The Court of the Air

Chapter Eleven

It had been a week since Oliver and the disreputable Stave had traded the warmth of the narrowboat for the damp ferns and wind-whipped moors that ran across Angelset, from the town of Ewehead to the outskirts of Shadowclock. To avoid the blood machines and the county constabulary they kept off the crown roads and away from the toll cottages, trekking across open countryside.

Little of the land seemed to be under cultivation; the border with Quatershift was only a few miles to the east. The presence of the cursewall — and the continual eerie whistling as that dark product of the worldsinger arts absorbed the wind — had been enough to empty any of the villages that had not been laid to waste during the Two-Year War. Now at last it felt to Oliver like he was really an outlaw. They avoided human company, keeping to the wilds, always with an eye to the nearest copse, wood or gully — in case the shadow of one of the RAN’s small border patrol scouts appeared on the skyline. Even in summer the moorland they crossed seemed like a desolate, blasted place. Freezing nights, soggy mornings and only the occasional wild pony or tail-hawk for company.

When they found streams, they would replenish their canteens and Harry would boil up water to make a stew from the dried meats and bacon that Damson Loade had crammed into their travel packs. She had also given them an earthenware jug of her favourite jinn, corked with a silver stopper in the shape of a bull’s head. The most that could be said for the sharp-tasting firewater was that it warmed them briefly, before they turned in at night under the tent that filled up most of Oliver’s bag.

Oliver had also kept the edition of the newspaper that revealed the killings at Hundred Locks. When Harry was not looking, he would unwrap the newspaper and stare at the remains of his old life fixed in print, hoping the details would make sense if he just pondered them long enough. The boring repetitive chores, the invisible cage of his registration order, they seemed to belong to someone else now.

The tent that Oliver lugged around was a strange-looking affair, a blocky harlequin patchwork of greens, browns and black. Harry said a transaction engine had turned out the design; specifically fabricated to disrupt the lines an eye would interpret as a man-made object. Up close it was enough to give Oliver a headache just looking at it. Once, he had pointed at one of the ruined villages, now in the shadow of a wood, and suggested they might camp under the shelter of one of the more solid cottages.

Harry just shook his head. ‘They’re abandoned for a reason, Oliver. Towards the end of the Two-Year War the Commonshare was getting desperate. Their invasion had been beaten back, their large cities had been bombed into rubble by the RAN’s aerostats; the human wave attacks by the brigades of the people’s army had failed; the Carlist uprising in Jackals had been crushed. So Quatershift resorted to mage-war. Their worldsingers hexed shells filled with plague spores and earthflow particles drained from the leylines, and they unveiled their secret weapon. Long Tim.’

‘Long Tim?’

‘After Timlar Prestlon, the mechomancer who created their long cannon. There’s one on display outside the barracks of the Frontier Light Horse; steam-driven monsters with a barrel as tall as the offices of a Middlesteel counting house. During the war the Commonshare was shelling most of Angelset from as far away as Perlaise.’

‘The war was over eight years before I was born, Harry,’ said Oliver. ‘The ruins would be safe now, no?’

‘The Commonshare was not playing four-poles, Oliver. They didn’t load their balls with shrapnel or blow-barrel sap. The devil’s potion their worldsingers brewed up made people sick, like being hit by a dozen plagues at once. The earthflow particles caused transmutations on top of it all — like being caught in a feymist, but without the slim chance of survival. During the months it took the order to neutralize their sorcery, tens of thousands of our people died in agony in this county. Some of that filth could still be active down in the ruins.’

‘But Jackals won the Two-Year War.’

‘For our sins, we did. The Special Guard smashed Long Tim, my people made Timlar disappear and furnished him with a nice warm cell in the Court of the Air, and the fury on the floor of parliament gave the First Guardian the backing he needed to overturn the conduct of war act of 1501. The RAN dirt-gassed the shifties’ second city, Reudox. They say the stench of the corpses was so bad that the God-Emperor could smell the carnage across the border in Kikkosico. Parliament sent the First Committee a list of towns and cities that would be gassed from the air, one every two days. Reudox was head of the list. We accepted their armistice the next morning.’

