‘I never thought I would see one of these.’ She looked up at Oliver. ‘I can’t protect you now, boy. Not for your father’s memory. They’ll come for you, eventually.’
Oliver took back the pistol and slid it into the holster. ‘Harry didn’t know about these, did he?’
‘He’s not a weaponsmith,’ said Mother. ‘And he never did have much time for legends. But the Court of the Air has weaponsmiths, boy. From places you wouldn’t even believe. They will understand, they will know. They always do.’
‘They have other things to occupy them right now,’ said Oliver.
From the front door a banging sounded, Mother jumping in her chair. Oliver extended his senses and his heart sank, a shiftie officer and a company of the metal-fleshers stood in the street. Commodore Black peered through a crack in the boarded-up window. ‘Blessed troops in the passage behind the shop too.’
Mother waved at the rifles racked on the shelves. ‘Who would have thought the Carlists read
Oliver slid two glass charges from his bandolier. ‘I don’t believe the new courts will favour transportation.’
‘Already tried that.’ Mother Loade walked down the corridor, trailing an accordion-like pipe from her steamman gun back to her pressure stove. ‘I’m too old for this nonsense.’
‘Open up,’ commanded the voice from outside the door. ‘In the name of the Jackelian Commonshare.’
‘Don’t worry dearie,’ shouted Mother Loade. Her giant steamman weapon began to whistle like a kettle. ‘I’m about to open up for you.’
She pushed a lever up on the weapon and it screeched with a noise like a saw blade tearing through a log. The door shattered in half, covering Oliver, the commodore and Mother in a back-blast of splinters. Mother kicked away the two halves of the door hanging from its frame. When she pushed the lever back on the gun there was a rain of metal balls from the weapon’s canister as the gun’s gravity feed kicked in, reloading.
The officer had been thrown to the other side of the street, his blue uniform turned into a mess of crimson rags.
‘Welcome to Middlesteel, dearie.’ She turned to the equalized revolutionaries and hefted up the pressure repeater. ‘And as for you lot, you’re a bloody disgrace.’
‘Mother, no!’
Oliver dragged the commodore back into the shelter of the shop as she triggered the heavy weapon, the storm of pellets hosing across the metal-fleshers; the revolutionaries were thrown back, death by a thousand cuts as balls ruptured iron and pierced their buried organs, the blizzard of ricochets cracking windows in the street and raising clouds of brick dust. The sawing noise cut off. Mother was lying face down in the street and Oliver ran over to her. Rolled her over. She was bleeding from a hundred ricochet wounds, her eyes fighting to stay open. ‘I’ll tell your father when I see him, dearie, before I move along the Circle.’
‘I know you will.’ He could barely hear her. She raised a liver-spotted hand to rest on Oliver’s pistol, the gun seeming to feed her the energy she needed for one last whisper. ‘Don’t trust them — Oliver. Never — trust — the — Court of — the Air.’
She was gone. He lowered her down, her back staining the snow red. Black shouted a warning. The troops from around the back of the shop had found their way to the front of the street. Oliver heard whistles. They sounded like crushers, but he doubted any constables from Ham House would be responding to the call.
Oliver staggered back towards the shop. Commodore Black wanted Mother’s gun, but first he had to prize it away from her dead fingers. He dragged the pressure repeater and its pipe back through the doorway. Equalized revolutionaries with pikes trotted down the street towards them, following their Quatershiftian officers.
‘Sorry, lad,’ said the commodore. ‘I think this is our last stand.’
Oliver sighed. Mother would keep glass-lined casks of blow-barrel sap in her cellar next door to the tools of the glass blower’s trade. They could blow them, follow Steamswipe’s example and take a street’s worth of the jiggers with them.
‘I’m sorry too, commodore. We should have run for the coast, hidden among the crowds of refugees.’ Oliver felt tired, like he could sleep for a thousand years. In a few minutes he would have an eternity of peace.
‘None of the would have, could have, should have now, lad. They’ve chased you down for your fey blood as they’ve chased old Blacky down for the royal claret that runs through my veins. Let’s sell it to them blessed dear.’
The witch-blade was in Oliver’s fist, extending out like a lizard’s tongue, feeding him shadow memories of his father facing a hunting team of toppers. Commodore Black rested the smoking pressure repeater on the shop’s counter and covered the entrance. The battle cries of the enemy were getting nearer. Oliver checked both his pistols were loaded, the heat from the steamman gun warming his face.
Harry Stave was in a Court cell, what was left of his mind ripped to shreds by the wolftakers’ truth hexing. Steamswipe and Lord Wireburn were walking the halls of the Steamo Loas. Oliver could almost feel their shades standing beside him.
‘I’ll see you soon.’
The enemy was upon them, filling the passage, breaking down the boarded windows of Loade and Locke’s establishment.
‘Send us the Third Brigade,’ Oliver shouted above the saw-scream of the commodore’s gun. ‘Send them all.’
Molly and Slowstack were almost across the bridge, a swaying line of glass bricks threaded together with silver cable, the transparent crossing giving them an all too apparent view of the chasm below. It was so hot this far down in the earth, lava running in streams and lakes, bubbling rivers filling the corridors with choking fumes. Once these hidden holds had echoed to the boots of the masters of an underworld empire that covered the entire continent, but the Chimecans had faded long ago. Now only their crystals remained, their sorceries still sucking the power of the earthflow and filling the world they had created with an eerie, inconstant light.
The vision struck Molly without warning, Slowstack grabbing her as she stumbled against the hand cable.
‘Do you see her?’ asked the steamman.
‘I see her,’ confirmed Molly. The ghostly figure of the small girl stood at the far end of the crystal bridge.
‹
Molly pulled herself along the bridge, the figure receding as she drew closer. ‘I can hear you.’
‹I am speaking through your blood, Molly. I draw closer to you as you draw closer to me. You vibrate with my essence.›
‘We found Molly softbody,’ said Slowstack. ‘We pulled her into the deep atmospheric tunnels, into the protection envelope of the enemy’s own aura to survive the blast.’
‹You are both clever and brave, Silver Slowstack. But I must ask more of you.
Molly reached Slowstack on the other side of the canyon and the steamman cut the cable supporting the bridge with one of his manipulator claws, the crystal bricks tumbling into the chasm below and flaring as they rained down onto the lava. ‘Let them ride the air.’
‹The cities of the coldtime have many passages, Silver Slowstack,› said the Hexmachina. ‹Many ways to reach you.›
‘Are you close?’ asked Molly.
‹Closer every hour. My lover the Earth has been helping me. I no longer ride her caress in the centre of the world; her liquid heart of fire has carried me through many levels of her body, pumping me towards you at ever- greater velocity. I come for you, Molly, but still the enemy will reach you before I do.›
‘I can feel you in my blood,’ said Molly. ‘The nearer we get to each other. I can feel my body changing. I can feel the earth’s heartbeat, the thoughts of the world.’
‹The earth
