The Court of the Air

Chapter Nine

Analyst Ninety-one pretended not to have noticed the newcomer standing outside the door to Lady Riddle’s office. She casually shuffled the punch cards for the afternoon’s transaction engine load as Analyst Two-eighty slotted them into a pneumatic tube container.

‘It is him,’ said Two-eighty, her voice low.

‘I thought he would be taller,’ whispered Ninety-one. But she didn’t sound disappointed.

It was the signature tweed cap that really settled it. He looked like he might have just walked in from a day’s grouse shooting on some green limestone pile in the uplands.

‘Eyes front and centre,’ ordered Regulator Nine as she walked past the processing station. They busied themselves as the regulator went up to him.

‘Lord Wildrake, the Advocate General will see you now.’

Shutting the door on the calculation hall, the regulator ushered the visitor into a private chamber, a vista of thick armoured crystal glass overlooking the still sky-reaches of the troposphere. It was always calm here, so high; the Court of the Air floating far above the storm systems and the worries of the Jackelians below. He stood a moment, watching the smaller aerostats patrolling beyond the tethered spheres and globes. Razor-finned and tipped with long pulse barbs, their exclusive purpose was to drive off any skraypers that floated too close to the city.

He took off his cloak and hung it on a hook next to the marble head of Isambard Kirkhill, then clicked his heels to announce his presence to Lady Riddle.

At the other end of the room, the light and the space of the office offset the ebony skin of the Advocate General perfectly. No doubt as was intended.

‘Take a seat,’ said Lady Riddle.

Wildrake shook his head and with a small jump, grabbed hold of one of the message ducts running across the ceiling. He began to do chin lifts on the pipe, the ripples of his muscles raw agony after his morning workout.

Lady Riddle swore to herself. His addiction to the damn drug was getting worse. ‘How much shine are you taking now, Wildrake?’

‘Just enough to keep me hard,’ said Wildrake. ‘To keep me solid. Talk to your sawbones in pharmacology, they keep me supplied.’

There was theoretically no upper limit to how much muscle an abuser could put on while chewing shine, the drug obtained from guard units of the city-states, where whole elite regiments warped themselves into living bull-women.

‘Tell me about the RAN Bellerophon, Wildrake.’

Lord Wildrake talked quickly, trying to get each sentence out between the blaze of pain in his arms. ‘I tracked down what was left of her to the dunes outside Dazbah under their camouflage nets. Full marks to the analysts involved for that prediction.’

‘Go on,’ said Lady Riddle.

‘One of the officers had been turned; they were holding his family prisoner and blackmailed him into putting the airship off course. Then he arranged for it to land on the other side of the Cassarabian border with a buoyancy leak. The local tribesmen took it from there.’

‘Our cloudies?’

‘Most of them were poisoned by something the traitor had put in their grog ration. I managed to free a couple of the survivors. The women in the crew had already been passed to the caliph’s biologick breeders by the time I arrived, I fear to say.’

‘Too bold,’ said Lady Riddle. ‘They are becoming far too bold. Something will need to be done about Cassarabia before long.’

‘The airship’s celgas has been siphoned off to a facility outside Dazbah,’ said Lord Wildrake. ‘They were using the wombs of our female ratings to try to witch up an organic substitute for celgas.’

‘The surveillant watch said you destroyed the place.’

‘They haven’t made any more progress on making their airship gas less flammable,’ said Wildrake. ‘You might say I just turned up the heat on the situation.’

‘If they don’t like it, they should have stayed out of our kitchen, Wildrake.’

‘My thoughts exactly, Advocate General.’

‘Now that the caliph has had his fingers burnt, I have a new job for you, Wildrake.’

‘I thought you might.’ Wildrake’s skin had taken on a healthy red sheen, the shine-induced sweat filling the room with a scent like cinnamon. ‘Another one of our airships is missing?’

‘Not an airship,’ said Lady Riddle. ‘A man. Wolf Twelve has gone rogue.’

