The Empire of Ashes

From the Journal of Miss Lewella Tythencroft—Sanorah, 21st Vorellum, 1600 (Company Year 211)

The successful management of a revolution, it transpires, requires neither military genius nor inspired leadership nor great rhetoric. No, if there is one lesson I have learned over the course of the preceding weeks it is that revolutions require, above all things, paper and ink as well as presses with which to apply the latter to the former.

I have no precise figures for the number of pamphlets, posters, handbills, one-sheet newspapers and other sundry publications produced by the Voters Rights Alliance since this all began but it surely must run into many thousands by now. The doughty old Alebond Commodities Mark II press that had served the Voters Gazette so well for several years eventually collapsed under the strain of it all. Had we not agreed on an alliance with the Printer’s Guild during the early days of this upheaval I doubt we would have achieved any measure of success in rousing the populace, but success, of course, is a relative concept.

Having read the paragraph above I find my tendency to ramble has once more come to the fore. It has been some time since I had the leisure to write in this journal and so much has happened in the interval that it will take too long to document every particular here. So, I am forced to summarise the principal events.

True to my promise to Mrs. Fredabel Torcreek, the Voters Rights Alliance shouldered most of the burden in housing the refugees from the Tyrell Islands. I must confess to operating in a haze of confused emotions for much of this time. Mrs. Torcreek’s news about Corrick engendered as much doubt and consternation as it did joy. It appears he has actually sailed off to the southern ice-cap in search of something glimpsed in a vision. Although, a much more thoughtful man than many in his profession, Corrick was never one given to flights of fancy and the notion that he might throw off Protectorate shackles to pursue something so ephemeral it seemed absurd to the point of impossibility.

Mrs. Torcreek, however, had at least a partial explanation: “My nephew drank the blood of White Drake, miss. Guess that makes a fella awful persuasive.”

Despite the doubts and unanswerable questions that threatened to befuddle my brain, I set myself to the task of aiding the refugees with all the energy I could muster. The minority who belonged to the managerial class were usually able to find relatives or friends to take them in which left the much-less-fortunate majority homeless without a scrip to their name. Many Voter families volunteered to provide foster homes for the distressingly high number of orphans, whilst others gave over spare rooms and attics to the few intact families to disembark the ships. Even so, the Alliance was forced to rent warehouse space to house the remainder. Wild speculation in the markets has had a strange effect on the warehouse district. Some remain full to capacity with unwanted luxury goods whilst those usually given over to agricultural produce and other necessities are increasingly empty. Consequently, finding a suitable location at a reasonable price was not difficult.

The large number of sick and wounded presented a far greater problem. All but a few independent hospitals in Sanorah are under corporate control and, since none of the refugees could provide an insurance certificate, their doors remained firmly closed to us. As might be expected many of the refugees with sick or injured relatives reacted badly to this, especially those hailing from Carvenport who, on the whole, display only a small regard for corporate authority. A minor riot erupted at the gates of the Ironship General Hospital, which degenerated into an ugly free-for-all when the constabulary arrived. More trouble might have broken out if aid hadn’t come from an unexpected quarter.

The day after the riot my father arrived at the Gazette offices with a letter of credit amounting to some one hundred thousand in exchange notes. Thanks to this donation the Alliance was able to secure all the required beds in the independent Sanorah hospitals. I will confess to a few private tears following this incident, my emotions being so aggravatingly variable at this juncture. The fact that my father’s intervention had been completely unsolicited, and I am aware that accumulating such a sum would have required him to liquidate a large portion of his personal assets, still brings a certain moistness to the eye.

In all over seven thousand people were successfully provided with shelter, food and medical care within two days of arrival in this port. I should record that all this was achieved without any assistance whatsoever from the Ironship Syndicate. The few managerial representatives with whom I secured a meeting provided only empty platitudes and reminders of the wider crisis facing the entire globe. If anything, their demeanour was mostly one of irritation, as if the need to provide succour to thousands of dispossessed souls was a mere diversion from the real issue.

Over the years the Voters Rights Alliance has maintained contacts with various sympathetic persons employed within the corporate structure. I wouldn’t go so far as to describe them as “covert agents,” more a small number of individuals disenchanted with their employers and occasionally willing to part with relevant information. Once such person, who I shall name only as “X,” met with me in the aftermath of yet another fruitless approach to the interim Board to impart a singular and important fact.

“The Ironship Syndicate is bankrupt,” X told me. I had chosen a quiet corner in a secluded tavern for our meeting and was obliged to lean across the table to hear, the words being so softly spoken.

“Bankrupt?” I asked, finding myself suddenly lacking comprehension. I knew the meaning of the word but placing it in conjunction with the wealthiest single entity in the world was momentarily disorientating. “What exactly do you mean?”

“I mean they have no money.” X is not a character given to overt emotion so it was disconcerting to take note of a tremulous voice and twitching hands. “The company reserves are exhausted. There is no money to pay the workers in the manufactories. No money to pay the Protectorate soldiers. No money to pay the managers, executives or clerks. They’ve been printing scrip by the bucketload but it’s only a matter of time before a finance house attempts to convert a substantial amount of scrip into exchange notes or gold and discovers they hold nothing more than a pile of worthless paper.”

I must confess to a certain hesitation before asking my next question. Although I had spent much of my adult years longing for the fall of the Ironship Syndicate, the apparent reality of just such an outcome was sobering to say the least. The Alliance had always campaigned for a peaceful transition to representative government and regulated markets, but the sudden collapse of the world’s greatest corporation would herald an era likely to be anything but peaceful. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be true. Nevertheless I buttressed my resolve and asked the question anyway: “You have proof of this?”

In response X handed over a weighty stack of financial ledgers, all marked “Secret—Board Eyes Only” and all showing a zero in the total column.

“How could this happen?” I asked.

“Product.” X let out a laugh at this point, somewhat shrill and rich in despair. “It was all built on product. Take that away and what is Ironship? Just a collection of offices, ships and manufactories, all soon to stand empty. And it’s not just the Syndicate. The Chairman of the Alebond Commodities Board committed suicide two days ago after being presented with a summation of the company accounts. Yesterday, South Seas Maritime issued an order forbidding any of its ships from leaving port, for the simple reason that they have no funds to buy coal or Red to fire the engines.”

X gave another near-hysterical laugh, which soon faded, their features sagging into the pallid mask of a defeated soul. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” X said, rising from the table. “I need to go home, dismiss all my servants and tell my spouse they are married to a pauper. After which, I suspect I shall get very drunk indeed.”

I made a slow return to the offices of the Gazette, clutching the ledgers tight and gazing around at all the people passing by. Despite recent troubles there was still an air of normalcy to Sanorah then. Stall holders still hawked their wares, boys still ran around delivering the Intelligencerand constables still strolled the thoroughfares, every one of them blithely unaware of the calamity that had already befallen their comfortable world. Upon returning to my office I ignored the many calls for my attention, locking the door and spending several hours in silent contemplation of the stack of ledgers on my desk. The decision before me was stark and, I decided in a fit of cowardice, not one I was prepared to make without counsel.

Regardless of our short acquaintance, Mrs. Torcreek had proven herself to be one of the most level-headed and basically sensible individuals I had yet to meet. Also, her recent experience gave her a depth of insight beyond that of my immediate colleagues in the Alliance. Father knows more about corporate finance than anyone of my acquaintance, and was therefore far better attuned to the consequences of the act I was now forced to consider. Having answered my invitation they both stood in silence as I related the news. Mrs. Torcreek reacted with a stoic lack of surprise and a sympathetic shrug. “Trouble’s gonna find everyone sooner or later,” she said. “That’s the nature of the world right now.”

My father was notably less phlegmatic, removing his jacket to roll up his sleeves before spending over an hour in feverish examination of the ledgers. “Seer save us all,” he breathed, closing the final one with a snap, resting his elbows on my desk as he rubbed at his temples. “It’s true. Ironship is ruined.”

I should like to relate that I immediately rose to my feet with a suitably impressive declaration regarding the duty of the press and the rights of the populace to be informed of such disastrous news. However, in actuality I continued to sit behind my desk, staring at my father’s stricken features as I asked in a small, frightened voice, “What do I do?”

He stared at me for some time, long enough for me to take shocked notice of the tears welling in his eyes. “Once . . .” he began in a choked quaver then paused, taking out a handkerchief and wiping his eyes. He coughed before continuing in a voice that actually sounded like my father. “Once I would have implored you to wait, give me time to liquidise the family holdings. And I’m sure you would have had many ugly things to say about my greed and selfishness, and perhaps you would have been right. Now . . .” He rested a hand on the ledgers, shaking his head. “Now it doesn’t matter. A disaster of this scale will take us all down with it, regardless of any action I take. Publish today or publish tomorrow, but publish. The world should know what’s coming.”

“Your pa’s right, miss,” Mrs. Torcreek put in. “People got a right to know, and it’s your job to tell them, elst what are you doing here?”

“Well quite,” I said, voice still small and hatefully weak. Taking a very deep breath, I rose to my feet, thanked them both for their advice and opened my office door, calling loudly for an urgent editorial meeting.

The following day the headline of the Voters Gazetteread: “IRONSHIP BANKRUPT,” rendered in the largest lettering our print set would allow. The story beneath contained a detailed summation, compiled with my father’s assistance, of the information in the ledgers provided by X. A battalion of Alliance volunteers spent several hours making copies of the ledgers which were sent to the editor of the Intelligencerand every other periodical in Sanorah. Copies were also dispatched via one of the few mail packets still operating to every major port in northern Mandinor.

Although the Gazette’s circulation has never been huge, the fact that this particular issue had been distributed for free guaranteed an initial readership of thousands. Our vendors were quick to demand more copies and our available presses were soon producing issues as fast as could be managed. By the evening of that day lengthy queues had appeared outside all of the major Sanorah banks as depositors demanded withdrawal of their funds. The fact that all but the first few dozen were turned away was all the proof the populace required to validate the Gazette’s claim. The previously orderly crowds outside the banks soon became considerably less so. These were not the agitators and campaigners often dismissed as extremists and malcontents by the corporations. These were ordinary people of many trades and occupations, all suddenly finding themselves impoverished through no fault of their own. Windows were broken, the doors to the banks battered down and bank tellers forced to open vaults which were found to be mostly empty.

Ironship’s reaction was swift but unfortunately predictable. A night-time curfew was declared, the Sanorah garrison was turned out with orders to assist the constabulary in clearing the streets. They also made the singular mistake of sending a company of Protectorate soldiers to arrest my good self and close the Gazette. The refugees, having been roused by Mrs. Torcreek, were more than happy to assist in establishing barricades in the surrounding streets. There are many stalwart souls amongst the refugees, some of them former Contractors hardened by numerous sojourns through the Arradsian Interior. Others are products of the notorious Carvenport slums and therefore habituated to use of weapons. Many of these people had contrived to retain ownership of their fire-arms, or found ways to purchase replacements since their arrival. Also, they were all unified, thanks to Mrs. Torcreek and the work I had done on their behalf, in a determination not to allow me to fall into Protectorate hands.

Consequently, the commander of the Protectorate force bearing my arrest warrant found himself confronted by a series of fortified streets bristling with guns wielded by persons well acquainted with their use. Our defences were also augmented by a significant number of Voters Rights Alliance volunteers, veterans of many a protest who had armed themselves with clubs and piles of displaced cobble-stones for use as projectiles.

The Protectorate captain, a resolute fellow, ordered his men to remain in ranks and approached our largest barricade alone, calling out a demand for my immediate surrender and a list of pertinent charges. “Corporate libel. Theft of Syndicate property. Conspiracy to disrupt public order . . .” This litany of misdeeds ended abruptly when one Molly Pins, the clown-faced woman I had first met at the docks, fired a single pistol shot that shattered a cobble-stone barely an inch from the captain’s foot.

“Get the f—— out of here, y’Syndicate p——!” Miss Pins advised to loud acclaim from her fellow defenders. “And take those limp d——s with you, lessen y’wanna see ’em all dead!”

The captain, now somewhat white of face, barked an order that had his soldiers unslinging their rifles, although some began to hesitate when Mrs. Torcreek added her own voice to the proceedings. “They ain’t paying you enough to die, boys!” she called out, standing tall on the barricade. “Fact is, they ain’t paying you at all!”

Peering through a small gap in the barricade, I saw a few of the soldiers exchanging uncertain glances, whilst a number of others had failed to respond to their captain’s order. Apart from the sergeants they were all young, eighteen or nineteen for the most part, conscripts from the outlying holdings drafted only weeks or days before. However, most were dutifully bringing their rifles to port arms as their sergeants barked out their commands. It was clear that any chance to avoid this ending in violence was fast disappearing and I had no desire to see anyone die on my account.

“Stop this!” I said, scrambling up to stand alongside Mrs. Torcreek.

“What’re you doing, miss?” she asked.

“I’m sorry. I can’t let this happen.”

I turned to the captain, raising my arms above my head. He stared up at me in grim satisfaction as I opened my mouth to surrender, then saw his body crumple when one of his men shot him in the back.

For perhaps three full seconds nothing happened. The captain lay bleeding on the street. The soldier who had shot him stood frozen with smoke leaking from the muzzle of his rifle. The other soldiers all gaped at him or the captain’s corpse. Then one of the sergeants raised his rifle and shot the soldier in the head. After that, everything happened very quickly.

“Geddown!” Molly Pins hissed, she and Mrs. Torcreek forcing me back behind the barricade as gun-fire exploded all around. The crack and snap of splintering wood accompanied the multitude of discharging fire-arms as bullets tore at the piled furniture that formed the barricade.

“Stop shooting, Seer dammit!” Mrs. Torcreek yelled, her voice possessed of enough volume and authority to cause the surrounding refugees to cease their fusillade. “They’re fighting each other.”

A quick glance above the barricade confirmed her judgement. The Protectorate company had split into two factions, both rapidly backing away from one another as they exchanged rifle-shots, often tripping over the bodies of their comrades in the process. In the confusion it was impossible to tell which group might harbour sympathy for our cause, although I did note that one was about two-thirds the size of the other. Also, the smaller group seemed to contain a number of sergeants whilst the larger had none.

After a few frantic minutes the smaller group seemed to have fled, whilst the others remained, having taken cover in near by doorways and alleys. A half-dozen soldiers lay on the cobbles, most unmoving, a couple twitching as they groaned.

The renegade soldiers emerged from cover shortly after, led by a scrawny, hook-nosed youth with the broad vowels of the Marsh Wold. “Not been paid for weeks,” he said. “Nor fed much the last few days. Not like we volunteered either. Most of us only got called up cos our folk’ve got land-hold contracts with Ironship.”

He went on to describe the widespread discontent amongst the ranks of the Sanorah garrison and alluded to the possibility that he could persuade more of his comrades to join.

“Join what?” I asked, a question I have since recognised as singularly foolish.

“Why, the revolution o’course, miss,” the scrawny youth told me. “That’s you, ain’t it?”

CHAPTER 18

Hilemore

“They’re safely on the plains,” Zenida said. “Mr. Torcreek thinks another three days until they reach the lake.”

“So soon?” Hilemore asked in puzzlement. His examination of the charts relating to southern Arradsia left him with no illusions as to the distances involved.

“Apparently a stampeding Cerath herd can cover a hundred miles a day,” she said. “Seems a hazardous form of travel to me, but there you have it.”

They were in his cabin, Zenida having just emerged from the regularly scheduled trance. Every time she did this Hilemore would sit in tense expectation of her awakening with nothing to report. “He also said to tell you that his uncle’s mood seems to have improved a little,” she added.

“Well that’s something at least.”

Hilemore rose from his desk, pacing to the window to gaze at the placid waters outside. They were anchored off the southern shore of the Upper Torquil. Unwilling to sit idle whilst awaiting the Longrifles’ return, Hilemore had undertaken an ad hoc mapping operation of this inland sea. It was clear that the charts of this region held by both the Maritime Protectorate and the Corvantine Imperial Navy were badly outdated and in sore need of revision. Besides which, he preferred to occupy the crew with something beyond yet more painting of the hull or another scrubbing of the bilge tanks.

