The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt
not the way of our kind.’
‘I need to get to the undercity. Can you take me down into the atmospheric?’
‘There is a high level of physical danger in the undercity,’ said the steamman. ‘The rules of community are not adhered to below.’
‘I know it’s an outlaw society,’ hissed Molly. ‘But I haven’t got anywhere else to run to.’
‘Crawl under my sacks,’ commanded the steamman. ‘Your pursuers draw close.’
Molly buried herself under the bags of waste, leaving as small a space to breathe as she dared. She heard a gruff voice asking a passenger if he had seen a missing runaway girl. The thug omitted to mention what Molly was running away from. Then the voice was left behind and the tap, tap, tap of the steamman’s legs on the concourse became the only sound she could hear.
Molly angled her face for a better view out of the skip; the metal bars of a door were being hauled into the ceiling and they were passing into a sooty lift of a size to accommodate the large steamman.
‘Steelbhalah-Waldo has been watching over you. The ones who wish you harm have been left behind.’
Steelbhalah-Waldo indeed, Molly thought. Her rescuer spoke of the religion of Gear-gi-ju. The steammen worshipped their ancestors and a pantheon of machine-spirits, sacrificing high-grade boiler coke and burning oil from their own valves and gears.
Molly crawled out from under the piled sacks. ‘Thank you for your help, old steamer. I think you may have just saved my life.’
‘My known name is Slowcogs,’ said the steamman. ‘You may call me by my known name.’
Molly nodded. Slowcogs’ true name would be a blessed serial number known only to himself and the ruler of the machine race, King Steam. That was not for her to know. The old lift started to vibrate as it sank.
‘Can you show me the way to the undercity, Slowcogs? The way to Grimhope.’
‘The way is known to the people of the metal, young soft-body. But it is a path filled with danger. I hesitate to expose you to such risk.’
‘Middlesteel above has become too dangerous for me, Slowcogs. A professional topper has been sent after me and now many of my friends have died because of my presence. There aren’t many places left to run to. I’ll take the risk of Middlesteel below.’
‘So young,’ tutted the old machine. ‘Why do the master-less warriors of your people seek your destruction?’
‘I don’t really know,’ said Molly. ‘I suppose it has something to do with my family. I think one of my kin is trying to remove my rights of inheritance the easy way, by removing me from Middlesteel.’
‘That those who share biological property with you should act in such a way is disgraceful. But all may not be as it seems – there are many sorts of inheritance.’
The lift room opened and they were in a large vaulted chamber facing a row of empty iron skips of the type that made up Slowcogs’ body. With a wrenching sound – like metal being torn – the front of Slowcogs disengaged from the multi-legged skip, leaving it behind like a tortoise abandoning its shell. The new, smaller Slowcogs was as tall as Molly, running on three iron wheels in tricycle formation. ‘Our way lies across the atmospheric platforms. The masterless warriors who seek your life will undoubtedly finish their search above and begin looking for you below.’
‘I’ll be quick,’ Molly promised.
They followed a small gas-lit tunnel, a locked door at the end opening onto Guardian Rathbone station’s main switching hall. In the centre of the cavernous circular hall was a series of interconnected turntables shifting windowless atmospheric capsule trains between lines. Large shunting arms terminating in buffers pushed the atmospheric capsules through leather curtains and into the platform tubes. Molly could hear the drone of the passenger crowd boarding the motorless capsules on the other side of the curtain, then the sucking sound as the capsule was shunted through the rubber airlock and into the line’s sending valve, before being pressure-sped into the vacuum of the atmospheric.
Slowcogs led Molly across the switching hall on a raised walkway, into a smaller maintenance hall where capsules lay stacked like firewood across the repair bays.
‘This is the way to the undercity?’ Molly asked.
‘First we must consult Redrust,’ said Slowcogs. ‘He is the station controller and a Gear-gi-ju master. He will know the safest path.’ They climbed a shaky staircase, coming into a hut overlooking the maintenance bay. Sitting inside watching the hall through a grimy window was a steamman with an oversized head, rubber tubes dangling from his metal skull like beaded hair. Redrust’s speaking tubes were three small flared trumpets just below his neck.
‘Controller,’ said Slowcogs, ‘I have need of your assistance for this young softbody.’
Redrust’s voice echoed out like a wire being scratched across a chalkboard. ‘When do we not need the guidance of those that have passed away on the great pattern, Slowcogs?’
‘I am in particular need today, controller,’ said Molly.
The rubber tubes on his skull jangled as Redrust turned his substantial head to stare at Molly. ‘A particular need, so? Much haste in your words. You would do better to wait a while and contemplate your part in the great pattern.’
‘Events dictate otherwise, old steamer.’
‘So? Let us throw the cogs and see what Gear-gi-ju has to reveal to us this evening, then.’
Slowcogs passed a porcelain cup to the controller, filled with small metalworkings of different sizes. Redrust released a small puddle of dark blood-like oil onto the floor from his valves. Scattering the cogs into the pool, he traced an iron digit through the pile.
‘I see a girl, climbing out of the wreckage of a collapsed tower.’
‘That would be me,’ said Molly.
‘I see shadows. Moving through the city. Deaths. A stalker.’
‘Lots of people die in Middlesteel,’ said Molly.
‘I see your desire to travel into the belly of the ground, escaping the perils that snap at your heels,’ said Redrust.
‘That is my wish, sir,’ said Molly.
‘I see—’ Redrust stopped. ‘Ah, so. Great complexity. Many wheels. You did well to bring this softbody to us, Slowcogs.’
‘She is known to us,’ said Slowcogs.
‘Indeed she is. The gears have turned so far already, and now they have turned to this.’ The controller looked at Molly. ‘What do you see in the cogs, young softbody?’
‘I am no Gear-gi-ju master, controller.’
‘Nevertheless, look into the cogs; feel the pattern with your mind. Tell me what you see there.’
She knelt to look. The smell of the dark oil made Molly dizzy. ‘History. I see history, revolving, turning back into itself.’
Redrust seemed pleased with the answer. ‘I have lived many years. Seen generations of softbodies quicken past on your own wheel, filled with hurry and the hasty ambitions of your fastblood kind – but I have never seen one able to read the cogs.’
‘Remarkable,’ agreed Slowcogs.
‘But not without precedent,’ said Redrust.
‘There’s something else you have seen,’ said Molly. ‘Something you’re not telling me …’
‘That is so,’ said Redrust. ‘Often that which you do not say means as much as that which you do, and sometimes knowing the future can change it. There are things I will not speak of.’
‘You will help me to the undercity then, to Grimhope?’ Molly asked.
‘Sadly,