‘Harold?’ said Wildrake, allowing his body to hang from the message duct for a minute. ‘Well, well. Naughty old Harold Stave. So it’s set a wolftaker to catch a wolftaker.’

‘Precisely,’ said Lady Riddle. ‘I understand you have some history with him, beyond your naval service, I mean. Will that be a problem?’

‘Moving barrels of ballast water around Jackals doesn’t exactly count as naval service in my estimation, ma’am,’ said Lord Wildrake.

‘But of all those captured it was only yourself and Harry Stave who survived the camp at Flavstar,’ Lady Riddle pointed out. ‘Along with that rich boy, the freelancer.’

‘Six months’ hospitality courtesy of the Commonshare’s Committee of Public Security took its toll on the team. It was something of a miracle any of us lived through it.’

Lady Riddle sat back. It was after his time in the camp that Wildrake had started taking shine. Bulking up; as if the wolf-taker could swell his muscles large enough that no Commonshare torturer could ever reach him again. ‘After your escape, I recall there was a difference of opinion as to whose error led to the operation in Quatershift being rolled up.’

‘No doubt in my mind as to whose fault it was, Advocate General. Harold Stave is a chancer, an accident waiting to happen. Not a gentleman at all.’

‘The latter may be true, but given the wake of destruction you leave behind you, Wildrake, I hardly think you are in a position to lecture.’

Wildrake gasped with the pain of the exercise. ‘I suspect, ma’am, it may be my previous disagreement with Wolf Twelve that has led you to drop this proposition into my lap. Consider myself stimulated. The circumstances will make for a rather interesting hunt.’

‘You have the field then,’ said Lady Riddle. ‘And Wildrake …’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Enough of him back alive to be interrogated by one of our truth hexers, if you please.’

‘Best efforts, Advocate General,’ said Wildrake, dropping to the floor, feeling the glorious pain in his aching arms. ‘Best efforts.’

Oliver stood in the cobbled streets outside Bonegate prison, the crowds lining up by the thousand to see him hang. Hawkers were selling trays of rotten fruit, some of which was already lashing past the scaffold. It was normally considered more fun to let the condemned prisoners feel the drop, then pelt them with garbage as they danced the Bonegate quadrille.

Inspector Pullinger raised his hands and a hush fell over the expectant mob. ‘For breaking of a crown registration order, for breach of registration boundary lines, for failure to submit to the Department of Feymist’s articles under statute six of the Feybreed Control Act, for the most foul deed of premeditated murder on three counts, Oliver Brooks is sentenced to death by hanging.’

The crowd cheered and clapped as a Circlist vicar stepped forward to administer the rites of conversion. She spoke the litany quietly, so that only Oliver and the others on the gallows platform could hear the words. ‘Troubled souls in this life, may your essence return to the one sea of consciousness, so that as the Circle turns, you are returned to this good earth in a happier vessel.’

The vicar spun in horror as the misshapen form of the Whisperer pulled himself up onto the gallows. ‘New vessel? Nothing wrong with the old one.’

Guards were running away screaming, the crowd falling back in a stampede.

‘See, wherever I want to sit, I can always find a space.’

‘Whisperer,’ Oliver groaned.

‘Stress dreams, Oliver?’ said the Whisperer. ‘I can go closer to home for them. Always someone new being introduced back at my place. Worldsinger guards with their funny ways and their scalpels, potions and rubber gloves.’

Oliver struggled to untie the noose around his neck. ‘Thank the Circle, I thought this was real. I really did.’

‘A little realer every day, Oliver,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘If they catch you, this is your future. A cell next to mine buried under the earth in Hawklam is the premium option for you now. I warned you about Harry Stave, did I not?’

‘My family’s dead, Whisperer. They killed my uncle. Killed Damson Griggs. They tried to kill me too.’

The Whisperer stroked Oliver’s back as he sliced the dream noose with a bony appendage, part teeth and part arm-bone. ‘See how similar we’re becoming, Oliver. My family died too. My father strangled my mother for giving birth to me, and I haunted his putrid dreams until he climbed a windmill at Hazlebank and threw himself off it.’

