by Stephen Hunt
Amelia looked over at T’ricola. ‘Is Billy not feeling hungry?’
‘Same reason he doesn’t drink blackstrap or rum rations,’ said T’ricola. ‘Billy has his funny ways. I think it might be religious.’
Amelia shrugged. There were extreme Circlist sects that did not eat meat, but most Jackelians had a hearty taste for a good steaming plate of red meat and roast potatoes drowning in gravy. Out in the shires, the doctors were known to prescribe red wine and hot roast beef to sickening children.
‘My ways are not that funny,’ said Billy, sitting down again.
Sweet Circle, he must have heard the two of them talking halfway across the room.
‘Despite what Bull’s pirates think to the contrary. It never sat well with me, that the price of my existence should be the end of something else’s.’
‘And the juice in your mug rather than a tot of rum?’ asked Amelia.
‘I like a ration of rum as much as the next man, professor, but when you’re running shy of a sense, you take trouble not to dull your remaining ones,’ said Billy. ‘Besides, you’re a fine one to be speculating about my funny ways. Most academics would be happy enough blowing the dust off journals back in Jackals, not dreaming of some ancient paradise that may or may not be lost beneath this green hell we are sailing through.’
There was a weight of things Amelia wanted to reply to that, but she had long since grown weary of trying to haul them out of her past — all the long evening conversations about Camlantis with her father, huddled under a blanket by a snug fire grate while hail tapped against their window — trying to find a way to reawaken that dream, that memory in her present. It was so hard, made her so cursed exhausted, attempting to explain the dream, attempting to justify it. Amelia speared a lump of stewed mutton in her bowl. ‘I guess you’ll just have to think of the lost city as my plate of salad at the spit-roast, Billy.’
Damson Beeton pursued Septimoth down the corridor. ‘What do you mean, the master’s delayed? His supper is waiting for him as dry as a Cassarabian sand garden inside my oven.’
‘His business is keeping him in Middlesteel this evening,’ said Septimoth.
‘Oh it is, is it, you old bird? Appointment with his tailor overrunning? You two will be the death of me.’
‘I am sure we will not, damson.’
‘So you say.’ Damson Beeton produced a bone pipe from beneath the folds of her pinny. ‘If so, then why did I nearly trip over this and crack my skull outside?’
‘My flute!’ Septimoth’s folded wings nearly expanded into their glide position. The seers of the crimson feather had made their decision, and returned his bone flute as a sign. Things must be worse than he had imagined, then, for them to turn to him for help.
‘Your ma’s old spine. Left on the top step of the main hall. I was going into the herb garden and nearly came a cropper tripping over this.’
Septimoth took the flute back and tucked the instrument into his belt. ‘Thank you, damson, I had mislaid it.’
‘Your poor mother,’ said Damson Beeton. ‘I thought her bones were meant to be holy and precious to you. If this is the way you treat them, then you can do me the favour of letting my spine rest in the grave when I move along the Circle, thank you very much. No. No lute for you stripped out of my poor weary back, you careless old bird.’
Septimoth bowed in acknowledgement and made to leave; he was grateful, too, that he wouldn’t have to be called on to perform his people’s death rites on the human housekeeper. Her corpse would be as tough as vulture meat, no doubt.
‘Hang on there,’ cried the housekeeper. ‘You haven’t told me where the master is, or what time I’m to be expecting him back?’
‘Do not worry, I’m sure he will return presently.’
The housekeeper tutted as Septimoth walked away. ‘Where is he, Septimoth? Has he accepted one of the invites to society I’ve been so carefully piling up?’
‘I’m sure he’s enjoying himself,’ Septimoth called back.
‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ whispered the mumbler as Cornelius writhed in the chair. ‘It’s a clever device, the crown of thorns. Not many working parts to go wrong. No.’
Cornelius had to wait for the rogue mechomancer to turn off the crown before he could reply. The trick of surviving a crown was to grit your teeth — so you didn’t bite your tongue off and bleed to death. If these thugs had been professionals, then they might have known that and given him the courtesy of a mouth guard to bite on. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘You can drop the act,’ said one of the thugs. ‘The, oh sir,let’s just settle the debt and be out of here bit. Which worldsinger changed your ugly features?’
