Jack Cloudie

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Omar dodged aside as a miniature beyrog-like monster slashed at him with its talons. It was even wearing a guardsman’s riding leathers. That dog Salwa is intent on perverting our traditions beyond the limits of all endurance. Dipping its head down, the thing tried to skewer Omar with the twin spikes of its helmet and Omar beat it back with the curve of his sword. There were ridges under its clothes that it moved to intercept Omar’s thrust, bone as hard as armour. If this had been a normal guardsman, he would have been slowly bleeding to death from a dozen cuts by now. Omar’s sword managed to fend off its talons again, as the creature moved them with all the skill of a born fencer — or a sorcery-created one. The real guardsmen had already discharged their pistols into the charging horde, and with no room to break them and load second charges, the fighting had switched to close quarters — talons clashing against steel. Killers who had been trained as the Caliph Eternal’s finest, versus slayers who had been born to it.

Omar’s opponent was joined by two more claw-guards, and he felt himself separated from the main press of the clash. He was pushed to the side against the railings as the mob of skirmishing fighters moved backwards, away from the exit and towards the sealed doorway his friends had used to enter the flesh library.

All three of the claw-guards came at Omar — not in a coordinated way, like real guardsmen would have done, but as jostling wolves pressing their prey for the first choice of meat. Covered in a sheen of sweat, Omar lunged and thrust his scimitar between them, keeping the beasts at bay — barely. They were hissing back at him in wordless fury as if they were serpents. Maybe the grand vizier only required obedience from his new elite, not conversation?

Then, suddenly, there was another guardsman by his side — Boulous. Two blades against three sets of talons. From the corner of his eye Omar noted that the other guardsmen were being pushed even further back down the gantry, but somehow brave Boulous had fought his way through to Omar’s side, leaving the pair of them as a little archipelago of resistance separated from their comrades.

‘They fight like savages,’ shouted Boulous, feinting forward and turning a taloned hand with a subtle twist of his wrist.

‘They are more handsome than you, Boulous.’

Boulous kicked out with a boot, landing a blow on a kneecap that would have left any human guardsman limping with a broken leg.

As the struck claw-guard stepped back, its brother charged at Boulous and the retainer moved sideways, using his womb mage’s robes like a matador’s cloak, confusing the monster as he speared the creature through its ribs. Boulous tried to slide his scimitar out, but something had clicked in the wounded, dying thing’s body, and the weapon stayed stuck. As Boulous was trying to retrieve his blade, the limping claw-guard returned, lowered its twin-spiked helmet and charged, catching the retainer in his gut and sending both of them sprawling back into the railing.

Omar yelled, smashed back the third of the trio, near-decapitating it, then turned around and hacked at the exposed neck of the claw-guard that had struck Boulous. It collapsed and Omar pivoted and unbalanced the last creature, sinking his scimitar through the false guardsman’s uniform and piercing its heart. Swivelling, he pulled off the dying claw-guard that had rammed Boulous, flipping it over the gantry and sending it plummeting towards the flesh library below.

‘I can’t see them patrolling — in the Jahan,’ wheezed Boulous, as he fell back against the railing, twin pools of blood soaking his womb mage’s robes. ‘No style. Give them a guardsman’s — cloak — and they’d probably — put it on the floor and shit on it.’

‘Get up, Boulous,’ urged Omar. ‘The Caliph Eternal needs you.’

‘The Caliph Eternal,’ coughed Boulous, his eyes rolling in his head as if he was trying to find the empire’s ruler. ‘I want — a governorship — from him — Omar. A nice fat — little province.’

‘You’ll have it.’

‘Somewhere — shaded — with trees.’

There was a bewildered howling down the gantry. The claw-guards were falling back, confused, while in front of them the womb mage’s robes that a second ago had been worn by Farris Uddin appeared to be worn by him no more. There was a new face inside them barking orders at the creatures. The grand vizier’s face!

‘Don’t obey him, you fools!’ screamed Salwa. ‘It’s a Pasdaran trick. Use your noses, mark his scent. It’s not the real grand vizier!’

The claw-guards were still retreating down the gantry, and when Omar gazed down at Boulous, his friend had passed away.

‘A forest kingdom for you, Boulous, if heaven truly rewards the deserving.’

As Omar glanced up, he saw Salwa flanked by his claw-guards working the controls of a console, his efforts rewarded by a cry from one of the raiders as the gantry began to retract into the wall behind the guardsmen. There was an open space growing between the citadel’s claw-guards and the raiding party, a space getting wider as the gantry pulled back. Omar’s friends tried to force open the sealed doorway to their rear but it was no good. The floor beneath them was vanishing foot by foot, until the surviving members of the raiding party spilled into one of the tanks below. Its occupants, a troop of stunted monkey-like things, hurled a primitive tirade of abuse at the interlopers. The guardsmen were trapped — even standing as a pyramid they couldn’t scale the tank’s tall glass walls.

‘New blood is always welcome here,’ laughed Salwa as his hideous claw-guards loped affectionately around him. ‘Especially when we don’t have to pay a slave trader’s head price.’

Omar rose up from Boulous’s corpse, pointing his scimitar towards the murderous cur. ‘Face me, Salwa! Set your half-sized beyrogs to one side and face me like a man, alone.’

‘That would be a hard thing to do, guardsman,’ said Salwa.

‘Your steel against mine — show me what the guard’s newly appointed grand marshal is good for!’

‘Ah, Omar Barir. How little you know me. It would be a hard thing for me to truly face you as a man, for deep inside I am not. Do you really not know your Shadisa …?’

