From the Deep of the Dark

CHAPTER TEN

‘Are you deaf?’ bellowed On’esse as Sadly and Daunt hesitated in climbing off the harvesting raft, snorkel spiders circling the boat with an eager, hungry intent.

‘This is inhuman,’ Daunt called out. ‘I must protest.’

‘Protest all you like,’ laughed On’esse, ‘but protest from the water. You have just as long as it takes my soldier here to reload his gun. All of you, restart your cropping!’

‘Cracked old arsehole,’ cursed Morris, now moving down the tree, but as slowly as he could. Obviously hoping someone else would get to the water first and attract the remaining snorkel spiders’ attention. ‘He’ll do for us all.’

Dick Tull could only agree. He’d had the luck to be on the tree strap, cutting down fruit when the attack started, otherwise he’d be taking part in this slow-motion race to see who would survive. Just so long as On’esse doesn’t notice I’m no longer holding my machete and orders me down too. Commandant On’esse had lost his patience waiting for his raft’s big tripod mounted gun to be reloaded with a fresh shell. He pulled out his pistol and waved it threateningly towards the nearest guard station. ‘You there, push the surface dwellers off your platform — those stands are for us, not these vermin.’

Something moved behind the commandant’s launch. At first, Dick thought that what he was watching was one of the snorkel spiders attracted to the commandant’s still humming engine, but the shape kept on rising and rising. Not a flurry of mandibles, but an orange-coloured carapace mottled with camouflaged yellow stripes, a long flat curve of armour wider than the commandant’s launch and balanced by two huge serrated claws.

‘Tiger crab!’ warned Dick.

‘Not just any tiger crab,’ muttered Morris, abandoning any pretence to be heading back into the water. ‘It’s Old Death-shell back again.’

Now Dick saw what the heavy bore weapon on the front of On’esse’s boat was for. Unfortunately for the camp commandant, he’d already wasted its shell on a hapless Jackelian victim. Desperately trying to reload, the soldier on the bow was near decapitated when Old Death-shell brought down its two claws onto the boat. Struck amidships and stern at the same time, the boat crumpled into three pieces under the tiger crab’s touch, On’esse discharging his pistol as he was flung back by the collapsing craft and the impact of the man-sized claws. His pistol shot rebounded off the shell close to Old Death-shell’s eyestalks, a new black scar of explosive residue joining a hundred others. Old Death-shell wore its previous encounters with the guards and their prisoners of war like medals on its armour, a constellation of scratches and lacerations speaking of how hard it was to kill. Trampling the boat, fair dancing across it in triumph, the tiger crab’s eight legs carried it over the debris and towards the thrashing form of On’esse. Old Death-shell’s left claw lazily swung around into an upper cut, smashing the commandant and sending him flying out of the surface before landing with a splash and a thump towards the bottom of Dick’s tree. Rifle fire from the soldiers on the guard stations raked the tiger crab from behind, and it swivelled around, slamming both claws into a wooden platform and cracking it asunder. The gill-necks that weren’t flattened by the claws tumbled off with the cowering prisoners of war who had reached the trunk’s elusive safety. All around the trees, the guards and convict labour were scattering — perhaps the snorkel spiders too, as Dick couldn’t see any sign of their previous attackers’ bony periscopes. All fear of the water was gone now among the harvesting party. There wasn’t an inch of sentient flesh in the Everglades who didn’t know what to fear now… the most vicious armoured predator on the island had come to dine, and there wasn’t any creature that was off the menu. Old Death-shell danced towards Dick’s tree, trampling over Sadly and Daunt’s raft as if the flatboat was nothing more than a waterlily, the two of them leaping out into the water before the raft splintered into pieces, hundreds of gillwort fruit sent flying.

Sadly and the ex-parson waded backwards as Old Death-shell advanced on their tree, the semi-conscious form of the commandant bobbing in front. Both of them ducked behind the tree, the tiger crab’s claws prodding forward, clacking, each pinching movement enough to cut a bull in half. One of its claws came cutting up, slicing the strap off Morris and sending the howling prisoner falling out of the tree towards the surface. Down below, Sadly and Daunt were shouting in terror as Old Death-shell scuttled forward, closing the gap between them to a couple of feet. Dick was desperately swinging himself around the tree trunk to avoid the claw swishing through the air when a whistling battle cry pierced the swamp. On the tree behind, Boxiron had sliced his climbing strap off, plummeting down towards the tiger crab beneath with his machete raised.

‘No!’ Daunt called from below as he stumbled backwards. ‘Old steamer, you’re not able to shift gears with that limiter welded onto you.’

Boxiron’s strength might have been throttled down, but his fury at the creature threatening his friend was undiminished. Dick took advantage of the steamman’s diversion and released his own belt to fall towards the surface, hitting the warm water and coming up alongside Sadly and Morris.

‘Your friend’s got a death wish, see,’ spluttered Morris.

On top of the tiger crab’s carapace, Boxiron had one metal hand digging into its shell, the other hacking down, trying to force its way into the flesh beyond the carapace joins. Old Death-shell was not reacting well to having a rider, making a furious chirping noise, rubbing its legs together as it was bucking, its claws trying to angle back to sweep this metal parasite off its back.

‘This is my fault,’ moaned Daunt, as he dragged the wounded commandant’s body clear of the lashing tiger crab’s assault. ‘Boxiron shouldn’t be here.’

Dick tried to shove Jethro Daunt away from the gill-neck. ‘Let me strangle the murdering sod.’

Morris grabbed Dick from behind. ‘I would be right behind you, matey. But if we do for him like he deserves, the gill-necks will make everyone in the camp pay.’

