Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

It was true. Outside the church an army of metal creatures stomped in perfect unison, three ranks deep, their boilers pouring dirty black smoke into the air.

‘They are not of the people,’ said Steamswipe, his fierce vision plate scanning the regiment of marching things. ‘They are golem, the clumsy manufacturings of your softbody mechomancers, although I do not doubt the corpses of many of the people informed their architecture.’

Oliver looked closer and saw that Steamswipe was correct. There was none of the uniqueness, none of the life of the citizens of the Steammen Free State in their design. They were peas in a pod, a shambling army of automated undead, transaction engine drums turning in their chests, clumsy welds and rivets sealing their bodies. The fad for steammen produced by companies like Doyce and Clennam had faded decades ago, after the clumsy metal butlers had shown a tendency to pour boiling soup on dinner guests, set fire to drawing rooms and trample over family pets and children. Even the automatics from the workshops of the Catosian League could not begin to approach the simplest of King Steam’s subjects. These new creatures were primitive, but still a cut above the servants that had rolled out of Clennam’s Middlesteel mills — progress of a sort.

‘There’s something wrong with them,’ said Oliver.

‘Everything about them is wrong. They are a violation of the life metal,’ said Steamswipe. ‘A sacrilegious affront by you damn softbodies cast in mockery of our perfection.’

At the knight’s side Lord Wireburn rumbled from his holster, ‘They must be destroyed .’

‘Violation they may be,’ said Harry. ‘But I would say that Shadowclock has solved its labour shortage.’

‘No,’ said Oliver. ‘Can’t you feel it? There are souls inside those things, pieces of human flesh trapped inside the metal. Animals too in some of them. The brains, the hearts of birds and swine. It’s hideous.’

Harry stared down at the legion of golems shaking the windowsill. In the street the families of miners stood and gawked at the sight, children running behind the primitive things as if the coronation carnivals had started early. ‘A fusion of animal and steamman? Damn but I wouldn’t want some mechomancer stuffing my liver inside one of those things.’

Lord Wireburn seethed. ‘Nor would our people want your frail meat cooking over our soul boards. This is dark sorcery indeed.’

‘Keeper of the Eternal Flame,’ said Steamswipe, ‘have you heard of such a foul practice before?’

‘In ancient times such monstrosities existed,’ spat the weapon. ‘They were known as metal-fleshers. Fusions of meat and steamman creeping over the ice sheets to murder each other for parts, blood to drink, bones to consume. But they were self-organizing, not like these uniform things, so obviously milled by the race of man.’

Behind them the preacher sat down laughing and lit a pipe.

‘What’s so funny, old man?’ asked Harry.

‘Harold, I am only laughing so I don’t cry. Just when you get to an age when you think you’ve seen every horror, every pain we’re capable of inflicting on each other, along comes something to shock you out of your dotage. Such baleful ingenu ity. You think those things need sleep? Or rest breaks? Gas flares won’t slow them down and if there’s a cave-in, by the Circle, you can just leave them under the rubble, they’d probably rather die anyway.’

‘Shut up, old man,’ shouted Harry. ‘Get the word to the grasper. There’s going to be a shipment of miners out of Shadowclock in the next few nights. The people those things are replacing. I need to know when.’

‘Who lit a fire under your tail, Harold?’

‘It’s the end game, preacher. If the governor is using those things in the mines he has gone well beyond caring if word leaks back to the House of Guardians about the state of affairs in Shadowclock. Why do you think that would be?’

The preacher stood up. ‘Because fairly soon it won’t matter whether it does or not.’

Down below the sea of clumsy steammen-people hybrids continued to flow past the church.

‘It matters to me,’ whispered Oliver.

In the Court of the Air’s monitorarium, Surveillant Seven’s telescope clacked as it swung a degree to the left. A skrayper had momentarily floated into the surveillant’s field of vision, blocking her view. Down in the troposphere the massive balloon-like creature was being pursued by a hunt of lash-lites, a dozen of the leathery-winged lizard people riding the thin atmosphere. They were climbing for height, trying to avoid the clawed tentacles dangling underneath the skrayper. There seemed to be a lot of lashlite hunts going on at the moment. Surveillant Seven had counted at least five in the last week.

Admittedly she had been working longer than anyone else realized — her monitorarium logs doctored between shifts to make it look like she had been taking her restoration cycle breaks. Most surveillants could last a week or two without sleep — she had done her first four days without even sipping at the potions in her drinking tube; just using the Court’s worldsinger techniques. If she had joined the order on the ground she would have made them come up with a new tattoo scheme to accommodate the number of flowers they would have had to etch on her forehead.

It was no accident they had chosen her for this duty. She was the best of the best, better perhaps than even her furtive masters realized. She put aside the temptation to watch the lashlites at play and dialled up the power of the telescope, the rubber of the viewing hood disconcertingly cold in the unheated monitorarium. There it was! Exactly what she thought she had glimpsed in her wide sweep before the skrayper had blocked the sight.

A little green pinprick in the night. Increase the resolution again, wait for the Court’s transaction engine to catch up with the focus. A pile of powder burning in the darkness, giving off a queer green energy that nearly scorched her eyes. Before the Court’s training she could have had her boots standing in that fiery powder and she would not have noticed it burning. Now, at this resolution, it was like staring into the face of the sun.

She noted the location. A church roof in Shadowclock. Her masters would be pleased — although this was one report that would not be passed through the official channel of the monitors. Her testimony would be given verbally, in some distant corner of the Court; a secret within a secret. The runaway wolftaker had been rumbled. The dangerous, disreputable Harry Stave was being tracked once more and this time the devious jigger would not slip away from her scope.

Prince Alpheus looked at the doctor. Even to his unseasoned eye the man did not seem worthy of the low standard of the Middlesteel College of Surgeons; his hands were shaking so badly that he could barely prepare the syringe.

‘If this is a show of concern for my health,’ said Prince Alpheus, ‘it’s rather late.’

Flare watched the greedy eyes of the two Greenhall functionaries who had accompanied the doctor to the palace. They stood like vampires waiting for the vial of royal blood to be handed over.

‘It is a security issue,’ said the Captain of the Special Guard. ‘They want to make sure you have the markers of the house royal in your blood.’

‘Given they bred me like a damn spaniel I would think that wasn’t in doubt.’

‘His Highness is most probably unaware of the Prince Silvar affair,’ said one of the Greenhall mandarins. ‘Where three royal guardsmen from Quatershift tried to swap the heir-apparent with a doppelganger supplied by the caliphs. A failed attempt to create a monarchy in exile and destabilize parliament. That was before the shifties had their own revolution of course.’