Jack Cloudie j-5

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘I see that Master Uddin’s teaching has not been totally in vein,’ noted Boulous, dryly.

  ‘You know the funny thing about playing the fool?’ said Omar. ‘People ignore a slave who is clumsy and stupid. They do not expect much of him. They don’t ask him to achieve anything too complex.’

  Boulous grunted, as if in understanding. ‘Master Uddin said something to me in your first week at the citadel. He said, “There, Boulous, goes the best actor who will never appear under the lamps of the imperial theatre company. The very best.”’

  Omar shrugged. ‘Have I won your applause?’

  ‘If you can remember where the actor begins and the act ends, I think it will be very wise for a fool of a freed slave to greet the grand vizier,’ whispered Boulous. ‘Your existence in our order is already an affront to his schemes. Give him a face to match what that slave girl you like so much has probably said about you.’

  ‘Shadisa would never betray me,’ whispered Omar. He imagined drawing his scimitar and plunging it into the grand vizier’s gut. Nothing personal — no more personal than unseating my house and supplanting our sect in the Holy Cent.

  Shadisa returned accompanied by a wiry thin man with an intricately oiled and curled beard hanging off his slim cheeks. By the cut of his expensive purple clothes and Shadisa’s respectful distance behind him, Omar marked this as the man responsible for his house’s destruction. Confirming Omar’s suspicions, both the slaves watching them dropped to their knees, Omar followed Boulous’s lead in giving a low bow to the man.

  ‘The last son of the House of Barir,’ said the man in a purring, silky voice. ‘And following such a traditional calling, too: the imperial guardsmen. Nobles, always rushing to push their sons forward for the guards.’

  Omar stared into the grand vizier’s strangely cruel, calculating gaze. Eyes so wide and intense, but with heavy hoods that looked as though they were trying to press his eyelids down into a sleepy slumber. ‘I like waving a sword about, grand vizier. It is easy work compared to what Master Barir had me doing on his water farm.’

  ‘And now you’re to wave it about on top of a drak.’ Immed Zahharl’s lips curled in amusement. ‘Down here, everyone prefers to use the title grand mage. Only in the palace above is it grand vizier, or high keeper if I am in one of the Sect of Razat’s temples.’

  ‘Truly,’ said Omar, letting an almost genuine note of awe creep into his voice, ‘you are a great man.’

  He seemed amused by this. ‘So it seems. My airships have given the Caliph Eternal command of the very heavens themselves. His bounty is merely in proportion to my labours for his glory.’

  Zahharl led them to a round chamber. There was a horizontal steel slab as its centre, surrounded by a ring of lamps giving off a more intense form of the blood-red light that seemed to pervade the womb mages’ domain. Shadisa and the other two slaves stayed by the door to the chamber. Boulous shifted nervously from boot to boot within the circle of light.

  Zahharl looked at Boulous. ‘You have seen this done before, jahani?’

  ‘I have, grand mage.’

  ‘You will assist your noble guardsman in training. I would not wish to spill too much of his blood this afternoon.’

  Boulous ignored the mage’s sarcasm and helped Omar onto the metal slab, then secured the leather wrist and ankle ties around Omar’s limbs.

  ‘Do not move,’ warned Boulous. ‘Clean cuts must be made. Struggle and you will bleed greatly.’

  ‘A pity that your father was not more progressive in his vision,’ said Immed Zahharl, moving behind a lectern-like bank of machinery at Omar’s feet and twisting at controls hidden from Omar’s angle of vision. ‘You could have had a commission in the new Imperial Aerial Squadron.’

  ‘Do they serve good food, grand mage?’ Omar coughed, trying to keep a look of panic from his face as a metal globe started to descend from a recess in the ceiling above. ‘To be frank with you, the rations up in the fortress are foul.’

  ‘In the years ahead they’ll be dining on the fruits of many victories,’ said Zahharl. He twisted the controls and a series of sharp razored tools and syringes pushed out of the iron ball. ‘But this is time for the old ways. Flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood.’

  Omar flinched and the sphere swept down and jabbed painfully at his restrained arms, cutting an incision on his biceps.