‘That’s horrible, Harry.’

‘As bad as it gets, old stick. But I am a scalpel, not the surgeon, so what do I know? Perhaps the Court could have stopped the war, but we’ve always been wary of being too hard-slap outside of Jackals; the world’s just too big, too complicated for us to act as high sheriff to every ha’penny kingdom and nation out there. When you’re faced with mob dynamics, taking the wolf without killing the flock is all but impossible. If our thinkers had spotted the trend early enough, maybe we could have landed Ben Carl a nice contract writing penny dreadfuls for Dock Street. Maybe we could have put Community and the Commons on the back shelf of the public library rather than the House of Guardians’ suppressed list.’

‘If he hadn’t written it, someone else would have.’

‘Which comes first, the movement or the man, yes?’ said Harry. ‘You’ve a fine mind, Oliver. It’s been wasted malingering in the shadow of Toby Fall Rise — if we get through this, I’ll have to see if I can change your fortunes.’

‘Does the Court of the Air take potential feybreed?’

Harry winked at Oliver. ‘You’ll be surprised at some of the people who turn up on the wolftakers’ pay-book. They even took me in.’

So they moved on. Past the destroyed villages and the roads overgrown with knee-high grass and brambles. Avoiding the shadows of aerostats and the silhouettes of red-coated riding officers traversing the hills and valleys. On the seventh night since they’d begun travelling overland Oliver was sleeping fitfully in his blanket roll. Images of Uncle Titus danced before him, puppet strings dangling from the sky where the unseen masters of the Court made him jig and jerk at their whim.

The Whisperer was trying to break through into his dream. Oliver could feel the pressure of the thing’s loneliness like a thousand-weight lifting stone from a pugilist’s pit pressing on his chest. The dream was not well formed enough for the Whisperer to break through, though; there needed to be substance to his dreamscape for the thing to appear.

‘Oliver,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘I can’t reach you.’

‘What did you say?’ Oliver shouted into the emptiness.

‘She is here; by all that is holy, I can feel her coming.’

‘Who, Whisperer?’ said Oliver. ‘Who is coming?’

‘Her! HER. I am water in the ocean before her, spittle in a hurricane. Dear Circle — her perfection — makes me — an animalcule in the stomach — of the universe. So small-’

‘You’re breaking up, Whisperer,’ said Oliver.

‘Shadow — in — the — light.’ The Whisperer’s presence faded to nothingness.

With the press of the cold moorland wind, Oliver awoke. The flap of the tent had come loose. Harry was at the opposite end of the canvas cover, snoring loudly as usual, wrapped up in his bedroll.

The first glimmering of sunrise reached into the sky outside, fingers of orange and purple climbing down to the horizon. Two deer stood a hundred yards from their tent, a doe and a stag, cautiously sniffing the air. They seemed oblivious to the presence of the woman sitting cross-legged in front of them, protected from the chill of the morning by nothing more than a white Catosian-style toga.

Oliver threw on his long-necked wool jumper, pulled up his trousers and went outside. Something about the woman seemed familiar, almost mesmerising. He walked up to face her. ‘Who are you?’

‘Has it been so long, Oliver, that you have forgotten me?’ As the woman spoke, multicoloured lights started to circle in lazy orbits around her head.

‘It was you,’ said Oliver. ‘You who came for me in the land of the feyfolk, beyond the veil.’

One of the lights hummed and the woman smiled at it. ‘You see, I told you he would remember our visit.’ She turned back to Oliver. ‘I had a hard job, Oliver, convincing the people of the fast-time that your place was here, in your own world, with your real family.’

‘I asked you if you were a goddess or an angel,’ said Oliver.

‘And I said to you that if the angel had a hammer, and the hammer had a nail, I might be the nail.’

‘I thought it was a dream,’ said Oliver. ‘You, my time inside the feymist. Everything beyond the veil.’

