Secrets of the Fire Sea (36 page)

Nandi brought her suit alongside Hannah’s. ‘It is old Jagonese.’ The academic looked closer, mouthing the translation out loud as she read. ‘To. Enter. Is. To. Die.’

‘A warning from William of Flamewall,’ said the commodore, dejectedly. ‘Ah, but who among us is wise enough to heed his omen?’

‘I don’t think it was William that scratched out this message,’ said Nandi. ‘Old Jagonese used different verbs depending on whether the writer was male or female. “Die”, here, is in the female form. I think this was scratched by Bel Bessant – it dates back to her original expedition.’

The ambassador stared up at the line of cherubs. ‘And the Angels of Airdia came as a host to bear away all of the dying children that had been burnt by the fires of the last war, for they wore their innocence as their mantle.’

Hannah looked into the inky darkness of the tunnel. All things considered, if their path took them inside the mountain, Hannah was happier to be wearing the armour of the RAM suit as
her
mantle.

To enter is to die.

There had nearly been a mutiny among Tobias Raffold’s crew of trappers when he had ordered them into the tunnel through the Cade Mountains. Only the Pericurian ambassador’s promise of a large bonus upon their return to Hermetica City overcame the trappers’ unease enough to activate their RAM suits’ lanterns and file inside.

With the two lights mounted on the shoulders of Hannah’s RAM suit throwing twin yellow beams forward, she could twist her machine’s chest above its hip gimble to focus in on sections of the tunnel. She had grown up in vaults bored and enlarged by the Jagonese Lodge of Engineer Diggers and the smoothness of this tunnel surpassed anything she had seen down in Hermetica. It was as if the walls had been carved out true by the rays of a sun and then layered with the same strange substance that formed the mouldings bordering the entrance.

Dozens of gutters, alcoves, ledges and air vents emerged under Hannah’s beams, signalling that this was no natural excavation. Whether there had once been a source of light along its length she could not say. There didn’t appear to be any lantern grates she could see, or anything resembling the LED panels lining Hermetica’s roof vaults.

When twin lights blinked into life in front of them, Hannah’s first thought was that the trapper scouting the way had turned to signal back to them. But then she realized that the points of light ahead were glowing demon red. Suddenly the tunnel was filled with the lead trapper’s screams as his machine came
stumbling backwards before collapsing in front of them, a molten hole burning in its chest armour.

‘The Angel of Airdia,’ the dying trapper croaked.

One of Alice Gray’s sayings echoed in Hannah’s mind.

Given enough time, all angels prove to be diabolic.

J
ethro’s heart sank when he saw the police militia standing on the cathedral’s bridge. Boxiron jumped to the same conclusion. ‘Father Baine has been murdered and—’

They both stopped as a company of green-uniformed militia led the young priest out of the cathedral’s main entrance, his hands in chains. He was still alive!

Jethro shouted and waved at the young priest to attract his attention, but when he saw the ex-parson of Hundred Locks standing there with Boxiron his face turned towards the ground with an embarrassed expression. Jethro pursed his lips. Guilt, or something exceedingly close to it? What had Father Baine done? Before Jethro could call out to ask, the lead militiamen hustling the prisoner out of the cathedral had spotted the pair on the edge of the bridge. Leaving the priest in the custody of their compatriots, they came sprinting towards Jethro and Boxiron, pushing their velvet capes back to draw pistols on the two of them. They were soon surrounded, their way impeded by police staffs.

‘Why do you have Father Baine in shackles?’ Jethro
demanded. ‘You are violating the rational ground of the church by your actions.’

‘If that were the least of the violations here I would be a happy man,’ said Colonel Knipe, emerging from behind his circle of militiamen. ‘When I heard that fool Silvermain’s charges against you I hardly gave them credence. But then upon further investigation and with a little encouragement, Father Baine here confessed everything to us. And against the weight of all past experience, it seems that idiot in senatorial robes has actually struck a vein of truth! It would have been far better if you had told me what you were really here for when you arrived, Jethro Daunt. We have enough problems on Jago already – we do not need foreign powers thinking they can send their agents to our shores to operate with impunity.’