“I thought I’d take a launch to shore tomorrow,” Zenida said, joining him at the port-hole. “Akina hasn’t set foot on dry land for months. Even for a Varestian, it’s not good to lose touch with the earth. With your permission of course.”

Hilemore surveyed the shore, which was much more picturesque than the marshlands that surrounded the Quilam. Small rocky islands topped by trees proliferated amongst the many inlets and creeks, though any scenic appreciation was offset by the knowledge of what lay beyond. “If you wish,” he said. “I’ll send Mr. Talmant along with an escort.”

“Why not come yourself? Take a little time away from your charts. I know Akina would like that.”

“All she ever does is make fun of me, when she’s not cursing me in pirate slang.”

“That’s why she would like it. And so would I.”

Hilemore turned towards her, finding a wary but definite smile on her lips. They were conversing half in Varestian and half Mandinorian, as they often did when alone, which reminded him that she hadn’t referred to him as “sea-brother” for several days now. In Varestian culture the absence of such formality between crewmates could have significant implications. The thought immediately summoned Lewella’s face to mind and he looked away.

You have no obligations, he reminded himself. A broken engagement is just that; the absence of obligation.

“I . . .” he began, unsure as he spoke what his answer would be, then stopped as a palpable vibration thrummed through the deck beneath his feet. The sensation was accompanied by a loud keening sound that seemed to be coming from beneath the ship.

He frowned at Zenida. “Is that . . . ?”

“It’s Jack,” she said. “And I believe that’s a warning cry.”

“Twenty points off the starboard bow, sir,” Talmant said, handing Hilemore a spy-glass as he and Zenida rushed onto the bridge. “About two miles out. Another to stern, similar distance. Chief Bozware has the auxiliary engine on-line and the blood-burner is standing by. Anchors are being raised.”

Hilemore settled the spy-glass on a patch of sea two miles beyond the bows, finding a familiar roiling to the Torquil’s surface he had hoped never to see again. A quick check of the stern confirmed it. Greens, and a damn sight more than we faced in the Cut.

“Well done, Mr. Talmant,” he said, lowering the glass and speaking swiftly but calmly. “Signal the Chief to bring us to one-third auxiliary power. Mr. Scrimshine, steer due west, if you please.” He pulled the set of keys from the chain around his neck and handed it to Zenida, lowering his voice. “Take every vial and report to the engine room. Tell the Chief to pack the blood-burner with as much product as he thinks she can take. Wait for my signal before firing it.”

She reached out to take the key, her hand closing over his and lingering for a second. “You owe me a trip to shore,” she said before swiftly exiting the bridge.

“Sound battle stations, Mr. Talmant,” Hilemore said, drawing his revolver and checking the cylinder. “Riflemen to the rail. All guns to load cannister.”

After the near-fatal confrontation in the Cut he had ordered Steelfine to see to the conversion of half their remaining standard shells to cannister. The armour-piercing warheads had been pried off and replaced with modified food cans filled with rifle bullets and whatever scrap-metal they could find. Such munitions were unlikely to prove as effective as true cannister-shot from an Ironship manufactory, but Hilemore expected them to prove their worth if the range was short enough.

He went out on the walkway tracking his spy-glass between the two approaching Green packs. It seemed to him that perhaps every aquatic Green in the Upper Torquil had been mustered by the White’s unseen but undeniable hand. Perhaps that’s why it took them so long to return, he mused. Gathering forces to make sure of us the next time.

“Take us to full auxiliary power, Mr. Talmant,” he called over his shoulder as the Superior settled to midships, shifting his glass to the western horizon, finding it mercifully clear of enemies. Hilemore returned to the bridge to plot their position on the map table. They were fast approaching the point where the Upper Torquil narrowed north of the Cut, meaning their overall speed would be reduced as they ran headlong into the morning tidal surge. The realisation raised the uncomfortable suspicion that the timing of this attack might not be coincidental.

“Signal the engine room,” he told Talmant. “Fire the blood-burner.”

“Aye, sir.”

Hilemore moved to stand at Scrimshine’s shoulder, peering through the bridge window. The blood-burner came on-line an instant later, the choppier waters of the narrows suddenly seeming to speed towards them as they surged to thirty knots then beyond. “Got some more tight manoeuvring for you, Leading Deck Hand,” Hilemore told Scrimshine. “Though I doubt it’ll be quite as bad as the Shelf. Think you’re up to it?”

“Beg pardon, sir,” Scrimshine said. “But there ain’t another hand on this tub I’d trust the job to.”

Hilemore didn’t feel inclined to argue the point, the helmsman was probably right. “You know the course from here,” he said. “On through the narrows to the Cut. Once there don’t wait for orders, take us straight through.”

“It’ll be heavy going, sir,” Scrimshine warned. “Tide’s likely to be fierce at this hour. Even with the blood-burner going.”

“If it’s hard for us it’s hard for the Greens,” Hilemore said, turning away. “Mr. Talmant, you have the bridge. Mr. Scrimshine’s position is to be protected at all costs. I’ll send two riflemen to assist.”

Talmant saluted and drew his revolver. “Very good, sir.”

“Mr. Steelfine!” Hilemore called as he descended the ladder to the deck, drawing up short as the Islander’s bulky form materialised at his shoulder almost immediately. “Muster all spare hands into a working party,” Hilemore ordered. “Shift the port and starboard batteries to the stern, and stack up the cannister for rapid loading.”

“Aye, sir.”

The lieutenant strode off shouting orders as Hilemore went aft, ordering two riflemen to the bridge and the rest to position themselves on the upper works. “No firing until they’re at the rails,” he cautioned as they scrambled up the ladders.

Moving to the stern he trained his glass on the sea beyond the Superior’s frothing wake, seeing the two groups of Greens beginning to converge two miles off. “They’re within range, sir,” the aft battery’s lead gunner pointed out. “Could throw out a salvo of steel-heads, get a few at least.”

Hilemore shook his head. “Waste of powder. Save it for the cannister.”

It took over a quarter hour to man-handle the port and starboard guns to the stern. When it was done they had five muzzle-loading thirteen-pound cannon lined up side by side, each with a stack of twenty cannister shells.

“When the time comes forget about accuracy,” Hilemore told the gunners, all kneeling in readiness. “Rate of fire is more important just now. The Undaunted was my grandfather’s favourite ship, and he was given to boasting that she had the best gunners in Protectorate history. Four shots a minute in close action, he said. I always swore I’d beat that if I ever got the chance. Don’t make me a liar, lads.”

“Aye, sir!” Steelfine barked, the others joining in with the enthusiasm of men facing death and keen for any source of encouragement. The fact that Hilemore’s grandfather, the legendary Commodore Racksmith, had never said any such thing was immaterial at this point.

The Superior lurched as Scrimshine altered the angle of the rudder to centre the bows on the fast-approaching Cut. There was a noticeable drop in forward speed once the ship completed the turn, her wake broadening as the engine laboured against the tide. Hilemore reckoned their speed to have reduced by at least a third. As ever in the moments before combat time became distorted, the agony of anticipation stretching seconds into minutes. Hilemore heard one of the gunners let out a gasp of relief as the roiling waters beyond the wake began to dissipate.

“Bastards are giving up,” the man breathed, sagging a little then straightening as Steelfine barked out a rebuke.

“I’m afraid the bastards are being clever,” Hilemore said after scanning the water with his glass. The Greens had divided, splitting off into two narrow groups, keeping close to the edge of the channel where the current was weakest. They were near enough now for him to see that they were slip-streaming, one Green leading the way, making the going easier for those behind. After several minutes the lead Green would fall back to be immediately replaced by another. Clever bastards indeed, Hilemore thought.

They entered the Cut proper soon after, whereupon the Superior slowed to the equivalent of one-third auxiliary speed. The Greens once again proved their cunning by veering away from the banks and into the ship’s wake. With the frigate acting as a breakwater they were soon able to close on the stern, approaching in a dense pack that stretched away for at least three hundred yards.

“Range fifty yards, sir,” the lead gunner reported, Hilemore noting how the man’s hand shook on his gun’s firing lanyard.

“Wait for the order,” Hilemore instructed, moving without particular haste to stand at the aft rail, hands clasped behind his back as he watched the Greens draw closer still. He waited until he could see the sunlight glinting on their scales and shook his head, possessed by a curious sense of regret for what was about to unfold. Such foolish things the White makes you do, he thought, turning away and nodding at Steelfine. “Sequential order, Number One. Port to starboard. Fire when ready.”

The gun on the far right fired even before Steelfine had finished shouting the command. The other four followed suit in quick succession. Hilemore moved to the left to gauge the effect of the shot as the crews feverishly began to reload. He could see a patch of red amongst the froth of the Superior’s wake, but the Greens were still coming on apace. The next salvo raised five identical waterspouts amongst the heart of the pack, Hilemore taking satisfaction from the sight of tumbling and torn Green bodies raining down in the aftermath.

“Got a dozen at least with that one, lads!” he called to the gunners. “Keep it up!”

He wasn’t sure the gun-crews did in fact manage four shots a minute in the time it took them to expend two-thirds of their cannister, but if not it was certainly close. The Superior left a pinkish stain the length of the Cut. Dead and dying Greens rolled and twisted in the current, some calling out plaintive cries before slipping beneath the water. None came within twenty yards of the ship’s stern and the survivors seemed to have abandoned their pursuit, milling about in the centre of the Cut as the Superior drew away.

The guns fired once more before Hilemore called out a cease-fire order, the cannister launched at too great a range to have any effect but the crews let out a triumphant cheer anyway. “A good day’s work, sir,” Steelfine commented as they surveyed the carnage churning in their wake.

“Actually, no, Number One, it isn’t,” Hilemore replied. “We appear to have been expelled from the Upper Torquil, making our mission markedly more difficult. We’ll have to find another location to retrieve the expedition . . .”

“Sir!” He trailed off as one of the riflemen he had assigned to the bridge approached at a run, coming to a halt and offering a quick salute. “Mr. Talmant’s compliments, sir. He requests your presence on the bridge.” The man’s shoulders slumped a little, face grim as he added, “There are more of them ahead, sir. Hundreds of the buggers sealing the far end of the Cut.”

Chased us right into a trap, and I fell for it.

Hilemore’s hands bunched into fists at the small of his back as he sought to keep the combined anger and self-reproach from his features. He had ordered the Superior to one-half auxiliary power, which, thanks to the inrushing tidal surge, kept them in a stationary position a half mile from the southern mouth of the Cut. He stood at the Superior’s prow along with Steelfine and Zenida, surveying the mass of Greens that filled the exit from the channel. There were so many it seemed as if they formed a solid barrier of drake flesh, far too thick to blast their way through with the ammunition they had left.

“We could wait for the tide to shift,” Zenida suggested. “Fire up the blood-burner when it does and charge them.”

“They’ll swarm the ship,” Hilemore said.

“We can fortify the upper works, sir,” Steelfine said. “Seal all the hatches and shift the cannon to the walkways.” The Islander’s features were rigid, but Hilemore saw the truth in his eyes clearly; a desperate ploy, but better than nothing. One thing was clear: They couldn’t just sit here and wait to run out of fuel.

“Very well,” he said. “Form parties to gather anything we can use as a barricade . . .”

He fell silent as a roar sounded from the mouth of the Cut, turning in time to see a column of flame erupt from the centre of the Green barrier. The drakes let out an immediate, shrill chorus of alarm as a very large blue shape burst through their ranks. Jack continued to belch out fire as he rose amongst them, turning the sea to steam and boiling the Greens who thrashed around him. Then, as the flames died, he arched his massive body and brought his tail up and down in a blow that shook the ship as he whipped it into the mass of flailing drakes.

“Get to the engine room,” Hilemore told Zenida, who was already running for the hatch. “Full power to the blood-burner!” he called after her before turning to Steelfine. “Take charge of the pivot-gun. Fire as she bears.”

Hilemore sprinted for the bridge, hauling himself up the ladder in a rapid scramble. The order he was about to give Scrimshine proved unnecessary as the ship lurched into forward motion and the helmsman spun the wheel to aim her at the opening Jack had torn in the cordon of Greens.

“Thought the bastard was a coward,” he said as Hilemore moved to his side.

“Not today it seems.”

Flames rose again as they sped forward, Jack casting the jet of fire all around him. The death cries of the Greens rose to ear-piercing levels as the Superior charged into the remnants of their barrier. A stream of fire flashed over the fore-deck, blinding Hilemore for a second. He blinked and wiped at his eyes, looking again to see Jack’s head rising to port with a pair of struggling Greens clamped in his jaws. The Blue bit down and shook his head, the Greens coming apart in an explosion of blood and shredded flesh. Jack opened his mouth wide, sword-length teeth gleaming red and white as he dived down in search of fresh prey.

Flames licked at the Superior’s flanks as she exited the mouth of the Cut, a last desperate attempt by the drakes to bar their escape that did little damage. Only one Green appeared on the fore-deck, a burnt, ragged thing that struggled over the rail to stagger about, coughing flame in all directions until a blast of cannister from the pivot-gun tore it to pieces. Then they were through, the smoke and billowing steam clearing to reveal the welcome sight of the Lower Torquil.

“Maintain speed and heading,” Hilemore said before going out onto the walkway and turning to the stern. He could see Jack still assailing the Greens but now they were fighting back, dozens of them leaping clear of the water to belch fire at his head whilst others clamped themselves onto his coils, biting furiously at his scales. The great Blue let out a roar of pain and rage, his flames incinerating a half-dozen Greens as he thrashed his massive body, but there were more boiling out of the sea. Within moments Jack was covered in them, clinging like leeches to his hide. The weight of so much flesh inevitably began to bear him down, though he fought and bit and roasted his enemies to the end. Hilemore closed his eyes as Jack’s head disappeared beneath the surface in a cloud of steam, his last roar swallowed by a sea stained dark with drake blood.

“Report from the crow’s nest, sir,” Talmant called from the bridge. “More Greens to the east.”

Hilemore tore his gaze from the scene of Jack’s demise, training his glass on the eastern horizon. The Green pack was a good way off, four miles or more, even larger than those they had already encountered and approaching fast. Every aquatic Green in the Torquils, he thought, returning to the bridge. Defeat was not a pleasant sensation but to deny it would make him a poor excuse for a captain.

“Mr. Scrimshine,” he said, “steer due south. We’re quitting the Torquils.”

CHAPTER 19

Lizanne

“I can see where it got its name,” Tekela commented, pulling back on the control lever so the Firefly ascended into a bank of cloud, the tall spike of the High Wall fading from view beneath.

The Okanas family had chosen to construct its seat in the crater of a long-extinct volcano. The narrow peak rose from the sea to a height of well over two hundred feet. The entire south-facing slope appeared to either have been shorn away by the elements or deliberately removed to be replaced by a wall of smooth granite. A massive iron door lay at the base of the wall, presumably to allow for the comings and goings of the family’s ships. Before the cloud closed in Lizanne had used a spy-glass to survey the cluster of buildings nestling in the volcano’s crater, marking the largest as a possible barracks and the more narrow but taller structure opposite as the Okanas mansion.

There was no sign of alarm in the crater or any indication they had been seen. Lizanne had ordered Tekela to stay as high as possible during the approach and make full use of the fortuitously plentiful cloud-cover. Also, the hour was late and the gathering gloom would make them harder still to spot, especially by look-outs accustomed to scanning the sea for likely enemies.

“The island three miles west,” Lizanne said, pointing at a stretch of sea visible through a gap in the cloud. “It’s flat enough for a landing. Wait until . . .”

“. . . dawn tomorrow before picking you up,” Tekela finished. “I know.”

“Steer north,” Lizanne said, reasoning there might be fewer sentries facing away from the most likely seaward approach. “Circle until it gets dark.”

