by Stephen Hunt
The reverend’s church was built into the narrow terraced streets. Oliver sat on a window seat, carefully cleaning the boatman’s gun the way Harry had showed him, with half an eye on the waking city outside. Three storeys below gas miners were changing shift, crowds of graspers wearing dirty gutta-percha capes and gas hoods trudging back home, elephantine breather filters swinging from their faces in a solemn pendulum sway. Normally the graspers would have been quite capable of mining without protection – their own warren cities in the downlands were testament to that. But exposure to celgas caused burns to even their tough hide, so they rode the steam lifts underground in their stifling suits and sweated their labours for Jackals’ most precious commodity.
Somewhere out there, obscured by the engine smoke and rock dust of Shadowclock, were the answers. The answers to why his family lay dead in Hundred Locks. The answers to why his name now adorned wanted posters on constables’ walls for murders he had not committed. The answers to why momentous events now seemed to swing around the orbit of his small life like drunken dancers around a festival pole.
‘You don’t look like you’re used to doing that, boy.’ It was the reverend. For all his years he moved with the silence of a cat. There was something else Oliver found disconcerting. The way the old man’s shadow moved sometimes – faster than his age, larger than his bulk. Like it belonged to someone else. ‘In fact, you don’t look any more comfortable than when you’re wiping the gunk off that talking obscenity your steamman friend keeps rolled away.’
Oliver placed a gleaming barrel down on the cloth. ‘I’ve only shot it the once – and if I hit what I was aiming at it was an accident.’
‘That I figured. How old are you, son? You look like you should just be finishing off your schooling, not trailing behind a poacher-turned-gamekeeper like Harold Stave.’
Oliver scratched a pattern in the soot on the window. ‘I was tossed out of school when they put me on the county registration book.’
‘Ah,’ said the reverend. ‘A bit of wild blood running through the veins, eh? That’s too bad. We don’t get the mist much in this part of the world. Don’t mix well with the earthflow streams and the gas we’re sitting on, I reckon. You’ll die of black lung and tunnel rot before you choke on a feymist here at Shadowclock.’
‘Is that why you stay here?’ said Oliver.
‘I go where I’m needed, pilgrim,’ said the reverend. ‘I’m a lifetime too old to fear the mist now, boy. Too old to survive the changes if it got me. Besides, a man has to die of something.’
‘You’re needed to supply jinn to the miners?’
‘That’s the mercenary streak you get hanging around Harold Stave speaking, boy,’ said the reverend. ‘There’s more than one sort of crime. As a for instance, Shadowclock doesn’t have a board of the poor to help the families here when they fall on hard times. The city’s a mining town – if you’re not working the governor doesn’t want you taking up valuable space that could be filled by someone more able. This is a bad place to get lame, injured or sick in.’
‘You sound like a Carlist,’ said Oliver.
‘That’s been noted before,’ said the reverend. ‘But when you come down to it, there’s not much that was written in Community and the Commons that wasn’t spoken first by one prophet or another in the good book. People are all people have got, boy. We need to look out for each other.’
The truth of what the reverend was doing suddenly settled on Oliver. ‘That’s why you’re running this place like the flash mob! You use the money to help the families that would have gone to the poor board.’
‘Keep your voice down, son. The state wouldn’t care for it if they knew I had a parallel system of taxation running underneath their noses.’
‘And Harry found out about it.’
‘That’s a polite way of asking is that what he’s got over me,’ said the reverend. ‘If it was, it would be the best of it. His people might care about the security of this place, but they don’t give a damn about skimming the froth off the customs gate. Their attitude to it is the same as mine – people have been drinking and stuffing their pipes for as long as there’s been history – someone’s going to do it. My way there’s fewer hungry children keeping their parents awake at night crying because the stew pot was more water than it was gravy.’
‘You sound tired,’ said Oliver.
‘By damn I am tired, pilgrim. Life at my age is like serving in a war. Everything you ever loved, everyone you knew, has been cut down by the years. I’ve outlived them all; my wife, my friends, most of my damn enemies too. All I have left is my anger at the foolishness of the world. The unnecessary cruelties, the pomposity and vanity of people who should know better. Most of the time I just want to shake some sense into the world.’
