The Court of the Air

Chapter Twenty-Six

Commodore Black stepped out in front of the two figures fleeing the battlefield, one of them so weak he was staggering — practically being carried by the other. ‘Ah now, Jamie, it seems like you are in the same pickle as I.’

Jamie Wildrake looked up. ‘Well, well, the Duke of Ferniethian.’

The submariner pointed to the semi-conscious body the agent was hauling behind him. ‘Thinking of becoming a royalist, now your wolftaker friends are after you?’

Wildrake dropped Prince Alpheus’s body in the snow. ‘The House of Guardians will pay to get him back. I’ll share the reward with you.’

‘What’s a king worth, Jamie? As much as the reward that was on my head, for the sea boots of poor old Samson Dark? As much as the blood money they paid you for the fleet in exile? A king must be a rare old thing these days — how many of the royal breeding house did your compatriots push into a Gideon’s Collar?’

Wildrake put his hand on his sabre’s hilt. ‘One too few, it seems. Let’s just say noble pedigrees will be at a premium once the Guardians discover how many royals were processed inside the collars. Now get out of my way, fat man.’

The commodore pulled his sabre out. ‘You’re right to be blessed worried, Jamie. There are worldsingers lying comatose all over Rivermarsh with faces like they’re sucking on a berry with no juice. You’re duelling on barren ground, Jamie, but even without your witch fighting tricks you’ve still got those fine muscles of yours. Why don’t you show me what they’re worth?’

Wildrake thrust out with no warning, his steel springing off the commodore’s sword.

‘Not bad for a fat man, eh?’ said the commodore. ‘The royal fleet wasn’t fussy, we couldn’t afford to be, could we? Our boats took crew from all over. You remember, don’t you?’

Wildrake stamped down and feinted, following through with a slashing cut, but the commodore turned it with hardly a movement. It was the kind of spare duelling style that would serve a fighter well in the confined corridors of a submarine vessel.

‘Concorzia, the Catosian League, the Holy Kikkosico Empire of — all those different fighting styles, you pick up a little bit here, a little bit there.’

Wildrake moved his sword from side to side, trying to batter his way through the commodore’s guard with his superior strength.

‘I would say the Court’s duelling masters were heavily influenced by the east.’

Wildrake switched the sabre to his left hand and darted in, the ring of steel unheard except by the prone form of Prince Alpheus.

‘One cut, one kill,’ said the commodore. ‘Fast, deadly, versatile. Everything they admire out Thar way. You’re good, Jamie.’

‘Shut up!’ shouted Wildrake. ‘Stop talking and fight me!’

‘Be careful of what you wish for, lad.’ The commodore’s sword nipped out and Wildrake caught and turned it, but not before Black nicked the corner of the wolftaker’s shirtsleeve, a line of red blood traced across the white silk.

‘You should have kept your jacket for protection, Jamie,’ said Black. ‘But I can see why you chose to throw it away. Commonshare uniforms have never been popular in Jackals and it’s the poor that are going to be wearing them in Middlesteel now, after the looters have stripped the corpses of all your friends — and the uniforms have been dyed a decent Jackelian green and brown by the ladies down Handsome Lane.’

Wildrake thrust forward, feinting, changing sword hand from left to right then slicing out at the commodore’s arm, drawing blood in a mirror of the submariner’s strike.

‘A duke’s blood looks the same as mine,’ spat Wildrake, circling the commodore slowly.

‘So they trained you to fight as a secret lefty,’ coughed the commodore, giving ground by a couple of steps. ‘They’re a sharp crew, alright, your clever friends above the clouds. Still dreaming Kirkhill’s visions after all these years.’

Wildrake snarled, flipping the sabre between his hands. ‘Sharp enough to take you, Samson Dark.’

