War he was designing his wave-front cannon to be hidden inside a mountain, far from the reach of airship bombs. We, unfortunately, don't have the time to excavate the mountain here, so instead we're lying the spiral gun's barrelling down across the forest floor. Yes, the fellow is truly a genius.'
'I think Timlar had a little help,' said Molly.
Poor, dead Kyorin. He should have been alive to see his desperate scheme bear fruit. They began walking down the path to the forest camp, Molly's coach and escort turning back along the trail. Up above the slope's melting snow stood the honeyed stone of a squat round Martello fort, a rusting airship tower rising behind its walls. The fort was manned with redcoats now, but the airship dock hadn't seen any traffic for a long while. The fort had no doubt been abandoned long before the camp was established, a relic of the ancient Jackelian civil war reoccupied by rough circumstance.
The camp might be hiding from view, but as Molly walked closer to the trees she could hear the hammering of steel and the hiss of gas torches. 'Has Duncan got over his disappointment?'
'He works as hard as any other welder or smelter in the camp. He may not admit it to himself, but he's clearly more usefully deployed here than fighting with the regiments,' said Coppertracks. 'He and Timlar Preston share their passion for rockets together; that is a small consolation. I think it is Purity we must worry about.'
'People here don't suspect…?'
'No, the false citizen code we acquired for her is solid. And as a seamstress for the cannon's rubber lining she is as accomplished as any of the factory children that have been drafted in here. But Purity is changing. She is so possessed by the Loa that it is now impossible to see where she begins and that which rides her ends. The other softbodies here can sense the difference. They don't know what it is, but they feel it all the same.'
Molly sighed, looking up at the evil new moon of the comet in the sky, before entering the cool, shadowed cathedral of the forest. 'Everything's changing, old steamer. And not for the better. We just have to hold it all together long enough for this cannon to be completed.'
'I tossed the cogs last night,' said Coppertracks, 'to read the auguries of our project in the trail of Gear-gi- ju.'
'And what did you see revealed?'
'The single skein,' said Coppertracks. 'The non-duplicated circuit. This project is both our peoples' last hope of survival. Without its success the race of man and the people of the metal will be exterminated by this Army of Shadows.'
'No pressure on us, then,' said Molly. Damn Kyorin. The murdered slave was right and the final vision the Hexmachina had sent to Molly had been right – and she would so much rather they'd both been mistaken about everything.
'I fear for the timely completion of the project,' said Coppertracks. 'If Oliver and the commodore fail to bring back those components from Quatershift; if my people fail to deliver what we need to see you safely to Kaliban… so many chances to fail, and there are other problems here, problems of our own making.'
Molly raised an eyebrow.
'The evening's project review meeting is about to begin. Come. See for yourself…'
Coppertracks led Molly under the canopy of trees, dappled shadows falling across an entire town that been raised in miniature here, hidden in the lee of Mount Highhorn. Raised on her word and that of the escaped slave still haunting her memories. Molly suddenly felt very small, a vessel for something so large that it overwhelmed her humanity. All that scale, pitted against a tiny voice of doubt that was wholly her own: what if I'm wrong? What if Kyorin was mistaken, or just a dupe of the Army of Shadows, released to sow confusion and distract the kingdom from the fight for life in the defence of its homeland? Just who – or what – were they building this peculiar cannon for?
The building Coppertracks led Molly to had been constructed so recently she could smell the freshly logged pine. When the steamman opened the door and she saw who was arguing around the table inside, she gasped with shock. 'What is he doing here?'
Coppertracks indicated a vacant chair and the empty space next to it for him to tractor up to the table. Opposite, a group of scientists sat with Lord Rooksby at their head. Rooksby looked angrily at Molly – her assistance to Coppertracks at the Royal Society presentation obviously not forgotten.
Coppertracks tuned his voicebox to a whisper. 'You know how parliament likes to work. Every opinion on a project as important as this one has to be balanced by an intellectual counterweight so all views can be considered.'
'We're not a bloody parliamentary committee,' hissed Molly, taking her seat. 'We have a job of work to do here.'
A tall man with long black sideburns nodded at her from the head of the table. The camp commander, by the look of the worry lines creasing his forehead. 'I see that we have our mission's progenitor with us now. I am Colonel Buller, of the First Corps of Engineers, the lucky soul the House of Guardians have charged with ensuring the success of this undertaking. I don't suppose you bring with you the parts we have been promised, damson?'
'I have a crate or two that might come in useful,' said Molly. And she did. There was hardly a theatrical supplier in Middlesteel that she hadn't visited in her efforts to craft the disguise she was planning to use on Kaliban. Blue skin dye and white robes to match the natives' clothing – identical to garments glimpsed in the dreams that assailed her now. Kyorin's dreams. 'But not the components for the cannon. They're in the process of being secured from our new allies out in Quatershift,' said Molly.'
'But secured to what end, Damson Templar?' asked Lord Rooksby. 'This entire project is misconceived. It is clear the Army of Shadows hails from one of the unexplored continents of our opposite hemisphere. The very idea that they have travelled here from one of the neighbouring celestial spheres is an arrant nonsense. We should mount this longrange artillery piece we are constructing on a turntable so that we can direct its fire towards the occupied provinces of Catosia and Quatershift. At least then we shall derive some utility from it beyond fanning the flames of your ridiculous new fashion in novels.'
'I assure you, my Lord Commercial, the Army of Shadows is far from fictional.' Molly looked down the length of the table. 'Where is Timlar Preston?'
'He seems to be of a rather nervous disposition,' said Colonel Buller. 'I have excused him his attendance at our meetings to benefit his health.'
The colonel and Molly exchanged glances. And the excusal, no doubt, did wonders for the productivity of the real work they were doing here.
'I have been thinking,' piped up a small narrow-faced man. Where had Molly seen him before? Then it came to her. The literary talk her agent had organized for her to attend last year at one of the theatres in Douglas Lane – he had been one of the other writers in attendance, riding her coattails on the fad for celestial fiction. No wonder Rooksby was chafing. Along with the Royal Society, parliament had drafted in the other obvious advisors to the threat posed by the Army of Shadows… celestial fiction authors. 'We know that the Army of Shadows originates from the polar wastes. Perhaps they don't come from the outer darks, but the inner ones! They might have travelled up a tunnel from the centre of the Earth. There are many ancient legends that suggest there is the entrance to a cavern system at the pole that leads to the centre of our world. In which case it is not a cannon we should be constructing here, but a vast drilling machine. One capable of burrowing into the heart of the invader's empire of the inner core!'
Molly rolled her eyes in frustration, noting the wave of blue energy circling lazily around inside Coppertracks' crystal skull at a uniform rate. He was bored, but at least he was diverting his intelligence to his mu-bodies scattered around the camp and continuing some meaningful work through his drones. She, meanwhile, was trapped here in this debating society of idiots and loons.
Duncan watched Purity peer down the tree-shaded length of the canal. The Halfshire Navigation's passage through Highhorn Forest was one of the main reasons why parliament had chosen to site the camp so close to the isolated lumber mill they had built their facilities around.
'Will they be with the canal boats?' asked Purity.
Duncan Connor scratched his stubble. 'I've been told that both Oliver and the commodore are safe.'
Duncan didn't say that they wouldn't be receiving the long-awaited parts from Quatershift now if their two friends hadn't made it back safely from the voyage. Large shire horses pulling flatbed carts were arriving to