Oliver did not know what to say. Listening to the old man was like hearing the thunder roll at the end of a storm. Their places in the world separated by the gulf of a lifetime. Something about the reverend made him uneasy, but he wasn’t sure if it was a hidden darkness in the man or a premonition that he might be seeing echoes of how he would end up seventy years hence.
From down the stairs Oliver heard Steamswipe calling his name. ‘I’d better go.’
‘Better had, boy.’
When Oliver had gone the reverend checked the stairs then shut the door to the room. He went to the window seat where Oliver had been resting and lifted up the cover. From underneath a jumble of blankets the reverend pulled out a wooden box. Settling his bones into a chair he balanced the box on his legs and toyed with the clasp. What had made him think of it now? He hadn’t thought of the box for months, let alone looked at it. Too much talk of the past. No fool like an old fool. Against his better nature he lifted the lid and the light of the box’s contents illuminated the crevices of his face. He sighed and put the box away. Then, resting back in the chair, he fell asleep.
It was a light slumber, the slumber of age and weariness. As a child the reverend had laughed when his own grandfather had fallen asleep during the day. It had seemed comical. Now he did the same four or five times a day. His dreams had become pedestrian since Anna had moved along the Circle: he was busying about the church, checking the cushions were still underneath the pews. Then the thing walked in from the street. Surely nothing could have been so badly injured in a tunnel gas flare and lived? It was a gargoyle given flesh.
‘By damn,’ said the reverend.
‘Not quite,’ said the Whisperer. ‘Although one of us might be damned.’
‘What in the name of the Circle are you, my friend?’
‘You can think of me as your conscience,’ hissed the Whisperer.
‘My conscience sure got mean since I last used it.’
‘No false modesty now,’ said the Whisperer, ‘your conscience gets out more than I do. All those secret payments to the widows and the children, the food for the miners with limbs as mangled as mine.’
The dream seemed more vivid than usual. The reverend looked around the church with unnatural clarity. ‘My conscience seems very well informed today, sir.’
‘I like your mind, old man. It’s as still as that graveyard you tend, and has as many secret tunnels buried away beneath it.’
‘We all have secrets,’ said the reverend, ‘and a tale to tell. Behind that flesh of yours, for instance.’
‘Ah, but my story is a mere abbreviation in comparison to yours, old man,’ said the Whisperer. ‘What’s to tell? A feymist rising and a sleeping child in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘The lives of half the Special Guard began that way.’
‘You should take a tour of Hawklam Asylum some time, old man. Poke a stick between the bars of the low-risk feybreed with all the other curious ladies and gentleman of Middlesteel. You would see how most of our stories end up.’
‘So you are connected to the boy.’
‘So I am,’ said the Whisperer. ‘I’ve been having a little trouble getting into Oliver’s dreams of late. His b
ody’s defences seem to be reacting to me as a threat after I had to pour a little unpleasant fey medicine down his throat.’
‘Lucky him.’
‘Don’t be like that, old man. I’m only trying to steer him in the right direction.’
‘Yes, but right for who?’ said the reverend.
‘That sounds a little sanctimonious coming from you, preacher,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘You used to redraw the line between right and wrong all the time. Or maybe you’ve forgotten? The Circlelaw by day, the mask and the black horse by night. Who was ever going to suspect you?’
‘The money went to those who needed it,’ said the reverend.
‘I believe you will find the counting houses and merchants you relieved of all that gold thought they needed it,’ said the Whisperer.
‘They were wrong.’
‘Don’t think I disapprove,’ said the Whisperer. ‘Quite the opposite in fact. You remember when you were given the box, when you found him half-dead in your old vicar’s church? Now it’s time to pass the box on.’
‘You’re talking about the boy.’
The Whisperer’s limbs twitched, but his silence spoke for him.
‘Don’t you think he’s been cursed enough? Given wild blood, chased away from his home in the company of those two killers.’