‘Shut your mouth about Shadisa. You killed her, you dog. I saw you washing away her blood down the drains of your filthy lair!’

‘The blood of a womb mage’s sorcery — a changeling virus as the female parts of my body were twisted into new forms or fell away. Shadisa was my old name — as much a slave name as the Ibn you once sported. Salwa is the new name the Sect of Razat has blessed me with. An identity created and circulated by the sect, associated with dark deeds before the female “victim” received the sect’s blessing and assumed his mantle.’

‘No!’ shouted Omar. Salwa will say anything, any lie, to save himself from my scimitar’s edge. ‘You are lying! You murdered her!’

‘Ah, my proud, vain little Omar. You are still a slave, a prisoner to the way of thinking you were raised with. I let the old Shadisa pass away, so a new one could rise up and take her place as a power in society — not an adornment.’ Salwa shrugged. ‘The Sect of Razat doesn’t sacrifice women, it frees them. We are the half of Cassarabia that has been forgotten and overlooked and abused. You should appreciate us, Omar, you should applaud the Sect of Razat, for we are the first true slave revolt that the empire has experienced in over a thousand years.’

Omar dropped his scimitar to the floor. The words had to be false, but he had reached out, grasping for the spark of Shadisa that had once fired his love — and there was something there, deep, hidden within Salwa, now that he knew what to search for. An image of the girl his heart had once quickened for, faint and indistinct — the twisted reflection of a chromosome.

Salwa laughed again, a little more gently this time. ‘I asked you to join us, Omar. Become part of the Imperial Aerial Squadron. You of all men know what it is like to have been chattel. The half of the empire that is untapped is about to be freed, and then we will be unstoppable.’ Salwa pointed to the cloud of bat-like creatures circling under the vault of the flesh library. ‘You should have brought a woman here with you, Omar, or one of the sect, and then the creatures would not have sounded an alert. For you and your friends, all the guardians of the old order — the secret police and the guardsmen — you have been outmanoeuvred by mere women. How does that feel, last son of Barir?’

Squatting on the floor by Boulous’s corpse, Omar could find no words, no boasts. Only tears dropping down through the metal grille into the tanks below. Now it made a terrible, sickening sense. No wonder he hadn’t been able to sense Shadisa in the palace until she was right under his nose. She had already begun the treatments to change into this thing, this monster. Sacrificing all that she was, and for what? Shadisa, his beautiful golden-haired Shadisa, remade as this horrific, ugly, power-hungry creature — as much of a traitor as the grand vizier. Of course, the grand vizier is another one of them too.

‘Kill her,’ Farris Uddin shouted from below. ‘In the name of the heavens, Cadet Barir, you must kill that abomination.’

Omar barely even felt the paws of the claw-guards, their talons retracted, as they grabbed him and dragged him away.

I am dead. You have murdered me, and you didn’t even require a scimitar to do it.

By the time Jack returned to the bridge of the Iron Partridge with all the calculations of their gas cells’ tensile strength, the three enemy vessels in the pathfinder squadron were already manoeuvring for advantage against the RAN airship.

Jericho was standing at the fore of the bridge with his personal telescope extended, shouting commands back to the signaller on the pipes station to relay across the ship. ‘Master gunner to run out our thirty-twos and have all quarter gunners starboard and port on short-fuse readiness, master bombardier to stand ready. Helioscope, flash the guardsmen talon wings to support on our forward quarter, I don’t want their draks getting raked in our crossfire.’

‘H-station reports flash from their forward vessel. Shall we flash the squadron some of the enemy codes we used to gain access to their city?’ asked the signaller.

‘Time to fly under our true colours,’ said Jericho. ‘We’ll leave the skulduggery to our State Protection Board friends. Flash the squadron this in Jackelian open signal: We are happy to accept your surrender. Please advise.’

A minute later the enemy responded, the signaller reporting the reply. ‘Enemy captain’s suggestion involves the use of our seats of ease, sir,’ he said, referring to the circular room where the ship’s officers exercised their bowels.

‘Jolly good, that’s all the usual formalities dispensed with. Lieutenant McGillivray, sound general-quarters. All hands make ready to give and receive fire.’

Jack moved forward and the captain noticed the young sailor in the reflection of the viewing port. ‘Their three pathfinder commanders are going for glory, Mister Keats. See now, they’re launching packets from their boat bays, no doubt headed back to the main fleet with word of our presence. All three of their vessels are coming for our throat.’

Jack looked out: three airships visibly growing larger, silhouetted against the moonlit sky with their running lamps burning, a little triangle-shaped constellation cutting through the night. They’ll be on us soon enough.

‘They’re fast studies, m’boy. We call that formation the tricorn hat, the best disposition for a squadron of three against a single enemy. Now — m’gas cell envelopes …’

‘Mister Shaftcrank and I believe the cells will hold, sir.’

‘Believe?’

‘Our specifications were incomplete, captain,’ said Jack. ‘We had to extrapolate their pressure potential from the other properties that were on record.’

‘Well then, you and the steamman strike me as bright sorts. Double or quits it is to be, quite literally. Across to the pipes station with you. Tell the yeoman of the cells to increase the pressure per square inch of our celgas spheres by a factor of two.’

Jack hesitated. You expect him to listen to me?

‘You’re acting master cardsharp now,’ said Jericho. ‘A warrant sky officer. I couldn’t issue a battlefield commission for Mister Shaftcrank; the First Skylord is a terrible stickler about allied nationals and promotions. I’ve already entered your temporary field commission in the ship’s log. If the ship were running under full automation, you’d be of equal rank to the first lieutenant. No hesitation, now. The yeoman of the cells will listen to you and take your commands, or damn his eyes, I’ll want to know why.’

