Secrets of the Fire Sea j-4

by Stephen Hunt

  A couple of minutes later the ambassador returned, followed by a free company officer in a RAM suit. 'There we are. Nobody has been posted to arrest us. An ursk pack has been carrying stones to the top of the aqueduct to block the water supply in the hope of luring out a meal from the city to fix it. This unit has arrived to clear the blockage. Not only shall we be back at Hermetica City shortly, we now have an armed escort to protect us on the remainder of our journey.'

  'How far are we from the city? Hannah asked the free company officer.

  'She only understands Pericurian, dear girl,' the ambassador answered for the soldier.

  'Oh,' said Hannah. That was odd. Most of the free company soldiers had picked up at least a smattering of Jagonese during their time on the island.

  'We're close enough to home,' said the trapper.

  Close enough. Yes. How good it would be to leave the sweat-stained confines of her RAM suit's cabin behind at last. Stretch her legs on the streets of Hermetica. Sit down at a tea table and watch the traffic of the Grand Canal without worrying about ursks and ab-locks hiding in ambush around the corner. And to think she used to believe that her mattress back at the cathedral was hard.

  As they moved past the unit of soldiers, Nandi's RAM suit slowed in front of Hannah, stopping in front of the aqueduct. The young archaeologist leaned in for a closer look before popping her skull dome to inspect a series of cords dangling from the construction.

  'This is wrong!' Nandi called.

  The others in the expedition halted, the free company soldiers at the front of the aqueduct backing away from them. Nandi indicated the hanging cords to the soldiers. 'You can't use this many blasting tubes to clear a blockage up there. You'll bring the whole thing down on top of you.'

  The soldiers were shouting up at the archaeologist's open canopy. Hannah's grasp of Pericurian was shaky, but she was sure they were telling the archaeologist to step back.

  'I've used blasting tubes to open up tombs,' Nandi insisted, waving at them. Their shouts were getting louder and angrier, as was the young archaeologist's tone. 'You fools, you're going to be showering pieces of aqueduct down for miles if you detonate this.'

  Striding towards Nandi, the free company officer in the RAM suit raised her arm and the air hissed as a razored disk slashed into Nandi's open pilot cabin, a splash of blood spitting across the visor of Hannah's canopy. Hannah stood still, transfixed as Nandi's blood rolled down her glass, hardly hearing the shouts of the free company soldiers surrounding the expedition, or the yells of the trappers they aimed their guns at. Inside the pilot cage of Nandi's machine, the young academic's body had fallen back and the suit translated its occupant's motion, tumbling back and collapsing onto the hard, snow-covered ground.

  'I am sorry,' called Ortin urs Ortin, his RAM suit returning from the head of the column. 'They did not understand what she was trying to do. It was an accident!'

  Hannah was out of her suit and down beside the fallen machine before she was aware of what she was doing, clambering up towards Nandi's cockpit. She found that Commodore Black was already on the ground and there before her.

  'Don't be looking inside, lass.' He pushed Hannah back, shaking himself – whether in anger or shock she couldn't say.

  'Nandi!'

  'Her head's been taken off. Ah my oath, my word to the professor and this brave girl here with her head taken off. All this way, all this way for this. Nandi Tibar-Wellking, you poor blessed thing.'

  'You jiggers!' Hannah screamed at the free company troops advancing on them. 'She was just trying to help you!'

  Commodore Black had his empty palms in the air, showing the soldiers he was holding no weapons. 'Quiet now, Hannah. The blood of these brutes is running hot on a hair trigger and you can't help Nandi by joining her along the Circle's turn.'

  Ortin urs Ortin was barking at the soldiers in Pericurian, but whatever the ambassador was shouting didn't seem to be calming them down.

  'I want this wet-snout on charges,' Tobias Raffold yelled, thrusting his suit's fist towards the free company officer. 'I want this-'

  His demands ended as a volley of turret-rifle fire jounced off his suit's armour, the canopy shattering in a storm of crystal as the free company fighters opened up on the trapper from all directions. Hannah was left scrambling over the cold ground, the whine of metal pitons mixed with the sound of splintering iron from the aqueduct behind her. The commodore knocked Hannah down to the icy soil as she was desperately weighing up her options – running for the cover of the ursk-haunted forest or the relative safety of her own RAM suit – a piton flying across where she'd just been standing.

