The Court of the Air

‘A machine,’ said Slowstack in awe. ‘But not of the metal.’

Molly realized it was cold in the room. After days of furnace-like heat, dreaming of the cool autumns of Middlesteel, she was actually shivering.

‘No, old steamer. Not of the metal. Those threads are crystallised blood, drawn from the bodies of the Chimecan lords’ own children. The ultimate sacrifice that their gods called upon them to make.’

Molly’s body fizzed with revulsion at this sly abomination, her proximity to it triggering her relationship with the Hexmachina. Her blood was changing, the structures of her body rebuilding themselves into something new. She was the daughter of Vindex and the philosopher slave had seen this thing, she knew that. He had stood exactly where she stood now and felt the same emotions, passions that had pushed him into leading the revolt of the slave nations.

‘Molly softbody, what is the function of this artefact?’

‘Nothing yet,’ said Molly. She felt the echo of the words in her head before she said them. The Hexmachina was so close now. ‘It is only half built. But had its construction been finalized, then it would have been a pipe, a pipe to play a tune for the Wildcaotyl, to crack the substance of the great pattern and allow the Wildcaotyl to call down their own gods. Meta-gods! Beings far beyond the frail substance of our universe.’

‘By Steelbhalah-Waldo’s beard,’ hissed Slowstack, ‘there are hymns among the people that are never sung. Names that are never said for fear of what power they might allow into the world. For the Wildcaotyl to do such a thing! The Circle would be closed, the great pattern dissolved. We believed that all the Wildcaotyl desired was to encase the earth in ice again, to return the Chimecan Empire to its ancient glory and control our life force as food for their table.’

Molly shook her head. ‘Poor mad Tzlayloc. He thought he was preparing the way for a perfect order, but the order was never his. It is to be his Wildcaotyl masters’, a perfect cold eternity of complete method … no chaos, no warmth, no gravity or movement or change. Everything subservient to the meta-gods’ inert dominion and the will of the Wildcaotyl. We would all be equal in a way — equal in our non-existence, equal in our living death within a circle of time without end. That is the future my ancestor glimpsed. Why he dared rebel against the Chimecan Empire.’

‘Molly softbody, you are changing,’ said Slowstack, his voicebox disturbed.

He tracked back; the same golden nimbus that had disintegrated the door was now lifting off Molly’s skin in waves, an aurora borealis that made the Wildcaotyl’s instrument of ultimate destruction glitter like a million crimson stars in a dark firmament. Slowstack’s own hull lit up with the glow, the golden energy making his body feel as hale as Slowcogs once had, before Onestack had fused their bodies together in a desecration.

Molly groaned and leant on the railing around the crater’s rim, collapsing to her knees with the strain of her body’s changes.

As the glow faded Slowstack’s vision plate cleared and he saw the dark figure standing three feet behind Molly, black fire leaking from his eyes, the sound of his malevolent laughter an echo from the pits of a nightmare.

Damson Davenport found it hard to keep up with the others — they had been equalized longer than she had and were used to the flat, dull way everything looked in their new bodies. She was continually reaching for things on the mill bench and missing them, or knocking them onto the floor. It was the nice cup of caffeel at the end of the day she missed most. The coke they fed into their boiler chutes might burn for days in their sorcerous new forms but she still remembered what it was like to taste things, to have an appetite. The work leaders boasted that they had eliminated hunger — well, that was true, in a way. And she missed the peace of sleep too. She could only rest for an hour or so in this new body and when she woke up from the dreamless respite she hardly felt refreshed at all.

‘Keep up with the line,’ shouted their company’s work leader, banging her iron back with his punishment wand. ‘Compatriot Davenport, you are slowing the column. Can you not take Compatriot Carker as your example? What a fine worker she is, what a fine example to the people she serves.’

Compatriot Carker had found the measure of how to trot in her new body. But then Harriet Carker was a Grimhope loyalist, one of the first to be equalized — the daft fool had volunteered for this existence, had been one of the subterranean renegades who had set up the flesh mills down below in the outlaw realm.

