The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt
us.’
‘Look away, Molly softbody,’ advised Onestack.
Molly did, but she couldn’t shut out the screams echoing from the walls of the square as Tzlayloc carved the traders’ beating hearts out of their still living bodies. Tzlayloc held the still pulsing organs above the crowd. ‘Xam-ku, feel the nourishment of their souls.’
The crystals in the cavern ceiling came alive with lightning, crimson fire arcing between the stones above them. Down in the square the crowd chanted their saviour’s name.
‘The old gods of Wildcaotyl have not fed in a long time,’ said Slowcogs.
‘I can feel their hunger,’ said Molly. ‘Welling up beneath the ground. The souls spilled are like the taste of meat for a slipsharp that hasn’t fed in a thousand years.’
Blood from the two limp bodies was coursing down channels in the stone. ‘In death,’ Tzlayloc bellowed, ‘these two corrupt vampires have made the sacrifice to their companions they were never willing to make in life. Behold, I have found their centre, and it nourishes the commons.’
Molly tried to turn away from the scene, but the press of the chanting mob was too fierce.
‘Our compatriots in Quatérshift feed such as they into the Gideon’s Collar, but in their admirable drive for efficiency, they have forgotten the wisdom of our ancestors. Wasting good souls which could be dedicated to Xam-ku,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Yet in Middlesteel above, the streets still throng with the oppressors of the people, the enemy inside our walls, withholding paradise from the hands of the starving, the propertyless and desperate. Shall we make a land of equals? Shall we free the people?’
‘Yes!’ the crowd roared.
‘Shall we pull the selfish bloodsuckers down into the gutter and thrash them until the streets of Middlesteel run red with their blood?’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ the crowd howled.
‘Now you see,’ whispered Silver Onestack. ‘Now you see why you were wrong to come here. Grimhope has died. This rotting carcass of a city is all that is left of the legend.’
Slowcogs bowed his head. ‘Forgive me, Silver Onestack. I did not know.’
‘No,’ said Molly. ‘This is not your fault, Slowcogs. I was meant to come here. I have seen this madness before, or something like it.’
Slowcogs’ head sunk in shame. ‘There is a song in your blood, Molly softbody, and the memory of your cells points the way you must travel.’
But where have I seen this before? Molly asked herself as they drifted away from the square. Where?
Molly and the two steammen had only just arrived back at Onestack’s lodgings when the political organizer who had dragged them to the rally appeared at the door. She banged on the front of the workshop. ‘Token day, compatriot metal, token day.’
Silver Onestack opened the door. ‘Enter, compatriot soft-body.’
‘Such a gathering, compatriot metal. Such a show of equality. The day is coming when the dogs on the surface will whine under the weight of our boots, surely it is.’
‘Surely,’ Silver Onestack mouthed.
‘Your ledger, compatriot.’
Onestack led the way into the room at the back of the workshop, picked up a dusty book of accounts and handed it to the woman, saying nothing as she leafed through the last few pages. ‘Excellent, compatriot metal. The communal share is now set at ninety per cent. The state will receive its share now.’
‘So much?’ said Onestack. ‘I have two assistants now. The girl must eat. We need boiler-grade coke.’
‘Careful what you say, compatriot metal,’ warned the woman. ‘Those words smack of shirking and defeatism. Your talent with matters mechanical has kept your position on the reserved list, but the mills are hungry for labour too.’
‘My apologies, compatriot softbody,’ said Onestack. ‘Perhaps you could put a word in for us with the committee of supplies for two extra food chits.’
The woman’s tone softened as Slowcogs handed over a bag of coins. ‘I know your contribution to the commons is hard, compatriot metal. But the struggle always is. Your gift to the cause is helping us forge hammers of freedom to strike down the tyrants and leeches.’
‘We’ll eat well when the tyrants are struck down,’ said Molly.
The woman failed to notice the sarcasm in Molly’s tone. ‘You’re not old enough to remember the famine of Sixty-six, young compatriot. I lost my husband at Haggswood Field when the crushers charged us. My young ones died of hunger when I was locked away in Bonegate for breach of the riot act, nobody in my lodgings with the food or the inclination to feed them. Everything I ever valued and loved was taken away from me by the quality of Middlesteel. All except my freedom. One day we’ll see the light of the surface again, compatriot, and the day will be ours.’
‘I doubt it,’ said a green-hooded figure coming down the stairs leading up to Onestack’s loft.
‘What! How did you get into my workshop?’ Onestack demanded of the intruder.
The figure leant on a cane and Molly felt a sinking feeling strike her stomach.
‘Perhaps you forgot to lock your door?’ said the figure removing his hood. It was him. The refined old killer from Fairborn and Jarndyce; somehow the topper had caught up with Molly, even down here in Grimhope. ‘But then one imagines the concept of a propertyless state rather negates the need for locks, would you not agree, compatriot?’
‘Which district are you from?’ spat the political. ‘And who are you to question the word of the revolution?’
‘Why the district of Vauxtion,’ said the old gentleman. ‘And once I carried a marshal’s baton. So I do hope you will forgive my small observation that the earnestness of your hod carriers is not going to prove much of a shield against navy fin-bombs falling from a Jackelian airship.’
‘What are you rambling about, old goat?’ said the woman. ‘There is no Vauxtion district in Grimhope.’
‘I see, damson, that your knowledge of geography is as tired as your rhetoric. Vauxtion is – or should I say, was – a province of Quatérshift. No doubt it bears a drearier label now. Area twelve of the Commonshare, or a similarly tedious designation. Something of a personal inconvenience for myself, given that I bear the title of the Count of Vauxtion.’
‘An aristo!’
He placed his cane on the workshop counter and was walking slowly towards the woman. ‘Indeed, an aristocrat. Although rest assured, your Carlist colleagues in my land have done their best to rid themselves of my kind. I saw my retainers, wife, children and grandchildren marched into a Gideon’s Collar by a mob of your self-righteous compatriots.’
The political at last recognized the old man’s air of menace and broke for the front room. As she did so a pepperbox-nozzled gas pistol appeared in the count’s hand, and as quick as it did, the woman was collapsing to the floor within a cloud of vapour.
‘A tip for you, damson,’ said the count, standing over the corpse. ‘The best way to evade famine is not to seize the breadbasket of the continent, leave her fields un harvested for two years of revolution, then fire a bolt through the neck of every disfavoured soul who knows anything about agriculture.’
Slowcogs powered towards the old assassin from behind, wheels spinning over the fungus-wood boards. In one smooth movement Count Vauxtion knelt and drew a double-barrelled harpoon gun from his back, the black claw smashing into Slowcogs’ mid-body. Sidestepping, the count watched Slowcogs trundle to a stop by the workshop door, hissing steam from his punctured boiler heart soaking the floor.
Molly was immediately by Slowcogs’ side as the count covered her with his gas gun.
‘I