Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Wildrake slapped the man on his back. ‘You know, a border fort is the last place I would have expected to find a Circlean, lieutenant, among all the shirkers and punishment company men. But I admire a fellow with principles.’

He nodded at Tariq and the Cassarabian spat a command in his desert tongue. Both biologicks sprang forward, tumbling the lieutenant to the grass. He thrashed, rolled and screamed as the man-dog joinings tore him apart.

Wildrake slid his sabre out and waved it like a wand in front of the noses of the terrified soldiers. ‘I am afraid I am not terribly conversant with church doctrine, but a little closer to home, I once read section forty-eight of the regimental code, punishment for mutiny on active service. Does anyone else here think the army would be better run along the lines of a Circlean soup kitchen?’

There were no dissenters.

Both the biologicks left the corpse alone as the Cassarabian made a guttural clicking sound, recalling the creatures.

Wildrake kicked the limp body. ‘So, what do Circlist principles taste like? Somebody’s idea of a joke, posting the fellow to a punishment company.’

One of the beasts gazed at the wolftaker and made a whining noise. It might have been words, but trapped in a canine jaw the human tongue mangled the speech into a bestial whimper. Wildrake patted the creature on the skull as if he understood. ‘You might think Tariq’s two hounds here are the unholy product of Cassarabian womb magic, and you would be right. But you need to understand that the state does not condone their use lightly. The prey we are after are two of the most dangerous killers in all of Jackals. One is a criminal who has been on the run from the crushers for over a decade, leaving a trail of dead police and soldiers in his wake. The other is a fey boy who murdered his own family before escaping the torc.’

Dark murmurs started among the ranks of the superstitious soldiers. Feybreed! The colonel did not have any purple tattoos — surely they needed a worldsinger to subdue a killer touched by the mist? Wildrake flourished his crown warrant. The lieutenant had made an excellent stick. Now it was time for the carrot.

‘As you can see, there is a very generous bounty on the heads of these two killers. Now that the lieutenant has moved along the Circle, his share of the prize money belongs to you . The warrant states dead or alive, but my two hounds here prefer dead — which means less risk for all of us. I have lost some good friends to the hands of these two jiggers, so I will also waive my share of the prize. I want these two assassins eating worms by the end of the day.’

Now the redcoats were happier; they waved their rifles — cheap Brown Jane patterns from Middlesteel’s mills — and gave him a half-hearted cheer. Most of them had probably done worse themselves in the rookeries and slums of whatever Jackelian city they had been arrested in — but they read well enough to understand the large sum of money printed on the warrant.

Wildrake passed Tariq a shirt that had come from the boy’s room in Hundred Locks. The biologicks sniffed at it and stood trembling with anticipation, the taste of human flesh fresh in their mouths. They were used to hunting slaves across the arid ground of Cassarabia and there was always a good meal at the end of a chase.

Nodding at Tariq, Wildrake brandished his sabre in the air. ‘Gentlemen, let the hunt begin.’

Molly stared up at the tower. It was not as tall as one of Sun Gate’s counting houses — perhaps only eight storeys — but the way it rose out of the tranquillity of the private garden dominating the topiary below gave it an extra sense of scale. An illuminated clock face crowned the square tower, two massive iron hands keeping time in a stately passage against the yellow light. Something Damson Darnay had once said to Molly back in the poorhouse jumped unbidden to mind. Even a broken clock is right twice a day .

‘You have rooms here?’ asked Molly.

Nickleby pointed his six-wheel horseless carriage into a coach house next door to the tower. ‘Tock House is mine, or should I say ours.’

‘You’re a pensman,’ said Molly. ‘How in the name of the Circle is this tower yours? Who are you, the part of the Quatershiftian royal family that didn’t hang around for the revolution?’

Nickleby carefully nosed the head of the horseless carriage into a steel dock, then, jumping down, he lit a boiler in the corner of the coach house — the carriage’s high tension clockwork whining as its drums were put under pressure by the steam-hissing mechanism, rewinding the engine for its next journey. ‘No noble blood in my family’s veins, Molly. Unless you consider the blood of poets and theatre players to be noble.’

Molly pointed up at the tower. ‘A good opening night paid for that, did it?’

‘I thought you were an aficionado of the pulp press, Molly? You must have missed the issues of the penny dreadfuls where my companions and myself found the wreckage of the PeacockHerne on the Isla Needless.’

‘The King’s airship, that was you?’

Nickleby gave a little bow. ‘I was covering the expedition for The Illustrated — of course, we weren’t looking for treasure; a safe passage across the Fire Sea was what the university had paid for.’

‘I thought everyone on the expedition died of a curse,’ said Molly.

‘Tropical disease,’ said Nickleby. ‘And there were enough of us left alive for parliament to invoke the crown treasure trove laws on the contents of the Peacock Herne . But even after the House of Guardians got its snout in the trough, our share of the treasure was enough to pay for a few luxuries.’ He lovingly patted the cab of the carriage.

They walked out of the coach house and into the evening air. Tending the lawn were a handful of small iron crabs, busy pulling weeds and cropping grass; Molly nearly tripped over one before she realized what it was. ‘There’s a steamman slip-thinker here?’

‘I told you I lived with a couple of companions. Come on, they should be inside. Aliquot Coppertracks is the reason we survived the Isla Needless. They can die of boiler sickness and crystal rot, but thank the Circle that tropical fever has a hard time with steammen.’

Molly tried to pick up one of the metal crabs but the drone sidled out of her reach. Slipthinkers were rare outside of the Steammen Free State; minds so powerful they could diffuse their consciousness among multiple bodies. It was rumoured that even King Steam and his royal architects did not fully understand the detail of their layout, using scavenged plans from the Camlantean age in their construction. Those that did not slide into madness provided the metal race with their greatest shamen and philosophers. She had never even seen a slipthinker, let alone met one.

Inside the tower’s hall they were greeted by a bear of a man — at first Molly thought he might be a retainer, but then she spotted the silver trident on his jacket as his voice boomed out. ‘So you are back again, Silas Nickleby. And us not knowing if you were dead or trapped a thousand leagues under the earth.’

‘It takes more than a pocket aerostat jaunt down to Grimhope to throw out my stars, commodore,’ said the pensman. ‘This is Molly Templar. She will be our house-guest for a while. Molly, this is Commodore Jared Black — it was his submersible that took us on the little trip I was telling you about.’

‘Your stars indeed,’ said the commodore, running a hand thoughtfully through his rambling saltpepper beard. ‘Lucky for you, but not so lucky for my blessed boat — the poor wrecked Sprite of the Lake lying beached on the shores of that swamp at the end of the world.’