by Stephen Hunt
Daunt patted his pockets and sighed in appreciation as he discovered his aniseed balls were still in his pocket. ‘They didn’t take them?’
‘I told them it was your medicine,’ said Boxiron. ‘It didn’t seem like a lie.’ The steamman gloomily tapped his power limiter. ‘My might they had already tasted, however, and the fastblood devils were quick enough to steal that.’
‘And my sleeve gun,’ complained Sadly. ‘The blighters had that away fast enough.’
‘Ah well,’ said Daunt. ‘At least they left you your cane to march with.’
‘Wouldn’t get too far without it, Mister Daunt, my bad foot and me. Not sure how much longer I can keep up with this, truth to tell. March, march, march, all day. No water in this heat. You’d think the gill-necks would appreciate the wisdom of staying hydrated, says I.’
‘Maybe they’ll let you open up a food stall when we get to where we’re going,’ sneered Tull.
‘Quieten your incessant ramblings, you diseased surface dweller vermin,’ hissed one of the guards. He removed his mask for a couple of seconds, rubbing the chafing scales of his green skin, and spat out a stream of water at the informant’s feet. ‘There is your water. Now keep moving, you shall stop for more of it later.’
The later in question became evident with the guard’s sibilant laughter when the trail through the rainforest gave way to a stinking stretch of everglades. The water around their feet started out barely lapping around their shoe leather, but rapidly rose deeper, soaking their knees before stopping at their hips. Still the prisoners marched on, a gloomy silence fallen upon the exhausted sailors, throats dry and croaking. But however thirsty Daunt grew, he was never once tempted by the thick, badly reeking water of the everglades. Insects skimming across the surface in enough variety to have kept a Jackelian entomologist engaged for years, the majority of the bugs only too happy to add a faltering column of soft-skinned Jackelians to their diet. Would that I had an entomologist’s netted hat, gloves, and sealed linen suit. Only Boxiron was immune from these biting, annoying swarms; clouds of them bothersome enough that Daunt began to swat at his skin with every tear of rolling sweat, mistaking perspiration for bloodsucking needles.
After an hour of slogging through the glades, the trees fell away and an island of raised land appeared surrounded by tall reeds, a rough path sawn through the ground and paved by something like bamboo. The exhausted prisoners were herded up a ramp and onto the path, reeds eventually falling away to reveal a camp built across cleared land. Simple barracks of white bamboo-like material, a fence just shy of the height of a man’s head. Not much to stop a prisoner from escaping. But then, the barricade wasn’t the barrier. That would be surviving for long enough to escape off the island and then navigate across hundreds of nautical miles of an ocean that was the sole dominion of the gill-necks. Not totally unguarded though. Guard towers rose out of the fence every hundred yards or so, simple wooden platforms with roofs of thatched palm trees, the silhouettes of lounging guards and their long rifles. A camp where the guards’ rifles point out, not in. What, I wonder, is out there to engage their attention in such a manner? On the far side of the camp stood a series of larger, more permanent-looking metal structures; a small forest of cranes rising beyond that. There was a distant hammering of steam engines carried by the weak febrile wind, the drumbeat of a slave galley for the emaciated figures of captives moving around the camp, pushing carts along rails or staggering under the weight of heavy hemp sacks. Not a prisoner of war camp then, but a work camp. And these aren’t mere make-work labours to busy minds and bodies so hard they can no longer think of escape, either. I detect the whiff of serious industry on the air. Interesting. A camp where the guards are as uncomfortable as the inmates, literally fish out of water. This has a purpose to it. I wonder what I would find inside those sacks the prisoners are lugging?
Turning left at the main gate of the camp, the columns of captives were marched towards a long shed-like structure, two bamboo doors swinging open. Inside was a wheezing machine that Daunt recognized from the Kingdom. A blood-code machine, the slowly rotating transaction-engine drums of its central control panel poorly oiled and squeaking in the humid atmosphere. The sailors in front of Daunt and his friends were led before the machine in turn, their arms pushed into a rubberised hollow, the grimace on their faces indicating the moment a needle was extended to sample their blood. For Boxiron, they didn’t even need the machine, a flurry of activity among the gill-neck engineers administering the tests. One of them fluttered a white card with the unmistakable black silhouette of the steamman’s unique form.
