The Court of the Air

by Stephen Hunt

  Molly helped in the shop, surprising Silver Onestack by her natural grasp of mechanisms and gadgetry.

  ‘You were never apprenticed to a mechomancer, Molly soft-body?’ the steamman asked.

  Molly laughed. ‘In Middlesteel, families pay a master for their children to be apprenticed to a good trade, Silver Onestack. They don’t take the sweepings from the workhouse.’

  ‘Would that the mechomancers had proved so discrimin ating when it comes to experimenting on my own people, Molly softbody.’

  Molly had not previously broached Onestack’s status as steamman unclean – a desecration. Taking Slowcogs’ lead she had ignored it, for fear of breaking some taboo of the metal race. ‘Is that why you live down here?’

  ‘I am outside the fold, Molly softbody,’ said Onestack. ‘King Steam makes use of my vision glass and hearing folds when it suits him, but my pattern is not to any plan laid by the architects royal in the Steammen Free State. Above ground, not a single one of my kind would share boiler-grade coke with me.’

  ‘Were you built in Middlesteel?’ asked Molly.

  ‘I was not built, Molly softbody. I was scavenged, cannibalized from the parts of other steammen,’ said Silver Onestack. ‘Your mechomancers cannot build us, but they still hope to understand our bodies by desecrating the corpses of our fallen. There are steammen souls trapped inside me, blended to make that which I am. I hear them during my thoughtflow, crying, begging me to release them.’

  ‘By dying,’ said Molly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Onestack. ‘By returning to the great pattern. I carry my own ancestors inside me and every step I take is a dishonour to them, but I cannot bear to deactivate. Life is too full, even down here. There is the beauty of the ceiling storms. The satisfaction of making whole that which is broken. The smells of the forest when the spores eject and cover the ground like snowfall. So instead of dying I live down here in the belly of the earth like a coward, showing my face to no brother of the metal, keeping my own company.’

  Molly lit the stove in the corner of the room. ‘How did the mechomancer get his hands on so many bodies?’

  ‘There was a tower collapse,’ said Onestack. ‘Blimber Watts, the pneumatics gave way.’

  Molly nearly dropped her coal shovel. ‘Silver Onestack, I was there! It was a steamman who rescued me from the ruins.’

  ‘Then you understand, Molly softbody.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.’

  ‘The steamman who rescued you would have been looking for our corpses as well as survivors, to bring peace to our souls before scavengers looted the metal dead. By Steelbhalah-Waldo, we are as brother and sister under our shell. You must see my work, you will understand.’

  Molly watched Onestack’s tripod legs knife across the floor, then he unlocked a small wooden door behind a curtain. ‘Come.’

  Silver Onestack led her up a narrow staircase and into a loft room. The room was piled with canvas paintings – all in monochrome – otherworldly scenes of the crystal light falling through the forest, a solitary figure sitting cross-legged under a fluted mushroom. In all the paintings the same figure stood indistinct, lonely: by a window painted from outside, small against the stretch of a building or walking isolated by the shore of a subterranean lake.

  Molly ran her fingers over the texture of the paint. ‘You always use the same model.’

  ‘She is not a model,’ said Silver Onestack. ‘I see her in the distance, often. I am not sure who she is. A shade of one of the dead from Blimber Watts, perhaps. Or a ghost image stuck in my vision glass after the softbody mechomancer put me back together.’

  ‘They are beautiful,’ said Molly.

  ‘I am the only steamman I have heard of who has ever painted,’ said Silver Onestack. ‘If I ever find the courage to deactivate, perhaps these works will survive me. Something of me will be left, that was not stolen from the souls of my pattern kin.’

  Molly rested the canvas she was looking at back on the floor. ‘It’s not cowardly to want to live, Silver Onestack.’

  ‘My life keeps three souls in torment, withheld from the great pattern. I have no illusions about the cost of my own survival.’

  ‘Neither of us seems to be popular with our families, Silver Onestack.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the steamman. ‘It could not have been easy to be raised without pattern kin inside a poorhouse.’

