'I am not the Lady of the Lights,' said the silhouette. 'But perhaps you should recognize me anyway, Oliver Brooks?'
He moved closer. There was just enough moonlight to see that the silhouette was wearing what looked like leather armour covered by bronze chainmail – archaic, the very picture of a warrior maiden from the cheap woodcuts of a child's novel.
'Enough of this.' Oliver pointed his two pistols at her but they vanished from his hands, reappearing in her own. The light reflecting from the pistols became twin suns, blinding him. As the light dwindled he saw that the pistols had changed form, one becoming a trident, the other an oblong shield with the crude face of a lion cast on it. The lion of Jackals.
Oliver gaped. 'They're mine.'
'No,' said the woman. 'They are mine. As are you, Hood-o'the-marsh.'
'You are an Observer then,' said Oliver.
'No, I'm not one of them,' said the woman. 'I'm a local girl. Did you never wonder where those two pistols of yours, so carefully passed down the ages from master to master, actually came from? It is my work you are about, Oliver Brooks.'
'Is it, indeed?' said Oliver. 'Then return those two pistols and I'll be about it once more.'
'Time enough for that,' said the woman. 'There are more important matters to attend to than corrupt guardians and local magistrates. Have you not felt the wrongness in our land?'
Oliver gazed down at his empty hands. She knew that he had.
'There is an ache in my bones,' continued the woman, 'and I fear what it augurs.'
'Your bones?'
'The bones of the land, Oliver Brooks of the race of man,' said the woman. 'The bones of the Kingdom of Jackals.'
'Jackals is a country, not a person,' said Oliver. 'It's my country.'
'You are half-right,' said the woman. 'Jackals is an idea, a dream of freedom that is dreamt by all those who live in the forests and glades of this green land. That is why you can dream no longer, Hood-o'the-marsh. Your job is to protect those who do dream, those who still believe in me.'
'Are you certain that you're not an Observer?' said Oliver. 'You surely sound like one to my thick ears.'
'I'm not one of the grand system's angels, I have already told you that. I'm the god of details. I'm the rustle of the wind in the oaks, the splash of a stone rolling into a loch, the mountains that stood against the glaciers and the spirit that won't be crushed.'
'Why are you here?' asked Oliver.
'Do you not remember the tales of battle your uncle told you sitting around the fire grate of Seventy Star Hall?' said the woman. 'Of a time when Jackals would be threatened and of what would arise once again from a circle of ancient standing stones?'
'He told me a lot of things about the war,' said Oliver. And so his uncle had. The mud-drenched fields of the east, Jackelian troops in trenches, wiping the smoke of battle from their gas masks' visors. The visions they sometimes saw in the sky, the product of chemical leakage through their suits or a by-product of the earthflow particles and mage-war. Lions running through the sky. Strange angels clashing in the heavens. 'Are the first kings really about to return from their slumber? There's no danger of war between Jackals and the Commonshare now. Quatershift can barely feed its own people, let alone mount another invasion.'
'No, the threat is not from the east this time.'
'Where, then? Cassarabia? The regiments saw off the last bandit army that came up from the desert. The caliph fears the high fleet and the wrath of the Royal Aerostatical Navy too much to make a more direct intervention.'
'There is an old saying in the Jackelian regiments,' said the woman. 'It is always the bullet you don't see that gets you.'
'I repeat my question: are the first kings about to return?'
'Right idea,' said the woman. 'Wrong gender. You are the key, Oliver. You will need to reunite with the scheme of offence to defeat that which is coming.'
'You mean Molly Templar?' Oliver laughed. 'You're a little out of touch. Molly is a famous author now, her celestial fiction the toast of the publishing houses along Dock Street. If you want someone to fill five pages in a penny dreadful with a story of derring-do, then she's definitely your woman. But this-' Oliver gestured around the woods '-running around the night, getting shot at. I don't think so. Not anymore.'
'Her path is still bound to yours,' said the woman. 'I need both of you together again, though far more than the pair of you will be required for the conflict that is bearing down upon us. Even together, the two of you are not enough to defeat that which you will face…'
'Yes, the enemy. I was hoping you could be a little less obscure on the nature of the enemy, given how you're definitely not an Observer, but the goddess of details and all that.'
A fog was rising around the warrior woman's body, a marsh mist. An hour ago Oliver would have said it was one of his mists, but now he knew better. The mist belonged to the land. It was the Kingdom of Jackals'.
'You are the key, Oliver; you will know when the time comes. Remember, you wear my favours, young man. Wear them proudly.'
With a burst of light, the familiar, comforting weight of the two pistols was back in his hands. The mist had enveloped the warrior woman, returning her essence to the soil of their land.
CHAPTER TWO
Purity Drake bent down to pick up the empty brown beer bottle, recently rolled under the tall iron railings of the palace following a chance impact with one of the many pairs of shoes exiting from Guardian Fairfax atmospheric station – the gates to the underground transport system hidden just out of sight, but not so far away that the grit and soot from the vast stacks that kept the atmospherics' tunnels under vacuum didn't rain down on the palace grounds day and night. Endless supplies of soot that constantly needed sweeping from the flagstones in front of the palace's faded marble facade.
But what shoes there were in the crowds outside. Polished knee boots the season's fashion for the men; patterned red leather with shiny copper buckles and heel ribbons for the ladies. Shiny patent dress boots for the soldiers barracked in the capital, so swish under their cherry-red cavalry trousers. And big hobnailed affairs – toe-armoured for protection, cushion-heeled for comfort – for the workaday crushers patrolling the royal precinct. All serving only to remind Purity of the dirty naked feet at the other end of her grimy, stockingless legs. She wiggled her bare toes sadly, then stood up and dropped the empty bottle in her rubbish sack.
Purity's mind drifted to the daydream – her favourite daydream. One day some young girl going to school, a rich mill-owner's daughter, would notice a small hole in her perfect, fashionable shoes, and her mother would arch an immaculate eyebrow in disgust and pull the shoes off, leading her daughter at once to the nearest cobbler for a fresh pair. The discarded shoes would land near enough to the railing for Purity to reach out and lift, lift towards her, the beautiful pair of-
There was a loud, a meaningful cough. One of Purity's two political police handlers had noticed she had stopped working. He nodded contemptuously towards the wire-haired brush – almost as tall as Purity after her sixteen years of the Royal Breeding House's meagre diet. Gruel and bread, with meat served on Circleday only. She didn't complain. Who would care to listen? Picking up the brush again, Purity quietly wiped the dirt off her drab grey shawl and went back to sweeping the flagstones. It was a mixed blessing, the duty of cleaning the palace grounds. It freed her from the captivity and tedium of the Royal Breeding House, true, and the exercise and fresh air were welcome. But this close to the main gates it would not take much for any bored passing republicans to notice the golden crown sewn onto her clothes. Republicans who would not mind that it wasn't a stoning day and that Purity Drake wasn't the queen. The types who would take it into their thick skulls that she made a perfect target for a bit of impromptu sport.
Purity glanced out of the railings towards the other side of the palace square. There had been a shoe shop in the line of merchants opposite at one point. Thank the Circle, that concern had shut down last year. Those