  ‘Your flesh must be blended inside the arnay ball with the essence of the drak we are to create for you. Too little human flesh and the producer’s womb will reject the drak embryo. The drak will be you, Omar Barir, and you will be your drak. Is that not a fine thing? That is our magic.’

  Omar yelled as one of the syringes on the globe found a vein in his leg and the arnay ball drank from him.

  ‘Too much of it, and well …’ the grand mage shrugged. ‘That would be unfortunate. Are there any body parts you don’t use much?’ The globe glided up towards Omar’s groin and he saw the metal arm bolted into the back of the cutter machine quiver as if in anticipation.

  Don’t think of the blade, think of the drak that will be born mine from this ritual. A drak, fine and strong, a drak which might allow guardsmen to mount him, but will only fly like the wind for me, its mind and mine as one creature as we soar. Don’t think of the blade. A flying war machine. Unstoppable, invincible.

  ‘Your slave, Shadisa,’ Omar’s voice came out in a tremor. ‘I would buy her papers of ownership from you.’

  A knife-like thing on the globe nicked his skin in surprise, Zahharl standing like a wraith at the other end of the bench. ‘This is an ancient and hallowed rite, last son of Barir. It is said that Ben Issman himself created the first drak on this very table millennia ago, and during this most blessed rite, you wish to haggle over a slave girl with the second most wealthy man in the empire? Is this a souk?’

  ‘Thank you for my drak, grand mage, but I would have the girl too. I would have Shadisa for my wife.’

  ‘Thank the Caliph Eternal and our foolish traditions for your drak,’ said Zahharl. He glanced back at Shadisa. ‘Do you know this dolt of a farm hand?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And would you marry him?’

  She shook her head. ‘Our time finished many years ago. Everything that was mine in that life ended for me when Haffa was razed to the ground.’

  Shadisa, you fool, what are you doing? You can’t choose a slave’s life with him over me. What foul magic has he used to cloud your mind? He has done something to you, that’s why I couldn’t sense your soul until you were right under my nose.

  ‘In this matter, I think my slave is far cleverer than her perspective suitor.’ He played with the controls and the sphere dug into Omar’s thighs, the young man shouting in pain through clenched teeth.

  ‘A pound of flesh for your drak — that’s an old bargain. But for this finely formed and highly intelligent slave, I’ll take twice my weight in gold as her price.’

  The globe retracted back into the ceiling and Boulous undid the arm and ankle restraints, one of the three slaves coming forward bearing a tray of bandages that the retainer used to staunch the cuts and wounds on Omar’s body.

  ‘Unfortunately for you, the days when a guardsman could earn such booty during a campaign are in the past,’ laughed the grand vizier. ‘The future belongs to others, last son of Barir. The old days are never coming back. That’s a lesson you should learn from Shadisa here.’ He snapped his fingers and Shadisa and the other two women from Omar’s hometown followed him out and left Omar and the retainer alone in the chamber. Her departure from his life again was almost more than he could stand, an abscess stabbing in his soul. How many more times am I going to have to lose her?

  ‘A little too good an actor,’ said Boulous, tightening the compress around Omar. ‘A little too good an act.’

  If I play the fool so well, it is only because she makes one of me every time she stands close to me.

  ‘I have agreed a price,’ said Omar. ‘And I have kept my life
to earn it, and I have the man who would see me dead walking away thinking that I am a fool.’

  ‘He is not the only one,’ whispered Boulous. ‘There is something you need to know about Immed Zahharl, but not here. I will tell you back on the surface when we are safely out of here. Now that you have met him, there is a dark secret that you must be told …’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jack watched First Lieutenant Westwick walk across to where he and Master Cardsharp Oldcastle were waiting on the brow of the rocky slope, standing sentry over the Cassarabian prisoners on the floor of the valley below along with the other sailors from the Iron Partridge. She stood for a second silhouetted against the pall of smoke, the boom of explosions from the mined vessel crackling away just out of sight. The empire’s remaining airship had been scuttled beyond repair, and gone with the Kochava Saar was any chance of the crew collecting the prize money that should have been their due from her capture. Is she the most hated person on the airship now, I wonder, or is that still me?

  ‘Keep an eye on the prisoners, Mister Keats,’ said the first lieutenant.

