Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

Jack leafed through the sheaf of large sheets, dark ink staining his fingers, imprinting them from the damp. ‘No mention of the unions here, lady. It’s all talk of a possible war brewing with the Cassarabians.’ They looked up at him, disappointed. There were dozens of families in the cell who had been accused of tearing up cobblestones and throwing them at a factory owner. The recent confrontation between the match workers’ union and the guards who’d been paid to keep the mill open had filled the holding cells.

Jack pointed to the cartoon on the front of the newssheet. A pregnant woman was stretched across a doctor’s table being attended to by a gaggle of surgeons with the faces of famous politicians. A plump young Jackelian boy wearing the uniform of the Royal Aerostatical Navy was jumping up and down in a jealous fit at the sight of a grotesque baby — clearly a Cassarabian — being delivered; the babe also dressed in an opulent airship officer’s uniform. ‘You have a rival, Jack,’ noted the voice balloon hanging over the leering surgeon’s head. ‘Confound you,’ the plump boy was yelling. ‘You promised me nary a sibling.’

‘A bad business,’ said the man.

Jack had to agree. His namesake in the illustration was a Jack Cloudie, an airshipman, and for centuries the monopoly the Kingdom had exercised over the celgas that floated the RAN’s four fleets of airships had kept the nation safe from foreign invasion. Now their belligerent neighbours to the south had secured a supply somehow, and a rival aerial fleet had been spotted patrolling the Jackelian-Cassarabian borders along the uplands. A bad business, indeed. And devilish worse when you’d been sentenced to service in the regiments. First in line when it came to being marched into a fusillade of Cassarabian cannon fire. How much could the world change in two weeks? Always for the worse, that was Jack’s experience. Always for the worse.

The man looked at Jack. ‘What did you get, the boat or the regiments?’

‘The army.’

‘Me too.’ There was a wave of weeping from the woman and her children at that. Of course, it would be transportation to the colonies for them. Without their father. Without her husband. ‘All my life I’ve laboured morning, day and evening. We were just standing on the picket line when management’s men cleared us out with whips and canes. That’s all, just standing there. All my life I’ve done the right thing.’

His voice trailed off.

At least someone here knows what that is.

‘On your feet,’ called the court constable, dragging his cosh along the iron bars of the cell. Jack woke coughing, blinking at the fierce light of the lamp in the policeman’s hand. There were a couple of hulking red-coated soldiers behind the constable, a sergeant and a corporal, the yellow light of the lamp reflected ominously on the death’s heads of their oiled shako hats. The two men fairly strutted along with their left hands balanced on their sheathed sabres to stop them bumping along the damp stone floor. The pair of soldiers might have been Boyd’s older brothers judging by the arrogance of their gait and the unvoiced capacity for violence they left hanging in the air around them.

‘Is this all you have for us?’ said the sergeant, disdainfully.

Jack rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. What were you expecting? A cell full of smartly dressed officers, expert duellists and marksmen for you to press gang into your suicide squad?

‘Not much to look at,’ said the court constable, waving dismissively at the prisoners. ‘But we don’t feed them a fighting man’s rations in here. Give them a plate of gruel and a bayonet and they’ll stick someone for you right enough. Most of them already have.’

‘On your feet, my raggedy boys,’ yelled the sergeant. ‘Move as if you had a purpose — and that was to be chosen by the hand of parliament to serve in its glorious army.’

‘Come on, come on!’ yelled the corporal. ‘Jump to it.’

Jack listened to the creaking of his reluctant bones, a product of the damp, as he joined the others in the cell shuffling through the door that had been opened for them, their leg chains still attached to their ankles. Where were his chains to be removed, Jack wondered? Behind the safe, high stockade of some New Pattern Army barracks, no doubt. Jack felt a sting on the back of his neck as the sergeant encouraged him along with a flick of a swagger stick. ‘Step lively, now. I’ve seen more bleeding life in a fella flogged for sleeping on duty.’

Jack’s wound smarted like a bee sting and he wasn’t the only one to receive some lumps at the hands of the two soldiers sent to collect the convicts. There was an army carriage waiting for them at the other end of the holding cell’s passage, a segmented iron-hulled thing with large spoked wheels. Two soldiers stood in front of it, a man and a female officer, both in brown oiled greatcoats. The appearance of the officer seemed to disconcert the pair of brutes dragging Jack into military service and no wonder. The woman had an angelic face, but frozen with a cold superiority that sat ill at ease with her smooth skin and elegant features; wide eyes that should have radiated softness, glimmered with a piercing intensity instead. She was beautiful the same way an assassin’s dagger was. You might admire it, but only a fool would want to take a closer look.

The male soldier, a broad-shouldered bear of a man with a forked beard salted white with age, came to attention and stamped his boot on the street’s cobbles. ‘The prisoners, lieutenant.’

‘Very good, Oldcastle,’ said the woman.

Both brutes shepherding the convicts into the light halted and saluted back — in what seemed to Jack a rather cursory way — towards the female lieutenant. ‘Prisoners of the Twenty-Second Rifles, sir. The Third Penal Battalion.’

‘Only so long as they don’t escape,’ said the lieutenant.

‘Ah, you’re lucky indeed we caught you two boys in time,’ said the soldier the female officer had named as Oldcastle. He banged the side of the armoured carriage. ‘This old clunker is fine to hold run-of-the-mill ruffians from Bonegate jail, but not this imp!’ His fat fingers jabbed towards Jack. ‘Why, the slippery rascal is the same fellow whose clever fingers nearly teased open the vault of Lords Bank. The locks on the back of your carriage are like bread and butter to a wicked clever thief like this one.’

‘We have sole custody, sir.’

‘House Guards sent us,’ announced the female lieutenant. ‘The general staff want Jack Keats in a secure stockade cell by the end of the day while they consider what to do with him.’

They do?

‘Of course, lads,’ winked Oldcastle. ‘If you want to keep hold of his sly bones, just write us a little note saying that you wouldn’t discharge him across to us. Two strapping fellows like you to look after the pup, he probably won’t escape, will he? The general staff will understand. Look at the thin rascal; why, I reckon the smoke rising from a good hot beef broth might blow the scrawny, thieving mischief-maker right over.’

The corporal pulled open an armoured door on the carriage for the convicts to board, but the sergeant reached out to stop him. ‘If the boy escapes, we’ll both lose our stripes.’ A key was produced, slipped into Jack’s ankle restraints and the corporal pushed him roughly towards the lieutenant. ‘Your prisoner, sir.’

Jack rubbed the life back into his chaffed shins while the corporal looked knowingly at the old soldier. ‘Keep your eyes on him. Some of these street rats got a turn of speed on them like you wouldn’t expect.’

If you think I can run for it, you’ve never spent a night in those cells.