‘You’re mad,’ said Oliver. ‘We’re nothing alike.’

‘You think I am mad?’ hissed the Whisperer, giggling. ‘You should see the things they’re releasing from the asylum, Oliver. Soul-sniffers. Special torcs to contain them — more like suits of armour than torcs. In the asylum we used to call them the wild bunch, and wild they are.’

Oliver looked out over Bonegate Square. It was empty now. ‘What are you doing here, Whisperer?’

‘So little gratitude, Oliver. I am taking care of business. For the both of us. A dream here, a dream there, not just the fey either — normals too.’

Oliver tried to avoid looking directly at the misshapen thing. ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

‘The feymist curtain has been in Jackals for over a thousand years, Oliver. Seeping its essence into the fields and the moors and the forests. The worldsingers won’t admit it, but there’s a bit of fey in all of us now.’ He laughed. ‘More in some than others though, eh?’

‘I haven’t started to change yet.’

‘Pah,’ spat the Whisperer. ‘Dreams are about the truth, Oliver. They are a door through which denial is rarely allowed admittance. Ask yourself this question: why does your mind, your perfect mind which can slew off worldsinger truth-hexing and mind-walking like water off a duck’s feathers, why does it still allow me entry into your dreams?’

‘I-’ Oliver had not anticipated the question.

‘Think on it, Oliver. I like it in here, Oliver — your mind is by far the best. Lovely detail. Perfect clarity. It isn’t as easy to make contact with the normals. But I have been bearing up, Oliver. I’ve been minding the shop for the both of us. The places I’ve been — even steammen minds; like wading through a stream of broken glass, riding one of the metal’s thoughtflows.’

‘And in your travels,’ said Oliver, ‘have you found anything more practical than obscure warnings about Harry Stave?’

‘Oh, I’m warming to Harry,’ said the Whisperer. ‘He’s a son of a bitch, and damned if I know if he’s our son of a bitch yet, but right now he’s the only game in town as far as young Master Brooks is concerned.’

‘How comforting.’

‘You’ve got a few surprises in store for you, Oliver. For me too. There’s someone else out there, or something. Leaving little traces behind in people’s minds. She thinks I don’t know about her, but I am powerful, Oliver. That’s why they buried me so deep beneath the earth. No special torc suit for me.’ The Whisperer’s normally sibilant voice had risen to a screech, the background reality of the tenements surrounding Bonegate wavering under the lashing fury of his temper. ‘No fun and games with the wild bunch for the poor old Whisperer. No midnight walks through Middlesteel’s wide boulevards for me. No moonlight. No cold evening air!’

‘Stop it,’ Oliver shouted. ‘My mind!’

Fading away, the dream storm died down as the Whisperer collapsed sobbing on the gallows platform. ‘I’m not predictable, Oliver. That’s why they fear me, that’s why they’ve got me surrounded by a dozen interlocking cursewalls, that’s why they use a trained hound to drag the drugged slop they feed me into my cell.’

Oliver watched rapt with a mixture of fascination, horror and pity as the Whisperer started to pull himself across the platform, his club-footed shuffle becoming a rhythm from his childhood only he could hear. ‘Do a little dance, do a little dance.’

‘What will you do, Whisperer,’ said Oliver, ‘if they catch me and the doomsman stretches my neck at the gallows?’

‘Don’t say that, Oliver,’ the Whisperer hissed. ‘The memory of last night’s roast beef is still so fresh in your skull. So clear. Ah, now I see what you’re trying to do. Distracting me the way you’d dangle string in front of a kitten.’

‘That beef sure tasted good though,’ said Oliver, sitting down on the edge of the hangman’s platform.

The Whisperer arranged himself alongside Oliver. It was difficult to tell if the feybreed had a sitting position or not. ‘I could almost bear my prison, Oliver, if it was not for the Special Guard. All the beautiful people, all the pretty-pretty boys and girls, eating the best, their fey gifts trotted out on call for the state. Like a basket of pampered, indulged pets. I used to visit their dreams, Oliver, in the early days. But now it’s just a little more than I can take.’

