by Stephen Hunt
‘We are not in favour, Cadet Barir,’ said the retainer. ‘The guardsmen are traditionalists, and we live in an age of progress. That is why the Caliph Eternal’s new armada of the heavens was given to the control of the navy’s admirals, salt-stained fools who know more about tides and sounding depths than they do of aerial navigation in the face of sandstorms.’
‘There was an old nomad I was friends with at home,’ said Omar. ‘He would have shrugged his shoulders and said such a misfortune must be god’s will.’
‘Perhaps, but it is also the will of the same sect that saw yours cast down from the Holy Cent,’ said the retainer. ‘You need to watch your tongue in the palace below. It was not just your father’s house and its allies that were destroyed by the new sect’s rise to ascendancy. The Pasdaran was dissolved by the Caliph Eternal last year when they were supposedly discovered plotting against the empire.’
The Pasdaran! But they were the caliph’s secret police. Even in Haffa just the invoking of the name of the caliph’s shadowy torturers had been enough to scare overactive children to sleep. It was said they had spies in every town, spirits in every house listening in for any fool reckless enough to dare speak treason against the caliph.
‘They are gone?’ said Omar, sounding astonished.
‘Their reward for standing against the appointment of the new grand vizier, Immed Zahharl,’ said the servant. ‘Immed Zahharl is also the head of the order of womb mages and he stands as high keeper for the Sect of Razat. The secret police declared publicly that Zahharl’s appointment was contrary to the tradition that a vizier must renounce all house, guild and sect and accept only the Caliph Eternal as his one true prophet. The “treason” among the secret police was uncovered soon after they spoke out against the new grand vizier.’
‘I remember when I was growing up,’ said Omar, ‘I thought the Pasdaran were demons hiding under my cot. I felt such fear. Of course, I was not as brave then as I am now.’
‘Oh, oh, there’s still plenty to be feared in the palace. But not from the hands of the secret police, nor any more from the swords of guardsmen.’ He reached out and touched the back of Omar’s cloak imploringly. ‘It is not the Caliph Eternal’s fault, not when sorcerers whisper in his ear. Sometimes I think the new sect has him half-bewitched, and they will hate you twice over. Once for the house that was yours in your old life, and once for the guardsman’s mantle you wear in your new one. When we walk inside the palace, remember, in imperial script there is only one syllable’s difference between the word for favoured and the word for executed.’
‘Do not fear, Boulous Ibn Jahani,’ said Omar. ‘You are a servant of the order and the order’s sword is here to protect you.’
Omar almost managed to sound as if he truly believed it.
Jack gazed with despair at the small transaction-engine-room pit of the Cassarabian airship, as ruined as his red-raw back. The wrecked room had been adequate enough to give them navigational control of the enemy vessel, but Jack was struggling with the differing standards when it came to symbolic logic, not to mention the fact the enemy calculation drums had been scuttled by her own crew when they realized their ship was falling to the Kingdom’s boarding parties. The prize vessel’s crew hadn’t been very forthcoming so far, but the airship — named the Kochava Saar — was slowly revealing its secrets. Unlike the Iron Partridge, its main structure wasn’t made of the iron-strong paper composite, carper, but some light material that seemed to be part bone and part wood, no doubt secreted like silk by one of the twisted creatures given life by the caliph’s womb mages. There were other mysteries, though. Such as the non-standard racks in the vessel’s bomb bays, seemingly built to hold fin-bombs several orders of magnitude larger than any found on a Jackelian vessel, yet completely empty of ordnance — the pair of enemy airships running light for long-distance patrol. What on earth would fit inside one of those monstrous frames?
‘What are we looking for?’ asked Jack, running his fingers down the strangely arranged symbols of the enemy punch-card writer.
‘Anything that might indicate where these Cassarabian lads are getting their celgas from, Mister Keats,’ said John Oldcastle, helping Coss lift up a spilled bank of machinery, the metal casing bent out of shape by wrecking hammers.
‘Searching for the source of their celgas is our mission?’ asked Jack.
Oldcastle indicated the debris filling the enemy transaction-engine chamber. ‘An airship is just canvas and metal with some clever papier-mache and chemicals all brewed up together. But what the Cassarabians are using to float their ’stats with, lad, that’s pure gold.’
