Jack Cloudie

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jack rubbed his brow, half covered by a turban and sweating in the arc of the high sun. The relative ease with which the four of them had transformed themselves into citizens of the empire still seemed inconceivable to him. The skins of the three men had been darkened by dyes which the first lieutenant, with her half-Cassarabian parentage, hadn’t needed. They wore the local clothing that Westwick had pulled out of her supply crate, the lining along the hems of their robes sewn with silver coins stamped with the caliph’s head — legal tender throughout the empire. But then, the empire — as the commodore had explained — wasn’t a homogenous nation, but rather a civilization composed of disparate nations, all ruled, however unwillingly, by the Caliph Eternal.

Jack did as he was told and repeated whenever he needed to the fiction that he was a slave from the sultanate of Zahyan, loyal servant to the commodore’s spice merchant and his new wife, just married to seal a trading alliance, and travelling with their mute colossus of a bodyguard — the contents of his two flasks now hidden beneath his robes.

Having crossed the desert the locals called the Empty Quarter, in their pocket airship, they had deflated the stolen aerostat and hidden the open boat-like gondola under the cliff of a gorge in the wilds. They had landed a couple of miles outside a small village that the commodore entered before returning with four camels tied together. He had been muttering about parting with good money for the rangy, flea-bitten, bad-tempered creatures, and after a few days on the road with them, Jack came to see why. Jack’s camel was always grumbling; deep-throated complaints at being mounted, dismounted, ridden too close to the other camels, or just protesting against every flick of the rider’s crop needed to keep the beast pitching forward.

Along with their reluctant steeds, the commodore led them into the hill town of Sharmata Sarl in the south-western corner of central Cassarabia, a couple of days travel from the coastal towns where the royalist fleet-in-exile had docked in his younger days. It was a trading hub for the various caravan roads that crossed the empire, a place where the people that the four of them were impersonating should feel at home — and more importantly, where some of the commodore’s old contacts were located.

The commodore had used the spare time travelling to Sharmata Sarl to drill Jack and Henry Tempest in the mannerisms of the locals. Jack found there was as much to learn as there had been when the airship’s officers had been tutoring them back on board the Iron Partridge. Firstly, there were all the little things, such as how locals would usually refer to the country as the empire, never as Cassarabia; how the caliph was never just the caliph when you talked of him, but the Caliph Eternal. And then there were the bigger things — matters completely alien to the mindset of a Kingdom-born man — such as how locals would always bow when a priest of one of the hundred sects of the Holy Cent passed, and the hours of the day when they were required to supplicate themselves for at least ten minutes if they passed under the shadow of a temple.

‘It’s the small actions that will give you away,’ the commodore had warned, ‘never the large.’

Small actions such as the need to fake indifference towards biologicks, the bizarre breedings of the empire’s womb mages.

‘It might be considered bad form in the Kingdom to have your body reshaped by a womb mage, but here in the empire it is a matter of blessed survival,’ noted the commodore. ‘Nomads with water-filled humps on their backs to see them through a dried-up oasis or two, or transparent eyelids so they can travel through wicked sandstorms without going blind.’

And there were enough of the twisted creatures tied up against the white-walled buildings of Sharmata Sarl. Caterpillar-like things as tall as a shire horse but seven times the length; carts pulled by pairs of sharp-beaked birds with human eyes, caravans guarded by gold-masked warriors with tails swishing behind them. ‘Nothing like growing out your prehensile tail for balance,’ explained the commodore. All the great scimitar masters should have one. It was, he explained, considered bad art to blend too much human flesh with the panoply of creatures whose templates the sorcerers borrowed from, although biologicks with human flesh were the easiest to be birthed by the swollen-bellied slaves who acted as the empire’s living factories.

‘I’ve never heard of this Cantara woman,’ said Westwick, looking at the door of the house that the commodore had led them to.

There had been camels stabled lower down in the town. Narrow, tall streets, steeped in shade now hemmed them in, while laundered items of clothing swayed on lines close to their heads. Further up the hilly incline, a group of old men played draughts in the street while thin hounds lay by their feet, noses laid out across the dusty white cobbles.

‘Ah, and that’s as it should be, Maya,’ said the commodore, his hand lifting a knocker shaped like a bat on the door. ‘Your dour friends in the State Protection Board are fine for winkling out the caliph’s agents hiding on Jackelian soil, but here in the empire the great game is played by the Pasdaran’s rules. Or at least, that’s how it used to be, back in the day.’

An old hook-nosed woman wearing a silk head-covering opened the door, her eyes widening in surprise at the sight of the commodore and the other three disguised Jackelians. ‘I see an old soul wearing the face of a young man I once knew.’

The commodore’s head bobbed knowingly. ‘Still in the house, Cantara, after all this time.’

‘It’s not easy to leave the house,’ said the woman. ‘As you must have noticed, the neighbourhood is quite different from the old days. Come in, come in you old rascal, come in for some yoghurt and sherbet.’

Jack walked in after the commodore, followed by the hulking captain of marines and First Lieutenant Westwick, her eyes surveying the street suspiciously for any sign that their entry had been watched.

‘Are your companions also tradesmen?’ said the old woman to the commodore, ushering them into a wide, awning-covered courtyard and bidding them to sink onto the cushions placed around a rectangular pool in its centre.

‘Of sorts, Cantara,’ said the commodore. ‘Tradesmen of sorts with the rival firm, whose wicked employ, I have to admit, has finally found my old bones too.’

The old woman nodded, humming thoughtfully. ‘Not so like the old days after all, then. You have heard from afar, I suppose, about how poorly our house has fared of late.’

‘Many of your servants have scattered?’ said Westwick.

‘Most have passed away,’ said the old woman. ‘Very sad, very sudden.’

‘Say it’s not all of them, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘I have travelled a blessed long way for a reunion. A few faces from the past to chew the fat with, that’s not much to ask for now, is it?’

