Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘Come you here, boy,’ his voice boomed across the room, before continuing towards the figure he had singled out. ‘Middlesteel surprised by aerial assault? I am surprised when any of you drunken sots show up on time for the morning shift. I would be surprised if my wife brought me a glass of warm jinn before tucking me up for the night. When I see one of our own Circle-damned aerostats dropping firebombs on the capital of our great and glorious land, I am not, sir, surprised . I am violated. I am jiggered by the enormity of it all. Pull the lead on that subtitle. If I ever see the like of that again on one of my inside pages, I will be surprising you by pulling your record of employment from the punch card drawer and feeding it into the fires still burning along the east bank of the river, do you understand?’

Turning from the quivering writer, the editor spotted Nickleby and Molly and swung his way over to them, stabbing his twin crutches into the floor like a duellist’s sword blows. ‘Found another waif for me to employ, Nickleby? I’ll be applying to Greenhall to re-register the paper as a Circlist charity before the week is out.’

Ver’fey had already disappeared with copy on the attack for the printers, but the editor obviously had a good memory for details. Molly and her rescuer followed the old man into his office, large round crystal portholes cut into the walls of the pneumatic structure giving them a good view of the smoke streaming into the air at the other end of the city. When the door was shut the din of the pensmen’s pit was instantly cut off; in the silence Molly could hear the soft flow of water shifting through the building’s rubber walls.

‘Walls have ears, eh?’ said the editor. ‘So this is the girl? Right now, m’dear, I could get more money for trading your head than I could if I sold The Illustrated lock, stock.’

‘It’s a strange old world,’ said Molly.

Broad looked out at the smoke gushing into the sky. ‘Indeed it is, m’dear. My paper would be empty most days if it were not.’

‘I told you there was more to the Pitt Hill slayings than a lone lunatic,’ said Nickleby. ‘Molly here is a proof of it, I am sure.’

‘We need to find the link,’ said the editor. ‘What connects this young lady to a bunch of society’s finest with their blood leeched out like so much desert butcher’s meat?’

‘You’ll protect me?’ said Molly. ‘Help me find the truth?’

‘Truth has a price,’ replied the editor, raising his crutches. ‘It extracts a cost from those that stare at it too long, those that seek it too zealously, eh Nickleby?’ He looked meaningfully at the journalist. Nickleby shrugged and looked away. ‘Well, m’fella here has the best nose for a story of anyone on The Illustrated . If someone can help you work out why your dear flame-coloured head is worth a Guardian’s ransom, it’s Nickleby here. As for protection, where’s that fierce bookworm with the amazon-sized arms — isn’t she on the payroll?’

‘Just for the finder’s fee,’ said Nickleby. ‘She’s off to parts foreign now.’

The editor shook his head. ‘More grist for the mill for the penny sheets, I don’t doubt. Well, I can always pull a couple of whippers from that gang of thieves I pay to guard the print mill and have them follow you about.’

Nickleby shook his head. ‘Anonymity is our best defence now, Gabriel. None of the mug-hunters and toppers looking for Molly knows that she is in our care. If you post an armed guard outside my gates, word’s going to get back to the flash mob sooner or later. People will start wondering why.’

‘So be it,’ said the editor. ‘That old salt who hangs around your place looks like he might be handy with a Sleeping Henry, eh?’

There was a knock at the door and a breathless runner stumbled in holding out a note. ‘The Board of the Admiralty denies that the Resolute had orders to even be in Middlesteel, let alone bomb it. They’re sending the RAN Amethyst and Upholder to escort the Resolute back to Shadowclock, with orders to bring her down if she resists.’

‘By the Lord Harry,’ exclaimed Broad. ‘A duel over the city. You boy, tell the desk to make ready for a second edition. Nickleby, you did some time on the decks, does the Board’s story sound likely to you?’

‘An airmaster can be hung for showing initiative with their position in a squadron formation,’ said Nickleby. ‘A skipper doesn’t change the crew’s jinn ration without written orders from the Board.’

‘Fella must have gone barking mad,’ said the editor. ‘Boy, boy, send someone down to the taverns where the jack cloudies soak their troubles, get me the name of the skipper of the Resolute . Anything about his background — see if this chappie was barking, history of lunacy in the blood, all of that.’

‘Dear Circle,’ said Nickleby. ‘Our own city. I still can’t believe it; it’s like a dream.’

‘Stuff of nightmares more like, eh?’ said Broad. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of this one and have someone’s head on the end of a pike for it.’

‘By writing about it?’ said Molly.

Broad furrowed his brow and picked up an edition of his broadsheet. ‘It’s easy to mistake this for a couple of sheets of wood pulp, m’dear, but you’d be wrong. This is a weapon. No less than that bloated airship floating above Middlesteel; and this can do a great deal more than burn a district to the ground. It can inflame an entire nation to arms. It can send the people stampeding in one direction or t’other at a polling booth. It can burrow into the heart of the flash mob and turn over the stone of the underworld so everyone can see the worms and maggots crawling through our sewage. It can uproot the stench and sweat of a Stallwood Avenue mill and slap it down inside the comfortable five-storey house of an articled clerk. It can take a selfless act of bravery and make it seem like the grossest foolhardiness — or it can take an idiot and raise him up to strut across the floor of parliament like a peacock.’

‘But it extracts its price, Molly,’ said Nickleby.

‘Not today,’ said Broad, pointing to the silhouette of the Resolute , still cloaked by waves of black smoke. ‘Today the city has paid the bill for us.’

Count Vauxtion swirled the remains of his brandy in the large glass. As they should, the legs of the drink made golden fingers against the side of the crystal. Only three bottles of the 1560 left now. The Carlists had seized the rest of his cellar when the Quatershiftian nobility found itself overrun during the people’s revolution. Drunk in a single evening to fuel the orgy of devastation which saw his chateau razed to the ground, his family arrested, his workers ejected from their cottages and most senseless of all — the grain stores torched. So much of his legacy, his life had gone in that single night.

Ka’oard entered the library, holding a package wrapped in brown paper. ‘I hope you are not brooding again, sir.’

Count Vauxtion allowed the craynarbian retainer to take the brandy glass out of his hand. ‘I find it hard to focus on the words in the books, old shell. I am not sure if that is a function of my fading sight or the distraction of too many accumulated memories.’

The craynarbian placed the package on the reading table. ‘Your beard and my shell are turning white together, sir.’

‘Do you remember the hills outside Estreal, Ka’oard? Your shell took a few cracks then.’

‘The King’s dispute with the Steammen Free State?’ said the craynarbian. ‘I remember it well, sir. The cavalry made a disastrous charge against the steammen knights. Colonel Weltard died in the saddle, taken down by a flame-gun.’