Secrets of the Fire Sea j-4

by Stephen Hunt

  'That is the last thing they will be!' shouted a voice from below.

  Hannah looked down onto the lower gantry. It was Jethro Daunt, standing alongside the hulking mass of a hammer-wielding Boxiron. Hannah felt a cold object resting against her temple and turned. Colonel Knipe was pointing his pistol at her head. 'Stay where you are, Jackelian, you and your metal brute both.'

  'What in the name of the Circle are you doing?' asked Hannah.

  'Keeping my country safe,' said the colonel.

  'That seems to come at a cost,' said Jethro. 'Such as when you paid Tomas Maggs to scuttle the boat carrying Hannah's father back home.'

  'No!' whispered Hannah. 'That was down to Vardan Flail.'

  'I'm afraid not, damson,' said Colonel Knipe, pushing the barrel of his pistol harder against her skull. 'That fool Vardan Flail is as much a Circlist fanatic as your learned Jackelian friend here. Flail was seeking the god-formula, but he didn't want to use it. He would have destroyed it!'

  'And Hannah's parents would have taken it back to Jackals to study,' said Jethro. 'You couldn't allow that to happen either. The Conquests came to you for help, didn't they? They had found images of William's three paintings in the great archives, and they feared that the guild was trying to stop them leaving the island. But you decided to murder the two of them first, steal their find and keep the god-formula to yourself. Just as you killed Alice Gray when you discovered she was also a guardian of copies of William of Flamewall's paintings.'

  'I had to torture her after Hugh Sworph came to me, knowing the bounty I was offering for William of Flamewall's works,' said the colonel. 'There was always the chance the archbishop was hiding the third piece of the god-formula somewhere in her cathedral.'

  'Your bad luck, then,' said Jethro. 'Alice was only the guardian of what you had already killed Hannah's parents for: two of William's paintings, each containing a piece of the god-formula, and a third seemingly blank. How many people died in the ursk attack you allowed into the city?'

  'Alice,' groaned Hannah. 'My father. Murdered by you!'

  'You should not complain,' said the colonel. 'Your good fortune allowed you to escape twice when you should have died. The first time from the ursk pack, and then from the bomb one of my men planted in your atmospheric carriage – although, to be fair, the second time I was really aiming to kill your meddling Jackelian archaeologist friend before she could uncover your parents' work here. The god-formula is to be mine, and mine alone. That is the way fate intends it to be. Your parents were the first to die, but there have been many others over the years. Explorers, chancers, thieves, local and foreign. Vanished into the stomachs of the beasts outside the wall or found floating drowned in our canals. It was destiny that you survived, young damson, for where would I be without you now? Who would have thought that a mere slip of a girl could succeed where I, with all my resources, failed? You are my fate, girl, and I am yours.'

  'But that's not the worst of it.' Jethro pointed beyond the flare-house's walls. 'The Pericurian attack – you knew they were going to invade, and you let it happen. Everyone who died in this senseless war, all on you. You've bobbed us all, used this whole city as your personal plaything.'

  'You cannot judge me,' said the colonel. 'I have done what the senate failed to do for centuries. I have united our people with the fear of a common enemy. I did not provoke the wet-snout invasion, I did not arrange it, I merely allowed their attack to happen on my own terms.'

  'You lured them into a bloodbath, man!'

  'You're a slippery fish, Jackelian. What was it that gave me away?'

  'When I was looking over the ballot records for evidence that the guild had falsified Hannah's draft,' said Jethro, 'I noticed the number of people from the lodge of gas workers who had been conscripted into the police militia. And what use could the militia have for those bleeding gas seepage away from the capital? The Pericurians weren't invading Hermetica, they were invading an underground gas chamber!'

  'They deserved a quick end, Jackelian, for uniting us and ridding the people of the insane, inbred First Senator and his lickspittles.' He pushed the gun even harder against Hannah's head as Boxiron's warhammer twitched in anger. 'Stay back, or she will die!'

