Secrets Of The Fire Sea Part 4

'Our voyage requires discretion,' said Jethro. 'We are travelling on a somewhat delicate matter.'

The commodore tapped the side of his nose knowingly. 'My discretion is legendary in this port, sir.'

Jethro Daunt did not point out the contradiction. 'And when will your u-boat sail, good captain?'

'As soon as my cargo and last pa.s.senger turns up, but I can see them both now. One having caught a lift with the other, so to speak. We should be away directly with the tide.'

Out on the docks, threading their way through the fishermen spreading their drying nets, four flatbed wagons drawn by shire horses rattled into sight, their beds piled with wooden crates and a single pa.s.senger. The pa.s.senger was ursine, a large ginger male wearing Jackelian clothes looking for all the world as if he might be a country squire out for a day's hunting with his hounds. All he lacked was a birding rifle and beagles to complete the picture.

'Ah now,' waved the commodore as the carts halted in front of the Purity Queen Purity Queen and the bear-like figure on the back jumped down, landing on a fine pair of knee-length riding boots. The Pericurian moved through the crowd of stevedores coming over to haul the crates down to the u-boat's hold, and walked towards the commodore. 'I received your baggage yesterday, so I thought you might be arriving in a grand old fashion this morning, Amba.s.sador Ortin, rather than helping keep your cargo safe.' and the bear-like figure on the back jumped down, landing on a fine pair of knee-length riding boots. The Pericurian moved through the crowd of stevedores coming over to haul the crates down to the u-boat's hold, and walked towards the commodore. 'I received your baggage yesterday, so I thought you might be arriving in a grand old fashion this morning, Amba.s.sador Ortin, rather than helping keep your cargo safe.'

The ursine creature blinked in surprise and adjusted a monocle resting in front of his left eye. 'Technically speaking, dear boy, I am not presently an amba.s.sador, as I no longer hold the position here in the Kingdom and haven't yet been sworn in on Jago. A point the new inc.u.mbent at the Jackelian emba.s.sy was only too keen to underline by ensuring my airship berth to Spumehead was cancelled and replaced by a cheap narrowboat ticket.'

'Well, however you've arrived Mister Ortin urs Ortin, you're here now right enough and I'll make good on my contract to deliver you to your new posting. Just as soon as the transaction-engine parts your a.r.s.e was so kindly keeping warm are loaded on board my boat.'

The commodore barked a flurry of orders at the stevedores shouldering the cargo towards his u-boat, and then with a nod to the professor, Jethro and Boxiron, he led the Pericurian diplomat across to his vessel.

Professor Harsh leant in close to speak quietly to Jethro. 'I won't ask what you'll be doing on Jago, but I would be grateful if you kept an eye out for Nandi on the island.'

'In addition to the eyes of the good commodore?'

'I trust Jared Black,' said the professor. 'That is, I trust him well enough to guard my spine when sabres are drawn and pistols are pulled, but the commodore has an unhealthy knack for getting into mischief and you're not the only ones trying to arrange a discreet pa.s.sage to Jago.'

'Your young a.s.sistant's work, good professor, it isn't the sort of archaeology that involves jewelled artefacts and murderous dispute over precisely who has the rights to secure them?'

'Nandi will simply be trawling Jago's records in their transaction-engine vaults,' said the professor. 'But a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.'

'So it can,' agreed Jethro.

After the academic had extracted a promise of safe-keeping for her a.s.sistant and was walking away, the transaction-engine drum in the centre of Boxiron's chest began to rumble as it turned usually a sign that the steamman was drawing down extra processing power for his ruminations.

'What are you thinking?' asked Jethro.

'Much the same as you, I expect,' answered the steamman.

'Yes,' Jethro hummed thoughtfully.

That the good professor knew their business on Jago must be an investigation, and if she was asking for the help of Jethro Daunt and Boxiron, it was only because she suspected her a.s.sistant's dealings was likely to put her in even more danger than consorting with the pair of them.

Bob his soul, but not all the truth of the academic's business on Jago had been told here.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Hannah was about to go into the archbishop's chancellery when a monk stopped her with a message. 'Your friend Chalph is waiting for you outside on the north bridge.'

'Thank you, father. Could you tell him I'll be finished here in a little while?'

