Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

Cornelius sat down while Dred fixed a magnifying lens over his mask and began to unlock the skin-coloured gutta-percha panels from Cornelius’s artificial arm.

‘Parliament really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find Queen Charlotte,’ said the mechomancer. ‘After they discovered the Commonshare had run the majority of the royal breeding house through a Gideon’s Collar during the invasion.’

Cornelius winced, but not from the pain in his shoulder.

‘Sorry, I forgot. But the point is, the Middlesteel Illustrated is still running editorials saying there’s as much royal blood in the queen’s veins as there is in your bath water. Rumour has it that she was found in the baggage train of the retreating Quatershiftian army — that one of the shiftie officers had taken her from the breeding house and only kept her alive because she was a pretty little thing; well, that was when she still had her arms, of course.’

‘The House of Guardians needs a symbol,’ said Cornelius.

‘Aha.’ The mechomancer removed a lead ball with a pair of tweezers, and then pulled out another from Cornelius’s arm. ‘Talking of our compatriots in Quatershift, I presume these two rascals are cast from Commonshare lead?’

‘I may have made a flying visit there recently.’

Dred tutted. ‘Your arm is rare, Cornelius — my skill combined with Catosian high-tension clockwork. I would rather you did not throw it away. One day the First Committee is going to get wise to those tricks of yours with your damn face. Their pamphleteers will stop flattering the egos of the leading Carlists with real-box pictures of the heroes of the revolution, leaving you to impersonate committee members from Gilroy’s cartoons in the Illustrated . Their spies will stop trying to hunt down emigres over here and start trying to steal the plans for a working blood-code machine.’

‘Can you repair my arm?’ asked Cornelius.

‘Of course I can. You know, you never did tell me how you do your face thing — did you learn the sorcery from a worldsinger? Were you caught in a feymist as a child? Did you travel south to see a womb mage? There are back-street sorcerers who can change a face just the once, but they say you feel agony for the rest of your life …’

‘I feel the pain,’ said Cornelius. ‘The difference is, I like to share it around.’

Dred pulled over a steam-powered winding machine and began to de-tension the clockwork inside the arm, still wary of another explosion, even after all these years. ‘The Commonshare will fall one day, you know. Helped along by you, or more likely because they can’t feed their own people. Or perhaps the God-Emperor in Kikkosico will tire of their insults and bypass the cursewall, land his legions on their shore and finish off Quatershift for good. What will you do then, old friend?’

‘Retire.’

Dred Lands teased out part of the arm mechanism, laying it down on the workbench. ‘All right, don’t tell me. I’ll fix you up for your next attempt at suicide all the same.’

‘You should be more appreciative of what I do,’ said Cornelius. ‘I even rescued one of your own from Quatershift a couple of nights back. Jules Robur, the mechomancer. He would not have lasted another year in the Commonshare’s “organized community” system.’

Dred’s hand slipped on the wire cutter he was twisting. ‘Sweet Circle, you got Jules Robur out of Quatershift? I thought he was dead for sure. His designs, his technical architectures. He’s the greatest of us, Cornelius, the greatest! Are you sure he’s alive? Dear Circle!’

Cornelius had never seen Dred so animated. It was as if he had rescued the mechomancer’s own father from the work camp. ‘He is alive, have no worries on that account. When he woke up in Jackals, he could not stop expressing his gratitude, talking about the devices he could tinker into life now, with all of Jackelian industry and science at his disposal.’

‘Tinker, indeed! You must bring him here to me; just convince him to visit me. I shall offer all my tools to his service. Do this one thing for me, Cornelius, and I shall work for you for the rest of the year for free.’

‘You can go and see him yourself. He’s here in the capital. I left him at his daughter’s house in Westcheap.’

‘His daughter? There must be some mistake.’

‘No mistake,’ said Cornelius. ‘I saw him walk through the door of her house myself. It was his daughter who convinced me to rescue the man from Quatershift.’

‘But it was Robur’s daughter who denounced him,’ said Dred. ‘She’s a Carlist, married to a general in the revolutionary army. She was the bloody reason he was in the camps in the first place. She blew him out to their secret police, led the crushers to the home he was hiding in. Look-’

Dred went to a bookshelf and returned with an old volume of the Journal ofPhilosophical Transactions , then opened it to a page with a cartoon. A man in Sun Court finery, Robur down to his hook nose, was being dragged away by soldiers of the revolutionary army as a woman watched. A speech bubble from the struggling mechomancer proclaimed: ‘Now this is a pretty penny in return for your mother’s labours.’ The woman was calling back, ‘And now your labours shall belong to the commons, you royalist dog.’ Pursed lips, staring eyes and wild hair — the daughter’s caricature bore no relation to the elegant creature who had implored him for his help in the rear yard of a jinn house.

‘It’s not the same woman.’ The anger leaked through Cornelius’s steely demeanour.

‘Keep your hair on, man,’ said Dred. ‘If she was an agent of the Commonshare, my fine arm and your strange bones would be lying dead in a ditch in Quatershift by now. She was probably his young mistress. Would you have risked your neck so readily for a lover as a daughter? You rescued the genius of Jules Robur; believe me, that is all that matters.’

‘Finish the arm,’ ordered Cornelius. ‘I’ll take your invite to Robur’s house personally tomorrow and see how well they like playing the fool with me when Furnace-breath Nick comes to call.’

Dred muttered, but he did as he was bid.

Cornelius’s eyes narrowed. Something was wrong here, deeply wrong. Was Jackals in danger again from her ancient foe to the east? If so, the old enemy would count themselves lucky if they lived to regret it. That was the thing about invasions. In the end, it just meant the shifties were coming to him .

‘What is going on here?’ Gabriel McCabe pushed past the ring of sailors urging on the fight; one of the seadrinkers trading blows — badly — with a Catosian soldier in the confines of the Sprite’s mid-deck. The first mate grabbed his sailor, Veryann moving in to pull off her fighter at the same time.

‘She broke my jigging nose!’ shouted the sailor, clutching a kerchief to stem the flow of blood as McCabe held him in the air.

‘He gave challenge to me,’ retorted the soldier, bridling and pushing her blonde hair back out of her face.

Commodore Black slid down a ladder and dropped to the deck, quickly followed by Amelia. ‘A blessed challenge is it? The Sprite of the Lake is too small to be fighting duels.’

The sailor pointed at Veryann’s soldier. ‘It was no challenge. I only suggested to her that when we get to Rapalaw Junction we find a nice room and get down to the hey-jiggerty.’

Veryann stepped between the sailor and her mercenary. ‘What manner of fool are you? No free company fighter will submit to mate with you until you have beaten her in combat. You must prove yourself fit before you bed a Catosian, demonstrate the superiority of your blood lineage. You issued a challenge to my fighter, duel or not.’