In the House of Guardians the members of the First Committee looked on with horror as Tzlayloc picked up the messenger — an equalized revolutionary — and propelled him through the stained-glass window of the gallery, the herald’s components smashed apart in the courtyard outside.
‘Machines,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Filthy machines.’
At first the committee members thought he must be talking of the equalized messenger, but then they realized he was referring to the news the messenger had brought — the army of the Steammen Free State was advancing. Tzlayloc felt like ripping apart the round table and scattering the maps of Middlesteel and her environs. He had never been stronger, but things were crumbling around him, the ungrateful wretches of Middlesteel joining the counter-revolutionary uprising. Half the city fighting, and now the people of the metal had finally found the guts to interfere in Jackals’ affairs. The crafty king of the steammen was rushing to rescue his corrupt allies now their snouts had been pulled from the feeding trough and made into bacon. Had he not fed the people? Had he not fed their masters into the Gideon’s Collars raised in their name?
Judging Tzlayloc’s fury had subsided, one of the locust priests approached the chairman, almost close enough to touch the black nimbus that now leaked from the leader’s body. Tzlayloc’s heart lifted. It was the ex-transaction engine man from Greenhall. He always brought good news. The leader was oblivious to the fact that after dealing with the petty mandarins of Greenhall, the priest was well versed in the art of timing good tidings. Husbanding them and squirrelling them away for the right moment to offer them up like tribute.
Tzlayloc nodded as the priest whispered to him, then he raised his head and made that awful clicking laugh. Soon the revolution would feed, feed so well and so long that the Hexmachina would never bind their cause with its web of polluted machine sorcery. Tzlayloc gave his orders to the priest, waiting as the loyal fellow hurried off to return with Marshal Arinze and his retinue, joined a minute later by Captain Flare. The Special Guardsman looked haggard. How ironic that someone so powerful could be so soft. The Wildcaotyl in Tzlayloc sensed the discomfort the captain felt passing the square outside. He had fought on a battlefield; he knew the butcher’s bill that war demanded. And the revolution demanded that this last war be fought and won at any cost. The enemy should suffer. It was the way of things.
‘The armies of the Free State march on us from the east,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘What news from our brothers in Quatershift, compatriot marshal?’
‘Our compatriot worldsingers have almost translated the hex on the cursewall,’ said Arinze. ‘The worldsingers have promised to have the wall lowered within the week. Our compatriots found a labourer in one of the camps who had worked on it, and he was able to provide insight into-’
‘We do not have a week!’ interrupted Tzlayloc. ‘We will have steammen knights on the outskirts of Middlesteel within four hours.’
‘The First Brigade has almost finished arriving through the atmospheric. We can hold the capital until the cursewall is lowered. Compatriot Tzlayloc, we have twenty divisions on the other side of the border. Enough troopers to seize every town, village and city in Jackals.’
‘And if the cursewall takes longer to fall?’
‘We have miners digging tunnels deep enough to pass underneath the cursewall. Jackelian sappers are not opposing them now. The dregs in the border forts have already fled, there is not a redcoat or frontier company left on the border. The upland regiments are still in the field but they dare not march on us in strength for fear they will return to their crofts and find the caliph’s soldiers bedded down in their clansman’s halls. Compatriot Flare and his guardsmen have forces enough to secure the south.’
‘The Special Guard may earn their city by the feymist later,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘First they will assist us in breaking the forces of King Steam.’
‘Breaking?’ The marshal looked at Tzlayloc with incredulity. ‘We are dug in, we hold Middlesteel. Let the enemy storm our fortifications and bleed oil on them.’
Tzlayloc stabbed a finger on the map. ‘We shall march out and break them here.’
Marshal Arinze looked at where the Chairman of the First Committee was pointing. ‘Rivermarsh? There’s nothing there but hills, bogs and farmland. Please, Compatriot Tzlayloc. With two brigades I can hold the capital until Midwinter. But you do not fight the armies of Mechancia on open ground. Their knights are better than cavalry, faster, stronger, more heavily armoured; their gun-boxes outclass my light cannon. I could not guarantee victory with a dozen brigades behind me.’