  ‘They’re licked,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Good and proper.’

  ‘They know what’s waiting for them,’ said the first lieutenant, pointing towards the Benzari warriors whooping and hollering as they approached to take custody of the enemy crew. ‘Tribal hospitality with the slim hope of a prisoner exchange or someone back in the empire making their hostage price. Men without hope are men without fear.’

  Westwick walked down the slope to greet the lead riders and Oldcastle muttered, ‘I think they know who to be afraid of here, lass.’

  Jack saw the prisoners at the head of the column shy away from the female lieutenant, jostling back towards the marines’ bayonets rather than staying close to Westwick at the foot of the slope. The first horsemen to arrive began galloping wildly around the enemy sailors, singing a fierce whistling song and shooting their rifles into the air. Their Benzari marines started waving their navy carbines in response until the giant captain of marines cursed them for savages and they quickly fell silent. Jack had noticed the wiry little marines were treating Henry Tempest like their own god now, a god of war given flesh. His commands were no longer orders, they were the word of tribal scripture.

  ‘Ah, that’s bad,’ said Oldcastle.

  ‘The marines seem to be learning navy discipline fast enough,’ said Jack.

  ‘Not our marines, lad,’ said Oldcastle. He pointed to the wildly circling riders. ‘Them! Look at their guns. Brown Bess pattern rifles, freshly minted, and no doubt right off the back of our Corps of Supply’s wagons. If we’re openly supplying Benzaral with army rifles, that can only mean one thing.’

  Jack was about to ask what, but Westwick returned with a sun-faded copy of the Middlesteel Illustrated News under her arm.

  ‘It’s begun then,’ said Oldcastle.

  Westwick nodded and handed the newspaper to the master cardsharp to read.

  ‘Ah, this is a week old,’ said the officer, flicking through the pages. ‘Parliament imposed a wave of import duties on Cassarabian goods. The first traders that came up north along the caravan road refused to pay our taxes. A temperance movement mob attacked their jinn traders in the upland towns, took axes to their barrels and burnt the mortal alcohol in the street, and then they sent the empire’s merchants scampering back over the border tarred and heathered. Our newspapers are calling it the Great Jinn War. Great for their wicked sales, not so good for the poor devils who’ll be doing the dying and the bleeding for their stories.’

  Behind them, the anchor cables holding the Iron Partridge above the hill-line started to vibrate as her engine cars tested their propellers before launch.

  ‘Then we were already at war when we engaged their two airships,’ said Jack.

  There was a strange hissing sound from the armed sailors on the slopes as the news of hostilities spread, the kind of ugly noise a Jack Cloudie would make when whistling through clenched teeth.

  ‘Stop that disgusting sound!’ the first lieutenant shouted down the slope. She drew her pistol. ‘Captain of marines, any sailor you find making that foul noise is to be arrested and held for flogging.’

  ‘What is it?’ Jack whispered to Oldcastle. ‘Why are they doing that?’

  ‘In times of war,’ said Oldcastle, ‘Admiralty House triples the prize money for a captured vessel.’ He nodded towards the waves of heat and smoke rising up from behind the hills. ‘We’ve just blown up a small fortune, Mister Keats. If you can find me an unhappier ship in the navy right now, I’ll crack the blessed shell in your gun’s breech and mix the charge with tonight’s rum ration.’

  The hissing from the crew was subsiding, like an angry snake sliding away to bide its time before coming back during darkness to strike.

  ‘We’re going to war with Cassarabia over some spilt drink?’ Jack said in disbelief.

  Oldcastle clapped Jack on the back. ‘Now I know you’ve been in a tavern before, lad. All the finest fights start over a spilt drink. No need to play gently in Benzaral’s disputed acres now, lad. We’re heading over the border and sailing for Cassarabia proper. Into the bloody empire for some bloody action.’

  Oh, fine. No prize money, but plenty of chances to die in action. They might as well appoint the first lieutenant as our morale officer. Jack stared at the downcast enemy sailors trudging away surrounded by Benzari horsemen. As prisoners of war their position seemed miserable, but at least they had survived. It seemed that the master cardsharp was going to have plenty of opportunities to make good on his promise to get Jack killed in action.