  Jared Black was trying to help Hannah to her feet when the hulking free company soldiers overtook them and they both went down in a flurry of blows from the iron grips of turret rifle butts. Hannah was still reeling from the pain when a blunt weapon connected with her head and she lost consciousness. Hannah had a variety of agonies to choose from when she began to regain consciousness, and it was a few seconds before she was able to separate the throbbing in her head from the thud of explosions she could hear around her. She was next to Commodore Black in a cage on the back of one of the trapper's RAM suits, the machine lurching heavily over the landscape.

  Then Hannah remembered Nandi and the swollen bruised skin around her eyes stung with tears. Nandi, poor Nandi. She was gone. Her corpse abandoned behind them somewhere in the wilderness. Hannah had never had that many friends on Jago, and now she was left with one less – except that the pain of the memory stung worse, like losing a sister she had never had. Nandi had risked her life to save Hannah from service in the guild, and how badly fate had rewarded the young academic. One second alive and vibrant, the next shot dead. Was this their deadly punishment for disobeying the senatorial will and mounting an expedition to Jago's interior in spite of the insane First Senator's opposition to it? It should have been Hannah who had died, but then, the secret of the final part of the god-formula would have died with her. The secret she could use to fix all this, to bring Nandi back to life. The memory of Nandi's voice echoed in her mind over the sounds of battle outside. 'What would such a thing be but a poorly formed simulacra?'

  'Those noises,' Hannah coughed.

  'Mortars, rifles and cannons. We're in a shooting war, lass. And I think I know whose…'

  Whose soon became clear. The plain outside Hermetica City's battlements was full of Pericurian soldiery, the capital's wall standing silent without the killing hum of electricity that usually flowed along its surface. Rows of tents and makeshift palisades were being raised in its lee. Massive iron cranes had been driven into the top of the black cliffs of Jago, lifting up more Pericurian formations and supplies onto the dark basalt plain from a fleet that lay out of sight below. Every gate in the sloped iron battlements that Hannah could see was wide open, ursine troops marching through.

  Commodore Black pointed to a line of new pennants raised from one of the wall's sentry stations. Dozens of triangles of fabric fluttered in the chill arctic wind, each a different colour, each bearing a different tree-oaks, sycamores, blackthorns, camwoods.

  'There's the blessed answer, flapping in the breeze. Pericur!'

  But the capital was yet to fall entirely. Whatever the state of affairs above ground, there were puffs of rifle smoke rising from the structures built into the slopes of the Horn of Jago, answered by the roar of cannon fire from the Pericurian siege below.

  Reaching the lee of the capital's silent battlements, Hannah and the commodore's cage was lowered towards the ground and when the door was sprung, they found themselves facing Ortin urs Ortin, with a ring of Pericurian soldiers pointing turret rifles at them.

  'Put your guns down now,' wheezed the commodore. 'There's just me and the girl and I've no weapons nor fight left in me besides.'

  'Where's everyone else?' asked Hannah. 'Where are the trappers?'

  'They opened fire when Tobias Raffold went down,' whispered the commodore. 'The wet-snouts killed them a
ll. We were only spared because we were out of our suits and already beaten into the snow for our troubles. The ursine weren't there to clear the aqueduct, Hannah. They were there to cut off the city's drinking water supply. The brutes blew it to pieces after they shoved you and me into the cage.'

  Hannah looked angrily at the ambassador. 'This is badly done.'

  'It is necessary,' said Ortin urs Ortin, motioning at the troops to lower their massive weapons.

  Commodore Black indicated the pennants raised above the capital's battlements. 'Those are the flags of the great liberal houses, ambassador. Not the wicked firebrands that follow the archduchess, but your people!'

  'It is the only way to secure our fortunes, dear boy,' said the ambassador. 'We will present the baronial council with something no one in history had been able to do before – the removal of all interlopers from the sacred soil of Jago.'

