Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Her manipulator and sword arms sprang open and Wildrake pivoted on a single leg, slamming his boot into her left knee. It crunched and she howled. Low tolerance for pain — all that armour they carried — they were simply not used to it. The turncoat Jackelian could almost see the rote drill moves the Sixth Foot had instilled in her. She was not even worth moving into witch-time for. Wildrake grinned as he ducked under her slashing sword arm, slipping behind her and circling her with his arm.

His muscles bulged underneath his skin, swelling with the force he was applying to her thorax. Better than bench-pressing ninety pounds in a muscle pit; the agony was electric. Her shell started to crack, his biceps burning crimson in the cold. The Third Brigade troops looked on in amazement. They had faced craynarbians on the border with Liongeli, but they had never seen the likes of this. There was a sound like a squeaky floorboard being stood on, then a crack as he burst her chest armour. Pieces of shell were sticking out of Wildrake’s bleeding arms but he stood over the gurgling Jackelian soldier, roaring with the thrill of victory as the Quatershiftian troops cheered his feat of strength.

Damson Davenport turned away in horror — then she realized that the technician by the blood machine was addressing her.

‘It’s your lucky day, compatriot. You’re not on the list. Mill duty — you’re assigned to the cannon works being put up over at Workbarrows.’

She took the numbered chit he handed her. ‘Your queue number. For equalization. Next.’

Damson Davenport watched the laughing troops leaping over Cru’brin’s corpse and tossing burning torches into her rookery. She suspected the falling sleet would put the flames out before the fire cart ever showed up now.

A cry went up among the soldiers — ‘Remember Reudox! Remember Reudox!’

People were still inside the tenement and the Third Brigade opened fire on the poorly dressed Jackelians as they tried to flee the burning building. A few men and women jumped out of windows on the second storey, some clutching young children. The metal zombies in the street surrounded them where they landed, thrashing the burning bodies with their metal arms until they stopped moving.

The head of the Four-poles Union, Meagles, was being dragged down the street, his feet trailing two furrows in the snow, still yelling that the shifties had the wrong man, his cries drowned now by the screams of those trapped inside the damson’s old home.

‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ She shivered, pulling her shawl tight. Part of her wanted to go up to the metal things, to the soldiers of the Third Brigade, and beg them to stop. Tell them that they were the people of Middlesteel. No different from any of the soldiers, but for an accident of geography and birth. No different from them, their mothers, their sisters, their friends. That they could all be compatriots together if they just tried a little harder. But she knew what would happen if she did, and she discovered that as often as she had thought her pains and aches would one day be over with the long march of her old years, she still wanted to live just a little longer. It did not seem like cowardice at all, just common sense.

A thought occurred to Damson Davenport, the kind of random silly thing that the mind throws up to distract itself from a scene too repulsive, too atrocious to observe.

‘Excuse me, what is equalization?’

Tzlayloc smelt the cold fresh air of the House of Guardians’ quad with satisfaction. Once he had dreamed of being elected to this place, of erasing the grinding poverty of Middlesteel, of changing things. The shattered plinths where statues of Isambard Kirkhill and other famous parliamentarians had once stood certainly bore testimony to his desire for the latter. It was a pity that Hoggstone had not been captured when they surrounded the palace of democracy. Now every lamppost in Parliament Square was occupied by a Guardian swinging on the end of a noose, his committee would have to consider doing things the Quatershiftian way and running the First Guardian through a Gideon’s Collar when they arrested him.

Everyone had to move with the times, as the sacks being piled in front of the altar constructed in the centre of the quad testified. Tzlayloc stopped an equalized worker with blood from a sack leaking down the dull metal surface of his — or her — perfect new body. The earlier metal-flesher models had retained traces of the compatriot’s gender in the voicebox assembly. An inequality his mechomancers and flesh mages had paid for. It was amazing how advanced their hexes and mechanisms had become after he had sacrificed a few of them.

‘Where is this sack from, compatriot?’

‘Equalization mill of victory nine, compatriot,’ buzzed the outlaw metal-flesher.

Tzlayloc dipped a hand in the sack: hearts, hundreds of them, but so few were still beating. Some of them had been removed almost a day ago. They would be fresher once the equalization mills above ground were completed. Right now they were relying on the few factories of liberation they had raised around Grimhope. ‘Splendid. Throw them on the altar fires, compatriot. Incinerate the last vestiges of the sins of difference. Now you are free. Free of greed and lust and pride — free of the master’s yoke and all the mills you labour in shall belong to you!’

The equalized outlaw grovelled at Tzlayloc’s feet. ‘Bless you, Compatriot Tzlayloc. A thousand blessings upon you.’

Tears rolled down Tzlayloc’s cheeks. ‘On your feet, brother. You need grovel to no one now. You are who I do this for. Your words mean more to me than I can express.’

He looked at the ring of locust priests shepherding the fumes from the pyre into the air. Tzlayloc could see the darting insect outlines circling the column of smoke. Stronger now, more powerful every hour. They were the perfect allies. Staunch, unstoppable and dedicated, each willing to die without hesitation so that their brothers behind them might advance forward.

He raised a hand and called to all who would hear. ‘I see a perfect world, compatriots. A world where we run not against each other as competitors, but together, as friends — as brothers and sisters. Each of us equal. Each of us perfect.’

The equalized were slower to chant his name now than they had been when they wore their old unequal forms, but slowly the mantra rose to fill the quad. Tzlayloc nodded, hiding his disappointment. They had only just begun, after all. Their understanding of the equalization process would develop with practice, would advance further still when the Steammen Free State was absorbed into the Union of Common shares which Quatershift and Jackals planned. The mean would be raised. Every year there would be an equality more prosperous, more shining. Every year they would move forward. Together. Always together.

Tzlayloc helped the worker to his — or her — feet, and helped to carry the heavy sack of bleeding organs across to the flames. ‘I wish I could burn my filthy unequal form away, compatriot. But the Wildcaotyl requires the soiled mantle of flesh to work through, not the perfect symmetry of your flawless beautiful body.’

‘The people understand your sacrifice, Compatriot Tzlayloc,’ said the worker, tumbling the hearts into the fire. ‘You who lead the flock must sacrifice most of all.’

Tzlayloc noted the courtiers and their military escort standing at the other end of the quad. More work. Even sleeping just a couple of hours a night and relying on the Wildcaotyl to purify this weak dirty body, the demands on his time seemed only to expand. But he would prove equal to the task. He had to. Tzlayloc picked a blackened heart off the pyre and chewed at it. ‘The people will nourish me, compatriot. As they always do.’