Secrets Of The Fire Sea Part 24

'Avert your eyes, Jethro softbody. You will find this distasteful.' The steamman fell to his knees, his voicebox echoing in machine song with the names of his ancestors, the Loas of his people Steelbhalah Waldo, Legba of the Valves, Magnet-e-rouge. But he never prayed to his Loas anymore, not to those that had forsaken him...

'They did not come,' said Jethro as his friend fell silent and stood up.

'I did not ask them to,' said Boxiron. 'For all your studies of religions to deny, I think you still do not understand what it is to believe.'

All around them, the lines of released prisoners were being formed into companies and dispatched to various vaults, given the names of streets where barricades had been set up and airshafts where the police militia expected the Pericurians to strike next. The two of them were a.s.signed to a group of perhaps twenty convicts who with the exception of the hammer-wielding steamman were each given a pouch of rifle charges. Then they marched through the streets to their position. Along all of the ca.n.a.l sides, the capital's inhabitants were being led away in the opposite direction women carrying wailing infants, old men with sacks filled with hastily collected family silver, money and whatever other valuables they could s.n.a.t.c.h before the militiamen banging on their doors lost patience.

'They are heading back towards the stairs leading up into the Horn of Jago,' said Jethro.

'A sound strategy,' said Boxiron, 'considering the foe have control of the surface. Once the surface is gained, the vaults of this city are not defensible. The Pericurians can strike at will through the airshafts and if the invaders blocked the vents, the city's inhabitants would slowly suffocate. Inside the mountain the defenders have air, windows to snipe from and a high slope that must be stormed. They will not be easily taken there.'

'You needn't sound so pleased about it,' said one of the convicts shuffling alongside them. 'We're the poor b.u.g.g.e.rs they're asking to hold the vaults. What did you two foreign lads get taken for? Killing a sailor, smuggling, taking on board stowaways?'

'Nothing,' said Jethro. 'We are innocent.'

'Me too,' guffawed the convict. 'It's just that one of the police fell on a knife when I was filling my pockets. Clumsy b.a.s.t.a.r.d. The very best I had waiting for me if a judge took pity on me was the senator's picnic outside the walls. But now? I reckon they'll give me a medal if I stick a few wet-snouts the same as I did Knipe's man.' He flicked the bayonet fitted on the end of his rifle and made a crude slurping noise as he imagined his blade piercing an ursine body.

Jethro wrinkled his nose in distaste. This was the sort of man that prospered in the chaos of war. One week a murderer, the next a war hero. It was only society's judgement that separated the two.

'I recognize this ca.n.a.l,' said Jethro. 'This is the way we came down from the harbour.'

Boxiron nodded. 'The Purity Queen Purity Queen. She must still be docked in Jago's u-boat pens or we would have been extradited on her.'

The convict by their side sneered. 'Did they have you two lads in solitary? Haven't you heard? You aren't sailing out of here. Knipe jammed the sea locks to stop the wet-snouts sailing into the city. And even if the locks weren't jiggered, there's the whole wet-snout fleet sitting out under the cliffs. You're bottled up here same as us. Best you keep your eyes on the main chance. Slit a few wet-snout throats and put your hand up for a pardon when it's done.'

'And what makes you think Jago is going to win, good sir?' asked Jethro.

'Wet-snouts, they're just savages,' said the convict, shaking his head at Jethro's ignorance. 'They only got this far because the free company swapped sides. b.a.s.t.a.r.d traitors let the fleet sail through the coral line yesterday, is what I heard. Stuck the First Senator's head on a pole on the battlements. No loss there, eh? But now they're fighting the people, not a bunch of gold-pursed idiots sitting around in senator's robes. Wet-snouts think the sky's going to fall on their heads if we stay on this island. Ignorant heathens. Been here two thousand years, ain't we, and we'll make the world end all right. For any dimwit wet-snout jigger left on Jago!'

Shouts of indignant anger were raised all along the line of convicts in support of this foul-mouthed oratory.

'I don't know what these people will do to the Pericurians,' Jethro said to Boxiron, 'but by the Circle, I know that they scare me.'

Commodore Black brushed his fingers along the warm iron wall of the brig, wiping off the tears of water crying out of the rivets. 'This is second-rate work, la.s.s. They've got water as hot as the Fire Sea right off the coast of Pericur, and the Pericurians can't even fit their boats out with a cooling system worth a spit.'

