Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

There was a tiny glint of light in the darkness of the tubes, the light of — Coss Shaftcrank’s vision plate staring over him as he jerked upright in his hammock. He was in the transaction-engine chamber, waves of pain streaming down his back from the flogging he had endured.

‘You were just dreaming,’ said Coss. ‘And calling out in your sleep.’

Jack rubbed at his temples. ‘I never normally dream.’

‘Everyone dreams,’ said Coss. ‘Even my people. It’s probably that you don’t normally remember them.’

‘I wish I hadn’t remembered this one.’

Coss listened to what Jack recalled of the dream, the steamman’s vision plate juddering in surprise as the young sailor described his meeting with Lemba of the Empty Thrusters. ‘You have described this Loa just as he appears to my people, Jack softbody. Truly, the Loas are walking your dreams.’

‘He must have been aiming for your noggin and missed,’ said Jack.

‘Kiss my condensers, but the spirits of my people’s ancestors are not sponges tossed at a village mayor’s face in a summer fair,’ said Coss. ‘Loas do not miss; Lemba of the Empty Thrusters only crosses the threads of the great pattern with purpose.’

‘If it was giving me a headache to go along with the stripes on my back, he may consider his purpose achieved.’

‘This is unprecedented,’ said Coss. ‘I have never heard of one of our gods visiting a softbody as if he was a steamman throwing his cogs at prayer.’

‘It’s just a dream, old steamer. They never make sense.’

‘This one makes more sense than you seem to know. If you had taken the time to read through my newssheet cuttings concerning the air-yard trials of the Iron Partridge ,’ explained Coss in irritation, ‘you would know that one of the unnecessary flourishes this vessel should be capable of is playing the Jackelian national anthem using air drawn through her mortar tubes.’

Playing music … Jack looked at the steamman in astonishment. ‘You are joking?’

‘I am entirely serious, Jack softbody. The Iron Partridge failed to do it, of course. One of the writers watching the vessel’s trials described the ship’s wailing in their newssheet as the cat-o’-nine-tails’ song, but a far better show than her gunners’ accuracy.’

‘That’s one song I’ve had enough of,’ said Jack, his spine burning at the thought of the flogging he had received. He rubbed his throbbing temples in annoyance. Whatever music the steamman gods had in mind for Jack Keats, they would have to sing along to it without him.

Now he was awake, Jack was glad to be out of the hammock; even the thin hanging fabric was rubbing raw against his back. But the start to the day’s roster of duties was swiftly circumvented by the appearance of the master cardsharp, who bore a more pressing appointment for Jack.

‘I need you, lad,’ wheezed the old officer. ‘It’s Captain Jericho — he’s feeling poorly and he’s holed up in his cabin and not in a mood to come out.’

‘Do you want me to fetch the ship’s surgeon for him?’

John Oldcastle shook his head. ‘It’s not that sort of malady. It’s the black dog chasing him, a mood as dark as thunder. When he’s up he’s up, and when he’s down he’s down. I’ve been trying to rouse the skipper out of his moonless humours for half an hour, but he won’t even come to the door of his cabin for me.’ The old officer saw the look on Jack’s face. ‘He’ll come to the door for you, Mister Keats. He still feels bad about you taking your stripes. The ship needs its captain and he just needs a little winding up to get him started. A few laps of the lifting chamber will see him set back on the mend. We’ll do it mortal discreetly, won’t we — no need to spook the rest of the crew.’

Jack did as he was bid. The gods of the steammen wanted him to make music and the master cardsharp wanted him to coax the captain out of his dark humours — everyone on the ship had something for him to do, it seemed. Jericho might, as the master cardsharp had intimated — and their recent improvised engagement proved — be a genius at the art of commanding a war vessel, but the flame of his genius was flickering erratically.

In many ways, their skipper was as broken as his vessel, and this was just the first of many times that Jack was sent down to bring Jericho out of his cabin. And always the captain came, shambling and ill shaven, and getting him out and ready to command the vessel was much as the master cardsharp had described it — a matter of slowly winding the captain up. Engaging Jericho in talk through the cabin door, getting him to open it, easing him into his uniform and walking him to one of the vessel’s two massive lifting chambers, where he would pace his way towards some sense of normality. Jericho would walk out his moods along the lifting chamber, marching the carper walkways between the gas cells as if the very act of driving himself forward and counting the rails along the walkways, would drive out the demons that haunted his mind. They worked too. Each mile driven forward stiffened the man and filled his uniform with command authority, until the doubting miserable wreck was replaced with a towering ship’s captain, his voice able to boom commands and direct the Iron Partridge with the skill of a fencing master directing a rapier.

This, Jack came to realize — perhaps even more than his talent with the ship’s transaction engines — was why he had been fished out of a hangman’s noose at Bonegate jail by the master cardsharp and the menacing first lieutenant. Perhaps it was why Westwick had been so insistent on enforcing her whims upon the skin of Jack’s spine — to make sure Jericho would come to the cabin door when Jack needed to call.

Patching up their broken ship and patching up their broken captain.

‘What else do you have to tell me about Immed Zahharl?’ demanded Omar as soon as he and Boulous had reached safety. ‘I can see how powerful he is. Grand mage of the sorcerers’ order. The high keeper of the Sect of Razat. A grand vizier with the ear of the Caliph Eternal. Making an enemy of any one of those positions would be enough to crush me twice over. What couldn’t you tell me about him back down in the palace?’

Boulous walked beside Omar, as they climbed the stairs back up to the guardsmen’s fortress in the crags above the palace.

‘It is his dark tastes,’ said Boulous. ‘That girl you are so fond of is a bigger fool than you are, if she truly thinks that Immed Zahharl is a good master. He brings in many female slaves to his household, and when he tires of their novelty, he drags them to his bed and he strangles them with a silken rope he leaves hanging there.’

‘You are wrong!’ said Omar. The retainer had to be mistaken.

‘The whole Jahan knows of his depraved pleasures,’ said Boulous. ‘I have lost count of the women he has purchased who have vanished from his bedchamber. He fills his personal court with killers and sadists just like himself; men who share his evil tastes. He uses some of his victims’ flesh in his rituals, for the biologicks he creates — the rest of their remains he dissolves in the secret vats of the womb mages. The slaves are never found or seen again.’

‘You are wrong!’ Omar repeated.

‘Slaves talk among themselves, Omar Barir, you remember that, don’t you?’

‘The Caliph Eternal would not tolerate such a thing.’

‘Zahharl is the high keeper of a sect, he is grand vizier, he is grand mage,’ spat Boulous. ‘Never has a single man wielded such concentrated power within the empire. I told you, the Pasdaran saw him for what he was, and when they tried to remove him from office, it was the secret police that were toppled, not Immed Zahharl.’