our brothers and sisters still toil under the yoke of Middlesteel’s barons of commerce and the false idolatry of a sham ballot every four years. Bring forward the corrupt ones, compatriots.’
The red-cloaked soldiers – the brilliant men – moved forward with two struggling figures in white togas.
‘These evil leeches …’ Tzlayloc’s voice echoed off the square’s walls. ‘These two evil leeches come to visit us from as far away as the city-states of the Catosian League. Why? To benefit from us! To profit.’
There was a collective rush of breath from the crowd.
‘Please,’ one of the Catosian traders begged. ‘Last year you needed high-tension boilers from us for your mills, parts and plans for automatics. We brought them to you. For mercy’s sake, let me live. I have a family who need me, three girls and a baby boy.’
‘Listen to these philosophers,’ Tzlayloc mocked. ‘To feed their families they would suck our blood. Is that not the excuse of the vampires on the surface? Just a little trade, just a little blood – work for me, not for each other. Work for me, not for the commons. Make me fat. Make me rich. Let me show you a new philosophy, men of Catosia.’
Tzlayloc drew an obsidian-handled knife – the blade sharpened stone. His crimson-hooded retinue dragged the two traders to an altar where they were arched back and strapped thrashing and sobbing to the stone. Tzlayloc thrust aloft the knife.
‘In life, you leeched blood from the people you should have cared for. Now, in death, your sacrifice will strengthen the people’s sinews and advance their cause. Xam-ku, Father Spider, hear my prayer – let the sacrifice of these two rats caught with their snouts buried in our grain bins swell your power and speed your return. Too long have we laboured under the yoke of slave master and merchant and market without the light of Wildcaotyl to guide us.’
‘Look away, Molly softbody,’ advised Onestack.
Molly did, but she couldn’t shut out the screams echoing from the walls of the square as Tzlayloc carved the traders’ beating hearts out of their still living bodies. Tzlayloc held the still pulsing organs above the crowd. ‘Xam-ku, feel the nourishment of their souls.’
The crystals in the cavern ceiling came alive with lightning, crimson fire arcing between the stones above them. Down in the square the crowd chanted their saviour’s name.
‘The old gods of Wildcaotyl have not fed in a long time,’ said Slowcogs.
‘I can feel their hunger,’ said Molly. ‘Welling up beneath the ground. The souls spilled are like the taste of meat for a slipsharp that hasn’t fed in a thousand years.’
Blood from the two limp bodies was coursing down channels in the stone. ‘In death,’ Tzlayloc bellowed, ‘these two corrupt vampires have made the sacrifice to their companions they were never willing to make in life. Behold, I have found their centre, and it nourishes the commons.’
Molly tried to turn away from the scene, but the press of the chanting mob was too fierce.
‘Our compatriots in Quatérshift feed such as they into the Gideon’s Collar, but in their admirable drive for efficiency, they have forgotten the wisdom of our ancestors. Wasting good souls which could be dedicated to Xam-ku,’ said Tzlayloc. ‘Yet in Middlesteel above, the streets still throng with the oppressors of the people, the enemy inside our walls, withholding paradise from the hands of the starving, the propertyless and desperate. Shall we make a land of equals? Shall we free the people?’
‘Yes!’ the crowd roared.
‘Shall we pull the selfish bloodsuckers down into the gutter and thrash them until the streets of Middlesteel run red with their blood?’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ the crowd howled.
‘Now you see,’ whispered Silver Onestack. ‘Now you see why you were wrong to come here. Grimhope has died. This rotting carcass of a city is all that is left of the legend.’
Slowcogs bowed his head. ‘Forgive me, Silver Onestack. I did not know.’
‘No,’ said Molly. ‘This is not your fault, Slowcogs. I was meant to come here. I have seen this madness before, or something like it.’
Slowcogs’ head sunk in shame. ‘There is a song in your blood, Molly softbody, and the memory of your cells points the way you must travel.’
But where have I seen this before? Molly asked herself as they drifted away from the square. Where?
Molly and the two steammen had only just arrived back at Onestack’s lodgings when the political organizer who had dragged them to the rally appeared at the door. She banged on the front of the workshop. ‘Token day, compatriot metal, token day.’
Silver Onestack opened the door. ‘Enter, compatriot soft-body.’
‘Such a gathering, compatriot metal. Such a show of equality. The day is coming when the dogs on the surface will whine under the weight of our boots, surely it is.’
‘Surely,’ Silver Onestack mouthed.
‘Your ledger, compatriot.’
Onestack led the way into the room at the back of the workshop, picked up a dusty book of accounts and handed it to the woman, saying nothing as she leafed through the last few pages. ‘Excellent, compatriot metal. The communal share is now set at ninety per cent. The state will receive its share now.’
‘So much?’ said Onestack. ‘I have two assistants now. The girl must eat. We need boiler-grade coke.’
‘Careful what you say, compatriot metal,’ warned the woman. ‘Those words smack of shirking and defeatism. Your talent with matters mechanical has kept your position on the reserved list, but the mills are hungry for labour too.’
‘My apologies, compatriot softbody,’ said Onestack. ‘Perhaps you could put a word in for us with the committee of supplies for two extra food chits.’
The woman’s tone softened as Slowcogs handed over a bag of coins. ‘I know your contribution to the commons is hard, compatriot metal. But the struggle always is. Your gift to the cause is helping us forge hammers of freedom to strike down the tyrants and leeches.’
‘We’ll eat well when the tyrants are struck down,’ said Molly.
The woman failed to notice the sarcasm in Molly’s tone. ‘You’re not old enough to remember the famine of Sixty-six, young compatriot. I lost my husband at Haggswood Field when the crushers charged us. My young ones died of hunger when I was locked away in Bonegate for breach of the riot act, nobody in my lodgings with the food or the inclination to feed them. Everything I ever valued and loved was taken away from me by the quality of Middlesteel. All except my freedom. One day we’ll see the light of the surface again, compatriot, and the day will be ours.’
‘I doubt it,’ said a green-hooded figure coming down the stairs leading up to Onestack’s loft.
‘What! How did you get into my workshop?’ Onestack demanded of the intruder.
The figure leant on a cane and Molly felt a sinking feeling strike her stomach.
‘Perhaps you forgot