‘It’s time to pass the box on, old man. It’s time for him to ride again.’
‘I won’t do it to the boy,’ said the reverend. ‘I’ve spent the last two decades trying to forget what I was.’
‘But you can’t, can you, old man? You’re like a worldsinger trying to meditate away the urge for another sniff of petal dust. The box calls to you, doesn’t it? It sings to be opened, to make you feel alive again – to make the night your cloak and make the wicked suffer under your heel.’
‘I will not let him out again,’ said the reverend. ‘I will not bear the responsibility for it.’
‘The responsibility was never yours to give,’ said the Whisperer.
‘Even if I could, Harold Stave will not let me.’
‘Now that’s the weasel in you talking,’ said the misshapen feybreed. ‘Stave knows about you, but he never knew about the box. As far as the Court is concerned the Hood-o’the-marsh died a long time ago. Give Oliver the box. If it’s time for him to ride, he will.’
‘That’s an awful thing to wish on a man.’
‘He may not live without it,’ said the Whisperer. ‘You may choose to hide yourself away in the smog of the mines but you have noticed all the odd little things going on in the city, haven’t you? The disappearances. The beatings. Out with the old, in with the new.’
‘I’m old,’ said the reverend, ‘but I am not blind yet.’
‘Well you don’t know the jigging half of it. There’s a storm coming and that line from the Circlelaw about where there is pain, ease it, that isn’t going to count for a whole lot soon, old fellow. Two ounces of mumbleweed without gate tax isn’t going to pay for a pauper’s funeral this time. All those hungry eyes of the children you had to bury – the ones that used to visit your nightmares – you better start laying in a fresh stack of small coffins.’
‘Get out of my head,’ cried the reverend.
‘Give him the box.’
‘He’s feybreed already,’ said the reverend. ‘Hasn’t he got witch powers?’
‘They seem a little shy right now,’ said the Whisperer, ‘and a bit too defensive for my tastes. And as you pointed out, Oliver is just a man. He’s been uprooted from everything that’s familiar, had what passes for a family cut out from underneath him. He is being hunted to ground like a fox by the order and the crushers for a crime he didn’t even commit. If a lifetime of hamblin contempt hadn’t made him so antisocial and contained to start with, this would have broken him. You can feel the anger within Oliver, old man. A sea of it. It needs a release. I need him released from the box and so does Jackals.’
The reverend crumpled back in his chair, feeling every one of his years. ‘I always thought I would die as the Hood-o’themarsh.’
‘You should have burnt the box,’ said the Whisperer.
‘You don’t think I didn’t try! I flung it into the furnaces up on the hill. The next morning I found it stored back in my chest under the blankets, waiting for me like a damn dog to be fed. That’s what you’re asking me to pass on.’
‘It’ll feed now,’ hissed the Whisperer. ‘It’s time for a banquet.’
Chapter Nineteen
They’re coming,’ shouted Nickleby from the window. A volley of silenced shots crackled off the thick walls of Tock House. Molly triggered her rifle and the recoil of the butt smashed painfully against her shoulder. She did not see where her shot landed – it was dark outside and the toppers were wearing uniforms blacker than a stack cleaner’s breeches.
‘Lean hard into the rifle, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘Don’t give it any room to dance about on you now.’
He rested his monstrous cannon on the open windowsill and fired it down into the grounds, all eight barrels spreading chaos below. Coppertracks’ drones ran behind them, taking discharged rifles, breaking them and emptying the shattered crystal charges into stone buckets. One of the mu-bodies passed a reloaded rifle to Molly. Coppertracks stood obscured behind the workbench and the blood machine, lying silent now the servants of his id were helping repel the attack.
‘Aliquot,’ called the commodore. ‘Will you busy yourself over here, we’re fighting for our blessed lives.’
Coppertracks did not reply, but from outside the night was filled with screams. Sharparms was galloping through the darkness spearing toppers with his piston arms. He had waited hidden in the tree line until the assault force had gathered in strength; now he was rampaging through the grounds like the dark conscience of the slipthinker, leaving murder and trampled softbodies in his wake.
