From the Deep of the Dark

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘The escort ships are pulling out of line and forming up as an independent flotilla,’ announced the sailor on the Purity Queen ’s sonar station, two greasy hands clasped to his earphones with his eyes shut, as if he could picture in his mind the ironclads taking position.

‘A grand disposition for cutting through the gill-necks’ ranks,’ said the commodore. ‘But it leaves our line of civilian tubs as ripe for picking as plums on a warm summer’s day. They’re not going to be happy out there.’

Charlotte knew how the merchant vessels’ crews felt. Waking up groggy and disoriented and with bizarre memories of a pursuit by monsters was bad enough. But waking up to find herself pressed into the crew of this strange submersible craft; its roguish company with their insular manners and sailor’s slang — an alien tongue of binnacle lists, drift counts and parbuckling — a miniature kingdom of cramped corridors and cabins and unfamiliar equipment. And everywhere Charlotte wandered the same odour of burnt oil and uniforms sweated by near-tropical heat while running submerged. She might still have King Jude’s sceptre, but the price she was paying for its possession was growing higher by the day. Sometimes, it was hard to tell where reality started and her delirium-haunted dreams had halted.

Charlotte piped up. ‘What about our people on the flagship?’

Our people. Well, the steamman had saved her life, so she supposed she owed him, not to mention the eccentric ex-churchman who seemed determined to warn her of supernatural threats to her life. Feeling gratitude to people wasn’t something Charlotte was used to, or a situation she felt at ease with. Especially because she wouldn’t complain if the commodore decided to turn his u-boat around and head right back for the solid land of home. I’d take my chances in the rookeries and disappear into the underworld. There was only so far the reach of a bunch of evil royalists and crooked secret police could extend, wasn’t there?

‘The Zealous is turning to meet the enemy vessels,’ said the commodore. ‘They’re moving at a rate of knots now, too fast to lower their launches safely. Jethro and that sly old bugger Dick Tull will be confined on board, though not willingly, I’ll wager, if Boxiron slips his gears.’ He scratched his beard thoughtfully. ‘Fire up our fish-scales outside — let’s see if the money I paid that brainy wretch in the naval yards is any more useful than a scraping of barnacles growing on my new hull. Prepare to bring us around, helm.’

‘Stealth plating receiving charge,’ reported the crewman. There was the slightest of vibrations from outside the hull, as if a tiny mosquito had come awake and was doing circuits of their cramped control room. ‘Acoustic profile is approaching optimum.’

The commodore checked a bank of machinery that looked more recently installed than most of the rusting, heavily greased equipment on board. ‘As slippery as an eel and hopefully as hard to seize too, to the phones of every boat in the water. Down-plane two degrees, helm, slip us out of the convoy and turn us around. Run us into the wake of The Zealous.’

‘We’re taking pings,’ sounded the phones man. ‘No back-echo. We’re displacing all incoming noise!’

‘One number short on the convoy’s list, then.’ said the commodore, his voice satisfied. ‘We’ve got two hours or so before we have to rest the stealth plates, or the mortal things will burn themselves out. After The Zealous, now. If I know Jethro and the rest of our friends, they’ll be pushing off the warship before long. We’ll pick them up and let Vice-admiral Cockburn and the gill-necks dance the sea waltz together while we set a course for the heart of the Advocacy.’

‘Fish in the water!’ warned the sailor on the phones station. ‘Multiple launches running hot. Depth charge spreads descending too.’

His words were borne out by a distant reverberation, the Purity Queen’s hull quivering at the faraway detonations.

‘Who fired first?’ the commodore demanded.

‘Simultaneous exchange of fire, skipper,’ said the sailor. ‘Damned if both fleets didn’t open up on each other at the same time!’

‘Bloody fools. This is meant to be a convoy, not a wicked sea duel. Cockburn’s orders should have been to avoid trouble, not provoke it.’

Another volley of depth charge explosions shook the u-boat.

‘Are they shooting at us?’ asked Charlotte.

‘They can’t even see the Purity Queen now, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘No, those are our fleet’s depth charges, and meant for the blessed Advocacy’s boats. The gill-necks don’t have surface vessels as such — though their fleet’s thick with submersibles. Take us up to periscope depth, pilot, I need to take a peek at what those blockheads are doing up there.’

A minute later and the old u-boat man had pulled a steel tube down out of the ceiling, using two grips on its side to twist the periscope around.

‘Skipper,’ warned the sailor on the sonar desk. ‘I’m picking up the sound of gyroscope rings being rotated.’

‘I see them, phones,’ said the commodore. ‘Starfish surfacing in the water, at least three of the terrible things.’

Charlotte had to resist grabbing the scope from the vessel’s skipper. ‘Starfish?’

‘Nothing good for our convoy, lass. The gill-necks have come armed for the hunt. Look at the terrible things getting ready to go into operation. That’s it for Jethro and our friends. They belong to the gill-necks now!’

‘What is that thing?’ shouted Dick. On their starboard, a metallic dome rising out of the waves started rotating, sea water pouring off five massive metal arms spinning around its head. There seemed to be nodules running across the arms, hundreds of them, giving the appendages the appearance of octopus tentacles.

Boxiron ran to the railing on the ship’s gantry, his vision plate emitting clicking sounds as his head jutted out over the edge. Whatever tricks Boxiron’s skull was playing with the sight of the bizarre carousel-like machine out there, the steamman recoiled back as if he had been physically struck. ‘A boarding device! The capsules in the arms are packed full of soldiers.’

Multiple detonations sounded, dozens of capsules exploding out from each arm. As sharp as a steel needle at their business end, the capsules rammed through the hull-platform of The Zealous, the vessel shaking as they pounded into her. On a normal ship the capsules would have struck just above the waterline, but on the wheel-ship they sank into the flat hull of the platform riding high above the waves, metal splinters shattering where each of the boarding devices hit. It was only then that Dick noticed a ring holding a large steel cable built into the flat rear of each capsule, the lines still connected to the dome-like thing surfaced off their side. With a hideous squealing sound, the dome began to rotate, rewinding the multiple steel lines it had cast out back into a groove around its base. As the cables wound, the wheel-ship started to list badly, the hydrofoils on the opposite side of The Zealous rising out of the water. It’s towing us towards it!

On the ship’s gantry, Dick, Jethro, Boxiron and Sadly were thrown across the deck as though they were little more than ants on a capsizing toy boat. Dick’s hand lurched, catching hold of a depth charge platform and hanging on for dear life as their ship was dragged across the waves. Boxiron’s firm grip lashed out onto the depth charge loader, clutching hard onto Jethro Daunt with the other, while Sadly swung in turn on the ex-parson’s hand, attempting to jam his cane into something solid enough to support his weight. Sailors unluckier than the four of them were sent tumbling off the superstructure and decks, shaken into the sea below and swallowed without a trace by the peaking waves. Beyond The Zealous, all was confusion. The long line of the convoy had broken, ship’s lights scattering across the sea, thunder sounding from warships’ guns, explosions and fires flowering in the darkness. But this ship, they want intact. As The Zealous was drawn in against the boarding machine, the angle of her deck righted, Dick tossed back from the edge into a wall behind. Boxiron spun into a porthole, smashing the toughened glass into a shower of shards as his arm shot out to stabilize himself.

