Secrets Of The Fire Sea Part 27

'Careful, man,' cried the commodore, grabbing the townsman by the jacket.

'Let me go! They're coming! The wet-snouts have breached the slopes. They're inside the mountain vaults now, inside!'

The townsman pulled away and resumed his sprint through the huddling crowd of refugee children. Jethro saw the commodore looking at his hands. The u-boat man's palms were covered in the blood that had been soaking the man's dark frock coat.

'Stay and fight, you mortal fool,' the commodore shouted after him. 'There's nowhere left to run to.'

Jethro looked around. There was just himself, the commodore and Boxiron trying to get through the a.s.sembly room. No defenders to protect the hundreds of children hiding here. The other fighters had already gone to man the firing lines, leaving the three of them to work their way up ever higher into the honeycombed pa.s.sages of the Horn of Jago in pursuit of Hannah Conquest.

'Where are you going, good captain?' Jethro called to the commodore as he moved towards the pa.s.sage. 'We have to keep moving higher.'

'I'm too tired to chase about the tunnels of this blessed mountain, Jethro Daunt. I'm going to sit myself down in this chamber and rest awhile.'

'These children are not our concern,' said Boxiron. 'We have a greater mission.'

'One man and a sabre will make no difference here,' agreed Jethro. 'All the armies of the world will make no difference unless we can get to Hannah before she finds the final section of the G.o.d-formula.'

'Does the Circlist church have a formula for that, Mister Daunt? Some equations wrapped up in a homily about the power of the common good?'

They did, but Jethro could sense that the old u-boat man had made up his mind. Not everyone could pick where they died. There were hundreds of children here, hiding terrified in the heart of the Horn of Jago, as safe from the bombardment and fighting outside as they could be.

'Off with you, lad. You and the old steamer have your G.o.d-formula to protect and I have my own code I must uphold.'

'May serenity find you, good captain,' said Jethro, pa.s.sing the commodore his rifle and satchel of charges.

'Maybe she will at that.'

Commodore Black watched Jethro and Boxiron climb up one of the side pa.s.sages before laying aside his sabre. Sitting wearily down in the a.s.sembly room, he raised the barrel of the ex-parson's rifle to his nose and sniffed it. 'As new as a freshly minted coin,' he muttered.

The commodore pulled out a cloth he used for his mumbleweed pipe and began cleaning the grease off the barrel. Two of the children came up to him, a brother and sister perhaps, the girl holding a tiny horse carved out of a single piece of volcanic stone.

'Why did the man run off?' asked the boy.

'He had forgotten to give his wife a kiss before he left home,' said the commodore. 'She'll be blessed angry at him if he doesn't get back to her quickly.'

'We've left home too,' said the sister.

'I thought you had, now. You had that look about you.'

There was a sound down the pa.s.sage, an echo of rattling bra.s.s, and coming out of the flickering artificial light was as bizarre a sight as the commodore had ever expected to see here on Jago. A line of children, but children in militia uniforms, miniature cloaks and full-sized rifles on their shoulders. Most of them barely looked to be in their teens, although the girl marching at their head might have had a year or two on that, along with a good few gangling inches over the troops in her company.

'Cadets, halt!' ordered the girl. She looked suspiciously at the commodore's tattered foreign naval uniform. 'We are here to protect you.'

'That's grand,' said the commodore.

'We wanted to stay on the slopes and fight but the major ordered us back here. She said that the evacuated cla.s.ses needed to be defended.'

Commodore Black sighed. In the Jackelian New Pattern Army these greenhorns might have pa.s.sed as drummers. In the Royal Aerostatical Navy, they might have pa.s.sed as midshipmen or catwalk monkeys for the sailors. Here in the mountain vaults, though, they were just frightened children in stiff uniforms trying to ignore the gestures and calls from the youngsters they had been studying next to the week before.

'Captain Jared Black,' said the commodore, wearily raising his full bulk to his feet. 'You might forget to salute, cadet,' he bl.u.s.tered, leaning over to lock the bayonet under her rifle barrel in place, 'but when you forget to turn-and-twist your cutlery, the first wet-snout you stick with that bayonet is going to end up keeping it in their gut.'

'Sir!' she barked.

Commodore Black stared back down the a.s.sembly rooms, calculating the meagre options for their defence. There was the corridor at the rear where he had entered with Jethro and the steamman. That led to the lower levels of the Horn of Jago and those grand doors out onto the subterranean city that should be safe enough. There was the stairway on the side up to the next level too narrow for a good a.s.sault, but maybe good for flanking with a skirmisher or two, he'd have to keep an eye on that. Then there was the entrance in front of them, leading onto the main corridor the cadets had retreated down. Yes, the main corridor, that's where he would a.s.sault from, and that's where the mortal Pericurian troops would show their snouts in force.

