by Stephen Hunt
‘Let it be buried without either of our mortal bodies if it can,’ said the commodore. ‘I will keep Purity safe and that is all I can do.’
‘I shall go along with your decision, dear mammal. But I fear it is neither the proper nor the correct one.’
‘The people of the metal are an honest folk,’ wheezed the commodore, ‘you leave the lies to old Blacky. I’ve lived a life full of them to keep my poor skin safe from parliament’s agents. And when the rest of those slippery slats turn up to make slaves of us all, you leave the killing to me. I’ve had a life full of that, too.’
‘I will hope instead that the Army of Shadows’ masters will prove amiable to reason and accommodation with the existing inhabitants of our land.’
‘Is that so?’ chortled the commodore. ‘Well, I’ve got eight barrels of reason loaded upstairs and a knapsack full of shells to accommodate all-comers. And we’ll see which of us is right about that point as well, before long enough.’
Coppertracks watched Commodore Black pack away Purity’s practice arms, returning them to the storeroom under Tock House’s grand staircase. Somewhere to the north lay the answer to the submariner’s wager, getting closer by the day with the fall of every new Quatérshiftian town. Ah yes, the small patterns and the large patterns. And something unexpected coming to disrupt them all. There hadn’t been many answers in the corpses of the slat creatures that had attacked Tock House, their organs rapidly dissolving in a soup of their own acidic blood, and the pistol one of them had carried defied the steamman’s understanding of modern science – a solid dark thing with almost no working parts, a heat agitation matrix inside capable of releasing bolts of fire from a rotating crystal inside its barrel.
Coppertracks resolved to throw the cogs of Gear-gi-ju that evening, to call upon the Loas to shed what wisdom they could on the matter of the invaders. As if every other steamman from the Kingdom of Jackals to the Free State wouldn’t be summoning their ancestors at the same time.
It was interesting, mused Ben Carl, that nobody ever took his butler for anything other than what he appeared to be. Diminutive. Bland. Someone, who, if he stood still for long enough, would begin to blend in with the wallpaper. Just another member of staff from Wolfstones, the First Guardian’s official parliamentary residence on the outskirts of the capital; just another piece of furniture adorning the rooms of state. With only the two of them in Carl’s office at the House of Guardians, though, it was always a temptation to refer to the man by his true title of General. Where he stood in the ever-shifting secretive hierarchy of the Jackelian political police was hard to say, but somewhere near the top, Carl suspected. Possibly poised serenely on the apex of their sharp, dangerous little organization.
‘You have another find?’ asked Ben Carl as the man shut the door to his office.
Carl’s supposed butler placed a burnt badge on his mahogany desk – the gate of parliament confining a wolf barely recognizable, so blackened was the circle of cloth. ‘This was from one of the more recoverable corpses, First Guardian. The wreckage had flattened a farmer’s oast house out in Halfshire.’
‘Who would have thought it possible?’ said the First Guardian. ‘Who would have even thought it undesirable?’ Carl touched the sides of his wheelchair. The Court of the Air had mangled his legs during the troubles, the brief, failed revolution that had been raised in his name so many years ago. He should have been glad that the Court had fallen. Fallen at last like he had, escaping from one of their black aerospheres as they lifted off the ground of the kingdom, intending to toss him in a cell to rot. Now the pictures the watchers in the sky had been sending had dried up and all he was left with was the terrified reports from refugees fleeing Quatérshift and Catosia. The Army of Shadows. Everywhere. Killing and conquering and enslaving and feeding.
‘We can preserve the peace in Jackals by ourselves,’ said the general. ‘Parliament’s writ will not falter on our watch.’
Carl nodded. But then, who would watch the watchmen? Who would keep the political police honest now the Court of the Air had been destroyed? Dear Circle, what a turn of the wheel they had come to.
There was another knock at the door and one of Carl’s aides entered on his command. ‘Word from the southeastern frontier, First Guardian. The army of the Steammen Free State has been sighted assembling in the foothills near their mountains.’
‘That is the best news we are likely to have all day. Thank the Circle for ancient treaties.’