With The Zealous reeled in alongside the Advocacy’s machine, a flurry of magnetic cables lashed out from a ring of holes at the apex of the siege craft, flying over the top of The Zealous and securing the gill-neck’s catch. A tangle of lines impaled the soft skin of one of the vessel’s pocket airships, the ’stat three-quarters reversed out of the hangar at the stern of the flagship as the projectiles struck. Capture cables tightened and the impaled airship crashed towards the launch deck, her command bridge and engine cars smashing down into the wheel-ship. A series of explosions rocked the vessel, a propeller cartwheeling across the deck in a cloud of debris as the airship’s expansion-engine gas ignited. Smoke gushed out from an open swinging door behind Dick, cries of alarm and orders drifting across the superstructure as a crew of sailors struggled past, unravelling a fire hose between them while Dick and the others picked themselves up. Tellingly, the guns of The Zealous had fallen silent.

‘This is a pretty picture,’ moaned Sadly, brushing broken glass off his clothes. ‘Pride of the bleeding fleet sea arm and we’re stuck here, a fly in the gill-neck’s web.’

‘They want the ship as a prize,’ said Dick.

‘Her capture would make a powerful propaganda coup for the Advocacy,’ said Daunt. ‘That much is certain.’

Dick and Boxiron leant over the vessel’s railing. In front of them the vast wheels were churning uselessly; behind them a wheel had stopped turning altogether, tangled by the cable shots of the underwater nation’s strange vessel.

‘Too far to jump. Even with a buoyancy vest, the fall would break your softbody necks.’ Boxiron glanced over at Daunt. ‘Not mine though.’

‘Let us hope that our boat bays are still in friendly hands, then, old steamer.’

‘Survive the fall, maybe, but you’ll float as good as a sinking rock,’ said Dick.

‘That is a common misconception,’ said Daunt. ‘In fact, Boxiron will float like a sealed drum and fare rather better, I fear, than we will.’

‘Well, good for him, amateur. How about you float home on him? Me, I’ll choose Blacky’s old tub again.’

Small arms fire chattered within the vessel, boarding parties clashing with Jackelian marines. How many gill-neck soldiers were shot across in each of those capsules? Sweet Circle, it’s never made easy. Not for me.

‘How are we going to get out of here?’ complained Sadly.

‘I possess perfect positional bearings,’ said Boxiron, the tone of superiority positively leaking from his voicebox. ‘I can place our location inside the ship, including our point of entry on this vessel, within two feet.’

‘Just take us back to the boat bay,’ growled Dick.

‘Follow me. I shall lead the way.’

Taking Boxiron at his word, the party plunged inside, allowing the steamman to take the lead. Whatever havoc the gill-neck boarding parties were creating inside the vessel, their handiwork had done significant damage so far. Gas lamps set into corridor walls flickered intermittently, throwing areas of the vessel into darkness — a gloom broken by the bobbing hand lamps of crewmen scurrying about on action stations. Worse still, the stabilizers that balanced the platform above the ugly propulsion wheels had been damaged. Previously stable enough in choppy waters that Dick had been able to rest a glass on a mess table, the drink’s contents as still as a mill pond on a summer’s afternoon, now the ship’s passages lurched and shifted with each swell of the waves below. Unlike a normal vessel, the wheel-ship didn’t possess the natural stability in the water that a keel’s weight would have given her.

Staggering like drunken sailors, the four of them navigated by Boxiron’s supposedly infallible sense of direction, clambering down steep ladders with ridiculously thin treads, as if the naval architects had deliberately been trying to create injuries from falling. At times, Dick thought he recognized some of the corridors from their escorted journey up from the boat bay. Mostly, he was navigating a narrow-passaged purgatory of unfamiliar shifting iron walls, slippery floors and intermittently hissing gaslights. They blundered through the strong smell of sea water, machine oil and the acrid tinge of smoke and gun cordite. If there was any consolation, it was that Sadly appeared to be sharing Dick’s tribulations in magnified misery, the green-tinged informant’s mouth intermittently opening to make gurgling noises as if he was going to vomit. His cane tapped out when their illumination failed, knocking at the sides of the corridor, grunting as he hauled his weight along on his clubfoot. Jethro Daunt, by contrast, seemed serenely untroubled by the confusion and carnage they were passing. Unbothered by the sound of running boots, shouts, the distant firecracker rattle of weapons fire, sweaty faces of red-coated marines looming up like devils in the half-light as they came pushing past towards the fray. There was, though, a quizzical look on the ex-parson’s face. As if he didn’t quite understand why they should be here, on The Zealous, at this time. As if their involvement was a puzzle with a definitive answer that could be teased out. What they found instead was a corridor full of gill-necks below. On the opposite side of a two-storey chamber, long-barrelled rifles were raised against a handful of marines, fire spurting from slots in the weapons’ muzzles as they exchanged fire with the crew. Snout-shaped silver war masks hid the soldiers’ faces, while their elongated skulls bobbed with a cone of frilled-ridges capped by a fin-like slash of bone. Roughly of human height, the heavily muscled scales of the attackers’ wet skin shone in the half-light — not much of it on show beneath carapace-like chestplates. Armour that might have been ripped off crabs, shell plates covering metallic mesh that shimmered with oil rainbows in the flickering lamplight. Used to being able to cut rapidly through the deep waters of the ocean, the underwater warriors moved with sinuous speed in the unnaturally thin environment of the air. The gill-necks betrayed their origins as a branch of mankind’s evolutionary tree… vestigial surface lungs that could allow them to exist briefly out of the water fluttering weakly below their chests, a reverse rebreather mask connected into their masks to allow them to suck at the precious sea water they craved. The Advocacy soldiers’ weapons gave off snake-hisses as they fired, the outnumbered human sailors facing them answering back with the oak splintering crackle of their sea pattern rifles. With the initial volley depleted, each side charged at each other, bayonet stabbing against bayonet, although the gill-necks’ blades were more like crystal-edged spears running underneath the long length of their weapons’ barrels.

So, this is what we’re bleeding fighting? We’re no match for their strength.

‘They’re blocking the way to the boat bay,’ roared Boxiron. ‘I fight in five!’

Behind Boxiron, Daunt gripped the rusting gear lever of the hulking steamman and dragged it slowly through its network of grooves until it came to a rest in the slot where someone had scrawled ‘murderous’ on the plate. Tilting a piercing spear of steam towards the ceiling, Boxiron vaulted the rail and hurled himself down towards the floor of the circular chamber and the two sides locked in a melee. A cry echoed up from his voicebox as he plummeted, a metallic steamman landslide. ‘Top gear!’

