by Stephen Hunt
Amelia wagged a finger at the submariner. ‘Maybe if you hadn’t been dirt-gassing their villages and taking their children for slaves-’
The chamber’s hatch was thrown open, one of Bull’s sea-drinkers pitching in. ‘Fire, fire in the engine room!’
Shouts echoed through the boat’s corridors, crewmen sliding down ladders and securing compartments. After taking a flooding breach, a blaze in the confines of the underwater vessel was a seadrinker’s worst fear. Commodore Black was at the speaking trumpet, barking orders to the pilot room and the Sprite bucked as she made a crash surface. Claxons began to sound. Amelia ran with the others for the rear of the boat, pushing past coughing sailors falling out of the engine-room hatch. Seadrinkers with leather fire hoods that made them resemble insects came rushing in behind the professor, lugging fire hoses and water pumps.
The angle of the floor pulled straight with a wrench, a sure sign they were on the surface of the Shedarkshe now.
‘Close the room,’ shouted T’ricola. ‘Everyone out? Then drop the seals port and aft, vent the air and give the bitch nothing to breathe.’
Bull was sliding down a ladder behind them. He grabbed one of his men. ‘Is the fire in the gas tanks?’
‘No, the scrubber room.’
Amelia looked at the craynarbian officer. ‘We’re not going to blow?’
‘Not if the fire’s in our scrubbers, professor. But the scrubbers are a dry area; you hardly ever get a fire down there. I don’t understand how-’
‘The how of it doesn’t matter,’ said Bull. ‘Let the fire burn down without air, then we go in and douse everything. Damn our luck. It seems we’ll be running on the surface to Rapalaw Junction after all.’
‘I thought you’d want to see this,’ T’ricola said to the commodore, pointing to the burnt-out wreck of the Sprite’s expansion-gas scrubbers. She ran the fingers of one of her manipulator arms through the brown liquid bubbling out of a metal grille.
Amelia looked at the sticky residue over the commodore’s shoulder. ‘What is it?’
‘Hull-tile fixative, professor.’ The commodore tapped the cork-like substance that had been exposed under the half-melted wall. ‘But what in Tridentscale’s name was this gunk doing blocking up the tubes on my gas scrubbers?’
‘Some of it might have leaked into the machine when the Sprite was back in the pens,’ said Amelia.
T’ricola indicated a hole in the copper tube feeding the scrubbers. ‘This was holed through with a metal punch, and then the glue was deliberately poured in. I checked our stores. There’s a can of fixative missing.’
Commodore Black tapped the burnt machinery in frustration. ‘That’s a mortal clever way to sabotage a boat. Not quite enough to sink us and move us all along the Circle, but sufficient to keep us on the surface like a dead fish waiting to be spotted by the gulls.’
Amelia looked at the commodore. ‘We can’t stay submerged under the river now?’
‘We’re not one of your pocket aerostats, Amelia. We have no chimneys on the Sprite and we can’t vent our engines through the periscope. If the scrubbers have packed up, then we have to dump the exhaust manually, rather than converting it into dust bricks, and that means running with open vents up on the surface.’
T’ricola angrily kicked the puddled water left by the fire crew. ‘It’s one of Bull’s people that did this. They think if we scratch the expedition before we get to Rapalaw Junction then they all get to sail free back to Jackals with full pardons in their pockets.’
‘Then they’ll be thinking wrong,’ said Black. ‘T’ricola, tell Billy and Gabriel to be keeping an eye on the crew. Then find Veryann and send her down here.’
Amelia almost felt sorry for whoever had done the damage when the situation was explained to Veryann. The Catosian turned pale with anger as the implications of the sabotage settled in.
‘Can this be repaired?’ Veryann asked.
‘Ah, my poor boat. We may be able to jury-rig her at one of the larger workshops in Rapalaw Junction,’ said the commodore. ‘We shall see. If anyone can repair a gas scrubber in this state, it is T’ricola. She can coax melted iron and twisted steel back to life. I have seen her do it before.’
‘I shall post armed sentries,’ said Veryann. ‘Have Gabriel McCabe indicate all your vital systems to us — the things a traitor would go for next: the main pistons, our water supply, fuel, our air. We must guard them all.’