‘They wanted me to join the legion,’ said Oliver. ‘To put a worldsinger’s control torc around my neck.’

‘Pretty cat needs a collar,’ said the Whisperer. ‘You think my father didn’t promise that for me when he hauled me to Middlesteel on the back of his cart? I trade messages for all the prisoners trapped in Hawklam Asylum, like a one-fey crystalgrid network. There’s hardly a soul penned in here that wasn’t expecting the finest steak and long lazy days of muscle-pit oil massages. You’d be surprised how normal-looking some of the condemned are down here. But if your powers can’t be turned on and off like a tap on a jinn barrel …’

The dreamscape started to fade. Oliver was waking up.

‘I’ll mind the shop, Oliver Brooks,’ said the Whisperer, once more back in his underground cell. ‘You just mind yourself with that devious jigger, Harry Stave.’

‘You need the hat,’ said Harry. ‘Trust me.’

The Chaunting Lay was moored four miles from Turnhouse, tied up outside a tavern at the back end of crown parkland — like everything else in Jackals, in the king’s name but belonging to the people. Coaches and fours were scattered across the grass, families from the town with checkerboard picnic blankets enjoying the Circleday afternoon.

‘Why do I need it, Harry?’ said Oliver, adjusting the cap. ‘I thought you said the all-seeing eye in the sky would have its attention elsewhere.’

Harry winked at the boy. ‘A little paranoia is never unhealthy.’

Oliver looked around the busy tavern yard, canteen tables crowded with navvies from the waterway clearance board. There had not been a crown park in the Hundred Locks district — the nearest one was in Beggarsmead, far outside the distance of his registration order. That was well and truly shot to pieces now.

‘Lots of people here,’ said Oliver. ‘How are we going to find your man?’

‘Not a man, Oliver. A woman. And crowds are good, lots of movement and extraneous detail — like a good cloth cap — to keep a surveillant and their transaction engine on their toes.’

They found their lady sitting on a stool outside a covered box-wagon, the kind normally found at country fairs hawking baldness remedies of a dubious provenance. She had a bottle of jinn on her left side and balls of wool piled on the right. She was carefully knitting a child-sized sweater.

‘Mother,’ said Harry, as she looked up. ‘More grandchildren on the way?’

‘She’s your mother?’ Oliver looked in disbelief at the grizzled old woman.

The old woman jabbed a knitting needle towards Oliver. ‘If you’re looking for the mare that birthed Harry Stave, you can just look on, dearie. My children are all married off and in respectable trades.’

‘Oliver, this is Damson Loade,’ said Harry. ‘Mother to her friends.’

She chuckled and took a swig of the jinn through a largely toothless mouth. ‘On account of a lucky strike I made, mining silver in the colonies.’

Oliver made a little bow. ‘Mother Loade.’

‘You’re a little cleaner than this reprobate’s usual travelling companions,’ said Mother.

‘A fine one to talk you are,’ said Harry. ‘You forgot to mention the reason you were in Concorzia was by way of a transportation hulk.’

‘Details,’ said the old woman. ‘The doomsman may have given me the boat, but a little silver buys a lot of forgiveness in Jackals. Enough to set up in business with Mister Locke as master gunsmiths to the nobility of Middlesteel and the twenty counties.’

‘Loade and Locke,’ said Oliver. ‘I used to see your details advertised at the back of my uncle’s copies of Field andFern.’

‘A privilege for which Dock Street charges handsomely, dearie,’ said Mother. ‘Now then, Harry. I don’t normally do house calls, not least because that chinless wonder of a partner of mine is liable to have lost the deeds to the shop at the gaming tables by the time I get back.’

‘Sorry, Mother,’ said Harry. ‘I’m in a bit of bother.’

