by Stephen Hunt
Sadly and the ex-parson waded backwards as Old Death-shell advanced on their tree, the semiconscious form of the commandant bobbing in front. Both of them ducked behind the tree, the tiger crab’s claws prodding forward, clacking, each pinching movement enough to cut a bull in half. One of its claws came cutting up, slicing the strap off Morris and sending the howling prisoner falling out of the tree towards the surface. Down below, Sadly and Daunt were shouting in terror as Old Death-shell scuttled forward, closing the gap between them to a couple of feet. Dick was desperately swinging himself around the tree trunk to avoid the claw swishing through the air when a whistling battle cry pierced the swamp. On the tree behind, Boxiron had sliced his climbing strap off, plummeting down towards the tiger crab beneath with his machete raised.
‘No!’ Daunt called from below as he stumbled backwards. ‘Old steamer, you’re not able to shift gears with that limiter welded onto you.’
Boxiron’s strength might have been throttled down, but his fury at the creature threatening his friend was undiminished. Dick took advantage of the steamman’s diversion and released his own belt to fall towards the surface, hitting the warm water and coming up alongside Sadly and Morris.
‘Your friend’s got a death wish, see,’ spluttered Morris.
On top of the tiger crab’s carapace, Boxiron had one metal hand digging into its shell, the other hacking down, trying to force its way into the flesh beyond the carapace joins. Old Death-shell was not reacting well to having a rider, making a furious chirping noise, rubbing its legs together as it was bucking, its claws trying to angle back to sweep this metal parasite off its back.
‘This is my fault,’ moaned Daunt, as he dragged the wounded commandant’s body clear of the lashing tiger crab’s assault. ‘Boxiron shouldn’t be here.’
Dick tried to shove Jethro Daunt away from the gill-neck. ‘Let me strangle the murdering sod.’
Morris grabbed Dick from behind. ‘I would be right behind you, matey. But if we do for him like he deserves, the gill-necks will make everyone in the camp pay.’
With the commandant pulled back onto the tree’s roots, Daunt grabbed one of the raft’s punts floating past and charged the flailing tiger crab, jabbing at the eye stalks. Breaking free, Dick snatched the machete off Morris and ran forward to stand by the amateur’s side, pushing his blade out at the enraged creature. Old Death-shell was not used to this. Prey ran. It did not fight back. It did not attack! Confused, its attention divided between the three of them, Old Death-shell’s left claw withdrew from trying to dislodge Boxiron and snapped out at Daunt. The amateur had waded out of range, but his punt was sliced in half. Dick ran forward, slashing at the black feathery fronds growing like a beard around the bottom of the tiger crab’s shell, then darted back as the creature shuddered in pain.
Daunt scooped up the half of his punt fallen in the water and tossed it up towards Boxiron. ‘Old steamer, give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world.’ The Circlist koan of the blessed fulcrum.
Boxiron seized the punt and rammed it into the gap in the carapace he’d been trying to cut open, driving a metal foot down onto the pole. Lifting up the armour with a terrible ripping sound that sent the tiger crab into a fit of shaking fury, the tear was not much, but enough to expose the soft flesh of its fibrous brain casing underneath. Boxiron lifted a victorious spear of steam into the air from his stack and he cried in triumph, driving the machete down with both hands. Limited in strength, but never in soul.
Chirping in agony, Old Death-shell’s eight legs buckled, its wide carapace collapsing into the everglade’s surface, and there it lay, trembling and shaking as its life leaked away.
‘Were you trying to die?’ demanded Daunt as the steamman slid off the mottled orange and yellow shell.
‘No, Jethro softbody, I was trying to live.’
There was another scream of fury, not the dying tiger crab this time. ‘You dirty surface-dwelling vermin!’ On’esse staggered in front of the tree, snapping shut the pistol he had just reloaded. ‘You dare to save me! To lay hands on me as if I am one of your dirty herd, as if my life is in your hands!’ As he raised his pistol towards the famous consulting detective, Dick threw the machete, its blade rotating once and hitting On’esse in the chest, slamming him back and pinning him to the tree trunk. There was a brief look of astonishment on the commandant’s face as the shock of his death sank in.
‘And that’s my way of saying thank you, you murdering old sod.’
On’esse slipped forward on the blade, croaking, trembling. Then the commandant’s shuddering increased, becoming more than just the last dying tremors of a gill-neck, his body shaking, fast and faster, blurring in the air, his form being replaced by something else. Something more or less the same size as On’esse, but with a terrible distended head, wrinkled skin that gleamed slimy, foul and as dark as night.
Boxiron stepped forward to examine the corpse. ‘By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, what is this thing?’
Daunt reached out to stop the steamman, grabbing his arm. ‘Stand back!’ As he was speaking there was a burst of light from the corpse’s chest and a spiral of fierce red energy wrapped the commandant’s body. By the time Dick had blinked the tears and afterimage of the explosion out of his eyes, there was nothing but charred ashes left sinking into the water. A shadow had been burnt into the tree trunk, the now half-melted machete still sunk into the smoking wood.