‘There’s a few left,’ admitted the old woman. ‘Mostly in service with the neighbours, you understand.’

‘It would be good to see them,’ said Westwick.

The old woman hummed again. ‘Travel can be dangerous.’

‘Life can be dangerous,’ said Westwick. ‘You never know when you will have to serve a new master, one who may turn out to be most unkind.’

‘That is why there are a hundred faces in paradise,’ said the old woman, ‘so that we may always find at least one to smile upon us.’ She looked at them. ‘And which of the sects smiles upon you?’

‘I’ll take the fifty-third,’ said the commodore. ‘The old one, that is, although I’d say the new one if it was soldiers doing the asking.’

Remembering the cover story that they had agreed, Jack nodded in agreement. I just hope that I can get out of this land without the cause to pray to your gods.

‘A good choice for a salty trader and his two servants,’ agreed the old woman, leaning over to finger Westwick’s kaftan. ‘And wearing the sash of a newly wed, which of the sects did your house before marriage support?’

‘The Sect of Jabal, the seventy-seventh cent,’ said the first lieutenant.

‘Known for its fidelity and dependability,’ smiled the old woman. ‘Good, good. Very believable. If I didn’t know better, I would take you all for locals, rather than travelling tradesmen.’ She pointed at Jack’s turban. ‘Better you had been a jahani, with such hair — even concealed, but still …’ She seemed to make up her mind. ‘A reunion after all, then. We shall talk about business old and new.’

‘Tradesmen always find something to talk about,’ said Westwick.

‘There’s a lot of business about, my dear,’ said the old woman. She clapped her hands together and a thin young slave appeared. ‘Rooms for our guests, and I shall have to see if I can arrange for a few more visitors to arrive. Udal Lackmann. Yes, I shall send for Udal Lackmann.’

The commodore nodded in thanks as the old woman withdrew.

‘You know this Udal Lackmann?’ asked Jack.

‘Of old, lad, yes,’ said the commodore. ‘The caliph never supported the royalist fleet directly, but he used men such as Udal — a smuggler — to channel his aid. That way if the caliph was caught, he could throw up his arms and say, “Ah, what wicked criminals there are dealing with these foreign scoundrels.” Udal was the one I dealt with, always good for a torpedo or two, as long as they were being put in the water against parliament’s shipping and fired a deniable distance from the empire’s shores.’

‘Pasdaran?’ asked Westwick.

‘If he wasn’t, he was their creature,’ said the commodore. ‘Much as I am yours.’

‘I am flattered that you believe so,’ said Westwick, without a trace of irony in her voice.

‘Your old friends may not know about Cassarabia’s sudden leap forward when it comes to the caliph’s airships,’ said Jack.

Westwick shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure that the airships are the Caliph Eternal’s, boy. There’s been an unbalancing of power here. Yes. The Pasdaran are down, but they aren’t quite out yet. They’ll know something, count on it. If the empire is the foot that is kicking us, then the Pasdaran is a fungus attached to its sole. Even after you rip it out, the roots are still left buried deep in the flesh.’

‘You’ll tell me when you want me to try,’ said Tempest.

‘Not yet, Henry,’ said Westwick. ‘Your time will come, as soon as we find out where their celgas is coming from.’

‘Is he really immortal?’ asked Jack. ‘The Caliph Eternal, I mean.’

‘It’s how the empire controls all its client nations,’ said the commodore. ‘The velvet glove slipped over the iron fist. The caliph’s private drug, lifelast, is doled out to all the ruling families who keep their loyalty to him true. I’ve seen men down here who are over two hundred years old and still sprightlier than my creaking old frame. They say the caliph keeps the good stuff for himself and only gives out his diluted piss-water to his cronies. Maybe he will live forever.’

‘They also say that the caliph’s touch can cure sickness and that he can resurrect the dead with a drop of his blood,’ sneered Westwick, ‘and that only the one true god himself decides when a caliph’s reign is over, striking him down with lightning and calling forward a new member from the bloodline of Ben Issman.’

‘Don’t let your mother’s hatred for this land and what they did to her blind you, Maya,’ said the commodore. ‘I’ve seen some mortal unexplainable things during my years down south.’ He looked at Jack. ‘Next time you’re in Middlesteel Museum, have a look at the oldest coins they have from the empire. They’re from before the cold-time and the face on those coins is the same blessed one you’ll find on the silver loose change sewn into your robe.’

Westwick snorted. ‘Go into the town’s flesh bazaar, boy, any womb mage there would be able to give you the same face if it wasn’t a crime to do so. Tell us what you know of this smuggler, Jared.’

‘His mind is as fast as anyone’s I’ve ever known,’ said the commodore. ‘He’s a striking fellow right enough, with skin as dark as ebony and a presence that’s large enough to fill a room. His men told me once that he’s an exiled prince from the Red Forests in the deep south — one of the empire’s disputed satrapies — and he’d fallen in with the machinations of the forest people’s politics. He came riding out on one of those great bulls they ride down there, with just the clothes on his back and a single lance, so the story has it. He started off running contraband through the forest, between the empire and the Skirrtula. Now there’s not much that moves illegally in the harbour towns that Udal doesn’t have a hand in.’

‘Then he must be Pasdaran,’ said Westwick.

‘What can’t be stamped out must be controlled,’ agreed the commodore. ‘That’s the caliph’s way, alright. Always the long game, down Cassarabia way.’

‘You’re looking mournful, lad,’ said the commodore to Jack as the young sailor sat by the second-storey window looking down onto the street — taking his turn on the sentry duty that First Lieutenant Westwick had insisted on.

‘I just realized,’ said Jack, ‘that I haven’t thought of my brothers for days. How they are doing, how they are being treated …’

‘And now you are feeling guilty for how wicked selfish you’ve been?’ said the commodore. ‘Ah, you’ve discovered the terrible secret of why people take to the great game like a drunk holds to his bottle. You’re never so alive as when you’re walking with death by your side, and we’re cowards all.’