‘The people of the fast-time move to a different beat, Oliver. The rule-set of their existence is beyond the ability of your mind as it exists here to process. I found it difficult myself to construct meaningful enough arguments to have you returned home by them. I hope you don’t miss your foster family inside the feymist too much.’

‘I hardly remember them now. But considering the life I have had here in Jackals, maybe you should have left me where I was.’

‘I promised your real parents I would save you, Oliver,’ said the woman, gently. ‘I made, well, you might call it a deal, with your father. If I had taken you out of the feymist too soon you would have died of shock. If I had left you beyond the feymist curtain for much longer you would have changed forever and your mind could not have adapted to life in Jackals again.’

Oliver looked back towards the tent where Harry was still sleeping. He knew the agent of the Court would not wake while the woman was here; she could move like a will’o-the wisp across the face of the world.

‘You’re the one the Whisperer was talking about.’

She nodded. ‘We have been playing a small game of tag, he and I, across the minds of the people of Jackals. Poor twisted Nathaniel Harwood, trapped in his decaying body and trapped in his dirty cell. The feymist curtain is a bridge, Oliver, and it seems every bridge must have its troll hiding underneath.’

‘Nathaniel. So that is his real name,’ said Oliver. ‘I wish you could help him.’

‘I am known as an Observer, Oliver, not an interferer. My interventions are discreet — no parting of the seas, no plagues of insects, no famines or resurrections. Free will, Oliver. You make your own heaven or hell here. Do not look to the uncaring sky for salvation, seek it inside yourself.’

‘What are you doing in Jackals, then?’ asked Oliver.

‘Trouble at the mill, young man. There are forces outside the system, unpleasant, foreign elements, that would love to burrow inside our universe, sup on it like parasites feeding on the flesh of a live hen. Not much room in their philosophy for free will, or any kind of will at all. Your people have met the agents of this evil before. In fact, it is better said that it was your kind’s belief in them that created these agents in the first place. They are called the Wildcaotyl. They are corrupt entities and the evil they serve is beyond the measure of my scale, let alone yours.’

‘Then you’re here to save us?’

She laughed loudly, as if that was deeply amusing, the funniest thing in the world. ‘No, Oliver. I am a nail, a tool. I can batten down the storm shutters, but I cannot divert the storm. I cannot save the village without annihilating it.’

An uneasy feeling crept through Oliver, an insight too terrible to contemplate. ‘You’re not here to save us. You are here to destroy us.’

‘The rule-set can’t be changed from outside, Oliver. We simply will not allow it. Never. If it comes to it, if a corruption takes and spreads, everything will be wiped out, the board cleared of pieces, every piece of matter you have known or have touched, even time itself, will be erased. Nothing to be given over to the enemy — nothing!’

‘But we can stop the end of the world,’ said Oliver. ‘Free will. We can choose.’

‘Yes, but your people are always choosing to believe in the wrong thing, Oliver. The Circlist church was good; closer to the truth than your vicars and parsons realize. But the landlord doesn’t like her tenants inviting in troublesome guests. You know the sort. Angry types who get above their station, urinating against the walls, trying to grab the freehold and making threats. When the landlord sees that, she draws up an eviction order. And Oliver, trust me on this, your people don’t want to find out what life is like living rough on the street.’

‘So that’s it,’ said Oliver. ‘My whole life, I’ve just been a pawn in your game of gods?’

‘No, Oliver,’ said the Observer. ‘You are my knight, and more. And one I am very fond of. You get to choose your own moves — you all do. It would please me greatly if the game could go on forever. But that is rather up to you.’

‘You have intervened,’ said Oliver. ‘What do you call our conversation right now? What do you call dragging me back here to Jackals when I was only five years old?’

