The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt
accompany you, a champion. But our steammen knights keep inside the borders of the Steammen Free State, and it would take too long to send for such as they.’
‘I shall go, controller,’ said Slowcogs. ‘It was I that found her.’
‘You, Slowcogs?’ A soft wheeze escaped from Redrust’s boiler heart like a laugh. ‘This is a task for young metal. Your design was drafted by King Steam before even my own and I am one of the oldest steammen to serve in the atmospheric.’
‘It is as you say, controller. Our paths are bound together by the great pattern.’
‘You are a poor excuse for a knight, Slowcogs. But let it be so. Old metal guiding a young softbody. Join with me.’
Slowcogs rolled past Molly and a thin crystal rod extended from the controller, slotting into a hole in Slowcogs’ torso. They remained joined for a minute, then Slowcogs disengaged from the crystal arm with a cracking noise.
‘Thank you for your wisdom, controller.’
‘Thank you for your courage, Slowcogs.’
The old steamman took Molly’s hand and they rolled out of the controller’s hut.
‘What did he share with you?’ asked Molly.
‘Such knowledge as we possess of the paths and passages of the undercity,’ said Slowcogs. ‘But the tunnels we must travel change frequently. The outlaws of Grimhope seal caverns off to confuse the political police and the soldiers of Fort Downdirt, and the political police often send in sappers to destroy tunnels. Then there is the stream of earthflow through the ground – the same energies of the leylines that cause floatquakes.’
The mention of the word sent a shiver down Molly’s spine. Whole regions of land shattered by the earth’s forces, ripped out of the ground and sent spiralling into the air, along with any unfortunates unlucky enough to be on the sundered ground. If those caught on rising land were lucky, the newly formed aerial islands would stabilize at a height low enough for RAN airships to rescue the inhabitants. If they were unlucky, they would rise far out of sight, into the airless night, beyond even the reach of RAN aerostats; their icy graves an occasional cloudy shadow passing over the land beneath.
Geomancy was the first duty of the order of worldsingers, tapping and relieving the lethal forces surging below the ground before they coursed into violence and destroyed large swathes of Jackals.
‘Can we get there on foot?’ asked Molly, trying to take her mind off the possibility of a floatquake.
‘The undercity? We must walk part of the way,’ said Slowcogs. ‘The first portion of the journey will be through the atmospheric.’
He rolled up to a small felt-lined service capsule, opening a circular door at the flat rear of the metal plate. Inside lay none of the comforts of the passenger tubes – no velvet-cushioned seats or gas lights; just a small wooden bench at the opposite end of the carriage and leather straps on the wall holding bundles of esoteric-looking tools. Slowcogs entered the carriage after Molly, clanging the door shut and spinning a wheel to lock it.
There was a moment’s darkness and then a phosphorous strip lit the spine of the capsule with a witching green light.
‘Sit,’ advised Slowcogs, ‘and hold onto the ceiling strap.’
With a jolt the capsule was shunted through the rubber lock of the sending valve; when the flap closed, the other end of the chamber opened and the carrier capsule was on its way. Stilled for a second, the motorless carriage started to accelerate through the airless lead service tunnel as the pressure differential caught it.
Molly had rarely been on the public atmospheric, but the windowless capsule made for a featureless journey, the only variation in their speed the slight deceleration and acceleration as they passed pressure-pumping stations.
After half an hour of near silent travel the service capsule braked to a halt and Slowcogs pulled a mask with goggling eyes out of a crate, attaching it to a brass oxygen cylinder with back-straps dangling from its front. ‘There is still vacuum outside. Place this over your face and I will help you strap on the cylinder.’
The small canister felt heavier than it looked and Molly nearly buckled with the weight of it digging into her back. Slowcogs adjusted the straps and the weight was redistributed, her field of vision shrinking to the view through the mask’s two crystal eyepieces. It took a moment or two to get used to the mask – everything appeared further away than it actually was.
When Slowcogs was satisfied she could move and breathe, the steamman equalized pressure with the tunnel outside and they stepped onto a stone platform set inside one of the atmospheric’s receiving valves, littered with tunnelling equipment, lead solder and bags of sand. Their platform was lit by the same green light that had illuminated the atmospheric capsule – the tunnel seemed to shine with it. Molly walked past the buffers that had caught the service capsule and ran her hand along the cold wall. The tip of her thumb shone with a green lichen smear.
Slowcogs beckoned Molly along the platform, rolling to a vault-like door in the stone. It opened onto a small room and another door. Pulling a chain hanging from a machine in the corner, Slowcogs moved back towards Molly as the hissing sound made her ears pop.
‘You can breathe in here,’ Slowcogs said, pulling Molly’s air tank off her back. ‘The passages of the undercity start beyond this door.’
A weight lifted from Molly’s shoulders. ‘They’ll never find me down here, Slowcogs. We’re free.’
‘Freedom from rules does not equate to safety,’ said Slowcogs. ‘With softbodies I have often noted the opposite to be the case.’
Slowcogs pulled back the second door and Molly gasped. A hall lay beyond, stairs leading downwards. It was massive, a vast cathedral of space, columns supporting the ceiling, statues as big as Middlesteel houses in alcoves shadowed by the lichen light.
‘I don’t understand,’ Molly said, overwhelmed by the scale of the space.
‘The under-people and outlaws live here now,’ said Slowcogs. ‘But they did not build this. Thousands of years ago Jackals lay under the rule of the old empire, Chimeca. These ruins are their legacy.’
Chimeca. That was ancient history, but Molly dimly recalled lessons of insect gods, locust priests and human sacrifice. ‘I thought the undercity was just an old level of Middlesteel under the sewers that had been built over.’
Slowcogs shook his head. ‘No, it was always thus. There was a period of great cold in ancient times and to survive the Chimecans riddled the earth with their cities below the surface. It is said the first steammen Loas date from that age, holy machines.’
Molly stared at bird bats circling near the ceiling, tiny dots of black. ‘I always wondered why the political police couldn’t just dirt-gas the outlaws. The crushers could lose a whole legion of police militia down here.’
‘Only a small fraction of the passages are known to us,’ said Slowcogs. ‘Much of it now rests collapsed by the ages. What you see runs deep and far. Entire sub-cities have crumbled as the earth has twisted and turned on its journey across the great pattern.’
Molly looked at a large section of wall collapsed over the stairs half a mile down-slope. ‘As long as it doesn’t cave in while we’re here.’
‘This exit was chosen by Redrust for both its stability and its remoteness from Grimhope,’ said Slowcogs. ‘There should not be any sentries here. Only the workers of the atmospheric know of its existence.’
‘The outlaw city is still down here?’ asked Molly.
‘I believe so, in body if not in spirit,’ replied Slowcogs. His wheel axles spidered down the stairs, leading them to a much smaller staircase hidden behind one of the statue alcoves. ‘This passage heads to the outskirts of the great cavern of the Duitzilopochtli Deeps; Grimhope stands there at the centre of the fungal forest, a day and a night’s travel from our present location.’