Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘The undercity!’ said the count.

‘Ah, yes, you came down on the private atmospheric line, didn’t you?’ said the assessor. ‘A little deeper than you realized perhaps.’

‘The outlaws of Grimhope didn’t raise the fortune sitting on my head,’ said Molly.

‘Obviously not,’ said the assessor. ‘But we are a long way from Grimhope, m’dear.’

‘This is a mortal bad turn,’ whined Commodore Black. One of the toppers shoved him to silence with the butt of his carbine and Nickleby had to help him back to his feet.

As they rounded the nearest of the ziggurats Molly passed by a line of shambling steamman walking out from the tent city. Something about the creatures was wrong. She could see it in their zombie-like walk — see it in the unnatural uniformity of the bodies — the metal equivalent of a womb mage’s organic breedings.

She got closer and one of the steamman stopped in the line. ‘Molly!’ the voice grated from a voicebox in the metal skull. ‘Molly, is that you?’

Molly stopped. ‘I-’

‘Molly, it’s me. Sainty, from the Sun Gate workhouse.’

Molly studied the poorly riveted machine life. ‘But you are…’

‘They did this to me!’ Sainty’s voice was hard to understand through the hisses and metallic popping. ‘They were looking for you, but they took us away — the ones they didn’t murder like Rachael. They peeled us into slices and jammed us into our new bodies. Most of the Sun Gate house is down here. With the others, with the-’

A man wielding a button-encrusted wand strode towards them and the girl who had been Sainty fell down to her metal knees, a fizz of agony whistling from her voicebox. ‘No talking among the equalized. Two minutes of pain as punishment.’

One of the toppers grabbed Molly by the arms as she tried to lash at the overseer who moved behind the safety of his column of shambling metal slaves.

‘You jigger, leave her alone. It was me that started the talking. What are you doing to her — what have you done to my friend?’

‘She is serving her purpose,’ responded the overseer. ‘When you have been equalized you will understand. Now move on or I shall increase this compatriot’s punishment level further. And hope that you are not assigned to my brigade after you have undergone the conversion.’

‘If she lives long enough to get a new body I believe she will count herself fortunate,’ said the assessor.

‘Come, lass,’ said Commodore Black, watching the guards restraining Nickleby. ‘These black-hearted cavern demons are in no mood to show us a drop of mercy. Help your friend as best you can by leaving her be.’

Pushed and shoved by the toppers, the three of them stumbled after the assessor. She led them across the ruined city and into the centre of the overgrown metropolis. They approached the largest of the ziggurats down a cracked boulevard lined by limb-like black stone lamps, light crystals long dead but recently superseded by gas lanterns lashed to their heads by wire ties. Up to the central stairs of the ziggurat. It had not looked so high from street level, but Molly quickly found her legs aching, having to rest at the caprice of their guards’ need to pause for a breath.

From the stone-hewn treads she could look down across the entirety of the ruins. To the right there was a yawning pit circled by scaffolding and wooden ramps where the activity of the resurrected Chimecan city seemed to be concentrated, legions of the dull metal bodies of human-steamman hybrids filing down into the darkness, the distant thump of machines and the whistle of steam engines venting pressure to the dance of spinning regulators. Behind them was the wall of the grotto where their cell had been buried, carved figures stretching from the floor to the mist-shrouded ceiling in an extended procession of monstrosities. Bare-breasted warriors from the race of man — both male and female — with dome-like crystal helmets and the folded legs of locusts. Molly saw Count Vauxtion following the course of her gaze; the ancient statues and the new mine works. From the look of curiosity on his face, her implacable hunter obviously had as little idea as the rest of them what was going on down here.

There were guards at the top of the ziggurat, wearing red cloaks and robe-like uniforms. Brilliant men. So the bullyboys of Grimhope were in on this place’s forbidding subterranean machinations. She should have expected no less. The assessor moved through the soldiers’ ranks and there, seated on a throne, was the dark-haired leader of Grimhope, lord of this broken place.

Molly, the commodore and the pensman were dragged in front of his throne.

‘Tzlayloc!’

‘Compatriot Templar,’ said the rebel lord. ‘So much nuisance in the form of one young damson, it hardly seems possible you have put me to this much trouble.’

‘You know him?’ said Nickleby.

‘Silas, he’s the King of Grimhope. You pulled me out of his capital in the Duitzilopochtli Deeps.’

‘A temporary parting only, it seems,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘If I had but known you were my guest then … but you do not appear so sure, compatriot pensman?’

‘I’m a little older than Molly,’ said Nickleby. ‘Old enough to remember when there was an exemption on real-box pictures being published in the penny sheets. Pictures of the leaders of the Carlist uprising, Jacob Walwyn .’

‘You have an astute eye,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘But Walwyn is dead. That naive student of Benjamin Carl breathed his last during the uprising, his blood running in the gutters alongside the rest of the Carlists when their hearts and methods proved ineffectual to the tasks that history demanded of them. They were soft while their enemy was hard, so they were broken by their own weakness. Believe me, that is not a mistake Tzlayloc intends to make.’

‘If you are my patron,’ said Count Vauxtion stepping forward, ‘and you are satisfied that I have completed my commission, then I shall take my leave. I fear I find Jackelian politics rather tedious.’

‘Compatriot Vauxtion, how good to finally see you without the distortion of a mirror crackling between us. Your words wound me. I am sure you follow the politics of your adopted land as closely as you did at home. You have proved a most capable mug-hunter,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘But then you did come highly recommended.’

‘Recommended by whom?’

A figure in a plain blue military tunic weighed down with medals moved out from behind the line of guards, worldsingers at either side, their robes cut in a foreign style. The sword arm of Count Vauxtion’s craynarbian retainer rattled in anger at the sight of the broken boxer’s nose and brutish features. ‘Captain Arinze!’

‘ Citizen-Marshal Arinze now,’ retorted the officer. ‘But I hardly expect you two to be familiar with the uniforms of the people’s army; the cut has been updated quite a bit since you escaped from the Commonshare.’

‘Another damn shiftie,’ said Molly, her stare moving between the count and the marshal. ‘This whole place is filthy with them.’

‘Oh, but the count isn’t a Quatershiftian any more, young compatriot,’ said the officer. ‘He forfeited that right when he fled over our border. You recall your speech to the general command on the night before the last battle and what I advised you then, don’t you, count? It seems I chose the winning side after all, old man. And now it is I that carry the marshal’s baton while you have been serving under my command in a manner of speaking, given it is the Commonshare’s gold that has been paying to assist our compatriots across the border. You’ve kept your title but lost your country, old man. I hope the bargain has been worth it.’

‘While you have kept your uniform but lost everything that once made it worth wearing,’ spat the count. ‘A bargain which I am sure you feel well made.’