Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Oliver was at the bottom of a sea. Sometimes he would rise towards the surface and the press of the depths would ease. He would be close enough to the light to hear the voices. A strident tone, someone complaining. ‘ I ’ m an architect — not a vet .’

Then it was gone. At other times he would hear singing. Strange melodies, inhuman but perfect. Not words though. Some sort of code. Then he would sink again into a hall of perfect blackness. It was peaceful, timeless, until a white dot appeared at the end of the hall. It grew bigger, taking form — unpleasant form.

The Whisperer.

‘Oliver,’ it hissed. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘This isn’t a dream,’ said Oliver. ‘I’m not dreaming.’

‘Focus on me, Oliver. Stay with me, you’re in a coma. Your body has nearly died twice in the last week.’

‘I feel so light, Nathaniel, like I might float away.’

‘You’ll float away forever, boy. You’ve been poisoned. Thetwo slave hunters from Cassarabia had some kind of toxin gland in their teeth — the architects think it originates fom a poisonous eel.’

‘Architects?’

‘You’re in the Steammen Free State, the mountains of Mechancia. King Steam’s own surgeons are trying to save you.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Oliver. ‘Whisperer, you look sick yourself, thinner — those wounds on your side…?’

‘My food’s been off the last few days,’ coughed the Whisperer. ‘And I walked into a door; but you should see the door.’

Oliver lay down on the hall’s infinite floor. ‘Let’s sleep then. Always better after sleep.’

‘Don’t sleep,’ shouted the Whisperer. ‘Oliver, stay with me. You sleep and you’re not going to wake up. Your body isn’t fighting off the infection well enough — the poison isn’t fey, it isn’t worldsinger magic, so your body doesn’t care, the part of you that’s from beyond the feymist curtain doesn’t give a damn about a mundane infection.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Oliver. ‘It’s time for a rest.’

‘Don’t care was made to care,’ said the Whisperer, grabbing Oliver’s arm. ‘Well jigger it, you’re going to die anyway.’

Something leapt out of the Whisperer’s body and into Oliver’s arm, as if his limb was being dipped in acid. Screaming, Oliver tried to roll away.

‘Does that get the old fey juices flowing, Oliver? Still want to sleep?’

Darkness everywhere, nowhere to run. Oliver tried to struggle free of the Whisperer’s grasp, but the creature seized his ankle and another bolt of agony flared like a sun in his leg, muscles bursting and burning.

‘This isn’t biological, Oliver, just you and me, a little fey horse-play. The kind of japes that got me buried alive in Hawklam Asylum all those years ago.’

Scrambling for freedom, Oliver’s body started convulsing, daggers of pain thrusting in at him from all directions. ‘Please! For the love of the Circle … the pain, you’re killing me.’

‘You and me both, Oliver,’ the Whisperer laughed. ‘In for a ha’penny in for a guinea. Let’s see just how much excitement that perfectly formed man-suit you hide in can take, shall we?’

Sinews erupted, flesh smoking, the black hall breaking up as cracks of red pain ran up its ebony walls. Crimson silhouettes poured from Oliver’s mouth, angry red traceries of demon-shapes vomiting out from his throat. They swarmed like hornets, twisting around and diving towards his fey assailant. The Whisperer swayed, falling back; part of his arm had vanished, boiling away into steam. ‘Took long enough to bloody arrive, didn’t you?’

Driving up like magma from a volcano, Oliver rode the pain, higher and higher, his hall of peace falling away as he was propelled into a room of white stone, his back arching, soaked in sweat.

Oliver lay panting on a slab-like table. White. In fact, everything seemed white, pure clean light pouring into the room from a glass ceiling. Snow-frosted mountains outside were the only sign he had not been expelled from hell and gobbed out into heaven. Coughing, Oliver clawed at the mask on his face — a yellow mist-like substance smoked out of it and it tasted like Damson Griggs’s carrot broth.

His leg seemed heavy; glancing down, he found what looked like a massive spider sitting on his ankles — the unexpected sight of which made the half-delirious Oliver scream.

‘Calm yourself,’ said a voice. ‘It’s only a mu-body.’

A steamman came into view, light gleaming off his polished shell like a dozen star glints. ‘You are in the hall of the architects, young softbody — I am what passes for an expert in comparative medicine.’

‘This is Mechancia, then?’

‘Indeed it is. Your friend carried you in,’ said the steamman. ‘Lucky to be activate, you are. Your body was infected by the bite of a creature warped by biomancy, your system juices poisoned at a very basic level; similar to crystal blight in my own people. I was in the process of developing a filter to clean your juices when your biology eventually rejected the poison on its own. This is not a capability I was aware your race possessed. Your traders bring me copies of the journals of your Royal Institute — but I have never read of such an advanced case of self-healing.’

Oliver remembered the Whisperer burning his body. He wiped away the sweat that was pouring down into his eyes. ‘I had some help.’

The steamman tapped the drone sitting on his leg. ‘Indeed you did. There is a test filter inserted in your ankle. I can leave it in — it will dissolve harmlessly in time — or this healer can remove it if you prefer to wait a day.’

‘Leave it in,’ said Oliver. ‘I want to see Harry.’

‘Your friend is meeting with the court,’ said the architect. ‘You must rest.’

Oliver tried to swing himself off the table, but he collapsed back, as weak as a newborn.

‘We are at quite an altitude here. Apart from your system-juice poisoning, your softbody biology will require time to adapt to the thinness of air in the city.’

‘Please, Architect …’

‘Architect Goldhead,’ said the steamman. ‘My skills as a fastblood healer may have previously been limited to journal reading, but even I can see that you need recovery time and nourishment, young softbody. Please to lie down, or with a heavy boiler I will command my drones to bind you to the table.’

Oliver’s stomach had set to rumbling at the mention of food. ‘Nourishment would be very welcome, Architect Goldhead.’

‘I have already alerted our embassy staff,’ said the architect. ‘They have much experience with preparing your food organics in the ways prescribed by fastbloods.’

Meals cooked by a race that could not taste? Well, judging by the sounds coming from his stomach he was not going to complain.

Oliver spent two more days in the surgery of the steamman architect. Not allowed visitors, the only company he kept was that of the voiceless spider-like medical mu-bodies and their master. Oliver would watch the architect’s gleaming over-sized gold skull nodding silently in thought as he busied about the room.

He had plenty of time to contemplate the mountain vastness of Mechancia from the large clear windows in the surgery. The city’s mist-shrouded buildings rose from the mountains like pearl coral, railing-protected paths twisting around the slopes, wide stairs carved out of stone. At night he could hear high winds rustling a thousand prayer flags, colourful streamers stroked by the wind as chimes made of steammen bones pealed and tinkled to the wind’s rhythms.

During the day, Oliver would watch steammen children in their borrowed nursery bodies climb the stairs to open-walled platforms on the peaks opposite the hall of architects. There they would sit in ordered rows and sing in their bizarre machine code, ancient hymns to the Steamo Loas and their ancestors: Steelbhalah-Waldo, Sogbo-Pipes, Legba of the Valves.