Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘Well made indeed.’ The marshal waved at the soldiers and they lugged forward a chest. ‘But let it not be said we are not men of our word. I said the Commonshare would fund our compatriots’ activities in Jackals and so we will. Enjoy the money while you can, compatriot; soon it will be as much of an anachronism as your title and the soiled remnants of your estate. A society of equals needs no currency save our devotion to the cause.’

The commodore’s eyes widened when he saw the fat bags of guineas lying in the chest. ‘Are you blessed fools? What does your monstrous realm want with this needy lass and a weary submariner like poor old Blacky?’

‘We require only the good will of our neighbours,’ said the Quatershiftian soldier.

‘That is a courteous way of saying it is his payment for a corner of Jackals,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Nothing too grand … everything from the border south to Comlonney in a sixty-mile strip. That includes an equal share of Shadowclock and the celgas mines of course.’

‘You belong in an asylum, Walwyn,’ said Nickleby. ‘The navy isn’t going to sit back and watch the Commonshare lower their cursewall, form up and march across the border. You’ll bring down another Reudox on the poor devils’ heads. There’ll be hundreds of thousands of Quatershiftian corpses lying dead in their cities as the price for your insane war.’

‘You write very well,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘I have always thought so. With your left hand I believe?’

The pensman’s guards seized Nickleby and hauled him forward. ‘However, I found your pieces a little too flowery for my taste. Let me show you what I am about to do to Jackals’ beloved Royal Aerostatical Navy.’ He slid out a sabre from a guard’s belt and whipped it down across Nickleby’s left arm, the severed hand tumbling out to land at the marshal’s feet. ‘Difficult to concentrate isn’t it,’ said Tzlayloc as the pensman screamed, clutching his bloody stump. ‘Of course, to make my point properly I should have cut off your head, but then there wouldn’t be enough left of you to undergo the equalization.’

He pointed at the fiery pit behind them and the guards dragged Nickleby towards it, thrusting the bleeding remains of his arm into the coals. The pensman was unconscious by the time his wrist had been cauterized.

Tzlayloc caressed Molly’s cheek as she swore at the rebel leader. ‘Don’t worry, Compatriot Templar. He shall have a new metal hand soon enough.’

‘Have you horrendous swine no blessed compassion?’ shouted Commodore Black.

‘My compassion is for the people suffering under the tyranny above ground,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Not war criminals and propagandists from the old regime. I see you are shocked, commodore. I know all about you and your friends — we have plenty of brothers and sisters in the engine rooms of Greenhall. And you must have done worse in your time as a science pirate, Samson Dark!’

Molly looked in confusion at the commodore.

‘You’re touched in the head,’ said the commodore. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I will admit, your fake blood code and the new face your back-street worldsinger gave you had our compatriots in Greenhall puzzled, Captain Dark. But Greenhall is not the only institution to track the ancient bloodlines.’ He beckoned with a finger and a figure dressed like a Jackelian country squire came forward, his waistcoat bulging tight over a muscular chest. ‘I believe you know our compatriot from the Court of the Air.’

Commodore Black flew at the figure in a frenzy, but the target of his fury became a blur, tripping the submariner and allowing the guards to seize his arms and restrain the bear of a man.

‘Wildrake,’ yelled the commodore, struggling, ‘stand these beasts down and let’s you and me get to it.’

‘You have become flabby, captain,’ said Jamie Wildrake. ‘Your pectorals are a disgrace to a fighting man. But you are to be congratulated on the length of time you have had to let them go to ruin. Fourteen years and the Court were convinced you had died with the rest of your fleet on the island.’

‘Commodore,’ said Molly, ‘what in the Circle’s name is he talking about?’

‘Commodore is it now?’ said the wolftaker. ‘Such a lowly title for the Duke of Ferniethian. You have been hobnobbing with the last of the Jackelian aristocracy, little street girl. The royalist buccaneers had been a thorn in our side since the end of the civil war. But until Dark came along they were disorganized, breeding like sea snakes in their ancient stolen boats. Samson Dark united the squabbling emigre families and moulded them into a formidable menace to the trading routes.’

‘It took your filthy treachery to sink us,’ said the commodore. ‘There wasn’t a Jackelian skipper fit to tilt a sea lance against us.’

‘You can’t betray a cause you don’t believe in,’ said Wildrake. ‘As our present masters of Jackals are about to discover.’

‘You’re a crusher?’ said Molly. ‘And you’re working with these jiggers?’

‘He’s the worst of all crushers,’ said Commodore Black. ‘There’s a whole nest of them in the sky, watching us like we are blessed ants, reaching down to stamp us out when they see us scurrying the wrong way.’

‘Then you should applaud what I am about to achieve, Dark,’ said the wolftaker. ‘What your nobles in exile couldn’t accomplish in five hundred years of futile raids and a trail of plundered burning merchantmen. No more parliament — the corrupt legacy of Kirkhill torn to pieces.’

‘There is no finer compatriot in all of Jackals,’ said Marshal Arinze, stroking Wildrake’s back as if the wolftaker were his child. ‘A true son of the revolution, a shining example of how a brother can have his eyes opened by the truth and renounce the uncommunityist tenets of his birth. Just look how solid his body is now. He is a sword of right-thought, a blade for us to plunge into the heart of the people’s enemy.’

‘You traitorous bloody jigger,’ hollered Molly. ‘Your perfect neck is going to end up swinging on the end of a rope at Bonegate.’

Marshal Arinze backhanded Molly’s face, slapping her to the ground. ‘I wish I had the opportunity to find you a place in one of our camps, girl, open your eyes to the truth of Carlism — you who were born with so little, you who should have been a natural soldier in our cause. But you have another way to serve.’

‘I won’t serve you. You and your shiftie friends are going to be slaughtered,’ said Molly. ‘The moment you come across the border our people will bury your whole dirty army, just like we always do.’

Tzlayloc laughed along with the marshal, sweeping his arm down to the ravine where his legions were toiling. ‘But our neighbours from Quatershift won’t be coming over the border to aid us, Compatriot Templar. They will be coming under it. This city isn’t the only secret the ancient shades of Wildcaotyl have shared with me. They have led me to the deepest atmospheric tunnel routes, half ruined and collapsed with age, but nothing that a dedicated force toiling for their freedom, striving for an equal society, could not clear. Your tyranny of shopkeepers and mill masters is about to tumble before the truth of the revolution, Compatriot Templar. In a few days I will have a brigade of the people’s army ready to march onto Middlesteel’s own doorstep. This time the events of the age will not find us wanting. We are not the lenient philosophers and sentimental combination families that fell to Jackals’ guns fifteen years ago. We have a purity of purpose.’

Molly was trembling. It sounded mad, but her heart told her that the decades-long bloodbath in Quatershift was about to be exported to her home. The old empire’s atmospheric lines — they must have cleared near two hundred miles of tunnels to get to the border with the Commonshare.