Tzlayloc reached out and seized the marshal’s face, applying enough pressure to his skull to make him drop to his knees. ‘You have the gods of revolution behind you! The Wildcaotyl are strong and grow stronger with each enemy of the people that is fed to the cause. What does the malevolent life metal have? Loas as thin as the foul smoke they expel from their stacks. That is why Jackals fell so easily to the revolution — because she had forgotten her faith. Do not make me doubt your faith in our communityist principles again, little man.’
Marshal Arinze scrambled back as Tzlayloc released him. Like all natural bullies the officer recognized a superior predator. ‘It shall be as you say, compatriot chairman.’
Tzlayloc turned to Flare. ‘What of you, compatriot captain? Do you have any counsel to offer on the order of battle?’
Flare stared grimly at the Commonshare worldsingers that were helping Marshal Arinze to his feet. ‘We will go to the uplands. We will go to Rivermarsh. You tell us where to go and we will obey. We will march there. We will fight at the other end.’
‘An admirable attitude, Compatriot Flare. The First Brigade will fall back to Gallowhill and Spouthall. The Third Brigade and the Special Guard will march out immediately with our equalized companies of the revolutionary army and meet the Free State’s invaders at Rivermarsh.’
Captain Flare could not let his air of melancholy detachment override his military judgement. The chairman’s plan was madness. ‘You are ceding more than two thirds of Middlesteel to the parties’ militia. Even if we beat off King Steam’s forces, we will be coming back to a city largely occupied by the enemy. The Third Brigade will not have the advantage of surprise, of appearing at night in the heart of the capital. We’ll see a terrible cost in the surgeon’s tent for every street we take back.’
‘Do not worry about the mill masters’ private armies of thugs,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘They will reap their reward for opposing the people.’
A terrible feeling struck Flare. Tzlayloc’s order of battle made no sense at all, except in one circumstance. But surely even the Chairman of the First Committee of the newly proclaimed Commonshare of Jackals was not capable of
‘Prince Alpheus,’ said Flare. ‘Are you leaving him in the city?’
‘Compatriot Alpheus is serving the revolution in so many ways,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Your attention to duty does you credit compatriot captain, but protecting the people from the monarchy is no longer the Guard’s responsibility. What is it that the mob used to shout outside the palace on stoning day? No republic with a king? If it makes you feel better we shall take the cross with us and the King’s pain will give succour to the revolutionary hearts and spur them to great acts of valour against the people of the metal.’
Tzlayloc’s fingers pawed the maps on the table, his fingers leaving dark trails across the neighbouring nations. ‘Yes compatriot captain. You may leave the vermin in the royal breeding house to the care of the Gideon’s Collar. Our energies will be focused outward, not inward. Victory after victory for the people, the standard of equality planted across every state in the world.’
Tears of dark energy struck the oak floor of the House of Guardians, burning like acid by his feet. Every society an ordered nest, its equalized citizens working together, indistinguishable as brothers and sisters. Perfect and content in their endless toil. It would be glorious.
In front of Oliver the last remaining cursewall of cell eight-zero-nine shrieked like a dying swine on the abattoir table, the energy of the sorcerers twisted and distorted around his fey body, wrapped and folded in ways that could never have been conceived by the worldsingers who invoked it. Inside, the Whisperer lay propped up against the wall, surrounded by the dirt of his own excrement and the bones of vermin.
‘Oliver,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘Your perfect body, it’s covered in blood.’
‘I had to stop a while and negotiate your release upstairs.’ Oliver turned his nose away at the smell.
‘They stopped taking the bucket away when they stopped bringing me the slop,’ said the Whisperer. ‘How did you get to Hawklam?’
‘Get here? By horse.’
‘Good, because I could jigging eat one.’
