The Court of the Air

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘I shall keep my sabre to hand in case,’ said Count Vauxtion. ‘Some of the Third Brigade are no doubt talented diggers, the number of ditches they had to shovel while convicts…’

  ‘Of course,’ said Nickleby. ‘Well, I with my pipe and you with your sabre. I would say we are both content.’

  * * *

  Outside in the mine pit a vortex had formed, a tornado of black energy whirling around and sucking Commonshare soldiers, brilliant men and equalized into its maw. Hands clung desperately to the side of the excavation, as tools, rocks and clothes were pulled up towards the putrid-smelling whirlwind.

  A terrified soldier ran towards Marshal Arinze, his rifle forgotten, shouting appeals to the sun god that the Commonshare had long since banned. He pushed past the officer and lifted into the air as Arinze shot him in the back. ‘Stay at your posts, compatriot soldiers. Hold to them fast.’

  By the officer’s side two of his worldsingers tried an invocation but a coil of darkness whiplashed out from the pit; piercing their foreheads; and they collapsed back, steam boiling from a tiny hole in each of their skulls.

  Tzlayloc appeared and the marshal grabbed at him. ‘Compatriot, my people are being slaughtered in there.’

  Tzlayloc laughed, pointing to the whirlwind speeding up. ‘You have such little faith in the cause. Your soldiers are not dying, they are being saved – they are feeding the Wildcaotyl.’

  As he spoke the whirlwind exploded towards the cavern roof, six separate storms of insects darting and twisting around each other. The citizens of Grimhope and their allies covered their ears as a hideous chattering filled the cavern, drowning out the terrified screams of the troops below.

  Each cloud looped around and plunged down into the excavation, heading for a single tunnel. Miners and their masters broiled as the stream of insect-shaped energy swept down the chambers and towards the source of the force that was being revealed below ground. At the rock fall the Wildcaotyl were hurled back. A wall of translucent silver outlines was standing sentry beyond the frantically digging soldiers and miners – the Steamo Loas safeguarding their chosen champion. The Wildcaotyl apparitions hissed in rage through tarantula-like fangs. These thin vapours of steammen deities were lesser spirits; they could devour the knight’s death guard, but not in the few seconds they sensed was left on Lord Wireburn’s flickering display.

  Turning as one, the Wildcaotyl poured down the airshafts and found the rubber curtain of the atmospheric terminus. Beating through the station valves they splattered against the walls, mile after mile of the vacuum-filled transport tunnel sprayed with a trembling skin of unholy energy. Then they waited, ignoring the whisper of atmospheric capsules speeding past.

  Stones tumbled down from the rock fall exposing a small triangle of space between two boulders.

  ‘What can you see?’ a voice sounded on the other side of the obstruction.

  Count Vauxtion smashed his fist into the nose that pressed itself up to the space, shaking his hand in pain as the soldier on the other side of the caved-in rock fell back.

  ‘You should have impaled him with your sabre,’ said Nickleby.

  ‘There speaks a true jack cloudie,’ said the count. ‘Warfare is more than pushing fin-bombs out of an aerostat bay. Sometimes it feels good to close with the enemy with nothing but your bare hands. It is a matter of honour.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nickleby. A line of pale lifeless faces looked up at him accusingly from a dead street, the cards with the names of the places the corpses had been discovered hung around their necks. ‘A matter of honour.’

  Shouts of anger sounded on the other side of the rock and the thud-thud of the engineers and soldiers clearing away the fall grew louder.

  The pensman glanced down at Lord Wireburn cradled in his arms – the crimson light flickering across his face as the sigils rotated around. Would the holy relic be able to fire now if the Third Brigade engineers broke through? He doubted it.

  ‘What say you?’ Vauxtion called out through the gap. ‘What say you of honour, my compatriots, my countrymen? Is there any honour still left in our beautiful home, or has it been crushed under the boots of the Third Brigade? Has honour yet to be allocated by committee 4302, or was the last of it marched into a Gideon’s Collar to pass away under the blow of a steel spike?’

