by Gareth Ward
Stanley’s cheeks flushed. “Just ’cos my mum weren’t a Baroness don’t mean she weren’t beautiful.”
“I think Darwin would disagree.” Velvet’s eyebrows raised.
“Stanley’s solid. It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” said Sin.
Velvet pointedly turned her gaze to Zonda. “Well, your girlfriend certainly has plenty on the inside.”
Bulldog-like, Sin squared his shoulders. Zonda placed a restraining hand on his arm. “Don’t rise to her. It’s what she wants. She knows I don’t care.”
Stepping back into line, Velvet smirked and flicked her inky black hair.
Heat prickled Sin’s cheeks. Velvet knew exactly how to rile him up. Since working with her on his last mission Sin thought she’d mellowed slightly, her jibes more irksome than cruel, but there was still a definite tension between him, Velvet and Zonda. And ever since Velvet’s mother, COG agent Baroness Lilith Von Darque, had been sent on a dangerous assignment into deepest Ruskovia, Velvet’s attitude had worsened.
Hawk stopped some seventy feet above them, her muscles straining to support her at the nearly forty-five degree angle her body was slanted to. “Although we will be on a training mission, make no bones about it, mistakes in the air will be fatal.” She disengaged one boot, balancing on a single leg. “If you do not pass training here, you will not be allowed aboard the Swordfish.”
The litanium cable supporting Hawk twanged and she spilled forwards, her other boot relinquishing its grip on the metal. A collective gasp issued from the candidates as the doomed aviator tumbled downwards. Her face showed no terror or fear, just a wild smile. She thumped her chest and with a cacophony of hissing gas, two giant balloons exploded from pouches on her flight suit, slowing her fall.
The smack of Hawk’s rigair boots hitting the gymnasium floor rang loud, like the cracking of bones. With only a slight bend of her knees, the aviator regained her posture. “You will be issued with buoyancy aids like mine when you board the Swordfish. However, if you go over the side, we may never find you. This is why you must pay close attention to Staff Stoneheart, who will instruct you in the physical skills required to crew my airship.”
Stoneheart strode back into the gymnasium carrying a canvas stretcher and a tiny first-aid kit, which to Sin looked wholly inadequate. They had already undertaken many risky activities during training, none of which had required such precautionary measures, and so this seemed to mark a new level of danger.
The Sergeant deposited the stretcher, dropping the first-aid kit on top of it. “Two things will keep you alive on the airship’s envelope: your wits, and your equipment. Always double-check your gear. That means you check it and your buddy checks it.” Stoneheart held her arms out to her sides. “East Wing to my left, West Wing to my right. Check your equipment now.”
“Yes, Staff,” chorused the candidates, splitting into their respective Wings.
Stepping behind Zonda, Sin grabbed the litanium D-ring sewn onto the suit’s leather harness and gave it a tug.
Zonda staggered backwards. “No need to be so ruffarooney.”
Thanks to his injections, Sin’s already stocky physique had bulked up, his muscles growing stronger and more defined. Nimrod thought it was because of the blue blood’s super-efficient oxygen carrying properties, but Sin sensed there was more to it than that. The blood was somehow enhancing the effects of the Super-Pangenes he’d been given as a baby, genetic coding that made him special in ways that even the great Nimrod Barm didn’t fully understand.
“Sorry, Zon. Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”
Zonda raised a booted foot and Sin grabbed the heel so he could see the deep groove cut in the sole.
“Switch check,” said Zonda. Clockwork turned on the side of the boot and with a mekanikal clunk, powered jaws snapped together along the length of the channel.
“Clamp good,” said Sin. He twisted the boot sideways and examined the winding gauge on the brassanium mekaniks riveted to the black leather. Beneath the ironglass lens, the dial showed green, indicating that the boot was fully wound and good for two thousand steps. “Gauge green,” Sin said, and lowered the boot.
“Have you ever flown?” Zonda raised her other foot.
“You kidding? Course not.” Having lived rough on the streets of Coxford before being recruited to COG, Sin couldn’t afford the price of a steambus ticket, let alone a berth on an aerostat.
“Me neither,” said Zonda. “Truth be told, I’m a tiny bit terrified.”