Wildrake stamped forward, sending a flurry of muddy snow spraying over the commodore’s trousers, the clatter of steel floating hollow in the silence of the twilight battlefield. Black curved his opponent’s blade away twice, diverting the agent’s thrusts with small turns. There was a dull ache in the commodore’s arm, the pain of having to hold the weight of the sabre telling now. Wildrake’s unnatural shine-stimulated muscles gave him the edge in a contest of endurance. The popinjay probably spent hours in front of a mirror holding a sword out straight, relishing the pain of the weight. Admiring himself.

‘Just how much would parliament pay for Prince Alpheus’s return?’ wheezed the commodore, swaying his sword defensively.

Wildrake grinned. ‘Trying to buy time to recover, fat man? You should have spent less time feeding your face in the pantry and more time down the muscle pits.’

‘I should have, Jamie. I should have. But maybe the old pirate in me wonders how much I could get for the boy’s head.’

Wildrake tried to cut under the commodore’s guard. Black barely managed to parry the attack. It was like being battered by a windmill. Relentless vigour without end. Only his defensive fighting style was keeping him alive.

‘Sell out one of your own? No, duke. I don’t think you’re ready for that. You are a sentimentalist, pining for an age that was buried by history long before either of us was born.’

The commodore stamped left but swung right, slipping his blade beneath Wildrake’s sabre, trapping it, then with a deft twist spinning the weapon out of the wolftaker’s hand and onto the ground. The blade impaled itself in the snow and stood there quivering.

‘I should give you the same chance you gave the fleet when you blew us out to the RAN’s airships,’ said the commodore. ‘But maybe I am a sentimentalist, Jamie.’ He stepped back and bowed slightly, pointing to the fallen sword with the tip of his sabre.

Wildrake shook his head and grinned ferociously, retrieving his blade without taking his eyes off the commodore. ‘You have to be joking! Dark, you are a piece of work and no mistake. You never would have made a wolftaker in a thousand years.’

‘You’re as cold as your friends, Jamie. The Court and the Commonshare both. You never understood; that piece of metal in your hand is only as good as the heart of the man behind it. You’ve got the moves and you’ve got the sinews, but they couldn’t give you the heart. You’re just a weapon, Jamie, a shiny sabre all bent out of shape and dirty from the hands of the bludgers and assassins who have used you.’

‘And you’re a relic, Dark. The last of the royal privateers. The last of a dead age. They should stuff you and put you in the museum back in Middlesteel next to one of the old monarchs.’

‘That they haven’t is not for want of trying. You broke my heart, Jamie, when I found out it was you that was the Court’s man on the boats, that it was you that blew on the fleet. You would have made a fine fleet-man if we could have fixed your soul — one of the best.’

Wildrake roared and thrust forward, but the submariner turned sideways and with a — snap — snap — snap — Commodore Black parried past Wildrake’s cuts using short controlled butterfly strokes that almost seemed too slight to be effective. But with each snap of metal Black pressed his sabre a little closer until — almost gently — he pushed the blade into the turncoat’s chest, sliding it right through Wildrake’s heart. ‘For old time’s sake, Jamie, for old time’s sake.’

Wildrake looked at the blade impaled into his body with incredulity. ‘I am tight — my muscles — so tight — your body — so flabby.’

Black shoved Wildrake off his sabre with his boot. ‘You’re all piss and wind, Jamie.’

Wildrake collapsed, falling on the snow, watching dis believingly as the commodore staggered back and lifted up the prone form of Prince Alpheus.

Black pointed to the smoke of the battlefield rising behind them. ‘You’re one of us, Jamie. A Jackelian with the blood of kings running through your veins. Why did you do it?’

‘I just got tired — old man. Of the dirt and the pain. The Court was too weak. The Commonshare had what is required to change things. I could have — made — our country perfect.’

‘We’re a blessed weak people, Jamie, for a perfect idea. Well now, it looks like I’ve saved the Court the trouble of hunting you down, so I think I shall take the lad as my payment and be saying my goodbyes to you.’

‘They will — find — you.’

