Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

Septimoth looked over at his friend. ‘Damson Beeton was recommended to our service by Dred Lands as I recall.’

‘So she was.’ Cornelius cursed his own stupidity. And the proprietor of the Old Mechomancery Shop along Knocking Yard was so perfectly connected into the heart of the Jackelian underworld, so perfectly equipped with illegal equipment and banned lore. The Court of the Air could look a long time before they found such a well-connected informer in Middlesteel — except that they obviously hadn’t needed to.

‘The watchers in the sky,’ said Septimoth. ‘My people avoid that cold place where they dwell. Perhaps it was to be expected. You always warned me that the Court could be monitoring us.’

‘You must have thought you were very clever,’ said Robur. ‘Your little palace of tricks hidden under the waters of the Gambleflowers. We use submersibles where we can to avoid their gaze ourselves, as it happens.’

‘Dear old Damson Beeton. Well, if the Court of the Air was using me to do their dirty work for them, then I was using them in exchange,’ sighed Cornelius. ‘They let Furnace-breath Nick flit back and forth across the cursewall like a wine merchant pushing bottles of brandy in a cart. But who is your “we”, mechomancer, who are you working for?’

‘So you were using them, were you, eh? A privateer, not a pirate — an admirably practical attitude. As for myself, you might say I am now working for the greater good of the race of man.’

‘Not Quatershift, then,’ said Cornelius.

‘You dare ask that!’ Robur’s voice exploded in anger. ‘After you saw the conditions they had me living in at Darksun Fortress. I could tell you things, Jackelian, the crimes I saw in that place and others like it, before. The things those monsters did to families that had fallen out with the First Committee and their revolutionary barbarians. To my friends, to their own supporters in the end …’

‘Save your breath, I have already seen the blessings of the revolution,’ said Cornelius, ‘as has Septimoth. I didn’t lose my arm in a milling accident — it was cut off as a punishment, then tossed into the fertilizer pit of an organized community not so very different from your camp.’

‘Then you know, you understand.’ It sounded like Robur was crying.

‘Yes,’ said Cornelius. ‘I know. So, mechomancer, who is it paying for the greater good of the race of man, these days?’

‘That I think you also know. Shall I confirm it for you?’

‘Abraham Quest,’ hissed Cornelius.

‘Yes, indeed. When the Catgibbon passed on word of an old friend of hers returning from the dead with an interest in missing steammen, it wasn’t too difficult to match her description to a reclusive hermit with no obvious means to show for his wealth suddenly showing up at Whittington Manor brandishing a party invite. Compte de Speeler — the Count of Thieves. That little wordplay may have cost you your life. Your methods are both hasty and unsound.’

‘My methods saved your life,’ said Cornelius.

‘That is the main reason why you and your companion are still alive,’ said Robur. ‘We are working on the same side, really. You in your small limited way. Myself in mine — but my methods are played on a grander stage. You are never going to change the Commonshare by slaughtering Carlists and the revolutionary leaders one by one. Your horror — as effective as it is — can never equal the great terror the revolution has imposed on Quatershift. What is a single angel of death dropping from the sky, one agent of vengeance, what is that compared to the constant fear of the knock at the door in the middle of the night by the Commonshare’s thugs? What is the terror invoked by the voice changer in your mask compared to the screams of your neighbours as their children are fed into a Gideon’s Collar?’

‘One death at a time is all I need,’ said Cornelius, ‘to slake my vengeance and give me a little peace at night.’

‘There we are, then,’ sighed Robur’s disembodied voice. ‘You are looking to punish those who wronged you, one grave at a time. I am looking to change society so that such evil can never be allowed to take hold again. You crudely treat the symptoms; I wish to eradicate the disease itself.’

‘There speaks a mechomancer,’ said Septimoth, his wings shivering in anger. ‘The race of man treating the sum of the world like a machine that can be fixed by tinkering with its components, by providing a different instruction set for the transaction engine.’

‘My talents will help usher in a new age,’ said Robur ‘An age where the crimes the Commonshare inflicted on my people in Quatershift will never be repeated.’

‘The Carlists were infected by the same meme,’ said Septimoth. ‘I heard identical noises from your monkey throats, even as the Commonshare practised genocide against the people of the wind when we would not turn from the old ways. I trusted your kind’s grand intentions once. I shall never do so again.’

‘You are not going to usher in a new age by robbing the decaying remains of steammen from their graves,’ Cornelius interrupted. ‘I fail to see how that is going to topple the regime in Quatershift.’

‘Of course you fail to see it, you dolt,’ said Robur. ‘And I am afraid I will be unable to enlighten you for a few days yet, as unlike you, I am anything but hasty. All will be revealed in good time.’

‘What about us?’ said Cornelius. ‘Do we have a place in your shining new society?’

‘We shall see,’ said Robur. ‘We shall see.’

The speaker in the ceiling fell silent.

‘Well, what do you make of that?’ Cornelius asked Septimoth.

‘I think, on reflection, we should have interviewed more than one candidate for the position of maid-of-all-works when we set up home in Jackals.’

‘Robur was fishing,’ said Cornelius. ‘He wanted to find out if we’re working with the Court of the Air. He’s worried how much the Court might know about his little game.’

‘Let us hope the Court knows more about his schemes than we do,’ said Septimoth, ‘for both our sakes.’

Cornelius did not reply. The last time he and Septimoth had been held captive it had been he who had come up with the plan to escape: his brains and freakish assassin’s face to break them free, Septimoth’s wings to carry them to freedom. But Robur was not a blunt instrument like an organized community inside the Commonshare. And relying on the old woman lashed to a frame in the cell next door and her deadly celestial employers to rescue them wasn’t much of a plan. If that was what they were relying on, then they truly were in trouble.

Blood-bats circled the cage at night, making passes that carried them uncomfortably close to Commodore Black. The commodore ignored the squeals of the large rodents as T’ricola massaged life back into Billy Snow’s legs, the paralysis toxin finally losing its effect. Ironflanks was with them now, and while no one wanted to speak of it, the absence of valiant Gabriel McCabe — the strongest man in Jackals no more — still hung over them like a ghost at the feast.

‘You are an unusual sonar man,’ Veryann said to Billy as she looked down on the bats sweeping through the petrol mist beneath them. ‘One who fights uncommonly well for a blind man. And a submariner.’

‘I crewed my way across the oceans to Thar when I was younger,’ said Billy. ‘They know a thing to two about blade work and empty fist fighting out there. You can even study the skill at their monasteries.’

‘Did they also smith witch-blades at their monasteries?’ Veryann asked.

‘It was considered something of an art,’ said Billy.

‘Quiet, Billy,’ said T’ricola. ‘Your throat muscles are as weak as every other part of your creaking body. You need to rest.’