The Atomic Sea: Volume Ten: Into the Dark Lands

by Jack Conner

  “And I am, of course, assuming you are who you say you are,” the Magistrate went on, and there was a strange lilt to his voice as he said this that for some reason made Avery begin sweating. Gods, what if they don’t believe me? “This will have to be verified, of course.”

  “Of course,” Avery said. “Call Hissig. Talk to Lord Idris. Talk to my daughter Ani, or Prime Minister Denaris. I’ll answer whatever questions you have to speed this along.”

  “‘This’?” The Magistrate steepled his fingers below a quivering chin, and his eyes hardened. “May I ask what ‘this’ is? Just what does bring you to grace our shores with your noble presence?”

  “I think I should wait to speak with the Empress before I reveal that,” Avery said. “It’s something that might be considered classified.”

  The Magistrate laid his fat hands down on the desk, crossing them, then leaned forward so that shadows suddenly concealed his eyes. The lights here were purple like in the hallways, and so the shadows were purple, too. “I’m afraid, my, ah, lord, that you will get no further than this prison without my leave or the intervention of one higher than myself, and, between you and me, that would take some doing.”

  Avery’s mouth opened and closed. “But surely you’ve let the government know we’re here?”

  “Oh, they know. They know because I know.”

  “You mean ... ?”

  The Magistrate’s eyes twinkled. “Let me more properly introduce myself. I am Duke Leshillibn the Fourth, second in line to the throne after our young prince and, I suppose, his mother. I command, among other things, the Sea Guard, who intercepted you. One side-effect of your reluctance to announce yourself in advance is that I am the only one of my class that knows of your presence here.”

  Avery blinked. “You don’t mean to tell the Empress?”

  “The Empress-Regent. And, well, that has yet to be decided, hasn’t it? I want to know what I’ve caught in my net before I show it off.” Peering at them critically, he said, “What do I have?”

  The four said nothing, at least in answer to his question.

  “Wait a minute,” Hildra said. “You’re a duke, and you make your home here?”

  “Oh, I have a place in the city, to be sure, where my family lives, and estates in the country, as well, but for the present I make my seat here. It may look ... gloomy, but it has its advantages. At any rate, it was I who assigned the Sea Guard to escort you here. For, regrettably, detainment.”

  “Detainment?” said Janx, and there was such a growl in his words that Avery couldn’t help but glance back over his shoulder at the guards. Indeed, both had seized their pistols, but neither had drawn them.

  The Magistrate ticked items off his fingers. “One, we do not know you. Your identities, and especially that of the, ah, lord doctor, must be confirmed. Second, you have not been invited, and we do not like guests, much less uninvited guests. If I decide to tell her you’re here, the Empress-Regent will then have to agree to see you, and she sees so few these days. Three, I am your host, and you have shown me no gratitude, no generosity.”

  “Generosity,” Avery said, understanding. Even dukes could be corrupt, he supposed. “Well, then, that’s something I can deal with. My apologies. If you can get us an audience with the Empress-Regent, we will give you whatever funds we have aboard the zeppelin. Hells, we’ll even give you the zeppelin.”

  The Duke pursed his lips. “A bribe, is it? Very well, I am not above tokens of friendship. I think that with that understanding—that I’m dealing with comrades, as it were—that I can, if nothing else, expedite the fact-checking of your identities.”

  Hildra snapped the match she was currently striking in half. “I’ll expedite my foot up your ass, you fuckwit! You’d better give us an audience with the Empress, you bastard, or—”

  She had half risen from the chair when one of the guards struck her from behind with a truncheon. She collapsed, instantly unconscious. Janx flew toward the guard’s throat, hands already forming claws. The second guard was already in motion, though, and when his nightstick hit the back of the big man’s neck Janx dropped like dead weight. The strange thing was that Janx had moved at half-speed. It was entirely possible the guards might have been able to overcome one unarmed man, anyway, as the guards held every advantage, but Janx hadn’t been given the chance to best them in a fair fight.

