In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘Bigger than your other cities, I think,’ called Sheplar Lesh from his cockpit in front of Jacob. ‘I mean you no disrespect, but such a place is too flat for anyone born to the mountains to want to live there.’

  ‘None taken,’ replied Jacob. All of Weyland must seem like a millpond to a Rodalian flier.

  Jacob gazed down with interest. Arcadia was at least ten times the size of the largest town they’d passed during their flight. And most of those cities had made Northhaven look like the provincial market town it really was. As their four flying wings circled lower, Arcadia’s streets and inhabitants came into focus. Close enough to hear tram bells ringing, Jacob gliding over wide boulevards still empty so early – a few tradesmen opening up shop fronts, lamplighters on ladders snuffing out their previous night’s labours, carts making the first deliveries of woodchips, cooking oil and milk. Fumes from brick chimneys drifted up from a thousand breakfasts, each of those families oblivious to the squadron cutting through their smoke. Families getting ready for the day. Didn’t seem so long ago I was among them. As was so often the way, there wasn’t a thing he saw that didn’t remind him of his wife and son, of all that he had lost. It was good to feel the pain, though. Jacob used it like a spur to keep on going. Whenever he doubted. Whenever he wavered, he just had to let the grief come flooding in and carry him forward.

  The buildings were high compared to Northhaven. Some rising six storeys with tall apartments and roof terraces and gardens above the shops and stores. Jacob had heard there was a law forbidding con­struction any larger in the capital. Six floors were plenty when you didn’t have enough metal girders to build safer and higher. There was no airfield at the capital for the squadron to land at. The National Assembly didn’t want its citizens reminded that their nation was a distant backwater without the resources necessary to field its own skyguard. The only airfield in Weyland was the city of Talekhard, close to the south-eastern border with the Republic of Ivah. And that was a free port for merchants and aerial nomads to land and refuel and conduct whatever trade they needed to with the kingdom. No, for Weyland, for the whole Lanca, the league’s lifeblood was the sea. The capital’s harbour was where all freight that mattered embarked and disembarked. Weyland was a maritime nation, where proximity to the water equated to wealth and life and cargo. Sheplar put his aircraft down on the capital’s outskirts, the landing commonplace to Jacob after their refuelling stops – no thoughts now of how easily a flying wing could be blown off course by a sudden gust of wind, to roll and crash and burst into flames. The squadron taxied down the main highway, finally coming to a halt in a line as neat as a parade ground formation. Arcadia lay half an hour’s walk away, a mass of white shimmering in the distance. Wiggins and the gask dismounted from their planes, and Jacob followed suit. Good to have real ground under my feet again. He looked around. Set back on either side of the road were vineyards, grapes climbing trellises and swaying in the sea breeze. Jacob could taste the salt from the direction of the ocean as he walked away from the flying wing.

  ‘The city by the sea,’ said Wiggins, his spirits obviously restored now they were done with the flight. ‘You think it looks as impressive up close, Pastor?’

  ‘Just bigger and noisier than home.’

  ‘Never seen a man love the quiet life as much as you; that I ain’t. You love our country acres so much, it’s still a surprise to me when I recall you weren’t born there.’

  Khow raised a sinewy hand to cover his eyes as he gazed at the city before them. ‘There are few trees here to speak of. No forests. No woodland. You set yourself apart from the bark, living like this.’ He sounded doleful over the way the Weylanders lived, sad for Jacob’s people.

  ‘Drinking what these fields produce is as close as most of the capital get to living on the land,’ laughed Wiggins.

  ‘It is not the gasks’ way.’

  Don’t think it’s mine, either. Jacob watched Sheplar bow to the pilot who would be flying his small aircraft back to Rodal. There was a short ritual, as the care of the diminutive fightercraft’s spirit passed between the two fliers. The other Rodalian pilots patiently watched, sitting cross-legged. After the ceremony was over, the pilots began checking their machines’ engines, each man trained as both mechanic and flier. Sheplar sighed as he watched his plane attended to by the spare pilot, but his lopsided grin quickly returned. It was a lot to ask Sheplar Lesh to leave his duty behind, but he was following his honour with the two Northhaven men and the gask. Jacob already had his traveller’s pack strapped to his shoulders, a small bedroll tied on top. They would enter the capital looking like the supplicants they were, four backwater hicks stumbling into the nation’s centre. One letter in Jacob’s pocket for Palmstruch General Bank, another for Assemblyman Charles T. Gimlette.

  Halfway to the capital proper, they came across a large open market, traveller caravans of all sizes setting up in a fenced-in enclos­ure, pens filled with livestock and stalls piled high with merchandise – everything from rolls of silk to gilded glass mirrors and crates of dried nuts heaped next to each other. The market hadn’t opened to the public yet, but the smell of roasting meat from the food stalls preparing for breakfast reminded Jacob how long it had been since he’d last eaten. That would have to wait, though.