‘This is bloody wrong,’ said Dick Tull.
Daunt reached into his pocket and palmed an aniseed ball before popping it into his mouth, half-melted and sticky. ‘I agree, good sergeant. The Advocacy shouldn’t have access to such a machine, let alone our citizen records swirling about its memory.’
Our identity details should be kept jealously guarded by the civil service’s bureaucrats back in the capital’s engine rooms, not freely floating around an enemy power.
‘This is much more than that crooked sod Walsingham and his cronies selling us out,’ said Tull.
Daunt nodded. ‘I rather fear it is.’
Extra guards arrived, along with a high-ranking officer, judging by the ornate gilding of his helmet. They cut Boxiron from the line, their raised rifles somewhat superfluous given the power-limiter they had fitted on the steamman’s body. With Barnabas Sadly, Dick Tull and Daunt passed through the blood-code machine and their identities confirmed, the four of them were marched under guard out of the building and taken towards the more permanent set-up at the rear of the camp. Shoved rudely inside one of the mill-like structures, they were led through iron passages that could have passed as the interior of the Purity Queen, until they reached a chamber lined with empty windowless cells, unpadded bunks its only furniture. Rusting metal bars slid into the ceiling at the bidding of a gill-neck soldier standing at the end of the corridor. Daunt was shoved inside alongside the others. Then the bar sank deep into pits set into the floor as the guards departed.
‘Lords-a’larkey, they know who we are, don’t they?’ groaned Sadly.
‘It would seem we are now wanted in two states,’ said Boxiron.
‘Your corrupt friends on the State Protection Board are to be congratulated,’ said Jethro to Dick. ‘Fast work indeed, to uncover who we are and circulate our descriptions so widely and rapidly.’ He placed a hand on Boxiron’s shoulder. ‘I rather fear it was your involvement, old steamer, which allowed the board to identify us. Your unique physiology featured rather prominently in the police files once upon a time.’
‘Whereas Sergeant Tull and his little rodent stool pigeon’s were rather easier to come by,’ announced a voice.
Daunt looked around. A middle-aged woman and a nondescript looking man. Ah, the man from outside Tock House. Walsingham, alias Mister Twist.
‘No salute for me, Sergeant?’
‘Piss off, traitor,’ growled Tull. ‘How much are the gill-necks paying you to sell us out?’
‘Let us say a comfortable accommodation has been reached,’ smiled Walsingham. ‘A little something for everyone involved, including my friend here, who—’
‘—is Gemma Dark,’ said Daunt. ‘Otherwise known as the younger sister of Jared Black.’
She inclined her head in acknowledgement of the fact. ‘Yes, I was told you used to be a Circlist priest. A clever fellow, full of tricks.’
‘You share more than a passing resemblance. Chin, voice, physical mannerisms.’
She stroked the bars playfully. ‘A clever man like you, you must already know why I’m here.’
‘You were hunting us, obviously,’ said Daunt, matter-of-factly. ‘These two—’ he indicated the State Protection Board agent and his informant, ‘—to ensure their silence. Myself and Boxiron to discover our involvement and the extent of our knowledge of your little royalist conspiracy. The commodore, because
you hate him more than anyone else in the world, and Damson Shades, well, the young lady most of all. Because she has King Jude’s sceptre.’
‘Where is the girl?’ Walsingham demanded. ‘Where is my sceptre?’
‘Probably out in the colonies by now,’ shrugged Daunt. ‘We split up. The commodore and Damson Shades sneaked a berth on a RAN airship across to Concorzia. We took the slow route by liner.’
Gemma Dark shook her head in disappointment. ‘How easily the lies trip off your tongue. There is a missing u-boat from the convoy’s logs, one that bears a suspicious resemblance to the lines of my brother’s current craft.’