He fights in five.

Coming hard and fast, the gill-necks threw themselves onto Boxiron, the crystal blades of their weapons bouncing off his hull plates, scraping and scratching his already dented surface. Two iron fists lashed back, cracking carapace armour, bones and flesh, sending broken bodies flying into bulkheads. No more sidestepping his true nature, attempting to temper his clumsy malfunctioning body. No more trying to dampen down his servos so that he didn’t inadvertently crack floors, dent walls, snap the toe bones of those standing too close to him. This is what Boxiron was for. Damage. Indiscriminate. Clanking. Raw. Damage. His legs lashed, his arms flailed, his head butted. Steam was spent and blood was shed.

Taking advantage of the confusion, Dick, Jethro and Sadly slipped down the spiral stair gantry to the chamber’s floor level, circling to the side of the fight, the few human sailors left alive demoted to the battle’s periphery. For its centre, its core, was now the throb of a boiler heart, Boxiron a wild hurricane of metal whipping through the disordered ranks of the enemy’s warriors.

Dick scooped up a rifle from one of the fallen soldiers, pulling off the corpse’s pack of shells. By his side, Sadly triggered his sleeve gun, the small single-shot pistol thudding into his open hand.

‘I told you not to bring that peashooter. We’re meant to be u-boat traders.’

‘Sailors shoot each other, don’t they, Mister Tull?’

‘Against those gill-necks, you’re more likely to annoy them.’

There was a corridor ahead of their chamber, the passage that led down to the boat bays — now filled with gill-neck warriors falling back under the fury of Boxiron’s onslaught. Bodies lay littered in the steamman’s wake, some broken and as still as death, others writhing in agony on the floor. Dick added to it, the butt of his rifle cracking down into the skull of one of the warriors trying to pull himself back onto his feet. There was a satisfying crack as the gill-neck slumped back down.

‘That was hardly sporting,’ protested Daunt.

Said the man who’s unleashed a metal demon onto the enemy. ‘What, you think there’s rules for this, amateur?’

‘He was trying to surrender.’

‘He was going to take a bite out of your leg!’

The force of the impact had dislodged the gill-neck’s silver mask, revealing humanoid features that were proudly defined by a burnished lightly scaled skin. Fierce and proud, even beaten unconscious. Its teeth were sharp and white, though, Dick had got that much right. They were famous for their bites weren’t they? At least, so the colourful stories of the penny-dreadfuls would have it — the Kingdom’s drowning mariners murdered by the savages of the sea before being dragged down to drown in their submerged palaces.

Dick felt the breeze ahead. They were close to the boat bay at the bottom of the vessel. He could almost taste his freedom. Dozens of runabouts and launches suspended on crane lines waiting to be lowered down to the choppy surface of the sea below. One of the little beauties had his name on it, waiting to take him back to the Purity Queen.

‘Coronation Market rules, Mister Tull?’ said Sadly.

Coronation Market. Middlesteel’s worst slum district. Guaranteed to leave its streets with a knife in your back and a bad disease between your legs. ‘They’re the only rules that count.’

As they pushed out into the open space of the boat bay, the party was assailed by gill-necks on either side of the boarding gantries, strong, muscled arms holding drum-headed weapons. The enemy soldiers opened up and weighted nets spun out from the strange guns, slapping into the steamman from both directions. Boxiron began to pull the netting off, tearing at it even before its lead-weighted ends had finished wrapping around him, but as he clawed at the material, Dick noticed the netting was still connected to the weapons by dangling cables. Cables that jolted as the charge they were carrying struck Boxiron, the steamman making a very organic sounding yelp as the mesh glimmered with the devastating force of the power electric. A deafening crash echoed around the boat bay as Boxiron tumbled onto the deck, his netting dancing with sparks.

Dick hardly had a moment to take in the sight of the felled steamman twitching on the floor before he was smashed in the back. Slammed to the floor just in time to see the bare webbed feet of a fresh boarding party of gill-neck fighters pistol-whipping Sadly and Daunt down to the deck with a flurry of blows. The rifle was kicked out of Dick’s hand and sent spinning over the edge of the boat bay into the waiting sea. Vanishing, along with any hope of an escape back to the u-boat.

A swift kick in his side turned Dick over. He was greeted by the sight of a dozen gill-neck weapons pointing at him, blades under their barrels balanced inches away from his bruised face.

‘Trespassing surface dweller vermin,’ hissed the sibilant voice of the nearest warrior, the frill of gills in his neck vibrating as he talked. ‘Let us see how long you have left.’

‘Left before what?’ coughed Dick.

‘Before your death, surface dweller. Before that.’

‘She’s dead in the water,’ said the commodore, banging the side of the periscope in frustration. ‘Damn their evil starfish, they have The Zealous. Wrapped like a kitten in yarn.’

‘Jethro and Boxiron?’ asked Charlotte.

‘No boats have launched,’ says the commodore. ‘Ah, the poor unlucky fools. The best we can hope for is that our friends are still on the ship and not among the poor wretches treading water underneath The Zealous.’

‘We can’t get them off?’

‘Not with a starfish wrapped around The Zealous, lass. Those iron beasts are troop carriers — nautical siege engines. That vessel will be swarming with boarding parties. If there’s one crumb of comfort for our friends, it’s that the gill-necks must be looking to take prisoners and prizes. Hostages to bargain with, and a prize vessel to embarrass Parliament into negotiating.’

He surrendered the periscope for Charlotte to gaze out for a moment onto the carnage. It was as if an octopus had clambered over the dark silhouette of The Zealous, two vessels locked in a death struggle which the Jackelians had already lost. With The Zealous’s propulsion wheels stilled, fires were left burning across her decks, lights in her portholes flickering. Sailors who had fallen off or abandoned the flagship were visible as small as bugs under her beam, struggling in the water.

‘Phones,’ said the commodore. ‘Any sign that the gill-necks are aware that we’re here?’

‘No pings being received, skipper,’ answered the sailor. ‘They’re too busy chasing the rest of the convoy off.’

‘They’ve still got eyes, though,’ said the commodore half to himself. ‘We are taking a mortal risk, sitting here. We just need a single gill-neck swimming close enough to lay their peepers on the Purity Queen.’

Charlotte sighed. What had she been thinking? That they would just sail up to The Zealous while Jethro Daunt and the steamman tossed themselves off the deck and landed in front of the u-boat? This was the reality of war in the periscope’s sweep… confusion and murder and darkness and men drowning in the water or burning in the oily debris set afire, two vessels locked together while marines tried to hunt down the opposition. A world shrunk no larger than a corridor down a gun sight and the comrade minding their rear from ambush.

‘What do we do now?’

