Oliver noticed Master Saw muttering and shaking his head next to the disreputable Stave. The knight commander clearly did not approve of the spirits’ choice in this matter, that a convicted coward should defile the chamber of arms with his presence.
‘Holy weapons,’ said the royal drone. ‘Look, Oliver soft-body. The Ace of Clubs, once wielded by Trinder Half- track in the war with Kikkosico near seven hundred years ago. And there, Grindbiter — the long gun — capable of tearing the pips off a Quatershiftian marshal’s uniform at close to a mile’s range.’
Oliver bit his lip. Steamswipe was pacing nervously in the centre of the room. None of the weapons were stopping. Would the knight be allowed to accompany Oliver if he failed this rite? Or would the master of the orders militant have his way and the centaur-shaped fighter be returned to millennia of suspension?
Steamswipe extended one of his manipulator arms beseechingly towards a curved blade but the weapon was drawn back inside the darkness of the moving wall.
‘Stokeslicer,’ moaned the warrior. ‘By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, will no weapon support my claim as a knight?’
‘Your voicebox disgraces the chamber with its sound,’ said Master Saw. ‘Even weapons which you have mastered would sooner stay deactivate rather than feel the iron of your fingers corrupt their grip.’
Whether in response to the knight’s plea, the commander’s scorn, or the slow procession of its own path, the wall stopped rotating and a single hatch remained open, revealing a snub black package trembling on a metallic stalk.
‘Armoury master,’ said the King. ‘Do you recognize the weapon which offers itself?’
‘I do,’ replied a steamman. ‘It is Lord Wireburn — the Keeper of the Eternal Flame.’ Gasps of amazement sounded from the courtiers. The armoury master addressed the crowd. ‘The last time this weapon selected a knight is almost beyond the recorded history of the true people, it was-’
‘I remember,’ said King Steam. ‘It was, as you say, a long time ago. Well, it seems we have a champion and the champion has his arms.’
‘Your Majesty,’ said Steamswipe, giving a small bow before the King. ‘What is to be my penance? Am I to return to the jungle to try and recover what was lost forever?’
‘No, Steamswipe,’ said the King, pointing to Oliver and Harry. ‘You are to accompany these two friends of the people and give aid to them in their journey. Protect their lives as if they were your own.’
Steamswipe turned his vision strip towards Harry and the young man sitting by the King’s tracks, the glass of his visor burning red. ‘These two — two — hairless monkeys? Your Majesty, say this is not true. By all that is sacred, say that you jest.’
‘We have not made you activate to play parlour pranks on you, knight,’ rumbled King Steam. ‘Your duty is to see that our two softbody friends do not come to harm.’
Steamswipe gazed with contempt at the two visitors. ‘Fastbloods — I would sooner trust Adjasou-Rust not to bite my hand than trust another Jackelian to watch over my back.’
‘What does he mean,
The mu-body shook its head with sadness. ‘There were two softbody guides on his last venture deep into the darks of Liongeli.’
‘So what did they do to Steamswipe?’
‘It’s not so much what the guides did to him, young soft-body,’ said King Steam. ‘It is what he did to them. Steamswipe staved in the skull of one of the guides with his war hammer, the other he impaled on a spear.’
King Julius’s chambers were a shadow of what they had been — only the grand dimensions gave any clue that they once housed the absolute monarch of Jackals, master of an entire nation. Like the man himself they had fallen into a state of disrepair. Julius’s hacking cough echoed off the bare walls, a rasping, rattling thing, sounding more alive than its owner now seemed.
Captain Flare stared down at the skeletal form stretched underneath the blanket, the rough wool all that warded off the damp of the chambers. It was summer so no fire burned in the hearth. Parliament had voted on that many years ago: fuel to be expended on the royal person only from the month of Frost-touch onwards — a petty economy that must have given the guardians who voted for it more warmth than it deprived King Julius of. He was barely lucid now, gripped by another bout of waterman’s sickness. Each fever reduced him slightly more than the last.
‘What’s he saying, captain?’ asked Prince Alpheus. ‘It sounded like something about lice.’
‘Not lice,’ said the Commander of the Special Guard. ‘Alice. Your mother.’
‘Mother. Yes. I wish I had met her.’
‘The House of Guardians probably wouldn’t have allowed it,’ said Flare. ‘Even if she hadn’t been returned to the royal breeding pool, even if she hadn’t…’
‘… died of the crinkleskin?’ said Alpheus. ‘I am always surprised by the number of royals who die of plagues and fevers at the breeding house. I am surprised they are still able to scrape together the blood of a squire’s daughter, let alone a duchess, to pair me off with.’
‘It’s fair to say that medical care has not been a priority over there.’
‘It has not been a priority here either,’ said Alpheus.
Flare shrugged. ‘Waterman’s sickness is the perfect illness for our democratic state — it strikes guardians and undermaids with equal ferocity, and once you get it, all the money in Sun Gate can’t help you.’
‘They say the heat and dryness of Cassarabia helps the afflicted.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Flare. ‘But I don’t think parliament trusts the caliphs any more than they do your father,’
‘It’s odd that I never get sick,’ said Alpheus. ‘Not even a cold in winter. I obviously don’t get that from either my father or mother.’
‘Your mother was tough,’ said Flare. ‘It took the conditions in the royal breeding house to wear her down.’
Alpheus stared down at his father. ‘He still remembers her.’
‘She was a hard woman to forget, Your Highness.’
A line of Special Guardsmen stood sentry at the far end of the bedchamber, by the light patches on the wall where rich tapestries would have once hung, their silent faces watching the slow death of the King. Flare waved them away and they turned smartly, filing out in a disciplined line. All except Bonefire.
‘You can go too,’ said Flare.
‘I was hoping the pup would lose his nerve — leave the job to a man.’
‘Surely not concern for me, Bonefire?’ said the prince. ‘You just wanted to do the thing yourself.’
‘Novelty value,’ replied the Special Guardsman. ‘It’s been a while since anyone let me have my head and I do miss the old days.’
‘You could let him do it,’ said Captain Flare. ‘There’s a lot at stake now. There is no going back after this — for any of us. It doesn’t have to be
‘Yes it does, captain. Anyway, what do I have to go back to?’ said Alpheus, picking up a pillow. ‘A life where I end up like him, tossing fevered in a bed, with no arms to beg for help, no dignity, no freedom, no hope.’
King Julius rasped as the pillow was pushed down on his sweating face by his son, legs shaking at first, then thrashing with a last burst of whatever life, whatever will to live, still subsisted in him. His limbs convulsed and bucked as the contents of his bladder soaked across the plain bed cover. Then the monarch trembled into stillness.
Alpheus removed the pillow. The old man’s eyes were wide in shock, his sallow grey skin shining like he had just risen from a bath. ‘Be kind to Mother when you see her, Papa.’
Captain Flare put his hand on the prince’s shoulder. ‘Apart from anything else, Alpheus, the way he was suffering it was a mercy for him to move along the Circle.’
Alpheus swayed, dazed by the enormity of what he had just done. ‘If this goes wrong, captain, I ask just one thing. Don’t let them make me into him. Kill me first, kill me with your bare hands rather than let them put my arms on display outside the House of Guardians.’
Flare looked grim and said nothing.
‘The King is dead,’ laughed Bonefire. ‘Long live the pup.’
