guts to learn at the ballot in 1566.’

Oliver interposed himself between the two quarrelling men, his pistols back in his hands — the outlaw who had been holding them along with Hoggstone’s debating stick incredulous that the brace of guns had disappeared out of his grasp. Two of the crossbow men loosed their bolts; Oliver tossed a pistol in the air, turned and watched one bolt thud into a bookcase — he caught the other bolt and slammed its metal head into the desk, the quarrel quivering, before catching the pistol and filling the room with his demon’s laugh.

‘Time for that cup of caffeel, Ben Carl,’ said Oliver. ‘You haven’t gone to the trouble of bringing the First Guardian here to discuss political philosophy.’

‘Who are you, compatriot?’

‘I am the people you two buffoons claim to be working for.’

‘And you don’t want to be upsetting the people, now,’ pointed out the commodore.

‘Perish the thought,’ agreed Carl. ‘It hasn’t escaped my notice that the parties have put aside their differences and are working together now. I thought you might consider a … wider alliance?’

‘With you?’ said Hoggstone. ‘Dear Circle, man, I thought you would be cock-a-hoop — in case you haven’t noticed, it’s your people strutting about up on the surface now.’

‘Jacob Walwyn was a brilliant scholar, Hoggstone. The best student I ever lectured. When I first knew him he was a gentle man who spent his Circledays teaching poorhouse foundlings how to read. After sixty-six he endured two weeks of beatings and torture from the political police. Not in official custody, mind. He was in the hands of one of your patriot squads. After he escaped the price on his head was second only to mine. Which of us, I wonder, taught the man who now calls himself Tzlayloc his lessons best?’

‘Your agitators nearly started a civil war in Jackals,’ said Hoggstone. ‘Across the border Quatershift has been bathing in the blood of your legacy for a decade. Why, sir, should I sign a pact with the devil?’

Carl filled one of the porcelain cups and offered it to the First Guardian. ‘For the same reason I must, compatriot Purist. I would not suffer your tyranny, but Tzlayloc’s is infinitely crueller — the more repugnant to me that he seeks to dress it up with his twisted rendering of the communityist truth. Neither of us on our own is strong enough to overthrow them, but perhaps together… did you ever really read my book, Hoggstone, before you threw it on the fire?’

‘Your damn philosophy has been nothing but a plague on my house,’ said the First Guardian. ‘Of course I did.’

‘Do you remember the last line of it?’

Commodore Black lifted up the tome from the table and turned the pages to the end. ‘Strength has no meaning unless it is used in the service of the weak. One stick may be snapped but the bundle is a community, and the community will never break.’

‘An alliance with a Carlist,’ said Hoggstone. ‘The House of Guardians will have me impeached after this. How many loyalists do you have?’

‘I have a whole city full of them, First Guardian. It is time for the voice of the people to be heard again.’

Hoggstone lifted his cup. ‘To the people, you communityist dog.’

‘To the people then, you Purist slave master.’

Oliver nodded in approval and holstered his two belt pistols. Hoggstone looked at him as he made ready to leave.

‘Shootist, this is a historic moment. Where are you going?’

‘Where else when the lunatics have taken over? I am going to pay a visit to the asylum.’

Molly was beginning to wish that she had drunk more water when she’d had the opportunity. Every hour they travelled the heat seemed to get more oppressive, sapping her ability to keep up the pace. It was only the increasing strength being channelled by her proximity to the Hexmachina that was allowing her to continue. She had tried riding on the back of Slowstack’s hull but the metal of his surface had become scalding; she could have fried a side of ham across the steamman’s body if she had one.

There was water somewhere, still being drawn through hidden cooling channels by the Chimecan crystals that survived this far down. She could tell by the haze of mist that filled some of the rooms. The extra burden of functioning this deep meant the crystals had fared far worse than the ones in the Duitzilopochtli Deeps. Many had melted or fractured under the strain of the heat, entire chains of the devices split open like hatched eggs. Bony glass splinters littered the floors of the passages where they had exploded.

Molly slowed down. On the passage wall were lines etched in stone, oblong shapes with stone circles inside them. She imagined a reservoir behind the wall, as cold and as cool as the irrigation waters that had fed the people crops in the higher cities.

‘Let’s stop, Slowstack.’ She hit the wall. ‘We need water before we drop.’

Slowstack came back to her, his stack spotted a fierce orange where the metal was overheating. ‘We understand, Molly soft-body, but we must continue. We are so close now.’

She hit the wall again. ‘There’s water behind here.’

‘No, Molly.’ He traced his manipulator arm over the sigils carved in the stone. ‘This is not a coolant pipe. This is a sink for draining away the pressure of the magma that the earth passes this deep within her body — liquid fire and earth, Molly softbody. These are escape vents in case the channels overload.’

Molly groaned and sunk to her knees to rest. ‘How could the Chimecans bear to live down here?’

‘Their coolant mechanisms had not suffered from a thousand years of neglect, Molly softbody. And the heat was valuable; it could be passed through exchangers and used to help keep the nations of the surface subservient to the empire during the harshest years of the coldtime. They needed their cattle — their slaves and food stock — kept alive.’

Reluctantly Molly continued to follow the steamman. The caverns they passed through were smaller now, some of the ziggurats and stalactite towers unfinished, abandoned during the Chimecans’ twilight years. A twilight her ancestor had helped inflict on them. Increasingly their passage was blocked — halls where stone fire doors had been triggered by magma breaches ahead, corridors that ended in unfinished caves.

In one of the dead-end caves there was a pile of bones so old they crumbled to dust when she tried to pick them up. There was no armour, Chimecan jewellery or scraps of clothes as with the other skeletons she had seen, but there were some links from an old leg chain. ‘A work gang,’ said Molly. ‘Digging out a new city for their masters, poor souls.’

‘We suspect not,’ said Slowstack. ‘There is no way forward here, we must go back.’

Molly trudged after the steamman as he reversed his tracks. ‘But there are chains back there?’