The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt

      ‘You have the field then,’ said Lady Riddle. ‘And Wildrake …’

      ‘Ma’am?’

      ‘Enough of him back alive to be interrogated by one of our truth hexers, if you please.’

      ‘Best efforts, Advocate General,’ said Wildrake, dropping to the floor, feeling the glorious pain in his aching arms. ‘Best efforts.’

      Oliver stood in the cobbled streets outside Bonegate prison, the crowds lining up by the thousand to see him hang. Hawkers were selling trays of rotten fruit, some of which was already lashing past the scaffold. It was normally considered more fun to let the condemned prisoners feel the drop, then pelt them with garbage as they danced the Bonegate quadrille.

      Inspector Pullinger raised his hands and a hush fell over the expectant mob. ‘For breaking of a crown registration order, for breach of registration boundary lines, for failure to submit to the Department of Feymist’s articles under statute six of the Feybreed Control Act, for the most foul deed of premeditated murder on three counts, Oliver Brooks is sentenced to death by hanging.’

      The crowd cheered and clapped as a Circlist vicar stepped forward to administer the rites of conversion. She spoke the litany quietly, so that only Oliver and the others on the gallows platform could hear the words. ‘Troubled souls in this life, may your essence return to the one sea of consciousness, so that as the Circle turns, you are returned to this good earth in a happier vessel.’

      The vicar spun in horror as the misshapen form of the Whisperer pulled himself up onto the gallows. ‘New vessel? Nothing wrong with the old one.’

      Guards were running away screaming, the crowd falling back in a stampede.

      ‘See, wherever I want to sit, I can always find a space.’

      ‘Whisperer,’ Oliver groaned.

      ‘Stress dreams, Oliver?’ said the Whisperer. ‘I can go closer to home for them. Always someone new being introduced back at my place. Worldsinger guards with their funny ways and their scalpels, potions and rubber gloves.’

      Oliver struggled to untie the noose around his neck. ‘Thank the Circle, I thought this was real. I really did.’

      ‘A little realer every day, Oliver,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘If they catch you, this is your future. A cell next to mine buried under the earth in Hawklam is the premium option for you now. I warned you about Harry Stave, did I not?’

      ‘My family’s dead, Whisperer. They killed my uncle. Killed Damson Griggs. They tried to kill me too.’

      The Whisperer stroked Oliver’s back as he sliced the dream noose with a bony appendage, part teeth and part arm-bone. ‘See how similar we’re becoming, Oliver. My family died too. My father strangled my mother for giving birth to me, and I haunted his putrid dreams until he climbed a windmill at Hazlebank and threw himself off it.’

      ‘You’re mad,’ said Oliver. ‘We’re nothing alike.’

      ‘You think I am mad?’ hissed the Whisperer, giggling. ‘You should see the things they’re releasing from the asylum, Oliver. Soul-sniffers. Special torcs to contain them – more like suits of armour than torcs. In the asylum we used to call them the wild bunch, and wild they are.’

      Oliver looked out over Bonegate Square. It was empty now. ‘What are you doing here, Whisperer?’

      ‘So little gratitude, Oliver. I am taking care of business. For the both of us. A dream here, a dream there, not just the fey either – normals too.’

      Oliver tried to avoid looking directly at the misshapen thing. ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

      ‘The feymist curtain has been in Jackals for over a thousand years, Oliver. Seeping its essence into the fields and the moors and the forests. The worldsingers won’t admit it, but there’s a bit of fey in all of us now.’ He laughed. ‘More in some than others though, eh?’

      ‘I haven’t started to change yet.’

      ‘Pah,’ spat the Whisperer. ‘Dreams are about the truth, Oliver. They are a door through which denial is rarely allowed admittance. Ask yourself this question: why does your mind, your perfect mind which can slew off worldsinger truth-hexing and mind-walking like water off a duck’s feathers, why does it still allow me entry into your dreams?’

      ‘I—’ Oliver had not anticipated the question.

      ‘Think on it, Oliver. I like it in here, Oliver – your mind is by far the best. Lovely detail. Perfect clarity. It isn’t as easy to make contact with the normals. But I have been bearing up, Oliver. I’ve been minding the shop for the both of us. The places I’ve been – even steammen minds; like wading through a stream of broken glass, riding one of the metal’s thoughtflows.’

      ‘And in your travels,’ said Oliver, ‘have you found anything more practical than obscure warnings about Harry Stave?’

      ‘Oh, I’m warming to Harry,’ said the Whisperer. ‘He’s a son of a bitch, and damned if I know if he’s our son of a bitch yet, but right now he’s the only game in town as far as young Master Brooks is concerned.’

      ‘How comforting.’

      ‘You’ve got a few surprises in store for you, Oliver. For me too. There’s someone else out there, or something. Leaving little traces behind in people’s minds. She thinks I don’t know about her, but I am powerful, Oliver. That’s why they buried me so deep beneath the earth. No special torc suit for me.’ The Whisperer’s normally sibilant voice had risen to a screech, the background reality of the tenements surrounding Bonegate wavering under the lashing fury of his temper. ‘No fun and games with the wild bunch for the poor old Whisperer. No midnight walks through Middlesteel’s wide boulevards for me. No moonlight. No cold evening air!’

      ‘Stop it,’ Oliver shouted. ‘My mind!’

      Fading away, the dream storm died down as the Whisperer collapsed sobbing on the gallows platform. ‘I’m not predictable, Oliver. That’s why they fear me, that’s why they’ve got me surrounded by a dozen interlocking cursewalls, that’s why they use a trained hound to drag the drugged slop they feed me into my cell.’

      Oliver watched rapt with a mixture of fascination, horror and pity as the Whisperer started to pull himself across the platform, his club-footed shuffle becoming a rhythm from his childhood only he could hear. ‘Do a little dance, do a little dance.’

      ‘What will you do, Whisperer,’ said Oliver, ‘if they catch me and the doomsman stretches my neck at the gallows?’

      ‘Don’t say that, Oliver,’ the Whisperer hissed. ‘The memory of last night’s roast beef is still so fresh in your skull. So clear. Ah, now I see what you’re trying to do. Distracting me the way you’d dangle string in front of a kitten.’

      ‘That beef sure tasted good though,’ said Oliver, sitting down on the edge of the hangman’s platform.

      The Whisperer arranged himself alongside Oliver. It was difficult to tell if the feybreed had a sitting position or not. ‘I could almost bear my prison, Oliver, if it was not for the Special Guard. All the beautiful people, all the pretty-pretty boys and girls, eating the best, their fey gifts trotted out on call for the state. Like a basket of pampered, indulged pets. I used to visit their dreams, Oliver, in the early days. But now it’s just a little more than I can take.’

      ‘They wanted me to join the legion,’ said Oliver. ‘To put a worldsinger’s control torc around my neck.’

      ‘Pretty cat needs a collar,’ said the Whisperer. ‘You think my father didn’t promise that for me when he hauled me to Middlesteel on the back of his cart? I trade messages for all the prisoners trapped in Hawklam Asylum, like a one-fey crystalgrid network. There’s hardly a soul penned in here that wasn’t expecting the finest steak and long lazy days of muscle-pit oil massages. You’d be surprised how normal-looking some of