Jack Cloudie j-5

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘Not something that will make an addict of a man, although the Caliph Eternal sorely needs it.’ Uddin looked at Boulous and nodded at the prisoners. ‘Cut their ties and let them stand free. Not the big one, though, his temper runs hot.’

  Farris Uddin named each of the prisoners in turn, for the benefit of Omar and Boulous.

  ‘You flaming unchain me,’ spat the giant Jackelian the commander had identified as Henry Tempest, ‘and it’ll take more than some nets dropped by your flying bloody salamanders to stop me.’

  ‘I am quite sure of that,’ said Farris Uddin, his features twitching and changing back to the face of the guardsman that Omar recognized. ‘You are a piece of inferior work; substantial, but inferior. Your bones and muscles are so dense that your own glands cannot cope with your form without making an amateur chemistry set of your blood. Our womb mages would not have made such elemental errors with your flesh.’ He tossed the empty vial across to the woman he had named as First Lieutenant Westwick. Boulous was keeping a wary pistol barrel levelled towards the prisoners.

  ‘What do you think our Caliph Eternal is “addicted” to, sweet lady?’

  Westwick dipped a finger inside the syringe, touching the residue to her tongue. ‘Blood!’

  ‘By Lord Tridentscale’s beard,’ whined the commodore, ‘is that the secret of the Caliph Eternal’s long life? He’s made himself into some sort of vampire?’

  Uddin smiled. ‘I presume the Kingdom’s State Protection Board has some insight into the inner workings of the empire — we always catch a few of your agents every year on our side of the border. They haven’t all been shopping for bargains in the souks, have they? Why would the Caliph Eternal need regular injections of blood?’

  ‘He’s not the caliph!’ said First Lieutenant Westwick sounding astonished.

  ‘Very clever, your price has just risen,’ said Uddin. ‘The grand vizier has installed an impostor on the throne. Only the true Caliph Eternal knows the secret of the blood engineering which bonds his regiment of personal bodyguards to him. A very useful protection, don’t you think?’ As Uddin spoke, his features began to warp again, this time reforming into an exact match of the young man that Omar had seen in the heart of the palace. The caliph, ruler of rulers, Akil Jaber Issman himself. ‘I can mimic the Caliph Eternal like this, but if I dared to trespass into the Jahan, the beyrogs would rip me apart the moment they saw me. They would know the difference between me and their true master.’

  ‘But how did they get to the Caliph Eternal?’ asked the woman. ‘We’ve known of your womb mages’ ability to breed shape-switchers for centuries. Jackals has safeguards against them in place and we don’t even have a full understanding of the processes you use to create them. Your defences must be superior to ours.’

  ‘Yes, there are tests that can detect such assassins,’ said Farris Uddin, ‘and of course, our tests are a lot more proficient than yours, but there is one secret you have not had access to — and that is the true nature of the Caliph Eternal’s title. His immortality doesn’t come from lifelast, although he imbibes the drug too. The drug extends a man’s lifespan no more than three hundred years. You die looking as if you are in your third decade, but die you eventually will.’

  ‘Then he is a wicked vampire,’ whined the commodore.

  ‘No,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘The caliph is what we call an enculi, although no one outside of the ruler of rulers’ inner circle should have heard of that word. It is a form of womb magery. You take the flesh of a man — even a corpse’s flesh will serve — and use it to give birth to a child, one so alike the original flesh-giver, that he or she is identical, beyond even a twin’s likeness.’

  ‘Your people’s blessed resurrections,’ said the commodore. ‘The oldest son of the sultan of Hakaqibla died falling off his horse on a hunt, and the caliph bought him back to life.’

  ‘Yes, the new son would have been an enculi,’ said Uddin. ‘It is one of the carrots that is dangled in front of the empire’s satrapies to ensure our friends’ loyalty. If a loved-one dies, we can bring them back, at least in resemblance.’

  ‘That’s the Caliph Eternal’s immortality …?’ said Westwick.

  ‘At any one time,’ said Uddin, ‘the Caliph Eternal has seven enculi cast from his own flesh and raised in secrecy at the heart of the Jahan, within the womb mages’ lair. There they are reared and taught in isolation from each other, waiting for the Caliph Eternal to pass into paradise.’