The aide pulled a silver-plated watch from his waistcoat and checked the time. ‘And the compatriots from our new treaty will be coming over from House Guards on the hour.’
‘Three armies to face this strange new foe,’ said Ben Carl. ‘Jackelians fighting alongside Quatérshiftians rather than against them. We live in interesting times. There has been no word from our embassy in Kikkosico, I suppose?’
The aide shook his head.
‘The god-emperor’s legions will stay dug in along the pampas,’ speculated the general. ‘Too much dissent in his provinces to risk sending his soldiers outside their borders.’
‘They’ll march out quickly enough when we prove we can turn the invaders back north,’ said Carl. ‘He’ll be into Catosia and raising the imperial standard over the city-states like a terrier charging into a fighting pit.’
‘Sooner him than us, then,’ said the general. ‘Anyone fool enough to claim Catosia will be raising their flag over an eternity of rebellion and trouble.’
‘Oh, and your other appointment is here,’ said the aide. ‘The appointment we weren’t certain we should accommodate.’
‘You should always make time for old friends and supporters,’ said the First Guardian. ‘Show them in.’
The aide did as he was bid and returned with Molly Templar and Oliver Brooks in tow.
‘The crows that fly before the storm,’ said Carl. ‘And now they’re flying in pairs. Why does that not surprise me?’
‘I’m hoping that you’re well informed,’ said Oliver. ‘Well informed enough not to believe all that nonsense in the news sheets about the Army of Shadows being an exceptionally aggressive horde of polar barbarians.’
‘Opinions seem to be mixed on that one,’ said Carl.
Oliver looked at Carl’s supposed butler. ‘But then, not everything is as it seems at first glance.’
Molly pointed to the First Guardian’s desk. ‘That badge you’ve just covered up with papers on your desk. If you’re collecting, we’ve recovered something a little more substantial from the wreckage of the Court of the Air. Or should I say, someone.’
‘You see,’ said Carl towards his butler. ‘I told you it’s always worthwhile making time for old compatriots.’
‘Let me explain just how far away we are from the old days,’ said Molly. And Carl listened as she shook the foundations of his world.
When Oliver and Molly left the First Guardian’s office, a sea of uniforms was being ushered into the largest of the cabinet rooms. The crimson jackets of the Jackelian New Pattern Army, the dark blue of the Sky Lords of the Admiralty, House Guards generals weighed down with braid and medals and a scattering of cyan-uniformed Quatérshiftian liaison staff – as incongruous by their presence as anything the pair had ever seen.
Molly waited for the hourly toll of Brute Julius – the bell tower that arrowed out of the House of Guardians – to quieten before speaking. ‘Do you think he will help us?’
‘The Court of the Air had an inkling of what they were facing towards the end,’ said Oliver. ‘You could see by the way that hyena in a butler’s jacket reacted, that the Court had communicated some of their suspicions to the First Guardian.’
‘Maybe it was a mistake me coming with you,’ said Molly. ‘Everyone in that room knows that I sparked off the celestial fiction genre.’
‘Just one of us would have been easy enough to write off as a case for the asylum, but both? And you could see how pale the political crusher went when I told him I was on the Court
of the Air when it was attacked. There isn’t a nation on this or any other continent capable of taking the wolf-takers down. The great game is changing and I can feel the fear of the unknown eating away inside them.’
Molly lifted her copy of the list Timlar Preston had composed for the First Guardian. The names of the scientists from his old cannon project team at the Institute des Luminaires, in the event that any were still alive after the purges and famines of the terror in Quatérshift. As well as the location of the abandoned mine where Timlar had hidden the parts for a weapon unlike any other during the dying days of the war. ‘Now all we need is the time to build Preston’s cannon.’
‘The three greatest armies on the continent fighting as allies … you’ll have your time.’
An ancient image rose unbidden within Molly – more of a feeling than anything concrete, another of Kyorin’s unwanted gifts to her. The Army of Shadows’ raw, rapacious savagery. Kyorin’s people had built a great civilization, but the Kals’ gentle instincts had made them so many cattle at the abattoir when the masters had fallen upon them.
