Secrets of the Fire Sea j-4

by Stephen Hunt

'I think there is a little bit of the devil in all of us, dear girl,' said Ortin. 'Whether you have a fine pelt like we do, or even if you don't.'

  Nandi nodded in agreement. So many tensions came from the misreading of history. All so avoidable.

  The preacher's voice grew fainter as they walked towards the capital.

  'The last judgement is coming, all of you…doomed!' Jethro looked out of the window of their lodgings while Boxiron finished unpacking the last of the travel cases he had been too tired to start the day before. It was a grand hotel, the Westerkerk, but the fact that the connected rooms they had been given were almost as large as their lodgings back at Thompson Street did not disguise the fact that this place was as a good as a prison cell for them. As soon as they'd arrived they had noticed the police militia posted at all the hotel's entrances, and while the soldiers were obviously busy turning away Jagonese claiming they had business with the Purity Queen's crew, Jethro knew that their presence was a double-edged blade.

  'We have quite a view of the cathedral across the Grand Canal,' noted Boxiron.

  'A view,' said Jethro, 'but not an unobserved way to present the Inquisition's credentials to the cathedral staff.'

  'The law enforcers here are not like your friends back in Ham Yard,' said Boxiron.

  'Indeed they are not,' said Jethro. 'If they changed the colour of their green uniforms for a redcoat's cherry attire, they might almost be taken for a military force.'

  'You marked the coral defences ringing the island on the way in,' said Boxiron. 'The commodore told me they have battlements surrounding the capital's surface structures almost as impressive.'

  Jethro rubbed his chin. 'An interesting frame of mind, don't you think? All your enemies are external, all your defences facing out to protect you. But what do you do if you find there is a rot within? How would you cope with that?'

  Boxiron did not get a chance to reply – there was a knock at their door and when the steamman opened it, Ortin urs Ortin stood there, filling the doorframe with his impressive furred bulk.

  'Good ambassador,' said Jethro. 'You're not rooming in the hotel, are you? I thought your embassy would have taken you in.'

  'The deputy ambassador claims that she wasn't told I was coming and that she's taken the opportunity of my predecessor's departure to remodel my apartments. I won't be able to move into my embassy rooms for weeks.'

  Jethro frowned. 'You suspect a slight?'

  'Of course I suspect a slight, dear boy,' said Ortin urs Ortin. 'I am a rare male office-holder in a matriarchal society, and it seems my banishment here is not to be made a comfortable one. But even they can't stop me taking up my duties. I have a summons to present myself to the stained senate this morning, as do you…'

  'Me? I'm a private party, good ambassador, not a representative of the Kingdom's foreign office.'

  'There's still a couple of reformers left on my staff here, despite the best efforts of the archduchess's conservatives, and my house's friends have caught wind of a few worrying circumstances brewing here,' said the ambassador, moving to the window. 'And that's one of them.'

  Jethro followed the direction of the large furred finger and saw an officer of the police militia striding towards the hotel.

  'Colonel Constantine Knipe, a particularly charmless fellow who seems to hold a low opinion of my appointment here that's not far removed from that of my own enemies in Pericur. He's already intercepted me and warned me to restrict my duties to a bare minimum and now I suspect it's your turn. Well, at least I've beaten the old fruit here to you. I counsel saying little…'

  True to the ambassador's words, Colonel Knipe arrived outside their rooms a minute later, his appearance preceded by the clump-hiss of his mechanical leg. He glowered at Ortin urs Ortin as though his presence implied that all three of them were involved in some plot. Then Knipe turned his attention towards Jethro, his eyes skipping briefly past Boxiron – the steamman surely an exotic oddity on the island – and waved a sheet of paper at the ex-parson. 'Jethro Daunt, citizen of the Kingdom of Jackals. The same Jethro Daunt, I am presuming, who was the consulting detective that retrieved the Twelve Works of Charity when the painting was stolen from the Middlesteel Museum.'

  'The same, good colonel. Although it would be truer to say that the painting never actually left the museum, it was merely switched and falsely identified as a forgery by the thief. You are exceedingly well informed.'