Jack sprinted back to the communications station. The ship’s weight was about to lighten, but his own had already increased. Picking up the speaking tube to the gassing stations, Jack gave the order to the increasingly incredulous sounding yeoman of the cells at the other end.

‘We’ll be running the cells fit to burst!’ the man spluttered over the fizzing line.

‘Does he like it, sir?’ the captain barked.

‘He does not, sir,’ called Jack. ‘But he’s obeying the orders anyway.’

‘He’s quite correct, Mister Keats. Gambling is a terrible sin,’ laughed the captain. The airship’s master sounded like a boy in a sweet shop who had been given a guinea to spend. ‘And now, an order which no captain of the RAN has to m’knowledge ever been required to issue. Pipes, the engine room if you please. Tell Mister Pasco to run up his engines for ramming speed!’

Commodore Black watched the last of the symbols on the door’s transaction-engine lock rotate towards the open position, the little portable transaction engine supplied by the State Protection Board cracking their encryption with smooth efficiency.

‘This is it, lass,’ the commodore said to First Lieutenant Westwick. ‘We’ve followed the trail of locks, and the cipher on our door here is as tough as any I’ve seen inside this dark place.’

Henry Tempest returned down the corridor, having just dragged away the bodies of the womb mages who had the misfortune to challenge the three of them. ‘I stuffed the little perishers in a supply room.’

Westwick nodded. ‘Take a sip more from the red canteen, Henry.’

‘It’s a mortal clever little thing,’ said the commodore, patting the small device. ‘I could have made mischief with this in the old days, I could. When old Blacky was in his prime and the locks of so many vaults and prison doors needed opening. It’s a hard thing to see your mortal genius replaced by a little box of tricks strung together by some engineman in the pay of the board.’

‘Your box still needs people on the ground to take it where the state requires its use,’ said Westwick.

‘That it does, Maya. A poor, creaking old fellow like Jared Black who should be resting in well-earned retirement back in Middlesteel, not sneaking through the empire’s terrible shadows wearing an ill-cut RAN uniform under some stinking robes.’

‘You’re still good for the great game, old man,’ said Westwick.

There was a clack as multiple bolts in the door withdrew. Pushing it open revealed a long dark corridor. Feeling along the wall, the commodore found a switch to activate the lanterns in the ceiling, and as they flared bright, the wall on the right was revealed as a length of smoked glass, and their corridor a viewing gallery for the chamber below. In the middle of the chamber lay a figure covered by a white gown and hooded by a large metal helmet. Coiled around the length of the body was a knot of tubes that seemed to be extracting blood while feeding in liquids and chemicals from dozens of archaic-looking machines that surrounded the figure.

‘Poor devil,’ said the commodore. ‘Like a fly caught up in a cobweb of the womb mages’ dark arts. But one man isn’t acting as the factory for the entire stock of the Imperial Aerial Squadron’s celgas.’

‘It is the Caliph Eternal,’ hissed Westwick. ‘The real caliph. They’re extracting what they need from him to inject into the grand vizier’s pet.’

‘It could be anyone under that helmet, Maya,’ said the commodore. ‘Some poor wretch the grand vizier has taken it into his mind to punish.’

‘It’s the true caliph,’ insisted Westwick, pointing to a door in the glass wall that led to a set of stairs down into the chamber. ‘Crack that lock and get him out of there.’

‘This isn’t our mission,’ said the commodore. ‘We’re here for the source of the empire’s blessed celgas, not the devil that sits on their throne. Are we to expect gratitude from him if we set him free? The gratitude of kings is a poor, beggarly thing, lass. Take it from one who has served a few.’

‘The Caliph Eternal could end the war …’

‘Or he could continue the whole wicked affair,’ said the commodore. ‘Once we break him out we have to get him back to the airship — we’ll have the whole empire after us and no more chance of a quiet infiltration in search of their celgas.’

Their argument was interrupted by the clamour of distant bells.

‘For us?’ asked Henry Tempest.

Commodore Black shook his head. ‘No, big lad. I think our allies have been discovered. But if the grand vizier knows there are rats creeping about his citadel, he’ll surely be sending sentries down here to check in on his prize guest all the same.’

‘Just crack the damn door,’ commanded Westwick. ‘Now! That’s an order.’

Commodore Black began to patch their cracksman’s box of tricks into the door that led down into the chamber, but he had hardly started the work when the floor started to shake. He looked up to find the end of the corridor, filled with huge beyrogs, accompanied by charging, human-sized cousins squeezed into replicas of the guardsmen’s uniforms.

‘Slake your thirst, Henry,’ shouted Westwick, drawing her pistol with one hand and her sword with the other. ‘Drain the red flask. Keep at the lock, Jared!’

She knelt and shot one of the charging beyrogs through the skull as Tempest charged past her. With no time to reload she shoved the pistol back in her belt and drew a knife with her free hand. Somewhere behind the enemy column, a voice was commanding the beasts on.

The commodore urged his box of tricks to its work, cursing it for a charlatan’s lock pick. Focus on the job at hand. Not the thud of Henry Tempest’s fists as they made a drum of the nearest beyrog’s chest, or the wet snick of Westwick’s dancing blades. Not the screams of the dying beasts in guardsmen’s uniforms. Not the captain of marine’s rising rage, his temper tracing the chemical arc of the filthy medical soup he had just downed in a single swig. No time to look at the wild bulging eyes and muscles twisting like snakes under his skin, or listen to the hot-tempered abuse he was hurling at the beasts as they beat at him, trying to overwhelm this wolverine in human form that had unexpectedly flung himself into their ranks.