‘You beautiful, frightful thing,’ called the commodore. ‘But I’m still glad we’ve four thick walls between us and you.’
As the toppers tried to assemble to meet the threat Sharparms would crash through the wood, the ghostly chatter of his spear arms moving in and out before he vanished into the tree line, reappearing in their midst from another angle.
Molly, Nickleby and the commodore poured shots down into the distracted assault, spinning bodies around to fall onto the gravel and the carefully tended flowerbeds. Coppertracks came up behind Molly and ushered her to the side as he passed beakers of red fizzing liquid to his mu-bodies. They hurled the chemicals out of the tower’s broken clock face, raining them down onto a cluster of toppers who were hefting a battering ram with a blow-barrel sap-filled head towards Tock House’s door. Jelly-like fire spread across the party, flames spilling out into the bushes and trees to the side of the coach house.
‘Dear Circle, Aliquot,’ said Nickleby. ‘Careful with my horseless.’
As Sharparms impaled two toppers, one on either arm, a figure stepped out of the bushes behind the steamman, spinning a three-sphere bolas around his head. Unlike the others he was not dressed in black – he looked more like he had been diverted from a dinner engagement at one of the chandelier-lit palaces of food along Goldhair Park. Light from Coppertracks’ chemical fire briefly illuminated his face. Molly sucked in her breath. It was him! The old devil from the bawdyhouse, the same jigger who had killed Slowcogs and Silver Onestack. Count Vauxtion. He was like some demon from a Spring-heeled Jack penny ballad. Every time she thought she had escaped him and slunk away into anonymity, he appeared like the calm eye in a cyclone of death.
The count’s bolas twisted in slow motion, wrapping itself around Sharparms’ hind legs – the steamman dropped the two dead toppers off his spear arms, his helmet-like head turning towards the source of the threat. From the woods one of Coppertracks’ other mu-bodies raced towards the warrior – he had nearly reached Sharparms when the explosion leapt out, blowing the diminutive drone back across the gravel. In the clearing smoke Molly saw that both of the steamman’s rear legs had b
een vaporized. Sharparms was trying to use his front two legs to scrabble forward, but the vengeful assassins were on top of him, opening his frayed armour with harpoon-like weapons.
Behind Molly, Coppertracks’ body tossed on top of his tracks, moaning as the pain of his warrior drone’s death overwhelmed him. Nickleby and the commodore emptied their rifles into the fray, but it was too late. Tock House’s steamman guardian lay deactivate in a pool of dark oil, his life force spilled in the warm summer night.
‘They’re withdrawing,’ shouted Molly. It was true, down below the toppers were disappearing back into the trees.
‘No, lass,’ said Commodore Black. ‘The black-hearted devils know we are on our last legs now. They’re regrouping.’
True to the submariner’s prediction the toppers came back out a few minutes later, odd guns that looked like broomsticks with kegs on their tips strapped to their bodies.
Molly stared. ‘What are those things?’
‘Get down Molly.’ Nickleby pushed her to the floor as one of the kegs fireworked off its broom and crashed through the shattered clockface. It was pierced with pepper-holes and spun across the floor, filling the chamber with smoke.
‘Aliquot,’ yelled Nickleby, ‘get the girl out of here.’
‘My vision glass is impaired,’ called the steamman. ‘Find my nearest mu-body.’
More of the wooden kegs clattered across the chamber, spinning as gas streamed out. Black was coughing an obscenity, but Molly could not even see him now in the smog. It smelt sickly sweet and stung at her eyes like vinegar – inhaling it was like trying to breathe cotton wool, her throat hacking as her lungs tried to separate air from the foul viscous cloud.
Crawling across the floor, breathing nails, she could not see Nickleby or any of her other friends – her tear-eyed vision was down to a couple of inches inside the mustard thick haze. An explosion shook the tower, followed by a clang as the metal shield door collapsed back with all the weight of a dying slipsharp. Molly’s shaking body was enveloped by darkness long before the first grappling hook slashed into the metal frame of the clock face.