  Avery, so shocked he couldn’t move, simply gripped the arms of his chair tighter. I’ve just seen what an Ysstral lord’s mental powers can do. Can he compel me to speak, as well? When Avery felt splinters digging into his skin, he stopped. Slowly, he turned to Sheridan. She eyed the Duke with calm cool detachment, and he in return regarded her, then Avery.

  “Will there be any further outbursts?” Duke Leshillibn said. “We do not tolerate such disrespect to the god-born in the Dark Lands. I trust I have made my point.”

  Avery cleared his throat. “You have.”

  “Good. Then my, ah, lord doctor, if you would be so good as to allow my men to escort you to a room—better than average, to be sure, and your friends with you—I will begin that expediting.”

  “And the rest of the crew?”

  “Our finest rooms, alas, are limited in quantity. But ... we will find space for them. Oh yes.” For the first time, something approximating genuine amusement lit his vaguely froggish face, and it was more horrifying than its lack. “Please, lord doctor, enjoy your stay. I do hope your detainment won’t be ... overly long.”

  * * *

  “This is what he meant by ‘expediting’?” Hildra snarled, rubbing the back of her head. Even after three days, it seemed to pain her. “Fucking bastard! How dare he! He has no idea what business we’re about, and he has the stones to lock us up?! Fuck him. If I ever get my hook within striking distance of his throat, I’ll—”

  “Can you shut your mouth?”

  This came from Sheridan, who had been sitting quietly in the nearest corner of their cell.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me,” Sheridan said. “I’m tired of listening to your blather. We’re stuck here. We can’t get out. Not without some opportunity. There’s nothing to be gained from complaining and yet you waste great expenditures of effort doing so. I don’t want to squander another calorie trying to process your bullshit.”

  Hildra took an angry step in Sheridan’s direction, but Janx waved her back half-heartedly, and the young thief subsided. Janx stood still, leaning against a stone wall. There were other prisoners in the (somewhat large) cell with them, about thirty, a third female, and few seemed to speak Ghenisan. Avery stood near one of the small barred windows encrusted with purple growths, watching the sun descend toward the harbor. Below him hundreds of fat, unnatural-looking seals clustered on the small rocks that girded Curluth Point. They stared up at him out of their flat, sagging faces and laughed. Har-har-har.

  “You think you’re safe because they took my hook,” Hildra told Sheridan, and cast a regretful look at her vacant stump. “Well, just wait till I get it back.”

  Sheridan sat calmly. “I am patient.”

  “Enough,” Janx said.

  “I agree,” Avery said. “Besides, if it’s not too naïve to say so, haven’t we finally started to get along? Let’s not ruin that.”

  Over the last few days, they’d had little to do but brood and converse, and eventually they’d taken to doing more of the latter than the former. Several of the other inmates possessed scratched board games, and they were willing to part with these temporarily in exchange for promise of cigarettes and other luxuries from the zeppelin; they had all heard rumor of the foreign airship coming in. The four Ghenisans had taken to spending several hours each day playing each other in various games, and after a few disagreements over cheating the first day things had gotten smoother.

  “Shit, bones,” Hildra said. “You don’t really think we can be friends with her?”

  “I’m up for another game,” Sheridan said.

  Janx seemed
to shake himself out a reverie. “I’ll play. Think my men’re alright?” This he directed at Avery.

  The doctor didn’t know how to answer. The four of them had been separated from the rest of the Muirblaag’s crew and put up in these “nicer” quarters—relatively clean, dry, unisex, and populated by the less disturbing prisoners. It was far from palatial, but Avery was aware that it must be considerably better than their mates were suffering somewhere below.

  The sound of alien laughing distracted him before he could answer, and Avery glanced out the window to see the seals stirring. They moved about on their rocks, flopping and lurching, their horrid fleshy faces emitting awful barking laughs. Avery knew seals were said to bark, but these sounds were something else entirely. These were laughs. The eerie noises constantly issued up from the islets, and it never failed to raise the hair on Avery’s arms. The animals looked somewhat piggish, he thought, like swine with flippers, and they were covered in rolls of fat. Lesions, tendrils, sections of carapace and other adornments stuck out here and there.

