think I am mad?’ hissed the Whisperer, giggling. ‘You should see the things they’re releasing from the asylum, Oliver. Soul-sniffers. Special torcs to contain them – more like suits of armour than torcs. In the asylum we used to call them the wild bunch, and wild they are.’
Oliver looked out over Bonegate Square. It was empty now. ‘What are you doing here, Whisperer?’
‘So little gratitude, Oliver. I am taking care of business. For the both of us. A dream here, a dream there, not just the fey either – normals too.’
Oliver tried to avoid looking directly at the misshapen thing. ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’
‘The feymist curtain has been in Jackals for over a thousand years, Oliver. Seeping its essence into the fields and the moors and the forests. The worldsingers won’t admit it, but there’s a bit of fey in all of us now.’ He laughed. ‘More in some than others though, eh?’
‘I haven’t started to change yet.’
‘Pah,’ spat the Whisperer. ‘Dreams are about the truth, Oliver. They are a door through which denial is rarely allowed admittance. Ask yourself this question: why does your mind, your perfect mind which can slew off worldsinger truth-hexing and mind-walking like water off a duck’s feathers, why does it still allow me entry into your dreams?’
‘I—’ Oliver had not anticipated the question.
‘Think on it, Oliver. I like it in here, Oliver – your mind is by far the best. Lovely detail. Perfect clarity. It isn’t as easy to make contact with the normals. But I have been bearing up, Oliver. I’ve been minding the shop for the both of us. The places I’ve been – even steammen minds; like wading through a stream of broken glass, riding one of the metal’s thoughtflows.’
‘And in your travels,’ said Oliver, ‘have you found anything more practical than obscure warnings about Harry Stave?’
‘Oh, I’m warming to Harry,’ said the Whisperer. ‘He’s a son of a bitch, and damned if I know if he’s our son of a bitch yet, but right now he’s the only game in town as far as young Master Brooks is concerned.’
‘How comforting.’
‘You’ve got a few surprises in store for you, Oliver. For me too. There’s someone else out there, or something. Leaving little traces behind in people’s minds. She thinks I don’t know about her, but I am powerful, Oliver. That’s why they buried me so deep beneath the earth. No special torc suit for me.’ The Whisperer’s normally sibilant voice had risen to a screech, the background reality of the tenements surrounding Bonegate wavering under the lashing fury of his temper. ‘No fun and games with the wild bunch for the poor old Whisperer. No midnight walks through Middlesteel’s wide boulevards for me. No moonlight. No cold evening air!’
‘Stop it,’ Oliver shouted. ‘My mind!’
Fading away, the dream storm died down as the Whisperer collapsed sobbing on the gallows platform. ‘I’m not predictable, Oliver. That’s why they fear me, that’s why they’ve got me surrounded by a dozen interlocking cursewalls, that’s why they use a trained hound to drag the drugged slop they feed me into my cell.’
Oliver watched rapt with a mixture of fascination, horror and pity as the Whisperer started to pull himself across the platform, his club-footed shuffle becoming a rhythm from his childhood only he could hear. ‘Do a little dance, do a little dance.’
‘What will you do, Whisperer,’ said Oliver, ‘if they catch me and the doomsman stretches my neck at the gallows?’
‘Don’t say that, Oliver,’ the Whisperer hissed. ‘The memory of last night’s roast beef is still so fresh in your skull. So clear. Ah, now I see what you’re trying to do. Distracting me the way you’d dangle string in front of a kitten.’
‘That beef sure tasted good though,’ said Oliver, sitting down on the edge of the hangman’s platform.
The Whisperer arranged himself alongside Oliver. It was difficult to tell if the feybreed had a sitting position or not. ‘I could almost bear my prison, Oliver, if it was not for the Special Guard. All the beautiful people, all the pretty-pretty boys and girls, eating the best, their fey gifts trotted out on call for the state. Like a basket of pampered, indulged pets. I used to visit their dreams, Oliver, in the early days. But now it’s just a little more than I can take.’
‘They wanted me to join the legion,’ said Oliver. ‘To put a worldsinger’s control torc around my neck.’
‘Pretty cat needs a collar,’ said the Whisperer. ‘You think my father didn’t promise that for me when he hauled me to Middlesteel on the back of his cart? I trade messages for all the prisoners trapped in Hawklam Asylum, like a one-fey crystalgrid network. There’s hardly a soul penned in here that wasn’t expecting the finest steak and long lazy days of muscle-pit oil massages. You’d be surprised how normal-looking some of the condemned are down here. But if your powers can’t be turned on and off like a tap on a jinn barrel …’
The dreamscape started to fade. Oliver was waking up.
‘I’ll mind the shop, Oliver Brooks,’ said the Whisperer, once more back in his underground cell. ‘You just mind yourself with that devious jigger, Harry Stave.’
‘You need the hat,’ said Harry. ‘Trust me.’
The Chaunting Lay was moored four miles from Turnhouse, tied up outside a tavern at the back end of crown parkland – like everything else in Jackals, in the king’s name but belonging to the people. Coaches and fours were scattered across the grass, families from the town with checkerboard picnic blankets enjoying the Circleday afternoon.
‘Why do I need it, Harry?’ said Oliver, adjusting the cap. ‘I thought you said the all-seeing eye in the sky would have its attention elsewhere.’
Harry winked at the boy. ‘A little paranoia is never unhealthy.’
Oliver looked around the busy tavern yard, canteen tables crowded with navvies from the waterway clearance board. There had not been a crown park in the Hundred Locks district – the nearest one was in Beggarsmead, far outside the distance of his registration order. That was well and truly shot to pieces now.
‘Lots of people here,’ said Oliver. ‘How are we going to find your man?’
‘Not a man, Oliver. A woman. And crowds are good, lots of movement and extraneous detail – like a good cloth cap – to keep a surveillant and their transaction engine on their toes.’
They found their lady sitting on a stool outside a covered box-wagon, the kind normally found at country fairs hawking baldness remedies of a dubious provenance. She had a bottle of jinn on her left side and balls of wool piled on the right. She was carefully knitting a child-sized sweater.
‘Mother,’ said Harry, as she looked up. ‘More grandchildren on the way?’
‘She’s your mother?’ Oliver looked in disbelief at the grizzled old woman.
The old woman jabbed a knitting needle towards Oliver. ‘If you’re looking for the mare that birthed Harry Stave, you can just look on, dearie. My children are all married off and in respectable trades.’
‘Oliver, this is Damson Loade,’
