The Court of the Air j-1

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘Harold?’ said Wildrake, allowing his body to hang from the message duct for a minute. ‘Well, well. Naughty old Harold Stave. So it’s set a wolftaker to catch a wolftaker.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Lady Riddle. ‘I understand you have some history with him, beyond your naval service, I mean. Will that be a problem?’

  ‘Moving barrels of ballast water around Jackals doesn’t exactly count as naval service in my estimation, ma’am,’ said Lord Wildrake.

  ‘But of all those captured it was only yourself and Harry Stave who survived the camp at Flavstar,’ Lady Riddle pointed out. ‘Along with that rich boy, the freelancer.’

  ‘Six months’ hospitality courtesy of the Commonshare’s Committee of Public Security took its toll on the team. It was something of a miracle any of us lived through it.’

  Lady Riddle sat back. It was after his time in the camp that Wildrake had started taking shine. Bulking up; as if the wolf-taker could swell his muscles large enough that no Commonshare torturer could ever reach him again. ‘After your escape, I recall there was a difference of opinion as to whose error led to the operation in Quatershift being rolled up.’

  ‘No doubt in my mind as to whose fault it was, Advocate General. Harold Stave is a chancer, an accident waiting to happen. Not a gentleman at all.’

  ‘The latter may be true, but given the wake of destruction you leave behind you, Wildrake, I hardly think you are in a position to lecture.’

  Wildrake gasped with the pain of the exercise. ‘I suspect, ma’am, it may be my previous disagreement with Wolf Twelve that has led you to drop this proposition into my lap. Consider myself stimulated. The circumstances will make for a rather interesting hunt.’

  ‘You have the field then,’ said Lady Riddle. ‘And Wildrake …’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Enough of him back alive to be interrogated by one of our truth hexers, if you please.’

  ‘Best efforts, Advocate General,’ said Wildrake, dropping to the floor, feeling the glorious pain in his aching arms. ‘Best efforts.’

  Oliver stood in the cobbled streets outside Bonegate prison, the crowds lining up by the thousand to see him hang. Hawkers were selling trays of rotten fruit, some of which was already lashing past the scaffold. It was normally considered more fun to let the condemned prisoners feel the drop, then pelt them with garbage as they danced the Bonegate quadrille.

  Inspector Pullinger raised his hands and a hush fell over the expectant mob. ‘For breaking of a crown registration order, for breach of registration boundary lines, for failure to submit to the Department of Feymist’s articles under statute six of the Feybreed Control Act, for the most foul deed of premeditated murder on three counts, Oliver Brooks is sentenced to death by hanging.’

  The crowd cheered and clapped as a Circlist vicar stepped forward to administer the rites of conversion. She spoke the litany quietly, so that only Oliver and the others on the gallows platform could hear the words. ‘Troubled souls in this life, may your essence return to the one sea of consciousness, so that as the Circle turns, you are returned to this good earth in a happier vessel.’

  The vicar spun in horror as the misshapen form of the Whisperer pulled himself up onto the gallows. ‘New vessel? Nothing wrong with the old one.’

  Guards were running away screaming, the crowd falling back in a stampede.

  ‘See, wherever I want to sit, I can always find a space.’

  ‘Whisperer,’ Oliver groaned.

  ‘Stress dreams, Oliver?’ said the Whisperer. ‘I can go closer to home for them. Always someone new being introduced back at my place. Worldsinger guards with their funny ways and their scalpels, potions and rubber gloves.’

  Oliver struggled to untie the noose around his neck. ‘Thank the Circle, I thought this was real. I really did.’

  ‘A little realer every day, Oliver,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘If they catch you, this is your future. A cell next to mine buried under the earth in Hawklam is the premium option for you now. I warned you about Harry Stave, did I not?’

  ‘My family’s dead, Whisperer. They killed my uncle. Killed Damson Griggs. They tried to kill me too.’

  The Whisperer stroked Oliver’s back as he sliced the dream noose with a bony appendage, part teeth and part arm-bone. ‘See how similar we’re becoming, Oliver. My family died too. My father strangled my mother for giving birth to me, and I haunted his putrid dreams until he climbed a windmill at Hazlebank and threw himself off it.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Oliver. ‘We’re nothing alike.’

