The Court of the Air

by Stephen Hunt

  Oliver knew what was coming. The pressure on his hands increased, the weight of holding an anvil no one could see. With a click the door swung open and the hulking Special Guardsmen moved into position to cover the exit. The tallest of the two looked down in disbelief as a spot of blood appeared on his uniform, the sword pushing out of his chest. Oliver cut the second guardsman’s connection to the mist as the count slid his sabre out of the first and turning decapitated the other guard with a stroke so fast it barely registered. The others had not even noticed the brace of ornate duelling guns that had appeared in Oliver’s hands.

  ‘I doubt we can afford your rates,’ said Nickleby to the count. Count Vauxtion wiped the gore off his blade and reassembled the sword cane.

  ‘I had two sons once. They paid for you.’

  ‘That’s it?’ said Molly. ‘You spent all that time tracking me down for them and you’re switching sides just like that?’

  ‘I choose who I work for,’ said the count. ‘And I choose which commissions I accept. I warned Tzlayloc once that he would be well advised not to try and change the terms of my contract halfway through the job. He has, and now at least one of us is going to be very unhappy with that decision.’

  ‘Let’s be away, now,’ said the commodore. ‘Before these devils realize you have seen the error of your ways. We can toast your change of heart back at Tock House if your wicked crew of toppers have left any bottles in my cellar.’

  ‘I wasn’t lying about the Third Brigade,’ said Count Vauxtion. ‘And the walls of your folly aren’t thick enough to resist shot and cannon.’

  ‘You have not freed us to rescue us,’ said Steamswipe, leaving the cell and smashing the glass case where Lord Wireburn lay trapped.

  ‘About time,’ grumbled the holy weapon.

  ‘You need our swords,’ said Steamswipe, tossing Oliver’s witch-blade back to him. ‘I have faced your softbody nation on the field of honour often enough to recognize your cunning.’

  ‘You have a long memory if you can remember staring north from the Steamman Free State and seeing any field other than killing ones in Quatérshift.’ The count sketched a map into the dirt of the floor with his cane. ‘This is the mine works on the floor of the cavern, this is the Jackelian terminus for the atmospheric line – under vacuum now. And this is the chamber where they store the blasting casks of blow-barrel sap, enough barrels to put a dent in a mountain. If we ignite it we can bury the entire invasion force in the tunnel under a thousand tonnes of rubble.’

  ‘They are your countrymen,’ said Nickleby.

  ‘I’m a Jackelian now,’ said the count. He held up the sabre and the long knife he had hidden inside his sword cane. ‘These are my debating sticks, don’t you know?’

  Oliver loaded both his pistols. ‘Let us go and discuss politics with Tzlayloc then.’

  Molly saw that the count had produced the gas gun she had seen him use in Grimhope, while the commodore and Nickleby liberated pistols out of the dead guardsmen’s holsters. Count Vauxtion led them across the lost city, the gas gun pressed into Molly’s back, Oliver suggesting paths through the dark overgrown buildings that avoided the Special Guardsmen and twisted fey things. Molly and her two companions from Tock House played the roles of mistreated prisoners to perfection, aided by the prop of Nickleby’s blackened stump of an arm. When brilliant men and the Commonshare’s skirmishers challenged them, the count flourished the letters of passage from Tzlayloc; that and the assassin’s menacing manner were enough to get them to the edge of the mine.

  Bright engineers’ lanterns augmented the Chimecan crystals’ twilight inside the pit, the same style of lamps Oliver had seen in Shadowclock’s tall streets. The stink of badly vented steam-engine smoke and the bash of equipment rose from the pit. Metal legions of the equalized laboured below. They sang the outlawed songs of the uprising with their scratchy voiceboxes, the once-organic population of Grimhope and pressed miners of Shadowclock both toiling under the supervision of brilliant men.

  On the pit’s sides the rickety scaffolding and ladders were being upgraded, replaced with reinforced ramps, strong enough to support the columns, cannon and sea of boots of the Third Brigade. The group had almost reached the floor of the pit when a shout sounded from the cavern above. Marshal Arinze.

  ‘Compatriot Vauxtion,’ shouted the officer. ‘Our Jackelian brothers want the girl back on the cross. Why are you down there?’

