high above the streets of the capital and towards Tavistead Hill. Towards Tock House!
The dot grew larger and larger in the sky. Embers from the disappearing tail-sail finally ignited one of the mainsails and the rider frame began losing height rapidly, falling out of the wind's clasp above the capital. Down below, Coppertracks' mu-bodies were running out from the house, crunching the gravel of the path, swinging buckets of sand unhooked from the fire point of their boiler room. If the sail rider managed to avoid being impaled on the tip of the steamman's tower of science, then he was going to come down hard in their orchard. The three owners of Tock House were fast after Coppertracks' drones, joining the little iron goblins converging on the likely landing point.
Down to a single sail now, the flaming craft swung across the clearing where Coppertracks' celestial signalling apparatus stood spearing up towards the clouds. Then the rig blew into the line of pear trees, wrapping itself around the canopy of branches, burning silk billowing into dozens of pieces across the tree line. Where sheets of flaming material blew across the grass, the friends quickly extinguished them. Splintering, the main frame of the sail-rider rig folded in two, the limp mass of the rider swaying to a sudden halt, left hanging upside down from a tangled snarl of harness belts and sail pulleys.
Commodore Black pulled out a knife and shimmied up the tree to cut the pilot loose, Molly and Coppertracks waiting underneath to catch the body in the canvas rain cover they had pulled off the glade's small Porterbrook steam engine.
'The sail rider's a lad and he's taken some burns,' shouted the commodore.
'Is he alive?' Molly called up.
'He can count his lucky stars, but I believe the fellow is.' The commodore was sawing his way through the nest of ropes. 'His lucky stars and the fact that for all its bright rainbow colours, this sail frame is an old RAN chute. I can smell the retardant chemicals from his blessed burning silk, like bad eggs. Treated to exit a cannonshot-riddled airship when needs demand.'
With a final slice and a warning shout, the commodore cut the pilot free to flop down into their canvas. Molly pulled off a black leather glove from the pilot's hand and felt the wrist for a pulse. Yes, he was still alive, but in what shape was anyone's guess. 'Send for the doctor and make sure she turns up half-sober.'
'One of my mu-bodies is already on its way into the village,' said Coppertracks.
Molly rolled the pilot over. What she had first taken for part of the sail frame caught up on his back clearly wasn't. 'Look, a travel case! Why in the name of the Circle would you sail-jump with the weight of a travel case tied to your back?' She tried to open the case but it was locked. Damned heavy too.
Commodore Black landed down on the grass next to the pilot. 'A queer thing to do, but it saved his life. The weight of that case would have kept him at a lower altitude than the rest of his circus friends. Whatever ignited the others' sails only singed his poor head a little.'
Molly glanced up towards the firmament. Only the flat grey clouds of Middlesteel hung over the capital, but this carnage was no accident. The mystery of the disappearing stars might have been solved, but something else was deeply awry up in the heavens. The Jackelians were used to being masters of the sky. Their airships ruled the vaults of the firmament without peer or equal; a monopoly of aerial destruction that had long preserved their ancient kingdom from her many enemies.
But it appeared it was a monopoly no longer.
CHAPTER FIVE
It took a lot to recall the Jackelian parliament from its summer recess. The honourable members of the House of Guardians didn't collect much of a stipend from the state for their troubles, but at least they could usually rely on the long days of hunting, shooting and fishing on their estates. Estates that the members of the present Leveller government often lacked, so the grumbles went, hence their eagerness to recall parliament at the drop of a hat. The guardians' resentment at the interruption of their amusements was slowly bubbling over while the speaker of the house's lictors assembled the bones of King Reuben, his ancient skeleton dangling from a seven- foot staff of heavy Jackelian oak.
'Get a move on,' shouted one of the guardians, a ripple of agreement running across the benches.
'Order!' hissed the speaker.
With King Reuben's bones at last wired together correctly, the lictors formed a column, the master whip Beatrice Swoop at their head, and set off to march the last true king's remains around the floor of the house for the prescribed three circuits.
'Parliament shall not sit,' chanted the lictors, speaking for the bones.
'Says who?' roared the guardians, getting into the swing of the opening ceremony at last.
'Parliament will never sit again, by the force of my army,' recited the lictors, dangling the king's bones menacingly as they stamped across the wooden tiles.
All the guardians rose to their feet, pointing angrily at the bones of the once absolute monarch, slamming their canes on the benches in lieu of the heavy debating sticks that stood racked below. 'King of the Jackelians by our command, not king of Jackals. By the force of our army.'
'Ohhhhh,' moaned the master whip, running out of the chamber with the dead king's bones, the final customary call a lonely echo down the corridors outside. 'Sod this for a game of soldiers.'
'Parliament's writ runs supreme,' announced the speaker. 'Parliament is hereby declared open in a session most extraordinary. I call upon First Guardian Benjamin Carl to make the opening address.'
From the cabinet bench the first guardian pushed the wheels of his bath chair forward, occupying the podium of oratory. Carl tutted to himself. In the old days, the bones of King Reuben would have been borne through the streets of Middlesteel. Then the citizens of the capital would have tossed rotten fruit at them, a purse bearer from the treasury at Greenhall walking behind the skeleton with a bag full of copper pennies for any urchin who managed to detach the king's skull from the staff. But the expense of the public holiday and the disruption to commerce had led to the parade's abandonment some thirty years earlier. They were a modern people now, after all.
Carl cleared his throat. 'I have come before you many times over the last few years and asked for changes to the laws of Jackals that have been considered radical by many of my honourable colleagues and some editors of Dock Street.' He gave a little nod to the public gallery, packed with pensmen from the news sheets. 'So who am I to deviate from the front page editorial that the Middlesteel Illustrated News has no doubt already laid out on their composition board? I shall even raise the ante for their editors a little. It is my terrible duty to ask you today for the passing of perhaps the most radical bill of them all. As radical as the threat this land of ours now finds itself faced with. We must repeal, at least temporarily, the Statute of Splendid Detachment.'
'No, NO,' howled the opposition benches – worryingly, the cry appeared to be taken up by many members on Carl's own side of the house as well.
'There are reports circulating which cannot have escaped the attention of my honourable colleagues assembled here today, reports that have been carried back from our trading houses in the Catosian League. Reports that I can sadly confirm. Almost all of the Catosian city-states have now fallen.'
From the facing benches, the opposition leader Guardian Hoggstone came to his feet. 'The policy of splendid detachment has served this house well for seven hundred years. The study of history is a litany of conflicts raging into war across the continent and ever shall it be so. Are we to act as policemen to the world? You will find it an ungrateful business, sir. We have no mutual assistance pact with the Catosian League. Indeed, who in the anarchy is there to sign a treaty with? Where each citizen speaks for him or herself, with not a government worthy of the name. We would go into their land as liberators and be shot at as occupiers within the week, mark me well on this matter.'
Carl continued. 'We know of no nation to the north capable of defeating Catosia. An expeditionary force would allow us to gather information on the invaders and-'
'And it would cause the Jackelian people to become embroiled with every foreign intrigue and border dispute on the continent,' roared Hoggstone. 'A little bit of splendid detachment when it suits one is similar to one's daughter declaring she is merely a little bit pregnant for the afternoon. And I have read the developments in today's news sheets as well as you.' He flourished a copy of the morning's Illustrated. 'Quatershift has now been
