From the Deep of the Dark j-6

by Stephen Hunt

  Coming across the gantries marched steammen — the human-milled variety, rather than citizens of the Steamman Free State. They were a polished copper colour, hulking things seven feet tall with a single rotating transaction-engine drum turning in the middle of each chest. On their back they had twin stacks behind each shoulder blade. Their head units resembled a cuirassier’s helmet, each with three camera-like eyes giving their skulls an insectoid appearance. Some had two arms, but many had multiple limbs — four, five, six or more arms, or tools and cutting equipment serving as appendages.

  Sadly noticed where Charlotte was looking. ‘We’ve always relied on automatics on the island. Locals are happy to help out with most things, but they don’t like coming inside the volcano. Old superstitions die hard.’

  ‘All those years in your gaff,’ said Dick Tull, the bitterness in his voice evident. ‘Me eating that slop you served and taking whatever scraps and tip-offs you tossed my way — and all that time you had all of this behind you.’

  Sadly didn’t appear even slightly embarrassed by the subterfuge. ‘A lot more than this, once, Mister Tull. And again, soon. The Court’s far subtler than the sea-bishops. A nudge here, a nudge there, and softly softly catchy monkey. We’ve always operated on the principle that you receive a much easier ride in the great game if your opponent doesn’t realize there’s an opponent sitting in the chair opposite the board.’

  ‘So it’s true then?’ said Daunt. ‘The Court has a predictive model of society running on its transaction-engines. You really believe you can shape the world’s events to a single plan?’

  ‘You and your inquisition friends,’ said Sadly, only half a sneer. ‘It would be truer to say we’ve got a backup of the original model running now, says I. What with all that bother during the invasion. The accuracy of the new model will be up to snuff by the time the next Court of the Air is refloated.’

  ‘You detected the infiltration of the Kingdom off the back of transaction-engine analysis?’ Dick asked, not bothering to hide his surprise.

  ‘Punch card artists are good for a lot more than working out how much has been paid in taxes and who’s shelled out enough to become a duke this year,’ said Sadly.

  The State Protection Board officer looked grey and tired. ‘I’ve got to get out of this bloody game, I really have. I used to think I understood how it operated, how things were done. Instead…’ his voice trailed off.

  ‘We’re on the same side, really,’ said Sadly. ‘It’s just the Court’s in for the long haul, the long view.’

  ‘That you are,’ said the commodore. ‘But this government rascal and the likes of poor old Blacky, we haven’t got enough years left apiece to play along, nor the energy remaining to care for the cleverness and cunning wheezes you’ve got turning on your thinking machines’ drums.’

  ‘I rather think your people have lost sight of the human perspective, good agent,’ said Daunt. ‘For all you’ve tried to do here, protecting the Kingdom, our future’s pivoted on the fate of young Damson Shades and the actions of myself, Boxiron, the commodore and-’

  Sadly interrupted. ‘But then, the Court’s not the only one with a plan, eh?’ He looked at Charlotte. Still, Elizica passed no comment to Charlotte. ‘And there’s a thin line between assistance and meddling when it comes to the Court’s calculations.’

  Daunt winked at Charlotte. ‘I wonder what side of the line we will be judged as occupying?’

  ‘So do I,’ sighed Sadly. ‘Like I said before, we’re not the organisation we used to be. Half our lot were listed as dead and missing after the Army of Shadows’ invasion, with the vacancies left filled by greenhorns, agents bought out of retirement and support staff.’

  They docked with a large building built into the opposite side of the crater. The commodore was the second to step out of the cable car, following Charlotte. ‘The mill’s been shut down, the labourers laid off, but the clerks in the counting house are still shuffling around their blessed pieces of paper, is it?’

  ‘We’re in a better state than that,’ said Sadly, but something in the way he said it made Charlotte think that the old u-boat man might be closer to the mark than the agent would prefer.

  Sadly led them into the building, through a nest of corridors and stairs, until the smooth rock face of the mountainous volcano replaced the metal walls of the building. Guards in close-fitting leather uniforms checked them before admitting the party any further into the complex. They carried strange-looking rifles with bulbous stocks that caught the commodore’s attention. Sadly explained that they were gas-rifles, capable of firing steel darts at enormous velocities from the rotating drums above their forestock without the need to break the rifle and insert a fresh charge after each shot. They could no doubt maintain a murderously fast rate of fire. Not quite as bulky as airship gas cylinders, Charlotte had a few acquaintances back in Middlesteel’s criminal underworld that would pay a small fortune to acquire such a weapon. But how to get it off the Isla Furia without getting caught?