‘Cowards?’ said Jack. ‘We’re in the middle of the enemy’s territory wearing false clothes that would have us hanged as spies if that old lady downstairs takes it into her head to hand us in.’

‘Does that make us brave, Mister Keats, or mortal fools? Brave is waking up every morning and trudging into a mill or the fields before the sun is up, worrying about feeding your family, worrying about whether your children will get an education, food on their plate, or survive the next winter’s round of whooping cough. Worrying about whether the crops will fail or your manufactory will have enough work to be able to hire you on for the following month. That’s real fear, Mister Keats. Living an ordinary life takes real bravery. Letting danger chase that away from your mind is one escape, travelling on a u-boat and seeing a different shore every week is another; drinking yourself insensible or a pipe stuffed with mumbleweed are more. I’ve tried them all, lad, and the great game is the best by far.’

‘But the State Protection Board forced you to come here,’ said Jack.

‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’ said the commodore. ‘And that’s what you tell yourself. They’ve found me. I’m too blessed old to run away and start a new life with yet another name. So it’s just one little favour, and then another. Run some cargo here for them off-manifest, no questions asked. Pick up a man on your boat in some far-off port; drop some documents off in another. Avoid the men-of-war hunting your boat; dodge the assassin in the shadows; draw your sword for a game of tickle-my-sabre when you can’t. And all the time while you’re doing it you never think about the sister who won’t talk to you for getting her son killed, or the wife and daughter who’ve moved along the Circle before you.’

‘I won’t be like that,’ said Jack. ‘I’m getting back to Jackals to see my brothers; to buy them out of the poorhouse.’

‘Perhaps you will at that,’ said the commodore.

Down in the street there was a commotion, the sounds of running — a group of black-uniformed men with red cloaks and strange silver facemasks sprinting after a solitary runner. The commodore pushed Jack back from the edge of the window so they wouldn’t be spotted watching from above. ‘Nothing down there for us, Mister Keats. Keep your head down.’

The runners caught up with their victim just under the safe house, kicking him to the ground and then dragging him away as he yelled in horror.

Jack shielded his eyes against the sun as he risked a quick look outside at the figures pulling the prisoner away up the hill. ‘Were they priests?’

‘No, town police,’ said the commodore. ‘The masks are based on the face of Salofar, the twelfth sect of the Holy Cent. The face of righteous justice, which as you’ve just seen, runs mortal swiftish in Cassarabia.’

‘The man they grabbed … a thief?’

‘A merchant,’ said the commodore. ‘The silver sash he wore bore his bazaar trading licence. He must have been caught cheating his customers. Poor devil, they practice menshala in the empire.’ The commodore saw that Jack didn’t know the word and continued. ‘It is the will of the one true god that the punishment must always fit the crime. When I was with the royalists in one of the empire’s harbour towns back west, I saw a baker who had been caught adulterating his flour with sawdust. The local police baked him to death in his own oven. No judges or courts or juries here. Just menshala.’

‘Barbarians.’ Jack shook his head in disgust. And here we are, right in the heart of their land.

‘Don’t be so quick to judge,’ said the commodore. ‘Back in Jackals you can spill seed potatoes onto a field of weeds and most years you’ll pull some spuds out. You’ve seen what the heart of the empire is like. Dust and sand and rocks. Here, you can break your back all year long, then a single neighbour two hundred miles upstream can divert the irrigation and kill your entire livelihood within a day; or a band of wild brigands can turn up, and in one hour steal a year’s labour from you at the point of a scimitar. A hard land breeds hardy people and if you don’t have hard justice to go along with the land, then you have the rule of the gun and the blade and the club, and no civilization at all that’s worth the blessed name.’

‘We’re here to fight them,’ said Jack. ‘And it sounds like you admire them.’

‘Not so, lad, but I do understand them. Because it’s the way of the world. In bright, fertile waters, the fish you see are as shiny as rainbows and swarm in schools as large as clouds. But run your u-boat deep and into the dark barrens, and the fish are tough, bony-looking things, few and fierce. That’s the empire. The Cassarabians are warriors. Their land made them that way and they’ve rolled up all the plumper, richer nations that lady fortune tossed down for them as their neighbours. All but one, Jackals in the north, protected by our floating walls … the Royal Aerostatical Navy.’

‘And now they have their own navy.’ The Circle preserve us.

‘So they do, Mister Keats, and we must get to the bottom of the whys, hows and wherefores of the Imperial Aerial Squadron’s celgas. Because unless we can, they’re going to be swimming in our waters. And as you love Jackals, as you love your two fine young brothers, trust me, you don’t want to see the Kingdom ruled as a satrapy of the empire.’

When Udal Lackmann did reach the safe house, Jack was not on sentry duty, so it seemed to him that the smuggler had arrived as if out of thin air. The first thing that Jack knew of the smuggler’s presence in the building was when he noticed their safe house’s aged host whispering with a newly arrived traveller by the entrance to the courtyard and pointing towards the group of Jackelians. Commodore Black got up from the game of cards he had been trying to teach Jack and Henry Tempest, and approached the man with what seemed to Jack a touch of uncharacteristic apprehension. The traveller’s white robes were grey with dust, a sand filter hung off his neck, and a single curved dagger was tucked behind his crimson waist sash.

‘Al-salaamo alaykum, Udal Lackmann,’ said the commodore.

‘Wa alaykum e-salaam, Jared Black,’ said the smuggler, flashing a smile as white as the shine on the courtyard’s four pillars. ‘It has been many years since you were a visitor here.’

‘Many years for me, Udal Lackmann,’ said the commodore. ‘But they’ve been a mortal lot kinder to you.’

‘My life is full of little blessings,’ said the smuggler. ‘They help me hold to a path that fills its travellers with vim and vigour. I had not heard that your u-boat was back in port.’

