Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

The centaur-like steamman fell forward and scooped up the beast with its skeletal manipulator arms. Another corpse was rising from the ground, two-legged and hump-backed, like a jumping rat but with a long metal beak. Soundlessly the iron knight slammed the hunting beast down onto the second steamman corpse’s beak, impaling the creature. It let out a reverberating howl so loud it seemed to rattle the heart inside Oliver’s chest.

Hearing more human-sounding cries, Oliver looked around to see the redcoats in the distance retreating, falling back in a disciplined skirmish line, the crackle of their rifles breaking against metal bodies uncovering themselves from the hillside. Harry was pulling himself out from under the corpse of the second beast. A headless barrel-sized steamman had pinned the creature to the ground with its pincer-like tripod of legs and the wolftaker was sliding his hunting knife out from the thing’s skull.

‘There’s a caliph across the border,’ coughed Harry, ‘who is going to be mighty jiggered that his prize hunting cats are feeding the worms in Jackals.’

Behind Oliver the shells of the two steammen who’d saved him were sinking back into the bog, one of the bodies weighted down by a tonne weight of dead meat. ‘The Loas, Harry, they’re riding the corpses.’

‘Well, it’d be rude to turn down good advice freely given,’ said Harry, looking at the iron zombies shambling after the company of redcoats. ‘And by the looks of it, possibly quite dangerous to boot. Let’s go and see what King Steam has to say.’

Harry looked at Oliver’s arm, feeling it with the fingers of both his hands. Oliver yelled as the wolftaker applied pressure to the bleeding muscle. ‘Make a bandage with your spare shirt. I’ll tie a tourniquet above the fang marks. You’re going to need to get that sewn and cleaned neater than I can do it.’

‘What about Shadowclock, Harry?’

‘Shadowclock will still be there after a visit to His Highness in Mechancia,’ said Harry, testing the dead corpse of the hunting beast with his boot. It remained lifeless. ‘So, who do we know who spends too much time in Cassarabia?’

‘The Jackelian ambassador to Bladetenbul?’

‘That was a rhetorical question,’ replied Harry. He took out a telescope and extended it in the direction of the retreating redcoats. ‘There’s a white wagon back there, medical corps — plague wagon.’ He grinned. ‘Bloody plague wagon. That’s old , Jamie. Let’s hoof it boy, before my old chum and his tame womb mage throw any more of the caliph’s pets our way.’

Oliver bent down for his blunderbuss. It was intact except for tooth marks on the butt. They left the bones of the hunting beasts to rot with the wreckage of the steammen and the broken divisions of the Commonshare.

Shortly after they had stopped for lunch, the boggy ground hardened up, the low rolling hills replaced by foothills, tall alpine woods and the start of a snow-capped mountain range. They must have crossed into the Free State — there were no mountains Oliver knew of this far east into Jackals. Most of the metal race’s villages and cities were up in the crags; this low down the only signs of people were the dried donkey droppings from trading caravans. That and metal rods with long ribbons of a paper-thin cloth fluttering in the breeze, the rainbow colours marking the path deeper into the steammen kingdom.

Maybe it was the icy mountain winds blowing down through the peaks of the Mechancian Spine, but after another hour of walking, pushing towards the steammen capital, Oliver started to shiver. At first it was just a chill and he buttoned up the collar on his coat, but it spread, fingers of cold creeping down across his back. Harry noticed Oliver was falling behind and waited for him to catch up.

‘It’s like winter here in the mountains, Harry.’

‘Winter? You’re sweating, Oliver. Let me see your arm.’

Oliver was trembling uncontrollably now. It felt as if just the breeze from the heights was enough to waft him up the slopes, carry him like a leaf spinning into the realm of the steammen. ‘I can’t raise it, Harry. The bandage has made it heavy, like a block of ice. But it tingles below the shoulder.’

Harry said something, but his voice had faded, then the wolftaker grew very tall — or was it that he was standing over Oliver now? The ground felt firm, almost warm, just the right shape for his body. If he had realized how comfortable it was he would have stopped before. On the slopes the pine trees stood like sentries, tall and clear, parading for his pleasure. ‘I’ve seen some interesting things, Harry. Since I’ve been free. It would have been boring to spend the rest of my days trapped in Hundred Locks.’

Harry was talking so softly now; he must have lost his voice. This was all very jolly. Oliver laughed. Then the blackness came and swirled him away into the dark.

In the ceiling above the Whisperer the lighting crystal grew brighter, throwing a line of reflections into the puddles of floodwater on the rock floor. So, one of the sorcerers was dropping the interlocking layers of cursewalls, peeling back the invisible barriers of his stone chamber. The black curtain covering the door went transparent. It was Shanks — even under the hex suit, dark, spined and shimmering with multiple worldsinger charms, the Whisperer recognized the current chief of jailers. He had two warders standing behind him with toxin clubs, and a purple-robed worldsinger. Unarmoured. Ah, so, it was him .

‘Hello Nathaniel,’ said the chief of jailers. ‘On your feet — or what passes for them. You have a guest who wants to talk to you.’

‘Shanks,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘You want to come and visit me sometime without that suit? Let’s see if those flowers you have tattooed on your face are worth their ink against my powers.’

Shanks turned to the unarmoured worldsinger. ‘Careful, sir. He nearly escaped three years ago. He broke the hex on one of the warder’s helmets and put her inside a waking dream, then convinced her it was her husband inside the cell and she had to unlock the cursewalls to save his life.’

‘I trust the sigils on your suits have been revised since then,’ said the worldsinger.

‘Don’t worry about me and Pullinger, Shanks,’ said the Whisperer. ‘We know each other from way back. You remember the last time we met, don’t you Pullinger? You were an acolyte fey-hunter, listening to your master promise my father how comfortable my life was going to be under the order’s protection. No more bad dreams for anyone in the village. No more angry fathers complaining that I’d convinced their daughters I was a blond-haired demigod with a physique like a Special Guardsman.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘Well, I was young. You use whatever advantages nature’s given you.’

‘You are no creature of nature, feybreed,’ said Pullinger, his features distorted behind the cursewall. ‘But you may be in a position to taste a little more freedom than you currently possess.’

‘You have my attention,’ said the Whisperer.

‘Our seers have just returned from a town called Hundred Locks,’ said Pullinger. ‘Does the name mean anything to you?’

‘Big dike wall up north — across the bay from the city-states and the Commonshare. My appreciation of Jackelian geography has been, well-’ he indicated the walls of the chamber ‘-somewhat restricted.’

‘How odd, then,’ said Pullinger, ‘that our seers detected the residue of manifestation there; fey manifestation, which they matched to the signature of one of our Hawklam Asylum residents. A continual and abiding presence was how they described it. Centred on a house recently filled with dead bodies — Seventy Star Hall. I suppose that name means nothing to you either?’