  'You wouldn't think twice, would you, good colonel?' Jethro reached into his pocket and drew out a boiled sweet, his cheek swelling as he popped it into his mouth and sucked it thoughtfully. 'You murdered the fence that brought you the church's copies of William of Flamewall's paintings. Just as you killed Chalph urs Chalph when he came to you to tell you his suspicions about the Pericurians' intentions. Chalph had spotted that the envelope Stom urs Stom passed the Pericurian ambassador supposedly warning the expedition not to depart wasn't written in the First Senator's hand, but that of the Baroness of Ush, no doubt apprising the ambassador that their invasion would take place when he was out of the city. Chalph told you this, and you couldn't risk the poor unfortunate ursine informing someone who actually would have tried to stop the invasion.'

  'And I would have hanged you for his death,' sneered Knipe, 'eventually.'

  'How did you know about the invasion?' asked Jethro. 'That's the one thing I haven't been able to fathom.'

  'Look no further than your own countrymen,' said the colonel. 'One of the members of the Jackelian consul here, your Mister Walsingham, came to see me with a packet containing stolen details of a model of the flows and drifts of the Fire Sea. A model sitting on the wet-snouts' transaction engines. I doubt if he is really a diplomat, but then I doubt if your parliament cares one way or another. As long as the Pericurian threat to your colonies' northern borders has its fangs trimmed.'

  'And you never passed this intelligence on to the senate?' said Hannah.

  The colonel brushed her hair teasingly with the cold barrel of the gun. 'And what would Silvermain have done with the news we were going to be invaded? Passed a bill? Installed one of his hunting hounds as the Senator of War? He was good at dreaming of things that could never be. I, on the other hand, have sacrificed too much to let our land fade. My will shall be done.'

  Hannah dropped the pouch of papers she was holding, the half-deciphered code taken from the stained glass vista falling to the stone gantry. 'Alice, my parents, Chalph, they all died for this.'

  'Continue your work!' Colonel Knipe shouted.

  'Go jigger yourself.'

  Colonel Knipe's pistol whipped out, striking Hannah on the skull and she fell to the ground, blood gushing from the wound and soaking her hands. She glared up with pure loathing at Knipe. 'I'll never do this for you – pull the trigger!'

  'Perhaps you won't after all,' said Colonel Knipe. He turned and shot Jethro in the stomach. The ex-parson was hurled back against the cannon housing, a crimson stain spreading out across his waistcoat. 'Drop the hammer, steamman!' Colonel Knipe shouted, reloading his pistol. 'I'll heal the Jackelian as good as new after I have attained godhead. Come up here and complete the decryption of the code in the stained glass before I put a second bullet through your friend's skull and leave him for the worms.'

  Jethro was lying on the lower gantry, clutching his stomach while his blood pooled across the flagstones. 'No. Not…for…me.'

  'I cannot let you die, Jethro.'

  'Must!'

  Hannah watched the black steel barrel of the colonel's pistol swinging around towards her again. Knipe was going to have to kill them all, for there was no way she was going to decrypt the final part of the code for the killer who had stolen everyone she had ever loved from her life, and Boxiron could not be allowed to either. Even over the clash and fury of rifle fire, Commodore Black heard the screams from the quailing children behind him, terrified by the appearance of two Pericurians crashing down the side-stairs from a higher level within the mountain.

  Jared Black had turned and put a bullet through the skull of the soldier carrying a turret rifle before he had even realized that the wet-snout wielding a sabre next to the falling ursine corpse was that of Ortin urs Ortin.


  'Spawn of Amaja urs Amaja!' the ambassador yelled. The children crowding the floor scrambled away in panic from this huge monster that had suddenly invaded the assembly room, a fur-covered demon bearing a sword slicked in the blood of their parents.

  Commodore Black lowered his sabre at Ortin urs Ortin. 'That and worse, ambassador.'

  Ortin charged, pure animal savagery bearing down upon the old u-boat man. Commodore Black stepped forward and met him with a clash of steel.

  'You trapped us, tricked us!' Ortin bayed. 'You butchered half the great houses!'

  'No, lad, not me.' The commodore fell back, grunting. Ortin's strength was far beyond that of any fighter from the race of man. 'But I'm going to settle for you all the same. For Nandi.'