  ‘Seven of them?’ said Omar.

  ‘The healthy body of an enculi can be guaranteed,’ explained the guardsmen commander, ‘but each mind is unique; even raised with shared tutors, given identical lessons, the same food and training. Some enculi cast from the Caliph Eternal’s flesh will grow to be wise, some will grow to be fools, and some will grow to be indolent or insane. When the Caliph Eternal is dying he is given the current seven enculi’s test results and the cleverest and strongest of them is chosen to continue as the light of the world. Their tutors strangle the other six and their bodies are destroyed. Before he dies, the passing Caliph Eternal gives his chosen child the secret of the blood sorcery that grants him absolute control over the beyrogs and the other biologick servants of the Jahan.’

  ‘A grand vizier who is also the head of the order of womb mages,’ said Omar, the realization of their predicament dawning on him. ‘He would have been involved in the destruction of the six spare enculi.’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘And it is now obvious that filthy wretch Immed Zahharl only destroyed five of them. The weakest and most pliable of the six he had installed on the caliph’s throne as his puppet; the Caliph Eternal’s chosen one must have been spirited away soon after his recent succession, before he could consolidate his power, kept prisoner and milked like a cow for the secrets of his own blood. How grateful would you be to the grand vizier, saved from destruction and installed on the throne as the true Caliph Eternal, your ability to command the beyrogs solely dependent on a regular infusion of your own flesh-brother’s blood?’

  ‘Where is the real Caliph Eternal?’ asked Boulous. ‘If they need to milk the ruler of rulers for the magics that are within his blood, where are they holding him prisoner?’

  ‘The surviving agents of the Pasdaran used the time the grand vizier’s men spent torturing you to good effect,’ said Uddin. ‘We matched their interrogations with a little questioning of our own. It was easy enough to kidnap one of the grand vizier’s inner circle when we knew what to look for, what questions to ask.’

  ‘I wish you had grabbed that bastard Salwa,’ said Omar.

  ‘The new grand marshal of the guardsmen?’ laughed Uddin. ‘A little too obvious.’

  ‘Where is the true Caliph Eternal being held?’ asked the Jackelian woman.

  ‘Where else, the Forbidden City itself,’ said Uddin. ‘Mutantarjinn, the stronghold of the womb mages, where the grand vizier and his disgusting new sect first rose to prominence.’

  ‘Say that isn’t so,’ groaned the commodore. ‘That’s a free city, owned and sealed as tight as a drum by the order of womb mages; crawling with your dark-hearted sorcerers and full of sicknesses and twisted abominations that should never see the light of day.’

  ‘It is also where the grand vizier and the Sect of Razat’s womb mages are producing the airship gas you have been sent to locate.’

  ‘You’re lying to me, Udal,’ said the commodore. ‘Another lie to go along with your damned false faces, just another wicked lie to get old Blacky to head down to that dark, terrible place and save your undeserving ruler.’

  ‘It is the truth,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘My agents were already investigating the strange new source of the grand vizier’s aerial power when the Pasdaran were declared heretic. The airship gas is not from a natural gas mine such as that which your people guard so jealously. Our gas is a product of womb mage sorcery. I do not know how, that is still their secret, locked away deep in Mutantarjinn, but I know it stems from the grand
vizier’s position as the head of the order of womb mages.’

  ‘Don’t trust him,’ warned the young Kingdom sailor, Jack.

  ‘I told you that I would take you to a man who could help you,’ said Uddin, ‘it just happens that I am that man.’

  ‘And why should we assist you?’ spat the commodore.

  ‘Our agents once backed your royalist friends’ fight to try to restore your true king back to power in Jackals,’ said Uddin. ‘It is only fitting for you to help me restore our emperor to his throne. Now, as before, your enemy is our enemy, and together we might bring him down.’

  ‘You want us to fight alongside Jackelian heathens?’ said Omar, more than a little shocked by the idea.

  ‘We have been declared traitors,’ said Farris Uddin, ‘so we may as well act like traitors. And your guardsman’s oath was given to the real Caliph Eternal, not the weakling enculi that the grand vizier has sitting on the throne.’

