Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Oliver whispered to the horse using gypsy words that came to him — and the mare increased her speed. He smelled Hawklam Asylum before he saw it, the bonfire smell of the cursewall on the hill, the air shimmering as flecks of snow drifted into its shield. There was a normal wall first, to protect the citizens of Middlesteel from blundering through the worldsinger’s barrier. Not entirely necessary. Anyone who was not put off by the evil whine it made was probably past caring. Oliver let his perception extend through the asylum gatehouse, his senses spreading and diffusing across Hawklam Hill; but lacking control he started being pulled part, diffusing himself too wide. With a wrench of concentration he pulled himself back together again, reassembling the jigsaw of his consciousness. He had touched the worldsingers inside and he had tasted their minds, noted the subtle differences. The Jackelian order had been reinforced with Quatershiftian sorcerers. Their mastery of the worldsong had created more in common between them than any differences of nation, politics and race. All over Middlesteel the Jackelians were fighting for their freedom, but up here it was business as usual. The wild fey had to be contained, that was something both sides agreed on.

In his anger Oliver had not noticed that he had climbed the boundary fence and wandered through the cursewall, leaving a hole in the shimmering barrier. He felt the thrum of the leylines in the bones of the earth, six great currents of power crossing at the top of Hawklam Hill. The mound had been a place of power and superstition for as long as Jackelians had lived in these lands. Ancient religions had raised standing stones here, spilt blood here, tracked the dance of the stars and buried war chiefs here. So much earthflow, so much power.

The front door of the asylum was a steel barrier as thick as the hull on a submarine war craft; they had sealed Hawklam when the invasion started. No fey to escape during the fighting.

Oliver rapped on the door with the hilt of his witch-blade and a viewing slot opened, the grooves of a man-sized portal visible within the larger black barrier.

‘How did you get up the hill?’ a voice demanded. ‘The gate-house has not admitted anyone.’

‘Who do you serve?’ asked Oliver.

‘What?’ The voice on the other side sounded confused.

‘I would like to know,’ said Oliver. ‘The order of world singers served the old kings, then it served the House of Guardians. In Quatershift it served the monarchy then the Commonshare. So I would like to know, is there anyone you jiggers won’t whore yourselves out to, to protect your privileges and station?’

A jailer pushed the worldsinger on door duty away and looked through the sally port. ‘Clear off you young idiot. If you make me open this door I’ll beat you to within an inch of your life and toss you back in the street.’

‘I will give you one chance,’ said Oliver. ‘Bring the feybreed Nathaniel Harwood to me. Bring him to me now or I will take him from you.’

‘You’ll take the back of my hand from me, boy.’ The jailer shouted back to his colleagues, calling for reinforcements. ‘You think we’re bloody Bonegate? We don’t have a visiting day — we don’t let gawpers in to see the prisoners dance in their cages for a penny a poke.’

‘I haven’t come to see him dance,’ said Oliver, cutting out a circle in the barrier with his witch-blade, the black steel hissing. The metal fell back before the kick of his boot with a clang like a cathedral bell. ‘I have come to see you dance.’

He dipped through and into a firestorm of spells, chants and curses, a fury of energy tossed at him by a semi-circle of worldsingers. Oliver let them throw their sorceries at him, the leylines throbbing as the power of the land was manipulated and twisted against his body. The energies grew thinner as their assault expended its force, the anger and confidence the sorcerers felt slipping away to be replaced by surprise, changing to fear as he filled the entrance hall of the asylum with his laughter. Their attack faltered and stopped.

‘Oliver Brooks!’

Oliver saw the figure at the other end of the hall. ‘Inspector Pullinger. Here I was visiting one old friend and instead I find two.’

‘I was right,’ spat Edwin Pullinger. ‘I was right all the time about you.’

‘I took your advice, Inspector. I came to Middlesteel to join the Special Guard. But they seem to be collaborating with the shifties, as do you. Does that make me the last honest guardsman?’

Jailers in hex-covered armour were running up behind Pullinger, tugging out toxin clubs from their belts. ‘I always knew you were a dirty little fey boy,’ said the worldsinger. ‘One of the ones who would never let themselves be controlled.’

‘My father was a wolftaker, my mother was a demigod and my fate is my own. For you I am the hand of justice.’

‘You are too dangerous to have a torc burned around your neck,’ said the sorcerer. He pulled out a snuffbox and inhaled a pinch of purpletwist. ‘And now Jackals is operating under the laws of a Commonshare we no longer have to adhere to the tedious restrictions of the charter the House of Guardians forced on us.’

‘The law of the mailed fist,’ said Oliver in disgust. ‘The rule of do as you will. Then we are both free of the laws that used to bind us. Your worldsong can’t touch me. That is my power, inspector. I am not touched by the feymist. I am the feymist.’

‘And for that you will die.’

Pullinger’s jailers had their toxin clubs ready. There must have been fifty of them in the hall now. The witch-blade trembled in Oliver’s right hand, the metal at the tip of the sabre flowing out and down on both sides of the blade; the hilt reforming and cracking upwards with the noise of breaking bone. The weapon was still unnaturally light — even as a double-headed axe. The part of his father’s soul that had been imprinted on the weapon was satisfied with the choice. Oliver tried to shut out the wickedness in the jailers’ souls; he felt their sins as an ache — the beatings, the sorcerous experiments, the fights they would make the fey enact just so they could gamble on the outcome, whole lifetimes of casual cruelties.

Twisting and squirming in his hand, the witch-blade knew a way to shut out the evil. ‘Come then, proud men of Hawklam Asylum. Show me how I might die.’

‘More power to the boilers,’ cried the locust priest.

In front of Damson Davenport the Gideon’s Collar was shaking on its platform’s legs, the processing machine’s engine working beyond its tolerances. Every few minutes a shiftie worker in a leather apron would toss out a sack that would slap down on the snow, leaving a puddle of blood behind when one of the brilliant men hauled it off to the palace.

Damson Davenport had stopped hearing the cries of the young king on the cross. By focusing on the work of tending the furnace she could avert her eyes from the wagons and cages being hauled into Parliament Square and emptied of soiled families, the fine-dressed prisoners pushed into line with rifle butts and sabres and pikes.

The important man — the one they called Tzlayloc — came out of the gates of parliament, a phalanx of guards and locust priests in his wake. He had been in and out of the House of Guardians all day like an excited child waiting for his Midwinter gift-giving. Distracted, Compatriot Davenport nearly tripped up over one of the other equalized workers stoking the boiler furnace. There were six of them now feeding the Gideon’s Collar.

Tzlayloc walked over to one of the sacks of hearts. ‘Faster, compatriots. We are so close now.’

Close to what? she wondered. Their overseer hurried over to the leader, and from all the nodding Damson Davenport knew their service in the shadow of the collar was going to get even more frantic. A Third Brigade riding officer galloping out of the snowstorm interrupted their overseer’s act of obsequiousness. She heard snatches of the report. Counter-revolutionaries, steammen knights, First Brigade reinforcements.