‘We wait and we watch, lass. For a boat to launch with our friends, or for the cables of the starfish to disengage from the hull of The Zealous, or for our clever stealth skin to wear out. Either way, we get to leave.’

‘What will the cables disengaging mean?’

‘That the wicked gill-necks have taken the ship. That all resistance on board has been beaten down.’

Charlotte could tell from the strained lines on the faces of the crew how dangerous staying here was. An oppressive silence spread amongst the men and women waiting on the bridge, fingers nervously wiping the same oily spot on an air scrubber, the red knuckles of hands clutching onto the sides of seat stations. All of them with ears cocked to the distant sounds filtering through the hull of the u-boat. Never was a silence so loud. They clung to the hush expectantly, waiting for a sudden sound, anything that would indicate their discovery. But what would that be? A torpedo detonating against their hull, a sudden inrush of water followed by the screams of dying men struggling to seal off bulkheads?

At last, the commodore folded the handles on the periscope and sent it retracting down into the floor with a clatter as it locked into place. ‘The starfish is disengaging and making for a dive. How long have we got left on our stealth cells?’

‘Ten minutes, skipper.’

‘Time enough to clear these wicked waters. Down-bubble two degrees. Slip us past the Advocacy flotilla. We’ll hug the boils of the Fire Sea until we’re close to the seanore hunting grounds.’

Charlotte wiped the sweat dripping into her eyes away. She realized her clothes were soaking with it. ‘Are we going on?’

‘Only forward, lass. There’s nothing behind for us, not until we get the answer of what my sister is up to with the gill-necks and those rascals who paid you to steal King Jude’s sceptre. Between the cover of the magma flows and the Purity Queen on silent running, we’ll show the gill-necks they are not the only masters of the ocean. There are a few lessons in seamanship they’ve sill got to learn from old Blacky.’

Charlotte nodded grimly. Why do I get the feeling that it’s not an answer that any of us are going to like? Half the people who had tried to help her plucked by fate and captured by the gill-necks, or worse, as dead on the flagship as poor old Damson Robinson in her pie shop. I’m not a lucky person to be around.

Charlotte woke with a jolt, eyes opening to the sight of her cabin’s porthole; the same circle of armoured glass where she had just been dreaming of monstrous faces pressed up against the window. The oily, scaled skin of their distended heads banging and whacking to gain entry, break through the u-boat’s hull and feast on her blood.

As Charlotte struggled to separate the reality from the dream, she realized that the Eye of Fate was leaking a blue light. A mist of illumination spread across the metal floor, shapes similar to those she’d been dreaming breaking up as if the first sunshine of morning was dispersing it. What was happening to her? This had never happened before. Ever since that thug, Cloake, had tried to kill her back in the Kingdom, nothing had been the same since. She touched the jewel nervously as she kicked off the blanket from her cot. You protected me back in the capital. Is this your price, now? Driving me half-insane with these impossible visions? Except that part of Charlotte knew that maybe they weren’t so impossible after all. Distracted, she realized that the tapping from her dream had returned. Someone was knocking on the door of her cabin. Charlotte got out of the cot and reflexively reached out to touch King Jude’s sceptre laid out on the top bunk. All the money she had saved up from her robberies, squirreled away in the Kingdom’s banks and counting houses. What use was it to her now? As good as exiled, on the run with her so-called patrons waiting to murder her if she ever showed her face again at home. No, she couldn’t think like that. She still had a small fortune here in the sceptre. She just had to find a way to parlay the stupid antique into its true wealth. Find the leverage, and the rest will follow. The money always helped.

It was Jared Black standing outside her cabin, the old u-boat man carrying a long metal object that had the look of a weapon about it.

She raised her hands, mockingly. ‘Stand and deliver?’

Black shook the long device. ‘An old friend. The same mortal weapon the nomads of the sea use underwater. A shock-spear. It fires a directed current accurate up to thirty feet below the waves.’

‘That doesn’t sound like much of a range?’

‘For anything further away, they use a rotor-spear, cast like a handheld torpedo with an internal motor to carry it towards its target. You see one of those heading for you, lass, you swim out of the way as fast as you can.’

‘Time to leave the Purity Queen?’ Charlotte felt a frisson of fear.

‘We’re in the seanore hunting grounds,’ confirmed the commodore. He led her through the u-boat’s corridors, down a ladder and into a chamber surrounded by diving suits, a central well of an airlock set in the middle of the suiting area.

‘Let’s see if the rough rascals remember me kindly.’

‘Honey, why would they remember you at all?’

‘I spent a little time with them in my youth. After the fleet-in-exile was broken at Porto Principe, there weren’t many friendly ports for an ex-royalist officer with no money and the stench of defeat clinging to his uniform. Losing myself with the nomads of the sea was a blessed relief. It’s a simple way of life, following schools of fish and hunting for the day without a thought for tomorrow. You can forget yourself and relinquish your mortal cares.’

She recognized the almost wistful tone in the old man’s voice. Right now escaping her past seemed a good idea, to Charlotte. Two sailors arrived to help her and the commodore suit up. The diving suits were made of a soft brown canvas that felt as if someone had spent many long nights oiling them, their rebreather tanks and helmets bronzed metal cast with a variety of seashell and ocean creature mouldings. As the helmet was locked down onto her shoulders, she was sealed in; the last owner’s scent blended with a faint mustiness at the suit being kept too long racked. One of the sailors attached a thin cable between Charlotte and the commodore’s belt and his voice echoed in her helmet.

‘Keep the voice line attached, lass, unless there’s an emergency and we have to break away from each other.’

‘What qualifies as an emergency?’

‘If it happens, you’ll know it.’

After Charlotte had been given the thumbs up by the crewmen checking her suit, the commodore removed a cigar box-sized metal device from the racks and clipped it onto the front of her suit, pulling a rubber cable out from the device and connecting it to her helmet. She noticed that the commodore had a similar arrangement on his own diving suit. ‘The voice line allows us to speak direct-like to each other without anyone earwigging in on our conversation. This box, though, will allow you to hear what the seanore are saying in the water and project your voice back out. When you talk, hold your hand over your heart, so people know it’s your voice coming over the phones. You forget to do that, the seanore will think you’re lying or trying to hide something. It shows your hand is away from your knife and the trigger of a shock-spear.’

‘Seanores can speak our language?’

‘Those from the race of man among the nomads can; the others, when it suits. Anything you hear that sounds like words, the nomads call babble-tongue. If you hear singing over your box, that’s what they call far-voice. Sounds produced by pushing an air stream in different directions within their respiratory track. I can understand much of it, but I sound like a blessed whistling kettle when I try to speak it. If you hear far-voice, they’re calling to each other over a grand old distance.’

He handed Charlotte a slightly shorter version of his own shock-spear while the crewmen poked and probed her diving suit to check she was airtight and shipshape. The weapon had a half moon curl of a trigger, enough space for even her gloved hand to slip around it. ‘I’ve never used one of these before.’