Jethro looked at the priest being led away, his face bruised from the local police’s ‘encouragement’ to volunteer what he knew. ‘The League of the Rational Court is an arm of the Circlist church, good colonel, it holds no civil power or temporal authority in Jackelian affairs.’

‘Oh, please.’ The police commander waved Jethro’s objections away. ‘Save your semantics for someone trained enough in church logic to care to debate with you. You two have been up to your necks in it here in the capital with your Inquisition mischief.’

Boxiron’s voicebox shook with barely contained fury. ‘Do you call it mischief to try to find out who murdered Alice Gray?’

‘You’ve got the ursk fur of the archbishop’s killer hanging in your rooms, steamman, and your justification for being here makes a sorry excuse for interference with evidence, disruption of lawful ballot service, suspected involvement in the death of the merchant Hugh Sworph, failure to declare
true intent to our customs officers and multiple counts of espionage against the Jagonese state.’

‘I assure you that we are on the side of what is right and rational,’ Jethro insisted.

‘That is as may be,’ said the colonel. ‘But you’re also on the wrong side of the Fire Sea to be practising your true trade.’

Colonel Knipe signalled to his men and they locked metal shackles across Jethro and Boxiron’s wrists. Boxiron suffered the manacles restraining him, but Jethro knew the police militia had to be sorely aware they would need chains a lot thicker to stop his hulking body from snapping his fetters in a second if he chose to break free.

‘I shall do you and your metal brute a favour, Jackelian. Call it a professional courtesy. I’m going to hold both of you for deportation. The next boat that comes in will find itself with two extra passengers – and if either of you two rascals ever try to set foot on Jago again, I’ll let the First Senator’s wet-snouts throw you outside the wall and our diplomatic relations with the Kingdom be hanged.’

‘I must protest this treatment,’ said Jethro as the militia dragged him away.

‘Of course you must,’ said the colonel. ‘Everyone always does, and you haven’t even enjoyed the hospitality of our cells under the police fortress yet.’

Jethro exchanged glances with Boxiron, the light on the steamman’s vision plate pulsing uncertainly. It seemed as if their investigation on Jago had come to an abrupt end.

Hannah ducked as the buzzing sound passed over her RAM suit’s skull dome, chips of the tunnel lining raining across her. The trappers fired their weapon arms wildly up into the darkness, the whirling circles of light cast by their lanterns trying
to pick out the creature assaulting them. Only the blinking red orbs – its eyes? – betrayed the fleeting presence of the attacker, rapidly skimming over their heads as though an enraged mosquito was harrying them. Except that this mosquito carried a sting capable of piercing the armour of a RAM suit.

One of the trappers in front of Hannah turned, and she caught sight of the creature in her beams – it was clinging to the back of the trapper’s suit with two tiny bony legs and plunging its other two limbs – long piston-like lances – into the suit’s battery pack as spouts of green acid gushed out. Attached to two circular wings, the creature’s body could almost have passed for human were it not for its transparent skin revealing pumping, pulsing organs within.

Hannah’s lantern beams were only on the monster fleetingly – it leapt off the disabled trapper, leaving the man’s paralysed suit sparking electric energy from a damaged spine plate. The thing’s eyes were twin telescopic tubes mounted on its skull, irising open and shut to blink out an evil red semaphore at her. Hannah ducked her suit as the humming of the monster’s wings bounced off the tunnel walls. The creature could be circling around and heading straight for the blind spot on her suit’s back right now.

Hannah’s brain desperately churned; there was something about the way the creature had shied away from the lantern beams, its telescope eyes casting diffuse red light. The sort that enabled it to hunt inside the dark tunnels?

Hannah tugged the handle down by her knee inside the pilot frame, the handle that would activate her – ‘Leg flares!’ she yelled. ‘Light up the tunnel!’

Fizzing out of the tube of her suit, a flare ricocheted off the roof well before its parachute could deploy and went spinning across the tunnel like an angry firework, painting the
shadows with its sodium glare. Then, all around Hannah came the sound of flares firing, and every shadow in the darkness was instantly banished, the sudden brightness making her eyes water with its ferocity; her eyes that were born to see daylight. For the murderous Angel of Airdia it must have been a different sort of pain altogether, the creature lashing around between the vaults above their heads, blindly trying to find a way out. But not before the maddened trappers raised their magnetic catapults and scored a dozen direct strikes on the thing, the creature’s massive, disk-like wings torn to shreds, sending it dropping, mewling, in front of them. Lurching forward, the nearest RAM suit connected its metal foot with the creature’s head – the crack from the amplified strength of the trapper’s strike carrying all the way through the armoured crystal of Hannah’s skull dome.

