Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

‘Walsingham wasn’t the only one in the graveyard, was he?’ Sadly said, cutting at the bush with his cane.

‘No. It was a veritable notables’ list of Jackelian quality — admirals, vice-admirals, generals, industrialists, mill owners, members of the House of Guardians, and those were just the names I recognized.’

‘The Court of the Air will need them all,’ said Sadly. ‘Along with everything else you know about how they got there.’

Daunt fished in his pocket, withdrawing with a Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drop. He looked at the sticky mess in disappointment then replaced it back again. Inedible. Perhaps it would dry out later? ‘First things first, good agent. We need to locate the commodore, Charlotte Shades and King Jude’s sceptre before the commodore’s sister and the gill-necks do. Otherwise there won’t be much of a Kingdom left to save.’

‘You’ve a cheek, Mister Daunt. We’re not your bleeding private carriage service.’

‘I know what the Court of the Air is for,’ said Daunt. ‘You must have suspected that your dealings over the centuries have come to the attention of the Inquisition?’

‘What do you know of the Court?’

‘When Isambard Kirkhill seized power in Parliament’s name after the civil war, he had only one fear left — and that was the throne. The army wanted Kirkhill to become king. Old Isambard had to fight them off with a sabre to stop them crowning him the new monarch. Then there were our royalists-in-exile plotting a counter-revolution and restoration. Kirkhill knew that if Parliament’s rule was to last, it would have to resist both the plots without and the ambitions of its own politicians. So Kirkhill established a court sinister as the last line of defence, a body that was to act as a supreme authority and ultimate guarantor of the people’s rule. But it was to be a court invisible. While the House of Guardians knew the Court existed, they knew nothing of its location, its staff, its methods and its workings. If any politician were to start looking at the throne restored with envious eyes, the existence of the Court would give them pause to think.’

‘There’s such a thing as being too clever for your own good,’ warned Sadly.

‘So people keep on telling me. However, in this matter I think you will find your mission and my own perfectly aligned.’

‘Are you an Inquisition officer, Mister Daunt?’

‘Perish the thought,’ said Daunt. ‘The church wouldn’t have defrocked me so readily if I had been. They’re under the misapprehension that they employ my services every so often, and it only seems like fair play to draw upon their resources in turn. The commodore’s sister made the same mistake when she linked me up to their machine to sift through my memories.’

‘And now you’re asking the Court to repeat the error? You’re not very reassuring, says I.’

‘Oh, I’m sure the Court of the Air is far too devious for me to play you along.’

The everglades’ bush was thinning out, the orange dunes of a beach ahead and the crashing sea beyond. The danger of the place was underlined by hundreds of abandoned carapaces lying in the sand, outgrown by generations of maturing tiger crabs. And how many tiger crabs are scuttling about out there with their shells still on, I wonder?

‘And what’s your explanation for the camp commandant burning up when he died?’

‘Patience, good agent. What exactly do you have concealed inside your cane? Not a flag rolled up with the word “help” sown on, I trust?’

‘An isotope,’ said Sadly. ‘Its signature can be followed from half an ocean away.’

Daunt glanced at the bottom of the man’s cane. It was leaking the last of a foul-looking green liquid onto the sand.

‘You’ve flushed it into the swamp…?’

‘Water nullifies it.’

‘And the signal stopping is the sign for your extraction,’ said Daunt, satisfied with himself. ‘I trust your colleagues have stayed near.’

‘You never know when you’re going to outwear your welcome.’

Any self-satisfaction vanished with the whistling of bullets past Daunt’s left ear, close enough to shave his sideburn.

‘Camp guards,’ yelled Morris, sprinting for the reedy dunes in front of them and throwing himself over the ridge. Jethro, Boxiron, Sadly and Dick Tull were fast behind the wiry convict, spurts of sand chasing their passage as they hurled themselves towards the sparse cover of the beach. There was something about the footsteps they had left in the sand, but what? Daunt didn’t have time to ponder. A cloud of gull-like lizards exploded into the air as the party of escapees landed close to their nests in the dune grass, bullets flitting over their heads with the buzz of roused hornets. Dick Tull pushed a shell into the stolen rifle and fired back, the gill-necks keeping cover, hunkering down along the edge of the everglades in response to this solitary, lonely voice of opposition. Geysers of sand erupted as the guards concentrated their volleys on the muzzle flash of Dick’s rifle.

‘There’s too sodding many of them over there,’ said Dick.

‘We just need to hold them off for a few minutes more,’ called Sadly. ‘Look!’

Out at sea, a u-boat was surfacing, but not any design that Daunt was familiar with… a bulbous, almost organic-shaped hull with a rotating stern composed of large metal tentacles that gave the craft something of the appearance of a steel squid. With a conning tower set as low and angular as a shark’s fin, a hatch in her lee was opening to release a pair of low metal surface boats. Both boats angled out heading towards the shore. Sailors stood on the prows with capacitor packs cabled up to tridents, the men releasing bursts of wild energy at the tiger crabs surfacing around the submarine. Old Death-shell’s kin appeared incensed at this strange metal interloper intruding upon their realm. The creatures weren’t the only ones to spot the rescue craft. More guards emerged in front of the jungle, throwing themselves down and sighting on the dunes.

‘If we try for the sea, they’ll cut us down before we make five yards,’ said Boxiron.

‘You go old steamer,’ urged Daunt. ‘The gill-necks might have dialled down your strength near to mine, but they haven’t yet exchanged your hull for flesh. Wade out there and find Commodore Black, tell him to place King Jude’s sceptre under the protection of the Court of the Air.’

‘They must have recovered the commandant’s corpse, see,’ moaned Morris. ‘We’re dead men now, whatever we do.’

As if in agreement with the convict’s prediction, the drone of the fusillade over their heads was swapped for a strident cannon-like booming, explosions of sand in front of the dunes swelling, showering them with beach debris.

‘They have brought up the heavy guns used to do business with the tiger crabs. Pass me your machete,’ Boxiron ordered Morris, feeling its heft in his left hand as the convict did as he was bid, its weight balancing the other blade gripped tight in the steamman’s right fist.

‘Boxiron,’ Daunt pleaded, ‘do not do this.’

‘What else am I for, old friend?’ asked Boxiron. He rose to his full height from behind the dunes and charged, a lumbering zigzagging assault caused as much by a lack of motor control as any desire to dodge the guards’ bullets. Shots cracked around him as he pounded through the sand, the gill-necks adjusting their range to home in on him. A couple of guards were thrown back by Dick Tull using the distraction to increase his rate of fire, reloading from his satchel of charges like a demon. Out at sea, the boats were closing on the beach, seconds away from landing. The crewmen inside were kneeling now, riding in on the jouncing waves. The tiger crabs had temporally withdrawn out of range of the sailors’ capacitor packs, bobbing around the submersible and awaiting for their food to return. It wouldn’t take long for the camp guards to redirect their fire towards the rescue boats. And if the boats were struck by something that could discourage a tiger crab, they would be in trouble.