‘I walked here on my dusty boots,’ said the commodore, ‘like a true son of the desert.’

‘There is not enough iron in your soul to be that,’ said Udal, ‘yet a little too much to make your merchant’s garb believable, at least to one who knows you.’

First Lieutenant Westwick appeared in the courtyard and the smuggler gave a small bow with one hand held against his heart.

‘The face I saw watching upstairs in the window,’ said Udal. ‘Tell me that you are not truly the wife of this old seadog?’

First Lieutenant Westwick raised the hem of her dress, revealing a brace of throwing blades strapped to her calf. ‘That’s not the point of me being here.’

‘Delightful,’ said the smuggler. ‘And a half-blood too, with a face exotic on both sides of the border. I shall buy you. How much for her, Jared?’

Henry Tempest leapt to his feet. ‘You touch a hair of her head and I’ll twist yours off your flaming neck!’

Udal laughed. ‘Sit down, giant one; it is too hot for such jokes. The price to be paid for such as she is paid in steel, not gold, and I have no wish to put to the test the accuracy of those deadly little blades.’ He looked at Jack. ‘And one not much younger than you were, Jared Black, when you first came visiting these shores.’

‘Aye, well age does funny things to memory,’ said the commodore. ‘Like the way I remember you so much the same, you might as well have just walked out the room all those years ago and strolled straight back in.’

‘I heard the royalist fleet met its end at Porto Principe,’ said the smuggler. ‘I raised a glass in toast to you and your friends.’

‘They were good ones,’ said the commodore, ‘in different times.’

‘It’s always different times,’ said the smuggler. ‘Are you bringing things in, or bringing things out?’

‘Ourselves in,’ said the commodore. ‘As for what we’d be taking out, my new wife here has a passion for airships. She finds them endlessly fascinating, especially the bit where they get floated off the ground. Isn’t that a miracle? All the weight of such a grand large hull, filled with all those sailors and fin-bombs and supplies, then you pack its cells full of gas, and up it goes, as long as a battleship and as high as the clouds.’

‘She should switch her temple tithes to the Sect of Razat,’ said Udal. ‘They find such matters endlessly fascinating, also.’

‘That’s what I heard,’ said the commodore. ‘And I thought to myself, I need a man of means, a man who gets about and will be able to introduce me to the right people. Why, my old friend Udal, he’ll do, that’s what occurred to me.’

‘I have very little against the Sect of Razat,’ said Udal. ‘For keepers and priests, they seem eminently practical people.’

‘A smuggler needs borders to cross, lad,’ said the commodore. ‘Without borders and taxes to avoid, you’re only in the haulage business. One continent, one empire makes a nice political slogan for the Caliph Eternal, but it’ll be wicked hard on your bottom line.’

‘To be an honest businessman,’ smiled Udal. ‘I long for such days. But perhaps not quite so soon.’

‘We can help you postpone them indefinitely,’ said First Lieutenant Westwick.

‘The followers of Razat are a very insular sect,’ said Udal. ‘But I know one man who can help you with what you wish to know. We will need to travel towards the capital to meet him.’

‘May the light of the world shine on you,’ said the first lieutenant, in what sounded like a quote to Jack. ‘And all who are under this house.’

‘The light of the world has been burning a little too brightly lately for those under this roof, pretty lady,’ said Udal. ‘And you will do well to remember that the road to the capital also ends in the road to the Caliph Eternal’s torture garden.’

Jack could feel the throbbing sun above him like a living organism pulsing its heat down upon his neck. The constant scurrying noise of their sandpedes’ tiny-clawed feet across the dusty surface of the road provided a counterpoint to the noise of crickets that came from the marshy grasses next to the river. Jack hadn’t asked what cargo was strapped to the multi-segmented insect-like beasts of burden by Udal’s smugglers, and nobody had volunteered the information. How can riding in this heat be so tiring?

They were following one of the empire’s more out-of-the-way tracks towards the capital, accompanied by the twisting, turning River Hahran, thrilling-sweet and rotten. There was not much traffic along the road, but they passed plenty of locals from the waterside villages. Women sat in the shade of palm trees like little knots of black crows, weaving clothing while they sang songs with throaty voices that rattled and hummed. Many of the village buildings had wheel-shaped minarets, ornate constructions holding circular rotors that spun into action when the breeze picked up, supplanting the mechanical power being supplied by turning watermills pushed out into the river. Dhows in the water took advantage of both the wind and the drift of the river, their decks piled with large pots containing their cargoes: fish, vegetables and meat from the flood fields along the riverbank, all heading for the great souks of the capital.

Greasy spiced mutton seemed to be the smugglers’ staple diet, leavened by tiny salted fish as small as a child’s fingers. They would stop and consume them in mud huts erected along the roadside for weary travellers to rest their legs.

When they were on the move again, Jack had to watch that the sling of his camel’s saddle, ornately frayed at the bottom, didn’t catch in the chitin of the sandpedes, the armour of each bony section clacking in and out as the caravan undulated over the dips and rises of the riverside route. The smugglers acting as drovers would walk alongside the pistoning legs, just out of reach, and crack the chitin with rhino horn-handled crops crafted specially for driving sandpedes. They would use the crops liberally, striking in the soft spot between the armour and the lashed-down cargo every time the sandpedes appeared as if they were slowing down, yelling out something that sounded to Jack like, ‘Jebbal Kallgoa!’

First Lieutenant Westwick rode under the cover of an umbrella-like sunshade, and would demurely turn her head when the fishermen and farmers along the way called out in her direction — wishing her luck in her marriage or other, cheekier, greetings. It was easy to believe, Jack realized, in the lie of their deception. Just humble travellers, slowly journeying through the heart of the empire at a merchant’s pace as they went about their innocent business. It was only when the jarring sight of an airship passed by, distant against a cloudless sky or a jagged mountain range, that reality intruded. Not a Jackelian ’stat, but the alien serrated vessels of the Cassarabians, incongruous both in design and location in these exotic climes. Then the deadly weight of the young sailor’s mission rose like bile in his throat. Four Jackelians, disowned by their own side, dressed up like desert nomads from the cover of some penny-dreadful, sedately wandering through the heart of the enemy’s territory in search of the source of the power driving the most dynamic sect in the empire. And who were the four of them trusting to guide them? Criminal dregs, the beholden creatures of a foreign secret police force that had already been routed by the enemy.

