Jack Cloudie j-5

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘Even the palace knows,’ laughed the nearest of the courtiers, pointing to the new script flowing along the dome’s inner surface. ‘It is war.’

  ‘War?’ said Omar.

  ‘The heathens in the north,’ said the courtier. ‘The Jackelians. They have finally provoked the righteous might of the empire.’

  ‘You should be pleased,’ said the man’s friend. ‘There will be many opportunities and promotions for everyone. You will fight for glory and when it is done, we will step in to the new provinces to run them as the Caliph Eternal wills.’

  Omar remembered the words the old nomad, Alim, had once uttered when he was cleaning his knife in the shade of the water farm. ‘All fights start with two victors. All fights end with one proven right, and one proven dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Omar, watching the happy pair jump across a water channel to join a group of revellers on the other side of the lawn. ‘When it is done.’

  The start of a war. What more perfect time for Shadisa to disappear from the palace? When every sinew of the caliph’s civil service and the court and the military was focused on victory over their heathen neighbours to the north. No time to look for one of Immed Zahharl’s servants disappeared from the grand vizier’s devious clutches; perhaps not even time enough to notice she had gone missing — until it was too late.

  Following various courtiers’ directions towards the pavilion of Immed Zahharl, Omar found himself heading towards the very centre of the Jahan. Protected from the elements by the almost magical dome high above, the buildings here had none of the practicality of old master Barir’s great house. No need to keep out the fierce winter storms that would roll off the sea and smash into the harbour town nestled against the lee of the cliffs. The memory of it almost made Omar wistful for his old life. How he would go to sleep listening to the screech of the gulls and wake up to the crack of lightning, watching the great dark storm front sliding in across the ocean. There was no need inside the Jahan for protection against lashing rains coming from one direction and drifting sands from the other. Here, the pavilions were made of crystal-blown walls engraved with flower motifs and stylized borders; curves of glass with just the occasional columns of marble to anchor the onion-topped towers.

  Made oblivious to the structures’ beauty by familiarity, the staff of the court at least gave some semblance of businesslike efficiency. Officials, some in military uniforms, strode about with papers and plans rolled under their arms. Commissions for the coming hostilities? Plans of supply, perhaps? Farris Uddin had lectured at great length about the logistics and supplies needed for any successful military venture. An army that was not provisioned adequately would quickly lose more men to sickness and disease than to the rifle fire of any enemy column. The organization that went into such things was the empire’s greatest weapon, a secret weapon, almost, given how the tedium of such detailed planning made it easy for incautious warriors to ignore it in favour of the glory and fury of a full cavalry charge.

  Remembering the name of the slave Boulous had suggested he seek out, Omar asked a gardener tending a bed of orchids outside the grand vizier’s pavilion if he knew a woman called Nudar. The gardener nodded and duly went off, returning with a woman so short that Omar at first mistook her for a child. There was no mistaking the lines of her ancient weathered face, hair faded to silver and tied back in tight buns — and judging by her features and pale skin, another slave with Jackelian blood. Taken together with her tiny size she looked as if she might have been born old, but this, Omar suspected, was only his imagination at work. She must have grown old in service.

  ‘Boulous told me that I should seek you out,’ said Omar to the old woman. ‘He said you were to be trusted.’

  ‘He said that, did he, guardsman?’ muttered the old slave, her knowing eyes appraising him. ‘Well, he is right enough. Old Nudar was once wet nurse in the jahani academy and as much a mother as he and hundreds of other jahani ever had. My boys, my darling boys. All grown up now and scattered across the empire. No little jahani to bounce on my knee now. How is Boulous, little Boulous, so quick and clever?’

  ‘Not so little now,’ said Omar.

  ‘No, not so little. He’ll make old Nudar proud one day. He’ll rise further than them all.’ She grasped Omar’s hand suspiciously and turned it over in her fingers.

  ‘Can you read my future from my palm?’ asked Omar.

  Her response was a gurgle like wet laughter. ‘No, but your past I find puzzling. Your hand is far too tanned to be that of a nobleman’s son and your sword practice calluses are new, yet formed across such skin as you only develop from years of manual labour. An aqueduct line worker?’

  ‘Water farmer,’ said Omar. He looked at the woman with a newfound respect. She was as canny as a witch, but could she really be trusted when the colour of her skin suggested she had come from Jackelian stock?

