The Court of the Air

‘There have been reports of a pride of pecks attacking the farms,’ said the count. ‘Productivity will suffer. The committee demands answers.’

‘Pecks are always dragging off spore hands, compatriot. We’d have more luck farming the black-furred little buggers instead. But it’s your papers of travel I need to see if you want to go on a picnic with bright eyes here.’

‘But of course,’ said the count. He reached inside his cloak as an explosion lifted the roof off a mill in the bottom of the valley.

‘Sweet Tuitzilopochtli!’

‘Stay here,’ the sergeant shouted at one of the men. ‘The rest of you with me. It could be counter-revolutionaries from the Anarchy Council.’

Count Vauxtion smiled at the remaining guard. ‘And where would any good revolution be without its counter-revolutionaries?’

‘You stay put, compatriot,’ scowled the guard. ‘Until we’ve sorted out what’s happening in town you ain’t going nowhere.’

‘Hardly very fraternal, compatriot,’ said the count, bending down to pick something up from the cavern floor. ‘As for the mill, I think you’ll find someone rather carelessly turned the water system off on one of the boilers. See here, a worm.’

‘Do I look like I bleeding care?’

Molly tried to pull away, but the count pushed her back. ‘It’s a matter of philosophical niceties, compatriot. My own personal form of equalization, although where I come from it’s called a vendetta.’ Vauxtion’s hand shot up and a blast of gas spurted into the guard’s face. The brilliant man collapsed to the ground as if an axe had felled him and the count tossed the worm contemptuously on his body. ‘See, compatriot. I have made you equal to both my family and these toiling gardeners of the soil. May the worms enjoy the meal.’

‘You murderous old goat,’ Molly shouted. ‘You don’t care who you kill.’

The count waved his gas gun in the direction of the fungal forest. ‘Quite the opposite, my sweet. Shall we go for our picnic?’

‘I—’ Molly flinched back as a boot came down from the sky, flashing past her cheek, and sending the count sprawling over the corpse of the dead guard. The breath whooshed out of her as an arm rammed her spine, encircling her, tossing her into the air and onto a wicker floor. She gazed up stunned into a craynarbian face.

‘Ver’fey!’

‘I told you it was her,’ said Ver’fey.

Standing behind the craynarbian was a large woman, the sleeves of her shirt cut short, massive tanned arms jutting out. The same arms that had just seized Molly and lifted her from the ground. She looked oddly familiar.

Molly rolled off her back and onto her feet. She was in a wicker gondola hardly larger than a boat; above her was a sausage-shaped canvas. A miniature aerostat. Beyond the woman a man stood holding the tiller of a pivot-mounted expansion engine. Molly swayed for a second, dazed, and looked back towards the ground.

Count Vauxtion was a small dot on the edge of the fungal forest.

‘Molly.’ The craynarbian steadied her human friend. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Back,’ said Molly. ‘I need to get back to Grimhope.’

‘You’re joking, kid,’ said the woman with the muscled arms. ‘Those asylum rejects would shoot us down as soon as look at us.’

‘I have friends down there,’ protested Molly.

‘Then make new ones, because we’re heading for the surface.’

‘Ver’fey,’ said Molly, ‘in Circle’s name what are you doing here? Can’t you tell her to put us down on the ground?’

Ver’fey shook her armoured skull, pointing to the man tending the expansion engine. ‘I told him where to find you, Molly, and I said I would come along to help them identify you.’

She turned to face the engine man, his thin hair whipping in the backdraft from the propeller.

‘My apologies, Molly,’ he said. ‘We have risked too much to find you to risk losing you back in Grimhope.’

‘A thank you would be nice, kid,’ added the woman. ‘I doubt if the count’s intentions towards you were any more altruistic than they normally are.’

‘You know him?’ said Molly. ‘Who are you people?’

‘We’ve run into each other before, kid, the count and myself. Normally at high speed.’

‘Don’t you recognize her, Molly?’ asked Ver’fey. ‘From the books at Sun Gate?’

Of course – the penny dreadful cover illustrations. A tanned woman with gorilla-sized arms sweeping across a ravine in a Liongeli jungle, clutching a massive purple gem stolen from a temple.

‘Amelia Harsh,’ said Molly.

‘Professor Harsh,’ corrected the woman.

‘What are you doing down here?’

‘The best I can, kid. But if you mean why are we pulling your scrawny frame out of Grimhope, you can talk to the money.’ She pointed to the man by the expansion engine.

‘Money?’

Professor Harsh shrugged. ‘Poking around the ruins of Chimeca doesn’t come cheap. This boat might be theirs, but what the university pays me doesn’t cover half of my work.’

‘Why are we here, Molly?’ said the money, sadly, ‘Because someone in Middlesteel is offering a fortune for your body – alive preferred, but dead perfectly acceptable.’

Chapter Nine (#u22f8491e-6dae-51e5-80ea-2e737e87817c)

Analyst Ninety-one pretended not to have noticed the newcomer standing outside the door to Lady Riddle’s office. She casually shuffled the punch cards for the afternoon’s transaction engine load as Analyst Two-eighty slotted them into a pneumatic tube container.

‘It is him,’ said Two-eighty, her voice low.

‘I thought he would be taller,’ whispered Ninety-one. But she didn’t sound disappointed.

It was the signature tweed cap that really settled it. He looked like he might have just walked in from a day’s grouse shooting on some green limestone pile in the uplands.

‘Eyes front and centre,’ ordered Regulator Nine as she walked past the processing station. They busied themselves as the regulator went up to him.

‘Lord Wildrake, the Advocate General will see you now.’

Shutting the door on the calculation hall, the regulator ushered the visitor into a private chamber, a vista of thick armoured crystal glass overlooking the still sky-reaches of the troposphere. It was always calm here, so high; the Court of the Air floating far above the storm systems and the worries of the Jackelians below. He stood a moment, watching the smaller aerostats patrolling beyond the tethered spheres and globes. Razor-finned and tipped with long pulse barbs, their exclusive purpose was to drive off any skraypers that floated too close to the city.

He took off his cloak and hung it on a hook next to the marble head of Isambard Kirkhill, then clicked his heels to announce his presence to Lady Riddle.

At the other end of the room, the light and the space of the office offset the ebony skin of the Advocate General perfectly. No doubt as was intended.

‘Take a seat,’ said Lady Riddle.