‘I don’t-’
The thug grabbed Cornelius’s face and viciously squeezed it. ‘The plate in the floor you stood on by the cloakroom is connected to a transaction engine. Faces are easy to mimic with worldsinger sorcery — but weight? Your weight’s changed by two pounds, you idiot.’
Cornelius silently swore to himself. They weren’t the gang of simple bludgers he had taken them for. Smarter than the revolutionaries across the border in Quatershift, certainly. He had badly underestimated the sophistication of the flash mob.
‘You must be new in town,’ said the thug, ‘if you think you can come onto the Ruby Belle and count cards at our tables. You think that our boss likes to be swindled? You think she goes to bed with a big smile on her face knowing that scrotes like you have been dipping your hand in her pockets?’
His companion waved a sheaf of illustrations and real-box pictures in front of Cornelius; face after face of known card counters and cheats. ‘So here’s what you’re going to do, new boy. You’re going to give us the name of the back-street sorcerer that did your mug for you, then you’re going to tell us the system you were planning to use to swindle the house, and finally, you’re going off to meet the eels in the Gambleflowers.’
‘You three are good,’ said Cornelius. ‘They should have you upstairs as the entertainment.’
One of them backhanded Cornelius. ‘You’re the amusement, jigger. Tell us what we need to know and we’ll make your death a little easier.’
‘You’re not thinking big enough,’ said Cornelius. ‘I’m not here to count cards; I’m here working for a rival crew. And the rest of what I’ve got to say is for the Catgibbon’s ears only.’
That stopped them short.
‘I could tell you, but the Catgibbon is as like to kill you, when she finds out that you know what I have got to say.’
‘Get her,’ ordered the thug; then he turned to Cornelius. ‘If you’re playing us false …’
‘I know. Little pieces; eels; feeding.’
He smelt her before he saw her, the faint scent of honey, a scent designed by womb mages to drive men wild. The Catgibbon. An ugly name for such an alluring creature; but none of her other names would have done. Not for a high lord of the flash mob.
‘Hello, Jasmine,’ said Cornelius.
The creature that had entered the room looked at him with anger on her face, brushing back the light dusting of fur that covered the golden skin on the nape of her neck. ‘You had better have something good for me.’
‘Will a greeting do?’ said Cornelius, his face melting back to an approximation of his natural features. Damson Beeton might not have recognized him now, but there was more than a touch of Cornelius Fortune in the old face he was wearing.
‘You look good, for someone who’s been dead for nearly thirty years.’ The Catgibbon turned to the others in the room. ‘Get out.’
The tone of her voice indicated that she was not inviting debate. The whippers and the crooked mechomancer hustled out.
‘You look good, too,’ said Cornelius. He inclined his head to indicate the boat. ‘And you seem to have done well for yourself. You took over Dirty Porterbrook’s crew after he died, I presume.’
‘And a few others besides,’ said the Catgibbon.
‘You always were the brains beh
ind the operation, Jasmine. Everyone always used to look at you and stop with your body. They never bothered to wonder what was inside that head of yours.’
‘Brains enough that I never believed that body we found in the rookeries of Whineside was yours. I always knew you would disappear one day without a word. Just change your face and vanish into the crowd. It must be a constant temptation with your talent.’
‘We are what we were born to be.’
‘Yes, quite. Neither of us would have risen so far or so fast in Cassarabia, would we? Too many people who would recognize what we are.’
‘My father was Jackelian,’ said Cornelius.
‘Of course he was. But how happy would the caliph’s womb mages be if they knew that one of their tailor-made assassin bitches had escaped to Jackals and started breeding wild with the locals? I can still smell the half of you that’s your mother in your blood.’
‘Well, you smell as sweet as ever to me,’ said Cornelius. ‘Even if I am immune to the wiles of your sweat.’
‘Where did you go, farm boy?’