  Molly sighed. ‘No, it was not. In Sun Gate we looked out for each other and made as much of a family as we could. But I can’t fool myself and say it was the same as having a mother and father who you knew loved you, who would do anything for you. When I walked the streets of Middlesteel there were days when all I would see were fathers and mothers out with their children. Holding hands. Laughing, doing things together. I would always wonder what was the matter with me, not to have that; there must have been something wrong with me to be abandoned. Do you only paint in black and white, old steamer?’

  Onestack pointed to his silver-domed head. ‘The mechomancer who put me together lacked the skill to do anything else with my sight. I remember from my old bodies what it was like to see in colour, though. I think I sometimes thoughtflow in colour, especially red. Apples are red, aren’t they?’

  Molly nodded. Silver Onestack opened an iron door to his spherical main body, exposing a maze of crystals, boards, silicate and clockwork mechanisms. ‘I went to King Steam and begged him to give me back my sight the way it was before, but he refused. He said the law forbade the people of the metal to deactivate me, but he would not suffer the undead to be given succour or repair.’

  Something about the workings seemed out of place to Molly. A wrongness that she could feel inside her as a tangible ache. She reached inside Onestack’s open hatch, repositioning boards and switching valve groups.

  ‘Molly softbody, desist,’ the steamman protested. ‘It is forbidden for those outside the people of the metal to tamper with our bodies.’

  ‘What is this?’ demanded Slowcogs, rolling into the loft garret. ‘This is an offence in the eyes of Steelbhalah-Waldo. Molly, you must cease this violation immediately.’

  Molly withdrew her hands and shut the casing plate. ‘Onestack was broken. I could not bear it.’

  Onestack’s voicebox sounded in amazement. ‘The floor is brown! Dried fungus wood. And Molly softbody, your hair is red – as red as any apple. I can see in colour again. By all the saints of the Steamo Loas, you have restored my vision glass to see in colour!’

  ‘How can this be?’ Slowcogs asked. ‘Molly softbody, you are no mechomancer or draughtsman from the hall of architects.’

  ‘It just looked wrong,’ Molly explained. ‘My hands knew what to do.’

  Silver Onestack spun his head to look at Slowcogs. ‘Slowcogs, has Molly softbody read the wheels?’

  ‘In the controller’s presence,’ said Slowcogs. ‘The pattern of Gear-gi-ju was revealed to Redrust.’

  ‘I just knew what to do,’ said Molly. ‘I have always had an affinity for such things.’

  ‘This is no normal affinity, Molly softbody,’ exclaimed Silver Onestack. ‘Oh Slowcogs, you fool of an old boiler. To bring this softbody down here, of all places. This nest of villainy and chaos. You should have sent her to King Steam with an escort of steammen knights to guard her precious soul.’

  ‘What are you two old steamers talking about?’ said Molly.

  Silver Onestack’s tripod of legs had collapsed his large spherical body onto the floor. ‘What a turning of the pattern this is. A foolish old boiler and a walking corpse to protect her.’

  ‘I can bloody well protect myself,’ said Molly. ‘It’s all I’ve been doing since I could walk.’

  Molly was about to demand an explanation when a fierce banging sounded on their door. Onestack arched up like a spider and opened a skylight to peer down into the street.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Slowcogs, his voicebox volume on low.

  ‘The committeewoman for our street and the others nearby. A political
, an informer.’

  Other men and women in crimson cloaks were walking up and down the street smashing on doors. ‘Rouse yourselves, compatriots,’ shouted the woman outside. ‘Mandatory loyalty display in the main square. Our district has been selected. It is a glorious day.’

  ‘We must go,’ said Onestack. ‘The brilliant men will search all the buildings. Any malingerers will be executed.’

  Out in the street dozens of locals had spilled out from their quarters, more arriving every minute, green hoods hiding their faces in shadow. The only sound was the dull thump of workshop cutting machines from the next street over.

  ‘Come,’ said the committeewoman. ‘Come.’

  Everywhere they went red-hooded figures were rousting the citizens of Grimhope out from their homes. The woman led them through the subterranean streets to Grimhope’s central square, built on a scale to rival Middlesteel’s Hope Park – but with the unfinished patina and dust of recent construction hanging over it. Standard bearers holding aloft flags – red fields marked with a gold triangle – marched out to look over the scene. The subdued disposition of the people in the square was replaced by an electric anticipation. More and more townspeople were arriving, until an outlaw host enveloped the granite flagstones.