Hannah found it hard to find words to answer with. Her mother's loss, Alice's murder, Nandi's body lying dead and abandoned in the wastes. All gone now. Even her country was going to be taken away from her.

The commodore banged the hull and listened to the echo of the metal. 'But still, when I was a lad the wet-snouts couldn't have done this. You could still see wooden submersibles in their ports in those days, like blessed oak bathtubs they were. Someone has been helping the ursine and you don't have to look far to see who. This tub is a bad copy of a Ca.s.sarabian Ad-Dukhan Ad-Dukhan cla.s.s boat. Aye, the caliph's boys have been up to mischief across the sea in Pericur. A strong Pericur on the borders of the Jackelian colonies causing trouble for us will suit the caliph just fine.' cla.s.s boat. Aye, the caliph's boys have been up to mischief across the sea in Pericur. A strong Pericur on the borders of the Jackelian colonies causing trouble for us will suit the caliph just fine.'

'It hardly matters,' said Hannah. 'Does it?'

'Take heart now, Hannah Conquest,' said the commodore, trying to put a brave face on their plight. 'We've got your mortal clever church-trained mind to rely on, and these ursine might have faced a few foes in their time, but they've never had Jared Black against them before.'

From outside their cell door there was the sound of the viewing panel being drawn back. Ortin urs Ortin's face appeared at the gap.

'The author of our wicked misfortunes,' said the commodore. 'Have you come to gloat over us, amba.s.sador?'

'I see little misfortune in your situation, old fruit. You are under our protection and safe with the fleet. Given the alternative for you is being caught up in the reconquest of the island, you have little to complain about.' He waved Hannah forward. 'I am afraid I am the bearer of bad news for you. In the expedition's absence, the body of Chalph urs Chalph of the House of Ush was handed over to us. He had been murdered, knifed to death. The capital's grain dole ran empty when we were away and there were a number of attacks on members of the trade mission and its warehouses. I suspect Chalph urs Chalph's death can be counted among the disturbance's fatalities.'

'I knew it,' sobbed Hannah, falling to her knees while the swollen skin of her cheeks burned. 'Chalph came to me in a dream. He told me that he was dead.'

The amba.s.sador's eyes widened in appreciation through the viewing slit. 'Reckin urs Reckin allows favoured souls a final moment of their choosing. You have been blessed.'

'Let us count our b.l.o.o.d.y blessings alone,' growled the commodore.

'You have my condolences, dear girl,' said the amba.s.sador. 'I will ask the vessel's master to take you off prisoner's rations. You shall be the fleet's guests until you are repatriated.' His footsteps echoed away down the corridor.

'Guests,' spat the commodore. 'With three inches of steel to keep us safe and a bucket to relieve our bowels.'

Hannah stood up, the last tears she would shed falling onto the deck. Her very last tears. 'I have to do it!'

'What, la.s.s?'

'Nandi, Alice, Chalph, my mother. I can save them all. Bring them all back. End this insane holy war.'

'Sit down, Hannah. Those wet-snouts must have rattled your head mortal bad when they gave us our pistol whipping.'

'Everything is my fault. Nandi was killed because I got her involved in my life, but I can make everything right again. I can save Nandi. I can save Chalph, I can resurrect all of them. I know where it is!' said Hannah. 'The last piece of Bel Bessant's G.o.d-formula. If I can get to it, I can use it. I'll make everything right.'

Hannah had to. Nandi had risked everything to save her from the guild and Vardan Flail; and if Hannah could just bring the young academic back, then she could make everything right again.

'You don't, la.s.s,' said the commodore. 'Say you don't know where it is. Say that wicked sc.r.a.p of dark mathematical art rotted to dust under the bones of William of Flamewall.'

'It didn't,' said Hannah. 'It was always concealed here. It never left Hermetica City the secret was hidden in the third painting all the time.'

Commodore Black was shaking. 'It was blank! The third painting was blank of any cipher.'

'No,' said Hannah. 'We just didn't look deep enough.'

'Don't do this thing,' begged the commodore. 'That terrible weapon isn't meant for us. You knew that back on Bloodgla.s.s Island when you had us blow those queer singing buildings to pieces.'