‘When aren’t you, boy?’ said Mother. ‘She picked up a folded copy of The Middlesteel Illustrated News from behind her stool. ‘Page twelve, towards the bottom.’

Harry leafed through the newspaper. ‘Hundred Locks slayings most foul as feybreed child and escaped felon murder constables and family guardians.’

‘What!’ Oliver choked. ‘They’re saying we killed them. What about the bodies of the toppers at the hall?’

‘Strangely absent,’ said Harry, ‘from this story. But then the Court’s got as many editors on the payroll as Dock Street has.’

‘I picked up a more detailed summary from my drop,’ said Mother. ‘You’re on the disavowed list, Harry. They say you’ve gone rogue. Every whistler from here to Loch Granmorgan is on orders to turn you in.’

‘Mother, this is horse manure,’ said Harry. ‘Someone in the Court’s been turned, but it isn’t me.’

‘You’re a rascal, Harry,’ said Mother. ‘But I believe you. Not because you’re a straight die, but because I don’t see how you could possibly turn a coin out of this mess.’

‘Nice to know you have such faith in me,’ said Harry. ‘Did the drop say which wolftakers you’re to give assistance to?’

Mother nodded. ‘Wolf Seven.’

‘Jamie bleeding Wildrake. I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. Someone up there has got a sense of humour.’

‘Stay off the big crown roads, Harry,’ said Mother. ‘The crushers have got blood machines set up at some of the toll cottages, they’re testing for you. Ham Yard is like a wasp’s nest with a burning rag stuffed down it.’

‘Those two jokers back at Hundred Locks were real policemen?’ said Harry. ‘That’s a turn up for the books. I had them pegged as toppers with counterfeit inspector brass. What’s the world coming to when you can’t trust a crusher?’

‘Complicates things,’ said Mother.

‘Yes it does,’ Harry agreed. ‘The blood machines won’t do Ham Yard any good though. My records were given a right old hocus when I joined the Court. My blood code on the census belongs to a poulterer called Jeremiah Flintwinch who died of syphilis twenty years back.’

Mother jerked a thumb in Oliver’s direction. ‘And his blood code? You can leave the boy with me, Harry. Safer for the both of you.’

‘I do have a name,’ Oliver protested.

‘And a good one at that,’ said Harry. ‘The station that got rolled up was run by Titus Brooks. Mother, meet Oliver Brooks, as in the son of Phileas.’

‘Phileas Brooks,’ said Mother. ‘Now there’s a name to conjure with. Bloody Circle, dearie, that’s a lot to live up to.’

‘There seems to be no shortage of people in the kingdom aiming to make sure I don’t,’ said Oliver.

The old woman got up and stretched her arms, ‘I can see it now, Harry. Like listening to Phileas’s ghost talking. Well, boy, let’s see if old Beth can help you even the odds a little. Now, where’s that useless beanpole of an assistant of mine?’

As if on cue a young apprentice turned up with a tray of hams wrapped in wax paper.

‘Creakle, I told you to lay in victuals, not to buy the store.’

‘Of course, damson. Sorry, damson. I was delayed by the crowds from the county fair.’

‘Delayed by a tot of Puttenland cider, by the looks of you, Creakle. Now open the door to the wagon, we’ve got clients to attend to.’

‘Very good, damson.’

Inside the wagon a workbench and counter had been squeezed in between dozens of tiny cupboards. It was just large enough to accommodate the four of them at the same time, Mother sitting down while the others stood.

‘Alright,’ Mother said. ‘Harry, your pleasure?’

‘Something discreet, small enough to fit under a coat, but large enough to pack a punch. Not a long-arm, but it might need range.’

‘And young Master Brooks?’

Harry looked at Oliver. ‘Did Titus ever take you out hunting or the like?’

Oliver shook his head. ‘We didn’t have any guns at Seventy Star Hall. Uncle used to say that a man’s mind was his best weapon. Guns just give you a false bravery — make you behave stupidly.’

