by Stephen Hunt
‘This is how it begins,’ whispered Daunt. Then he shook himself. It was almost as if he had been possessed by the old gods again when he had spoken.
‘Reckon you’re not wrong,’ said Morris, resting his rifle on the battlements. There were two little metal legs underneath the barrel, and he had opened them up to rest the gun against the stone, swivelling the stock experimentally. ‘You been through anything like this before?’
‘Jago,’ said the ex-parson. ‘I was on Jago when it was invaded.’
‘Then you know what to expect.’
‘I presume you’ve tasted similar when you were in the regiments?’
‘Once.’
‘So you showed the good wit to get out,’ said Daunt. ‘Sickened by the senselessness of it all?’
‘That wasn’t why I deserted,’ said Morris. The convict’s body language closed up. ‘Eyes front. They’re coming. Can you smell them? Can you taste them? Bloody gill-necks.’
Out towards the sea the wind had changed direction, war gas drifting across the lake, providing the advancing Advocacy forces with a haze screen of cover. The Court’s own deadly cloud was working against them now. Daunt saw a couple of runners outside the battlements, sprinting down the ground between the wall and near shore of the lake, pegging small triangular pennants into the dirt. The effective killing range of our rifles, so our defenders don’t expend ammunition needlessly. There wasn’t much cover in the stretch of land between the lake and the city — wooden jetties for fishing boats, a few shacks for storing nets, eeling skiffs lying beached in the reeds. Apart from the runners desperately marking out the ground, the rest of Nuyok were sheltering behind their town’s thick, tall walls.
Daunt quickly tipped up his gas mask and wiped the salty sweat off his forehead before it could sting his eyes again. Even the wind on the island was hot, playing against his skin as if it had been blown off the coals of a Jackelian tavern’s fireplace. Matters were about to get devilishly hotter. Out on the border of the lake, a rhythmic clanking filled the air as hundreds of rolling-pin tanks began to rise up out of the lime-coloured waters, tracks at either end of the metal vehicles dragging them off the lake bed and up onto the surface. Almost before the landing craft had cleared the surface, the guns studding their armour spewed out a hail of fire. They were moving up in a coordinated assault formation — some halting for hatches at their rear to fall down and disgorge marines, others coming to a standstill in the shadows of the battlements, dozens of weapons bristling up on their maximum elevation and peppering the battlements with shot and shell. These soldiers had come for the long haul, bulbous crystal helmets filled with water connected by hoses to their version of rebreather packs, bodies weighted down with pouches and entrenchment equipment. Protected by the initial landing force, more rolling-pin armour emerged out of the lake waters. Some were dragging spherical cargo containers, others mounted with trench digging prows and siege machinery. The appearance of this assault was met by a hail of fire from the Nuyokians, the roar of their rifles firing a thousand baby rattles shaking in anger. It resounded across the lake like no gunfire Daunt had ever heard before. Not the wood-like splinter of explosive charges being ignited and discarded manually, but a hollow thwacking as the firing bolts in the side of rifles jolted back and forth with the discharge of super-compressed gas. The defenders’ furious response was accompanied by a clockwork clack of ammunition drums rotating on top of the rifles as the city’s militiamen emptied their magazines down onto the ground in front of their home. A fierce drumming echoed from the rolling-pin tanks as rifle balls glanced off their armour. Where the gill-neck marines were out in the open, unloading their siege and entrenching tools from the landing craft, soldiers’ corpses spilled into the dirt and crumpled back into the lake’s reeds.
