Stephen Hunt - Secrets of the Fire Sea

Jethro sweated on his side of the confessional, his cubicle a claustrophobic trap. He heard a scratching on the other side of the grille, a claw dragging across the filigree of equations etched across the walls. Not one of the refugees, this time, then. One of the others. The ancient things that usually visited his dreams afterwards. Black and silver fur brushed against the grille, and a snorting like that of a bull wading in a water meadow sounded from the other side. Badger-headed Joseph. An ancient god that was meant to have lightning for sight, except Jethro never got to see its eyes.

'Fiddle-faddle fellow,' growled Badger-headed Joseph, in the kind of voice that you would expect to come from something half-man and half-beast. 'Are you shy, Jethro Daunt, little man, little fiddle-faddle fellow? Too shy to open the Inquisition's post?'

Jethro glanced down towards his lap. There was the package, still unopened, the gift of the Inquisition's highly placed emissary. 'It is not my business; it is the Inquisition's. I reject it and I reject you, Badger-headed Joseph.'

More scratching sounded from the other side. 'Do you reject curiosity, too, fiddle-faddle fellow? Part of you must want to know what's in the folder. Whose name is in the folder? The same part of you that stuck your hand in the fire when you were a child. When your grandfather warned you to watch out for the embers.'

'I am Jethro Daunt, I am my own man. I serve the rational order.' He tried humming the algebra-heavy mantra of the first hymn that sprang to mind, but the scratching grew louder, breaking the concentration needed to enter a meditation.

'Take care, little fiddle-faddle fellow. You make your intellect your god – it has powerful muscles but a poor personality. Not like me. Here comes the rain…' There was a moaning noise of relief on the other side of the confessional booth and a powerful stench assailed Jethro's nose. The ancient god was urinating against his side of the booth.

'This is a rational house,' shouted Jethro, retching. 'It has no place for you, Badger-headed Joseph. No place for the old gods. I cast you out!'

'You're not a parson anymore,' growled the voice behind the grille. 'Make me happy, fiddle-faddle fellow; indulge your curiosity with the packet.'

Jethro Daunt woke with a start. His bedroom was dark save for the illumination of the triple-headed gas lamp in Thompson Street burning beyond his window. Just enough light to see the tightly bound folder from the Inquisition.

He looked at it, the echo of his grandfather's warning as his hand reached for the fire grate whispering across the darkness. Boxiron thumped along the corridor. He had trouble enough approximating sleep during the small hours, the hearing folds on the side of his head wired into the inferior routing mechanisms of the man-milled neck join randomly amplifying the sounds of the night.

Opening the door with far more vigour than he had expected – or requested – from his arm servos, Boxiron was faced with a sight strange even for their chambers at Thompson Street.

Jethro Daunt was in the middle of the floor, the folder from the Inquisition cut open with a letter knife. Papers and notes sodden with the consulting detective's tears were scattered across a rug in the centre of the room.

Glancing up, Jethro noticed the steamman as he entered. 'She's dead. After all these years, she's dead.'

The light in the centre of Boxiron's vision plate flared with anger. This was the Inquisition's work. It wasn't just Jethro Daunt who was an expert at staring into a softbody's soul. Curiosity. Curiosity could always be counted on to undermine Jethro's resolve. Every time. The Loas damn the devious minds of the Inquisition.

'You're going to do what they want, aren't you? You're going to take their case.'

Jethro rested his spine against the foot of the bed and stared up at the ceiling, a blank look on his face. A mask. 'Of course I am.'

And where Jethro went, Boxiron would inevitably follow. As he so often did, Jethro began to hum one of his mad little ballads as he leafed through the papers spread around him. He didn't hum church hymns anymore, that pained him too much; but he had picked up many ditties from the drinking houses their informers frequented. 'Well of all the dogs it stands confessed, your Jackelian bulldogs are the best.'

The steamman noticed the stack of unpaid bills on the table in the room, a little higher every day. Boxiron hoped that the League of the Rational Court could be counted upon to pay more promptly than Lord Spicer's estate. It was a terrible sight to see inside the cathedral – normally so tranquil and shaded – now lit by the brightly burning diode lamps of the police militia as they moved about the nave, throwing open the doors leading down to the crypt and checking the transept for any sign of ursks. Nobody was protesting the presence of the heavily armed free company soldiers with them. The green-uniformed police militia was interviewing the few monks and vergers left inside the cathedral. Hannah and Chalph pressed past for a view of the confessional booths along the side of the far wall.

'We weren't here,' Hannah heard a verger telling a militia officer. 'Hordes of people came across the cathedral's bridges begging for help. We were out with the people carrying torches alongside the canals. Only she stayed behind.'

She. Hannah looked unbelievingly towards where the police were kneeling outside the confessional booths, blood flooded across the flagstones. Dear Circle, those were the archbishop's robes on that stump. That decapitated stump.

'Alice!' yelled Hannah, trying to press forward.

'Who let her in here?' frowned Colonel Knipe. Jago's imposing silver-headed police commander limped forward on his artificial leg.

'Is it Alice?'

'It is the archbishop's body,' said the colonel sadly, pushing Hannah and Chalph back.

'Where's her head? Where's her head?'

'Don't look at the body, this isn't something for you to see,' ordered the colonel.

She couldn't take it in. There wasn't even a skull left on the woman who had raised Hannah as her own daughter. And some of their last words…The accusation that Alice had been trying to trap her here…

'Where's her head?' Chalph demanded.

'I wish I knew,' said the colonel. 'It's not inside the cathedral. The ursk that did this must have ripped pieces off the archbishop to feed on later.'

Chalph sniffed the air. 'I can't smell any ursk scent in here.'

'You think her head fell off of its own accord, sprouted legs and ran away?' snapped the colonel. He tapped his metal leg, the clockwork-driven mechanism inside whirring back at him. 'I know things about ursks, wet-snout. The only difference between filth like those monsters and your people is about twenty stone in weight and a leather shirt.'

'Pericurian free company soldiers are the only thing keeping Hermetica City safe,' cried Chalph in outrage.

'What a good job your people are doing,' sneered the colonel. 'I told the senate that paying for free company mercenaries to patrol our walls was a mistake of the highest order. When you fight for money, money is all you value. You wet-snouts let this happen, cub. You want to scare us all off your sacred soil, but it's not going to happen. We've been here for two thousand years and we'll be here for another thousand before your damn archduchess holds one inch of Jago's mud for her scriptures.'

'But there's no claw marks on the confessional's walls,' observed Hannah. 'Let me see the body!'

Colonel Knipe snapped his fingers and two of his police militia came forward grabbing Hannah and Chalph.

'I don't have time for this! You can see her body at the funeral like everyone else – get these two out of here.'

Chalph snarled as the Jagonese militia pushed him rudely out of the cathedral, shoving with their lamp rods and rifle butts, no doubt venting the frustration they felt at the usurpation of their role manning the battlements by Chalph's race. They were only slightly kinder in their handling of Hannah.