The Court of the Air

His colleague was pressing down on Oliver like a mountain. ‘Then murdering his registration officer.’

Oliver thrashed on the floor but couldn’t find the purchase to struggle free. The brigadier slipped a thread-thin noose from under his coat. ‘Then the boy hangs himself from a beam in the station-house for the shame of it.’

The noose looped over, cutting into Oliver’s neck.

‘How long, would you wager, captain?’ asked Morgan.

‘With his weight?’ said Bates. ‘Three minutes.’

‘Not long enough,’ said Morgan. ‘I’d have the boy down as a six-minute thrasher, choking and kicking all the way.’

‘Nah. Too skinny.’

‘A guinea on it, then, captain?’

‘Done, you old rascal.’

Oliver was hauled to his feet and a chair scraped close, the noose thread tossed over a beam.

‘Come on, son,’ grinned the brigadier. ‘You do your best and last four minutes for me.’

As if in a dream, Oliver’s chair was kicked out from underneath him, the cord of his noose biting tight – as if someone was pouring molten metal down his throat. Feet kicking and flogging the air, he tried to scream with pain but could find no voice to do it. Then the floor was slowly rising up to slap into him – were the gates of the underworld opening up underneath his shoes?

<Roll under the table.>

A rifle crack and the brigadier was tossed across the room in a haze of blood, the pistol he was reaching for suspended in the air. The other Ham Yard detective was fumbling for something underneath his coat, but Harry Stave was not waiting to reload Cudban’s rifle. Wheels of darkness spun across Oliver’s confused eyes. Harry Stave was moving like a whiplash across the room – surely nobody could move that fast? The cord must have starved his brain of air.

Bates doubled up as Harry pushed the long rifle’s butt into his stomach, then one step forward and the captain was twisting in the air, a snap as his neck cracked, limp body flopping back down onto the ground.

Coughing, Oliver pulled at the cord still circled tight around his neck. He looked up and saw the knife quivering in the wall, where it had struck after cutting his noose.

‘Uncle Titus?’ Oliver hacked.

Harry Stave shook his head sadly.

‘Oh Circle.’ The enormity of what had happened began to sink in. Three fresh corpses at his feet. Cudban dead. Damson Griggs. His uncle. ‘They tried to kill me.’

‘You were just an excuse, old stick. A convenient registered boy to blame the killings on. It was Titus and me they wanted.’

‘But they were police?’

Harry Stave kicked Bates’s body. ‘Maybe. But if they were, they weren’t the kind of crushers you’ll find cluttering up Ham Yard.’

Stave raised a finger to his lips as Oliver tried to speak. ‘I killed two back at Seventy Star Hall, Oliver. Two here. Questions later. We have to leave now.’

Everything was upside down. The police were killing people. A murderer was protecting him. Everyone he had half a care for in Hundred Locks was gone. As if he were sleepwalking, Oliver left the police station, closing the door on a huddle of sprawled corpses.

Closing the door on his entire life.

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

Molly’s lessons with Damson Darnay in the poorhouse had never been as intensive as the month of training Lady Emma Fairborn and her tutors supervised. Lessons in etiquette conducted in empty rooms the size of warehouses, only the silent black-clad presence of the house whippers blocking the door for company. Protocol, balance, poise, how to walk, talk, think. The difference between a thrust and a parry – more than you might think. The difference between the various factions in the House of Guardians: Heartlanders, Purists, Levellers, Roarers, and Circleans – less than you might think.

Not yet allowed to roam the large mansion and its high-walled grounds – including a small boating lake – Molly was confined to a room shared with one of the other girls. An old hand bawdy girl called Justine. An air of expectation and menace hung in the air. Of what would happen to her if she failed to please a tutor, stumbled in front of one of the cold-eyed instructors of dance, philosophy or comportment.