He nodded and departed as she entered the office. It was still strange seeing someone else sitting behind Alice's desk, even if Father Blackwater the head of the testing rooms was only acting as their senior priest until another archbishop was appointed. A fiercely clever man who hid his true thoughts behind the odd veiled comment or dry remark, Father Blackwater was a Jagonese priest through and through. Which was precisely why the Rational Synod would never confirm him to the archbishop's post he obviously thought he deserved.

Hannah entered and took the seat where she had sat opposite Alice Gray so many times over the years. Meeting an ursk wearing the robes of a priest would not have seemed as alien to her.

'I have mixed blessings to report,' said the father. 'As I feared, the senate will not allow me to oppose your draft ballot. I am not regarded as having the seniority to even speak on the floor on your behalf.'

Her heart sank. 'Then I am finished.'

'Not yet, my dear,' said the priest. 'On the other side of the equation, we have found this-' he flourished an envelope '-among the personal effects of the late archbishop. It stipulates that in the event of her demise preceding your majority, you receive her grant of authority to sit our entrance exam early.'

Her waiver! Alice had granted her dispensation after all. Hannah was overwhelmed, the grief over losing her guardian momentarily lifted. But...Hannah did the calculation in her head, working out the date of the next church board examination. 'I'll already be drafted into the guild's service by then, father!'

'We can't nullify the guild's draft order,' said Father Blackwater, 'but Vardan Flail can't nullify a written waiver from the archbishop that precedes your ballot notification, either. Her letter was written weeks before your name was ever posted on the draft ballot.'

Weeks before? It was as Alice Gray's clerk had said: almost as if she had been preparing for her own death. How many run-ins had there been between Vardan Flail and Alice in the previous months that Hannah hadn't been around to witness, before Hannah's name was 'coincidently' teased out at 'random' for entry into the lists of the Guild of Valvemen? before? It was as Alice Gray's clerk had said: almost as if she had been preparing for her own death. How many run-ins had there been between Vardan Flail and Alice in the previous months that Hannah hadn't been around to witness, before Hannah's name was 'coincidently' teased out at 'random' for entry into the lists of the Guild of Valvemen?

Father Blackwater pointed to the chess set waiting lonely on the table in the corner of the chancellery, and Hannah remembered the gentle snorts that Alice would make while planning her next move. 'Stalemate, Hannah. You will unfortunately be in service with the guild for a while, but the guild cannot forbid you to take our tests, and if you pa.s.s, you will be free of the curse of the draft for the rest of your life. You will be part of the church.'

He said the words with satisfaction, as if there could be no higher honour. A couple of days ago Hannah would have agreed with him; that life had seemed almost inevitable to her. But with the death of Alice Gray, the cathedral's bright stained gla.s.s seemed so much dimmer, the formulae and lessons of the Circlist teachings mere parroting of the echo of great thinking done by minds long since dead. In their stead grew the cold hard seed of something else planted in a ground far more fertile than the volcanic basalt outside the capital's battlements. Vengeance, vengeance and the fell craving for it.

To Hannah's surprise, vengeance could be like one of the mathematical puzzles of synthetic morality. You could lose yourself considering it, studying its shape. Vengeance could become as much an obsession as some of the paradoxes that had driven church priests insane when pondered for too long. There was a beauty in vengeance's pursuit and gratification to be gained in solving the riddle of the murder. Gratification that would climax in Vardan Flail being led by a hooded executioner across Snapman's Bridge and made to stand on the trapdoor while the crowds gathered on each side of the black ca.n.a.l.

It took a heinous crime to earn a death sentence that wasn't commuted to banishment or life indenture by the senate judiciary, but Hannah was determined to see that Vardan Flail was one of the few that received it. And if she had to serve that twisted monster in the guild's own vaults, then that would just take her a step or two closer to realizing her new goal.

Jethro Daunt pulled himself up the final few rungs of the u-boat's conning tower and emerged onto the observation deck, almost immediately finding the goggles of his rubber scald suit misting up from the heat of the Fire Sea.

Standing against the rail wearing a battered greatcoat and holding a telescope was Commodore Black, his black-bearded face tinged orange from the glow of the magma. 'Come up for your turn of fresh air, Mister Daunt?'