  There was a chlorine smell about the corridors they passed through. The scent sparked a memory of the public bathing rooms back in the capital — residue from the centuries of celgas mining operations, perhaps. Led into a large chamber, Charlotte saw they were left in front of a raised floor and a series of chairs, behind which curved one of the clear almost magically transparent view screens displaying the smoking vista of the Fire Sea beyond. Only one of the chairs was occupied, a balding man with two patches of wispy white hair clinging behind large ears, staring down on them over a pair of hexagonally framed spectacles. Charlotte had seen enough colleagues sent down in front of the middle court back home to know what this chamber was meant to signify. He cut a lonely figure up on the raised floor, a magistrate with most of his stenographers and court officials missing.

  ‘This,’ Sadly introduced, ‘is the acting advocate-general of the Court of the Air, Lord Edwin Trabb.’ He bowed towards the seat above. ‘And my lord advocate, these are the group who have been frustrating the schemes of the infiltrators we now know as the sea-bishops. Jethro Daunt, ex of the church, Jared Black, ex of the royalist fleet-in-exile, Dick Tull, ex of the State Protection Board, and Charlotte Shades, ex of the flash mob and the present guardian of King Jude’s sceptre.’

  ‘The clever, the desperate, the barely competent, and the incorrigibly criminal,’ said Lord Trabb. ‘As strange a group as I’ve had presented before me in a long time.’

  ‘You can’t have many visitors out here,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘I believe you’ve seen the hulls of those that do,’ said Lord Trabb. ‘Mounds of hasty trespassers sunk on our doorstep and overgrown with fire coral.’

  ‘ Acting advocate-general,’ said Daunt. ‘And whom might I inquire are you acting for?’

  ‘Ah yes, the clever one.’ Lord Trabb pushed his glassed back on his nose. He seemed to enjoy lecturing them. The chamber was starting to feel less like a courtroom and more like a schoolroom. ‘Well, you’ve given our elusive enemy a name and a face, albeit not quite the one we were expecting, so why not? I am acting for Lady Riddle, who was declared missing when the old Court of the Air was destroyed in the invasion. My department was the only one to survive unscathed, so it seemed natural for me to occupy the role. I would declare myself the real thing and dispense with the formalities, but milady Riddle has a disconcerting habit of disappearing and then reappearing when you least expect her.’

  ‘And your department, good agent?’ said Daunt.

  ‘Section Six,’ said Trabb. ‘The Service and Engineering Corps.’

  The commodore looked unhappy at the news. ‘Ah, that’s a bad turn. We’ve come seeking a way to keep this sceptre out of our wicked foes’ clutches and instead we find grease-stained fingers guiding the tiller, not the skipper’s firm grip.’

  ‘Come now, I hardly think the desperate one is in a position to cherrypick his allies,’ said Lord Trabb. ‘And by your words you mark yourself out to be a fool. Who better to rebuild
the Court of the Air than the very marshalling yards that maintained the old aerial city, the same academy that trained the old agents to teach the new? We have a backup model of the Kingdom’s society running here, the perfect template for the perfect democracy. That is all that matters in the end.’

  ‘It’ll matter a lot less than you think, lad, when the demons chasing the sceptre turn up in their darkships, wanting to open the gates to their terrible home full of hungry ravening beasts.’

  ‘I would council against complacency,’ said Daunt. ‘From what we’ve seen, the sea-bishops have fully infiltrated the Advocacy’s leadership. When they come for the sceptre, it will no doubt be at the head of a sizeable gill-neck force.’

  ‘I had no idea the Circlist church’s remit extended to military matters?’ said Lord Trabb. ‘I rather had the notion you were all pacifists. To kill another is to kill myself and all that synthetic morality cant.’ He waved Daunt’s concerns aside. ‘It is all in the model now. The sea-bishops and their schemes are fully accounted for.’

