Secrets of the Fire Sea j-4

by Stephen Hunt

  'I know him,' said Hannah touching the ice around the corpse. 'I know him.'

  'I don't think you can, he's been here a long time,' said Nandi. 'The body is frozen desiccated under the ice.'

  'His face,' said Hannah, trembling and not – Nandi suspected – from the biting wind. 'I recognize his picture from Hermetica's news sheets, from when my parent's boat was lost in the Fire Sea. He was the captain of my parent's boat. His name is Tomas Maggs.'

  'He looks good for it,' said the commodore, tapping the ice around the corpse with the butt of his pistol. Nandi had to agree. Captured in the ice of this remote place when he should have been burnt to a cinder by an unpredicted closure of one of the boils' channels by the shifting walls of magma.

  And if the captain of the Conquests' boat had been alive when the pair had both disappeared, then their deaths may not have been the result of any terrible accident at sea after all… Boxiron risked a millisecond's worth of processing time to cast his senses behind him again. He was losing ground to the pursuing valve-mind with every loop and twist through the guild's transaction engines – having to keep away from the destination gate in case this twisting green monstrosity realized where he was heading and called in help to trap him inside the valves.

  There was something about the valve-mind's behaviour, too, something that Boxiron couldn't quite put a finger on. It was trying to run him down to ground, but not engaging in any action more hostile than that – and hostility was something that the steamman suspected this thing was well capable of. And it was acting on its own, too. If this had been the great engine rooms of Greenhall, back in the Jackelian civil service's vast palace of centralized power, then he would have had a whole pack of sentry routines baying on his trail by now. Whatever the valve-mind's motives, Boxiron had to get back to his body before the thing captured him – it was always dangerous separating out your mentality for a visit to the artificial planes contained within a transaction engine. The dangers of the natives aside, too much time here and the systems of his clunking body might not even recognize Boxiron when he reinserted his id back inside his shell. His own body could reject him.

  With the valve-mind nipping furiously at his mentality, Boxiron swerved across one of the main data channels and let loose with a trick that had been gifted to him by the same artful mechomancer who'd turned him into the steamman equivalent of a battering ram for the ignoble art of breaking and entering Jackals' locks and engines. Boxiron slashed down with a piece of self-replicating code that scattered like hell's own rainfall above the crowded channel of data handlers below. Without the reassurance of the comfortable system chatter nudging them along, pushing them towards their different destinations, they flew upwards, blindly groping for orders, for reassurance, for the familiar. More and more of them uplifted, shooting higher into the abstraction layers of their environment – and found the valve-mind.

  They swamped it, desperately accreting around its skin like a swarm of bees. And as quickly as it could open up communication with the corrupted traffic and command them away, more and more of the infected handlers pushed in – some re-infecting the cleared handlers that had just been ordered away. Like a battleship whose shell had been weighed down with limpets, the valve-mind sank lower into the data channels and Boxiron had the lead he needed.

  The steamman's mental projection had almost reached the destination gate when he felt a fierce bite of pain in his consciousness, an acid burning spreading out from the sting. Behind him, the valve-mind had extended a nest of tentacles whipping about its sinking form like a spastic octopus. Darting to the side, Boxiron slipped under the tendril that had pierced him, the valve-mind blindly grasping out, trying to relocate him. Ignoring the stinging irritation of the wound, Boxiron backed away at full speed, closing the gap to the exit.

  As his consciousness picked up a message he could have sworn was projected out by the valve-mind. ‹The girl. The girl.›

  Then he slapped into the black passage of the line back out to the capital's battlements and the crippled iron shell of his body coalesced around him once more, clumsy limbs jerking into life, all of his imperfect feeling restored through the degraded connections soldered into his steamman skull. Back again. And there was the extra pain of the valve-mind's wound on his mind, still smarting; something to dwell on beyond the accustomed sensations of decay his body was feeding him. His vision plate pulsed into life and he found himself resolving on the image of Jethro Daunt, with the furred visage of Chalph urs Chalph gazing anxiously at him from behind the ex-parson.

