Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Molly remembered the aeronaut’s tales from the penny dreadfuls — how cold it got when floatquakes sent chunks of land spinning towards the heavens. How warm the jack cloudies had to wrap up when they bravely raised their aerostats in pursuit. How thin the air became as their airships climbed in search of any survivors clinging onto the floating earth. Surely nothing could live beyond the sky? They would have to be ice-people, able to survive freezing temperatures — with the humps possessed by desert tribesmen; storing not water but instead holding the very air they needed to breathe. What a story that would make for the penny dreadfuls. Tales featuring strange life beyond the clouds. Perhaps one day there would be a market for celestial fiction in the stationers of Jackals.

‘So you squander our few remaining pennies on that blessed thing you’re raising in the grounds,’ said the commodore. ‘An artificial mother crystal, as if there’s going to be a crystalgrid operator happily biding their time on one of the moons, waiting to receive an order for cheese from the great Aliquot Coppertracks. Ah well, perhaps there’s a couple of moonlight-touched fools walking the streets of Middlesteel who’ll pay a few coins to see the thing when you’re done … to keep the butcher and his debt collectors at bay.’

‘My apparatus is not intended as a side-show amusement,’ said Coppertracks, angrily. ‘Any more than the apparatus which my colleague in the Royal Society has sent over — which I might remind you, commodore softbody, you are meant to be helping me assemble.’

Grumbling, the commodore left to fetch one of the last crates from the corridor’s dumb waiter. The slipthinker’s tireless mu-bodies were already busying themselves with a pyramid of machinery — sliding copper pistons being greased and fixed in place, glass lenses stacked in frames.

Nickleby lit his mumbleweed pipe and the clock chamber began to fill with sweet-scented smoke, not unpleasant, but too much of it made the bridge of Molly’s nose ache — Circle knew what it was doing to the inside of the pensman’s body.

‘The answer is in front of my face,’ said Nickleby from his chair. ‘There hasn’t been a Pitt Hill slaying in days now. That matches perfectly with what you discovered in Greenhall’s records. The price on your head, Molly, reflects the fact that whatever the reason for the death list being drawn up, you are one of the last to be found and targeted for murder.’

‘When someone is left on the poorhouse steps they are not meant to be found,’ said Molly.

‘The unfortunate circumstances of your birth worked in your favour this time, Molly,’ said Nickleby. ‘I have no doubt that if your mother had kept you, I would already have written up your murder for the crime and law section of The Illustrated . So, what else links you with those names on the list?’

‘Nothing at all,’ wheezed Black, returning with a box of equipment. ‘She’s a blessed child. A terrible young age to be thrown into the deadly games you involve us in, Silas.’

‘You have a point, commodore. Molly is the youngest of all the people on the Pitt Hill Slayer’s list of victims. But hardly a child anymore — she is nearly of an age to exercise the franchise.’

‘Marking a cross next to the name of some thieving Guardians on a ballot paper is small blessed compensation for being hunted down by a murdering gang of lunatics.’

‘There is method here-’ said Nickleby ‘- were we but able to see it.’

For the hundredth time he looked over the list of names which Binchy had copied down following the discovery in Greenhall’s engine rooms. The names that were confirmed as Pitt Hill Slayings were marked with a cross. Some of the victims had not been linked to the slayer by the police, too poor to warrant any investigation of substance. There were not that many of those. The majority of the names were from well-to-do families — educated, moneyed. The average age was mid to late thirties, a couple of victims had been in their twenties. Most but not all lived in Middlesteel. Molly was the youngest by far. Both sexes were represented about equally — but the victims were all human — no craynarbians, no steammen or graspers murdered by the Pitt Hill Slayer.

Molly sat down opposite the pensman. ‘So what connects these people to me?’

‘Nothing that I can see, Molly. You might as well ask what doesn’t connect you. In a game of odd one out, you would win every time against the names on this list. I do need to check on some of the people not originally linked to the Pitt Hill killings. I don’t have any details on them — one of them might be the link to you. There’s a butcher down on Ventry Lane. Ham Yard marked his death as suspicious, but finally chalked it up as an open verdict. How they thought he could have accidentally lost all his blood in his abattoir is beyond me. The crushers must have been waiting for the murderer to paint a sign on the wall saying “The Pitt Hill Slayer struck here”.’

‘Deduction is a science,’ said Coppertracks. ‘And it is science which will come to our aid in this matter.’

‘Your science is mortal heavy,’ puffed Commodore Black, lifting down the last of the boxes. ‘If it’s not a tonne weight of old journals I’m dragging in here for you to gobble down, it’s these strange machines of yours, full of mammoth pipes and fizzing with dark energies.’

Coppertracks moved through the throng of drones, his mu-bodies clambering over the half-assembled machine in the centre of the clock room. ‘The scientific method will prove its worth in this case, dear mammal. Lord Hartisburgh has been gracious enough to lend us his latest organic analyser — I would not like to return it to him broken.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t want to put you in poor standing with your wild friends at the Royal Society now. But could you not tinker with light little gases instead. Or we could convert the whole floor to a telescope for you to study the celestial movements — if you would promise to do it at night and not disturb the well deserved rest of an old submariner.’

‘Members of the institute are allowed to use the optics up at Prighty Hill,’ said Coppertracks. ‘And an installation here would hardly take up less space than this device. Blood, Molly softbody. That is what this dark affair turns on — someone sought out yours and that of all the others on that list. From the million Jackelian names on Greenhall’s transaction engine, only yours satisfied the criteria set by your tormentors. This machine will shine the bright light of science on those that seek to stay hidden in the shadows.’

‘I don’t doubt you, Coppertracks,’ said Molly. ‘I know all about the scientific method of detection. We managed to collect the entire series of penny sheets with Barclay and the Game Chicken at the poorhouse.’

Nickleby harrumphed. ‘Your penny dreadfuls can only begin to hint at the insufferable vanity of the man.’

‘You’ve met Barclay?’ Molly was in awe.

‘Our paths have crossed,’ said the pensman. ‘Barclay and his oaf of an associate. I am sure you will find, Molly, the contribution myself and Coppertracks made towards solving the case of the missing abbot was carefully overshadowed by the size of Barclay’s ego and the depth of his connections with the Dock Street press. If I have one consolation with this current grisly affair, it is that Barclay and Bird are not being consulted by Ham Yard or any of the victims’ families.’

‘Is he as rakish as his illustrations?’

‘Reality disappoints,’ was Nickleby’s terse reply as he burrowed with renewed vigour into the names on the list.

Coppertracks’ skull threw light off the nearly completed machine as its assembly was finalized. Gold spheres began to rotate on top of the machine as the mu-bodies connected the device’s steam stack to a vent at the side of the chamber. What the pensman’s far-off neighbours would think if they peered out from their windows and saw the clock tower venting steam the Circle only knew. Molly guessed that with Coppertracks’ eccentric interests they had probably seen worse and stranger in their time.