Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

Cornelius’s destination was moored far enough away from the affluent heart of the capital that the visitors to the jinn house were in no danger of being spotted by anyone other than their fellow revellers. He noted that the jinn house’s iron hull had once belonged to a fire-breaker. A decommissioned colony boat, no longer fit to skirt the Fire Sea, not now that her decks were fitted out with additional pagoda levels, flammable oakwood rising by the light of a constellation of paper lanterns. Her new silver nameplate had been riveted proudly above the entrance. The Ruby Belle .

On the boarding ramp the two whippers nodded at the face Cornelius was wearing, passing no comment that one of their regulars had changed his mind and decided to try his luck again. The ship’s interior bore out the impression of wealth that Cornelius had derived from its patrons’ dress. No ha’penny tumble this for dockers, riverboat crews and rookery dwellers. Her cramped colonist hold had been cut out, replaced with a set of stairs leading down to a floor of lush red carpet covered by gaming tables, mirror-backed bars and marble-surfaced drinking stalls. Another line of stairs swept up to the pagodas. The transparent silk shifts worn by the two women waiting by the flight of steps, as well as the oiled chests of the guards standing behind them, left little doubt as to the entertainments that were on offer above.

‘Canes to be checked at the door, sir,’ said one of the jinn palace hands, making it clear that they expected all their patrons’ canes to have a razor-sharp utility beyond fashion. Cornelius moved aside for a press of braying quality, rich ladies with their stud retainers close at hand. ‘Of course.’

‘Back for another crack at the whist tables, sir?’

Cornelius handed over his cape and cane. ‘Yes. I believe my luck may be about to change.’

He took a step up onto a brass dais and received a numbered wooden coin from the cloakroom assistant, noting that the room behind her was racked with purse pistols, shoulder holsters, garter guns and sword sticks. The patrons might be slumming it in this end of town, but they were careful with it, preserving their dignity — and their life — while about their sport.

‘Would you care for a masque, sir?’ asked the cloakroom assistant, indicating a range of velvet-lined masques hanging to the side. ‘To preserve your anonymity?’

Cornelius shook his head. ‘I left mine at home today, I don’t believe I would care for another.’

‘As you will, sir.’

Down below, the gambling tables were frequented by a mix of merrymakers — some concealed by masques, others openly revelling in the wickedness of the house and probably hoping they would be recognized. Plying the tables, spinning the wheels of chance and turning cards, Cornelius moved across the connected series of chambers, mapping the layout of the Ruby Belle and locating the corridors and doors used by her staff. Taking a long glass of sweet wine, he slipped out onto the promenade, bypassing laughing clusters of patrons engrossed in their own amusements. He found the blind spot he was looking for and put down his glass. Pushing on his artificial arm with a finger, he drew out a metal cord, looping it around the railing, then lowered himself down the hull of the boat on her river side. His boots pushed him out in looping arcs, quietly swinging him down the outside of the jinn house. This should be about where the boarding ramp lay on the port side of the craft.

From his thumb he extruded a rubber circle that rolled out into a dome, a thin copper wire trailing back into his arm. He hated using this, the mechomancy so obviously imperfectly reverse-engineered from a steamman’s architecture. He willed the device into action and it began to amplify the vibrations of sound in the hull, crystals in his arm flaring up as they fed the information along his nerves, a fire like heartburn withering his guts. But along with the fire came words — a male voice growling about his attentions being rejected by a croupier. Using the large rivets as footholds, Cornelius moved along the hull, flakes of paint and iron rubbing against him as he eavesdropped on the conversations and peeped in through portholes — safe enough with the darkness of night and the lapping waters of the river Gambleflowers behind him.

Midway across the hull he found them. The two flash mob enforcers that had bundled Bunzal Coalmelter into their false-bottomed cart. They had changed out of their coke vendors’ rags, and were inspecting the ruin of the steamman’s cracked chest casing as parts were being gingerly teased out into a pool of dark puddling oil. Damn. It was not Robur working on the grave robbers’ dark business — instead, some gangly beanstalk of a man was poking around the steamman’s body.

‘Careful now,’ said rat-face. ‘The parts have to be preserved, removed without cracking the crystals.’

‘For that I need to concentrate,’ said the mechomancer performing the forbidden autopsy. The man spoke annoyingly quietly, his words barely carrying through to Cornelius’s vibration amplifier.

‘There’s good coin in this for you,’ said rat-face. ‘You do this job right . The client needs the parts shipped out tomorrow, cleaned and each organ labelled.’ The larger of the two bruisers cracked his knuckles. ‘You do it badly, and it’ll be your parts that’ll need work. This is the last of the steamers on our list. You won’t get a second chance now.’

‘This is delicate work,’ whispered the mechomancer. ‘Leave I to it.’

They laughed together at the sport of needling the quiet hireling, then left, shutting the door to the room. Cornelius was about to trigger the retraction wheel on his grappling line when he realized that the mechomancer was mumbling to himself. The Circle bless a mumbler. He dialled up his listening device to maximum to catch the hissed mutters, ignoring the lancing pain.

‘Turds, turds, the way they treat I. But they have no brains, no wit.’ He stuck his lips out like a fish that was about to start whistling, scratched at his head as fiercely as if he had nits, then delved back into Bunzal Coalmelter’s guts. ‘Not clever. The client wants it tomorrow. They want it tomorrow, get to stuff their face at Whittington Manor, see all the quality. All the pretties. Should be I that goes. It is I that is working for him, not the stupids. The way they treat I …’

Whittington Manor. Cornelius had heard that name recently, or had he read about it in the Middlesteel Illustrated News ? Was that where Robur was holed up, playing him for a fool and possibly planning his mischief for Quatershift’s First Committee? He willed the retraction wheel into action and, with a low hiss, he was hauled back up to the Ruby Belle’s promenade.

Picking up the fluted wine glass, Cornelius moved across the gaming floor, his mind revolving with the possibility of finally tracking down the slippery refugee from the Sun King’s broken court; so focused on his quarry that he only noticed the two whippers when they stepped out in front of him — both a head taller than Cornelius.

‘Excuse me, sir, the floor master would like a word with you about the settlement of your debts.’

‘My debts?’ Another two whippers emerged out of the crowd around the tables, taking position behind him. Four was not such a big number, but an ordinary patron killing them would spook the flash mob. Robur might be moved somewhere else as a precaution. Damn his unlucky stars, of all the customers he could have chosen to mimic, he had to have selected a welcher. Let them have their say, then. He should be able to buy them off for at least a night with the wad of money thickening his borrowed wallet. A night was all that he required.