The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt

Oliver. As usual the truth crystal was not alerted by his reply.

      ‘Have you had any dreams you would class as unusual?’

      ‘No,’ lied Oliver, the Whisperer’s hiss in his ears.

      ‘Have you had any mental conversations with relatives you believe might be dead?’

      ‘No,’ said Oliver. ‘Although if I did, I really wouldn’t mind.’

      Pullinger clearly did not believe a word of it. Four years exposed to the feymist and no resulting abominations. It was unheard of, an impossibility. Oliver had become his life’s work. His obsession.

      ‘I know you are hiding something, boy,’ said the worldsinger. ‘You may pass the crystal but you are not telling me everything, I can feel it in my gut.’

      ‘Been staying at the Three Bells, have you?’ muttered the sergeant. ‘We’ll have to do something about the state of their kitchen.’

      Pullinger ignored the jibes. ‘What do you have to fear, Oliver? You are normal physically. You wouldn’t end up with the broken gibbering things at Hawklam Asylum, I can promise you that.’

      ‘I would serve.’

      ‘Yes, Oliver. You would serve. In the Special Guard your powers would be put to the service of the people. You would be a hero, Oliver. No longer something unknown, to be feared and loathed. But a champion of the state – protecting your countrymen from our enemies abroad and at home.’

      ‘With a torc around my neck,’ said Oliver. ‘Controlled by someone like you.’

      ‘For all our powers, Oliver, the order is still human. Trusted to contain those who clearly are not. The torc is our insurance in case a feybreed goes rogue … or insane. How many fey are ever executed by torc? None so far this year.’

      Oliver shook his head. ‘I’m more human than your friends in the Department of Feymist.’

      ‘I know you think you have been treated badly, Oliver. But that’s the self-centred perspective of a young man who has seen nothing of life or the world. This is for your safety – and ours. You have not seen the things we have in the Department. You could go fey one night and wake up in the morning with as much in common with us as you have with the insects in your garden. You could decide to turn your uncle’s body inside out just to see what it looks like. You could walk through Hundred Locks setting people alight with your mind just to hear the difference in their screams. I have seen that happen, boy.’

      ‘I would never do that.’

      ‘People fear the feymist, Oliver. They fear it when whatever is behind the curtain seeps its poison across Jackals, changing its victims. They fear an abomination that hasn’t been tested and submitted to the people’s control.’

      ‘But I am normal,’ Oliver nearly shouted. ‘I’m the same as the rest of you.’

      ‘You can’t be the same, Oliver. Not after four years inside the feymist curtain. You are the only one who has been inside and lived to return.’

      ‘I don’t remember those years.’

      ‘What life is it here for you, Oliver? Your neighbours and friends terrified of your torcless neck, terrified you’ll wake up one day fey and rogue. Show me what you really are and let me conscript you into the Special Guard.’

      ‘Hundred Locks is my home.’

      ‘It’s your prison, Oliver. You would be happier among your own kind. Captain Flare would welcome you into the legion like a brother. Bonefire and the other champions of the guard would make you into a hero.’

      Oliver remained silent.

      ‘The common herd worship the Guard, Oliver. There wouldn’t be a tavern in the kingdom you couldn’t walk into and have Jackelians falling over themselves to stand you a drink. And the women, Oliver. You haven’t seen how the women drool over the Special Guard; hang on their every word. You would have Dock Street writers penning your adventures in the legion into myth. All that, and what do you have here?’

      ‘My freedom,’ said Oliver, quietly.

      ‘A curious sort of freedom,’ said the sorcerer. ‘And it has come very cheap for you, so far. But the day may not be far off when you find the price of it rises.’

      ‘I am normal,’ Oliver protested, the words sounding hollow even as he said them. ‘Normal.’

      Pullinger and his Department stooge made ready to leave. ‘You’ll slip one day, Oliver. Lose control and reveal yourself. When you do, we’ll be there to bind you. Or stop you.’

      Sergeant Cudban shook his head as the two sorcerers left. A row of polished cutlasses and rifles lay on the table in front of him. ‘I admire your spirit, laddie. But are you doing yourself any favours?’

      ‘You think I should give him what he wants?’

      Cudban shrugged. ‘I de nae know if there’s an ounce of fey in your bones, laddie, but that four years inside the feymist curtain is a life sentence as far as they’re concerned. They’ll keep you on the county register till your hair is silver and you’re walking with a stick. It’s no life for you.’

      ‘It’s not fair.’

      ‘I knew a Ham Yard detective, laddie; once he took it into his head that you were guilty, you might as well confess to the doomsman and take a shorter sentence, innocent or no. Either way they’d take you.’

      ‘Even if I’m not fey?’

      ‘Especially if you’re nae, laddie. Just tell them that old Isambard Kirkhill is sending you messages from beyond the grave – let them put a suicide torc around your neck and stick you in the Special Guard. He wasn’t lying about that. They live like Guardians down in Middlesteel. A bit of light duty protecting the people from the King. Let the heavy crushers like Captain Flare do any real fighting that parliament orders your way. I’ll be reading in The Middlesteel Illustrated about what a fine young champion of the state you are before midwinter.’

      But Oliver was not thinking about the Special Guard. He was thinking about Hawklam Asylum; the sibilant venom-words of the Whisperer; what it would be like to be ensnared for the rest of his years in a dark airless cell next door to the inhuman dream walker.

      Maybe it was a sixth sense – something within him finally fulfilling the Department of Feymist’s expectations – but Oliver knew something was wrong the moment he opened the back door to Seventy Star Hall. Everything in the lumber-room was as it should be, the jumble of rakes, earthenware pots and old garden boots, the dusty cloth-covered round table.

      Despite this, the hairs stood up on Oliver’s neck, a deep sense that things were no longer as they ought to be. Cautiously he left the garden door ajar rather than clunking it shut, and peered into the kitchen. Damson Griggs lay face-down on the kitchen tiles, her blank eyes staring lifeless across the pooling blood. There was a small wood-handled knife from the kitchen drawer embedded in the back of her head. The practical, protective Damson Griggs, the old lady who did not have a single bad bone in her body; snuffed out with the casualness of a garden beetle flattened under a boot.

      Oliver choked back a sob. He felt faint, like his soul was being drawn into the sky, his body lifted in the updraft of the death. Then his raw animal instinct for survival kicked in and he was back in the kitchen. Had Damson Griggs come in the back way too, surprising some cracksman stealing the house’s silver plate? Where was his uncle?

      Oliver felt a wave of panic rising in his stomach. His uncle should be home; why had he not heard the damson’s cries? He slipped a large knife out of the sharpening block by the porcelain basin, briefly comforted by its heft. Someone coughed outside the kitchen. Oliver tried not to slip on the blood – impossibly brown when it surely should have been red – and he went to look through the crack of the door to the hallway.

      There was a man he did not recognize – no, two of them – rifling quickly