by Stephen Hunt
‘I think I might still qualify as a stranger,’ said Tom.
‘Yes, but I can still smell the scent of ink heavy on you, Mister Purdell, not blood. Carter, when you have that message decrypted, commit it to memory. Don’t risk travelling back to Northhaven with it on paper.’
Jacob watched the two young men make ready to leave. They would travel up to Northhaven’s old city where the Guild of Radiomen’s first message cart of the day would be preparing to set out to the librarian’s hold, a virtual fortress buried in the slopes of a valley an hour’s travel from the town. The two of them would hitch a lift to work. The fact that the librarians were sending physical couriers rather than trusting the radiomen to transmit messages for them spoke volumes for the splits appearing in the nation. Rifts even among the long guilds, which, stretched across the world of Pellas, were meant to remain neutral in such conflicts. A hard thing to manage when many of the guildsmen were locals with divided loyalties. The radiomen backed King Marcus, while the librarians – with their holds packed full of law-books – judged Prince Owen to have the better claim on the throne.
Jacob spoke to Carter before his son stepped out of the rectory. ‘You don’t look particularly happy this morning. Our unexpected guest worrying you?’
‘It’s not that,’ said Carter. ‘I went to visit Willow yesterday evening at the park, but the gatehouse guards wouldn’t let me in. Said she was too busy at some social function to see me.’
‘Too busy to meet you? That’s horse manure.’
‘Of course it is. Old Benner Landor’s made it clear he doesn’t want me seeing his daughter anymore. That refusal was on his orders.’
‘You and Willow survived a death sentence in the imperium’s sky mines,’ said Jacob. ‘I reckon you can endure her father’s disapproval.’
‘But we shouldn’t have to. After all we’ve been through, enduring hell at the end of the world, the two of us are just expected to slot back into Northhaven, same as it ever was? Rich man, poor man. Bowing down to the great and powerful landowner, doffing my cap and showing my respect. Benner Landor wouldn’t have lasted a week inside the sky mines if he’d been taken by the slavers. It might be the House of Landor’s money paying for the town to be rebuilt after the raid, but that doesn’t make him my master.’
‘Willow’s got it worse than you,’ said Jacob. ‘Living in the great house at Hawkland Park with all the changes up there. And you know Benner Landor hasn’t forgiven any of us for leaving his son behind in the imperium.’
‘Duncan chose to stay in the empire. He was a free man while the rest of us were dying as slaves in the sky mine.’
Jacob shrugged. ‘I don’t think Benner will ever believe it.’ The pastor was the only one in Weyland who knew that he’d put a bullet in Duncan Landor’s heart before they’d escaped the empire’s clutches. The boy hadn’t left Jacob with much choice in the matter and the pastor hadn’t lost much sleep over it. A boy who had turned against his own people … joined the enemy. Become an imperial citizen while his friends and family were dying from hunger and overwork under the whip. No, Jacob Carnehan wasn’t going to lose any sleep over a single dead turncoat, even if the boy had been the heir to a great northern house.
‘Doesn’t want to believe it, you mean,’ said Carter. ‘The son’s not that different from the father, that’s the truth of it.’
Jacob worried that the same might be true of him and Carter. Jacob lifted a gun belt down from the wooden wall – a simple rotating chamber pistol slid inside the holster – and passed it to his son. ‘You be careful on the road. Some of those marauders haunting the wilds aren’t real bandits. They’re the king’s agents, out hunting for that young imperial noble we took hostage.’
His son examined the pistol and belt. ‘I still prefer my knives.’
‘Hard to threaten a bandit with a blade,’ said Jacob. ‘You might have to kill the raider just to prove you can throw faster than he can draw.’
‘Fair point,’ said Carter, belting the gun around his waist. ‘They won’t find that little Vandian girl, you know.’
‘Not unless they tie you to a tree and light a fire under your feet, to loosen your tongue about where Lady Cassandra’s stashed,’ said Jacob.
‘They won’t be reckless enough to do that,’ said Carter. ‘King Marcus doesn’t know we’re not bluffing about hanging our hostage if he attacks us.’