  ‘I was not taken by force from Jackals by slave traders,’ said the woman, seeing the direction of Omar’s gaze and running a prune-like hand along her chalk-white cheeks. ‘I was found on the slopes of a mountain by a caravan, abandoned as a baby, when they took pity on my cries. Oh yes, it’s not only our nomads that do that. Uplanders like big strapping sons to carry on their crofts too. Old Nudar was lucky, as are you, I think. There are not many ex-slaves among the ranks of those who patrol the palace — you are the first I have seen.’

  ‘There are few men in the guards with my prodigious talents.’

  ‘Well then, prodigiously talented one, what do you need my assistance for?’

  Omar told her the story, or as much as he dared. Of his and Shadisa’s origins in the far-off town of Haffa and how he had to find Shadisa again to tell her the truth of how her wicked new master really treated his slaves.

  Nudar shook her head in astonishment that Omar would risk so much for another slave. ‘I don’t know who is the bigger fool, a guardsman who would want such a woman, or a woman who would not want such a man?’

  ‘You will take me to her?’

  ‘Old Nudar knows a little more than Boulous in this matter,’ said the old woman. ‘The girl you seek is already as good as dead.’

  ‘I saw her this afternoon and she was as alive as you or I,’ protested Omar.

  ‘Those who would enter the grand vizier’s inner circle must first prove their loyalty to him,’ said Nudar. ‘It is not just the guardsmen who have an initiation ceremony, although I am sure yours is far more honourable than Immed Zahharl’s. The rite is murder and I have heard that a new initiate stands willing to take his place in the grand vizier’s retinue. The slave you would help escape, Shadisa, is to be the sweetmeat the brutes will toy with tonight in the library of the womb mages, and when they are done, her corpse will disappear into one of their acid vats and all you will be left with are your memories of her.’

  Shadisa! How could she have ever thought that the grand vizier was a master who meant well for her? Who would care for her better than I could? Is she such a fool?

  ‘What is the name of the man who would do this to her?’ demanded Omar.

  Nudar shrugged. ‘I do not know. It is not wise to inquire too closely into such things, not in a court where even the secret police’s killers can be made to vanish without a trace. I can try to find out for you …’

  ‘Do so, and take me to Shadisa,’ said Omar.

  ‘Even if you find the man and deal with him, there will be other initiates,’ said Nudar. ‘The only female slaves who are safe in this place have faces that have seen as many seasons pass as mine.’

  ‘She will not die tonight. I will see to it.’ I saved her before, that evening in the desert outside Haffa, and she did not thank me for it once; let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself. It doesn’t matter, I’ll save her a hundred times if I have to, and carry her away from her murderous rich master screaming and kicking.

  The woman laughed her wet rasping laugh again. ‘Well, why not? It’s been a long time since I saw such recklessness co
mmitted for a motive other than personal gain. Follow me and act as if you are assigned to the pavilion. Swagger, don’t waddle like a water farmer trying to conserve enough energy to get through a day’s labouring.’

  Omar followed the old woman into the pavilion, a series of chambers and courtyards, walls inlaid with abstract frescoes in the traditional style, channels running with water threading through the corridors before veining out to opulent fountains that flaunted the grand vizier’s wealth. Omar wondered how Shadisa would react to his presence here. She has to listen to me this time, doesn’t she? Once he explained the true nature of her duplicitous owner, surely she would feel some gratitude towards him? Trust him enough to spirit her away from the wicked designs of Immed Zahharl?

  Omar’s thoughts were interrupted by a ripple of awareness that seemed to pass like a breeze through the courtiers and staff in the courtyard he was walking through. Before he could question Nudar as to its cause, he caught his first sight of a phalanx of seven-foot-high grey-skinned giants advancing down a side corridor towards them.

  ‘The Caliph Eternal,’ hissed Nudar. ‘To your knees, boy.’

  All around the courtyard, the staff were dropping to the floor in reverence, and Omar followed their example. Two of the giants were carrying a sedan chair, the windows on either side covered by purple curtains. The other grey-skinned creatures formed a bodyguard marching in a protective square around the ebony-black carriage. The caliph’s august presence was heavily concealed, which was just as well, as the stories of those commoners who had lost their heads for staring upon him were legion.