'We didn't look hard enough,' said Hannah. 'Just like you've been keeping your eyes off this cell's transaction-engine lock since they threw us in here. All your boasts, your stories about how there isn't a lock that can stand up to the genius of the great Jared Black.'

'We're safe here, la.s.s. The amba.s.sador's a double-dealing jigger, but he had that much right. We could die outside in their terrible war.'

'Nandi already died for us,' pleaded Hannah. 'You were sworn to protect her, to help her, and I can bring her back when I complete the G.o.d-formula,'

Commodore Black sobbed and he seemed to crumple before her, placing himself over the transaction engine lock. 'An oath taken. It always comes down to duty. Poor old Blacky, he's been crushed by it. Everything lost to it.'

Hannah watched curiously as the old u-boat man pulled off one of his jacket's b.u.t.tons, using the edge of the metal circle to lever out the nails holding down his boot's heel. But the nails were longer than they should have been, with ridges and serrations and wardings along their length. He used one of them, a long flat piece of metal, to lever open the escutcheon protecting the lock's cylinders, then got to work inside the mechanism of the frame plate that had been exposed. Hannah stared suspiciously when she saw how smoothly he removed the plate to expose the transaction engine's punch-card injector, and her suspicions turned to incredulity when he pulled a strip of leather off his boot heel and began punching holes through it with one of the tools that had been concealed as a nail.

'This is too easy!'

'Don't doubt my genius, la.s.s.'

'Genius be hanged,' said Hannah. 'A punch card concealed within a heel? This is one of the transaction engines you supplied the Pericurians with from Jackals and it's been tampered with, hasn't it? What's going on here?'

'A fine church mind,' whispered the commodore, not taking his eyes off his task. 'As tight as a trap and wasted on all that Circlist cant. The state back home has something heavy on me, la.s.s, and they've been using it to blackmail an old fool out of his much deserved rest. The great liberal houses in Pericur might have their hands on the Kingdom's transaction engines, but they're still the Kingdom's Kingdom's engines.' engines.'

'You're a spy!' said Hannah.

'Not a willing one,' said the commodore, grunting as he slipped his makeshift punch card into the lock's engine. 'A poor fool caught up in the great game. A dupe. Pericur would have got their hands on transaction engines anyway; if not from us, from the Ca.s.sarabians. And if the information that whispers across the drums of Pericur's engines can be picked up by card-sharps in the employ of the state's intelligencers, well, supplying the infernal contraptions still turned a little profit for me. A sorry recompense for what the wet-snouts would have done to me if they discovered I was playing them false.'

He finished his work with a flourish, the pick from his shoe briefly a conductor's baton, before he placed his ear to the bulkhead. 'I can hear the throb of the boat's engines. We're not on the blessed surface.' He picked up one of the drops of water crying from the rivets and let it roll down his thumb. 'And we're running not too shallow with it.'

Hannah looked horrified. 'We're not leaving Jago already?'

They couldn't! Everything depended on her being able to get to the final piece of the G.o.d-formula.

Commodore Black shook his head. 'No. You stay close to the surface of the boils to keep an eye on the magma shifting, never out of periscope depth. My guess is the Pericurians have sappers in dive gear working to clear the entrance to the harbour on the seabed. If they can sail this wicked fleet of theirs right into Hermetica City's submarine pens, then they can open up a second front, come at the poor blessed Jagonese from below and above at the same time.'

'If the fleet can get into the city that way,' said Hannah, 'then so can we.'

'I would not pick the waters of the Fire Sea to give you your first diving lesson, la.s.s. We'll need insulated suits, heavy gear, and there will be Pericurian navy divers in the water, while the crabs on Jago's coast scuttle about as large as carts and as mean as a Jackelian mountain lion.'

He saw the look she gave him and moaned as if he was mired in the scalding waters already. 'Then it is to be duty. So be it and I've come to expect nothing better, curse my unlucky stars. I'll do it for you and the chance to bring poor Nandi back.'

Hannah listened carefully to the instructions the old u-boat man imparted to her. The commodore a.s.sured her that in the case of the Ca.s.sarabian-designed submarine they were imprisoned on, their uncomfortable brig would be located between the boat's orlop deck and the bilges, and that the diving chamber should lie just down the corridor from them. The two of them waited for the next meal of thin gruel to be slotted through the feeding vent in the bottom of the door. Not because, as Hannah first suspected, the commodore wanted to escape on a full belly but as an indicator that the boat's mess would also be fully occupied, with as many of the Pericurian sailors off the decks as they could hope for.

