The Court of the Air

‘She was with us, Molly softbody. Even when we were Silver Onestack, only once a desecration, a leper among the people of the metal. Now we are twice a desecration and she is still inside us. If we live through this the people of the metal will not believe it. That the holiest of machines has made a twisted desecration its instrument.’

‘They will believe it,’ said Molly. ‘I’ll have our part in this written into a Dock Street penny dreadful and send copies of it to King Steam until they sing your name in their hymns.’

‘And what will you call your fiction?’

“‘The Terror of the Crystal Caves”,’ said Molly. ‘Except they’ll get my feelings wrong. They’ll have me being brave and valiant all the way through the story. Not scared and tired and so hot I might throw the whole thing away for a glass of cold water. Everything I do in the story will be because I planned it, not because I had no choice.’

‘You have had a choice, Molly softbody,’ said the steamman, ‘and you have followed your path and stayed true to it. There is no greater bravery than that. The Hexmachina showed us glimpses of a world where you did not — and it was a dark, cold, quiet, terrible place. Sometimes the fate of the land turns on the common actions of a common individual.’

‘I am not sure it should have been me, Slowstack. Out of everyone in Jackals, I keep on asking why this has fallen upon me. I’m just a Sun Gate scruff that everyone predicted would end up running the streets with the flash mob. Better this duty had fallen to an adventurer like Amelia Harsh or a handsome deck officer on an aerostat. I don’t have a family; I don’t even have a living. Out of everyone in the world, why me?’

‘The great pattern has woven your place in its fabric better than you know, Molly softbody,’ said Slowstack. ‘The blood of Vindex runs in your veins, not just in a literal sense — you are a true heir to his legacy. Out of all his descendants with the blood-song singing within their veins we can imagine no other we would rather have at our side.’

The last syllable of the steamman’s words was lost in the howl that echoed off the walls of the passage.

‘That is a softbody throat,’ said Slowstack.

‘Not merely the race of man,’ said Molly. ‘Those things are ridden by dirty Loas.’

She extended her senses, felt the rush of the Hexmachina’s voyage through the magma. The Hexmachina was at least an hour away from their position.

They started speeding away from the noise, but Molly was reluctant to flee, checking the path with her hands, looking for something.

‘Molly softbody?’

‘They are too near, Slowstack. They’ll run us down in minutes.’

‘I have no weapon capable of harming the Wildcaotyl,’ said the steamman. ‘Even a pair of minor entities. Are you joined yet with the Hexmachina?’

Molly shook her head. ‘We should save our strength, stand here and face them down.’

‘You can smell another pack of wild pecks?’

‘The only thing worth hunting down here is us, old steamer.’ She pulled him towards her. ‘By my side, Slowstack. Don’t try and throw yourself in front of me. No heroic sacrifices.’

Down the passage the two convicts rounded the corner, rolling in two spheres of black light suspended above the ground, their hands crackling with an incinerating fire. They sighted their prey and accelerated towards Molly and Slowstack with a howl which was a roar of triumph channelled through burning human throats.

‘This is chaos,’ shouted Oliver.

Third Brigade soldiers were falling back at the other end of the street in a disciplined line, one rank firing, while the troops who had retreated a couple of steps behind them reloaded from their bandoliers. On Nagcross Bridge equalized revolutionaries were being picked up by their iron legs by rebels and tossed into the Gambleflowers, political fighters running along the shops on the bridge and brandishing their debating sticks.

Commodore Black had one of the dead shifties’ carbines and he shot it with the accuracy of a long rifle, Third Brigade troops dropping with each charge he broke. ‘Use the cover, lad. Your fey skull will stop a bullet the same as any other.’

One of Benjamin Carl’s officers ran up to them, his only mark of rank a red band of cloth bound around his arm. ‘They’ve started putting pickets on the sewer gates, we can’t get our people behind them.’

‘The other bridges?’ asked Oliver.

‘Even better defended than this one.’

Nagcross Bridge had to fall. Oliver looked at the ranks of soldiers at the other end of the bridge. They were sheltering behind an interlocking wooden rampart — one of the mobile barricades they erected to seal off troublesome districts back in the Quatershiftian cities. As he watched a column of soldiers came into view marching in quickstep, reinforcing the position to the north of the bridge.

‘Different uniforms,’ said the commodore. ‘Look, caps, not shakos. The marshal has swallowed his pride and is bringing in another brigade to help crush the city.’

On their side of the lines an old steamman came into sight, supported by a couple of young political fighters from the party of the Levellers.

‘Guardian Tinfold,’ said the Carlist officer.

Tinfold made a weary whistle as steam escaped out from beneath his metal plates. ‘I told Hoggstone our forces were not prepared for an all-out assault. I counselled for a guerrilla campaign.’

Oliver pointed to the Quatershiftian soldiers blocking the north end of the bridge. ‘Time is their ally, old steamer, not ours. If we don’t free Middlesteel before the cursewall is lowered you’ll have your guerrilla war — generation after generation of fighting from caves in the uplands.’

‘Fastbloods are so hasty,’ sighed the politician. ‘Well then, we must save Jackals from the folly of our alacrity. Our people in the city are cut off now; we must open a passage to the pocket or suffer encirclement and defeat. Nagcross Bridge must fall.’

At the shiftie end of the bridge fresh ammunition boxes had been brought up and the troops felt emboldened enough to start a volley of fire that started cutting down the rioting street fighters. Debating sticks smashed aside doors as the ragtag army took cover.

A couple of fast-bowlers with glass grenades tried running out onto the bridge and pitching the explosives towards the north end, but the range was too far even for the two four-poles fanatics, the explosions showering flames at the foot of the barricade as the Third Brigade cut down the two players. From the rebels a traditional flutter of applause sounded as they honoured the dead men’s fatal innings.

Oliver turned as a clatter of hooves reverberated behind them, half expecting to face a charge of exomounts. But instead of heavy cavalry, Oliver saw a line of horses with a collection of riders as motley as the city fighters’ own forces. There were huntsmen from the villages wearing red tunics that could almost pass for redcoat uniforms, the black greatcoats of mail coachmen, the blue uniforms of the county constabulary, and, by far the greater number, hundreds of roamers — wild gypsies in a flurry of colours, their fire witches riding without saddles and naked, war paint swirled around lithe muscles. At their head was a riding officer of the House Horse Guards, parliament’s oldest cavalry regiment.

‘Jack Dibnah,’ shouted the riding officer, adjusting his roundhead-style helmet. ‘Mad Jack to m’friends. Late of the House’s own. Been out hunting any shifties foolish enough to stick their heads into the royal county of Stainfolk. Heard there were some of the buggers in Middlesteel needing stringing up too.’

He pointed at the hundreds of horses behind him, sixers mostly, whippet-thin and panting from the thrill of the ride. ‘Dibnah’s irregulars. Not much for parade turns but handy enough with a sabre or a lance.’

One of the fire witches kicked her horse up to the front of the column. ‘Enough of your prattle, we were promised the blood of the beng that drove us from the plains of Natsia.’

Mad Jack winked at Oliver and the commodore. ‘Not much for the niceties of command either, but they’re spirited fillies, eh?’ He looked over at the steamman politician. ‘You with that lot camped out east?’

‘I am the honourable member for Workbarrows, young softbody,’ said Guardian Tinfold. ‘Which lot are you referring to?’

‘Good Circle, man, there’s a whole army of your people camped east of the Gambleflowers.’

‘King Steam has honoured the ancient treaty,’ said Tinfold.

Bullets whistled past Mad Jack’s helmet, but he just swatted at the air, as if horseflies drawn to the sweat of