  'Our representatives in the Kingdom still collect your penny sheets,' said the colonel. 'And our transaction-engine vaults are still one of the wonders of the world.'

  'So I have heard,' smiled Jethro. 'And I see from the paper in your hand that their retrieval speeds match all that I have heard about their superiority.'

  'Why have you been summoned to the senate floor, Daunt?'

  'That, I'm afraid, only your stained senate can answer,' said Jethro.

  'Your services have not been engaged by them?'

  'No,' sighed Jethro. 'Sadly, my visit here is of a private nature.'

  'There is nothing private on Jago when it comes to keeping our people safe,' said the colonel. 'I will have the reason for your appearance on our shores. We haven't had a Jackelian u-boat call for over thirteen months.'

  'If you will,' said Jethro, stiffly. 'I have come here to pay my respects to a recent grave. That of Damson Alice Gray.'

  'The archbishop?' said the colonel, surprised. 'What is she to you?'

  'She and I were engaged to be married, although sadly the loss of my original living prevented our union.'

  Colonel Knipe looked shocked, as though he wouldn't have been more disturbed if Jethro had admitted he and Boxiron were grave robbers come to whisk the woman's corpse out of her grave for sale to medical students in need of surgical practice meat.

  'If the Jagonese embassy back home have been thorough in sending you copies of the Middlesteel Illustrated News, you will find the posting of our banns in your archives, I am sure. A little relic of my personal history buried among so much of yours, good colonel.'

  'You have missed the funeral,' noted the colonel.

  'Word travels slowly from Jago these days,' said Jethro. 'But I am here now.'

  'Better for you to have missed the funeral,' said the colonel, his manner softening slightly now that he thought he understood the rationale for Jethro's presence on Jago. He pointed at Ortin urs Ortin. 'One of your friend's primitive cousins was released into the city thanks to the incompetence of the Pericurian mercenaries the senate has seen fit to hire to protect us. You have your memories of the archbishop as she was, not as she was left after the ursk attack. It is better that way.'

  'A terrible accident,' said Jethro. He did not say that he hadn't been able to properly remember Alice Gray's face for many years. He could recall their courtship, the places they had visited together, but the cruelty of time had erased her features from his memories. He was a different man now. Like so many men, he had defined himself by his relationship with her. What she had left behind would have been wretched, wrecked and worse even without the old gods' touch of madness.

  'We killed four ursks in the canals that night,' said the colonel. 'Not much of a recompense for a life lost, but some consolation. I believe we still have one of the furs on the wall in the militia fortress. I could let you have it, if you think the use of it as a rug would bring you peace when you look at it.'

  Jethro nodded. 'You are exceedingly obliging, good colonel.'

  'I shall take you to the senate,' decided the colonel, graciously. He waved Ortin away, noting that the ambassador was expected to present himself first. Jethro watched the Pericurian leave eagerly enough, happy to be out of the militia officer's company with all his talk of skinning ursks. When the ambassador had left, the colonel shook his head knowingly. 'And on the way I will tell you what you need to know to keep you safe here.'

  'Safe?' said Jethro. 'I understood the Jagonese were exemplars of courtesy and the abidance of laws.'

  'By nature, o
ur people are,' said the colonel. 'But the wheel has turned and things on Jago are not as they once were.' He stared at Boxiron, 'Is it safe to talk in front of this one?'

  'I trust Boxiron with my life,' said Jethro. 'And despite the best efforts of the Jackelian underworld, as my living presence here attests, I have yet to be disappointed.'

  'Are you from the Steammen Free State?' the colonel asked Boxiron. 'Or an automatic milled by the race of man? You are not as I imagined you.'

  'I am a little of both,' replied Boxiron, his voicebox juddering.

  'My friend's is a sad and difficult story,' said Jethro, 'and it would pain him to relate it. Suffice it to say, Boxiron is a better and more reliable friend than all others have proven over the years. He's a topping old steamer.'