Minutes after the footsteps of the sailor charged with feeding them had died away, the commodore sprang the lock and the door retracted into the ceiling. There were no marines inside the small brig office outside, nor a master of arms all the fighters were otherwise occupied on Jago. The commodore managed to break open the locker where their belongings had been stowed, retrieving his sabre while cursing the thieving paws of the ursine that had stolen the expensive pistol he kept concealed inside his great coat.

As the commodore had promised, it was only a short way down the corridor to the diving chamber, both Hannah and the u-boat man's strength needed to spin the iron wheel on the door in the deck to reveal a simmering pool of water in the middle of the floor. There were diving costumes racked on the wall triple-insulated canvas. The ma.s.sive bra.s.s helmets shaped like shark heads had hard crystal lenses where the sharks' eyes would have been. Commodore Black lifted the complex arrangement of lead weighted belts, buoyancy compensators and auto-inflation hoses over Hannah after she had donned her ridiculously large suit cut for an ursine, not for someone of her slight build. Then he bid Hannah sit on the edge of the frothing water as he lifted the tank and regulator onto her back; her spine almost crumpling from the weight of it.

Donning an arrangement similar in almost every way apart from the better fit on his almost ursine-sized frame, the commodore lifted a spear gun out of the rack and pilfered a couple of underwater flares, then, with a final check on the air hose's connection to the back of Hannah's helmet, they both dropped through the tight enclosure of the airlock pool. Circle's teeth, it was hot inside, even with the protective layers of the suit going rigid around Hannah's legs, arms and chest. Then they were dropping down into the burning waters of Jago proper, the dark hull of the Pericurian u-boat squatting ominously above them, the green fronds of an underwater forest rippling below. Forward of their position lay the basalt rocks of the island's submerged harbour, the alien-looking buildings fronting the tunnels that led away from the underwater harbour lit by the flares of enemy divers and u-boat lanterns. Dozens of vessels were suspended in the sea in front of the underwater cliffs, their lights making the beads of sweat rolling down Hannah's eyepieces glint like stars.

Hannah's breathing inside the helmet sounded unnaturally loud, echoed by the rasping of the regulator, as though she was sharing the suit with someone else. Distracted by the noise, she almost lost sight of the commodore, unused to the sensation of moving and locating someone in the three dimensions of this hot, viscous world. How unlike the experience of swimming in the city's public baths, or jumping off bridges into ca.n.a.ls on festival days this was it must be how a bird felt when flying. Hannah spotted the commodore below her. He was waving at her to move down, to follow the fronds of the strange underwater forest towards the harbour tunnels. As they got closer to the island's submerged base, the commodore slowly angled around and pointed to the dozens of Pericurian divers in front of them, tiny shapes marked by the flash of their underwater cutting gear, cables running back to the u-boats at their rear. Hannah followed the old u-boat man into the undulating seaweed that would cover their approach, colourful fish as large as shields dodging effortlessly out of their way. They emerged from the underwater forest at the foot of one of the metal carvings to the side of the ornamental entrance to the harbour created by the ancient Jagonese. It was a bronze devilfish, ninety feet tall, sitting on a row of scallops, each sh.e.l.l bearing the arms of an ancient senatorial seat. The devilfish's metal tentacles were rolled up around it and Hannah saw that the suckers of its arms were actually pipe-ends capped by grilles. The discoloration in the water told her exactly what this was a sewage outlet for the city, Hermetica's machines still dumbly following the pattern of their creation even during the surprise a.s.sault of the holy war forced upon Jago.

Commodore Black tested one of the grilles with his diving suit's gloves, but despite using all his strength he wasn't able to dislodge the thing. Hannah nervously checked for Pericurian divers off to their right. She and the commodore hadn't been spotted yet. No, the Pericurians weren't interested in sewage outlets barely large enough to admit a single diver they needed to open the way for their entire war fleet to enter the capital en ma.s.se.