‘He didn’t like them, Oliver,’ said Harry. ‘But never confuse disliking fighting with not being able to fight. He kept a pistol in a secret compartment in his desk. Much good that it did him in the end.’

‘That old Tennyson and Bounder?’ said Mother. ‘You’d have better luck spitting at an enemy. He should have let me make him a proper pistol. Circle knows, I made the offer often enough.’

‘We all get sentimental about things, Mother,’ said Harry. ‘They were all the go when I was a boy.’

‘Oh, sir,’ said Mother’s apprentice. ‘When you were a boy? Leaaf addict were you, sir? Oh, a Tennyson and Bounder, they belong behind the glass in a museum.’

Harry looked at the young assistant with a glimmer of irritation in his eyes. ‘You like guns, old stick?’

‘Oh, sir. I do. All sorts. Duelling pistols, gas guns, mail-coach pieces. Special commissions for navy officers, long-arms for the gamekeeper, but I have a particular fondness for ladies’ weapons sir. Nice delicate pieces, sir. The sort of thing you can tuck into a purse or under a skirt.’

Mother rolled her eyes at Harry. ‘We apprenticed Creakle as an arrangement of a debt with one of Locke’s gambling companions.’

‘Well then, apprentice, what would you recommend for my friend here who has never shot before?’

The odd young man moved over to Oliver and started feeling his arm, sizing up his height, weight and balance. ‘Never shot, sir? Not often we get a virgin through the doors at Loade and Locke. Something flared I think, sir, something with a bit of heft to make sure it doesn’t jerk around. Would you like a bit of heft, sir? No need for customization, just something to get you going, something to set you off, something off the peg.’

He opened one of the drawers, rummaged around, and drew out a black pistol with a bell-ended barrel. ‘Our boatsman model, sir. Intended for the salty sea dog, the gentleman of the ocean, where the yaw and pitch of the waves renders accuracy obsolete. Not good for long range, but should you let off your weapon at a close distance, sir, you will find the results are quite devastating.’

Harry signed his approval of the choice for Oliver. ‘You need to fire that, Oliver, do me the favour of making sure I’m standing behind you at the time.’

Mother pulled out a couple of drawers and began scattering parts across the work counter — barrels, chambers, hammers, clockwork igniters. She began to run her fingers across the pieces, muttering instructions to her assistant, sending him scuttling off into the dark recesses of the wagon for some part or another. When she was happy with her selection, Mother began assembling the parts, slipping pieces together, sometimes reaching for a set of fine watchmaker’s tools. Her old fingers seemed to shrug off age as they danced across the flat surface, adjusting, tinkering, pressing pieces of clockwork against her ear and listening to the whirr and click of each mechanism. The gun began to take shape before Oliver’s eyes, a square blocky pistol with a long barrel.

Harry looked on with interest, appreciative of Mother’s craft. ‘You’re using a Catosian breech ejector.’

‘Nothing but the best, Harry. Talk while I work. I like to hear chatter. Dig out some charges for young master Brooks.’

Mother’s apprentice produced a bag of crystal bullets and passed them across to Harry. ‘Did they grow blow-barrel trees in Hundred Locks, Oliver?’

‘No. There was talk of setting up an orchard a few years ago, but the voters in the town got the permissions refused. Said it was too dangerous.’

Harry held up a glass shell in front of the oil lamp, gripping it between his thumb and finger. ‘A bullet is blown by a glassmaker in pretty much the same way as nature grows the seed-barrels on the tree. Two chambers filled with sap, separated by a thin membrane. Each sap by itself is harmless, but mix the two and you’ll lose a hand in the explosion.’

‘Someone in Claynark died when they were hit by a seed-barrel from a wild tree. They found the sapling five miles away,’ said Oliver.

‘A mature tree can blast its seed-barrel up to twenty miles,’ said Harry. ‘When you trigger your pistol, the hammer mechanism strikes and shatters the weak point in the shell’s glass casing, breaks the mixing chamber and ignites the charge.’

