Jack Cloudie

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Omar winced as the gaggle of the citadel’s surgeons and womb mages poked and prodded at his body, the spray on his shoulder leaving the skin inflamed. But as the commodore had pointed out before he left the surgery, better safe than sorry; the painful poison-cleansing sorceries of the womb mages weighed up against the chance that the dead grand vizier’s blades had been dipped in something corrosive and lethal to the flesh.

Lying in the shadow of machines the size of the desalination tanks on his water farm, Omar raised his voice above the womb mages chanting the results of his blood-code tests, loud enough for the Caliph Eternal to hear him over the racket.

‘They should be taking care of you first, your majesty. We-’

The Caliph Eternal rested a hand on the slab where Omar was laid out. A prize steak at a bazaar for senior members of the order of womb mages to tenderize. ‘I have just been seen by the order.’

‘They have already purged you of the grand vizier’s poison? So soon-’

The Caliph Eternal shook his head and smiled. He sounded distracted, as if he was talking about some event in the distant past that had affected one of his ancestors. ‘It seems that my blood contained dormant defences. When the first fever touched me, those defences emerged and turned into predator cells that burnt all traces of the changeling virus from my flesh.’

Omar’s eyes widened at the news — his elation that the ruler was safe followed by a more selfish notion. If only a humble guardsman is left infected, how hard will the senior womb mages work at developing a way of halting my transformation into a human breeding machine?

Squeezing Omar’s unwounded shoulder, the caliph indicated the womb mages clustered around them. ‘I am protected by the one true god, guardsman, and my protection will be extended to you. You have my word. There are no resources in this city that will not be spent on curing you.’

The bowing of one of the obsequious cluster of womb mages interrupted the ruler’s reassurances.

‘Speak,’ commanded the Caliph Eternal.

‘The guardsman is clear of the changeling virus, your majesty. He is not infected.’

‘But I had the fever,’ said Omar. ‘My stomach was in agony.’

Even the caliph’s normally ethereal manner seemed thrown by the news. ‘This guardsman’s pedigree includes partial inheritance from a Pasdaran officer, but his immune system would not-’

‘I have not adequately explained myself to your majesty,’ pleaded the womb mage. ‘Unlike your own noble body, the guardsman’s contains no traces of the changeling virus. The resequencing vector was blank and the carrier he was injected with was empty. Any discomfort he felt was purely as a result of the carrier itself, EE4208.’

‘A modified variant of E.coli,’ said the caliph, nodding in understanding. ‘You do not need my protection, guardsman, the hundred faces of heaven were already smiling down upon you.’

Omar felt only confusion at the sorceries being discussed. ‘I was injected, I was sick …’

‘Injected with one of two syringes, both prepared by Salwa. One syringe with the changeling virus, the other with a blank carrier virus that would only make its recipient ill enough to mimic the effects of the real thing.’

Omar remembered the sequence of events, Farris Uddin lying dead on the floor, Salwa holding two syringes, the Caliph Eternal struggling bound to his chair as the grand vizier poisoned him before ordering Salwa to do the same to Omar.

‘But Salwa couldn’t be sure which of us the grand vizier would choose to give the needle to first, you could have been injected with the blank virus instead of me.’

The Caliph Eternal smiled sadly. ‘Do you think Immed Zahharl could ever pass up the opportunity to test Salwa’s loyalty to the sect by demanding she infect you? Or that the grand vizier wouldn’t reserve the pleasure of injecting me with a changeling virus that could easily have killed me in front of his eyes? Salwa knew the grand vizier would order her to inject you, that is why she passed the grand vizier the live virus and kept back the syringe with the blank virus in her own hands.’

Tears rolled down Omar’s cheeks. It hadn’t been Salwa who had plunged the needle into his neck, it had been Shadisa. What had she been planning on doing — faking his death and pulling him out of the producers’ chambers, sending him out of Mutantarjinn with one of the slavers’ caravans? Risking her life by defying the grand vizier. By saving me. If Immed Zahharl had caught a whiff of her betrayal, she would have been slaughtered by her own claw-guards a few minutes after the discovery.

‘A miracle after all,’ said the caliph. ‘Saved by love. I have been witness to so many things over the ages, but that happens far less than it should.’

There was a tone of wonder in the ruler’s voice, as if he had found a long-extinct breed of butterfly alighting on his wrist; but Omar barely heard the man’s words.

Shadisa saved me. Omar hadn’t failed to rescue Salwa from falling off the tower, he had failed to rescue Shadisa. His father’s words whispered across the chamber.

‘We are what heaven wills us.’

Commodore Black was swinging supply bales into the open gondola of the grand vizier’s pocket airship when he caught the reflection of First Lieutenant Westwick advancing on him in the polished mahogany of the craft’s prow.

‘You’ve heard the news about the Iron Partridge then?’ said the commodore. ‘I was hoping to away and rendezvous with her without troubling you or any of the others here. Ingenious Jericho and his mad strategies. We made a grand choice in picking him, eh? Not that the list of candidates was that long to start with, and that’s the truth of it.’

