Secrets of the Fire Sea j-4

by Stephen Hunt

  There was a moment's silence as Badger-headed Joseph waited for a reaction from the ex-parson. But the ancient spirit was to be disappointed. 'Have you not even the breath to deny us?'

  'Not today, good emissary,' said Jethro. 'This day, I'm going to do the one thing your kind truly can't suffer. I'm going to forget you, and by the time I'm finished on this island, you're going to be just another echo lost in history, your idols threepenny curiosities in an antique shop – good for a bookend or a doorstop.' Jethro started laughing and the voice hissed in anger at his mockery, the hiss transforming into the steam escaping from Boxiron's stack.

  The steamman was shaking Jethro awake. 'I'm glad you can find some amusement in our confinement. Clear your eyes of sleep. Something is happening outside. Cell doors are being opened up along the corridor and I have heard gunfire in the distance.'

  Jethro rubbed his tired eyes. 'It's a war.'

  'Jago is unassailable, Jethro softbody,' said Boxiron. 'If I wore my old war frame and had every steamman knight that ever served King Steam given to my command, I would still not wish to assault this place.'

  'Perhaps,' said Jethro, touching his heart. 'But that's not where the war that matters is going to be fought.'

  From outside their cell came a clanking, then the door was pushed inward and the space filled by a fat militiaman. 'It's your lucky day, my bucks. Follow the others up the stairs to the courtyard level. Draw a rifle. You're going to get to fight for your freedom.'

  'I'm not a soldier,' said Jethro.

  'Everyone's a soldier today, friend.'

  'Who is the foe?' asked Boxiron.

  'It's the wet-snouts, metal shanks. Seems they got tired of bleeding us dry slowly with their trading boats. Now they're here to finish the job fast with their armies.'

  'We are Jackelian citizens,' protested Jethro.

  'The wet-snouts are climbing down the shafts and killing everyone they come across,' said the militiaman, impatiently jingling his keys and kicking straw on the floor at them. 'When they find you they won't see a kingdom man, they'll see meat to decorate the end of their bayonet. Now get out – any prisoner who's not joining up today, we're hanging.'

  Jethro noted the evidence of that in front of the police fortress, a gallows erected between two statues of mastiffs, the granite hunting hounds carved with leather hoods covering their eyes. The statues might have been symbolically blinded to the status of those the police pursued, but Jethro needed to turn his face away from the figures hanging in warning from their ropes – militiamen tugging at the boots of one of the recent thrashing additions, a recalcitrant who clearly hadn't been cleanly finished by the drop from the trapdoor. Was Jethro's reaction hypocritical, he wondered? He had worked with Ham Yard back in Jackals to send many a killer to such a fate. But he had never joined the crowds outside Bonegate Prison on a hanging day to see the final result of his labours.

  Filing to a table set up in the shadow of the gallows with the other prisoners, Jethro found a long rifle pushed into his hands, an ugly length of steel with an intricate clockwork firing mechanism mounted on an engraved brass lock-plate.

  'This still has oil on it,' Jethro said to the bald militiaman lifting the long guns out of wooden crates piled behind the table.

  'It's new. Wipe the barrel clean on your sleeve and then sod off.'

  Jethro was shoved forward by one of the militiamen guarding them, the slippery gun almost falling out of his hands. Yes. New rifles for a surprise attack by Pericur.

  Behind him, Boxiron was thrusting his rifle back at the militiaman behind the table. 'The trigger will not accommodate my fingers. Your weapons mill has made them too small.'

  'Beg your pardon, my lord,' spat the militiaman. 'We'll get our gunsmith to commission you your own personal piece in gold. In the meantime, you'll bloody fight like everyone else.'

  Boxiron reached behind the table and picked up one of the sledgehammers the militiamen had been using to crack open the wooden rifle crates.

  'That's just a hammer,' said the militiaman.

  'In your hands, perhaps,' corrected Boxiron, his body hulking above the militiaman's frame. 'In mine it is a warhammer.'

  'You are too eager, old steamer,' Jethro said to Boxiron as they cleared the line. 'This is not our fight and you know your hands shake too much for a gun to be of use to you.'