'Turn over those tables in front of this pa.s.sage and form two lines behind them. First line kneels and loads, second line fires on command, then you change position. Don't sight your rifles; the pa.s.sage's width will do your blessed aiming for you. Clear your broken charges cleanly and watch you don't burn yourself on the wadding and residue.'

She saluted. 'We will do our duty, captain.'

Aye, and they would break on it too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

Hannah opened the door and she and Colonel Knipe stepped out onto the floor of a hoop-shaped pa.s.sage circling around the metal barrel of the flare-house gun. The two of them had travelled as high as they could climb up the Horn of Jago, to the very tip of the summit itself. It was cold in the narrow pa.s.sage. It would have been warmer had the flares still been launching like magnesium stars overhead, but the flare bins deep below must have run empty with the loading crews cowering in hiding like everyone else in the mountain vaults.

A ladder had been riveted to the stone wall, rising a man's height to a second gantry, which ran alongside the flare-house's stained gla.s.s windows. Each twenty-foot high pane bore a multicoloured ill.u.s.tration based on the rational orders' illuminations, filled with the calligraphy of mathematical philosophy and Circlist imagery from the Book of Common Reflections Book of Common Reflections.

'Up here?' said the colonel. 'This is where the third part of the G.o.d-formula is hidden?'

'There were three paintings created by William of Flamewall,' said Hannah. 'Two of them held parts of the G.o.d-formula hidden in steganographic code. The last painting was blank of any code it was the third painting of the rational trinity.'

'You climb the mountain alone,' said Colonel Knipe.

'William of Flamewall wasn't just an illuminator of ma.n.u.scripts for the church,' said Hannah, pointing up towards the stained gla.s.s. 'He was a gla.s.s master. He even used the oxides from his gla.s.s dye to murder the priest who had created the G.o.d-formula, Bel Bessant.'

Colonel Knipe swivelled on his feet, looking in amazement at the wall of gla.s.s surrounding the ma.s.sive flare cannon.

'The third painting wasn't blank,' said Hannah. 'The Circlist priest in the painting was pointing to the top of the Horn of Jago. We never found an image of William of Flamewall, but I'd wager that his face is that of the priest in the third painting.' She craned her neck up at the images circling them, indicating a panel that represented the third part of the rational trinity. 'And there is the same face on the gla.s.s.'

Colonel Knipe climbed the ladder to the second gantry, his cloak brushing Hannah's hair as she followed. 'And this picture will hold the missing piece of the G.o.d-formula!'

Hannah looked at the stained gla.s.s work, running her hands along the borders of the towering illumination set in crystal, a chequerboard of colourful squares purples, reds, greens, yellows all set in a seemingly random pattern that echoed the colours used in the main ill.u.s.tration, priests of a dozen religions being parted by Circlists to make way for a single man to climb the mountain. Alone.

'It's here,' she declared. 'a.s.sign each colour along the border a value, work out the key. This is more steganography.'

'You know what you must do now,' said Colonel Knipe. 'Decipher the code. The archbishop tutored you, you are your mother's child, you must!'

'I didn't crack the first two codes,' said Hannah. 'It was Jethro Daunt and his friend Boxiron the steamman has special skills in this area.'

'As you love Jago,' pleaded the colonel, 'you must! Our people's time is short.'

Yes, as high as they were, she could still hear the sounds of war drifting up from the slopes below. Hannah's mind raced. She was visualizing things so fast now, she could do this. She had to. For all of them. Hannah reached for the satchel containing the first two sections of the G.o.d-formula. She would use the blank sides of the paper to decipher the steganography and tease out the last part of the G.o.d-formula. She knelt down to note the sequence of colours on the first of her sheets, suddenly twisting her head to look down onto the lower gantry. 'Did you hear that?'

Colonel Knipe already had his pistol out as he looked down towards the barrel of the flare-house cannon and the instrument room beyond it from where the flares were launched. 'I heard nothing.'

Hannah scowled and went back to work. She could have sworn she had heard an animal grunting below as though it was laughing.

'Look to your locks!' the commodore yelled to the faltering riflemen though men they were not yet as their young hands fumbled with their charges. The mortal terrible ranks of ursine charged down the corridor through the press of fire and bolts of steel, smashing into the barricade, splinters tearing into the cadets who cried out with raw, animal fear.

