Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘Sweet mercy of the Circle, Aliquot Coppertracks,’ said the commodore. ‘Do not speak of such wicked things. Let’s go down to the kitchen and crack open a bottle of jinn or two to whet our appetite for supper. Let’s not talk of strange currents and disturbed spirits. Surely you did not drag our poor diseased bodies out of that hellish jungle just for the three of us to go plunging ourselves into danger back home in Jackals.’

‘Molly didn’t ask to have a Guardian’s ransom placed on her head, Jared,’ said Nickleby. ‘Any more than the homes down on the docks asked to be firebombed by an aerostat; any more than the victims of the Pitt Hill Slayer asked to be picked up and murdered.’

The commodore scratched at his beard in despair. ‘If only we had my blessed boat, we could head out to sea and submerge to safety. You’d have been protected on board the Sprite of the Lake , lass, and I could have shown you the wonders of the world’s oceans on my darling boat. Steam beds off the Fire Sea, the sunken stone towers of old Lostangels, slipsharps schooling under the Straits of Quat. But her wreckage litters the beach of that cursed isle, while I rot away here in the decadent capital of ancient Jackals.’

Nickleby and the steamman seemed oblivious to the large submariner’s inexhaustible well of self-pity. Coppertracks continued his work assembling a bank of strange-looking machinery while his drones devoured the crates of reading material.

The pensman turned by the door. ‘Aliquot, I don’t think that any of the mug-hunters know yet that young Damson Templar is our guest, but in case they do …’

‘Mortal Circle,’ wheezed the commodore, stumbling after Molly and Nickleby. ‘Let us not be waking up that metal monster again. Let it rest safe in its slumber.’

‘My dear mammal.’ Coppertracks stopped his work and swivelled on one of his tracks. ‘That monster is little more than an extra arm for me to plug into my body; it is a drone, a mu-body driven by my id … to all intents and purposes it is me.’

‘Ah, Coppertracks,’ pleaded the commodore, ‘I know your vast intelligence pulls on different bodies like I do a pair of old boots, but that beast you keep in the basement is possessed. It is as wicked as a sand demon.’

‘The Steamo Loas only rode it the once and they could have picked any of my bodies,’ said Coppertracks. He turned to Nickleby. ‘Fire up its boiler for me, Silas softbody. I shall stand sentry outside Tock House tonight.’

Two levels of chambers and junk rooms lay underneath the tower of Tock House. Molly and Nickleby navigated a narrow trail through piled curios and junk. There were globes of the world, many of the continents left a speculative solid yellow for the unknown, oil portraits of Guardians and guild officials, orreries of the twenty planets of the solar system, their celestial motion stilled by rusty clockwork; and more recent additions to the junk — piled daguerreotype prints taken by a real-box.

Unlike the staid upright family shots that graced the windows of fashionable real-box artists, these monochrome prints were of Middlesteel itself. Nagcross Bridge at sunrise, a few lonely milk carts setting out from their depot, the masts of wherries sailing the Gambleflowers rising like trees beyond. The massive bell house of Brute Julius rising out of the House of Guardians, ready to ring each afternoon as parliament began sitting. A child at Cradledon aerostat field, her face wide in wonder at the merchant marine airships poised in a long line down the horizon. Behind the daguerreotype images stood a real-box on its tripod, the sad nose of the lens pointed at the dusty flagstones.

Nickleby saw Molly looking at the card-mounted images. ‘They are mine, Molly.’

‘I haven’t seen anything like them,’ said Molly. ‘You could make a living just selling them.’

‘I did once,’ said the pensman. ‘As well as writing for TheIllustrated , I used to take real-box pictures for the newspapers.’

‘Used to? What happened?’

‘A mixture of the personal and the practical, Molly. I ran out of images I wanted to capture, and then the illustrators’ combination lobbied parliament to ban the use of daguerreotypes in printed publications. They said the images could be used in a bawdy and lewd manner and pointed to the sleazier end of Dock Street to make their point. These days the only place I could sell my real-box work would be to the underground press — Carlist flysheets, political pamphlets and issues of Damsons’ Relish .’

Molly could tell there was something more that Nickleby was not telling her, but they were soon at the end of the chamber and into a second hall, this one filled with furniture and curios left by a previous owner; wooden mannequins wearing armour from foreign lands and earlier times.

Small wonder the present owners had hidden the figures out of sight; it was as if Molly and the pensman stood surrounded by a legion of spectres. There was plate armour from the old royalist army, spiked steel chest-pieces and beaked helmets with holes on either side for rubber gas-mask tubes long since rotted away. There were Cassarabian sand rider uniforms — brittle leather skins with more lace ties than a ball gown and head masks of thin metal gauze capable of filtering a hundred-mile-an-hour desert storm. There were quilted gutta-percha guardsmen jackets from Catosia, ridiculously oversized to accommodate the shine-swelled muscles of their pectorals and latissimus dorsi.

In between the animal skins of a couple of Liongeli tribesmen stood what Molly had first taken for powered duelling armour — towering above its companions — but as Nickleby approached it, Molly realized that there was no manikin underneath. This was one of Coppertracks’ spare bodies, the steamman’s dark alter ego that had sent the commodore scurrying for the comfort of the pantry. Nickleby slid a couple of bricks of compressed high-grade coke into the steamman’s armoured furnace loader and flicked the ignition switch on the oil reservoir.

With a rattle of its iron arms the body started to wake. Four centaur-like legs began to piston the steamman higher, the creature turning its square head to scan them.

‘Aliquot, can you hear me?’ asked Nickleby.

‘Yes,’ answered the metal centaur. Filtered through the voicebox of this brute, Coppertracks’ consciousness had none of the scholarly inflexions or distracted airs of the slipthinker Molly had met in the tower above. This was a killing machine and nothing else. Two manipulator arms flexed their metal fingers, while above, two long fighting arms — segmented javelins — swung in a testing arc.

‘Upstairs, then,’ said Nickleby.

‘Patrol, guard, protect,’ said the steamman.

‘Sharparms is a poor conversationalist,’ said Nickleby to Molly. ‘King Steam would not offend the knights steammen by giving the slipthinkers mu-bodies with minds capable of strategy and war arts — it is Coppertracks’ job to supply the brains.’

‘Mister Black doesn’t like him,’ said Molly.

‘Submariners are a superstitious lot,’ said Nickleby. ‘The commodore had a bit of a fright when one of the Loas possessed Sharparms on the Isla Needless. But whether being ridden by the spirits or not, you can rely on Coppertracks’ bodies to keep us safe at Tock House.’

Molly’s sleep was not made any easier by the lush depths of her mattress or the round goose-feather pillows scattered across the four-poster bed. Every time she started to fall asleep she woke up with a start, convinced someone was in the room with her. Now it was night she could hear the mechanism of the clock two storeys above, the slow processions of the hands, and every couple of minutes a thud and a clack interrupting the gargle of the tower’s water and heating pipes. Cursing herself for a fool, she kicked the blanket off her body and dipped her feet down for her shoes.