'That I have, good captain, and I'm already regretting not bringing my coat.'

It was a curious, unhealthy mix outside, the intense waves of heat from the Fire Sea's magma interspersed with jabbing arrows of a freezing artic wind from the north. Too much exposure to this was likely to bring any pa.s.senger or sailor down with a fever.

'A savage, strange sea,' said the commodore. 'But old Blacky has got used to it. I've sailed further and deeper inside it than any other skipper, and left many a good friend's bones on the sh.o.r.es of its wild islands while doing so.'

'I'm hoping for a rather more pedestrian voyage.' Jethro looked down at the boiling waters their u-boat was pushing through on the surface boils boils in nautical parlance searing, shifting channels of water veined through the bubbling magma. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a paper bag filled with striped sweets. 'Would you care for a Bunter and Benger's aniseed drop, good captain?' in nautical parlance searing, shifting channels of water veined through the bubbling magma. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a paper bag filled with striped sweets. 'Would you care for a Bunter and Benger's aniseed drop, good captain?'

Commodore Black put aside the telescope he had been using to sweep the burning waves. 'I won't be troubling you for one of those wicked things. You know what they put in them...?'

'Defamation on the part of their commercial rivals, I am certain.'

'I'll stick to eating what goes well with a drop of wine. No need to suck those blessed things for your nerves, Mister Daunt a nice boring voyage is what you'll get aboard the Purity Queen Purity Queen. Jago barely lies inside the rim of the Fire Sea and The Garurian Boils here are settled waters. The magma keeps to its course and so do the boils we sail through.' Commodore Black pointed to the north. 'One hundred and seventy miles ahead is a buoy station of the Jagonese tug service. That's when the magma gets unpredictable and choppy, but the island's sailors will lead us through the safe channels for a price.'

Jethro stared where the old u-boat man was pointing, but all he could see from the conning tower was a burning ocean of red seamed by black cooling rock, the pa.s.sages of superheated water they were following marked out by curtains of rising steam.

'You've never sailed the Fire Sea before, Mister Daunt? Never been to Jago. I can see it in the way the flames are casting a mortal spell on your gaze.'

'My business has occasionally seen me travel across the nations of the continent,' said Jethro, 'but never over the ocean.'

'Yes, now, your discreet discreet business,' said the commodore, teasingly. 'But you've travelled widely enough to know that a master of a boat is rightly addressed as captain, be they an admiral or a commodore.' business,' said the commodore, teasingly. 'But you've travelled widely enough to know that a master of a boat is rightly addressed as captain, be they an admiral or a commodore.'

A cracking sounded in the distance and a geyser of molten rock and gas fumed into the air, adding to the chemical stench of the place sulphur, by its reek.

'Someone told me that at the docks,' Jethro dissembled. 'An ocean this wild, it seems hard to believe that the people on Jago can predict where the ebbs and flows of the magma and the pa.s.sages of water through them will lie within an hour's time, let alone days and weeks ahead. It's a wonder anyone can follow the boils back to Jago.'

'Ah now,' said the commodore. 'It's an easy enough matter predicting a safe pa.s.sage when you have caverns filled with mortal clever transaction engines. Machines that could give King Steam a run for his money when it comes to the thinking game. And when we get to the buoy station and the master there summons up a tug to see us safe to their black sh.o.r.es, we'll no doubt pay for every penny of their engine room's power and the model of the Fire Sea they have sealed up down there with them.'

'That will be a sight to see on Jago, good captain,' said Jethro. 'Cities where they have actually tamed the wild power.'

'Electricity,' said Commodore Black. 'Yes, nowhere else in the world, only on Jago.' He pointed to the currents of magma sliding past the watery channel of the boils they were navigating. 'Something to do with all that blessed molten iron swirling around out there, or so a fine steamman friend of mine would have it.'

'You sound like you don't approve, good captain.'

'I've used the wild energy to tickle the armour of wicked savages trying to break their way into my hull and had cause to thank it,' said the commodore. 'But for more practical purposes I'll take the thump of good honest steam power, the hum of high-tension clockwork and the burn of a little expansion-engine gas any day of the week. The kind of dark power the Jagonese use is as good for your blessed health as taxes.'

