by Stephen Hunt
Amelia sucked in her breath. She had enough craynarbian friends to have heard their tales of the terror of Liongeli. The greenmesh. A territory of animals and vegetation merged into a deadly living symbiosis of evil. The Daggish might be called an empire, considered a polity, but it was really an ancient hive, evolved out of the fierce fight for resources at the jungle’s deep interior into something alien and brooding. At best, outsiders were just rogue cells to be absorbed into its cooperative. At worst they were enemies to be slain on sight. Quest must be insane. Her expedition would need to do their work on the bed of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, carry out sensitive underwater archaeology while trying to remain un detected by creatures that would rip them apart merely for the crime of violating their realm.
‘If the city’s foundations are on Daggish territory I don’t think it can be done,’ said Amelia. ‘There must be another way to uncover the location of Camlantis in the heavens?’
‘Whatever remains of their civilization on earth is under the waters of this lake.’ Quest paced up and down, his arms waving as he became animated. ‘The legends speak of a million people in Camlantis, close to a million citizens who sacrificed their lives so their legacy could not be perverted by the barbarian hordes of their age. Think of the absolute courage of such an act, blowing your own home into the heavens, a slow death of cold and airlessness for yourself and your friends and your family, rather than turning away from your ideals of pacifism. You could spend a lifetime futilely attending digs in Mechancia, Kikkosico, Cassarabia, hoping to find some clue in a trader’s journal or a refugee’s crystal-book as to where they sent their city.’ His finger stabbed down on Liongeli. ‘This is the mother lode. That it is now underwater close to the shores of a Daggish city in the jungle’s heart is an accident of geography we must overcome.’
‘Underwater,’ mused Amelia. Then she grinned. ‘How much money do you really want to spend on this expedition, Quest?’
‘To unlock the secrets of the ancients, to give Jackals a chance of living in the prosperity and peace of the Camlantean age? How much money do you require?’
Amelia explained her plan.
Veryann watched the professor of archaeology leave the tower. ‘She is almost as mad as you are, Abraham Quest.’
‘Mad? No. Inspired,’ said Quest. ‘Her plan is quite inspired. Did you know she studied under Hull? The very fellow who translated the Camlantean language and worked out how the crystal-books could be activated.’
‘If he were alive, I suppose you would also hire him for your expedition.’
‘Yes, I suppose I would,’ said Quest.
‘Still, for all her cleverness, her inspiration, you did not show the professor the images from the second crystal-book of the pair you purchased.’
‘The contents of the second crystal-book would disturb her,’ said Quest. ‘I prefer to keep Amelia’s faith pure, unwavering.’
‘Yes, I imagine the images would disturb her,’ said Veryann. ‘Your ideals have too high a risk attached to them. Paradise is not to be made on Earth.’
‘It was made here once.’ Quest stood in front of one of the large portholes, listening to the gurgle of water moving through his pneumatic tower. He pointed towards the sky. ‘And the secret to unlocking it all again is hidden up there.’
Smike did not know what to make of the old fellow. It was not often a blind man would venture into the rookeries of Rottonbow. What would someone wearing heavy grey robes in the manner of a Circlist monk be doing wandering one of Middlesteel’s most dangerous districts this late at night? Smike listened to the patter of the gnarled old cane, tapping along the cobbles of the lane between the ancient, tumbledown towers.
For a moment Smike considered letting the old twit keep on wandering deeper into Rottonbow, but even with his limited conscience, he could not do that. Smike skipped to catch up. The sightless visitor looked like an old man, but he was spry for his years.
‘Grandfather,’ called Smike, ‘wait. Do you know where you’re going?’
‘Why yes, I do,’ said the blind man, his face concealed by his hood and the night. ‘I am heading for Furnival’s Wark.’
Smike sucked on his mumbleweed pipe. ‘Old fellow, there’s nothing down there but the paupers’ graveyard.’
‘Yes, I believe an old friend of mine is resting there.’
‘Hang on, grandfather, do you know what hour it is?’