  ‘And why should we trust a word you say, many-faces?’ said Westwick.

  ‘Because,’ smiled Farris Uddin, ‘as a token of good faith I am going to give you back your airship — the same one that your fool of an admiralty officer surrendered intact to the Imperial Aerial Squadron without firing a single shot in anger.’

  Omar could see that Farris Uddin was smugly pleased by the consternation the news of their ship’s capture caused among the four prisoners.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The grand vizier angrily sent a goblet spinning across the secret gardens at the heart of his pavilions. Salwa cowered as the caliph’s chief minister digested the last of the news concerning the flight of the guardsmen. ‘They knew of our trap — they knew!’

  ‘It is so,’ Salwa insisted. ‘They had clearly been forewarned of the order’s dissolution. Most of our men who entered the fortress were ambushed and led to the slaughter dressed as guardsmen. The guardsmen’s supplies, their draks, were already departing even as we believed that we were surrounding them.’

  ‘It might have been bad luck,’ suggested one of the grand vizier’s retinue. ‘The guardsmen could have been preparing for the war — if they were mobilizing anyway, they could have just left when they saw our marines arrive.’

  ‘Fool!’ yelled the grand vizier. ‘The guardsmen had no orders to join the campaign and there is no such thing as luck. Someone within our own ranks informed them that we were coming, someone loyal to the old regime. Which of you warned them?’

  There was a loud chorus of denials alongside protestations of loyalty from the toadies surrounding him.

  ‘We are loyal to you,’ protested Salwa, abasing himself on the floor of the pavilion. ‘How can you doubt us? All of us have undergone the initiation ritual, all of us have shed blood in your honour, in the cause of progress!’

  ‘I should ask those Pasdaran bastards I have planted out in the torture gardens,’ snarled the grand vizier. ‘There are still a few of the secret police’s cancerous cells left in our flesh, I warrant.’ He jabbed a finger towards Salwa. ‘You are meant to be the grand marshal of the guardsmen, what will they do now?’

  ‘What can they do, master?’ said Salwa. ‘They are detached from the army, with only the supplies they carried out of the fortress. They will avoid an engagement, practice banditry in a guerrilla war against us.’

  ‘That would be the rational thing to do,’ agreed the grand vizier, his eyes narrowing. ‘But they are not rational creatures. They are proud men. They could have abandoned the fortress and fled before we even turned up, but they wanted to give us a bloody nose before they left. As if to say, we are guardsmen, this is our palace, and we choose to leave here on our own terms. They used to be the caliph’s elite troops, a strike force of well-trained killers. And what does a strike force do? It strikes!’

  ‘They will not dare to take on the might of the Imperial Aerial Squadron,’ said Salwa.

  ‘Their soldiers have trained for centuries to disable and fight Jackelian airships,’ said the grand vizier, ‘I would not be so sure of that. Yes, I believe they will want to take a prize worthy of a song or two before they die, before their supplies run out and they slide into becoming just another band of bandits, scavenging for booty to stay alive.’ He pointed furiously at a clump of officers in the black and silver uniforms of the Imperial Aerial Squadron. ‘Recall four squadrons to reinforce the capital’s defences and recall another six squadrons to protect Mutantarjinn and the airship yards outside the city.’

  ‘But that will require the bulk of our invasion force to be pulled back from the north,’ said the senior officer.

  ‘Let the Jackelians stew for another month or so then, you dolts,’ shouted the grand vizier. ‘What will it profit us to gain another satrapy for the empire, if the Imperial Aerial Squadron returns back here to find the Pasdaran’s new choice of candidate sitting on the throne? How kind do you think the secret police and their guardsmen friends will be towards you if they succeed in mounting a counter-revolution?’

  The men bowed in fear at his temper.

  ‘We will carry the day,’ said the grand vizier. ‘We will carry it because if we fail, we will all die together. Ensure our marines and sailors are billeted in the airfields outside the capital without leave to enter. We do not want them getting sick.’

  ‘Sick?’ said Salwa.

