Stephen Hunt - Secrets of the Fire Sea

There weren't many people in the station – but then, this line only served the distant vaults of the Guild of Valvemen, their chambers buried many miles away at the foot of the hills that served as the gateway to the cold, dark interior of the country. Outside the battlements and no doubt out of mind, too. Practically a city by itself. No farm or park domes out there, nothing on the surface. All buried deep and far enough away from the capital for Jago's citizens not to be concerned about being poisoned by the power electric the guild's turbine halls generated.

Nandi stood by a cluster of statues in the centre of the concourse, watching the crimson-robed valvemen moving over the polished stone floor like red ghosts – waiting for the capsule that would take them to their vaults to arrive. She was puzzling over the inscription at the foot of a sculpture of three Jagonese women hugging each other – Here lays Eli, still and old, who died because he was cold – when she spotted the commodore coming towards her.

'I thought you might have forgotten I was due to make my first visit to the guild's transaction-engine rooms today,' she said by way of greeting.

'Ah, lass,' said the commodore, 'I would have come sooner, but for the curiosity of that colonel of police, Knipe, and his insistence I satisfy it with every petty little detail of our voyage here. As if the Jagonese shouldn't be grateful that there is still an honest skipper willing to brave the perils of the Fire Sea to pay them a call.'

'I had my turn yesterday evening,' said Nandi. 'After they escorted us to the hotel. What was my research, why was Saint Vine's paying the guild's fees of access so eagerly? How I am to immediately report anyone offering me large amounts of money as a dowry to marry them. What I know of Mister Daunt and the old steamer that follows him around…'

'You see now,' declaimed the commodore in triumph, 'why it is old Blacky avoids this blasted port. They are an insular, suspicious bunch on Jago. They have dug themselves a pit here, pulled themselves in and let themselves stew in their own juices for a few centuries too long.' He indicated the guild workers on the concourse around them. 'And these red crows are the worst of all, their bodies crumbling under the wicked weight of the dark energies they tame. But this is where you've come to study, and so I'll wait with you to see you safely away from the cursed place.'

'I'm not your daughter,' said Nandi. 'I don't need protecting.'

'Nobody will ever be my daughter,' said Commodore Black.

'I'm sorry,' Nandi apologized. 'I should not have said that. I asked one of your crew back on the submarine who your boat was named after.'

'You're not my daughter, Nandi, but you have more than a little of her fire. She died doing what was right. I wish I could say I taught her that, but I'd be a wicked liar if I did.'

'I'll be safe enough here,' said Nandi.

'This city, this whole island, is a mortal tomb,' said the commodore. 'It just hasn't sunk in with the locals here yet. And I know your Professor Harsh well enough to know that she would have lectured you all about the dangers of tombs.'

'There are no stake-covered pits here,' said Nandi.

'Not the kind that you can see, lass,' said the old u-boat man. 'Which makes them even more dangerous in my book.'

'What if I need to do what I feel is right?' asked Nandi. 'Will you try to stop me?'

'I'm not that big a fool, lass.' He patted the sabre by his side. 'But I'll be close by, waiting to take up the point with any blackguards that do.'

Nandi shook her head and accepted the inevitable. It seemed that in convincing the professor that she could manage the expedition to Jago on her own, she had merely swapped one would-be protector for another. If her father had been alive, he would have come here with her. Nandi couldn't have stopped him, though perhaps he would have used his influence over the professor to stop her. The commodore and the man her father had been were as different as the sun and the moon, but they shared one thing – they would both die for her, that much she knew. Nandi shifted the leather satchel she was carrying, inscribed with the double-headed crane seal of Saint Vine's college and weighed down with her papers, blank notebooks and pens and ink. 'You won't have to wait much longer, look…'

Three iron capsules arrived in quick succession, whipping through the rubber curtain to be caught by the turntable at the far end of the concourse, then rotated in front of the passenger platform as if they were offerings to those waiting. Nandi and the commodore had been sent a capsule all to themselves, to spare them the guild workers' company – or perhaps the converse. Their capsule also came with a guide; a single valveman in the same intricately embroidered crimson robes worn by the guild workers boarding the other capsules.

'No one on the platform to check for tickets,' remarked Nandi.

'Ah, anyone who wants to go where we're going is mortal welcome to it,' said the commodore. 'If there was any justice in the world, the guild would be paying us to visit their dark lair, not the other way around.'

Their guide led them into their windowless capsule and in a female voice told the two of them to make themselves comfortable on the red leather bench seats running along one side. When they were seated, the valve worker touched a button and the door irised shut with a clang, followed by a slight thump as the loading arm pushed them forward – into the atmospheric system. Then a whoosh. An increasing sense of acceleration as the pressure differential built up, sending them hurtling along the airless tunnels towards the great engine rooms of Jago.

Commodore Black turned to their guide. 'Tell me, lass, is there no pilot on this blessed contraption of yours?'

There was a slight shake of her heavy red hood. 'No. The atmospheric capsules are controlled by the machines.'

'Machines, always more machines on Jago,' said the commodore. 'Machines to open the gates on the great ring of coral that circles your island, machines to heat and light your vaults, and yet more of the blessed things to bring down the air from the terrible land above. You've more machines down here in your city than in King Steam's land.'

'And transaction engines,' added Nandi, expectantly. 'Filled with the lost knowledge of the ages.'

'It's never been lost to us,' said their guide.

'Archived away unstudied, then,' said Nandi. She rummaged around in her bag and brought out her letters of admittance and travel. 'Your colonel of police has already seen my papers, but my college is very insistent the right people receive these and I get access to all of the records we paid for.'

The valvewoman took the grant of access, and as she read her previously steady hand began to shake. Did she have the palsy? Had one of the engine-room afflictions weakened her arm?

'Are you well, lass?' asked the commodore. 'Do you need a tot from old Blacky's hipflask to steady your hand?'

'The names on these papers,' said their guide, 'the two original names listed under the prior grant of access.' Hannah Conquest pulled her crimson hood down. 'They're the names of my mother and father!' As Jethro walked towards the senate, the combination of noises produced by Colonel Knipe's artificial leg and Boxiron's clumping footsteps on the iron gantry seemed to merge into one rhythm. Down below lay an atmospheric station almost identical to those of Middlesteel, save for the presence of Pericurian mercenaries waiting for the capsule-like trains. A large turntable in the centre of the concourse was retrieving new capsules emerging through the rubber curtains that sealed the airless tubes the carriages travelled along.

Struggling in the shadow of the bear-like mercenaries were Jagonese loaded down with bundles, crates and chests of possessions, pushing, pulling and hauling their burdens off the transport capsules and out into the vaults of the capital below.