The cloud-cover thinned as evening slipped into night, the two moons casting a long shadow from the High Wall and scattering glitter over the sea. “Are you sure this is the best idea?” Tekela asked, not for the first time. “It’s a tricky piece of flying.”

Lizanne rose from her seat, crouching to open the hatch in the floor of the gondola. “I have every confidence in your abilities,” she said, pulling on a harness. It was constructed from strong, heavily stitched leather with two additional straps above her shoulders that were joined by a steel ring. Once she had buckled the harness into place Lizanne reached for a twenty-yard-long coil of steel cable. One end of the cable was a standard eye hook whilst the other was something Jermayah had quickly put together before they set off. She buckled this device onto the harness’s steel ring before leaning down to reach outside and attach the other end to the half-ring on the gondola’s underside.

“Ready,” she told Tekela, swinging her legs into the opening and using the Spider to inject a large dose of Green.

“Engine off,” Tekela said, closing the throttle then taking a firmer hold of the central control lever. “Descending now.”

Lizanne jumped as Tekela put the aerostat into a steep dive, the force of the wind instantly whipping her back as the cable extended. The Green limited the effect of the jarring impact when the cable reached its limit, Lizanne feeling her vertebrae strain with the jolting instant deceleration. The cable scraped over the engine mounting as she swung behind the plummeting Firefly, and would have fouled the propellers if they hadn’t had the foresight to kill the power.

The aerostat continued to dive for about thirty seconds whereupon Tekela pulled back on the control lever and it came to a stop, the Firefly rearing backwards. Lizanne continued to plummet, the cable tightening to swing her beneath the gondola at near-terminal velocity. The High Wall loomed before her as she neared the apex of the swing, the fortified edge of the crater no more than fifty yards away.

Lizanne reached up and hit the catch on Jermayah’s hook, detaching herself from the cable. The momentum was sufficient to carry her across the edge of the crater and the parapet beyond. As she passed over it she could see only one sentry, face lit by a glow as he touched a match to his cigarillo, completely oblivious to anything that might be happening above.

She landed on the roof of the barracks, displacing several tiles in the process, then sliding to the edge of the roof. Lizanne twisted about and caught hold of the gutter, hanging there in rigid silence. She heard a few raised voices and the rapid tread of boots on cobbles, no doubt drawn by the cascade of falling tiles. Her Green-enhanced ears caught much of the subsequent conversation.

“Could be gulls again . . .”

“Too many fallen slates for that. Better take a look.”

“Do we tell him?”

“Fuck no . . .”

Lizanne waited for the tread of boot leather to fade then hauled herself back up onto the roof. It was overlooked by the parapet and she knew she had only moments before the inquisitive and overly conscientious guard climbed up and raised the alarm. The barracks were separated from the Okanas mansion by a twenty-foot gap, a relatively easy jump for a Blood-blessed stoked with Green, but requiring a decent run up and yet more fallen tiles. Instead Lizanne opted for the shorter jump to the crater wall to the rear of the barracks. It was a rough-hewn cliff-face with hand- and footholds aplenty, enabling her to latch on and descend rapidly into the shadows below.

Upon reaching the ground she immediately sprinted towards the mansion, disappearing into the refuge of the house’s shadowed rear in the space of a few heart-beats. Given the lack of alarm she had successfully avoided the attentions of the inquisitive guard.

Scanning the rear edifice of the mansion, she saw lights in the ground-level windows, but none in the floors above. Intelligence on this place had been meagre, garnered from the few sailors and refugees she could find with some familiarity of Varestian waters. Only one, a former Blue-hunter hand recently recruited into Madame Hakugen’s militia, had actually been to the High Wall but never reached these lofty heights. “They’re a right suspicious bunch to be sure, miss,” the man had said. “Don’t let visiting sailors wander from their docks. Though there’s rumours of all manner of treasure in the upper reaches of that mountain.”

Lizanne, of course, wasn’t interested in treasure tonight, merely maps and documents which experience told her would most likely be found on the first floor. The mansion was a close copy of a larger-than-average Mandinorian country-house, the kind purchased by the upper middle rank of the corporate managerial class desirous of a refuge from the odorous bustle of city life. She had had occasion to burgle such places before and the study would normally be found opposite the stairwell on the first-floor landing. Quickly identifying the correct window, she moved to the mansion wall and launched herself upwards, the Green ensuring she gained purchase on the window-sill some twelve feet off the ground. Hoisting herself up, she was gratified to find only a basic latch on the window, easily opened after a fractional injection of Black. She used the remaining Black to draw the window up and swiftly swung herself inside, crouching to survey the room with her enhanced vision. After a few seconds of squinting at brooms, buckets and a variety of mops she realised she had chosen the wrong access point after all.

Getting rusty, she chided herself, moving to press her ear to the door of what was plainly a closet. She could hear a faint murmur of voices from the lower floor, two or three, all male. The words were indistinct but the pitch was casual, lacking in urgency. Lizanne found the door unlocked and eased it open, seeing an empty landing and two stairwells, one leading up, the other down. Spotting another door opposite the cupboard, she stole out onto the landing, moving in a slow crouch, her feet testing each floor-board before putting her full weight on it. She found the other door secured by a heavy Alebond Commodities double-mortise lock, indicating something of value might well lie on the other side. Another injection of Black and some careful probing later and she was in, closing the door softly behind her.

The room was fully dark and the windows shuttered so even with Green in her veins it took a moment to confirm she had in fact found the study this time. However, it was more of a library-cum–map room, the walls lined with book-laden shelves from floor to ceiling whilst a number of chart-bearing easels were arranged around a large central map table.

Not so rusty after all. Lizanne allowed herself a small compliment as she went to the map table. Laid out on its surface beneath a thick sheet of glass was the largest complete map of the Arradsian continent she had ever seen. It was clearly several decades old from the foxing that discoloured the edges of the paper, but it also appeared to be remarkably accurate, albeit also heavily modified. Annotations in dense Varestian script had been scribbled all around the coast and at some places in the mostly blank Interior. Lizanne’s interest piqued, however, as her gaze tracked across the chart to Krystaline Lake where the annotations became a jumbled, overlapping frenzy.

“Mrreaaoow?”

Lizanne’s gaze snapped to the underside of the table, finding a pair of green eyes blinking up at her from the gloom. The cat slinked out of the shadows and wound itself around her legs, tail swishing. Lizanne ignored it and returned to the map, peering closer at the cloud of scribbles around the lake. Her spoken Varestian was perfect but her understanding of the written form less so. It was a curious mode of text in that it mixed pictography with phonetics, making rapid translation difficult.

“Current becomes . . . a vortex here,” she murmured, her finger tapping a notation next to a series of circular arrows. It was marked with several cruciform squiggles she knew to be the equivalent of a Mandinorian exclamation mark.

The cat let out another plaintive miaow then purred as it prodded her calf with its head. Keen to quiet the animal, Lizanne crouched and gathered it up, stroking it as she continued to examine the map. Large as it was the depiction of Krystaline Lake still lacked sufficient detail for her to identify a precise location. She gauged the swirl of arrows as about sixty miles south of the falls that fed the lake, and at least three miles from shore, but doubted that would be enough for Clay and his Contractors to pin-point it.

She stepped back from the map, turning her attention to the easels that surrounded it. She carried the cat to the closest one, the furry bundle purring as she scratched under its chin. The map was a detailed scientific study of the lake marked with the crest of the Consolidated Research Company. Various depths were depicted and coded in different colours and likely concentrations of “draconic activity” outlined in green ink, but the map itself gave no clues as to the location of what had so obsessed the late patriarch of the Okanas clan.

She examined each of the easels in turn, finding them all detailed renderings of various regions of Krystaline Lake, until she came to one that was plainly an enlarged version of the region with the swirling currents. The arrows depicting the vortex were drawn with more care, some rendered in black, others red and often marked with the Varestian equivalent of a question mark. However, what drew most of her attention was the large “X” in the centre of the vortex. The notation next to it was unusual in that it wasn’t written in Varestian, but something that resembled the flowing elegance of Dalcian. Ancient Dalcian, she decided, recalling what Clay had told her about the original legend regarding the treasure of Krystaline Lake. She didn’t know this script and therefore couldn’t translate it, but was sure if she had it would have read “a vessel of wonder, unbound by earth or sea, come to rest with precious cargo ’neath the silver waters.”

“I do believe,” Lizanne said, giving the cat a hug, “I may have found what I came for.”

The cat squirmed in her arms, suddenly agitated. A flicker of movement drew Lizanne’s gaze to a near by bookcase, finding another cat perched atop it. Unlike the grey tabby she held, this one was black, and considerably larger. Also, judging by the white teeth it bared at Lizanne as it hissed, much less desirous of petting.

“Don’t do that,” Lizanne said, patting the cat she held on the head. “See? I’m nice.”

The black cat, however, seemed unimpressed, its hiss becoming louder still as it lowered itself for a pounce. The cat in Lizanne’s arms let out a frightened growl and tore itself free, bounding off into the gloomy recesses of the study, swiftly pursued by its darker cousin. Soon came the sound of tumbled books and furniture as the cats raced around the room, letting out a chorus of shrieks and hisses as they did so. From the sound of raised voices from below, it was evident the commotion hadn’t been missed.

Lizanne snapped her gaze back to the map on the easel, trained eyes drinking in every detail in the space of a few seconds. Hearing keys rattling in the door’s lock she ran to the nearest window. The shutters were locked so she injected Black and tore them away before shattering the window itself. She leapt through just as the door to the study burst open. A pistol shot boomed behind her as she tumbled into space, followed by a stern rebuke in Varestian: “No firing, shit-brain! I need her alive!”

Lizanne landed amidst a cluster of rose-bushes in the mansion’s small garden. Tearing herself free and ignoring the sting of thorns, she refreshed her Green and ran for a stairwell carved into the surrounding crater wall. As she scaled the steps a man leapt down from above to land in front of her, swinging the butt of a carbine at her head, then finding himself tumbling through the air as she blasted him aside with Black. Below light flooded the crater as torches and lanterns sprang to life accompanied by a chorus of shouts and orders. Loudest amongst the babble of voices was one calling for “Morva! Get up here, you lazy bitch!”

Messy, Lizanne reproached herself as she neared the top of the stairwell. Next time just throttle any cats.

A five-strong squad of sentries charged at her when she got to the parapet, arms locked and grouped together in a tight bunch in the hope it might protect them. They were wrong. She swept their legs away with a wave of Black, sending them all sprawling face-first onto the parapet. Lizanne leapt the struggling quintet, landing atop the battlement and pausing to gauge the distance to the crashing waves below. It would be the highest dive she had ever attempted, but survivable with sufficient Green in her veins and Black to part the water as she came down.

Lizanne leapt, her form perfect, legs straight and toes pointed, arms outstretched then pulled forward and hands clasped together . . .

The air rushed out of her lungs as an invisible fist closed about her chest, holding her in mid air for a second before dragging her backwards. She managed to cushion the impact with Black, sending out a pulse just before she collided with the cobbled surface of the courtyard to the front of the mansion. She rolled as she landed, jerking to the side as a wave of heated air told of a near miss with Red. Lizanne whirled and dodged, gaze roaming the courtyard for her assailant, taking in the onlooking cordon of Varestians. They were all carrying weapons and many were in a state of undress, having just been roused from their beds. The Blood-blessed wasn’t hard to find, a tall slim figure standing apart from the others, female with a scarlet headscarf. She stood with her arms crossed and head tilted in a way that put Lizanne in mind of the cat that had just undone her mission. It didn’t improve her mood.

She sent a contained blast of her own Black straight at the woman’s face then followed it with one to the chest as she dodged aside, Lizanne experiencing the satisfaction of watching her opponent spun into an untidy pirouette by the force of the blow. The woman let out a frustrated yelp, bounding upright in an impressive display of agility and letting loose with a stream of Red. It was an undisciplined riposte, one Lizanne easily evaded with a Green-enhanced leap that brought her to a height of twenty feet, whereupon she pinned the woman to the cobbles with a stream of Black. Lizanne drew both her revolvers and landed astride the woman’s prostrate form, levelling one pistol at her forehead as she tracked the other across the surrounding Varestians.

They all raised their own weapons with a metallic rattle of drawn hammers and chambered rounds. They held a mix of carbines and pistols along with the occasional shotgun. Lizanne knew in an instant the chances of evading so many projectiles at once were non-existent, and given the confident anticipation on their faces, so did they.

“Kill her if you want,” said one of the Varestians, a bearded fellow of broad stature who stepped from the cordon with a long-barrelled pistol in hand. He cast a withering glance at the woman on the ground, who returned it with a resentful frown. “My niece has never really earned her salt,” he said, sliding the pistol into a shoulder holster. “So you would in fact be doing me a great favour.”

Lizanne cast a final glance around at the ring of armed men and women, then slowly raised both pistols above her head. “My name is Lizanne Lethridge . . .” she began.

“Miss Blood herself?” the bearded man cut in, eyebrows raised in apparent awe. However, the awe disappeared almost instantly and he began to voice a laugh that was soon shared by his compatriots, the sound of their humour echoing through the crater. “I did rather think it might be,” he added once the laughter had faded, inclining his head in a grudging gesture of respect. “Alzar Lokaras, Custodian of the High Wall. And before I hang your worthless corporate hide from said wall, I should very much like to know what you’re doing here.”

Lizanne replied with an affable nod, smiling to distract him before dropping the pistol in her right hand and pressing the fourth button on the Spider. Alzar Lokaras swore and lunged towards her as she collapsed, Blue flooding her veins and dragging her into the deepest trance.

CHAPTER 20

Clay

“Thank the Seer for that,” Skaggerhill groaned, slipping from the back of the female Cerath he had been riding. The animal immediately cantered away to cluster with its kin as the Harvester rubbed at the small of his back. “One more mile would have done for me, I reckon.”

“I believe we’re close enough to walk the rest of the way,” Lieutenant Sigoral said, looking up from his map. “Just over twelve miles due east should bring us to the lake’s western shore.”

Clay leaned forward then back to relieve his own aching muscles, casting his gaze over the darkening blue of the sky, broken by Nelphia’s pale crescent rising over the eastern horizon. “It’s late,” he said. “We’ll rest up. Same watch order as last night, lest anyone’s got any objections.”

Since taking on the primary burden of leadership he had also assumed the post-midnight watch, generally considered the least desirable, something his uncle had tended to do during their search for the White. He wasn’t sure if the absence of argument was due to an acceptance of his leadership or a desire for uninterrupted sleep.

“Would never light a fire out here before,” Braddon said later, tossing a few sticks into the small but healthy blaze in the centre of the camp. “Woulda drawn Spoiled by the dozen.” He paused to scan the surrounding plains, the grass whispering faintly beneath a starlit sky. “Now, there’s no fresh sign of their passing for miles around. Used to be six different tribes on the plains, that we knew of anyways.”

“All gone off to fight the White’s war,” Clay said. “Those that ain’t dead already.”

“Makes you wonder,” Skaggerhill said. “If they got any notion of what they’re fighting for. Or any say in the matter.”

“‘Those that serve the drake’s will surrender their own,’” Preacher said, causing the usual stir of surprise at breaking his customary silence.

“Forgive my ignorance,” Sigoral said. “But did the Seer predict any of this? His writings have long been banned in the Empire.”

“He tried to warn the world of what was to come,” Preacher replied. “Though there were few who listened.”

“I have read all the Seer’s words, more than once,” Braddon said. “Don’t recall mention of anything that resembles what’s happening right now.”

Preacher fixed Braddon with a bright-eyed stare of the kind Clay had last seen during their previous visit to Krystaline Lake. “Then you should have read deeper, Captain,” the marksman said in a low, intent voice. “For it’s all there. The Travail is at last upon us and are we not seven in number?”

Braddon gave no reply causing Loriabeth to pipe up. “What’s that gotta do with anything?”