  Satisfied, the colonel led Jethro and Boxiron out of the hotel, across the square and towards the imposing steps that led into the passages and vaults hollowed out of the mountainous Horn of Jago itself. Jethro was quite glad the colonel didn't suspect what Boxiron really was, or he wouldn't have been so happy to lead the two of them in front of the senate.

  Jethro glanced across at the cathedral before the steps took him inside the mountain, the church building rising stalagmite-like to join the roof of the capital's vast central vault. That was where his business lay, not in front of the rulers of Jago.

  What could the senate possibly want of Jethro Daunt that he had to give them?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The thing that disconcerted Nandi the most about Hermetica City's atmospheric station was how clean she found it compared to stations such as Guardian Fairfax back in Middlesteel. None of the smoke, the dust, the grime, no ceaseless thump from the constant labour of steam engines to keep the transport tunnels under vacuum. This system was powered by electricity. She shivered at the thought.

  There weren't many people in the station – but then, this line only served the distant vaults of the Guild of Valvemen, their chambers buried many miles away at the foot of the hills that served as the gateway to the cold, dark interior of the country. Outside the battlements and no doubt out of mind, too. Practically a city by itself. No farm or park domes out there, nothing on the surface. All buried deep and far enough away from the capital for Jago's citizens not to be concerned about being poisoned by the power electric the guild's turbine halls generated.

  Nandi stood by a cluster of statues in the centre of the concourse, watching the crimson-robed valvemen moving over the polished stone floor like red ghosts – waiting for the capsule that would take them to their vaults to arrive. She was puzzling over the inscription at the foot of a sculpture of three Jagonese women hugging each other – Here lays Eli, still and old, who died because he was cold – when she spotted the commodore coming towards her.

  'I thought you might have forgotten I was due to make my first visit to the guild's transaction-engine rooms today,' she said by way of greeting.

  'Ah, lass,' said the commodore, 'I would have come sooner, but for the curiosity of that colonel of police, Knipe, and his insistence I satisfy it with every petty little detail of our voyage here. As if the Jagonese shouldn't be grateful that there is still an honest skipper willing to brave the perils of the Fire Sea to pay them a call.'

  'I had my turn yesterday evening,' said Nandi. 'After they escorted us to the hotel. What was my research, why was Saint Vine's paying the guild's fees of access so eagerly? How I am to immediately report anyone offering me large amounts of money as a dowry to marry them. What I know of Mister Daunt and the old steamer that follows him around…'

  'You see now,' declaimed the commodore in triumph, 'why it is old Blacky avoids this blasted port. They are an insular, suspicious bunch on Jago. They have dug themselves a pit here, pulled themselves in and let themselves stew in their own juices for a few centuries too long.' He indicated the guild workers on the concourse around them. 'And these red crows are the worst of all, their bodies crumbling under the wicked weight of the dark energies they tame. But this is where you've come to study, and so I'll wait with you to see you safely away from the cursed place.'

  'I'm not your daughter,' said Nandi. 'I don't need protecting.'

  'Nobody will ever be my daughter,' said Commodore Black.

  'I'm sorry,' Nandi apologized. 'I should not have said that. I asked one of your crew back on the submarine who your boat was named after.'

  'You're not my daughter, Nandi, but you have more than a little of her fire. She died doing what was right. I wish I could say I taught her that, but I'd be a wicked liar if I did.'

  'I'll be safe enough here,' said Nandi.

  'This city, this whole island, is a mortal tomb,' said the commodore. 'It just hasn't sunk in with the locals here yet. And I know your Professor Harsh well enough to know that she would have lectured you all about the dangers of tombs.'

  'There are no stake-covered pits here,' said Nandi.

  'Not the kind that you can see, lass,' said the old u-boat man. 'Which makes them even more dangerous in my book.'

  'What if I need to do what I feel is right?' asked Nandi. 'Will you try to stop me?'

  'I'm not that big a fool, lass.' He patted the sabre by his side. 'But I'll be close by, waiting to take up the point with any blackguards that do.'