Finally, the commodore’s desperate work was rewarded by the clunk of the cell door’s locks retracting into the walls. ‘Maya, Henry!’

‘Fall back!’ ordered Westwick.

Their captain of marines had his hand around one beyrog’s throat, smashing it into the corridor’s narrow walls while his boot lashed out at another, the giant beast already doubled up in agony from a previous blow. ‘I’ll hold ’em here, first lieutenant. The little granite-faced goblins will be all over us like bleeding flies if we all fall back at the same time.’

‘That wasn’t a suggestion, captain of marines!’

‘He’s right, lass,’ called the commodore. ‘Circle help us, but he’s right. Run for it and we’ll see how they value their impostor’s milk cow with a knife held to his throat.’

Westwick came running back towards the cell door, while the captain of marines single-handedly fought the beasts’ advance to a halt behind her. Westwick and the commodore had just gained the inside of the caliph’s cell when the front ranks of the advancing beyrogs parted to reveal more of their number bearing the only projectile weapons that would fit their ungainly fists — crossbows the size of brace supports torn out of an airship. They began to loose bolts into Henry Tempest, the first three missiles catching him in the chest and sending him stumbling back, yelling in pain and anger.

‘Is that all you’ve got?’ roared the captain of marines. He pulled two of the projectiles out and charged the front of their ranks, impaling the bolts into a beyrog, even as the next line opened up on him with their crossbows. ‘Who taught you dirty sand-footed abortions to shoot? Your bloody aunt?’ He grabbed a monstrous hand coming at him with an oversized scimitar, twisted it round, and stuck the sharp end into another beyrog as six more bolts thwacked into him. ‘You eat a man’s round of roast beef and drink a quart of beer, then you’ll fight like proper soldiers.’

The first line of crossbow-wielding brutes had reloaded and they put a third volley into the captain of marines, enough of them in the fight now to keep up an almost constant barrage of independent fire.

Commodore Black and Westwick were halfway down the steps of the caliph’s cell when the door slammed behind them, their view of the uneven stand-off restricted to their angle of sight through the viewing gallery window. Little flecks of blood struck the glass in between each roar of Jackelian defiance from outside.

There was a thump against the glass as a dying beyrog was shoved up against it, another thump as the beast’s twin appeared on the right, and then in the middle, Henry Tempest appeared, a human pin cushion, juddering and twitching with each fresh bolt finding its mark in his spine. ‘Perishing — little — sand — monkeys.’

All three bodies slumped off the glass leaving trails of blood. They could hear the feral roars of the enemy’s victory through the locked cell door.

‘We only have as long as it takes them to key open that wicked door,’ said the commodore, moving to pull the cables out of the prone figure’s body.

‘Poor Henry. You died as you were designed to, as you were fated to by your creators.’ Westwick struggled with the visorless helmet, lifting it off the prisoner’s head to reveal the ageless features that could be seen stamped on the face of any Cassarabian coin. The Caliph Eternal. The rudimentary machines around him whined in protest as their charge was freed.

‘Aye now, let’s see what their precious ruler of rulers is good for.’

The caliph was still lying down, eyes blinking against the light and groggy from being pulled from whatever sustenance they had been pumping into him to keep him unconscious.

‘Up with you, lad,’ urged the commodore. ‘You’ve two guardian angels to thank for your wake-up call.’

‘Two Jackelians?’ coughed the ruler. ‘The almighty of almighty’s sense of humour has not improved for the better, then.’

There was a banging at the top of the gallery as the door was unlocked and opened.

‘And neither has the sight of the grand vizier and my surplus flesh brother.’

They turned to see the caliph’s twin in the doorway, with a thin-faced man the commodore took to be the emperor’s chief of ministers. Commodore Black had his pistol out and pointed to the back of the caliph’s head. ‘How long can your impostor survive without the blood of the Caliph Eternal, and still pull off his royal act?’

‘Quite long enough for Akil Jaber Issman to abdicate in my favour,’ said the grand vizier. ‘After it is miraculously discovered that my veins also flow with the blood of Ben Issman.’

‘A miracle indeed,’ said the true caliph. ‘The kind the order of womb mages specializes in.’

‘You have slept through the start of a glorious war,’ said the grand vizier. ‘The sort of war your recently departed flesh father would have loved to have masterminded, little enculi. Plunder and land enough to make sure the only question the empire’s generals and admirals and sultans ask is, “How much of what we take is mine?” Their loyalty has been well purchased.’

‘Put your gun down,’ Westwick ordered the commodore. ‘They know you’re bluffing.’

‘I’m not bluffing, lass.’

Westwick raised her own pistol, pointing it at the commodore’s head. ‘I gave you an order, Jared Black.’

‘Ah, well here’s the thing,’ said the commodore. ‘I’m not quite ready to take my mortal orders from a Pasdaran double agent. Why do you think the State Protection Board really sent me along with you, lass? They’ve had their doubts about the Cassarabian section for a long time. I didn’t even need the proof of us ending up here to save the caliph rather than inside their wicked celgas rooms where we were meant to be — the board knew that the Sect of Jabal was the recognition word being used by the Pasdaran cell inside the Kingdom. The same word you traded with my old friend back in the safe house at Sharmata Sarl to let her know you were one of them.’

The grand vizier laughed from the top of the stairs, his beasts in guardsmen leathers snarling in front of him. ‘Ah, the Pasdaran. They are like the knotweed that strangles a garden. So hard to pull out, although heaven knows I have tried. I find it strangely reassuring that the Kingdom has much the same problem with them.’

‘Unless your parliament has ordered my assassination,’ said the true caliph, ‘I would rather everyone put their guns down.’