“The Seven Penitents,” Braddon said. “The Seer claimed that when the forces of darkness rise up during the Travail they’ll be opposed by Seven Penitents.”

“Seven Righteous Penitents,” Preacher said, the volume of his voice climbing a notch. “Chosen from amongst the great throng of sinners to stand against the ravaging tide.” He paused, gaze unfocused but gleaming. “I see it now. Though I hid from it for many years. Though I sundered myself from the church and sought death in the Interior. Though I have revelled in slaughter of drake and Spoiled and sullied my soul in the revelling, ever has the truth of the Seer’s word pursued me, until now, at last it finds me.”

He stood, raising his arms, hands outstretched, fingers spread wide. “Will you pray with me, brothers and sisters?” he said, head lowered. “Give thanks to the Seer for his guidance and seek his blessing for the task ahead.”

Loriabeth exchanged a brief glance with Clay and her father before getting to her feet, lip curled in distaste. “Fuck off,” she said wearily before going to her bedroll.

“Wait a second, cuz,” Clay said, bringing her to an uncertain pause. He rose to his feet and went to clasp Preacher’s outstretched hand. The marksman gripped it with all the fierceness of a man clinging to wreckage in a stormy sea. “Thank you, brother,” he breathed, head still lowered.

“Well, why not?” Clay said, looking at each of them in turn and holding out his own hand. “Reckon we’ll be needing all the help we can get before long.”

It was Kriz who took his hand, albeit with a bemused smile. Braddon moved to clasp Preacher’s other hand, extending his own to Skaggerhill, who took it after a moment’s hesitation.

“Lieutenant?” Kriz said, holding her hand out to Sigoral.

The Corvantine frowned in rueful resignation before joining his hand to hers, muttering, “A man would find himself hung for this in the Empire.” He turned, hand raised expectantly to Loriabeth. The distaste still lingered on her face, though the sneer had disappeared now.

“Ma never had no truck with such nonsense,” she said, crossing her arms. “Neither do I.”

“Please, Lori,” Braddon said. “It’s just for a second.”

Loriabeth raised her face to the sky, breath misting a little in the chill night air as she let out a soft curse. “As long as he don’t take all night about it,” she said, moving to join hands with Sigoral and Skaggerhill, closing the circle.

“The final resting place of the Seer is unknown to this day,” Preacher said, raising his face, eyes still lit by the same glow of conviction. “For that was his wish. ‘Make no idols of me,’ he said. ‘My words are my temple and my testament.’ The Seer offered no false promises, no empty lies, that those who followed his words would earn an eternal place in another world or riches in this one. His message was simple: The Travail is coming. And now it is here. Of the Seven Penitents he said only this: ‘When the storm winds born of the Travail blow hardest, when the flames reach highest, when the screams of the damned grow loudest, then will the Seven Righteous Penitents rise. Long will they travel and much will they suffer, but it is they who will quench the flames and silence the screams, though it cost them all.’”

“Well, that’s cheery,” Loriabeth muttered.

“We are Seven!” Preacher said, Clay wincing a little as his grip tightened. “Joined in purpose and now joined in faith. I know the Seer blesses our endeavour.” He lowered his gaze once more, saying, “Heed the words of the Seer.”

“Heed the words of the Seer,” Braddon repeated, Clay and the others doing the same.

Silence reigned for a time as they stood there, holding hands in silent contemplation until, from somewhere out on the darkened plain, there came the shrill cry of a drake.

“Shit!” Loriabeth drew both pistols and threw herself flat, the circle breaking apart as the rest of them armed themselves and hunkered down. “Sounded a mite too high-pitched for a Green,” she said.

“Plains Green,” Skaggerhill said, drawing back the hammers on his shotgun. “Little smaller than jungle Greens, but a good deal more cunning. They move in packs of six or more and hunt at night. Most likely caught the scent of the Cerath we rode here on. Be after the young ’uns.”

“And if they ain’t?” Clay asked.

Skaggerhill sighed and reached for his pack, placing it in front of him and laying the shotgun on top. “Then we’re in for a very long night.”

Either through blind luck or disinterest they spent a nervous night untroubled by any Greens. Clay eventually ordered the resumption of the watch rota and each of them managed a few hours’ sleep before dawn. They set off after a short breakfast of canned sea rations washed down with a larger-than-usual quota of coffee to stave off the lingering fatigue. It took two of them to carry Kriz’s apparatus, the bulky device lashed into a tarpaulin suspended between two poles. Clay had been taking his turn lugging the apparatus when they came upon the body of a juvenile Cerath.

Flies buzzed in greedy swarms around the empty cavity of the animal’s stomach and the many wounds that scored its hide. “Like I said,” Skaggerhill commented, “after the young ’uns.”

“Got a dead Green over here,” Braddon said, pointing to something in the long grass near by. “Looks like its head got stoved in. Guess momma Cerath got herself some vengeance.”

“You wanna stop and harvest it?” Skaggerhill said. “Won’t take too long.”

“No,” Clay said. He grunted and settled the poles on his shoulders before resuming the trek. “The lake’s only a coupla miles away, and we already got us a decent stock of Green.”

Krystaline Lake came into view just after noon, the plains suddenly descending in a gentle slope towards the shore that stretched away on either side. The water was as blue and deceptively inviting as Clay remembered, and at this latitude so broad that the jungle covering the eastern shore was lost to view.

“We’re gonna need another boat,” Braddon said. “Or at least a raft.”

“Need some notion of where to look first,” Clay said as he and Sigoral set the apparatus down. “I’ll trance with Miss Lethridge toni—”

The rush of fear hit him like a punch, sending him to his knees, a pain-filled yell escaping his clenched teeth as thoughts that were not his own flooded his head: A great host of aquatic Greens, seen from below, sediment billowing, Jack’s huge heart hammering in alarm as he let out a plaintive warning cry.

“Clay?” his uncle was at his side, holding him as he convulsed, Jack’s need for reassurance dominating his thoughts.

STOP!

Clay forced the command through Jack’s terrorised babble, reaching into the core of his mind to crush the worst of his fear. Jack calmed, his huge body ceasing its desperate coiling as he sought to conceal himself in a cloud of raised sediment. Clay had Jack cast his gaze upwards once more, seeing that the Green pack had passed overhead now. They were clustering together on the surface a short way off, forming some kind of barrier. Clay turned Jack about, seeing the narrow hull of the Superior cutting the surface towards them, its wake diminishing as it came to a halt. Jack’s incredible hearing was full of the massed clicking and chirping of the Greens directly to the Superior’s front and keen enough to detect a similar cacophony of another pack behind. From the way the sound echoed around he was also able to deduce they were in a narrow channel.

Got themselves trapped in the Cut, Clay realised. Bet the captain’s pissed about that.

He centred Jack’s gaze on the twisting coil of the Green barrier, several yards thick and growing thicker as more drakes swam to join it. It’s time to fight, Jack, Clay told the Blue, which caused an immediate resurgence of his fear. Clay tried to calm him again but this time the terror couldn’t be stemmed. I’m sorry, Clay said, guilt and resignation mingling in his heart. But I need Last Look for this.

He dived deep into the Blue’s memories, pulling together all the messy remnants of Jack’s life, forming them into an ugly ball that throbbed with violence. Clay pushed himself into the ball, fighting nausea at the blood-lust he found. Rummaging through the shifting mass of slaughter and madness felt like sinking his hands into a charnel-house trough. Finally, he found what he was looking for, the still-living core that had been Last Look Jack. It was a dark, twisted thing, denuded of much of its being but still holding on to all that useful hatred.

See them? Clay asked it, focusing the Blue’s gaze on the Greens once more. They ain’t drakes, they’re men. He took an image of one of the Greens and remoulded it, shrinking the tail and growing the limbs, sculpting the head into a ball rather than a spear. Jack’s hunger swelled at the sight, then blossomed further as Clay spread the remade image of the Green to its brethren. Within seconds what had been a mass of drake flesh had become a mass of men, and Jack required no further encouragement.

The shared awareness began to fragment as Jack surged upwards into the Greens, flame erupting from his mouth. Clay felt himself convulse as the subsequent kaleidoscope of horrors played out, man after man roasted or snapped into bloody remnants, except they weren’t men. Even at his worst Jack had never experienced such an ecstasy of vengeance. His mind exulted with it, as if this were the pinnacle of his quest to rid the seas of humankind.

Clay was vaguely aware of the Superior passing by, but Jack was too preoccupied with his feast to pay the ship much mind. Soon, however, he began to feel pain amongst the fury, Clay’s hands scrabbling at his body as he felt the Greens tear at his hide. He started to choke and gasp as the weight of them bore him down, Greens worrying their way past his scales to the flesh beneath whilst flames licked at Jack’s eyes. Clay let out a groan as ever more of the Blue’s blood seeped into the sea and his mind became a distant, withered remnant.

I’m sorry, Jack. He sent the thought after the Blue as his mind flickered in the depths, flared bright for one last second and then died. I’m so sorry.

He didn’t wake until the next morning, blinking the blur from his gaze to find a ring of concerned faces staring down at him. “Told you he weren’t dying,” Loriabeth said, poking Sigoral in the ribs.

“Fever’s gone,” Kriz said, crouching to press a hand to his forehead. “Your temperature was a little alarming for a while.”

Clay shook his head, finding he had only the most dim recollection of the previous few hours. There had been dreams, he knew that, but he had a sense of being fortunate not to remember them.

“What was that?” Kriz asked. “Has it happened to you before?”

“Jack died,” Clay said, climbing to his feet. “The ship ain’t waiting for us in the Torquils no more. We’ll have to find another way back to it.”

He shrugged away their helping hands and turned his gaze to the lake. Jack’s demise kept replaying in his head, provoking a sick, guilty jab at his gut with every repetition. “Uncle’s right,” he said. “We need a raft. Time to find some trees.”

Constructing a raft of sufficient dimensions took two full days, much of the time spent harvesting the necessary wood from the infrequent trees found on the lake’s western shore. Kriz oversaw the design whilst Skaggerhill and Sigoral did the bulk of the construction, they being the most familiar with water-craft. When it was done they had a square platform some twelve feet wide complete with four oars for steering. They carried it to the shore for a test launch, which confirmed it could actually float and bear the weight of Kriz’s apparatus.

“Now we just need somewhere to look,” Braddon said.

That night Clay drank Blue and sank into the trance, his relief surging at finding Lizanne waiting for him though he was surprised to find her usually neat whirlwinds a roiling mess.

I don’t have long, she told him, mind curt and urgent. Here.

One of the whirlwinds swept towards him and unfolded into what at first appeared to be a confused, vaguely circular jumble of scribbled text. Co-ordinates, Lizanne added, pushing a set of numbers into his mind with an uncharacteristic clumsiness.

Ow! Clay protested, the intrusion sending a pulse of discomfort through his mindscape. What—?

No time.

And she was gone, leaving him dazed on Nelphia’s dusty plains.

“Five miles north along the coast,” Sigoral said after plotting the co-ordinates onto his map. “Just under three miles from shore.”

“Three miles is a lot,” Skaggerhill said. “’Specially on a lake as rich in Greens as this one.”

“Can’t be helped,” Clay said. “We’ll go out only in daylight, for just a few hours at a time. Me and the lieutenant will accompany every trip.” He pulled on his pack and moved to take one of the ropes securing the raft to the shore. “Best get to towing this thing whilst there’s still daylight.”

They reached the required stretch of coast by midafternoon, towing the raft along the shore-line until Sigoral confirmed they were in the right place.

“You don’t want to wait for tomorrow?” Clay asked Kriz as she prepared her breathing apparatus.

“There’s plenty of daylight left,” she said, fixing a pipe onto the pump then connecting the other end to the helmet she would wear whilst underwater.

“Seems pretty simple,” Clay went on. “Maybe I should . . .”

“It’s not,” she said. “And you shouldn’t.”

They launched the raft a short while later, Clay and Sigoral imbibing Green and manning the oars to ensure a swift transit, whilst Braddon and Preacher kept a close watch on the surrounding waters. Kriz took charge of the tiller, keeping an eye on Sigoral’s compass as she steered them towards the required spot. After a quarter hour of rowing the raft took on a wayward spin, Clay noticing that the lake’s surface had become much more lively.

“I think this is it,” Sigoral said. “The chart you drew indicated a circular current surrounding the site.”

They pressed on for a short distance until the water became calm again. They had crafted a makeshift anchor by gathering up as many boulders as they could and wrapping them in a tarpaulin bound with rope. Clay pushed it over the side and the raft slowly came to a halt.

“Depth one hundred and thirty-five feet,” Sigoral reported after checking the markers whitewashed onto the anchor rope.

Kriz nodded and adjusted a valve on her apparatus before donning a leather belt which had been fitted with several lead weights. “Green and Black,” Clay said, handing her two vials. “Drink all of it now.” When she had done so he slipped a vial of Blue into the top pocket of her overalls. “Just in case,” he said.

Kriz sat on the edge of the raft as Clay readied the helmet. Even with Green in his veins it was a weighty item fashioned from some old boiler plate with the assistance of Chief Bozware. The plate had been hammered into two half-spheres and riveted together, a hole then cut through one side and a sealed glass window fitted.

“You see any Greens come straight back up,” he told Kriz, who replied with an impatient nod, gesturing for him to get on with it. Clay placed the helmet over her head and settled it onto the padded-leather collar about her neck before moving to the pump. It was a simple hand-powered device that would have benefited from an engine, but there hadn’t been time to construct one before leaving the Superior. However, Kriz had concluded that a Blood-blessed with sufficient Green would easily provide the required amount of air.

Clay refreshed his Green before taking hold of the pump-handle, the lever it was attached to blurring as he started to turn it. Sigoral moved to tie a rope around Kriz’s waist after which she took a few breaths before slipping into the water, sinking down immediately in a cloud of bubbles. Clay kept turning the pump-handle, his gaze fixed on the patch of disturbed water as Sigoral played out the rope.

“That’s it,” he said as the rope stilled in his grip. “She’s on the bottom.”

Minutes ticked by with grating slowness, Clay never faltering at the pump, his eyes tracking the bubbles as they moved away from the raft and more and more of the air-line was drawn over the side. This was a bad idea. The words kept repeating in his head with every turn of the pump-handle, the growing certainty fed by his still-raw guilt over Jack’s death. This was a bad idea. This was . . .

“Two tugs,” Sigoral said, the rope jerking in his hands. “She’s coming back up.”

It seemed to take an age for her to reappear, bobbing to the surface a few yards from the raft. Sigoral and Braddon hauled her closer before removing the helmet. Kriz hung onto the side of the raft, breathing heavily but her sweat-beaded face flushed with excitement. “I found it,” she told Clay, pointing. “One hundred yards that way.”

“No Greens?” he asked.

Kriz laughed, shaking her head. “Not one.” She raised her arms and he and Sigoral hauled her on board. “Let’s go,” she said, nodding at the oars.

“Getting late,” Braddon said, eyes narrowed as he surveyed the sky. “Better to wait for tomorrow.”

“It won’t take more than an hour,” Kriz insisted. “We should take the chance while there are no drakes in the vicinity.” She met Clay’s gaze, an insistent plea in her eyes. “We’re so close,” she added in her own language.

“Captain’s call,” Braddon told Clay, keeping his tone neutral, though Clay could see the shrewd appraisal in his uncle’s gaze.

“She’s right,” Clay said, his desire to get this hazardous enterprise out of the way overcoming his caution. “The more days we spend around here the more likely the Greens will catch our scent.” He moved to take up his oar, gesturing for Sigoral to do the same. “Let’s get it done.”

Her next dive was considerably longer, so much so that Clay used up a full dose of Green at the pump and was forced to change places with Sigoral. Clay’s growing agitation was made worse by an inability to perceive much of anything below the lake’s surface. However, this didn’t stop him continually attempting to do so as he stood at the edge of the raft, staring fixedly into the depths.

