the gypsy caravans that visited Hundred Locks during the Midwinter Festival. ‘Right. We stay here for the rest of the day – don’t even think about getting out of the cabin until tomorrow morning.’
Oliver felt a wave of exasperation rise in him towards his enigmatic saviour. ‘Why, Harry? You think that strange-looking aerostat is going to be floating around looking for us? That’s a pile of horse manure – what’s the chances of us being spotted at that distance?’
Harry sighed. ‘More than you’d credit, old stick. It’s not human eyes you need to worry about. There’s watchers up there with transaction engines to assist them; but they can only focus on a single place at a time, and we’ll be outside of their sweep area by tomorrow.’
Oliver sat down on a small three-legged stool. ‘Harry, that sounds like paranoia.’
‘It’s only paranoia if they’re not out to get you, lad. And judging by our reception back in the woods, they are.’
‘But who are they?’
Harry sighed again and pulled up a stool. ‘Both myself and my associates back in the woods are what are colloquially known as wolftakers.’
Oliver snorted in disbelief. ‘Wolftakers? So you’re a demon who’s come to—’
‘—snatch naughty children, Oliver? Every myth has its substance in reality. The tale’s just a twisted version of the truth.’
‘You’re an escaped convict, Harry. I saw the paper on you in the police station.’
‘That’s true enough,’ said Harry. ‘Although I would prefer to be known as a free-spirited entrepreneur who ran afoul of the navy’s taste for bureaucracy and regulations.’
‘So what’s this nonsense about wolftakers in the sky? Next you’ll be telling me you help Mother White Horse give gifts to the children every Midwinter.’
‘Wolftakers are human enough,’ said Harry. ‘Listen. When Isambard Kirkhill seized power in parliament’s name, he had only one fear left – and that was the throne. The navy and army wanted him to become king. Old Isambard had to fight them off with a sabre to stop them making him the new monarch. Then there were our own royalists in exile in Quatérshift plotting a counter-revolution and restoration. Kirkhill knew that if the rule of parliament was to last, it would have to resist both the plots without and the ambitions of its own Guardians within the house.’
‘What does this have to do with a children’s tale?’ Oliver asked.
‘Everything,’ explained Harry. ‘Kirkhill established a court sinister as the last line of defence, a body that was to act as a supreme authority and ultimate guarantor of the rule of the people. But it was to be a court invisible. The House of Guardians knows the Court is there, but they know nothing of its location, its staff, its methods or its workings. If any First Guardian were to start looking at the throne restored with envious eyes, the existence of the Court would give them pause to think.’
‘But all the stories about demons?’
‘To those that wish ill to Jackals,’ said Harry, ‘we are demons. A conspiracy of Guardians is plotting a coup and one morning they wake up and their ringleader has disappeared – never seen again. A merchant starts taking Cassarabian gold to smuggle navy celgas across the border and his tent is found empty on the sands. The political police begin taking orders to stitch up the ballot, and one day the Police General’s river launch is found adrift empty on the Gambleflowers – no trace of the old sod. That sends a powerful message. We’re the ghosts in the machine, Oliver, keeping the game straight and hearts pure. The only thing they know about us is the name Kirkhill gave us – the Court of the Air; the highest bleeding court in the land.’
‘But the men who tried to kill us – who killed Uncle Titus?’
‘Your uncle was a whistler, Oliver. Part of the Court of the Air’s network of agents on the ground. He’d discovered something, something worth killing him for.’
‘Uncle Titus?’
‘He was one of the best. His people were all over: clipper crew, traders – Cassarabia, Quatérshift, Concorzia, the Catosian League and the Holy Kikkosico Empire, every county in Jackals from Chiltonshire to Ferniethian.’
‘All this time,’ said Oliver. ‘He was never one for talking, but—’
‘Part of the job, Oliver. He was recruited by the same man who saved my neck from the drop outside Bonegate, the greatest wolftaker of them all – Titus’s brother.’
‘But that would mean—’
‘Your father, Oliver. He was the wolftaker who trained me in the craft. Took my not insubstantial talents and gave them a purpose beyond diverting navy biscuits to the merchants on Penny Street.’
‘If you work for this court,’ said Oliver, ‘why would they be trying to kill you?’
‘It’s the old quandary. Who watches the watchmen? I’ve been coming across little things for a couple of years now, signs that someone in the Court is playing both sides of the field. Your uncle suspected the same thing. When our extraction became an ambush just now, those suspicions became a reality.’
‘Extraction?’
‘Craft talk. Laying the flag is called putting up a signal. Calling down an aerosphere to lift us out and take us up.’
‘The Court lives on an aerostat?’
‘Not an airship, Oliver. We’ve got an entire city up there in the sky now. Higher than any RAN high-lifter can reach, just the skraypers for company.’
‘And now they’re trying to kill you?’
‘Only some of them. They must have spiked poor old Landless and got Monks onto the aerosphere roster in his place. Never did trust Monks; not enough of a thief for my taste. Who to trust now, Oliver? Always a tricky one in the great game at the best of times. Now, let me think. If they’re acting in the open then they must have declared me rogue. They couldn’t blow an extraction and hope to cover it up. That means regulator-level intervention. Circle, the rot in the Court goes a lot higher than I’d thought.’
‘And the phoney police in the station at Hundred Locks?’ said Oliver.
‘Someone’s dogs,’ said Harry. ‘But not the Court of the Air’s. We’ve got a military arm called the incrementals for the hard slap work. Proper killers. If they had come after us neither of us would be alive to be discussing it now. So, so, who to trust?’
‘Can I trust you, Harry?’
‘Trust him with your life but not your wallet.’ The voice sounded from the narrowboat’s doorway. The steam-shrouded steersman from earlier. Rising no higher than Oliver’s chest, his earless, whisker-bristled face buried beneath heavy rolls of leathery brown skin, the master of their canal boat was a grasper.
‘Armiral, you old rascal.’ Harry stood up to greet the grasper. ‘Room for a couple of stowaways?’
‘Is he a whistler?’ Oliver whispered to Harry.
<Armiral? Circle no. He’s one of my murky acquaintances.
