Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Master Saw had his suspicions. The cracked soul board that had been passed to him by the softbody girl four years ago on the bloody battlefield of Rivermarsh, the soul board that had belonged to the desecration, the one that would have been scrubbed and recycled by the birthing chamber. By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, he would dearly love to know where that particular soul board had ended up.

‘What is that thing he is doing called?’ asked Master Saw.

‘It is a form of visual representation,’ said the educator. ‘Like writing or the plans schema of an architect. You need to stare at it for quite a while, but if you look long enough it starts to make sense. You can see a picture among the strokes and marks. He has been teaching the other children how to do it, too.’

Well, King Steam had always been different, eccentric in many little ways.

‘The softbodies do this, do they not?’

‘Yes, master,’ said the educator, passing the steamman knight one of the sheets of paper. ‘They call it painting.’

Master Saw looked at the paper, trying to resolve the mass of colours and detail into an image. There was something there, something elusive. He tried to think of the script of writing, of the steamman iconography that might bring meaning to the representation. It was hard work indeed.

‘The slipthinkers are very impressed,’ said the educator proudly. ‘Especially our people in Jackals who have more familiarity with such things. We have noticed similar representations on some of the walls and floors of the palace; we may have had such an art in the past ourselves but lost it during the coldtime.’

The child looked up at the adults, noticing them for the first time. ‘My pictures are in colour.’

Master Saw patted the child’s head. ‘That much I can see, young person.’

Master Saw took the sheet of paper away with him. He would look at it a little each day. The steamman knight would follow the advice he so often dispensed on the floor of the dojo — with enough time and practice you could master any challenge, any puzzle. Things would become clear in time.

Fladdock stepped over the body of the old man to gaze out of the barred window at the passing boots of the citizens of New Albans. The recently installed Leveller government in Jackals had not made much of a dent in the flow of convicts sentenced to the boat, or for that matter to his own fate — a month on a rotting prison hulk bobbing in the waters of the Gambleflowers, followed by the long transportation to Concorzia in the stinking holds of a merchant steamship.

Most of the convicts were half Fladdock’s age, street children who had only stolen to stay alive. Far easier prey for Middlesteel’s crushers than the slicker professional criminals that ran with the flash mob. With the exception of the crooked old corn-chandler sleeping at his feet, Fladdock was now the oldest transportee in the cell awaiting the appearance of a colonist farmer to purchase his papers. Fladdock had certainly had his eyes opened since being sentenced for his admittedly incompetent attempt to dip that swell’s wallet on Haggswood Field. Eight years’ labour and transportation for touching the smooth leather of some quality’s wallet — hardly a fair exchange.

‘Tell us a story again?’ asked Gallon, hopefully.

Fladdock nodded kindly to the young boy. Who would have thought the mere ability to read would see him appointed as the official librarian of the motley group of convicts? He picked up the torn penny sheet which one of the passing settlers — probably an ex-convict — had passed through the bars, and brushed down its front cover. The MiddlesteelIllustrated . Four weeks old, the saltwater stains showing where it had been carried over as ballast in one of the clippers lying off the bay of New Albans.

Fladdock would have preferred one of the more relevant local news sheets, but beggars could not be choosers — and transportees had to be even less selective, it seemed.

‘Which story would you like me to read, Gallon?’

‘Something from the pages with dancing and rich people!’ piped up Louisa the Dipper. ‘Like the one about the ball at Sun Gate.’

‘Boring,’ said Gallon. ‘Give it a rest, girl. The crime and punishment pages. They’re the best!’

‘There’s a real story in here at the back,’ said Fladdock. ‘Not just news, but a piece of fiction. It’s called a serial. Just like the kind of tale you would find inside a penny dreadful.’

‘I know what a chuffing serial is,’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘But that’s no bleeding good, is it? We’ll have missed the start of the tale and none of us will ever know how the story ends up either; we’ll be stuck on a farm on the plains sweating in some nob’s field.’

‘That’s a pity,’ said Fladdock. ‘I read it myself yesterday and it’s rather good, something completely new in fact. People are calling it celestial fiction. It’s all about a group of aeronauts who travel by airship to one of our moons and find very different creatures living up there. It’s all the go back in Jackals; it’s written by a woman too.’

‘A woman?’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘Can I see a picture of her?’

‘There’s no line illustration of the author,’ explained Fladdock, showing the girl the pages. ‘But the name reads M.W. Templar. When you find a story where the writer is using initials instead of a first name, the chances are the author is a female … you see the stories often sell better if the readership don’t know the novelist is a woman.’

Fladdock failed to mention the fact that he knew the author personally. And she was definitely a woman.

‘Read the real stories. With the murders and the stealing,’ demanded Gallon.

‘Again?’ sighed Fladdock. ‘Alright, we’ll stick with the real murders and stealing for now, but only if I can read Louisa the serial afterwards. What story do you want me to start with?’

‘The broadsman who took a knife in the gut after they found him cheating at cards,’ suggested one of the other convicts, a craynarbian youngling with a missing arm.

‘No,’ said Gallon, a serious look settling on his gaunt face. ‘The Hood-o’the-marsh story. The one where the Hood-o’themarsh escapes twenty crushers after hanging the mine owner, the jigger that left his workers to die in the cave-in because it cost too much to save ’em.’

‘You are a turnip, Gallon,’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘There’s no Hood-o’the-marsh. It’s just a name radicals use when they want to put a scare into the quality.’

‘He is bleeding real!’ shouted back Gallon. ‘His stories are always in the sheets. They say he has two pistols that shine like devil fire and he only kills at night when he becomes invisible; they say that he can whistle down lashlites from the sky to rescue him when the crushers have him cornered!’

‘My granddad used to tell me stories about the Hood-o’themarsh that he was told by his granddad,’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘Leaaf addict is this Hood? Ghost is he? You still waiting for your Midwinter presents from Mother White Horse? Maybe they’ll be delivered here tomorrow, Gallon.’

Their impromptu reading was interrupted by a clanking at the door of the cell, followed by a colonial guard admitting a gust of fresh air into the fetid holding chamber. ‘On your feet now my lovely boys — you’ve got some respectable visitors.’ He glanced at the old craynarbian waiting in the doorway behind him. ‘Well, fairly respectable anyway. Two gentlemen farmers after extra hands. Prisoner Fladdock, you in here?’

Fladdock stood up.

‘Your lucky day, young fellow my lad. One of the cattle owners scanning the transport list spotted your blood code and reckons you’re her second cousin twice removed or some such tosh. She’s bought out your contract.’