Black winked before he limped away, hauling the prince behind him. ‘You killed Samson Dark, remember? And poor old Blacky, well, he is a hero of the war of 1596 — fought alongside the First Guardian at Rivermarsh, so he did. You killed Samson Dark and now I have returned the favour. I believe that rounds things out nicely.’

When the wolftakers found Wildrake’s body, the bloody message of accusation against Samson Dark that he had written in the snow had long since melted away into the meadow grass.

Molly was not sure how long she had been standing on the downs of Rivermarsh when she realized the melting snow was soaking her feet. Despite the fall of night it was warmer now than it had been earlier, the seasons of Jackals returning to normal. Her body felt strange, as if she was not sure where she began and the Hexmachina ended. The land seemed part of her still.

A pile of burrowed dirt in front of her was the only clue that the events of the day had not been a dream. Once more the Hexmachina had returned to her lover’s embrace. The Wildcaotyl had faded away like an echo in a well. Down the hill a few torches moved around the dark plain — scavengers looking for boots and coins to strip from the corpses, soldiers calling out for comrades, wives and children calling for fathers who had not returned, a few medical company orderlies moving between the bodies, trying to locate the increasingly weak cries of the wounded.

The stars were in the east, partially covered by smoke still rising from Middlesteel. No glow of fire though — the water must have been restored and the fires put out. For the first time in her life Molly did not know what to do. She had felt the heat of familiar souls when she had been joined with the Hexmachina — the commodore and the fey boy, Coppertracks too. They might be back at Tock House now if the folly had not been smashed apart by the Commonshare’s aerial assault. She could join them. She could do … anything. Nobody was hunting her blood now, the poor house was gone — Circle, the very records of her existence might lie in a broken tran saction engine smouldering in the ruins of Greenhall for all she knew.

But she was a Middlesteel girl at heart; she headed in the direction of the moon, across the battlefield towards the capital.

Molly wandered through the downs of Rivermarsh like a wraith. After being joined with the Hexmachina everything seemed flat and dull, denied the sight beyond sight the ancient machine possessed. It was a surreal nightmare. The wailing of a wife who had just discovered her dead husband on the ground, his face sliced by a Commonshare sabre. The multi-armed steamman she found walking through a field of deacti vate knights and mounds of dead metal-fleshers, the water from his boiler leaking out as tears for the warriors he had commanded. She pressed on him the fused soul boards of Slowstack in return for a promise her friend would be taken back to the Free State. She doubted they would inter a desecration in their hall of the dead, but perhaps the board would be scrubbed and returned to a new body, as was their way. Circle knows, there would be enough parts to be returned to the mountain kingdom over the next few weeks, caravans of deactivate. Parts enough for a new generation of steammen to replace the fallen of the last.

She was trudging up a slope when she noticed a figure in a bath chair slowly pushing itself up the hill in front of her. The ground was damp and his wheels were grinding through the slippery mud.

Molly took the handles on the chair and helped persuade it to the top of the rise. ‘You want to be careful, old fellow. The steammen have pickets out here to stop mechomancers robbing their graves, they won’t care if you’re after a Commonshare sabre to sell at the market or a Free State voicebox.’

‘Thank you, compatriot, but I’m not with the crows,’ said the man. ‘I was looking for a friend of mine, an old student.’

‘Did you find him?’

‘What was left of him. He died during the battle. It helps to see the body sometimes, to remember the man.’

Molly pushed the chair around a collapsed exomount, a circle of dead Jackelians surrounding the beast, testament to the power of its pincers. ‘A lot of people died here today.’

‘Is that not the truth?’ He slowed the chair and they listened together to the cries of the dying and the wounded still out on the field. ‘What is it they say about Jackals? Every valley has a battle and every lake has a song. I wonder what they will say about this place in a hundred years?’

‘They’ll talk about the lions in the sky and the shifties dead in the snow. But you won’t have to wait a hundred years; there’ll be penny ballads on sale outside Rottonbow by the end of the week.’

