Secrets of the Fire Sea (7 page)

There was a crowd gathering on the bridge. Word of the archbishop’s murder was spreading through the Seething Round. Using their lamp rods as staffs, the militia were holding them back. Archbishop Alice Gray might not have started off as a Jagonese churchman, but she had been popular enough with the people of the island by the time she died.

‘I think the archbishop expected something like this would happen,’ said the priest.’

‘Had Alice talked to you before about Flail?’ asked Hannah.

‘It wasn’t what she said,’ explained Father Baine. ‘It was what she didn’t say. There were letters she was drafting; the ones she didn’t ask me to write for her. Some were composed in church cipher, but I saw who those were addressed to once – the League of the Rational Court.’

The Inquisition! Sweet Circle, that was one arm of the church Hannah had hoped never to encounter.

‘It’s not just bodies that are twisted in the guild’s turbine halls,’ said the priest. He tapped his prematurely thinning hair. ‘It’s their minds. The way they cling to Circlism out in their vaults, it’s almost faith!’

Heresy. Superstitions perverting the church without gods.
The implications of the archbishop’s murder collided with the weight of emotional wreckage spinning around Hannah’s mind. And with the archbishop gone, Hannah would have no one to speak for her in front of the senate. She was going to end up an initiate of the Guild of Valvemen, indentured to a master who had murdered her guardian!

‘We have to prove that Vardan Flail killed the archbishop,’ said Chalph. ‘If we can do that, prove that your draft ballot was a personal matter in a vendetta, the senate will have no choice but to nullify it.’

Prove it when the colonel’s police militia wanted the very opposite finding. What hope did they have?

But it was the only way Hannah was going to survive – if the deadly energies of the guild’s vaults didn’t finish her off, then Vardan Flail would be only too eager to ensure an accident befell her and silenced her wagging tongue.

Jethro and Boxiron waited in the shipping office for the agent behind the wooden counter to flick through his box of yellowed cards. This was the last shipping agent on the harbour, and it looked as if they were about to receive the same answer they had been given by every other office they had visited.

‘Sorry, Mister Daunt,’ said the clerk. ‘I hate to turn away custom, but there ain’t no call for passage to Jago no more.’

‘There must be at least one vessel on your roster that makes regular stops there?’

‘Not since the southwest passage fully opened,’ said the clerk. ‘They’re dangerous waters, the Fire Sea, and there are easier ways to get across to the colonies now. It’s their own fault, bloody Jagonese. Their tugs used to charge skippers a small fortune to see us safely through the boils. Now there’s another way to sail to Concorzia, who’ll pay their fees, eh? Not any of the vessels on my lists, that I can tell you.’

‘Myself and my good steamman friend here need to get to Jago,’ insisted Jethro.

‘Well, you won’t be going direct, fellow, that’s the truth of it. Last I heard, Pericur still runs a service out to the island once a month. Take a steam ship across the Sepia Sea to Concorzia and travel north overland to the ursine lands, and then you can wait there for your boat to the island. That’s how I’d do it.’

‘What about a direct passage to Pericur?’

‘Not on my list either,’ said the clerk. ‘Their great and mighty archduchess hoards their trade routes for her kin, and it don’t seem like I got the furry hide to qualify for her graces, do I? Like I say, travel to the colonies and then head north overland for the Pericurian border. I can sell you an airship berth rather than a steamer cabin if you’re in a hurry. You’ll be walking the streets of New Alban in three days and there’s plenty of wagon trains from there up towards Pericur.’

‘We are on church business,’ said Boxiron. ‘Is there really nothing you can do?’

The clerk traced an ironic little circle across his waistcoat and shrugged. ‘Then may serenity find you.’ He walked away leaving the two of them to their own devices.

‘Then may it find us on a luckier day.’ Jethro shook his head and made to leave the dusty little room, but a younger female clerk – seeing her master had left the front office – stopped scribbling in a ledger and waved her inky nib in Jethro Daunt’s direction.

‘There is a way for you to travel directly to Pericur. There’s a free trader with a trading licence from the archduchess moored down in the submarine pens. No shipping agent here will recommend him to you, though. He’s an awkward bugger and he’s not registered with any of us.’

Jethro eased a coin out of his pocket and slipped it across
to the girl. ‘Thank you. I would have paid you a commission on the recommendation, whether the boat was a free trader or not.’

‘It’s not just the lack of a fee for us,’ warned the girl. ‘There’s talk about this boat and the kind of cargoes it’s been known to handle. You’ll be shipping out with a right crew of rascals. A gentleman of your quality, sir, you might want to take a berth on an airship of the merchant marine and go the rest of the way overland from the colonies like was suggested to you.’

Jethro tapped the iron shoulder of his hulking steamman companion. ‘Have no fear, good damson. Boxiron and I can both be persuasive, in our own different ways.’

‘Then count your fingers after shaking hands with any of the crew, sir, and ask for the
Purity Queen
down on the docks. You won’t miss her when you see her lines.’

She was correct in that, there was no chance of missing the craft. The u-boat in question was a double-hulled affair, lying low in the waters of the pens like a giant metal catamaran, a single conning tower rising out of her middle, the bridge low and square and home to a flock of screeching seagulls. The bowsprit of the closer hull ended in a snarling moulding of a boar, her companion hull an iron lion’s head, the ferocity of both figures diminished somewhat by the spattering of guano from the cloud of noisy seagulls above her.