  A green-robed courtier marching in front of the sedan chair banged a jewel-headed staff on the marble tiles, making the courtyard echo. ‘Make way for his most esteemed majesty, Caliph Eternal Akil Jaber Issman — Emperor of Cassarabia, thunderbolt of heaven, immortal prince of princes, eternal sword of the Holy Cent and protector of the hundred faces of the one true god.’

  The caliph’s bodyguards might have been dressed as guardsmen in their golden yellow armour, but their phenomenal size and lumpen ugliness indicated they were anything but. Their eyes swept over the courtiers around them as they marched. As well as their swords they carried crossbows so large they wouldn’t have looked out of place in the outer circle of a city siege.

  Suddenly it came to Omar where he had seen such hides before. Such ugliness briefly surfaced on the waters around Haffa in the hour when the town’s fishermen threw the spoiled share of their day’s catch back into the harbour. The harbour thrashing with the grey muzzles of … ‘Sharks!’

  ‘Quiet!’ whispered Nudar furiously.

  One of the creatures broke away from the caliph’s bodyguard and loped towards where Omar and Nudar were kneeling. The shadow of the huge creature fell over them as Omar felt the monster’s hand land on the guard of his scimitar, drawing it out an inch as if to check it was genuine. The two nostril slits along the side of its muzzle sniffed at the nape of Omar’s neck, warm fetid breath blowing against his hair. The creature made a low grunting noise, as if satisfied, and loped back after the retreating sedan chair.

  Omar watched the back of the column disappearing deeper into the pavilion. ‘What was that thing doing sniffing my hair?’

  ‘Your sweat,’ whispered Nudar, her eyes glancing up from where they had been fixed to the tiles with such intensity that he might have believed the secrets of the world to be engraved on the floor. ‘The beyrog was checking that you were a guardsman and authorized to carry a weapon in the palace, not an assassin waiting to attack the Caliph Eternal.’

  ‘How could it know that from my sweat?’

  ‘Your rations up in the fortress carry hidden ingredients,’ said Nudar. ‘That is why you are confined there for so much of your training. It takes time for your body to begin to sweat like a noble guardsman, giving you command of draks other than the beast that is born from your own blood. Beyrogs can smell steel and the charges of a gun, they can smell poison, and some say that they can smell treason itself. If it had smelt such a weapon on a mere slave like old Nudar, it would have torn me apart.’

  That’s why my training draks became more compliant the longer I stayed at the citadel. And I thought they were just getting used to me.

  ‘Biologicks,’ said Omar, not able to hide his distaste of the dark magic. ‘I was not daunted by them, do not think that I was, not even for a moment.’

  ‘You should be, they are the caliph’s hand. And who else would you trust if you were the emperor of emperors, ruling for eternity across the ages? Men can be corrupted, even guardsmen like you. Beyrogs are created by the caliph’s womb mages to be loyal only to his person. Beyrogs have no family that can be kidnapped to force them to break their vows, they have no desires or lusts other than to serve the caliph, and they obey no orders other than those which comes from his mouth. And why not? Is the Caliph Eternal not the lawful seed of Ben Issman, his name be blessed? It is his wisdom that makes the deserts bloom with crops and keeps the people safe and fed.’ Nudar pointed towards the archway through which the beyrogs had disappeared. ‘Only the grand vizier’s personal servants are allowed into the inner pavilion. Old Nudar can go no further.’

  ‘And guardsmen?’

  ‘The Caliph Eternal’s law knows no boundaries, and neither do his guardsmen,’ said Nudar. ‘At least, not officially. I have heard that the slaves to be murdered are made to await their fate in the hanging garden at the pavilion’s centre. Look for your fool of a girl there.’

  ‘Thank you, Nudar.’

  ‘Boulous needs a good friend to keep him safe,’ said the old slave. ‘If the grand vizier’s men catch you with this girl, you will both die and my poor Boulous will have one friend less.’

  ‘He has a good friend who is a legend with a scimitar,’ said Omar. ‘And I will not die today.’

  The old woman nodded and walked away muttering a prayer to Ben Issman’s name: a slave’s humble prayer.

  Omar plunged into the lion’s den.