  'I will not let us die here, Jethro softbody. I know you won't raise your rifle to protect yourself, there is too much of the parson left in you.'

  'As I fear there is too much of a steamman knight left in you.'

  'I still have a head for war,' agreed Boxiron.

  That was what Jethro feared, that and a hulking body that had been used for murder before Boxiron had allowed himself to be saved from the flash mob's clutches by a young ex-parson recently defrocked from the rational orders.

  'I have exceedingly few friends left who do not shun me,' said Jethro. 'I would not see that number dwindle still further, good steamman.'

  'Avert your eyes, Jethro softbody. You will find this distasteful.' The steamman fell to his knees, his voicebox echoing in machine song with the names of his ancestors, the Loas of his people – Steelbhalah Waldo, Legba of the Valves, Magnet-e-rouge. But he never prayed to his Loas anymore, not to those that had forsaken him…

  'They did not come,' said Jethro as his friend fell silent and stood up.

  'I did not ask them to,' said Boxiron. 'For all your studies of religions to deny, I think you still do not understand what it is to believe.'

  All around them, the lines of released prisoners were being formed into companies and dispatched to various vaults, given the names of streets where barricades had been set up and airshafts where the police militia expected the Pericurians to strike next. The two of them were assigned to a group of perhaps twenty convicts who – with the exception of the hammer-wielding steamman – were each given a pouch of rifle charges. Then they marched through the streets to their position. Along all of the canal sides, the capital's inhabitants were being led away in the opposite direction – women carrying wailing infants, old men with sacks filled with hastily collected family silver, money and whatever other valuables they could snatch before the militiamen banging on their doors lost patience.

  'They are heading back towards the stairs leading up into the Horn of Jago,' said Jethro.

  'A sound strategy,' said Boxiron, 'considering the foe have control of the surface. Once the surface is gained, the vaults of this city are not defensible. The Pericurians can strike at will through the airshafts and if the invaders blocked the vents, the city's inhabitants would slowly suffocate. Inside the mountain the defenders have air, windows to snipe from and a high slope that must be stormed. They will not be easily taken there.'

  'You needn't sound so pleased about it,' said one of the convicts shuffling alongside them. 'We're the poor buggers they're asking to hold the vaults. What did you two foreign lads get taken for? Killing a sailor, smuggling, taking on board stowaways?'

  'Nothing,' said Jethro. 'We are innocent.'

  'Me too,' guffawed the convict. 'It's just that one of the police fell on a knife when I was filling my pockets. Clumsy bastard. The very best I had waiting for me if a judge took pity on me was the senator's picnic outside the walls. But now? I reckon they'll give me a medal if I stick a few wet-snouts the same as I did Knipe's man.' He flicked the bayonet fitted on the end of his rifle and made a crude slurping noise as he imagined his blade piercing an ursine body.

  Jethro wrinkled his nose in distaste. This was the sort of man that prospered in the chaos of war. One week a murderer, the next a war hero. It was only society's judgement that separated the two.

  'I recognize this canal,' said Jethro. 'This is the way we came down from the harbour.'

  Boxiron nodded. 'The Purity Queen. She must still be docked in Jago's u-boat pens or we would have been extradited on her.'

  The convict by their side sneered. 'Did they have you two lads in solitary? Haven't
you heard? You aren't sailing out of here. Knipe jammed the sea locks to stop the wet-snouts sailing into the city. And even if the locks weren't jiggered, there's the whole wet-snout fleet sitting out under the cliffs. You're bottled up here same as us. Best you keep your eyes on the main chance. Slit a few wet-snout throats and put your hand up for a pardon when it's done.'

  'And what makes you think Jago is going to win, good sir?' asked Jethro.

  'Wet-snouts, they're just savages,' said the convict, shaking his head at Jethro's ignorance. 'They only got this far because the free company swapped sides. Bastard traitors let the fleet sail through the coral line yesterday, is what I heard. Stuck the First Senator's head on a pole on the battlements. No loss there, eh? But now they're fighting the people, not a bunch of gold-pursed idiots sitting around in senator's robes. Wet-snouts think the sky's going to fall on their heads if we stay on this island. Ignorant heathens. Been here two thousand years, ain't we, and we'll make the world end all right. For any dimwit wet-snout jigger left on Jago!'