  'Jethro softbody,' Boxiron's voicebox crackled into operation. 'Is this what I'm for?'

  Jethro helped him break the connection to the battlement's control machinery and gently shook his head. 'It's only the smallest part, old steamer.'

  The steamman allowed the two of them to help steady him until he found his sense of balance again. 'Then by the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, why am I so good at it?' Jethro and Boxiron had nearly reached their hotel in the central vaults of Hermetica City, when a group of large, black-leather-clad ursine soldiers stopped them. Jethro's first thought was that their foray into the police militia's records had been detected and tracked back to them, followed a second later by the realization this couldn't be the case. Given the rivalry between the senate's mercenary army and the police militia, the ursine thugs were the last people the police would turn to.

  Jethro and his steamman friend found themselves politely – but firmly – being escorted back to the surface. Not through the air vents, but up into the Horn of Jago, then out along stone corridors that belonged to the fortifications and mortar positions at the foot of the mountain, past the green-tinged farm domes, and finally into a metal-walled guard complex that joined the battlements. There were plenty of free company fighters from Pericur inside the complex, but no sign of Chalph urs Chalph. If Jethro and his steamman friend were about to be punished for their break-in, surely they would have dragged the young ursine here to share their fate? The mercenaries stood back as first Jethro, then Boxiron were forced to enter a vertical passage and climb a ladder inside to the top of the wall.

  Jethro drew a silent breath of relief as he saw First Senator Silvermain standing on the insulated walkway of the battlement's parapet. He was gazing down the sloped iron walls, the smell of ozone strong from the deadly charge flowing down the barrier. Little forks of electric energy rippled over the surface, angry green serpents where the steam mists rolling across the ground outside stimulated the killing charge into visibility.

  'Our friends,' the First Senator called loudly, seeing Jethro emerging out onto the parapet. 'Our clever Jackelian soul mate and his loyal servant.'

  'Your Excellency,' acknowledged Jethro, giving a little bow.

  'Just the fellow,' said the First Senator. 'How is your search for the conspirators progressing? Has Jago's evil cabal proved a match for your fierce intellect?'

  'It continues by-and-by. Early days, I fear,' said Jethro. He reached into his pocket and drew a bag of boiled sweets out. 'Can I offer you a Bunter and Benger's aniseed drop?'

  'My food taster is not here. Do not underestimate those who would rob us of our bright, shining age,' warned the First Senator, waving the proffered bag of sweets away. 'Their minds are cunning and their hearts are riddled with the sickness of sedition.' He leered at the steamman. 'What of you, strange creature of the metal? Have you found the enemy yet?'

  'I have a simple attitude to such matters,' replied Boxiron. 'I wait for my enemy to reveal himself, then I strike him down.'

  'An admirably straightforward method, yes, but the enemy's daggers will not bounce off our skin as well as they would off your hull plating,' laughed the First Senator. 'You will both benefit from seeing the foe at first hand, we believe.' The First Senator signalled to his senatorial rod carrier and the elaborately liveried servant stepped forward and inserted the ruler's staff of office into a control socket in the battlement's floor. 'Open the doors!' commanded the First Se
nator, 'and send out the prisoners.'

  Slipping open a panel on the side of the gold staff, the servant revealed a line of keys, and sent the order to the machines that controlled the battlement systems. Jethro heard a rusty-sounding ratcheting as a concealed door in the battlements opened, a ramp extending down to the black rock in front of the wall.

  Stumbling out across the ramp and onto the dark, mist-shrouded plain below, a group of seven Jagonese were roughly shoved out into the wilderness. They milled around looking confused for a second while the light from the door disappeared behind them. The ramp was pulling back, the door closing.

  'What are you doing?' demanded Jethro. 'There are women and children down there…'

  'They look the same as other citizens, don't they?' said the First Senator. 'But they're not. That's what you're up against with this cursed conspiracy; the enemy could be anyone – anyone at all.'

