‘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
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.’