  Shouts of indignant anger were raised all along the line of convicts in support of this foul-mouthed oratory.

  'I don't know what these people will do to the Pericurians,' Jethro said to Boxiron, 'but by the Circle, I know that they scare me.' Commodore Black brushed his fingers along the warm iron wall of the brig, wiping off the tears of water crying out of the rivets. 'This is second-rate work, lass. They've got water as hot as the Fire Sea right off the coast of Pericur, and the Pericurians can't even fit their boats out with a cooling system worth a spit.'

  Hannah found it hard to find words to answer with. Her mother's loss, Alice's murder, Nandi's body lying dead and abandoned in the wastes. All gone now. Even her country was going to be taken away from her.

  The commodore banged the hull and listened to the echo of the metal. 'But still, when I was a lad the wet-snouts couldn't have done this. You could still see wooden submersibles in their ports in those days, like blessed oak bathtubs they were. Someone has been helping the ursine and you don't have to look far to see who. This tub is a bad copy of a Cassarabian Ad-Dukhan class boat. Aye, the caliph's boys have been up to mischief across the sea in Pericur. A strong Pericur on the borders of the Jackelian colonies causing trouble for us will suit the caliph just fine.'

  'It hardly matters,' said Hannah. 'Does it?'

  'Take heart now, Hannah Conquest,' said the commodore, trying to put a brave face on their plight. 'We've got your mortal clever church-trained mind to rely on, and these ursine might have faced a few foes in their time, but they've never had Jared Black against them before.'

  From outside their cell door there was the sound of the viewing panel being drawn back. Ortin urs Ortin's face appeared at the gap.

  'The author of our wicked misfortunes,' said the commodore. 'Have you come to gloat over us, ambassador?'

  'I see little misfortune in your situation, old fruit. You are under our protection and safe with the fleet. Given the alternative for you is being caught up in the reconquest of the island, you have little to complain about.' He waved Hannah forward. 'I am afraid I am the bearer of bad news for you. In the expedition's absence, the body of Chalph urs Chalph of the House of Ush was handed over to us. He had been murdered, knifed to death. The capital's grain dole ran empty when we were away and there were a number of attacks on members of the trade mission and its warehouses. I suspect Chalph urs Chalph's death can be counted among the disturbance's fatalities.'

  'I knew it,' sobbed Hannah, falling to her knees while the swollen skin of her cheeks burned. 'Chalph came to me in a dream. He told me that he was dead.'

  The ambassador's eyes widened in appreciation through the viewing slit. 'Reckin urs Reckin allows favoured souls a final moment of their choosing. You have been blessed.'

  'Let us count our bloody blessings alone,' growled the commodore.

  'You have my condolences, dear girl,' said the ambassador. 'I will ask the vessel's master to take you off prisoner's rations. You shall be the fleet's guests until you are repatriated.' His footsteps echoed away down the corridor.

  'Guests,' spat the commodore. 'With three inches of steel to keep us safe and a bucket to relieve our bowels.'

  Hannah stood up, the last tears she would shed falling onto the deck. Her very last tears. 'I have to do it!'

  'What, lass?'

  'Nandi, Alice, Chalph, my mother. I can save them all. Bring them all back. End this insane holy war.'

  'Sit down, Hannah. Those wet-snouts must have rattled your head mortal bad when they gave us our pistol whipping.'

  'Everything is my fault. Nandi was killed because I got her involved in my life, but I can make everything right again. I can save Nandi. I can save Chalph, I can resurrect all of them. I know where it is!' said Hannah. 'The last piece of Bel Bessant's god-formula. If I can get to it, I can use it. I'll make everything right.'

  Hannah had to. Nandi had risked everything to save her from the guild and Vardan Flail; and if Hannah could just bring the young academic back, then she could make everything right again.

  'You don't, lass,' said the commodore. 'Say you don't know where it is. Say that wicked scrap of dark mathematical art rotted to dust under the bones of William of Flamewall.'

  'It didn't,' said Hannah. 'It was always concealed here. It never left Hermetica City – the secret was hidden in the third painting all the time.'

  Commodore Black was shaking. 'It was blank! The third painting was blank of any cipher.'