‘Oh sir,’ said the assistant. ‘The crack, boom and whine of a bullet, it’s like a symphony. Does the young sir know the rules?’

‘You press the trigger and nothing happens, Oliver, that’s a misfire. Never turn around and show the gun to anyone whose life you value. Hold the gun away from you, break it in the middle like this, then pull the lever on the side to eject the charge,’ said Harry. ‘If you need to clear a used charge manually, take the rod off the side of the gun and push it out and down the barrel. Never use your hand. Blow-barrel residue can burn through your fingers; that’s why the charge is blown crystal, not cast metal. When you’re on the field of battle, be careful where you step. A charge that hasn’t fired is likely to have been blown too strong in the glassworks, jettisoned with a crack that can shatter when you step on it, taking off your boot — with foot attached.’

‘Never skimp on the charges, dearie,’ said Mother as she worked. ‘You can’t afford to buy cheap ones. Shoddy crystal’s killed more soldiers than accurate fire ever did. Cheap crystal will shatter in your gun when you don’t want it to; you take a wallop against your charge sack and your friends will be scraping pieces of you off the grass for your coffin.’

‘Same reason you never walk around with your gun charged. You wait until you’re looking trouble in the face, then break the gun and load,’ Harry said. ‘In polite company, like a shoot or a hunt, you walk around with your gun broken in the middle so everyone knows your weapon is safe.’

Mother held up her nearly assembled pistol to the light. ‘It’ll take you a while to learn the glassmaker’s marks on the charges, dearie. Quick way to tell cheap crystal is to check if one half of the charge has the sap a different colour or not. Natural blow-barrel seed sap is as clear as water, both left chamber and right chamber. A good gun maker will add dye to the liquid on one side or the other. I use red dye on right-chamber sap. Cheap gunsmiths that sell to fools won’t spend the extra coin on the dye.’

Harry passed Oliver a crystal charge. There was a hollow in the glass shell, forward of the two explosive sap-filled chambers — packed with dozens of lead balls. ‘Your blunderbuss uses these; they’re called buckshot charges. Not good on range, but then I haven’t got the time to make a marksman of you. You let off that bessy and the charge will spread the shot in front of you. Ain’t intended to discriminate, you understand?’

Oliver looked at his bell-barrelled gun. Now he understood what Uncle Titus had meant. The false bravery seeped from the weapon like warmth from a hearth. Next time some bent Ham Yard crusher tried to slip a noose around his neck, he had better come armed with more than a Sleeping Henry and a police cutlass. ‘I understand, Harry. No friends in front of me when I fire.’

‘Young sir,’ said Mother’s apprentice. ‘You are a fast learner. What a magnificent piece you have. Quite the young duellist now, sir.’

Mother passed Harry his newly assembled pistol. He began to check it, looking down the barrel and sizing up its weight in each hand. The old woman looked at Oliver. ‘If you ever travel abroad, dearie, you might come across what we in the trade call suicide guns.’

‘Suicide guns?’

‘Two-barrel guns, tri-barrels, quad-barrels, even accordion guns. Stay clear of them. You load more than one charge in a gun, the first charge goes off and weakens the crystal in the other shells. Each extra shot and the chance of the gun exploding on you rises real fast. My first husband died in Concorzia that way when he was called out packing a tribarrel. Never could shoot worth a damn anyway.’

Harry placed a hand on Mother’s shoulder. ‘Mother, you’re an artist.’

‘I aim to please, Harold Stave. Now dearie, a curio for the son of Phileas Brooks.’ Mother stood up and unlocked a drawer on the floor of the caravan. Removing a cloth bundle tied in string, she unwrapped a blunt-looking knife with a dull black handle. It was unremarkable in every way except for an image of a boar’s head carved into its end. ‘Your father gave this to me as a payment, a while before his aerostat went down. Never did have the heart to sell it after that.’

Oliver felt the heft of the knife. It was unnaturally light, like holding air. ‘Thank you, Damson Loade. Why would my father have used this though?’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ the old lady chuckled. ‘Wouldn’t cut the string on its wrapping. Pass it back.’

