The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt

‘Yes, I am sure I would be amazed at how expensive the ward’s Victualling Board can buy in the cheapest kitchen slops. Still—’ she looked directly at the Beadle ‘—I am sure the suppliers have their overheads.’

      The Beadle positively squirmed behind his writing desk.

      ‘Well, my dear.’ Damson Fairborn adjusted the short silk-print wrap draped around her jacket’s shoulders. ‘You will do. I think I can pay you a handsome stipend once the poor board’s monthly fees have been accounted for.’

      Molly was shocked. If there was an employer who was paying the poorhouse’s dole and adding on an extra salary for the boarders, it was a first for the Sun Gate workhouse. The whole rotten idea of the poorhouse was as a source of cheap labour for the ward.

      ‘She’s an orphan, mind,’ reminded the Beadle. ‘She reaches her maturity in a year and then she’s a voter. I can only transfer her ward papers to you for twelve months.’

      The lady smiled. ‘I think after a year with me our young lady’s tastes will be expensive enough that she won’t wish to return to working for your Handsome Lane concerns.’

      Molly followed her new employer out onto the street, leaving the dank Sun Gate workhouse to the Beadle and his minions. The lady had a private cab waiting for her, the horses and carriage as jet-black as the livery of the squat, bullet-headed retainer standing beside them.

      ‘Damson Fairborn,’ Molly coughed politely as the manservant swung open the cab door.

      ‘Yes, my dear.’

      Molly indicated the high prison-like walls of the poorhouse behind them. ‘This isn’t the usual recruiting ground for a domestic’

      Her new employer looked surprised. ‘Why, Molly, I don’t intend you for an undermaid or a scullery girl. I thought you might have recognized my name.’

      ‘Your name?’

      ‘Lady Fairborn, Molly. As in my establishment: Fairborn and Jarndyce.’

      Molly’s blood turned cold.

      ‘Of course,’ the lady winked at her heavily muscled retainer, ‘Lord Jarndyce is sadly no longer with us. Isn’t that so, Alfred?’

      ‘A right shame, milady,’ replied the retainer. ‘Choked on a piece of lobster shell during supper, it was said.’

      ‘Yes, Alfred. That was really rather careless of him. One of the very few occurrences of good living proving harmful to one’s constitution, I should imagine.’

      Molly’s eyes were still wide with shock. ‘But Fairborn and Jarndyce is—’

      ‘A bawdyhouse, my dear. And I, not to place too delicate a sensibility on it, am widely known as the Queen of the Whores.’

      The retainer stepped behind Molly, cutting off her escape route down the street.

      ‘And you, Molly. I think you shall do very nicely indeed as one of my girls.’

      Back in the Beadle’s office the Observer faded into the reality of the poorhouse. She was allowed only one intervention, and it had been one of her best. Small. As it had to be. Hardly an intercession at all.

      Originally the Beadle had been intending to rent Molly’s ward papers to the large abattoir over on Cringly Corner; but that reality path would have seen Molly returned, dismissed for insubordination, and back in the poorhouse within six weeks. Which would not have been at all beneficial for the Observer and her designs.

      It had been so easy to nudge the Beadle’s brain a degree to the side, letting the new plan form in his imagination. Harder to push Emma Fairborn’s steel trap of a mind, but still well within the Observer’s intervention tolerances. The Beadle was sitting behind his desk now, working out how much graft was due in by the end of the week.

      The Observer made sure everything was tidy and accounted for in the man’s treacle-thick chemical soup of a mind. Something, a sixth sense perhaps, made the Beadle scratch the nape of his neck and stare directly at where the Observer was standing. She increased the strength of her infiltration of his optic nerve, erasing even her background presence, comforting the small monkey brain back into a state of ease. Silver and gold, think about the money. The Beadle shuffled his papers into a neat stack and locked them away in his drawer. It was going to be a good take again this week.

      The Observer sighed and faded back out of reality. Sadly, the Beadle was not going to live long enough to purchase that twelfth cottage by the coast to add to his burgeoning property empire. She could have saved him. But then there were some interventions the Observer was glad she was not required to make.

       Chapter Two

      The aerostat field at Hundred Locks was slowly filling up with passengers awaiting the Lady Hawklight’s arrival. Oliver checked his trouser pocket. The description of his uncle’s guest still lay crumpled in there.

      ‘Oliver.’ A voice diverted his attention away from his uncle’s errand – Thaddius. A boy he had known from school. When Oliver had still been allowed to attend school, of course.

      In the way of the young everywhere, the lad’s nickname was Slim, because he was anything but. The portly Thaddius had about as many friends in Hundred Locks as Oliver. At least, as many friends as Oliver had been left with, after the word had spread about what he really was … or might become.

      ‘Tail spotting?’ asked Oliver.

      ‘Tail spotting,’ confirmed Thaddius, his portly cheeks spreading in a grin. He showed Oliver his open book, neatly criss-crossed by a pencilled grid. ‘See, I got the Lady Darkmoor’s tail code last week. She normally operates on the Medfolk-to-Calgness run, but the merchant fleet are introducing the new Guardian Cunningham class in the south, so some of the uplander airships are being reallocated here now.’

      Oliver nodded out of politeness. Thaddius was desperate to join the Royal Aerostatical Navy but his family had too little money to purchase him a commission, and just a little too much to countenance him ever signing up as a humble jack cloudie. Poor fat Thaddius was going to follow the family trade and become a butcher with his father and brothers, spending his evenings at the field, wistfully watching the graceful airship hulls sailing in and out. Dreaming of what might have been. And soon too. There were only three months to go before Thaddius and his classmates left the gates of the local state school for the last time.

      ‘Fieldsmen to the line,’ cried one of the green-uniformed airship officers and a burly gang of navvies took position, making a cigar-shaped outline on the grass. A pair of large dray horses walked to the nose of the formation to stand alongside the field’s tractor-like steamman; ready to provide the heavy muscle. The steamman hardly looked up to the job. His name was Rustpivot, and he had been a worker at the field when Oliver’s Uncle Titus was a boy. As large as two wagons, his boiler belly was bordered by six spiked wheels. Despite his advanced years, the steamman could still reach out with any of his four arms to tow an aerostat back into lift position.

      ‘Those with passage booked, please make sure you have your tickets to hand,’ called an official.

      Oliver sighed. Travel.

      Thaddius looked at him and read his mind. ‘They can’t keep you registered forever, Oliver. They’ve either got to pass you, or, well, you know…’ his voice trailed off.

      ‘They’re never going to pass me,’ Oliver spat. ‘They enjoy keeping me prisoner here too much.’

      Thaddius fell quiet. The woes of his approaching family apprenticeship were put into perspective for him, set against the alternative prospects faced by his companion on the airship field. Remaining an outcast. Marked out. Gossiped about. Unable to travel further than was allowed by the state’s requirement that he sign on every week. Thaddius gave him a long look of sympathy, then left for the airship hangar to join the gang of tail spotters waiting by the doors.