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘The steammen are coming,’ said Oliver, speaking the words with the reverence of a prayer. ‘And Jackals has never lost a war when the Steammen Free State has been fighting by our side.’
Another of Molly’s memories rose. One of her own this time, of her old steamman friend Slowcogs, who had given his life to save hers; and she had to choke back a tear. ‘Have we had a good life?’
‘Define good.’
‘After we beat Tzlayloc and his revolutionaries, it felt as if I could do anything, achieve anything. And in my own way I suppose I have. I escaped the poorhouse. I have a living now that many would envy. Wealth. Friends who would die for me. Yet here we are a few years down the line and I’m not even sure if I know what I’m doing. Gambling everything on an escaped slave’s vision. When every instinct inside me is screaming at me to run away as far and as fast as possible. What in the Circle’s name are we doing here?’
‘The best we can,’ said Oliver. He lifted his coat and patted the two pistols that had appeared by his side. Molly shivered. The guns hadn’t been there when they’d entered the First Guardian’s office.
‘I used to think I owned these,’ said Oliver. ‘But now I know that it’s the other way around. And we both belong to the kingdom; the pistols’ reports just an echo of the lion’s roar. I know exactly what I’m doing here. I’m here to protect Purity Drake. I’m the key to keeping her alive.’
‘What does that make me?’ asked Molly. ‘Some lonely old spinster who desperately wants to live out the plot of her last novel while the world is razed to the ground around her?’
They had reached one of the entrances to the House of Guardians, the two redcoats on duty there stamping their boots as Molly and Oliver walked past. Outside, mounted cavalry waited behind the sharp black railings of parliament. A crowd of Broken Circle cultists knelt beyond in Parliament Square, humming a meditation that sounded more like a mass moan of pain. Their numbers were swelling every day, now; more and more of the population convinced that the end of the world was nigh. That the Circle was finally breaking. Maybe the cultists were right. On Molly and Oliver’s side of the railings brightly clothed hussars cantered up and down nervously. No looting yet. No riots yet, just that damn rhythmic keening.
Molly raised a hand to shield her eyes against the sunlight. There it was, just to the left of the sun. Ashby’s Comet. A baleful red eye behind a thin skein of clouds. ‘I hate the sight of that thing.’
‘If your friend Coppertracks is right, we had better get used to it,’ said Oliver. ‘The comet’s become another moon now.’
‘A cursed ugly one,’ said Molly. She looked out at the crowd. It was almost obscene. They looked as if they were praying. The Circlist faith was degrading into superstition and myths of the end-time. How much longer until they started raising false idols to save them from the Army of Shadows and the dark auguries in the sky? How much longer until the Jackelians started believing in gods again? Molly ran up to the railings. ‘The new moon’s just a piece of loose bloody rock! Caught revolving around us by the attraction of our world’s mass. I can show you Coppertracks’ formulae to explain everything you see up in the sky.’
The moaning of the cultists just grew louder.
‘Get off your knees, you’re Jackelians, you’re—’
A hussar kicked his stallion in front of her. ‘Don’t go disturbing them, now, there’s a good damson. They’re jittery enough this afternoon.’
‘They’re a disgrace,’ said Molly. ‘What do they think they’re doing? How can you allow them to do that outside parliament’s gates?’
‘It’s hard enough to keep our lads from deserting and joining them at the moment,’ said the hussar. ‘If trouble breaks out in the capital now, it’ll take more than the flats of our sabres to turn them aside. Go home, damson, and make sure you have a stout lock on your door, that’s my advice.’
‘Come on,’ said Oliver, tugging Molly’s sleeve. ‘We’ll go down to the river and hail the sixpenny boat.’
Passing under the shadow of Brute Julius the pair arrived before the low iron profile of an iron gunboat moored alongside the House of Guardians’ embankment, its disc-shaped cannon turrets turned towards the opposite side of the river.
Oliver nodded towards the armed sailors on deck across from them as he waved for a riverboat to stop. ‘Ready for war?’
