means to show for his wealth suddenly showing up at Whittington Manor brandishing a party invite. Compte de Speeler — the Count of Thieves. That little wordplay may have cost you your life. Your methods are both hasty and unsound.’
‘My methods saved your life,’ said Cornelius.
‘That is the main reason why you and your companion are still alive,’ said Robur. ‘We are working on the same side, really. You in your small limited way. Myself in mine — but my methods are played on a grander stage. You are never going to change the Commonshare by slaughtering Carlists and the revolutionary leaders one by one. Your horror — as effective as it is — can never equal the great terror the revolution has imposed on Quatershift. What is a single angel of death dropping from the sky, one agent of vengeance, what is that compared to the constant fear of the knock at the door in the middle of the night by the Commonshare’s thugs? What is the terror invoked by the voice changer in your mask compared to the screams of your neighbours as their children are fed into a Gideon’s Collar?’
‘One death at a time is all I need,’ said Cornelius, ‘to slake my vengeance and give me a little peace at night.’
‘There we are, then,’ sighed Robur’s disembodied voice. ‘You are looking to punish those who wronged you, one grave at a time. I am looking to change society so that such evil can never be allowed to take hold again. You crudely treat the symptoms; I wish to eradicate the disease itself.’
‘There speaks a mechomancer,’ said Septimoth, his wings shivering in anger. ‘The race of man treating the sum of the world like a machine that can be fixed by tinkering with its components, by providing a different instruction set for the transaction engine.’
‘My talents will help usher in a new age,’ said Robur ‘An age where the crimes the Commonshare inflicted on my people in Quatershift will never be repeated.’
‘The Carlists were infected by the same meme,’ said Septimoth. ‘I heard identical noises from your monkey throats, even as the Commonshare practised genocide against the people of the wind when we would not turn from the old ways. I trusted your kind’s grand intentions once. I shall never do so again.’
‘You are not going to usher in a new age by robbing the decaying remains of steammen from their graves,’ Cornelius interrupted. ‘I fail to see how that is going to topple the regime in Quatershift.’
‘Of course you fail to see it, you dolt,’ said Robur. ‘And I am afraid I will be unable to enlighten you for a few days yet, as unlike you, I am anything but hasty. All will be revealed in good time.’
‘What about us?’ said Cornelius. ‘Do we have a place in your shining new society?’
‘We shall see,’ said Robur. ‘We shall see.’
The speaker in the ceiling fell silent.
‘Well, what do you make of that?’ Cornelius asked Septimoth.
‘I think, on reflection, we should have interviewed more than one candidate for the position of maid-of-all- works when we set up home in Jackals.’
‘Robur was fishing,’ said Cornelius. ‘He wanted to find out if we’re working with the Court of the Air. He’s worried how much the Court might know about his little game.’
‘Let us hope the Court knows more about his schemes than we do,’ said Septimoth, ‘for both our sakes.’
Cornelius did not reply. The last time he and Septimoth had been held captive it had been he who had come up with the plan to escape: his brains and freakish assassin’s face to break them free, Septimoth’s wings to carry them to freedom. But Robur was not a blunt instrument like an organized community inside the Commonshare. And relying on the old woman lashed to a frame in the cell next door and her deadly celestial employers to rescue them wasn’t much of a plan. If that was what they were relying on, then they truly were in trouble.
Blood-bats circled the cage at night, making passes that carried them uncomfortably close to Commodore Black. The commodore ignored the squeals of the large rodents as T’ricola massaged life back into Billy Snow’s legs, the paralysis toxin finally losing its effect. Ironflanks was with them now, and while no one wanted to speak of it, the absence of valiant Gabriel McCabe — the strongest man in Jackals no more — still hung over them like a ghost at the feast.
‘You are an unusual sonar man,’ Veryann said to Billy as she looked down on the bats sweeping through the petrol mist beneath them. ‘One who fights uncommonly well for a blind man. And a submariner.’
‘I crewed my way across the oceans to Thar when I was younger,’ said Billy. ‘They know a thing to two about blade work and empty fist fighting out there. You can even study the skill at their monasteries.’
‘Did they also smith witch-blades at their monasteries?’ Veryann asked.
‘It was considered something of an art,’ said Billy.
‘Quiet, Billy,’ said T’ricola. ‘Your throat muscles are as weak as every other part of your creaking body. You need to rest.’
‘I can rest when I’m dead,’ said the sonar man.
‘That fate will come soon enough,’ said Commodore Black. ‘Along with the wicked spectacle the mad prince of this jungle hell is planning for us.’
‘At least the end will be quick,’ said Ironflanks. ‘The five of us pitted weaponless against a kilasaurus max. It will be quick.’
The commodore laid a hand on the steamman’s shoulder. ‘For the love of the Circle, can’t you be telling the prince that you have changed your mind and that he’s a fine fellow who should be letting his new friends go on their way?’
‘You mistake him for one of my kind,’ said Ironflanks. ‘Doublemetal and his siltempters haven’t been part of the Free State for many thousands of years. They worship the foulest of Loas, Lord Two-Tar and his minions, and the Lord of Deactivation has driven all compassion from the siltempters’ boiler hearts for those whose threads are woven alongside their own in the great pattern.’
‘The prince said you escaped from this place once before,’ said T’ricola. ‘Can you not break the cell’s locks and get us out of the pit?’
‘That was an age ago,’ said Ironflanks. ‘And I had help. I was a knight steamman, ranked errant among the Order of the Pathfinder Fist. I led a party of knights here — King Steam had heard rumours that the siltempters had captured one of the last remaining Hexmachina, a wounded and nearly deactivate model. We were to find it and free it. But we had not realized how the jungle had changed the siltempters over the millennia. They had grown into monsters here. They slaughtered us, those who did not run. A few of us survived, tortured while our architecture was violated by the same prince that King Steam had once cast out of Mechancia by his own hand.’
‘But still you escaped,’ said Commodore Black.
‘It was Bronzehall who broke the codes on our lock in the temple’s torture rooms,’ said Ironflanks. ‘He was a sly one, Bronzehall. A knight of the Commando Militant with a hundred ways to demolish any construction, and a thousand more to break into it. He was one of the last of us to die when we were pursued through the jungle by the siltempters, the only steamman other than I not to be recaptured.’
‘What happened to him?’ Billy Snow asked.
‘We had almost reached Rapalaw Junction when the components the prince had violated our architecture with began to change our bodies. When Bronzehall realized how badly he had been afflicted, he could not bear the shame.’
‘A warrior’s death,’ said Veryann.
‘Yes, a warrior’s death. If we had succeeded in bringing back the Hexmachina, then perhaps King Steam would have helped us, instructed the hall of architects at Mechancia to do what they could to restore our bodies to the righteous pattern. As it was, banishment and the isolation of the unclean was to be my reward.’
‘You are still a steamman,’ implored the commodore. ‘Can you not help me break this cunning transaction- engine lock?’
‘Bronzehall could,’ said Ironflanks, ‘but not I, my softbody friend. I wish that I could, but I am as much a part of the jungle now as I am of the metal, which is why Liongeli’s dark realm speaks to me at night and fills my thoughtflow with the whispers of the canopy.’
Commodore Black stared forlornly down towards the bubbling lake of oil. ‘Then I will tease the blessed thing open myself. My genius versus the mocking black boiler hearts of the siltempters. Let us see if Prince Doublemetal is as canny as he thinks he is, the lord of the loons, filing down his rivets like a walking razor and crushing the bones of honest travellers that fall into his clutches.’
‘Let me help you,’ offered Billy Snow.
