The Court of the Air

while a line of soldiers ran into the rookery’s hall.

‘We’re not quality on this street, young man,’ said Damson Davenport. ‘I work in the jinn house over on Sling Street, not the palace of bleeding Greenhall.’

‘Quiet, old woman,’ said the soldier, pulling her out towards a gypsy-sized caravan drawn by a train of four horses, a mobile blood machine pouring steam into the sky. The rumours were true, then. In the street the Jackelians were being herded into one of two groups guarded by metal-fleshers. Her neighbour Mister Kenwigs had told her that those metal things used to belong to the race of man once, but that did not seem likely.

They took a sample of her blood and then made her wait for the results. What were they testing for? The wagon was not large enough to contain the records of everyone in Middlesteel. It had to be the new required-citizen register — guardians and silks and famous Jackelians. Nobody on this street would be on that list. If only they did not find the girl. Shouts sounded from inside the rookery and Damson Davenport’s worst fears were realized. Poor Cru’brin. Everyone in the crumbling tenement had known the young craynarbian from when she was an infant. It did not take long for them to drag her out, still wearing the tattered red uniform of the Sixth Foot. Better she had been slaughtered with the rest of her company or had disappeared into Shell Town. Hiding with her mother had been madness.

A tall officer appeared by the wagon. The craynarbian’s captor jumped up and hastily saluted him. ‘Marshal Arinze.’

The marshal ignored them and walked up to the struggling deserter, followed by another soldier, his blue uniform cropped at the side to display his muscled arms. There was a boy who loved himself, tutted Damson Davenport. Too many days down the muscle pits with a mirror in his back pocket.

‘Harbouring enemy troops,’ said Marshal Arinze. He called to the soldiers pulling the weeping people into the street. ‘Compatriot sergeant, burn this building down. There shall be no relief given to the enemies of the people.’

Swearing at the marshal, young Cru’brin tried to break free of the leather straps binding her sword arm. The troops struggled to hold her.

‘Compatriot marshal, if I may…’

‘Compatriot Colonel Wildrake?’

‘Let me show these counter-revolutionary criminals the power of the Commonshare, the superiority of our forces.’

Arinze rubbed the colonel’s arm with a worried look on his face. ‘You do not need to continually prove your loyalty to the revolution, compatriot colonel. You have advanced our cause in Jackals more than any brother save Tzlayloc himself.’

‘Look at her, compatriot marshal, her scrawny shell. What kind of muscles can she have under that armour? My lats are falling towards the corpulent without a test worthy of the name.’

Arinze sighed. ‘Hold the burning, sergeant. You, compatriot private of the Sixth Foot. You shall have a chance to prove the worth of this decadent city of yours. You see before you a gladiator of the Third Brigade. If you can beat him in a match I will spare your entire street from punishment.’

A space was cleared for the craynarbian deserter and Colonel Wildrake, the marshal momentarily distracted as his soldiers dragged a man with a red beard up towards the commanding officer’s entourage.

‘You’ve got the wrong man!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve done nothing. I just row a boat on the estuary. I ferry people up and down the Gambleflowers, that’s all.’

‘Compatriot Meagles,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘Secretary of the Middlesteel Four-poles Union. His blood code is confirmed by the required-citizen register.’

‘The Union is a proscribed organization,’ said the marshal. ‘You have been encouraging uncommunityist tendencies among the people. Unproductive tendencies. The people must labour to advance their cause, not spend their days as idlers tossing balls of leather at pieces of wood on the grass.’

‘It’s just a bit of a lark,’ begged the boatman. ‘We always go to the inn afterwards for beer and jinn. Please, you can come too, you and all of your soldiers.’

Arinze slapped him to stop the blubbing, then raised his voice for the benefit of the Jackelians being rounded up in the street. ‘Four-poles is banned, debating sticks is banned, summerpole dancing is banned, the singing of “Lion of Jackals” is banned, membership of political parties is banned. You shall work hard in the service of the people as equals and the community will serve you each well in return.’

One of Arinze’s troops indicated the boatman. ‘Processing group thirteen?’

‘A Gideon’s Collar is too good for him. A visible example must be set. Take Compatriot Meagles to the boulevard at Rollfield and hang him from one of the lamps alongside the corpses from the House of Guardians.’

In front of the rookery Wildrake had stripped down to his trousers, and the soldiers who had been oiling his muscles stepped back. It was freezing in the street and Wildrake rubbed his biceps as the bite of the cold wind dug in. He nodded at the troops holding the craynarbian and they released her into the shadow of the street. She was at the height of her youthful vigour, sword arm sharp enough to slice a sapling oak in half, but still looking scrawny on her meagre army rations. Not that you could judge, of course — craynarbian muscle groups worked in different ways, and she was at least strong enough to march with one hundred pounds of shell underneath her infantry knapsack.

Her manipulator and sword arms sprang open and Wildrake pivoted on a single leg, slamming his boot into her left knee. It crunched and she howled. Low tolerance for pain — all that armour they carried — they were simply not used to it. The turncoat Jackelian could almost see the rote drill moves the Sixth Foot had instilled in her. She was not even worth moving into witch-time for. Wildrake grinned as he ducked under her slashing sword arm, slipping behind her and circling her with his arm.

His muscles bulged underneath his skin, swelling with the force he was applying to her thorax. Better than bench-pressing ninety pounds in a muscle pit; the agony was electric. Her shell started to crack, his biceps burning crimson in the cold. The Third Brigade troops looked on in amazement. They had faced craynarbians on the border with Liongeli, but they had never seen the likes of this. There was a sound like a squeaky floorboard being stood on, then a crack as he burst her chest armour. Pieces of shell were sticking out of Wildrake’s bleeding arms but he stood over the gurgling Jackelian soldier, roaring with the thrill of victory as the Quatershiftian troops cheered his feat of strength.

Damson Davenport turned away in horror — then she realized that the technician by the blood machine was addressing her.

‘It’s your lucky day, compatriot. You’re not on the list. Mill duty — you’re assigned to the cannon works being put up over at Workbarrows.’

She took the numbered chit he handed her. ‘Your queue number. For equalization. Next.’

Damson Davenport watched the laughing troops leaping over Cru’brin’s corpse and tossing burning torches into her rookery. She suspected the falling sleet would put the flames out before the fire cart ever showed up now.

A cry went up among the soldiers — ‘Remember Reudox! Remember Reudox!’

People were still inside the tenement and the Third Brigade opened fire on the poorly dressed Jackelians as they tried to flee the burning building. A few men and women jumped out of windows on the second storey, some clutching young children. The metal zombies in the street surrounded them where they landed, thrashing the burning bodies with their metal arms until they stopped moving.

The head of the Four-poles Union, Meagles, was being dragged down the street, his feet trailing two furrows in the snow, still yelling that the shifties had the wrong man, his cries drowned now by the screams of those trapped inside the damson’s old home.

‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ She shivered, pulling her shawl tight. Part of her wanted to go up to the metal things, to the soldiers of the Third Brigade, and beg them to stop. Tell them that they were the people of Middlesteel. No different from any of the soldiers, but for an accident of geography and birth. No different from them, their mothers, their sisters, their friends. That they could all be compatriots together if they just tried a little harder. But she knew what would happen if she did, and she discovered that as often as she had thought her pains and aches would one day be over with the long march of her old years, she still wanted to live just a little longer. It did not seem like cowardice at all, just common sense.