‘You thinking about home, boy?’ asked Henry Tempest.

I was thinking about my brothers. If only they could see me now. They wouldn’t believe it. Jack nodded. ‘Don’t you?’

‘A marine carries his home with him,’ said Tempest, swigging from one of his canteens — just water to ward off the heat, rather than one of the two chemicals he needed to bring some semblance of balance to his mind. ‘It’s the decking of your airship, the lay of your hammock, the company’s colours and the crew you serve with.’

‘Yes, but the ship’s gone,’ said Jack.

‘The ship’s mission is here,’ said Tempest, ‘and so are we. Captain Jericho is depending on us. We find the enemy’s celgas and the skipper will be covered in glory. We fail and it won’t matter one perishing way or the other.’ He gestured to the marshy reeds waving in the river breeze. ‘It’s better than the four walls of the stockade, and that’s where I’d bloody be without the old man. Floating in a maximum security isolation tank with a plug up my nose.’

‘They’d have hanged me without him,’ whispered Jack.

‘So I heard,’ said Tempest. ‘They tried to hang me once, after I got into one of my rages with a provost. The rope didn’t take.’

Tempest was as rugged as the mountains in the distance. The wind didn’t touch the captain of marines. The sun didn’t burn him. The impossibility of their task didn’t faze him. He was a rock in the sea, waiting for the ocean to beat him with her fury; and the rock just sat there and took it — knowing no dread or doubt.

‘Didn’t you feel any fear when they put the noose around your neck?’

Tempest’s slab-like brow furrowed as if the thought had never occurred to him, as if the act of considering it now was bringing him pain. ‘No. It wasn’t a very scary rope. I should feel more things, I know I should. But they took it away from me when they gave me my strength. I think I was frightened before I was strong, I think I can remember what it was like.’

‘Maybe you’re better off not remembering,’ said Jack.

‘They made me into a man-of-war,’ said Tempest. ‘That’s what they call our airships and that’s what they called us. I’m the last of them, that I am. And I’m not done yet. Captain Jericho always says that when he comes to the stockade for me. You’re not done yet, Henry Tempest. Did you really break into the vaults of Lords Bank?’

‘Yes,’ said Jack.

‘Well, bugger me. It’s true, then. They would have tried more than two ropes on you outside Bonegate if your weight had flaming snapped your noose.’

From the reeds on their left a series of shouts rose from the wading fishermen. ‘Soldiers! Soldiers!’

There was a cloud of birds in the air, but as the wheeling, diving creatures drew closer, Jack saw that his eyes had been deceived by perspective. They were far larger than any bird he had ever seen, more like giant lizards, virtually dragons, with human riders saddled behind their long sinuous necks.

‘Those aren’t scouts,’ Jack shouted back towards the commodore. All around him, the smugglers were running towards the sandpedes, lifting long spindly-barrelled rifles out from under the bundles of contraband, breaking the rifles and pushing fresh crystal charges into their breaches.

There was no doubt as to where the creatures were headed. The caravan of smugglers was their target. This was no innocent over-pass. The smugglers raised their rifles, but they didn’t point them at the fast-approaching dragon riders. The four Jackelians on their camels found themselves surrounded.

‘Ah now,’ whined the commodore at the smuggler’s leader. ‘Is this how you’re being eminently practical these days?’

‘It is for the best, I think, Jared Black,’ said Udal.

‘The best for who?’ spat Jack.

Henry Tempest was half laughing, half gargling as he poured the contents of the red-lidded canteen down his throat.

‘Henry!’ shouted the first lieutenant. ‘Stand down. There’s too many of them here!’

‘Is that it?’ yelled Tempest. ‘Is that all you’ve got? A bunch of lancers on those flaming flying snakes, they couldn’t take a RAN airship even on our worst day.’ He reached down to the pair of smugglers covering him with their shaking rifles, seizing the tips of both barrels and bending them around into a u-shape. ‘No polish on your brass, no bayonets.’ The captain of marines twisted in his saddle, dismounting and kicking out at the same time, the two smugglers with the crushed rifles collapsing back from the force of the blow. He reached out with his left hand and tore off the leather saddle straps from his camel, grabbing the saddle and using it half as a shield, half as a mace, to lash down another two smugglers running at him with their curved belt daggers. Contemptuously, he kicked one of the fallen jewelled daggers, sending it arcing away into the reeds. ‘I wouldn’t clean my bleeding teeth with that toothpick!’

The smugglers had seized the reins of Jack’s camel. He wasn’t armed — no slave in the empire was allowed to wear a scimitar or carry a rifle, not even in his supposed merchant master’s name — so he lashed out with his boot, but one of Udal’s men clutched his ankle and pulled him off, others seizing him before he’d even hit the ground. A rifle butt connected with his skull and bright light flared across his vision, followed by a spinning darkness encroaching from the edges of his sight.

Just as he lost consciousness, Jack thought he saw Henry Tempest with his hand around a drak’s harness, swinging the giant lizard like a fairground ride, other riders swooping down to cast large nets across his massive form.

The giant’s voice faded into the black. ‘I’m not done yet!’

Salwa glanced over at a group of Imperial Aerial Squadron officers coming out of a turret towards the execution party before he turned back to Omar. ‘I do hope these four draks are strong enough to rip you and your friend apart, as they are the last ones left alive in the fortress.’ Salwa turned his attention to a half-full spherical container being lugged over by the sailors. ‘Why do you still have poison left inside there? The womb mages calculated the precise dosage to wipe out the guardsmen’s entire stable.’

