The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt
Middlesteel, families pay a master for their children to be apprenticed to a good trade, Silver Onestack. They don’t take the sweepings from the workhouse.’
‘Would that the mechomancers had proved so discrimin ating when it comes to experimenting on my own people, Molly softbody.’
Molly had not previously broached Onestack’s status as steamman unclean – a desecration. Taking Slowcogs’ lead she had ignored it, for fear of breaking some taboo of the metal race. ‘Is that why you live down here?’
‘I am outside the fold, Molly softbody,’ said Onestack. ‘King Steam makes use of my vision glass and hearing folds when it suits him, but my pattern is not to any plan laid by the architects royal in the Steammen Free State. Above ground, not a single one of my kind would share boiler-grade coke with me.’
‘Were you built in Middlesteel?’ asked Molly.
‘I was not built, Molly softbody. I was scavenged, cannibalized from the parts of other steammen,’ said Silver Onestack. ‘Your mechomancers cannot build us, but they still hope to understand our bodies by desecrating the corpses of our fallen. There are steammen souls trapped inside me, blended to make that which I am. I hear them during my thoughtflow, crying, begging me to release them.’
‘By dying,’ said Molly.
‘Yes,’ said Onestack. ‘By returning to the great pattern. I carry my own ancestors inside me and every step I take is a dishonour to them, but I cannot bear to deactivate. Life is too full, even down here. There is the beauty of the ceiling storms. The satisfaction of making whole that which is broken. The smells of the forest when the spores eject and cover the ground like snowfall. So instead of dying I live down here in the belly of the earth like a coward, showing my face to no brother of the metal, keeping my own company.’
Molly lit the stove in the corner of the room. ‘How did the mechomancer get his hands on so many bodies?’
‘There was a tower collapse,’ said Onestack. ‘Blimber Watts, the pneumatics gave way.’
Molly nearly dropped her coal shovel. ‘Silver Onestack, I was there! It was a steamman who rescued me from the ruins.’
‘Then you understand, Molly softbody.’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.’
‘The steamman who rescued you would have been looking for our corpses as well as survivors, to bring peace to our souls before scavengers looted the metal dead. By Steelbhalah-Waldo, we are as brother and sister under our shell. You must see my work, you will understand.’
Molly watched Onestack’s tripod legs knife across the floor, then he unlocked a small wooden door behind a curtain. ‘Come.’
Silver Onestack led her up a narrow staircase and into a loft room. The room was piled with canvas paintings – all in monochrome – otherworldly scenes of the crystal light falling through the forest, a solitary figure sitting cross-legged under a fluted mushroom. In all the paintings the same figure stood indistinct, lonely: by a window painted from outside, small against the stretch of a building or walking isolated by the shore of a subterranean lake.
Molly ran her fingers over the texture of the paint. ‘You always use the same model.’
‘She is not a model,’ said Silver Onestack. ‘I see her in the distance, often. I am not sure who she is. A shade of one of the dead from Blimber Watts, perhaps. Or a ghost image stuck in my vision glass after the softbody mechomancer put me back together.’
‘They are beautiful,’ said Molly.
‘I am the only steamman I have heard of who has ever painted,’ said Silver Onestack. ‘If I ever find the courage to deactivate, perhaps these works will survive me. Something of me will be left, that was not stolen from the souls of my pattern kin.’
Molly rested the canvas she was looking at back on the floor. ‘It’s not cowardly to want to live, Silver Onestack.’
‘My life keeps three souls in torment, withheld from the great pattern. I have no illusions about the cost of my own survival.’
‘Neither of us seems to be popular with our families, Silver Onestack.’
‘Yes,’ said the steamman. ‘It could not have been easy to be raised without pattern kin inside a poorhouse.’
Molly sighed. ‘No, it was not. In Sun Gate we looked out for each other and made as much of a family as we could. But I can’t fool myself and say it was the same as having a mother and father who you knew loved you, who would do anything for you. When I walked the streets of Middlesteel there were days when all I would see were fathers and mothers out with their children. Holding hands. Laughing, doing things together. I would always wonder what was the matter with me, not to have that; there must have been something wrong with me to be abandoned. Do you only paint in black and white, old steamer?’
Onestack pointed to his silver-domed head. ‘The mechomancer who put me together lacked the skill to do anything else with my sight. I remember from my old bodies what it was like to see in colour, though. I think I sometimes thoughtflow in colour, especially red. Apples are red, aren’t they?’
Molly nodded. Silver Onestack opened an iron door to his spherical main body, exposing a maze of crystals, boards, silicate and clockwork mechanisms. ‘I went to King Steam and begged him to give me back my sight the way it was before, but he refused. He said the law forbade the people of the metal to deactivate me, but he would not suffer the undead to be given succour or repair.’
Something about the workings seemed out of place to Molly. A wrongness that she could feel inside her as a tangible ache. She reached inside Onestack’s open hatch, repositioning boards and switching valve groups.
‘Molly softbody, desist,’ the steamman protested. ‘It is forbidden for those outside the people of the metal to tamper with our bodies.’
‘What is this?’ demanded Slowcogs, rolling into the loft garret. ‘This is an offence in the eyes of Steelbhalah-Waldo. Molly, you must cease this violation immediately.’
Molly withdrew her hands and shut the casing plate. ‘Onestack was broken. I could not bear it.’
Onestack’s voicebox sounded in amazement. ‘The floor is brown! Dried fungus wood. And Molly softbody, your hair is red – as red as any apple. I can see in colour again. By all the saints of the Steamo Loas, you have restored my vision glass to see in colour!’
‘How can this be?’ Slowcogs asked. ‘Molly softbody, you are no mechomancer or draughtsman from the hall of architects.’
‘It just looked wrong,’ Molly explained. ‘My hands knew what to do.’
Silver Onestack spun his head to look at Slowcogs. ‘Slowcogs, has Molly softbody read the wheels?’
‘In the controller’s presence,’ said Slowcogs. ‘The pattern of Gear-gi-ju was revealed to Redrust.’
‘I just knew what to do,’ said Molly. ‘I have always had an affinity for such things.’
‘This is no normal affinity, Molly softbody,’ exclaimed Silver Onestack. ‘Oh Slowcogs, you fool of an old boiler. To bring this softbody down here, of all places. This nest of villainy and chaos. You should have sent her to King Steam with an escort of steammen knights to guard her precious soul.’
‘What are you two old steamers talking about?’ said Molly.
Silver Onestack’s tripod of legs had collapsed his large spherical body onto the floor. ‘What a turning of the pattern this is. A foolish old boiler and a walking corpse to protect her.’
‘I can bloody well protect myself,’ said Molly. ‘It’s all I’ve been doing since I could walk.’
Molly was about to demand an explanation when a fierce banging sounded on their door. Onestack arched up like a spider and opened a skylight to peer down into the street.
‘Who