  Molly had to cling onto Slowcogs’ iron hand to stop her being separated from the steamman by the crush of the rally. Silver Onestack sat in front of them like a beached slipsharp, his tripod of legs partially retracted inside his body.

  ‘Is he here yet?’ one of the crowd asked Molly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tzlayloc,’ said the outlaw townsman. ‘Who else?’

  ‘There,’ called one of the mob. A figure had walked out onto the podium, throwing back his crimson hood. He slowly raised his arms and a hush fell over the crowd.

  ‘My people,’ the voice boomed across the open space. ‘I look across you all assembled here and I see an army of equals – of brothers and sisters – of compatriots standing with a common purpose.

  ‘Look at the person next to you. There are no mill-owners here. No landlords or kings or guardians. Nobody to call you tenant or subject or slave. And why is that?’

  ‘Because we are equal,’ the crowd yelled back.

  ‘Everything here belongs to the commons – to you,’ the man called Tzlayloc rumbled. ‘And compatriot, everything that is you belongs to the commons.’

  The crowd screeched their approval. Molly could not believe the speed at which the rally had turned from an apprehensive flock to a mob running at fever pitch. It was as if a glamour had been cast over the crowd.

  ‘When another man, another woman, gives you the right to vote, says they give you freedom, they are making you a present of that which you already have – that which you were born with. And by so doing they make a grateful slave of you.’

  ‘We are not slaves,’ someone yelled back.

  ‘No. No, we are not. Compatriots, we stand together, a perfect commonshare. No poppy taller than the next, stealing the sun, casting their neighbour into the shadow, sucking up the goodness of the earth while letting their neighbour wither and die. Are we equal?’

  The crowd roared in near-perfect unison: ‘We are!’

  ‘Compatriots, let me show you our heroes of society, those who lead by example.’

  At his signal, a man hobbled onto the stage, one of his legs glinting steel in the red subterranean light. ‘Many of you know me,’ said the newcomer. ‘I am Ikey Solomon, once the fastest dipper in Middlesteel. And when the crushers finally came to take me away and transport me to the Concorzian colonies, I ran all the way down to Grimhope.’

  The crowd cheered his defiance.

  ‘But I was not equal. I could run from one end of the Deeps to the other in eight hours, and then drink a yard of ale. Not one of you people here today could match me.’

  The crowd murmured darkly at his incorrect boasting.

  ‘So I have had my left leg equalized. Look.’ He raised the limb from the ground. ‘The bones have been fixed with steel pins. I am equal in my speed to you. I am the Commonshare – and you are me. Now when we run, we shall run together, not against each other!’

  The crowd went into an apoplexy of delight at Compatriot Solomon’s sacrifice.

  ‘Compatriot, you have shown the way,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘But he is not alone. Step forward, Sister Peggotty.’

  A short woman came though the crimson-hooded honour guard, holding the hand of a boy – no older than nine or ten years in Molly’s estimation.

  ‘There are many of you here, who might have once frequented the gambling pits on Stalside,’ she began. Laughter sounded from the crowd.

  ‘Those that did would have seen my son play the boards there … two jump-stones, chess, round circle’s move. In the old days, the pit owners used my son like a magnet to empty the pockets of the desperate and the addicted. They called him a prodigy – able to beat any of you at a game of skill or chance. Exploited him like an angler’s lure. But look at him now …’

  The boy stared uncomprehendingly out at the rally, drool running down the left side of his chin.

  ‘Compatriots, now he has been cured. Equalized. Now he is one of us. By the grace of our own renegade worldsingers his mind has been adjusted. Why, any of you could play him at a game of your choice and beat him as oft as not.’

  The mob roared their approval.

  ‘Which of you here will show your devotion?’ exclaimed the mother. ‘Which of you will show your love for your compatriots?’

  A young girl pushed her way past Molly. ‘I will! Tzlayloc, take me. I am beautiful and it is nothing but a curse to me. Scar my face with acid from the workshops.’