‘Lords-a’larkey,’ whispered Sadly. ‘I’ve seen a few things, say I, but that, that—’
‘Let’s see if I am right,’ said Daunt, advancing on the sinking mound of blackened residue. He dipped a hand down, searching for something under the water, then came back up with a jewel. ‘Does this look familiar? Rather like the gem that Damson Shades wears around her neck, don’t you think?’
‘What’s happened to him?’ Dick demanded. ‘Did that crystal do that?’
‘I believe it might be expedient if I saved your answers until we have reached the safety of the beach. The guards who fled will doubtless be back soon with larger guns.’
Dick waded through the water, retrieving a rifle and a satchel of soaked shells from the remains of the commandant’s broken boat.
‘There’s no safety on the beach,’ cried Morris, his dripping arms windmilling around the humid air. ‘You think we haven’t tried to escape, man? Every year some green arseholes steal a harvesting raft and make for the sea.’ He jabbed a finger towards the gently shaking carapace of Old Death-shell. ‘There are hundreds just like that beast in the waters around the island. What do you think Ko’marn Island means in the gill-neck tongue? It’s “Death-by-claw Island”! This is one of the islands where tiger crabs lay eggs every summer.’
Daunt smiled, looking meaningfully at Barnabas Sadly. ‘Oh, I think we can do better than a shallow-beamed harvesting raft, a sail made out of tattered shirts and an old punt, don’t you?’
‘What, the cripple? You think he’s got a private sloop tucked up his shirt-tails?’ Morris scoffed.
‘Not a sloop, but a trick up his sleeve. Or rather, inside his cane. How about it, Barnabas?’
Sadly nodded thoughtfully. ‘Your reputation is well deserved, Mister Daunt. How did you work it out?’
‘Many signals, but two matters stood out rather glaringly. Firstly, your clubfoot. Those born with congenital talipes equinovarus in a single limb always learn to compensate with their other foot by the time they reach adulthood, leaving the heel of the good shoe worn away. Someone who came from a family of cobblers should know that. Whereas for you, sir, your good shoe’s heel stands as flat as a millpond. I can thereby deduct that you weren’t born with what is solely a congenital disease. A womb-mage’s alteration of the flesh, I expect? I doubt if that’s the face you were born with, either.’
Sadly nodded in approval. ‘And the second thing?’
‘You told me you hadn’t been born in a poorhouse. There is a good reason why Sadly is such a common surname in the slums of
the capital. It is because it is the name automatically entered in the rolls by a workhouse when a male baby is abandoned at a church and handed over to the board of the poor. If you had been an abandoned baby girl, you would have been called Templar, after temple, while Sadly comes from the Ballad of Franklin Sadly, the Saint of the Workhouse.’ Daunt began to hum the tune. ‘In a long and hungry line, the paupers sit at their tables, for this is the hour they dine, with poor Franklin Sadly.’
‘A guinea for you to stop bleeding singing. You are quite a fount of useless trivia, Mister Daunt.’
‘I would say there’s no such thing as a piece of useless information.’
‘And what amongst your vast store of ephemera makes you think I’m going to take you with me?’
‘Us,’ said Daunt, indicating the group. ‘And I think you’ll take us with you because I know the answers to what is really going on here.’
‘Who are you?’ Dick snarled at the informant, the flush of anger rising within him as the truth of the matter started to dawn. ‘Have you played me for a mug, Sadly?’
‘Not a mug, good sergeant,’ said Daunt. ‘And he’s treated you no differently from the rest of us. That’s the purpose of bait, isn’t it? To be impaled on a hook and dragged through the water to see what bites. Well, your mission has been successfully completed. You’ve caught quite a whopper, and now you’re going to make sure that we’re the ones that got away.’
‘I’m going to need a taste of that fish,’ said Sadly. ‘Just to make sure you’re telling the truth.’
‘I would expect nothing less from a trade that deals in lies and deceits.’ Daunt reached under his breeches and removed a bamboo rod that had been tied to his leg. He tossed it to Sadly. ‘From the graveyard here. Read the name engraved on the marker.’
Sadly did so, a worried frown creasing his rodent-like features. Then he pitched it back to the ex-parson. ‘All right then, consider that your ticket out of here.’
Dick stuck his hand out. ‘Let me see it.’
Daunt passed it across and Dick scanned the name on the grave marker, then looked at the date of the burial. The feeling of confusion swelled within the sergeant. ‘How can that be?’
‘A riddle, indeed,’ said Daunt. He passed the marker across to the obviously curious steamman. ‘What do you think, Boxiron? How can Walsingham have been buried in the camp’s graveyard two years past, when the good sergeant’s employer was only just interrogating me? Quite a curiosity, and enough to stump even—’ Daunt pointed to Sadly, ‘—an agent of the Court of the Air.’
Daunt pushed back the undergrowth in his way as they cut a passage through the everglades, the harvesting machetes put to a use their gill-neck captors would not have approved of. Sadly was not limping quite so badly now, the act of his cover identity abandoned for expediency’s sake as they slashed their way to freedom.