  Ortin struck the commodore's sabre with his steel, again and again, making the commodore's arm ring with the wicked pain of it. There was little room for sophistication in this battle, his parries blunted by the raw swinging power of the Pericurian's massive frame. The commodore's rare bones turned into an anvil from the battering.

  As their fight stumbled back and forth across the assembly room, Commodore Black caught a brief glimpse of the barricade where the front line of cadets was thrusting bayonets against the crush of the Pericurian advance, the second line unable to shoot now without hitting their own side. Children, blessed children asked to fight and die like this. To fight for their lives. Their stronghold at the centre of the mountain was seconds away from falling…

  Commodore Black yelled in surprise as he slipped on the blood of a dead Pericurian soldier and sprawled backwards, his sabre sliding away across the floor. He was weaponless. Ortin urs Ortin moved in and the commodore met the ambassador's insane, glazed eyes as the huge beast raised his blade upwards for the killing stroke. 'Leave…me…to die.' Jethro coughed.

  The steamman shook his visored head at Jethro's wounded form and dropped the warhammer with a clang, mounting the rungs up to the circle of stained glass windows. 'No, I cannot. You must trust me.'

  Hannah watched the huge steamman stop in front of the stained glass, drinking in the final hidden section of Bel Bessant's terrible creation. 'Don't do this, Boxiron. I would only have used the god-formula to fix what wasn't meant to be broken. What sort of god will you create by giving such a thing to Knipe? For the love of the Circle, he killed my father, Nandi, Chalph, Alice, he-'

  'Be quiet, damson,' threatened the colonel. 'The Inquisition was good enough to send us a machine to break codes, it's only fitting that we use it as they intended.'

  'What sort of thing will you be?' Hannah cried.

  'A better thing than your precious Circlism,' spat the colonel. 'All this time the church knew what it had here – the means to save our land! And your people buried it away; you forgot it along with our greatness! And the church claims to care for the needs of the people…'

  'I have completed the steganographic key,' said Boxiron. 'I am ready to begin deciphering the main code.'

  Colonel Knipe picked up the first two sections of the god-formula that Hannah had dropped and threw them towards the steamman. 'Pick up the girl's pencil and begin writing on that paper. Quickly! Your Inquisition friend only has a few minutes of life left in him.'

  Hannah looked down. Jethro Daunt had fallen silent and was lying with his back against the flare-house cannon, as still as a corpse bar for the trembling of one single leg. The floor below was awash with his blood.

  'Jethro Daunt is not a member of the Inquisition,' said Boxiron as he worked. 'He is not even a churchman anymore.'

  'So you say. For hire, then. A mercenary, no better than the dirty wet-snouts the senate believed they were buying.'

  Boxiron continued to write out the equations of the final piece of the god-formula, his iron fingers moving several times more rapidly than any human hand could. 'Not for hire, for love.'

  'He really was going to marry the archbishop?' said Colonel Knipe, sounding surprised. 'Well, I never did get around to checking if that part of his story was true. More fool him. Everything that you love you end up losing. That is the way of life.'

  'What will you do with this, colonel?' asked Boxiron. His voicebox sounded as if it was vibrating with pain, as if the mere effort of translating the final section of the god-formula burned at the core of his being.

  'I will save your Jackelian friend. I have never broken my word.'

  'Afterwards.'

  'I shall restore Jago to its natural position at the head of the world's nations, just as I shall burn the last wet-snout left on the island into ashes. Fire, then ice!'

  Hannah pulled herself up, clutching her bleeding scalp. If that meant what she thought! 'You can't.'

  'My will shall be done,' shouted the colonel. 'The world's winter shall be Jago's summer. Our civilization will rise once more. Everyone will want to dwell here again and those who do not will consider themselves cursed. And they shall be!'

  No. A new age of ice. A winter without end, never the spring again as the world turned.

  'Please!' Hannah begged Boxiron to stop what he was doing, but instead the steamman slid the final completed section of the god-formula back towards Colonel Knipe.

  'We gave the world everything, little girl,' snarled the colonel. 'And they turned their backs on us, believed us fit only for use as a rock to break the rising wet-snout tide. A mere pawn in the game of our betters. We passed the world the light once, after the age of ice ended, now the torch of their civilizations shall be ours to snuff out again.'