'First line kneel, second line fire fire!'

Another ripple of explosions, gla.s.s charges cracking, the sulphur hiss of liquid explosives smoking out of their barrels.

'Clear them! Second line kneel, first line fire fire!'

There were screams and curses from the ursine in the corridor as they clambered over the bodies of the fallen, the dark press of the beasts getting closer to the hundreds of bawling, huddling children crowded behind them in the a.s.sembly rooms.

'Look to your locks. Clear them!'

Clear them before the maddened Pericurians broke through the barricade. Soldiers of the great houses that practised vendetta through tooth and claw. Their enemies wiped out down to the third generation.

Tooth and wicked claw.

Hannah's hand brushed against the cold crystal of the stained gla.s.s window, her head spinning with the steganographic encryption she was attempting to break.

Her eyes drifted to a transparent pane that had been left undyed, and she gasped as she saw the pall of smoke rising up from the headland in front of the black cliffs of Jago. 'The Pericurian fleet. The fleet is burning at sea!' She swivelled on Colonel Knipe. 'What is this? The Pericurians took the coral line, the battlements, the city vaults...?'

'The wet-snouts have taken what they deserved,' said the colonel.

'But the people,' said Hannah, stunned. 'They were in peril. I was doing this for them them.'

'And they will be saved,' said the colonel, 'when you have decoded the final piece of the G.o.d-formula.'

'That is the last thing they will be!' shouted a voice from below.

Hannah looked down onto the lower gantry. It was Jethro Daunt, standing alongside the hulking ma.s.s of a hammer-wielding Boxiron. Hannah felt a cold object resting against her temple and turned. Colonel Knipe was pointing his pistol at her head. 'Stay where you are, Jackelian, you and your metal brute both.'

'What in the name of the Circle are you doing?' asked Hannah.

'Keeping my country safe,' said the colonel.

'That seems to come at a cost,' said Jethro. 'Such as when you paid Tomas Maggs to scuttle the boat carrying Hannah's father back home.'

'No!' whispered Hannah. 'That was down to Vardan Flail.'

'I'm afraid not, damson,' said Colonel Knipe, pushing the barrel of his pistol harder against her skull. 'That fool Vardan Flail is as much a Circlist fanatic as your learned Jackelian friend here. Flail was seeking the G.o.d-formula, but he didn't want to use it. He would have destroyed it!'

'And Hannah's parents would have taken it back to Jackals to study,' said Jethro. 'You couldn't allow that to happen either. The Conquests came to you for help, didn't they? They had found images of William's three paintings in the great archives, and they feared that the guild was trying to stop them leaving the island. But you decided to murder the two of them first, steal their find and keep the G.o.d-formula to yourself. Just as you killed Alice Gray when you discovered she was also a guardian of copies of William of Flamewall's paintings.'

'I had to torture her after Hugh Sworph came to me, knowing the bounty I was offering for William of Flamewall's works,' said the colonel. 'There was always the chance the archbishop was hiding the third piece of the G.o.d-formula somewhere in her cathedral.'

'Your bad luck, then,' said Jethro. 'Alice was only the guardian of what you had already killed Hannah's parents for: two of William's paintings, each containing a piece of the G.o.d-formula, and a third seemingly blank. How many people died in the ursk attack you allowed into the city?'

'Alice,' groaned Hannah. 'My father. Murdered by you you!'

'You should not complain,' said the colonel. 'Your good fortune allowed you to escape twice when you should have died. The first time from the ursk pack, and then from the bomb one of my men planted in your atmospheric carriage although, to be fair, the second time I was really aiming to kill your meddling Jackelian archaeologist friend before she could uncover your parents' work here. The G.o.d-formula is to be mine, and mine alone. That is the way fate intends it to be. Your parents were the first to die, but there have been many others over the years. Explorers, chancers, thieves, local and foreign. Vanished into the stomachs of the beasts outside the wall or found floating drowned in our ca.n.a.ls. It was destiny that you survived, young damson, for where would I be without you now? Who would have thought that a mere slip of a girl could succeed where I, with all my resources, failed? You are my fate, girl, and I am yours.'

'But that's not the worst of it.' Jethro pointed beyond the flare-house's walls. 'The Pericurian attack you knew they were going to invade, and you let it happen. Everyone who died in this senseless war, all on you. You've bobbed us all, used this whole city as your personal plaything.'

