Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

‘The Court has always protected us.’ The mayor sounded as though he was trying to convince himself.

‘We will, I vow to you we will.’

It was on Daunt’s hands now. Failure or success. A pacifist general was leading the army to victory or defeat.

The barrel of a gun pushed Dick inside a large windowless cell, the space matted with dirty straw and scattered with a dozen unkempt prisoners in a variety of clothes. Algo Monoshaft was rudely shoved in after the officer.

‘I’ve seen better looking cells,’ said Dick.

‘It’s not so much a cell,’ said the guard. ‘More of a larder.’

‘The Mass must feed,’ agreed the second guard. ‘But we’re not fussy about our prey being alive, as long as your flesh hasn’t turned rancid.’

Dick looked at the thick metal door, sturdy enough despite turning rusty from the damp. ‘How many of you things are there?’

‘Not so many here. Where we come from, you have no idea.’ The guard tossed Dick his cane. ‘You’re solely among fodder in there, though. You can use your little toy to confirm the truth of my words. You won’t need the cane when it’s your turn to be taken. You’ll be able to tell who among you is the Mass quite easily, because we’ll be the ones dining on you.’

The creature masquerading as Sadly appeared, wearing the Court agent’s form again rather than Algo’s. ‘You’ll be pleased to know, I checked your cane and left you your Court-issue suicide pill underneath the detection mechanism. I have a wager with my brothers here. They think you’ll take it after you’ve seen us feed. I say you won’t.’

‘What’s the prize?’

‘The little sustenance that’s hanging on your scrawny bones is enough of a wager. I prefer younger meat myself, but waste, not want not, as Sadly’s old ma used to say.’

‘Choke on it, you jigger.’

Their laughter echoed outside as the cell door clanged shut.

‘Not to trust anyone,’ moaned the steamman. ‘I told you. I warned you.’

‘That’s been my bloody life, sir.’ My death now too, from the look of it.

The other prisoners in the chamber seemed cowed and cowering. It took a second glance from Dick to realize he recognized one of the figures. Vice-admiral Cockburn bore little relation to the commanding figure Dick has seen on the convoy’s flagship. An atrophied figure now, sitting rocking in his own filth. There were a number of plates shoved through the feeding flap at the bottom of the armoured door — the plates piled with cubed vegetables — turnips, parsnips and other root vegetables. Dick scooped up the plate to take to the gaunt officer of the fleet sea arm. ‘Eat, man. You’re wasting away here.’

‘Eat,’ giggled the vice-admiral through a scraggly grey beard. ‘You fool. They always take the fattest first. Don’t eat. Never eat the food.’ He spilled the plate angrily in front of Dick. ‘You’ll see, when they come to choose. They feed outside the door. You can hear them. You’ll be the first. Look at you, like a pie seller with that gut. You first.’ He broke down into a fit of snorting coughs and Dick reeled back. He was disgusted by how far the navy officer had fallen. Even the prisoners back in the gill-neck’s slave camp had held onto more dignity than this. How long had the officer been held inside here?

Algo’s metal skull swivelled around the room, taking in the dozen or so prisoners, ‘You have a device to detect the presence of vampires, sergeant? Inside your cane? Use it now, there are treasonists among us, my olfactory sensors can detect the stench of the enemy, and the fact that monster told us there are none in here merely confirms it to my mind.’

‘The enemy aren’t vampires,’ said Dick, checking his cane. ‘We’ve been calling them sea-bishops, an underwater race from a bloody long distance away from the Kingdom.’

‘Names, names, I heard you, sergeant, just as I heard the vampire. Sea-bishops, the Mass. They feast on human flesh, they can alter their form, and they walk unseen among us. What else would you have me call them but vampires?’

‘Fair dos,’ said Dick. ‘But this cane isn’t going to find them.’ He pulled out the detection device, locating the tiny white pill sunk on a small velvet-lined niche underneath.

‘What do you mean? That is a device of the Court of the Air, is it not?’

‘One of the civilians I’ve been working with, Damson Shades, otherwise known as the Mistress of Mesmerism. Before I left for the capital she whispered something in my ear as I was saying my goodbyes. Your detector doesn’t work. Tell no one, until it’s too late.’

‘By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, sergeant, why would the Court send you here with a defunct vampire detection mechanism?’

‘Bugger me if I know. But a force that’s been around the maypole a few more times that you or me has possessed the girl. Let’s see what this cane does do, then.’ He re-inserted the tube of coiled machinery and twisted the handle as Lord Trabb had instructed him back on the Isla Furia. The eyes on the copper boar’s head started glimmering orange just as Sadly’s cane had done within Victory Arch. But unlike the fierce orange glow, the illumination of Dick’s cane’s ornamental handle spluttered and flickered weakly. That’s it then? Just broken like the girl said it was?

Algo Monoshaft seized the cane from Dick’s hands, and for a moment, Dick thought the batty old steamer was going to use the confirmation of the light to accuse him of being a sea-bishop, but the head of board seemed intent on the handle’s eyes.

‘What is it, sir?’

‘A coded message,’ said Algo. ‘From someone who knows a very ancient secret… that steammen can pulse their vision plates to communicate privately between each other, and an individual who also has access to King Steam’s royal cipher. Ah, here’s the writer’s signature. Did you meet a Lord Trabb inside the Court of the Air?’

‘That I did. Your opposite number in the Court.’

The flashing in the handle finished and the steamman unscrewed the knob, pulling away the detection apparatus. Algo tapped out the suicide pill, holding it up gently between his iron digits. ‘It is time for your vampire friend to lose his wager, sergeant. You are going to have to ingest this pill.’

Dick looked at the senile old sod as if he had gone mad.

‘It’s only fair, sergeant, as I fear I am going to have to commit suicide too.’

Whether through good timing or having to slowly navigate their way against the current of nightsoil and effluence, by the time Charlotte, the commodore and Maeva dislodged the sewer port into the gill-neck’s capital, the city’s defence — and their diversion — was already well under way. Charlotte’s suit carried the distant sounds of the underwater battle, amplified and tinny to her ears. She hardly noticed the clash, last out of the claustrophobic tunnel, the commodore and Maeva helping her out into a tight space between two buildings.

Lishtiken, remote and hidden from all surface dwellers’ sight, was even more imposing close up. It seized the light of its own lamps and hurled the illumination across the cityscape, dancing and reflecting from a thousand crystal surfaces, mirrored and distorted by the planes and waters. Only the constant movement of swimmers and their submersible vehicles anchored the vista as real, rather than a hall of mirrors glimpsed through the prism of a glass of water. The scale of the city and the way its illumination twisted and shimmered around Charlotte was enough to make her feel dizzy. Many of the crystal surfaces were transparent, exposing chambers inside — a few filled with liquid, others airtight, betraying the gill-necks’ origins as an amphibious offshoot of the race of man. At close quarters she could observe the organic nature of the vast steepling constructions running together like a cliff line, crystalline buildings branching out to search for the surface’s scant light. On the outskirts of the city low flashes of light bounced around Lishtiken’s margins, rotor-spears exploding and the distant magnesium flashes of shock-spears discharging bolts of wild energy. How many nomads were losing their lives out there, buying them the time to carry out her plan? When Charlotte looked closer, the flow of traffic between the buildings was bustling with a single purpose now — getting to cover. She touched the reassuring heft of the shock-spear holstered like a splint against her calf. They had decided not to enter the city with the man-high rotor-spears… waving one of the ranged weapons would have been akin to unfurling a nomad standard in the centre of Lishtiken.