The Court of the Air. Stephen Hunt

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СКАЧАТЬ blew the dust off the top. Pristine. Some work of philosophy kept for impressing visitors with the weight of the Beadle’s intellect. Then she walked over to where the lady was sitting and passed the work across.

      Damson Fairborn gently held Molly’s hand for a second before turning it over and examining it like a gypsy palm reader. ‘Thank you, Molly. I am so glad that your tenure in the employ of that Snell woman was brief. Your hands are far too nice to be ruined by bleach.’ She placed the book down beside her. ‘And you have a good sense of balance for someone with your height. A shade over five and a half feet I would say.’

      Molly nodded.

      ‘My dear, you have no idea how many pretty girls I meet who clump around like shire horses at a country fair, or waddle like a duck with the bad fortune to have been dressed in a lead corset. I think I can work with you. Tell me, Molly, have you enjoyed your time here at the house?’

      ‘I have found it … somewhat wearisome, damson,’ Molly replied.

      She seemed amused. ‘Indeed, have you? You have quite an erudite turn of phrase for someone raised between these walls.’

      ‘The last director here was a Circlist, Damson Fairborn,’ said the Beadle. ‘She had the children in classes well past the statutory age, flouting the Relief of the Poor Act.’

      ‘A mind is the hardest thing to improve and the easiest thing to waste,’ said the lady. ‘And you, Molly. You have received no salary for these labours, I presume?’

      ‘No, damson,’ Molly answered. ‘It all goes to the Sun Gate Board of the Poor.’

      Damson Fairborn nodded in understanding. ‘Yes, I am sure I would be amazed at how expensive the ward’s Victualling Board can buy in the cheapest kitchen slops. Still—’ she looked directly at the Beadle ‘—I am sure the suppliers have their overheads.’

      The Beadle positively squirmed behind his writing desk.

      ‘Well, my dear.’ Damson Fairborn adjusted the short silk-print wrap draped around her jacket’s shoulders. ‘You will do. I think I can pay you a handsome stipend once the poor board’s monthly fees have been accounted for.’

      Molly was shocked. If there was an employer who was paying the poorhouse’s dole and adding on an extra salary for the boarders, it was a first for the Sun Gate workhouse. The whole rotten idea of the poorhouse was as a source of cheap labour for the ward.

      ‘She’s an orphan, mind,’ reminded the Beadle. ‘She reaches her maturity in a year and then she’s a voter. I can only transfer her ward papers to you for twelve months.’

      The lady smiled. ‘I think after a year with me our young lady’s tastes will be expensive enough that she won’t wish to return to working for your Handsome Lane concerns.’

      Molly followed her new employer out onto the street, leaving the dank Sun Gate workhouse to the Beadle and his minions. The lady had a private cab waiting for her, the horses and carriage as jet-black as the livery of the squat, bullet-headed retainer standing beside them.

      ‘Damson Fairborn,’ Molly coughed politely as the manservant swung open the cab door.

      ‘Yes, my dear.’

      Molly indicated the high prison-like walls of the poorhouse behind them. ‘This isn’t the usual recruiting ground for a domestic’

      Her new employer looked surprised. ‘Why, Molly, I don’t intend you for an undermaid or a scullery girl. I thought you might have recognized my name.’

      ‘Your name?’

      ‘Lady Fairborn, Molly. As in my establishment: Fairborn and Jarndyce.’

      Molly’s blood turned cold.

      ‘Of course,’ the lady winked at her heavily muscled retainer, ‘Lord Jarndyce is sadly no longer with us. Isn’t that so, Alfred?’

      ‘A right shame, milady,’ replied the retainer. ‘Choked on a piece of lobster shell during supper, it was said.’

      ‘Yes, Alfred. That was really rather careless of him. One of the very few occurrences of good living proving harmful to one’s constitution, I should imagine.’

      Molly’s eyes were still wide with shock. ‘But Fairborn and Jarndyce is—’

      ‘A bawdyhouse, my dear. And I, not to place too delicate a sensibility on it, am widely known as the Queen of the Whores.’

      The retainer stepped behind Molly, cutting off her escape route down the street.

      ‘And you, Molly. I think you shall do very nicely indeed as one of my girls.’

      Back in the Beadle’s office the Observer faded into the reality of the poorhouse. She was allowed only one intervention, and it had been one of her best. Small. As it had to be. Hardly an intercession at all.

      Originally the Beadle had been intending to rent Molly’s ward papers to the large abattoir over on Cringly Corner; but that reality path would have seen Molly returned, dismissed for insubordination, and back in the poorhouse within six weeks. Which would not have been at all beneficial for the Observer and her designs.

      It had been so easy to nudge the Beadle’s brain a degree to the side, letting the new plan form in his imagination. Harder to push Emma Fairborn’s steel trap of a mind, but still well within the Observer’s intervention tolerances. The Beadle was sitting behind his desk now, working out how much graft was due in by the end of the week.

      The Observer made sure everything was tidy and accounted for in the man’s treacle-thick chemical soup of a mind. Something, a sixth sense perhaps, made the Beadle scratch the nape of his neck and stare directly at where the Observer was standing. She increased the strength of her infiltration of his optic nerve, erasing even her background presence, comforting the small monkey brain back into a state of ease. Silver and gold, think about the money. The Beadle shuffled his papers into a neat stack and locked them away in his drawer. It was going to be a good take again this week.

      The Observer sighed and faded back out of reality. Sadly, the Beadle was not going to live long enough to purchase that twelfth cottage by the coast to add to his burgeoning property empire. She could have saved him. But then there were some interventions the Observer was glad she was not required to make.

       Chapter Two

      The aerostat field at Hundred Locks was slowly filling up with passengers awaiting the Lady Hawklight’s arrival. Oliver checked his trouser pocket. The description of his uncle’s guest still lay crumpled in there.

      ‘Oliver.’ A voice diverted his attention away from his uncle’s errand – Thaddius. A boy he had known from school. When Oliver had still been allowed to attend school, of course.

      In the way of the young everywhere, the lad’s nickname was Slim, because he was anything but. The portly Thaddius had about as many friends in Hundred Locks as Oliver. At least, as many friends as Oliver had been left with, after the word had spread about what he really was … or might become.

      ‘Tail spotting?’ asked Oliver.

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