Stephen Hunt - Secrets of the Fire Sea

The sounds of battle slowly began to creep into his consciousness. The hiss of a steamman's stacks burning too hot to handle, the crack of a warhammer answered by howling ursine.

Jethro came alive and entered the fog of war to find Boxiron. Hannah followed the soldiers through the besieged city folk packed into the halls inside the Horn of Jago, coming to a lifting room, its once-opulent interior stained with the gore of wounded Jagonese borne down from the slopes being bombarded by the Pericurian artillery. While medical orderlies lifted out the wounded, Hannah was taken inside and the lifting room ascended up into the senatorial levels. The blood-spattered doors drew back to reveal a long corridor lined with statues of senators, massive busts familiar from the tedium of her history lessons and the annals the priests used to throw at her when she was daydreaming. This was the entrance to the senate, but it had found a new use now, transformed into the military headquarters for the defence of Jago. The famous windows had been smashed, the brightly coloured glass lying on the marble floor, and militiamen stood on makeshift fire steps, pointing rifles or telescopes down the peak, shouting orders to runners waiting behind them as they detailed where the Pericurians were massing, where the bombardment was falling, and which chambers of the mountainside below were likely to be assaulted next.

There was a canteen-style table laid out with maps and plans and Hannah recognized two of the people behind it. One was Colonel Knipe, the police commander looking haggard and tired, and the other was Father Blackwater, the acting archbishop wearing the same baffled expression she recalled from his synthetic morality lessons – as if the ability of any pupil to draw a meaningful equation might be a miracle beyond expectation.

Colonel Knipe glanced up at Hannah and wiped the weariness out of his eyes. 'Your name is on the First Senator's arrest list.'

Hannah looked askance.

'Don't worry,' said the colonel. 'That fool Silvermain's head is on a pole down on the battlements now. Sometimes I take one of the spotter's telescopes and look at his surprised eyes, just to help keep me going.'

A shell shook the slopes below the senatorial palace and the colonel pushed his maps aside. 'But not, I suspect, for much longer. Your arrival is well timed, young Damson Conquest. Father Blackwater here was just explaining to me how he knew nothing about the Inquisition helping to finance an expedition by the Pericurian diplomatic service into the interior.'

'The League of the Rational Court,' protested the father, 'does not answer to that vulgar-'

'Enough!' Colonel Knipe silenced the old priest. 'I trust, damson, you too will not insult my intelligence by pretending that your presence with the Pericurian expedition was a coincidence.'

'It was not,' said Hannah, jumping slightly as a roar of voices rumbled down the corridor from the direction of two massive doors.

'Excellent,' said the colonel. 'Don't mind the noise. The senate is currently debating what to do about the crisis.' He grimaced. 'With any luck, we'll have some legislation freezing all Pericurian trading assets on Jago within the hour. It's something of a rump senate, however, given that many of their noble elected heads are on poles next to Silvermain's, but we can but hope they overcome such trifles in time for victory.'

'The Pericurian ambassador was looking for evidence of the truth of their scriptures out there,' said Hannah. 'It was an archaeological mission.'

'To justify the war?' said the colonel. 'Most wet-snouts can find that drivel in their priests' imaginations readily enough without resorting to archaeology. And the Inquisition's involvement, damson?'

'There is a weapon, a mathematical weapon, devised by the church over a thousand years ago,' said Hannah. 'Its pieces are scattered. With it we can turn back the Pericurians.'

'Oh, please,' said the colonel. 'It'll take more than a church formula to disprove the force of the legions the wet-snouts have landed on Jago.'

'It's true!' insisted Hannah. 'We've already found two pieces of the weapon. We call it the god-formula, and when it's completed, the invasion could be turned back in the second it takes to think of it. The Inquisition's agent – Jethro Daunt – financed the expedition so we could track down the last missing piece.'

'And did you find it?' asked Colonel Knipe.

'No,' said Hannah 'It wasn't there, but-'

Colonel Knipe waved her away. 'This fancy is madness! We need soldiers, cannons, charges, not ancient church legends.' He motioned a militiaman patiently waiting behind Hannah to step forward. The soldier carried a large leather backpack and a dangling speaker-tube. 'I have contact with the guild, colonel.'

'Good man; so, let us see what that fool Vardan Flail has to say.'

Vardan Flail! Hannah's eyes narrowed. That was all she needed.

'Do you have good news for me, guildsman?' barked the colonel into the speaking trumpet.

'I will not transfer the First Senator's command functions to your staff of office,' said an obsequious voice issuing from speakers on the side of the backpack. 'Not without the due ratification of the senate.'

'Don't you play politics here, you little worm,' spat the colonel. 'I need those functions to prosecute the war. With them I can seal fire-doors on vaults the wet-snouts have overrun, I can-'

'You get the senate to vote for it,' replied the warbling voice, 'and the functions will be yours.'

'Do you think you are safe in your deep hole?' shouted the colonel. 'When the wet-snouts have finished with us here, they'll be straight over to the guild's vaults and turbine halls – down after you like weasels in a rabbit warren.'

'We are not in our vaults,' came the voice. 'We are marching on Hermetica City in our RAM suits and we will be with you within the hour!'

Colonel Knipe cut the voice off and slammed the speaking trumpet into the table. 'Worm. Filthy worm. Vardan Flail thinks that if he comes here with his guildsmen the senate we be so relieved they'll hail him as the new First Senator.'

'The turbine workers are a tough crew, colonel,' said the communications officer.

'RAM suits are fine for turning aside ursk claws and the poison of an electric field,' said the colonel, 'but not a shell from a wet-snout howitzer.'

'Please,' Hannah begged the head of the capital's militia. 'I can fix this, all of this. The war, everyone who has died. I have two pieces of the god-formula and I know where the third part is hidden. It's here in the city, Bel Bessant hid it here in the capital! The ambassador and his people don't know about the existence of the third piece.'

Father Blackwater's eyes widened in shock. 'Bel Bessant! You mean the horror she wanted to develop to use against the Chimecan gods? It doesn't exist, it is just a legend.'

'But it does,' said Hannah. 'The Inquisition knew. Alice Gray was an agent of the League of the Rational Court! She knew about the god-formula before any of us did. The Inquisition has been protecting the secret for centuries.'

'You know better than this,' said the priest. 'If that horror exists you must swear silence on the matter. You must allow yourself to be tortured rather than pass it over to hands touched by mortal weakness.'

'But I can fix it, stop the war and the deaths,' begged Hannah. 'I can see so clearly now. Everything the Circlist church has taught me, all of synthetic morality. I'm strong enough to endure being given the godhead. I won't stay a god long, just long enough to stop the war and bring back the dead that didn't have to-'

'Enough, child!' Father Blackwater slapped her. 'This is vanity. Your grief has unbalanced you.'

'The archbishop was a member of the Inquisition?' Colonel Knipe mouthed the words, hardly believing them. 'I can see there has been a merry dance being played here on Jago behind our backs. Girl, if you really know of something that will stop the wet-snouts, you must use it. To do otherwise would be madness.'