by Stephen Hunt
‘You and I,’ said Charlotte, as the queen relinquished her voice. The plans of the spirit drifted in Charlotte’s mind as if they were her own. ‘An old thief and a young one. Who better?’
‘Ah lass, I would come gladly with you, but it can’t be done. You say the demons’ seed-city is on the bottom of the great trench that cuts the world’s seabed like a scar? No u-boat can go so deep, no bathysphere can withstand that pressure, not even the Court of the Air’s queer submersible. You’re talking about over eight tons per square inch; our hull would crumple like rice paper at six-thousand fathoms deep.’
‘You are quite right,’ said Charlotte. ‘That’s why you and I are going to need to steal the one kind of craft that can withstand that pressure, just as Elizica’s raiding party did before. We need to hijack a darkship!’
Daunt and Charlotte followed the Court’s white-coated functionary through a narrow corridor lined with pipes, leaking steam from ancient joins. It was warm inside. Daunt was glad they had a guide to lead them through the Court’s labyrinth inside the volcano; with few clues to differentiate one area from the next, even his memory would be stretched trying to trace his steps. Opening a large metal door at the end of the passage, the guide led them into a cavernous chamber. It was small wonder the volcano still appeared active outside, venting the steam from the mine works and all of this. The chamber they stood in was just the first of many interconnected recesses, the neighbouring vault holding enormous transaction-engines, the thinking machines’ heat driving the temperatures in the chamber close to the level of a sauna.
The first chamber they had been led to was filled with unfamiliar devices, and, of more immediate concern to Daunt, the horizontal form of Boxiron. His steamman friend lay stretched out in an open-lidded tank, half-floating in a pool of pink liquid while being tended to by engineers in white coats and leather aprons. One of the men in attendance was Lord Trabb, the lens of his hexagonal spectacles splattered with the soupy liquid covering Daunt’s friend.
‘You servant’s recovery is progressing well,’ said Lord Trabb, noting the two newcomers’ arrival.
‘He’s not a servant,’ said Daunt.
‘Colleague, acquaintance, friend,’ said Lord Trabb, wiping his glasses. ‘The label you choose has no bearing on the process we are using.’ He indicated the open casket. ‘We are feeding his steamman components, which have a remarkable capacity for growth and healing, while inserting new components from our own automatics into the nutrient gel to be absorbed by his structure.’
Daunt gazed down into the tank. There was a spider’s web of filaments stretched out over the gaping holes and missing limbs of Boxiron’s original body, hundreds of new components laid out like a child filling in a cardboard silhouette of a figure with crystals, boards and cogs. There were more parts ready on a cart next to the tank — armoured plates and hull pieces, as if a knight in armour’s plate had been assembled ready for the joust. But he’s still not conscious. Still not reanimated back into life. If anyone could bring him back, these people could. Some of the staff moving around the chamber were under guard, their legs and arms bound by heavy sets of chains as they shuffled between the machinery. These were the more pliant prisoners the Court of the Air had snatched out of the world. Mad geniuses and master criminals and science pirates, their talents kept under check by imprisonment inside the Court’s cells. Their capacity to create mischief forcibly redirected into the service of the state.
Daunt dipped a finger into the healing gel. It felt warm, like touching skin, the consistency of a conserve jam. On the other side of the tank, much to Daunt’s amazement, he saw Lord Trabb fish into his pocket to emerge with a familiar old friend. ‘Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drops?’
‘I find their consumption conducive to the efficacy of my mental quality,’ said Lord Trabb.
‘Indeed,’ said Daunt.
‘I do hope you are not a proponent of those scurrilous libels spread by their rivals in trade.’
‘Not at all,’ said Daunt. ‘I was actually hoping to impose myself on your hospitality for the gift of one. I did have my own supply, but I’m afraid they survived the privations of the Advocacy’s labour camp as little more than a swamp-water melange.’
‘A tragedy,’ said Lord Trabb. He eased the paper bag out of his pocket and passed it to Daunt. ‘You must have these. I keep a private stock laid in from our provisioning boat to the Kingdom.’