  ‘You think I am mad?’ hissed the Whisperer, giggling. ‘You should see the things they’re releasing from the asylum, Oliver. Soul-sniffers. Special torcs to contain them — more like suits of armour than torcs. In the asylum we used to call them the wild bunch, and wild they are.’

  Oliver looked out over Bonegate Square. It was empty now. ‘What are you doing here, Whisperer?’

  ‘So little gratitude, Oliver. I am taking care of business. For the both of us. A dream here, a dream there, not just the fey either — normals too.’

  Oliver tried to avoid looking directly at the misshapen thing. ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

  ‘The feymist curtain has been in Jackals for over a thousand years, Oliver. Seeping its essence into the fields and the moors and the forests. The worldsingers won’t admit it, but there’s a bit of fey in all of us now.’ He laughed. ‘More in some than others though, eh?’

  ‘I haven’t started to change yet.’

  ‘Pah,’ spat the Whisperer. ‘Dreams are about the truth, Oliver. They are a door through which denial is rarely allowed admittance. Ask yourself this question: why does your mind, your perfect mind which can slew off worldsinger truth-hexing and mind-walking like water off a duck’s feathers, why does it still allow me entry into your dreams?’

  ‘I-’ Oliver had not anticipated the question.

  ‘Think on it, Oliver. I like it in here, Oliver — your mind is by far the best. Lovely detail. Perfect clarity. It isn’t as easy to make contact with the normals. But I have been bearing up, Oliver. I’ve been minding the shop for the both of us. The places I’ve been — even steammen minds; like wading through a stream of broken glass, riding one of the metal’s thoughtflows.’

  ‘And in your travels,’ said Oliver, ‘have you found anything more practical than obscure warnings about Harry Stave?’

  ‘Oh, I’m warming to Harry,’ said the Whisperer. ‘He’s a son of a bitch, and damned if I know if he’s our son of a bitch yet, but right now he’s the only game in town as far as young Master Brooks is concerned.’

  ‘How comforting.’

  ‘You’ve got a few surprises in store for you, Oliver. For me too. There’s someone else out there, or something. Leaving little traces behind in people’s minds. She thinks I don’t know about her, but I am powerful, Oliver. That’s why they buried me so deep beneath the earth. No special torc suit for me.’ The Whisperer’s normally sibilant voice had risen to a screech, the background reality of the tenements surrounding Bonegate wavering under the lashing fury of his temper. ‘No fun and games with the wild bunch for the poor old Whisperer. No midnight walks through Middlesteel’s wide boulevards for me. No moonlight. No cold evening air!’

  ‘Stop it,’ Oliver shouted. ‘My mind!’

  Fading away, the dream storm died down as the Whisperer collapsed sobbing on the gallows platform. ‘I’m not predictable, Oliver. That’s why they fear me, that’s why they’ve got me surrounded by a dozen interlocking cursewalls, that’s why they use a trained hound to drag the drugged slop they feed me into my cell.’

  Oliver watched rapt with a mixture of fascination, horror and pity as the Whisperer started to pull himself across the platform, his club-footed shuffle becoming a rhythm from his childhood only he could hear. ‘Do a little dance, do a little dance.’

  ‘What will you do, Whisperer,’ said Oliver, ‘if they catch me and the doomsman stretches my neck
at the gallows?’

  ‘Don’t say that, Oliver,’ the Whisperer hissed. ‘The memory of last night’s roast beef is still so fresh in your skull. So clear. Ah, now I see what you’re trying to do. Distracting me the way you’d dangle string in front of a kitten.’

  ‘That beef sure tasted good though,’ said Oliver, sitting down on the edge of the hangman’s platform.

  The Whisperer arranged himself alongside Oliver. It was difficult to tell if the feybreed had a sitting position or not. ‘I could almost bear my prison, Oliver, if it was not for the Special Guard. All the beautiful people, all the pretty-pretty boys and girls, eating the best, their fey gifts trotted out on call for the state. Like a basket of pampered, indulged pets. I used to visit their dreams, Oliver, in the early days. But now it’s just a little more than I can take.’

  ‘They wanted me to join the legion,’ said Oliver. ‘To put a worldsinger’s control torc around my neck.’

  ‘Pretty cat needs a collar,’ said the Whisperer. ‘You think my father didn’t promise that for me when he hauled me to Middlesteel on the back of his cart? I trade messages for all the prisoners trapped in Hawklam Asylum, like a one-fey crystalgrid network. There’s hardly a soul penned in here that wasn’t expecting the finest steak and long lazy days of muscle-pit oil massages. You’d be surprised how normal-looking some of the condemned are down here. But if your powers can’t be turned on and off like a tap on a jinn barrel …’

  The dreamscape started to fade. Oliver was waking up.