‘Act as if you have and you won’t have to. That rebreather pack of yours is seanore, handed down the generations. Remember this, treat it as if it’s the most valuable thing you own, and that the only way someone should get you out of it is to cut your corpse off it.’

Charlotte nodded, ignoring the twinge of guilt stabbing at her. The life he was describing sounded uncomfortably similar to gypsy society. Proud and independent and distrustful of outsiders, wild and free. And one she had already forsaken for the comforts of the capital. The Eye of Fate throbbed between her breasts, reminding her that it had prior owners. Not my first theft. Not my last.

Following Commodore Black’s lead, Charlotte slipped into the airlock pool in the middle of the floor. Once inside, she watched the iron door closing over her head, before a similar one opened by her feet. The commodore checked the buoyancy adjuster on her belt and they exited together, accompanied by a fizzing along the sides of their rebreather packs. Whatever alchemy the device’s innards was working, separating oxygen from the surrounding water, it seemed to activate on contact with the ocean.

If the slope of rock the Purity Queen was drifting over was a hill, the plain below them lay covered by an underwater forest, fronds of red, orange and green kelp climbing as high as twenty feet amidst clumps of hydrophyic plants attached to flotation sacs, coral reefs snaking through it all like veins. Only shoals of orange fish darting above the wavering forest indicated that the vista was submerged, not a scene from the valleys of home. The two of them swam over the forest, slanting rays of light from the surface illuminating the brass of their tanks. To Charlotte, connected to the commodore by the umbilical-like cord of the voice line, this felt like flying, moving solely through the gentle motion of the rubber flippers on her feet. Curious fish wheeled in to watch her before vanishing as her hand reached out towards them. The water was warm too. A reminder that the magma of the Fire Sea wasn’t so far off to the north. Before long, the slope where the double-hulled catamaran-shaped silhouette of the Purity Queen was floating disappeared out of sight, and only the submerged forest was left stretching out in all directions.

It almost seemed a sacrilege to break the spell of the place by speaking, but Charlotte, spooked by the alien immensity of the scenery, felt a need to fill the silence. ‘How do you know the seanore are close?’

‘Look down there, lass…’

She followed the thrust of his diving glove. Rising out of the kelp arched a dome composed of white bones lashed together by seaweed chord.

‘It’s the remains of a whale hunted down by a clan.’

‘Was that the site of their camp?’

‘The seanore leave them behind as a frame for coral to settle around; keeps the forests fresh and growing. Nothing is wasted down here. What can’t be used is returned.’

Similar to the care Madam Leeda used to take removing all signs of their presence in the woods before moving her gypsy caravan on. Or had that been self-preservation to make sure she and Charlotte weren’t followed? There was no mistaking the seanore camp when the two of them came across it, visible in the distance as a series of shadows swaying above the kelp heads. As they swam closer, Charlotte saw the shapes were a series of spherical nets anchored to the forest by lines of kelp rope, nets teeming with large silvery fish and minded by dolphins circling the catch as though they were shepherds’ dogs. Beneath the nets the forest had been felled, the seabed anchoring a varied collection of structures that could best be described as air-filled tents, canvas bubbles tied together by ropes and webbing. In their lee were other structures set into the seabed. Not air-filled, but canvas stretched over frameworks that might have been made of bamboo-like material harvested from the underwater forest. Moving around the assorted structures were hundreds of swimmers, and from their shapes, Charlotte could see that the commodore’s description of the sea nomads as a society as multiracial as Jackals’ own was no exaggeration. As well as human-shaped figures weighed down by helmets and rebreathers, there were figures that had to be related to gill-necks, although a lot less ferocious-looking than their images from the lewd works of popular fiction suggested. Swimming through their midst were some of the other races that the commodore had described back on board the Purity Queen. Sea lion-shaped creatures beating their way through the camp with a powerful mermaid-like tail and arms that seemed too thin to be holding the objects they carried. Heavy, clumsy things that resembled six-legged salamanders, their arms webbed with wing-like skins and working on repairing the fish nets with a surprising level of dexterity. Other beasts that might have been goblinized gill-necks, pointed snout, large eyes, hooked teeth and an oversized proboscis that covered the smooth hairless skin of their lips.

The pair didn’t have to signal the nomad camp, their presence was noticed almost immediately, the tame fish-keeping dolphins arrowing in towards the two intruders. Followed by sudden flurries of activity inside the camp as they realized the intruders might be scouts from an approaching rival clan.

‘Stay still now,’ the commodore whispered to Charlotte, the hushed tones unnecessary since they were still connected by the voice line. Charlotte noticed that the commodore was already covering his heart with his right hand when he talked. ‘Keep your hands away from your shock-spear when they approach.’

The dolphins approached, making loops around Charlotte, the speed of their movement pushing her down towards the kelp forest — her chest-mounted speaker box supplying a series of rapid clicking noises from the creatures. Others were approaching from the camp, seanore armed with shock-spears that looked identical to the weapons the commodore and Charlotte carried slung across their backs.

Charlotte’s sound box picked up their voices passed up to her helmet. ‘Pah, it is not the Clan Coudama, they are surface dwellers.’

‘U-boat traders from the world above.’

‘We do not trade. What belongs to the sea stays in the sea.’

‘We are not from the Clan Coudama,’ spoke the commodore, ‘or any other clan. Nor do we come as traders. If you have not the eyes to recognize Jared Black then take me to Poerava.’

‘Poerava no longer rules the Clan Raldama,’ came the voice of one of the seanore.

‘Is that so? Then we’ll settle for whoever sits as chief of the clan.’

A song-like wailing came over the sound box and the commodore answered with a similar burst of sound.

‘There are children who speak with a better accent,’ said the gill-neck. ‘You who claim to be seanore and issue commands as though you issue edicts.’

‘I speak with my heart, clansman. Now, you just see before you an old white beard and a young girl. If your new chief scares easy enough to be shy of us, then just be saying it and we’ll be on our way.’

‘It’s obvious you haven’t been around the Clan Raldama for a long time, white-haired surface dweller. Come in — but let us see if you thank me for the invite later.’

Seanore hung in the water around them as Charlotte and the commodore made their way into a clearing inside the kelp forest. She noted that some of the tethered buildings had air inside, swelled out, as though the nomads had decided to stake a series of balloons in their midst. The buildings constructed on the seabed, though, were obviously for the nomads’ gills-bearing members — white whalebone frames stretched over with elasticized fabric and shielded with interlocking shells laid over the framework. The shells were a rainbow, mottled and ringed with dancing colours. As Charlotte looked closer, she saw they’d belonged to crustaceans, repurposed for the camp and hung as shields on the surface of the collapsible constructions.