Jacob didn’t correct his son. There wasn’t any artifice in the threat he’d sent south. As far as the pastor was concerned, if there was even a hint of a revenge attack against Northhaven and the escaped slaves, Weyland’s treacherous King Marcus would have to explain to his imperial allies why the Vandian emperor’s kidnapped grandchild was occupying a grave. Jacob would tie a noose around the young noblewoman’s neck and kick the chair away himself. Let the emperor suffer like he’d suffered. Vandia slave traders had murdered Jacob’s wife, taken his son and destroyed his life. The empire’s suffering for their crimes had only just begun.
‘Things will get better soon,’ said Carter. ‘Prince Owen will replace King Marcus and the country will settle down again.’
‘The prince is a good man,’ said Jacob. ‘But that’s my worry. Asking the assembly to force King Marcus to abdicate. Following the due process of the law, always doing the right thing.’
‘The law is on the prince’s side,’ said Carter.
‘The law’s been bought,’ said Jacob. ‘Bought and paid for by imperial gold secretly shipped to King Marcus. That rodent on our throne’s little better than a puppet ruler for the empire.’
‘We’re a long way from the empire,’ said Carter. ‘When it comes to raiding for slaves, the Vandians prefer their pickings easy and compliant. If King Marcus refuses to abdicate, the prince can reveal how Marcus arranged for his own brother and family to be assassinated so he could steal the throne. And if that doesn’t have the king hanging from a lamppost in the capital by the end of the day, Owen can explain how Marcus has been stuffing his treasury with imperial gold in return for selling his own citizens as slaves.’
‘Well,’ said Jacob. ‘We’ll see how much the truth and the right thing is worth soon enough.’
Yes, they would. Trouble was, a plausible lie could travel a million miles around the world before the truth got its boots on. Prince Owen should have listened to Jacob when they’d first returned to Weyland. Jacob’s method of abdication would involve a quick bullet in Arcadia City’s royal, long before King Marcus realized that the citizens he’d secretly sold off to the empire had rebelled and escaped home. Lord, how he’d love to be the one to do that. Once King Marcus became ex-King Marcus, Jacob would still be aching to try. Not many would miss the damn snake. And their endless world was certainly large enough to swallow a deposed king’s bones.
Carter and the guild courier had been gone a couple of minutes when a guest arrived in the form of Thaddeus Castle, the master mason supervising the building of the town’s first cathedral. Tanned from long exposure to the sun and sporting muscles built by hauling stone, Thaddeus looked like he’d been assembled from bricks himself; as though he could fill in for one of his crane-and-pulley arrangements. A human building machine if there ever was one. Damned if he wasn’t better company than most of the churchmen who’d be filling the new cathedral once it was finished. Jacob had loved the Northhaven of old, when it had been a quiet backwater and his pews the only seats in town. No politics, no interference from the church council; a simple, tranquil life. When Thaddeus departed for his next job, Jacob would miss the master mason for more than the good company the man had provided – it would mark the start of a new stage of existence for the pastor with a finality that he resented.
‘You haven’t forgotten you’re meant to meet the bishop this morning?’ said Thaddeus.
‘If I had, he surely wouldn’t let me.’ Jacob gathered his coat and closed the front door of the rectory. The day had hardly started and already he was deafened by the thump of hammers on wood, like
a morning chorus of woodpeckers. When Jacob had left to track down his kidnapped son, large swathes of the new town had been nothing but burning ruins. Only the old town, sitting up high behind its fortifications on the hill, had escaped more or less unscathed. Now, the town of Northhaven was being rebuilt on the scale of a city. Bigger, wider, taller, better. Extra streets. Fresh faces. It didn’t seem much like the home he had lost along with his wife. What would Mary have thought if she could have seen all the new streets and shops and mills where once there had been meadows and woodland? Too much noise and too much buzzing without consequence, whispered his wife’s ghost. Jacob couldn’t fault Benner Landor on the landowner’s ambitions. The man had been given a clean slate to impose his vision across, and he’d taken to the task with a relish and all of his house’s resources. Even the great stone cathedral that Thaddeus and his workers were putting the finishing touches to had been paid for by Landor money. The same could be said of Northhaven’s new bishop – Virgil Kirkup – Jacob reckoned, even if the bishop had nominally been appointed in the capital by the Synod Council.