‘This is war, your excellency,’ said the commodore. ‘That makes this medals, not murder.’

‘Not my war, Jackelian.’

‘Put your weapons down,’ barked the grand vizier. ‘Who knows, perhaps I will let you live a while longer.’

The commodore sighed and slowly lowered his gun. ‘Well, there it is then, curse my unlucky stars. I suspect I will come to regret this.’

The grand vizier’s beasts in guardsmen’s uniforms swept down the steps towards the caliph and his two would-be rescuers. ‘Bind their hands and gag the caliph’s mouth. We don’t want the beyrogs getting confused by contradictory orders. So, the Jackelian State Protection Board has taken an interest in the methods for floating my airships? I shall have to involve you all in the process, then.’ His cruel laugh cut across the chamber. ‘I shall involve you very directly. Since you have come such a long way, it is the least I can do.’

There was a lurch as the Iron Partridge pulled violently up, the deck slanting and the pilot on the elevator station fighting his rapidly rotating wheel as the upper and lower lifting chambers near-instantly doubled the amount of gas in their cells. Jack could hear the drone of the engine cars, a nasal complaining whine from the rotors as they struggled to match the viciously strong pull of their transmission belts. Alarms were sounding throughout the airship; anything not tied down was rolling and breaking now, from the pots and pans that belonged to the ship’s slushy, to the far more dangerous shells that hadn’t been tied down by the gunners.

‘Vent ballast water tanks, rear only,’ barked Jericho. ‘I want level yaw for m’broadside when we cut their centre.’

Jack clutched onto the side of the pipes station as the Iron Partridge began to level out. Hold, he begged the gas cells. Just hold on a bit longer without bursting. Circle, but we’re rising fast. The pit of his stomach was falling towards his feet.

‘Hold us regular — hold us regular,’ urged Jericho, his eyes fixed on the view outside the bridge. ‘Quarter gunners, ready cannon hoods for movement.’

There was a brief moment of silence, the sense that they were suspended in time as well as the dark night sky, then Jericho yelled, ‘Fire!’ and the airship shook with fury. Even with their cannons rail-mounted on turntables, pneumatic shock absorbers cushioning the recoil, Jack could feel every inch of the anger of the Iron Partridge’s guns through the shaking decks.

From a porthole Jack caught a fleeting glimpse of two of the enemy pathfinder vessels which had been caught unawares by the massive ironclad’s sudden turn of speed and lift. The enemy’s gun decks had been left completely mangled, un discharged ordnance detonating, their crew in air masks just visible in the light of the fires desperately trying to seal rubber hoods that had been torn to shreds. Such carnage. Men pulling off the remains of their cannons from the remains of their friends. Fires and death and burning. Sailors no different from us trying to cope with it. When will it be our turn?

Jack marked the wheeling draks and their guardsmen riders, like vultures rather than hawks, closing in to finish off the carcasses this giant iron beast had left in her wake. He only had a second to stare in astonishment at the devastation of their cannonade.

‘Pipes!’ roared Jericho. ‘All chambers, all stations. Brace! Brace! Brace!’

They were heading for the last vessel and about to tear the top off the tricorn hat.

Omar struggled against his bonds, but he was tied to the chair too tightly. Not that he could have achieved much against the line of claw-guards formed up behind the prisoners’ chairs. Farris Uddin, Commodore Black and First Lieutenant Westwick were all tied to their chairs, not to mention what looked like the true Caliph Eternal. The bound and gagged ruler of rulers seemed to hold a strange fascination for the grand vizier’s pet, who kept peering around Salwa for a better look at his flesh twin. Despite his obvious curiosity, he held back from touching the true Caliph Eternal, as if to do so might negate his own existence in a sudden flash of sorcery. I can sense the difference between them now I’m so close, much good may it do me. He had to work hard not to sob at the thought.

They were inside a dim, dark chamber, facing a mirrored wall. The grand vizier motioned to Salwa to open a large womb mage’s chest and he — she? — withdrew a set of blood-filled vials, making the case ready for the grand vizier. Now Omar knew the truth of what had happened to Shadisa, he could hardly stand to look at the creature of sorcery that had subsumed her body. How could she do this to herself? How could she do this to me? She had swapped her beauty and her soul and her honour for this? Power, the chance to follow the grand vizier around like a lapdog.

‘It is always good to know who you are dealing with,’ said the grand vizier, pacing the room. ‘I believe it was the fourth book of Ben Issman that said that no one should rise to heaven with a lie in their heart or a falsehood on their tongue.’

‘You dare to treat the Caliph Eternal like this,’ spat Omar, ‘the blood of Ben Issman himself, and then talk of the truth.’

‘The blood of Ben Issman?’ laughed the grand vizier. ‘How naive, how hopelessly romantic.’ He pointed to the gagged form of the Caliph Eternal. ‘Meet the much-diluted, much-copied, twentieth-generation enculi of a very distant cousin who managed to wrest power centuries ago from an equally distant enculi of some inbred fool who was briefly ruthless enough to seize the throne. It was said that Ben Issman took five hundred wives. There’s probably more of his blood in your veins, guardsman, than in this pathetic pair. There’s certainly enough of some others …’ He pointed at Farris Uddin. ‘Does the last son of Barir know, officer of the Pasdaran? He’s what, your great-great-great grandson?’

Farris Uddin said nothing as Omar stared at him in shock. Is it true? Was that the real reason why Farris Uddin had rescued the House of Barir’s last half-blood bastard of a son from a bandit’s blade?