With the commandant pulled back onto the tree’s roots, Daunt grabbed one of the raft’s punts floating past and charged the flailing tiger crab, jabbing at the eye stalks. Breaking free, Dick snatched the machete off Morris and ran forward to stand by the amateur’s side, pushing his blade out at the enraged creature. Old Death-shell was not used to this. Prey ran. It did not fight back. It did not attack! Confused, its attention divided between the three of them, Old Death-shell’s left claw withdrew from trying to dislodge Boxiron and snapped out at Daunt. The amateur had waded out of range, but his punt was sliced in half. Dick ran forward, slashing at the black feathery fronds growing like a beard around the bottom of the tiger crab’s shell, then darted back as the creature shuddered in pain.

Daunt scooped up the half of his punt fallen in the water and tossed it up towards Boxiron. ‘Old steamer, give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world.’ The Circlist koan of the blessed fulcrum.

Boxiron seized the punt and rammed it into the gap in the carapace he’d been trying to cut open, driving a metal foot down onto the pole. Lifting up the armour with a terrible ripping sound that sent the tiger crab into a fit of shaking fury, the tear was not much, but enough to expose the soft flesh of its fibrous brain casing underneath. Boxiron lifted a victorious spear of steam into the air from his stack and he cried in triumph, driving the machete down with both hands. Limited in strength, but never in soul.

Chirping in agony, Old Death-shell’s eight legs buckled, its wide carapace collapsing into the everglade’s surface, and there it lay, trembling and shaking as its life leaked away.

‘Were you trying to die?’ demanded Daunt as the steamman slid off the mottled orange and yellow shell.

‘No, Jethro softbody, I was trying to live.’

There was another scream of fury, not the dying tiger crab this time. ‘You dirty surface-dwelling vermin!’ On’esse staggered in front of the tree, snapping shut the pistol he had just reloaded. ‘You dare to save me! To lay hands on me as if I am one of your dirty herd, as if my life is in your hands!’ As he raised his pistol towards the famous consulting detective, Dick threw the machete, its blade rotating once and hitting On’esse in the chest, slamming him back and pinning him to the tree trunk. There was a brief look of astonishment on the commandant’s face as the shock of his death sank in.

‘And that’s my way of saying thank you, you murdering old sod.’

On’esse slipped forward on the blade, croaking, trembling. Then the commandant’s shuddering increased, becoming more than just the last dying tremors of a gill-neck, his body shaking, fast and faster, blurring in the air, his form being replaced by something else. Something more or less the same size as On’esse, but with a terrible distended head, wrinkled skin that gleamed slimy, foul and as dark as night.

Boxiron stepped forward to examine the corpse. ‘By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, what is this thing?’

Daunt reached out to stop the steamman, grabbing his arm. ‘Stand back!’ As he was speaking there was a burst of light from the corpse’s chest and a spiral of fierce red energy wrapped the commandant’s body. By the time Dick had blinked the tears and afterimage of the explosion out of his eyes, there was nothing but charred ashes left sinking into the water. A shadow had been burnt into the tree trunk, the now half-melted machete still sunk into the smoking wood.

‘Lords-a’larkey,’ whispered Sadly. ‘I’ve seen a few things, say I, but that, that-’

‘Let’s see if I am right,’ said Daunt, advancing on the sinking mound of blackened residue. He dipped a hand down, searching for something under the water, then came back up with a jewel. ‘Does this look familiar? Rather like the gem that Damson Shades wears around her neck, don’t you think?’

‘What’s happened to him?’ Dick demanded. ‘Did that crystal do that?’

‘I believe it might be expedient if I saved your answers until we have reached the safety of the beach. The guards who fled will doubtless be back soon with larger guns.’

Dick waded through the water, retrieving a rifle and a satchel of soaked shells from the remains of the commandant’s broken boat.

‘There’s no safety on the beach,’ cried Morris, his dripping arms windmilling around the humid air. ‘You think we haven’t tried to escape, man? Every year some green arseholes steal a harvesting raft and make for the sea.’ He jabbed a finger towards the gently shaking carapace of Old Death-shell. ‘There are hundreds just like that beast in the waters around the island. What do you think Ko’marn Island means in the gill-neck tongue? It’s “Death-by-claw Island”! This is one of the islands where tiger crabs lay eggs every summer.’

Daunt smiled, looking meaningfully at Barnabas Sadly. ‘Oh, I think we can do better than a shallow-beamed harvesting raft, a sail made out of tattered shirts and an old punt, don’t you?’

‘What, the cripple? You think he’s got a private sloop tucked up his shirt-tails?’ Morris scoffed.

‘Not a sloop, but a trick up his sleeve. Or rather, inside his cane. How about it, Barnabas?’

Sadly nodded thoughtfully. ‘Your reputation is well deserved, Mister Daunt. How did you work it out?’

‘Many signals, but two matters stood out rather glaringly. Firstly, your clubfoot. Those born with congenital talipes equinovarus in a single limb always learn to compensate with their other foot by the time they reach adulthood, leaving the heel of the good shoe worn away. Someone who came from a family of cobblers should know that. Whereas for you, sir, your good shoe’s heel stands as flat as a millpond. I can thereby deduct that you weren’t born with what is solely a congenital disease. A womb-mage’s alteration of the flesh, I expect? I doubt if that’s the face you were born with, either.’

Sadly nodded in approval. ‘And the second thing?’

‘You told me you hadn’t been born in a poorhouse. There is a good reason why Sadly is such a common surname in the slums of the capital. It is because it is the name automatically entered in the rolls by a workhouse when a male baby is abandoned at a church and handed over to the board of the poor. If you had been an abandoned baby girl, you would have been called Templar, after temple, while Sadly comes from the Ballad of Franklin Sadly, the Saint of the Workhouse.’ Daunt began to hum the tune. ‘In a long and hungry line, the paupers sit at their tables, for this is the hour they dine, with poor Franklin Sadly.’

‘A guinea for you to stop bleeding singing. You are quite a fount of useless trivia, Mister Daunt.’

‘I would say there’s no such thing as a piece of useless information.’

‘And what amongst your vast store of ephemera makes you think I’m going to take you with me?’

‘Us,’ said Daunt, indicating the group. ‘And I think you’ll take us with you because I know the answers to what is really going on here.’

