Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

‘Commodore; or should I call you Samson?’

‘Let that old name rest,’ said the commodore. ‘It has brought its line nothing but misery. In another world where Isambard Kirkhill never made his mischief I would have been proud to bear my noble title and partake of the luxuries that would have been mine. But in this world it’s better to be poor old Blacky, rather than an outlaw by a wicked accident of birth.’

She looked over at Nickleby who was asleep, sweating. He did not look well, clutching his bloody stump of an arm. There were two others in the cell. A large fierce-looking steamman and a boy with tattered clothing — perhaps a year older than her.

‘Who are they?’

‘Two bad turns, that’s for sure,’ said the commodore. ‘Our jailers swear he is feybreed and have posted Special Guards down the corridor to make sure he doesn’t escape. I think he’s been touched by the moonlight — but you should hear his blessed laugh. It’s like a demon cackling and he sits there and talks to himself sometimes.’ Black pointed to an open cell opposite their own; there was an ugly black gun-like thing and a rusty old knife sealed inside a crystal case, and a brace of more normal-looking pistols next door to it. The blade of the knife seemed to be writhing and twisting like a snake. ‘That dark gun is alive. Sometimes the boy and the steamman call out to it and you can just hear it answer back from under the glass. The boy’s friend is a vicious one for sure, not like our gentle old Coppertracks. Stay well clear of that hammer, lass, or he’ll split your pretty skull.’

Molly peered through the bars, trying to look down the walkway. She could not see anything. ‘Guardsmen. They should be smashing this bloody place up.’

‘They’re helping that devil of a revolutionary, Molly. No chance for us now, lass. Nickleby and me are to be measured up for metal suits in an hour. By tomorrow night we’ll both be fit for naught but mu-bodies for poor old Coppertracks. Clunking around these infernal caverns like metal ghosts, toiling like slaves for Tzlayloc and his mortal evil schemes.’

Molly hugged the submariner. ‘I’m sorry, commodore. This is my fault. You tried to help me and now you are both going to end up like Sainty and the rest of the Sun Gate workhouse.’

‘No tears for Blacky, now,’ said the commodore. ‘My stars have seen me cheating death since the day I was born on my ancient old boat. Better I perish down here than get thrown into the royal breeding house as a prize heifer expected to serve parliament’s cruel pleasure.’

Molly went over towards the four-legged steamman.

‘Leave him alone,’ said Oliver. ‘He’s in no mood to be a spectacle to a Middlesteel street urchin.’

‘Who are you?’ retorted Molly. ‘His mother? He’s in pain.’

‘Let me suffer,’ groaned Steamswipe. ‘I have failed the duty charged to me by King Steam for a second time. This fate is all I deserve.’

‘You are drawing too much power for your body-to-weight profile,’ said Molly, scooping up a handful of mud from the floor and shaping it over the rents in his stack. ‘And you are no good to King Steam lying here on the floor feeling sorry for yourself.’

Steamswipe breathed a sigh of relief, the red light behind his visor growing brighter. Molly popped a hatch in his belly armour and started to work on the steamman knight’s innards, her fingers pushing cogs back in place, adjusting boards and pulling out broken components.

‘You’re her ,’ said Oliver. ‘You’re the plan of offence.’

‘Quiet,’ said Molly. ‘How can I work with you twittering on?’

Marching boots sounded down the corridor and Molly closed the hatch, hiding what she had been doing with her body.

Captain Flare appeared outside their cell, a boy by his side, the only one in the captain’s retinue not in a guardsman’s uniform. He looked familiar to Oliver, the subject of a hundred vicious caricatures by the penny sheets’ illustrators.

‘Dear Circle,’ said Molly. ‘Prince Alpheus!’

Oliver stood up. ‘Have you come to gloat? You couldn’t have taken me without half the guard at your back.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the captain. He held up a sheaf of papers. ‘I have your registration records, Oliver Brooks. The worldsingers did not know what you are and neither did Tzlayloc’s killers. You’re not a wolftaker; I have confirmation of that from the horse’s mouth. You seem to have wandered into all this by accident.’

‘When your friends murdered my family it was not an accident.’

‘It was the Court of the Air’s own people who did that. At least, the ones loyal to Tzlayloc.’

‘Why are you here, guardsman?’ said Molly. ‘You’re meant to be protecting us.’

‘I’m here to make an offer,’ said the captain. ‘As to the rest of it, I doubt you would understand, Damson Templar.’

‘I’m not interested,’ said Oliver.

‘You haven’t heard my offer yet,’ said Captain Flare.

‘They all sound the same after a while,’ said Oliver. ‘You’ve come to offer me the same thing that the worldsingers used to every week I was dragged into a police station to sign the county register.’

‘But with one significant difference.’ Flare tapped the torc around his neck. ‘The Commonshare’s worldsingers have removed the hex. The Special Guard are free — no more executions on the order’s whims, no more campaigns foisted upon us by the House of Guardians. We are free!’

‘Is that all?’ said Oliver. ‘You sold out cheap.’

‘Don’t be asinine, Oliver. We get our own grant of land. Judging by your choice of travelling companion you obviously came by the Steammen Free State. Why not the Feybreed Free State as well? We receive the southern uplands for our part in this. No one wants to live that near the feymist curtain anyway. We shall offer our children to it — we shall found a city of the fey. Free fey.’

‘I hope you are not planning to have families,’ said Oliver. ‘What we’ve got isn’t the winter fever. You can’t pass immun ity down a bloodline. The mist’s changes to your children’s bodies will kill eight out of ten you leave to the curtain.’

‘We shall learn, Oliver. We know nothing about the feymist — you are living proof of that. You spent your entire childhood inside the curtain. You can teach us how to survive.’

‘You’re a fool, captain,’ said Oliver. ‘Do you think your allies intend to allow the south of Jackals to become the fey-breeding capital of the world? They’ll use you to help smash the kingdom then show you the inside of a Gideon’s Collar the moment you are of no use to them.’

‘You could not defeat us,’ said Captain Flare. ‘And neither will they. We have fought for our freedom and we shall fight to keep it. Whomever we have to.’

‘Enjoy the illusion of it while you can, guardsman. I have seen inside the souls of those you call compatriot and they are rotten to the core.’

‘So much power and it’s all going to go to waste,’ said Flare. ‘The order should never have kept you at Hundred Locks. You should have been with us from the start. Now you are going to compound their error by dying down here. The wolftaker wants to bring in some of his associates to rip your mind to shreds, to see how many of his crooked friends you uncovered on the way to tracking us all down here. If you come with me as a Special Guardsman, Wildrake will have no choice but to content himself with your steamman attendant.’

‘If the price of my freedom is the subjugation of everyone else in Jackals, you can bloody keep it,’ said Oliver.

By the captain’s side the young prince stared at Commodore Black. ‘Why do you gawp at me so, old man?’