Jethro nodded. The commodore was as superst.i.tious as most u-boat men. It was small wonder when a small metal bubble of air was all that stood between them and death under the darks of the ocean. The Circlist church always did have its work cut out in the harbour towns of the Kingdom. U-boat men were almost as bad as airship sailors with their strange rituals and their profession's cant.

He raised a hand to shield his hair from a few rogue cinders drifting across from a fire plume that looked to be erupting ten miles to starboard. It was no wonder that no airship could cross above the Fire Sea intact the combination of plumes, wild thermals and fierce artic storms made an aerial crossing a one-way bet: with a grinning skeleton drawn on the reverse of every card in the deck. Jethro remembered reading about a few foolhardy Jack Cloudies who were never seen again after attempting the voyage in the early days of Jackelian aviation.

Commodore Black pressed the telescope back to the bra.s.s goggles protecting his face and Jethro looked on as the whistle of a magma fountain off their starboard became the whisper of Badger-headed Joseph. 'The blood, the blood of the earth is your sea.' 'The blood, the blood of the earth is your sea.'

Jethro gritted his teeth. The old G.o.ds never normally bothered him during the day, only within his dreams. He wiped the steam off his goggles and unnoticed by the commodore, stepped back and rubbed at the side of his head. This was his choice, sailing to Jago. His. Not the Inquisition's, not theirs theirs. Only his.

An invitation to dinner at the captain's table wasn't something that Jethro expected, but perhaps for Commodore Black it mitigated the guilt he felt at the extortionate rates he was charging his pa.s.sengers to travel through the inhospitable currents of the Fire Sea. Although looking at the square navigation table in the captain's cabin that had been pressed into service for dinner, Jethro suspected the location of their supper had more to do with the wishes of the coa.r.s.e men and woman that served as the u-boat's crew desiring to make free with their ribald table manners in the mess, rather than feeling they had to be on good behaviour in front of the 'cargo'.

The Pericurian amba.s.sador-in-transit Ortin urs Ortin demonstrated the highest manners at their table, every facet of Jackelian etiquette smoothly performed in almost mocking counterpoint to Boxiron's jerky shovelling of high-grade boiler c.o.ke into his furnace trap and the noisy siphoning of the water the steamman needed to feed his boiler heart. The young academic Nandi Tibar-Wellking was a fairly neutral observer of the two polar extremes at the table, but recalling his own time in the company of her professor, Jethro rightly guessed that Nandi had been well taught and exposed to the intricacies of dining at foreign tables. If the cabin boy acting as steward had served them sheep's eyes and fried scorpion tails rather than their usual fare of scrambled duck eggs, Spumehead rock crab and pot-roasted lamb, he doubted she would have even blinked.

Commodore Black's appet.i.te tipped the table's balance back towards the ribald; he ripped apart the meats with gusto and matched Boxiron's siphoning of water with an equal capacity for sweet wines, jinn and beer. If the boat's master had an excuse for his thirst, it was that even with the Purity Queen Purity Queen's cooling systems running on maximum, it was hard not to drip sweat onto their food as they maintained their course through the outer boils of the Fire Sea.

Ortin urs Ortin tactfully overlooked the rattling from Boxiron and instead addressed the young academic, his Jackelian accent so polished he might have been born a squire to its acres. 'You mentioned that you have not been to Jago before, damson, but I am interested to know what your book learning in the college suggests the island's people will be like?'

'Very similar to the Jackelian citizenry,' answered Nandi, balancing a soup spoon between her fingers as if she was penning a dissertation on the subject. 'And with good reason, amba.s.sador, when we look back to what cla.s.sical history texts have to say on the matter. The two largest tribes settled on the northwest of the continent were the Jackeni and the Jagoli, but when the cold time arrived, the Jagoli fled the advancing glaciers and journeyed to a new island home, whereas the Kingdom's ancestors stayed put. Prior to that, the early Circlist church had converted both tribes, and there were plenty of intermarriages between the two peoples. In many ways, the modern Jagonese are truer to the traditions of our ancestors than we are as, unlike the Jackelians, their civilization never fell to the Chimecan Empire. When all else was darkness and ice, their island kept the traditions of democracy burning. They kept their freedom when our kingdom was a va.s.sal province of the empire and our people were being farmed for food. Jago kept their science through the age of ice, and they kept their history.'

