The Court of the Air j-1

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘Well then, apprentice, what would you recommend for my friend here who has never shot before?’

  The odd young man moved over to Oliver and started feeling his arm, sizing up his height, weight and balance. ‘Never shot, sir? Not often we get a virgin through the doors at Loade and Locke. Something flared I think, sir, something with a bit of heft to make sure it doesn’t jerk around. Would you like a bit of heft, sir? No need for customization, just something to get you going, something to set you off, something off the peg.’

  He opened one of the drawers, rummaged around, and drew out a black pistol with a bell-ended barrel. ‘Our boatsman model, sir. Intended for the salty sea dog, the gentleman of the ocean, where the yaw and pitch of the waves renders accuracy obsolete. Not good for long range, but should you let off your weapon at a close distance, sir, you will find the results are quite devastating.’

  Harry signed his approval of the choice for Oliver. ‘You need to fire that, Oliver, do me the favour of making sure I’m standing behind you at the time.’

  Mother pulled out a couple of drawers and began scattering parts across the work counter — barrels, chambers, hammers, clockwork igniters. She began to run her fingers across the pieces, muttering instructions to her assistant, sending him scuttling off into the dark recesses of the wagon for some part or another. When she was happy with her selection, Mother began assembling the parts, slipping pieces together, sometimes reaching for a set of fine watchmaker’s tools. Her old fingers seemed to shrug off age as they danced across the flat surface, adjusting, tinkering, pressing pieces of clockwork against her ear and listening to the whirr and click of each mechanism. The gun began to take shape before Oliver’s eyes, a square blocky pistol with a long barrel.

  Harry looked on with interest, appreciative of Mother’s craft. ‘You’re using a Catosian breech ejector.’

  ‘Nothing but the best, Harry. Talk while I work. I like to hear chatter. Dig out some charges for young master Brooks.’

  Mother’s apprentice produced a bag of crystal bullets and passed them across to Harry. ‘Did they grow blow-barrel trees in Hundred Locks, Oliver?’

  ‘No. There was talk of setting up an orchard a few years ago, but the voters in the town got the permissions refused. Said it was too dangerous.’

  Harry held up a glass shell in front of the oil lamp, gripping it between his thumb and finger. ‘A bullet is blown by a glassmaker in pretty much the same way as nature grows the seed-barrels on the tree. Two chambers filled with sap, separated by a thin membrane. Each sap by itself is harmless, but mix the two and you’ll lose a hand in the explosion.’

  ‘Someone in Claynark died when they were hit by a seed-barrel from a wild tree. They found the sapling five miles away,’ said Oliver.

  ‘A mature tree can blast its seed-barrel up to twenty miles,’ said Harry. ‘When you trigger your pistol, the hammer mechanism strikes and shatters the weak point in the shell’s glass casing, breaks the mixing chamber and ignites the charge.’

  ‘Oh sir,’ said the assistant. ‘The crack, boom and whine of a bullet, it’s like a symphony. Does the young sir know the rules?’

  ‘You press the trigger and nothing happens, Oliver, that’s a misfire. Never turn around and show the gun to anyone whose life you value. Hold the gun away from you, break it in the middle like this, then pull the lever on the side to eject the charge,’ said Harry. ‘If you need to clear a used charge manually, take the rod off the side of the gun and push it out and down the barrel. Never use your hand. Blow-barrel residue can burn through your fingers; that’s why the charge is blown crystal, not cast metal. When you’re on the field of battle, be careful where you step. A charge that hasn’t fired is likely to have been blown too strong in the glassworks, jettisoned with a crack that can shatter when you step on it, taking off your boot — with foot attached.’

  ‘Never skimp on the charges, dearie,’ said Mother as she worked. ‘You can’t afford to buy cheap ones. Shoddy crystal’s killed more soldiers than accurate fire ever did. Cheap crystal will shatter in your gun when you don’t want it to; you take a wallop against your charge sack and your friends will be scraping pieces of you off the grass for your coffin.’

  ‘Same reason you never walk around with your gun charged. You wait until you’re looking trouble in the face, then break the gun and load,’ Harry said. ‘In polite company, like a shoot or a hunt, you walk around with your gun broken in the middle so everyone knows your weapon is safe.’

