Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

Commodore Black inspected the cleanly sunk rivet with satisfaction, pulling a fresh bolt from the sack slung over his shoulder. 'As neatly done as any navvy back in the submarine pens of Spumehead could manage.'

Duncan held onto a strut and looked down the scaffold. To the right, one of the engineers from Quatershift had stopped fiddling with the components of an injector ring as Paul-Loup Keyspierre talked at him.

'There's something not quite right about yon one,' said Duncan.

'His foreign accent, is it?'

'No, it's the way people react to him, all the staff who arrived at the project from Quatershift. Just look at that scientist, Jared. How still and pale he is. I've seen simple farm laddies and lasses being given their first lumps by a drill sergeant with less fear than that on their faces.'

'Ah well, he's the skipper of their boat, right enough. Back across the border Keyspierre would have the power to strip a man of his position and send work-dodgers off to organized communities. That's the power to starve you and your family, or imprison you in a living death – until you'd come to welcome the real article when it moved you along the Circle.'

'It's more than that,' said Duncan. 'It's a different sort of fear. And then there's his daughter. She stalks about like a panther.'

'She's sleek lines, that Jeanne, I'll give you that,' said the commodore. 'But the terrors of the revolution have been raising ladies mortal resilient across the border, that's all there is to the girl's manner. Compatriot Keyspierre and his daughter are decent enough salts at heart. Jeanne was quick enough to save me back in Quatershift, when one of the Army of Shadows' giant slugs was about to transform the iron in my blood into another wicked brick for their city.'

Duncan said nothing, but he seemed to cling onto his doubts.

Having finished with the scientist working on the firing ring, Keyspierre walked down along the curve of the cannon to stop underneath the scaffold where Duncan and the commodore were working.

'Commodore Black, I see that your contribution to the effort here stretches beyond your rather curious specialist knowledge of the channels off my nation's coastline.'

Duncan noticed the man's voice was deep and smooth, his Jackelian accent very nearly flawless.

'Just doing my bit, Compatriot Keyspierre,' said the commodore. 'A bit of Jackelian elbow grease to help chivvy this mortal fine piece of engineering along to completion.'

'Grease being applied to a scheme generated by the inspired minds of the glorious revolution,' said Keyspierre.

'But cast,' Duncan called down, 'from Jackelian iron. Aye, much the same as the barrel on a redcoat's Brown Jane. Your people are not strangers to our rifles, I believe.'

'So it once was,' snorted Keyspierre, the nostrils of his large nose flaring. 'I can see how well our cannon is polishing up. A pity we did not have a few of these formidable devices completed during the Two-Year War. Who knows which way the winds of fate would have blown if we had been able to shell the House of Guardians when they were debating the continuance of their war against us.'

'An interesting question, for sure,' said the commodore.

Keyspierre nodded, before starting to walk away. 'Quite. But we speak of the past, when it is the future both our countries needs to look to now. Please do pass my compliments on to the noble workers helping complete this most ingenious feat of gunnery.'

'They must have a different set of history books across the border,' bridled Duncan as the man left their earshot. 'I was sure it was the laddies in Quatershift who invaded us during the Two-Year War.'

'As I recall, most of their books were fed into the fires on the boilers of the shifties' steam-driven execution machines during the purges.' Commodore Black looked at the figure of the departing institute official. 'Ah, well. All friends together now, eh?'

Radford and Sykes lengthened the run of the nets alongside their shallow-draught fishing keel. It was usually such easy work this far from the estuary, where their competition was few and far between. The Gambleflowers splintered into a dozen channels around the marshland of Monymusk before reforming into a single course that snaked all the way out to the coast. The marsh was usually thick with insects and the river crabs, and the fish and birds that fed on them. But something was scaring the fish off today, with the result that the pair's nets had been empty each time they hauled them back on board.

Sykes cast an eye at the lonely fish still flopping about the catching crate on their foredeck. 'It'd be nice to have some friends for Mister Trout here. Some companions, so that we'll have something more to show for the day's labours than an ear-wigging from Damson Sykes when I get back home.'

'Never seen anything like it,' said Radford, pulling his leather hat down tight against the chill marsh air. 'Empty, today.' He nodded to the east where the river cut through Middlesteel. 'You expect bad waters down by Old Reeky; but then when the capital's mills have got a stink on, the fish all head up to us. Look at the bugs flitting over the water. Got to be something wants to bite on them today.'

The lines holding their net seemed to judder at his complaints and both men began to haul the net in. 'That's more like it.'

Sykes winced. 'Is we stuck? This is heavy, Circle it is.'

The pair of fishermen heaved at the lines until the pulley began to run again and the net lifted up. They swung the catch over and down onto their foredeck.

It landed with a heavy slap and Sykes advanced on it, scaling knife in hand. 'What's this, then?'

Radford sucked his breath in as the wash of water dragged blackened cloth away from the sodden mass under the net and revealed the pale white stretch of a human hand against their boat's boards. 'It's a floater!'

Sykes bent down to loosen the net from around the body. 'Poor unlucky bugger. Ain't seen one of these for years, not since I worked the six-penny boat in Old Reeky.'

Radford watched his friend uncover the corpse. 'Must have come down with the morning tide from the sea. Wonder if this is the fellow that's been putting off our fish?'

Sykes tapped the flat of his knife thoughtfully against his bushy beard. 'Now then, I think we knows him. Last week. Don't you remember? He came down to the docks, wanting to know if there were any inns with spare rooms left in Sheergate. One of the carriage folk wanting to travel on to Spumehead for passage out to the colonies.'

'I think you may be right,' said Radford. 'He was a flush jack with his pocket book. Bit too full of himself for my taste.'

'Have to be a dreadful severe sinking right off the coast for him to roll in this far with the tide, mind.'

'Could be so,' said Radford. 'Steamers have been running full to Concorzia for weeks, putting out dangerously low on their waterlines from what I been told.'

Radford was bending over to help Sykes clear the corpse entangled in their net when their little boat jolted to port, a pitter-patter rain of thuds pushing their hull back into the marshy reeds of the bank. Trying to keep their balance, both men dropped the tangled netting and swayed to the other side of the boat.

Down the river, thousands of bodies drifted face down with the tidal waters, as if a forest of humanity had been felled and loggers were moving the harvest downstream. Blackened, burnt clothing; men, women, children, all dead. Sykes reached down into the water and pulled out a sodden blue sailor's cap floating by to inspect its name badge. The Jackelian Navy Ship Excellent, one of the huge ironclads that had been guarding the harbour entrance at Spumehead. It appeared there would be no sudden influx of new colonists arriving in Concorzia after all.