‘I’ll do that, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘But be warned, there is not much on my beautiful Sprite that is not vital to our survival.’
Veryann stood looking crossly at the ruined machinery in the scrubber chamber as the commodore and Amelia turned to leave for the main engine room.
‘My poor stars,’ she heard Black groan. ‘Is it not enough that to get my own boat back I have to plunge her into the heart of treacherous Liongeli? Now I find I have a wicked cuckoo making a home in my nest.’
A cuckoo? One of Bull Kammerlan’s convicts trying to shorten their sentence? Veryann pulled out her boot knife — almost a short sword — and rammed it into the exposed tiles. If the commodore had been shown the second crystal-book back in Middlesteel, he might think differently. Someone on board was playing a very dangerous game in trying to stop Abraham Quest’s expedition. Someone who obviously knew things they had no right to know. But a u-boat sailing up the Shedarkshe was a dangerous place to keep a secret. She would make sure that whoever held it would be leaving it in the jungle … along with their decaying bones.
CHAPTER FIVE
Damson Beeton clutched the cream card of the invitation, her cotton mittens barely keeping the chill out as the cold lifted off the Gambleflowers’ waters and washed across the island. The Islands of the Skerries sat in the middle of Middlesteel’s great river, their isolation making them an ideal home for the Jackelian quality; those rich enough not to want to bother with tall walls for their mansions, or private guards to keep the fingers of the capital’s cracksmen, anglers, rampers and myriad other trades of the criminal flash mob out of their silver.
Rich enough to pay for isolation, although, much to the damson’s disgust in this particular instance, not rich enough to want to pay for a full staff to clean Dolorous Hall. A single housekeeper and butler, and not much of a butler at that, to keep a gentleman of the master’s station in the state he deserved to be kept in. It was not proper. No it wasn’t. Not that anyone even knew where the master’s wealth came from. Family money, so the gossip ran. Twenty thousand gold guineas a year. Almost as rich as a real gentleman like Abraham Quest, or one of the bankers from the counting houses of Sun Gate. Jackals was a nation of shopkeepers and merchants, but as well as he paid her, the master of the house would not stretch to any staff larger than a few day-men and maids boated across every morning to help her dust, cook and keep the gardens. It simply was not proper.
‘Every afternoon, he is always here,’ she said to Septimoth, the silent butler waiting beside her. ‘It is not right.’
Septimoth stood there, a statue in the cold — a bony lizard-like statue with wings folded like those of a stone angel. That was another thing. Who ever heard of having a lashlite as a retainer? Graspers made fine servants. Steammen would toil for you all day long and bear life’s travails with stoic resolve. But a lashlite? They preferred their village nests in the mountains and hunts high in the airless atmosphere, tracking the balloon-like skraypers that preyed on airships. Now there was a valuable service to the nation. Hunting skraypers. As a butler, Septimoth — surly, enigmatic lashlite that he was — was frankly abominable.
‘It is his habit,’ said Septimoth. ‘We must respect his wishes, Damson Beeton.’
‘Tish and tosh,’ said the housekeeper. ‘He needs to be out and about, embracing society, not drinking alone in the cold halls of this old place.’ She waved her invitation at the lash-lite. ‘Every day I feed the fireplace with a dozen such as this, all unanswered by him. The height of rudeness. Society wishes to clutch us to its b
osom, Septimoth, and we should not turn our back on society.’
‘I believe the master has finished his meditation now,’ said Septimoth.
‘Meditation is it, you say?’ said Damson Beeton. ‘That’s a fancy name for moping about, in my book.’
Septimoth kept his own counsel, and Damson Beeton tutted. How many more nights would she have to stand and ogle the other islands of the Skerries — the river awash with taxi-boat lanterns rowing the great and the good to parties and dinners, the laughter in the gardens, the blaze of chandeliers? It was obvious that the grim corridors of Dolorous Hall would be better filled with the product of her social organizing. But then, would anyone come if she got her way? Dolorous Isle was said to be unlucky. Cursed by its proximity to the old heart of Middlesteel, the part of the city drowned by the great flood of 1570, and then drowned again by design when the river was widened to stop a reoccurrence of the disaster. River boats piloted by those new to the trade still often struck the spire of Lumphill Cathedral protruding from the water, despite parliament’s red buoys bobbing in the currents nearby.