  Mother held up her nearly assembled pistol to the light. ‘It’ll take you a while to learn the glassmaker’s marks on the charges, dearie. Quick way to tell cheap crystal is to check if one half of the charge has the sap a different colour or not. Natural blow-barrel seed sap is as clear as water, both left chamber and right chamber. A good gun maker will add dye to the liquid on one side or the other. I use red dye on right-chamber sap. Cheap gunsmiths that sell to fools won’t spend the extra coin on the dye.’

  Harry passed Oliver a crystal charge. There was a hollow in the glass shell, forward of the two explosive sap-filled chambers — packed with dozens of lead balls. ‘Your blunderbuss uses these; they’re called buckshot charges. Not good on range, but then I haven’t got the time to make a marksman of you. You let off that bessy and the charge will spread the shot in front of you. Ain’t intended to discriminate, you understand?’

  Oliver looked at his bell-barrelled gun. Now he understood what Uncle Titus had meant. The false bravery seeped from the weapon like warmth from a hearth. Next time some bent Ham Yard crusher tried to slip a noose around his neck, he had better come armed with more than a Sleeping Henry and a police cutlass. ‘I understand, Harry. No friends in front of me when I fire.’

  ‘Young sir,’ said Mother’s apprentice. ‘You are a fast learner. What a magnificent piece you have. Quite the young duellist now, sir.’

  Mother passed Harry his newly assembled pistol. He began to check it, looking down the barrel and sizing up its weight in each hand. The old woman looked at Oliver. ‘If you ever travel abroad, dearie, you might come across what we in the trade call suicide guns.’

  ‘Suicide guns?’

  ‘Two-barrel guns, tri-barrels, quad-barrels, even accordion guns. Stay clear of them. You load more than one charge in a gun, the first charge goes off and weakens the crystal in the other shells. Each extra shot and the chance of the gun exploding on you rises real fast. My first husband died in Concorzia that way when he was called out packing a tribarrel. Never could shoot worth a damn anyway.’

  Harry placed a hand on Mother’s shoulder. ‘Mother, you’re an artist.’

  ‘I aim to please, Harold Stave. Now dearie, a curio for the son of Phileas Brooks.’ Mother stood up and unlocked a drawer on the floor of the caravan. Removing a cloth bundle tied in string, she unwrapped a blunt-looking knife with a dull black handle. It was unremarkable in every way except for an image of a boar’s head carved into its end. ‘Your father gave this to me as a payment, a while before his aerostat went down. Never did have the heart to sell it after that.’

  Oliver felt the heft of the knife. It was unnaturally light, like holding air. ‘Thank you, Damson Loade. Why would my father have used this though?’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ the old lady chuckled. ‘Wouldn’t cut the string on its wrapping. Pass it back.’

  Oliver gave the gunsmith the knife. She took out a heavy block of lead for casting balls, twisted the head of the pommel and pushed the blade through the lead slab like it was soft Fromerset cheese. Clicking the boar’s head back into place she laid the knife back on the workbench. ‘Phileas got it on one of the continents out east, a hex-blade, folded into shape by whatever passes for worldsinger sorcery out there. Your father could make the blade do things too, change its form and become a sabre or an axe — I never did work out how.’

  ‘As ordinary-seeming as a tanner’s knife and as deadly as a slipsharp,’ said Harry in admiration. ‘The perfect wolftaker’s
weapon.’

  ‘I really don’t have any money to pay for this,’ Oliver said.

  ‘There’s debts other than those that run to coin,’ said Mother, passing Harry a bag of crystal charges. ‘And I seem to be repaying most of them today. You need any more supplies?’

  ‘Just enough food to get to Shadowclock,’ said Harry.

  ‘Shadowclock! Of course,’ Mother tutted. ‘When you’ve got the crushers in front of you and the wolves of the Court behind you, where better? The most heavily guarded city in the whole of Jackals.’

  Harry tucked his pistol under his coat. ‘I think it was you who once told me the best place to hide is in the shadow of a police station.’

  ‘Harry dearie, I also spent ten years of my life swapping those same stories with transportees while I was digging out irrigation channels for tenant farmers in the colonies. From here on in, you’re not going to find any more whistlers damn fool enough to get themselves disavowed for your sins.’