‘Mere coincidence.’
‘He’s a slippery fish, my brother, an eel covered in grease. I’ve been trying to kill him for years, but he runs and hides so well. You know that Jared Black isn’t his real name? He was born Samson Solomon Dark, a duke’s blood in the cause he betrayed.’
‘I know a little of his history,’ said Daunt. ‘Betrayal is rather strong a word. I think perhaps he just outgrew you and your royalist friends’ need for revenge.’
‘Outgrew!’ the woman shrieked. ‘This is who we are. Our history – our land, everything stolen from us by Parliament’s thieving shopkeepers. The cause is not a waistcoat you grow too fat for and discard. He ran when he should have fought. A coward and a traitor.’
‘But not always,’ said Daunt. ‘Sometimes he fought when he should’ve run. Like the time when he had your son released from Bonegate jail. A convicted river slaver offered parole in return for acting as a pilot, and that was a voyage he didn’t return from.’
‘You snivelling pious bastard,’ she screamed. ‘You dare call him a slaver? Treat us like outlaws and how do you—?’
‘Hold your tongue,’ advised Walsingham. ‘The churchman is manipulating you. He wants to use your anger to goad you into filling in the copious gaps in his knowledge.’
Daunt shrugged behind the bars. ‘I should take that as a compliment coming from you, Mister Walsingham, alias Captain Twist. Who would’ve imagined, such a high-ranking secret policeman assuming the mantle of a royalist bogeyman? What complicated webs we do weave.’
‘It’s not a compliment,’ spat Dick Tull angrily gripping the bars between his hands. ‘A traitor to all he believes in. It’s a sodding insult.’
‘That rather depends on what he believed in to start with. A little like the good commander of our convoy, Vice-admiral Cockburn. I believe he was a friend of yours?’
Tull sank wearily onto one of the bunks. ‘What are you talking about, amateur?’
‘You should listen to your friend, sergeant,’ said Walsingham. ‘He’s a clever man indeed. Dangerously clever, in fact.’
‘You want him, then?’ asked the commodore’s sister.
‘A defrocked parson of the Circlist church?’ Walsingham mused. ‘Such an obtuse organization with no real power in the Kingdom. When you believe in nothing, you believe in anything. Still, waste not, want not. Take him out of the cells. We shall kill two birds with one stone.’
She indicated Dick Tull and Sadly. ‘These two?’
‘A blunt knife and his diseased lapdog. I think not. Cannon fodder. They can die in the camp.’
Tull lunged through the bars, but Walsingham stepped back.
‘I’m still sharp enough to snap your neck, Walsingham.’
‘You have surprised me, sergeant. The duties I set you were specifically allocated on the basis of your complete lack of utility and possession of the scruples of a sewer rat. In the end, you’ve proved just good enough at your job to get yourself killed. It won’t be fast for you, but I guarantee you will make yourself useful before you waste away. Give him a beating for his insolence. Remind him of the proper forms that should be observed between master and servant.’
As the wall of bars retracted up into the ceiling, Boxiron moved in front of Daunt as the gill-neck soldiers swarmed in. ‘Do not touch him!’
Gemma Dark laughed as the guards easily restrained the steamman while others laid into Dick Tull. ‘You’re just strong enough to slave for us in the camp, old steamer, but your days of cracking skulls are over.’
Daunt leant in to the steamman and whispered words of reassurance before the gill-necks seized his arms and dragged him out.
‘Where are you taking him?’ Boxiron demanded.
‘I need to gauge just how clever your ex-parson actually is,’ Walsingham said.
‘I imagine the process will be quite painful,’ sighed Daunt as he was bundled out.
Walsingham followed with the commodore’s sister fast behind him. ‘Torture usually is.’