‘You’re a true Jackelian,’ laughed the man. ‘You should write some of those ballads yourself and approach a printer; you would have the market to yourself if you got in early enough.’

‘You know, I think I might just do that,’ said Molly. ‘And are you going back to teaching?’

‘I have an invite,’ said the man. ‘From a Guardian called Tinfold, to run for parliament.’

Molly snorted. ‘That old whistler? He’s a radical — the Levellers haven’t held the majority for a hundred years.’

‘Do you think so? I always thought they were a bit middling. Still, I like to tilt for lost causes.’ He indicated one of the corpses Molly was pushing him past. ‘And after this I don’t think Jackals will be quite as complacent about our position in the natural order of things. Middlesteel will need rebuilding and the fleet will need rebuilding; most of the Special Guard are torcless and on the run; there’ll be calls to firebomb Quatershift to rubble that will need to be fought. Thousands of our people have been turned into metal-fleshers — they will need to be helped. I think a change might be just what we need. How about you? Are you old enough to hold the franchise?’

‘Greenhall took my blood code earlier this year,’ said Molly. ‘Maybe I’ll even vote for you, though I don’t know if I’d be doing you any favours if I did.’

‘I can still hold a debating stick.’ He slapped the side of his bath chair. ‘And I can strike low, where it hurts.’

‘To Middlesteel then?’

‘Yes,’ said Benjamin Carl. ‘Home.’

Harry pushed the dead Third Brigade officer off the chair. The rear guard had made a valiant stand at the little farmhouse north of Rivermarsh. But the vengeful survivors of parliament’s new pattern army pursing them had chewed them up.

‘Well, he wasn’t going to need it,’ said Harry, seeing Oliver’s look.

‘You had an offer for me, Harry.’

‘What makes you think that?’ asked the disreputable Stave.

‘The fact that you’re here. If I had to guess, I would say you’ve been talking to someone who knows their weapons. Or their history. Or both.’

Harry sighed. ‘Yes. It’s those two pistols, Oliver. They come with a provenance of trouble. That bloody preacher, I should have known he was up to no good.’

‘They’re part of the earth, Harry, part of the land.’

‘That’s strange, Oliver, because I was going to propose taking them up there.’ He pointed up to the ceiling.

‘With or without me?’

Harry winked. ‘Either will be acceptable.’

‘I don’t think I would make a good wolftaker, Harry.’

‘I don’t think the Court cares. That old preacher gave us the run-around, Oliver. Like no one else has ever done before. At the time I thought he was the man behind the trouble, but I was wrong. It’s not often I admit that.’

‘That’s what I mean. You’ve got a plan. You’re systemized. All that watching and peeping and planning, all those games, all those little intercessions, the small shuffles of pieces across the board, the feints and bluffs.’

‘Your father played the great game, Oliver.’

‘I am not my father.’

‘The Court doesn’t like free agents. It pollutes their ability to predict things, having chaotic elements running around down here freelancing.’

‘You’re right, Harry, these two pistols don’t have a plan or an agenda. But when you wear them you can see evil, see it like a colour, feel it like a physical force.’

‘We need the rule of law. Have you ever considered that those belt guns understand evil because they are evil? The things the preacher did when he was running around Jackals … he was operating without any boundaries. He was becoming what he hunted.’

‘You think because a king-killer wrote a charter on a piece of bloodstained note paper he stole from the palace and gave it to the Court of the Air that what you do is justice?’ said Oliver. ‘The Court recruited you from prison. Just like the Third Brigade recruited their soldiers. Does the Court want wolftakers, or does it want killers who will take orders?’

‘You can be both.’

‘Were you both, Harry, when my father came to see you?’

‘Oliver?’

‘I can feel evil, Harry. But I don’t need the guns to see the guilt you feel.’

‘What do you mean, old stick?’

