Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘That sounds a little sanctimonious coming from you, preacher,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘You used to redraw the line between right and wrong all the time. Or maybe you’ve forgotten? The Circlelaw by day, the mask and the black horse by night. Who was ever going to suspect you?’

‘The money went to those who needed it,’ said the reverend.

‘I believe you will find the counting houses and merchants you relieved of all that gold thought they needed it,’ said the Whisperer.

‘They were wrong.’

‘Don’t think I disapprove,’ said the Whisperer. ‘Quite the opposite in fact. You remember when you were given the box, when you found him half-dead in your old vicar’s church? Now it’s time to pass the box on.’

‘You’re talking about the boy.’

The Whisperer’s limbs twitched, but his silence spoke for him.

‘Don’t you think he’s been cursed enough? Given wild blood, chased away from his home in the company of those two killers.’

‘It’s time to pass the box on, old man. It’s time for him to ride again.’

‘I won’t do it to the boy,’ said the reverend. ‘I’ve spent the last two decades trying to forget what I was.’

‘But you can’t, can you, old man? You’re like a worldsinger trying to meditate away the urge for another sniff of petal dust. The box calls to you, doesn’t it? It sings to be opened, to make you feel alive again — to make the night your cloak and make the wicked suffer under your heel.’

‘I will not let him out again,’ said the reverend. ‘I will not bear the responsibility for it.’

‘The responsibility was never yours to give,’ said the Whisperer.

‘Even if I could, Harold Stave will not let me.’

‘Now that’s the weasel in you talking,’ said the misshapen feybreed. ‘Stave knows about you, but he never knew about the box. As far as the Court is concerned the Hood-o’the-marsh died a long time ago. Give Oliver the box. If it’s time for him to ride, he will.’

‘That’s an awful thing to wish on a man.’

‘He may not live without it,’ said the Whisperer. ‘You may choose to hide yourself away in the smog of the mines but you have noticed all the odd little things going on in the city, haven’t you? The disappearances. The beatings. Out with the old, in with the new.’

‘I’m old,’ said the reverend, ‘but I am not blind yet.’

‘Well you don’t know the jigging half of it. There’s a storm coming and that line from the Circlelaw about where there is pain, ease it, that isn’t going to count for a whole lot soon, old fellow. Two ounces of mumbleweed without gate tax isn’t going to pay for a pauper’s funeral this time. All those hungry eyes of the children you had to bury — the ones that used to visit your nightmares — you better start laying in a fresh stack of small coffins.’

‘Get out of my head,’ cried the reverend.

‘Give him the box.’

‘He’s feybreed already,’ said the reverend. ‘Hasn’t he got witch powers?’

‘They seem a little shy right now,’ said the Whisperer, ‘and a bit too defensive for my tastes. And as you pointed out, Oliver is just a man. He’s been uprooted from everything that’s familiar, had what passes for a family cut out from underneath him. He is being hunted to ground like a fox by the order and the crushers for a crime he didn’t even commit. If a lifetime of hamblin contempt hadn’t made him so antisocial and contained to start with, this would have broken him. You can feel the anger within Oliver, old man. A sea of it. It needs a release. I need him released from the box and so does Jackals.’

The reverend crumpled back in his chair, feeling every one of his years. ‘I always thought I would die as the Hood-o’themarsh.’

‘You should have burnt the box,’ said the Whisperer.

‘You don’t think I didn’t try! I flung it into the furnaces up on the hill. The next morning I found it stored back in my chest under the blankets, waiting for me like a damn dog to be fed. That’s what you’re asking me to pass on.’

‘It’ll feed now,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘It’s time for a banquet.’

They’re coming,’ shouted Nickleby from the window. A volley of silenced shots crackled off the thick walls of Tock House. Molly triggered her rifle and the recoil of the butt smashed painfully against her shoulder. She did not see where her shot landed — it was dark outside and the toppers were wearing uniforms blacker than a stack cleaner’s breeches.

‘Lean hard into the rifle, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘Don’t give it any room to dance about on you now.’

He rested his monstrous cannon on the open windowsill and fired it down into the grounds, all eight barrels spreading chaos below. Coppertracks’ drones ran behind them, taking discharged rifles, breaking them and emptying the shattered crystal charges into stone buckets. One of the mu-bodies passed a reloaded rifle to Molly. Coppertracks stood obscured behind the workbench and the blood machine, lying silent now the servants of his id were helping repel the attack.

‘Aliquot,’ called the commodore. ‘Will you busy yourself over here, we’re fighting for our blessed lives.’

Coppertracks did not reply, but from outside the night was filled with screams. Sharparms was galloping through the darkness spearing toppers with his piston arms. He had waited hidden in the tree line until the assault force had gathered in strength; now he was rampaging through the grounds like the dark conscience of the slipthinker, leaving murder and trampled softbodies in his wake.

‘You beautiful, frightful thing,’ called the commodore. ‘But I’m still glad we’ve four thick walls between us and you.’

As the toppers tried to assemble to meet the threat Sharparms would crash through the wood, the ghostly chatter of his spear arms moving in and out before he vanished into the tree line, reappearing in their midst from another angle.

Molly, Nickleby and the commodore poured shots down into the distracted assault, spinning bodies around to fall onto the gravel and the carefully tended flowerbeds. Coppertracks came up behind Molly and ushered her to the side as he passed beakers of red fizzing liquid to his mu-bodies. They hurled the chemicals out of the tower’s broken clock face, raining them down onto a cluster of toppers who were hefting a battering ram with a blow-barrel sap-filled head towards Tock House’s door. Jelly-like fire spread across the party, flames spilling out into the bushes and trees to the side of the coach house.

‘Dear Circle, Aliquot,’ said Nickleby. ‘Careful with my horseless.’

As Sharparms impaled two toppers, one on either arm, a figure stepped out of the bushes behind the steamman, spinning a three-sphere bolas around his head. Unlike the others he was not dressed in black — he looked more like he had been diverted from a dinner engagement at one of the chandelier-lit palaces of food along Goldhair Park. Light from Coppertracks’ chemical fire briefly illuminated his face. Molly sucked in her breath. It was him! The old devil from the bawdyhouse, the same jigger who had killed Slowcogs and Silver Onestack. Count Vauxtion. He was like some demon from a Spring-heeled Jack penny ballad. Every time she thought she had escaped him and slunk away into anonymity, he appeared like the calm eye in a cyclone of death.

The count’s bolas twisted in slow motion, wrapping itself around Sharparms’ hind legs — the steamman dropped the two dead toppers off his spear arms, his helmet-like head turning towards the source of the threat. From the woods one of Coppertracks’ other mu-bodies raced towards the warrior — he had nearly reached Sharparms when the explosion leapt out, blowing the diminutive drone back across the gravel. In the clearing smoke Molly saw that both of the steamman’s rear legs had been vaporized. Sharparms was trying to use his front two legs to scrabble forward, but the vengeful assassins were on top of him, opening his frayed armour with harpoon-like weapons.