The woman looked over at a tree, as if she had noticed something that confused her, and the little spheres of light revolving around her seeming to spin faster. Her attention returned to Oliver. ‘Only in so much as I can choose to gently correct any imbalances caused by the presence of external forces, the ones who have no place here such as the Wildcaotyl and their masters. Of course, how I choose to paper over the cracks is left to my discretion, Oliver. But we are fast moving beyond the point where a little extra wattle and daub around the edges is going to keep the roof from leaking. It is going to get fundamental very quickly. When that happens, what I want or do not want is going to matter very little indeed. I will be removed, Oliver. No more nails. No more damage limitation. You will be assigned something very dangerous with a very short fuse instead.’

‘Are you alright?’ asked Oliver. ‘You look shaky.’

‘I — need to — go, Oliver. Too much resolution. I am not used to operating at this level of detail, constrained in this silly body. I am a big-picture girl — at — heart. The fractal beauty of the branches, splitting into — leaf upon leaf — simplicity from complexity — complexity from simplicity.’ She was fading, the thrumming noise of her lights growing more intense.

‘Before you go, I know why the feymist curtain is here,’ said Oliver. ‘Why it appeared a thousand years ago in Jackals, infecting children at random, killing most of the adults it touches.’

‘Clever boy.’ Tears were running down the woman’s face.

‘The land beyond the mist, the feyfolk: they won’t be destroyed, will they? They’re not part of this, not part of our universe. That’s why the mist infects some of us — to allow a few of us to survive outside of our world, to escape extinction, for the race of man to continue to exist beyond the curtain. It’s an escape tunnel your kind punched directly into the heart of Jackals.’

‘Should it come to it, Oliver,’ said the Observer, ‘you will know when to cut and run. Only the fey can survive beyond the veil. Breeding pairs, Oliver, lead mainly breeding pairs into the mist.’

She was gone and the lash of the dawn wind seemed colder.

Oliver was left with the memory of a scared five-yearold boy, standing alone outside one of the upland villages that clung precariously close to the feymist curtain. Trying to talk to a crowd of villagers who were curious and terrified in equal measure by this child from beyond. He showed them the pendant that the Observer had given him as a talisman, the one with the miniature painting of his birth mother inside.

Not for the first time his old life had ended.

‘Order, order,’ shouted the speaker, banging her gavel. She had never seen the chamber so full. Guardians who normally only showed up in Middlesteel for lunch at their club once a year were thronging the hall. Opposite her, the doors to the cramped press gallery had been shut and the hyenas of Dock Street were being turned away.

Yesterday’s events had even roused Tinfold from his deathbed, the ancient steamman and leader of the Levellers still representing Workbarrows as Guardian despite the failing state of his body.

A brief hush fell over the chamber as Hoggstone took his seat on the front benches, followed by the minister from the Department of War, looking pale at the prospect of what was to come.

‘This House calls the minister for the Board of the Royal Aerostatical Navy to read his prepared statement,’ announced the speaker.

‘Guardians elect,’ began the minister. ‘I have received the preliminary details from the Admirals of the Blue in the matter of the RAN Resolute’s unauthorized bombardment of Middlesteel. These details serve as a preface to the official crown enquiry. Contrary to the sensational speculations of the Dock Street news sheets, at no point was any order issued through the chain of command for the RAN Resolute to assault the capital. Its actions in this matter were entirely unrelated to the disgraceful civil disturbances taking place in many sections of the city at this time. A detail underlined by the fact that the list of casualties in the airship’s unlawful bombardment include many prominent officers of the Middlesteel constabulary, militia, magistrates, order of worldsingers and fencible regiments attempting to restore order to the capital.’

‘Resign!’ shouted one of the Guardians on the Heartlander seats, the call taken up in a hiss by many of the parliamentarians.

Flustered, the minister continued. ‘The RAN Resolute deviated from the Admiralty’s written orders to patrol the Medfolk and Shapshire county boundary. The master of the Resolute lied to his own officers, falsely claiming that the vessel had received orders to put down an armed Carlist uprising in the capital.’

On the opposition benches Tinfold waved a small yellow flag. The speaker recognized the point of order and the steamman rose to make his argument. ‘Perhaps the honourable gentleman of the War Office would care to explain why one of the navy’s most experienced airmasters, a veteran of some forty years’ service, would bombard one of our cities?’