  Suddenly men entered Avery’s frame of vision, all carrying spears, and Avery saw why the seals had stirred. Each man was protected by an environment suit, but they were dinged and rusty things, overgrown by encrustations, and Avery knew that inside them were fellow inmates. The Duke sent them out hunting every day.

  The men crossed over a narrow land bridge onto one of the islets, seals scattering before them, or at least slowly slump-shuffling out of their way. Even these laughed, mocking the men as they closed in. A spear flew, and seal blood ran across the rock, but still the awful blubbery things laughed. Har-har-har. Avery shivered. When the men moved in wielding cleavers, he looked away.

  “Creepy fuckers, aren’t they?” Hildra said. She’d come up beside him and was peering out the window. “Never seen anything like ‘em.”

  The seals converged on the men who’d gathered around the fallen animal. Chunks of flesh glistened bright red in the light of the setting sun from the exposed carcass. The men fell back, raising their weapons. One let fly and struck a seal a glancing blow. The mass of animals shot forward, their faces laughing as they attacked the inmates, biting and goring; some of the seals were tusked. The men scattered, clutching their stolen flesh. One collapsed to his knees on the uneven ground and was instantly swarmed by fat, hairless bodies. His screams faded under the seals’ laughter. The remaining men fled across the bridge and out of sight. Sickened, Avery turned away again.

  “Surprised the warden lets the prisoners have those sticks,” Hildra said. “Or knives.”

  “They’re forced to give them back before they enter. They can’t return inside until they pass the spears and cleavers through.”

  “I know, but still.” She shrugged, then lit a cigarette. When she offered him one, he didn’t refuse. He’d been smoking too much since his confinement and his mouth tasted like ash, but he felt compelled to keep his fingers busy, and the smokes went some way toward calming his mind.

  “Also,” she said, “don’t you think it weird the Duke makes the prisoners hunt down their own dinner? I mean, surely the Ysstrals have a food budget for their lock-ups, right?”

  “I’m just glad they process the creatures.” More inmates saw to the processing that cleansed the animals of the Atomic Sea’s taint, he had learned. Others saw to food preparation. There was a whole industry built around the seal hunts. “Also, thank the gods that there’s vegetables and bread. I find I have little appetite for seal meat.”

  “Me, either.” In a lower voice, Hildra said, “Though I am happy to be doin’ my part to ending the creepy bastards.” She glanced once more out the window, blowing a smoke ring through the purple-encrusted bars. Strange growths grew all over the prison, both inside and out, and bizarre creatures could be seen scuttling among the crenellations. Some prisoners made games of trying to lure animals inside; some tried to make them pets, while others tried to use them against the guards. Some could be eaten. Some had bones that could be whittled into knives, or sacs that could be used to derive poison from.

  Janx and Sheridan sat opposite a petrified stump that was used as a table, playing a game of quran on a badly used board. Some of the pieces had been lost and replaced by stones and crab pincers and bits of coral over the years, but the combatants made do. Smoking, Avery and Hildra, along with a small ring of other prisoners, fell to watching them, becoming absorbed in the game as the natural light faded and the sun set in splendor over the spires of Salanth. Shadows from the towers spread long across the harbor like venomous teeth, then grew to encompass the world; Avery felt as if he’d been devoured by the city, and in a way he supposed he had, without even setting foot in it.

  Ani, he though. Where are you? What are you doing right now? Will I ever see you again?

  What of Layanna? What was she doing? Avery pictured her accepting a human sacrifice right at that moment and felt something twist inside him.

  With the sun down, alchemical lamps sprang to life in the hallways, but weakly, and they faded minute by minute, encouraging the prisoners to sleep. Many did, and snores began to pepper the chamber. The players continued at their game.

  “Godsdamned duke,” Hildra was saying. “Who the hell does he think he is?”

  Avery lowered his voice: “Second in line to the throne.”

  “You don’t think ... ?”

  “Why else would he be keeping secrets from the Empress-Regent unless he thought they might serve some advantage over her? There are intrigues afoot here, and I’m afraid we’ve become pawns in their game.”

