Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

Whatever the lies, they had not been enough to keep these three from escaping the great terror in Quatershift. Since the Commonshare’s worldsingers had laid the cursewall, there had been so few refugees making it alive to Jackals that magistrates now granted the shifties automatic political asylum. One of the many emigre charities would be called in to help. After all, there were now more Quatershiftian nobles sloshing around Jackals than there were back in the homeland — the lucky ones who had flooded out with their gold before the cursewall was raised. The less fortunate quality were still in Commonshare camps waiting on a piece of paper with a red number scrawled across it … followed by an iron bolt fired through the neck.

As the line of prisoners disappeared down the street, Oliver knocked on the station door and entered.

‘Oliver.’ Sergeant Cudban glanced back from locking the door to the cells. ‘That time of the week already?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Oliver.

‘Come on in laddie, don’t stand on ceremony. Your wee conjurer is already around the back. Would you like a nice cup of caffeel? Young Wattle’s just brewed up.’

Oliver nodded. Sergeant Cudban was a brusque, straightforward uplander, and he had little patience for the worldsingers and even less for the superior manners of Oliver’s personal tormentor, Edwin Pullinger, the county’s Inspector Royal from the State Department of Feymist.

‘A busy night?’ Oliver asked.

‘Aye, the usual. Although I did have the parson in here yesterday. Somebody’s been stuffing political pamphlets inside the book of Circlelaw.’

‘Pamphlets,’ laughed Oliver.

‘You should have seen the man’s face. The highlights of Community and the Commons , it was. I don’t think the parson had ever read it before and the thought of Carlists in the pews of his good Circlist church had him in a right tizzy.’

Oliver shrugged. ‘For that matter, I don’t think I’ve ever read it either.’

The sergeant winked at Oliver. ‘I’ll slip you a copy later then, compatriot. Never sat well with me, laddie, burning books. Them’s the sort of larks foreigners get up to, not us Jackelians. Benjamin Carl hasn’t been seen alive since eighty-one anyway, and to my mind, since the uprising was crushed most of his revolutionaries have been baking bread and milling steel for the last fifteen years.’

‘And printing pamphlets,’ Oliver added slyly.

Sergeant Cudban pinned up a reward on the wall, an illustration of a highwayman and a modest reward staring down on them. ‘Grumbles, laddie. Everyone’s got grumbles. You happy, laddie? Being dragged in here to sign on every week at the pleasure of that purple-robed prat? And do you think I’m happy? Three wee constables to keep the parliament’s law in Hundred Locks while Shipman Town above has ten times that number. What do they do all day — interview cod? Arrest gulls? And send their beered-up sailors down here to break each other’s heads in my taverns.’

Constable Wattle poked his face around the door. ‘Inspector Pullinger wants to know why he’s being kept waiting.’

‘See, laddie. Grumbles.’ The sergeant turned to his constable. ‘The Department of Feymist would not like the answer to that question, young Wattle.’

Oliver was ushered into the office. Cudban unobtrusively took up position underneath the station’s weapons rack, cleaning the cutlasses in the top row and oiling the walnut-stocked rifles below. Listening all the while. It was not unknown for the Department to resort to worldsinger mind tricks to get results — but it would not happen while old Cudban was in charge of policing the Hundred Locks Township.

The oily sorcerer had a new arrival sitting by his side, another Department of Feymist worldsinger, though not much older than Oliver. An acolyte. Pullinger rubbed his brow where a tattoo of four small purple flowers shone — the mark of his rank among the worldsingers.

Edwin Pullinger turned the register on the writing desk around and pushed it towards Oliver. ‘Your official signature, Mister Brooks. My colleague here will be counter-signing for the Department.’

Oliver picked up the stylus and dipped its nib in the inkpot. ‘Planning to retire, Inspector Pullinger?’

‘Not any time soon, young Master Brooks,’ Pullinger replied. He took out a small snuffbox of purpletwist and, measuring a pinch on the back of his hand, sniffed at the rare pollen. Addictive when inhaled, it also enhanced the power of a worldsinger. The acolyte produced a flat green crystal, tracing a line of truth sigils in the air over it.

Resigned, Oliver placed his right hand on the truth crystal while Pullinger commenced the ritual questioning.

‘Have you manifested any of the following powers of feymist abomination? Telekinesis, the power of flight, abnormal strength, mental control over animals, invisibility, the power to generate heat or flame…’ Pullinger ran through the exhaustive list.

‘I haven’t,’ said Oliver, when the sorcerer finished at last. ‘Have you?’

Sergeant Cudban snorted with amusement at the answer.

Pullinger leant forward. ‘If I had, young Master Brooks, it would have been as the result of the disciplined study of the worldsong and mastery of my own natural abilities over the bones of the world.’

‘Naturally.’

‘And that is precisely the point,’ said Pullinger. ‘By nature. Naturally. I could take the most talentless clodhopping constable in this station and with enough time and diligence teach him to tap leylines and move objects around using the worldsong.’ To demonstrate his point, the pen rose from Oliver’s hand and floated in the air to the worldsinger.

‘Don’t bother on my account,’ muttered Sergeant Cudban.

Pullinger leaned back in his chair, addressing his acolyte. ‘Young Master Brooks, as you can see, is my greatest challenge. An enigma. How much exposure to the feymist does it take on average for an abomination to occur?’

‘Anything from two minutes to an hour,’ answered the acolyte.

‘Correct,’ said Pullinger. ‘You can be sleeping soundly in your bed when a feymist rises from the soil, and the first you will know of it is when your body begins to change in the morning.’

The boy nodded.

‘Two minutes,’ Pullinger repeated. ‘Yet young Brooks’ aero-stat crashed into the very feymist curtain itself when he was just one year old. And he was found wandering out, alone, the sole survivor, four years later. Four years exposed to the feymist. Too young to feed himself. And when he resurfaces — no feybreed powers, no abominations, no memory of what happened to him behind the curtain.’

‘Perhaps I was raised by wolves,’ said Oliver.

‘Have you remembered anything of your time behind the feymist curtain since our last meeting?’

‘No,’ lied Oliver. As usual the truth crystal was not alerted by his reply.

‘Have you had any dreams you would class as unusual?’

‘No,’ lied Oliver, the Whisperer’s hiss in his ears.

‘Have you had any mental conversations with relatives you believe might be dead?’

‘No,’ said Oliver. ‘Although if I did, I really wouldn’t mind.’

Pullinger clearly did not believe a word of it. Four years exposed to the feymist and no resulting abominations. It was unheard of, an impossibility. Oliver had become his life’s work. His obsession.

‘I know you are hiding something, boy,’ said the worldsinger. ‘You may pass the crystal but you are not telling me everything, I can feel it in my gut.’

‘Been staying at the Three Bells, have you?’ muttered the sergeant. ‘We’ll have to do something about the state of their kitchen.’

Pullinger ignored the jibes. ‘What do you have to fear, Oliver? You are normal physically. You wouldn’t end up with the broken gibbering things at Hawklam Asylum, I can promise you that.’