'The people of Pericur hold the island in some reverence, I believe, good amba.s.sador,' said Jethro.

'The scripture of the Divine Quad,' said Ortin, adjusting his monocle, 'teaches that the island was once a paradise, where the ursine were shaped and breathed into life by the whisper of the world. There we lived on the Island of the Blessed until the two male members of the quad, Reckin urs Reckin and Amaja urs Amaja, fell to bickering between themselves and had to leave the island for the crime of destroying their home. And the whisper of the world became tears of fire at their fall from grace, filling the sea with all its flames.'

'Then you believe Jago is sacred soil and that neither the Jagonese nor your people should be there?'

'That is a conservative view. I am certainly not one of those who believe that, but I do believe there must be some practical truth to the scriptures. That the ursine once lived on Jago before we lived on Pericur.'

Nandi took another mouthful of soup. 'And why would that be?'

'Let me show you,' said Ortin. The amba.s.sador ducked out of the commodore's quarters and returned a minute later having retrieved a leather-bound tome of Pericurian scripture from his cabin. 'In the scriptures, Reckin urs Reckin was unfairly cast out of paradise for the covetousness and l.u.s.ts of his ravening brother, Amaja urs Amaja.'

The amba.s.sador opened the holy book to a beautifully illuminated page showing the two couples of the Divine Quad. The two deities on the left were clearly ursine, glowing in beatific purity, while the pair to the right a furless male and female were almost definitely from the race of man. '"And the fur of Amaja urs Amaja and his wife was singed from their bodies as they waded into the fires of the sea, begging Reckin urs Reckin and his beloved to forgive their brother his foolishness in destroying their home, the selfish Amaja urs Amaja watching his brother and his wife borne away by the Angels of Airdia to new lands." The people of Pericur had followed the scriptures of the Divine Quad for thousands of years before we ever laid eyes on someone from your nation, Damson Tibar-Wellking. It came as quite a surprise when we discovered the same covetous devils painted on the walls of our temples colonizing the territory to our south in Concorzia, not to mention trampling the sacred soil of Jago deep inside the Fire Sea.'

'But the timescales are all wrong, you must see that?' said Nandi, perplexed. 'The Jagonese settled the island long before we first established contact with your people in Pericur. Your race and ours have never lived alongside each other: the Jagonese migrated from the freezing wastes of our continent they were never native to the island.'

'Aye,' interrupted the commodore, 'and the only time the black blasted rock of Jago looked like a paradise was when sheets of ice covered the rest of the world and the people there had the blessed heat of the Fire Sea to keep their greenhouses warm and their vaults heated from the cold.'

Ortin urs Ortin tapped his book. 'And yet here your people are, and here we are too, just as the scriptures say. I am a reformer, damson and gentlemen. The great liberal houses of the Baronial Council have paid for this u-boat's hold to be filled with the latest transaction engines from the Kingdom's workshops. I would see our archd.u.c.h.ess's rule tempered by a properly elected council of her peers; I would see our cities pushing towards the heavens with the sway of pneumatic towers; I would see the best of your Jackelian science and culture being used to improve our nation; but for all that, there are still some things you must take on faith.'

'Don't be so quick to change, lad,' warned the commodore. 'I have visited Pericur, and I say that your cities of oak with their strange blessed wooden minarets wouldn't be much improved by the smogs of our mills and the beating engines of our industry. Your scriptures say that Jago is a dark isle where only those who would be cursed abide. You walk down the streets of Hermetica City after we have docked and tell me that you don't feel cursed just being there, and then ask yourself why their land is locked away behind the Fire Sea.'

Ortin urs Ortin raised his gla.s.s in salute towards the commodore. 'May I always be reminded of the scriptures' truth by my Jackelian friends without any G.o.ds at all.'

Jethro winced. Without any G.o.ds at all Without any G.o.ds at all. If only the Pericurian amba.s.sador knew the truth of that.

'There are other books than your people's scriptures that must be considered,' said Nandi kindly, her voice coming alive with the pa.s.sion of her quest. 'Jago is not just the oldest democracy in the world; their transaction-engine archives are the oldest in the world, too. When the rest of the continent was burning encyclopaedias to stay warm, Jagonese traders were preserving what knowledge they could find, keeping the Circlist enlightenment alive during the depths of the long age of ice.'