‘Well,’ said the minister. ‘That is to say, we believe the commander went insane. Briefly.’

There were guffaws from around the chamber. Some of the Guardians on the government bench started to whistle, mimicking the air that frequently escaped from the steamman’s malfunctioning boiler. Tinfold ignored their jibes. ‘Yes, that is the fragment of this tale I find most troubling. We have rather a lot of warships and rather a lot of airmasters on the payroll. I find myself a little discomfited to realize that any one of them at any time could suddenly take it into their head to overfly one of our cities and firebomb it.’

‘Actions have been taken.’

The minister was shouted down.

‘How convenient that Captain Dorian Kemp took his own life, saving us the cost of his court martial,’ said Tinfold.

‘My point exactly,’ said the minister. ‘The taking of one’s own life is hardly the act of a sane man.’

‘Sanity seems to be a relative term when applied to those who serve in the navy,’ retorted Tinfold, producing a copy of The Middlesteel Sentinel. ‘Although their antics do seem to produce a steady stream of fodder for the cartoonists of Dock Street.’

A large monochrome illustration on the cover of the steamman’s paper showed the wide-eyed airmaster of the Resolute reading a government act on the command deck of his airship. The bill read: The Slum Clearance Act of1596.

Both sides of the chamber erupted in a tirade of name-calling and hooting. On the chamber floor the footmen of the Master Whip stood ready with their Sleeping Henrys in case any of the benches tried to rush their political rivals. Ex-political police with at least twenty years’ service, these lictors were notoriously ready to dispense violence if the Guardians resorted to fisticuffs. Limited editions of old cartoons showing the more notorious riots on the floor of parliament were always in demand among collectors.

One of the shadow ministers from the Middle Circleans finally lost his temper as an empty mug of caffeel tossed his way shattered by his feet. Rising with a roar he kicked past a footman, sending him toppling over. Beatrice Swoop, the current Master Whip, flicked her cat-o’-nine-tails around the shadow’s left leg, upending the politician with a deft jerk upwards. Her footmen jumped on him like hyenas, two of them holding him down while a third laid into him with his Sleeping Henry, coshing him around the face.

The rest of the lictors held the party line, brandishing their bludgeons as the Guardians forgot their shouting match and briefly united to throw papers and heavy parliament bills at the Master Whip’s forces.

‘Order, ORDER!’ screamed the speaker. As the din subsided she waved her red flag of censure. ‘The honourable shadow from the Middle Circleans is banned from the House for a period of one week. Will the lictors please remove him to the parliamentary surgeon’s office.’

There was a moment’s respectful silence as the unconscious politician was dragged away by his feet from the debating chamber. ‘The First Guardian has the floor,’ ordered the speaker.

Hoggstone stood up behind the leader’s table on his side of the chamber. ‘Like my honourable friend from the opposition.’ He paused to give a little whistle. ‘I find myself more than a little disconcerted that a rogue RAN officer can take it into his head to falsify Admiralty orders in front of his crew and attack the heart of our fair land. Of course, unlike my honourable friend and his Leveller colleagues, the Guardians of the Purist party currently hold the majority in parliament and so we are obliged to do more than just stand around letting off steam on the matter.’

Loud calls of approbation rose up from the government benches.

‘We have consulted with the Admiralty and Greenhall, and with the assistance of the order of worldsingers, the cabinet has arrived at a plan of action to ensure this terrible tragedy does not reoccur.’

‘How?’ someone yelled. ‘By resigning?’

Ignoring the whispered chant of ‘resign, resign, resign’, the First Guardian continued. ‘The order of worldsingers proposes to test the minds of all airmasters and flag officers of the RAN for signs of both madness and undeclared feymist infections. Until that truth-saying is completed, which the order estimates will take the best part of a month, the bulk of the fleet will remain stationed at their bases around Shadowclock.’

There were murmurs of discontent from the wealthier Guardians, the ones who used their fortunes to help lubricate the franchised voters in their wards.

