Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

The First Guardian turned to Inspector Reason. ‘Do you believe the fellow?’

‘Three days in here, I do.’

‘Keep his works under watch,’ said Hoggstone. ‘Day and night. The devil take Benjamin Carl. I never thought I’d need an audience with that bloody troublesome philosopher. He must be in his dotage now … and still up to his old mischief too.’

Reason gestured towards the prisoner. ‘The magistrates? He’ll be given the scaffold for sure.’

‘I just see a tired old fool who has traded printing one type of dirty book for another. Charge Garrett, not Tait. Do it quietly and put him through my district. I’ll see he only gets the boat.’

‘Sleep,’ Tait moaned.

The inspector checked his pocket watch. ‘You’ll stop seeing the visions by this evening — then you’ll sleep for days.’

‘The first days of a fairer nation,’ said Hoggstone, quoting the opening dedication of Community and the Commons .

The inspector called for his warders to come in and unchain the restraining frame.

‘Ben Carl,’ said Hoggstone, rolling the name around his mouth. ‘Benjamin Carl. Old man, I thought you were dead.’

‘I got everything on the list you gave me,’ said Awn’bar.

‘Nice one,’ said Binchy, taking the wicker basket of food from the craynarbian boy. He reached into his pocket and took out a thruppence coin. ‘How was Jerps on the Park?’

‘Big queue, same as always.’ The adolescent mottling on the boy’s armoured skull glowed in the sunlight of the corridor. ‘The jellied eels looked fresh, so I got you a cup’s worth of those too.’

Binchy smiled. ‘Good lad. That’s my supper sorted then.’

‘My matriarch said to ask after Damson B,’ said the boy.

‘You say thanks to your mam, tell her we’re both winning the race.’

‘The race?’

‘The race of man,’ laughed Binchy.

‘You haven’t got time to show me the cards again, have you?’ asked the boy.

He was good too. At an age when most of the Shell Town youngsters were running through the rookeries tossing mud balls at anyone who took offence at their larks, the boy could sniff out a recursive loop in a line of Simple and read the tattoo of a punch card like a born engine man.

Binchy checked the time on the grandfather clock in his hall. ‘Best you get back to your clan, Binchy must be about it. There’s always tomorrow.’

‘Circleday then,’ said the craynarbian boy, sounding disappointed.

They both turned as the tapping of a cane sounded down the tower’s corridor. Nobody who lived on his floor as far as Binchy could tell.

‘Mister Binchy?’ said the dapper old man as he came up to them.

Binchy put the basket of food down on the hall floor. ‘You have me at an advantage, sir?’

‘Professor Vineis. My office wrote to you, I believe.’

‘The alienist? I only got your letter yesterday.’ He looked at the boy. ‘On your way then, Awn’bar. Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow,’ said the craynarbian, running down the corridor.

The professor rested on his cane. ‘They are a fine people, the craynarbians, are they not? I have heard about your wife’s unfortunate condition, Mister Binchy, and would like to talk to you about her if I may.’

‘Best you come in, then,’ said Binchy. ‘You’re not on the Royal Institute’s list? I’ve consulted with most of them — useless buggers. Engine sickness is beyond their field of expertise. If it struck down guardians and counting-house masters I’d say they’d find it within their field of expertise fast enough.’

‘I have been consulting in the city-states for the last few years,’ said the professor, taking off his cape.

‘Thought your accent had a touch of the exotic to it.’ Binchy took the cape and hung it on a hook on the back of the door. ‘How did you find me? It’s been a while since information sickness appeared in any of the journals I subscribe to.’

‘A curious turn of events,’ said Count Vauxtion. ‘Culminating in a message and a broken mirror.’

Binchy scowled in incomprehension. ‘A broken mirror? That’s bad luck.’

‘Indeed it is,’ said Count Vauxtion. ‘For someone. Now, Mister Binchy, shall we begin our consultation…’

Oliver looked at the makeshift bandage being wound around Steamswipe’s war hammer, then checked outside the stone barn again to make sure they had not been seen ducking inside. The steamman knight looked at the sacking covering up his arm and the panniers loaded on his back with a notable lack of enthusiasm. ‘Disguising my status in this way is not honourable — and a single layer of cloth is not an effective ruse.’

Harry continued winding the sacking around the metal limb. ‘Would that be your status as a reinstated knight steamman, or your status as a disgraced warrior sentenced to deactivation?’

‘Little softbody,’ rumbled the knight, ‘if I was not under code oath to protect your life, I would break your bones with that which you so clumsily seek to conceal.’

‘It is necessary,’ said a strange voice.

Oliver looked to where the knight’s sacred weapon, Lord Wireburn, lay on a bale of hay. Something about the weapon’s voicebox made him uneasy; the sound of all the souls it had dispatched from the world caught within its piercing artificial timbre. Luckily for the Jackelian the weapon spoke rarely.

Steamswipe did not reply to his weapon but it was clear he was willing to defer to the holy relic — without its intervention in the chamber of arms the knight would have been returned back to his eternal dreamless sleep.

‘Too bleeding right it’s necessary,’ said Harry. ‘Since I’m the only one in this party who’s been to Shadowclock before, let me clue you in on what we’ll be facing. Shadowclock is a sealed city — its walls date from the civil war. There are four gates, all manned by redcoats and watched day and night. Inside the city is the entrance to the mines — outside are the largest, best-protected aerostat fields in the kingdom. Anyone coming in or out by road and waterway is searched for contraband.’

‘Celgas?’ said Oliver.

‘Bang on,’ said Harry. ‘The House of Guardians is paranoid when it comes to the gas mines. As it should be, given they think they’re the only source of the gas in the world.’

‘But they are,’ said Oliver.

Harry tapped the side of his nose. ‘Actually, you would be surprised where celgas turns up, old stick. But I digress; the important thing is if you control Shadowclock, you control the navy. And when you control the navy, you control the continent. Everyone knows that, and someone in the city is playing silly buggers. Your uncle was on to something, something that involved that place, and everyone who has had a sniff of it so far has ended up dead.’

‘We’re still alive, Harry.’

‘Not for want of trying, Oliver. If it weren’t for this old steamer’s kin, those Cassarabian slave hunters back at the border would be chewing our bones. A sad end for a fellow of my talents.’

‘Some would say fitting,’ said Steamswipe.

‘No doubt some would,’ said Harry. ‘But seeing as how your ancestors seem to have volunteered your services to this merry outing, how about you devote some of your superior steamman intellect to working out how we are going to get into that city without being rumbled by the army, city constabulary and navy.’

‘Haven’t you got any of your people in the city, Harry? Wolftakers, or whistlers?’

‘None that I can trust,’ said Harry. ‘Those two sand cats and my old friend Jamie weren’t waiting for us because they were taking a picnic on the moors, lad. My network has been compromised. Even if the whistlers in Shadowclock haven’t been turned directly, people who want to see you and me disappear will have briefed them. Too risky by far.’