Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘I hardly remember them now. But considering the life I have had here in Jackals, maybe you should have left me where I was.’

‘I promised your real parents I would save you, Oliver,’ said the woman, gently. ‘I made, well, you might call it a deal, with your father. If I had taken you out of the feymist too soon you would have died of shock. If I had left you beyond the feymist curtain for much longer you would have changed forever and your mind could not have adapted to life in Jackals again.’

Oliver looked back towards the tent where Harry was still sleeping. He knew the agent of the Court would not wake while the woman was here; she could move like a will’o-the wisp across the face of the world.

‘You’re the one the Whisperer was talking about.’

She nodded. ‘We have been playing a small game of tag, he and I, across the minds of the people of Jackals. Poor twisted Nathaniel Harwood, trapped in his decaying body and trapped in his dirty cell. The feymist curtain is a bridge, Oliver, and it seems every bridge must have its troll hiding underneath.’

‘Nathaniel. So that is his real name,’ said Oliver. ‘I wish you could help him.’

‘I am known as an Observer, Oliver, not an interferer. My interventions are discreet — no parting of the seas, no plagues of insects, no famines or resurrections. Free will, Oliver. You make your own heaven or hell here. Do not look to the uncaring sky for salvation, seek it inside yourself.’

‘What are you doing in Jackals, then?’ asked Oliver.

‘Trouble at the mill, young man. There are forces outside the system, unpleasant, foreign elements, that would love to burrow inside our universe, sup on it like parasites feeding on the flesh of a live hen. Not much room in their philosophy for free will, or any kind of will at all. Your people have met the agents of this evil before. In fact, it is better said that it was your kind’s belief in them that created these agents in the first place. They are called the Wildcaotyl. They are corrupt entities and the evil they serve is beyond the measure of my scale, let alone yours.’

‘Then you’re here to save us?’

She laughed loudly, as if that was deeply amusing, the funniest thing in the world. ‘No, Oliver. I am a nail, a tool. I can batten down the storm shutters, but I cannot divert the storm. I cannot save the village without annihilating it.’

An uneasy feeling crept through Oliver, an insight too terrible to contemplate. ‘You’re not here to save us. You are here to destroy us.’

‘The rule-set can’t be changed from outside, Oliver. We simply will not allow it. Never. If it comes to it, if a corruption takes and spreads, everything will be wiped out, the board cleared of pieces, every piece of matter you have known or have touched, even time itself, will be erased. Nothing to be given over to the enemy — nothing!’

‘But we can stop the end of the world,’ said Oliver. ‘Free will. We can choose.’

‘Yes, but your people are always choosing to believe in the wrong thing, Oliver. The Circlist church was good; closer to the truth than your vicars and parsons realize. But the landlord doesn’t like her tenants inviting in troublesome guests. You know the sort. Angry types who get above their station, urinating against the walls, trying to grab the freehold and making threats. When the landlord sees that, she draws up an eviction order. And Oliver, trust me on this, your people don’t want to find out what life is like living rough on the street.’

‘So that’s it,’ said Oliver. ‘My whole life, I’ve just been a pawn in your game of gods?’

‘No, Oliver,’ said the Observer. ‘You are my knight, and more. And one I am very fond of. You get to choose your own moves — you all do. It would please me greatly if the game could go on forever. But that is rather up to you.’

‘You have intervened,’ said Oliver. ‘What do you call our conversation right now? What do you call dragging me back here to Jackals when I was only five years old?’

The woman looked over at a tree, as if she had noticed something that confused her, and the little spheres of light revolving around her seeming to spin faster. Her attention returned to Oliver. ‘Only in so much as I can choose to gently correct any imbalances caused by the presence of external forces, the ones who have no place here such as the Wildcaotyl and their masters. Of course, how I choose to paper over the cracks is left to my discretion, Oliver. But we are fast moving beyond the point where a little extra wattle and daub around the edges is going to keep the roof from leaking. It is going to get fundamental very quickly. When that happens, what I want or do not want is going to matter very little indeed. I will be removed, Oliver. No more nails. No more damage limitation. You will be assigned something very dangerous with a very short fuse instead.’

‘Are you alright?’ asked Oliver. ‘You look shaky.’

‘I — need to — go, Oliver. Too much resolution. I am not used to operating at this level of detail, constrained in this silly body. I am a big-picture girl — at — heart. The fractal beauty of the branches, splitting into — leaf upon leaf — simplicity from complexity — complexity from simplicity.’ She was fading, the thrumming noise of her lights growing more intense.

‘Before you go, I know why the feymist curtain is here,’ said Oliver. ‘Why it appeared a thousand years ago in Jackals, infecting children at random, killing most of the adults it touches.’

‘Clever boy.’ Tears were running down the woman’s face.

‘The land beyond the mist, the feyfolk: they won’t be destroyed, will they? They’re not part of this, not part of our universe. That’s why the mist infects some of us — to allow a few of us to survive outside of our world, to escape extinction, for the race of man to continue to exist beyond the curtain. It’s an escape tunnel your kind punched directly into the heart of Jackals.’

‘Should it come to it, Oliver,’ said the Observer, ‘you will know when to cut and run. Only the fey can survive beyond the veil. Breeding pairs, Oliver, lead mainly breeding pairs into the mist.’

She was gone and the lash of the dawn wind seemed colder.

Oliver was left with the memory of a scared five-yearold boy, standing alone outside one of the upland villages that clung precariously close to the feymist curtain. Trying to talk to a crowd of villagers who were curious and terrified in equal measure by this child from beyond. He showed them the pendant that the Observer had given him as a talisman, the one with the miniature painting of his birth mother inside.

Not for the first time his old life had ended.

‘Order, order,’ shouted the speaker, banging her gavel. She had never seen the chamber so full. Guardians who normally only showed up in Middlesteel for lunch at their club once a year were thronging the hall. Opposite her, the doors to the cramped press gallery had been shut and the hyenas of Dock Street were being turned away.

Yesterday’s events had even roused Tinfold from his deathbed, the ancient steamman and leader of the Levellers still representing Workbarrows as Guardian despite the failing state of his body.

A brief hush fell over the chamber as Hoggstone took his seat on the front benches, followed by the minister from the Department of War, looking pale at the prospect of what was to come.

‘This House calls the minister for the Board of the Royal Aerostatical Navy to read his prepared statement,’ announced the speaker.

‘Guardians elect,’ began the minister. ‘I have received the preliminary details from the Admirals of the Blue in the matter of the RAN Resolute’s unauthorized bombardment of Middlesteel. These details serve as a preface to the official crown enquiry. Contrary to the sensational speculations of the Dock Street news sheets, at no point was any order issued through the chain of command for the RAN Resolute to assault the capital. Its actions in this matter were entirely unrelated to the disgraceful civil disturbances taking place in many sections of the city at this time. A detail underlined by the fact that the list of casualties in the airship’s unlawful bombardment include many prominent officers of the Middlesteel constabulary, militia, magistrates, order of worldsingers and fencible regiments attempting to restore order to the capital.’