‘I tried my luck in Quatershift, before the troubles began.’
‘The court of the Sun King? Rich pickings, for the capital’s greatest thief.’
‘Actually,’ said Cornelius, ‘I tried going straight.’
The Catgibbon laughed at the idea. ‘That I would have liked to have seen. But now you’re back in Middlesteel. I can’t blame you. What have the shifties got left that’s worth stealing now? They can’t even put food on the table, let alone set it with silver plate to eat off. You’re not really working for a rival crew, are you?’
‘No,’ admitted Cornelius.
‘No. You barely tolerated working under Dirty Porterbrook’s patronage. But even you and your pliable assassin’s face couldn’t have afforded to have both Ham Yard and the flash mob hunting you down; which rather begs the question …’
‘What I’m really doing here? You’ve grabbed a friend of mine. A steamman friend. I was hoping to find him.’
The Catgibbon looked puzzled, then her delicate golden-furred face split into a most unladylike laugh. ‘Is that it? Is that all? No wonder I haven’t been reading news sheet tales of paintings and jewels mysteriously going missing from the residences of the quality. Sweet Circle, that’s a turn up for the books, you really have gone straight. What happened to you, Cornelius, what happened to the reign of crime of the Nightshifter?’
‘Allow that a year held in a Commonshare organized community changes a man’s perspective.’
The Catgibbon stroked his face, a cruel look settling on her face. ‘Poor you.’
‘Why is my friend lying in pieces on a table in your jinn house?’
‘Nothing personal, farm boy. He’s just a job, one that is paying handsomely at that.’
‘Grave robbing? You used to only take on jobs that amused you. The years have changed you.’
‘We’re no longer those two young greenhorns that arrived in Middlesteel without a guinea to our names,’ said the Catgibbon. ‘And the Nightshifter I remember wouldn’t have cared three turds for some senile old steamer that’s been nothing but a pigeon rest for most of the century.’
Damn it. She was too canny to spill the beans on the steamman’s fate, even with Cornelius tied up and at her mercy in the jinn palace.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll let me go then, for old time’s sake?’
She grinned at him, but not fondly. ‘I would love to, but you know how it works. If I let you go, everyone’s going to be talking about how the Catgibbon caught a card counter and went soft on him. Then the smaller crews will stop sending me my percentage and start sending me toppers with daggers down their trousers and strangle-cords sewn into their cuffs.’
‘I thought you might say something like that.’
She fingered the crown of thorns on his head. ‘I’m going to do exactly what you did to me. I’m going to walk out on you. Without a word. Without looking back. Then I’m going to let my crew turn your mind into a beef broth with our crown of thorns. You always liked wearing all those different faces — by the time my boys have finished with you, you’ll have a fresh new personality to go along with each of them.’
‘It irritates you, doesn’t it,’ said Cornelius, ‘that I’m as immune to the wiles of your body’s perfume as your old owners back in Cassarabia.’
‘You’re nothing but a halfbreed desert assassin,’ said the Catgibbon, ‘and if you wanted to keep on bloody living, you should have stayed back in Quatershift.’
Cornelius smiled. ‘It’s odd that you should say that, because part of me did stay behind in their death camp. I’d say round about the two extra pounds you spotted on your ingenious set of scales. Let me show you …’
He sent the flex command to his arm and the limb went rigid, snapping the cords binding him to the chair. She was diving for the door even as her whippers outside were piling back inside. But Cornelius wasn’t planning on leaving by the grand entrance. One of the double nozzles that had emerged from his artificial wrist sprayed the porthole with a circle of blow-barrel sap and he ducked as a squirt of ignition chamber liquid left his arm. The explosion scythed out above Cornelius, knocking the Catgibbon’s thugs back into the corridor while he flopped sideways out of the torn hull, the cold waters of the Gambleflowers slapping into his face as the Catgibbon’s scream of rage chased him down.