In Oliver’s belt the two pistols began to glow. ‘The Chaunting Lay, your pension. How many canal boats do you own now, Harry? How easy is it to operate a flash mob of smugglers when you have all the resources of the Court of the Air to smooth over the wrinkles? It must have been easy to justify when you started, just cultivating old contacts for the whistler network, a little more like a real gang each year. That was your price for protecting the preacher, for not turning him in. He was working for you in Shadowclock, Harry, wasn’t he? It wasn’t his smuggling operation, it was yours. But when my father found out about your operation he gave you a chance. He didn’t go to the Court, he told you to shut it down.’

‘Life isn’t all black and white,’ said Harry. ‘Look at me. I just saved Jackals. I rolled up the Carlists that burrowed into the Court and Greenhall and every bloody corridor of the great and the good. How many times have I saved your life? I led the incremental companies that turned the war, for Circle’s sake. I’m a bloody hero.’

‘The hero who knew enough about aerostats to ensure that my father’s vessel took a dive into the feymist curtain.’

‘My little enterprise serves Jackals,’ said Harry. ‘It turns a crust on the side but it wouldn’t last long if it didn’t.’

Oliver placed the two pistols on the table. ‘Then maybe we are both fated to become what we hunt. The Court of the Air gave you three choices. Bring the guns, bring me and the guns, or…’

‘Don’t make me do it, Oliver.’

‘The incrementals who followed us were very good; it was almost impossible to know that they were there. But they have the weight of their own sins to carry. No level of worldsinger tricks can hide that.’

‘Even if I ordered them, Oliver, they won’t just let you walk off.’

Oliver laughed and the sound of it filled Harry Stave with fear. ‘I’m not terribly clubbable, Harry. I don’t take orders, I don’t ask permission, and with my wild blood I don’t think the Court has much interest in doing anything except keeping me in a cell.’

‘Oliver, the Court will have half a dozen surveillants watching this farmhouse, marksmen with long rifles, a couple of companies of incrementals waiting to storm the building.’

Oliver leant forward. ‘You were there for me when it counted, Harry, for Jackals. So I’m going to let you live this time. But don’t let them send you after me.’

‘You’re not listening to me, boy. Unless you surrender those two pistols to me there’s not going to be any after.’

‘I’ve got a message for the Court. If they want the pistols-’

‘Yes?’

‘-they will have to come and take them.’

Oliver’s laugh remained as he faded from view; the echoes of his cackle left lingering in the room as the black-uniformed soldiers shattered down the door.

The Whisperer pulled his attention from the surveillants in the Court at the same time as he left Harry’s mind. Damn but it was cold that high — and the peculiar watchers were hard to influence — their minds changed by all those potions they took to remain awake and vigilant.

‘The old sod was right about one thing,’ said Nathaniel. ‘They’re not going to rest until they catch you or kill you.’

Oliver shrugged and spun one of the pistols around before holstering it. ‘On the run for being fey — on the run for these. You can slip a piece of paper between the difference. How about you?’

The Whisperer had shifted back to his natural form, leaving the pretence of humanity behind. ‘I’m going to find myself a forest and a cave, Oliver. I’m going to live life as a hermit, far, far away from all the hamblins. Roger everyone. I just want the peace that comes from being alone.’

‘Is that any different from how you were held at Hawklam?’ asked Oliver.

‘I will be where I choose to be. That’s all the difference in the world — you should understand that. But Oliver, do me a favour…’

‘I owe you at least that.’

‘I saved myself first, you second, the feybreed third, and Jackals last of all. I don’t want any part of your mischief, Oliver Brooks.’

‘You will have your solitude, Nathaniel. If things get too hairy here I can always slip somewhere they can’t follow. You don’t need to worry about me.’

The Whisperer hissed in laughter. ‘Worry about you? Dear Circle, and they thought I was a menace to the realm. Goodbye Oliver. Don’t sell your life too cheaply.’