‘For me it is always night,’ chortled the man in the robes.
‘It’ll be the long night for you, grandfather.’ Smike tugged at the visitor’s robes. ‘You’ll get yourself in the soup so you will, tap-tapping with your cane along these avenues. There’s some right old bludgers lurking around Rottonbow. They’d think nothing of sinking a blade in your ribs and emptying your pockets.’
‘But I have so little to steal,’ said the visitor, ‘now that you have taken my money.’ The visitor’s cane darted out and spun his lifted purse back out of the folds of Smike’s tattered jacket. Like the tongue of a toad, a gnarled cold hand snaked out, catching the leather bag and concealing it under his robes again.
Smike stepped back, coughing on his mumbleweed pipe in shock. ‘You can’t blame a lad for trying, now, can you? Are you really blind, governor?’
‘Oh yes,’ the robed figure chortled. ‘The eyes are the first thing to go. The treatment preserves everything else, but not the eyes.’
Smike glanced around nervously. He had thought this blind old fool was prey. But he was mad, or something very close to it.
‘Down in the paupers’ graveyard, have they held the funeral for Sixrivets yet?’
‘The steamman?’ said Smike. ‘There’s not much of his body left in the graveyard, grandfather. After Sixrivets died, the state coroner sent his soul-board back to King Steam’s mountains like the law requires. The rest of the old steamer was so old, the king didn’t even want Sixrivets’ iron bones back to recycle.’
‘But the funeral, it has been held?’
‘Yesterday. His friends from Steamside came over and sung in their strange voices – the machine tongue. Even though Sixrivets wanted to be buried down here, rather than over in Steamside, they still came.’
‘They would come,’ said the old man. ‘Steammen never forget their own. Now, be off with you.’
Smike darted into an alley, then stopped. A thought had occurred to him. The strange old goat’s interest in Sixrivets’ corpse. He was a grave robber! Middlesteel’s mechomancers often raided the graves and corpses of the race of steammen, prying the secrets of their architecture from their rusting crystals and decaying cogs. Sixrivets had been so ancient and obsolete that the denizens of Dwerrihouse Street had thought it safe to honour the steamman’s last wish and inter him with the rest of their people down the road. But this sightless old man must be desperate, on his downers. No wonder he was wandering around at night in one of the least salubrious parts of the capital. He was about his filthy trade.
Smike stuck his head around the corner and watched the figure shuffling towards the graveyard. Smog was drifting across the cobbled streets – the miasma of industry, the currents of the capital’s factories, workshops and manufactories. The blind devil had a bleeding cheek, so he did. Sixrivets was one of their own. They said the steamman had been old enough to see the clatter of steel and puff of gun smoke as the royalist guardsmen and the new pattern army clashed on the streets of Middlesteel during the civil war, six hundred years back. Generations of Dwerrihouse Street’s children had come and gone while Sixrivets pottered about Rottonbow’s lanes. Who was this sightless goat to come and dig him out of their dirt and strip pieces off his body for souvenirs? Smike considered shouting for some of the others, but the canny old prowler might hear him and be off into the night, to return when no one was abroad. Best to watch and wait, catch him in the act, then raise the alarm.
Smike crept past the shadows of the old rookeries, his bare feet numb against the chill of the smog-cold cobbles. At the iron gates of the gr
aveyard – two Circlist eels cast as wheels consuming their own tails – Smike heard voices whispering. He rubbed his eyes and searched for the corner plot where Sixrivets had been buried. Two shadows were there, digging. Neither of them were the old man, though. They were too big for a start. Their voices sounded familiar, too.
Smike slipped into the graveyard and used the cover of the tombs to get closer to the men. He heard the crunch of hard dirt being tossed back and a low cursing growl.
‘Can you see the body yet?’
‘It’s in here somewhere.’
‘I can see the head. The rest of it is coming. Keep at it, carefully now, don’t break anything.’
‘Break anything? Just me back, mate, just me back. This ain’t clay we’re digging through here, you know?’