Hannah attempted to help the commodore, who was using his spear gun as a lever to try to force open one of the grilles, but the barnacle-encrusted bars had been as good as welded shut by the rust and wear of age. Her suit's interior was beginning to burn her now, the layers of insulation starting to be overwhelmed by the searing heat of the boils. Hannah felt a twinge of panic. How long before they were spotted and hauled back to the fleet's brig? Her toes inside her fins felt as if they had been jabbed into a fire grate. If they swam to the surface, could the pair of them scale the towering black cliffs of Jago in full view of the enemy fleet, with the surface crowded by Pericurian soldiers waiting to engage the enemy? This escape was looking more and more like madness, the commodore's warnings deadly prophetic. Hannah was still struggling with the drain cover when a stream of brown dust and coral debris rained down on her helmet. She looked up. The siphon on the side of the devilfish's head had opened up above them, figures in the bright orange rubbers of modified scald suits arrowing out of the opening. It was a maintenance tunnel hatch and it was disgorging Jago's defenders tug service divers, the merchant marine and harbour repair crews, come to ensure the underwater gateway stayed sealed to the invader's fleet!

The commodore pulled her back just as the lance of a spear gun bubbled past, entering the sewage grille they had been trying to force open. That shot had come from above. Of course! She and the commodore were wearing Pericurian suits. A choice of outfit that looked as though it was going to get them both killed. A couple of divers from the ragtag army raised in Jago's defence were zeroing in on Hannah and the commodore, breaking off from the main force swimming towards the sappers attempting to clear the harbour entrance. Wicked barbed lances were exchanged between the Pericurian invaders and Jagonese, seemingly slow in the water, but powering fast enough to skewer a handful of the defenders explosions of red mist under the sea where the spears found their mark.

Another barbed bolt cut through the water, this time only an inch from Hannah's chest. Then the two divers from the city were upon them, the commodore releasing his spear gun's single round into the two attackers. The diver the commodore shot was carried back by the spear's impact, clutching the metal barb that had impaled his gut. Hannah desperately tapped her helmet, trying to indicate that her eyes were those of the race of man, not ursine. But the surviving attacker was beyond noticing, closing in on the commodore with a dagger drawn from his leg sheath. Jared Black had his own Pericurian diver's blade drawn and the two figures twisted and turned in the water as they grappled and fought for purchase.

Hannah kicked over to the two figures thrashing in slow motion. She pulled on the handle of her knife, freeing it from her leg sheath in time to slash at the back of the Jagonese diver's seash.e.l.l-shaped helmet, cutting a wedge out of the air hose connecting his helmet to its tank. As the lion's share of the defender's air supply began to ladder upwards, the commodore pushed their attacker away and allowed the figure to swim desperately up towards the surface. Hannah was watching the weight belt their attacker had just detached sink towards her when she felt something as powerful as a whale slam into her shoulder, sending her corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g back through the water.

Hannah just caught a glimpse of the rotating propeller on the back of a Pericurian torpedo ploughing forward to slam into the cliff, before the first shockwaves of the explosion reached her and blew her into a bottomless chasm of darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

'He ain't firing,' shouted the convict, his voice lost behind the barricade, lost against the hymn-like howling of the Pericurian soldiers, their fierce war songs given counterpoint by the crash of turret rifles against the bra.s.s tanks of compressed gas that powered their weapons.

'I cannot!' said Jethro, squatting sadly against his unfired rifle as though it was a crutch. 'I cannot take a life in this way. Every death is my own.'

'It will be your b.l.o.o.d.y own, alright,' said the convict, sighting down his rifle. 'The wet-snouts are coming forward a second time.'

'Bayonets!' yelled someone behind them. 'Get your cutlery fixed.'

'It is not his way,' said Boxiron, watching the tide of fur, fang and claw storming down the street at them. The attackers were firing wildly, pitons smashing through the barricade and hurling the kneeling ranks of those freed from the prison off their feet with each impact.

'He ain't firing,' repeated the convict, as if this was the only thing that mattered, his bravado fleeing now the defenders had made contact with the terrifying ranks of their ma.s.sive enemy. The convict might have been a steamman himself, stuck in a loop with fear.

'You seem more in control,' Jethro said to his steamman friend, sounding surprised. 'Before we voyaged here you would have slipped into a fury by now.'

Boxiron stood up, his right arm turning the ma.s.sive hammer slowly in preparation. 'This is my way. This is what I am for, but I will require your help.'