Oliver watched the Whisperer head through the trees, his shuffling footsteps through the brambles disappearing, followed only by the hoot of an owl. ‘Goodbye Whisperer. Goodbye, old friend.’

As the Whisperer left, the Lady of the Lights materialized into view by Oliver’s side. ‘I can remove the stain on your soul, Oliver, if you wish it to be so.’

‘No more fuse, mother?’

‘His time has gone. I am afraid he rather over-reached himself.’

‘My fault no doubt, I did rather goad him. As for my soul, I am who I am. Part of you was briefly human once — human enough to take a lover from the race of man — you must remember change, evolution.’

The Lady of the Lights drew a circle in the air, sparkling motes that faded beside the miniature stars that revolved around her orbit. ‘The system exists to accommodate change. Change, even at the end of all things, is the only real constant.’

‘I hope I did not disappoint you.’

‘No Oliver.’ She smiled. ‘Quite the opposite. You astonished me.’

‘Will I see you again?’

She was fading away, the trees and moonlight visible through her white robes. ‘In another thousand years, perhaps. Your people are always running into trouble, always choosing to believe in the wrong things.’

Oliver sighed. He would not be around in a thousand years. But Jackals would, and the guns would, and they, they would remember.

Master Saw walked with the leader of the council of seers, their conversation echoing down the corridors of Mechancia. They were almost at the chambers of education; the playful sound of the young steammen’s nursery bodies a cheerful counterpoint to the endless stream of business which being regent brought.

‘There is no margin for error in this decision,’ said Master Saw.

‘Nor would the Loas allow it,’ said the council leader. ‘The cogs of Gear-gi-ju have fallen the same way for weeks — I myself have been ridden by Zaka of the Cylinders and Adjasou-Rust, and they both concur. It has been obvious for a while which body King Steam has settled in. You must see it, Master Saw, even a venerable old fighter like yourself.’

‘Yes,’ said Master Saw. ‘The ancients in the hall of the dead whisper his name; the slipthinkers find it scattered in the great pattern when they grow ill from information sickness. It is a wonder his name does not spontaneously slip into the hymns of the people.’

He nodded to the educator who greeted them at the doors to the level. Two children in nursery bodies raced past them, their tracks skidding along the marble floor, oblivious to the presence of the three adults.

‘Delay long enough and I am sure that too will happen,’ said the council leader. ‘Ah, there he is. Such a serious child.’

The seer, the educator and Master Saw stopped. The young steamman was at a table, paper spread out in front of him, concentrating so hard he had not noticed the adults or the other nursery bodies at play.

Master Saw had his suspicions. The cracked soul board that had been passed to him by the softbody girl four years ago on the bloody battlefield of Rivermarsh, the soul board that had belonged to the desecration, the one that would have been scrubbed and recycled by the birthing chamber. By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, he would dearly love to know where that particular soul board had ended up.

‘What is that thing he is doing called?’ asked Master Saw.

‘It is a form of visual representation,’ said the educator. ‘Like writing or the plans schema of an architect. You need to stare at it for quite a while, but if you look long enough it starts to make sense. You can see a picture among the strokes and marks. He has been teaching the other children how to do it, too.’

Well, King Steam had always been different, eccentric in many little ways.

‘The softbodies do this, do they not?’

‘Yes, master,’ said the educator, passing the steamman knight one of the sheets of paper. ‘They call it painting.’

Master Saw looked at the paper, trying to resolve the mass of colours and detail into an image. There was something there, something elusive. He tried to think of the script of writing, of the steamman iconography that might bring meaning to the representation. It was hard work indeed.

‘The slipthinkers are very impressed,’ said the educator proudly. ‘Especially our people in Jackals who have more familiarity with such things. We have noticed similar representations on some of the walls and floors of the palace; we may have had such an art in the past ourselves but lost it during the coldtime.’

The child looked up at the adults, noticing them for the first time. ‘My pictures are in colour.’

