The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt
he said. ‘We have risked too much to find you to risk losing you back in Grimhope.’
‘A thank you would be nice, kid,’ added the woman. ‘I doubt if the count’s intentions towards you were any more altruistic than they normally are.’
‘You know him?’ said Molly. ‘Who are you people?’
‘We’ve run into each other before, kid, the count and myself. Normally at high speed.’
‘Don’t you recognize her, Molly?’ asked Ver’fey. ‘From the books at Sun Gate?’
Of course – the penny dreadful cover illustrations. A tanned woman with gorilla-sized arms sweeping across a ravine in a Liongeli jungle, clutching a massive purple gem stolen from a temple.
‘Amelia Harsh,’ said Molly.
‘Professor Harsh,’ corrected the woman.
‘What are you doing down here?’
‘The best I can, kid. But if you mean why are we pulling your scrawny frame out of Grimhope, you can talk to the money.’ She pointed to the man by the expansion engine.
‘Money?’
Professor Harsh shrugged. ‘Poking around the ruins of Chimeca doesn’t come cheap. This boat might be theirs, but what the university pays me doesn’t cover half of my work.’
‘Why are we here, Molly?’ said the money, sadly, ‘Because someone in Middlesteel is offering a fortune for your body – alive preferred, but dead perfectly acceptable.’
Analyst Ninety-one pretended not to have noticed the newcomer standing outside the door to Lady Riddle’s office. She casually shuffled the punch cards for the afternoon’s transaction engine load as Analyst Two-eighty slotted them into a pneumatic tube container.
‘It is him,’ said Two-eighty, her voice low.
‘I thought he would be taller,’ whispered Ninety-one. But she didn’t sound disappointed.
It was the signature tweed cap that really settled it. He looked like he might have just walked in from a day’s grouse shooting on some green limestone pile in the uplands.
‘Eyes front and centre,’ ordered Regulator Nine as she walked past the processing station. They busied themselves as the regulator went up to him.
‘Lord Wildrake, the Advocate General will see you now.’
Shutting the door on the calculation hall, the regulator ushered the visitor into a private chamber, a vista of thick armoured crystal glass overlooking the still sky-reaches of the troposphere. It was always calm here, so high; the Court of the Air floating far above the storm systems and the worries of the Jackelians below. He stood a moment, watching the smaller aerostats patrolling beyond the tethered spheres and globes. Razor-finned and tipped with long pulse barbs, their exclusive purpose was to drive off any skraypers that floated too close to the city.
He took off his cloak and hung it on a hook next to the marble head of Isambard Kirkhill, then clicked his heels to announce his presence to Lady Riddle.
At the other end of the room, the light and the space of the office offset the ebony skin of the Advocate General perfectly. No doubt as was intended.
‘Take a seat,’ said Lady Riddle.
Wildrake shook his head and with a small jump, grabbed hold of one of the message ducts running across the ceiling. He began to do chin lifts on the pipe, the ripples of his muscles raw agony after his morning workout.
Lady Riddle swore to herself. His addiction to the damn drug was getting worse. ‘How much shine are you taking now, Wildrake?’
‘Just enough to keep me hard,’ said Wildrake. ‘To keep me solid. Talk to your sawbones in pharmacology, they keep me supplied.’
There was theoretically no upper limit to how much muscle an abuser could put on while chewing shine, the drug obtained from guard units of the city-states, where whole elite regiments warped themselves into living bull-women.
‘Tell me about the RAN Bellerophon, Wildrake.’
Lord Wildrake talked quickly, trying to get each sentence out between the blaze of pain in his arms. ‘I tracked down what was left of her to the dunes outside Dazbah under their camouflage nets. Full marks to the analysts involved for that prediction.’
‘Go on,’ said Lady Riddle.
‘One of the officers had been turned; they were holding his family prisoner and blackmailed him into putting the airship off course. Then he arranged for it to land on the other side of the Cassarabian border with a buoyancy leak. The local tribesmen took it from there.’
‘Our cloudies?’
‘Most of them were poisoned by something the traitor had put in their grog ration. I managed to free a couple of the survivors. The women in the crew had already been passed to the caliph’s biologick breeders by the time I arrived, I fear to say.’
‘Too bold,’ said Lady Riddle. ‘They are becoming far too bold. Something will need to be done about Cassarabia before long.’
‘The airship’s celgas has been siphoned off to a facility outside Dazbah,’ said Lord Wildrake. ‘They were using the wombs of our female ratings to try to witch up an organic substitute for celgas.’
‘The surveillant watch said you destroyed the place.’
‘They haven’t made any more progress on making their airship gas less flammable,’ said Wildrake. ‘You might say I just turned up the heat on the situation.’
‘If they don’t like it, they should have stayed out of our kitchen, Wildrake.’
‘My thoughts exactly, Advocate General.’
‘Now that the caliph has had his fingers burnt, I have a new job for you, Wildrake.’
‘I thought you might.’ Wildrake’s skin had taken on a healthy red sheen, the shine-induced sweat filling the room with a scent like cinnamon. ‘Another one of our airships is missing?’
‘Not an airship,’ said Lady Riddle. ‘A man. Wolf Twelve has gone rogue.’
‘Harold?’ said Wildrake, allowing his body to hang from the message duct for a minute. ‘Well, well. Naughty old Harold Stave. So it’s set a wolftaker to catch a wolftaker.’
‘Precisely,’ said Lady Riddle. ‘I understand you have some history with him, beyond your naval service, I mean. Will that be a problem?’
‘Moving barrels of ballast water around Jackals doesn’t exactly count as naval service in my estimation, ma’am,’ said Lord Wildrake.
‘But of all those captured it was only yourself and Harry Stave who survived the camp at Flavstar,’ Lady Riddle pointed out. ‘Along with that rich boy, the freelancer.’
‘Six months’ hospitality courtesy of the Commonshare’s Committee of Public Security took its toll on the team. It was something of a miracle any of us lived through it.’
Lady Riddle sat back. It was after his time in the camp that Wildrake had started taking shine. Bulking up; as if the wolf-taker could swell his muscles large enough that no Commonshare torturer could ever reach him again. ‘After your escape, I recall there was a difference of opinion as to whose error led to the operation in Quatérshift being rolled up.’
‘No doubt in my mind as to whose fault it was, Advocate General. Harold Stave is a chancer, an accident waiting to happen. Not a gentleman at all.’
‘The latter may be true, but given the wake of destruction you leave behind you, Wildrake, I hardly think you are in a position to lecture.’