  Seizing the completed god-formula, the colonel vaulted over the railing, landing on the lower walkway, then sprinted into the flare-house instrument room and sealed its door behind him.

  Hannah was on her feet, groggily climbing down the ladder to the lower level. She picked up Boxiron's hammer and smashed at the door to the instrument room, but its head bounced uselessly off. She screamed for Boxiron to help, but he was standing on the upper gantry as immobile as an iron statue. Had the enormity of what he had done finally begun to sink in? The terrible cost of his friendship with the man who had saved him? She tried to batter the crystal panel in the door, but it had been hardened to withstand a flare misfiring inside the launch barrel. Hannah's strength was draining away. On the other side of the glass, a haze of twisting, turning diamond-sharp panes of light surrounded Colonel Knipe as he read the god-formula, enveloped by energies that were too exotic to be contained by the mortal world. His body was growing translucent, his organs pulsing with light. He was shedding his mortal shell.

  Hannah felt fingers circling her ankle.

  'Don't…let…him.'

  'It's no good,' said Hannah, kneeling beside the ex-parson. 'The colonel's in there changing. He's taken the godhead.'

  'Boxiron! Boxiron!'

  'He's frozen,' cried Hannah. 'Please, Jethro, Boxiron's not even moving anymore.'

  There was an awful ripping sound behind the instrument room door, something alien and terrible, the fabric of matter itself tearing.

  It was the laughter of a new demigod striding the earth. Commodore Black heard the cadet commander's yell as she scooped up his sabre and tossed it across to him. He rolled through the blood on the flagstones and speared Ortin urs Ortin squarely through the stomach, the tip of his sabre emerging through the back of the Pericurian ambassador's jacket.

  Commodore Black was on his knees, the ambassador looming over him, still trying to move forward despite the wound. At first the commodore could barely hold the ambassador back, but gradually the realization of his imminent death seemed to sink into Ortin urs Ortin, his eyes losing their glare of insanity.

  'Well – played – dear – boy.'

  The commodore nodded, trying to rise, still keeping both hands on the sabre's grip and preserving the gap between them.

  'I – am – not – a – savage.'

  Commodore Black pulled out his sabre and the ambassador swayed. The old u-boat man raised the steel to his nose in salute as the ambassador crashed onto the flagstones,
his monocle rolling away across the floor.

  'Just two blessed nobles,' said the commodore, 'living through a savage age as best we can.'

  But the ambassador was beyond hearing him.

  Commodore Black turned as the barricade cracked open to admit a wave of ab-locks, tools jangling from leather belts, bayonet-fitted rifles at the ready, followed by a pair of men in guildsmen's robes. They looked for all of the world like a couple of hunters taking their hounds out for a walk through the vaults of the mountain.

  'Our RAM suits wouldn't fit through the Horn's corridors,' said the nearest of the guildsmen.

  'There's a pity,' answered the commodore. He watched the ab-locks fan out across the assembly rooms towards the stairs to the higher levels, followed by the guildsmen. Hunting down creatures that looked and smelt like ursk cubs was something that no doubt came quite naturally to the pack.

  'On, T-face,' cried the younger of the two valve-men. 'Smell them out for us, up the stairs, up.'

  Commodore Black drew out his mumbleweed pipe and searched for a packet of leaves to light, standing next to the white-faced cadet commander who was starting to tremble in shock now that the combat had ended. He took her rifle from her clenched fingers and set it down on the ground.

  'Is this war?' she murmured in horror.

  'Not for us, lass,' said the commodore. His eyes moved across the heaps of dead cadets and ursine, bodies locked together in death, mourned by the cries of the shivering children behind them.

  'For us, this was campaign experience. For us it's the chance of a medal. It's only war for them.' Hannah had hold of Jethro's hand, the tremor of his fingers growing weaker as the alien gale of laughter behind the iron door became a storm. The energies being unleashed inside that chamber were leaking through the seals as little flickers of ball lightning.

  'Boxiron. He…' Jethro gasped. 'Top. Gear.'

  Hannah glanced up. The steamman was standing statue-still, transfixed by the scene below. What was the point, what was the point of anything now?