“Just gone past the hour,” his uncle said, holding up his pocket-watch. “Reckon it’ll be dark before long.”

Clay didn’t need any further persuasion. “I’m calling her back,” he said, reaching for the rope and giving it two hard tugs. He waited, the rope twisting a little in his grip but failing to slacken. He muttered a curse and began to tug again, but stopped when Preacher spoke a single terse word: “Green.”

Braddon instantly brought his rifle to his shoulder, moving to stand beside Preacher’s kneeling form. The marksman had his rifle trained on what seemed to Clay to be an empty stretch of water to the south, but he had learned by now to trust the man’s eyes.

“How many?” he asked.

“One. Just over a hundred yards out.”

“There’ll be more,” Braddon said, sweeping his own rifle from left to right.

Clay tugged on the rope once more then fell back as it lost all tension. “Shit!” He began to draw it up, hands moving in a rapid blur until the ragged end of the rope emerged from the water.

“Mr. Torcreek,” Sigoral said, nodding at something twenty yards away, Clay seeing a great mass of bubbles rising to the surface. A split-second later the air-line began to twist and coil like an elongated snake. Clay immediately began to haul it up, knowing he would also find it severed even before he got it out of the water.

“Sliced through,” his uncle said. He stepped closer, putting a hand on Clay’s shoulder, though any commiseration he was about to offer was drowned out by the boom of Preacher’s longrifle. Clay turned in time to see a long tail whipping the surface fifty yards to the south, the water flashing both red and white.

“She’s gone, Clay,” Braddon said, tugging his shoulder.

Clay returned his gaze to the water, staring hard into the depths. No . . . Blue, I gave her Blue. He reached for the vial in his wallet, raising it to his lips then stopping as an image blossomed in his head . . . Greens, a pack of them, gliding through the misty depths, their shapes rendered vague and distorted, as if he were seeing them through scratched glass . . .

It was as clear and real as any trance he had experienced, made more so by the near panic that accompanied the image. He looked at the vial in his hand, still full. I tranced with her, he realised, astonishment momentarily freezing him in place. I didn’t drink but I still tranced.

“We gotta go,” Braddon said, shaking him now as Preacher’s rifle boomed again. “You and the lieutenant get on the oars. Me and Preacher’ll hold them . . .”

Clay wasn’t listening, kicking off his boots and shrugging free of his duster before drinking down full vials of Green, Red and Black. “Don’t!” his uncle shouted, reaching for Clay as he launched himself clear of the raft, plunging into the lake and diving deep.

CHAPTER 21

Sirus

Like many older Corvantine cities the port of Sairvek had once been enclosed within a defensive wall, long since fallen into disuse as the conurbation grew in size and the Empire became more unified. It was still discernible amidst the maze of streets and houses as an irregular semicircle snaking from the coast through the outlying suburbs, but the days when troops had patrolled its battlements were long gone. Its principal aid to the defence of the city now lay in the fortified gatehouses which served as both police stations and barracks for Imperial soldiery. Two nights before Sirus had flown over the port on Katarias’s back and discovered there were twelve of these strong points in all. Eliminating them simultaneously would be the key to seizing the city.

He chose mostly tribal Spoiled and former Islanders for the initial assault, they being the most attuned to the stealth required for such a task. Each squad was small, only ten fighters apiece, but in an operation of this nature surprise would offset any disadvantage in numbers. They had been dropped by Reds at various locations in the surrounding country-side, Sirus choosing a moonless night to maximise the concealing power of the dark. He decided to lead one of the squads himself, something that had provoked concern from an unlikely source.

“Who will I eat dinner with if you get yourself killed?” Catheline asked, her apparent flippancy diluted somewhat by the tic of genuine worry he saw in her red-black eyes.

“The operation will be dynamic,” he said. “Requiring swift modification. First hand experience of the conditions . . .”

“Oh, don’t be boring,” she chided, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders. Her demeanour had remained largely unchanged since suffering the White’s punishment outside Melkorin, though any impulse she might have felt towards confiding in him had vanished in the aftermath. “No unwise heroics,” she said, stepping closer to press a kiss to his cheek. Her lips felt soft and warm on his scaled flesh. “We need our general.”

They steered clear of roads or marked paths during the approach to the city, moving in a loose formation at a steady run. Sirus called a halt when the lights of the outlying western quarter came into view. Veilmist had advised that this was one of the wealthiest districts, which meant a lack of people on the streets at night and, hopefully, fewer patrolling members of the Corvantine Constabulary.

Report, he commanded the other squads as his keen inhuman eyes surveyed broad, neatly kept streets lined with cherry-blossom and acacia. There was no sign of a living soul beyond the lights in the windows. The other squads all reported an untroubled approach, apart from Forest Spear pausing to dispatch a farmer who chose an inopportune moment to visit his outhouse.

A trap? the tribal warrior wondered, sharing his own view of the narrow but empty streets of the much poorer northern quarter. They must know what happened to Melkorin.

More likely a curfew, Sirus replied. It’s probably been in place since Corvus fell to the rebels.

So the garrison is on guard.

Against their own people, not us. We’re likely to encounter patrols the deeper we go. Keep to the roof-tops, kill any sentries you find. Otherwise, proceed as planned.

He led his squad forward, increasing the pace as they entered the first streets, then scrambling up the wall of one of the larger houses to reach the roof. Spoiled hands were perfect for climbing, the claws hard enough to dig into the brickwork as the muscles of their remade limbs carried them upwards. The squad covered the distance to their objective in little under ten minutes, leaping from roof-top to roof-top. A few attic windows blazed into life as their boots sent some slates clattering to the streets below, but they had moved on by the time any curious eyes came to investigate.

The squad encountered the first sentry only when the gatehouse came into view, a youthful and bored-looking conscript fiddling with the rearsight of his rifle. He was perched on the roof of a shop opposite the gatehouse, Sirus taking note of his unkempt uniform and unsoldierly disregard for his surroundings. A Spoiled Islander used his short-bow to sink an arrow into the base of the boy’s skull as Sirus quickly scanned the vicinity for more look-outs. There were two atop the gatehouse itself but none in the street or enclosing roof-tops.

Whoever has charge of this place deserves a court martial, he decided, sending the squad into their prearranged assault plan.

His two marksmen took up position close by, rifles aimed at the sentries on the gatehouse roof, whilst Sirus and the rest of the squad descended to a shadowed alley. He paused for a moment as they prepared their munitions, confirming that the other squads were all in position, then struck a match and touched it to the fuse of the grenade in his hand.

The two marksmen fired as they charged across the street, Sirus glancing up to see the two sentries falling back from the parapet. When they were close enough he threw his grenade, the smoke from the fuse describing an elegant arc as it flew through the narrow gun-port in the gatehouse’s upper floor. The rest of the squad followed suit, save for one who sprinted forward to lay his grenade against the building’s heavy door. The multiple explosions cast an instant pall of dust and smoke over the entire street, Sirus leading his squad through it to hurdle the remnants of the door and charge inside.

A Corvantine sergeant came stumbling down a spiral staircase to Sirus’s left, hands clutching at a bloodied face, then falling dead as one of the tribals slammed the spike of her war-club into his back. The other soldiers on the ground floor were dispatched with similar swiftness, each of them too stunned to offer resistance. Sirus led the squad up the stairs, lighting another grenade then casting it ahead of him. They crouched in the stairwell, waiting for the explosion and when it came charged into the resultant carnage to cut down any survivors. They repeated the process until they reached the roof, finding both sentries dead, each with a bullet-hole through the forehead. The entire assault had taken less than ten minutes.

Sirus checked on the other squads, finding all had met with similar success apart from one who had the misfortune to encounter a Blood Cadre agent in the dock-side gatehouse. The woman clearly had a good deal of experience from the way she set about killing his Spoiled, crushing the skulls of three in quick succession before lighting the rest on fire. Despite this Sirus considered the assault a success, since the agent had done them the service of setting light to the gatehouse before making good her escape.

It’s done, he told Catheline as she watched the distant port from the deck of the Malign Influence. Send them.

You see, Marshal, she said, casting her thoughts wide so as to encompass Morradin’s mind. This is how it should be done.

She shoved Morradin’s dark, envious thoughts aside to share her vision with Sirus, his mind filling with the sight of the army’s entire contingent of Reds alighting from the decks of the fleet, each one carrying Greens in their talons. They’ll spare the docks and the harbour, she said. Just as you asked. We do need more ships, after all.

Veilmist had calculated a carefully co-ordinated sequence in which the fires would be set. Sirus expressed doubts that the drakes would be capable of keeping to such a complex plan but Catheline assured him it wouldn’t be an issue. Even so, he noticed she had spent several hours in silent communion with the White before giving the final assent to his stratagem. It needed something from me . . . the words for which she had been punished replaying in his head as he watched her entwine herself about the beast’s forelegs, both she and the White barely seeming to breathe as their minds touched.

In the event, the drakes kept rigidly to their allotted schedule, first setting fire to the market square near the docks, then the houses to the east and west. There was no repeat of the mass, uncontrolled conflagration that had consumed Melkorin, instead the fires advanced across the city from south to north in a steady progression that had the population fleeing before it. Streets became choked with people, some clutching bundles of hastily gathered belongings, others herding screaming children. Those who attempted to flee to the east or west found themselves menaced by packs of Greens and forced into an unco-ordinated horde which by morning had begun to straggle in loose order along the region’s principal road. This highway led into a shallow river valley to the north where Marshal Morradin waited with seventy thousand Spoiled. The first conversions began by the end of the day.

Sporadic resistance had flared up in the city as remnants of the Sairvek garrison mounted a few desperate and easily contained counter-attacks. The Blood Cadre agent made a reappearance as the fire reached the grand square at the centre of the city. She proceeded to put on a spectacular display of Blood-blessed abilities that left a dozen Spoiled dead along with several Greens. Her valiant stand came to an end when Katarias descended from the sky to bathe the woman in a torrent of fire, leaving her a pile of smoking ash on the square’s cobbled surface. Sirus made a well-concealed mental note to learn her name if he ever got the chance.

“Four thousand two hundred and seventy conversions already,” Veilmist reported to the conference of captains two days later after they gathered aboard the Malign Influence. “The overall yield is projected to exceed fifty thousand by the end of the week. There are numerous villages in the region which are adding to the total.”

“Over twice the yield at Melkorin,” Catheline observed, arching an eyebrow at Morradin. “Quite impressive, wouldn’t you agree, Marshal?”

Morradin’s eyes flicked to Sirus before he replied in a colourless mutter, “Yes, an impressive victory won against minimal opposition.”

Catheline’s expression darkened a fraction and might have led to more punishment if Sirus hadn’t added, “The Marshal is correct. Opposition was weak here, and poorly organised. From the intelligence we have gleaned it seems the city authorities had been rendered into a state of disarray by the revolution. Some wanted to send envoys to the rebels, but the majority held loyalist sympathies. In the face of mounting discord the garrison commander declared martial law some weeks ago, apparently at the behest of the local Cadre representative.”

“That heroic bitch you were so impressed by, you mean?” Catheline said, Sirus detecting a faint trickle of jealousy leaking from her thoughts.

“Yes,” he said, seeing little point in subterfuge. She always saw more than he suspected and considered himself fortunate she hadn’t yet uncovered his hidden machinations. “The point is we can’t expect opposition to be so ineffective in future. Word of what happened here will already be spreading. Fear will breed unity.”

Catheline lowered her gaze to the map of the region, finger tapping at the port of Subarisk some sixty miles westward. “Our next source of recruits. It’s the largest port on the coast, is it not?”

“Over two million inhabitants,” Veilmist said. “Defended by a full division of Imperial troops and a seven-strong flotilla of warships.”

“The harbour wall is formidable,” Sirus added. “Gun batteries on the wall itself and a series of island forts defending the approaches.”

“But we have lots of lovely new ships,” Catheline said. “Do we not?”

“We captured thirty-three merchant vessels in Melkorin harbour,” Sirus confirmed. “But only one warship, an aged customs cutter with only three guns.”

“You’re saying we can’t take this port?” she asked, voice pitched into a soft, intent murmur as she surveyed each Spoiled at the table. “But, you see, that can’t be right. For I want it, and He wants it.” She fixed Sirus with as cold a stare as she had ever shown him. “Find a way, General,” she said before sweeping from the room, Sirus quelling the surge of self-annoyance for enjoying the perfume she left in her wake.

“An overland march will take too long.” Morradin sucked deeply on a short, sweet-smelling cigarillo, the tip glowing in the dusky gloom. “By the time we advance within striking distance they’ll have had plenty of time to fortify their inland defences. Plus we don’t have anywhere near enough artillery for a siege.”

After a week of fruitless pondering Sirus had called him to the roof of the dock-side gatehouse for a discussion. Any enjoyment of the marshal’s resentment at being summoned by someone he still considered an inferior was diminished somewhat by their shared dilemma. This meeting could have been conducted mentally but the marshal had developed an ability to shield his thoughts almost as well-honed as Sirus’s own. Whereas he used fear, Morradin’s mental walls were forged from anger. Sirus could feel it now, though outwardly the marshal seemed oddly affable as he puffed away on his cigarillo, stubby claws scratching at his spines in gloomy contemplation, betraying no indication of the constantly stoked rage within.

“So it has to be a sea-borne assault,” Sirus said. They shared a memorised image of the map detailing the port of Subarisk and the six island forts that guarded the coastal approaches.

“The fortifications were designed a century ago by the great military architect Zevaris Lek Akiv Torlak,” Morradin said. “Clearly a man who knew his business. We’d need at least a thousand troops to take each one, and they’ll be attacking under fire and in daylight, since the landing sites are only accessible with the morning tide.”

“We augment the attack with Reds,” Sirus said. “Assault them from the air and the sea at the same time.”

Morradin summoned another image, a pen-and-ink diagram of something that resembled a brick sculpture of a legless tortoise. “These aren’t ordinary fortifications, boy,” he said. “Domed roofs to deflect plunging shot, walls ten feet thick and a battery of twenty-pounders, which means they have enough range to provide fire support to the neighbouring forts. And even if we do manage to subdue the outer defences, we still have the harbour wall to contend with. As I said, Torlak knew his business.”

“Are you saying the place is impregnable?”

Morradin’s eyes narrowed behind the smoke as he took another deep drag. “Nowhere’s impregnable, boy,” he said, “if you’re prepared to spill enough blood. Your stealthy tricks won’t help us at Sairvek. This is my kind of battle. Something I think you already know, else why would you bring me here?”

Sirus stiffened a little as the barb struck home, finding himself irked by how the truth jabbed at his pride. Pride in slaughter, he thought, letting the fear rise to mask the self-disgust. On impulse he reached out to Morradin mentally, colouring the thought with mingled images of the White and Catheline’s red-black eyes. Any eavesdropping mind would hopefully mistake what followed for a shared terror of the consequences of failure.

Do you like this life, Marshal? he asked Morradin, watching his eyes narrow further as the emotionless question slipped through the torrent of fear.

You are full of tricks, aren’t you? Morradin returned, taking the cue to stoke his own fears along with a fresh bout of anger. You sure she can’t hear us?

No, but we’ll find out very soon if she can. Do you have an answer for me?

This life? Morradin let smoke seep from his nostrils before raising his hand and stubbing the cigarillo’s burning tip out on the palm. Can barely feel this, he commented. And by tomorrow it’ll have healed. Can’t deny the gifts we’ve been given.

Or the lives we’ve taken, the children now being hunted in the hills by the monsters we serve. We leave nothing but ash and grief in our wake.

As armies have always done. And I never before had command of an army like this.

Except you don’t. I do.

Morradin’s anger rose again, this time coloured by some authentic heat, and he revealed elongated teeth in a grin. For now. She’ll tire of you soon enough. I know the type. Beauty and privilege were ever a toxic combination. And let’s not forget the fact that she’s completely fucking insane.

