by Stephen Hunt
‘She has a name,’ spat Molly, pressing her face to the bars. ‘Are you the one paying for my head?’
‘I am just the assessor, m’dear,’ said the woman. ‘You would be surprised how many disfigured corpses have been handed in to me from unscrupulous sources who are only too happy to claim the money on your scalp without doing the actual mug-hunting.’
‘Blessed hard to come by an honest murderer, then,’ said the commodore.
‘Quite,’ said the woman. ‘But the good news is that we both get paid our commission now.’ She turned to one of the toppers. ‘Unlock the door. If the girl gives you any trouble, kill these two bumpkins. If these two give you any trouble, you can still kill them – but cut off one of the girl’s ears first. She doesn’t need to hear to be of use to our employer.’
The count turned to an old craynarbian standing behind them and indicated they would depart, but the assessor raised her hand. ‘The contract says “to the satisfaction of the patron”, Compatriot Vauxtion. I have yet to hear him express that satisfaction.’
‘You appear better informed than I, madam,’ said the count. ‘I was not even certain that the patron was a him.’
‘Smoke and mirrors, hmm?’ said the female assessor. ‘Well, allow me to satisfy your curiosity. You will find him a fascin ating fellow, I believe.’
The craynarbian retainer leant close and whispered something to Count Vauxtion and he nodded. Molly was prodded in the back by a topper and she and her two companions were led down a corridor past empty cells. At the end of the passage a pair of double iron doors was unchained and opened.
Molly gasped. She had been expecting the basement of some rich lunatic’s mansion in Middlesteel – not this. Wide steps sweeping down to a landscape littered with broken ziggurats; the crimson light of Chimecan crystals in the cavern ceiling, painting the landscape in an eternal twilight. Most of the ruins were wild, overgrown with spiked fungus spheres and flat, red cavern grass like a sea of fire. Paths had been cleared through the undergrowth, boxes of equipment piled behind wire fences. On the other side of the ruins she could see a tent city stretched out in ordered rows, the light from human buildings and the hum of industry. She had come full circle.
‘The undercity!’ said the count.
‘Ah, yes, you came down on the private atmospheric line, didn’t you?’ said the assessor. ‘A little deeper than you realized perhaps.’
‘The outlaws of Grimhope didn’t raise the fortune sitting on my head,’ said Molly.
‘Obviously not,’ said the assessor. ‘But we are a long way from Grimhope, m’dear.’
‘This is a mortal bad turn,’ whined Commodore Black. One of the toppers shoved him to silence with the butt of his carbine and Nickleby had to help him back to his feet.
As they rounded the nearest of the ziggurats Molly passed by a line of shambling steamman walking out from the tent city. Something about the creatures was wrong. She could see it in their zombie-like walk – see it in the unnatural uniformity of the bodies – the metal equivalent of a womb mage’s organic breedings.
She got closer and one of the steamman stopped in the line. ‘Molly!’ the voice grated from a voicebox in the metal skull. ‘Molly, is that you?’
Molly stopped. ‘I—’
‘Molly, it’s me. Sainty, from the Sun Gate workhouse.’
Molly studied the poorly riveted machine life. ‘But you are…’
‘They did this to me!’ Sainty’s voice was hard to understand through the hisses and metallic popping. ‘They were looking for you, but they took us away – the ones they didn’t murder like Rachael. They peeled us into slices and jammed us into our new bodies. Most of the Sun Gate house is down here. With the others, with the—’
A man wielding a button-encrusted wand strode towards them and the girl who had been Sainty fell down to her metal knees, a fizz of agony whistling from her voicebox. ‘No talking among the equalized. Two minutes of pain as punishment.’
One of the toppers grabbed Molly by the arms as she tried to lash at the overseer who moved behind the safety of his column of shambling metal slaves.
‘You jigger, leave her alone. It was me that started the talking. What are you doing to her – what have you done to my friend?’
‘She is serving her purpose,’ responded the overseer. ‘When you have been equalized you will understand. Now move on or I shall increase this compatriot’s punishment level further. And hope that you are not assigned to my brigade after you have undergone the conversion.’