‘Who are you?’ Dick snarled at the informant, the flush of anger rising within him as the truth of the matter started to dawn. ‘Have you played me for a mug, Sadly?’

‘Not a mug, good sergeant,’ said Daunt. ‘And he’s treated you no differently from the rest of us. That’s the purpose of bait, isn’t it? To be impaled on a hook and dragged through the water to see what bites. Well, your mission has been successfully completed. You’ve caught quite a whopper, and now you’re going to make sure that we’re the ones that got away.’

‘I’m going to need a taste of that fish,’ said Sadly. ‘Just to make sure you’re telling the truth.’

‘I would expect nothing less from a trade that deals in lies and deceits.’ Daunt reached under his breeches and removed a bamboo rod that had been tied to his leg. He tossed it to Sadly. ‘From the graveyard here. Read the name engraved on the marker.’

Sadly did so, a worried frown creasing his rodent-like features. Then he pitched it back to the ex-parson. ‘All right then, consider that your ticket out of here.’

Dick stuck his hand out. ‘Let me see it.’

Daunt passed it across and Dick scanned the name on the grave marker, then looked at the date of the burial. The feeling of confusion swelled within the sergeant. ‘How can that be?’

‘A riddle, indeed,’ said Daunt. He passed the marker across to the obviously curious steamman. ‘What do you think, Boxiron? How can Walsingham have been buried in the camp’s graveyard two years past, when the good sergeant’s employer was only just interrogating me? Quite a curiosity, and enough to stump even-’ Daunt pointed to Sadly, ‘-an agent of the Court of the Air.’

Daunt pushed back the undergrowth in his way as they cut a passage through the everglades, the harvesting machetes put to a use their gill-neck captors would not have approved of. Sadly was not limping quite so badly now, the act of his cover identity abandoned for expediency’s sake as they slashed their way to freedom.

Boxiron was hacking in front, Dick Tull and Morris behind the steamman, the State Protection Board agent surly and uncommunicative towards the man he’d believed was his informant. It was not an easy thing, to flip from predator to prey with such speed, and the sergeant’s professional pride was clearly wounded worse than anything his capture by the gill-necks had inflicted upon him. Boxiron released the exhaust of his labours from his stacks in brief, short bursts, nothing to draw attention of the pursuit by the camp’s soldiers that had to be underway by now. If the State Protection Board officer’s pride had taken a beating, Daunt hoped that Boxiron’s had been restored by his victory over Old Death-shell. Even limited by the gill-necks’ device, he was still a steamman knight. I just hope he knows it, and that his plunge towards the tiger crab was to save me, not a suicide attempt.

‘Walsingham wasn’t the only one in the graveyard, was he?’ Sadly said, cutting at the bush with his cane.

‘No. It was a veritable notables’ list of Jackelian quality — admirals, vice-admirals, generals, industrialists, mill owners, members of the House of Guardians, and those were just the names I recognized.’

‘The Court of the Air will need them all,’ said Sadly. ‘Along with everything else you know about how they got there.’

Daunt fished in his pocket, withdrawing with a Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drop. He looked at the sticky mess in disappointment then replaced it back again. Inedible. Perhaps it would dry out later? ‘First things first, good agent. We need to locate the commodore, Charlotte Shades and King Jude’s sceptre before the commodore’s sister and the gill-necks do. Otherwise there won’t be much of a Kingdom left to save.’

‘You’ve a cheek, Mister Daunt. We’re not your bleeding private carriage service.’

‘I know what the Court of the Air is for,’ said Daunt. ‘You must have suspected that your dealings over the centuries have come to the attention of the Inquisition?’

‘What do you know of the Court?’

‘When Isambard Kirkhill seized power in Parliament’s name after the civil war, he had only one fear left — and that was the throne. The army wanted Kirkhill to become king. Old Isambard had to fight them off with a sabre to stop them crowning him the new monarch. Then there were our royalists-in-exile plotting a counter-revolution and restoration. Kirkhill knew that if Parliament’s rule was to last, it would have to resist both the plots without and the ambitions of its own politicians. So Kirkhill established a court sinister as the last line of defence, a body that was to act as a supreme authority and ultimate guarantor of the people’s rule. But it was to be a court invisible. While the House of Guardians knew the Court existed, they knew nothing of its location, its staff, its methods and its workings. If any politician were to start looking at the throne restored with envious eyes, the existence of the Court would give them pause to think.’

‘There’s such a thing as being too clever for your own good,’ warned Sadly.

‘So people keep on telling me. However, in this matter I think you will find your mission and my own perfectly aligned.’

‘Are you an Inquisition officer, Mister Daunt?’

‘Perish the thought,’ said Daunt. ‘The church wouldn’t have defrocked me so readily if I had been. They’re under the misapprehension that they employ my services every so often, and it only seems like fair play to draw upon their resources in turn. The commodore’s sister made the same mistake when she linked me up to their machine to sift through my memories.’

‘And now you’re asking the Court to repeat the error? You’re not very reassuring, says I.’

‘Oh, I’m sure the Court of the Air is far too devious for me to play you along.’

The everglades’ bush was thinning out, the orange dunes of a beach ahead and the crashing sea beyond. The danger of the place was underlined by hundreds of abandoned carapaces lying in the sand, outgrown by generations of maturing tiger crabs. And how many tiger crabs are scuttling about out there with their shells still on, I wonder?

‘And what’s your explanation for the camp commandant burning up when he died?’

‘Patience, good agent. What exactly do you have concealed inside your cane? Not a flag rolled up with the word “help” sown on, I trust?’

‘An isotope,’ said Sadly. ‘Its signature can be followed from half an ocean away.’

Daunt glanced at the bottom of the man’s cane. It was leaking the last of a foul-looking green liquid onto the sand.

‘You’ve flushed it into the swamp…?’

‘Water nullifies it.’

‘And the signal stopping is the sign for your extraction,’ said Daunt, satisfied with himself. ‘I trust your colleagues have stayed near.’

