Stephen Hunt - Secrets of the Fire Sea

The woman broke the seal on the folder and opened it, lifting out a parcel of papers tied tightly with red cord. 'It's small bloody wonder we threw you out of the church.'

'I wonder about it,' said Jethro. 'I wonder about it all the time. But haven't I kept my end of the bargain? Not a hint of scandal, no stories about me in the penny sheets.'

'Not as the ex-parson of Hundred Locks,' said the woman. 'But you've been keeping busy as the proprietor of Daunt's Private Resolutions. Quite a reputation you've built up among the quality, solving cases, hunting down criminals.'

'So you say.'

'I find it slightly grubby, myself,' muttered the woman. 'All those years the church spent training you in synthetic morality and here you are now, applying your finely honed mind to uncovering sordid infidelities and unmasking common poisoners.'

'There's exceedingly little that's common about such crimes. To keep the gods from the people's hearts, you must first understand the people,' quoted Jethro. 'And while I acknowledge your disdain for my new calling, I believe expediency has driven you to seek out those same skills as much as it has pushed me towards a career outside the church to keep my coal scuttle full and the bailiffs from my door.'

'The irony isn't lost on me,' said the mother superior, passing the parcel of papers across to Jethro.

'What is it?' he asked.

'A murder,' said the woman.

'It must be important for you to come to me.'

'Clearly.'

'Important enough for you to give me back my parsonage if I asked for reinstatement in the rational orders as my payment?'

The reverend mother laughed heartedly, the first real emotion Jethro had seen her demonstrate. 'We don't let people inside the Circlist church who believe in gods. Not as parishioners, and certainly not as parsons. I do believe your ancient gods have driven you quite mad.'

'As I told your people at my hearing, I don't believe in them,' retorted Jethro.

She shrugged. 'Well, perhaps they believe in you, rather than vice versa. It doesn't matter. The distinction is irrelevant and besides, we're asking you to investigate precisely because you're not in the church. Believe it or not, we do have a few minds in the league that are almost as proficient in synthetic morality as the much-vaunted Jethro Daunt. Aren't you going to open the folder? You will quickly see why we believe this case would be of particular interest to you.'

'No,' said Jethro. 'I'm not interested in your money, I'm not interested in working for the Inquisition, and most of all, I'm not interested in continuing this conversation.'

'We can offer you a hundred guineas to take the case, triple that upon a successful conclusion.'

'I've already got a hundred guineas,' Jethro told the woman. 'I get to choose the members of my flock now.'

The woman sniffed disapprovingly, then banged on the roof of her carriage for it to draw to a halt. 'Keep the folder. Read the papers. It sounds as if you already know where to send your note indicating that you agree to be engaged.'

'Not in a hundred years, good mother superior,' said Jethro, opening the door and starting to climb down the steps extending towards the street with a clockwork clack. 'Not even in a thousand.'

The nun leant out of the window. 'Is it just the precepts of synthetic morality that have helped you solve all the cases you've taken, Jethro? Or do the voices you hear at night whisper other things, too? What do all those ranks of pagan gods really murmur to you?'

'That the intellect is only a lie to make us realize the truth.'

'Just send word,' tutted the woman at Jethro's blasphemy. Her carriage pulled away, the hum of the engine disappearing as it rounded a corner.

Jethro looked at the collection of papers in his hand and pulled his cloak tight against the cold of the afternoon. The folder's contents would do for a five-minute crackle of kindling in his fire grate, if nothing else.

Jethro Daunt knew many things: the things that his finely tuned mind could extract from the pattern of life swirling around him, and the things that the ancient gods hissed at him in his dreams. But what he didn't know was what in the name of the Circle had possessed the Inquisition to think that he could possibly be coerced, tricked or cajoled into working for the same organization that had hounded him out of the church.

Jethro ran his fingers thoughtfully through his long sideburns, the black running to silver now, and cleared his throat as he always did before he sucked on an aniseed ball and his brain began to whir.

'How extremely diverting,' he whispered to himself, balancing the papers in his hand.

Then he strode back towards his apartment. Twisting on the overgrown path where she had fallen, Hannah flinched back from the snarling, intertwined forms – Chalph lost in the larger black mass of the ursk. Chalph, brave suicidal Chalph, who had charged the beast when they were cornered. Not only was the creature attacking them at least twice the weight of Hannah's ursine friend, its fur was matted across a leather-thick skin hardened against the steam mists and geyser plumes of the volcanic landscape outside. You would be hard pressed to have opened its hide with a sabre, let alone the tooth and claw of a mere ursine cub.

But a turret rifle, that would do it. As the ursk angrily tossed Chalph off itself, throwing him back into the brambles and rearing up on all fours, its chest exploded open. Toppling backward, the ursk fell to the side of Hannah and landed like a collapsing mountain an inch shy of Chalph's leather boots. Hannah glanced up to see a three-foot long rifle being lowered, the rotating ammunition drum clacking to a halt as the finger depressing the trigger uncurled and the clockwork-driven mechanism slowed. Hannah scrambled back as the cable attached to the shooter's brass tank of compressed gas went limp and dropped past her nose.

Hannah pointed back through the brambles they had flattened while fleeing the ursk. 'There's at least one more over there.'

The free company fighter that had come to their rescue – at least a head taller than Chalph at seven foot – growled in acknowledgement. 'And it knows what the bark of a turret gun sounds like, as it should.' The soldier sniffed the air with her black nose. 'It's heading over to the other side of the park.'

Chalph picked himself up from the dirt. 'Stom urs Stom, what are the free company doing inside the park?'

'Our job,' growled the over-sized soldier. She had a leather patch covering her left eye socket and looked like a brown-furred buccaneer as she scowled down at Hannah and her friend. 'The guard post reported seeing ursks coming over the wall. It looks like a section of the battlements have lost their charge.'

'How can that happen?' demanded Hannah. It was a rhetorical question.

'Lack of repairs would be my guess,' said Stom. 'Not enough people left on the island to maintain anything the way it should be kept. Now, stay close, this one's friend might be circling around to take us from the rear.'

The soldier strode forward as Hannah and Chalph trailed in her wake, Chalph's triangular black nose snuffling the air for a clue to the second monster's whereabouts. 'But its scent is coming from the other side.'

The soldier angrily raised her paw-like hand. 'Hold your tongue, Chalph urs Chalph. It's pissed on the undergrowth over there to draw us off in the wrong direction.' She thrust a finger to the left. 'I hunt that way. Stay behind my rifle to stay alive.'

'Chalph was just trying to help,' said Hannah.

'When I want a price for grain I will ask a junior clerk from the House of Ush's advice,' said the soldier. 'The first time you underestimate an ursk, little furless cub, is the last time you underestimate an ursk.'