  ‘Reckon every day’s market day here,’ noted Wiggins.

  ‘It’s not like home, that’s for sure,’ said Jacob.

  Outside the market they found a cabbie, surprised at his good for­tune in filling his two-horse cabriolet with visitors so early.

  ‘We need to stay near the hill, friend,’ Jacob told the driver after they were rattling towards Arcadia.

  ‘Nothing too fancy or expensive,’ warned Wiggins.

  ‘You want to stay on the hill,’ smiled the cabbie, ‘expensive is the only flavour of hotel you’ll find. Cheap lodgings are at the north­eastern end of town, furthest from the bay and government buildings.’

  ‘Are there any woodlands in the northeast?’ asked Khow.

  ‘You’re kidding me? You want greenery, you better camp out here. No, sir, the cheap end of town has lots of artists and singers and stage types,’ explained the cabbie, directing a lazy flick of his reins towards his horses. ‘But I don’t figure you boys for any of those.’ He didn’t seem fazed by Khow’s question or the gask’s appearance. But then, with so many foreign ships in harbour from distant ports, he had prob­ably given rides to stranger people. Wiggins’ police uniform was probably more of a curiosity than Khow’s presence here. As long as they spoke trade tongue, commerce could be done, and that was all that counted in the capital.

  ‘Somewhere good for a quiet night’s rest, no crowds,’ said Jacob, tapping the pocket where Benner Landor’s bank draft was tucked. ‘The rate’s not a problem. Someone else is paying for our stay.’

  The cabbie happily stroked his walrus moustache as he steered the coach through an arch, the first city marker, and rolled them down an avenue lined with gleaming white statues. ‘That’s the best kind of stay there is!’

  Charles T. Gimlette was a big man and from the way he ordered food in the fancy restaurant Jacob had booked for the assemblyman, he gave every appearance that he was fixing to stay that way. It was a tribute to the expensive tailoring of Gimlette’s high-collared dark jacket that it held in the man’s paunch as effectively as it did. Even when the politician wasn’t feeding, his wide jowls moved up and down, chewing air as if he needed to exercise his jaw in preparation for the next course. His skin had a good healthy gleam despite being upwards of fifty, and his long dark hair shone as slick as the glazed chicken legs and peppers piled up in front of the politician. He hadn’t confined himself to meat, though. There were dishes of seafood spread across the table too. Gimlette used his fingers while he talked, his hands adding emphasis to each statement. You’d have thought he was on the floor of the assembly, rather than just filling a chair above the restaurant’s rich green carpet. With Sheplar Lesh visiting outfitters to secure supplies and
passage for the next leg of their journey; Wiggins and Khow returning to the bank to ensure that the ransom money would be released on time; dealing with the assemblyman had fallen to Jacob.

  ‘Father Carnehan, I was shocked, I say. Shocked to the core when I heard about the raid on Northhaven. Had to send one of my staff over to the radiomen to make sure it wasn’t some fool prank being played on me by one of the other assemblymen. They would love that. Have me standing up and making speeches about a disaster that never happened. This city’s ablaze with the news and fixing to mend what’s broke.’

  Except that the disaster was no prank. Not that it’s enough to put an assemblyman off his lunch. ‘The newspapers in my hotel lobby seem to have a Northhaven-sized hole where the story should be,’ said Jacob.

  ‘Wrong sort of newspapers where you’re staying, Father. Only boring political stories. But that’s what you get when you lodge on the hill.’ His eyes – just a little too small for that wide face – drifted to look out at the view of the city spread out below them; a haze of sparkling stone buildings in the full heat of the day. The prices of the food that Benner Landor was paying for seemed to suit the politician just fine, though.

  ‘Is there anyone in the government who can even find Northhaven on a map?’

  ‘Now, I know that our prefecture seems small and far away down here, Father. But even if the government don’t know it, they know me. And Benner Landor is my good friend. It breaks my heart when I think of his two children – and yours, and all of our people’s young men and women – in the hands of goddamn slavers.’

  ‘So you’ll help?’

  ‘Without a doubt, you will have everything I can arrange to assist you. But what happened during the raid, sad as it is, is part of wider considerations too.’

  ‘Wider?’

  ‘You have to view this through a political lens. There are two main factions in the assembly, same at the court too. The gaiaists and the mechanicalists. Hell, the whole Lanseatic League is divided down the same lines, even if they’re called something different.’

  ‘Those that are content with what they’ve got and those that want a little bit more,’ said Jacob.

  ‘That’s just gaiaist cant, Father. You think if we had more mills here and were importing the coal and steel to fuel them, fielded a skyguard of our own, the slavers would’ve dared to strike Northhaven? Hell no, they would have headed north. Gone for easier pickings at the far end of the caravan routes. Hit some poor devils where a witch doctor’s dance is the only medicine to save you when you’re ailing.’

  ‘I can see why Benner Landor throws his votes behind you.’