The creature was finished now for sure, laying sprawled on the tunnel floor, energy from its long, lance-like arms sparking across the space while one of their flares spun madly around inches from it, illuminating the organs visible deep inside its transparent chest.

‘Nothing like this has ever been recorded attacking the battlements,’ said Tobias Raffold, gingerly pushing at one of the monster’s limp lance arms. ‘Not that I’ve bleeding heard of, at any rate.’

‘It was waiting in ambush,’ said Nandi, looking with fascination at the mangled beast, ‘as if it knew we were coming.’

‘That wicked eye on the slopes behind us, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘It was that eye that ratted us out for sure. They’re an evil pair, watchman and sentry, waiting for innocent travellers to enter their lair before slaughtering them and divvying up the meat.’

Hannah watched Nandi looking more closely at the thing.
There were cables hanging out of one of the broken tubes the creature had been using for its eyes.

‘It’s a metal-flesher, an animal-machine hybrid,’ observed Nandi.

‘Made for war,’ whispered the commodore. ‘Aye, and sure I’ve seen many of the same dark arts practised down Cassarabia-way by their womb mages. But this is an ancient thing, Hannah Conquest, as foul and old as that beastly eyeball up on the mountain slopes. You wanted to know what happened to William of Flamewall and his lover’s terrible god-creating design, I say it ended here, in the clear belly of that tube-eyed horror.’

‘No,’ insisted Hannah, firmly. ‘Bel Bessant travelled past this point centuries ago and she, at least, lived to return to Hermetica to create the god-formula. William of Flamewall followed her trail here, and not just to ensure the last part of the god-formula was placed beyond the hands of the race of man. He could have simply jumped into the Fire Sea to achieve that. William came here for another reason, and whatever that reason may be, this tunnel leads towards it.’

Yes. Bel Bessant had survived this creature. Might Hannah’s mother also have lived, her brave, resourceful mother? Her mother had to have survived, she simply had to.

‘Ah, lass,’ Commodore Black said to Hannah, ‘you’re sounding more and more like that rascal Jethro Daunt every day. So forward it is, though against all sense it be. Your blessed scripture talks of a paradise fallen to war, ambassador; if this flying devil was one of its soldiers, then it must have been a mortal hellish affair indeed.’

‘You see the evidence of the ruins around you, captain. Darkness enveloped our paradise, and darkness is all that we are left with. I must agree with the young damson,’ Ortin urs Ortin said. ‘The fragments of scripture that Bel Bessant
retrieved were found beyond here, beyond the angel’s hunting ground.’

They moved down the tunnel even more carefully now, in case there were more survivors from the Pericurians’ ancient war lurking in the arches and alcoves. Three destroyed RAM suits and dead trappers lay behind them, sporting smoking holes where the angel had administered its fatal blessing.

Shortly before Hannah reached the end of the tunnel, the alcoves that intermittently lined the walls turned into full side-chambers connected by corridors that were too narrow and low to follow inside a RAM suit. Rather than explore the passages immediately, the expedition members conferred and decided to follow the distant suggestion of natural light to the end. And there she saw
it
.

The expedition had passed right underneath the towering mass of the Cade Mountains, emerging clear on the other side, and if Hannah had lived to be a thousand years old, she would never have expected to find the shocking sight that was waiting for her outside.

Hester stood in front of the tug’s pilothouse, cursing her luck as the febrile waters of the boils on either side of the craft spouted angry geysers, their burning vapours keeping her rubber scald suit uncomfortably hot. The channel the Jagonese tug was bouncing along felt dangerously narrow, seventy feet of boiling water shadowed by slowly shifting walls of magma to either side. But the channel’s increasing narrowness was precisely why the tug had been dispatched from Hermetica. The great model of molten flows contained in the guild’s transaction engines had predicted weeks ago that this channel was going to close, the boils of water squeezed into non-existence, and the Jagonese tug service
still had a way station at the other end that needed towing to a safer mooring.