  'They're Jagonese? In the name of the Circle…'

  The First Senator shook his head. 'They were, until the Senatorial Court stripped them of their citizenship. These villains put themselves beyond society, now society is putting these criminals beyond it. Turnaround is always regarded as fair play back in Jackals, is it not? The most natural form of justice. The two tall ones down there were forgers, producing false papers of travel to Concorzia. The other dogs you can see below were named as the criminals that paid them for the forged documents.'

  'Exile,' said Jethro.

  'A death sentence,' said Boxiron, hissing out the words.

  'What they do beyond the city walls is up to them,' said the First Senator. He leant over the parapet and yelled down. 'They are no longer our society's concern. Off with you. We don't need your kind here. Corrupt filth!'

  'For pity's sake,' begged Jethro.

  'Some we are told even make it as far as the closest of the abandoned cities,' said the First Senator. 'If they can run fast enough.'

  Down below, the shifting currents of steam had swallowed the two forgers as they ran towards a black forest rising out of the sea of white. In the distance there was a muffled drumming. It sounded to the ex-parson of Hundred Locks as though it was coming from the direction of the trees.

  'Ursks,' said a mercenary officer walking down the battlements towards the politician. 'They smash bones against the sides of the trees when they smell city folk coming.'

  'But not our bones, Stom urs Stom,' said the First Senator. 'Not while we have our loyal Pericurian soldiers protecting the true citizens of Jago.'

  Down below, the group of would-be emigres began yelling as screams sounded from the direction of the forest. Jethro couldn't hear what the exiles were shouting, but the dark shapes he spotted fleeting though the mist spoke volumes for what their cries might be.

  'Your bones!' the First Senator yelled down jubilantly. 'It's your bones today!'

  The large Pericurian officer jerked a paw towards her soldiers and they unshouldered their turret rifles.

  'You are not to shoot them,' shrieked the First Senator. 'Their sentence is exile, not execution.'

  'There are cubs down there,' protested the officer as her fighters lowered their rifles. 'The ursks will drag them away alive for burial in their larder caves.'

  'They wanted to leave us all behind,' cried the First Senator. 'Well, they have! They're getting exactly what they wanted.'

  With a scream, one of the exiled citizens was pulled back into the white vapour, vanishing while dark shapes cut through the mist where he had been standing. Jethro tried to shut his ears to the group's panicked, pleading cries, though he had no choice but to listen to the screams of grief as the remaining adults picked up their children and tossed them into the sloped city battlements, the explosion of energy carrying up past Jethro's face, so intense it almost stopped him seeing the remaining exiles grasping their hands together and hurling themselves forward to create a second blast. They had committed suicide rather than try to outrun what was waiting hungrily for them in the mists.

  'You're cheating the exile law,' shrieked the First Senator, his face pursing petulantly.

  Jethro leant forward, his knees buckling and involuntarily emptied the contents of his stomach across the insulated grey tiles along the rampart. By the time Boxiron helped him back onto his feet, all that remained of the exiles was the charred smell in his nostrils. Their burnt corpses had already been dragged out of sight by the horrific things prowling through the steam mists.

  'We expected a stronger stomach from you,' said the First Senator. 'We know you have sent men and women to the gallows back in Jackals.'

  'They were murderers,' coughed Jethro. 'All of them.'

  'And so are the members of the conspiracy and their puppets,' said the First Senator. 'The enemy are murdering our society. Every year, every month, we are a little deader on Jago. A little bit emptier, a little nearer being finished. But we will stop them, we will reverse all of their schemes, we will smash their plots, and so-' he jabbed a finger at Jethro, '-will you, my Jackelian friend. Don't bring us the little people, the draft dodgers and the deserters. They are all the colonel's incompetent militia are able to catch to feed our courts, the pathetic stowaways dragged off the boats heading to Pericur. We want the ones organizing the great plot. Find us the cabal behind this evil so we can toss them out of our city before they corrupt any more of our people.' The First Senator pulled a silk handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and tenderly wiped a trace of vomit away from Jethro's mouth as his voice turned threatening. 'And you must work fast. We would hate to see you fall victim to the conspirators' filthy lies, our Jackelian friend. You must prove where your loyalties lie.'

