Secrets of the Fire Sea (40 page)

Hannah screamed as her brain began to heat up, her every thought a burning dagger as molten as the fires of Jago. Changing her, remaking her. Healing her and killing her…

W
ith eight bearers on either side, strapping ursine adults all, the litter belonging to Baroness Laro urs Laro of the House of Ush, head of the Pericurean trade mission, was borne with careful dignity and some difficulty through the tight entrance to the cavernous senatorial banqueting hall and towards the senate’s best imitation of a Pericurian feast.

Despite their best efforts at courtliness, the bearers deposited the Baroness in front of the piled food as if she were another haunch of meat being added to the feast. First Senator Silvermain’s free company mercenaries took position along the wall, guns and armour jangling, two food tasters emerging from a doorway to flank the politician and his noble guest – both the food tasters kin of the kitchen staff, as was the Jagonese tradition. The possibility of poison aside, the two food tasters looked as happy to be sampling the foreign food as the First Senator’s favoured courtiers and cronies. They were trying not to make it too obvious as they covered their noses with silk handkerchiefs in distaste at the fare in front of them. There were a few disgusted mutters of
wet-snout food
whispered by the courtiers forced to sit down with this foreign savage.

Banging the First Senator’s staff of office on the stone floor, the senatorial rod carrier declared the state occasion open with all the flowery language expected of him and extended the senate’s official leave-taking to the baroness of Pericur, expressing the senate’s deep regret at her recall to her noble homeland. As the man’s last words echoed away, waiting staff emerged in force to remove heavy glass domes from platters of food, revealing roast meats spread across beds of sugared rice, all smothered with a pungent honeyed sauce made from rotting fish entrails. Steam rose up towards the stained glass windows in the arches above.

‘Remind us, how long has the House of Ush held the trading licence for Jago, baroness?’ First Senator Silvermain solicitously enquired as he waved sweet wine towards his guest of honour, who had already started pulling honey-soaked baked hams off the table and towards her razor sharp teeth.

‘Seventeen years, noble excellency,’ said the baroness from the horizontal comfort of her litter, wiping her face with the fur on the back of her huge wrists.

‘Yes, we remember now,’ said the First Senator. ‘It seems like only yesterday we assumed the mantle of our position – a couple of years before the House of Ush replaced the incumbent trading house. And now the wheel has turned. Your house’s boat is due today, is it not? By tomorrow you shall be sailing for your homeland.’

‘The boat will be here by this afternoon,’ agreed the baroness, holding out one of her people’s traditional leather cups for the senatorial staff to fill with sweet wine.

‘You seem to be bearing your house’s loss of its trading licence with admirable equanimity,’ said Silvermain.

‘Life is change.’

‘Change, indeed,’ said the First Senator. ‘A good Circlist sentiment. Your previous archduchess was a great reformer;
ruling with ambition and vision, cut much from our own cloth. The loss of your patron is not just mourned by the House of Ush; it is Jago’s loss also.’

The baroness shrugged, sending great ripples of fur rolling down her body. ‘Forests have been felled and mills built, with many minor merchant houses raised on the tide of their industry. Not even the conservatives can so easily turn the clock back on our advances. There is a time for everything and our house’s star will be resurgent again.’

‘Capital. If only you had been born within the race of man, baroness,’ trilled the First Senator. ‘Such vim! No whining or complaining. If we had a hundred such as you sitting by our side in the hall of the stained senate, then our future could not be denied!’

The baroness raised her overflowing wine cup in a toast. ‘To futures that cannot be denied.’

The First Senator was delighted to join in the toast, before calling out for Stom urs Stom. The mercenary officer appeared and was dispatched with a company of her hulking soldiers to bring back the architect’s model of the planned new capital. The mercenaries returned, struggling under the immense weight of a section of the scale model, and lowered it to the floor in front of the table.