‘Special shackles for you, my aged Pasdaran friend. I have extracted most of your abilities from your blood code. You have been gifted with a shape-switcher’s face and the ability to sweat acid and see in the dark. Enhanced strength, speed and senses. How old are you? The amount of trace drugs in your blood suggests you must have been taking pure lifelast for a very long time. You would have served my little enculi’s flesh father for most of his reign. How fitting for you to be here at the founding of a new dynasty.’

At last, Farris Uddin spoke, jerking his head towards Salwa. ‘An abomination as the power behind the throne? You are, I presume, the same as this thing?’

Salwa moved closer and punched him in the face. ‘You should not listen in to other people’s conversations.’

‘Our present forms are a necessary deception,’ shrugged the grand vizier. ‘The empire is not yet ready for a female grand vizier. And my male form should not disgust you, for in a very practical sense, it was you and your kind that made me, my Pasdaran friend. You are as much my begetter as you are the boy’s here.’

‘What do you talk of?’ spat Farris Uddin.

‘Do you remember when the satrapy of Hakaqibla rebelled all those years ago? When the Pasdaran came and executed everyone in the sultan’s family — all the males anyway. It’s not an easy thing to be a twelve-year-old girl, raised in luxury as a princess, innocent and artless, knowing nothing of the world, and then to have all that ripped away from you in a single night of savagery.’

‘You were there …’

‘As were you, I expect. You have no care for what you and your people did to me, do you? What you did to all of us. After such a gentle upbringing to find myself being whipped as a slave, watching most of my sisters and cousins die as we were dragged half-drugged behind sandpedes across half the empire. But I was lucky, if you can call being kept alive after what I experienced lucky. I was the prettiest of the survivors — the slavers made sure I got just enough food and water not to stumble and perish in the desert. Eventually, when I went on the block in Bladetenbul, I was purchased at no small expense by a very old and powerful womb mage who stood senior in the order’s ranks. I became his very special little slave, and somewhere in between abusing me, the sweaty old goat fell in love with what I still was in those days, as did his young fool of an apprentice. Between the two of them, I learnt every skill of the womb mage’s craft, until the pair didn’t even realize that their innovations were more my work than their own. I drove the old goat into a fit of jealousy by my dalliance with his apprentice, drove him into murderous fury, and made sure he pushed the young boy out of one of the towers of Mutantarjinn.

‘It was then that I replaced the apprentice, in every sense of the word, having developed a changeling virus to assume his assistant’s gender. How furious my owner was when he saw what his beautiful little slave had turned into. But he could say nothing without being executed by my side as the murderers we had become. And when the time was right, I slipped a draught into the old goat’s wine that burst his heart like an overripe fruit, leaving me to claim his legacy.’

Omar stared appalled at Immed Zahharl. More of an abomination than anyone had suspected. How similar and yet how different they were. Both Omar and the grand vizier had once been slaves, both risen beyond their station. He freed — indirectly — by her machinations, and she clawing her way back to privilege, becoming a chimera through the darkest murder and treason. How many lives had ended in the fall of the House of Barir, the Sect of Ackron declared heretic to make room for her followers’ rise in the Holy Cent; how many more would die in the war against the north? My father, my people, my home. She had slain Boulous, and worse yet, completely corrupted his beautiful Shadisa within and without. Filled the Sect of Razat with monstrosities made in her own image by sorcery — then filled them with the lust for power and the blood of men. How much better if that young princess had been left to her guileless pleasures in her distant province.

The grand vizier’s eyes narrowed. ‘I should plant you in the torture gardens, Farris Uddin, so I can thank you every morning for making me what I am today. Unfortunately, old man, you have too few years left for me to enjoy your company, so we shall have to put your body to a more practical use.’

The grand vizier was now near enough to Westwick’s chair for her to spit at his feet as she cursed him for a traitor.

Immed Zahharl just seemed amused by the woman’s little act of defiance. ‘I would free you if I could and convert you into one of us. But you are as much a product of the Pasdaran as the old man here. How clever of the secret police to send agents across the border masquerading as escaped slaves. And every girl born of her mother’s womb as much a slave to the Caliph Eternal as his troop of beyrogs. The changes in your body that imprint your loyalty to him run too deep and subtle for me to remove them without killing you. A pity. What an assassin’s blade you would have made for me. But don’t worry.’ The grand vizier tapped the vials of blood that had been extracted from the prisoners. ‘I have your design here. We can have a few more like you bred, I think, with the recipient of your devotion corrected to a more appropriate choice of candidate. The original, I fear, we must feed to the creatures in our stables. Some of them have quite a healthy appetite, you see.’

The grand vizier moved down the line to where Commodore Black was tied up. ‘And here is a strange fellow to turn up as one of parliament’s agents. The blood of kings runs through your veins, old man. I was led to believe that all of the Jackelian royalist rebels had perished with the fall of the u-boat fleet-in-exile at Porto Principe.’

‘Not the ones who swam from the depth charges, lass,’ said the commodore.

‘Eminently sensible,’ smiled the grand vizier. ‘Half the people who serve my cause have switched sides. I rather count on it, or I would be ruling over a very depopulated empire. When the Kingdom of Jackals falls, I think I will crack open the cells of your people’s royal breeding house and see if I can find someone malleable enough to become the puppet sultan for my new satrapy. A little continuity goes a long way in such matters. You shall act as my broker.’

‘Parliament already has a blessed puppet queen locked up in the palace,’ said the commodore. ‘And I would sooner have her the prisoner of parliament’s crew of dirty Jackelian shopkeepers than of some wicked Cassarabian caliph.’

The grand vizier’s smile turned to ice on his thin lips. ‘You’ll change your mind in time, I believe.’