  ‘No.’ A giant of a man rose out of the crowd. ‘Tzlayloc, look how strong I am. Make me equal, cut off one of my ugly beef-hooks of an arm.’

  ‘Compatriots.’ Tzlayloc waved the supplicants back down. ‘Your willingness to join our Commonshare is a credit to you all. But not everyone shares our beliefs. While we live free down here our brothers and sisters still toil under the yoke of Middlesteel’s barons of commerce and the false idolatry of a sham ballot every four years. Bring forward the corrupt ones, compatriots.’

  The red-cloaked soldiers – the brilliant men – moved forward with two struggling figures in white togas.

  ‘These evil leeches …’ Tzlayloc’s voice echoed off the square’s walls. ‘These two evil leeches come to visit us from as far away as the city-states of the Catosian League. Why? To benefit from us! To profit.’

  There was a collective rush of breath from the crowd.

  ‘Please,’ one of the Catosian traders begged. ‘Last year you needed high-tension boilers from us for your mills, parts and plans for automatics. We brought them to you. For mercy’s sake, let me live. I have a family who need me, three girls and a baby boy.’

  ‘Listen to these philosophers,’ Tzlayloc mocked. ‘To feed their families they would suck our blood. Is that not the excuse of the vampires on the surface? Just a little trade, just a little blood – work for me, not for each other. Work for me, not for the commons. Make me fat. Make me rich. Let me show you a new philosophy, men of Catosia.’

  Tzlayloc drew an obsidian-handled knife – the blade sharpened stone. His crimson-hooded retinue dragged the two traders to an altar where they were arched back and strapped thrashing and sobbing to the stone. Tzlayloc thrust aloft the knife.

  ‘In life, you leeched blood from the people you should have cared for. Now, in death, your sacrifice will strengthen the people’s sinews and advance their cause. Xam-ku, Father Spider, hear my prayer – let the sacrifice of these two rats caught with their snouts buried in our grain bins swell your power and speed your return. Too long have we laboured under the yoke of slave master and merchant and market without the light of Wildcaotyl to guide us.’

  ‘Look away, Molly softbody,’ advised Onestack.

  Molly did, but she couldn’t shut out the screams echoing from the walls of the square as T
zlayloc carved the traders’ beating hearts out of their still living bodies. Tzlayloc held the still pulsing organs above the crowd. ‘Xam-ku, feel the nourishment of their souls.’

  The crystals in the cavern ceiling came alive with lightning, crimson fire arcing between the stones above them. Down in the square the crowd chanted their saviour’s name.

  ‘The old gods of Wildcaotyl have not fed in a long time,’ said Slowcogs.

  ‘I can feel their hunger,’ said Molly. ‘Welling up beneath the ground. The souls spilled are like the taste of meat for a slipsharp that hasn’t fed in a thousand years.’

  Blood from the two limp bodies was coursing down channels in the stone. ‘In death,’ Tzlayloc bellowed, ‘these two corrupt vampires have made the sacrifice to their companions they were never willing to make in life. Behold, I have found their centre, and it nourishes the commons.’

  Molly tried to turn away from the scene, but the press of the chanting mob was too fierce.

  ‘Our compatriots in Quatérshift feed such as they into the Gideon’s Collar, but in their admirable drive for efficiency, they have forgotten the wisdom of our ancestors. Wasting good souls which could be dedicated to Xam-ku,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Yet in Middlesteel above, the streets still throng with the oppressors of the people, the enemy inside our walls, withholding paradise from the hands of the starving, the propertyless and desperate. Shall we make a land of equals? Shall we free the people?’

  ‘Yes!’ the crowd roared.

  ‘Shall we pull the selfish bloodsuckers down into the gutter and thrash them until the streets of Middlesteel run red with their blood?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ the crowd howled.

  ‘Now you see,’ whispered Silver Onestack. ‘Now you see why you were wrong to come here. Grimhope has died. This rotting carcass of a city is all that is left of the legend.’

  Slowcogs bowed his head. ‘Forgive me, Silver Onestack. I did not know.’

  ‘No,’ said Molly. ‘This is not your fault, Slowcogs. I was meant to come here. I have seen this madness before, or something like it.’