‘You never know when you’re going to outwear your welcome.’

Any self-satisfaction vanished with the whistling of bullets past Daunt’s left ear, close enough to shave his sideburn.

‘Camp guards,’ yelled Morris, sprinting for the reedy dunes in front of them and throwing himself over the ridge. Jethro, Boxiron, Sadly and Dick Tull were fast behind the wiry convict, spurts of sand chasing their passage as they hurled themselves towards the sparse cover of the beach. There was something about the footsteps they had left in the sand, but what? Daunt didn’t have time to ponder. A cloud of gull-like lizards exploded into the air as the party of escapees landed close to their nests in the dune grass, bullets flitting over their heads with the buzz of roused hornets. Dick Tull pushed a shell into the stolen rifle and fired back, the gill-necks keeping cover, hunkering down along the edge of the everglades in response to this solitary, lonely voice of opposition. Geysers of sand erupted as the guards concentrated their volleys on the muzzle flash of Dick’s rifle.

‘There’s too sodding many of them over there,’ said Dick.

‘We just need to hold them off for a few minutes more,’ called Sadly. ‘Look!’

Out at sea, a u-boat was surfacing, but not any design that Daunt was familiar with… a bulbous, almost organic-shaped hull with a rotating stern composed of large metal tentacles that gave the craft something of the appearance of a steel squid. With a conning tower set as low and angular as a shark’s fin, a hatch in her lee was opening to release a pair of low metal surface boats. Both boats angled out heading towards the shore. Sailors stood on the prows with capacitor packs cabled up to tridents, the men releasing bursts of wild energy at the tiger crabs surfacing around the submarine. Old Death-shell’s kin appeared incensed at this strange metal interloper intruding upon their realm. The creatures weren’t the only ones to spot the rescue craft. More guards emerged in front of the jungle, throwing themselves down and sighting on the dunes.

‘If we try for the sea, they’ll cut us down before we make five yards,’ said Boxiron.

‘You go old steamer,’ urged Daunt. ‘The gill-necks might have dialled down your strength near to mine, but they haven’t yet exchanged your hull for flesh. Wade out there and find Commodore Black, tell him to place King Jude’s sceptre under the protection of the Court of the Air.’

‘They must have recovered the commandant’s corpse, see,’ moaned Morris. ‘We’re dead men now, whatever we do.’

As if in agreement with the convict’s prediction, the drone of the fusillade over their heads was swapped for a strident cannon-like booming, explosions of sand in front of the dunes swelling, showering them with beach debris.

‘They have brought up the heavy guns used to do business with the tiger crabs. Pass me your machete,’ Boxiron ordered Morris, feeling its heft in his left hand as the convict did as he was bid, its weight balancing the other blade gripped tight in the steamman’s right fist.

‘Boxiron,’ Daunt pleaded, ‘do not do this.’

‘What else am I for, old friend?’ asked Boxiron. He rose to his full height from behind the dunes and charged, a lumbering zigzagging assault caused as much by a lack of motor control as any desire to dodge the guards’ bullets. Shots cracked around him as he pounded through the sand, the gill-necks adjusting their range to home in on him. A couple of guards were thrown back by Dick Tull using the distraction to increase his rate of fire, reloading from his satchel of charges like a demon. Out at sea, the boats were closing on the beach, seconds away from landing. The crewmen inside were kneeling now, riding in on the jouncing waves. The tiger crabs had temporally withdrawn out of range of the sailors’ capacitor packs, bobbing around the submersible and awaiting for their food to return. It wouldn’t take long for the camp guards to redirect their fire towards the rescue boats. And if the boats were struck by something that could discourage a tiger crab, they would be in trouble.

Dick Tull rose, firing the rifle from the hip. ‘Leg it for the water.’

Boxiron had reached the line of guards, a few gill-necks standing up just in time to face his machetes, twin windmills of death as he cut and slashed about him. He was staggering back from the blasts at short range. Not even the armour the criminal underworld had fitted their hulking ex-possession with was proof against this level of abuse.

‘Move!’ called Sadly, dragging Daunt back. ‘Right now, your noggin’s the most valuable thing on this island.’

Only to everyone at home. To Daunt, the most valuable thing on the island was the steamman about to throw his life away against the ranks of their gill-neck pursuers.

When Charlotte saw the two darkships, the only part of their description that covered what she had been expecting to see was their colour: a shining, oily darkness rippling along their featureless hulls. Nothing else about them resembled any submarine she had heard of. Pear-shaped and driving forward on the sharp of their noses, the crafts couldn’t have been more than forty feet long. Their approach was soundless. There was no sign of a means of propulsion, no portholes, no torpedo slits, no hydroplanes, no conning tower, no ventilation intakes, no rudders for steering. It didn’t take much to believe this evil pair had escaped from Elizica’s prophecy and the legends of the seanore. Demon chariots, the chasm’s seed, their skins sucked the light out of the ocean, surfaces made a rippling absence of matter, organic teardrops of devilry solidified into twin darts and sliding with pernicious intent towards the nomads’ grand congress.

Where the outskirts of the underwater forest gave way to the encampment, dozens of warriors rose from sentry positions in the wavering kelp, casting rotor-spears at the ebony teardrops accelerating towards the assembly. At least seven explosive-headed rods were heading straight for the bows of the two craft, white trails of bubbles fuming behind rotors built into their shafts, the darkships suddenly banking contemptuously into the swarm, detonating the spears. Both darkships powered forward, even faster now while the warriors below had drawn their shock spears, angling the discharge of electric bolts towards the belly of the two ships. The twin craft overshot the warriors. As they passed, the seanore underneath doubled up in agony, clutching their ears and left writhing above the wavering forest of kelp. Just being in the proximity of the darkships was enough to drive the nomads into waves of agony.

Elizica’s words resonated inside Charlotte’s mind. ‘Sound — the enemy is using sound as a shield. The seanore’s eardrums exploded when the darkships passed, ruptured like the triggers on the rotor-spears’ warheads, detonating before they hit the hull.’

