spears of smoke darted up the six convicts’ nostrils, flowing into their skulls, draining all the smoke from the pyre as the men stumbled around, mouths open in the rictus of a silent scream.
Tzlayloc looked on in appreciation. The six’s bull-like bodies had survived the hell of life sentences in Bonegate and now they swelled still further under the power of the Wildcaotyl, frames expanding, clothes rippling and tearing while their muscles bulged out at aberrant angles, as if fragments of broken bricks had started rising out of their skin.
The Whineside Strangler turned to Tzlayloc, his irises swirling black with the smoke that had filled his skull. ‘I am remade.’
‘So you are. You know what you must do.’
‘The Hexmachina must not find an operator. If the fissures are sealed, I — we — they will dissipate. The operator must die.’
‘Yes,’ said Tzlayloc sadly. ‘Molly Templar must die. For the sake of the people get to her well before she reaches that filthy machine. Get to her before you in turn become the prey.’
Looking at the pile of burning hearts, the Whineside Strangler was gripped by a terrible hunger, unlike any of the pangs his old self had felt in Bonegate. ‘That is not enough nourishment.’
‘There will be more,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘We have only begun emancipating the people from their old unequal flesh. And there will be sacrifices too — not all of the old regime are dangling on lamps in the square outside. I have our priests looking at converting a Gideon’s Collar — replacing the bolt with an obsidian blade and adding a claw which can tear out a heart while it is still beating.’
‘I distrust them. Machines,’ hissed the Strangler.
‘That is understandable, but we live in a brave new world now. These machines will work for us. It takes a locust priest half an hour to feed you the single soul of an unproductive. When we have a collar converted we can feed you a hundred or more in an hour.’
The Strangler flexed his fingers, looking at the way the nails had extended into talons. ‘Flesh is reliable. It can be controlled. Always so much flesh here. Breeding, multiplying.’
Tzlayloc smiled. The Wildcaotyl were primitive, primordial, almost child-like. Harnessing them was like harnessing the power of the land itself. He had become the ultimate worldsinger, tapping a force that made the unreliable currents of earthflow look as ephemeral as morning dew. The Wildcaotyl had nourished the Chimecans for a thousand years and now they would become the foundation stone for a global union of commonshares. He picked up the punch card from Greenhall. A single name. If it had been anyone else. If only Compatriot Templar had not fled, rejecting the destiny he had planned for her. Tzlayloc crumpled the paper. There were some things even the forces of the revolution could not control.
Undetected by Tzlayloc or his allies, the Shadow Bear stood in the corner of the chamber seething — but not about the unholy amount of energy he was having to draw down to remain in stealth in the presence of the enemy. It was the name coded on the card. That name was outside the order of things by such a wide degree, his predecessor might as well have left him a note that said ‘unauthorised intervention: sorry’.
It was unthinkable. They were the rule-set. Rules did not break themselves. Down that road madness lay. Yet there it was, the name on the card. The Observer could not have known how things were going to develop down here to the level of detail necessary to make an unauthorized intervention of such delicacy. She could not have known he would have to wait now, investigate the threads of this, could she? There was all his fun thrown out of the window. A little beating for the enemy well out of sight, then he would have got to close this place down and remove all evidence of playtime with the Wildcaotyl and the greater darkness they wanted to invite into reality. Tearing the wings off insects was such fun too.
He began the process of erasure.
Hell. They were all going to die anyway.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Commodore Black had been maudlin ever since Oliver had turned them back from the walls of Tock House. ‘Has it come to this, then? A company of Commonshare oafs billeted in my fine house. Draining my cellar and packing everything of value in their knapsacks for their journey home.’
‘They were waiting for us,’ said Oliver. ‘Tzlayloc will have our blood codes posted with every patrol in Middlesteel.’
‘Ah, lad, do not say that. Let’s make a run for the coast and leave Jackals to Tzlayloc and his cohorts.’
Oliver shook his head. There was no distance far enough to make them safe if Jackals fell to the Wildcaotyl. So they had crept past the outside privy and into the back yard of the only house in the capital where Oliver imagined he might receive a half-friendly welcome. He tried the back door. Locked.
‘Let me pass, lad. I have a small talent with locks.’ The commodore picked up an old nail nearly covered over by the snow and started to lever it gently into the door’s mechanism. ‘Listen to the canny tumblers clicking, this is a better lock than the door it stands in, Oliver.’
‘Not a talent that I would imagine comes in useful often on an underwater boat?’
‘Poor old Blacky, pursued for his family name with nothing but a gallows or a cell in the royal breeding house waiting for him. You would acquire a knack for picking locks too if you were in my sea boots.’
With a clack the door opened into a darkened room. The whole place looked deserted, just the smell of blow-barrel sap and gun oil to welcome them.
‘Step forward,’ said a voice. ‘Run and I’ll cut you down.’
‘Mother?’ said Oliver. ‘It’s me, Oliver Brooks. Phileas’s son.’
A small oil lamp lit up with a strike of its igniter. Mother Loade was sitting in an armchair with a barrel-sized gun pointing at them — the same kind of pressure repeater he had seen the steammen knights carrying around Mechancia. No range, but deadly this close.
‘Where’s Harold, boy.’
Oliver pointed a finger to the ceiling. ‘Snatched.’
She tutted. ‘So naughty Harold’s luck finally ran out. Not that it matters much now.’
‘We tried out front first, Mother. Your shop sign’s down and the windows are boarded up. If I hadn’t seen your adverts in the back of
‘Why do you think that is, boy? My useless husband ran for the coast when the shifties showed up and my apprentices have all disappeared. Right now all my trade is good for is a place on a production line in an armaments workshop.’
Oliver flicked his eyes enquiringly towards the ceiling.
‘I got a penny note from my son before the crystalgrid went down. One word. Bedtime. Do you know what that means, boy?’
‘Blessed Circle,’ said the commodore. ‘Oliver, this damson you have brought old Blacky to in our hour of need, she’s not what I think she is, is she? This damson’s with the Court, isn’t she?’
Mother Loade looked at the commodore. ‘You, I don’t know.’
‘Run silent, run deep. That’s what your little crystalgrid message means. Like a boat being hunted by a Jackelian aerostat. Except this time around it’s the shifties doing the hunting. And all the wolftakers and whistlers doing the hiding.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘That’s just a little bit more than you should know. Are you trade?’
‘Ah lass, poor old Blacky is no player in the vicious games run by you and your friends. He’s only the poor fox, hunted down without mercy by the wolftakers for the unhappy accident of his birth.’
‘Well dearie, now there’s three of us that don’t want to be questioned at a barricade or checkpoint-’ she stopped as she saw Oliver taking off his coat, eyes widening at the brace of pistols holstered at his side.
‘I kept your knife,’ said Oliver.
‘Sweet Circle,’ she whispered. ‘They really exist.’ She extended a hand and Oliver passed one of the pistols over. Mother Loade held the gun, her hand trembling as she marvelled at the silver engraving, the carefully rendered lions of Jackals, their malevolent patina.