‘We’re not a ha’penny tumble around the back of Hulk Square,’ explained Lady Fairborn with a tone of contempt in her voice when Molly had balked at the need to master yet more current affairs. ‘Of the clients who step through the doors of Fairborn and Jarndyce, those that do not directly decide the fate of Jackals will own title to significant parts of its lands and commerce.’

Molly exhaled in frustration.

‘Come, my dear,’ said Lady Fairborn. ‘Don’t play coy with me. I know what it’s like to be brought up in the poorhouse. You think that if you give your body to a boy or a girl, that is all there is to pleasuring them. But that is barely a tenth of being a good lover.’ She tapped her head. ‘The rest is what occurs within this organ.’

Molly started. ‘You were born in a—’

‘I can’t speak for where I was born, Molly. And that is largely irrelevant to where one intends to end up. But yes, like you I was raised in the orphanage wing of a Middlesteel workhouse. Not behind your well-kept walls at Sun Gate, mind, but down in the Jangles, among the city’s rookeries, sewage and human cast-offs.’

‘But you have a title…’ said Molly.

Fairborn laughed. ‘Oh Molly, the most successful whores you’ll find in Middlesteel are down on the floor of the House of Guardians. Which makes my title one of the cheapest purchased in Jackals.’

Molly seemed lost in thought.

‘Your education here, Molly, is not just about facts and where on the table to locate the soupspoon. It’s about seeing the world as it really is. Lifting the veils of hypocrisy and the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day. You still believe that working here will prove distasteful? An honest answer if you please…’

Molly nodded.

‘That’s because you have been sold a tissue of lies designed to chain you, Molly. Keep you unquestioning in your place, a compliant female and an obedient worker. Your beauty, your raw attraction for men, is a weapon. Use it well and you can achieve as much as I have. Some would have you believe that I am a victim, Molly. But when clients walk through my door, they are nothing but sheep to be shorn of their skin and their wealth. The bargains we strike here are as much an economic transaction as any that occur at a society ball or in front of a Circlist altar.

‘The genial pensmen of Dock Street might steal their small amusements by writing my activities into the pages of the penny sheets as the Queen of the Whores, but the only difference between myself and a merchant’s daughter being hawked at a coming-out ball is that I get to name my own price.’ The lady leant over and kissed Molly, her tongue brushing lightly against the girl’s. ‘And unlike those respectable married ladies of Middlesteel, I find greater opportunity for repeat sales.’

‘But what about love?’ Molly questioned.

‘The greatest lie of them all,’ Fairborn retorted. ‘A biological itch telling you it’s time you started churning out tiny copies of yourself. Weakening your body and ravaging your beauty. Trust me on this; if there was ever a handsome prince waiting for either of us on a horse, he took a wrong turn somewhere. Love is like winter flu, Molly. It soon fades after the season. Better you learn to master it, package it, label it with a price and start building a future for yourself with it.’

The time had come for Molly to be introduced to her first client. A training patron, as it was euphemistically known, to orientate her in the trade of bawdy girl to the capital’s quality. Justine sat behind Molly on the red velvet bed, combing her hair.

‘You’ve nothing to worry about, Molly. I’ve seen your jack and he’s a regular gentleman, dapper as a dandy and old too – his beard is as silver as this here comb.’

Molly’s voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘Sell him to me some more.’

‘Not one of our usuals, but he must have come highly recommended to be here. Besides, an old one is best for the hey-jiggerty. He’ll only last a couple of minutes.’

Molly shook her head. ‘I can’t do this.’

‘You’ve got no choice, Molly. You bail out and you’ll be transferred to housekeeping duties, right up until you go hard down some stairs or get crushed by a falling cabinet. The only way you’ll get out of here is by paying off your contract.’ The girl handed Molly a square of green-coloured gum. ‘Chew this, it’ll take the edge off.’

Molly gnawed suspiciously at the square. It was almost tasteless, the consistency of wet clay. ‘What is it?’

‘Leaaf,’ said Justine.