A group of nomads emerged from one of these larger buildings — two gill-necks and one human swimmer in a suit similar to Charlotte and the commodore’s, except that the newcomer had a mohican-like wedge of spiny bush attached to the back of her helmet’s brass skull. A female face was visible under the clear crystal of the helmet. The first of the gill-necks was a large male, green-scaled-shoulders as broad as a weightlifter’s, his mail-like tunic clinging to an expansive, muscled chest. The other gill-neck was a female, her face hidden by a golden mask, a forehead covered by swirls of curling tentacles moulded into the metal for hair.

‘ Them. Well, this is starting out grand,’ Charlotte heard the commodore whisper over the voice line. So, he recognized the clan’s new leaders.

‘I wondered if it was you,’ said the old female, ‘when they said a surface dweller was asking for Poerava.’

‘Poerava passed seasons ago,’ said the large male gill-neck. ‘I lead the clan now.’

‘And a tale in the telling that must be, Vane. You were a wild young buck in my day, always sailing close to being banished by Poerava.’

‘She was old and tired even back then. Too confused to see what a liar and a dark-heart you were.’

‘Who is this Vane?’ whispered Charlotte over the voice line. ‘He sounds like he hates you.’

‘As he should,’ replied the commodore. ‘His father died out hunting with me. We were cut off and became prey ourselves when a pack of tiger crabs turned up.’

‘Do not whisper to each other like thieves,’ Vane’s voice boomed over the speakers. ‘You have come here to speak to the clan leader, you shall speak to me.’

‘Hear him out,’ urged the female gill-neck. ‘He was of the clan once.’

‘Thank you, Tera,’ said the commodore. ‘As surprised as I am to see Vane with the chieftain’s trident, it surprises me not a jot to find you as the clan’s wise-woman.’

‘Wise enough to remember my predecessor’s warnings about your honeyed tongue, Jared silver-beard.’

‘I could’ve told you that,’ said the human woman.

‘Wasn’t it you who said to me that our life underneath the waves was never feted to be, Maeva? Too much air in my veins, you said.’

‘Saying goodbye might have been an expected courtesy,’ said Maeva. There was a resigned tone in the old woman’s voice, as if she’d expected no better. ‘It was I that fished you out of the broken hull of your ravaged u-boat. I that ministered you back to life. Did I not deserve better?’

‘Always better than me, lass,’ said the commodore.

‘You owe her a life debt,’ said Vane, the muscled arms of the leader bunching in anger. ‘You owe my family one, also. How many others among the Clan Raldama?’

‘I had trouble following in my wake,’ said the commodore. ‘I had to flee to Cassarabia. One of the wicked surface traders who’d come among us recognized me as a royalist rebel. If I had stayed, I would have an ocean full of life debts, and a corpse is only good for paying back carrion.’

The wise-woman, Tera, danced from side to side in the water. ‘Do you not have trouble following you now, Jared silver-beard? I can scent it on you like blood leaking from your pores, calling every shark and tiger crab in the territory to us.’

‘It’s brewing up a storm, Tera. But I fear it’s coming your way whether you heed my warnings or not.’

‘Enough!’ cried Vane, jabbing out with the clan leader’s trident. ‘Go now, back to your iron vessel, full of surface air and surface dwelling scum. I smell the gas from its engines fouling our forest’s waters.’

The commodore shook his head. ‘I claim the right of admittance to the clan as one who was once seanore, and protection for me and the girl.’

Maeva’s voice spat over the speaker. ‘Take your old carcass and your fancy piece’s back to the surface. Your time among us ended long ago.’

‘I claim the right of admittance,’ insisted the commodore. He pointed at Tera. ‘Is that within clan law?’

‘It is.’

‘Then I shall take my life debt from you,’ said Vane. ‘Your claim is accepted.’

‘What does he mean?’ Charlotte asked.

‘A duel, lass,’ the commodore said over the voice line. Then he switched to the public speaker. ‘Name your champion.’

‘I will not fight with a champion,’ laughed Vane. ‘And neither will you two. You shall both fight, you and your young surface dweller here.’

‘This is between you and me, Vane. Leave the lass out of it.’

‘Two seek admittance to the clan, two shall fight!’

‘Just my old bones for the clan, then, Vane. Charlotte, make your way back to the Purity Queen.’

At the clan leader’s gesture, the seanores’ shock spears lowered, a circle of bristling violence being thrust towards the pair. ‘The claim’s validity has been accepted, you vile dark-heart. Both must fight, both must win.’

‘Do I look like a seanore warrior to you?’ protested Charlotte.

‘No,’ said Vane. ‘You look like bait for the hunt. But then, death always did follow the silver-beard like a shadow. Today it shall be yours.’

Jethro Daunt groaned as the vision returned to his head, the sound of scraping ground bumping below him. He was lying on a makeshift stretcher, a thick sheet of canvas lashed between two iron pipes, the litter being dragged by Boxiron. They were part of a trudging line, prisoners from the convoy by the damp, bedraggled appearance of the sailors — fleet sea arm as well as merchant seamen. In front of the steamman was Barnabas Sadly, limping along on his cane and the State Protection Board agent, Dick Tull. The latter had his leg in a temporary splint and was hobbling too, a pair of invalids among many. The Jackelians carried a resigned air of defeat with them as palpable baggage. But carried, where? Hearing him moan, Boxiron turned around and Daunt noted the addition of a new metal device over the steamman’s chest, hiding his rotating transaction-engine drum. It lent the steamman the bizarre appearance of a metal cleavage, all he needed was a dress and he could’ve been performing in a panto as an old widow.

‘Have you been repairing yourself in the field, old steamer?’

‘This further foul violation of my architecture,’ said Boxiron, tapping the device’s front plate with one of his hands and nearly spilling Daunt out of his stretcher, ‘is our captors’ idea of a leash for my race. It is an inhibitor for my boiler heart. I hardly have the strength to pull you along, let alone make a break for freedom.’

Daunt lifted up his arm and the steamman bent down to help put him up. ‘No need, I can stand, I think.’ He let the sudden sensation of dizziness pass, his nose filling with the lush, rich scent of wherever they had ended up. The line was marching along a well-worn track, grasses as high as a man’s knee off the path. Ten feet further on either side stood thick rain forests dripping after a recent rainfall, steaming mist rising among the clammy, tropical heat of the place. Eschewing the path for the grass, a gill-neck came along, his golden mask hooked up on either side by two rubber pipes feeding into a tank-like backpack. A diving suit in reverse. But why? Wouldn’t we be more secure as prisoners if we were held in cells in one of their cities under the waves, at a depth where any attempt to escape would mean drowning?

‘If you no longer wish your metal servant to drag your useless carcass along the ground, surface dweller, then march.’ He thumped Daunt in the ribs with the butt of his weapon. Urged on by the guard, Daunt stumbled alongside Boxiron, the steamman supporting him with an iron arm, the stretcher left abandoned in the grass.

‘Where are we?’