‘This grounding does of course apply only to the high fleet of war. The aerostats of the merchant marine will continue to serve the cargo and passenger routes as normal. This is the proposal the executive puts before this House and I thoroughly recommend it.’

‘Point of order,’ called the speaker. ‘Is there anyone who wishes to challenge this proposal being put before the House?’

Hoggstone glared at his own benches. Only a Guardian from the party in power could challenge a cabinet proposal. Fowler and Dorrit shifted anxiously in their seats but said nothing. Half of Fowler’s family had purchased commissions in the navy — as much as the jealous old fool would like to challenge him, he could not intervene without stirring up more trouble for his navy friends. Hoggstone shifted his attention to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his backbench cronies. Not that the Chancellor would challenge him directly, that would not be four-poles. Guardian Aldwych rose from in front of the treasury faction. Shrewd. An ex-cavalry colonel, he had no love for the jack cloudies in the navy. ‘I challenge the proposal.’

‘Do you, sir?’ boomed Hoggstone.

‘I do, sir,’ said the Guardian, defiantly.

The Speaker of the House raised her hand. ‘The honourable gentleman is facing a challenge from within his own party. Master Whip, will you please clear the floor and issue red rods to the First Guardian and the challenging member.’

A banging cheer echoed across the chamber, the Guardians thumping the benches in anticipation. Hoggstone dipped his hands in the chalk-powder box by the side of the platform used for debating sticks. His opponent theatrically twirled his moustache as he received his red rod from a lictor. Aldwych was a bruiser and a chancer — his ancestors had switched sides from the King to parliament when they saw which way the wind was blowing. Centuries later and the Aldwych heirs were still tacking their sails against the winds of fortune.

How they looked down their noses at Hoggstone, whose father had died of the yellow plague, whose sainted mother had been a common patcher, climbing the pneumatics with nothing but a soldering iron, a bag of rubber seals and the need to feed six hungry children.

‘Time to retire, old man,’ hissed Aldwych as they faced each other on the platform. ‘Time to hand the First Guardianship to someone who’ll use it to make Jackals great, not just line their pockets with merchant guineas.’

‘Someone like my chancellor, perhaps? When I need m’ledger balanced I’ll be sure and come over to the Treasury offices at Greenhall. Until then, sir, I will take counsel from where I see fit.’

Aldwych whipped his red rod across and tried to land a blow on the First Guardian’s face. Hoggstone ducked to the side and saw his own blow blocked by his challenger’s staff. Just as Hoggstone thought. Aldwych was precise and powerful, but predictable. A typical product of the House Horse Guards. No creativity, no art in his moves. The staff school of Bludgeon, Bludgeon and Trample.

Stamping to try and distract Hoggstone, Aldwych swung his red rod across, then reversed and swung again, repeating the movement in a fusillade of blows.

Too canny to trade windmills with the Guardian, Hoggstone deflected the blows side on — a flat fighting profile the inhabitants of the Middlesteel rookeries called eeling, after the cantankerous eels fished out of the Gambleflowers.

Aldwych was sweating, tiring. Red rod was far heavier than a training staff or a duelling rod. The ancient debating sticks came from an age when parliamentarians still wore mail armour under their gentleman’s cloaks. The young buck was slowing now, and Hoggstone feinted, then landed a jab on the Guardian’s knee.

Yelping with pain, Aldwych dropped down and Hoggstone crowned his skull with a smashing blow. The challenge was over. Aldwych lay sprawled unconscious on the debating sticks platform.

‘The issue has been decided in favour of the First Guardian,’ announced the speaker. ‘The proposal is now before the House. Those in favour?’

A sea of yellow flags was raised.

‘Those against?’

The opposition Guardians contested the proposition, waving their flags. Even lathered in sweat and still panting, Hoggstone could see that he had carried the day. No one in his party had dared oppose him after the Chancellor’s play for power had been beaten down, and the Purists still held the numbers after the last election.

‘The proposal is carried,’ announced the speaker, banging her gavel.