‘Yes,’ said Molly. ‘Ready for war. Again.’
Commodore Black touched Oliver’s sleeve and pointed to the dark silhouettes emerging onto the shale of the Quatérshiftian beach, men and women clambering over large boulders as they left the silent pine forest behind them and headed for the line of dinghies. The commodore pulled a rag off his lantern to show the figures the way through the night. There were about twenty people coming out of the tree line. Burly red-coated marines from the Fleet Sea Arm were holding the craft down in the surf behind Oliver and the commodore, rifles shouldered, waiting for the advancing refugees to board the dinghies. The foreign scientists were exactly where the shifties had promised they would be gathered, with the Army of Shadows currently showing little sign of intervening in the Kingdom of Jackals’ attempt to spirit away some of Quatérshift’s best brains for its gunnery project.
They were a ragged gathering, these refugee scientists, led by a silver-haired man staring thankfully towards Oliver and the commodore with an odd-looking face that managed to be senatorial, proud and ugly at the same time. A lithe-legged beauty accompanied the Quatérshiftian man, at least half his years, looking stunning despite her standard revolutionary citizen’s garb.
‘I am Paul-Loup Keyspierre,’ said the shiftie. ‘Head of the Institut des Luminaires of the People’s Commonshare of Quatérshift. As requested by the First Committee, I and my daughter, Jeanne, have been scouring the country for every engineer and scientist who worked on the old cannon project with Timlar Preston during the Two-Year War.’
‘There’s not many of you here,’ said Oliver. ‘I was told by Timlar Preston to expect maybe forty or fifty people.’
‘You have those who are still breathing, compatriot,’ retorted Jeanne, her short dark hair ruffled by the fierce wind off the sea. ‘In case you have failed to notice, our country is dealing with a full-scale invasion. There may be others on the antique staff list we were given who are still alive, but if they are, they have been completely lost in the confusion of the fighting.’
Paul-Loup Keyspierre gently motioned his daughter to silence. ‘Our new compatriots from the west haven’t seen how bad things are here now, they cannot be expected to understand the nature of the enemy and the difficulties we have faced finding as many cannon workers as we have.’
‘We’ll take the time to deepen our understanding as soon as we’ve got your eggheads safely back to our blessed u-boat,’ said Commodore Black. He waved to the Jackelian marines and they pushed the crowded dinghies out
into the surf and began to row back towards the low black hull of the submersible. ‘There may not be much moonlight tonight, but I don’t want to leave parliament’s tub sitting on the surface any longer than I have to.’
Paul-Loup Keyspierre glanced around. ‘This is an old smuggler’s beach, yes? It is good that it is out of the way, but the lack of moonlight won’t help you, compatriot u-boatman. The Army of Shadows hunt and fight at night as well as they do during the day.’
‘This landing may have seen a little smuggling in and out of it,’ admitted the commodore. ‘The odd barrel of brandy lifted from your fine nation by plucky fellows, although admittedly somewhat in contravention of parliament’s wishes and the laws of your revolution. But we’ll leave the fighting to the brigades of your people’s army if we can. They’re trained for it and I doubt if they need the help of old Blacky when it comes to battling the Army of Shadows.’
Oliver unfurled a map while the commodore lifted his lantern over the crinkled surface, revealing a province of northern Quatérshift printed on the paper. ‘We didn’t just choose this beach because it’s out of the way. Timlar Preston buried the components of his prototype cannon inside a worked-out mine five miles inland of here; he salted the parts away when it looked like the Two-Year War was swinging our country’s way, when the RAN was raining fire-fins down around your mills and weapons factories.’
‘I told you something was not right here,’ said Jeanne to her father. She pointed back to the tree line and a handful of Quatérshiftian soldiers appeared leading a train of pack mules. ‘The animals weren’t requested at the rendezvous point because these so-called allies of ours have suddenly forsworn roast beef for mule meat.’
‘So I am to trust you with the lives and fates of Quatérshift’s greatest minds,’ said Keyspierre to Oliver and the commodore, ‘but I am only to be told of these buried components when you arrive to steal them away from my people?’
