Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘You’re it, are you?’ said the Shadow Bear. ‘She’s had a thousand damn years and you are the best she could cobble together. It’s a wonder I wasn’t called in earlier.’

The Observer’s words out on the cold moors echoed in Oliver’s mind. ‘ I will be removed, Oliver. No more nails. No more damage limitation. You will be assigned something very dangerous with a very short fuse instead .’

‘The fuse, I presume?’ said Oliver.

The Shadow Bear glared around the cell, but its gaze was extending across nations. ‘What a bloody mess. You haven’t looked after the shop at all, have you?’

Oliver laughed, the strangeness of the sound echoing around the frozen timescape. ‘What in Circle’s name do you know about living in real life?’

‘That’s new,’ said the Shadow Bear. ‘No wonder you spooked her into calling me in, but it’s not nearly enough to save you. Personally speaking, if it was me, I would scurry away down that rat tunnel she laid the last time there was trouble here.’ It pointed an angry finger at Oliver. ‘I was made for this. After you smears of water and meat have royally rogered up, I might even hold off from bringing this place down, just so I can tarry a little with the enemy. It has been a bloody age since I had some fun.’

Oliver thrust his face to within an inch of the featureless silhouette of the Shadow Bear. ‘Best you start burning then, short little fuse. I would imagine you have a lot of things to do.’

The Shadow Bear shook its head in disgust. ‘Man, did she ever go native.’

It vanished like it had never been and time became fluid again.

There were moments when the pain became so intense that it did not even hurt, when the burning fire eating away at Molly’s skin grew hot enough for her suffering to transcend the capacity of her nerves to signal their agony. Those brief interludes of cold calm were disrupted when the cross of stone she was strapped to sensed her ascension and shifted the pattern of pain, making it a line of dancing impaling spikes or the crushing grip of a mountain squeezing her down. It was so clever, the ebony slab. It could sense when her mind was about to shut down and splinter into schizophrenic shards to isolate her from the torrent of suffering. Seconds before her mind collapsed the cross would suddenly turn itself off, leaving her senses drifting in the warm cavern air, nothing to watch but the play of Chimecan lantern crystals as they dimmed and flared with the surges of earthflow.

‘It is said that it can become addictive,’ said Tzlayloc. How long had he been standing there, watching her writhe and yell? ‘Such a clever artifice from the coldtime. The stone is as much a surgeon as it is a torturer; it can keep you alive for years, breaking you and then mending you. The beauty of it is that it’s all in the mind. It’s like a microcosm of life — giving you a little pain, holding out the promise of a little pleasure — or at least a respite from your grief.’

It was difficult for Molly to focus, even when the cross-shaped slab was waiting for her to recover. She tried not to bite her tongue as she replied, ‘What do you want? I’ll give it to you, just let me off this.’

‘This isn’t what I want ,’ said Tzlayloc, the man who had once been Jacob Walwyn. ‘Please do not think that. But it is necessary . You are the last operator, Compatriot Templar. What you feel is what the Hexmachina feels — there are no other operators for it to draw upon, for it to distribute its senses among. When I torture you, I torture it.’

‘I haven’t even met the Hexmachina,’ sobbed Molly.

‘Oh, but I think you have.’ Tzlayloc stroked the crystal walls of the gem behind Molly, the blood of her family amplifying her suffering as a lens focuses light. ‘Like the rest of your distant relatives. I wager you see things at night, in dreams. A young child perhaps?’

Her ghost — the young spirit at Tock House — was the Hexmachina?

‘I have seen it in dreams myself,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘And its real body too, glimpses of it scuttling about the tunnels. I went deep, Compatriot Templar, after the uprising. Even Grimhope was no protection for Jacob Walwyn, with mug-hunters and outlaws willing to risk the free city to turn me in for the bounty on my head. I went further and deeper than any since the fall of Chimeca. Crawling through rubble falls and shinning down air stacks, past the bones of tomb robbers, past the dust and armour of Chimecan legionnaires who had stayed at their posts to the bitter end.’

‘I drank from underground lakes that haven’t been seen for a millennium, ate the mushrooms the old empire grew to save their people from starvation. Even the wild stock the locust priests kept for themselves. Some of their machines are still breathing down there, living machines made of meat, some of the same sorcery which survives weakly diluted over in the dunes of Cassarabia.’

Molly screamed as the slab decided her body was fit enough for another burst of agony.

‘I am sorry, compatriot,’ said Tzlayloc, ‘but you are the key. Can’t you feel it? Xam-ku is almost with us now and Toxicatl, all the shadows of Wildcaotyl. Your agony is unstitching the prison your ancestor and his ill-advised creations sealed them in. Soon the Hexmachina will be able to stand it no more and will be drawn here to try to save you — and we shall tear it to pieces.’

She could see the outlines of the old ones etched in the air, their hungry mandibles clicking in anticipation, awakening memories of ancient clashes against the filthy powerful parasites. Seven holy machines and a band of desperate warriors from every race on the continent locked in a deadly battle to win their freedom. The old evil was back, but its presence was not yet permanent. It would take the Hexmachina’s destruction and the feast of souls the leader of Grimhope was planning to consolidate its hold. Hearts tossed into the pyres of Chimecan rites; for what need did the equalized have of beating meat in their chests? Equals required no passion for jealousy, no striving for betterment, no hope to feed their dreams. Their mean was set for them and fixed in their brave new bodies for Tzlayloc’s brave new world.

Molly’s spine arched on the slab, her cries carrying across the ruined city. ‘You can’t trust the old ones,’ she managed through clenched teeth.

‘They are a force, nothing more,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Our belief is their manna, our devotion their sustenance. As a gale drives a windmill so we shall harness the Wildcaotyl as the tailwind behind our cause. It is an eminently practical arrangement. They gorge on our souls and there are so many souls for them above ground that will not be missed. Counting-house masters, mill overseers, emperors and every other uncommunityist vampire who has been feeding on the people since the wheel of history began turning. Turnabout is fair play, is it not? They have gnawed at our sinews for long enough. Now it is our turn to make a meal out of them.’

‘Don’t — do — it,’ Molly begged.

‘Think of it, Molly Templar. Our compatriots in Quatershift have been running the unproductive leeches of their land through Gideon’s Collars for a decade and producing nothing more than compost for their farms. But with the gods of Wildcaotyl melded with the revolution there is nothing that we will not be able to achieve — no enemy we cannot cut down. We shall create a perfect reign of equality that will last for all eternity.’

Molly screamed as she burned. ‘Please!’

Tears rolled down Tzlayloc’s face. ‘I shall make you a saint, Molly. I shall raise temples to you, the poor street girl who gave her life to seal our perfect world. Your suffering is worth that, is it not, surely you must want to help us?’