‘No trouble,’ said Westwick. ‘In fact, we’d prefer it if you stayed.’

‘She’s a fine ’stat, isn’t she, Maya?’ said the commodore, patting the airship. ‘All her instruments plated with gold rather than brass. Her blessed wheel a single piece of carved ivory instead of oak. Where do you wonder they found tusks large enough for that?’

‘She’s the Caliph Eternal’s airship now,’ said Westwick.

‘They’ve very particular traditions when it comes to dividing out the plunder, do the locals,’ said the commodore. ‘And I was there at the grand vizier’s end. So technically, I would say this fine little beauty belongs to me now.’

Westwick drew her sabre. ‘We would really much rather that you stayed.’

‘That would be the Pasdaran we, then,’ sighed the commodore, drawing his sword in reply. ‘Do you think the State Protection Board won’t know about you, lass, if I don’t report back? And the tale of how the empire was getting its airship gas is well and truly out of the bag now, too. No Cassarabian will stand for male producers being used as the price of your aerial navy.’

‘All that you know,’ said Westwick, ‘and the secret of the enculi too.’

‘Add one more secret then, lass — why the caliph’s belly isn’t swollen out as large as the canvas of my beautiful craft here.’

Westwick’s eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘And why would that be, old man?’

‘The grand vizier’s wicked sorcery changes the male to the female. How well do you think that such a virus would work on a lass to begin with?’ He shrugged unconcernedly. ‘The descendent of Ben Issman, or the descendent of Benitta Issman? Do you think the grand vizier discovered the sorcery of masking her true gender, or just re-discovered it from the ancient records in the city?’

Westwick raised her sword into a guard pose. ‘You die for speaking blasphemy here.’

‘The gratitude of kings, Maya,’ said the commodore, saluting her with his blade. ‘I was counting on it.’

Their steel clashed in the air between them, the commodore toppling over some of the supply sacks in front of Westwick. She spun out and struck, turning and dancing back.

‘All very fancy, lass,’ wheezed the commodore. ‘That’s what you get when you learn from the State Protection Board’s trainers. Assassins, not duellists. Too much ritual in it.’

He stamped forward, cutting low as she cartwheeled back, stepping into a quick flurry of counter strikes, every blow making the airship harbour ring with crashing steel.

‘I’ve a third of your years,’ hissed Westwick. ‘I can keep this up for hours. How tired is your sword arm right now, how much does it ache from the battle?’

‘You’re a grand beauty, lass,’ admitted the commodore. ‘As beautiful as that wicked blade up your sleeve; the one you’re hoping I haven’t noticed.’

She sprung it and leapt across the bales of supplies, slashing out and missing the old u-boat man by inches. ‘Let me sink this into your heart. It’ll be quick and almost painless. That’s a professional courtesy.’

Commodore Black groaned as she advanced on him a second time, close to exhaustion after the battle against the claw-guards. Their blades slashed back and forth in an intense, intricate and brutal exchange of fury that might have lasted minutes or hours.

As the first lieutenant backed him up against the airship hull, her arm struck out in a blur and the knife sank into the thigh of his left leg, only its hilt visible as he fell to one knee, yelling with the shock of the blow. I forgot how much this wicked game bloody hurts. He raised a hand out in supplication as she twisted around, kicking the sabre out of his fingers.

‘One last secret to tell, lass.’

‘Valuable enough for me to drag you to an interrogation cell rather than taking your head for a trophy?’

‘More of an admission, Maya,’ coughed the commodore.

There was a curious look on the first lieutenant’s face as she drew her sword back ready for the killing strike. A look that turned to confusion as she began blinking peculiarly, her feet stumbling over one of the overturned supply bales as if she hadn’t seen it lying there.

‘It’s not sleep those beautiful green eyes of yours need, Maya — it’s a fresh shot of the womb mages’ blessing against the dark curse of their Forbidden City. A dose that wasn’t cut with so much water by me.’

She sliced out blindly, but the commodore had already rolled out of the way, removing the bloody knife from his leg and sending it spinning across the harbour. Screaming in frustration, the first lieutenant carved her blade through the air, missing the commodore and the landing rocket launcher he was pulling over the side of the airship by a couple of feet. It was Westwick’s last cut before the commodore triggered the large metal tube he was hefting, the landing rocket impaling her leg and sending her flying back towards a rack of expansion-engine cylinders.

The commodore ignored her wailing oaths as he tossed the empty launcher aside and hauled himself into the pocket airship’s gondola. ‘Don’t be too mad at me, lass. The secret police down here will need a new head to gather together all of your survivors. I’m sure the State Protection Board will prefer a known quantity like yourself in that office.’

Westwick swore and sent her sword spinning blade-first into the hull of the airship.

‘Out by a foot or two,’ said the commodore. ‘You know, you were right all along, lass. I thought I was getting too mortal old for all of this. But I am still good for it.’

The commodore fired up the airship’s twin expansion engines, a rotor on either side of the small packet spinning into life. Lighting up his mumbleweed pipe, he puffed contentedly as the richly appointed airship lifted away from the tower’s harbour moorings.