It was so hard to tell the equalized apart — the loyalists from the conscripts. You learned to watch what you said and to whom. Damson Davenport had only tasted the pain stick once and it was enough to cow her tongue. The rumours of a resistance, the rumours of a counter-revolution, had been denied by the company leaders. But then they had interrupted the evening reading of Community and the Commons to deny them. They might have sliced her up and stuffed her into this shambling new body of metal and flesh, but they had not cut away her common sense. She could see the fear in the eyes of the brilliant men. She could see the upside down Vs — the lion’s teeth — that had been scrawled on the walls of the streets; she could see the distant smoke and hear the fighting.

‘Halt,’ shouted the company leader. They were outside the Circlist cathedral on the Lilburne road, Third Brigade troops lined up and guarding the doors. What could be inside, wondered Damson Davenport? The practice of Circlist worship was a pain-rod offence now; the company leaders had made that clear. Wagons were drawn up outside, dozens of them with canvas covers concealing their valuable cargo.

‘Form up,’ shouted the company leader to the column of equalized workers. ‘Eight each to a wagon. Then we pull them to Parliament Square. After we have delivered the wagons we will return to this street — there will be more wagons waiting for us. This will be our duty until we are reassigned back to the cannon works.’

The royal we, thought Damson Davenport, as the company leader climbed up to the top of one of the wagons while his equalized compatriots did as they were bid.

‘These wagons are meant for horses,’ said Damson Davenport. It came out before she realized she had spoken.

‘They’ve been eating them,’ whispered the metal-flesher behind her, voicebox set on low. ‘I heard the brilliant men complaining that it is the only meat left in Middlesteel now.’

Damson Davenport glanced around. Thank the Circle the company leader had not heard the uncommunityist exchange. To gossip was to steal exertion from the cause — they had been warned against that too. A mixture of Third Brigade troops and brilliant men escorted the large convoy, holding their rifles ready as they marched. A small glimmer of hope rose in her. If they were being guarded, then there was still something to guard against in Middlesteel.

Gates on a barricade with the muzzles of galloper cannons protruding out were heaved back outside Parliament Square. A squat black building had been raised in the centre of the square, its stacks venting oily black smoke into the snow-pregnant sky. Damson Davenport noticed the rubble of the statues that had been smashed to make way for this new structure. Something else had been added recently too — a tall stone cross which had been driven into the ground outside the entrance to the House of Guardians, a figure strapped to it howling like a banshee, his screams carrying across the cold space of the square. Above the figure being punished a crimson-filled jewel boiled as snowflakes fell across it and turned to steam.

Third Brigade soldiers pulled the canvas covers off the wagons, revealing the cages underneath. In Damson Davenport’s chest the calculation drums ground in shock. The cages were filled with people, once-fine clothes ripped and soiled by confinement in a space a Jackelian would not have wished to keep a street hound in. There were old men, families and children, the school uniforms of the private academies ruined by weeks of sleeping and living in them. The strangest thing of all was how quiet they were. They were just standing there, resigned. Why weren’t they angry? These were the city’s quality — they were used to the finest food and the finest accommodation Middlesteel had to offer. Now they had been reduced to gaunt figures without enough spark to spill even a tear for their own predicament.

Soldiers unlocked the cage walls and pushed the dirty prisoners to form a line leading towards the squat structure. Behind her the company leader was talking to one of the brilliant men. After the conversation was over, the leader came over to Damson Davenport and cut her out of the team pulling the wagon. ‘You are slowing the wagons down, compatriot. You are not yet used to your beautiful new form, so I have decided to show compassion to you. You will be working on the Collar’s boiler for the rest of today.’

The Collar? So, that is what a Gideon’s Collar looked like. He led her to the middle of the square, over to the furnace being stoked on the back of the construction. Inside the building she could hear the crack of the bolts as they fired. One every five seconds. Quick, painless, humane. Clearly the product of an advanced society. Damson