CHAPTER NINE
Voices were crackling so rapidly from Charlotte’s speaker box that the device was having problems interpreting the cacophony of shouts and calls; the box collapsing into an intermittent rack-rack-rack noise as it was overwhelmed by the seanores’ cries. There was no point trying to work out which of the nomads was signalling, the crowd encircling tall seabed impaled rotor-spears, seanores beating their chests as they hollered and whooped. Their spears were arranged in a field-sized semicircle along the rocky seafloor, the sketched out arena bounded by the chasm of a supposedly bottomless trench. If the proximity of the trench was meant to add an additional frisson of danger to their trial of admittance into the seanore’s ranks, then Charlotte considered the choice of venue largely superfluous. It wasn’t as if she was going to last longer than a couple of minutes against a mass of deadly muscle such as the clan’s chieftain, Vane.
‘This stands against all the blessed forms,’ the commodore protested, close enough to sound loud and clear over the jeering assembly. ‘It’s old Blacky who should be fighting you first.’
The clan leader shook his head, ‘It was you that sought admittance, silver-beard, not I that offered it. And I say your surface dwelling fancy piece shall fight me first.’ He glanced meaningfully towards Charlotte, then back at the commodore. ‘You shall know loss before I meet you in the arena.’
‘Ah, Vane. I’ve known loss since I left the clan. I lost the woman who would have been my wife and seen my own daughter perish. I’ve lost friends by the dozen and my mortal pride by the pound as I’ve scurried and run from my enemies. But this lass is not my blood, there is no need for you to involve her in our vendetta.’
‘Then you will not mind greatly when I slice her apart in front of you before tossing her carcass down into the darkness.’
‘The forms do not require that this be a death match,’ said Tera, the clan’s wise woman bobbing behind the chieftain.
‘Nor do they forbid it!’ He beckoned to Maeva and the old woman came forward bearing a case embedded with polished crab shells. Opening it, she revealed two short spears topped by jagged blades of diamond.
‘No rotor-spears in this trial,’ Vane said to Charlotte. ‘You must be close enough to look into my eyes when you come at me. To seek admittance to the clan you must understand us, know your blood and ours.’
No rotor-spears, but Charlotte had something else. She touched her diving suit below her neck, the Eye of Fate nestled reassuringly beneath the thick canvas. Will the amulet work underwater, beneath the suit? If I can throw him off for a second, paralyse him, then maybe I can live through this after all?
‘I’ve known more than a few bastards in my time,’ said Charlotte. ‘I don’t need to be close enough to you, honey, to smell your stink.’
He laughed. ‘A little spirit from you at last. I may hope for a show after all.’
They moved through a gap in the weapons and inside the semicircle of spears.
Vane traced a line in front of the rotor-spears. ‘Stay inside this space during the trial of admittance. Pass no further than fifty feet above the seabed. Flee our circle before the trial ends and we will slaughter you.’
The commodore moved in to disconnect their voice line, whispering over the private line as he did. ‘Vane will toy with you first, lass. He wants to draw the wicked game out to make me squ
irm and please the clan. Before he finishes you, he’ll swim behind and sever your rebreather’s air hose. Wait for that moment and jab behind. Go for his neck. His scales are weakest there, for flexibility. Until then, just play the damsel in distress.’
Play? This is one act I won’t have to study for. ‘All right.’ Charlotte was trying to fight down the rising feeling of panic, not helped by the cold currents from the trench playing across her diving suit. As cold as hell, a voice inside her whispered. Somehow, she knew that this was the reason they were fighting here. The nomads believed that the trench was the opening to the underworld.
Someone in the ring of surrounding seanore – it might have been Tera – held a crystal aloft on the end of a staff, triggering a short sunburst from the gem. Vane didn’t need any further urging; the chieftain launched himself above her head, short powerful thrusts of his legs powering him through the water. It was all Charlotte could do to spin around trying to fix his continually shifting position. If the clan leader had been minded to, he could have torn the spine of her suit open on the way past. Bastard. He’s playing with me. The roar of the crowd transmitted to her speaker box diminished to a distant surf as she raised the short glittering head of her spear against Vane – but the nomad wasn’t where she thought he would be. Where?