Smike’s eyes widened. No wonder the voices sounded familiar. It was two of the Catgibbon’s bludgers – thugs that worked for the flash mob, and not just any gang either. The Catgibbon was the queen of the underworld in Middlesteel. They said she held the guardians and half the police of the capital in one pocket, while she kept a good share of the magistrates, doomsmen and other court functionaries in the other. Smike did not know this pair’s names, but they were a familiar sight in the daytime, knocking up pennies with not-so-subtle insinuations of what happened to shop owners who didn’t pay their ‘fire and accident’ money.
Smike was wondering where the sightless old prowler had got to, when a figure emerged from the mist behind the bludgers.
‘Good evening, gentlemen. A cold night for it.’
Startled, they whirled around, one holding his spade ready like an axe, the other dropping his sack and pulling a pistol out from his coat pocket.
‘He’s not the police.’
‘Course he isn’t a crusher; he can’t even see. Look at his cane.’
‘Away with you, blind eyes,’ said the one pointing the pistol. ‘This body is ours.’
‘That body belongs to Sixrivets, surely,’ said the old prowler. ‘And what use do you have for one of the people of the metal, now his ancient soul has passed into the great pattern?’
The spade man pulled out an evil-looking dagger. ‘Let’s do him silent, before he has half of Rottonbow up out of their beds and onto us.’
Spade man jumped across the open grave, but the old prowler had moved, moved faster than anything alive had a right to. The leaping bludger continued his motion; the top half of his body hitting a tombstone while his severed legs tumbled down across the opened grave. His colleague tried to trigger his pistol, but then it dawned on him he was holding a handle only, the other half of the weapon with the chambered crystal charge severed and falling down towards the dirt.
The old man had his legs in a fighter’s position with a silver sword turning in the air, tracing a pattern like calligraphy in the smog, before returning it gracefully to his cane sheath. Smike was about to run – this had all become a little too rich for his simple tastes – when he stepped on a branch, its snap sounding like a cannon shot even to his ears. The blind man moved his head slightly, evaluating the potential threat and choosing to ignore it, then pushed the tip of his cane in front of the frozen bludger’s face. ‘What does the Catgibbon want with ancient steamman body parts?’
Rather than answer, the terrified thug turned and sprinted across the graveyard.
‘Ah well,’ said the old man, staying put. ‘I doubt you knew much, anyway. Breaking the fingers of anyone sticking their nose into one of your rackets, that’s what your kind knows best.’ He announced to the air: ‘And why don’t you come out from behind there, now? I want to thank you for all your help.’
‘I was just keeping myself in reserve, grandfather,’ said Smike. ‘Always good to have someone watching your back. You seemed to be doing well enough against the two of them.’
‘For an old blind man, you mean?’
‘That’s a good one,’ said Smike. ‘You’re not really blind, are you? That’s just a bit of grift to get people to underestimate you. You’re good though, all that tapping you do with your cane. I couldn’t tell from watching you.’
‘I believe I gave you the answer to that question a minute ago, but I can see there’s no fooling you, young fellow.’
‘Did you know Sixrivets, grandfather? Were you protecting an old friend?’
‘Something like that.’
Smike pointed to the opened grave, the steamman’s remains keeping company with the two halves of the dead thug’s body. ‘What did the flash mob’s lads want with Sixrivets’ corpse, then?’
‘I was hoping you might know the answer to that question.’
Smike shook his head. ‘Not me, mate.’
‘Pity. Well, I have my suspicions. But they are not for sharing.’ The old man picked up the criminal’s fallen sack, climbed into the grave and began to fill it with the rusted parts of the entombed steamman. When he had finished he pulled himself out and passed the sack to Smike.
Smike looked at the sack in disgust. ‘What do you want me to do with this?’
‘I’m sure you’re not completely unacquainted with the means of concealing ill-gotten gains.’ He produced two silver sovereigns. ‘One of these is for hiding Sixrivets’ body parts some place the flash mob will not be able to lay their hands on the old steamer. Please don’t just toss the sack in the river, Sixrivets deserves better than that, and if that is what I desired, I could throw him in the Gambleflowers myself and save the cost of a sovereign.’