How do we fight them?

‘There is a way. Head for the weapons the nomads left outside the congress.’

Charlotte swam though the panicked nomads packed inside the expanded camp of the Clan Raldama. Thousands of seanore warriors had been waiting to hear the results of the tribal elders’ deliberations. Now they had been reduced into an undisciplined mass desperately seeking the commands of their chiefs, most of whom were tightly mixed with the ranks of their rivals and neighbours. Behind Charlotte, the darkships had rammed the line of spherical nets holding the nomads’ schools of fish, kelp-rope lattices bursting apart as waves of silvery fish burned in the interlopers’ dark energies, floating dead towards the surface. When the teardrop-shaped darkships passed over the encampment, their shape seemed to change, flattening, taking on a manta ray configuration. They had jettisoned something in their wake, an inky mist spreading though the ocean, heavier than the sea water and sinking towards the dozens of domes raised on the seabed. Hitting the interlocking plates of the structures, a devil-dust crackling fizzed over Charlotte’s helmet speakers, a fierce popping. Collapsing as if they were decaying flesh, the chambers began to crumble inwards, unlucky nomads who had not yet evacuated eaten away wherever the black mist touched them. A froth of disintegrating bone and flesh bubbled out along every point of contact with the wicked wave of pollution that had been unleashed.

‘The chasm-demon’s breath,’ whispered Elizica as Charlotte hesitated. She had been swimming straight for that evil substance. ‘I would sleep away another age if it meant not waking to see that filthy weapon afresh.’

A strange blurring in the water beyond her visor caught Charlotte’s eye. It was the Purity Queen, the catamaran-hulled submarine had fired up the stealth plates along her hull and they were vibrating like the polyps on a reef’s Dead Man’s Fingers. Her bow was slanting down, rising on an explosion of air from her ballast tanks, a beast rearing in the water to challenge the two newcomers. She was positioning herself for a perfect firing solution against the two darkships.

The commodore must be back on board.

‘They’ll go gentle with the u-boat,’ said Elizica. ‘They’ve tracked the submarine and will sense the sceptre is within her decks.’

Four torpedoes powered away from the Purity Queen ’s forward firing tubes, a pair sent streaming from each bow towards the darkships. Neither of the enemy vessels altered course, rather, their bows flowed out into needle-like lances, quick flashes of burning light — but black light, like the negative on a daguerreotype plate — pulses hitting each of the propelling torpedoes and sending them spinning towards the seabed. Inert lumps of slagged steel with their chemical warheads burnt into a cloud of yellow particles chasing the torpedoes’ wake down.

The two darkships passed either side of the Purity Queen, lances forming along the side of their waxy skin as the pair released an underwater broadside at the u-boat. As they struck, Charlotte’s sight vanished with the explosion of light across her retina. The fireworks departed and her vision returned. Charlotte saw the Purity Queen ’s hull had been left with dozens of steaming, melted holes, the new crevices in her hull leaking air as though it were blood. The u-boat’s proud conning tower had been singled out and left a ruin of melted metal, her forward and aft hydroplanes sheared off. In that single pass, the once proud vessel, ex of the Jackelian fleet sea arm, had been left a filleted wreck. One of her two propellers was still active and she nosed down towards the seabed, crashing into the kelp forest and ploughing it up. Then her stern rose, keeping the Purity Queen vertical for a second, a strange metal tower implanted on the seabed, before she tipped forward under the propulsion of her remaining screw. The remains of the submarine’s mangled conning tower impaled the vegetation and there she lay, stretched out on her belly, rivulets of oxygen streaming upwards from multiple hull ruptures.

Go gentle with her, my left foot!

‘For the chasm-seed, that was a light touch. Quick, girl-child, that way! Swim for those rotor-spears.’

Circling the Purity Queen’ s upended hull in vulture loops, the darkships had lost interest in the seanore, stunned into a near-rout by the appearance of these deadly auguries of destruction in their waters.

‘They are scanning the wreck for the sceptre, for the crystal in its orb,’ warned Elizica.

Charlotte was close to the centre of a clearing in the kelp forest. Corpses caught in the current floated past above rotor-spears and shock-spears piled against each other in cones of weaponry, the nomad mob jostling as they snatched wildly at the arms laid aside during their grand congress.

‘Take the Eye of Fate off your chest,’ ordered Elizica. ‘Press it against the warheads of the rotor-spears.’

Charlotte did as she was bid, spotting Vane amid the mob of scrambling nomads, trying to restore order among the warriors. ‘Vane, have them stand aside, I need to get to these weapons.’

‘Back, clansmen!’ Vane threw punches at the clawing warriors, holding the line against the panicked mass. ‘Do you have a plan, surface dweller?’

Charlotte rubbed the Eye of Fate against each first rotor-spear, a green light radiating from the amulet briefly rendering the weapon’s mechanism transparent. ‘You know how it is, Vane, a bit of that old-time prophecy juice.’

I hope this is good.

Elizica’s voice slipped through her mind. ‘I’m burning out the rotor-spears’ detonation triggers so there will be nothing for the darkships’ perimeter sonics to detonate early when they pass through their shields.’

I’m no engineer, but if you do that, just how in the Circle’s name are they going to explode when they hit?

‘Contact force,’ said Elizica. ‘They’ll need to be thrown from no further than twenty feet for them to have enough velocity to detonate.’

That sounds like suicide.

‘Let’s compromise and call it the act of a champion, girl-child. When I was your age I’d already jumped a bull and strangled a lion unconscious in an arena’s sands.’

You reached my age? Charlotte finished with the last of the cluster of rotor-spears, looping the Eye of Fate around her chest again. Picking up the nearest rotor-spear, she passed it to Vane. ‘These will do the job now, if there are seanore here courageous enough to swim close enough to the enemy to stand in a darkship’s shadow.’