I know. Something which doesn’t bode well for any of us.

Morradin’s grin subsided into a glower. You ask if I like this life. Of course I don’t. I hate it. I was not born to be a slave.

Nor was anyone. But what if there was a way to free us. All of us?

Sirus felt a sour, despairing note creep into Morradin’s mind. To date I have tried to shoot myself six times, the marshal told him, playing out a series of memories. A room in Morsvale, Morradin staring at his Spoiled visage in the mirror, a pistol pressed to his temple. He pulled the trigger and the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Another memory, this time in the Barrier Isles, the cold metal of the pistol’s barrel sliding over his tongue, pressing against the roof of his mouth. Another pull of the trigger, another dry click from the hammer. Then again during the voyage to Feros, then again during the hill-country campaign . . .

I did load the pistol, Morradin went on as the final fruitless suicide attempt played out, this one only yesterday. Or rather I remember loading the pistol, but each time when I looked again it was empty. Somehow the White knew and changed my thoughts accordingly. If you ever try it, you’ll probably discover the same thing. So, how exactly do you intend to free us from a nightmare crafted by a being that knows our thoughts?

I don’t know yet, Sirus confessed. But I do know it can only happen if we act as one. Not just you and me, all of us.

There are Spoiled in this army who love their new lives. What for us is torment is paradise to them.

Unity of purpose is the only thing that will free us. We’ll have to ensure there are less of them to pollute our thoughts, and we have a very costly engagement to plan, do we not?

He withdrew his thoughts, speaking aloud after a silence that had lasted only a few seconds. “Your plan, Marshal?”

Morradin was wise enough to colour his mind with a sense of triumph before replying. Catheline, should she be listening, would expect no less. “Tell me,” he said. “Have you ever heard of a Protectorate naval hero named Racksmith?”

CHAPTER 22

Lizanne

It was only as the Blue began to dissipate in her veins that Clay chose to appear in the trance, leaving barely a few seconds for her to share the information she had obtained. The trance evaporated before she could be sure he had acquired the shared memory, or learn anything about his current circumstances.

Lizanne blinked into full consciousness, finding herself lying on the stone floor of a narrow cell. The walls were windowless rough-hewn rock and a heavy, iron-bracketed door barred the exit. The Spider was gone from her wrist and her feet were bare and numb with cold. Her captors had evidently been thorough enough to rob her of the product concealed in the heels of her boots.

She rose into a sitting position, rubbing her benumbed feet and replaying the unsuccessful mission in her head. Failure was not a sensation she enjoyed but rigorous and objective self-examination were a core part of her training. Too long playing the politician, she thought, grimacing as a vestige of feeling returned to her feet. And overconfidence, she admitted after further reflection. It’s unhealthy to believe one’s own legend.

There was a snicking sound from the door and she looked up to see a pair of dark, hostile eyes regarding her through a small slat. The eyes were female and it took Lizanne a moment to recognise the Blood-blessed woman she had come close to killing the night before.

“You were lucky,” the woman said, breaking a lengthy silence.

“No,” Lizanne said, returning the stare, face impassive. “I was better.”

The eyes narrowed and the slat slid shut with a loud clatter followed shortly after by the rattle of a lock and key. The door swung open on squealing hinges, revealing the Blood-blessed woman standing with a pistol in hand. Two burly pirates stood on either side of her, both bearing shotguns.

“Get up,” the woman said, gesturing with the pistol. “He wants to see you.”

Lizanne was surprised to find herself unmanacled as the woman led her along a cramped tunnel, the two shotgun-carrying guards at her back. They assume I’m no threat without product, she surmised, watching how the Varestian woman moved with an air of studied nonchalance. A foolish miscalculation.

Throughout the subsequent journey she identified three separate occasions when it would have been a relatively simple matter to subdue the woman, take her pistol and kill the two guards. But that would have left her isolated in an unfamiliar locale and, unless the woman had indulged the additional misjudgement of carrying product on her person, with no practical means of escaping this rock.

The tunnel eventually opened out into a broad platform set into the wall of a huge, wind-gusted chasm. Looking to her right, Lizanne saw that a complete section of the chasm was formed of a massive, smooth edifice and realised she was viewing the High Wall from the inside. Glancing down, she could see a placid lagoon and a wharf where half a dozen ships were moored. Despite her circumstances she couldn’t help but be impressed by the scale of this place and the ambition of its construction.

“Even your Protectorate couldn’t take it,” the woman said, reading Lizanne’s expression. “They tried once, you know. Or rather they hired a bunch’ve mercenary scum to try it. My great-grandfather saw them off then pursued them all around the world so that every pirate who dared challenge the Okanas clan was sent to serve the King of the Deep.” She stepped closer, looming over Lizanne. “So it is with all our enemies.”

Lizanne pursed her lips and nodded before placing a puzzled frown on her brow. “Except, these days you are your own enemy, are you not? Your cousin Arshav seems to think this place is his by right . . .”

The woman snarled and lashed out with her empty hand, which met only air as Lizanne ducked under it, delivered a hard punch to the woman’s solar plexus then stepped close to snare her other limb in an arm-lock. She forced the woman to her knees and twisted the pistol from her grip, pressing it to the back of her head. She looked up to see the two guards raising their shotguns, though not with the sense of urgency she expected.

“That’s very unwise,” the larger of the two advised, speaking in an unruffled tone that told Lizanne a great deal. The Blood-blessed woman wasn’t in charge of this escort, he was, and he didn’t care if Lizanne killed her.

She grunted and released the woman, tossing the pistol over the side of the platform. “A weapon only has value if you have the knowledge and intent to use it,” Lizanne told her, quoting a favourite line from one of her tutors.

The woman let out another snarl, hand flashing to the knife tucked into the top of her boot.

“Morva,” the larger guard said as the woman crouched for a lunge. She came to a halt, features quivering with rage. The guard stepped between them, jerking his head at Lizanne. “Enough of this. He’s waiting.”

She was carried up the chasm wall in an elevating contraption. It was formed of a cage attached to a cable driven by some sort of counter-weight mechanism she was sure her father would have found fascinating. Lizanne noticed that the two guards became markedly more attentive as they neared the top, the larger one pointing his shotgun at her head whilst the other levelled his at the small of her back. When the cage came to a jerky halt at the top of the chasm the two guards kept pace with Lizanne as she stepped out. Their weapons never strayed from their target as Morva led them through the courtyard and up the stairway to the parapet.

Alzar Lokaras stood atop a raised turret on the western flank of the crater lip, playing a hand along the back of a large black cat sitting on the battlement beside him. The cat hissed as it caught sight of Lizanne, she instantly recognising it as the author of her current misfortune.

“Don’t mind Sherva,” Alzar said as the guards brought her to a halt a few feet away. “She’s bred to dislike strangers.” He gave the cat’s chin a scratch then beckoned Lizanne closer. “I found myself greeted by a curious sight during my morning stroll,” he said, pointing to something out at sea. “Perhaps you can enlighten me as to what it might be.”

Lizanne moved closer, aware of the increased tension of the guards as she did so. Their indifference to Morva’s well-being clearly didn’t apply here. She followed Alzar’s finger to a small, flat-topped island some three miles away. The Firefly hovered above it at a height of about fifty feet, Tekela pointing the aerostat into the prevailing wind so that it bobbed up and down continually, but showed no sign of leaving.

“It’s been there since first light,” Alzar said. “My crew are very keen to sail out and capture it. Should I let them do so, do you think? Or maybe just have my gunners blast it out of the sky.”

“You’ll miss,” Lizanne said. “And then it’ll just fly away.”

Alzar grunted out a short laugh. “I’m not too sure about that. I suspect whoever has charge of that thing is possessed of an unreasoning loyalty; otherwise, they’d have departed as soon as it became clear your mission here had failed.” He turned, resting his back against the battlement, regarding Lizanne with careful scrutiny. “I think if I tie a rope around your legs and dangle you over the side of this rock they might well decide to deliver that marvellous contraption to me. Am I wrong?”

I hope so, Lizanne thought, suspecting the opposite to be true. “What makes you think I failed?” she asked instead.

Alzar’s scrutiny faded, replaced by a cold calculation. “You tranced,” he said. “So it’s safe to assume your corporate masters have whatever information you came for. Therefore, I find it curious that the more interesting documents in my uncle’s library remain undisturbed. Nothing appears to have been taken or destroyed.” He jerked his head at the guards, who stepped closer, shotgun barrels pressing into Lizanne’s head and back.

“I am not some Imperial Cadre fool,” Alzar said, voice terse with harsh sincerity. “I will not play your games or entertain your bargains. Tell me what you came here for and why or I’ll show your friend over there what we do to spies at the High Wall.”

Lizanne replied quickly. Experience taught her how to spot a bluff, and this wasn’t one. “It’s quite simple, really,” she said. “Zenida sent me.”

“Quite a story you weave,” Alzar said a few hours later. After a hasty explanation on the parapet he had her brought to the mansion for a more fulsome account. Lizanne sat in a chair in the library, the larger of the two guards at her back and Morva stalking about on the edge of her vision. Alzar remained standing throughout, his gaze occupied by the huge table map of Arradsia. “What makes you think I believe a word of it?” he added.

“The fact that you haven’t killed me,” Lizanne replied. “And how else would I know the details of your feud with Arshav and his mother?”

“Ironship spies know a great many things, and they’ve always been overly interested in my family.”

“Indeed. In fact they were interested enough to employ Zenida as a privateer. She did the Syndicate some valuable service over the years.”

“What?” Morva said, stepping into view and addressing the question to her uncle. “What did she say?”

“Mind your place!” Alzar snapped, jaws bunching and shooting Lizanne a glare. “My cousin’s choices did not always meet with my approval,” he said as Morva retreated with a sullen scowl. “But she is truly of this clan, in blood and spirit, unlike her corrupted wretch of a brother and his bitch mother.”

“Who now hold sway over the Seven Walls and the Ruling Council,” Lizanne pointed out.

“Council.” Alzar grated out a laugh rich in contempt. “There never really was a Ruling Council. Just a bunch’ve puffed-up bilge rats playing politics, and failing for the most part. The High Wall had no truck with their empty prattle. Arshav and his mother can preen and pronounce all they want, Varestia has never truly had a government, nor has it needed one.”

“Until now. You do know what’s coming, I assume? A clan with so many ships at its command will surely have some notion of the threat this region faces.”

Alzar turned back to the map, saying nothing, though Lizanne discerned from his deeply furrowed brow her words had struck home.

“Melkorin has been destroyed,” she pressed on. “Other towns and cities will follow. Our enemy swells in number with every conquest and when it has sufficient strength it will be coming to lay waste to the Red Tides.”

He kept his gaze on the map, his expression that of a man forced into hateful consideration. “When I was a boy,” he said after a lengthy silence, “I would watch my uncle stare at this map for hours. There was something about this land that had once captured his soul and never let go for the rest of his life, right up until it killed him. Now, you tell me the key to saving us all rests at the very heart of his greatest obsession.” He gave a very small, humourless laugh. “And Zenida thought it all just an old man’s delusion.”

Alzar moved away from the map to sit in the chair opposite Lizanne’s. “I would like it remembered,” he said in a hard, resigned tone, “that, at any other time, your corpse would now be decorating our wall.”

“Duly noted,” Lizanne said.

“Take a message to Arshav and Ethilda. I’ll join our ships with theirs. We’ll fight for the Red Tides, but this changes nothing between us. He is still a bastard and a faithless cutthroat who sullies our name and she is still a scheming whore my uncle should have strangled when he had the chance. When this war is done and Zenida resumes her rightful place here, there will be a reckoning.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“I have three further conditions,” he went on. “Firstly, any prize captured by our ships belongs to the High Wall and not your absurd company. Secondly, we receive equal amounts of any weapons produced by your manufactory. And, thirdly.” He turned his gaze to Morva standing in sulky silence in the corner of the library. “I require a tutor for a wayward youth.”

“What’s she doing?” Tekela asked as Morva climbed into the gondola.

“We have a passenger,” Lizanne said. “This is Morva, my . . . student.”

“Student . . . ? Don’t touch that!” Tekela snapped as Morva’s hand strayed towards the control panel.

The Blood-blessed woman stared at her for a second, face dark. “This one’s a Corvantine,” she muttered, voice laden with menace. “I kill Corvantines.”

“I think we both know you’ve never actually killed anyone,” Lizanne said. “But Tekela has, so watch your tongue. Go and sit in the back.”

Lizanne settled herself into the seat alongside Tekela, buckling on the straps. “I’ll explain later,” she said. “For now, please let’s get out of here.”

She looked through the side-window as Tekela opened a valve to add more gas to the envelope, seeing Alzar standing in the High Wall’s courtyard. His gaze tracked the Firefly as it ascended, face hard with resentment at the necessary bargain he had struck. However, despite his evident detestation of the corporate world she still found him a preferable business partner to Arshav and Ethilda.

She heard Morva issue a small sound as the High Wall shrank beneath them and Tekela angled the aerostat towards the north. Glancing back Lizanne saw the Varestian woman sitting with her eyes closed tight, knuckles white as they gripped her seat.

“Don’t worry,” Lizanne told her. “You get used to it.”

Morva muttered something in barely articulate and profanity-laden Varestian, Lizanne detecting the words “corporate devilry” amongst the torrent.

“Headwind’s pretty strong today,” Tekela advised. “It’ll take at least five hours to reach the Sound.”

This drew another whimper from Morva, which Lizanne ignored. “We’re not going to the Sound,” she said. “Set course for the Seven Walls.”

“You had no authority to negotiate on behalf of this Conglomerate,” Ethilda Okanas said in a surprisingly placid tone. Unlike her in-law at the High Wall she possessed the ability to keep her voice and face free of emotion, though she couldn’t quite keep the glint of anger from her eyes. “Agreement will require a vote of the Board . . .”

“The Okanas family has direct command of thirty ships,” Lizanne broke in. “They also have clan affiliations with most of the families in southern Varestia, the majority of whom, I’m reliably informed, would rather see you and your son dead than answer any call to battle you might issue. Like it or not we’ll need them if we’re to have any hope of defending this region.”

Ethilda’s eyes strayed to the Firefly, hovering above the docks of the Seven Walls. Lizanne had descended to the quayside via rope and told the harbour-master who came to greet her to fetch either Ethilda or her son, refusing his request to follow him to the Navigation. Ethilda had arrived along with an escort under the command of the inevitable Mr. Lockbar.

“Burgravine Artonin isn’t joining us?” Ethilda asked.

“We won’t be staying long,” Lizanne replied. “Too many landings deplete the gas reserves.”

“Such a pity. I am so starved of well-spoken company . . .” Ethilda trailed off, eyes narrowing. “So,” she said. “Alzar off-loaded the little bitch on you, did he?”

Lizanne looked over her shoulder, seeing Morva’s face in the aerostat’s open hatchway. “He felt his niece would benefit from some education,” Lizanne replied. In fact Alzar had said, She’s no use as she is. Like a child with a loaded gun but no notion of how to aim it.

“Niece?” Ethilda asked. “That’s what he’s calling her now? You should know she’s not a true Okanas, just some Blessed orphan he purchased from the hold of a Dalcian reaver. With Zenida off on her privateering adventures he felt the clan needed a new Blood-blessed. She’s always been trouble, causing discord and being far too free with her body. Varestians are not a prudish people but daughters of the major clans are expected to display some decorum, if not discernment. Legacy of whatever those reavers did to her, I suppose. Ruin a girl young and she’ll stay ruined.” Ethilda shrugged. “Leave her here, if you like. We’ll find a use for her.”

Lizanne wondered whether it would matter all that much if she killed this woman this very moment. Only if her son still lives. “We need more Blood-blessed at the Sound,” she said, fingers twitching on the Spider as she added, “Is Arshav here?”

“Gone to the peninsular to gather more ships and fighters.” Ethilda nodded at the harbour, which now held at least double the number of vessels than Lizanne had seen during her first visit. “We’ve been doing fairly well so far. Especially since the news about Sairvek broke.”