  Gimlette made a steeple of his fingers, his elbows resting on either side of a plate of steaming crab. ‘A little bit of progress, that’s not much to ask for, is it now?’

  ‘What does either side of this squabble care about the raid on North­haven?’

  ‘The mechanicalist side of the assembly can use the raid as an argument for advancing things. Building a stronger, more industrialised Weyland. That means the gaiaists will look to frustrate us at every turn, just on principle; and they, Father, sadly hold the majority in the assembly. That’s the bad news.’

  ‘And the good?’

  ‘King Marcus is on the forward-thinking side of this argument, on our side and Benner’s too. He can’t use his royal veto in the assembly without provoking a constitutional crisis, but that doesn’t mean he’s without feelings for his people. People that we can barely protect anymore. Northhaven isn’t the only town that’s been hit by slavers. Lots of towns have been raided over the last few years. All small and too far away for the army to get to in time. Now the slavers are growing bolder. Mostly it’s been dirt-poor out-of-the-way places to the east that have been raided. Now the skels are heading west towards the coast, where the arteries of the league’s trade runs thick and fat. If we don’t arm up soon, it won’t be long before those flying savages are passing over Arcadia itself and raiding for slaves.’

  ‘I never read of other sorties by the slavers in our papers?’

  ‘The Lanca is a big place, Father. Unless you’re in the radiomen’s guild, all news is local news. But the king, he knows.’

  ‘And what is his knowing worth?’

  ‘You and I, we’re going to find out, Father. Because I have secured a royal audience for us. Already radioed Northhaven to let Benner know how well his people are being looked after and his interests represented.’

  ‘What can the king do?’

  ‘He’s still the king, Father. You want to go after the slavers? Well the royal guardsmen report directly to the monarch. The gaiaists can’t vote the king down if he backs your mission out of his own pocket, however much they might want to.’

  ‘Royal guardsmen,’ said Jacob, trying to suppress the flicker of hope before it was prematurely snuffed out. ‘I’ve heard they’re good people in a fight.’

  ‘The best,’ Gimlette smiled, forking a piece of crabmeat between a wall of white teeth. ‘Strongest, fastest, most accurate with any weapon from a crossbow through to a sharpshooter’s rifle. Recruits have to stand over six-feet tall just to join. It’ll be like having a regiment of giants marching behind you.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jacob. ‘I’ll need soldiers like that.’

  This was as much as Jacob could’ve hoped for, with the king only a few years on the throne himself. He still remembered when Northhaven had been flying royal standards from every window for the funeral of the old king and half the royal family had been swept away in a winter hunt’s avalanche. Then bunting stretched across the narrow streets for the coronation of King Marcus. Jacob bit his lip at the thought of himself and Mary and Carter together at the celebrations. Those were good days. I wish I had known how precious they were at the time. You never appreciate what you have until it’s gone. Damn fool. Nobody in this room wanted to see a churchman’s tears falling onto a dining table. Not the staff, or the other patrons or this avuncular gourmand of an assemblyman.

  ‘You will, I say you will have them. Prayer can only take you so far, Father. Against the slavers, a repeating rifle will carry the day and bring our people back. Where will you go after Arcadia, though? That’s what the king will ask.’

  ‘Wherever I have to. I figured I’d ride the railway to Talekhard and book a commercial passage on board one of the big carrier planes. Follow the slavers wherever I have to.’

  Gimlette raised his wineglass, one of the waiters rushing over to refill it. If the powerbrokers at court knew this assemblyman as well as the waiters here, then the expedition from Northhaven would be off to a fine start.

  ‘How are you going to follow the slavers? Could be anywhere by now. Across the sea to the Burn, east, west, north? Can’t track a weeks-old contrail, not even on a couple of hundred propellers. They’re nomads of the air, Pastor. You have to go back to ancient history before you find a chunk of land those skel savages called home.’

  Jacob brushed his simple black church tunic. ‘They were last seen flying south. But I’m a pastor, assemblyman. I figure God’s going to show me the way.’

  Gimlette looked at Jacob, his eyes wet and glistening and his brow sweating slightly, the man trying to work out if Jacob was being serious or not. Then his paunch rolled as he laughed. ‘You had me going there for a second, Father. Hell, the guardsmen got the best weapons and the best men, probably got the best trackers too, right?’ He pointed at the glass of red and caught the waiter’s eye again. ‘Some white wine too, to go with the crab. You should have some, Father, it’s as fine as fine can be. All the best wines come from Arcadia.’

  ‘I’ll stick with water. Meeting the king’s not an everyday experience for a simple country preacher. But don’t mind me. Benner Landor’s paying for a cathedral, now. What’s a bottle or two of white wine compared to the cost of that?’

  The politician chortled and held his glass up high. ‘That’s the right attitude. As sober as a churchman, I say. But don’t you worry about the king.
His Highness knows who supports him in the assembly. Just as I know which landowners support Charles T. Gimlette.’