‘You won’t be his only visitor this morning,’ said Thaddeus. ‘Bishop Kirkup has himself a house guest too grand to check in at the big hotel up on the hill.’
‘Do tell,’ said Jacob.
‘Arrived last night at the airfield,’ said Thaddeus.
Jacob groaned. ‘I liked it better when the country didn’t have a shiny new-minted skyguard, when anyone who wanted to come to Northhaven had to spend months on a train to get here.’
‘Seems that progress is flying in whether you like it or not,’ said Thaddeus.
Jacob didn’t. Especially not when he suspected that the blueprints for the flying machines and the money and resources to build them had been supplied by the imperium; all part of King Marcus’s sly dealings with Vandia. ‘Somebody important, then, I’ll wager?’
‘Won’t find me accepting that bet. Nobody more important in this part of the world. It’s the head of the prefecture, Hugh Colbert.’
Now Jacob really had cause to be aggravated. Not that he had ever met the politician. But unlike the lower house of the assembly, voted for by its citizens, the nation’s upper house was appointed by writ of royal council, which in practice meant prefects swanning around acting as the king’s personal marionettes. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, Jacob suspected … and this particular apple was writhing black to its core with worms. ‘You heard what he’s come north for?’
‘Your assemblyman’s been protesting about the number of vagrants and hobos drifting in from the east to play highwaymen in the prefecture. Prefect Colbert’s come up to smooth the ruffled feathers of the great and the good in Northhaven.’
And that meant the House of Landor, since the assemblyman they had voted for was as much in Benner Landor’s pocket as everyone else around here. What are you really here for, king’s man? Maybe the kidnapped granddaughter of a very distant, very powerful emperor? ‘Give the poor enough work to feed their families and the royal highways would empty of brigands quick enough.’
‘Careful what you wish for, Father Carnehan,’ said Thaddeus. ‘I heard tell that you were out practising your own version of toll-keeping on the road last night.’
‘Just returning home from a farm. The church’s work has a greater call on my time than warming my feet around a fire,’ said Jacob.
‘And there’ll be a few souls who won’t be returning to the unruly bands roaming the wilds,’ said Thaddeus. ‘At least, that’s the story from a coach driver who rolled into town early this morning with twenty horsemen from the royal cavalry.’
‘Those bandits were violating the laws of the nation as well as the lord,’ said Jacob.
‘I’m sure your lead cure was very effective. You know, people in town are beginning to talk,’ said Thaddeus. ‘They say that you ain’t you anymore. They say that when you were far-called hunting for the town’s taken, the stealers swapped your soul for a demon’s.’
‘Well, they’re half-right,’ said Jacob.
‘Which half?’
‘I met one stealer at the end of the world. It didn’t take to lead, so we dropped an aircraft full of explosives on its head. That seemed to discourage it.’
‘I never could tell when you’re joking,’ said Thaddeus.
‘Not many can.’
‘I know that a journey can change a man,’ said Thaddeus. ‘And you were gone long enough for me to oversee the build of a fine new cathedral while you were chasing down slave traders. But you weren’t gone nearly long enough to teach a man of the cloth to wear a holster as easy as you do.’
‘I don’t wear the pistols, the pistols wear me.’
‘I heard you were trained by monks in the mountains,’ said Thaddeus. ‘Must have been an unusual seminary.’
‘I’m an old man, now,’ said Jacob. ‘But there’s a few good works left in me, yet.’
‘Who decides what counts as good?’
‘Sometimes it’s the richest man; sometimes it’s the most powerful. Sometimes it’s another type of man altogether.’
‘Anyone I know?’
‘The quickest,’ said Jacob, ‘and the one with nothing left to lose.’
‘You’ve still got a little left to go on both scores,’ said Thaddeus.
‘Don’t let my enemies know that,’ said Jacob.
‘How many enemies can a meek country pastor possess?’
Jacob thought back to a burning coach in the snow, surrounded by corpses. ‘A few less every week.’