‘No lass. I might feel sorry for you, but I won’t be doing that. Because you’re right about one thing, you’re a creature of the Pasdaran alright. They created you in the cruelty of the life of a girl born to the empire and the crucible of slavery, they made you just as surely as a womb mage creates a drak. They didn’t need a scalpel and blood splicer to do it. Just whips and murder and a slave collar.’

‘They made me strong!’ the grand vizier hissed.

‘No, lass. They made you hard, and broke you into so many pieces you’ll never be able to tell the difference. As one noble-born to another, strength has no purpose unless it’s used to help the weak. Not this, not what you’re about here.’

‘We shall see what the true currency of strength is, you old fool. When there are crowds of Jackelians kneeling on the streets of Middlesteel as my armies march in procession down your lanes. We shall see which of us is right, then. I will give the empire a victory no man has ever been capable of achieving, and how they will love me for it.’ The chief minister finished behind Omar’s chair. ‘And here we have the last son of Barir, the smallest and least significant of my loose ends. Of no account at all. I am told you were a slave on a desalination line, guardsman. How cruel for fate to push you so far beyond your limits. I clawed myself up through society one death at a time to get back to where I belonged. Perhaps you should have crawled back down to your natural station?’

‘I’ll crawl over glass to see you die,’ spat Omar. He struggled madly against his bonds but they were too tight. Too tight to let him slip them for a second and break the neck of the beast who had turned Shadisa into a twisted shadow of the spiteful politician. All this death, fate, all this suffering. Why have you put me here in front of this monster if not to kill it?

‘Just a proud, vain little peacock, that’s all,’ said the grand vizier, wagging a knowing finger towards Salwa. ‘I told you, even in one who used to be a slave, his male pride would prove too strong for him to defect to our cause.’ The grand vizier moved back to the start of the line of prisoners. ‘So, the guardsmen among you came looking for the Caliph Eternal, and here he is for you now, conveniently trussed up. While my two curious Jackelian friends came visiting to see how it is I now have celgas enough to float an armada capable of outgunning the Royal Aerostatical Navy. That too, I have to show you!’

The grand vizier went to a control panel in front of the mirrored wall, and as his fingers ran over it, the surface of the wall became transparent, revealing a spacious cavern on the other side. Pointing to a series of large glass tanks on the ground of the cavern carpeted with decomposed vegetation and filled with a green mist. Within them, herds of white, bone-like spheres, each with six human-shaped arms, progressed slowly across the tanks as though they were drugged cattle. They walked on their hands whilst scraping up vegetation into a round mouth where a double set of teeth was slowly, constantly chewing.

‘The creatures you see down there are called skoils. They have a voracious appetite for rotting foliage and the green gas you see is their sole output. Lighter than air, and you simpletons could barely understand the labours I went through to make it non-flammable.’

‘Save your womb mage’s tricks for someone who will appreciate them,’ said Farris Uddin.

‘Oh, but you should appreciate them,’ insisted the grand vizier, pointing to another series of tanks facing those that housed the strange, sorcery-born creatures. ‘It’s not easy to produce a skoil, only someone as brilliant as I could find a way around the hurdles that have defeated every womb mage labouring on the problem for half a millennia.’

Omar stared down to where the grand vizier was indicating. He had seen such tanks before, being dragged through the womb mages’ chambers beneath the caliph’s palace. The yellow nutrient fog inside almost concealed the poor slaves within, their bellies unnaturally distended to allow them to give birth to the products of the sorcerers’ art.

‘Of course,’ said the grand vizier. ‘The previous attempts to manufacture our airship gas were made by mere men, and my solution would not have been one they could easily countenance.’

As the grand vizier stopped speaking, the yellow fog of nutrients cleared and Omar saw the faces of the slaves, straining and sweating under the unnatural load their wombs were carrying. Bearded and coarse, they were the faces of men!

Farris Uddin turned his head from the sight in disgust. ‘Abomination, what have you done?’

‘When Ben Issman wrote of the two souls held in a body’s flesh, he was talking about something we womb mages refer to as a chromosome. And only the male chromosome can produce a skoil. Fortunately, the work I did on scouring away my gender can be modified for other uses … such as giving a male a fully functioning womb.’

‘You are cursed under heaven!’

‘Perhaps I am.’ The grand vizier shrugged. ‘Perhaps every one of us was. Not all of my sisters died on the long journey from the provinces to the heart of the empire. When I tried to locate my remaining two sisters, I found their death records here in the Citadel of Flowers — where they had spent their final years as producers. Do you know what they whisper to producers before their bellies are given a changeling virus to swell them to a useful size? This is your duty to the Caliph Eternal, do your duty, woman.’ The grand vizier beckoned to Salwa who removed a large syringe from the chest and passed it to him. The chief minister leant close to Farris Uddin’s head and whispered, ‘This is your duty to the Caliph Eternal, do your duty. Man.’

He plunged the syringe into Farris Uddin’s arm. ‘Of course, it’s not easy to give a man a producer’s womb, even now. It takes many days for the changes to complete, and fifty per cent of those we attempt to alter reject the virus and die within the first few seconds.’

Farris Uddin was shaking in his chair, his face turning purple. The grand vizier kicked the chair over angrily, enraged that there would be no chance to inflict the ultimate indignity on the last of his surviving secret police enemies. ‘Wasteful, I know. But there are always so many sons of the empire left.’

Omar looked on in horror as the chest of the man who had saved him from the sack of Haffa swelled up, choking Uddin, as the air could no longer enter his lungs. Omar’s kin, the last of his family, by how many generations removed? Their eyes met briefly as he twisted on the floor, the features of his face distending in automatic reflex, as if all the faces he had worn across the ages were surfacing in turn during his death throes.

