Stephen Hunt - Secrets of the Fire Sea

'Up here?' said the colonel. 'This is where the third part of the god-formula is hidden?'

'There were three paintings created by William of Flamewall,' said Hannah. 'Two of them held parts of the god-formula hidden in steganographic code. The last painting was blank of any code – it was the third painting of the rational trinity.'

'You climb the mountain alone,' said Colonel Knipe.

'William of Flamewall wasn't just an illuminator of manuscripts for the church,' said Hannah, pointing up towards the stained glass. 'He was a glass master. He even used the oxides from his glass dye to murder the priest who had created the god-formula, Bel Bessant.'

Colonel Knipe swivelled on his feet, looking in amazement at the wall of glass surrounding the massive flare cannon.

'The third painting wasn't blank,' said Hannah. 'The Circlist priest in the painting was pointing to the top of the Horn of Jago. We never found an image of William of Flamewall, but I'd wager that his face is that of the priest in the third painting.' She craned her neck up at the images circling them, indicating a panel that represented the third part of the rational trinity. 'And there is the same face on the glass.'

Colonel Knipe climbed the ladder to the second gantry, his cloak brushing Hannah's hair as she followed. 'And this picture will hold the missing piece of the god-formula!'

Hannah looked at the stained glass work, running her hands along the borders of the towering illumination set in crystal, a chequerboard of colourful squares – purples, reds, greens, yellows – all set in a seemingly random pattern that echoed the colours used in the main illustration, priests of a dozen religions being parted by Circlists to make way for a single man to climb the mountain. Alone.

'It's here,' she declared. 'Assign each colour along the border a value, work out the key. This is more steganography.'

'You know what you must do now,' said Colonel Knipe. 'Decipher the code. The archbishop tutored you, you are your mother's child, you must!'

'I didn't crack the first two codes,' said Hannah. 'It was Jethro Daunt and his friend Boxiron – the steamman has special skills in this area.'

'As you love Jago,' pleaded the colonel, 'you must! Our people's time is short.'

Yes, as high as they were, she could still hear the sounds of war drifting up from the slopes below. Hannah's mind raced. She was visualizing things so fast now, she could do this. She had to. For all of them. Hannah reached for the satchel containing the first two sections of the god-formula. She would use the blank sides of the paper to decipher the steganography and tease out the last part of the god-formula. She knelt down to note the sequence of colours on the first of her sheets, suddenly twisting her head to look down onto the lower gantry. 'Did you hear that?'

Colonel Knipe already had his pistol out as he looked down towards the barrel of the flare-house cannon and the instrument room beyond it from where the flares were launched. 'I heard nothing.'

Hannah scowled and went back to work. She could have sworn she had heard an animal grunting below as though it was laughing. 'Look to your locks!' the commodore yelled to the faltering riflemen – though men they were not yet – as their young hands fumbled with their charges. The mortal terrible ranks of ursine charged down the corridor through the press of fire and bolts of steel, smashing into the barricade, splinters tearing into the cadets who cried out with raw, animal fear.

'First line kneel, second line fire!'

Another ripple of explosions, glass charges cracking, the sulphur hiss of liquid explosives smoking out of their barrels.

'Clear them! Second line kneel, first line fire!'

There were screams and curses from the ursine in the corridor as they clambered over the bodies of the fallen, the dark press of the beasts getting closer to the hundreds of bawling, huddling children crowded behind them in the assembly rooms.

'Look to your locks. Clear them!'

Clear them before the maddened Pericurians broke through the barricade. Soldiers of the great houses that practised vendetta through tooth and claw. Their enemies wiped out down to the third generation.

Tooth and wicked claw. Hannah's hand brushed against the cold crystal of the stained glass window, her head spinning with the steganographic encryption she was attempting to break.

Her eyes drifted to a transparent pane that had been left undyed, and she gasped as she saw the pall of smoke rising up from the headland in front of the black cliffs of Jago. 'The Pericurian fleet. The fleet is burning at sea!' She swivelled on Colonel Knipe. 'What is this? The Pericurians took the coral line, the battlements, the city vaults…?'

'The wet-snouts have taken what they deserved,' said the colonel.

'But the people,' said Hannah, stunned. 'They were in peril. I was doing this for them.'

'And they will be saved,' said the colonel, 'when you have decoded the final piece of the god-formula.'

'That is the last thing they will be!' shouted a voice from below.

Hannah looked down onto the lower gantry. It was Jethro Daunt, standing alongside the hulking mass of a hammer-wielding Boxiron. Hannah felt a cold object resting against her temple and turned. Colonel Knipe was pointing his pistol at her head. 'Stay where you are, Jackelian, you and your metal brute both.'

'What in the name of the Circle are you doing?' asked Hannah.

'Keeping my country safe,' said the colonel.

'That seems to come at a cost,' said Jethro. 'Such as when you paid Tomas Maggs to scuttle the boat carrying Hannah's father back home.'

'No!' whispered Hannah. 'That was down to Vardan Flail.'

'I'm afraid not, damson,' said Colonel Knipe, pushing the barrel of his pistol harder against her skull. 'That fool Vardan Flail is as much a Circlist fanatic as your learned Jackelian friend here. Flail was seeking the god-formula, but he didn't want to use it. He would have destroyed it!'

'And Hannah's parents would have taken it back to Jackals to study,' said Jethro. 'You couldn't allow that to happen either. The Conquests came to you for help, didn't they? They had found images of William's three paintings in the great archives, and they feared that the guild was trying to stop them leaving the island. But you decided to murder the two of them first, steal their find and keep the god-formula to yourself. Just as you killed Alice Gray when you discovered she was also a guardian of copies of William of Flamewall's paintings.'

'I had to torture her after Hugh Sworph came to me, knowing the bounty I was offering for William of Flamewall's works,' said the colonel. 'There was always the chance the archbishop was hiding the third piece of the god-formula somewhere in her cathedral.'

'Your bad luck, then,' said Jethro. 'Alice was only the guardian of what you had already killed Hannah's parents for: two of William's paintings, each containing a piece of the god-formula, and a third seemingly blank. How many people died in the ursk attack you allowed into the city?'

'Alice,' groaned Hannah. 'My father. Murdered by you!'

'You should not complain,' said the colonel. 'Your good fortune allowed you to escape twice when you should have died. The first time from the ursk pack, and then from the bomb one of my men planted in your atmospheric carriage – although, to be fair, the second time I was really aiming to kill your meddling Jackelian archaeologist friend before she could uncover your parents' work here. The god-formula is to be mine, and mine alone. That is the way fate intends it to be. Your parents were the first to die, but there have been many others over the years. Explorers, chancers, thieves, local and foreign. Vanished into the stomachs of the beasts outside the wall or found floating drowned in our canals. It was destiny that you survived, young damson, for where would I be without you now? Who would have thought that a mere slip of a girl could succeed where I, with all my resources, failed? You are my fate, girl, and I am yours.'