  Nandi shook her head and accepted the inevitable. It seemed that in convincing the professor that she could manage the expedition to Jago on her own, she had merely swapped one would-be protector for another. If her father had been alive, he would have come here with her. Nandi couldn't have stopped him, though perhaps he would have used his influence over the professor to stop her. The commodore and the man her father had been were as different as the sun and the moon, but they shared one thing – they would both die for her, that much she knew. Nandi shifted the leather satchel she was carrying, inscribed with the double-headed crane seal of Saint Vine's college and weighed down with her papers, blank notebooks and pens and ink. 'You won't have to wait much longer, look…'

  Three iron capsules arrived in quick succession, whipping through the rubber curtain to be caught by the turntable at the far end of the concourse, then rotated in front of the passenger platform as if they were offerings to those waiting. Nandi and the commodore had been sent a capsule all to themselves, to spare them the guild workers' company – or perhaps the converse. Their capsule also came with a guide; a single valveman in the same intricately embroidered crimson robes worn by the guild workers boarding the other capsules.

  'No one on the platform to check for tickets,' remarked Nandi.

  'Ah, anyone who wants to go where we're going is mortal welcome to it,' said the commodore. 'If there was any justice in the world, the guild would be paying us to visit their dark lair, not the other way around.'

  Their guide led them into their windowless capsule and in a female voice told the two of them to make themselves comfortable on the red leather bench seats running along one side. When they were seated, the valve worker touched a button and the door irised shut with a clang, followed by a slight thump as the loading arm pushed them forward – into the atmospheric system. Then a whoosh. An increasing sense of acceleration as the pressure differential built up, sending them hurtling along the airless tunnels towards the great engine rooms of Jago.

  Commodore Black turned to their guide. 'Tell me, lass, is there no pilot on this blessed contraption of yours?'

  There was a slight shake of her heavy red hood. 'No. The atmospheric capsules are controlled by the machines.'

  'Machines, always more machines on Jago,' said the commodore. 'Machines to open the gates on the great ring of coral that circles your island, machines to heat and light your vaults, and yet more of the blessed things to bring down the air from the terrible land above. You've more machines down here in your city than in King Steam's land.'

  'And transaction engines,' added Nandi, expectantly. 'Filled with the lost knowledge of the ages.'

  'It's never been lost to us,' said their guide.

  'Arc
hived away unstudied, then,' said Nandi. She rummaged around in her bag and brought out her letters of admittance and travel. 'Your colonel of police has already seen my papers, but my college is very insistent the right people receive these and I get access to all of the records we paid for.'

  The valvewoman took the grant of access, and as she read her previously steady hand began to shake. Did she have the palsy? Had one of the engine-room afflictions weakened her arm?

  'Are you well, lass?' asked the commodore. 'Do you need a tot from old Blacky's hipflask to steady your hand?'

  'The names on these papers,' said their guide, 'the two original names listed under the prior grant of access.' Hannah Conquest pulled her crimson hood down. 'They're the names of my mother and father!' As Jethro walked towards the senate, the combination of noises produced by Colonel Knipe's artificial leg and Boxiron's clumping footsteps on the iron gantry seemed to merge into one rhythm. Down below lay an atmospheric station almost identical to those of Middlesteel, save for the presence of Pericurian mercenaries waiting for the capsule-like trains. A large turntable in the centre of the concourse was retrieving new capsules emerging through the rubber curtains that sealed the airless tubes the carriages travelled along.

  Struggling in the shadow of the bear-like mercenaries were Jagonese loaded down with bundles, crates and chests of possessions, pushing, pulling and hauling their burdens off the transport capsules and out into the vaults of the capital below.

  Colonel Knipe noted the direction of Jethro's gaze. 'You must feel Alice Gray's loss, Mister Daunt, to have travelled all the way to Jago to see her grave?'

  Jethro nodded.

  'There,' said the colonel, 'is our loss. The senate has ordered the closure of Tarramack, the second city of Jago. Her people are being relocated here to the capital, whether they care to come or not. When the evacuation is complete, the atmospheric line out to Tarramack will be blown and the tunnels caved in to keep us safe in the capital. Then there will only be us left. Our loss is not as sudden as the one you feel so keenly, it has been happening over centuries. Slowly, like a disease, or like old age, dying a little more each year.'