‘If she lives long enough to get a new body I believe she will count herself fortunate,’ said the assessor.
‘Come, lass,’ said Commodore Black, watching the guards restraining Nickleby. ‘These black-hearted cavern demons are in no mood to show us a drop of mercy. Help your friend as best you can by leaving her be.’
Pushed and shoved by the toppers, the three of them stumbled after the assessor. She led them across the ruined city and into the centre of the overgrown metropolis. They approached the largest of the ziggurats down a cracked boulevard lined by limb-like black stone lamps, light crystals long dead but recently superseded by gas lanterns lashed to their heads by wire ties. Up to the central stairs of the ziggurat. It had not looked so high from street level, but Molly quickly found her legs aching, having to rest at the caprice of their guards’ need to pause for a breath.
From the stone-hewn treads she could look down across the entirety of the ruins. To the right there was a yawning pit circled by scaffolding and wooden ramps where the activity of the resurrected Chimecan city seemed to be concentrated, legions of the dull metal bodies of human-steamman hybrids filing down into the darkness, the distant thump of machines and the whistle of steam engines venting pressure to the dance of spinning regulators. Behind them was the wall of the grotto where their cell had been buried, carved figures stretching from the floor to the mist-shrouded ceiling in an extended procession of monstrosities. Bare-breasted warriors from the race of man – both male and female – with dome-like crystal helmets and the folded legs of locusts. Molly saw Count Vauxtion following the course of her gaze; the ancient statues and the new mine works. From the look of curiosity on his face, her implacable hunter obviously had as little idea as the rest of them what was going on down here.
There were guards at the top of the ziggurat, wearing red cloaks and robe-like uniforms. Brilliant men. So the bullyboys of Grimhope were in on this place’s forbidding subterranean machinations. She should have expected no less. The assessor moved through the soldiers’ ranks and there, seated on a throne, was the dark-haired leader of Grimhope, lord of this broken place.
Molly, the commodore and the pensman were dragged in front of his throne.
‘Tzlayloc!’
‘Compatriot Templar,’ said the rebel lord. ‘So much nuisance in the form of one young damson, it hardly seems possible you have put me to this much trouble.’
‘You know him?’ said Nickleby.
‘Silas, he’s the King of Grimhope. You pulled me out of his capital in the Duitzilopochtli Deeps.’
‘A temporary parting only, it seems,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘If I had but known you were my guest then … but you do not appear so sure, compatriot pensman?’
‘I’m a little older than Molly,’ said Nickleby. ‘Old enough to remember when there was an exemption on real-box pictures being published in the penny sheets. Pictures of the leaders of the Carlist uprising, Jacob Walwyn.’
‘You have an astute eye,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘But Walwyn is dead. That naïve student of Benjamin Carl breathed his last during the uprising, his blood running in the gutters alongside the rest of the Carlists when their hearts and methods proved ineffectual to the tasks that history demanded of them. They were soft while their enemy was hard, so they were broken by their own weakness. Believe me, that is not a mistake Tzlayloc intends to make.’
‘If you are my patron,’ said Count Vauxtion stepping forward, ‘and you are satisfied that I have
completed my commission, then I shall take my leave. I fear I find Jackelian politics rather tedious.’
‘Compatriot Vauxtion, how good to finally see you without the distortion of a mirror crackling between us. Your words wound me. I am sure you follow the politics of your adopted land as closely as you did at home. You have proved a most capable mug-hunter,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘But then you did come highly recommended.’
‘Recommended by whom?’
A figure in a plain blue military tunic weighed down with medals moved out from behind the line of guards, worldsingers at either side, their robes cut in a foreign style. The sword arm of Count Vauxtion’s craynarbian retainer rattled in anger at the sight of the broken boxer’s nose and brutish features. ‘Captain Arinze!’
‘Citizen-Marshal Arinze now,’ retorted the officer. ‘But I hardly expect you two to be familiar with the uniforms of the people’s army; the cut has been updated quite a bit since you escaped from the Commonshare.’
‘Another damn shiftie,’ said Molly, her stare moving between the count and the marshal. ‘This whole place is filthy with them.’