  ‘Popinjay!’ Elizica’s words jabbed into Charlotte’s mind. ‘Am I to trust this dusty clerk, this oily-ragged boiler repairer with protecting the sceptre? Knowing of the sea-bishops’ existence is not the same as having won hard experience of fighting them.’

  ‘Tell me you can protect the sceptre,’ said Charlotte. ‘That you can protect the Kingdom.’

  ‘My dear, it’s what the Court’s been doing for a lot longer than you’ve been around. The enemy are weak and far from home and dependent on secrecy and their little tricks of illusion to prosper. Now that we know what to look for, we’ll root them out like a gardener clubbing moles with a spade, eh?’

  Charlotte began to protest, but the acting head of the Court of the Air cut her off. ‘You will have quarters made available to you in Nuyok below while our analysts follow the repercussions of your new information through our models. The course of action we need to pursue will be arrived at in good time. In the meantime, we will need to test King Jude’s sceptre and see if there is a way to destroy the key-gem, to cut the sea-bishops off from further reinforcements of their race for good. I am having testing facilities prepared and we will send for it shortly.’

  Their interview, it seemed, was over, and guards led the party away from the chamber.

  ‘All my bloody working life,’ Dick said to Sadly. ‘I’ve been raised on tales of how all-seeing and omnipotent the Court of the Air is. Like ghosts in the machine, moving through the shadows and disappearing people before they ever posed a threat. All enemies, foreign and domestic, living in fear of the legendary wolftakers. And this is the bleeding reality? You’re no better than the State Protection Board. Run by blue-blood idiots and leaving dross like me to get the job done right. What’s that slur your people used to call the board’s officers?’

  ‘The glass men,’ said Sadly. ‘But this isn’t the Court of the Air, Mister Tull. This is just what’s left of it after the Court was destroyed. And it will be rebuilt and refloated again.’

  Daunt frowned. ‘Is that likely to happen before the sea-bishops trace the sceptre back to the Isla Furia, good agent?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I think we better make some plans of our own,’ added Charlotte. And quickly.

  Daunt watched Charlotte lay King Jude’s sceptre down on the table of the roof garden while Commodore Black quickly reached for a bottle of corn whisky Sadly had produced, as if he was worried that the sceptre’s presence might contaminate his drink. ‘A precious drop of the local fire water, that’s what’s needed to lubricate my thinking. For never was there a more dangerous puzzle than how to keep this wicked key-gem out of the clutches of its demon owners.’

  It didn’t seem to matter what time of the day it was, wherever you stood on the Isla Furia, you were always accompanied by the sound of the wind whistling. Sometimes it was a soft, gentle breeze. Other times a hard violent force rattling the shutters that stood ready to be lowered over the porcelain towers’ windows. But gentle or hard, the whistling was a constant companion for the people of the city. Where it buffeted the slopes of the volcano, it literally whistled, seeking out the holes in the porous rock and singing through its crevices.

  Dick Tull leant back in his chair. ‘We could hoof it out to one of the other great powers — Cassarabia or Pericur, maybe. Someone without much love for the Kingdom or the Advocacy and able to protect the sceptre from both.’

  ‘Who’s to say their nations won’t be infiltrated, or maybe the caliph and the grand-duchess will just decide to cut a side-deal with the sea-bishops like the royalists have done?’ said Sadly. ‘Don’t trust them, says I.’

  ‘The sceptre is as safe here as anywhere,’ said Daunt. ‘Which is to say, not very safe at all. And the good agent has a point; at least here we can be assured that the Court of the Air’s best interests are aligned with the Kingdom’s own. On foreign shores we would have no such guarantee. There would be incalculable political variables as well as the threat of the enemy’s darkships arriving to seize the sceptre by force.’ Far too risky.

  ‘The sceptre is never going to be safe,’ said Charlotte. ‘Someone can always steal it. I proved that.’

  ‘The time of the sea-bishops exercising caution is over,’ said Daunt. ‘They know their presence here in our world stands revealed now. I believe they will act decisively to seize back the key-gem. They need to open the gate to their home before word of their nature spreads and we locals band together to cast them out, unite to destroy them prior to their numbers swelling.’