  A whole war full of them.

  Jack’s dreams were normally shapeless, formless things; flashes of memories and movement like treacle, and this one had started no differently. But clarity, terrible clarity, was coming, like sunlight streaming through parting clouds — his father on his sickbed in the debtors’ prison, telling Jack in between hacking coughs that the burden of being head of the family was going to be on his shoulders soon. All thoughts of his son’s engineman training forgotten, the fever running so high, Jack’s father was no longer aware that the farm and its lands had long since been sold off — trying to make Jack promise that he would find good positions for his two younger brothers when he took over management of the estate.

  His brothers so young they had come to look on the four high walls of the debtors’ prison as home. Their bewildered looks as the three of them were cast out of its gates — the family’s debts annulled after the funeral. Then long weeks of being moved on by shopkeepers angry at finding the three of them sleeping in the doorway, running from the constables of Middlesteel, one step ahead of the vagrancy laws and the brutal, enforced care of the poorhouse. They were falling away from him, Jack’s deathbed promise to his father stretched paper-thin by circumstance. Every job he tried to take on paying just pennies when the cost of life was measured in shillings and crowns. It was like being back on the farm when it all started to go wrong. Failed harvest after failed harvest. Debts. His mother and father arguing about having to let the tenant farmers go.

  Fewer hands. More work. Their clothing growing frayed, the paint peeling from their house, fences on the land unrepaired and then the fields unploughed. Their mother dying of an old age arrived early, buried by worries. Not enough to feed all of them, going hungry for his brothers’ sakes, a little more tired and weary every day. Until he was falling, falling out of the airship and tumbling through a sky without ground. They were gone.

  ‘Alan! Saul!’ Jack yelled, his clothes whipping in the wind, the air fierce and angry as he fell. He raised his hands towards the distant shadow of the airship, but there was no help, only the distant jeers of Master Engineer Pasco. Thief. Thief.

  Spinning through the air, the storm playing with him. No mercy, only the black mote of an eagle growing larger and larger, talons outstretched. But as it got closer Jack could see this was no bird — it was all steel and spikes, a moving machine of wings
and razors, twice as long as Jack’s falling, flailing body.

  ‘Do you know me?’ hissed the machine, a beak of reinforced steel needling closer towards Jack as it spoke.

  ‘You are a Loa,’ said Jack. ‘One of the steammen gods.’

  ‘Not just any mere Loa,’ hissed the machine as it looped about the falling boy. ‘I am Lemba of the Empty Thrusters, the spirit of the sky.’

  ‘Save me,’ begged Jack, tumbling wildly as the Loa darted after him. ‘Pull me back to the airship.’

  ‘Why should I, little godless softbody? You who trespass into my realm in your ridiculous bags of lighter-than-air gas. And now there are two of your kind’s nations in my heavens, flinging iron balls at each other and filling the skies with smoke and noise. How am I to choose which of you to cast down? Maybe both, maybe both shall be my choice.’

  There was blackness below the sky’s blue: icy blackness rather than ground. He was pitching towards his oblivion. ‘Save me,’ called Jack, ‘and I will help you.’

  ‘Help me, then,’ said the Loa, rolling in the gale and clamping a hold on Jack’s body with its hard, biting metal manipulator arms. Tighter and tighter. Jack yelled in agony, as he was pulled out of the dive and accelerated upwards towards his airship.

  ‘I wish to hear music.’

  ‘I have no instrument to play,’ cried Jack.

  They were travelling so fast Jack’s eyes had difficulty opening against the wall of wind driving into his face.

  ‘Oh, but you do,’ said the Steamo Loa, opening its manipulator talons and letting Jack arc out. He was above the Iron Partridge now, sailing down towards its frill of mortar tubes and the vessel was blasting out a tune like an organ grinder.

  ‘Play,’ the Steamo Loa called as Jack tumbled towards the mortar tubes. ‘Play!’

  There was a tiny glint of light in the darkness of the tubes, the light of — Coss Shaftcrank’s vision plate staring over him as he jerked upright in his hammock. He was in the transaction-engine chamber, waves of pain streaming down his back from the flogging he had endured.