‘An island, Jethro softbody. We were on an Advocacy transport submarine for a couple of days after we were taken prisoner. That places us in the heart of the gill-neck kingdom.’

‘An area of the atlas left disappointingly vague by the Advocacy’s refusal to allow foreign surface craft to traverse their territory, old steamer.’

‘It is called Ko’marn, Mister Daunt,’ called Sadly hobbling in front of the steamman. ‘One of the gill-necks said I was welcome to the place when he pushed me off their u-boat’s gangway.’

‘Perhaps that’s their word for hell,’ Daunt mused. ‘Offered by way of irony. After all, by the lights of their thinking, only the cursed and misbegotten snub the sea for dry land.’

‘I’m wagering it ain’t their word for hotel, amateur,’ snarled Dick Tull, pulling his injured leg along. ‘I’ve never seen a prisoner of war camp that I wanted to stay in.’

Daunt bit his tongue. He had a feeling there was more to this place than a camp for holding captured surface dwellers. ‘What a pity. I was hoping we might get to see one of our captors’ legendary crystal cities. If I recall correctly from the commodore’s anecdotes, the gill-neck capital is called Lishtiken, and the few who have visited it speak of it as one of the wonders of the ocean.’

Daunt gazed at the gill-neck guards walking either side of the line of shuffling captives. The Advocacy soldiers were dripping from the heat as much as any among their prisoners of war. Their body language positively cried out with discomfort and displeasure at this duty. He noted the way their heads moved, jerking around. They were close enough to the race of man for him to be able to read them, and they betrayed their dislike for this realm with every gesture. How must the island appear to them? The claustrophobia of only being able to move in limited dimensions. No up, no down. The restrictiveness of this environment combined with the almost infinite expanse of the sky, sight-lines stretching to the horizon, rather than the restricted visibility underwater. They don’t like this, he realized. Bob my soul, but they don’t like this at all. This is a hardship posting for them. Short duration and frequent rotations of duty to stop them developing, what shall we call it, land sickness, perhaps? He murmured thoughtfully to himself. ‘There once was a gill-neck from the sea, which on the land he had to be. When he took in the air he was sick, and he could only last out of water a bit, so home he swam in time for tea.’

Daunt patted his pockets and sighed in appreciation as he discovered his aniseed balls were still in his pocket. ‘They didn’t take them?’

‘I told them it was your medicine,’ said Boxiron. ‘It didn’t seem like a lie.’ The steamman gloomily tapped his power limiter. ‘My might they had already tasted, however, and the fastblood devils were quick enough to steal that.’

‘And my sleeve gun,’ complained Sadly. ‘The blighters had that away fast enough.’

‘Ah well,’ said Daunt. ‘At least they left you your cane to march with.’

‘Wouldn’t get too far without it, Mister Daunt, my bad foot and me. Not sure how much longer I can keep up with this, truth to tell. March, march, march, all day. No water in this heat. You’d think the gill-necks would appreciate the wisdom of staying hydrated, says I.’

‘Maybe they’ll let you open up a food stall when we get to where we’re going,’ sneered Tull.

‘Quieten your incessant ramblings, you diseased surface dweller vermin,’ hissed one of the guards. He removed his mask for a couple of seconds, rubbing the chafing scales of his green skin, and spat out a stream of water at the informant’s feet. ‘There is your water. Now keep moving, you shall stop for more of it later.’

The later in question became evident with the guard’s sibilant laughter when the trail through the rainforest gave way to a stinking stretch of everglades. The water around their feet started out barely lapping around their shoe leather, but rapidly rose deeper, soaking their knees before stopping at their hips. Still the prisoners marched on, a gloomy silence fallen upon the exhausted sailors, throats dry and croaking. But however thirsty Daunt grew, he was never once tempted by the thick, badly reeking water of the everglades. Insects skimming across the surface in enough variety to have kept a Jackelian entomologist engaged for years, the majority of the bugs only too happy to add a faltering column of soft-skinned Jackelians to their diet. Would that I had an entomologist’s netted hat, gloves, and sealed linen suit. Only Boxiron was immune from these biting, annoying swarms; clouds of them bothersome enough that Daunt began to swat at his skin with every tear of rolling sweat, mistaking perspiration for bloodsucking needles.

After an hour of slogging through the glades, the trees fell away and an island of raised land appeared surrounded by tall reeds, a rough path sawn through the ground and paved by something like bamboo. The exhausted prisoners were herded up a ramp and onto the path, reeds eventually falling away to reveal a camp built across cleared land. Simple barracks of white bamboo-like material, a fence just shy of the height of a man’s head. Not much to stop a prisoner from escaping. But then, the barricade wasn’t the barrier. That would be surviving for long enough to escape off the island and then navigate across hundreds of nautical miles of an ocean that was the sole dominion of the gill-necks. Not totally unguarded though. Guard towers rose out of the fence every hundred yards or so, simple wooden platforms with roofs of thatched palm trees, the silhouettes of lounging guards and their long rifles. A camp where the guards’ rifles point out, not in. What, I wonder, is out there to engage their attention in such a manner? On the far side of the camp stood a series of larger, more permanent-looking metal structures; a small forest of cranes rising beyond that. There was a distant hammering of steam engines carried by the weak febrile wind, the drumbeat of a slave galley for the emaciated figures of captives moving around the camp, pushing carts along rails or staggering under the weight of heavy hemp sacks. Not a prisoner of war camp then, but a work camp. And these aren’t mere make-work labours to busy minds and bodies so hard they can no longer think of escape, either. I detect the whiff of serious industry on the air. Interesting. A camp where the guards are as uncomfortable as the inmates, literally fish out of water. This has a purpose to it. I wonder what I would find inside those sacks the prisoners are lugging?

Turning left at the main gate of the camp, the columns of captives were marched towards a long shed-like structure, two bamboo doors swinging open. Inside was a wheezing machine that Daunt recognized from the Kingdom. A blood-code machine, the slowly rotating transaction-engine drums of its central control panel poorly oiled and squeaking in the humid atmosphere. The sailors in front of Daunt and his friends were led before the machine in turn, their arms pushed into a rubberised hollow, the grimace on their faces indicating the moment a needle was extended to sample their blood. For Boxiron, they didn’t even need the machine, a flurry of activity among the gill-neck engineers administering the tests. One of them fluttered a white card with the unmistakable black silhouette of the steamman’s unique form.

‘This is bloody wrong,’ said Dick Tull.

Daunt reached into his pocket and palmed an aniseed ball before popping it into his mouth, half-melted and sticky. ‘I agree, good sergeant. The Advocacy shouldn’t have access to such a machine, let alone our citizen records swirling about its memory.’

Our identity details should be kept jealously guarded by the civil service’s bureaucrats back in the capital’s engine rooms, not freely floating around an enemy power.

‘This is much more than that crooked sod Walsingham and his cronies selling us out,’ said Tull.