‘And the other coin?’
‘For carrying a message to someone who can help clear up this mess. You must tell them what you saw this night, and you must memorize what I am about to tell you.’
Smike listened intently to what the old man had to say. Those two shining coins were more than he usually managed to steal in a couple of months.
When the old man had finished relaying the message and answered most of Smike’s queries to his satisfaction, the lad concluded by asking the obvious question. ‘How do you know I won’t just pocket your two coins and do a runner?’
‘Firstly, because I will find you and remind you of a bargain badly made. Secondly, because when I return from my business I shall pass you another coin to befriend the two now warming your pocket.’
‘But you don’t even know where I live …’ said Smike.
The old goat tapped the side of his nose. ‘The musk of cheap mumbleweed? I shall find your lodgings. Even if you move. You will have to be patient for your third coin, though. I may be away some time, as my business will be taking me out of the capital for a little while.’
Smike waited until the blind old man had disappeared into the smog, the tapping of his cane against the gravestones fading to nothing, before he gathered the courage to bite into the silver sovereigns. The coins were real enough. Smike looked at the two halves of the Catgibbon’s enforcer spilled across the grave that had been opened. Time to be off, in case the crimelord’s blades came back in force.
The coins vanished back into the pickpocket’s jacket and he slung the sack over his shoulder. ‘Carry a message for me, boy. Hide Sixrivets for me, boy. What does he think I am, a bleeding postman or a bleeding undertaker?’
But conceal the body and carry the message he would. Out of fear … and for the promise of another silver sovereign.
Professor Amelia Harsh nodded politely to the steamman pushing a flattening-roller across the lawn, a little iron goblin with a single telescope-like eye. It nodded back at her. The drone was not intelligent enough to enter directly into conversation with Amelia, but it would no doubt pass on word of her arrival back to the central consciousness that controlled it.
Amelia walked along the gravel path and looked up at the tower, a large clockface dominating the upper storey of the building. Tock House showed little sign of the ravages of war now, but it had been left in quite a state after the invasion of Middlesteel. Attacked, burnt, then finally occupied and looted by the shifties. Amelia knew she was lucky that she had been out
in the counties in Stainfolk when Quatérshift’s vicious Third Brigade had seized Jackals’ capital; but she had counted as friends those who had lived here – and one of them, sadly, had not been as fortunate as she had. Amelia had helped the current tenants of Tock House search for Silas Nickleby’s body in the undercity, but they had not even found enough of his corpse to bury out in the orchard.
Before Amelia got to the pair of stone lions flanking the stairs to the tower, the house’s door pulled back, revealing a flame-haired young woman waiting to greet her. Amelia stuck out her over-sized hand to meet the pale, slim palm extended towards her.
‘Professor Harsh, it has been too long. I heard about you losing your position at the college, but you weren’t at your lodgings when I called on you.’
‘I’ve been out and about, kid, you know me. So where did you hear that piece of scurrilous gossip?’
‘A mutual friend,’ said Molly Templar. ‘One who works in the engine rooms at Greenhall.’
‘That weasel Binchy? I’m surprised he’s still talking to you after what happened to him during the invasion.’
Molly shrugged and led Amelia into the comfortable hallway of Tock House. ‘Once a cardsharp, always a cardsharp. He’s got nothing better to do than set his punch cards to work on the drums of Greenhall’s engines. He’s probably keeping tabs on all of us. Do you need money, professor, to finance your work?’
‘My work always needs money, kid, but not from the likes of you.’
‘You saved my life, professor, and whatever problems I have now, thankfully money is not one of them.’
‘Yes, that much I figured,’ said Amelia. ‘I read your last novel, Molly, along with most of the rest of Jackals.’
‘Just so that you know,’ said Molly, ‘the offer is always there if you need it.’
‘Borrow money from your enemies. Never from your friends or family. That’s an old Chimecan proverb. No, I’ve come to call on the old sea dog, if he’s around?’