‘Apologies,’ said the lead officer, raising his face from under his peaked cap. ‘Your men weren’t thirsty enough to drink any more.’

Omar’s eyes widened at the sight of Farris Uddin’s face. There was a sudden exchange of bullets between the guardsmen dressed as marines and Salwa’s men, the rasp of steel being drawn and the confusion of crashing blades. Omar was rolled about, the draks thrashing around in confusion amongst the melee, the troops controlling them having abandoned the reins for their weapons. His cry of relief at being reprieved from execution by Salwa turned to one of agony as his limbs were twisted beyond their natural tolerance.

Omar felt a burning pain lash across his arms and legs as the severed straps of the chords that had bound him to the drak whipped across them. Rolling to his feet he caught a scimitar tossed from one of the disguised guardsmen. Boulous rose to his feet beside him, then Omar ducked reflexively as a shadow buzzed overhead, the wind of a passing drak ruffling the hairs on the back of his neck. He barely had time to register a whole talon wing in the air before a series of detonations from the battlements on the other side of the bailey filled the air with dust and flying rock fragments.

One of Salwa’s men came sprinting towards Omar, his steel blade twisting in an intricate pattern in the air. Omar ducked down and kicked out with both his legs, going under the arc of the scimitar and sending his attacker flying. He rolled along the ground and pulled up into a guard stance to be greeted by the sight of Farris Uddin plunging his blade down into the man’s chest, swift and sure, as merciless as an executioner.

Omar yelled in frustration as he saw Salwa retreating back into one of the battlement’s turrets with a handful of his men.

Farris Uddin’s hand fell heavily on Omar’s shoulder as he made to sprint after them. ‘Let them go.’

‘But he’s murdered half the guardsmen in the fortress!’

Farris Uddin pointed down to the corpse-strewn bailey. ‘Look closer.’

Omar did as he was bid and noticed something strange about the guardsmen’s bodies; their arms were locked behind their backs by ropes, a line of cloth tied around the mouth of each corpse.

‘The only guardsmen down there were volunteers,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘To make enough noise that the Imperial Aerial Squadron wouldn’t notice we had already captured the marines they had waiting outside. Salwa was firing on his own men down in the courtyard.’

‘You knew the guardsmen were going to be dissolved!’

Farris Uddin held up the empty vial Omar had seen the grand vizier use to make the Caliph Eternal beg like a whipped dog. ‘I intercepted this, along with the grand marshal’s murdered body and the grand vizier’s men charged with disposing of the evidence. The grand marshal was killed by a poisoned needle thrust into the back of his neck — an assassin’s kill. Everything else, your blade through his gut, was for show. The grand marshal would have known what this vial meant as well as I. Its existence meant that our demise was inevitable.’

‘They have the Caliph Eternal addicted, master,’ said Omar. ‘I saw him bowing and grovelling before the grand vizier, as if the ruler of rulers was no more than a slave … The Caliph Eternal, himself.’

‘He is not an addict,’ said Farris Uddin, ‘and you saw something very different.’

Omar started to speak, but Farris Uddin silenced him. ‘Later, boy. There is one truth here. We are now apostate — as rogue and rebellious as any bandits of the Empty Quarter. Boulous, back to the stables. Mount up and follow the talon wing out of the capital. All of you, go, two to a drak if you have to. Any who stay here will be hunted down by the grand vizier’s men and silenced.’

‘Where will we go?’ asked Omar.

‘We regroup and we run,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘That is our duty now, just to survive.’

Omar was glad to be off the drak when it landed, the creature’s tail thumping the ground in irritation, resentful of Omar supplanting whoever had been its blood-bonded guardsman. Probably one of their brave volunteers, lying dead in the inner bailey of the fortress. Stable hands came running forward to take the reins dangling from the drak’s snake-like neck, dust from the ground under its four stubby, sharp-clawed feet rising up like a veil of mist around its green scales.

Omar followed after Boulous and Farris Uddin, vacating the open clearing outside the hundreds of tents so more riders could land. Everyone who had survived the guardsmen’s betrayal had regrouped here — all the planning for a campaign that they had never been called on to execute now put to use in fleeing the capital as fugitives. How long could they survive as a rogue army in the field, raiding for supplies after their stores ran out? That was the question. And how long before the shadow of the Imperial Aerial Squadron’s new airships passed over them with their bomb bays open?

‘How long will we be here, Master Uddin?’ called Omar, catching up with the guardsman commander and his retainer.

‘We have a period leave of grace,’ said Uddin. ‘The grand vizier likes to announce victories, not defeats. He was set to announce the dissolution of the guardsmen, not their flight intact from the capital. Perhaps the dog will try to claim we have been sent into the field against the Jackelians after all.’

‘The grand vizier just has to wait for our supplies to run out, master,’ said Boulous, miserably. ‘An army of foot soldiers might be able to live off the land, but with draks to feed we need the wagoneers of the army supply corps to stay in the field.’

‘Your grasp of logistics does my teachings credit,’ said Uddin. ‘Although watch the impact your words might have on the morale of our people.’

‘The grand vizier will wish to finish us off out of sight,’ said Omar. ‘He does his work in the shadows.’

‘Quite so,’ said Uddin, walking up to a large collection of tents covered with netting the same colour as the barren rocky ground they were pegged into. ‘But we have enough supplies to last for one battle — we will just have to choose that one battle wisely. You have heard the old adage that my enemy’s enemy is my friend?’ He opened the flap to the tent. ‘Meet your enemy’s enemy.’

Omar stared in amazement. Inside were four prisoners tied up against the tent posts: a shaven-headed giant of a man wrapped in tight chains; a statuesque woman with the look of both beauty and danger — one who might almost have passed for a Cassarabian; an old salt-bearded fellow; and a young man who looked about Omar’s age. The faces of the men mottled where skin dye had been rubbed off to reveal a skin as light as a jahani’s, like Boulous.