‘Look at the carvings of the mouths,’ noted Boxiron, his voicebox quivering. ‘That vessel has real teeth: those are torpedo tubes inside the jaws.’

‘Ex-fleet sea arm,’ said a familiar-sounding voice behind them. ‘Decommissioned and sold off into private hands. There’s empty gun mounts on the fantail behind her bridge, and the torpedo tubes have been deactivated. Allegedly.’

Jethro turned and was startled to see a face he knew standing
behind them; a middle-aged woman with gorilla-sized arms, and next to her a girl half her age whom Jethro didn’t recognize. ‘Professor Harsh,’ said Jethro. ‘Bob me sideways; I haven’t seen you since, what, that business with the tomb of Kitty Kimbaw? Are you mounting another expedition, good lady?’

‘Not this time,’ said the professor. ‘I’m head of the department of archaeology at Saint Vine’s College now. I’m reluctantly leaving the fieldwork to my more youthful associates these days.’ She indicated the young woman standing next to her. ‘This is Nandi Tibar-Wellking, my assistant, about to embark on the solemn task of adding some extra letters after her name, and these—’ she indicated Jethro and Boxiron ‘—are the two dears who helped me prove that the curse of Kitty Kimbaw’s tomb owed more to a heavily bejewelled statue that had been stolen from a side-passage than it did to supernatural vengeance from the disturbed mummified remains of its occupant. Mister Jethro Daunt, ex of the church, and Boxiron, ex of the Steamman Free State and various other parts.’

‘It is good to see you again, Amelia softbody,’ Boxiron nodded towards the professor. ‘Would your assistant be shipping out on the
Purity Queen
? We’ve been led to believe that this vessel has something of an unsavoury reputation.’

‘Yes,’ hummed the professor, ‘knowing her skipper, I would be surprised if it were otherwise.’

‘Do you know her commander well enough to recommend us for berths?’ asked Jethro.

‘I don’t think you’ll have much of a problem in that regard. Tramp freighters are lucky to get whatever cargo they can, and there are no bigger tramps than—’ she pointed towards a figure weaving out of the conning tower and crossing the gantry to the quayside, followed by a pair of submariners in striped shirts ‘—him!’

‘Ah, lass,’ said the figure as he got within earshot. ‘I can tell by the mortal twinkle in your eye that you’re either slandering Jared Black or defaming my fine boat’s reputation.’

‘One of the two, commodore,’ said the professor.

‘It’s a terrible thing, the malicious tittle-tattle in Spumehead that has attached itself to an honest fellow like me. A fellow who, as you well know, Amelia, has done nothing but sacrifice himself for the blessed Kingdom of Jackals. A war hero who has had little out of the state but the wicked attentions of her revenue men and false accusations of smuggling from lesser skippers jealous of old Blacky’s genius and skill at navigating the perilous courses of the oceans.’ He looked at the professor’s young assistant and indicated her baggage to his two u-boat men. ‘And this must be your Damson Tibar-Wellking. A pretty rose to be carried by the hard lines of my old war-boat, but we’ll see you safe to your destination, lass.’

It seemed to Jethro that the young academic nodded rather nervously towards the commodore. Whether it was the ruffians acting as porters, the military lines of the freighter, or the declarations of the vessel’s master about his honesty that made her apprehensive, Jethro was uncertain. He didn’t need his church training in reading the souls of men to know that upright people very rarely needed to proclaim their honesty. Young Nandi kissed goodbye to her mentor and was led away inside the u-boat. The commodore watched her walk away, scratching his thick black beard. There was a speckling of white on its fringes that made it look as if snow had recently fallen and settled there.

‘I’ve bumped into a couple of old acquaintances I wasn’t expecting to see,’ said the professor to the old u-boat man, indicating Boxiron and Jethro. ‘They seem also to be in need of a vessel.’

‘I am led to believe you have Pericurian trading papers,
good captain,’ said Jethro. ‘Myself and my steamman friend here need to reach Pericur to catch the supply boat to Jago.’

‘Jago is it now?’ said the commodore. ‘Well then, I can save you the bother of the extra leg. I’m calling at the dark isle before I head on out to Pericur.’

‘Someone’s paying you to go to Jago?’ said Boxiron, surprised.

‘The college is,’ commented the professor. ‘We’re paying for the voyage and access to their great transaction-engine vaults both.’

‘And a more durable craft nor a more knowledgeable skipper you could not have picked to look after your young college flower,’ said the commodore. ‘There’s not a vessel in port better qualified to navigate the perilous currents of the Fire Sea.’

‘I’m trusting you with Nandi’s life, Jared,’ said the professor, seriously. ‘Her mother has never forgiven me for getting her father killed down south. I don’t know whether it would be her mother or the high table back at the college that would be more upset if they knew my assistant was heading for Jago to do this research.’

‘Nobody’s sailed deeper into the Fire Sea than brave old Blacky,’ said the commodore. ‘I’ll get your lovely lass there as smartly as if my beautiful boat was still part of the fleet sea arm. And you two fine fellows, also, if you need to reach the blasted coast of that terrible isle.’

‘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 passenger 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 passenger. The passenger 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
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, Ambassador 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 ambassador, as I no longer hold the position here in the Kingdom and haven’t yet been sworn in on Jago. A point the new incumbent at the Jackelian embassy 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 arse 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 passage to Jago.’