Behind Daunt, the two long guns of the city were still discharging every few minutes, tossing shells at the stalled battle fleet of the Advocacy as fast as the city gunners could reload shells into the breeches. Daunt ducked as a spray of shots whistled past his head. Morris was keeping down, swivelling his gas gun on its leg mounts and aiming careful bursts at the invaders below, laughing as if the vista of carnage below was a theatre production laid on purely for his amusement. At the receiving end of each spray of bullets, Advocacy soldiers collapsed to the ground with shattered breathing helmets, their crab-shell armour torn and holed. Elements of the landing force were trying to storm the slopes of the volcano, no doubt trying to find elevated positions from where they could shell and snipe at the city below. Fortunately for the Nuyokians, the close-defence mechanisms of the Court of the Air were coming into play. Fake rock fronts were drawing back all across the mountain side, cannons, mortars and banks of rapid-fire rifles emerging into the light of day from camouflaged bunkers, cutting down each wave of Advocacy marines as they attempted to scale the rise.
Stretcher-bearers ran crouched along the length of the battlements, rolling collapsed bodies onto stretchers and manhandling them down the steps towards the surgeons’ tents on the lawns of the nearest towers.
All around Daunt the defenders were intent on murder, focused on killing enough gill-necks for the Advocacy to abandon its beachhead. This is your war, Jethro Daunt, and welcome to it. He bent down and went off to see how many of the wounded he could save.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dick and Sadly stood in the shadows of an alleyway, occupying one of the narrow passages between the imposing marble facades of the capital’s moneyed districts, a wide boulevard disgustingly well-lit by gas lamps even in the middle of the night. As head of the State Protection Board, Algo Monoshaft was entitled to a grace and favour residence supplied by the state. In this case, a series of rooms atop Victory Arch.
Dick had always considered it fitting that the civil servant charged with the protection of the realm from its enemies should be ensconced inside a monument built to celebrate Parliament’s victory in the civil war. If me and Sadly get in there alive, who knows, maybe the old arsehole’ll continue doing the job. That didn’t mean Dick failed to begrudge Algo Monoshaft his polished walnut floors and his servants and his expensive antiques and every penny of the luxuries he enjoyed while Dick had shivered in the cold comfort of Damson Pegler’s cheap boarding rooms. Perched in gilded opulence atop the ceremonial gateway’s four arches. Well, at least Dick knew where to find the senile sod, even if it was in the lap of state-patronized luxury. They might have had an easier job of it, if the head had lived in Steamtown with the majority of the capital’s other steammen. But Algo Monoshaft was living high on his perks, so here the head was, and across there Dick and Sadly would have to go.
Sadly checked outside the alley. ‘Nobody watching that I can see, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there to get us.’
‘Oh, they’re watching all right,’ said Dick. ‘Walsingham isn’t going to let anyone he doesn’t trust within a country mile of the old steamer.’
‘They can’t all be sea-bishops across there,’ said Sadly. ‘They don’t have the bleeding numbers to impersonate everyone, says I.’
Dick cradled the heft of the Court’s heavy gas rifle. It was a queer-looking weapon, but it’d plough a furrow through anyone standing between him and the master of the board. ‘Doesn’t matter. There’s an execution warrant out on the both of us. If there’s dustmen inside the arch, they’ll cut our throats first and ask questions later. Won’t have time to separate intentions inside there.’
‘Well then, Mister Tull, some good men are likely to die for a misguided cause.’
Sadly’s rodent-like features were darting about and he looked like he was ready to sprint out to the cover of the nearest building, but Dick laid a hand on the Court agent’s shoulder. ‘We’re not going to run up to the front and shake scullery windows looking for a way in. If it’s an assault you’re after, we could’ve landed that aerostat of yours on the roof and kicked in a skylight.’
‘How then?’
‘I don’t know what trade-craft they
taught you in the Court, but me, I was taught by good old Sergeant Childers back in the day. I’d say he was a grim old bugger, except I think I’ve turned into him.’ Dick led Sadly down the narrow passage and into a small square off the side. There was an oblong of grass bounded by seats on four sides, the kind of place clerks and clackers would come during their lunch to sit and stare at the prestigious volume of pigeon droppings painting the marble statues lining the path. ‘Always good for a lesson, was Childers, and a kicking if his education didn’t stick in the head of the young fools palmed off onto him to train.’ Dick approached a life-sized statue of a man clutching the pommel of a great sword with two mailed hands. He eased himself behind it enough to slip his fingers towards a shadow on the statue’s back, twisting his hand around an awkward angle to reach inside the hidden shelf — feeling for the cobweb-ridden rusting lever he had once been shown. ‘Lessons like never enter somewhere you haven’t located the back door.’ As Dick twisted the lever, the statue ground forward on its plinth, revealing a square well with a metal ladder riveted into the shaft. ‘And a back door can be a front door too, when you don’t want to be seen going in.’ Maybe I would have shown it to that young oaf William before I’d retired. Not that Billy-boy would’ve listened. He hadn’t thought there was much that Dick knew worth the passing on.