'You cannot judge me,' said the colonel. 'I have done what the senate failed to do for centuries. I have united our people with the fear of a common enemy. I did not provoke the wet-snout invasion, I did not arrange it, I merely allowed their attack to happen on my own terms.'

'You lured them into a bloodbath, man!'

'You're a slippery fish, Jackelian. What was it that gave me away?'

'When I was looking over the ballot records for evidence that the guild had falsified Hannah's draft,' said Jethro, 'I noticed the number of people from the lodge of gas workers who had been conscripted into the police militia. And what use could the militia have for those bleeding gas seepage away from the capital? The Pericurians weren't invading Hermetica, they were invading an underground gas chamber!'

'They deserved a quick end, Jackelian, for uniting us and ridding the people of the insane, inbred First Senator and his lickspittles.' He pushed the gun even harder against Hannah's head as Boxiron's warhammer twitched in anger. 'Stay back, or she will die!'

'You wouldn't think twice, would you, good colonel?' Jethro reached into his pocket and drew out a boiled sweet, his cheek swelling as he popped it into his mouth and sucked it thoughtfully. 'You murdered the fence that brought you the church's copies of William of Flamewall's paintings. Just as you killed Chalph urs Chalph when he came to you to tell you his suspicions about the Pericurians' intentions. Chalph had spotted that the envelope Stom urs Stom pa.s.sed the Pericurian amba.s.sador supposedly warning the expedition not to depart wasn't written in the First Senator's hand, but that of the Baroness of Ush, no doubt apprising the amba.s.sador that their invasion would take place when he was out of the city. Chalph told you this, and you couldn't risk the poor unfortunate ursine informing someone who actually would have tried to stop the invasion.'

'And I would have hanged you for his death,' sneered Knipe, 'eventually.'

'How did you know about the invasion?' asked Jethro. 'That's the one thing I haven't been able to fathom.'

'Look no further than your own countrymen,' said the colonel. 'One of the members of the Jackelian consul here, your Mister Walsingham, came to see me with a packet containing stolen details of a model of the flows and drifts of the Fire Sea. A model sitting on the wet-snouts' transaction engines. I doubt if he is really a diplomat, but then I doubt if your parliament cares one way or another. As long as the Pericurian threat to your colonies' northern borders has its fangs trimmed.'

'And you never pa.s.sed this intelligence on to the senate?' said Hannah.

The colonel brushed her hair teasingly with the cold barrel of the gun. 'And what would Silvermain have done with the news we were going to be invaded? Pa.s.sed a bill? Installed one of his hunting hounds as the Senator of War? He was good at dreaming of things that could never be. I, on the other hand, have sacrificed too much to let our land fade. My will shall be done.'

Hannah dropped the pouch of papers she was holding, the half-deciphered code taken from the stained gla.s.s vista falling to the stone gantry. 'Alice, my parents, Chalph, they all died for this this.'

'Continue your work!' Colonel Knipe shouted.

'Go jigger yourself.'

Colonel Knipe's pistol whipped out, striking Hannah on the skull and she fell to the ground, blood gushing from the wound and soaking her hands. She glared up with pure loathing at Knipe. 'I'll never do this for you pull the trigger!'

'Perhaps you won't after all,' said Colonel Knipe. He turned and shot Jethro in the stomach. The ex-parson was hurled back against the cannon housing, a crimson stain spreading out across his waistcoat. 'Drop the hammer, steamman!' Colonel Knipe shouted, reloading his pistol. 'I'll heal the Jackelian as good as new after I have attained G.o.dhead. Come up here and complete the decryption of the code in the stained gla.s.s before I put a second bullet through your friend's skull and leave him for the worms.'

Jethro was lying on the lower gantry, clutching his stomach while his blood pooled across the flagstones. 'No. Not...for...me.'

'I cannot let you die, Jethro.'

'Must!'

Hannah watched the black steel barrel of the colonel's pistol swinging around towards her again. Knipe was going to have to kill them all, for there was no way she she was going to decrypt the final part of the code for the killer who had stolen everyone she had ever loved from her life, and Boxiron could not be allowed to either. was going to decrypt the final part of the code for the killer who had stolen everyone she had ever loved from her life, and Boxiron could not be allowed to either.

Even over the clash and fury of rifle fire, Commodore Black heard the screams from the quailing children behind him, terrified by the appearance of two Pericurians crashing down the side-stairs from a higher level within the mountain.

Jared Black had turned and put a bullet through the skull of the soldier carrying a turret rifle before he had even realized that the wet-snout wielding a sabre next to the falling ursine corpse was that of Ortin urs Ortin.