  Jethro swayed on his feet, the cold winds mixed with the warm fog from the Fire Sea playing across his face. He was rock. It was as if he was becoming part of Jago here. Merging with its black basalt plains and the fire-warmed cliffs.

  'We should come out to the wall more,' said the First Senator, his voice turning sugary again. 'To see the enemy. To remind ourselves of what they look like. It's better when the weather's not so misty, you can see more of what the ursks do to the criminals. And it's so warm when the mists are rising, so warm.'

  Jethro watched the First Senator collapse into a sedan chair waiting on the parapet for him, four Jagonese bearers lifting him away. Another man ran alongside the chair with a large fan, energetically cooling the ruler and trying to avoid his feet becoming entangled with the robes of the richly liveried senatorial rod carrier trotting after his master.

  'Yes, but who is the enemy?'

  'A free company fighter does not ask such a question,' said Stom urs Stom, thinking Jethro's remark was addressed to her. 'We only need to know who is paying us to take to the field.'

  'There should always be honour in war,' said Boxiron.

  The large mercenary stared at Boxiron, as if seeing the steamman for the first time – a steamman knight's skull incongruously welded to the rattling body of a Catosian mechanical. A broken fighter.

  'Yes,' said Stom. 'Yes, you are right. There should be that.'

  The mercenary officer followed after the departing retinue, leaving Jethro and Boxiron alone looking into the shifting mist and listening to the distant victorious howling of the ursks.

  Jethro was no soldier, but he was bobbed if he could see any honour out there.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  'Wait here,' commanded the house's chamberlain, brushing the white-tipped fur on his ancient chin; easily one of the more supercilious of the ursine representatives that comprised the trading mission to Jago. 'I shall check the baroness is ready to receive you.'

  Chalph resisted the urge to click his teeth – the ursine equivalent of a tut. Of course the baroness was ready to receive him. If Chalph hadn't shown up exactly on time this evening to present the week's completed trading ledgers, the Master Clerk of Accounts would have had him whipped for his tardiness. Luckily for the young ursine, he was far cleverer than the elders he served usually gave him credit for – able to do his wo
rk, and squeeze enough time out of his far-ranging errands to help Hannah. Chalph, isn't he at the docks this morning? No, then he must be out visiting the merchants for returns. Really, but I thought he was with you this afternoon?

  Chalph rebalanced the pile of heavy ledgers under his arm as his eyes flicked across to the large double doors the chamberlain had disappeared through into the baroness's receiving room. Above the doors were the crests of each Pericurian house that had held the Jagonese trading licence – the House of Ush's single legendary white oak occupying the right-most position – that line of heraldry a living testament to the twists and turns of politics in their homeland. In much the same way as the Jagonese had managed to capture a slice of their old lives in the deep vaults of the island, the interior of the building the trading mission had occupied since time immemorial boasted the oak flooring, panelling and engraved woodwork of a typical Pericurian dwelling. If the baroness could have got away with adding onion-shaped minarets to the mission's roof, she would have. Then again, perhaps not. These days there was a value in being discreet. There was enough bad feeling towards the Pericurian traders 'getting rich' as the islanders' own fortunes waned, without the house flaunting expensive imported timbers on the outside of their compound.

  'Enter now,' said the chamberlain with a false tone of awe, reappearing through the doors and making it sound as if Chalph had just been given news of a large legacy.

  The baroness's chamber was dark, the wooden slats of the blinds turned to admit only a half-light from the vault outside – the kind of perpetual twilight you were meant to be able to feel walking through the great forests of Pericur. And there, lying on a low, cushion-lined couch of monstrous proportions was the great dark mass of Laro urs Laro, the twenty-second Baroness of the House of Ush, most humble servant of the nation of Pericur. Among those of her house, those on Jago, she was known simply as the baroness, as if there were no others sitting on the Baronial Council. And as far as Chalph and his fellow bonded workers were concerned, that might have been the scripture's own truth.