In the garden, the master stood up, leaving his apple tree behind as he shut the gate on the little enclosure. Cornelius Fortune looked tired, even to Damson Beeton’s eyes. The lash-lite and the old woman followed their employer back to the steps of the mansion.
Cornelius noticed the invitation Damson Beeton was clutching. ‘Is it tonight, damson? I had forgotten, to tell you the truth. I should sleep now, I am so tired, but if you have said yes …’
‘Sleep? Why you are a slack-a-bed, sir, you have been sleeping all through the morning and the afternoon. The least you can do now is take the air of the evening in polite company.’
Cornelius rubbed his red eyes. ‘Forgive me, Damson Beeton. It seems as if I have been up for hours.’
‘This is an event to raise finances for the poor,’ chided the housekeeper. ‘Presided over by the House of Quest. There is a function every evening for the rest of the week, so if you can’t make this night, you have no excuse for not attending the other evenings! There will be members of the House of Guardians there, perhaps even the First himself, that old rascal Benjamin Carl. There will be many great ladies looking for suitable matches and-’
Cornelius took the invitation and ran his eyes over it before handing it back. ‘I am glad to see the “poor” will be so well catered for, damson. Light a lantern to call a boat. I shall go.’
Oblivious to his sarcasm the housekeeper bustled off; mollified that she had got her way at last. As she left, she chuckled at herself. She was really very good as a housekeeper. Sometimes she could go for a couple of weeks without remembering once what she really was. But that was as it should be. ‘Damson Beeton’ had been very carefully crafted and put together. Every little quirk. Every little nuance. Now, where in the garden had she stored that damned lantern oil?
‘Your arm is still hurting you; I can see it in the way you walk,’ noted Septimoth. ‘You are taking a boat to visit the old man in the shop?’
‘You know me too well,’ said Cornelius, watching their housekeeper waddle away. He flexed his right arm, the joints hardly moving. ‘I think there’s a rifle ball still lodged in it.’
‘You take too many risks,’ said Septimoth.
Cornelius reached out and touched his friend’s leathery shoulder. ‘No, old friend, most weeks I take far too few.’
‘Do you wish me to come with you?’
‘No. I shall travel to his house like a gentleman,’ said Cornelius. ‘His neighbours will certainly talk if they see you dropping me out of the sky on his roof.’
Septimoth nodded and pulled out his most precious possession, a bone-pipe: all that was left of his mother. ‘Then I shall play for a while.’
Cornelius smiled. Damson Beeton would be pleased. He left Septimoth walking up the stairs to the hatch in the loft, the eyrie between the mansion’s smoke stacks, where he would crouch like a leathery gargoyle and fill the island grounds with his inhuman tunes. It was no wonder the river’s pilots believed this stretch of the water was haunted.
The alien melody had begun as Cornelius reached the quay, the glass door of Damson Beeton’s lantern rattling in the breeze, spilling drops of slipsharp oil down onto the wooden planks.
A long dark shape pulled out of the river, the pilot at the back lifting his oars. ‘Evening, squire.’ The pilot pointed at the other figure sitting in the front of the skiff. ‘Don’t mind if you double up, do you, squire? The islands are fair humming tonight, as busy as I’ve ever seen them. Parties all over the place.’
Cornelius nodded and stepped down into the boat, the other passenger shifting uneasily. Cornelius’s nondescript greatcoat was drawn tight and it gave little clue to its owner’s station. The coat would have suited a private on leave from the regiments as well as it would have covered the finery of a dandy visiting a wealthy relative on the Skerries.
The fact that its social ambivalence allowed its wearer to play either part was not lost on the other passenger, who erred on the side of caution and gave a greeting. ‘A cold night, sir, for such frivolity. It seems there is a ball on almost every piece of land along the river this night.’
Cornelius decided it would be easiest if he put his fellow passenger at ease. ‘I shall have to take my cousin to task, sir, for it seems he never entertains at Dolorous Hall.’
