Stephen Hunt - Secrets of the Fire Sea

'But that's not the worst of it.' Jethro pointed beyond the flare-house's walls. 'The Pericurian attack – you knew they were going to invade, and you let it happen. Everyone who died in this senseless war, all on you. You've bobbed us all, used this whole city as your personal plaything.'

'You cannot judge me,' said the colonel. 'I have done what the senate failed to do for centuries. I have united our people with the fear of a common enemy. I did not provoke the wet-snout invasion, I did not arrange it, I merely allowed their attack to happen on my own terms.'

'You lured them into a bloodbath, man!'

'You're a slippery fish, Jackelian. What was it that gave me away?'

'When I was looking over the ballot records for evidence that the guild had falsified Hannah's draft,' said Jethro, 'I noticed the number of people from the lodge of gas workers who had been conscripted into the police militia. And what use could the militia have for those bleeding gas seepage away from the capital? The Pericurians weren't invading Hermetica, they were invading an underground gas chamber!'

'They deserved a quick end, Jackelian, for uniting us and ridding the people of the insane, inbred First Senator and his lickspittles.' He pushed the gun even harder against Hannah's head as Boxiron's warhammer twitched in anger. 'Stay back, or she will die!'

'You wouldn't think twice, would you, good colonel?' Jethro reached into his pocket and drew out a boiled sweet, his cheek swelling as he popped it into his mouth and sucked it thoughtfully. 'You murdered the fence that brought you the church's copies of William of Flamewall's paintings. Just as you killed Chalph urs Chalph when he came to you to tell you his suspicions about the Pericurians' intentions. Chalph had spotted that the envelope Stom urs Stom passed the Pericurian ambassador supposedly warning the expedition not to depart wasn't written in the First Senator's hand, but that of the Baroness of Ush, no doubt apprising the ambassador that their invasion would take place when he was out of the city. Chalph told you this, and you couldn't risk the poor unfortunate ursine informing someone who actually would have tried to stop the invasion.'

'And I would have hanged you for his death,' sneered Knipe, 'eventually.'

'How did you know about the invasion?' asked Jethro. 'That's the one thing I haven't been able to fathom.'

'Look no further than your own countrymen,' said the colonel. 'One of the members of the Jackelian consul here, your Mister Walsingham, came to see me with a packet containing stolen details of a model of the flows and drifts of the Fire Sea. A model sitting on the wet-snouts' transaction engines. I doubt if he is really a diplomat, but then I doubt if your parliament cares one way or another. As long as the Pericurian threat to your colonies' northern borders has its fangs trimmed.'

'And you never passed this intelligence on to the senate?' said Hannah.

The colonel brushed her hair teasingly with the cold barrel of the gun. 'And what would Silvermain have done with the news we were going to be invaded? Passed a bill? Installed one of his hunting hounds as the Senator of War? He was good at dreaming of things that could never be. I, on the other hand, have sacrificed too much to let our land fade. My will shall be done.'

Hannah dropped the pouch of papers she was holding, the half-deciphered code taken from the stained glass vista falling to the stone gantry. 'Alice, my parents, Chalph, they all died for this.'

'Continue your work!' Colonel Knipe shouted.

'Go jigger yourself.'

Colonel Knipe's pistol whipped out, striking Hannah on the skull and she fell to the ground, blood gushing from the wound and soaking her hands. She glared up with pure loathing at Knipe. 'I'll never do this for you – pull the trigger!'

'Perhaps you won't after all,' said Colonel Knipe. He turned and shot Jethro in the stomach. The ex-parson was hurled back against the cannon housing, a crimson stain spreading out across his waistcoat. 'Drop the hammer, steamman!' Colonel Knipe shouted, reloading his pistol. 'I'll heal the Jackelian as good as new after I have attained godhead. Come up here and complete the decryption of the code in the stained glass before I put a second bullet through your friend's skull and leave him for the worms.'

Jethro was lying on the lower gantry, clutching his stomach while his blood pooled across the flagstones. 'No. Not…for…me.'

'I cannot let you die, Jethro.'

'Must!'

Hannah watched the black steel barrel of the colonel's pistol swinging around towards her again. Knipe was going to have to kill them all, for there was no way she was going to decrypt the final part of the code for the killer who had stolen everyone she had ever loved from her life, and Boxiron could not be allowed to either. Even over the clash and fury of rifle fire, Commodore Black heard the screams from the quailing children behind him, terrified by the appearance of two Pericurians crashing down the side-stairs from a higher level within the mountain.

Jared Black had turned and put a bullet through the skull of the soldier carrying a turret rifle before he had even realized that the wet-snout wielding a sabre next to the falling ursine corpse was that of Ortin urs Ortin.

'Spawn of Amaja urs Amaja!' the ambassador yelled. The children crowding the floor scrambled away in panic from this huge monster that had suddenly invaded the assembly room, a fur-covered demon bearing a sword slicked in the blood of their parents.

Commodore Black lowered his sabre at Ortin urs Ortin. 'That and worse, ambassador.'

Ortin charged, pure animal savagery bearing down upon the old u-boat man. Commodore Black stepped forward and met him with a clash of steel.

'You trapped us, tricked us!' Ortin bayed. 'You butchered half the great houses!'

'No, lad, not me.' The commodore fell back, grunting. Ortin's strength was far beyond that of any fighter from the race of man. 'But I'm going to settle for you all the same. For Nandi.'

Ortin struck the commodore's sabre with his steel, again and again, making the commodore's arm ring with the wicked pain of it. There was little room for sophistication in this battle, his parries blunted by the raw swinging power of the Pericurian's massive frame. The commodore's rare bones turned into an anvil from the battering.

As their fight stumbled back and forth across the assembly room, Commodore Black caught a brief glimpse of the barricade where the front line of cadets was thrusting bayonets against the crush of the Pericurian advance, the second line unable to shoot now without hitting their own side. Children, blessed children asked to fight and die like this. To fight for their lives. Their stronghold at the centre of the mountain was seconds away from falling…

Commodore Black yelled in surprise as he slipped on the blood of a dead Pericurian soldier and sprawled backwards, his sabre sliding away across the floor. He was weaponless. Ortin urs Ortin moved in and the commodore met the ambassador's insane, glazed eyes as the huge beast raised his blade upwards for the killing stroke. 'Leave…me…to die.' Jethro coughed.

The steamman shook his visored head at Jethro's wounded form and dropped the warhammer with a clang, mounting the rungs up to the circle of stained glass windows. 'No, I cannot. You must trust me.'

Hannah watched the huge steamman stop in front of the stained glass, drinking in the final hidden section of Bel Bessant's terrible creation. 'Don't do this, Boxiron. I would only have used the god-formula to fix what wasn't meant to be broken. What sort of god will you create by giving such a thing to Knipe? For the love of the Circle, he killed my father, Nandi, Chalph, Alice, he-'

'Be quiet, damson,' threatened the colonel. 'The Inquisition was good enough to send us a machine to break codes, it's only fitting that we use it as they intended.'