  The muzzle of a gun pushed through the gap and Vauxtion seized it, striking the weapon back into its owner’s face before pulling the rifle through into their chamber. He caressed the ugly black gun’s lines, checking the crystal charge loaded into its barrel. A look of disappointment settled on the count’s face. ‘Functional, at best. A tool for intimidating farmers and menacing bakers’ boys. There is more workshop artistry in a Jackelian redcoat’s Brown Jane, more craftsmanship in a lady’s purse gun.’

  Vauxtion tilted the rifle through the gap and discharged it, the retort of the charge echoing around the small space like thunder. Nickleby coughed and waved the pungent smoke away with his mumbleweed pipe. The count tossed the empty gun contemptuously onto the floor.

  ‘I do apologize,’ said the count.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ said Nickleby. He drew a deep breath on the pipe. ‘These are rather difficult times.’

  ‘Quite. You realize that when the bludgers on the other side of the rock were my soldiers, we never would have been squirming around under the dirt like thieves digging into your basement. We would have marched across the border in the same old way, marched like men, then battled your new pattern army with our king’s military trinity: cavalry, infantry and artillery. By the glory of the sun and all that is holy we would have fought like devils.’

  ‘And we would have seen you off in the same old way,’ said Nickleby. ‘With the red-coated scrapings of the gutter, the threat of the lash on their back and the promise of a large tot of jinn when it was all over.’

  Vauxtion smiled and nodded, then turned his attention back to the rocks tumbling down on their side of the divide.

  The pensman heard the scraping of an iron manipulator hand behind him.

  ‘Ni.c.kle.by, h.ear m.y wo.r.d_s.’

  It was Steamswipe, half-crushed, half-decapitated. Somehow the knight had managed to regain enough of his functions to communicate in the higher languages.

  ‘We a.r e a.ll c.lo.se to d.e.ac.ti.v_atio.n. The K.eep.er of th. e Et_e.rn.al Fla_me w.ill cle.an.s.e u.s all.Y.ou m.u_st sing. S_ing t.o p.lea.se th.e Loas.’

  ‘I am afraid I wouldn’t be much good at the hymns of your people, old steamer,’ said Nickleby. ‘I simply don’t have the voicebox for it.’

  ‘T_he.n yo.u m.ust in.to.n.e the ma.nt.ra of y.our k_in_d. O.ur ti.me i.s at an e_n_d.’

  The pensman shrugged.

  ‘Oh, please no,’ said Vauxtion.

  On the other side of the rock face the troopers and engineers halted their clearance work.

  ‘What’s that sound? Do you hear it?’

  ‘They are singing,’ replied one of the equalized workers. ‘They are singing “Lion of Jackals”.’

  The whole cavern shuddered, as if the world had bounced the lost underground city a foot into the air. Crystals embedded in the cavern ceiling shattered, raining down the dust of ancient machinery onto the shakos of the Commonshare’s skirmishers. Equalized revolutionaries briefly halted then continued to the schedule of their work rota as if nothing had happened. Tzlayloc extended a hand down to Marshal Arinze and the soldier picked himself up.

  ‘The Third Brigade is here compatriot marshal. The revolution has arrived in Jackals.’

  Commodore Black stared down the shaft they had just scaled. It had collapsed, filled in by an avalanche following the quake. A minute earlier and they would have been inside there.

  ‘The tunnels still stand,’ said Oliver. ‘I can feel the troops in their atmospheric carriages. Murderers and killers. Thousands of them.’

  ‘Silas? Your friends?’

  Oliver shook his head.

  ‘Silas Nickleby, you dear blessed fool,’
wept the commodore. ‘Silas and Molly, both dead. All for nothing, all for nothing. I warned him what would happen. You heard me tell him. The scrapes that old goat got me into. What am I going to do without the impetuous fool? An army of the worst slayers in history nipping away at our heels. There’s nobody left, lad, just us. What have we got left?’

  Oliver’s shadow swelled in the dirty tunnel like a living thing, his brace of pistols glowing with a light not cast by the tunnel lanterns. He lifted the bandolier of crystal charges off Black’s shoulder. ‘Forty bullets.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Brigadier-general Shepperton stared up at the lone aerostat floating over Fulven Fields on the outskirts of Middlesteel. ‘What is Admiralty House playing at? We can’t move into position without cover from the navy – I don’t know what’s the matter with our bally aerostats today. Where are those damn loafers from signals?’

