Jackelian 1 - The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt

Author:Stephen Hunt [Hunt, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, steampunk
ISBN: 9780765360229
Publisher: Tor Fantasy
Published: 2009-03-31T06:00:00+00:00

Stave proved correct in his decision to switch to travelling by daylight. Every morning the roads they took filled with people. Drovers herding hundreds of geese to market, young dogs bounding around the honking birds to keep them off the meadows and on the road. Independent traders, carts filled with barrels of supplies and market goods rattled past. Sometimes the three of them stopped and rested in red barn-sized structures by the side of the road, the Lissacks Commons, named after the Guardian who had raised the bill in the house that paid for their construction. Oliver would listen to the hoots of owls and drift into a deep sleep while Harry traded ghost stories with the other travellers and merchants staying in the free accommodation.

The evenings were becoming balmy as high summer arrived, and for a while the cares and worries lifted from Oliver’s shoulders. Even Steamswipe seemed to draw barely a second glance as they passed through the rutted tracks of the county’s hamlets. Villagers in the gardens seemed more concerned about when the next mail coach would arrive, and Oliver became tired of telling them when the last time was that the cheap ha’penny post had passed him. The mail coaches often overtook them – their drivers showed no inclination to spare the whip on their poor horses. They raced against each other as they had always done, to beat the best times for the stage. It was doubtful if anyone else in Jackals cared. Penny post went by aerostat and urgent letters – where money was no object – could be entrusted to a crystalgrid station.

Occasionally they would be resting underneath the foliage of a shady ash tree when the shadow of an aerostat would pass over them, one of the massive warships heading south to Shadowclock. Harry was curious about the frequency of the airships travelling overhead, until he found the reason from a horseman resting his stallion at one of the Lissacks. The high fleet of war was confined to port after some trouble in the capital. Only the merchant marine was running in and out of the aerostat fields now. This news seemed to trouble Harry although he would not – or could not – say why.

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