  ‘Keep moving to the bottom of the ramp,’ whispered the count, then shouted back up: ‘Tzlayloc wants the girl to see her companions undergo equalization in the conversion mills. He believes it will help amplify Compatriot Templar’s suffering on the pain device.’

  ‘Splendid,’ the marshal called down. ‘Now why don’t you explain to me how they are going to equalize that brute of a steamman warrior you have with you?’

  He said something to his troopers and they began slipping crystal charges out of their bandoliers and unslinging their rifles. Upheaval erupted across the pit floor, shots crackling down as Steamswipe returned fire, rotating sunbursts searing the walls with plasma light. Equalized workers milled around, trying to work out where and why the sudden explosion of violence had interrupted their toil. A number of the press-ganged compatriots shuffled towards the ramps, trying to use the confusion as cover to escape; their overseers frantically worked their discipline rods and the equalized workers tumbled to the ground in anguish.

  ‘Behind you,’ warned Molly as a wave of loyalist equalized shambled towards Steamswipe brandishing picks and pressure cutters. The steamman knight sang to Lord Wireburn in machine tongue and the holy relic poured forth a jet of blue fire, Steamswipe spraying the line from left to right and back again. Screams from the human-machine hybrids died as their voiceboxes exploded in the unearthly fire, a shower of molten metal and charcoaled flesh raining back on the advancing children of the revolution.

  Lord Wireburn was smoking in the knight’s manipulator arms, the dark oil which slicked his surface fully burnt off. ‘Suffer not these abominations to live, Steamswipe. Eradicate every last one of the filthy outrages.’

  ‘Close quarters,’ barked Count Vauxtion. Their rear was being rushed by a mob of overseers, unarmed except for their discipline rods. Nickleby and the commodore were frantically reloading from their stolen bandoliers as Oliver raised both pistols and discharged them at the scaffolding joins. High above soldiers plunged into the air as a section of the ramp gave way, an explosion of iron pipes and dust rolling out into their attackers. Both blades from Vauxtion’s cane were in his hands as he stepped lightly through the sudden dust storm, flicking his sabre and long knife like butterfly wings, cutting throats and slitting sinews.

  Tucked in Oliver’s belt the witch-blade shivered with delight; here was an enemy it could engage without the pain of trying to penetrate fey-twisted muscle. Oliver stepped forward and was engulfed by the cloud of rock dust, the witch-blade grown sword long. He moved with a stamping, twisting gait, the hilt of the witch-blade grasped with both hands, sweeping up, sweeping down, a single cut through a body each time. Oliver could hardly see his attackers’ faces; they were merely shadows in the dust, their angry bellows cut off as they went down. The part of him that had not died at Hundred Locks was glad he couldn’t see the look of contorted astonishment on their faces as the witch-blade sucked the life from them.

  He could see the expression of horror on Molly’s face though, as the dust cleared and he and the count stood among a sea of fallen brilliant men, three blades slicked with gore. Somehow her disgust mattered to him more than it should.

  ‘An ancient fighting style,’ said the count. ‘I was not aware it was even taught any more.’

  Oliver dipped down and wiped the blood off his witch-blade onto a corpse’s jacket. A slippery blade is a dangerous blade; the words arrived in his mind as if from his father. Steamswipe galloped for the tunnel that Vauxtion had sketched out for them, Oliver and the count taking the rear as their three companions sprinted in
the shielded lee of the steamman’s hull, round shot pinging off his armour.

  Someone was shouting at them from above as they reached the shelter of the tunnel mouth, a woman’s voice. It was the assessor; her livid words mangled by the row of kneeling Quatérshiftian scouts discharging their rifles. Vauxtion stuck out his hand and Oliver tossed him one of his pistols, the count falling to one knee and turning sideways, gun bucking once. The assessor fell forward lifeless onto the rank of soldiers, spilling one of the troopers into the pit mouth.

  ‘Remind me to tell Ka’oard to engage a new agent.’

  Tunnels split out in front of them in all directions and they pushed past bewildered workers – equalized and human – following the count’s lead. Molly added to the confusion, shouting warnings of raids by the crushers and tunnel collapses, floatquakes and failing Chimecan roof crystals. Tremors ran through the floor of the mine system, lending authenticity to her warnings.