  ‘I’ll mind the shop, Oliver Brooks,’ said the Whisperer, once more back in his underground cell. ‘You just mind yourself with that devious jigger, Harry Stave.’

  ‘You need the hat,’ said Harry. ‘Trust me.’

  The Chaunting Lay was moored four miles from Turnhouse, tied up outside a tavern at the back end of crown parkland — like everything else in Jackals, in the king’s name but belonging to the people. Coaches and fours were scattered across the grass, families from the town with checkerboard picnic blankets enjoying the Circleday afternoon.

  ‘Why do I need it, Harry?’ said Oliver, adjusting the cap. ‘I thought you said the all-seeing eye in the sky would have its attention elsewhere.’

  Harry winked at the boy. ‘A little paranoia is never unhealthy.’

  Oliver looked around the busy tavern yard, canteen tables crowded with navvies from the waterway clearance board. There had not been a crown park in the Hundred Locks district — the nearest one was in Beggarsmead, far outside the distance of his registration order. That was well and truly shot to pieces now.

  ‘Lots of people here,’ said Oliver. ‘How are we going to find your man?’

  ‘Not a man, Oliver. A woman. And crowds are good, lots of movement and extraneous detail — like a good cloth cap — to keep a surveillant and their transaction engine on their toes.’

  They found their lady sitting on a stool outside a covered box-wagon, the kind normally found at country fairs hawking baldness remedies of a dubious provenance. She had a bottle of jinn on her left side and balls of wool piled on the right. She was carefully knitting a child-sized sweater.

  ‘Mother,’ said Harry, as she looked up. ‘More grandchildren on the way?’

  ‘She’s your mother?’ Oliver looked in disbelief at the grizzled old woman.

  The old woman jabbed a knitting needle towards Oliver. ‘If you’re looking for the mare that birthed Harry Stave, you can just look on, dearie. My children are all married off and in respectable trades.’

  ‘Oliver, this is Damson Loade,’ said Harry. ‘Mother to her friends.’

  She chuckled and took a swig of the jinn through a largely toothless mouth. ‘On account of a lucky strike I made, mining silver in the colonies.’

  Oliver made a little bow. ‘Mother Loade.’

  ‘You’re a little cleaner than this reprobate’s usual travelling companions,’ said Mother.

  ‘A fine one to talk you are,’ said Harry. ‘You forgot to mention the reason you were in Concorzia was by way of a transportation hulk.’

  ‘Details,’ said the old woman. ‘The doomsman may have given me the boat, but a little silver buys a lot of forgiveness in Jackals. Enough to set up in business with Mister Locke as master gunsmiths to the nobility of Middlesteel and the twenty counties.’

  ‘Loade and Locke,’ said Oliver. ‘I used to see your details advertised at the back of my uncle’s copies of Field andFern.’

  ‘A privilege for which Dock Street charges handsomely, dearie,’ said Mother. ‘Now then, Harry. I don’t normally do house calls, not least because that chinless wonder of a partner of mine is liable to have lost the deeds to the shop at the gaming tables by the time I get back.’

  ‘Sorry, Mother,’ said Harry. ‘I’m in a bit of bother.’

  ‘When aren’t you, boy?’ said Mother. ‘She picked up a folded copy of The Middlesteel Illustrated News from behind her stool. ‘Page twelve, towards the bottom.’

  Harry leafed through the newspaper. ‘Hundred Locks slayings most foul as feybreed child and escaped felon murder constables and family guardians.’

  ‘What!’ Oliver choked. ‘They’re saying we killed them. What about the bodies of the toppers at the hall?’

  ‘Strangely absent,’ said Harry, ‘from this story. But then the Court’s got as many editors on the payroll as Dock Street has.’

  ‘I picked up a more detailed summary from my drop,’ said Mother. ‘You’re on the disavowed list, Harry. They say you’ve gone rogue. Every whistler from here to Loch Granmorgan is on orders to turn you in.’

  ‘Mother, this is horse manure,’ said Harry. ‘Someone in the Court’s been turned, but it isn’t me.’