Master Saw patted the child’s head. ‘That much I can see, young person.’

Master Saw took the sheet of paper away with him. He would look at it a little each day. The steamman knight would follow the advice he so often dispensed on the floor of the dojo — with enough time and practice you could master any challenge, any puzzle. Things would become clear in time.

Fladdock stepped over the body of the old man to gaze out of the barred window at the passing boots of the citizens of New Albans. The recently installed Leveller government in Jackals had not made much of a dent in the flow of convicts sentenced to the boat, or for that matter to his own fate — a month on a rotting prison hulk bobbing in the waters of the Gambleflowers, followed by the long transportation to Concorzia in the stinking holds of a merchant steamship.

Most of the convicts were half Fladdock’s age, street children who had only stolen to stay alive. Far easier prey for Middlesteel’s crushers than the slicker professional criminals that ran with the flash mob. With the exception of the crooked old corn-chandler sleeping at his feet, Fladdock was now the oldest transportee in the cell awaiting the appearance of a colonist farmer to purchase his papers. Fladdock had certainly had his eyes opened since being sentenced for his admittedly incompetent attempt to dip that swell’s wallet on Haggswood Field. Eight years’ labour and transportation for touching the smooth leather of some quality’s wallet — hardly a fair exchange.

‘Tell us a story again?’ asked Gallon, hopefully.

Fladdock nodded kindly to the young boy. Who would have thought the mere ability to read would see him appointed as the official librarian of the motley group of convicts? He picked up the torn penny sheet which one of the passing settlers — probably an ex-convict — had passed through the bars, and brushed down its front cover. The MiddlesteelIllustrated. Four weeks old, the saltwater stains showing where it had been carried over as ballast in one of the clippers lying off the bay of New Albans.

Fladdock would have preferred one of the more relevant local news sheets, but beggars could not be choosers — and transportees had to be even less selective, it seemed.

‘Which story would you like me to read, Gallon?’

‘Something from the pages with dancing and rich people!’ piped up Louisa the Dipper. ‘Like the one about the ball at Sun Gate.’

‘Boring,’ said Gallon. ‘Give it a rest, girl. The crime and punishment pages. They’re the best!’

‘There’s a real story in here at the back,’ said Fladdock. ‘Not just news, but a piece of fiction. It’s called a serial. Just like the kind of tale you would find inside a penny dreadful.’

‘I know what a chuffing serial is,’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘But that’s no bleeding good, is it? We’ll have missed the start of the tale and none of us will ever know how the story ends up either; we’ll be stuck on a farm on the plains sweating in some nob’s field.’

‘That’s a pity,’ said Fladdock. ‘I read it myself yesterday and it’s rather good, something completely new in fact. People are calling it celestial fiction. It’s all about a group of aeronauts who travel by airship to one of our moons and find very different creatures living up there. It’s all the go back in Jackals; it’s written by a woman too.’

‘A woman?’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘Can I see a picture of her?’

‘There’s no line illustration of the author,’ explained Fladdock, showing the girl the pages. ‘But the name reads M.W. Templar. When you find a story where the writer is using initials instead of a first name, the chances are the author is a female … you see the stories often sell better if the readership don’t know the novelist is a woman.’

Fladdock failed to mention the fact that he knew the author personally. And she was definitely a woman.

‘Read the real stories. With the murders and the stealing,’ demanded Gallon.

‘Again?’ sighed Fladdock. ‘Alright, we’ll stick with the real murders and stealing for now, but only if I can read Louisa the serial afterwards. What story do you want me to start with?’

‘The broadsman who took a knife in the gut after they found him cheating at cards,’ suggested one of the other convicts, a craynarbian youngling with a missing arm.

‘No,’ said Gallon, a serious look settling on his gaunt face. ‘The Hood-o’the-marsh story. The one where the Hood-o’themarsh escapes twenty crushers after hanging the mine owner, the jigger that left his workers to die in the cave-in because it cost too much to save ’em.’

