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Authors: Stephen Hunt
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why you can dream no longer, Hood-o’the-marsh. Your job is to protect those who do dream, those who still believe in me.’
‘Are you certain that you’re not an Observer?’ said Oliver. ‘You surely sound like one to my thick ears.’
‘I’m not one of the grand system’s angels, I have already told you that. I’m the god of details. I’m the rustle of the wind in the oaks, the splash of a stone rolling into a loch, the mountains that stood against the glaciers and the spirit that won’t be crushed.’
‘Why are you here?’ asked Oliver.
‘Do you not remember the tales of battle your uncle told you sitting around the fire grate of Seventy Star Hall?’ said the woman. ‘Of a time when Jackals would be threatened and of what would arise once again from a circle of ancient standing stones?’
‘He told me a lot of things about the war,’ said Oliver. And so his uncle had. The mud-drenched fields of the east, Jackelian troops in trenches, wiping the smoke of battle from their gas masks’ visors. The visions they sometimes saw in the sky, the product of chemical leakage through their suits or a by-product of the earthflow particles and mage-war. Lions running through the sky. Strange angels clashing in the heavens. ‘Are the first kings really about to return from their slumber? There’s no danger of war between Jackals and the Commonshare now. Quatérshift can barely feed its own people, let alone mount another invasion.’
‘No, the threat is not from the east this time.’
‘Where, then? Cassarabia? The regiments saw off the last bandit army that came up from the desert. The caliph fears the high fleet and the wrath of the Royal Aerostatical Navy too much to make a more direct intervention.’
‘There is an old saying in the Jackelian regiments,’ said the woman. ‘It is always the bullet you don’t see that gets you.’
‘I repeat my question: are the first kings about to return?’
‘Right idea,’ said the woman. ‘Wrong gender. You are the key, Oliver. You will need to reunite with the scheme of offence to defeat that which is coming.’
‘You mean Molly Templar?’ Oliver laughed. ‘You’re a little out of touch. Molly is a famous author now, her celestial fiction the toast of the publishing houses along Dock Street. If you want someone to fill five pages in a penny dreadful with a story of derring-do, then she’s definitely your woman. But this—’ Oliver gestured around the woods ‘—running around the night, getting shot at. I don’t think so. Not anymore.’
‘Her path is still bound to yours,’ said the woman. ‘I need both of you together again, though far more than the pair of you will be required for the conflict that is bearing down upon us. Even together, the two of you are not enough to defeat that which you will face …’
‘Yes, the enemy. I was hoping you could be a little less obscure on the nature of the enemy, given how you’re definitely not an Observer, but the goddess of details and all that.’
A fog was rising around the warrior woman’s body, a marsh mist. An hour ago Oliver would have said it was one of his mists, but now he knew better. The mist belonged to the land. It was the Kingdom of Jackals’.
‘You are the key, Oliver; you will know when the time comes. Remember, you wear my favours, young man. Wear them proudly.’
With a burst of light, the familiar, comforting weight of the two pistols was back in his hands. The mist had enveloped the warrior woman, returning her essence to the soil of their land.
CHAPTER TWO
P urity Drake bent down to pick up the empty brown beer bottle, recently rolled under the tall iron railings of the palace following a chance impact with one of the many pairs of shoes exiting from Guardian Fairfax atmospheric station – the gates to the underground transport system hidden just out of sight, but not so far away that the grit and soot from the vast stacks that kept the atmospherics’ tunnels under
‘Are you certain that you’re not an Observer?’ said Oliver. ‘You surely sound like one to my thick ears.’
‘I’m not one of the grand system’s angels, I have already told you that. I’m the god of details. I’m the rustle of the wind in the oaks, the splash of a stone rolling into a loch, the mountains that stood against the glaciers and the spirit that won’t be crushed.’
‘Why are you here?’ asked Oliver.
‘Do you not remember the tales of battle your uncle told you sitting around the fire grate of Seventy Star Hall?’ said the woman. ‘Of a time when Jackals would be threatened and of what would arise once again from a circle of ancient standing stones?’
‘He told me a lot of things about the war,’ said Oliver. And so his uncle had. The mud-drenched fields of the east, Jackelian troops in trenches, wiping the smoke of battle from their gas masks’ visors. The visions they sometimes saw in the sky, the product of chemical leakage through their suits or a by-product of the earthflow particles and mage-war. Lions running through the sky. Strange angels clashing in the heavens. ‘Are the first kings really about to return from their slumber? There’s no danger of war between Jackals and the Commonshare now. Quatérshift can barely feed its own people, let alone mount another invasion.’
‘No, the threat is not from the east this time.’
‘Where, then? Cassarabia? The regiments saw off the last bandit army that came up from the desert. The caliph fears the high fleet and the wrath of the Royal Aerostatical Navy too much to make a more direct intervention.’
‘There is an old saying in the Jackelian regiments,’ said the woman. ‘It is always the bullet you don’t see that gets you.’
‘I repeat my question: are the first kings about to return?’
‘Right idea,’ said the woman. ‘Wrong gender. You are the key, Oliver. You will need to reunite with the scheme of offence to defeat that which is coming.’
‘You mean Molly Templar?’ Oliver laughed. ‘You’re a little out of touch. Molly is a famous author now, her celestial fiction the toast of the publishing houses along Dock Street. If you want someone to fill five pages in a penny dreadful with a story of derring-do, then she’s definitely your woman. But this—’ Oliver gestured around the woods ‘—running around the night, getting shot at. I don’t think so. Not anymore.’
‘Her path is still bound to yours,’ said the woman. ‘I need both of you together again, though far more than the pair of you will be required for the conflict that is bearing down upon us. Even together, the two of you are not enough to defeat that which you will face …’
‘Yes, the enemy. I was hoping you could be a little less obscure on the nature of the enemy, given how you’re definitely not an Observer, but the goddess of details and all that.’
A fog was rising around the warrior woman’s body, a marsh mist. An hour ago Oliver would have said it was one of his mists, but now he knew better. The mist belonged to the land. It was the Kingdom of Jackals’.
‘You are the key, Oliver; you will know when the time comes. Remember, you wear my favours, young man. Wear them proudly.’
With a burst of light, the familiar, comforting weight of the two pistols was back in his hands. The mist had enveloped the warrior woman, returning her essence to the soil of their land.
CHAPTER TWO
P urity Drake bent down to pick up the empty brown beer bottle, recently rolled under the tall iron railings of the palace following a chance impact with one of the many pairs of shoes exiting from Guardian Fairfax atmospheric station – the gates to the underground transport system hidden just out of sight, but not so far away that the grit and soot from the vast stacks that kept the atmospherics’ tunnels under
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