'He ain't firing,' protested the convict by their side, fumbling for another charge to slip into his smoking breech.

'Don't worry,' said Boxiron, laying his left hand upon the convict's shoulder. 'I am to claim his share.' He looked down at Jethro. 'It is time.'

'He ain't firing,' the convict coughed at the huge ursine who had smashed through the barricade and pushed a bayonet through his ribs. Howling with victory, the giant invader shot the man once, the impact of the piton throwing the corpse off her blooded blade and clearing her turret rifle.

Jethro heard the clack of the Pericurian's turret rifle drum as its barrel swept around towards the steamman and the ursine fed a fresh piton into her breech. 'Forgive me,' Jethro whispered as he seized the lever on the back of Boxiron's spine and shoved it up to five. Top gear Top gear. Boxiron jolted straight as if he had been struck by lightning, rotating the hammer in an uppercut that lifted the ursine off her feet and sent her sailing into the bow window of a deserted shop. Too panicked to reload their rifles now that they were thrusting and cutting at the enemy through the crumbling barricade, a handful of the Jagonese convicts turned and ran, yelling in fear, the first to flee collapsing as one of the police militiamen shot him in the back with a pistol.

'Coward!' yelled Boxiron, striking forward to sink the flat of his hammer into the policeman's gut. 'This is how you lead!' He stepped over the groaning officer's body and vaulted the collapsing barrier, his ma.s.sive weight clanking into the middle of the Pericurian a.s.sault, clearing a circle of broken bones with his warhammer. Shocked ursine stumbled back as this huge iron brute landed in their midst and lashed out at them. 'Take only those that I leave!'

Jethro looked at his hand in horror as the Jagonese defenders vaulted the blockade and threw themselves down at the stalled, hesitating a.s.sault. The hand that had just turned the clock back on everything he had accomplished since rescuing his friend from the influence of the criminal flash mobs in the slums of the Jackelian capital. Jethro pushed through the barricade, just behind the melee, the only evidence of his steamman friend the brief flash of a hammerhead among the screams and shouts. The convicts pressed forward taking Boxiron at his word and impaling the wounded soldiers trying to crawl away along the ground.

'Please,' Jethro begged them. 'Take them prisoner. Enough, they are wounded.'

'Savages. Filthy, treacherous wet-snouts. Savage. Savage. Savage.'

The convicts pushed the ex-parson away as he tried to restrain them. Jethro Daunt stumbled to his knees. 'This is wrong. Wrong.'

A fist as strong as steel gripped the back of Jethro's neck, pulling him off his knees. It was one of the Pericurians. A fierce scarred grey-furred face stared into his own. The beast was lying on the ground with a sabre driven through her back mortally wounded, no doubt, but still with enough strength left to crush him. Blood was streaming out of the corner of her mouth. 'This is war war!'

She dragged Jethro astride her, her arms pulling him down towards the b.l.o.o.d.y blade jutting out of her own dark leather armour.

'For me and you!'

Jethro grunted in agony as he tried to resist his stomach's inevitable inching descent onto the sabre's tip. He was being pulled down to join her in death.

Hannah woke up to a darkness filled with spots of light. Was she blind, lying on the seabed with a dwindling reservoir of air, perhaps? No, she could hear the water, but it sounded like the gentle splash of a paddle on the surface. As she stirred, a hand reached out and covered her mouth. A hand covered with rough, bare skin, not ursine fur.

'Keep your voice down,' whispered the silhouette in the darkness. 'There are Pericurian soldiers on these streets.'

Hannah realized she was staring up at the LED panels of a vault roof, malfunctioning by the look of them, dark except for a few flares of light dancing along what was left of the imitation sky. 'Where am I?'

'The Augustine Vault,' said the shadow bending over her. Was that a police militiaman's cloak she could see behind the figure? 'The wet-snouts have taken most of the city now. We're following the Augustine ca.n.a.l east to get to the Seething Round and the Horn of Jago.'

Hannah tried to move, but her shoulder felt as though someone had been using it for a pincushion and left the pins inside. Gradually, her eyes grew accustomed to the dark. She was horizontal on the deck of a gondola, warm ca.n.a.l water soaking her clothes. Her diving suit had gone. The crew were using oars rather than poles to move the gondola forward, keeping their profile low down on the water.