  ‘You’re a rascal, Harry,’ said Mother. ‘But I believe you. Not because you’re a straight die, but because I don’t see how you could possibly turn a coin out of this mess.’

  ‘Nice to know you have such faith in me,’ said Harry. ‘Did the drop say which wolftakers you’re to give assistance to?’

  Mother nodded. ‘Wolf Seven.’

  ‘Jamie bleeding Wildrake. I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. Someone up there has got a sense of humour.’

  ‘Stay off the big crown roads, Harry,’ said Mother. ‘The crushers have got blood machines set up at some of the toll cottages, they’re testing for you. Ham Yard is like a wasp’s nest with a burning rag stuffed down it.’

  ‘Those two jokers back at Hundred Locks were real policemen?’ said Harry. ‘That’s a turn up for the books. I had them pegged as toppers with counterfeit inspector brass. What’s the world coming to when you can’t trust a crusher?’

  ‘Complicates things,’ said Mother.

  ‘Yes it does,’ Harry agreed. ‘The blood machines won’t do Ham Yard any good though. My records were given a right old hocus when I joined the Court. My blood code on the census belongs to a poulterer called Jeremiah Flintwinch who died of syphilis twenty years back.’

  Mother jerked a thumb in Oliver’s direction. ‘And his blood code? You can leave the boy with me, Harry. Safer for the both of you.’

  ‘I do have a name,’ Oliver protested.

  ‘And a good one at that,’ said Harry. ‘The station that got rolled up was run by Titus Brooks. Mother, meet Oliver Brooks, as in the son of Phileas.’

  ‘Phileas Brooks,’ said Mother. ‘Now there’s a name to conjure with. Bloody Circle, dearie, that’s a lot to live up to.’

  ‘There seems to be no shortage of people in the kingdom aiming to make sure I don’t,’ said Oliver.

  The old woman got up and stretched her arms, ‘I can see it now, Harry. Like listening to Phileas’s ghost talking. Well, boy, let’s see if old Beth can help you even the odds a little. Now, where’s that useless beanpole of an assistant of mine?’

  As if on cue a young apprentice turned up with a tray of hams wrapped in wax paper.

  ‘Creakle, I told you to lay in victuals, not to buy the store.’

  ‘Of cour
se, damson. Sorry, damson. I was delayed by the crowds from the county fair.’

  ‘Delayed by a tot of Puttenland cider, by the looks of you, Creakle. Now open the door to the wagon, we’ve got clients to attend to.’

  ‘Very good, damson.’

  Inside the wagon a workbench and counter had been squeezed in between dozens of tiny cupboards. It was just large enough to accommodate the four of them at the same time, Mother sitting down while the others stood.

  ‘Alright,’ Mother said. ‘Harry, your pleasure?’

  ‘Something discreet, small enough to fit under a coat, but large enough to pack a punch. Not a long-arm, but it might need range.’

  ‘And young Master Brooks?’

  Harry looked at Oliver. ‘Did Titus ever take you out hunting or the like?’

  Oliver shook his head. ‘We didn’t have any guns at Seventy Star Hall. Uncle used to say that a man’s mind was his best weapon. Guns just give you a false bravery — make you behave stupidly.’

  ‘He didn’t like them, Oliver,’ said Harry. ‘But never confuse disliking fighting with not being able to fight. He kept a pistol in a secret compartment in his desk. Much good that it did him in the end.’

  ‘That old Tennyson and Bounder?’ said Mother. ‘You’d have better luck spitting at an enemy. He should have let me make him a proper pistol. Circle knows, I made the offer often enough.’

  ‘We all get sentimental about things, Mother,’ said Harry. ‘They were all the go when I was a boy.’

  ‘Oh, sir,’ said Mother’s apprentice. ‘When you were a boy? Leaaf addict were you, sir? Oh, a Tennyson and Bounder, they belong behind the glass in a museum.’

  Harry looked at the young assistant with a glimmer of irritation in his eyes. ‘You like guns, old stick?’

  ‘Oh, sir. I do. All sorts. Duelling pistols, gas guns, mail-coach pieces. Special commissions for navy officers, long-arms for the gamekeeper, but I have a particular fondness for ladies’ weapons sir. Nice delicate pieces, sir. The sort of thing you can tuck into a purse or under a skirt.’

  Mother rolled her eyes at Harry. ‘We apprenticed Creakle as an arrangement of a debt with one of Locke’s gambling companions.’