The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt

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      ‘You shouldn’t be trying to kill me,’ said Molly. ‘I want to speak to my mother.’

      ‘She died of shame,’ said the assassin. ‘After you were born.’

      ‘That’s not true.’

      The topper shoved her to the dirt, pushing her red hair back from the nape of her neck. ‘Time to die, Molly Templar.’

      ‘Please,’ Molly pleaded. ‘I just want to see my mother once before you kill me.’

      ‘Hold still. I’ll send you to her now.’

      It was Slowcogs that shook her awake, rather than the kiss of cold sabre steel. Molly groaned.

      ‘It is midday in the world above, Molly softbody. Time to move on.’

      The first growths in the fungal forest were tall white mushroom trees with multiple cups and red mottling; then the lichen-covered ground grew denser with darker single-cup growths. At times they needed to retrace their steps so Slowcogs could squeeze through the thick forest.

      Molly watched a squirrel-like rodent chewing on one of the trunks. ‘You could live free out here, Slowcogs. If you didn’t mind a diet of mushrooms.’

      ‘Grimhope is safer,’ said the steamman. ‘Relatively speaking.’

      ‘Is it still like the legends of the Green Man?’

      ‘I doubt if it ever was the place of your tales, Molly soft-body,’ said Slowcogs. Then, as if it explained everything, he added, ‘It is an outlaw city.’

      ‘They will welcome us there?’

      ‘My people have not updated our knowledge of Grimhope for many years,’ said Slowcogs. ‘There are few outlaw steammen; although one of our kind does live down here. Silver Onestack. He is a desecration.’

      ‘You mean he is malfunctioning?’

      ‘Which of us does not, with age?’ answered Slowcogs. ‘No. He is a joining – a creature formed from steamman cadavers at the hands of one of your human mechomancers. His pattern has been violated, the architecture laid down by King Steam tampered with. Three souls of our fallen lay trapped within the corpses that make up his body by Onestack’s selfish refusal to deactivate. It is a great dishonour for him.’

      Molly remembered her dream of the night before. ‘Poor Silver Onestack.’

      ‘So he hides himself away down here in the undercity. But he is still steamman. Word has been sent by the controller – if he is alive I hope he will meet us outside the town.’

      ‘Word?’ said Molly. ‘Surely there is no crystalgrid network down here?’

      Slowcogs pointed towards the ceiling mist, where black dots rode the cavern thermals. ‘There are older ways to send a message, young softbody. Trained bird bats with leg clips do as well in the deeps.’

      They travelled at a steady pace for the rest of the day, uneventfully except for when one of the mushroom trees rained spores down on them as they passed. Molly’s eyes swelled up like the crimson ball from a game of four-poles and she sneezed uncontrollably for another two miles. Apart from the odd spike of earthflow-fed lightning, the bright red light from the crystals high above them never varied or dimmed. It was always day in the Duitzilopochtli Deeps.

      By the late afternoon the cavern floor started to slope upwards and the fungal forest began to grow less densely. The presence of fields of stumps in the dirt suggested heavy felling by the inhabitants of the undercity. Before the brow of a hill they came across a field of a different kind, the stone markers and headstones of a graveyard stretching back to the fungal forest.

      ‘This is where Silver Onestack will meet us, if he is still activate,’ said Slowcogs. The steamman rolled along a path towards a shrine at the corner of the graveyard. The temple looked as abandoned as the Chimecan structure Molly had slept in the night before, but with none of the half-human, half-insect effigies. She guessed the outlaw city, rather than the ancient fallen empire, had constructed the shrine. Peering inside its gloom, Molly saw a figure squatting on the floor. A steamman, as silent as one of the Guardian’s statues in Parliament Square.

      ‘Have you no greeting for us, Silver Onestack?’ asked Slowcogs.

      Raising itself on a tripod of three pincer-like legs, the large spherical body of the creature rotated, a silver-domed head emerging from an iris on the globe. ‘I had hoped no greetings would be necessary, Slowcogs. Did the controller not receive my message?’

      ‘We did not wait for your reply,’ said Slowcogs. ‘The Geargi-ju wheels have been thrown.’

      ‘Then he has read badly, Slowcogs. Grimhope is not the place it once was. Whatever threat this softbody faces in Middlesteel, it is only a fraction of the disorder that now rules down here.’

      Slowcogs rolled back. ‘I do not understand.’

      ‘Then let me show you,’ said Silver Onestack, his three legs scissoring him out of the temple. They reached the top of the hill and stared down into the valley.

      Old Chimecan ziggurats lay dotted around the cavern floor overwhelmed by the towers of a human city, smoke rising from workshops and manufactories. It looked like the Jangles in Middlesteel viewed from the top of the hill at Rottonbow.

      ‘Where is the tree town?’ asked Slowcogs. ‘Where is the palisade and Lake Chalchiuhtlicue?’

      ‘Cut down. Built over. Drained,’ said Silver Onestack. ‘The Anarchy Council fell three years ago. What is left of its members rests behind you in those plots.’

      ‘You have not reported this,’ said Slowcogs, accusingly.

      ‘Rather, I have, but you have not received my messages. The new regime brought flying things with them, all teeth and claws. I lost my whole loft of bird bats within a week. You were lucky the controller’s communication got through to me at all. It is the first word from the people of the metal I have received for years.’

      ‘It is strange this has been kept from us,’ said Slowcogs. He was clearly not used to the knowledge of something on such a scale having escaped the attention of the steammen’s all-knowing network.

      ‘Stranger still that the new regime were instantly able to identify all of the political police’s informers down here,’ said Silver Onestack. ‘Those informers that still live now tell the Guardians on the surface whatever the new regime wish them to hear.’

      Molly stared down at Grimhope, deeply disappointed. She had expected freedom to look different, not like a miniature replica of Middlesteel. But however bad it was, her murderous family would not be able to track her down here.

      Silver Onestack passed Molly a green cloak with a large hood. ‘Wear this, Molly softbody. And if anyone speaks to you before we get to my lodgings, do not forget to address your reply with compatriot, not sir or damson.’

      ‘They are communityists?’ Molly asked.

      ‘Not any more,’ said Silver Onestack, looking back at the bone-white gravestones of the Anarchy Council. ‘No. Not any more.’

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