Hoggstone stared up at the press gallery, at the illustrators scribbling furiously away on their pads. He was not a gambling man, but if he had been, the First Guardian would have betted that Dock Street’s headlines tomorrow would describe how close he had come to being defeated by a rebellion in his own ranks.

A bit of roughhouse theatre for the pensmen, and the rising death toll from the docks would be safely buried away on the inside pages. But then the hacks did not want the truth. They wanted whatever sold their penny sheets.

Yes. Quite a satisfactory afternoon’s work.

Shifting from foot to foot, the red-coated soldiers were trying to keep warm as they waited on the icy moor. Jamie Wildrake looked at them with dissatisfaction. They were the scrapings of Jackals’ gutter. While every child — every gentleman — aspired to join the Royal Aerostatical Navy, protectors of the realm worshipped by the people, what was left for the regiments of the new pattern army? Occupation of towns left flattened by airship bombardments? Bad rations and the discipline of the strap? No wonder the doomsmen often had to offer criminals the choice of service in lieu of transportation, spilling the human debris of the jails into the Jackelian military.

But convicts were what the wolftaker needed this day, especially red-coated criminals who had been taken in by his false colonel’s papers when he had turned up at their poorly manned border garrison.

Wildrake could feel his muscles straining as he lifted one of the granite boulders from the soggy ground. The pressure on his arms was exquisite, each rise of the rock building him up, making his body harder and stronger, little footsteps on the infinite road to perfection. By contrast, the soldiers of the Twelfth Frontier Foot sat on their packsacks and smoked mumbleweed pipes, bodies soft and fleshy, clothed in layers of fat from too many days spent warming themselves by the fire in their hill fort. Watching the rain beat down on the moors while they chewed salted beef and swigged their daily ration of blackstrap. Sending patrols out to check the listening posts to make sure the shifties were not trying to dig surreptitious tunnels under the killing warp of their own cursewall.

Wildrake did not know how the soldiers could bear to exist with those loose rolls of flesh hanging around their bellies and off their arms. Where was their self-respect? Could they not feel the hum and tensions of their sinews calling out to be stressed and pained with exercise? Pain for the lats, pain for the pectorals, pain for the deltoids and hams. Glorious.

He chewed a fresh cud of shine and watched for the wagon coming from the south. It arrived within an hour of the time he had agreed with Tariq. The soldiers looked nervously at the white paint on the box-like caravan being pulled across the wet moorland by a train of six massive shire horses. Their fear intensified when they caught sight of the twin snakes of the surgeon’s guild on the side.

‘Colonel,’ coughed the company’s lieutenant. ‘That carriage is sporting a plague wagon’s livery.’

‘A small deception, lieutenant,’ said Wildrake. ‘To transport a delicate cargo.’

The driver of the wagon dropped down to the soil and grasped Wildrake’s arm in the Cassarabian style. ‘So my friend, does this prophet-cursed land of infidels ever get to see the sun?’

‘The Circle knows better than to waste its light on the head of a sand cur, Tariq.’

‘Ha, is that so?’ laughed the Cassarabian. ‘Well, your gold will sweeten the scent of my counting room all the same — perhaps it will pay for one of those ridiculous shades you use to keep out the rain. I will sit under it and take caffeel in one of your gardens and invite all my friends to my house to see how fine I am.’

‘With a bit of tweed and a decent tailor you can dress up a spaniel as a Jackelian gentleman,’ said Wildrake. ‘But it still barks.’

The Cassarabian went around to the back of the wagon and took a key to the padlock there, sliding out a chain and throwing open the door. ‘I do not need to bark, my friend. I have others to do that for me.’

Two creatures leapt out of the wagon, brown arcs of panther-sized muscle with flat muzzles and wide interlocking fangs, jaws like mill-saws clicking in greedy anticipation. The human eyes buried in their skull-plates flicked over the ranks of the soldiers and the troops fell back terrified.

‘Biologicks!’ said the lieutenant. ‘The church will not suffer their presence in Jackals.’