‘You are a turnip, Gallon,’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘There’s no Hood-o’the-marsh. It’s just a name radicals use when they want to put a scare into the quality.’

‘He is bleeding real!’ shouted back Gallon. ‘His stories are always in the sheets. They say he has two pistols that shine like devil fire and he only kills at night when he becomes invisible; they say that he can whistle down lashlites from the sky to rescue him when the crushers have him cornered!’

‘My granddad used to tell me stories about the Hood-o’themarsh that he was told by his granddad,’ said Louisa the Dipper. ‘Leaaf addict is this Hood? Ghost is he? You still waiting for your Midwinter presents from Mother White Horse? Maybe they’ll be delivered here tomorrow, Gallon.’

Their impromptu reading was interrupted by a clanking at the door of the cell, followed by a colonial guard admitting a gust of fresh air into the fetid holding chamber. ‘On your feet now my lovely boys — you’ve got some respectable visitors.’ He glanced at the old craynarbian waiting in the doorway behind him. ‘Well, fairly respectable anyway. Two gentlemen farmers after extra hands. Prisoner Fladdock, you in here?’

Fladdock stood up.

‘Your lucky day, young fellow my lad. One of the cattle owners scanning the transport list spotted your blood code and reckons you’re her second cousin twice removed or some such tosh. She’s bought out your contract.’

‘Lucky jigger,’ someone muttered.

Fladdock nodded, feeling the scrubby beard on his cheeks. About time. The blood code was no more real than his name, no more real than his face — which still felt distorted and swollen when he touched it. He was constantly amazed that the other convicts could not see through the results of his visit to the back-street worldsinger. The farmer picking up his paper could conceivably be his second cousin twice removed, though. Royalists had been finding the wide-open plains and deep forests of Concorzia more than accommodating for generations.

Did Commodore Black’s face still feel like this after all the years since his own trip to the worldsinger? Fladdock might have asked if he had known what the effects were going to be like. The cunning old sea dog had been right on the money about one thing. With the forces of the old country still unrelentingly shaking trees to try and turn up Prince Alpheus, the easiest way out of Jackals was with a bona fide prison record turning on the drums of a transaction engine at Greenhall and a free transportation under the crushers’ noses courtesy of the office of the colonies. They had declared the former king dead. They could never afford to be proved wrong.

The guard turned to the old craynarbian. ‘And how many hands will you be requiring today, Mister Ka’oard?’

‘Just the ones in this chamber,’ said Ka’oard.

The guard groaned. ‘Not again. You can’t keep on doing this, sir. It is causing tensions among the other landowners. These jacks are meant to be serving labour, not rolling for fish in the waters of one of your streams. Someone in town told me you’ve even engaged a couple of tutors for these scruffs out at Vauxtion Valley. My lovely boys need to be taught how to harvest and cut down lumber, not master their letters. You realize there’s a shortage of labour here now? Just how much money have you got to be spending, driving up the price of convict contracts?’

‘Oh, there’s a few of your very fine Jackelian pennies left yet, I think,’ replied Ka’oard.

The guard sighed in exasperation and waved Fladdock out, passing him over to the cart driver that had been sent to collect the young man.

Fladdock stepped forward, handing the battered news sheet down to Gallon. ‘Keep it, Gallon. Keep it for when you’ve mastered your letters.’

The colonial guard pocketed the customary tip sent by Fladdock’s new master and looked over at the craynarbian. ‘It’s not like the old days anymore, Mister Ka’oard, when you could ride for months without bumping into one of your neighbours. You could breathe back then, you could really feel alive. Those are the times I was born with and they were damn good years too. But those days are gone out here.’

Blinking in the sunlight, Fladdock glanced back at the remaining convicts, flexed his two perfect arms and grinned. Then he was gone.

‘Yes,’ said Ka’oard. ‘You are quite correct. I don’t believe these are the old days any more. But they will do.’