Vane examined the rotor-spear, running a finger along its warhead as if he expected it to tingle now. ‘I fear shadows less than I fear your enchantments. I hope your witchery will be enough.’

Charlotte located the two darkships, their black mass hovering above the wrecked Jackelian u-boat. Weapon horns had formed along their bows, smaller this time, focused cutting beams slicing out and opening up the broken vessel’s hull. Someone was swimming towards the submarine from the camp — a solitary figure. Maeva? What did the old woman think she was doing over there? The third member of the Clan Raldama’s council hadn’t been spotted yet. The two interlopers were still too busy carving up their prize in their search for King Jude’s Sceptre. My sceptre, you bastards.

‘It’ll be enough.’ The nomads were hanging back uncertainly, Vane and his warriors, Korda too, the rival nomad chief’s skull covered by a silver war mask he had yet to push forward to cover his face. ‘You might need to find your balls first.’ Charlotte tugged one of the rotor-spears out of the seabed and pushed off for the wreck of the submarine.

Just tell me that the commodore is still alive inside there?

‘He may be.’ Elizica’s words slid through her head.

I’m not doing this for you or your dammed prophecy. I owe Jared my life and that sceptre is mine. I stole it… I get to sell it.

‘Yes, you get to sell it.’

Seanore were overtaking her now, the nomads shamed into action, their powerful webbed feet powering them ahead of her. Soon enough Charlotte was only swimming alongside wetbacks like her, the clans’ human members weighed down with rebreathers and diving suits. There were more warriors by her side than the numbers of rotor-spears she had altered — many were rushing towards their deaths with weapons that would prove useless against the intruders. Some of the nomads were already releasing rotor-spears, engine bulges propelling the spears forward in a flurry of bubbles, seanore war cries echoing inside Charlotte’s helmet as disembodied as Elizica’s voice. ‘Too far away.’

I don’t think that discipline is their strong point.

A flurry of warheads detonated before they had even reached the darkships’ ebony surface, others bouncing uselessly off the hulls, their velocity too spent to explode on impact.

I hope they don’t notice the duds bouncing off their ships.

‘They will release their demon’s breath again when they have recharged their tanks. This is our only chance, girl-child. Close with them, ATTACK!’

Charlotte had covered half the distance to the Purity Queen ’s wreckage, the seanores nearer still, close enough for the initial acceleration of their rotor-spears to detonate on impact now. The nearest of the darkships above the dead Jackelian submarine juddered with a wave of flowering explosions, the wash of shockwaves rattling Charlotte’s helmet and throwing her back in the water. Damage had been taken along the closest darkship, although it was nothing like the destruction the two craft had visited on the Purity Queen. Black folds fluttered along the invader’s ebony surface as though in torment, oily globules vomiting out of the rips. Its hull flexed and writhed close to the impact strikes.

Charlotte had difficulty concentrating this close to the darkships, the throb of pain in her head intensifying with every foot she swam nearer. Not just the pain, their proximity was setting her nerves on edge, an almost superstitious dread tunnelling into her deepest, darkest fears. Every iota of Charlotte’s being screamed at her to flee, to swim away from these underwater terrors and keep on going. She was breathing hard, the visor of her diving helmet misting up on the inside. Her bones vibrated with panic, shaking in terror.

‘The darkships sing their own song,’ Elizica’s voice warned. ‘They seek out the frequency of fear within your heart.’

Both darkships had returned to their pear-like configuration and pulled up from the Purity Queen ’s belly, the craft further away lifting and using the hull of the damaged darkship as a shield. From one of the rents near the Purity Queen ’s amidships a figure emerged pulling another, both in diving suits. One of them was Maeva. The prone form; the commodore’s. But was he alive? No sign of King Jude’s sceptre; that must still be inside the wreck.

These cursed things; these were part of the conspiracy that had set Charlotte up to steal the sceptre, before coldly attempting to slaughter her as they had murdered poor old Damson Robinson. They had hounded her from her home and were hunting her still, hungry for retribution. With a yell Charlotte cast the rotor-spear, the rush of water activating the gas charge inside the staff, its small motor accelerating the projectile towards the damaged darkship. It struck exactly where she’d aimed, the top of the craft’s bulbous bow, the intuition — supplied by the ancient spirit haunting her mind — that this was where the pilot was succoured by the foul black substance. Her shaft’s explosion was one of many. The seanore didn’t need to follow Charlotte’s example to press home their advantage against an obviously wounded party. The damaged darkship reversed erratically, its surface breaking up and threading away as if it were a lump of lard melting in the pan. Tilting forward, the surviving craft had learnt the danger of ignoring these attackers, its bow reforming into a lance. With a flash of strangely dark light, the cutting force of the craft was unleashed against the attacking seanores. To Charlotte’s right, one of the human nomads was cleaved from head to groin in a broiling second, his two halves split and simultaneously cauterized into a bloodless death, drifting apart in a frozen rictus agony. There seemed no limit of range to the weapon; when it fired, the sea boiled and everything in its path was carved into slices.

Charlotte yelled in alarm as the beam punched past her, the sound echoing in the confines of her helmet, flinging her down towards the seabed. Close enough to sear the skin beneath her diving suit. A handful of seanore were swimming in above the kelp forest, using their rotor-spears set low to carry them in before launching the weapons — literally riding the projectiles down onto their foe. The undamaged darkship pivoted, the cutting beam moving with it, ploughing through the forest — ground erupting like the fault line of an earthquake with its violence — before bursting through the raiding party.

Charlotte crawled through the kelp towards the broken hull of the Purity Queen. Maeva was in the lee of a rent, oxygen from the crippled craft streaming out behind her as she held onto the prostrate form of Commodore Black. The surface of the old u-boat man’s suit appeared burnt and there was no way to tell if she was cradling a corpse or not.

‘Just like when we first met,’ Maeva’s murmurs carried across to Charlotte’s helmet. ‘Always pulling you out of the wreckage of your mishaps.’

‘Leave them, girl-child. Find the sceptre,’ ordered Elizica.