Daunt nodded. ‘I rather fear it is.’

Extra guards arrived, along with a high-ranking officer, judging by the ornate gilding of his helmet. They cut Boxiron from the line, their raised rifles somewhat superfluous given the power-limiter they had fitted on the steamman’s body. With Barnabas Sadly, Dick Tull and Daunt passed through the blood-code machine and their identities confirmed, the four of them were marched under guard out of the building and taken towards the more permanent set-up at the rear of the camp. Shoved rudely inside one of the mill-like structures, they were led through iron passages that could have passed as the interior of the Purity Queen, until they reached a chamber lined with empty windowless cells, unpadded bunks its only furniture. Rusting metal bars slid into the ceiling at the bidding of a gill-neck soldier standing at the end of the corridor. Daunt was shoved inside alongside the others. Then the bar sank deep into pits set into the floor as the guards departed.

‘Lords-a’larkey, they know who we are, don’t they?’ groaned Sadly.

‘It would seem we are now wanted in two states,’ said Boxiron.

‘Your corrupt friends on the State Protection Board are to be congratulated,’ said Jethro to Dick. ‘Fast work indeed, to uncover who we are and circulate our descriptions so widely and rapidly.’ He placed a hand on Boxiron’s shoulder. ‘I rather fear it was your involvement, old steamer, which allowed the board to identify us. Your unique physiology featured rather prominently in the police files once upon a time.’

‘Whereas Sergeant Tull and his little rodent stool pigeon’s were rather easier to come by,’ announced a voice.

Daunt looked around. A middle-aged woman and a non-descript looking man. Ah, the man from outside Tock House. Walsingham, alias Mister Twist.

‘No salute for me, Sergeant?’

‘Piss off, traitor,’ growled Tull. ‘How much are the gill-necks paying you to sell us out?’

‘Let us say a comfortable accommodation has been reached,’ smiled Walsingham. ‘A little something for everyone involved, including my friend here, who-’

‘-is Gemma Dark,’ said Daunt. ‘Otherwise known as the younger sister of Jared Black.’

She inclined her head in acknowledgement of the fact. ‘Yes, I was told you used to be a Circlist priest. A clever fellow, full of tricks.’

‘You share more than a passing resemblance. Chin, voice, physical mannerisms.’

She stroked the bars playfully. ‘A clever man like you, you must already know why I’m here.’

‘You were hunting us, obviously,’ said Daunt, matter-of-factly. ‘These two-’ he indicated the State Protection Board agent and his informant, ‘-to ensure their silence. Myself and Boxiron to discover our involvement and the extent of our knowledge of your little royalist conspiracy. The commodore, because you hate him more than anyone else in the world, and Damson Shades, well, the young lady most of all. Because she has King Jude’s sceptre.’

‘Where is the girl?’ Walsingham demanded. ‘Where is my sceptre?’

‘Probably out in the colonies by now,’ shrugged Daunt. ‘We split up. The commodore and Damson Shades sneaked a berth on a RAN airship across to Concorzia. We took the slow route by liner.’

Gemma Dark shook her head in disappointment. ‘How easily the lies trip off your tongue. There is a missing u-boat from the convoy’s logs, one that bears a suspicious resemblance to the lines of my brother’s current craft.’

‘Mere coincidence.’

‘He’s a slippery fish, my brother, an eel covered in grease. I’ve been trying to kill him for years, but he runs and hides so well. You know that Jared Black isn’t his real name? He was born Samson Solomon Dark, a duke’s blood in the cause he betrayed.’

‘I know a little of his history,’ said Daunt. ‘Betrayal is rather strong a word. I think perhaps he just outgrew you and your royalist friends’ need for revenge.’

‘Outgrew!’ the woman shrieked. ‘This is who we are. Our history — our land, everything stolen from us by Parliament’s thieving shopkeepers. The cause is not a waistcoat you grow too fat for and discard. He ran when he should have fought. A coward and a traitor.’

‘But not always,’ said Daunt. ‘Sometimes he fought when he should’ve run. Like the time when he had your son released from Bonegate jail. A convicted river slaver offered parole in return for acting as a pilot, and that was a voyage he didn’t return from.’

‘You snivelling pious bastard,’ she screamed. ‘You dare call him a slaver? Treat us like outlaws and how do you-?’

‘Hold your tongue,’ advised Walsingham. ‘The churchman is manipulating you. He wants to use your anger to goad you into filling in the copious gaps in his knowledge.’

Daunt shrugged behind the bars. ‘I should take that as a compliment coming from you, Mister Walsingham, alias Captain Twist. Who would’ve imagined, such a high-ranking secret policeman assuming the mantle of a royalist bogeyman? What complicated webs we do weave.’

‘It’s not a compliment,’ spat Dick Tull angrily gripping the bars between his hands. ‘A traitor to all he believes in. It’s a sodding insult.’

‘That rather depends on what he believed in to start with. A little like the good commander of our convoy, Vice-admiral Cockburn. I believe he was a friend of yours?’

Tull sank wearily onto one of the bunks. ‘What are you talking about, amateur?’

‘You should listen to your friend, sergeant,’ said Walsingham. ‘He’s a clever man indeed. Dangerously clever, in fact.’

‘You want him, then?’ asked the commodore’s sister.

‘A defrocked parson of the Circlist church?’ Walsingham mused. ‘Such an obtuse organization with no real power in the Kingdom. When you believe in nothing, you believe in anything. Still, waste not, want not. Take him out of the cells. We shall kill two birds with one stone.’

She indicated Dick Tull and Sadly. ‘These two?’

‘A blunt knife and his diseased lapdog. I think not. Cannon fodder. They can die in the camp.’

Tull lunged through the bars, but Walsingham stepped back.

‘I’m still sharp enough to snap your neck, Walsingham.’

‘You have surprised me, sergeant. The duties I set you were specifically allocated on the basis of your complete lack of utility and possession of the scruples of a sewer rat. In the end, you’ve proved just good enough at your job to get yourself killed. It won’t be fast for you, but I guarantee you will make yourself useful before you waste away. Give him a beating for his insolence. Remind him of the proper forms that should be observed between master and servant.’

As the wall of bars retracted up into the ceiling, Boxiron moved in front of Daunt as the gill-neck soldiers swarmed in. ‘Do not touch him!’

Gemma Dark laughed as the guards easily restrained the steamman while others laid into Dick Tull. ‘You’re just strong enough to slave for us in the camp, old steamer, but your days of cracking skulls are over.’

Daunt leant in to the steamman and whispered words of reassurance before the gill-necks seized his arms and dragged him out.

‘Where are you taking him?’ Boxiron demanded.

‘I need to gauge just how clever your ex-parson actually is,’ Walsingham said.

‘I imagine the process will be quite painful,’ sighed Daunt as he was bundled out.

Walsingham followed with the commodore’s sister fast behind him. ‘Torture usually is.’