The Court of the Air

collaborate.’

Flare shook his head in frustration. ‘No doubt inspiring the same loyalty we felt towards the order. These idiots couldn’t organize a harvest-merrie, let alone a revolution. This is no way to overthrow a tyranny! Where is the Third Brigade liaison?’

Bonefire indicated the scene below the chamber’s window. ‘Someone at the Brigade must have heard you.’

Down below, Marshal Arinze’s retinue followed the leader of the Third Brigade as he swept imperiously past the shadow of the Gideon’s Collar set up in the palace square. Captain Flare got to his feet as the Marshal came through the door, his pet wolftaker in tow wearing a plain blue Quatershiftian brigade tunic.

‘Marshal, I had no idea you were personally involved with the quartermaster’s office.’

Arinze took the supply orders, looked at them, then passed them contemptuously back to a staff officer. ‘Hardly, compatriot captain. Your store requisitions have been put on hold.’

‘On hold?’ said Bonefire, his tone less than respectful.

Arinze ignored the mere guardsman and addressed his comments to the captain. ‘Things are not moving as fast as they should be, compatriot captain. Middlesteel is ours but elsewhere in Jackals the forces of tyranny are organizing against us. We have not yet managed to float the RAN and our scouts report that some of the survivors from Fulven Fields are organizing Jackals’ regiments along the southern frontier.’

‘That is not our concern,’ said Flare. ‘Lower the cursewall; bring more troops across on the atmospheric; chase off the gunboats in the Sepia Sea and land soldiers in the north. It is not my job to teach your forces how to campaign.’

‘The First Committee of Jackals believes it is your concern,’ said Marshal Arinze. ‘If you want to claim your territory you will have to earn it.’

Flare pointed an irate finger at Arinze. ‘Claim! We are not applicants at the board of the poor, Marshal. The Fey Free State is ours. We have a deal with Tzlayloc; we have worked with him, not for him. The Special Guard is not yet an arm of the brilliant men and the Middlesteelians you have been slaughtering may be hamblins, but they are still citizens of Jackals.’

Arinze snapped his fingers and was handed a sheaf of rolled papers. ‘All revolutions come with a butcher’s bill attached, compatriot captain. It’s time you got your hands dirty. Here are your orders from the First Committee.’

Flare tore off the wax seal and scanned the papers. ‘March on the uplands under the command of the second company of the Third Brigade. Is this a joke? We had a deal, Arinze. We would mutiny when they ordered us into action against you, but we told you we would not fight against our own regiments. We ensured the RAN would be docked in harbour when you attacked. We made sure every Guardian, every commercial lord and person of quality in Jackals would be in Middlesteel for the coronation when you arrived. Without the Special Guard the remnants of your army would be limping its way back to Quatershift pulling shards of fin-bomb crystal out of their uniforms.’

‘No plan of battle survives contact with the enemy, compat riot captain. Times have changed. The deal has changed.’

‘Jigger you!’ shouted Bonefire. ‘You dirty hamblin, you want a change of deal? Let’s see how you enjoy my terms…’

Fire lashed out from the guardsman’s fist, bathing the Marshal in wraithlike light. Arinze dropped to the floor of the palace screaming in distress. Flare pushed the arm of the Special Guardsman towards the ceiling, dragging Bonefire away kicking from the Quatershiftian officer.

‘Let’s see if Tzlayloc and his committee men want to renegotiate when I rip your skull off and toss it to them in a sack, you shiftie scum,’ shouted Bonefire.

Arinze got to his feet. ‘Striking an officer of the Third Brigade is a capital offence, compatriot guardsman.’

‘I’m not in your army, shiftie. I barely even belong to the race of man anymore.’

‘Execute him!’ shouted Arinze.