  ‘An atmospheric capsule,’ said the commodore. ‘The blessed shifties are coming through. If we don’t bring the tunnels down soon we’ll be facing a brigade full of the rascals down here with us.’

  Count Vauxtion pulled a spherical detonator cap from his pocket. ‘Be cautious, there will be guards outside the blasting store.’

  Oliver frowned. He could not detect any soldiers around the corner. Steamswipe rounded the corner of the tunnel to find a steel door blocking their passage.

  ‘There is nobody here.’

  ‘So much the better,’ said the commodore. ‘Let’s set your blessed charge and be away from here before it does its lethal work.’

  Steamswipe lifted Lord Wireburn and hosed the locked door with blue fire, melting the barrier with the precision of a Middlesteel watchmaker. Pushing into the blasting chamber’s cavernous interior they halted. It was empty. Four solitary glass-gilded barrels lay piled in the centre, an equalized worker about to load one into a two-wheeled handcart.

  ‘Where are they?’ shouted the count. ‘Where’s the blasting store?’

  ‘Compatriot,’ grated the equalized worker, ‘this is the blasting store.’

  ‘The blow-barrel casks,’ said Vauxtion. ‘This chamber was piled high with blow-barrel casks yesterday evening.’

  ‘They have been shipped back to mill twelve,’ said the worker, the calculation drums in his chest turning hesitantly as he tried to summon the words. ‘The glass blowers have been out of sap for charge manufacture for days. The mine-works committee said you did not need the barrels in here any more, time for bullets they said.’

  Commodore Black kicked the handcart over. ‘Our stars. Our unlucky stars.’

  ‘Soldiers,’ said Oliver. ‘Coming into the tunnels after us. We cannot afford to be dead-ended in this chamber.’

  ‘Tell me we can get out of here,’ Molly said to the count.

  ‘I was not planning to die down here,’ said Count Vauxtion, slipping the detonator sphere back in his pocket. ‘This complex is a termite mound, there’s tunnels all around us and the higher ones connect to the old copper mine above. There are airshafts that come out in Middlemarsh Forest.’

  ‘With our mortal luck the Third Brigade will have parked their ammunition train over them,’ said the commodore.

  They dared the mine passages again, passing equalized gangs blissfully unaware of anything except the hollows in the rock that they were working on and the equipment they were dragging behind them, ignorance which turned to panic when the Commonshare’s skirmishers darted through the corridors in pursuit of the intruders.

  Steamswipe overturned three wagons of rubble waiting to be pulled out on a rail. An instant blockade. A tongue of cyan flame licked out from Lord Wireburn, sending the soldiers behind them scattering. Molly ducked her head into a side passage and then tried another opening down the tunnel. ‘One leads up, one leads down.’

  Bullets cracked past as Nickleby tried to reload his pistol one-handed. ‘I can hold them here.’

  ‘With me by your side,’ said Steamswipe, loosing another burst of flame. ‘I could slay the entire army of the Commonshare in these tunnels and I would not think it too much.’

  Molly pushed the commodore down the tunnel towards Oliver. ‘I’m not leaving anyone here. We can smash the ladders in the shaft behind us, the shifties don’t know these tunnels any better than us.’

  ‘He has a point,’ said the count. ‘If a couple of us stay and hold the tunnel—’

  Molly heard the glass sphere as it rolled down the corridor towards them, two hues of liquid capped by a clockwork head rotating in towards the crystal. Someone shouted ‘grenade’ and Steamswipe cast himself on top of the crystal explosive, the detonation lashing the steamman warrior into the wall of the tunnel, lifting everyone else off their feet. The burning knight crumpled into the wooden tunnel support, snapping the stay as an avalanche of rock rained down around them.

  Oliver got to his feet. Blood was pouring from his head where a rock had glanced off it. Commodore Black rose out of the haze of rock powder. ‘Sweet mercy!’

  They had been cut off from the others by the rock fall. There was a small chink of light from the lanterns on the other side of the cave-in – their side had fallen into darkness.