“It’s just a training mission. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Zonda’s eyes narrowed. “You do realise that every time you say that, something stupendously bad occurs?”
“I’m afraid something stupendously bad has occurred,” said Major Churchill Chubb. Reflections from the study’s chemlights glinted from the Major’s brassanium arm and half-helmet. He strode from behind the mahogany desk, his piston-powered leg hissing steam. With a whirr and a clunk, he came to a halt in front of the two candidates.
Sin kept his gaze fixed to the front and his face impassive. A vein throbbed in his temple, pulsing with the rapid beat of his heart. He had to breathe normally, show no sign of the panic gripping him. Major C couldn’t possibly know about the injections. How could he? It was Sin and Nimrod’s secret. Besides, Sin wasn’t breaking any rules, not technically. They couldn’t kick him out of COG unless he was declared medically unfit, and while he kept taking the injections, he was fine – better than fine.
So why had the Major summoned him? And why was Zonda required too? Unless of course, she’d been spying on him. She was his best friend, and he trusted her more than anyone, but she was also the Major’s daughter, and blood was thicker than water. She’d kept secrets from Sin before. Perhaps her first loyalties were to the Major and to COG.
Major C looked from Sin to Zonda, his head turning in a series of mekanikal clicks. “It pains me to tell you this. Earlier today, Eldritch Moons escaped from our custody.”
Zonda gasped. Her hand going to her lips.
“How?” asked Sin. “I thought he was guarded?” He rubbed his shoulder, feeling the scar from where Eldritch had skewered him with a poisoned sword and left him for dead.
“He was.” The Major retrieved a document from his desk and a tinted monocle slid from his half-helmet, covering one eye. “The guards were drugged. It appears Eldritch may not have been the only traitor inside COG.”
Noir, it had to be him. Sin had never trusted the magician, with his painted white face and rasping voice. He’d always given Sin the shivers, and even after Eldritch had been revealed as the traitor, Sin still had his suspicions about the COG instructor.
Zonda tentatively raised a hand. “I’m sure Sin appreciates being informed, but why are you telling us?”
Gears meshed, and the Major lowered the paper. “The intelligence leaks stopped when Eldritch was taken into custody, but we always suspected he had an accomplice. Someone further down the food chain doing the dirty work.”
“You should have let us know.” Sin gestured to Zonda. “We could have been hunting for the accomplice, like before, couldn’t we Zon?”
Zonda refused to meet his gaze. Wrinkles furrowed Sin’s brow. “You already knew?”
His friend didn’t answer. Instead she stared at her feet and fiddled with a zip on her flight suit.
A sickening weight filled Sin’s stomach. “You thought it was me?”
“I never thought it was you.” Zonda looked at him imploringly, a watery sheen glazing her eyes.
Steam spurted from the Major’s mekaniks. “Eldritch recruited you and Nimrod found a sheath of Eldritch’s papers in your keeper. We had to be sure.”
Sin’s fingers bunched into fists. To help stop the war, he’d been prepared to die for COG. Perhaps he already had. The experimental blue blood infecting his veins appeared to be flawed. He didn’t understand the science, but the nuts and bolts of his predicament were clear: his organs were
failing. The injections staved off the worst of the side effects, for now, but Nimrod didn’t know when they’d stop working. How could the Major think Sin was the traitor, after all he’d done? After all he’d given? “Eldritch tried to kill me. He would have killed me if it weren’t for the Fixer.”
“Eldritch doesn’t like leaving loose ends. We thought maybe he was ensuring you couldn’t betray the King’s Knights.”
“That’s why I’m here. You still don’t trust me?” Sin scowled, determined not to melt under the Major’s furnace-like stare.
The monocle slid back into Major C’s half-helmet and his eyes narrowed. “You’re here because I want you to recapture Eldritch. The news of his escape must remain our secret.”
Still indignant, Sin clicked his fingers. “So I’ve gone from traitor to trustworthy in a snap.”
The Major slammed his mekanika hand onto the desk, splintering the woodwork. “COG Sin, you will modify your attitude. I have over two hundred operatives under my command, many of them in constant danger, enduring suffering, pain and peril to try and stop the war to end all wars. Worrying about whether I’ve hurt your feelings is not high on my priorities.”