Boxiron was hacking in front, Dick Tull and Morris behind the steamman, the State Protection Board agent surly and uncommunicative towards the man he’d believed was his informant. It was not an easy thing, to flip from predator to prey with such speed, and the sergeant’s professional pride was clearly wounded worse than anything his capture by the gill-necks had inflicted upon him. Boxiron released the exhaust of his labours from his stacks in brief, short bursts, nothing to draw attention of the pursuit by the camp’s soldiers that had to be underway by now. If the State Protection Board officer’s pride had taken a beating, Daunt hoped that Boxiron’s had been restored by his victory over Old Death-shell. Even limited by the gill-necks’ device, he was still a steamman knight. I just hope he knows it, and that his plunge towards the tiger crab was to save me, not a suicide attempt.
‘Walsingham wasn’t the only one in the graveyard, was he?’ Sadly said, cutting at the bush with his cane.
‘No. It was a veritable notables’ list of Jackelian quality – admirals, vice-admirals, generals, industrialists, mill owners, members of the House of Guardians, and those were just the names I recognized.’
‘The Court of the Air will need them all,’ said Sadly. ‘Along with everything else you know about how they got there.’
Daunt fished in his pocket, withdrawing with a Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drop. He looked at the sticky mess in disappointment then replaced it back again. Inedible. Perhaps it would dry out later? ‘First things first, good agent. We need to locate the commodore, Charlotte Shades and King Jude’s sceptre before the commodore’s sister and the gill-necks do. Otherwise there won’t be much of a Kingdom left to save.’
‘You’ve a cheek, Mister Daunt. We’re not your bleeding private carriage service.’
‘I know what the Court of the Air is for,’ said Daunt. ‘You must have suspected that your dealings over the centuries have come to the attention of the Inquisition?’
‘What do you know of the Court?’
‘When Isambard Kirkhill seized power in Parliament’s name after the civil war, he had only one fear left – and that was the throne. The army wanted Kirkhill to become king. Old Isambard had to fight them off with a sabre to stop them crowning him the new monarch. Then there were our royalists-in-exile plotting a counter-revolution and restoration. Kirkhill knew that if Parliament’s rule was to last, it would have to resist both the plots without and the ambitions of its own politicians. So Kirkhill established a court sinister as the last line of defence, a body that was to act as a supreme authority and ultimate guarantor of the people’s rule. But it was to be a court invisible. While the House of Guardians knew the Court existed, they knew nothing of its location, its staff, its methods and its workings. If any politician were to start looking at the throne restored with envious eyes, the existence of the Court would give them pause to think.’
‘There’s such a thing as being too clever for your own good,’ warned Sadly.
‘So people keep on telling me. However, in this matter I think you will find your mission and my own perfectly aligned.’
‘Are you an Inquisition officer, Mister Daunt?’
‘Perish the thought,’ said Daunt. ‘The church wouldn’t have defrocked me so readily if I had been. They’re under the misapprehension that they employ my services every so often, and it only seems like fair play to draw upon their resources in turn. The commodore’s sister made the same mistake when she linked me up to their machine to sift through my memories.’
‘And now you’re asking the Court to repeat the error? You’re not very reassuring, says I.’
‘Oh, I’m sure the Court of the Air is far too devious for me to play you along.’
The everglades’ bush was thinning out, the orange dunes of a beach ahead and the crashing sea beyond. The danger of the place was underlined by hundreds of abandoned carapaces lying in the sand, outgrown by generations of maturing tiger crabs. And how many tiger crabs are scuttling about out there with their shells still on, I wonder?
‘And what’s your explanation for the camp commandant burning up when he died?’
‘Patience, good agent. What exactly do you have concealed inside your cane? Not a flag rolled up with the word “help” sown on, I trust?’
‘An isotope,’ said Sadly. ‘Its signature can be followed from half an ocean away.’
Daunt glanced at the bottom of the man’s cane. It was leaking the last of a foul-looking green liquid onto the sand.
‘You’ve flushed it into the swamp …?’
‘Water nullifies it.’
‘And the signal stopping is the sign for your extraction,’ said Daunt, satisfied with himself. ‘I trust your colleagues have stayed near.’
‘You never know when you’re going to outwear your welcome.’
Any self-satisfaction vanished with the whistling of bullets past Daunt’s left ear, close enough to shave his sideburn.
‘Camp guards,’ yelled Morris, sprinting for the reedy dunes in front of them and throwing himself over the ridge. Jethro, Boxiron, Sadly and Dick Tull were fast behind the wiry convict, spurts of sand chasing
their passage as they hurled themselves towards the sparse cover of the beach. There was something about the footsteps they had left in the sand, but what? Daunt didn’t have time to ponder. A cloud of gull-like lizards exploded into the air as the party of escapees landed close to their nests in the dune grass, bullets flitting over their heads with the buzz of roused hornets. Dick Tull pushed a shell into the stolen rifle and fired back, the gill-necks keeping cover, hunkering down along the edge of the everglades in response to this solitary, lonely voice of opposition. Geysers of sand erupted as the guards concentrated their volleys on the muzzle flash of Dick’s rifle.