Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

‘I live by the will of heaven,’ said the prisoner. ‘Ben Issman’s name be blessed.’

‘And isn’t it funny how often heaven’s will coincides with the will of all the emperors and their armies and thugs,’ said Oldcastle. He leant in close to the prisoner and Jack only just heard what he whispered. ‘We’re devils, and the woman taking your lads out of your brig one by one, she’s the worst of us all.’

He drew his naval cutlass. For a moment Jack thought Oldcastle was about to cut the prisoner’s throat, but instead he sliced the ties around the Cassarabian’s wrists. ‘You’ve told me plenty, lad. No money to pay for a ransom, you’re just a dirt-poor scholar, and you can either help me get your foreign thinking machines working again, or I’ll let the first lieutenant have you for her entertainment. You’ve seen some strange creatures bred in your land, I warrant, but a woman that’s half-Cassarabian and half-Jackelian, that’s the most wicked unholy animal you will ever see in this life or the next.’

The master cardsharp’s cajoling had its effect. Seeming to crumple, the Cassarabian become pliable enough to do their bidding, inspecting the broken transaction engines and helping Coss patch up the damage. Oldcastle had brought over a portable transaction engine configured with translation filters from the Iron Partridge and patching it into the ruined Cassarabian systems allowed them to access the data they needed in a format that was intelligible to Jack. Wherever that box had come from, it wasn’t standard navy issue, that much Jack was certain of. Coss’s warnings drifted back to Jack’s mind, that John Oldcastle wasn’t who he claimed to be, but someone called Jared Black. Yes. The master cardsharp knew just enough about transaction engines to get Coss and Jack to do his bidding, but he lacked the real expertise that an officer in his position should have had.

‘What you were saying about the Cassarabians and the first lieutenant’s mother,’ said Jack to the master cardsharp. ‘That’s why there’s so few women sailors on the Iron Partridge ?’

‘You’ve noticed that then, Mister Keats?’

‘They have an advantage in the weight tables against most male sailors. I expected to see more of them on board.’

‘Disappointed were you, lad? All those bawdy penny-dreadful tales about the airship lasses. Ah, to be a young buck again. As desperate as we were for a competent crew, old Jericho refused every female cloudie that tried to sign up. There are a few people who have a grand old time of it down in Cassarabia, living high on the hog, but you won’t find too many of them being women.’

‘We have First Lieutenant Westwick on board,’ noted Coss.

‘The skipper didn’t get a choice with her,’ said the officer, winking at Jack. ‘But then not many of us do.’

Jack knew what the old man meant. Pity the enemy that thought they had captured her.

‘I have a sister, Mister Keats, every inch as sharp as our prickly first lieutenant. Not that we get on that blessed well — truth to tell, she’d stick me with a dagger as soon as look at me. But mean as she be, if I had any say in the matter and push came to shove, I wouldn’t let her within a thousand miles of the empire.’

‘This is the softbody concept of male gallantry towards the opposite gender?’ asked Coss.

‘Not gallantry, old steamer. I’ve shipped out with some tough old birds in my time and pulled through more than a few tight scrapes with some brave lass guarding my back, and been happy for the privilege. But never down south. Never down there.’

He turned back to the console. To Jack’s eyes, their efforts seemed to yield little of interest when it came to the origin or nature of the gas being used to float the enemy’s vessels.

Jack showed Oldcastle the admittedly incomplete entries he had dredged from the enemy thinking machine, the results twisting on the abacus-like beads of the Cassarabians’ version of a rotator screen. ‘There’s nothing meaningful about their gas. Just leakage tables and regassing estimates.’

‘Don’t be so sure, lad,’ said Oldcastle. He tapped a series of unfamiliar icons on the top rail of the rotator. ‘I would say this is something. Mister Shaftcrank, switch off the translation box and let me view this in Cassarabian.’

All the icons on the beads rotated into patterns unfamiliar to Jack, but they seemed to make sense to Oldcastle.

‘So, lad, it’s a rising tide that floats all ships.’

‘You can read Cassarabian?’ Jack asked.

‘Indeed I can. This,’ Oldcastle tapped the corner of the rotator, ‘is the supply chit for the gas they took on. But it’s not the caliph’s military that signed it over to the airship.’ He glanced at their prisoner and gestured at the two marines guarding him. ‘Back to the brig with our scholarly friend. This isn’t for his ears.’ After the prisoner had been removed, the master cardsharp continued. ‘This gas came from one of the Cassarabian temples, the Sect of Razat. They’re a new crew, all for war and expansion and banging the patriotic drum.’

‘Temples?’ said Coss from the small transaction-engine pit. ‘Unlike the people of the metal, I understood that the Cassarabians allow for the existence of only a single true god?’

‘It’s the genius of their faith, Mister Shaftcrank,’ said Oldcastle. ‘One god maybe, but they have as many prophets and competing philosophies within heaven as your steammen have ancestral spirits. Well, a hundred of them, anyway. It’s a holy number in Cassarabia. A hundred sects for the hundred faces of the one true god. Anyone can sup at their priests’ high table, if they can command enough power and temple tithes and are willing to play by the caliph’s rules when it comes to mouthing platitudes about the one true god.’ He patted the rotator. ‘It’s like your transaction engines, Mister Keats. As long as you’re inclined to unconditionally accept the operating system and are minded to make your code compatible with it, you can merrily write punch cards and may the best cardsharp’s works prosper. Cassarabian myth says there was a wicked sea of bloodshed before the first caliph, Ben Issman, unified the sects down south. Now their faith evolves over the ages without all-out religious war, without the whole wicked empire murdering each other over whether their priests need to demand two or three days’ fasting to prove true penitence.’

Jack resisted the urge to touch his aching spine. ‘And this new sect wants war?’

‘Aye, from what I’ve heard,’ said Oldcastle. ‘The hundred faces of the one true god, and this new face is preaching that the Cassarabians have grown terrible soft, easy and complacent over the centuries. Trading silks, jinn barrels and spices with filthy infidels has fallen out of favour. Trading shells and scimitar thrusts is to be the new thing. Paradise will only come from the conversion of unbelievers at the point of a sword. That’s a rather traditional view, and I’m mortal unhappy to see it coming back into favour.’

‘Infidels,’ said Jack. ‘That would be the Kingdom, then.’

‘Sadly the case. It’s been an age since I’ve travelled south,’ said Oldcastle. ‘The Sect of Razat is after my time. I’m all for a little ease and complacency myself, but I don’t think this new crew are going to allow us much of that. Now, where is this cursed sect getting their mortal airship gas from? That’s the question we need answered.’

Jack tapped the information slowly flickering across the rotator. ‘Will the information be in their machine’s memory?’

‘No, lad,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Because such a secret is too sensitive, and because my unlucky stars are never that kind to these poor, tired old bones. A map with an “X” marking the spot of a newly discovered celgas mine would be too easy for us, not when we could happily sip our grog rations as we sailed straight back home before sending the high fleet down here with enough fin-bombs to wreck the caliph’s dreams of glory forever. No, we’ll be doing this hard and slow-style. Boots on the ground and sniffing around Cassarabia the old-fashioned, dangerous way.’