“Sairvek?”

“Burned, just like Melkorin. Although our enemies have remained in port for now. We lost three fast ships to Blue attacks just to find that out.”

Sairvek. They’re getting closer with every attack. “The total size of our fleet?” Lizanne asked.

“Thirty ships here and another two hundred in the Iskamir ports. Only a handful could truly be called warships.” She settled a steady gaze on Lizanne. “We assured the captains who answered the call they would receive mighty and ingenious weapons. They’re already getting impatient.”

“I promised the first delivery in a month,” Lizanne said, turning and striding back towards the rope dangling from the Firefly. “And I meant it. Don’t waste any more ships on reconnaissance. We’ll take care of that.”

“It’s impossible.”

Jermayah blinked tired eyes at her, voice barely audible above the constant clatter of the manufactory. Lizanne had been impressed by the progress made in her absence, the place now resembled an Ironship facility with its long rows of assembly tables attended by numerous workers. The town had also undergone a swift transformation, whitewash covering many of its previously drab walls and about half the houses now had roofs and shutters on the windows. However, it transpired all this effort had yet to result in any actual output.

“You have materials . . .” Lizanne began only to be waved to silence by Jermayah.

“Materials have to be converted into components and components assembled into finished products. All of this requires organisation, skills and the time to learn them. At the moment we have perhaps one-third of the components we need for a production run of fifty Growlers and half that number of Thumpers. At the current rate they’ll be ready in seven weeks.”

He paused, running a hand through his shaggy, unkempt hair. Lizanne knew she had pushed him close to exhaustion already, and dearly wanted to order him to rest, but the situation required a harder heart. “What’s the biggest obstacle to rapid production?” she asked.

Jermayah thought for a moment. “Moulding, I suppose. Copper, brass and steel all has to be melted and poured into moulds and the components finished by hand before assembly. We have plenty of fuel but the forging facilities here are primitive and minimal, designed for repairing locomotives rather than large-scale manufacture.”

“Can’t the Blood-blessed help with the melting?” Lizanne asked.

“We’ve been trying to husband what product we have. Madame Hakugen has a supply of Eastern Conglomerate stocks from Lossermark but guards it fiercely. Says we’ll need it for defence when the time comes.”

“I’ll speak to her.” Lizanne turned and started for the exit, pausing to add, “And drink some Green. You look terrible.”

“Too much,” Lizanne said, stepping back and raising an arm to shield herself from the sparks fountaining from the bulky granite flask.

“Want it melted, don’t you?” Morva replied.

“Yes, melted, not exploded. Watch.” Lizanne concentrated her gaze on the next flask and the three copper ingots it contained. “Think of the Red as a pool and you the stream that flows from it,” she said, the air shimmering as she sent a steady, narrow wave of Red into the flask. The copper took on a glow before the ingots started to sublime into one another. After a few minutes the flask was full of steaming liquid metal.

Lizanne nodded to the team of workers, all clad head to toe in thick leather. Two of them stepped forward to clamp the flask with iron poles before lifting and tilting it to pour the contents into the prearranged row of moulds.

“Try again,” Lizanne told Morva pointing to another flask, this one full of brass.

Thanks to Madame Hakugen’s reluctantly surrendered product and Lizanne’s employing all the settlement’s Blood-blessed in the forge, they had quadrupled the output of components in a single day. The woman’s warning that such profligate use would soon exhaust their supply was undoubtedly correct but Lizanne argued the need to produce finished weapons outweighed any concerns about defence. “One thing I have learned, madame,” she said. “In war moderation is not a virtue but an impediment.”

Using so much product so quickly also gave her the chance to fulfil her educational obligation, though Morva was a frequently recalcitrant student. After completing a shift at the forge Lizanne had her assist with moving the moulded components to the assembly line. The Varestian woman’s first attempt had an entire row of workers ducking for cover when she propelled a crate full of components across the manufactory with all the force of a cannon-shot.

“Only ever used it to throw things,” she said with a shrug of what Lizanne discerned to be studied indifference. “The Okanas family needs a Blood-blessed that can fight, not push things around like a glorified cart-horse.”

“I’ve seen you fight,” Lizanne returned. “And you’re no better a cart-horse than you are a fighter.”

That earned a glaring sneer, Morva turning on her heel to stalk from the manufactory, then freezing in place as Lizanne’s Black closed around her. She held her still for a second then slowly lifted her off the ground, turning her around and setting her down close to the stack of crated components. She could feel the woman struggling in her grip, lashing out with her own Black in a series of undisciplined blasts that were too unfocused to have any effect. Lizanne maintained her grip until Morva exhausted her reserves, then released her after a final squeeze to empty her lungs.

“Ethilda says you’re not really an Okanas,” Lizanne said, moving to stand over Morva as she knelt, clutching her chest and gasping. “Is that true?”

“That . . . whore is . . . no Okanas either,” Morva rasped, raising her gaze to glare at Lizanne.

“She says they bought you.” Lizanne went to her haunches, bringing her face level with Morva’s. “Why are you so loyal to a family that sees you as just a useful slave?”

Morva gritted her teeth and looked away. “Uncle Alzar always told me I was free to go . . .”

“Go? A lone child in the Red Tides. Where exactly would you go?”

“You don’t understand. The High Wall, it’s my home.”

A child taken from a life of bondage and abuse, given a home, told she had a family. Even if it was all just a contrivance to win her loyalty, clearly it worked. “Your home will burn,” Lizanne said. “Along with everything else if we don’t win this war. Make no mistake, I have seen the face of our enemy and it is all too real. This is the first battle.” She inclined her head at the busy lines of workers. “Every minute spent here is another step to victory. Every bolt, screw and lever we make is worth a thousand bullets.”

She took a fresh vial of Black from the pocket of her overalls and held it out. “Let’s try again, shall we? Shift me five tons by the end of the day and I’ll show you how to shatter a knee-cap with just a drop of Black.”

The first Growler came off the production line a week later, followed by the first Thumper two days after that. Jermayah had given manufacture of the Smokers over to the small band of gunsmiths and armourers who had escaped Lossermark. Their progress was slow and they shared a tendency to ignore entreaties to forsake long-ingrained perfectionism for speedy production. However, after another week of cajoling and a liberal ration of Green to stave off fatigue the gunsmiths’ workshop was producing the new carbines at a rate of five a day.

With the assembly lines running at reasonable efficiency Jermayah focused his efforts on ammunition, Lizanne and the other Blood-blessed exhausting all but a small amount of their Red to once again kick-start the process. The shell casings and projectiles were soon coming off the lines in decent quantities but the propellant needed to fill them required a more prolonged and hazardous process.

“The Varestians only gave us black powder,” Jermayah said. He had established a separate workshop to manufacture the ammunition, an old warehouse situated at a decent remove from the town. The mostly female work-force had been hand-picked for their dexterity and many were former seamstresses or print-setters. They all wore overalls fastened with laces rather than buttons, Jermayah having forbidden the smallest scrap of metal in the place.

“Works fine for cannon but it’ll foul the workings of the Growlers and Thumpers,” he went on. “We need to add flakes of nitrate and grind it into a fine dust.”

“As long as it works,” Lizanne said. Watching his head sag a little as he nodded, she said, “Get some sleep. You’ve done more than enough for now.”

“This lot needs watching . . .”

“Then send them home.” A faint smile formed on her lips as an idea occurred to her. “Tomorrow will be a holiday,” she said. “I think these people deserve a small celebration.” The smile slipped from her lips as she turned away, knowing that for many whatever festivities she organised could well be the last they ever saw.

CHAPTER 23

Clay

It was only thanks to the Green in his veins that he was able to make out much of anything below the surface. The undulating lake-bed stretched away beneath him, featureless but for a sand-covered hump almost directly below. He angled his body towards the hump and kicked with all the enhanced strength his body would allow. His objective became clearer as he descended, resolving into something vaguely boat-shaped. It was almost entirely covered by silt but for one section near its narrow prow that appeared to have been scraped away.

A gondola, he realised as he swam closer, the sight of a hatch resolving through the murk, an open hatch. An aerostat’s gondola.

Clay’s lungs began to burn as he forced his body lower, coming to a thrashing halt a good forty feet short. Got too much air in me, he knew as a renewed bout of kicking failed to push him any lower. He stopped moving, focusing his gaze on the half-open hatch and reaching out with Black. It took two hard tugs before the hatch came free revealing something round and shiny in the gloom within. Kriz, Clay thought, recognising the helmet and using Black to draw her out of the gondola. His vision was already beginning to blur thanks to the lack of air and there was no time for finesse. Kriz’s helmet thumped against the side of the hatchway as he dragged her clear, opening his arms to catch her as she shot upwards.

She sagged in his grasp, limp and unmoving but he could feel the faint beat of her heart as his hands pressed against her chest. Clay’s hands fumbled at the weighted belt about her waist for a few agonising seconds before it came free. He began to kick for the surface when something fast and large streaked out of the gloom directly ahead, Clay having time to register the sight of two triangular rows of teeth before instinctively unleashing his Black. The Green recoiled as if it had charged into a brick wall, blood seeping like crimson smoke from its nostrils as it twisted and vanished into the gloom, tail whipping.

Clay twisted about, seeing a sleek narrow shape cut through the murk a short distance away, quickly followed by another moving in the opposite direction. They’re circling, he realised, head swivelling left and right. His body spasmed then as the product in his veins started to thin in earnest, lungs now like fire, the Greens coming closer with every circle. He knew with awful certainty that the attack would come soon and all at once, the whole pack rending and tearing at the hated intruders in a frenzy. It was as if they knew his product was fading and all they had to do was wait.

Panic rising he lashed out with Red at the closest drake, leaving a lightning-fork-like trail of bubbles through the water. The Green veered away, more in confusion than distress as Clay could see no apparent damage to the beast. Stupid, he thought, skin prickling in the suddenly warm water. Boil them and you boil yourself. Which left only the Black, and there were too many to push away.

He convulsed again, clamping his mouth shut against his body’s instinctive need to gasp. A strange, reflective calm overtook him then, the panic vanishing as the imminence of death became a certainty. A last serene notion slipped into his head as he felt Kriz begin to slip from his arms. Too many to push . . . Then don’t push, pull . . . Pull the water.

Water. More substantial than air, which could be affected by Black but only in the most unfocused way. Water was different, water could be pulled.

Clay used the last vestiges of his reason to marshal his Black, focusing his attention on the space separating them from the drakes, then expending it all at once to draw the water towards them. The effect was immediate and dramatic, the pressure of so much water compressing at once shooting the pair of them to the surface.

They broke through into a cacophony of sound and beautiful, sweet-tasting air. Clay heard his uncle call out before they plunged down. He kicked for the surface and dragged more air into his lungs as they bobbed back up. He could see the raft a little over ten yards away, which suddenly seemed a great distance in light of what lurked beneath. Uncle Braddon and Preacher were both kneeling, rifles pointed in his direction whilst Sigoral stood to the side, tipping a vial of product down his throat. Clay began to call out for a rope but the yell died as Sigoral cast the vial aside and focused his gaze. Clay felt the invisible hand of Black close around him and a heart-beat later he and Kriz were being dragged through the water at a considerable rate of knots.

Braddon and Preacher fired several shots in the time it took for them to reach the raft, Sigoral lifting them clear of the lake at the last instant to deposit them in the centre of the raft. Clay was forced to spend some time gasping for breath before he began to get the helmet off Kriz’s head.

“I got it,” Braddon said, crouching to pull the helmet clear, revealing Kriz’s slack, unresponsive features. Braddon held a hand to her mouth then, muttering a curse, lay her flat on her back and delivered several hard shoves to her sternum with both hands. Clay’s gaze was dragged away by a sudden commotion, turning to see a Green frozen in mid-leap close to the edge of the raft. Sigoral held the beast in place long enough to aim his carbine and put a bullet through its skull. The lieutenant cast the Green’s corpse away and Clay turned back, watching his uncle pumping Kriz’s chest.

“Must’ve had some air left in the helmet,” Clay said, knowing it was a desperate notion. “I felt her heart-beat, Uncle.”

Braddon said nothing, continuing his rhythmic shoves, Kriz’s head lolling in response with not even a flicker to her eyelids. He kept at it until Preacher’s rifle fell silent a minute or so later. Braddon sat back on his haunches, turning to Clay with a grim shake of his head. “I . . .”

All four of them started as Kriz jerked, a gout of water erupting from her mouth. She spent some time convulsing, breath coming in deep, saw-like rasps, eventually choking into a bout of violent coughing. Clay moved to clasp her hand as she continued to cough, finding it closed into a tight fist.

“I . . . I found them,” she said when the coughing had subsided, meeting Clay’s gaze with a bright smile. She opened her fist to reveal two objects. One was a small crystal shard, little bigger than an arrow-head, and the other a glass vial. Clay initially took it for product but the colour was strange, possessed of a rainbow-like sheen as it caught the light.

“What are they?” he asked.

Kriz’s smile broadened and she reached out with her other hand to caress his face. “The keys . . . to convergence.”

“Seems we came an awful long way for such small things.” Loriabeth peered at the two objects in Kriz’s palm with a dubious gaze.

“Density is relative and often deceptive,” Kriz replied. “Everything you can see or touch is made up of mostly empty space.” She sat huddled close to the camp-fire, a blanket about her shoulders. They had retreated a good distance from the lake-shore before making camp, Kriz having to be carried most of the way. She had shivered continually during the trip and even now spoke with a pronounced tremor to her voice. “I need Black,” she said, looking at Clay.

He frowned, concerned by her wan face and red, over-bright eyes. “You don’t want to wait awhile . . . ?”

“Black.” She held out her free hand, continuing in her own language, “As you know, I have waited a very long time for this and find myself out of patience.”

Clay duly handed over a vial of Black, Kriz drinking a quarter of the contents before focusing her gaze on the crystal sitting in her palm. It floated free and drifted away from her then seemed to shimmer as it began to vibrate, Clay detecting a familiar tinkling sound he had last heard in their trance in the hidden enclave. The rest of the company let out a mingling of gasps and surprised profanity as the crystal abruptly unfolded. Narrow spikes lanced out from the core, catching the fire-light as it spun under Kriz’s manipulation, eventually slowing to hang serenely in the air, resembling a star in the way it glittered. Clay stepped closer to it, memory racing with recognition. The trance in which Kriz had shown him the cavern where Zembi had created the first White, the four crystals, Red, Green, Blue . . . and one so dark it seemed to swallow the light.

“The Black crystal,” he said, reaching out to press a tentative finger to one of the spikes. “We actually Seer-damn found it.”

“Kinda begs the question of what we do with it,” Braddon said, moving closer to peer at the crystal.

“It will enable communication,” Kriz said. “Between drake and human, specifically Black drakes and humans.”

“Clay can already do that,” Skaggerhill said.

“Only with Lutharon,” Clay said. “And that was thanks to Miss Ethelynne. If he’d stayed with us any longer things would’ve gone bad sooner or later, for us and him.” He turned to Kriz. “We can command them with this, right? Make them join us?”

She shook her head. “Of all the pure-bred species the Blacks were always the hardest to control, more intelligent than the others and more aggressive towards humans. This was partially why Father was never able to successfully cross-breed them. The White contains blood lines from all drake species, except the Black.”

“Guess that’s why they didn’t join its war,” Clay said. “And why they fought him when he rose before, fought alongside the people who lived here to bring him down.”

“That I can’t explain,” Kriz replied. “It’s clear that the world my people built fell, and the civilisation that grew in its place was able to achieve some kind of symbiosis with the drakes.”

“Heart-blood.” Clay remembered the mosaic from the hidden city that lay on the far side of the lake. “Their queen would drink heart-blood and bond with a Black. That’s what bound them together. With this”—he nodded at the crystal—“we won’t have to.”