‘Oh, but the count isn’t a Quatérshiftian any more, young compatriot,’ said the officer. ‘He forfeited that right when he fled over our border. You recall your speech to the general command on the night before the last battle and what I advised you then, don’t you, count? It seems I chose the winning side after all, old man. And now it is I that carry the marshal’s baton while you have been serving under my command in a manner of speaking, given it is the Commonshare’s gold that has been paying to assist our compatriots across the border. You’ve kept your title but lost your country, old man. I hope the bargain has been worth it.’
‘While you have kept your uniform but lost everything that once made it worth wearing,’ spat the count. ‘A bargain which I am sure you feel well made.’
‘Well made indeed.’ The marshal waved at the soldiers and they lugged forward a chest. ‘But let it not be said we are not men of our word. I said the Commonshare would fund our compatriots’ activities in Jackals and so we will. Enjoy the money while you can, compatriot; soon it will be as much of an anachronism as your title and the soiled remnants of your estate. A society of equals needs no currency save our devotion to the cause.’
The commodore’s eyes widened when he saw the fat bags of guineas lying in the chest. ‘Are you blessed fools? What does your monstrous realm want with this needy lass and a weary submariner like poor old Blacky?’
‘We require only the good will of our neighbours,’ said the Quatérshiftian soldier.
‘That is a courteous way of saying it is his payment for a corner of Jackals,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Nothing too grand … everything from the border south to Comlonney in a sixty-mile strip. That includes an equal share of Shadowclock and the celgas mines of course.’
‘You belong in an asylum, Walwyn,’ said Nickleby. ‘The navy isn’t going to sit back and watch the Commonshare lower their cursewall, form up and march across the border. You’ll bring down another Reudox on the poor devils’ heads. There’ll be hundreds of thousands of Quatérshiftian corpses lying dead in their cities as the price for your insane war.’
‘You write very well,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘I have always thought so. With your left hand I believe?’
The pensman’s guards seized Nickleby and hauled him forward. ‘However, I found your pieces a little too flowery for my taste. Let me show you what I am about to do to Jackals’ beloved Royal Aerostatical Navy.’ He slid out a sabre from a guard’s belt and whipped it down across Nickleby’s left arm, the severed hand tumbling out to land at the marshal’s feet. ‘Difficult to concentrate isn’t it,’ said Tzlayloc as the pensman screamed, clutching his bloody stump. ‘Of course, to make my point properly I should have cut off your head, but then there wouldn’t be enough left of you to undergo the equalization.’
He pointed at the fiery pit behind them and the guards dragged Nickleby towards it, thrusting the bleeding remains of his arm into the coals. The pensman was unconscious by the time his wrist had been cauterized.
Tzlayloc caressed Molly’s cheek as she swore at the rebel leader. ‘Don’t worry, Compatriot Templar. He shall have a new metal hand soon enough.’
‘Have you horrendous swine no blessed compassion?’ shouted Commodore Black.
‘My compassion is for the people suffering under the tyranny above ground,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Not war criminals and propagandists from the old regime. I see you are shocked, commodore. I know all about you and your friends – we have plenty of brothers and sisters in the engine rooms of Greenhall. And you must have done worse in your time as a science pirate, Samson Dark!’
Molly looked in confusion at the commodore.
‘You’re touched in the head,’ said the commodore. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I will admit, your fake blood code and the new face your back-street worldsinger gave you had our compatriots in Greenhall puzzled, Captain Dark. But Greenhall is not the only institution to track the ancient bloodlines.’ He beckoned with a finger and a figure dressed like a Jackelian country squire came forward, his waistcoat bulging tight over a muscular chest. ‘I believe you know our compatriot from the Court of the Air.’
Commodore Black flew at the figure in a frenzy, but the target of his fury became a blur, tripping the submariner and allowing the guards to seize his arms and restrain the bear of a man.
‘Wildrake,’ yelled the commodore, struggling, ‘stand these beasts down and let’s you and me get to it.’
