Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Tzlayloc howled with rage. She had no trouble hearing his instructions. ‘Cancel the Special Guard’s orders to march south. Have them form for battle and bring me Flare.’

His retinue closed in and there was a flurry of commands in the wake of the cavalryman’s departure, the leader’s minions rushing off to do their master’s bidding. Suddenly Tzlayloc dropped to the ground, screaming. Damson Davenport thought he must be having a stroke. All that shouting and hurrying about. It was no wonder. But then she realized his cries sounded more like an exclamation of ecstasy.

A tearing noise sounded and in the air above Parliament Square a fissure appeared, colours she had never seen before leaking out of the rip.

‘Xam-ku,’ shouted Tzlayloc. ‘Xam-ku!’

Black tendrils snaked out of the fissure, snowflakes turning to steam as they touched the arms waving and flexing in the air, moving like the legs of a spider emerging from its hunting hole. Two of the tendrils reached down to Tzlayloc, stroking him gently as he moaned in pleasure. His body was changing, swelling and rippling as the darkness from the fissure slithered its way into his form, leaving Tzlayloc trembling — and not from the cold of the strange winter that had frozen Middlesteel. Around the head of the First Committee his locust priests had fallen to their knees and were chanting in a language she did not recognize.

Tzlayloc’s eyes leaked black fire as his gaze swept Parliament Square, a clicking laughter like the rattle of a mandible filling the emptiness of the cold air. Damson Davenport did not know what product of mechomancy they had traded her beating heart for inside her metal-flesher frame, but whatever it was, she realized the organ could still curl in terror.

Commodore Black climbed from the makeshift raft and pushed it through the reeds and the freezing water the remaining foot to the bank of the Gambleflowers. Clutching the debating stick that had made such an excellent punting pole, Guardian Tinfold stepped onto dry land. Smoke from the burning tavern boat chased after them as their makeshift ferry finally sank into the brown waters of the river.

A line of knights from the encamped steammen army had ridden over to meet these new refugees. ‘Dear mammal, your circulation will freeze with the temperature of the river.’

Commodore Black looked up from the snowy bank. ‘Coppertracks! Blessed Circle, you escaped Tock House.’

‘Quite clearly,’ said the steamman. War mu-bodies surrounded the slipthinker, giant fighting mechanisms slaved to his consciousness, twice the size of Sharparms, with fiercely glowing vision plates. ‘Could you not have found a more river-worthy craft to flee the environs of Middlesteel?’

‘Flee! We’ve come for you, you daft old steamer. Poor old Blacky’s been dragged along the length of the Gambleflowers while those devils from the Third Brigade used us as a floating target for their cannons and their rifles. Do you not recognize Guardian Tinfold?’

The mu-bodies around Coppertracks bowed to the poli tician. ‘Guardian Tinfold, I heard rumours you had perished when the Quatershiftian forces sealed off Steamside and lay siege to our people inside the steammen quarter.’

‘I was in Workbarrows on business. Fortunately our party fighters have been able to move around using the sewers,’ said Tinfold. ‘I come bearing the writ of parliament — where is King Steam?’

‘We shall take you to him.’

The knights made way for one of the Free State’s gun-boxes to walk up to the riverbank, both iron feet ploughing through the snow. It dipped down like a war elephant and the commodore and Tinfold climbed up next to its mortar mouth. Clutching the bombard they moved out across the steammen army’s encampment, Coppertracks and a column of steammen knights at their head. Instead of the tents of a campaigning Jackelian army, the people of the metal had brought iron rods that connected together to make hexagonal skeletons sealed with panels of gutta-percha. It was as if the white meadows of the east bank had been transformed into a bed of coral.

It was not just the orders militant that had marched down from the mountain kingdom; the boiler trails of ten thousand steammen rose through the falling snow. Steammen who had never served in a fighting regiment had the barrels of pressure repeaters fixed to their arms, pipes coiled back to their boilers, drums rattling with steel balls while they used every precious minute to practise battle manoeuvres under the supervision of their new officers.

Tinfold and the submariner were taken to the centre of the camp where colourful streamers on a field of lances crackled like burning logs with the energy of the wind. There, sixty feet tall, stood King Steam’s war body — a thing of functional terror, two claw-like legs bearing a spherical mass of cannons, gun barrels and spiked impaling apparatus. The frame drew closer to the gun-box and the Commodore saw that caged inside it was a small, golden, child-like steamman, twisting and turning the bulk of the machine with control levers.

‘King Steam,’ called Tinfold, his ancient voicebox straining to carry above the sound of the wind. ‘I bear the writ of the House of Guardians of the Kingdom of Jackals. I represent the will of the emergency government of all parties, the army of resistance, the party of the Levellers, and the people of the electorship of Workbarrows. Do you recognize my writ?’

‘I DO.’ King Steam’s voice boomed across the entire riverbank, shaking the organs inside Commodore Black’s chest. Loud enough to issue orders to the very mountains they had left behind.

‘Then I invoke the treaty of 980, as signed by the Lord First Guardian Isambard Kirkhill and yourself on the Fulven Fields and duly ratified by the House of Guardians. The parliament of Jackals calls upon the force of arms of the Steammen Free State and grants you the dispensation of the House to cross the waters of the Gambleflowers and enter the environs of the royal capital of Jackals.’

King Steam’s war machine pistoned closer to the gun-box so the monarch could speak from his golden pilot body. ‘You have prospered in this land, Tinfold. You are a true citizen of Jackals, but the Steamo Loas could not be prouder of your achievements if Steelbhalah-Waldo himself had been elected to the Guardianship of Workbarrows.’

‘I have often reflected that the spirit of freedom is like a Loa itself, Your Majesty. It rides many within this land.’

‘Then let us ride with it,’ said King Steam. He swivelled to address his officers and the orders militant, to command the whole army. ‘TO WAR. TO WAR! WE MARCH ON MIDDLESTEEL.’

In the House of Guardians the members of the First Committee looked on with horror as Tzlayloc picked up the messenger — an equalized revolutionary — and propelled him through the stained-glass window of the gallery, the herald’s components smashed apart in the courtyard outside.

‘Machines,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Filthy machines.’

At first the committee members thought he must be talking of the equalized messenger, but then they realized he was referring to the news the messenger had brought — the army of the Steammen Free State was advancing. Tzlayloc felt like ripping apart the round table and scattering the maps of Middlesteel and her environs. He had never been stronger, but things were crumbling around him, the ungrateful wretches of Middlesteel joining the counter-revolutionary uprising. Half the city fighting, and now the people of the metal had finally found the guts to interfere in Jackals’ affairs. The crafty king of the steammen was rushing to rescue his corrupt allies now their snouts had been pulled from the feeding trough and made into bacon. Had he not fed the people? Had he not fed their masters into the Gideon’s Collars raised in their name?