  “Well, the joke’s on them. We’ve got a game of our own. Let’s just hope dukie confirms who you are and springs us. He wouldn’t keep ‘a-ah’ lord of Ghenisa locked up, would he?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Janx and Sheridan finished their game (Sheridan won, as usual), and Avery and Hildra were just sitting down for a turn when suddenly the bars rattled and guards scraped open the cell door.

  “Lord Avery,” one said. “You’re to come with us.”

  Avery exchanged glances with the others, then went away with the guards, who showed him down the hall and up several flights of stairs. They were going up to the top of one of the towers, he realized. A pity this couldn’t have been earlier; the view must be spectacular during daytime.

  They emerged into cool wind on the top of a battlement with the harbor black and calm on one side and the Atomic Sea raging and wave-capped on the other. Lightning flowered up from it in furious detonations, and far out toward the horizon some translucent squids drifted in a long school; they looked like ghosts. Overhead loomed a jagged peak, the rock studded with barnacles and other things. Avery realized that though he stood on the highest tower of the prison fortress, he did not occupy the highpoint of the island; the cluster of rocky pinnacles before him had that honor. The fortress was built into the rock of the island.

  The top of the tower he stood on was a blackly-glistening circle, and the wind nearly drove Avery off his feet. He was tempted to hang onto the guards for support.

  “Why are we here?” he asked, pitching his voice above the tumult, but received no answer.

  No one else was present. For a moment he feared the guards might try to chuck him over the side, or at least begin beating him. Maybe Duke Leshillibn had decided to get rough.

  Instead, more guards, about ten of them, came out onto the tower top, dragging four prisoners with them. In chains, the inmates gazed about them with dull eyes, not seeming to appreciate the view but perhaps seeing something else, some picture in their minds that they had brought with them. They looked like men going to their executions. Again Avery thought the guards might start tossing people over the side, but when the big event came it was nothing so predictable.

  All of a sudden the prisoners gasped and recoiled. The guards gripped them tightly. All eyes had gone to something above. Avery craned his head.

  Starlight filtered through the gelatinous flesh of an enormous jellyfish-like
creature flying down through the air, tentacles shining like living icicles. The creature was both beautiful and nightmarish, and the starlight lent it a certain austere majesty. As it neared, Avery could smell the venom and ammonia, and his eyes teared up. The creature was not what the prisoners feared, though, and not what the guards had brought them here to see. The jelly was simply the living throne, literally, of the man who had summoned them. A chair—Avery couldn’t tell if it was organic, part of the jelly itself, or man-made—sprouted from the top of the animal, and the great, corpulent form of Duke Leshillibn managed to squeeze into it. The Duke had dressed himself in his aristocratic finery, not the everyday warden outfit he wore when about his prison business, and he held a black scepter in his left hand. His thick fingers winked with jewels, and his eyes, as they became visible, were rooted on the prisoners.

  The jelly reached the level of the tower and sank. Two of the guards helped their lord down from his seat, and the rest, including the two who had brought Avery, went to their knees, some dragging the prisoners with them. The two who had brought Avery indicated that he should follow their example, but he stayed standing. If he was to be thought of as some sort of lord, he would not kneel to a foreign noble, now would he? Act the part until you become the part.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” the Duke said, but it was toward the prisoners that he advanced. They tried to shrink away, but the guards held them fast.

  Avery cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but—”

  The Duke’s head snapped in his direction, and the expression on it closed Avery’s mouth for him. Satisfied, Duke Leshillibn turned back to the prisoners, drawing close to them. One was praying. One was trembling. One urinated in his pants; Avery could smell it in the air, even over the reek of the jelly. Only one managed to look defiant, but even he held his tongue.

  The Duke stretched out his jewel-bedecked hands, touched one inmate on the head for a few moments, then the next. Even as he moved on to the second one, the first collapsed to the floor, and the guards let him. It seemed to be expected. The man began to spasm, jerking and twitching, his eyes rolling and spittle gathered at his lips. Avery started to go forward, to help him, but the guards who had brought him here jerked him back.