Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

Dick almost slipped as the kettle-black careered around the corner, only just managing to halt short of the massive iron wheels crunching past his boots. He raised his blunderbuss towards the driver’s step at the front and stopped himself from firing as Barnabas Sadly’s rat-like features twitched down towards him. ‘Onto the cart, Mister Tull.’

Dick leapt for the ladder on the side, hauling himself onto the driver’s perch even as the vehicle swung around, the massive boiler and barrel-laden flatbed on the back interspersed between them and the first shots whistling down the street, bullets clanging off the heavy iron of the carriage.

‘Your people came for me, Mister Tull. The dustmen came for me when I was in my cellar, killed the brewery delivery man and two of my customers they did.’

Dick stood on his toes and risked a glance behind the kettle-black’s single stack pumping steam out into the evening air. Three men in dark coats and rubber stench masks were sprinting after them, but falling back as they lost ground to the powerful engines of the cart. And they set me up too. What was it you said, Sadly? Foxes and hounds, mousers and mice, all dancing together.

‘Why, Mister Tull? Lords-a’larkey, what have I ever done against the board? Haven’t I always given you the truth of it, at considerable risk to my own life?’

‘Damned if I know,’ said Dick. And damned for certain if we don’t find out. The dustmen. Sod it. How dead does that make us?

Retirement had finally been forced on Dick, a retirement less comfortable than even he had imagined.

In the tall, cold chambers of the State Protection Board, its head, Algo Monoshaft, whistled in anger and frustration as the steamman tried to find a place for his latest report on the paper-strewn floor of his office.

Corporal Tull’s report that detailed how Dick Tull had been accepting large bribes in exchange for turning a blind eye to the royalist rebels’ activities inside the capital. The report that made clear how the sergeant had murdered his own partner when he had been found out, but only after tossing his royalist contact’s dead body into the river to ensure his treachery remained undiscovered.

Algo Monoshaft maniacally pulled at the crimson threads criss-crossing the paper fragments. Where does this go? WHERE DOES THIS GO?

There were hordes of staff working within Parliament’s walls, cleaners and caterers and the hundreds of personnel who waddled through its warrens wearing antiquated cloaks and powdered wigs. But none climbed so high or worked so cold as the bell-men who tended the intricate clockwork mechanism of Brute Julius, the massive bell tower that emerged like a brick spear from the gothic architecture of the debating chamber.

Once an hour its twenty bells chimed their resounding call across the roofs of the capital, ringing loud and clear over Middlesteel’s towers and warehouses and slums. Walking through the oak-panelled corridor of Parliament, the master of the bell’s boots echoed across the largely empty corridors and staircases, walls hung with political cartoons from the Middlesteel Illustrated Times and its rival newssheets. Strangely, the boots of the master’s apprentice made a great deal less noise, even though she was carrying a heavy toolbox. It took practice to be that stealthy.

The master of the bells pulled out a pocket watch chained to his waistcoat. ‘Nearly time for eleven-chime.’

‘No,’ said the apprentice. ‘They’ve already sounded. It’s time for the nightshift to begin.’

‘Yes,’ said the master. ‘Time to hand over to the nightshift.’

His apprentice passed over the toolbox to the old man. ‘Time to go to the Ship and Shovel for a drink. I’ll see you there.’

‘Time to go to the Ship and Shovel,’ said the master. ‘See you there?’

‘Of course,’ said the apprentice. Charlotte watched the old man walk to the red-coated sentry at the door at the end of the corridor, King Jude’s sceptre concealed inside his long toolbox, along with all the equipment she’d needed to tease open the vaults’ clever locks.

It was quite a piece, that sceptre, symbolic value aside. Discounting the intricately carved solid gold rod that made up most of its three feet of length, King Jude’s sceptre was banded by rubies with large amethysts and an egg-sized sapphire inlaid in its handle. If that wasn’t enough to get any thief salivating, the sceptre’s spear-like head was mounted by seven platinum leaves crafted like a bulb, and contained the largest diamond Charlotte had ever seen — an octahedral-shaped beauty larger than a big man’s fist. It managed to be both beautiful and strangely deadly at the same time, a spear crafted in rare metals for a warrior queen. I can almost see why Twist is willing to pay me so much money for it.

It hadn’t been simple either, getting into the vault. Even with the Master of Bells operating under the misconception that Charlotte had been his apprentice for the last three years, even with the burning weight of the jewel between her breasts to mesmerize all the guards and the attendants. The locks and tumblers set to protect the crown jewels across five vaulted passages hadn’t bent to the Eye of Fate’s hypnotic power. No, those brutes had required every ounce of Charlotte’s proficiency with tumblers and the safe-cracking equipment she was lugging along, they’d taken every drop of sweat she’d shed defusing the poison gas injectors and capture cages concealed in the false ceiling. The traps that most definitely had not been detailed on the floor plans or deactivated by the pass cards supplied by her mysterious patron. Well, if it had been easy, the royalists would have done it themselves.

A momentary sadness struck Charlotte. It would be hard to top this job. All the safes and vault rooms and cunning tripwires and ingenious traps she had faced in her career, they could all be relegated to experience now. Merely the practice she’d needed to hone her craft to the level necessary to break into Parliament and spirit away its most valuable symbol of power. Things wouldn’t be the same in a couple of months, after she’d lain low long enough for the hue and cry the newssheets would raise over this crime to fade away. Where would the fun be in facing down the run-of-the-mill protections guarding a merchant lord’s antiquities after this? It would be like a master painter reduced to setting up an easel opposite the capital’s national gallery and capturing the likeness of tourists in charcoal for thruppence a caricature. Well, at least she would always carry the warmth of her memories of having humbugged every one of the honourable members of the House of Guardians. The outrage of this crime a slap in the face to every one of the smug, superior aristocrats… the gallants who in a rightful world would have been Charlotte’s equal in station.

And she could use the time to lay low to avoid the fate the mad ex-parson Jethro Daunt and his hulking, malfunctioning half-steamman friend seemed to think was lurking around the corner, waiting to befall her. Money would help. Money always did. It was amazing how being rich could cushion you from the worst the world had to throw it to you. Charlotte could speak with authority on that. Her shameful memory of having been so hungry as an abandoned child that she had been reduced to eating grass and leaves. Grubby and crawling on her knees, cramps slicing across her stomach like a hundred knives being plunged into her. Bile rising in her throat as she tried to chew down on coarse grass. Real hunger, not just being ready for dinner. That had been close to the time when she had first found Charlotte, taken pity on her… another stab of shame, more deserved this time. The gypsy woman. The gypsy.

Money? No, money wasn’t a family’s love, but it was as much a comfort as Charlotte required. So much money she’d taken over the years. Then, in a fit of irony, she’d spread it out across all of the capital’s major banks and counting houses, just in case there was a run on one of them and Charlotte lost her savings. Security. With enough money she would have security; she would know peace. If she got ill, she could afford to pay for doctors and medicine. If she got hungry, she could pay for food to still the pain of hunger. If one of the people she cared for ran into hard times, then she could help them to survive too. Charlotte just needed a large enough amount of money and then she would be protected, for now and forever. It was strange, how she could fill her accounts with silver and gold and notes of the realm, the amount on deposit curiously swelling on its own account as interest was applied. But it could never grow larger than the fear of what might happen to a young woman all alone in the world. The fear always expanded faster than the money. Perhaps that was the nature of fear. Or perhaps it was the nature of money. Still, having money always helped. There was no doubt about that.