Manners nearly made Daunt refuse, but a sweet tooth and the knowledge that the next nearest bag was lingering hundreds of miles across the sea prodded the ex-parson to override the social niceties. He took the bag, extracting a sweet.
‘You prove my theory, Mister Daunt, that all of the Kingdom’s greatest minds find succour in Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drops.’ Lord Trabb obviously counted himself among that august company, but standing here with the scale of an ant surrounded by the Court’s massive machinery, the purpose of half of which Daunt found it hard to fathom, who was he to gainsay the acting head of the Court of the Air?
Daunt offered a sweet to Damson Shades, but she wrinkled her nose in disgust and shifted her willowy body to one side so she wouldn’t have to watch him suck on his, before pushing the remainder into his pocket. Obviously the Mistress of Mesmerism didn’t seek to enter Lord Trabb’s pantheon of genius through the sweets’ consumption. Even with the clarity of consuming the aniseed drop, Daunt could do nothing for Boxiron but put his trust in the ministrations of Trabb’s engineers and his gallery of rogues.
‘Boxiron will be fine,’ Charlotte reassured Daunt. ‘There is still the spark of life within him. Elizica senses it.’
Daunt’s fingers tightened around the edge of the tank. It was out of his hands now, there was nothing he could do for Boxiron but wait and refuse to pray.
‘I see that the key-gem is still intact,’ said Charlotte, pointing to where King Jude’s sceptre was held tight in a vice-like affair, surrounded by massive needle-nosed instruments on wheels. The smell of cordite hung heavy in the air as if they had just finished firing cannons at it. ‘As I told you it would be.’
‘It is a fascinating item,’ said Lord Trabb. ‘We believe it somehow exists across multiple worlds, sharing its storage capacity with gems twinned in other realities. That no doubt accounts for its remarkable resistance to physical forces in our world.’
‘Is there no way to destroy it?’ asked Daunt.
‘Not that we have at our disposal. But there is more than one way to skin a cat, eh?’ Trabb’s hand lifted towards the next chamber and the thousands of clacking transaction-engine drums revolving inside their vast thinking machines. ‘We have successfully copied the key to open the enemy’s gate onto our transaction-engines. My staff are working on decrypting the key’s information, corrupting it, re-encrypting it and then returning it to the key-gem in a form that will not be rejected. We may not be able to destroy the gem, but these sea-bishop tallywackers will find it a lot less useful if it connects their gate to some random world in the universe rather than their home reality.’
‘How long will that take?’ asked Charlotte.
Lord Trabb pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his pinched nose. ‘Months, at the very least. The encryption used is completely alien to us; it uses a form of mathematics that was hitherto unknown in this world. But have no fear,’ he indicated the prisoners shuffling around in chains. ‘To the world’s most diabolical and depraved minds, this is a welcome distraction from their incarceration.’
Charlotte shook her head in frustration. ‘Well, as long as they’re entertained, then.’
Lord Trabb seemed puzzled by her lack of enthusiasm for their work. ‘I can assure you, it’s an astonishing achievement, being able to extract a copy of the key from the gem’s substrate. It should have been impossible to accomplish, but one of our prisoners worked out a method…’
Daunt listened with polite weariness to a tortuous explanation about quantum reflections, indeterminacy and superpositions, b
efore watching the acting head of the Court move across to a plinth where another gem was held in a metal vice. It looked to be a twin for the Eye of Fate, but Daunt knew that still hung around Charlotte’s neck. This was the crystal Daunt had taken off the camp commandant’s corpse before they escaped into the Court’s clutches. Lord Trabb paused, lost in a world of abstract models and infinite scientific possibilities, until he remembered he was still conversing with the visitors to his island. ‘By comparison with the complexities of the key-gem, this chameleon crystal is the very model of simplicity. A multifaceted device that amplifies its owner’s powers to manipulate others’ minds, their mesmeric ability to pass unseen as a member of another race. It also interfaces with the sea-bishop’s common machinery, as well as serving as a communication, calculation and defensive tool. A veritable penknife holding a hundred blades.’