Sin looked down. He’d overstepped the mark and he knew it. If he’d talked to the Fixer like that, he’d have been on the wrong end of a beating for sure. He straightened, pulling himself smartly to attention. “Sorry, sir.”
“I haven’t forgotten what you did for us. Nevertheless, that is the crux of being a COG agent. Without thanks or glory, we risk our lives to stop the outbreak of war.” Minuscule clouds of steam puffed from the Major’s neck. “You, Zonda and Nimrod are the only ones I can trust. If there’s another leak in COG, we can’t risk alerting Eldritch to our plans to recapture him.”
The furtive look the Major gave Zonda was not lost on Sin. Something else was going on. Something they still weren’t telling him. “Trust goes both ways. You owe me the whole truth, sir.”
“Yes. I do.” The Major nodded mekanikally. “Eldritch was one of the finest soldiers I ever served with. When we were in the King’s Steam Cavalry together, he never, ever failed in a mission. We don’t think he’ll run from the city. We think he’ll go to ground until he can finish what he started.”
“He’s going to kill Nimrod,” guessed Sin.
“Eldritch always denied any involvement in the assassination attempt.” The Major’s gaze tracked back to Sin. A stony intensity filled his cool grey eyes. “It’s not Nimrod he wants to kill. It’s you.”
The excited chatter of Sin’s classmates washed over him. The first State Room had always been out of bounds; it was a Cast-Iron Rule. Today that rule had been relaxed. Their admittance to the finely decorated section of the palace clearly heralded an announcement of some import.
Sin shuffled onto a gilt chair next to an intricately woven tapestry that covered the whole of one wall. It depicted the Battle of Malplaquet. From a hillside vantage point three commanders on horseback oversaw the massed armies below. Thirty-three thousand soldiers died that day – more than the entire population of the city of Coxford, wiped from existence in just a few hours. Despite two thirds of the losses being from the allied armies, it was still commemorated as a victory. Nimrod had once used it as an example of the pointlessness of war. He’d called it a Pyrrhic victory, and now Sin wondered if his triumph over Eldritch was equally flawed. The assassin had escaped to finish the job, and if Eldritch didn’t kill him, the blue blood would.
A figure in a tattered black cloak and top hat stalked between the chairs, and silence fell over the students like a spell.
Sin swallowed, his mouth dry. Magus Noir was their tutor in the magical arts of sleight of hand and misdirection. He radiated malevolence like sorrow at a funeral, and Sin trusted him like he’d trust the Fixer in a room full of gold.
Noir took station behind an exquisite walnut desk at the front of the State Room and surveyed the class. His mean black eyes glared from the band of red stage makeup that decorated his white painted face. With the theatrics of a showman he raised one hand and clicked his fingers.
Shutters slid across the room’s full-length windows, and a white canvas screen lowered in front of the Malplaquet tapestry. The chemchandelier dimmed and a lumograph projector flickered to life, throwing a fantastical image of a glittering palace onto the screen.
An air of wonder filled the room. The palace floated among the clouds, constructed around the circumference of a gigantic golden balloon, a quarter of a mile in diameter. High Moorish windows of brightly coloured ironglass fronted the palace’s litanium walls, while spectacular arched doorways offered entrance. A quartet of turquoise domed minarets towered around the perimeter. Tethered with litanium chains to the spiked tip of each minaret were four more massive golden balloons.
“Behold the Sky Palace,” rasped Noir. “Home of Sultan Khan.”
The lumograph image faded from view, replaced by a new picture showing a cluster of zeppelins, dirigibles and aerostats anchored to the broad disc that extended fifty yards from the palace. Aircrew in a variety of uniforms strolled among the ornamental gardens that bedecked the disc.
“The Sultan is an advocate for peace. COG endeavours to strengthen the bonds of goodwill between us by taking all candidates to visit the Sky Palace. Operating as a welcome host to airships of all nations, the Sultan provides a true example of amity.”
The Candidates chattered enthusiastically.
“Silence,” snapped Noir.
In an instant, a hush fell over the room. Of all their tutors, Noir was the most feared, holding more sway over the students than even the formidable Stoneheart.