'Their transaction engines may be ancient, la.s.s,' said the commodore, 'but they're dangerous. They don't run things on steam out there. The Jagonese will poison your lovely head with their knowledge.'

'I am aware of the dangers, but I'll take precautions,' said Nandi. 'New knowledge is never acquired easily. The island has historical records stretching back unbroken for two millennia that have never been properly mined.'

'Aye, and now our boats can bypa.s.s the Fire Sea to get to the colonies it's all they have to sell,' spat the commodore. 'That and safe pa.s.sage to a fat fool like Blacky who's still generous enough to come a-calling to their bleak isle.'

Jethro didn't comment that the commodore seemed only too willing to pa.s.s the cost onto his pa.s.sengers.

'Saint Vine's college must consider your research worth funding, Nandi softbody,' said Boxiron. 'If it wasn't for the college's share of this voyage's cost, I suspect Jethro softbody and I would be heading to Jago via Pericur by way of a colony boat.'

'I won't argue with you on that,' said Nandi. 'But I don't think my research can take all the credit. When my sponsor at the college, Professor Harsh, was my age, she studied under a Doctor George Conquest. He later travelled to Jago with his wife to pursue a similar vein of research to mine, but his boat sank in the Fire Sea as he returned back home to the Kingdom. All his work was lost.'

'And the good professor wants his work finished,' said Jethro.

'I believe it would be fitting,' said Nandi. 'And now the professor is sitting on the High Table and she has the authority to spend the money to ensure it happens.'

'It's a wicked shame,' said the commodore, 'for a beautiful la.s.s like yourself to be locked away in dusty archives studying the shadows of what has pa.s.sed. What use is that to us, Nandi? Forget Jago, la.s.s, stay on my boat and I'll show you all the mortal wonders of the oceans. There are wild, beautiful islands deep inside the Fire Sea untouched by the footsteps of the race of man; there are the seabed cities of the gill-necks carved from coral and shaped in living pearl. And if you've still got a taste for archaeology after you've seen all that, I'll show you some of the broken, flooded towers that lie collapsed along the sides of the Boltiana Trench. You can put on a diving suit and run your hand along marble statues that haven't been seen by anything apart from sharks for a hundred thousand years.'

Her dark skin seemed to blush, and Jethro wondered whether it was the attraction of the offer or the glow from the magma outside the porthole that was lighting her burnished features.

'Thank you,' said Nandi, 'but there is important work awaiting me on Jago. The Circlist church was kept alive on Jago when the Chimecan Empire were raising idols to their dark G.o.ds across the continent without Jago there would be no rationalist enlightenment in the Kingdom today. We'd likely be dancing around maypoles on the solstice, wearing the masks of animals and our old G.o.ds like-' Nandi paused to recall a name.

'Like Badger-headed Joseph,' said Jethro.

'Exactly. You've studied prehistory, Mister Daunt?'

Jethro rubbed at his temples, which ached as if trapped in a vice. 'I used to be a parson, before I found a more accommodating line of work. But I can still disprove the existence of every G.o.d and G.o.ddess of every religion on the continent current or historical. Some things you never forget.'

At the head of the table, the commodore narrowed his eyes; he obviously disapproved of Jethro Daunt's old career. 'There's five types of gentlemen I don't normally carry on the Purity Queen Purity Queen, sir. That's members of the House of Guardians, lawyers, spies, officers of Ham Yard, and last but not least, church crows of any denomination. But seeing as you've taken up a new business now and come well-recommended by a fine lady like Amelia Harsh, I shall make an exception in your case.'

'Thank you, good captain,' said Jethro. 'I fear neither myself nor Boxiron would be comfortable swimming through the boils or trying to scramble over the flows of magma.'

But it wasn't the steaming waters of the sea that Jethro Daunt felt he was drowning in. It was the swirling currents of his thoughts. His case. The demands of the Inquisition. The visitations from G.o.ds he was trying to deny. And now tales of the history of Circlism on the island and the concerns of a long-dead university doctor and a venerable professor worried for the life of her student.

Jago, all the answers lay on Jago, smouldering lonely and dark amidst the angry solitude of the Fire Sea.