  ‘Just my luck. All those tales of dashing, seductive vampires in the penny-dreadfuls, and when I finally meet them, they turn out to be fish-faced monsters with a head like a bludger’s wedding tackle.’ Charlotte tapped the sceptre thoughtfully. ‘It looks like we’re going to need to split up, then. First, word of the sea-bishops’ return must be spread. Second, the sea-bishops themselves must be confronted and thrown back to hell. Lastly, the sceptre needs to be protected here.’

  ‘Is that you talking, lass, or that ancient phantom knocking round your noggin?’ asked the commodore, his sweaty fingers clutching the glass of alcohol. ‘Three tasks, and each of them larger than the number of brave souls we have in our band to carry them out.’

  ‘It’s the only way,’ insisted Charlotte. ‘I don’t want to take this on any more than you do. I didn’t ask for this. My easy life finished when that monster masquerading as Walsingham chose me as the sceptre’s thief and a convenient corpse he could turn over to the constabulary. One thing I do know, we’re not going to beat the enemy sheltering on this island, waiting for the gill-neck fleet to arrive and bottle us in here.’

  Sadly nodded. ‘Warning the Kingdom will be my job, says I. I’m as like to get it officially anyway, when our analysis section decides its time to move in and clean house back home.’ He glanced at Dick. ‘Will Algo Monoshaft believe news of the sea-bishops’ invasion if we get it to him?’

  ‘He’s as mad as a bag of badgers, that one,’ said Dick. ‘Paranoid enough to believe his own staff were traitors. But the head might believe it, if it’s me that tells him. He was halfway to getting to the truth as it was… he knew something was rotten in the Kingdom and it was Monoshaft who told me that the Court of the Air was back in the great game. I thought he was mad at the time.’

  ‘As my old ma said, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’

  ‘Getting to him won’t be easy, and that’s if he’s still alive,’ said Dick. ‘They might have already topped him by now. I don’t think the sea-bishops can con us into thinking they’re steammen, otherwise the head of the board’d be dead already.’

  ‘No,’ said Sadly. ‘I reckon they like the shadows and pulling the strings from the backroom.’ He looked at Daunt. ‘There were lots of numbers twos and threes on your list from the graveyard, Mister Daunt, but not many number ones. The spotlight doesn’t suit the sea-bishops.’

  ‘As elusive a
s they have been,’ said Daunt, ‘I have a disturbing feeling that is going to change. How do you propose taking the fight to the sea-bishops, Charlotte? Or should we be asking Queen Elizica?’

  Charlotte felt the queen’s presence swell inside her.

  ‘You may ask me, priest of the Circle. The only way to beat them is to enter their seed-city and steal another shield unit from their craft, use it to lock them away in a loop of time again,’ said Elizica.

  ‘Ah, you terrible phantom,’ begged the commodore. ‘There must be another way.’

  ‘I can think of only one other way of stopping them,’ said Elizica. ‘And we should not attempt it, as it’s too dangerous. Stealing one of their shield generators and trapping them in time is the best course of action. It worked before.’

  ‘Before, my royal bloody highness, you had seven great heroes to sneak into the seed-city, and what do we have here? An ex-parson that even the church doesn’t want, a thieving stage trickster, a couple of double-dealing spies, and poor old Blacky, tired and dying.’

  ‘And with myself and Boxiron, I count seven,’ said Elizica.

  ‘The long dead and the near-dead is it?’ whined the commodore. ‘Is that how we will make up our numbers? Let me stay here. Let poor old Blacky stay here with a few jars of corn whisky and guard the sceptre from these demons and my wicked sister and their gill-neck puppets.’

  Charlotte felt the queen make her mind up almost as soon as the old u-boat man had finished speaking. ‘That is not the role I have for you. Jethro Daunt must stay on the Isla Furia to guard the sceptre. Am I right?’

  ‘I cannot in good conscience abandon Boxiron here, as wounded as my friend is. I will stay to assist his recovery and if it falls on me to keep the key-gem and the sceptre safe, then I shall do all that I can to ensure it stays out of the sea-bishops’ hands.’

  ‘Well then,’ said the commodore. ‘If Daunt is to stay here and prepare for a siege, and Dick and Sadly are to warn the Kingdom of the monsters that walk among us, just who do you expect to be sneaking into the sea-bishops’ evil city?’