Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

He went over to the courtiers and they parted as he walked onto what had once been the floor of the House of Guardians. The benches had been ripped out to feed the pyre in the centre of the palace of parliament. In their place was a wide round table where all could sit as equals. Of course, Tzlayloc could not claim credit for that idea. Had not one of the first kings come up with something similar?

Both of the locust priests he had dispatched had returned from their errands. So much the better. He looked at the one who had once been an engine man. ‘The Greenhall records?’

‘They were trying to overload the boilers when we took Greenhall, Compatriot Tzlayloc; destroy the engine rooms. But my card daemon had got into the pressure controls and was frustrating their efforts.’

Tzlayloc drummed the table in anger. Greenhall functionaries making decisions without authorization from the House of Guardians? Someone had picked a dangerous time to develop a sense of initiative.

‘You have done well, brother. We could not control Jackals without controlling the transaction engines.’ He turned expectantly to the locust priest newly returned from the atmospheric tunnels.

‘The summoning went as planned, Compatriot Tzlayloc, and your intuition proved correct. The Wildcaotyl could only scent the echo of three souls in the ruins — the steamman warrior, the war criminal Nickleby and the traitor Vauxtion. There is no sign of Compatriot Molly Templar, the feybreed or the duke of Ferniethian.’

‘The last two are an irrelevance,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Flare and his twisted friends are the only ones who will mourn the fey boy, and our fat duke and his family have been on the run for six generations — we could hang him outside Bonegate and his oily body would slip off the rope.’

‘But Compatriot Templar…’

‘Yes. My beautiful, brave little girl. On the run again, and no count of Quatershift to track her down for our cause this time. I should have expected no less of her.’ He turned back to the old engine room hand. ‘Your search for the second operator?’

‘With all the resources of Greenhall at my disposal the search was a lot easier than hiding my pet in the drums the first time around. This blood code has only been registered recently. I believe you will understand why when you see the name.’ He passed a folded punch card to Tzlayloc. Tzlayloc read the name of the second operator, the recipient of the foul Hexmachina’s blood curse.

The locust priest had expected Tzlayloc to fall about laughing as he had done himself at the irony of the name, but instead the leader of the First Committee placed the card gently on the table. ‘Oh, Molly. My darling sainted Molly Templar. Now I am going to have to do away with you, you foolish girl. You have lost your place in the pantheon of the people.’

‘I have the names of Compatriot Vauxtion’s associates,’ said the locust priest. ‘Some of them are no doubt competent enough in their trade.’

Tzlayloc smiled. ‘Compatriot Templar is no longer running from us. I fear she is running towards something now. The Wildcaotyl has fed well in the last few days — let us try a new type of hunt.’

He waved at the guards and his soldiers marched in with six men. He recognized the oldest of the six from the illustrations that had dotted Middlesteel’s walls during the reign of the Whineside Strangler. The criminal had done well to survive Bonegate all these years. He sported red welts around his neck where they had tried to hang him three times. How foolish was that rite of Jackelian justice. Survive the rope three times and have your death sentence overturned. Tzlayloc tutted and indicated the six should be escorted outside to the quad. The three-hangings rule was inappropriate in the age of the Gideon’s Collar. Nobody ever got a second chance at the collar.

‘They said we was to join the Third Brigade,’ spat the Whineside Strangler.

‘That pleasure is reserved for your compatriots back in Bonegate,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘I have duties a little more deserving of you and your colleagues’ special talents.’

‘As long as we don’t go back to the gate,’ said the killer.

‘You will never see the cell walls of a prison again.’

Above the mountain of smouldering hearts the cloud of smoke had begun to be shaped by the locust priests’ chanting, tendrils reaching out like the mandibles of an insect. Unnerved by the display of dark sorcery, the six men shuffled uneasily, the cloud swaying hypnotically in front of their faces. Then, as if the cloud had made a decision, spears of smoke darted up the six convicts’ nostrils, flowing into their skulls, draining all the smoke from the pyre as the men stumbled around, mouths open in the rictus of a silent scream.

Tzlayloc looked on in appreciation. The six’s bull-like bodies had survived the hell of life sentences in Bonegate and now they swelled still further under the power of the Wildcaotyl, frames expanding, clothes rippling and tearing while their muscles bulged out at aberrant angles, as if fragments of broken bricks had started rising out of their skin.

The Whineside Strangler turned to Tzlayloc, his irises swirling black with the smoke that had filled his skull. ‘I am remade.’

‘So you are. You know what you must do.’

‘The Hexmachina must not find an operator. If the fissures are sealed, I — we — they will dissipate. The operator must die.’

‘Yes,’ said Tzlayloc sadly. ‘Molly Templar must die. For the sake of the people get to her well before she reaches that filthy machine. Get to her before you in turn become the prey.’

Looking at the pile of burning hearts, the Whineside Strangler was gripped by a terrible hunger, unlike any of the pangs his old self had felt in Bonegate. ‘That is not enough nourishment.’

‘There will be more,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘We have only begun emancipating the people from their old unequal flesh. And there will be sacrifices too — not all of the old regime are dangling on lamps in the square outside. I have our priests looking at converting a Gideon’s Collar — replacing the bolt with an obsidian blade and adding a claw which can tear out a heart while it is still beating.’

‘I distrust them. Machines,’ hissed the Strangler.

‘That is understandable, but we live in a brave new world now. These machines will work for us. It takes a locust priest half an hour to feed you the single soul of an unproductive. When we have a collar converted we can feed you a hundred or more in an hour.’

The Strangler flexed his fingers, looking at the way the nails had extended into talons. ‘Flesh is reliable. It can be controlled. Always so much flesh here. Breeding, multiplying.’

Tzlayloc smiled. The Wildcaotyl were primitive, primordial, almost child-like. Harnessing them was like harnessing the power of the land itself. He had become the ultimate worldsinger, tapping a force that made the unreliable currents of earthflow look as ephemeral as morning dew. The Wildcaotyl had nourished the Chimecans for a thousand years and now they would become the foundation stone for a global union of commonshares. He picked up the punch card from Greenhall. A single name. If it had been anyone else. If only Compatriot Templar had not fled, rejecting the destiny he had planned for her. Tzlayloc crumpled the paper. There were some things even the forces of the revolution could not control.

Undetected by Tzlayloc or his allies, the Shadow Bear stood in the corner of the chamber seething — but not about the unholy amount of energy he was having to draw down to remain in stealth in the presence of the enemy. It was the name coded on the card. That name was outside the order of things by such a wide degree, his predecessor might as well have left him a note that said ‘unauthorised intervention: sorry’.