Not to mention a device for removing evidence of a sea-bishop’s presence when it dies. Daunt remembered how quickly the camp commandant’s corpse had combusted after he died.
‘Exploring the nature of the sea-bishops’ tools will not make you a better fighter against those monsters,’ said Charlotte; although Daunt detected an older voice hiding among her words.
‘On the contrary, my dear,’ said Lord Trabb, producing a small metal device the size of a shoebox. As he brought it near the sea-bishop’s chameleon crystal, a dial in the device started twitching. ‘Where you detect the energies of a chameleon crystal, you detect a sea-bishop. Along with the list of names you procured from the prison camp’s graveyard, Daunt, these detectors will serve as a functional method for winkling out the tallywackers hiding within our ranks in the Kingdom.’
The obituaries section of the newssheets back home was, Daunt suspected, about to lengthen by a couple of column inches if Lord Trabb had his way. Lots of shut casket funerals where a rash of accidents left the great and the good vaporized or incinerated beyond recognition.
‘And with such chameleon crystals,’ continued Lord Trabb, ‘we have the answer to where the gill-necks developed the knowledge to cultivate their crystalline cities and other knickknacks. Doubtless pillaged from the wreckage of the sea-bishops’ last attempt to invade our homeland. I wonder what wonders of science and engineering the Court shall divine from their technology with all of our resources?’
‘A way to hold off a big gill-neck armada would be favourite,’ said Charlotte.
Lord Trabb didn’t seem to notice Charlotte’s lack of faith in the Court, wandering off deep in conversation with his technicians.
Daunt looked at Charlotte. ‘It will take more than the beauty of a perfect equation to keep the key out of the sea-bishops’ hands. I rather fear we don’t have months. Days, perhaps, if we are lucky.’
‘You’re right,’ Charlotte sighed. ‘Elizica says she is going to call in an old marker with a friend.’
Charlotte said no more, and Daunt got the feeling that she didn’t know any more herself. She walked over to the far side of the chamber, gripping the rail that overlooked the busy engines inside the next chamber.
Daunt came up beside her. ‘I’m sorry myself and Boxiron couldn’t protect you better, Damson Shades. I did rather promise you back in Fidelia’s parish when we first met.’
He had the feeling she wasn’t used to being looked after by anyone; nor the ancient spirit haunting her, for that matter.
‘Just look after my sceptre,’ said Charlotte. ‘If I can’t melt it down for gold scrap, maybe Parliament’s posted a reward for its return.’
‘I fear no amount of money will help us now,’ said Daunt.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Charlotte, fingering the Eye of Fate thoughtfully and staring out across the rooftops of a thousand rumbling thinking machines. ‘The money helps, it always helps.’
‘Are you still experiencing nightmares?’ asked Daunt.
Charlotte nodded. ‘It’s hard to separate all the memories sometimes. Which are mine, which are Elizica’s, which belong to the Eye of Fate’s previous owners. It’s always worse at night.’
‘I used to suffer something similar myself, I don’t envy you. The curious thing is that since we escaped from the prison camp, my own dreams seem to have been stilled. It’s as if they’re in abeyance until Boxiron returns. Damson Shades,’ said Daunt, glancing around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. ‘I need to talk with you, or more accurately, the passenger you are carrying in your mind.’ He indicated the corridor back to the surface of the volcano. ‘I have some questions about the prior invasion — a quiet state of meditation should prove conducive in winkling the answers out.’
‘Honey, I’m usually wary about men trying to get me alone.’
‘You can trust me,’ smiled Daunt. ‘After all, I used to be a parson.’
‘Yes. You did.’
Boxiron was only dimly aware of Daunt’s presence inside the large vaulted chamber, dozing in a chair next to the healing tank. The steamman’s sensory levels were set to the bare minimum, as much to protect him from the burning web of pain that was his half-grown body as any results of the damage that had been inflicted on his frame by the Advocacy soldiers. None of the Court of the Air’s scientists were in attendance now, in the middle of the night. None of them were there to see the strange luminescent shape coalescing into existence off to the side of the tank. In the presence of the ghostly child-like outline, Boxiron’s nervous system began to reawaken, a brief hot surge of pain, before easing like balm as the ethereal silhouette reached out to touch the tank’s accelerant gel. Inside Boxiron’s intact skull, a private channel opened on a very special frequency. One reserved for the creator. Reserved for King Steam.