‘It is neither RAN celgas nor gold,’ said Coss, ‘that much I am sure of, master cardsharp. I helped our crew tap some barrels of enemy gas on the Iron Partridge. Tear my transfer pipes, it had a most unpleasant smell — although it is non-flammable and appears to have a similar lifting capacity to our own airship gas.’
‘Get the furnace going, Mister Shaftcrank; we’re going to tickle some life back into their calculation drums. Mister Keats, you’ll search for anything to do with the enemy gas. Where the Cassarabians loaded it, how much was taken on, and if you’ve even a sniff of how or where they get it from, you inform me right away.’
‘Their writer layout isn’t the same as ours,’ said Jack pointing to the punch-card machine. And it looks as if it’s been put together by a half-drunk blind man.
‘Best efforts, lad, best efforts.’
Jack was halfway through puzzling out the foreign systems, when two of their Benzari marines appeared escorting a Cassarabian prisoner, a thin-faced man whose sunken cheeks were covered with an elaborately greased and embroidered beard, his tanned skin still marked with soot from the fires that had been burning across the stricken airship.
The marines pushed him roughly down onto the chair and secured him to it.
‘Ah, just the fellow,’ said Oldcastle, cleaning his engine-oiled hands on a rag. ‘You’ve been fingered to us as one of the clever jacks that used to run this room.’
‘I have nothing to say to you,’ said the Cassarabian, ‘and you will find I am worth no ransom to your people.’
‘Here it is, my fine friend,’ said Oldcastle, ‘we might lock you away for a prisoner exchange later, but we won’t sell you, not even to your own side. We’re not slavers in the Kingdom.’
‘I know what you are,’ snarled the Cassarabian. ‘I have heard the screams of the others after they were taken away.’
‘That would be our first lieutenant,’ said Oldcastle. ‘She a direct lass, so she is.’
The Cassarabian spat at the master cardsharp’s feet. ‘I expect no honour from you, infidel.’
‘You’ll have to forgive our first lieutenant,’ said Oldcastle moving behind the prisoner and putting his hands on the man’s shoulders. ‘Her mother was one of your escaped slaves, crossed the desert to the uplands to get away from the empire. Not just any sort of slave, our good lady officer told me, but a producer.’ Oldcastle looked at Jack. ‘They’ve got some funny ways in Cassarabia, Mister Keats. All those creatures bred by their womb mages. They come out of the thighs of slaves when they’re born. Not a very pleasant job I would say; bottom of the slave pecking order when you draw that duty. The ones that are forced into the trade are known as producers. Most women that draw that wicked straw only last for three years, but the first lieutenant’s mother was a tough old bird. She was at it for five years before she escaped.’ He patted their prisoner on the back. ‘You can imagine the kind of stories the first lieutenant was raised on, can’t you? I think that’s why she treats her job so mortal serious. But it could be worse for you lads, you could have her old ma here, instead, asking you the questions.’ Oldcastle angrily spun the prisoner’s chair around. ‘So let me ask you, my fine fellow, how much honour is there in your desert brigands having to tie the hands of our upland lasses to stop them committing suicide when they’re snatched by you? Or is your honour measured in the number of luckless children the caliph rec
eives as annual tribute from the conquered nations that have your wicked lackeys installed as sultans?’
‘I live by the will of heaven,’ said the prisoner. ‘Ben Issman’s name be blessed.’
‘And isn’t it funny how often heaven’s will coincides with the will of all the emperors and their armies and thugs,’ said Oldcastle. He leant in close to the prisoner and Jack only just heard what he whispered. ‘We’re devils, and the woman taking your lads out of your brig one by one, she’s the worst of us all.’
He drew his naval cutlass. For a moment Jack thought Oldcastle was about to cut the prisoner’s throat, but instead he sliced the ties around the Cassarabian’s wrists. ‘You’ve told me plenty, lad. No money to pay for a ransom, you’re just a dirt-poor scholar, and you can either help me get your foreign thinking machines working again, or I’ll let the first lieutenant have you for her entertainment. You’ve seen some strange creatures bred in your land, I warrant, but a woman that’s half-Cassarabian and half-Jackelian, that’s the most wicked unholy animal you will ever see in this life or the next.’
