Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

‘This is much more than that crooked sod Walsingham and his cronies selling us out,’ said Tull.

Daunt nodded. ‘I rather fear it is.’

Extra guards arrived, along with a high-ranking officer, judging by the ornate gilding of his helmet. They cut Boxiron from the line, their raised rifles somewhat superfluous given the power-limiter they had fitted on the steamman’s body. With Barnabas Sadly, Dick Tull and Daunt passed through the blood-code machine and their identities confirmed, the four of them were marched under guard out of the building and taken towards the more permanent set-up at the rear of the camp. Shoved rudely inside one of the mill-like structures, they were led through iron passages that could have passed as the interior of the Purity Queen, until they reached a chamber lined with empty windowless cells, unpadded bunks its only furniture. Rusting metal bars slid into the ceiling at the bidding of a gill-neck soldier standing at the end of the corridor. Daunt was shoved inside alongside the others. Then the bar sank deep into pits set into the floor as the guards departed.

‘Lords-a’larkey, they know who we are, don’t they?’ groaned Sadly.

‘It would seem we are now wanted in two states,’ said Boxiron.

‘Your corrupt friends on the State Protection Board are to be congratulated,’ said Jethro to Dick. ‘Fast work indeed, to uncover who we are and circulate our descriptions so widely and rapidly.’ He placed a hand on Boxiron’s shoulder. ‘I rather fear it was your involvement, old steamer, which allowed the board to identify us. Your unique physiology featured rather prominently in the police files once upon a time.’

‘Whereas Sergeant Tull and his little rodent stool pigeon’s were rather easier to come by,’ announced a voice.

Daunt looked around. A middle-aged woman and a non-descript looking man. Ah, the man from outside Tock House. Walsingham, alias Mister Twist.

‘No salute for me, Sergeant?’

‘Piss off, traitor,’ growled Tull. ‘How much are the gill-necks paying you to sell us out?’

‘Let us say a comfortable accommodation has been reached,’ smiled Walsingham. ‘A little something for everyone involved, including my friend here, who-’

‘-is Gemma Dark,’ said Daunt. ‘Otherwise known as the younger sister of Jared Black.’

She inclined her head in acknowledgement of the fact. ‘Yes, I was told you used to be a Circlist priest. A clever fellow, full of tricks.’

‘You share more than a passing resemblance. Chin, voice, physical mannerisms.’

She stroked the bars playfully. ‘A clever man like you, you must already know why I’m here.’

‘You were hunting us, obviously,’ said Daunt, matter-of-factly. ‘These two-’ he indicated the State Protection Board agent and his informant, ‘-to ensure their silence. Myself and Boxiron to discover our involvement and the extent of our knowledge of your little royalist conspiracy. The commodore, because you hate him more than anyone else in the world, and Damson Shades, well, the young lady most of all. Because she has King Jude’s sceptre.’

‘Where is the girl?’ Walsingham demanded. ‘Where is my sceptre?’

‘Probably out in the colonies by now,’ shrugged Daunt. ‘We split up. The commodore and Damson Shades sneaked a berth on a RAN airship across to Concorzia. We took the slow route by liner.’

Gemma Dark shook her head in disappointment. ‘How easily the lies trip off your tongue. There is a missing u-boat from the convoy’s logs, one that bears a suspicious resemblance to the lines of my brother’s current craft.’

‘Mere coincidence.’

‘He’s a slippery fish, my brother, an eel covered in grease. I’ve been trying to kill him for years, but he runs and hides so well. You know that Jared Black isn’t his real name? He was born Samson Solomon Dark, a duke’s blood in the cause he betrayed.’

‘I know a little of his history,’ said Daunt. ‘Betrayal is rather strong a word. I think perhaps he just outgrew you and your royalist friends’ need for revenge.’

‘Outgrew!’ the woman shrieked. ‘This is who we are. Our history — our land, everything stolen from us by Parliament’s thieving shopkeepers. The cause is not a waistcoat you grow too fat for and discard. He ran when he should have fought. A coward and a traitor.’

