The Court of the Air

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.’