The master cardsharp’s cajoling had its effect. Seeming to crumple, the Cassarabian become pliable enough to do their bidding, inspecting the broken transaction engines and helping Coss patch up the damage. Oldcastle had brought over a portable transaction engine configured with translation filters from the Iron Partridge and patching it into the ruined Cassarabian systems allowed them to access the data they needed in a format that was intelligible to Jack. Wherever that box had come from, it wasn’t standard navy issue, that much Jack was certain of. Coss’s warnings drifted back to Jack’s mind, that John Oldcastle wasn’t who he claimed to be, but someone called Jared Black. Yes. The master cardsharp knew just enough about transaction engines to get Coss and Jack to do his bidding, but he lacked the real expertise that an officer in his position should have had.
‘What you were saying about the Cassarabians and the first lieutenant’s mother,’ said Jack to the master cardsharp. ‘That’s why there’s so few women sailors on the Iron Partridge?’
‘You’ve noticed that then, Mister Keats?’
‘They have an advantage in the weight tables against most male sailors. I expected to see more of them on board.’
‘Disappointed were you, lad? All those bawdy penny-dreadful tales about the airship lasses. Ah, to be a young buck again. As desperate as we were for a competent crew, old Jericho refused every female cloudie that tried to sign up. There are a few people who have a grand old time of it down in Cassarabia, living high on the hog, but you won’t find too many of them being women.’
‘We have First Lieutenant Westwick on board,’ noted Coss.
‘The skipper didn’t get a choice with her,’ said the officer, winking at Jack. ‘But then not many of us do.’
Jack knew what the old man meant. Pity the enemy that thought they had captured her.
‘I have a sister, Mister Keats, every inch as sharp as our prickly first lieutenant. Not that we get on that blessed well — truth to tell, she’d stick me with a dagger as soon as look at me. But mean as she be, if I had any say in the matter and push came to shove, I wouldn’t let her within a thousand miles of the empire.’
‘This is the softbody concept of male gallantry towards the opposite gender?’ asked Coss.
‘Not gallantry, old steamer. I’ve shipped out with some tough old birds in my time and pulled through more than a few tight scrapes with some brave lass guarding my back, and been happy for the privilege. But never down south. Never down there.’
He turned back to the console. To Jack’s eyes, their efforts seemed to yield little of interest when it came to the origin or nature of the gas being used to float the enemy’s vessels.
Jack showed Oldcastle the admittedly incomplete entries he had dredged from the enemy thinking machine, the results twisting on the abacus-like beads of the Cassarabians’ version of a rotator screen. ‘There’s nothing meaningful about their gas. Just leakage tables and regassing estimates.’
‘Don’t be so sure, lad,’ said Oldcastle. He tapped a series of unfamiliar icons on the top rail of the rotator. ‘I would say this is something. Mister Shaftcrank, switch off the translation box and let me view this in Cassarabian.’
All the icons on the beads rotated into patterns unfamiliar to Jack, but they seemed to make sense to Oldcastle.
‘So, lad, it’s a rising tide that floats all ships.’
‘You can read Cassarabian?’ Jack asked.
‘Indeed I can. This,’ Oldcastle tapped the corner of the rotator, ‘is the supply chit for the gas they took on. But it’s not the caliph’s military that signed it over to the airship.’ He glanced at their prisoner and gestured at the two marines guarding him. ‘Back to the brig with our scholarly friend. This isn’t for his ears.’ After the prisoner had been removed, the master cardsharp continued. ‘This gas came from one of the Cassarabian temples, the Sect of Razat. They’re a new crew, all for war and expansion and banging the patriotic drum.’
‘Temples?’ said Coss from the small transaction-engine pit. ‘Unlike the people of the metal, I understood that the Cassarabians allow for the existence of only a single true god?’