  ‘You’re a saint, Mother.’

  ‘Listen boy, I’d like at least one of the old crew alive enough to put flowers on my grave when I’m under the soil.’

  ‘Mother, you’re going to live forever.’

  The old gun maker took a generous swig from her jinn bottle. ‘No. But ever since my doctor got me off my mumble-weed pipe, it sure feels that way.’

  The crystalgrid clerk looked annoyed that someone had arrived at the front desk just as the station was about to go over to its night shift. ‘We’re closed to the public. Priority state traffic only now. Unless you have a permit you’ll need to come back in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, sir, I have, you know,’ said the customer. He produced a police inspector’s badge from inside his coat, as shiny as it was false. ‘You’re not going to go off right now, are you sir?’

  Resigned, the clerk pulled out a pencil and a message slip. ‘It is late, you know. We sent off all the Turnhouse station dispatches four hours ago.’

  ‘I would have come earlier, sir, but I had to wait for my mother to fall asleep.’

  As the latecomer filled out the message slip, the clerk glanced back into the transmission hall. Some of the day shift’s blue-skinned senders were already going into their hibernation cycle in front of the daughter crystals.

  Reading the message, the clerk looked up. ‘You know that state traffic is sent free — you don’t have to pay tuppence for each word. You can write more if you want…’

  ‘Oh no, sir. Length isn’t important to me.’

  The odd fellow left and the desk clerk pressed the bell for a transcriber. Seconds later a woman poked her head through the door.

  ‘Late one, Ada,’ said the man. ‘Flash traffic.’

  The transcriber read the message on the slip of paper. ‘Wolf twelve. Shadowclock. What in Circle’s name am I meant to do with that?’

  ‘I reckon it’s a tip for a horse at tomorrow’s races,’ said the clerk. ‘Bloke who passed it in was police. The blooming crushers are having a laugh. Just code it and pass it down the line.’

  ‘Do you see what he’s written under destination — it’s not a town, it’s a crystal node.’ She passed back the slip the customer had scribbled on.

  ‘What?’ The clerk read back the sequence of numbers. ‘So it is. Not a mother crystal I recognize, either; do you, Ada? Maybe the crusher worked on the crystalgrid before he became a policeman.’

  ‘The mother crystal won’t be in any of the blue books we’ve got here,’ the transcriber sighed. ‘I don’t even think the inheritance check is validly formed. Look, I don’t get paid night rates. I need to get home. I’m just going to send the message down the line exactly as it is; someone on the grid will know what to do with it.’

  Someone did.

  Chapter Ten

  It had taken two hours for the mob outside the royal palace to gather to its full strength and reach the maximum intensity of its natural curve into violence. Now they were finally boiling over. The chants had reached a self-righteous zenith. The lack of response from the thin line of black-uniformed police behind the palace rails, nervously clutching their cutlasses, was making the crowd bolder still. Bold enough to ignore the occasional tripod-mounted grasshopper cannon loaded with gravel and grapeshot, standing behind the police line.

  ‘We’re trying to get a magistrate to read the riot act,’ said a police major to Captain Flare. ‘But she’s stuck behind the barricades that have been raised in Gad’s Hill.’

  ‘No doubt wedged alongside the heavies,’ Flare said.

  The major looked miserably out across Palace Square. There were none of the craynarbian Heavy Brigade reinforcements from the Echo Street station he had sent for. Let alone the exomounts from the stables behind Ham Yard.

  ‘It’s deuced busy out there on the streets,’ said the major. ‘The dockworkers’ combination withdrew their labour early this morning and the port owners tried to lock them out. Half of the Gambleflowers is up in flames.’

  Flare nodded. From the fourth-storey palace window he could already see the storm front brewing. The order of worldsinger’s weather witches had been called in to put out Middlesteel’s blazing warehouse district. Heavy black clouds were gathering along the river.

  ‘Will you open up on them?’ asked Flare.

  ‘They haven’t broken through the railings yet,’ said the police major. ‘We’ll hold our fire.’

  Of course he would. It might well be the major’s head on a pole that was called for on the floor of the House of Guardians if the protest in Palace Square turned into a bloodbath. ‘Did somebody say fire?’ Flare’s two lieutenants in the Special Guard had arrived from the palace barracks along with their worldsinger minder, a four-flower bureaucrat.

