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 is it?’ asked Slowcogs, his voicebox volume on low.
‘The committeewoman for our street and the others nearby. A political, an informer.’
Other men and women in crimson cloaks were walking up and down the street smashing on doors. ‘Rouse yourselves, compatriots,’ shouted the woman outside. ‘Mandatory loyalty display in the main square. Our district has been selected. It is a glorious day.’
‘We must go,’ said Onestack. ‘The brilliant men will search all the buildings. Any malingerers will be executed.’
Out in the street dozens of locals had spilled out from their quarters, more arriving every minute, green hoods hiding their faces in shadow. The only sound was the dull thump of workshop cutting machines from the next street over.
‘Come,’ said the committeewoman. ‘Come.’
Everywhere they went red-hooded figures were rousting the citizens of Grimhope out from their homes. The woman led them through the subterranean streets to Grimhope’s central square, built on a scale to rival Middlesteel’s Hope Park — but with the unfinished patina and dust of recent construction hanging over it. Standard bearers holding aloft flags — red fields marked with a gold triangle — marched out to look over the scene. The subdued disposition of the people in the square was replaced by an electric anticipation. More and more townspeople were arriving, until an outlaw host enveloped the granite flagstones.
Molly had to cling onto Slowcogs’ iron hand to stop her being separated from the steamman by the crush of the rally. Silver Onestack sat in front of them like a beached slipsharp, his tripod of legs partially retracted inside his body.
‘Is he here yet?’ one of the crowd asked Molly.
‘Who?’
‘Tzlayloc,’ said the outlaw townsman. ‘Who else?’
‘There,’ called one of the mob. A figure had walked out onto the podium, throwing back his crimson hood. He slowly raised his arms and a hush fell over the crowd.
‘My people,’ the voice boomed across the open space. ‘I look across you all assembled here and I see an army of equals — of brothers and sisters — of compatriots standing with a common purpose.
‘Look at the person next to you. There are no mill-owners here. No landlords or kings or guardians. Nobody to call you tenant or subject or slave. And why is that?’
‘Because we are equal,’ the crowd yelled back.
‘Everything here belongs to the commons — to you,’ the man called Tzlayloc rumbled. ‘And compatriot, everything that is you belongs to the commons.’
The crowd screeched their approval. Molly could not believe the speed at which the rally had turned from an apprehensive flock to a mob running at fever pitch. It was as if a glamour had been cast over the crowd.
‘When another man, another woman, gives you the right to vote, says they give you freedom, they are making you a present of that which you already have — that which you were born with. And by so doing they make a grateful slave of you.’
‘We are not slaves,’ someone yelled back.
‘No. No, we are not. Compatriots, we stand together, a perfect commonshare. No poppy taller than the next, stealing the sun, casting their neighbour into the shadow, sucking up the goodness of the earth while letting their neighbour wither and die. Are we equal?’
The crowd roared in near-perfect unison: ‘We are!’
‘Compatriots, let me show you our heroes of society, those who lead by example.’
At his signal, a man hobbled onto the stage, one of his legs glinting steel in the red subterranean light. ‘Many of you know me,’ said the newcomer. ‘I am Ikey Solomon, once the fastest dipper in Middlesteel. And when the crushers finally came to take me away and transport me to the Concorzian colonies, I ran all the way down to Grimhope.’
The crowd cheered his defiance.
‘But I was not equal. I could run from one end of the Deeps to the other in eight hours, and then drink a yard
