sort. But he did alright by me, and there was none better among the wolftakers.’
‘The things he must have seen,’ said Oliver. ‘The things he must have done in the service of Jackals. Only to die in an aerostat accident. How utterly pointless.’
‘An accident? Perhaps,’ said Harry. ‘I always had my doubts about that.’
‘What? You don’t think-’
‘They’re just suspicions, Oliver. Your airship came down during the start of the not-so-glorious revolution of 1566, quickly followed by the Two-Year War with the Commonshare. The Court of the Air had its hands full making sure Benjamin Carl’s committeemen disappeared. Now my capacity in the navy may only have been in the Victualling Board, but I know enough about the job of an airmaster to understand that if you’ve got an expansion engine fire, you don’t plot a course that will take you anywhere near the feymist curtain.’
Oliver’s eyes were red. ‘And I was the only survivor.’
‘The only one that was ever found, old stick. The only one that was ever found. Unless you know different?’
‘Not that I remember, Harry.’
‘Let’s put your memory to the test,’ said Harry. ‘Titus never got around to telling me what he had discovered; he was waiting for someone from down south to turn up before letting me in on it. But instead we got those two phoney crushers from Ham Yard and the toppers at the hall. I’d say that whoever Titus was expecting to arrive was intercepted by the same crew that tried to do for us and most likely done away with. Any idea who your uncle’s visitor could have been?’
Oliver mulled the question over. ‘Uncle asked me to meet you at the aerostat field last week, but he didn’t mention anything about anybody else arriving. The next airship isn’t due at Hundred Locks for four days either.’
‘Let’s try something else,’ said Harry, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. ‘It’s like when I talk with my voice inside your skull, except everything flows in the opposite direction. I might be able to pick up clues from your memories.’
‘More worldsinger tricks?’
‘Of a sort. Although the people that trained us aren’t in the order, which wouldn’t please the worldsingers one jot if they ever found out. One of the reasons they dislike the fey so much is they don’t like the bleeding competition.’
Harry placed his left palm in front of Oliver’s forehead and shut his eyes, straining to make contact with the boy’s thoughts. Oliver expected to feel something, a tingle, or a pressure, perhaps a headache, but there was nothing.
‘Now that’s a first,’ said Harry. ‘I can’t establish a lock with you. But you can hear my mind-echo, yes?’
‘Like you were talking an inch away from my ear, Harry.’
Oliver thought back to the inactive truth crystal at the police station. Something appeared to be protecting him from worldsinger probing. Was there already something fey, dangerous and defensive developing inside him like a tumour, ready to erupt and twist his body in terrible, unnatural ways? Perhaps old Pullinger had been right all along, Oliver would be better off with a torc around his neck and kept under close observation by the order.
‘Damn queer, Oliver. Well, there’s some that can resist a glamour; though you’re the first I’ve ever met in the flesh. We’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way. Are there any visitors you can remember arriving for Titus in the last few months?’
‘A handful,’ said Oliver. ‘A skipper back from the Holy Kikkosico Empire. Runners from the crystalgrid station with tape. The head clerk from uncle’s Middlesteel counting house came at the start of the month as usual.’
‘Anybody uncommon?’
Oliver racked his brains. ‘Back in Barn-month we had an old grasper visit twice. Once at the start of the month, once at the end.’
‘Old?’ said Harry. ‘Older than Armiral here?’
‘The spine-hair on his face was white and his cheeks looked like a field of snow, except where he had this mark on his right cheek.’
‘A tattoo?’ asked Harry.
‘No. More like it had been branded there.’
‘Armiral.’ Harry called the grasper back into the narrowboat’s cabin. ‘Get a pencil for the boy. Oliver, draw for us the mark you saw.’
Oliver sketched out a circle with three slanting lines drawn through it.
‘What do you think?’ Harry asked the grasper boat master.
‘Celgas miner from Shadowclock.’
‘That’s what I thought too,’ said Harry.
Armiral leant against the open door to the deck and scratched his heavy-jowled face thoughtfully. ‘Each line represents a cave-in survived — few of our people reach three. The one who wore this will be senior, Harry. High warren.’
Oliver remembered the way the visiting grasper had scuttled inside Seventy Star Hall. Like he was glad to trade the space and sky outside for the confines of the hall. ‘Uncle Titus didn’t have any contracts with the celgas mines. Why would he be meeting a mining combination man?’
‘Nobody has contracts directly with Shadowclock, Oliver. The State Victualling Board handles it. The place is practically a closed city — only town with a military governor appointed by parliament instead of an elected mayor. There are plenty of people who’ve died for the riches under the mountains at Shadowclock. Smugglers, agents from every great power on the continent, gas runners. If Titus found some mischief going on at Shadowclock, then I don’t doubt there’s some rascals out there who would judge his murder and our deaths a cheap price to keep their transgressions secret.’
‘Does your business take you to Shadowclock, Harry?’ asked the grasper. ‘I can ferry you as far south as the navigation at Ewehead. After that you need special papers to use the mining waterways.’
‘I need to make a stop in Turnhouse on the way. When that’s done, if you can get us to the county boundary at Medfolk, I’ll take us the rest of the way to Shadowclock on foot.’
‘Harry,’ said the grasper, ‘do you really want to go to Shadowclock? The citadel to the north is the largest RAN fortress in Jackals — our old friends might recognize you. And if the navy don’t do for you, you’ve got the mining police, the regular army and a garrison of the Special Guard.’
‘Jackals knows how to protect its monopoly on celgas, Armiral. Even from me.’
‘So be it,’ say the grasper. ‘You really do like to live dangerously, Harry Stave.’
‘If you’re not living on the edge you’re taking up too much space, old stick.’ Harry saw Oliver’s face. ‘Don’t worry, lad. After what we’ve been through, a trip to see the celgas mines is going to be a walk in the park.’
Monitor Eighty-one was not expecting to have her duty interrupted in the monitorarium, but she could tell by the way the other monitors had silently cleared a space for the newcomer — busy finding things to do at the far end of the gantry — that the interloper had rank.
‘Monitor Eighty-one?’
The monitor nodded. Something inside her, a prudent voice of caution, stopped Eighty-one from asking the newcomer why her skin-tight black leather airsuit was bereft of Court insignia, except for a thin yellow stripe running down each trouser leg.
‘I’m interested in your report from Lightshire, Eighty-one. The Hundred Locks incident.’
‘Passed to analyst level, now, ma’am,’ said the monitor.
‘Of course,’ said the visitor. ‘Nevertheless, I would value your raw impression of events.’
Eighty-one was about to reply when she saw the regulator nervously waiting by the entrance to the great monitorarium — a level green. And they only waited on one person. It was
She was a lover of Isambard Kirkhill. She was over six-hundred years old. She was a weather witch holding the Court of the Air fixed in the troposphere by the power of her mind alone. She was a leaaf addict. She was a failed revolutionary. She was a shape switcher, rogue fey escaped from Hawklam Asylum. She was … standing in front of her; and she was Lady Riddle. Advocate General. Head of the Court of the Air. There was no doubt about that.
‘Go on,’ said Lady Riddle.
‘It was the morning,’ said Eighty-one. ‘My normal surveillant was off-shift after his telescope had been
