Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘I heard the governor has been making up the shortfall by running down the reserves,’ said the grasper. ‘The governor and the combination are working together. You open your mouth to complain and if the combination hands don’t beat you along the Circle, the redcoats will pull you from your bed at night and you’ll never be seen again.’

‘Where are the miners who disappear being taken to?’ asked Oliver.

‘I bloody well know where the troublemakers go,’ said the grasper. ‘I went to one of the caverns the combination has declared out of bounds — there’s bodies down there, rotting corpses piled as high as houses. Probably my father too if I had the heart to look.’

Oliver felt sick to the stomach. People treated like the scraps from a cleared table, their bodies left to decompose underground without a Circlist burial.

Harry’s eyes narrowed. ‘Just the troublemakers?’

The grasper nodded. ‘The workers are taken away. My sister clerks on the hill and even she doesn’t know where they’re being taken. They’ve been told some story about another gas mine that’s been discovered and must be kept secret for the state, but that’s tunnel-mule manure. Everyone knows celgas is only found underneath Shadowclock.’

‘If there is another source of celgas,’ said Harry, ‘it sure as damn isn’t being worked with miners from Shadowclock, old stick. What in the name of the Circle is going on here? None of this makes any sense.’

‘Maybe there is another celgas mine, Harry,’ said Oliver. ‘Isn’t that a secret worth killing Uncle Titus for?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Harry. ‘People have killed for a lot less.’ But the wolftaker did not sound convinced; he looked at Steamswipe, still standing sentry by the window. ‘But I don’t think that King Steam is the sort to get all fierced up by a fortune in gas, not even if it had been found squarely underneath the peaks of the Mechancian Spine.

Oliver rubbed his eyes; they always seemed to be full of grit since they had come to Shadowclock. A fortune worth killing for — but Harry was right, the riches of a fresh gas strike might spark the avarice of the race of man, but it wasn’t enough to vex the Lady of the Lights or produce the grim predictions of King Steam. Jackals was in danger, but the nature of their enemy seemed as elusive as ever.

‘Can your sister find out when the authorities intend to ship the next crew of pressed miners out of the city?’ Harry asked the grasper.

‘I don’t want anything to do with you,’ said the grasper. ‘Just one look at you three maniacs and I know you’re trouble. I’m hiding for my life here — the only thing I need to do in Shadowclock is disappear before someone disappears me.’

‘Think of your father,’ growled Oliver. ‘He cared enough about what happened to his people to do something about it.’

The grasper shivered in his chair. ‘I’m frightened.’

‘I know what that feels like,’ said Oliver. ‘I’ve been running for my life every day since I left my home in Hundred Locks. But the people who are after you are not going to forget about you. Wherever you hide, you’re going to be going to sleep every night wondering whether you’ll wake up with a knife at your throat — or not wake up at all. You don’t want to live life like that. It’s like dying every day. Think about your father at the bottom of that pile of corpses. You want to pay them back for that? Give them something else to think about … give them us.’

‘Alright,’ the grasper crumbled. ‘If she can find out when the next aerostat leaves I’ll give you the details. It may be a few days. There’s not many left here in the trade now worthy of the name brother — the mines are scraping the bottom of the barrel.’

‘We’ll be here,’ said Oliver.

‘Sharply done, Oliver,’ said Harry, after the grasper had gone.

‘He just needed some fire in his belly,’ said Oliver. ‘You could see the fear in his eyes.’

Harry looked at Oliver. There was something different about the young man he could not quite put his finger on.

‘You intend to follow the aerostat back to its home,’ said Steamswipe.

‘That I do not,’ replied Harry. ‘I intend to stow away on the bloody thing. I spent most of my life arranging for contraband to be sneaked on and off RAN vessels. If I can’t get us onto the governor’s stat I don’t deserve to be hanged as a thief.’

‘Then I believe we are as good as on board,’ said Steamswipe.

Oliver tossed and turned in the back room of the church. Since the Whisperer had stopped his nighttime visitations, Oliver’s dreams had become disjointed and jumbled. Faint, fading things that he woke up struggling even to recall. To make matters worse the whistles and hisses from the mines carried on the wind at night, making it hard to drift off. He was used to the rural stillness of Hundred Locks. Oliver could sleep through a storm blown off the dike wall, but not the clatter of miners’ boots as they trampled back from their midnight shift.

He was running through the woods behind Seventy Star Hall, killers from the police and the Court of the Air in pursuit. He could hear Pullinger shouting behind him, promising him leniency if he only turned himself in. Oliver’s head was burning, a band of pain constricting tighter and tighter. Please let me live, please let me live, the plea turned over in his mind. As he fled other dreams seemed to mingle with his desperate scrabble to escape — could you have dreams within a dream? — flashing hooves, a black horse slipping through the night with eyes burning demon-bright. Soldiers stood in his way but the horse and rider rode them down, screams as he smashed through a window, standing on top of a roof as thunder and lightning wrapped around his body like a nimbus.

Then he was back in the woods behind his home and the thunder had followed him from the other dream — and the thunder became laughter, deep and hideous, as if every tree in the forest stood possessed by devils. But the laughter was coming from his throat, from him … two redcoats emerged from the night and still laughing he broke the first soldier’s neck, then grabbed the second man’s rifle and rolled back, spinning the redcoat over his head. He turned the rifle around and bayoneted the soldier on the grass. Other soldiers came, but seeing Oliver laughing in the clearing they fled. His shadow moved around him like a cloak — like something alive, stirring to his whim.

‘Here’s my neck,’ Oliver yelled at the retreating soldiers. ‘Here is my neck. Waiting for the worldsingers’ scaffold, waiting for the caliph’s hunting cats, waiting for the Court’s justice. But who is to take it?’

He could see them, feel them. Every wicked intention, every sin, little bundles of malevolent sparks fleeing into the darkness, trying so hard to escape, but calling to be snuffed out as they fled.

Where there is evil , the trees whispered.

‘Where there is evil,’ Oliver repeated like an oath.

He is called .

‘He is called.’ The pain in his skull intensified and he dropped to the ground, clawing at his burning forehead.

Darkness is your cloak. Fear is your ally. Wickedness is your manna .

Oliver looked around the glade, the mist of pain vanishing, then he filled the forest with his terrible new laughter.

‘I ride at night.’

‘Oliver,’ Harry shook him awake.

‘I hear the noise,’ said Oliver, half dazed. It took him a moment to realize where he was; perhaps even who he was.

Outside in the street a clatter of marching echoed down the soot-stained cobbles. People from the city were spilling out into the morning to see the sight.

The reverend came into the room and peered out of the window. ‘Steammen — an army of them.’