The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt

understand.’

      ‘I’ll explain later. For now, let’s concentrate on our journey out of here.’

      Harry’s route led them to what Oliver at first took for a river; then he saw the towpath and realized it was the tail end of the Hundred Locks navigation. If they followed the canal path north they would eventually reach the hundred locks carved into the dike wall of the Toby Fall Rise.

      ‘Keep back under the trees for the moment,’ cautioned Harry. ‘We need to stay in the black. See the tunnel in the hill? We’ll head for there, keeping under the tree line at all times. The towpath goes into the tunnel. We’ll get into the channel behind that bush growing down there on the left.’

      Harry’s precise instructions left Oliver puzzled. ‘You think someone might be watching for us?’

      ‘Trust me,’ said Harry. ‘Someone’s always watching. Come on.’

      They hugged the forest until the mouth of the canal tunnel was upon them. The bush extended all the way up the hill and pushing past it, Oliver scraped his neck against the sharp twigs that grew between its small orange flowers. It was cool inside the tunnel. Damp too. Harry sat down in front of a navvy’s alcove and dangled his feet over the edge of the waterway.

      Oliver joined him. ‘Now we wait?’

      ‘Clever lad. You’ll go far.’

      After half an hour the tunnel mouth darkened as the first of three nearly identical narrowboats entered, a single paddle at the rear of each boat tossing water across the towpath.

      ‘When the middle boat passes,’ instructed Harry, ‘jump for the cabin.’

      Oliver did as he was bid – the narrowness of the tunnel and the slowness of the canal craft making it easy to step through the cloud of smoke and onto the deck. There was a steam-wreathed figure at the back, hand on the tiller, and if the canal man was surprised at the sudden addition of two passengers, he did not show it.

      Harry pushed Oliver through the door into a narrow room. It looked like the inside of the gypsy caravans that visited Hundred Locks during the Midwinter Festival. ‘Right. We stay here for the rest of the day – don’t even think about getting out of the cabin until tomorrow morning.’

      Oliver felt a wave of exasperation rise in him towards his enigmatic saviour. ‘Why, Harry? You think that strange-looking aerostat is going to be floating around looking for us? That’s a pile of horse manure – what’s the chances of us being spotted at that distance?’

      Harry sighed. ‘More than you’d credit, old stick. It’s not human eyes you need to worry about. There’s watchers up there with transaction engines to assist them; but they can only focus on a single place at a time, and we’ll be outside of their sweep area by tomorrow.’

      Oliver sat down on a small three-legged stool. ‘Harry, that sounds like paranoia.’

      ‘It’s only paranoia if they’re not out to get you, lad. And judging by our reception back in the woods, they are.’

      ‘But who are they?’

      Harry sighed again and pulled up a stool. ‘Both myself and my associates back in the woods are what are colloquially known as wolftakers.’

      Oliver snorted in disbelief. ‘Wolftakers? So you’re a demon who’s come to—’

      ‘—snatch naughty children, Oliver? Every myth has its substance in reality. The tale’s just a twisted version of the truth.’

      ‘You’re an escaped convict, Harry. I saw the paper on you in the police station.’

      ‘That’s true enough,’ said Harry. ‘Although I would prefer to be known as a free-spirited entrepreneur who ran afoul of the navy’s taste for bureaucracy and regulations.’

      ‘So what’s this nonsense about wolftakers in the sky? Next you’ll be telling me you help Mother White Horse give gifts to the children every Midwinter.’

      ‘Wolftakers are human enough,’ said Harry. ‘Listen. When Isambard Kirkhill seized power in parliament’s name, he had only one fear left – and that was the throne. The navy and army wanted him to become king. Old Isambard had to fight them off with a sabre to stop them making him the new monarch. Then there were our own royalists in exile in Quatérshift plotting a counter-revolution and restoration. Kirkhill knew that if the rule of parliament was to last, it would have to resist both the plots without and the ambitions of its own Guardians within the house.’

      ‘What does this have to do with a children’s tale?’ Oliver asked.

      ‘Everything,’ explained Harry. ‘Kirkhill established a court sinister as the last line of defence, a body that was to act as a supreme authority and ultimate guarantor of the rule of the people. But it was to be a court invisible. The House of Guardians knows the Court is there, but they know nothing of its location, its staff, its methods or its workings. If any First Guardian were to start looking at the throne restored with envious eyes, the existence of the Court would give them pause to think.’

      ‘But all the stories about demons?’

      ‘To those that wish ill to Jackals,’ said Harry, ‘we are demons. A conspiracy of Guardians is plotting a coup and one morning they wake up and their ringleader has disappeared – never seen again. A merchant starts taking Cassarabian gold to smuggle navy celgas across the border and his tent is found empty on the sands. The political police begin taking orders to stitch up the ballot, and one day the Police General’s river launch is found adrift empty on the Gambleflowers – no trace of the old sod. That sends a powerful message. We’re the ghosts in the machine, Oliver, keeping the game straight and hearts pure. The only thing they know about us is the name Kirkhill gave us – the Court of the Air; the highest bleeding court in the land.’

      ‘But the men who tried to kill us – who killed Uncle Titus?’

      ‘Your uncle was a whistler, Oliver. Part of the Court of the Air’s network of agents on the ground. He’d discovered something, something worth killing him for.’

      ‘Uncle Titus?’

      ‘He was one of the best. His people were all over: clipper crew, traders – Cassarabia, Quatérshift, Concorzia, the Catosian League and the Holy Kikkosico Empire, every county in Jackals from Chiltonshire to Ferniethian.’

      ‘All this time,’ said Oliver. ‘He was never one for talking, but—’

      ‘Part of the job, Oliver. He was recruited by the same man who saved my neck from the drop outside Bonegate, the greatest wolftaker of them all – Titus’s brother.’

      ‘But that would mean—’

      ‘Your father, Oliver. He was the wolftaker who trained me in the craft. Took my not insubstantial talents and gave them a purpose beyond diverting navy biscuits to the merchants on Penny Street.’

       ‘If you work for this court,’ said Oliver, ‘why would they be trying to kill you?’

      ‘It’s the old quandary. Who watches the watchmen? I’ve been coming across little things for a couple of years now, signs that someone in the Court is playing both sides of the field. Your uncle suspected the same thing. When our extraction became an ambush just now, those suspicions became a reality.’

      ‘Extraction?’

      ‘Craft talk. Laying the flag is called putting up a signal. Calling down an aerosphere to lift us out and take us up.’

      ‘The Court lives on an aerostat?’

      ‘Not an airship, Oliver. We’ve got an entire city up there in the sky now. Higher than any RAN high-lifter can reach, just the skraypers for company.’

      ‘And now they’re trying to kill you?’

      ‘Only some of them. They must have spiked poor old Landless and got Monks onto the aerosphere roster in his place.