Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

‘Both gems share much the same composition,’ said Boxiron. ‘Close to the reflective index of diamond, but not quite.’

‘And, as you witnessed, the jewel around her neck appeared to ward off unnatural energies from Mister Cloake’s blade which are the most likely cause of her collapse and her subsequent coma. I wonder if the sisters Lammeter were urging us to find Charlotte Shades, or the thing she wears around her neck?’ It was to his chagrin that he hadn’t been able to save the other names the sisters had been chanting. He would not fail Charlotte. Daunt lifted the sceptre up and offered it to Boxiron, the weight of the thing such that he could barely manage to pass it while sitting down.

‘Examine it closely, old friend. Set your vision plate to its maximum resolution.’

Boxiron leant in close towards the sceptre, the red dot pulsing in the centre of his visor-like vision plate narrowing in size until the light was barely visible. ‘Yes, there is something inside the jewel — a pattern, finely etched. So fine I can barely distinguish it at my optic’s maximum resolution, and on that setting, the side of a hair appears like the contours of a mountain.’

‘Is it an image perhaps, or cursive script?’

‘No,’ said Boxiron. ‘It’s circuitry, I’m sure of it. But on a granular scale unlike anything I have heard of. The crystal boards designed by the architects of my people are as cave paintings compared to the sophistication responsible for this.’

‘The sceptre’s a bloody antique,’ said Tull. ‘How can that be?’

‘Ah, this is a dark business,’ said the commodore. ‘All the rightful queens and kings who have held that sceptre over the millennia, wielded it in good faith, and you are telling me it is etched full of wicked sorcery?’

Daunt scratched his chin. ‘Yes, all those hands. All the way back to the Queen Elizica, before the cold time and glaciers covered the world. All the way back to the first war between the tribes of the Jackeni and the gill-necks. A war then, and a war now.’

‘Let’s not be digging up old history,’ said the commodore. ‘No blessed good can come of it. You remember the trouble we got into on the black isle of Jago when we started disturbing dark ruins.’

‘I believe it was the professor who told me that those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it,’ said Daunt.

‘History books won’t bleeding keep us alive,’ said Tull. ‘What’s this mess got to do with yourself and the old steamer anyway? You’re meant to be tracking down a nest of bloodsuckers for the town’s alderman, not prancing about taking on bent board officials and royalists backed by the Advocacy.’

‘I believe the victims of the vampire slayings are collateral damage, good sergeant,’ said Daunt. ‘A few poor souls good for the pot. Those who knew too much, or perhaps too little. Much like yourself. And from what you said, it was what you and your fellow intelligencer saw on the night of your surveillance at Lord Chant’s residence that got your partner killed and would have seen you assassinated too. And as for the rest, yes. The pieces are starting to fall in place.’ Daunt rummaged around in his pocket for a Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drop, then offered the bag in the direction of Dick Tull.

‘You’ve got to be joking me, amateur. Those things’ll rot your teeth and your mind.’

‘Lubrication of my mental processes, harmless stimulation only,’ said Daunt. He sucked on the sweet and looked over at Commodore Black. ‘There wasn’t much in the books at Tock House about the modern gill-necks, good captain. Beyond the fact that the Advocacy’s ancestors were once driven onto our shores by changes in the magma currents of the Fire Sea, and the tribes living on our land united to drive them away.’

‘Nor will you find such learnings in the university’s dusty towers,’ said the commodore, tapping his skull. ‘It’s all up here. In the heads of a few honest skippers, in the noggins of adventurers like me who brave the sea.’

‘It is said that the Advocacy are an insular people.’

‘Ah, a little beyond that. The gill-necks of the Advocacy live their lives by a book of rituals and law called the Misleash — and according to its teachings, there is an eternal cycle of life where mankind abandons the sea and returns to the land, before returning to the sea again. Their words for home, universe and sea are one and the same, and if that doesn’t tell you all you mortal need to understand about how they think, then I’ll add that their word for land has another meaning which is “torment”. There’s blessed little the Advocacy need from us to live below the waters — they only tax the shipping that passes over their territory to discourage visitors.’

‘But they’re an evolutionary offshoot of the race of man,’ said Daunt. ‘Just like the graspers or the craynarbians.’

‘Aye, not that you would know it to look at them, stubby muzzles and skin like sharks. The proof of the pudding is that the gill-necks can interbreed with us, although such misbegotten babes as result only gives truth to the notion of us surface dwellers as accursed. A mewling, twisted babe ill-suited to land or sea, that’s the sad result of any union between man and gill-neck. Your Circlist friends should be pleased by them; they don’t have any gods, just the sea as their great mother.’

‘A noble race, then,’ said Daunt. ‘Ruled by law, and no heaven or hell.’

‘Ah, well, they have a measure of hell. They believe that the dark of the abyss sends devils to punish them when they abuse the seas.’

‘Even more intriguing. But I see why you are uneasy about the idea of an alliance between the royalist rebels and the gill-necks.’

‘There is no royalist rebellion, lad,’ said the commodore. ‘Not anymore. Parliament’s airships broke the fleet-in-exile when they took Porto Principe. All that survived of the cause are a few submarines whose crews turned to slavery and privateering. The gill-necks are meant to be breathing life back into the cause all these years later? Why? The Advocacy doesn’t give a fig who rules the land, not when they call the sea their realm. The ocean’s magma fields are in retreat now, not expanding, there’s no trouble to drive the gill-necks in desperation towards our shores.’

‘They have a king, don’t they?’ said Tull. ‘Maybe the gill-necks decided they’ll be safer in their land with a friendly monarch sitting on the throne of Jackals again.’

‘Pah, that’s parliamentary propaganda, you old rascal,’ said the commodore. ‘What you call a king, the gill-necks call the Judge Sovereign. They’re not ruled by a royal court, but a court of law. A supreme mucky-muck selected from the bench of the four Princes Intercessor, the Bench of Four, appointed by their societies of ritual. The bench interprets their laws and set out the rituals and ceremonies that every guild and clan must abide by. The Advocacy know as little of our affairs as you do of theirs — or at least that was the way it used to be. How my sister got in tight with them is beyond my tired old noggin. And that Parliament has let a trade dispute escalate close to war is wicked foolery even the idiots in the House of Guardians should be ashamed of. Like watching a squid and an albatross fighting over whether the squid should live in the sky and the bird under the water.’

Daunt nodded his head sadly. ‘Bob my soul, so here we are. Teetering close to a war with no cause and no real prize for its victor.’ The ex-parson ran his hand along King Jude’s sceptre. And this is the glue that binds the mystery together. Are you what this conflict is being fought for, or the key to halting it? If we’re ever to return to the Kingdom, if we’re to stop this senseless war, we need to find out. ‘The gill-necks have no fondness towards surface dwellers?’