  'How can you do this?' Hannah pleaded. 'To Nandi, to the Jagonese?'

  'How could we not, young lady?' The ambassador pointed at the lead tabernacle that had been recovered from the chamber deep under the Cade Mountains. 'How can you even ask that after everything that we saw on the other side of the mountains? This land is cursed, nothing can prosper here. Its poisons have infected the Jagonese and your society has been on its deathbed for centuries. Pericur is not here to conquer; we are here as liberators. When we've defeated the nobles who are your jailors, do you think we will need to drag the common people out of their vaults, crying, kicking and fighting at the tips of our sabres? No, we will point to the empty holds of our freighters and offer your people free passage to the colonies across the sea and they will flood away. No more ballot, no more protected professions, no more exile into the wastes for those caught trying to stow away for just the chance of a better life.'

  'Spare us your cant, lad,' said the commodore. 'You're doing this for politics, not for the people here.'

  'Nobody's hands are clean, dear boy,' said the ambassador. 'Especially not yours. What do you think our houses needed all those transaction engines for? Why do you think our last archduchess was willing to give a ship of the Purity Queen's reputation a trading licence?'

  Hannah's heart sank. So much processing power. Enough, perhaps, to approach the power of the transaction-engine vaults of the guild, if not the sophistication of the guild's valve-based engines. 'You were modelling the flows of the Fire Sea.'

  'Safe passage through the magma,' smiled Ortin urs Ortin. 'For the greatest war fleet our nation has ever raised.'

  Commodore Black's eyes blazed in anger, but Hannah could only shake her head in disgust. How long had Jago's neighbour on the other side of the Fire Sea been planning this holy war of theirs? As she pondered, a figure she recognized came striding out of a gate opened in the battlements. The First Senator's pet, Stom urs Stom.

  The head of the free company fighters marched up to the survivors of the expedition and her eyes widened when she saw the lead tabernacle retrieved by the ambassador. 'The Divine Quad has smiled upon you, my ambassador.'

  There was a light in those eyes, Hannah realized, a light that had been well hidden before. The glare of a fanatic.

  'Just so, my captain,' said the ambassador. 'I have seen such things out in the wilderness. The ruin of paradise. The words of the scripture are true, all of them. How long have our forces been camped here?'

  'A day only.'

  'I did not anticipate quite so much activity on the surface,' said the ambassador, looking across their camped legions.

  'The tug service jammed the lifting rooms on the seabed. We weren't able to enter the harbour with the fleet. It is only a small set-back.' Stom urs Stom indicated her forces massing in front of the wall. 'We have taken the coral line; we have taken the city wall and secured all the gun emplacements protecting the capital. The Jagonese have no reply to our cannons except a few police militia pistols and rifles on the slopes of the mountain. With all the airshafts under our control on the surface we can drop down into the city vaults at any point, as we will.'

  Ortin looked up at the Horn of Jago. 'You have troops enough to assault the slopes?'

  'Only a few scared policemen shelter behind the stained glass windows,' said the officer triumphantly. 'Without even the counsel of their leaders now that the head of the snake has been decapitated.'

  'Traitor!' shouted Hannah. 'Traitor to the oath of the free company.'

  'Keep her quiet,' snapped Stom. 'Or I will cut out her tongue.'

  'These are no mere free company fighters,' said Ortin urs Ortin. 'During my years in the Kingdom of Jackals I played my own small part in that ruse. Paying corrupt pensmen working on the Kingdom's newssheets to plant false stories concerning the exploits of the continent's most successful band of ursine mercenaries. The free company's activities were legendary, making them the natural choice for the First Senator to hire when he decided to engage his own private army to cling onto power.'

  'You're a clever fellow,' said the commodore, 'taking by subterfuge what you could not take by force.'

  'Not bad for a savage, you mean, old fruit? Not bad for a simple wet-snout? You really shouldn't have underestimated our people so, and the Guild of Valvemen shouldn't have recorded in their archives everything that they read in quite so unquestioning a manner.'