‘But not always,’ said Daunt. ‘Sometimes he fought when he should’ve run. Like the time when he had your son released from Bonegate jail. A convicted river slaver offered parole in return for acting as a pilot, and that was a voyage he didn’t return from.’

‘You snivelling pious bastard,’ she screamed. ‘You dare call him a slaver? Treat us like outlaws and how do you-?’

‘Hold your tongue,’ advised Walsingham. ‘The churchman is manipulating you. He wants to use your anger to goad you into filling in the copious gaps in his knowledge.’

Daunt shrugged behind the bars. ‘I should take that as a compliment coming from you, Mister Walsingham, alias Captain Twist. Who would’ve imagined, such a high-ranking secret policeman assuming the mantle of a royalist bogeyman? What complicated webs we do weave.’

‘It’s not a compliment,’ spat Dick Tull angrily gripping the bars between his hands. ‘A traitor to all he believes in. It’s a sodding insult.’

‘That rather depends on what he believed in to start with. A little like the good commander of our convoy, Vice-admiral Cockburn. I believe he was a friend of yours?’

Tull sank wearily onto one of the bunks. ‘What are you talking about, amateur?’

‘You should listen to your friend, sergeant,’ said Walsingham. ‘He’s a clever man indeed. Dangerously clever, in fact.’

‘You want him, then?’ asked the commodore’s sister.

‘A defrocked parson of the Circlist church?’ Walsingham mused. ‘Such an obtuse organization with no real power in the Kingdom. When you believe in nothing, you believe in anything. Still, waste not, want not. Take him out of the cells. We shall kill two birds with one stone.’

She indicated Dick Tull and Sadly. ‘These two?’

‘A blunt knife and his diseased lapdog. I think not. Cannon fodder. They can die in the camp.’

Tull lunged through the bars, but Walsingham stepped back.

‘I’m still sharp enough to snap your neck, Walsingham.’

‘You have surprised me, sergeant. The duties I set you were specifically allocated on the basis of your complete lack of utility and possession of the scruples of a sewer rat. In the end, you’ve proved just good enough at your job to get yourself killed. It won’t be fast for you, but I guarantee you will make yourself useful before you waste away. Give him a beating for his insolence. Remind him of the proper forms that should be observed between master and servant.’

As the wall of bars retracted up into the ceiling, Boxiron moved in front of Daunt as the gill-neck soldiers swarmed in. ‘Do not touch him!’

Gemma Dark laughed as the guards easily restrained the steamman while others laid into Dick Tull. ‘You’re just strong enough to slave for us in the camp, old steamer, but your days of cracking skulls are over.’

Daunt leant in to the steamman and whispered words of reassurance before the gill-necks seized his arms and dragged him out.

‘Where are you taking him?’ Boxiron demanded.

‘I need to gauge just how clever your ex-parson actually is,’ Walsingham said.

‘I imagine the process will be quite painful,’ sighed Daunt as he was bundled out.

Walsingham followed with the commodore’s sister fast behind him. ‘Torture usually is.’

Voices were crackling so rapidly from Charlotte’s speaker box that the device was having problems interpreting the cacophony of shouts and calls; the box collapsing into an intermittent rack-rack-rack noise as it was overwhelmed by the seanores’ cries. There was no point trying to work out which of the nomads was signalling, the crowd encircling tall seabed impaled rotor-spears, seanores beating their chests as they hollered and whooped. Their spears were arranged in a field-sized semicircle along the rocky seafloor, the sketched out arena bounded by the chasm of a supposedly bottomless trench. If the proximity of the trench was meant to add an additional frisson of danger to their trial of admittance into the seanore’s ranks, then Charlotte considered the choice of venue largely superfluous. It wasn’t as if she was going to last longer than a couple of minutes against a mass of deadly muscle such as the clan’s chieftain, Vane.