‘These are the docks for New Titus,’ said the First Senator, his hand sweeping proudly over the diorama. ‘U-boat pens with space enough to accept freighters from all over the world, for who will not want to visit us to see the wonders we will construct anew on Jago? And here—’ he indicated a vast stretch of marble buildings lining the underwater harbour, ‘—will sit the new Pericurian trading mission. After you return home, you must spread word among your liberal allies in the baronial council that as Pericur is now becoming a great power in the world, we shall be building them a trade mission worthy
of your people’s ambitions. We shall prosper together, Jago and Pericur, as an apprentice and an old tradesman prosper in their shared labours, participating in the glory of the great venture we are planning here.’

There was an enthusiastic round of applause from Silvermain’s favoured senators and courtiers as Baroness Laro urs Laro bowed her head in recognition of the First Senator’s flattery.

‘And will your trading boat from Pericur be bringing word of which house the archduchess has decided to favour with the new grant of the Jagonese commercial concession?’

‘I do not think so,’ said the Baroness, picking a string of bacon fat out of her teeth.

‘But surely the archduchess will want to award it to one of her political allies? That is the way of patronage, is it not?’

‘It is a matter of economics, not patronage,’ said the baroness, with the same tone that a mother might use in telling a truculent child that there would be no supper for the night. ‘Have you never been shown your trade minister’s accounts? Since the opening of the southwest passage diverted all the shipping away from Jago, your coffers have been running down to empty over the last few years. There is simply no margin for us now here on Jago.’

‘But,’ the shocked First Senator had abandoned all pretence of nibbling at the pungent foreign dishes, ‘we have been given assurances from the archduchess through your embassy. The trading license will be passed onto a new house just as it always has.’

‘I would be surprised if she hadn’t made such assurances to you,’ said the baroness. ‘Maybe she even believes her own words. But there is something else to consider…’

‘What?’ the First Senator pressed.

‘It is a confidence,’ said the baroness. ‘I would like to share
it with you, but first, I must admit, I am most curious. I have heard that you have the gift of reading the lines of your people’s feet in the manner of a wise woman, that you can ascertain much about the person, even their future.’

‘We do possess that gift,’ said the First Senator, the anxiety in his voice mixed with a sliver of satisfaction that word of his second sight had passed as far as the foreign traders.

‘I heard as much soon after I first arrived on Jago,’ said the baroness, ‘and ever since I discovered it, I have often wondered if your gift might extend to an ursine’s feet as well as those of the race of man.’ She clicked her fat furred fingers and one of her retainers jumped forward to slip off her enormous dark leather boots. ‘Will you do me this honour, noble excellency? In return I shall pass on some small intelligence I have come into possession of, a morsel that will prove of great advantage to you’

‘It is said that fair exchange is no robbery,’ said the First Senator, kneeling down to run his hands along the two fur-covered slabs of flesh that had been revealed. The ranks of Jagonese courtiers suppressed their scandalized coughs and whispers at the lack of decorum in the situation, lest their dangerously erratic master overhear them. Silvermain examined the limbs of the baroness and poked and prodded at her soles for a minute before he appeared to give up. ‘We fear these are too unlike the feet of our people for our talent to be brought to bear. We can see no future here.’

The baroness nodded thoughtfully and bent forward. ‘Well, you tried, so I shall tell you the few facts I know. The assurances of the present archduchess are worthless. I fear her reign will be short. You see, she is close to being replaced.’

A shocked hush fell over the table at this sudden revelation.

‘What faction could take power so quickly?’ asked the First
Senator. ‘Who is to be installed as the new archduchess?’

Baroness Laro urs Laro looked distrustfully at the staring faces of the First Senator’s lackeys around the table. ‘I will whisper the name to you.’

The First Senator came forward, climbing up between the sprawling noble’s legs as the baroness bent forward on her litter, pushing aside the politician’s hair around his ears and drawing his head in close to her voluminous belly.

‘Me,’ she whispered, pushing the First Senator’s face down flat onto the great folds of furred flesh. Silvermain’s yell of surprise was smothered by the vast tract of flesh blocking his nose and mouth, his spine pressed down by the full strength of the massive ursine female.

There was a moment when the courtiers lining the table opposite looked at the jerking, struggling body of the First Senator being suffocated as though this might be some surreal prank being played on them by their insane ruler. But there was little disguising the reality of Silvermain’s violent spasms. A clang sounded through the hall as the door to the banqueting chamber was locked from inside.

