Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

Daunt dipped a finger into the healing gel. It felt warm, like touching skin, the consistency of a conserve jam. On the other side of the tank, much to Daunt’s amazement, he saw Lord Trabb fish into his pocket to emerge with a familiar old friend. ‘Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drops?’

‘I find their consumption conducive to the efficacy of my mental quality,’ said Lord Trabb.

‘Indeed,’ said Daunt.

‘I do hope you are not a proponent of those scurrilous libels spread by their rivals in trade.’

‘Not at all,’ said Daunt. ‘I was actually hoping to impose myself on your hospitality for the gift of one. I did have my own supply, but I’m afraid they survived the privations of the Advocacy’s labour camp as little more than a swamp-water melange.’

‘A tragedy,’ said Lord Trabb. He eased the paper bag out of his pocket and passed it to Daunt. ‘You must have these. I keep a private stock laid in from our provisioning boat to the Kingdom.’

Manners nearly made Daunt refuse, but a sweet tooth and the knowledge that the next nearest bag was lingering hundreds of miles across the sea prodded the ex-parson to override the social niceties. He took the bag, extracting a sweet.

‘You prove my theory, Mister Daunt, that all of the Kingdom’s greatest minds find succour in Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drops.’ Lord Trabb obviously counted himself among that august company, but standing here with the scale of an ant surrounded by the Court’s massive machinery, the purpose of half of which Daunt found it hard to fathom, who was he to gainsay the acting head of the Court of the Air?

Daunt offered a sweet to Damson Shades, but she wrinkled her nose in disgust and shifted her willowy body to one side so she wouldn’t have to watch him suck on his, before pushing the remainder into his pocket. Obviously the Mistress of Mesmerism didn’t seek to enter Lord Trabb’s pantheon of genius through the sweets’ consumption. Even with the clarity of consuming the aniseed drop, Daunt could do nothing for Boxiron but put his trust in the ministrations of Trabb’s engineers and his gallery of rogues.

‘Boxiron will be fine,’ Charlotte reassured Daunt. ‘There is still the spark of life within him. Elizica senses it.’

Daunt’s fingers tightened around the edge of the tank. It was out of his hands now, there was nothing he could do for Boxiron but wait and refuse to pray.

‘I see that the key-gem is still intact,’ said Charlotte, pointing to where King Jude’s sceptre was held tight in a vice-like affair, surrounded by massive needle-nosed instruments on wheels. The smell of cordite hung heavy in the air as if they had just finished firing cannons at it. ‘As I told you it would be.’

‘It is a fascinating item,’ said Lord Trabb. ‘We believe it somehow exists across multiple worlds, sharing its storage capacity with gems twinned in other realities. That no doubt accounts for its remarkable resistance to physical forces in our world.’

‘Is there no way to destroy it?’ asked Daunt.

‘Not that we have at our disposal. But there is more than one way to skin a cat, eh?’ Trabb’s hand lifted towards the next chamber and the thousands of clacking transaction-engine drums revolving inside their vast thinking machines. ‘We have successfully copied the key to open the enemy’s gate onto our transaction-engines. My staff are working on decrypting the key’s information, corrupting it, re-encrypting it and then returning it to the key-gem in a form that will not be rejected. We may not be able to destroy the gem, but these sea-bishop tallywackers will find it a lot less useful if it connects their gate to some random world in the universe rather than their home reality.’

‘How long will that take?’ asked Charlotte.

Lord Trabb pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his pinched nose. ‘Months, at the very least. The encryption used is completely alien to us; it uses a form of mathematics that was hitherto unknown in this world. But have no fear,’ he indicated the prisoners shuffling around in chains. ‘To the world’s most diabolical and depraved minds, this is a welcome distraction from their incarceration.’

Charlotte shook her head in frustration. ‘Well, as long as they’re entertained, then.’

Lord Trabb seemed puzzled by her lack of enthusiasm for their work. ‘I can assure you, it’s an astonishing achievement, being able to extract a copy of the key from the gem’s substrate. It should have been impossible to accomplish, but one of our prisoners worked out a method…’

Daunt listened with polite weariness to a tortuous explanation about quantum reflections, indeterminacy and superpositions, before watching the acting head of the Court move across to a plinth where another gem was held in a metal vice. It looked to be a twin for the Eye of Fate, but Daunt knew that still hung around Charlotte’s neck. This was the crystal Daunt had taken off the camp commandant’s corpse before they escaped into the Court’s clutches. Lord Trabb paused, lost in a world of abstract models and infinite scientific possibilities, until he remembered he was still conversing with the visitors to his island. ‘By comparison with the complexities of the key-gem, this chameleon crystal is the very model of simplicity. A multifaceted device that amplifies its owner’s powers to manipulate others’ minds, their mesmeric ability to pass unseen as a member of another race. It also interfaces with the sea-bishop’s common machinery, as well as serving as a communication, calculation and defensive tool. A veritable penknife holding a hundred blades.’

Not to mention a device for removing evidence of a sea-bishop’s presence when it dies. Daunt remembered how quickly the camp commandant’s corpse had combusted after he died.

‘Exploring the nature of the sea-bishops’ tools will not make you a better fighter against those monsters,’ said Charlotte; although Daunt detected an older voice hiding among her words.

‘On the contrary, my dear,’ said Lord Trabb, producing a small metal device the size of a shoebox. As he brought it near the sea-bishop’s chameleon crystal, a dial in the device started twitching. ‘Where you detect the energies of a chameleon crystal, you detect a sea-bishop. Along with the list of names you procured from the prison camp’s graveyard, Daunt, these detectors will serve as a functional method for winkling out the tallywackers hiding within our ranks in the Kingdom.’

The obituaries section of the newssheets back home was, Daunt suspected, about to lengthen by a couple of column inches if Lord Trabb had his way. Lots of shut casket funerals where a rash of accidents left the great and the good vaporized or incinerated beyond recognition.

‘And with such chameleon crystals,’ continued Lord Trabb, ‘we have the answer to where the gill-necks developed the knowledge to cultivate their crystalline cities and other knickknacks. Doubtless pillaged from the wreckage of the sea-bishops’ last attempt to invade our homeland. I wonder what wonders of science and engineering the Court shall divine from their technology with all of our resources?’

‘A way to hold off a big gill-neck armada would be favourite,’ said Charlotte.

Lord Trabb didn’t seem to notice Charlotte’s lack of faith in the Court, wandering off deep in conversation with his technicians.

Daunt looked at Charlotte. ‘It will take more than the beauty of a perfect equation to keep the key out of the sea-bishops’ hands. I rather fear we don’t have months. Days, perhaps, if we are lucky.’

‘You’re right,’ Charlotte sighed. ‘Elizica says she is going to call in an old marker with a friend.’

Charlotte said no more, and Daunt got the feeling that she didn’t know any more herself. She walked over to the far side of the chamber, gripping the rail that overlooked the busy engines inside the next chamber.