Climbing down into it, the shaft led to a narrow tunnel, a ceiling low enough they both had to stoop. Dim shafts of light emerged from vents intended for ventilation and there was a layer of dust thick enough to indicate the tunnel hadn’t been used in quite a time. Sergeant Childers had been right about this, but then the sod had been old school. It was a depressing thought to Dick, but now, so was he. As long as you didn’t count getting ahead in the board, there were quite a few tricks and skills he would be taking with him unpassed when he left. Plenty about doing the job right. Not that effectiveness counted for much among the quality that ran the civil service. Being in the appropriate place to take credit with the right accent was more important to preferment than anything so grubby as consistently getting results. That was what the proletariat was for. But if Dick lived through this, if he got this job right… they won’t be able to steal the credit for this result. Rooting out conspiracy within the board; nobs like Walsingham not just exposed as enemy agents, but revealed as abhuman. The state had awarded large discretionary pensions to fools for far less than Dick was attempting to do.
There was another vertical shaft at the end of the narrow corridor, a claustrophobic climb up into the bowels of Victory Arch, then a series of horizontal passages branching out which the two of them had to traverse crawling on all fours. Built into the floor at irregular intervals were little wooden flaps that could be lifted up, revealing small eyeholes giving onto the rooms below. When it came to tradecraft, you had to forget what you read in penny-dreadfuls and saw on the stage. No self-respecting spy would order a builder to construct a surveillance hole in a wall, much less behind the eyes of a strategically placed oil painting. Marks waiting in a room would get bored, would look around — and wandering eyes were quick to spot little flickers of movement on supposedly static surfaces. But a ceiling? Nobody looked up at ceilings; crane a neck for too long and all you were going to get for your trouble was a neck ache. And sounds, they carried up quite naturally — just ask anyone in the slum tenements of the rookeries about how noisy their neighbours were. Of course, sound carried down too, which is why the dusty passage Dick was squeezing through was lined with a stretch of cork across its floor and walls.
Dick was in the lead and he laid down his gentleman’s cane and indicated to Sadly that they should halt, taking the time to lift the wooden flap off a surveillance hole. It proved to be a good spot, right above a chandelier, the top of which had a hidden ring of mirrors around the crystals, giving angled views of the entire chamber below. There were glass cases containing old swords, armour and a variety of personal items that had belonged to prominent parliamentarians centuries ago. They were still above the public part of the arch, where the idle and curious could pay a penny or two to gawk at the faded glories of the monarchist’s defeat. He closed the flap. They continued on their way, ignoring the hatches in the passage’s roof that would lead up into concealed entrances inside the apartments. Dick had been here twice before, inside the arch, not its hidden passages. Both times when he was starting out in his career with the board, bearing official document pouches for the head to peruse and sign. From what Dick could see of the rooms through the surveillance holes, they hadn’t changed much in all those years. Burnt larch panelling, antiques on display, the occasional night watchman patrolling with a gas-fed lantern and a belted cutlass. The private apartments above were much the same, except the watchmen were board officers. Far too many of them for a normal night’s duty in this place; far too alert and well armed.
Dick lowered the wooden flap on the surveillance hole. ‘They really don’t want any bugger getting in to see the head.’
‘Then they’re due a disappointment, says I.’
‘Sergeant Childers told me the head’s private rooms have an escape hole. He’s up top, we have to climb another two storeys.’