  Major Wellesley turned on his skittish sixer, the horse unsettled by the ranks of shining metal bodies taking to the field in the low hills opposite; they had no smell and the horses of the riding officers had been spooked all morning. ‘Sir, none of our scouts have managed to locate a crystalgrid station that wasn’t fired last night by the Carlists.’

  The major glanced up at the aerostat. It was an old Guardian Prester class, due to be decommissioned at the royal armoury and manned mostly by retired RAN types and a handful of enthusiast volunteers from the Middlesteel chapter of the Lighter than Air Society. A bunch of tail spotters in the fin-bomb room. Wellesley shuddered and prayed that they would remember which army below stood on their side.

  A riding officer galloped at full tilt from the north, reining in at the last moment in front of the staff officer’s table. ‘Brigadier-general, sir, Admiralty House is burning. Spoke to one of the staff there, said some of the Admiralty Board were feybreed, fey wearing the bodies of the Sky Lords. Quite a to-do in the city, sir, shifties everywhere, barricades and Carlists manning them. Makes getting about rather tiresome.’

  ‘Where’s your hat, man?’

  ‘Shot off, sir.’

  ‘Draw a new one from the commissionaire,’ ordered the brigadier-general. I won’t have my boys looking unkempt, what what. Jack cloudies have let us down badly this time, ships of the line sitting around Shadowclock like a school of useless bally skraypers. There’ll be questions asked in the House.’

  Wellesley winced. They had already told the brigadier-general twice that the House of Guardians had fallen early on in the Commonshare’s assault. It was pure luck the Middlesteel Rifles had been out of their barracks when the nighttime attack had begun.

  ‘Sir,’ said Major Wellesley, pointing to the neat lines of their troops. ‘Now we have confirmation that the RAN won’t be operating in support, might I suggest we look at our dispositions again?’

  ‘You may not, sir,’ said the brigadier-general. ‘The new pattern army has not lost a battle since it was formed by Isambard Kirkhill. Our order of battle has been tried and tested over centuries by some of the finest military minds produced by Jackals.’

  Wellesley shifted irritably in his saddle. ‘With respect, sir, our current disposition is intended to involve close coordin ation with the high fleet. We have a single aerostat – our formation requires at least a squadron of the line. These fellows are not the colonial farm boys we saw off last year.’

  ‘Shifties, major,’ said the brigadier-general. ‘Shifties and a criminal rabble of Carlists. They will come at us in the same old way and we shall beat them off in the same old way. This is not the time to dabble with new thinking, major. I do not require more than a single aerostat to see off a bunch of damn shifties and a mob of traitors who have crawled out of the undercity.’

  Wellesley started to reply, but seeing the look on the brigadier-general’s face thought better of it. This was turning into a nightmare. From the moment they had received word that Fort Downdirt had been overrun to sighting the Quatérshiftian lines being dug in outside the capital.

  The brigadier-general turned to the riding officer who had just come in. ‘You sir, lieutenant I-have-no-hat-sir. Ride over to the other side of the column and bring me one of the worldsingers. I want to know what feybreed are doing running around Admiralty House. And will someone please find me the Special Guard.’

  ‘There, sir,’ pointed a staff officer. Blazing through the sky like a comet, the Special Guardsman sailed in a lazy arc over the battlefield, overflying the Commonshare’s columns of troops and rows of cannon, before twisting off to head towards the Jackelian forces. With a shock of wind that nearly lifted off their shakos and tricorn hats the Special Guardsman halted above the ground in front of their map-littered folding table.

  ‘About bally time,’ said the brigadier-general. ‘Did you not receive the written orders I sent Captain Flare?’

  ‘We did,’ said the guardsman.

  ‘Then, sir, perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me where in the Circle’s name the guards’ companies are today?’

  Passing a letter to the brigadier-general the guardsman saluted then sped off into the sky, looping back towards the capital. Brigadier-general Shepperton read the note, holding onto it for far longer than it should have taken to digest the message. Then he handed it up to Wellesley on his horse.

  Major Wellesley read it for the benefit of the staff. ‘The guard will not fight for you. The guard will not fight against you. This is a hamblin war. Let us see how well Jackals fares without our intervention. Flare.’