  ‘Yes,’ laughed the grand vizier. ‘Because you are going to have our womb mages release a plague inside the capital’s central souk. Use a milder variant of the one we used to depopulate the House of Barir and their allies along the coast. I need a plausible excuse to move our tame caliph out of the Jahan and south to the safety of Mutantarjinn’s walls for a while, and a little summer plague will do nicely. Nothing so virulent that the local womb mages won’t be able to cure it after a month or two. I don’t want mass casualties and wage levels creeping up again, not with a major war to prosecute.’

  Salwa nodded and the grand vizier bent in close so only Salwa could hear his next words. ‘Our enemies are not stupid. When the guardsmen come, they’ll be coming for my head and the caliph’s — our little pet, or the real Caliph Eternal, perhaps both at once. And they’ll be coming for your head too, Salwa, last grand marshal of the guardsmen!’ He leant back and clicked his fingers, speaking loudly again for all to hear his commands. ‘Ready my personal packet for the journey south.’

  Salwa allowed his heart to swell in hope. South, to the heart of the Sect of Razat’s powerbase, the Forbidden City of Mutantarjinn, the city of sorcerers, where those who entered without the ruling womb mages’ permission were struck blind.

  Not even the guardsmen would be foolish enough to strike against them there, surely?

  Jack walked alongside the young guardsman Omar as the draks were inspected. There had been a lot of contemptuous talk of the Cassarabian household guards and their flying biologicks among the sailors back on board the Iron Partridge. The only weapon the Kingdom’s ancient enemy in the south possessed that was actually capable of taking to the skies against the Royal Aerostatical Navy. But all talk of human-lizard hybrids and crude jokes about ham-fisted lancers on ‘sallys’ — naval slang for salamanders — appeared very hollow when confronted by one of the forty-foot long flying monstrosities in the flesh. They might not have seemed much of a threat when viewed at a distance from behind an airship cannon’s rubber hood, but up close its sinuous neck could whip around to take a bite out of you with its pointed alligator face in a second.

  ‘This is my drak,’ said Omar Barir, indicating his creature with what Jack thought was more than a touch of pride. ‘His original rider died. Normally we would put him down as a kindness, but we are short of steeds and every drak is precious to us now.’

  The thing looked to be staring at them from the corner of its eerily human eyes — a cunning gaze that Jack recognized from the shire horses back on his family’s lost lands. A pernicious look that said, ‘Use me at your peril.’

  Jack sighed. The whole plan seemed reckless to him. Hoping to pic
k up the trail of the Iron Partridge and its companion airship from the Imperial Aerial Squadron transporting the Kingdom crew as prisoners towards the testing facilities at Mutantarjinn. Assaulting both airships with the guardsmen’s legion of flying biologicks, attempting to capture the two ’stats intact enough to continue their journey and infiltrate the enemy stronghold under the guise of being a prize vessel. The commodore’s secret police contact seemed sure enough of the guardsmen’s ability to pull the mission off. They would utilize the four Jackelians’ knowledge of the best way to board the Iron Partridge and fight off the prize crew, hopefully with the assistance of the skeleton crew of prisoners of war being kept on board to assist with the foreign systems. But even if the ruse worked, sneaking into the Cassarabian den of sorcerers was one thing; getting out alive was quite another, let alone getting out with evidence of how the Imperial Aerial Squadron was manufacturing its airship gas. Did Jack owe the Kingdom this? Impressment into the navy was bad enough, but mounting one of these hideous hybrids on a suicide mission — he hadn’t exchanged his court sentence for that.

  But there was Captain Jericho, who had gambled on pulling his poorhouse friend’s son off the gallows and into the service. What did Jack owe Jericho, hopefully still alive on a prison hulk heading for Mutantarjinn? What did he owe Coss Shaftcrank, who had risked his life to save Jack from the trumped-up charges of mutiny? Or the commodore, who seemed determined to drag Jack along in his trail, trying to keep them both alive despite the hard hand that lady fortune had dealt their party of intelligencers?

  The young guardsman appeared to mistake Jack’s pensive face simply for reticence to mount the drak. ‘You have nothing to fear, Jack Keats. This bull drak may not be the steed that I was destined to ride, but by the hundred smiling faces of god, he will know the finest flyer in the guards is in the saddle when he feels my stirrups on his flanks.’