‘Sorry — boy,’ the man mouthed, and then with a series of gentle tremors, his eyes rolled to white and the long life of Farris Uddin finally came to an end.

Omar howled in rage, rocking his chair until the claw-guards weighed into him, giving him a taste of their rock-hard fists with their talons retracted.

‘You really are the last son of Barir, now,’ sighed the grand vizier, almost sounding disappointed by the lack of challenges left to face. ‘And you shall honour your venerable ancestors by following in their footsteps.’ He indicated to Salwa that another syringe should be made ready.’

‘He is not one of them,’ protested Salwa.

‘Not raised as one, perhaps,’ said the grand vizier. ‘But he is a male and he wears a guardsman’s uniform. He picked his side when you had him tied to a pair of draks.’

‘I know Omar better than anyone — he is a joke, not a threat.’

‘The woman called Shadisa knew him. Salwa of the Sect of Razat has chosen more aptly — or do you wish to reconsider your answer to me?’ There was an edge of menace in the grand vizier’s words, and suitably subdued, the new grand marshal of the guardsmen delved back into the womb mage’s chest.

‘Better,’ said the grand vizier. ‘One dose for the last son of Barir, one for the Caliph Eternal.’

Gagged and bound to the chair, the real caliph began to struggle madly, and with an imperious flick of his fingers, the grand vizier sent one of his claw-guards to beat the ruler to a quiet stillness with its fists. ‘You have reached the end of your usefulness to me, Akil Jaber Issman. Let us see if it is to be death or a producer’s tank for you.’

The false caliph moved to stand between the grand vizier and his twin, clearly troubled by the implications of what the grand vizier had just announced. ‘We still need my flesh brother’s blood, mother, we still need to milk him for the enzyme that controls the beyrogs and the other creatures of the Jahan.’

‘Oh, my beautiful son,’ said the grand vizier, hugging him close and speaking softly. ‘We don’t.’ The grand vizier indicated the ranks of claw-guards. ‘We have a new imperial bodyguard, more appropriately sized to travel on an airship’s decks. And as for the Jahan, I believe the Citadel of Flowers will make a far more appropriate centre of power for the new, enlarged empire I shall create.’

‘But you saved me from execution,’ whined the enculi. ‘You said I was the son you could never have, that your love for me was too strong to allow one of my flesh brothers to supplant me as the rightful Caliph Eternal.’

‘My darling,’ said the grand vizier, plunging a dagger deep into his pet’s heart. ‘You are quite correct, the one thing I can no longer have is a son.’ The false caliph staggered back, looking in stupefaction at the blade buried in his chest, before collapsing slowly to the floor. ‘By heaven’s right, my future enculi shall be daughters.’ The grand vizier knelt by the dying boy’s side, taking his hand, kindly. ‘Close your eyes, my son. You will be asleep soon. Sleep knowing your mother is claiming your throne. A calipha to rule the empire in the name of Ben Issman’s blood line.’

As the dying boy’s tremors ended, the grand vizier stood up and took one of the pair of syringes being proffered by Salwa. ‘I suppose I shall have to have the beyrog barracks in the citadel flooded with poison gas, now that I can’t control the stupid, lumbering things. Almost as stupid as my little enculi here. He always was the weakest of the last caliph’s flesh children, whereas I have high hopes that you-’ the grand vizier angled the needle towards the empire’s real ruler, ‘-young ruler, will be able to survive the process of becoming a producer.’ Walking up to the true caliph, the grand vizier plunged the syringe into his arm and stood back to watch his shaking palpitations. The grand vizier nodded in satisfaction as the fit passed after a couple of minutes. ‘There, that is the vigour of youth for you. Now, Salwa, you shall prove your loyalty to me. Put the last son of Barir to the service of our sect as a producer, and let us see if his constitution proves as stout as the caliph’s.’

‘Pray,’ said Salwa. ‘Can you not do it? Or one of my claw-guards?’

‘And would that be a true test?’

‘Please,’ Omar begged, as the new master of the guardsmen advanced on him, a strange, conflicted look in the creature’s eyes. ‘Shadisa, do not do this thing.’

‘Shadisa shall not,’ said the thing Omar had once loved as a woman. ‘But I am Salwa.’

The needle plunged into Omar’s arm, drawing blood as its terrible contents found their way into his body. His eyes went out of focus as his chest heaved, the skin around his arm burning, throbbing. The commodore was shouting something to Omar, but he couldn’t hear the old man’s words. Please don’t let me die here, fate. What would be the point of letting it end here for me? Who would you have to torment then? The room seemed to judder with rough chemical violence, his body changing, twisting with the sickness of the sorcerer’s foul art. Then, as quickly as it had taken Omar, perhaps a minute or two later — although if felt like mere seconds to him — the fit was lifted, his body left washed with cold sweat.

‘Thank Lord Tridentscale’s beard, lad,’ said the commodore. ‘You made it.’

‘Welcome into our sect’s service, last son of Barir,’ smirked the grand vizier. ‘We will require litters of ten skoils a time from you, a new brood every four months. Toss the boy in a cell with the Caliph Eternal and the two Jackelians. Make sure you remove the caliph and the boy when their bellies start showing.’

The claw-guards cut Omar’s bonds and dragged him away. He shouted and struggled in panic as he caught a last glimpse of the long line of producers’ tanks below, filled with slaves doing their hideous duty for the empire. Omar hardly needed the stomach cramps and fever to remind him of his fate. I will be joining their ranks soon enough.