Omar caught a movement out of the corner of his eye — from Farris Uddin. The guard commander’s skin was changing colour, darkening to ebony. It moved and flexed as if parasites were rippling under his cheeks and forehead. Omar stepped back in astonishment, the guard commander raising a hand to calm him. Astonishingly, Boulous seemed unconcerned by the changing features of Farris Uddin, as did all the prisoners except the youngest of them, whose look of horror must have mirrored Omar’s own.

‘So, Udal the smuggler and Uddin the soldier are one and the same,’ said the salt-bearded prisoner on the floor of the tent. He laughed and looked towards Omar. ‘What’s the matter, lad? Didn’t your officer tell you that he’s a shape-switcher and an agent of the Pasdaran to boot?’

Omar found the scimitar in his hand, drawn and pointing at the man-thing. ‘Who are you, what are you?’

It was Farris Uddin’s voice answering, but with an uncharacteristic tone of amusement. ‘Everything he said, everything that you know, and more.’

‘Ah, they’re the only Pasdaran who made it through the recent purges,’ said the bearded foreigner. ‘Those who were buried deep in the guards and the army and the jahani, with other faces and identities to hide behind.’

‘How perfect,’ snarled the woman, in a tone that indicated she considered it anything but. ‘A smuggler and the guardsman who is meant to catch him, poacher and gamekeeper, both rolled into one.’

Omar remembered the snake tattoo he had seen on Farris Uddin’s neck when he first saw him that had vanished by the time they had journeyed away from Haffa. He looked accusingly at Boulous. ‘And you knew, all this time?’

‘Do not be too hard on Boulous,’ said Uddin. ‘I told you when you first arrived at the fortress, I picked my retainer for his discretion.’

Omar’s head was left spinning by the implications. All this and more. But this man was still the officer who had taken his oath as a guardsman, who had travelled to Haffa Township so as to save him from the fall of the House of Barir. What did it matter if his face could flow like melting candle wax to take on the guise of others? The other faces were still him. A thought leapt unbidden into Omar’s mind. The nagging feeling that there had been something familiar about Farris Uddin when they had first met. Was it possible that Farris Uddin had been in his father’s house before, wearing someone else’s face, or perhaps using a face that would fit in there. Had he been one of the house’s retainers — perhaps even Alim, the rascally nomad turned water farmer who had helped Omar tend the desalination tanks?

No, he couldn’t have been a permanent fixture, Omar realized. A guardsman might have to travel the length of the empire on the caliph’s business. So might a smuggler or a bounty hunter. But Farris Uddin couldn’t have spent years labouring on the house’s water farms, could he?

‘And what will you get for handing us over to the caliph?’ asked the large, bearded prisoner. ‘More of your blessed immortality drug? You haven’t aged a single day since I left the empire.’

Farris Uddin held up the empty vial that Omar had seen the caliph inject himself with. ‘The Caliph Eternal is not the man he used to be — which, ultimately, is why you are here and why we are here too.’

‘You’re too old to be a philosopher, Udal.’

‘I’m too old to be anything else,’ said Farris Uddin.

‘You told me back in the fortress that it isn’t a drug,’ said Omar. ‘But I saw the Caliph Eternal begging the grand vizier to be given its needle.’

‘Not something that will make an addict of a man, although the Caliph Eternal sorely needs it.’ Uddin looked at Boulous and nodded at the prisoners. ‘Cut their ties and let them stand free. Not the big one, though, his temper runs hot.’

Farris Uddin named each of the prisoners in turn, for the benefit of Omar and Boulous.

‘You flaming unchain me,’ spat the giant Jackelian the commander had identified as Henry Tempest, ‘and it’ll take more than some nets dropped by your flying bloody salamanders to stop me.’

‘I am quite sure of that,’ said Farris Uddin, his features twitching and changing back to the face of the guardsman that Omar recognized. ‘You are a piece of inferior work; substantial, but inferior. Your bones and muscles are so dense that your own glands cannot cope with your form without making an amateur chemistry set of your blood. Our womb mages would not have made such elemental errors with your flesh.’ He tossed the empty vial across to the woman he had named as First Lieutenant Westwick. Boulous was keeping a wary pistol barrel levelled towards the prisoners.

‘What do you think our Caliph Eternal is “addicted” to, sweet lady?’

Westwick dipped a finger inside the syringe, touching the residue to her tongue. ‘Blood!’

‘By Lord Tridentscale’s beard,’ whined the commodore, ‘is that the secret of the Caliph Eternal’s long life? He’s made himself into some sort of vampire?’

Uddin smiled. ‘I presume the Kingdom’s State Protection Board has some insight into the inner workings of the empire — we always catch a few of your agents every year on our side of the border. They haven’t all been shopping for bargains in the souks, have they? Why would the Caliph Eternal need regular injections of blood?’

‘He’s not the caliph!’ said First Lieutenant Westwick sounding astonished.

‘Very clever, your price has just risen,’ said Uddin. ‘The grand vizier has installed an impostor on the throne. Only the true Caliph Eternal knows the secret of the blood engineering which bonds his regiment of personal bodyguards to him. A very useful protection, don’t you think?’ As Uddin spoke, his features began to warp again, this time reforming into an exact match of the young man that Omar had seen in the heart of the palace. The caliph, ruler of rulers, Akil Jaber Issman himself. ‘I can mimic the Caliph Eternal like this, but if I dared to trespass into the Jahan, the beyrogs would rip me apart the moment they saw me. They would know the difference between me and their true master.’

‘But how did they get to the Caliph Eternal?’ asked the woman. ‘We’ve known of your womb mages’ ability to breed shape-switchers for centuries. Jackals has safeguards against them in place and we don’t even have a full understanding of the processes you use to create them. Your defences must be superior to ours.’