  Jack was on the bridge, about to hand a list of automated systems they were having problems suppressing to the captain, when the signals officer received a communication from the crow’s nest and picked up the telescope to confirm the sighting. ‘Propellers ho, bearing forty degrees to starboard at ten o’clock.’

  ‘Confirmation on her silhouette?’ barked the first mate.

  ‘Smaller than fifty feet, she looks like a launch — Jackelian lines.’

  ‘Light her up with the helioscope,’ ordered Captain Jericho. ‘Standard fleet code. Confirm our name and ask for hers.’

  Jack strained for a view of the approaching vessel through the bridge’s forward canopy. Confirming their own name was just a formality — there could be no mistaking the lines of the Iron Partridge with her strange spine of mortar tubes.

  One of the sailors picked up the speaking trumpet and transmitted the captain’s orders to crewmen standing duty in the h-station below — the small keel-mounted dome holding a gas-fired helioscope to exchange messages between airships. There was a minute’s delay as the communication was flashed across to the approaching airship and her reply sent back.

  The signals officer turned in his seat. ‘Reply given in well-formed fleet code. RAN Searcher requesting dock. Vice-Admiral Tuttle on board.’

  Jack winced but didn’t give voice to his thoughts. That was the same arrogant arse that had threatened to stop the Iron Partridge leaving the airship field back home.

  One of the sailors had the fleet list book out on his control desk. ‘The RAN Searcher is an admiral’s packet, sir, attached to the RAN Trespasser.’

  ‘The flagship of the Fleet of the South,’ said Jericho.

  A murmur sounded around the sailors on the bridge and Jack realized why. A vice-admiral doesn’t have the authority to countermand the written admiralty orders held in the captain’s safe, but a fully flagged admiral does. Would their unpopular sorties into Cassarabia soon be over?

  The captain nodded thoughtful
ly. The same notion must have occurred to him. The skipper pointed at Jack and two of the other more junior ratings on the bridge. ‘You three with me to the boat bay. Do you know how to pipe a vice-admiral on board, Mister Keats?’

  ‘Master Cardsharp Oldcastle taught the new hands during one of his lessons, sir,’ said Jack, falling in behind the captain.

  ‘Then the rascal’s probably taught you the tune from some stockade ditty,’ said Jericho. He winked at Jack. ‘Lucky for us that Vice-Admiral Tuttle is an inky-fingered Admiralty House politician who normally flies a desk. He’ll hardly recognize the difference.’

  There were already two stocky Benzari marines standing sentry outside the boat bay hatch, rifles shouldered, when the captain and Jack arrived. The marines’ presence around the ship had become a lot more conspicuous after the master cardsharp informed the captain about the shot-rolling incident that had nearly seen Jack and Lieutenant McGillivray scattered like ninepins. Five more marines came trotting along to form an honour guard, while Jack helped a pair of sailors wind open the bay’s starboard hangar doors. There was plenty of room inside, the frames of their own three boats — in reality, small semi-rigid pocket airships that could carry up to ten crew in their gondolas — racked and packed on shelves with their small expansion engines, ready for assembly and independent action in less than ten minutes when they were needed to land crew or marines, act as scouts, or exchange sailors between vessels.

  Each of the sailors had clipped a line to their belts as they entered the boat bay. Some small protection against an unexpected shift in position and a sudden tumble through the wide open doors, wind whistling in, setting the envelopes of their boats’ racked fabric rustling noisily in the blow.

  ‘Prepares for lines,’ Jericho shouted over the wind.

  ‘Beware the lines,’ called one of the boat bay men.

  A second after the warning shout, a lead-weighted line was cast in from outside the Iron Partridge, hitting the wooden target against the hangar wall with a bull’s-eye. Jack and the other sailors ran in, catching the line before it could tumble back out, carrying the heavy head to a mechanical winch where it was locked in place and the equipment activated. Her rotors stilled, the vice-admiral’s launch was drawn inside the boat bay, still bucking in the sky against the crosswinds outside. Her crew was bustling about the open gondola of the pocket airship, the flash of the vice-admiral’s blue uniform visible between the sailors’ canvas rain cloaks. Jack and the other two ratings held their whistles at the ready as the launch was winched in. Just as the pocket airship was being tied down, First Lieutenant Westwick joined the reception party, looking about as happy as Jack felt.