  'No,' said Hannah. 'We just didn't look deep enough.'

  'Don't do this thing,' begged the commodore. 'That terrible weapon isn't meant for us. You knew that back on Bloodglass Island when you had us blow those queer singing buildings to pieces.'

  'We didn't look hard enough,' said Hannah. 'Just like you've been keeping your eyes off this cell's transaction-engine lock since they threw us in here. All your boasts, your stories about how there isn't a lock that can stand up to the genius of the great Jared Black.'

  'We're safe here, lass. The ambassador's a double-dealing jigger, but he had that much right. We could die outside in their terrible war.'

  'Nandi already died for us,' pleaded Hannah. 'You were sworn to protect her, to help her, and I can bring her back when I complete the god-formula,'

  Commodore Black sobbed and he seemed to crumple before her, placing himself over the transaction engine lock. 'An oath taken. It always comes down to duty. Poor old Blacky, he's been crushed by it. Everything lost to it.'

  Hannah watched curiously as the old u-boat man pulled off one of his jacket's buttons, using the edge of the metal circle to lever out the nails holding down his boot's heel. But the nails were longer than they should have been, with ridges and serrations and wardings along their length. He used one of them, a long flat piece of metal, to lever open the escutcheon protecting the lock's cylinders, then got to work inside the mechanism of the frame plate that had been exposed. Hannah stared suspiciously when she saw how smoothly he removed the plate to expose the transaction engine's punch-card injector, and her suspicions turned to incredulity when he pulled a strip of leather off his boot heel and began punching holes through it with one of the tools that had been concealed as a nail.

  'This is too easy!'

  'Don't doubt my genius, lass.'

  'Genius be hanged,' said Hannah. 'A punch card concealed within a heel? This is one of the transaction engines you supplied the Pericurians with from Jackals and it's been tampered with, hasn't it? What's going on here?'

  'A fine church mind,' whispered the commodore, not taking his eyes off his task. 'As tight as a trap and wasted on all that Circlist cant. The state back home has something heavy on me, lass, and they've been using it to blackmail an old fool out of his much deserved rest. The great liberal houses in Pericur might have their hands on the Kingdom's transaction engines, but they're still the Kingdom's engines.'

  'You're a spy!' said Hannah.

  'Not a willing one,' said the commodore, gr
unting as he slipped his makeshift punch card into the lock's engine. 'A poor fool caught up in the great game. A dupe. Pericur would have got their hands on transaction engines anyway; if not from us, from the Cassarabians. And if the information that whispers across the drums of Pericur's engines can be picked up by card-sharps in the employ of the state's intelligencers, well, supplying the infernal contraptions still turned a little profit for me. A sorry recompense for what the wet-snouts would have done to me if they discovered I was playing them false.'

  He finished his work with a flourish, the pick from his shoe briefly a conductor's baton, before he placed his ear to the bulkhead. 'I can hear the throb of the boat's engines. We're not on the blessed surface.' He picked up one of the drops of water crying from the rivets and let it roll down his thumb. 'And we're running not too shallow with it.'

  Hannah looked horrified. 'We're not leaving Jago already?'

  They couldn't! Everything depended on her being able to get to the final piece of the god-formula.

  Commodore Black shook his head. 'No. You stay close to the surface of the boils to keep an eye on the magma shifting, never out of periscope depth. My guess is the Pericurians have sappers in dive gear working to clear the entrance to the harbour on the seabed. If they can sail this wicked fleet of theirs right into Hermetica City's submarine pens, then they can open up a second front, come at the poor blessed Jagonese from below and above at the same time.'

  'If the fleet can get into the city that way,' said Hannah, 'then so can we.'

  'I would not pick the waters of the Fire Sea to give you your first diving lesson, lass. We'll need insulated suits, heavy gear, and there will be Pericurian navy divers in the water, while the crabs on Jago's coast scuttle about as large as carts and as mean as a Jackelian mountain lion.'

  He saw the look she gave him and moaned as if he was mired in the scalding waters already. 'Then it is to be duty. So be it and I've come to expect nothing better, curse my unlucky stars. I'll do it for you and the chance to bring poor Nandi back.'