Stephen Hunt - The Court of the Air

It was unthinkable. They were the rule-set. Rules did not break themselves. Down that road madness lay. Yet there it was, the name on the card. The Observer could not have known how things were going to develop down here to the level of detail necessary to make an unauthorized intervention of such delicacy. She could not have known he would have to wait now, investigate the threads of this, could she? There was all his fun thrown out of the window. A little beating for the enemy well out of sight, then he would have got to close this place down and remove all evidence of playtime with the Wildcaotyl and the greater darkness they wanted to invite into reality. Tearing the wings off insects was such fun too.

He began the process of erasure.

Hell. They were all going to die anyway.

Commodore Black had been maudlin ever since Oliver had turned them back from the walls of Tock House. ‘Has it come to this, then? A company of Commonshare oafs billeted in my fine house. Draining my cellar and packing everything of value in their knapsacks for their journey home.’

‘They were waiting for us,’ said Oliver. ‘Tzlayloc will have our blood codes posted with every patrol in Middlesteel.’

‘Ah, lad, do not say that. Let’s make a run for the coast and leave Jackals to Tzlayloc and his cohorts.’

Oliver shook his head. There was no distance far enough to make them safe if Jackals fell to the Wildcaotyl. So they had crept past the outside privy and into the back yard of the only house in the capital where Oliver imagined he might receive a half-friendly welcome. He tried the back door. Locked.

‘Let me pass, lad. I have a small talent with locks.’ The commodore picked up an old nail nearly covered over by the snow and started to lever it gently into the door’s mechanism. ‘Listen to the canny tumblers clicking, this is a better lock than the door it stands in, Oliver.’

‘Not a talent that I would imagine comes in useful often on an underwater boat?’

‘Poor old Blacky, pursued for his family name with nothing but a gallows or a cell in the royal breeding house waiting for him. You would acquire a knack for picking locks too if you were in my sea boots.’

With a clack the door opened into a darkened room. The whole place looked deserted, just the smell of blow-barrel sap and gun oil to welcome them.

‘Step forward,’ said a voice. ‘Run and I’ll cut you down.’

‘Mother?’ said Oliver. ‘It’s me, Oliver Brooks. Phileas’s son.’

A small oil lamp lit up with a strike of its igniter. Mother Loade was sitting in an armchair with a barrel-sized gun pointing at them — the same kind of pressure repeater he had seen the steammen knights carrying around Mechancia. No range, but deadly this close.

‘Where’s Harold, boy.’

Oliver pointed a finger to the ceiling. ‘Snatched.’

She tutted. ‘So naughty Harold’s luck finally ran out. Not that it matters much now.’

‘We tried out front first, Mother. Your shop sign’s down and the windows are boarded up. If I hadn’t seen your adverts in the back of Field and Fern I wouldn’t have been able to find your place.’

‘Why do you think that is, boy? My useless husband ran for the coast when the shifties showed up and my apprentices have all disappeared. Right now all my trade is good for is a place on a production line in an armaments workshop.’

Oliver flicked his eyes enquiringly towards the ceiling.

‘I got a penny note from my son before the crystalgrid went down. One word. Bedtime. Do you know what that means, boy?’

‘Blessed Circle,’ said the commodore. ‘Oliver, this damson you have brought old Blacky to in our hour of need, she’s not what I think she is, is she? This damson’s with the Court, isn’t she?’

Mother Loade looked at the commodore. ‘You, I don’t know.’

‘Run silent, run deep. That’s what your little crystalgrid message means. Like a boat being hunted by a Jackelian aerostat. Except this time around it’s the shifties doing the hunting. And all the wolftakers and whistlers doing the hiding.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘That’s just a little bit more than you should know. Are you trade?’

‘Ah lass, poor old Blacky is no player in the vicious games run by you and your friends. He’s only the poor fox, hunted down without mercy by the wolftakers for the unhappy accident of his birth.’

‘Well dearie, now there’s three of us that don’t want to be questioned at a barricade or checkpoint-’ she stopped as she saw Oliver taking off his coat, eyes widening at the brace of pistols holstered at his side.

‘I kept your knife,’ said Oliver.

‘Sweet Circle,’ she whispered. ‘They really exist.’ She extended a hand and Oliver passed one of the pistols over. Mother Loade held the gun, her hand trembling as she marvelled at the silver engraving, the carefully rendered lions of Jackals, their malevolent patina.

‘I never thought I would see one of these.’ She looked up at Oliver. ‘I can’t protect you now, boy. Not for your father’s memory. They’ll come for you, eventually.’

Oliver took back the pistol and slid it into the holster. ‘Harry didn’t know about these, did he?’

‘He’s not a weaponsmith,’ said Mother. ‘And he never did have much time for legends. But the Court of the Air has weaponsmiths, boy. From places you wouldn’t even believe. They will understand, they will know. They always do.’

‘They have other things to occupy them right now,’ said Oliver.

From the front door a banging sounded, Mother jumping in her chair. Oliver extended his senses and his heart sank, a shiftie officer and a company of the metal-fleshers stood in the street. Commodore Black peered through a crack in the boarded-up window. ‘Blessed troops in the passage behind the shop too.’

Mother waved at the rifles racked on the shelves. ‘Who would have thought the Carlists read Field and Fern too? We’re blown. What do you think the punishment for possession of a private armoury is?’

Oliver slid two glass charges from his bandolier. ‘I don’t believe the new courts will favour transportation.’

‘Already tried that.’ Mother Loade walked down the corridor, trailing an accordion-like pipe from her steamman gun back to her pressure stove. ‘I’m too old for this nonsense.’

‘Open up,’ commanded the voice from outside the door. ‘In the name of the Jackelian Commonshare.’

‘Don’t worry dearie,’ shouted Mother Loade. Her giant steamman weapon began to whistle like a kettle. ‘I’m about to open up for you.’

She pushed a lever up on the weapon and it screeched with a noise like a saw blade tearing through a log. The door shattered in half, covering Oliver, the commodore and Mother in a back-blast of splinters. Mother kicked away the two halves of the door hanging from its frame. When she pushed the lever back on the gun there was a rain of metal balls from the weapon’s canister as the gun’s gravity feed kicked in, reloading.

The officer had been thrown to the other side of the street, his blue uniform turned into a mess of crimson rags.

‘Welcome to Middlesteel, dearie.’ She turned to the equalized revolutionaries and hefted up the pressure repeater. ‘And as for you lot, you’re a bloody disgrace.’

‘Mother, no!’

Oliver dragged the commodore back into the shelter of the shop as she triggered the heavy weapon, the storm of pellets hosing across the metal-fleshers; the revolutionaries were thrown back, death by a thousand cuts as balls ruptured iron and pierced their buried organs, the blizzard of ricochets cracking windows in the street and raising clouds of brick dust. The sawing noise cut off. Mother was lying face down in the street and Oliver ran over to her. Rolled her over. She was bleeding from a hundred ricochet wounds, her eyes fighting to stay open. ‘I’ll tell your father when I see him, dearie, before I move along the Circle.’