Oliver gave the gunsmith the knife. She took out a heavy block of lead for casting balls, twisted the head of the pommel and pushed the blade through the lead slab like it was soft Fromerset cheese. Clicking the boar’s head back into place she laid the knife back on the workbench. ‘Phileas got it on one of the continents out east, a hex-blade, folded into shape by whatever passes for worldsinger sorcery out there. Your father could make the blade do things too, change its form and become a sabre or an axe — I never did work out how.’

‘As ordinary-seeming as a tanner’s knife and as deadly as a slipsharp,’ said Harry in admiration. ‘The perfect wolftaker’s weapon.’

‘I really don’t have any money to pay for this,’ Oliver said.

‘There’s debts other than those that run to coin,’ said Mother, passing Harry a bag of crystal charges. ‘And I seem to be repaying most of them today. You need any more supplies?’

‘Just enough food to get to Shadowclock,’ said Harry.

‘Shadowclock! Of course,’ Mother tutted. ‘When you’ve got the crushers in front of you and the wolves of the Court behind you, where better? The most heavily guarded city in the whole of Jackals.’

Harry tucked his pistol under his coat. ‘I think it was you who once told me the best place to hide is in the shadow of a police station.’

‘Harry dearie, I also spent ten years of my life swapping those same stories with transportees while I was digging out irrigation channels for tenant farmers in the colonies. From here on in, you’re not going to find any more whistlers damn fool enough to get themselves disavowed for your sins.’

‘You’re a saint, Mother.’

‘Listen boy, I’d like at least one of the old crew alive enough to put flowers on my grave when I’m under the soil.’

‘Mother, you’re going to live forever.’

The old gun maker took a generous swig from her jinn bottle. ‘No. But ever since my doctor got me off my mumble-weed pipe, it sure feels that way.’

The crystalgrid clerk looked annoyed that someone had arrived at the front desk just as the station was about to go over to its night shift. ‘We’re closed to the public. Priority state traffic only now. Unless you have a permit you’ll need to come back in the morning.’

‘Oh, sir, I have, you know,’ said the customer. He produced a police inspector’s badge from inside his coat, as shiny as it was false. ‘You’re not going to go off right now, are you sir?’

Resigned, the clerk pulled out a pencil and a message slip. ‘It is late, you know. We sent off all the Turnhouse station dispatches four hours ago.’

‘I would have come earlier, sir, but I had to wait for my mother to fall asleep.’

As the latecomer filled out the message slip, the clerk glanced back into the transmission hall. Some of the day shift’s blue-skinned senders were already going into their hibernation cycle in front of the daughter crystals.

Reading the message, the clerk looked up. ‘You know that state traffic is sent free — you don’t have to pay tuppence for each word. You can write more if you want…’

‘Oh no, sir. Length isn’t important to me.’

The odd fellow left and the desk clerk pressed the bell for a transcriber. Seconds later a woman poked her head through the door.

‘Late one, Ada,’ said the man. ‘Flash traffic.’

The transcriber read the message on the slip of paper. ‘Wolf twelve. Shadowclock. What in Circle’s name am I meant to do with that?’

‘I reckon it’s a tip for a horse at tomorrow’s races,’ said the clerk. ‘Bloke who passed it in was police. The blooming crushers are having a laugh. Just code it and pass it down the line.’

‘Do you see what he’s written under destination — it’s not a town, it’s a crystal node.’ She passed back the slip the customer had scribbled on.

‘What?’ The clerk read back the sequence of numbers. ‘So it is. Not a mother crystal I recognize, either; do you, Ada? Maybe the crusher worked on the crystalgrid before he became a policeman.’

‘The mother crystal won’t be in any of the blue books we’ve got here,’ the transcriber sighed. ‘I don’t even think the inheritance check is validly formed. Look, I don’t get paid night rates. I need to get home. I’m just going to send the message down the line exactly as it is; someone on the grid will know what to do with it.’

Someone did.