Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘In this matter, anonymity is our friend,’ said Nickleby.

Coppertracks’ skull erupted into light, fiercer than Molly had ever seen before. ‘Dear mammal, I fear anonymity may have betrayed us. I have just lost contact with all my mu-bodies beyond the woods.’

‘An accident?’

‘Simultaneously?’ The steamman’s mu-bodies in the clock room exploded into action, scattering to a dozen synchronised tasks.

‘Aliquot Coppertracks, say this is not so,’ whined the commodore.

‘I fear it is. There are intruders in the grounds. In numbers large enough to destroy a dozen of my mu-bodies in chorus.’

A ball of fear curled inside Molly’s stomach. She had found out why her implacable foes were hunting for her. Not for a family inheritance that did not even exist, but for her very blood itself. But now it was too late. Her friends were in danger again … and it was all because of her. The hidden enemy were going to do to Tock House what they had done to her family at the Sun Gate poorhouse. She was going to end up on a butcher’s table while some history-obsessed maniacs opened up her veins and she became just another name on the Pitt Hill Slayer’s tally of victims.

‘My beautiful house,’ moaned Nickleby. ‘I knew this was too good to last.’

Commodore Black raided a storeroom on the side of the clock house chamber and then stumbled out with both arms spilling over with rifles and black leather bandoleers of crystal shells. He saw the look on Molly’s face. ‘They’re from the Sprite of the Lake . I never did have the heart to chuck out the blessed things.’

‘Circle, commodore, were you piloting a submarine or a man-o’-war?’

‘Well now lass, you can be sailing across some rough old coves out there on the oceans.’

Coppertracks’ mu-bodies grabbed the weapons out of his arms and dispersed smoothly to positions around Tock House. Black tossed the sling of a eight-barrel monstrosity around his shoulder. Molly had heard the whippers at the Angel’s Crust laughing about those things — they had never said anything good about them.

‘Commodore, that’s a suicide gun!’

‘No lass; a suicide gun fires one barrel at a time. This wicked devil empties all eight at once. She’s a lucky gun! Mounted on the conning tower of the Sprite she was, and many a time I used her beautiful mouth to sweep the decks of a boarding party while we sat recharging the Sprite’s air supply.’

Molly jumped as a booming noise echoed up the staircase. Nickleby lay a steadying hand on her shoulder. ‘Tock House was built just after the civil war, Molly. Soldiers from both armies laid off and dangerously unemployed on the streets. Why do you think there are no windows on the first two storeys? That was the house’s transaction engine triggering the clockwork on the shield above the door.’

‘Shield?’

‘Twelve inches of layered armour,’ said Nickleby. ‘The Jackelian Artillery Company would pause before taking our front door down.’

Something pinged off the walls of the tower.

‘That was too quiet,’ said Nickleby.

Commodore Black risked a quick glance out of the window. ‘Toppers, then. Ah, I can see the mufflers on their mortal guns. Real hard men, coming to kill a scared little lass. Come on you dark-hearted jiggers, let’s see how you like what old Blacky has got for you!’

A cadre of Middlesteel’s professional assassins. Not one, but an army of them. They were all as good as dead. Molly slumped to the floor and pushed her red hair back out of her face. She had brought this on her friends. Better they had caught her on the streets of Sun Gate outside the poorhouse and none of this had happened.

Nickleby lit his mumbleweed pipe and the sweet smell filled the room. He picked a rifle from the commodore’s pile and offered it to Molly like he was proffering a plate of cheese at the dinner table.

‘I’ve never used a gun before,’ said Molly.

‘Lass,’ Commodore Black called from his position at the window. ‘In ten minutes’ time, you are going to have a whole blessed world of experience.’

Oliver noticed that fewer people were passing through the main square of Rattle. The day was wearing on and there was still no sign of the man they were waiting for. Rattle was the last hamlet before Shadowclock, a farmers’ market where the drovers could trade their poultry and swine without having to pay the toll on the city road. Their gypsy travelling companions had avoided the main crown highway too, heading south over the hills of the downlands that morning. Paying a levy to the local board of roads held as much attraction to the nomads as swapping their bright wooden caravans for one of Rattle’s thatched cottages.

The copper hands of the square’s clock reflected the last ember of the sunset from their burnished metal.

‘Is your contact likely to answer his summons?’ asked Steamswipe.

Harry nodded. ‘If he knows what’s good for him he will.’

‘Can you be sure he’ll get the message?’ said Oliver.

‘I still have a little faith in human nature, old stick,’ said Harry. ‘And a little more in the purchasing power of the Jackelian shilling I gave that trader for taking him the word.’

Lights were beginning to appear in the windows of Rattle, the smell of slipsharp oil rising from the tavern behind them as the coaching inn’s staff lit their own lanterns. Finally a wagon hove into view, creaking at a stately pace, and Harry rose to greet it. Behind the reins sat just about the oldest man Oliver had ever seen — his face fissured with age, part covered by a white beard trimmed into a fork. He was wearing a grey dog collar with the infinity symbol and fish of the Circlist faith on his waistcoat. The man nodded at the disreputable Stave.

‘Harold.’

‘Reverend,’ said Harry.

The preacher cast a languid glance at Oliver and the knight steamman. ‘I thought you worked alone.’

‘The lad is almost family, reverend. And my friend of the metal … well, you could say he is something of a favour.’

The preacher grunted and looked at Steamswipe. ‘Those saddlebags would be his idea.’

‘You would be correct,’ said the steamman.

‘Saw a fox wearing a hat once,’ said the reverend. ‘It was still a fox. You can ride alongside us, my dangerous friend. Unless you fancy taking a turn pulling my wagon. Harold, boy, in the back.’

With the nag pulling the cart — nearly as toothless as the churchman — they made a slow arc around the village square, then began trotting down the hamlet’s lanes.

‘You think I would come, Harold?’

‘When you got my message,’ said the wolftaker.

‘Damn presumptuous of you. But then you always were a chancer.’

‘I think I’m on safe enough ground,’ said Harry. ‘Hallowed ground in fact. We need to get into Shadowclock and I don’t have city permission papers this time. We also need a place to hide while I conduct a little business.’

‘Has the Court lost its taste for forgery, Harold, or are you running something off the ledger?’

Harry scratched his nose. ‘You just worry about blagging us past the gate constables, reverend. Leave keeping the ledger straight to me.’

To Oliver’s surprise the Circlist churchman turned the cart away from the main road and into a wood. When they emerged from the press of pine, the high walls of Shadowclock rose before them, a pall of engine smoke hanging over the city. Contained by ramparts sixty feet high the town sat crowded across three hills, tall buildings of Pentshire granite and steep, narrow streets stained with soot. Even though it was late evening Oliver could still hear the muffled thumps and whistles of machinery from the gas mines.