‘Hence the plague wagon,’ said Wildrake, as if he were explaining to a child. ‘A craftsman needs the right tools, lieutenant.’

‘Colonel, those creatures have been grown inside the wombs of slaves,’ insisted the officer. ‘They are abominations.’

The Cassarabian shook his head. ‘Alikar preserve me from the backward mind of the infidel. What else would you expect us to do with wombs blessed on women by the hundred prophets, bake bread in them?’

‘Their presence in Jackals is prohibited,’ shouted the officer.

‘The state makes the law,’ said Wildrake. ‘And parliament makes the exceptions to that law. We are both servants of that state, lieutenant. Besides, where would a hunt be without its dogs?’

‘Those things are not gun hounds,’ said the lieutenant. Both the creatures were flat on the ground, growling, sensing the hostility of the officer of light foot.

‘They are at least part dog,’ said Wildrake, smiling at the things. They stared back at the agent with their wide children’s eyes. ‘Or is it sand wolf, Tariq?’

‘Colonel, I will not allow my company to follow these unholy blendings, they stand against the Circlelaw,’ spat the lieutenant.

Wildrake slapped the man on his back. ‘You know, a border fort is the last place I would have expected to find a Circlean, lieutenant, among all the shirkers and punishment company men. But I admire a fellow with principles.’

He nodded at Tariq and the Cassarabian spat a command in his desert tongue. Both biologicks sprang forward, tumbling the lieutenant to the grass. He thrashed, rolled and screamed as the man-dog joinings tore him apart.

Wildrake slid his sabre out and waved it like a wand in front of the noses of the terrified soldiers. ‘I am afraid I am not terribly conversant with church doctrine, but a little closer to home, I once read section forty-eight of the regimental code, punishment for mutiny on active service. Does anyone else here think the army would be better run along the lines of a Circlean soup kitchen?’

There were no dissenters.

Both the biologicks left the corpse alone as the Cassarabian made a guttural clicking sound, recalling the creatures.

Wildrake kicked the limp body. ‘So, what do Circlist principles taste like? Somebody’s idea of a joke, posting the fellow to a punishment company.’

One of the beasts gazed at the wolftaker and made a whining noise. It might have been words, but trapped in a canine jaw the human tongue mangled the speech into a bestial whimper. Wildrake patted the creature on the skull as if he understood. ‘You might think Tariq’s two hounds here are the unholy product of Cassarabian womb magic, and you would be right. But you need to understand that the state does not condone their use lightly. The prey we are after are two of the most dangerous killers in all of Jackals. One is a criminal who has been on the run from the crushers for over a decade, leaving a trail of dead police and soldiers in his wake. The other is a fey boy who murdered his own family before escaping the torc.’

Dark murmurs started among the ranks of the superstitious soldiers. Feybreed! The colonel did not have any purple tattoos — surely they needed a worldsinger to subdue a killer touched by the mist? Wildrake flourished his crown warrant. The lieutenant had made an excellent stick. Now it was time for the carrot.

‘As you can see, there is a very generous bounty on the heads of these two killers. Now that the lieutenant has moved along the Circle, his share of the prize money belongs to you. The warrant states dead or alive, but my two hounds here prefer dead — which means less risk for all of us. I have lost some good friends to the hands of these two jiggers, so I will also waive my share of the prize. I want these two assassins eating worms by the end of the day.’

Now the redcoats were happier; they waved their rifles — cheap Brown Jane patterns from Middlesteel’s mills — and gave him a half-hearted cheer. Most of them had probably done worse themselves in the rookeries and slums of whatever Jackelian city they had been arrested in — but they read well enough to understand the large sum of money printed on the warrant.

Wildrake passed Tariq a shirt that had come from the boy’s room in Hundred Locks. The biologicks sniffed at it and stood trembling with anticipation, the taste of human flesh fresh in their mouths. They were used to hunting slaves across the arid ground of Cassarabia and there was always a good meal at the end of a chase.

Nodding at Tariq, Wildrake brandished his sabre in the air. ‘Gentlemen, let the hunt begin.’