‘It’s the genius of their faith, Mister Shaftcrank,’ said Oldcastle. ‘One god maybe, but they have as many prophets and competing philosophies within heaven as your steammen have ancestral spirits. Well, a hundred of them, anyway. It’s a holy number in Cassarabia. A hundred sects for the hundred faces of the one true god. Anyone can sup at their priests’ high table, if they can command enough power and temple tithes and are willing to play by the caliph’s rules when it comes to mouthing platitudes about the one true god.’ He patted the rotator. ‘It’s like your transaction engines, Mister Keats. As long as you’re inclined to unconditionally accept the operating system and are minded to make your code compatible with it, you can merrily write punch cards and may the best cardsharp’s works prosper. Cassarabian myth says there was a wicked sea of bloodshed before the first caliph, Ben Issman, unified the sects down south. Now their faith evolves over the ages without all-out religious war, without the whole wicked empire murdering each other over whether their priests need to demand two or three days’ fasting to prove true penitence.’
Jack resisted the urge to touch his aching spine. ‘And this new sect wants war?’
‘Aye, from what I’ve heard,’ said Oldcastle. ‘The hundred faces of the one true god, and this new face is preaching that the Cassarabians have grown terrible soft, easy and complacent over the centuries. Trading silks, jinn barrels and spices with filthy infidels has fallen out of favour. Trading shells and scimitar thrusts is to be the new thing. Paradise will only come from the conversion of unbelievers at the point of a sword. That’s a rather traditional view, and I’m mortal unhappy to see it coming back into favour.’
‘Infidels,’ said Jack. ‘That would be the Kingdom, then.’
‘Sadly the case. It’s been an age since I’ve travelled south,’ said Oldcastle. ‘The Sect of Razat is after my time. I’m all for a little ease and complacency myself, but I don’t think this new crew are going to allow us much of that. Now, where is this cursed sect getting their mortal airship gas from? That’s the question we need answered.’
Jack tapped the information slowly flickering across the rotator. ‘Will the information be in their machine’s memory?’
‘No, lad,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Because such a secret is too sensitive, and because my unlucky stars are never that kind to these poor, tired old bones. A map with an “X” marking the spot of a newly discovered celgas mine would be too easy for us, not when we could happily sip our grog rations as we sailed straight back home before sending the high fleet down here with enough fin-bombs to wreck the caliph’s dreams of glory forever. No, we’ll be doing this hard and slow-style. Boots on the ground and sniffing around Cassarabia the old-fashioned, dangerous way.’
Oldcastle laid a hand on the back of Jack’s shirt and
he winced from the pain of the weals left by his flogging. ‘My boots, Mister Keats and yours too. I haven’t killed you yet.’
Don’t worry, old man. You and the navy, between you, you’re working hard on it.
As Omar moved through the imperial palace he saw why those who called it home knew it simply as the Jahan, the world. The high crystal geodesic domes protected a universe in miniature, immaculately tended gardens filled with streams and orchards, gently curving brooks and jasmine-scented pools that had been expertly crafted around the luxurious pavilions and ornate buildings. While he and Boulous walked, they were sheltered by the palace’s crystal covering, shimmering as it matched opacity with the position of the sun burning high above the capital. Omar revelled in the expensive, luxurious sprays of water on his skin as he watched the calligraphy slowly tracking across the dome’s inner surface, an animated scroll from the writings of the Holy Cent. But the mournful retainer Omar was travelling with managed to spoil even the sight of this dazzling world when he pointed out that now, only the visions of the keepers of the Sect of Razat were present in the enchanted march of words, the teachings from the other ninety-nine sects’ temples relegated to the evening after the majority of the court had retired to bed for the night.
Omar looked at the courtiers walking around the cool waters, nodding respectfully at each other on their slow circuits of the landscaped paradise, and the knots of officials — some in uniforms, some in expensive silk robes — sprawled across the grass while tiny colourful birds fluttered in and out of the trees. This was the life, Omar decided. Being waited on by retainers with iced jugs of water under the magical shade of the palace’s domes. One day he and Shadisa would share it together, of that he was certain.
‘What do they find to talk about all day?’ Omar wondered out loud.
‘Who’s up, who’s down,’ said Boulous. ‘Who’s in and who’s out. Which sect of the Holy Cent is gathering the most worshippers and tithes, which sect is dwindling. Which viziers are to be replaced this year and who is to replace them. Which of our dominions will rebel and who the Caliph Eternal will trust to crush them. It is like a game of draughts with ten thousand players competing on a single board.’