From the Deep of the Dark

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Daunt stood on the edge of the Isla Furia’s u-boat pens, the hull of one of the Court of the Air’s strange sleek submersibles swarming with crewmen making last minute maintenance checks before she dove. Above the pens, on the slope of the volcano, part of the mountainside had been drawn aside, camouflaged doors retracted to reveal a dark sphere, an urban legend — the gas-filled globe of an aerosphere ready to lift off when Dick Tull and Sadly boarded.

‘You shouldn’t dally,’ Sadly warned Charlotte and the commodore. ‘We’ve detected a darkship approaching the island. They know the sceptre is here and it’s only a matter of time before more of them show up to test the island’s defences.’

‘It’ll make our job easier,’ said Charlotte. ‘If they’re here, they won’t be protecting the seed-city.’

The commodore still looked ill at ease with the plan. ‘This is where we are, then. Not even waiting for the wicked demons to come and try and winkle us out of the Court’s well-defended lair, an island where a man can secure a warm berth for the night and a drop of hot totty to stave off the terrors of war. No, poor old Blacky must go out and uncover a whole nest of monsters and poke them with his sabre until they swarm out to sting him to death.’

‘That’s all you can ever choose,’ said Sadly. ‘Where you’re going to die.’

‘What do you care, Blacky?’ said Dick. ‘We’re all dead men walking now, same as you. Home, here on the island, or their hole at the bottom of the sea, the odds aren’t exactly in our favour are they?’

‘Ah,’ said the commodore. ‘All the adventures and terrible scrapes I’ve been in over the years. My luck’s dwindled away and left me beached here. Curse my mortal stars. All my luck’s been used up and this is my last throw of the dice.’

Dick Tull shrugged. ‘How’d you think it was going to end, you old pirate? Jared Black propped up on a swan feather pillow, surrounded by tearful grandchildren levering open the mansion’s windows so he can take one last peep at the stars in the sky above? This is how men like us go. A sabre in one and hand a pistol in the other and surrounded by all the enemies we haven’t outlived. At least you’re going out rich. My pension’s good for an evening’s gratitude at an alehouse and one cold meal a day at Sadly’s dung hole of an eatery.’

‘Let us rather focus on that life we have left before us,’ said Daunt. ‘And what we might achieve with it.’

Dick Tull didn’t look convinced. ‘Let me know how that goes for you, amateur, when the entire gill-neck fleet’s anchored off the coast. Maybe we’ll meet again on the Circle’s next turn. Maybe not. You used to be a churchman; you tell me where we’re going.’

No heaven, no hell. The Circlist mantra echoed in Daunt’s mind.

‘You owe me a drink after this, Blacky, in that escape hole of an alehouse you’re got at the bottom of your grounds,’ said Dick.

‘If I’m around to serve it, you better check it for my bladder water,’ whispered the commodore. ‘What’s the blessed world coming to when some State Protection Board man is as much a friend as an enemy?’

A sedan chair emerged from the entrance to the u-boat pens, borne with ease by two of the clanking mechanicals the Court used in its gas mines. They knelt down, lowering the chair to the ground. Silk curtains along its side were pulled back revealing Lord Trabb, the acting head of the Court swinging his legs out and dismounting uncomfortably, working the age out of his joints before approaching the group. He had two Jackelian style gentlemen’s canes in his hand, but he wasn’t using them to steady his gait. Instead, he tossed one to Dick Tull, the other out to Sadly. ‘A departing gratuity for you both.’

‘Sword cane or shotgun, sir?’ asked Sadly, examining his. Made of stout rosewood, they had copper boar’s heads as handles.

‘Neither,’ said Lord Trabb. ‘We have fitted a working prototype of our sea-bishop detection device inside each of the canes. Rotate the handle counter clockwise and push it down and the boar’s eyes will glow when you are in the presence of a sea-bishop wearing one of their mesmerism crystals. The fuel source is only rated for twenty minutes of continuous operation and once the detector is activated, it cannot be turned off, so only use the cane when you absolutely need to.’

‘No room for a shooter, then?’ said Dick. He sounded disappointed.

‘Only a suicide pill. If you pull out the detection apparatus you will find it concealed underneath. I trust you won’t be requiring it, or we shall all be royally tallywacked.’

‘Only when I absolutely need to,’ said Dick.

Charlotte stepped in and kissed Dick Tull on the cheek, whispering a quick goodbye in his ear. The State Protection Board agent looked at her with surprise, as if he didn’t quite believe his luck, then Dick and Sadly walked away towards the mountainside and the waiting aerosphere.

‘You make sure your old steamer gets better,’ Charlotte told Daunt. ‘I’m going to need Boxiron to keep my sceptre safe. I have a feeling that the Court’s engineers aren’t going to be much use in a fight.’

‘It’s not my place to put faith in what you’ve got whispering away in your head,’ said Daunt. ‘But if I did, I would ask it to keep you safe.’

‘Goodbye, Jethro Daunt, from myself and Elizica.’

‘My sabre, lad,’ said the commodore, exchanging a quick handshake with the ex-parson, just before he followed Charlotte along the gantry out to the Court’s submersible, Maeva and the survivors from his crew mixed in with the Court’s sailors across its sleek shining decks. ‘That’s what you can place your faith in. It’s kept us alive this long, hasn’t it?’

Only just.

‘My Lord Trabb,’ said Daunt, as the acting head of the Court was reclining back into his sedan chair. ‘I trust you have been factoring our schemes into the transaction-engines running the simulation of the Kingdom’s future.’

‘Yes of course,’ said the man.

‘What do they say about our chances of success?’

Lord Trabb sighed, a look of deep melancholy settling on his features. ‘Well, dear boy, let’s just say if you’d recently received an inheritance, now would be an excellent time to blow the lot on fine brandies, games of chance and large tips in the most expensive hotels.’ The chair lifted up into the air, its poles settling on the mechanicals’ shoulders, then bobbed back towards the u-boat pens.

Well, at least the gambling I’m doing doesn’t cost money. Just bodies and blood, you hypocritical fool. Daunt watched his friends leave, the u-boat sinking in a gush of foam and the aerosphere drifting like a black sun into the sky, growing smaller and smaller, until it was swallowed by the smoking volcano’s smoke. Daunt had a terrible premonition this was the last time he would see any of them again. Is it because they aren’t going to be around, or because I won’t? My fate is my own, created through right actions. He tried to shrug off the feeling of superstitious dread, yet still it lingered. How strange. The Court of the Air’s hidden support base, with an ancient town built beyond the submerged wreckage of an even more ancient marvel. It should have felt like a lost world. Instead, it seemed to Daunt as if the world beyond was lost, and this, here, was all that was real. The horrors that lay outside would be intruding soon, though. There was no getting away from that. Daunt just had to hold on long enough for his friends to do the impossible. That wasn’t so much to ask, was it?

He set off back to Nuyok’s walled gate, trying to whistle away the reckoning that was blowing in from the world outside, nodding to the fishermen repairing their nets in the wall’s shadow. ‘There once was a Circlist priest, who found himself facing a terrible beast. He prayed not to god, but whittled a duelling rod, and instead invited the monster in to feast.’