Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

The machine the ex-parson was confined in was connected by twisting root-like crystal cables, winding organically around each other, until they linked up with a similar machine visible behind the first. For a moment, Gemma Dark was glad that the climbing waves of energy were hiding the shape of the form inside the second machine. Her luck, her famous luck. Allies at last to turn around the declining fortunes of cause that had so nearly been lost. And if this is the price, then it is a small thing indeed.

‘Do you have his memories?’ asked Walsingham from behind Gemma.

A voice answered from within the burning cage of the second machine. ‘I do.’

‘Solomon Samson Dark,’ snarled Gemma, surprising herself by the loathing engendered simply speaking the traitor’s name. Her cursed brother. ‘Also known as Jared Black. Where is the dog and does he have my sceptre?’

‘The sceptre is still in his possession, along with the girl thief, Charlotte Shades. They were on board the Jackelian submersible, the Purity Queen, until the Kingdom’s convoy was attacked. Jethro Daunt does not know their location after that point in time.’

‘I knew it,’ laughed Gemma in triumph. ‘But the sea won’t swallow you this time, my treacherous jigger of a brother. Not with the entire gill-neck navy at my disposal.’

‘His submarine has a stealth hull designed to disperse sonar waves,’ warned the shadow inside the second machine.

‘Then it is time we committed some of our ships to the hunt. Rest,’ Walsingham commanded the thing inside the device. ‘Give the ex-parson’s memories time to settle into you. Meanwhile, we shall discover if the commodore’s rudimentary submersible also has a way of disguising its mass from our sensors.’

There was a hideous screeching noise from the cage, like a fox baying, the talons of a scaled hand reaching out towards the semiconscious form of Jethro Daunt. No, you couldn’t always choose your allies.

Walsingham listened to the screeching, a frown crossing his face. ‘Speak only in Jackelian from now on. Use your new memories.’

The thing inside the device obeyed. ‘The priest-man can sense our presence. He realized that the vice-admiral on the convoy was one of the Mass.’

‘What is it that Daunt can detect?’ Walsingham snapped, looking as troubled as Gemma had ever seen him.

‘It is what he cannot. There are signs of the body, subtle cues that he could not detect when he was standing close to the vice-admiral. The Circlist church trained him in this art. Their absence gives us away.’

‘That is not a problem,’ said Walsingham. ‘Now that we know about his profession’s skill, we can focus our attention on any priests we encounter and fill in the signals they are expecting.’

The baying sounded again, louder and more insistent.

‘He is not yours to consume,’ Walsingham commanded angrily. ‘We must keep Jethro Daunt alive in the camp for a little while longer. You may need his mind and his memories again.’

‘Not for too long,’ said Gemma. ‘Not if events go as they should.’

‘Hope for the best, plan for the worst,’ said Walsingham.

They were meant to be words of reassurance, but as Gemma considered where they had probably been dredged from, her blood ran cold. The Mass must feed.

If there was ever a reassuring face to wake up to from the burning clasp of feverish unconsciousness, then Boxiron’s silvery vision plate was hard to trump. Less so, the miserly pinched expression of Dick Tull. With one arm apiece, the two of them hauled Daunt upright. ‘How do you feel, Jethro softbody?’

‘Drained, quite literally.’

‘A day,’ said Tull. ‘That’s how long we were taught by the board to hold out under interrogation. Long enough for your side to realize you’ve been taken and compromised. Any longer and you’re broken beyond use anyway, if your captors are serious about it.’

‘They were serious, but it wasn’t that kind of interrogation.’

Dick Tull lifted the ex-parson’s arm, no doubt counting his fingernails. ‘What kind was it?’

‘They have a machine that rips out your memories, that allows them to crawl inside your mind.’ Daunt glanced around. He was in one of the prison camp’s barrack buildings, sitting on a crude bunk lashed together out of bamboo poles.

Sadly was on the bunk opposite, resting his chin on the top of his cane. He had kicked one of his shoes off, his clubfoot swollen larger than the shoe leather in the close heat. ‘That sounds right effective, Mister Daunt.’

‘Surprisingly so.’ Although not quite as effective as they think.

‘What were they after?’

‘They want King Jude’s sceptre back. And the commodore’s sister would like her brother’s head on a platter for betraying the royalists, not to mention getting her son killed. They also wanted to know all about my life.’

Tull grunted. ‘Of course, you’re so interesting.’

Daunt smiled. ‘Again, surprisingly so, but they forgot one thing.’

‘What is that, amateur?’

‘There is an old adage of the church. Well, actually something of a warning. Be careful when staring into the darkness, for the darkness also stares into you. What they have forgotten is that oft times, the converse can also be true.’

‘What have you found out, you devious fastblood?’ asked Boxiron.

Daunt raised his hand. ‘Have you spoken to the other prisoners about the camp and why we’re here?’

‘We are to start work later today,’ said Boxiron. ‘The camp’s task is to harvest a purple fruit from the jungle that the Advocacy calls gillwort. The juice is used to help suppress a common sickness among the gill-necks… hyperplasia. The disease attacks their respiratory system, eventually causing death by suffocation.’

‘And let me guess, our new island home is the only place where this cure grows.’

‘Correct.’

‘The guards need us here,’ said Tull. ‘They can’t stay out of the sea for more than a couple of weeks at a time without doing their nut in.’

‘The exception being the camp commandant, On’esse,’ said Boxiron. ‘It is said that he never takes any leave.’

‘And he’s as barmy as a bucket full of badgers for it,’ said Dick. ‘His guards are terrified of him, let alone the prisoners.’

‘Sometimes the job chooses the man,’ said Daunt. ‘Or should that be evolutionary offshoot of man? No matter, I am sure the beatings will continue until morale improves. There is a graveyard inside the camp?’

Boxiron raised a heavy hand towards one of the walls. ‘A sizeable one in the Northeast corner. Dysentery, malnutrition and overwork are to be our bedfellows.’

‘I rather think rust, in your case.’ Daunt stood up. ‘I suspect there hasn’t been a churchman here for years, even a defrocked and sadly wayward one such as myself. Time to pay my respects to the departed.’

‘You’ll be joining their ranks sharpish if you’re not here when the next work party is due to leave,’ warned Dick.

‘I’m sure there’ll be time aplenty to discover my humanity in simple labour.’ Daunt remembered the guard towers along the walls, the rifles and focus behind them directed outwards. A set time to go out implies a schedule. But not a timetable, methinks, for our convenience.

It wasn’t much to look at, the camp’s graveyard. Not much to mark the passing of so many lives. Hundreds of mounds crowded in with single spikes of bamboo, ranks of them crudely carved with the name of the passed and the date of their removal from the camp’s rolls. A few of the more recent graves had tiny scrolls of paper pushed into the bamboo’s hollow centre. Daunt squatted down and removed a couple, reading the messages before folding them back into place. Simple memories and farewells from friends in the camp. Standing in the far corner were the oldest graves, their bamboo markers splintered and weathered to near destruction by the passage of time. If there had been paper farewells pushed inside these, they had crumbled into dust long ago; food and nesting material for the ants crawling over the dirt.