Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

‘Inject, reduce, ingest,’ called Walsingham.

Charlotte couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sickening sight, the man’s frame diminishing, blood and liquefied meat flowing up the crystalline prongs, the young creature’s stomach swelling as if it were pregnant. Flicking out talon-like, the prongs of the feeding blade withdrew and a crumpled husk, little more than sack of mummified skin, flopped to the oily surface of the cell. This is what happened to Damson Robinson back in her pie shop, the Circle preserve her soul. They did that to my friend! I never had so many I could afford to lose them.

‘Very good, child. A perfectly clean cull,’ said Walsingham, patting the hideous thing’s distended head. ‘Tomorrow we will practice feeding and see if you can push your cattle semblance into the minds of all the animals here, not just your prey’s.’ He turned to Charlotte. ‘It is relatively painless. The blade sedates as it drains, just as our mesmeric trance convinces the animal it is in the presence of its own herd.’ He pushed the sailor’s desiccated remains away with his foot. ‘Very little sustenance is wasted, which is of paramount importance.’

Charlotte bent over, clutching her heaving stomach. Charlotte had seen this in the memories Elizica had dredged up in the sceptre’s recordings, but watching it in person, the visceral sight and the stench, was almost more than she could stand.

Walsingham appeared amused by her reaction. ‘I remember the night we first met. Before you took to the stage in front of the guests, one of his lordship’s servants fetched you a plate from the kitchens and you ate. Did you weep tears for the cuts of roast pork you piled into your primitive digestive system? Did you mourn how long the animal had hung in a dirty shed, its neck inexpertly slit and its blood pouring away? Do you know how much genetic similarity you share with that swine? I could rip out its heart and have it sown into your body with as little inconvenience as changing the power cell in my guard’s rifle. But does that stop your saliva running when you smell roast crackling? It does not. This is the way of nature. Predators and prey, always.’

Charlotte glared hatred at the creature. ‘Don’t expect your prey not to go down scratching and biting.’

‘Oh, you’ve inconvenienced me quite enough thus far. You should view you and your rabble through our perspective, understand how pathetically short-lived you are. The Mass have purified our genes — we can live for thousands of years, near immortal. To us, you animals pass like mayflies in the burning of a single afternoon. You should be honoured that your flesh serves the Mass. Well, we’re preparing a recorder to rip a memory imprint from you. We will discover just what tricks you have played on us. After that…?’ He smiled at her, licking his lips. ‘My progeny shall see how the bacon sizzles.’

As the sea-bishops departed, the wall sealed up, leaving not a trace of a join behind them.

Commodore Black stumbled after the creatures, slamming his fist into the cell’s damp featureless surface. ‘Look at this foul black stuff, dripping with evil and cunning. How can I pick the lock on this? A swallowed man tickling open the guts of a whale? How am I meant to bring my mortal genius to bear on such a foul prison?’

‘Don’t worry, Jared,’ said Charlotte, laying a hand on the old u-boat man’s shoulder.

‘Why, because our worries will be short, lass? I always knew in my bones that it would be Elizica’s games that did for me in the end. All my life, running. You can escape from almost anything, but you can never escape the who or how of your birth, not who you are.’ Big wet tears tolled down his cheeks and he rubbed them away with half a sob and half a snort of laughter. ‘These tears aren’t for me, lass. Not old Blacky. Sick and dying and hardly missed when he’s gone. They’re for you and all my friends back home. I’ve saved us all Charlotte, that I have. I’ve saved us all a dozen times over. I’ve faced mad revolutionaries and madder gods, fought our enemies from Cassarabia to Quatershift, battled villains from the deserts of Kaliban to the black halls of Jago, but here’s my end. A cell with no lock is an escape even old Blacky can’t manage.’

Charlotte shrugged. ‘Housebreaker, animal, cattle, prey, bastard, thief girl — that’s all that Walsingham and your sister see when they look at me. But while I dabble as a thief, I’m also Charlotte Shades, Mistress of Mesmerism. I didn’t fall onto the stage by luck. I didn’t become the quality’s act of choice just because they wanted to gawk at the bastard daughter of one of their own, fallen, capering about for their amusement. I learnt the craft the hard way: memory tricks, cold reading, sleight of hand, pickpocketing and hypnotism. I studied under the best in Jackals and stole to pay for it. And you know what, we’re the best in the world. I can read any mark for their weakness and I know what the sea-bishops’ real flaw is — it’s their bloody sense of superiority.’

‘Push a sabre in these poor old fingers and I’ll take on any horde of demons, but I can’t beat a pack of monsters with their own arrogance.’

‘I think you can,’ said Charlotte as she leant in. And began to tell the commodore the truth.

‘All I wanted when I was younger,’ said Morris, the gas rifle shaking against his shoulder as he fired behind the sandbags, ‘was to be rich. And now I’m older, all I can think about is getting a little peace.’

‘I would settle for a little peace myself,’ muttered Daunt.

There was scant cover in front of them now, the parkland cleared and barren. Trees felled by the Nuyokians to give a clean field of fire and ornamental gardens churned to pieces by the Advocacy’s artillery. Zigzagging gill-neck skirmishers fell as they advanced. The town’s militia had held onto the ruins of the library for as long as anyone could have expected them to, only falling to the massed ranks of gill-neck columns advancing up the transparent streets, countless thousands of the invaders in the city now. Their enemy had numbers enough that they could afford to ignore the surviving groups of militia guerrillas still holed up in the porcelain towers, other citizens using the maintenance levels under the city to pop up behind gill-neck positions, loose a few bursts, then disappear into the subterranean warrens under Nuyok. There were telltale columns of yellow smoke rising up. The gill-necks pumping dirt-gas into the undercity, trusting the respirators on the militia’s masks would expire before the invaders’ supplies of war gas. How many of Daunt’s decoy signals were broadcasting now, in imitation of King Jude’s sceptre? Probably only the real one locked in the Court’s hidden depths. On the foot of the slopes, Daunt could gaze out across Nuyok’s length. Its white porcelain symmetry, the hexagonal perfection of her spires shining in the light of the tropical sun. The hypnotizing symmetry of avenues broken where towers had fallen, lying in piles of rubble. Fires burned uncontrolled through the landscape, palls of smoke blending in ugly rainbows with poison gas and the smoke of the gill-necks’ guns.

The Advocacy forces were massing on the other side of the ruined library, using the burning rubble to shield themselves from the militia’s sniping. They had cleared enough of a passage to bring up rolling-pin tanks, clambering uncertainly onto the rubble, clacking tracks halting, leaving the armour a clear field of fire onto the militia survivors ranged against them. The rate of fire of their respective weaponry was dictating both sides’ tactics, exactly as Daunt had counted on. With single shot rifles, each old charge needing to be cleared and a new one breech-loaded, the gill-necks were coming at the Nuyokians in columns and massed squares, the traditional marching lines the Kingdom’s regiments used. The gas rifles supplied by the Court lacked their enemy’s range, but put out a ferocious rate of fire in comparison. Each soldier able to pour a company’s fusillade against the gill-necks. Daunt had his forces scattered and dispersed, small units operating in support of each other, but the time for hit and run was disappearing with every foot of territory lost.