  ‘We’re here,’ Oliver shouted through the small crevice.

  On the other side of the rock fall Nickleby and Count Vauxtion picked themselves up from under the layer of tunnel wreckage and shouted back. Steamswipe’s head and chest were visible; the rest of his body lay trapped under a huge rock. The ceiling had collapsed in front of them too; the barks of the Commonshare skirmishers muffled beyond their pocket of tunnel.

  ‘Lass!’ shouted the commodore. ‘Molly! Is Molly with you, Silas?’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  Commodore Black stared at the mass of rock. ‘Sweet Circle. Molly, Molly!’

  Oliver pulled the submariner away from the rock fall as he frenziedly tried to pull at the rubble and rocks. ‘I can’t sense her under there, commodore. I can feel the Third Brigade passing through in the atmospheric capsules below us, but I can’t sense Molly.’

  ‘Lad, she might be unconscious under there. Trapped in a pocket of air.’

  ‘She could be, but better if she isn’t. A company of miners with blasting barrels and drills would take a day to shift this. If she woke under there and she wasn’t dead…’

  ‘Oh lass, my poor lass.’

  Nickleby placed his face near the fissure in the rock fall. ‘We are trapped in here. Steamswipe is pinned down and near deactivate. The tunnel fall at the other end is lighter. We might be able to dig out that way although I suspect we are going to find half the Third Brigade waiting for us.’

  ‘I doubt they have waived the brigade’s rules on prisoners since I faced them with the remains of the royalist army,’ said the count. ‘Soldiers who accept a surrender are to feed the prisoners out of their own allocation of rations.’

  ‘There is another way,’ rumbled Lord Wireburn from the tunnel floor.

  Count Vauxtion picked up the holy weapon. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I contain within my shell the stuff of anti-life, a grain of a primordial energy superior in explosive force to a forest of blow-barrel trees. I can lower the walls of containment to this power and release my life force in a single burst.’

  The commodore climbed up the rock fall to speak through the gap. ‘Silas, you’ll not survive that. Dear Circle you can’t leave old Blacky and the lad down here on our own, scrabbling about in the dark like rats in a trap.’

  ‘Get away, Jared,’ called Nickleby through the cranny. ‘As far and as fast as you can. We’re going to bring down the roof on the Third Brigade after all.’

  ‘No Silas,’ wheezed the commodore.

  Oliver pulled at the submariner’s jacket. ‘We have to climb as high as possible.’

  ‘You tell Broad,’ shouted the pensman. ‘You tell him when they publish the story on the Pitt Hill murders that I want the by-line. It’s not to go to anyone
else. It’s my damn story.’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ promised the commodore, as he and Oliver scrambled along the passage and into the darkness. ‘And you’ll get the whole blessed front page too.’

  Nickleby passed his pipe over to Count Vauxtion to relight. ‘Do you smoke?’

  ‘I prefer brandy,’ said the count. ‘But you can’t raise a decent vintage in Jackals. You lack the soil.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nickleby. ‘I remember the brandies that used to come over from Quatérshift. Haven’t seen one in years. No flask on me, I’m afraid. Not even jinn.’

  Red sigils had appeared on Lord Wireburn’s oily surface, sweeping down in a circular pattern like a clock. A hum of static was streaming from Steamswipe’s voicebox, as if the life of the old warrior was leaking out into the stale air of the cave-in.

  ‘That sounds like a tune,’ said Count Vauxtion.

  ‘He is approaching deactivation,’ said Lord Wireburn. ‘He is singing to the Steamo Loas. Calling their blessing. He remembers only the low-level languages now; too much of him has been destroyed. He has asked me to apologize to you for not being able to sing a little in your tongue. So you also might know their blessing.’

  ‘How long do we have left?’ asked Nickleby.

  ‘Three minutes perhaps,’ said Lord Wireburn. ‘The barriers I am bypassing are not intended to be lowered lightly. It is only the wisdom of my dotage that allows me to override the constraints of my architecture.’

  From the other side of the light rock fall came the sound of rubble being removed. Count Vauxtion pulled his delicate sabre from his cane and rested it on his knees.

  ‘I doubt if they will get through in time,’ said Nickleby.