‘Shut up.’ Charlotte banged her helmet’s side as if that was enough to silence the bodiless ghost.

There was a crackle of exploding speaker boxes behind her. The darkship was looping back, passing over the human nomads of the seanore, felling them with the proximity of its ear-bursting shields. The seanore didn’t have any rotor-spears left, all their projectiles spent in the initial attack. A couple of shock-spears fired licks of energy at the darkship, too far away, their foe moving too fast. Close enough to hit it with their hand weapons was near enough to be cooked by its mere proximity.

In front of the ship, a party of five seanores emerged from ambush among the underwater forest’s fronds, flinging themselves towards the darkship in a suicidal frontal assault. Korda was among them. The leader of the Clan Coudama diving forward with a crystal-bladed harpoon, raising it to impale the supernatural vessel. They rushed the enemy vessel despite the agony they must be undergoing, its hymn of fear rupturing their eardrums, but the darkship and whatever agency propelled it into battle cared not a fig for their bravery. The evil craft accelerated through the war party, running them down, its surface briefly spiking out into a thousand small spines like a bloating pufferfish, a terrible cloud of floating limbs and skewered pieces of the fighters left behind.

Ignoring the roar of static from her speaker box, Charlotte fell back as the darkship’s central weapon extended and carved the Purity Queen ’s remains in half, riding through the boiling, bubbling water of the discharge. The darkship closed on her position. Charlotte’s helmet phones squealed with all the distress of a swine feeling its throat slit, her helmet’s machinery overloading under the fury of the vessel’s dark radiations.

Daunt broke away from Sadly’s grip as the first of the shallow-draft boats hit the beach, sprinting around a tiger crab’s abandoned shell and vaulting the boat’s gunwale. He was seizing one of the spare capacitor packs in the stern as Sadly and Morris caught up with him.

‘We need that to return to the submarine,’ one of the sailors in the rescue party yelled at Daunt. ‘My battery’s almost spent.’

Pulling the pack onto his back, Daunt twisted the trident off a side-clip connected to egg-scented chemical batteries by a dangling cable. ‘Don’t worry good fellow, I have an intuition that the tiger crabs won’t be in the water on our return journey.’

Dick Tull was retreating backward, firing his rifle and reloading from the satchel of charges, bursts of sands and spouts of sea water all around him as the camp guards divided their fire between Boxiron’s suicidal assault and the escaping prisoners. Sadly blocked Daunt’s way, the Court of the Air agent’s face incredulous as he saw the ex-parson trying to delay their departure. ‘Are you cracked? You can’t fight half the bleeding camp’s guards with that!’

‘There’s too many of ’em, amateur.’ Dick agreed.

‘I don’t intend to fight the gill-necks,’ Daunt said, slipping past the hobbling agent. ‘But I don’t intend to leave Boxiron behind either.’

Not today. Not ever.

Sadly cursed the ex-parson, the cane that had contained the tracking isotope suddenly pressed into service to push him after Daunt’s retreating form. He turned to the sailor in the prow of the first rescue boat as the second craft slid in under fire. ‘Get these two men to safety. Tell the sub commander to hold steady.’ He pointed at a sailor on the front of the second boat. ‘You, wait for me.’

Using the cover of the abandoned shells, Daunt circled around the heart of the skirmish. Daunt gained the top of the grassy bank just as Sadly caught up with him. Hiding in the line of the everglades, the camp guards had realized their small-bore rifles were having minimal effect against the steamman. Now they were concentrating their fire on Boxiron with their heavy guns. The steamman’s chest armour had been torn up, gaping holes in the iron revealing his innards, coiled pipes and crystal boards crudely cobbled together in the human mills that turned out artificial servants. Unfortunately for his attackers, their heavy weapons had also chewed chunks out of the power limiter they had fitted to his boiler heart. Its original function had been reduced to so much scrap metal, and now Boxiron was powering up, the warrior’s stacks pouring ugly black spears of smoke into the air above him as he slipped through his gears. Boxiron lurched through their midst, fighting at close quarters, his twin machetes a dervish dance of death, lumbering, brutal, hacking and chopping. Breaking gill-neck bones with every contact of his body. If the guards had been concentrated in a single formation, Boxiron might have been able to overcome the gill-necks in the melee, but they were scattered up and down the beach. Their heavy guns boomed straight through their own ranks as they recognized that this was the only way to bring the steamman down. Before he turned his fury on them too. Boxiron’s chest crumpled under the volley of fire, the plating he’d been fitted out with by the Kingdom’s criminal underworld no match for the armour piercing shells loosed against him. Boxiron’s right arm blew away in the assault, the steamman staggering and nearly slipping, briefly recovering, his left arm lashing out with a blade and catching a gill-neck in the face — or what was left of it after that terrible impact.

Daunt tore his gaze away from his friend’s last stand. Down the slope was a line of rock pools, sand turning marshy where it joined the start of the undergrowth.

‘You know why tiger crabs have adapted to the land almost as well as the sea?’ Daunt said to Sadly, lowering his trident towards the beach. He didn’t wait for the court’s agent to answer. ‘It’s because this is where they lay their eggs, out of reach of their fellow predators of the ocean.’ Daunt opened up with the trident, the sparking discharge of the power electric hitting the water and scattering across the damp breach, lightning chasing along the ground. There was a furious popping and whistling beneath the marshy sand, soft pieces of shell exploding out of the water. Daunt walked along the beach, squeezing the trigger under the trident’s insulated handle, power forking out and causing the beach to erupt. ‘Forgive me,’ whispered Daunt.

‘Beg that from their mothers, says I!’ Sadly shouted.

Behind the two Jackelians there was an angry clicking as dozens of chirruping tiger crabs surfaced out of the sea, the cries and stench of their smoking young pulling in the adults.

Daunt sprinted across the marshy dune grass, down the slope towards the steamman, firing to his right as he ran, leaving a distinct trail for the furious trilling tiger crabs emerging out of the water to follow. ‘Bob my soul, but now the camp guards will have something a little more pressing to aim at.’