The First Senator’s rod bearer ran up to the advancing free company soldiers. ‘She’s lost her bloody mind, beat her off, bring her down. Kill her if you have to.’

‘I am loath to do so,’ said Stom urs Stom.

‘But I’m ordering you,’ spluttered the official. ‘That’s your sworn liege-lord!’ He stumbled back, looking dumbfounded at the short sword thrust into his chest.

‘That would depend,’ said Stom, unhooking her turret rifle from the brass tank on her back, ‘on who commanded the oath to start with.’

Rifles burst into action, courtiers and senators sent sprawling as heavy piton heads struck them. None of the Jagonese was permitted arms in the presence of their First Senator, and they scrambled away in terror from the table, ploughing into serving
staff trying to escape down the passage to the kitchens, only to find its doors bolted by those that were meant to be guarding them. The serving staff died with more dignity than their politician masters, turning and throwing themselves at the guns of the mercenaries rather than clawing in useless desperation at the thick oak doors blocking their exit. In the narrow confines of the corridor concentrated weapons fire tore the fleeing throng to shreds without discrimination.

Great pawed hands reached under the stone table to pull out a few remaining, cowering senators, tossing more targets into the open. The politicians had hardly got to their feet when they were cut down again in a hail of heavy pitons. They lay twitching on the stone floor as the last few embers of life departed.

Laro urs Laro, Baroness of the House of Ush, pulled herself to her feet, casually discarding the blue-faced corpse of the First Senator as she surveyed with satisfaction the dozens of bodies strewn across the banqueting hall.

She addressed Stom urs Stom. ‘I believe I won our wager.’

‘Baroness?’

‘It seems the First Senator had the gift after all.’ Her foot stepped down on the scale model of Titus City abandoned on the floor, splintering a whole district with her weight.

We can see no future here.

The feverish air on top of the coral rise surrounding Jago resounded to the crack of the work crew’s sledgehammers chipping away at the growth. The Jagonese had long ago realized that the best way to control the width of their protective coral line was to prune the height of the great rise – topping it forced its growth out horizontally instead, thickening the defences.

Theirs was hard, hot, dirty work, judged vital by the lessons of history – the coral line had turned back the long wooden
ships of the polar barbarians, the wheel-powered dreadnaughts of the Chimecan Empire – every foe who had been attracted by the wealth and power of the island nation in centuries past.

It was always a welcome part of the work gang’s routine to take pause for a water break when the trading boat from Pericur arrived in front of the massive gates cut into the rise, the sight of the machines drawing open the doors below an awe-inspiring sight, as well as an excuse to halt their backbreaking labours. But the crew knew enough about the comings and goings of the trading vessel to recognize that a thrashing in the water didn’t normally precede its arrival as the thick-skinned dolphins that inhabited the boils tried to flee before the iron hull. And if the merchant u-boat below had an escort of dolphins, it was missing the accompanying tug that would have normally guaranteed it safe passage through the Fire Sea’s shifting flows of magma.

The coral line’s portcullis master and his workers must have shared the work crew’s sense that something was out of place, as the gates that had started to open were now slowly shutting in the face of the trading boat. The work crew’s feelings turned from apprehension to panic as they saw gate staff being tossed out of balconies along the gate’s control cabins below, tiny bodies bouncing and tumbling off the coral line’s slopes before being absorbed by the searing waters of the channel they were meant to be protecting.

Behind the Pericurian trading boat, the bowsprit of a u-boat broke the steaming water’s surface, then another and another, ugly black lines of men-o’war masked by the steaming wash flowing off a forest of conning towers; hundreds of submersibles rising up from the depths of the channel leading to Jago’s entrance. And to the work crew’s horror, the gate’s closure had now halted, the rumble of the machines accelerating as they
powered up again to open the gates wide, admitting the dark-hulled armada into their realm. None of the snub-nosed mortars and cannons on the bastions of the coral line’s gun emplacements were moving into position, let alone shaking the air with the ear-splitting fury of their weekly gunnery practice. The free company soldiers that the work crew could see on the emplacements below seemed unconcerned by the massive fleet’s arrival.