‘Yes, there are tests that can detect such assassins,’ said Farris Uddin, ‘and of course, our tests are a lot more proficient than yours, but there is one secret you have not had access to — and that is the true nature of the Caliph Eternal’s title. His immortality doesn’t come from lifelast, although he imbibes the drug too. The drug extends a man’s lifespan no more than three hundred years. You die looking as if you are in your third decade, but die you eventually will.’

‘Then he is a wicked vampire,’ whined the commodore.

‘No,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘The caliph is what we call an enculi, although no one outside of the ruler of rulers’ inner circle should have heard of that word. It is a form of womb magery. You take the flesh of a man — even a corpse’s flesh will serve — and use it to give birth to a child, one so alike the original flesh-giver, that he or she is identical, beyond even a twin’s likeness.’

‘Your people’s blessed resurrections,’ said the commodore. ‘The oldest son of the sultan of Hakaqibla died falling off his horse on a hunt, and the caliph bought him back to life.’

‘Yes, the new son would have been an enculi,’ said Uddin. ‘It is one of the carrots that is dangled in front of the empire’s satrapies to ensure our friends’ loyalty. If a loved-one dies, we can bring them back, at least in resemblance.’

‘That’s the Caliph Eternal’s immortality …?’ said Westwick.

‘At any one time,’ said Uddin, ‘the Caliph Eternal has seven enculi cast from his own flesh and raised in secrecy at the heart of the Jahan, within the womb mages’ lair. There they are reared and taught in isolation from each other, waiting for the Caliph Eternal to pass into paradise.’

‘Seven of them?’ said Omar.

‘The healthy body of an enculi can be guaranteed,’ explained the guardsmen commander, ‘but each mind is unique; even raised with shared tutors, given identical lessons, the same food and training. Some enculi cast from the Caliph Eternal’s flesh will grow to be wise, some will grow to be fools, and some will grow to be indolent or insane. When the Caliph Eternal is dying he is given the current seven enculi’s test results and the cleverest and strongest of them is chosen to continue as the light of the world. Their tutors strangle the other six and their bodies are destroyed. Before he dies, the passing Caliph Eternal gives his chosen child the secret of the blood sorcery that grants him absolute control over the beyrogs and the other biologick servants of the Jahan.’

‘A grand vizier who is also the head of the order of womb mages,’ said Omar, the realization of their predicament dawning on him. ‘He would have been involved in the destruction of the six spare enculi.’

‘Yes, he was,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘And it is now obvious that filthy wretch Immed Zahharl only destroyed five of them. The weakest and most pliable of the six he had installed on the caliph’s throne as his puppet; the Caliph Eternal’s chosen one must have been spirited away soon after his recent succession, before he could consolidate his power, kept prisoner and milked like a cow for the secrets of his own blood. How grateful would you be to the grand vizier, saved from destruction and installed on the throne as the true Caliph Eternal, your ability to command the beyrogs solely dependent on a regular infusion of your own flesh-brother’s blood?’

‘Where is the real Caliph Eternal?’ asked Boulous. ‘If they need to milk the ruler of rulers for the magics that are within his blood, where are they holding him prisoner?’

‘The surviving agents of the Pasdaran used the time the grand vizier’s men spent torturing you to good effect,’ said Uddin. ‘We matched their interrogations with a little questioning of our own. It was easy enough to kidnap one of the grand vizier’s inner circle when we knew what to look for, what questions to ask.’

‘I wish you had grabbed that bastard Salwa,’ said Omar.

‘The new grand marshal of the guardsmen?’ laughed Uddin. ‘A little too obvious.’

‘Where is the true Caliph Eternal being held?’ asked the Jackelian woman.

‘Where else, the Forbidden City itself,’ said Uddin. ‘Mutantarjinn, the stronghold of the womb mages, where the grand vizier and his disgusting new sect first rose to prominence.’

‘Say that isn’t so,’ groaned the commodore. ‘That’s a free city, owned and sealed as tight as a drum by the order of womb mages; crawling with your dark-hearted sorcerers and full of sicknesses and twisted abominations that should never see the light of day.’

‘It is also where the grand vizier and the Sect of Razat’s womb mages are producing the airship gas you have been sent to locate.’

‘You’re lying to me, Udal,’ said the commodore. ‘Another lie to go along with your damned false faces, just another wicked lie to get old Blacky to head down to that dark, terrible place and save your undeserving ruler.’

‘It is the truth,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘My agents were already investigating the strange new source of the grand vizier’s aerial power when the Pasdaran were declared heretic. The airship gas is not from a natural gas mine such as that which your people guard so jealously. Our gas is a product of womb mage sorcery. I do not know how, that is still their secret, locked away deep in Mutantarjinn, but I know it stems from the grand vizier’s position as the head of the order of womb mages.’

‘Don’t trust him,’ warned the young Kingdom sailor, Jack.

‘I told you that I would take you to a man who could help you,’ said Uddin, ‘it just happens that I am that man.’

‘And why should we assist you?’ spat the commodore.

‘Our agents once backed your royalist friends’ fight to try to restore your true king back to power in Jackals,’ said Uddin. ‘It is only fitting for you to help me restore our emperor to his throne. Now, as before, your enemy is our enemy, and together we might bring him down.’

‘You want us to fight alongside Jackelian heathens?’ said Omar, more than a little shocked by the idea.

‘We have been declared traitors,’ said Farris Uddin, ‘so we may as well act like traitors. And your guardsman’s oath was given to the real Caliph Eternal, not the weakling enculi that the grand vizier has sitting on the throne.’

‘And why should we trust a word you say, many-faces?’ said Westwick.

‘Because,’ smiled Farris Uddin, ‘as a token of good faith I am going to give you back your airship — the same one that your fool of an admiralty officer surrendered intact to the Imperial Aerial Squadron without firing a single shot in anger.’

Omar could see that Farris Uddin was smugly pleased by the consternation the news of their ship’s capture caused among the four prisoners.