Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘I had two sons once. They paid for you.’

‘That’s it?’ said Molly. ‘You spent all that time tracking me down for them and you’re switching sides just like that?’

‘I choose who I work for,’ said the count. ‘And I choose which commissions I accept. I warned Tzlayloc once that he would be well advised not to try and change the terms of my contract halfway through the job. He has, and now at least one of us is going to be very unhappy with that decision.’

‘Let’s be away, now,’ said the commodore. ‘Before these devils realize you have seen the error of your ways. We can toast your change of heart back at Tock House if your wicked crew of toppers have left any bottles in my cellar.’

‘I wasn’t lying about the Third Brigade,’ said Count Vauxtion. ‘And the walls of your folly aren’t thick enough to resist shot and cannon.’

‘You have not freed us to rescue us,’ said Steamswipe, leaving the cell and smashing the glass case where Lord Wireburn lay trapped.

‘About time,’ grumbled the holy weapon.

‘You need our swords,’ said Steamswipe, tossing Oliver’s witch-blade back to him. ‘I have faced your softbody nation on the field of honour often enough to recognize your cunning.’

‘You have a long memory if you can remember staring north from the Steamman Free State and seeing any field other than killing ones in Quatershift.’ The count sketched a map into the dirt of the floor with his cane. ‘This is the mine works on the floor of the cavern, this is the Jackelian terminus for the atmospheric line — under vacuum now. And this is the chamber where they store the blasting casks of blow-barrel sap, enough barrels to put a dent in a mountain. If we ignite it we can bury the entire invasion force in the tunnel under a thousand tonnes of rubble.’

‘They are your countrymen,’ said Nickleby.

‘I’m a Jackelian now,’ said the count. He held up the sabre and the long knife he had hidden inside his sword cane. ‘These are my debating sticks, don’t you know?’

Oliver loaded both his pistols. ‘Let us go and discuss politics with Tzlayloc then.’

Molly saw that the count had produced the gas gun she had seen him use in Grimhope, while the commodore and Nickleby liberated pistols out of the dead guardsmen’s holsters. Count Vauxtion led them across the lost city, the gas gun pressed into Molly’s back, Oliver suggesting paths through the dark overgrown buildings that avoided the Special Guardsmen and twisted fey things. Molly and her two companions from Tock House played the roles of mistreated prisoners to perfection, aided by the prop of Nickleby’s blackened stump of an arm. When brilliant men and the Commonshare’s skirmishers challenged them, the count flourished the letters of passage from Tzlayloc; that and the assassin’s menacing manner were enough to get them to the edge of the mine.

Bright engineers’ lanterns augmented the Chimecan crystals’ twilight inside the pit, the same style of lamps Oliver had seen in Shadowclock’s tall streets. The stink of badly vented steam-engine smoke and the bash of equipment rose from the pit. Metal legions of the equalized laboured below. They sang the outlawed songs of the uprising with their scratchy voiceboxes, the once-organic population of Grimhope and pressed miners of Shadowclock both toiling under the supervision of brilliant men.

On the pit’s sides the rickety scaffolding and ladders were being upgraded, replaced with reinforced ramps, strong enough to support the columns, cannon and sea of boots of the Third Brigade. The group had almost reached the floor of the pit when a shout sounded from the cavern above. Marshal Arinze.

‘Compatriot Vauxtion,’ shouted the officer. ‘Our Jackelian brothers want the girl back on the cross. Why are you down there?’

‘Keep moving to the bottom of the ramp,’ whispered the count, then shouted back up: ‘Tzlayloc wants the girl to see her companions undergo equalization in the conversion mills. He believes it will help amplify Compatriot Templar’s suffering on the pain device.’

‘Splendid,’ the marshal called down. ‘Now why don’t you explain to me how they are going to equalize that brute of a steamman warrior you have with you?’

He said something to his troopers and they began slipping crystal charges out of their bandoliers and unslinging their rifles. Upheaval erupted across the pit floor, shots crackling down as Steamswipe returned fire, rotating sunbursts searing the walls with plasma light. Equalized workers milled around, trying to work out where and why the sudden explosion of violence had interrupted their toil. A number of the press-ganged compatriots shuffled towards the ramps, trying to use the confusion as cover to escape; their overseers frantically worked their discipline rods and the equalized workers tumbled to the ground in anguish.

‘Behind you,’ warned Molly as a wave of loyalist equalized shambled towards Steamswipe brandishing picks and pressure cutters. The steamman knight sang to Lord Wireburn in machine tongue and the holy relic poured forth a jet of blue fire, Steamswipe spraying the line from left to right and back again. Screams from the human-machine hybrids died as their voiceboxes exploded in the unearthly fire, a shower of molten metal and charcoaled flesh raining back on the advancing children of the revolution.

Lord Wireburn was smoking in the knight’s manipulator arms, the dark oil which slicked his surface fully burnt off. ‘Suffer not these abominations to live, Steamswipe. Eradicate every last one of the filthy outrages.’

‘Close quarters,’ barked Count Vauxtion. Their rear was being rushed by a mob of overseers, unarmed except for their discipline rods. Nickleby and the commodore were frantically reloading from their stolen bandoliers as Oliver raised both pistols and discharged them at the scaffolding joins. High above soldiers plunged into the air as a section of the ramp gave way, an explosion of iron pipes and dust rolling out into their attackers. Both blades from Vauxtion’s cane were in his hands as he stepped lightly through the sudden dust storm, flicking his sabre and long knife like butterfly wings, cutting throats and slitting sinews.

Tucked in Oliver’s belt the witch-blade shivered with delight; here was an enemy it could engage without the pain of trying to penetrate fey-twisted muscle. Oliver stepped forward and was engulfed by the cloud of rock dust, the witch-blade grown sword long. He moved with a stamping, twisting gait, the hilt of the witch-blade grasped with both hands, sweeping up, sweeping down, a single cut through a body each time. Oliver could hardly see his attackers’ faces; they were merely shadows in the dust, their angry bellows cut off as they went down. The part of him that had not died at Hundred Locks was glad he couldn’t see the look of contorted astonishment on their faces as the witch-blade sucked the life from them.

He could see the expression of horror on Molly’s face though, as the dust cleared and he and the count stood among a sea of fallen brilliant men, three blades slicked with gore. Somehow her disgust mattered to him more than it should.

‘An ancient fighting style,’ said the count. ‘I was not aware it was even taught any more.’

Oliver dipped down and wiped the blood off his witch-blade onto a corpse’s jacket. A slippery blade is a dangerous blade; the words arrived in his mind as if from his father. Steamswipe galloped for the tunnel that Vauxtion had sketched out for them, Oliver and the count taking the rear as their three companions sprinted in the shielded lee of the steamman’s hull, round shot pinging off his armour.

Someone was shouting at them from above as they reached the shelter of the tunnel mouth, a woman’s voice. It was the assessor; her livid words mangled by the row of kneeling Quatershiftian scouts discharging their rifles. Vauxtion stuck out his hand and Oliver tossed him one of his pistols, the count falling to one knee and turning sideways, gun bucking once. The assessor fell forward lifeless onto the rank of soldiers, spilling one of the troopers into the pit mouth.