  ‘Can they do that?’ piped up an officer.

  From the left flank the riding officer returned with a worldsinger, his purple robes almost the same shade as the brigadier-general’s fuming cheeks. ‘You man! There’s a mutiny in the guards – what have you fellows in the order been doing about it?’

  ‘I have had reports, brigadier-general,’ said the worldsinger. ‘Sendings.’

  ‘I’m not interested in how much of that damn wizard’s snuff you’ve had up your nose, man, or if you’ve been playing chess on the spirit plane with the god-emperor of Kikkosico. Facts, sir, I need facts.’

  ‘The torcs on their neck do not respond, the control hex is there but it no longer works. Brigadier-general, the order no longer has command over the Special Guard.’

  ‘The Circle you say!’ swore the brigadier-general. ‘This is most irregular, wouldn’t you say?’

  Grass spurted up in front of them as cannons in the enemy line opened fire.

  ‘I do believe that was purposefully aimed at us,’ shouted the brigadier-general.

  ‘Bad form,’ agreed one of the general staff.

  Major Wellesley kicked his horse towards his men below. He rode so fast that he did not notice that the cloud drifting towards Jackals’ last remaining aerostat was not rain but a swarm of insect-like outlines.

  The battle for Middlesteel had begun.

  When she woke up the ceiling was moving, a sea of black rock sliding down and away from her. A stretcher-like affair of old mining stays and canvas lashed together by cable supported her stiff back. Things looked wrong. She was only seeing out of one eye. Her hand touched her face, feeling the swollen cheek blocking her right eye’s sight – and shouted in agony.

  ‘Molly,’ said a voice, ‘Are you conscious?’ The roof’s motion halted, plunging her stomach into nausea.

  Molly’s good eye managed to catch sight of what had been dragging her: some kind of steamman – but it looked badly formed, hull plates were missing and exposed machinery twisted and turned through open spaces, an unholy rattling coming from the thing’s belly.

  ‘Is this the undercity? Where are my friends?’

  ‘They are dead, we think, Molly softbody,’ said the steamman. ‘There was an explosion, very large, most of the mine came down. But the enemy was protecting the atmospheric – we survived in the maintenance tube.’

  ‘We?’ Molly looked around. None of her companions were with her. Dead? Nickleby and the commodore, the warrior from Mechancia and h
is strange fey friend, even her deadly nemesis from Quatérshift. No. No. But her last memory came back to her. The steamman knight throwing himself on top of the crystal grenade that had been tossed towards them – the explosion – the ground opening up beneath her feet, falling as an avalanche of rock pelted her sides. Then nothing. Her friends really were murdered. She was alone again, everyone who tried to protect her cut down. No wonder her mother had abandoned her on the steps of Sun Gate; she had obviously had a premonition of what her fate would be if she tried to look after her cursed child.

  She might have been crying for hours before she felt one of the pincers of the steamman adjusting the torn fabric that had been pulled over her.

  ‘Molly,’ said the steamman. ‘Molly softbody, do you not recognize us?’

  Her tears burnt like fire on her bruised cheek. ‘Have we met?’

  ‘We never thought we would see you again, Molly soft-body. After Grimhope, the repair room.’

  ‘Repair—’ she looked at the steamman, the shape of the hull pieces and the timbre of the voicebox. Some of the parts so familiar. But how?

  ‘It was straightforward, Molly softbody. The Hexmachina came to us and showed us how to join our bodies. Silver Onestack did not care, as he was already a desecration. But Slowcogs did not want to live that way, until the girl from the paintings opened his vision plate. Showed him the routes that would be travelled by the world if we did not combine. What would happen to you, Molly softbody.’

  ‘Dear sweet Circle,’ said Molly, reaching out to feel the warm metal of the steamman. ‘Slowcogs, Silver Onestack, you repaired yourself.’

  ‘We are joined, young softbody, fused by the will of the Hexmachina. We have violated the law of the Steamo Loas, cannibalized our own flesh, but she is of a higher order and we would do it again. Do it again to save you, Molly.’

  ‘I would not have asked you to do this,’ said Molly.

  ‘We know.’ The ruined steamman began to pull at the stretcher again. ‘And that is why we must.’