Behind the marshal two worldsingers stepped out of his retinue and circled Bonefire chanting. The Special Guardsman started to laugh, but his expression turned to shock as his body started folding in on itself, caught in an invisible press. Around his neck the hexes on the silver torc glowed, the fire of their brilliance sucking in air and whistling around his body like a kettle coming to the boil. The Special Guardsman’s arms and legs made popping noises, crushed under their own weight, red slashes hurtling across his skin as veins exploded. Bonefire twisted like a corkscrew, held erect in a hidden field before them as his muscles were crushed beyond use. The two worldsingers stopped their chanting and the bloody mess that was left flopped to the palace flagstones with a sickening slap.

Flare’s hand had unconsciously moved to the torc around his neck. ‘You-’

‘It took a long time for our worldsingers to unlock the hexes on your little necklaces,’ said Marshal Arinze. ‘I am told it took a dedicated team three years to solve them. Another two years to leave them in place but neutralize the trigger. Do you really think we went to all that trouble to leave a military force as powerful as the Special Guard in the field unchecked? We did not neutralize the hexes, compatriot captain, we modified them.’

Flare stumbled back. ‘What have I done, what have I done?’

‘Do not worry, compatriot captain, you shall have your territory in the south. After you have fought for it — after you have earned it. You will like serving as part of the Third Brigade. We are not prudes like Compatriot Tzlayloc and his First Committee with their funny little ways. Nobody in the Commonshare of Quatershift will be lining up to have their bodies changed in your flesh mills. We are proud of our bodies — they must be kept strong to serve the revolution.’ Arinze ran his hands down Major Wildrake’s chest. ‘Your guardsmen have been blessed with power and that power will serve us very well. You shall breed your city of fey-born, and your children will become the shock troops of the revolution.’

‘We are free,’ said Flare, as if repeating it would make it true.

‘There is no greater freedom than service to the community,’ said Arinze. ‘And service as the guardians of the cause has its rewards. Circlist prigs do not command us; we do not hang our soldiers for taking women, we do not hang them for stealing poultry from the henhouse of an enemy peasant. For hard men to be asked to do hard things in the name of the people, to inflict terror on the enemy, they must be kept as sharp as the sabres they carry.’

‘It must be difficult for you, Flare,’ said Major Wildrake. ‘I am a Jackelian too, I understand. But these people recognize the nature of our race. They opened my eyes to the principles of community, showed me how soft and weak I had become — how decadent Jackals had become.’

‘Sometimes it takes one not born in the Commonshare to see its true beauty,’ said Marshal Arinze. ‘Now, where is the King who missed his crown — where is the pup?’

‘Alpheus?’ said Flare. ‘What do you want with him?’

‘For my part, nothing. Tzlayloc wants him.’

Flare’s voice sounded on edge. ‘Prince Alpheus helped the revolution, he helped ensure everyone was in Middlesteel when you needed them there.’

‘And now Compatriot Alpheus is to serve the revolution again.’

‘How is he to serve it?’ Captain Flare demanded.

Arinze motioned a party of worldsingers and soldiers to search the palace. ‘A question better put to Chairman Tzlayloc. Like I said, your countrymen do have their funny little ways.’

‘Deals change,’ mumbled Flare. His guardsmen eyed the worldsingers among the shiftie troops with unconcealed loathing. That strange fey boy they had captured had been eerily prophetic — in the end they had only swapped one set of masters for another.

Molly had never run so far or so fast before — even Slowstack’s inexhaustible body had trouble keeping pace with her. There was a strange hum in her legs; a pain that only the exertion of running seemed to cancel. The very stuff of her blood fizzed with her increasing proximity to the Hexmachina, and the closer she got the more her body was changed. She could feel the pain of the earth now, the tunnels and cities of Chimeca like scar tissue over an old wound; the hex-engraved crystals that powered their cities were leeches, sapping the world’s energy. Below ground the leylines had become veins of enormous energy, the rock and the magma teeming with tiny life — earthflow: a world’s weight of it — the soul of the earth, breathing, sighing, pained by the coarse manipulations which the old