  'We are the chosen,' said Stom, proudly pointing to the army's pennants. She growled another word Hannah didn't recognize. 'The bodyguards of the great houses. Shock troops. Our loyalty cannot be questioned. It was just, unfortunately for the Jagonese, never your First Senator's to command.'

  'Please don't do this, Ortin,' said Hannah. 'Don't let your people do this. I know that you're not bad, but this terrible thing is not right or rational.'

  'It is entirely right, dear girl,' said the ambassador. 'We have the righteousness of the scriptures as well as the weight of the large guns on our side. Your people's time here desecrating our forbidden soil is at an end, and not even your own commoners will mourn your age's end.'

  Religion, always religion. Hannah shook her head. This disease was too deep for any other course to run here.

  'We don't despise you,' said Stom, watching her soldiers step forward and manacle Hannah and the commodore's hands. 'We pity you. Your forefathers were burnt of their fur for their sins. It is only natural you should be attracted back, but staying here is an offence against the Divine Quad. Your presence on this bitter ground is twisting your people to ruin, soiling your symmetry, until one day you will become demonic enough to call down another Armageddon upon the world.'

  'Well, that's mortal big of you to feel sorry on our account,' spat the commodore. 'After you and your traitorous diplomat friend have taken the life of a girl who was under my protection. Someone who had not an ounce of wickedness in her bones, nor any cause against your people.'

  'Someone who has sailed the world should not be so naive,' said the ambassador. 'There are always innocent casualties in these affairs, dear boy.'

  'I'm always ready to be disappointed, and sure enough the world's always obliged me there,' said the commodore. 'But I'll trade you your pity for your corpse. Toss me a sabre and I'll pit what I've learnt on my voyages against you and your chosen brutes here. Line them up and let's see how well your filthy scripture protects a gang of cowards.'

  Stom urs Stom angrily drew her short sword and looked ready to grant the commodore his match, but the ambassador pushed the blade back into her scabbard for her. 'The great houses would much prefer to choose their wars, my dear captain, rather than have them forced upon them. Let's try not to kill any more Jackelians today. Lock these two up in the fleet's brig. After we've captured the Jackelian embassy staff, they will all be given safe passage across to their colonies.'

  Hannah coughed as a wave of pungent cannon smoke drifted over them. The Pericurian formations were moving into position to attack the city; perhaps as many soldiers as there were citizens of Hermetica City. Their black leather uniforms were weighed down with ammunition belts, blades and
the brass tanks to power their turret rifles. Hannah choked down her despair. And against what? Shoemakers and gondola men, storekeepers and merchants. Many of whom, it was true, would be only too glad to accept their conqueror's offer of passage away from Jago if they survived this war.

  Their time here was at an end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Part of Jethro Daunt knew where he was, shivering inside the cell of the militia fortress, his sleep disturbed by the muffled cries of agony that could be heard at night in any house of correction. And other sounds, too. Otherworldly sounds. Jethro could hear Badger-headed Joseph snuffling around outside the cell door, just as real as the wan light thrown from the single electric lantern in the ceiling.

  'Such a disappointment,' snuffled the ancient god. 'Not even brave enough to put your principles to the test. Pushing a little girl out into the darkness just so you wouldn't have to suffer temptation.'

  'The frustration in your voice is enough to tell me that I made the rational choice,' Jethro called to the voice behind the cell door.

  'What makes you think that yours wasn't exactly the decision we wanted?' growled the ancient god. 'Your young friend hasn't had a good time out there in the wilderness, fiddle-faddle man. Do you think we had to line up behind Bel Bessant and push and prod her into creating the god-formula? No, she saw what the veneration of science over nature leads to, logic over spirit, learning without play, laws without passion.' There was a noise like a shudder of relief. 'And now your young friend's returned cleverer than you. Just like Bel Bessant. Clever enough to see things without the pipe-smoke of your pious humanist humbug. Soon, she won't be looking into the core of humanity for answers; she'll be looking to us. Joining us!'

  So, young Hannah Conquest was safely returned. Perhaps the gods had been looking after her.

  'All she needs now is to see her people as they really are, and there's nothing like a good war to put a shine on your kind's true nature.'