Lead balls bubbled past him, the pistol shots’ velocity broken by the black river waters. He swum downwards, watching the crown of thorns carried away towards the darkness of the river bottom, chased to the deeps by the flash mob’s volley. A gutta-percha tube snaked out of his arm and Cornelius took a greedy gulp of air as his feet beat him down deeper into the grasp of old mother Gambleflowers. The tidal flow quickly sucked him out west, the jinn house nowhere to be seen when he finally broke the surface. He must have been carried a mile downriver at least. Cornelius’s life would be far more dangerous now that the head of the flash mob knew he was alive and living in Middlesteel. But there was nothing to connect his old life to his solitary existence on Dolorous Isle. Nothing to connect a ghost-like thief that had made fools out of Ham Yard with the demon of vengeance stalking Quatershift.
The man had won without the mask.
‘You were lucky tonight,’ the words drifted down the river from Dolorous Isle.
‘I let myself be captured to find out more about their plans.’
‘Keep telling yourself that,’ whispered the mask.
Hotter each day, the Sprite of the Lake followed the Shedarkshe southeast. The hull of the u-boat seemed to sweat tears of coolant, the creak and crack of the heat exchangers the expedition’s constant companion. Nerves were on edge now — fights and squabbles a daily affair — as they charted waters that had never been inked on any explorer’s map. The commodore marked their progress with a compass and cartographer’s nib, the blank expanse on the neatly lined roll of paper a reminder of how deep into the unknown they were sailing.
‘No sign of any seed ships yet,’ said Commodore Black. ‘We’ll be running into their borderlands soon. I hope our blessed steamman knows what he is about.’
Amelia stood behind the two pilot seats and gritted her teeth. If the mercurial Ironflanks didn’t know where they were going then the whole expedition was in trouble.
‘The Daggish are out there,’ said Bull Kammerlan. ‘If they’re not patrolling this far west, it’s a measure of their strength, not weakness.’
‘I thought it was only Ironflanks who had ventured this far out?’ said Amelia. ‘What do you know about it?’
Bull grinned. ‘The craynarbians around the fringes of the greenmesh worship the Daggish. When you think the gods protect you, you tend to get careless. Easy pickings.’
‘You really are disgusting,’ said Amelia. ‘How many thousands of lives did your slavers ruin in Liongeli?’
‘The way I see it, girl, we were giving them a step up. You’ve only seen a taste of what it takes to survi
ve out in the jungle. Life on a Cassarabian slave block looks pretty sweet after you’ve survived out in this hell for a few years.’
‘That must be why you had to gas their village,’ said Amelia, ‘rather than selling the tribes a passage downriver.’
‘You may be sniffy now, dimples, but it’s my crew’s knowledge of the Shedarkshe that’s kept your skull connected to your neck so far, rather than shrunk down to the size of an apple on some war chief’s necklace.’
‘That’s enough, Bull,’ said the commodore. ‘Your river lore’s got you and your rascals out of a water sentence back in Bonegate, so be thankful for that.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Bull. ‘The water is where we both belong, one way or another, eh?’
‘Old time’s sake only goes so far,’ warned the commodore.
‘Yes, I do seem to remember you saying that at my court martial.’
‘Channel is splitting up ahead, skipper,’ called Billy from his station. ‘Three courses.’
‘Stop, full,’ ordered the commodore. He pulled a speaking tube out of the wall and dialled Ironflanks’ quarters on the panel. ‘Up to the bridge with you, old steamer. You never said anything about a choice of tributaries in the river.’
Commodore Black looked puzzled. There was no answer from the speaking tube.
‘I’ll find him,’ said Amelia, swinging out of the pilot room.
Find him she did, lying in a pool of dark oil that had vomited out between the seal joins around his boiler, the smell of magnesium in the air as his legs jerked and twitched in the delusion of his quicksilver dreams. His trip did not look like a good one. For a moment she didn’t know whether she should feel pity or revulsion for the creature of the metal. She called the master of arms on the room’s speaker tube and Veryann turned up with two of her fighters fast behind her.
‘By the blood of Forman Thawnight,’ swore Veryann, seeing the half-comatose steamman lying on the floor. ‘I thought we had confiscated his stash of quicksilver.’
