Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

Seated at the table of officers, First Lieutenant Westwick leapt to her feet. ‘We will not. Without the admiral’s presence to countermand our orders, the Iron Partridge is back under independent command.’

In the absence of a seance, Jack judged it unlikely the admiral’s ghost would be countermanding anyone. Was his corpse one of those I was poking through on the sands below?

‘Under whose command, my dear?’ the vice-admiral laughed, pointing at the captain’s vacant chair. Jericho was in his cabin again, struck by his dark humours and refusing to come out. ‘Yours? Your naval commission is caught somewhere between being a mere formality and a high farce.’

‘The source of the enemy’s celgas is more important than ever,’ insisted the first lieutenant. ‘The loss of the Fleet of the South has shown the failure of conventional tactics against the empire. We need to raid deep into Cassarabia for answers.’

‘This vessel is under the command of the Royal Aerostatical Navy, not the State Protection Board,’ the vice-admiral raised his voice. ‘I am a vice-admiral of that navy, your superior officer, and by my order we are retuning to Jackals.’

‘I heard you were a coward, sir,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘Always to be found at the rear of a squadron, as far away from danger as your position could afford you.’

‘You will not offer such vile insubordination to me!’ yelled the vice-admiral.

‘Marines,’ shouted the first lieutenant towards the two Benzari guarding the door, ‘arrest the vice-admiral and place him in the brig.’

The two marines advanced on the vice-admiral and seized his arms to an uproar from the officers around the table, some protesting the arrest of a senior officer, others supporting the principle of independent command in the absence of a living ranked flag officer to countermand it. Jack was pushed back against the wall in the melee. If only Jericho was here to call order on the riot.

Oldcastle clearly had the same idea. ‘Run to the skipper’s cabin, Mister Keats, Mister Shaftcrank. Rouse Jericho from his black dog and bring him here even if you have to shove a pistol in his blessed back to do it.’

Jack and Coss were attempting to leave by the wardroom’s exit hatch when the door swung open and a mob of sailors clutching cutlasses and marine carbines burst in. Master Engineer Pasco was at the head of the table, waving the rabble in.

‘Shut it down,’ yelled the burly engine master over the ruckus, his men fanning out down the sides of the wardroom, shoving Jack and Coss against the officer’s table with their rifle butts. The two Benzari marines were overpowered and pushed to the floor, the vice-admiral struggling to his feet.

‘This is mutiny, Mister Pasco,’ spat the first lieutenant.

‘So it is, my dear,’ answered the vice-admiral. ‘But it is not being committed by the master engineer and his men. You have chosen to go against the written orders of a flagged admiral and disobeyed the lawful orders of a superior officer and it is you that is to be charged with mutiny. I am relieving Captain Jericho of command, and you and your minions are to be brigged pending a court martial. Jericho will be confined to his cabin under guard for the rest of the voyage.’

‘You’re out of line,’ protested the master cardsharp. ‘On what basis are you relieving the master and commander of this vessel?’

‘Gross dereliction of duty,’ smiled the vice-admiral. ‘He burnt a Cassarabian prize vessel rather than handing it over to the admiralty as he was required by regulations to do. If we had properly examined the enemy airship you had captured, we would have discovered its aerial mines and the Fleet of the South would not have been lost!’

Jack groaned. The duplicitous navy politician had found a way to scapegoat the captain for the loss of the Fleet of the South after all.

‘There were no mines on board the prize vessel,’ called Jack. ‘Their bomb bays weren’t even loaded — the ship was rigged light for long distance patrol.’

‘Shut your mouth, thief,’ said Pasco. ‘You’re only on this ship because you were in the pokey with Jericho. We all know it. Nobody checked the prize vessel properly; she was burnt as fast as your Benzari wild boys could lay charges inside her.’

The vice-admiral shook his head sadly. ‘The word of a pressed criminal; well, at least we still have some real navy personnel left on this ship. Mister Pasco, do your duty. Westwick and her secret police lackeys are to be held in the brig. I want a loyal sailor with small arms on every station as we set a course for home.’

There was a cheer from the mob of armed sailors and Pasco’s men grabbed Jack, Coss and John Oldcastle, pushing them after the first lieutenant, the female officer surrounded by a ring of jeering armed mutineers. They would be lucky if they made it to the brig without being hanged first.

‘Not the brig for the old steamer,’ said Pasco, pointing at Shaftcrank. ‘Escort him up to the transaction-engine chamber. We need someone to prevent this albatross of a ship from killing us all on the way home.’ Pasco turned to Jack as he pushed a cutlass under the master cardsharp’s nose. ‘I told you, boy, and you, fat man, the day would come when we’d settle this proper.’

That day had arrived.

Standing in the corridor that led to the great library cavern, Omar could hear the clacking echoes of the womb mages’ copper-plated spell books turning under their fingers as he frantically inspected the buttons on the lifting room’s wall panel. Where would you go to assault, murder and dispose of a slave? Deep, that was what the grand vizier had told the initiate. Deep to hide the crime, deep to dispose of Shadisa’s corpse.

Omar had a name now for the golden-masked would-be slayer, courtesy of Nudar. Salwa . A name accompanied by a warning, for Salwa was reputed to be a keeper of the Sect of Razat, a priest who had already proved himself by questioning and strangling many of the men captured in Haffa by raiders. Men that Omar would have known of old. The priest’s murderous actions towards those who had been cast out as heretics should have already proven his loyalty to the grand vizier, yet here this devil Salwa was, about to snatch the greatest love of Omar’s life away from him.

Well, Salwa the priest is going to become Salwa the dead when I catch up with him. And if he had harmed so much as a hair on Shadisa’s head, then he would become Salwa the man who welcomed death on the day his fate crossed paths with a certain guardsman’s. If only Omar’s luck held until he caught up with them. Omar had already seen the sedan chair and the bodyguard of massive beyrogs exiting the womb mages’ lair, the chair held noticeably higher by its two porters now its occupants had been deposited somewhere below. Why set me this fate, god, why make a guardsman of a slave if you don’t mean for me to rescue her?

It was as if the heavens were blessing Omar’s plans, trying to restore the balance of justice here in the Jahan. Guiding him to alcoves to hide in and ledges to crouch on unseen while the sorcerers passed by. The fear of their craft among the people was both their strength and their weakness. They were so sure that nobody would dare to poke their nose in a sorcerer’s business, that they didn’t even require guards to watch their gates.

Standing in the lifting room, Omar pressed the button for the lowest level, and shuddered as the gate shut off the corridor and the room began to sink. There was a smell inside of chemicals that reminded Omar of the bleaches he had used to clean the water farm’s desalination lines out after their pipes clogged up with crusted salt. Omar’s heart was pounding as he tried not to think of what would happen if he were too late. It felt as if his guts were being wrung tighter and tighter as the lifting room descended painfully slow. When the gate finally opened again, the surprise of it almost made Omar jump. Focus, I have to focus. Remember the advice in scimitar practice. Master yourself before you master your opponent. As he walked the crimson-lit corridors the many different doors and passages seemed to create a maze. He picked one route and stuck with it, ducking into an alcove as a column of womb mages came marching down the corridor. He heard them before he saw them, each of the men humming the letters of a different spell. It was as if they were in a trance, their faces fixed on the bare concrete floor. They wore not the usual robes of the womb mages, but voluminous white garments. Matching white skullcaps covered their heads, while small gauze masks protected their mouths like the filters nomads wore when hunkering down during a sandstorm.