‘I did note the dark windows on your isle, but there is no shame in that. There is entirely too much frivolity in Middlesteel these days.’ He lifted a surgeon’s bag that had been hidden behind his seat. ‘And as a man of medicine, I have often noted the effects that intemperate spirits may have on the body. Jinn, I would say, is the curse of our nation.’
‘Ah, a doctor.’ And a temperance man to boot.
‘Not of the two-legged kind,’ said the passenger. ‘Although I did start out in that noble profession. No, I practise on animals now. A vet. I have noted those who are in a position to do so often care more for their pets than for members of their own family. Indeed, I have just come from the house of Hermia Durrington — perhaps you know the good lady?’
Cornelius shook his head.
‘Her raven is sick and she is quite distraught. But I have prescribed a restorative and I have every confidence that the bird will soon be returned to its …’
Cornelius listened politely for the rest of the journey as the doctor of animals went on to describe every sick canine, feline, bird and mammal owned by the capital’s quality. Even as Cornelius was about to depart, leaving him in the boat, the vet seemed barely aware that he had discovered nothing about his fellow passenger, or that the groans coming from the oarsman were not entirely the result of rowing against the current of the Gambleflowers.
‘I should give you a discount on that ride, squire,’ whispered the pilot as he stopped to let Cornelius alight along a row of dark steps cut into the river embankment.
Cornelius passed him twice the fare. ‘And I shall give you a tip for bearing the rest of the journey.’
As Cornelius watched the boat slip back into the darkness of the river, his face began to melt, his skin turning to streams of liquid flesh, folding and refashioning itself into an exact duplicate of the vet’s features.
‘Her raven is sick and she is quite distraught,’ Cornelius cackled. He pitched the voice again, lower, until it was an exact duplicate of the vet’s own tones.
Anybody who had been watching would have seen a surgeon of animals stroll away into Middlesteel, while the river taxi bore away its remaining passenger — presumably one Cornelius Fortune — into the stream of the Gambleflowers.
As was his habit, Cornelius Fortune assumed the face of the man he had come to visit. Unlike most of those who were on the receiving end of Cornelius’s visitations, Dred Lands — proprietor of the Old Mechomancery Shop along Knocking Yard — would not be shocked to meet someone wearing his own face. After all, Dred Lands hardly had much use for it himself these days.
The outside door
of the shop was a cheap wooden affair with a latch that was easily lifted by a cracksman’s jimmy, but it was the hall inside where the real security began.
Two iron doors that would have honoured the front of a bank vault barred Cornelius’s way, an old but efficient blood-code machine jutting out from the wall. Cornelius pressed his thumb on the needle, a tear of his blood trickling into its nib as the transaction engine’s drums clicked and clacked in their rotary chamber. Even Cornelius could not imitate another’s essence to the level of detail required to fool one of these machines, but deception would not be needed here. Not when it was mainly his financial resources that funded the life and occupation of one of the few individuals in Middlesteel more reclusive than himself.
On the other side of the doors a steamman waited. Not one of the incredible beings of the life metal from the Steamman Free State, but a dull automaton — little more than an iron zombie — its parts scavenged from the unreliable Catosian servant machines that were available in the more exclusive markets of the capital. Lacking a voicebox as well as the wit to use it, the juddering creature limped down the corridor, through what passed for a showroom for the Old Mechomancery Shop, little more than a warehouse of pawned items awaiting repair.
The steamman’s four arms turned in a slow windmill fashion, keeping balance and urging Cornelius down a spiral staircase. You really had to know where to look to spot the duke’s hole inside the cellar; the fact that the shop was still standing was a testament to that. Six hundred years ago if Isambard Kirkhill and the parliamentarians’ new pattern army had discovered the hidden door, they would have burned the shop down to its foundation stones, along with a few of its neighbours, as a lesson. The metal servant triggered a hidden hatch and a section of the cellar floor opened up, revealing a square of orange light. They went down a line of narrow iron treads like a ship’s stairs. Below, more metal servants tended massive night orchids behind a glass wall, feeding the plants rats — no doubt cornered and trapped in the cold shop above. The rest of the chamber was fitted out like something from a Cassarabian harem or a Middlesteel bawdy house. When the royalists in the capital had hidden down here, they had hidden in style.