‘You’re an unusual priest, Father Carnehan; I’ll say that about you.’
Jacob stared at the new cathedral hoving into view; its grey stone facade still surrounded by oak scaffolding, masons lifting twisted gargoyles on pulleys. The workers shared their platform with glaziers carefully installing elaborate rose windows under the highest of the five pointed spires. ‘That’s a fact the bishop in there will be only too pleased to thump in, if you lend him one of your hammers.’
Jacob watched the master mason leave to supervise his team, then entered the cathedral via the west portal. One of the increasingly numerous functionaries hired by the new bishop appeared to lead Jacob under ribbed vaulting still fresh with stone dust, towards the private rooms of this newly installed prince of the church. Bishop Kirkup was older than Jacob by a decade, maybe sixty-five, his forehead shining and a curve of wild white bushy hair clinging to the back and edges of his skull. The bishop possessed a sharp, scholarly manner that verged on the pedantic; allowing no opportunity to pass by without reminding the pastor that Northhaven was now guided by a new lord of the church. Jacob was careful to conceal his contempt for the churchly courtier by affecting the veneer of a provincial hayseed. This fussy martinet could well be one of the many acting in the service of the old king who so desperately wanted to cling on to his crown. So it was that the two men circled each other in these meetings, the bishop prodding and goading, Jacob pretending that he was too much the country bumpkin to understand the subtleties of the bishop’s provocations.
‘Father Carnehan, this morning finds you well?’
‘Very well, Reverend Excellency.’
‘I hear the same cannot be said of some of the prefecture’s less welcome souls.’
Jacob nodded. ‘I would have to say that’s about right, Reverend Excellency.’
‘We should comport ourselves in the eyes of the saints by conducting services for the departed, Father. Not creating them.’
‘I’ve clutched that piece of advice to my heart, Reverend Excellency, since our last meeting. But the trouble was I was out riding late to my parishioners when I was beseeched by a coach full of honest travellers to intervene in their troubles. It just didn’t seem charitable to ride on by.’
‘Northhaven has a territorial army regiment for such business.’
‘I know,’ said Jacob. ‘I often find myself wondering where they are when I’m out riding. But then it’s very cold at the moment.’
‘Flu spreads like the devil around the farms at this time of year,’ said Jacob. ‘But then it is very cold.’
‘Doctor and constable both,’ said Bishop Kirkup. ‘Have you given any more thought to returning to the monastery in Rodal?’
‘I have,’ said Jacob. ‘And I’m sure I’ll head back there one day, but it doesn’t seem the right time at the moment. My son is still in a fragile state after his travails as a slave, as are many of the younger members of the parish who suffered after they were taken.’
‘The cathedral is nearly finished,’ said Kirkup. ‘And our generous patron hasn’t paid so much towards its completion for the people of Northhaven to continue worshipping at a humble wooden church.’
‘Oh, I’m sure the good citizens of the town will come out here to visit your grand vaulted arches and sit in your fine pews. By the size of the city Benner Landor’s raising out here, now, I can see the cathedral opening dozens of smaller churches spread across Northhaven.’ All reporting in to you, naturally.
‘We shall see,’ said the bishop, as though this wasn’t what he’d been planning all along. Of course, the one thing Kirkup wasn’t planning was to keep a pastor hanging around who, under ecumenical law, should have been considered for the position of bishop before a certain churchly courtier bagged the role. It was an easy mistake for the church’s council to make. Any pastor departed the country to wander the endless lands outside, searching for a scattering of human needles in a haystack … by rights, such a man should have ended up dead on the road a hundred times over. That Jacob hadn’t, had thrown more than just this opportunist’s schemes out of joint. ‘Father Carnehan, how does one man manage to slay eight highwaymen in the middle of the night?’
‘It wasn’t one man, Reverend Excellency.’
‘It wasn’t?’
Jacob leant forward, raised two fingers and pointed up to the ceiling. ‘It was me and Him. And only the unholy were smited. Nobody can see much in the dark, of course, so I must have had luck and the saints on my side. Our country manners are a little more bluff than I expect you found them down in the capital.’