  ‘Bonefire, Hardfall.’ Flare pointedly ignored the order’s man.

  ‘Have we got the nod yet to put this down?’ asked Bonefire.

  ‘The House of Guardians isn’t in session,’ said Flare. ‘I sent Cloudsplitter off half an hour ago to locate the First Guardian and secure a cabinet order. If you can find a doomsman out there hiding under a magistrate’s bench, please do get them to read the riot act.’

  Bonefire gazed out of the throne room’s tall windows. ‘Look at them down there. The face of reason, the heart of democracy. Bloody hamblins.’

  Flare grimaced. He did not like his people using guard argot around the palace. Hamblin Normal was an upland village in Drochney outside the feymist curtain; where a waterfall was rumoured to have the power to cure the fey. Hundreds of families made their pilgrimage there each day, to take the waters and ward off any exposure to the body-warping mist they imagined might have occurred. Flare had always suspected it was a tale concocted by the worldsingers to allow them to net potential feybreed.

  Bonefire turned to the captain. ‘These are the people the Special Guard protects. What are they worth to you? I’d sooner trust a rabid dog not to gnaw my arm off.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as a pretty mob, lieutenant,’ said Flare.

  Outside, the shouting had got louder. Sections of the mob were trying to pull the railing bars out. The grasshopper guns were being swivelled by their crews to face the sections of the wall that looked likely to fall first.

  ‘The soldiers will fire if they break the fence,’ said Hardfall. ‘It will be a massacre.’

  ‘There’s children in the crowd,’ said Flare. ‘We can’t allow that to happen.’

  ‘You have the order’s blessing to intervene,’ said the worldsinger. ‘If casualties are kept to a minimum.’

  Flare looked at the sorcerer with contempt. ‘I think it’s gone a bit beyond that, don’t you?’

  ‘There will be no bloodshed this day!’

  Flare turned around. King Julius was out of his sickbed, standing shakily in a bed robe. Crown Prince Alpheus rushed down the corridor after his father.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ said Captain Flare. ‘You are not well enough to be on your feet.’

  ‘Listen to them down there, ca
ptain,’ said King Julius. ‘It’s my head they are baying for. No republic with a king, isn’t that the old Carlist cry?’

  ‘It’s not a republic they’re thinking about right now,’ said Flare. ‘It’s your blood.’

  The tired old nobleman collapsed onto his throne. ‘I think I have a little of that to spare, young man, before the waterman’s sickness puts me under the soil and I move forward on the Circle. Bring me my mask and open the doors to the main balcony.’

  The crown prince was horrified. ‘Father! There’s no need for you to go, to humiliate yourself. Hoggstone hasn’t ordered this.’

  ‘My boy,’ said the King. ‘Alpheus, it is me that they want.’

  ‘You gutless old fool!’ Alpheus shouted. ‘Just once why don’t you stand up to them? Refuse to do what they want. Walk away from them. Did they cut your courage away when they took off your arms?’

  ‘Alpheus,’ said the King, ‘our circumstances may be reduced, but our duty is not. Remember the blood that flows in your veins. Our ancestors protected Jackals for nearly a millennium, they helped cast down the dark gods and watched over the people for centuries. We do what we have to, what we must. Not what our fancies dictate.’

  ‘I hate you,’ shouted the prince. ‘And I hate your fairytales. That’s your people out there, and all they want to do is tear you apart.’

  The king had a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Bring me my mask.’

  Flare sighed. ‘Bring the King’s gag. Bonefire, Hardfall, cool the mob’s appetite for blood a little first.’

  Bonefire grinned. ‘Twitching time for the hamblins.’

  Opening the balcony doors, the wind caught the velvet capes of the two Special Guards. Bonefire raised a fist and cerulean false-fire leapt from his arm, lashing out along the perimeter of the palace railings. Unlike some of the other burners in the Special Guard, Bonefire’s ethereal energy did not ignite physical objects, failed to even leave a mark on a victim’s skin; but for anyone caught in the witch-light, they felt as if they were burning alive at the stake, a pain more terrible than plunging a hand into a hearth.