writhe and yell? ‘Such a clever artifice from the coldtime. The stone is as much a surgeon as it is a torturer; it can keep you alive for years, breaking you and then mending you. The beauty of it is that it’s all in the mind. It’s like a microcosm of life — giving you a little pain, holding out the promise of a little pleasure — or at least a respite from your grief.’
It was difficult for Molly to focus, even when the cross-shaped slab was waiting for her to recover. She tried not to bite her tongue as she replied, ‘What do you want? I’ll give it to you, just let me off this.’
‘This isn’t what I
‘I haven’t even met the Hexmachina,’ sobbed Molly.
‘Oh, but I think you have.’ Tzlayloc stroked the crystal walls of the gem behind Molly, the blood of her family amplifying her suffering as a lens focuses light. ‘Like the rest of your distant relatives. I wager you see things at night, in dreams. A young child perhaps?’
Her ghost — the young spirit at Tock House — was the Hexmachina?
‘I have seen it in dreams myself,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘And its real body too, glimpses of it scuttling about the tunnels. I went deep, Compatriot Templar, after the uprising. Even Grimhope was no protection for Jacob Walwyn, with mug-hunters and outlaws willing to risk the free city to turn me in for the bounty on my head. I went further and deeper than any since the fall of Chimeca. Crawling through rubble falls and shinning down air stacks, past the bones of tomb robbers, past the dust and armour of Chimecan legionnaires who had stayed at their posts to the bitter end.’
‘I drank from underground lakes that haven’t been seen for a millennium, ate the mushrooms the old empire grew to save their people from starvation. Even the wild stock the locust priests kept for themselves. Some of their machines are still breathing down there, living machines made of meat, some of the same sorcery which survives weakly diluted over in the dunes of Cassarabia.’
Molly screamed as the slab decided her body was fit enough for another burst of agony.
‘I am sorry, compatriot,’ said Tzlayloc, ‘but you are the key. Can’t you feel it? Xam-ku is almost with us now and Toxicatl, all the shadows of Wildcaotyl. Your agony is unstitching the prison your ancestor and his ill-advised creations sealed them in. Soon the Hexmachina will be able to stand it no more and will be drawn here to try to save you — and we shall tear it to pieces.’
She could see the outlines of the old ones etched in the air, their hungry mandibles clicking in anticipation, awakening memories of ancient clashes against the filthy powerful parasites. Seven holy machines and a band of desperate warriors from every race on the continent locked in a deadly battle to win their freedom. The old evil was back, but its presence was not yet permanent. It would take the Hexmachina’s destruction and the feast of souls the leader of Grimhope was planning to consolidate its hold. Hearts tossed into the pyres of Chimecan rites; for what need did the equalized have of beating meat in their chests? Equals required no passion for jealousy, no striving for betterment, no hope to feed their dreams. Their mean was set for them and fixed in their brave new bodies for Tzlayloc’s brave new world.
Molly’s spine arched on the slab, her cries carrying across the ruined city. ‘You can’t trust the old ones,’ she managed through clenched teeth.
‘They are a force, nothing more,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Our belief is their manna, our devotion their sustenance. As a gale drives a windmill so we shall harness the Wildcaotyl as the tailwind behind our cause. It is an eminently practical arrangement. They gorge on our souls and there are so many souls for them above ground that will not be missed. Counting-house masters, mill overseers, emperors and every other uncommunityist vampire who has been feeding on the people since the wheel of history began turning. Turnabout is fair play, is it not? They have gnawed at our sinews for long enough. Now it is our turn to make a meal out of them.’
‘Don’t — do — it,’ Molly begged.
‘Think of it, Molly Templar. Our compatriots in Quatershift have been running the unproductive leeches of their land through Gideon’s Collars for a decade and producing nothing more than compost for their farms. But with the gods of Wildcaotyl melded with the revolution there is nothing that we will not be able to achieve — no enemy we cannot cut down. We shall create a perfect reign of equality that will last for all eternity.’
Molly screamed as she burned. ‘Please!’
Tears rolled down Tzlayloc’s face. ‘I shall make you a saint, Molly. I shall raise temples to you, the poor street girl who gave her life to seal our perfect world. Your suffering is worth that, is it not, surely you must want to help us?’
Her pain drowned out the rest of his words.
Count Vauxtion sat as he had done for the last hour, in his chair with the chest of money in front of him. A bag of Jackelian guineas had been lined up in neat piles across the shine of his varnished tabletop and the count reduced one column of coins, building up another and then repeating the exercise … a game of chess without end.
‘I believe you have the means to retire now, sir,’ said Ka’oard.
‘Yes,’ said the count. ‘Although I suspect we will find a paucity of berths available in the direction of Concorzia if we should try the stats or the paddle steamers.’
‘Perhaps one of the old tall ship skippers, sir. Or a tramp submarine boat. And they do not yet control Jackals. There are the ferries to the city-states and the Holy Empire. If it came to it, my clan connections could no doubt secure us safe passage through the worst of Liongeli. If we got to one of the Saltless Sea ports along Crayorocco we might sail out to Thar. I have always wondered what it might be like to travel to the east, sir. And I doubt if they will be watching the jinn road south.’
‘Cassarabia?’ the count started laughing. ‘An old man sitting on an adobe roof in the shade of a palm tree, chewing leaaf and trying to remember what it was like to drink wine without the taste of sand in it. This is not about Tzlayloc’s continued patronage, old shell. This is about the application of power. But his people are only watching me. You can still go to the colonies, there’s no point both of us rotting here while this place falls apart.’
‘I do not believe I would care for that, sir,’ said the craynarbian. ‘I have grown rather fond of this silly bumbling nation. They have the power to overrun the whole continent, but they would rather potter about their gardens cutting their hedges into fanciful shapes, slap each other with debating sticks and stop every hour to brew a pot of caffeel. Jackals deserves better than what happened to the old place, don’t you think? Besides, sir, without you things would appear rather dull.’
‘Well then,’ said the count. ‘I am a good hunter but I fear I will make for rather poor prey. So what is to be done?’
The craynarbian retainer proffered a tray. ‘I don’t think this is a matter of power at all, sir.’
Count Vauxtion stopped building his tower of coins. ‘Then what — ah, I see, you kept it after all.’ He picked up a polished thin blade from the tray. Ka’oard watched his master’s eyes sparkle as he handled the fencing sabre. The command to throw the blade away thirty years ago was the only order on a battlefield the old retainer had ever disobeyed.
‘I believe, sir,’ said the craynarbian, ‘that this is a matter of honour.’
On top of the ziggurat the rulers of Grimhope trembled and wished they were any place except here. They had never seen Tzlayloc in such a murderous fury.
‘Why?’ he screamed at them, pointing at the limp sweat-covered figure secured to the Chimecan torture slab. ‘Why does the Hexmachina not come? She has been on the slab for two days. Her agony has been exquisite — but I see no Hexmachina!’
There was a nervous shuffling among the locust priests. They had embraced the old religion with gusto, their minds filled with the power of the ancient texts that Tzlayloc had brought back from his strange odyssey to the underworld. But now some of them were wishing for the relative anonymity of an equalized shell that their compatriots had enjoyed.
‘Compatriot Templar is not the last operator,’ said one of them. ‘It is the only explanation.’
‘We always knew there was a danger of this,’ piped up one of the priests at the front.
Tzlayloc stabbed a finger at the red-robed figure that had spoken. ‘You are the guardians of the new order,