Why have you come? Boxiron signalled. None of the people of the metal have given me succour, all have shunned me. The Loas have forsaken me, my ancestors abandoned me.
‘It is a hard law,’ said King Steam, the bronzed child-like machine’s image growing more distinct. ‘But you know why it must be. We cannot allow our race’s sentience to be copied by the fast-blooded creatures of our world. We cannot allow them to pick apart our corpses like carrion and reanimate our people as their zombie-machines. If the race of man learns how to copy our pattern, they will create a race of sentient slaves, and down that road lies perpetual warfare between the softbodies and the people of the metal. I favour the way of peace and friendship, not war.’
And I choose death, signalled Boxiron. I have tired of stumbling through life as a pale shadow of my former self, of being an outcast among the people of the metal and a brutish curiosity among the race of man. Let me honour my vows as a steamman knight; let me pass into the great pattern.
Boxiron sensed a wave of sadness from the steamman ruler washing over him.
‘It would be the right thing to do,’ said King Steam. ‘Wherever our pattern has been corrupted by outsiders, self-termination is the only honourable course of action.’
Then help me, pleaded Boxiron. Burn away this softbody gel that sustains my wounded corpse. Melt my soul-board and let me walk at last with the Loas.
King Steam’s astral projection drifted above the tank. ‘One day, Boxiron. But not today.’
Why?
‘Expedience. The cruellest of masters, and one before even I must sometimes bow my knee. I have been visited by an old acquaintance, Elizica of the Jackeni, and she has helped me travel the threads that lie before us. They were not comfortable precognitions to entertain. If you die here tonight our race dies too.’
No!
‘The enemies that walk hidden among the softbodies are as foul a race of monstrosities as creation is capable of producing and they have a deep loathing of our kind. They cannot drain our bodies for nourishment or rip memories from our encrypted minds, so terror of the steammen is their sole refuge. On all the worlds along the infinite string they have visited where they have found sentient people of the metal, they have burnt us out like a farmer pouring oil over a wasp’s nest discovered hanging inside his barn.’
‘My law to waive. And your sovereign to obey, by your rites of birth and your knightly vows.’
Please.
‘I created you once,’ said King Steam. ‘And now I will do something I have never done in all the history of the people of the metal. I shall create you anew.’
The astral projection cascaded into the tank and the pink gel began to change colour. Without sound it began to glitter and spark, a constellation of a million burning lights.
Exhausted, Daunt slept in his chair, which was probably just as well. Bearing witness to a resurrection was not a matter that would sit easily with a man who had once been a Circlist parson. It was always easier not to believe in gods when they didn’t come calling on you.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Daunt stood on the edge of the Isla Furia’s u-boat pens, the hull of one of the Court of the Air’s strange sleek submersibles swarming with crewmen making last minute maintenance checks before she dove. Above the pens, on the slope of the volcano, part of the mountainside had been drawn aside, camouflaged doors retracted to reveal a dark sphere, an urban legend — the gas-filled globe of an aerosphere ready to lift off when Dick Tull and Sadly boarded.
‘You shouldn’t dally,’ Sadly warned Charlotte and the commodore. ‘We’ve detected a darkship approaching the island. They know the sceptre is here and it’s only a matter of time before more of them show up to test the island’s defences.’
‘It’ll make our job easier,’ said Charlotte. ‘If they’re here, they won’t be protecting the seed-city.’
The commodore still looked ill at ease with the plan. ‘This is where we are, then. Not even waiting for the wicked demons to come and try and winkle us out of the Court’s well-defended lair, an island where a man can secure a warm berth for the night and a drop of hot totty to stave off the terrors of war. No, poor old Blacky must go out and uncover a whole nest of monsters and poke them with his sabre until they swarm out to sting him to death.’
