Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Compatriot Carker had found the measure of how to trot in her new body. But then Harriet Carker was a Grimhope loyalist, one of the first to be equalized — the daft fool had volunteered for this existence, had been one of the subterranean renegades who had set up the flesh mills down below in the outlaw realm.

It was so hard to tell the equalized apart — the loyalists from the conscripts. You learned to watch what you said and to whom. Damson Davenport had only tasted the pain stick once and it was enough to cow her tongue. The rumours of a resistance, the rumours of a counter-revolution, had been denied by the company leaders. But then they had interrupted the evening reading of Community and the Commons to deny them. They might have sliced her up and stuffed her into this shambling new body of metal and flesh, but they had not cut away her common sense. She could see the fear in the eyes of the brilliant men. She could see the upside down Vs — the lion’s teeth — that had been scrawled on the walls of the streets; she could see the distant smoke and hear the fighting.

‘Halt,’ shouted the company leader. They were outside the Circlist cathedral on the Lilburne road, Third Brigade troops lined up and guarding the doors. What could be inside, wondered Damson Davenport? The practice of Circlist worship was a pain-rod offence now; the company leaders had made that clear. Wagons were drawn up outside, dozens of them with canvas covers concealing their valuable cargo.

‘Form up,’ shouted the company leader to the column of equalized workers. ‘Eight each to a wagon. Then we pull them to Parliament Square. After we have delivered the wagons we will return to this street — there will be more wagons waiting for us. This will be our duty until we are reassigned back to the cannon works.’

The royal we , thought Damson Davenport, as the company leader climbed up to the top of one of the wagons while his equalized compatriots did as they were bid.

‘These wagons are meant for horses,’ said Damson Davenport. It came out before she realized she had spoken.

‘They’ve been eating them,’ whispered the metal-flesher behind her, voicebox set on low. ‘I heard the brilliant men complaining that it is the only meat left in Middlesteel now.’

Damson Davenport glanced around. Thank the Circle the company leader had not heard the uncommunityist exchange. To gossip was to steal exertion from the cause — they had been warned against that too. A mixture of Third Brigade troops and brilliant men escorted the large convoy, holding their rifles ready as they marched. A small glimmer of hope rose in her. If they were being guarded, then there was still something to guard against in Middlesteel.

Gates on a barricade with the muzzles of galloper cannons protruding out were heaved back outside Parliament Square. A squat black building had been raised in the centre of the square, its stacks venting oily black smoke into the snow-pregnant sky. Damson Davenport noticed the rubble of the statues that had been smashed to make way for this new structure. Something else had been added recently too — a tall stone cross which had been driven into the ground outside the entrance to the House of Guardians, a figure strapped to it howling like a banshee, his screams carrying across the cold space of the square. Above the figure being punished a crimson-filled jewel boiled as snowflakes fell across it and turned to steam.

Third Brigade soldiers pulled the canvas covers off the wagons, revealing the cages underneath. In Damson Davenport’s chest the calculation drums ground in shock. The cages were filled with people, once-fine clothes ripped and soiled by confinement in a space a Jackelian would not have wished to keep a street hound in. There were old men, families and children, the school uniforms of the private academies ruined by weeks of sleeping and living in them. The strangest thing of all was how quiet they were. They were just standing there, resigned. Why weren’t they angry? These were the city’s quality — they were used to the finest food and the finest accommodation Middlesteel had to offer. Now they had been reduced to gaunt figures without enough spark to spill even a tear for their own predicament.

Soldiers unlocked the cage walls and pushed the dirty prisoners to form a line leading towards the squat structure. Behind her the company leader was talking to one of the brilliant men. After the conversation was over, the leader came over to Damson Davenport and cut her out of the team pulling the wagon. ‘You are slowing the wagons down, compatriot. You are not yet used to your beautiful new form, so I have decided to show compassion to you. You will be working on the Collar’s boiler for the rest of today.’

The Collar? So, that is what a Gideon’s Collar looked like. He led her to the middle of the square, over to the furnace being stoked on the back of the construction. Inside the building she could hear the crack of the bolts as they fired. One every five seconds. Quick, painless, humane. Clearly the product of an advanced society. Damson Davenport looked down at the fuel being fed into the furnace by the equalized workers. ‘These are books, Compatriot Coordinator.’

‘Supplies of coal have run low, Compatriot Davenport,’ said the company leader, indicating the snow. ‘Your concern does you credit — but the books are an adequate fuel source and you will not find any copies of Community and the Commons among them.’

Of course, there was only one book for the land now. She took a shovel from the company leader and joined the others digging out piles of books and tossing them into the flames of the furnace. She did not feel the heat from the furnace, but then she did not feel the cold either; she knew what the temperature was, her body could tell her that. She just did not feel it. Piercing screams from the figure on the cross nearly made her spill a blade full of tomes onto the snow. ‘Who is that?’

One of her co-workers turned his voicebox in her direction. ‘The King.’

‘The King? But he is dead, isn’t he?’

‘The new King.’

‘Oh dear.’ She looked at the distant figure writhing on the cross. She must have missed the coronation festival. Everyone back home had so been looking forward to that — she had been building up a little store of rotten fruit for weeks in her room, just so she could throw it on coronation day. Bitterly disappointed, she went back to feeding the fires of the Gideon’s Collar.

Glass grenades hurled by the riders blew apart the barricade on the bridge, horses arrowing through the cordon to join those who had already leapt the line of bayonets. Oliver slashed down with his blade, the hex-heavy knife forming itself into the perfect simulacrum of a curved sabre. In front of him the gypsy witch twirled a whip of fire across the nearest Third Brigade trooper. Oliver ducked the rifle bullet coming towards his skull, pulling a belt pistol out and killing the marksman. To his left he deflected a bayonet with the flat of his sabre, and then turned a boot to kick the soldier down to the ground.

It was strange fighting on horseback, the weight of the sixer striking fear into the hearts of the soldiers on the ground, the height making it easy for him to slice down, but raising him into the line of fire at the same time. With a cry of vengeance the gypsy witch launched herself off the mount and fell into the melee like a flaming comet. The Commonshare had driven her off her lands in Quatershift and the invaders would pay a blood price for trying to repeat their purges in Jackals.

Oliver looked over the bridge rail and saw the commodore’s tub floating down the watery green surf of the Gambleflowers unmolested by the troops on the bridge. He did not hesitate but pulled himself forward on the horse and took control, kicking its flanks forward and surging out of the scrum. Oliver galloped past a knot of wounded Third Brigade men being pulled back by their compatriots, abandoning the fight behind him for the city. Soon he was into the heart of Middlesteel, windows iced over and dark, the few people out scrabbling for food disappearing as he charged past.