“Alas, due to worsening diplomatic relations around Europe, hostile air incursions, and an increase in air-piracy, it has been decided that this year it is too dangerous to take you to the Sky Palace.”
The candidates deflated like punctured balloons.
Noir held out his white-gloved hands and flicked his fingers. In a flash of flame an envelope appeared. He broke the wax seal and removed a black invitation embossed with silver writing. “In light of that news, the Sultan has very kindly offered to come to us. We will therefore be holding this year’s Heroes Ball here, aboard the Sky Palace.”
Gasps and a smattering of applause erupted from the candidates. The Heroes Ball was legendary among COG. A yearly gathering attended by all agents not on a mission, it commemorated those who had died in the service of COG. For many older agents, it also provided an opportunity to catch up with seldom-seen comrades and swap stories. For the candidates, it was a chance to witness the heroes they so often heard about in lessons.
“The Heroes Ball aboard the Sky Palace. How fabuloso.” Zonda clapped her hands together in delight.
Sin glanced at Stanley. The look of bemused disinterest on his face mirrored Sin’s own sentiments.
Jasper Jenkins turned to face Zonda and ran his fingers through his curly white hair. “I just love a good Schottische, don’t you?”
“You like Staff MacKigh?” said Sin, confused.
“He’s Scottish, rust for brains,” sneered Jasper. “A Schottische is a Bohemian folk dance.”
“A dance?” Sin’s nose wrinkled. “Think I’d prefer Staff MacKigh.”
Zonda shuffled in her seat, nudging Sin. “Don’t be ridiculous. Dancing is fun. Especially when one has a good partner to take the lead.”
Sin danced around Zonda and their sabres clashed; the metallic clang echoed through the otherwise deserted arena. The hexagonal building was where the candidates trained in hand-to-hand combat. Racks of swords, spears and all manner of other weapons lined the walls, and that was one reason it was out of bounds to students at this time of night. The Major had given Sin and Zonda special dispensation to break the Cast-Iron Rule so they could meet Nimrod. The scientist was supposed to be demonstrating some experimental equipment to aid in their mission to recapture Eldritch. As usual, he was late.
Bored of waiting, Sin had begun to rib Zonda, and thei
r argument had quickly escalated from a war of words into a full-blown duel.
Zonda twirled her blade and stepped sideways, her leather boots scraping across the white sand. Sin circled, cat-like, his sabre held en-garde. “I suppose it’s too late to apologise?”
Batting Sin’s blade aside, Zonda thrust with her cutlass. Sin twisted and the blade slipped harmlessly past his shoulder. His eyes shone with the thrill of the fight. “I’ll take that as a no.”
Perspiration trickled down Zonda’s cheeks and her chest heaved. She recovered her sword to a defensive stance and brushed a strand of matted blonde hair from her face. “You think you’ve got me bested because you’re stronger, faster and more skilled than me?”
Sin’s bottom lip stuck out. It didn’t pay to underestimate Zonda; by anybody’s reckoning she was a genius. However, he couldn’t see how her smarts could get the better of his streetwise cunning in the arena. “Yep. Pretty much.”
“Nevertheless, I’ve got something you haven’t got.”
She was bluffing. She had to be. Sin tilted his head. In the past, Zonda had hidden all manner of gadgets and gizmos beneath the petticoats of her dresses. He tried to imagine what her taffeta tea gown might now conceal that would help her in a swordfight.
“What have you got?” he said, probing her defence with a flick of his blade.
Zonda took several large steps backwards. “I’ve got a Nimrod.”
An explosion of steam erupted behind Sin, then something slammed into his back and he stumbled. A sturdy net enveloped his body, the weighted corners lassoing him so the ropes pinned his arms. Unable to balance, he toppled over and faceplanted into the sand.
Zonda rolled Sin onto his side with her boot and rested the tip of her sword beneath his chin. “Surrender.”
Sin strained to lift his head. “I yield.”
Zonda withdrew the blade. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
Sin shifted his gaze to Nimrod, feeling somewhat betrayed by his father. The balding scientist limped across the arena. He wore a fine tweed suit and a beige cravat. Half supported in his arms and half resting on his portly belly was a strange contraption that looked like a cross between a steamrifle and the brass section of an orchestra.