‘You have become flabby, captain,’ said Jamie Wildrake. ‘Your pectorals are a disgrace to a fighting man. But you are to be congratulated on the length of time you have had to let them go to ruin. Fourteen years and the Court were convinced you had died with the rest of your fleet on the island.’
‘Commodore,’ said Molly, ‘what in the Circle’s name is he talking about?’
‘Commodore is it now?’ said the wolftaker. ‘Such a lowly title for the Duke of Ferniethian. You have been hobnobbing with the last of the Jackelian aristocracy, little street girl. The royalist buccaneers had been a thorn in our side since the end of the civil war. But until Dark came along they were disorganized, breeding like sea snakes in their ancient stolen boats. Samson Dark united the squabbling émigré families and moulded them into a formidable menace to the trading routes.’
‘It took your filthy treachery to sink us,’ said the commodore. ‘There wasn’t a Jackelian skipper fit to tilt a sea lance against us.’
‘You can’t betray a cause you don’t believe in,’ said Wildrake. ‘As our present masters of Jackals are about to discover.’
‘You’re a crusher?’ said Molly. ‘And you’re working with these jiggers?’
‘He’s the worst of all crushers,’ said Commodore Black. ‘There’s a whole nest of them in the sky, watching us like we are blessed ants, reaching down to stamp us out when they see us scurrying the wrong way.’
‘Then you should applaud what I am about to achieve, Dark,’ said the wolftaker. ‘What your nobles in exile couldn’t accomplish in five hundred years of futile raids and a trail of plundered burning merchantmen. No more parliament – the corrupt legacy of Kirkhill torn to pieces.’
‘There is no finer compatriot in all of Jackals,’ said Marshal Arinze, stroking Wildrake’s back as if the wolftaker were his child. ‘A true son of the revolution, a shining example of how a brother can have his eyes opened by the truth and renounce the uncommunityist tenets of his birth. Just look how solid his body is now. He is a sword of right-thought, a blade for us to plunge into the heart of the people’s enemy.’
‘You traitorous bloody jigger,’ hollered Molly. ‘Your perfect neck is going to end up swinging on the end of a rope at Bonegate.’
Marshal Arinze backhanded Molly’s face, slapping her to the ground. ‘I wish I had the opportunity to find you a place in one of our camps, girl, open your eyes to the truth of Carlism – yo
u who were born with so little, you who should have been a natural soldier in our cause. But you have another way to serve.’
‘I won’t serve you. You and your shiftie friends are going to be slaughtered,’ said Molly. ‘The moment you come across the border our people will bury your whole dirty army, just like we always do.’
Tzlayloc laughed along with the marshal, sweeping his arm down to the ravine where his legions were toiling. ‘But our neighbours from Quatérshift won’t be coming over the border to aid us, Compatriot Templar. They will be coming under it. This city isn’t the only secret the ancient shades of Wildcaotyl have shared with me. They have led me to the deepest atmospheric tunnel routes, half ruined and collapsed with age, but nothing that a dedicated force toiling for their freedom, striving for an equal society, could not clear. Your tyranny of shopkeepers and mill masters is about to tumble before the truth of the revolution, Compatriot Templar. In a few days I will have a brigade of the people’s army ready to march onto Middlesteel’s own doorstep. This time the events of the age will not find us wanting. We are not the lenient philosophers and sentimental combination families that fell to Jackals’ guns fifteen years ago. We have a purity of purpose.’
Molly was trembling. It sounded mad, but her heart told her that the decades-long bloodbath in Quatérshift was about to be exported to her home. The old empire’s atmospheric lines – they must have cleared near two hundred miles of tunnels to get to the border with the Commonshare.
‘Search within yourself, young compatriot. You know it is true. And once we have purged the RAN of its patrician leeches we will unleash our eager jack cloudies on the rest of the continent. The complacent mechomancers of the city-states, that fat godhead in Kikkosico, King Steam’s cold intelligence, all will be overthrown by our new army of light. We will sweep away the antiquated kingdoms of this land and replace them with our perfect new union.’
Molly kicked the chest of money, rattling the bags of coins inside. ‘Why have you been hunting me, Tzlayloc? I haven’t got a place in your sullied new land.’