‘Let’s be about it, then, eh, Mister Tull.’
It was slow, careful work. Dick hoped that Monoshaft would be able to squeeze though these passages on the way down. They had been built in an age before the old steamer had taken charge of the board’s resources. They reached the staff quarters below the head’s private apartments, and surveying the corridors, Dick spotted Corporal Cloake sitting at a table in the main corridor, a number of burly-looking men lounging about, some playing cards next to a pile of coins. Dick lifted his cane up and made to activate the sea-bishop detection mechanism, but Sadly tugged on the cane to stop him.
‘Don’t be wasting its charge,’ whispered Sadly. ‘That one’s got to be one of them. He was at Tock House when they came for us.’
‘You’re right, some of the guards too, probably.’ But not all of them, or I doubt if they’d be playing cribbage on the table.
Sadly pulled the gas gun slung across Dick’s back. ‘This’ll sort ’em out, either way. Come on.’
Dick was about to shut the surveillance flap when a figure walked down the corridor and the sergeant had to stifle his reaction. Jethro Daunt. It was one thing to know at the back of your mind that people like Cloake and Walsingham had been murdered and replaced by doppelgangers — Walsingham had never seemed particularly human to him in the first place. But to actually see one of the sea-bishops mimicking a man Dick knew was presently hundreds of miles away on the Isla Furia sent a waterfall of chills crawling down his spine.
‘What is it, Mister Tull?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.’
Reaching their destination, Dick used the butt of the rifle to hammer aside the rusty bolts securing the hatch above his head, a shower of oxidised metal flakes falling onto his sweating face. There was a clockwork box meant to trigger the escape route from outside but it had stopped functioning — possibly centuries ago. The hatch opened above the crawl space. When Dick pulled himself out he found himself in a large wardrobe littered with mothballs but no clothes — attire superfluous to a steamman’s needs. There was an oblong of angled slats in the wood giving a view out onto the room beyond.
‘Any guards?’ asked Sadly, coming up behind Dick.
Dick shook his head. ‘Monoshaft’s said to only allow a single house servant inside to clean. Doesn’t trust anyone not to nose around his papers and notes.’
‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’
Clicking open the wardrobe door, Dick was at a loss to know what cleaning the unlucky servant was actually allowed to do. All around the room, every surface was scattered with pieces of paper covered over with half-mad scrawls, annotated cutting from newssheets and pieces of string and chord connecting the scraps like veins on a drunk’s face. It was as bad as the mess back in the board’s offices. Sad
ly picked up a faded cartoon cut out of the front of the Middlesteel Illustrated News, a drawing of two senior members of the government pinching each other’s noses. The speech bubble had been scrawled over, frantic handwriting demanding, Why is this here? Why, why?
‘He’s not playing with a full deck of cards anymore, is he?’ said Sadly.
‘Give him his due. He’d worked out the Court was back in the great game when I thought he just blowing steam from his stacks,’ said Dick, ‘He connected the gill-necks and the royalists working together before anyone else.’
There was a noise from the connected room and Sadly unshouldered his rifle while Dick padded silently up to the door. The Court’s agent was holding his rifle ready, lowered and angled towards the floor, and Dick rested his cane against the wall, then tipped the door open before springing into the room with his gun gripped in both hands.
‘You!’ Algo Monoshaft was scrabbling around the floor, laying lengths of string around the spirals of paper littering his expansive carpet. He had a dozen pots of dye of different colours scattered around him, and appeared to be painting the strings according to the strictures of some mad colour code. Monoshaft didn’t sleep much, but at least they had caught the board’s head unawares.
‘You murdered William Beresford. I knew it would be you who came for me, sergeant.’
‘Stay where you are, sir,’ said Dick. ‘I don’t know how many hidden buttons you’ve got to call for help, but I reckon a cautious old steamer like yourself will have a few.’
‘I though you were too trivial to be turned by them,’ said the steamman. ‘But here you are to kill me, just like you slew poor young Beresford softbody.’