Disoriented young crabs — megalops — each the size of a dinner plate, emerged from the blackened sand and broke through the sugar-like crust of slagged sand left by his capacitor’s trident. Daunt zigzagged as he sprinted, but it was becoming increasing obvious that the camp guards had bigger fish to fry now — quite literally.

Salvos from the guards’ rifles grew erratic, their fire redirected. The sight of dozens of angry tiger crabs lumbering up the beach and heading for them enough to turn any gill-neck’s thoughts to self-preservation.

Sadly limped behind Daunt’s trail, his cane now being used as a mere support, the boot of his good foot lashing out to overturn a snapping juvenile version of the monsters rising out of the sea behind them. ‘That’s what I love about this job, always something new.’

Daunt reached Boxiron, the steamman on his knees surrounded by a pile of dead gill-necks, any challengers either dead or retreating to cover in the tree line. The steamman was nearly sliced in two, half his chest blown away by the guards’ heavy weaponry, exposed pipes ruptured and fountaining hydraulic liquid over his broken human-milled machinery. With only one arm left, he was flailing about, trying to stab the ground with his remaining machete. Daunt didn’t know if there was purpose to the movements, or if the pain of his wounds had overwhelmed the steamman. Thank the Circle, his precious steamman skull looks undamaged. At least, no more dented than normal.

Boxiron’s words fell out distorted from his shattered voicebox. ‘I am finished here. Finished here.’

‘Help me!’ Daunt begged Sadly, the rat-faced agent moving in to support Boxiron’s gashed open side where his right arm had been sheered off. Daunt took the weight of the semi-functioning steamman under the remaining shoulder, jagged rents in his friend’s clavicle plate cutting through the cloth of Daunt’s shoulder as he attempted to spur the steamman forward.

‘You’ve got your strength back, old friend,’ said Daunt, rubbing the area above the steamman’s rotating calculation drum where the power limiter had been welded. Please, just enough strength to see us to the boat.

Boxiron’s legs wheezed steam from his joints as he blundered forward, his knee gimbals buckling as they headed for the remaining rescue boat. Daunt could see the lick of energy from the sailors’ capacitors as they held back the roused tiger crabs crawling ashore.

‘What gear — am — I — in?’ Boxiron’s voicebox fluttered weakly.

Daunt glanced behind him. The gearbox on his spine wasn’t even there anymore, a wreck of holed iron in its place, crystal boards sparking in anger underneath. ‘You’re in top gear, old steamer.’

‘’Ware the left,’ warned Sadly.

Daunt’s spare hand twisted the trident around and he triggered a burst of energy at the tiger crabs pincering towards them. The creatures stopped twenty feet away as the blast crackled around their carapaces, waving their claws towards him in an almost human gesture of defiance. Daunt grunted and hauled his friend forward. Moving with the steamman was like trying to walk with a house’s weight in bricks stuffed inside a rucksack. If Boxiron’s failing power gave out on them now, nothing short of a crane was going to get the old steamer to the rescue boat.

Just up this dune and across the sands to the water. We can do that. His tattered boots dug into the dunes, sand spilling into his shoes. So heavy. Just a little further. Daunt considered dumping the weight of the capacitor pack, but abandoned the idea as he saw the ring of tiger crabs closing in on the beached rescue craft.

‘Clever perishers,’ hissed Sadly, sweating as he dug his way up the slope with his cane. He was glancing behind them. The tiger crabs had formed into a line to attack the gill-necks in the tree line, an almost orderly queue, which meant the guards’ heavy guns could only be bought to bear on the lead creature. ‘Always had a taste for lobsters, says I. Never realized they were so bleeding smart, Mister Daunt.’

‘Lobsters are a different genus from tiger crabs,’ said Daunt. ‘The nephropidae family. I’ll wager you never served them in your ordinary.’

‘Too many pennies for the great unwashed,’ said Sadly as they reached the top of the dune.

There was a strange fizzing noise from within Boxiron’s exposed chest, as if some chemistry was at work, an acidic green cloud merging from the torn rents, burnt rubber and a toast-like stench. Before the fleeting tendrils of smoke evaporated they seemed to coalesce into images of steamman faces, angular and proud and angry, the sea breeze catching the mist and rubbing them out as they formed.

‘The Steamo Loa,’ hissed Boxiron. ‘Have I — earned a — warrior’s end?’

Were the ancestral spirits of his people here to help or hinder? Here to claim a noble spirit and drag him into the deep layers of code in their Hall of Ancestors?

Daunt lurched forward, swatting the smoke with the tip of his trident. ‘Away with you! You’re not even proper gods. Just fireflies pestering his corpse. Your kind never helped him in life, only I did. All these years, you never came to help him.’

Tiger crabs scuttled away from the circle blockading the boat, advancing towards the exhausted Jackelians and their wounded comrade. Daunt lashed out with bolts of energy, driving them unwillingly off, reluctant to back down now. ‘I deny you!’ shouted Daunt. ‘And so does Boxiron.’

The tiger crabs could almost taste their revenge against these interlopers who had dared make a battleground of their ancient hatching ground, but the lick of the power electric was a pain that even their toughened carapaces proved no defence against. Daunt and Sadly pushed through the gap in their ranks, the ex-parson’s trident swinging left and right, with the capacitor pack whining in complaint to be run down so rapidly, fire flung to either side

At last, in front of the rescue boat, the three of them collapsed exhausted. Sailors in simple striped shirts and black canvas breeches leapt out to their aid as Sadly ordered the steamman to be hauled on board.

Boxiron’s silver skull rested in the sand as the sailors found their purchase below his wrecked body. ‘Always — my friend.’

‘Preserve your strength,’ urged Daunt.

Half the sailors waded into the water to refloat the rescue boat, electrical fire from the remaining crewmen licking port and starboard, the noise of the reversing screws blended in with an unholy snapping emanating from Boxiron’s exposed innards.