He heard his uncle let out a faint groan and turned to find him frowning in grim realisation.

“Captain?” Skaggerhill asked.

“He means we’re gonna have to go find us some Blacks,” Braddon said, “to make friends with.”

“That’s what you need?” Clay asked later, nodding at the glass vial in Kriz’s hand. The others were all sleeping, Clay and Kriz having taken the first watch. She had returned the Black crystal to its original state and now sat regarding the vial in one hand and the blade-shaped shard in the other. “You drink that and you can unlock the memories Zembi put in there?” he went on.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes tracking from the shard to the vial but making no move to drink it.

“Is it dangerous?” he asked, sensing her reluctance and switching to her language.

“All knowledge is dangerous, but all knowledge is precious. The contradiction at the heart of everything the Philos Caste studied or created.”

“Convergence,” Clay said. “What is it?”

Kriz was silent for a time, turning the vial over in her fingers, face rapt. “Does this look like drake blood to you?” she asked, holding the vial out to him. He took it, holding it up so the fire-light illuminated the contents.

“Kinda,” he said, handing it back. “Looks a little like one of the more expensive Ironship dilutions. Colour’s different, though.”

“Then it might surprise you to know that no part of what is in this vial came from a drake, except the knowledge of how to make it. This is what your people call product, Clay. It will do everything Blue will do, but it was not syphoned from the corpse of some unfortunate beast. It was made.

“Zembi believed that the abilities of the Blood-blessed lay dormant in all of us. What else could explain the random nature of the Blessing? If only a small proportion of the population developed the ability during early adolescence, an ability they clearly didn’t inherit, then the same potential rested in all of us. If the right formula could be found, it could unlock that potential. Think of it, Clay, a whole world of people able to share their thoughts, craft wonders, walk this earth without fear. This is what we were working for all those years under the ice. This is the key to convergence. This”—she held up the vial once more—“is synthetic product. Anyone can drink it and harness the power it holds. Not just the Blessed. Anyone.”

“The White,” Clay said. “You needed it to make this?”

She lowered her gaze, Clay seeing a mirror of the shame he had seen on the face of her younger self in the trance. It’s unfair of me to despise you so, she had told the sickly White as it glared at her from the pit. Like you, it appears I should never have been born. “There is more than just drake blood in the White,” she said.

It took him a moment to realise the import of what she had said, a chilly fist closing around his heart as the implications struck home. “People,” he said in a slow, hard rasp. “You used people to make that thing.”

“Not people. Human tissue, mostly unfertilised eggs and plasma. Zembi had developed a method of blending organic material at the microscopic level. Another barely understood gift from the crystals. It took years, there were many failures.” Kriz’s head lowered farther still, voice dropping to nearly a whisper. “Many . . . things were brought into this world, things we are fortunate did not live for more than a few minutes after hatching. Then came the first White, and Zembi thought he had his discovery, the ultimate triumph of the Philos Caste. Its blood was unique, much easier to study than the other breeds. It gave us clues as to how to formulate synthetic compounds, clues we would never have had if it hadn’t been born.”

“But it got out, while you slept it got out, turned him into a Spoiled and somehow made it to Arradsia.”

“All knowledge is dangerous, all knowledge is precious.” Kriz looked again at the shard in her hand. “At least now we have a chance to discover how it got out.”

“Could be he only had that thing because the White allowed it. Maybe it wanted him to give it to you. For all we know you’ll drop down dead the moment you enter the trance.”

Kriz jerked her chin at Preacher’s sleeping form on the other side of the camp-fire. “Your friend gave us a lesson in faith the other day. Maybe it’s one we should heed.”

“Faithful he surely is, but he’s also crazy.” Clay reached out, placing his hand over hers to cover the vial and the shard. “Don’t. At least not here, not now. Wait till we’re back on the ship, or at least somewhere that could be called civilised. We got what we came for.”

She gave a small grin, slipping back into her accented Mandinorian to ask, “That an order, Captain?”

“If you like. We got a long way to go and a better chance of surviving this trip with three Blood-blessed ’stead of two.”

She gently pushed his hand away and looked again at the items in her hand before nodding and consigning them to the pocket of her jacket. “As you wish. I wouldn’t want anyone calling me a mutineer.”

In the morning he woke in time for his trance with Zenida Okanas, spending several minutes in contemplation of the vial in his hand. It did happen, he thought, replaying the events at the lake in his head. I tranced without drinking. But how? There was only one explanation that made any sense. Heart-blood. He had been able to maintain a mental connection with Jack from the moment he drank Blue heart-blood, and what else could that be called but a kind of trance? If he could trance with a drake, why not a human?

Checking his watch to confirm the moment had arrived, he shrugged and returned the Blue vial to his wallet. One way to find out.

Closing his eyes he concentrated on Zenida’s face, reasoning it would summon enough memories of her to establish the connection. Nothing happened. He tried to recall every interaction with the Varestian woman, discovering they were few in number, just enough in fact to forge enough of a connection for the Blue-facilitated trance. Looks like I need something more for this one, he decided, pondering that moment on the raft again. The trance with Kriz had seemed to occur naturally, without any conscious decision, as if his fear for her had reached down to the bottom of the lake and forced its way into her mind. Fear . . . Fear is an emotion. When they first met, Lizanne had tutored him on the basics of the trance, explaining that mental communication required some form of emotional connection between the two parties. It’s how we remember one another in the real world, she said. Not through faces but feelings, however slight. Think of all the people you must have met in your life. Now ask yourself how many you remember. Comparatively few, I imagine. You remember those who made you laugh, those who made you cry, and, especially in your case, Mr. Torcreek, apparently those who made you angry most of all.

Anger, another emotion. Zenida had never made him angry, nor had she made him laugh, except during those times she directed her occasionally caustic observations at Captain Hilemore . . . An image blossomed in his mind then, Hilemore’s face, rendered in much more detail than Clay could have recalled. The captain, it transpired, had a small mole on his chin Clay had never noticed. But she did, he realised. This ain’t my memory. It’s hers. Hilemore’s our connection.

He summoned his much more plentiful supply of Hilemore-related memories, all shot through with the conflicting range of emotions the captain always birthed in him, from grudging admiration to consternation to, most of all, anger.

Zenida’s mindscape arrived with disorienting swiftness, the jewel-encrusted ship filling his vision in a flash and Clay stumbling as he felt its boards beneath his boots. He let out a delighted laugh at the sight of Zenida herself, standing near the prow and regarding him with a half-baffled, half-amused expression.

Are you alright? she asked. The captain will be dismayed to discover the Interior has driven you mad.

We wouldn’t want that, Clay replied. I know how you’d hate to disappoint him, and all.

Zenida’s expression hardened into something that reminded Clay this was a very dangerous woman if the mood took her, and this was her mind.

Just a bad joke, he said, raising his hands. I got some interesting news to share, if you’re ready.

“The Carnstadt Mountains,” Braddon said, gloved finger tapping the map. The mountains lay south-west of the Torquils, a considerable distance from their current location.

“That’s an awful long way, Uncle,” Clay pointed out.

“You want Blacks, that’s where you’ll find ’em. Largest concentration anywhere on the continent. There are pockets in the Coppersoles and the Cragmines on the far western coast, but this is the only place you’re guaranteed a Black kill.”

“’Cept we ain’t going to kill ’em,” Loriabeth put in. “We’re going to make nice and ask them to join up to fight the White, iffen you can believe it. Not sure I do, so the Seer’s ass knows what they’ll think of it.” Seeing Preacher stiffen at the blasphemy she added, “Sorry,” in a low mumble.

“They’re a rambunctious lot to be sure,” Skaggerhill said. “Blacks grow big and mean in those mountains. Cunning too. Longrifles took a pass through the foot-hills a few years back. Lost a marksman and a gunhand with only two kills to show for it.”

“Still a profitable trip by my recollection,” Braddon said, a faint note of annoyance in his voice. “Good news is,” he continued, turning back to Clay, “we don’t have no Spoiled to worry about twixt here and there. Just a whole lotta Cerath wrangling and walking in between.” He lowered his voice to add, “Skaggs is right, though. Next to the Red Sands it’s just about the worst country I ever contracted in. Had hoped never to set eyes on the place again.”

Clay looked at the map. The distance was dismaying but if they were to make this expedition count for something he couldn’t see any other option. “I tranced with Captain Okanas this morning,” he said. “The Superior’s making for Stockcombe.” He tapped the dot a hundred miles or so south of the Carnstadts. “So we have to get there and the route leads us past the mountains in any case.”

He clapped his uncle’s shoulder and moved away, eyes roaming the surrounding plain. “Looks like we got some mounts to find. Lieutenant, I believe it’s your turn to tame the bull.”

CHAPTER 24

Hilemore

Hilemore tracked his spy-glass over the bodies hanging from the Stockcombe-harbour wall, counting twenty in all. Curiously, the row of suspended corpses was confined to the right-hand side of the wall, halting at the huge copper-and-wood edifice of the harbour door. Each corpse had a noose around its neck and some kind of sign fixed to its chest, but the distance was too great to make out any words. I doubt it’s a welcome in any case, he decided, lowering the glass and nodding to Talmant. “Ahead dead slow, Lieutenant.”

“Ahead dead slow, aye sir.”

Hilemore had ordered the Superior to battle stations upon commencing their approach to the port, although the truce pennant fluttered from her mast and her signal lamp flashed a repeated request for safe harbour. So far, however, no one had appeared atop the harbour wall to issue either a welcome or a warning. Stockcombe’s wall was unusual in that it was more of a dam than a simple barrier against the tide. It curved out from the steep slopes forming the apex of the channel where the port lay. It was famed for the unique geographical feature of a waterfall that cascaded into a lake at the base of a huge crater within which the port had grown. The lake was kept at a constant depth by a series of huge outlet tunnels. Consequently, the waters around the wall were in a permanent state of frothy turmoil save for a narrow stretch of calm water directly in front of the door. This ensured a nervous approach as any evasive manoeuvres the Superior might make would see her floundering in the churn.

“All stop,” Hilemore ordered as the door loomed larger. He was close enough now to read the signs adorning the hanging bodies, finding them each bearing the same message painted in red Mandinorian letters: CORPORATE MURDERER.

Perhaps coming here wasn’t the best idea, Hilemore concluded. He was about to order Talmant to signal the engine room to reverse the propeller, drawing them away in preparation for turning about, when the harbour door let out a loud squeal of grinding metal and began to ascend.

“Pretty sight, ain’t it, Skipper?” Scrimshine commented as the port was revealed. The famous Stockcombe falls cascaded from atop a tall narrow promontory extending from the crater wall. The falls birthed a plume of misty vapour as it met the lake below, producing a small rainbow as it caught the sun. This pleasing spectacle was contrasted by the sight of the town itself. It stretched away on either side of the falls, covering the banks of the lake and ascending up the steep flanks of the crater. Denied building space, the residents of Stockcombe had built up rather than out, the place featuring some of the tallest buildings Hilemore had seen, some rising six storeys or more. The architecture varied in style, from high-angled roofed colonial mansions to Corvantine-influenced official buildings complete with classical pillars and statuary. The taller structures all conformed to modern standards, reflecting the clean, uncluttered lines favoured by the corporate world.

This would all have made for an aesthetically varied and interesting view if Hilemore’s practised eye hadn’t noticed the signature signs of cannon-shot on many walls, accompanied by the blackening and vanished roofs that told of extensive burning. The damage was worse close to the docks where many buildings had been completely burned out and others reduced to rubble. Hilemore’s initial assumption that the port had been attacked in much the same manner as Carvenport was proven mistaken as he took in the sight of the numerous flags flying over the buildings on either side of the falls. The flags on the western side were all the black square emblazoned with a silver ship pennant of the South Seas Maritime Company, whilst those on the eastern side consisted of a simpler design; white with an uneven red X within a square. Thanks to his prior engagement Hilemore was fairly familiar with this symbol and was obliged to contain a dismayed groan at the sight of it.

“Buggers’ve been fighting each other, Skipper,” Scrimshine observed. Even with his new-found regard for military manners he still had difficulty in restraining his tongue. “Don’t recognise that flag, though. One of those new East Mandinorian syndicates, maybe?”

“It’s not a company flag,” Hilemore said. “It appears the Voters Rights Alliance has a significant presence here.”

He could see numerous vessels in the harbour, none of them warships. Only one was in motion, an old Blue-hunter Hilemore soon recognised. The Farlight’s signal lamp blinked out a message as she approached, moving at dead slow and drifting to a halt some fifty yards short of the door.

“‘Half the town v. pleased to see you,’” Talmant related the message. “‘Steer to port or the other half will fire on you.’”

Hilemore was tempted to follow his first impulse to turn the Superior about and make for open water. This place was clearly riven with internal strife and he had no desire to embroil his command in a conflict that might impede their mission. But the Superior was down to less than one-fifth of her coal reserves. Added to that was their rapidly diminishing food stocks and all the ammunition they had expended in the Torquils. Without a substantial resupply the chances of recovering the Longrifles and making use of their discovery were slight at best.

“Ahead dead slow,” Hilemore told Talmant. “Mr. Scrimshine, take her in and steer immediately to port.”

“Ethany Kulvetch.” The young woman in the ill-fitting and besmirched uniform greeted Hilemore with a salute. “Acting Colonel, South Seas Maritime Defence and Security Force.”

Given her youth and diminutive size Hilemore might have found Kulvetch’s appearance almost comical but for the recently stitched cut above her left eye and the carbine slung over her shoulder. The fact that she had the weapon slung barrel down and wore a half-empty bandolier across her chest indicated she had plenty of practice in using it. She had been waiting on the quayside along with a squad of similarly dishevelled but well-armed South Seas Maritime Marines. He took note of the way her gaze continually strayed to the eastern regions of the port across the harbour, as if expecting a cannon shell to come sailing over at any second.

“Corrick Hilemore,” he replied with a salute of his own. “Captain of the IPV Superior.”

“Welcome, Captain. Captain Tidelow of the Farlight vouched for your conduct but was somewhat reluctant to elaborate as to your mission here.”

“Resupply. Assuming South Seas Maritime is still open for business.”

Kulvetch’s gaze darkened with disappointment. “I had hoped you might have been subcontracted to assist us in our . . . local difficulty. We tranced requests for reinforcement with Head Office until our Blood-blessed fell victim to a sniper’s bullet. That was two weeks ago.”

“Sadly, I knew nothing of the situation here until we caught sight of your wall. Unfortunate business.”

The colonel’s eyes grew darker still as she settled her gaze on the eastern districts. “They hung all our senior managers on the first day of their so-called uprising. Held a trial and so on, to give it the appearance of actual justice.”

“The signs proclaim them as murderers.”

“There had been a good deal of trouble since the other ports went silent and ships started arriving with all manner of mad rumours. Management’s attempts to quell the disorder may have been . . . excessive but they certainly didn’t deserve to be slaughtered at the hands of a slum-born mob.” A shudder ran through Kulvetch then and she lowered her gaze, Hilemore realising she was even younger than she first appeared. “Forgive me,” she said, straightening her back. “My father was amongst the slain. He had command of Defence and Security here.”

“I see. My condolences. And your position in this port, Colonel?”

“When the uprising began I was a junior executive in the Customs Enforcement Division. Two days later I was the most senior official left. It took some hard fighting but with good and loyal soldiers”—she inclined her head at the squad of Marines—“and the support of the corporate populace, we won back half the city.”

“Would I be correct in assuming, therefore, that you are the only figure in authority on this side of the harbour?”

“You would. If you wish to purchase supplies you will negotiate with me. As a corporate officer I’m sure you’ll understand that prices will reflect prevailing circumstances.”

Hilemore’s hand went to his breast pocket and emerged with a gold Dalcian sovereign, one of the stack taken from the wreck of the Windqueen. Hilemore had fortuitously liberated the coins and other sundry valuables from the Viable Opportunity’s safe before seizing the Superior. “I’m sure we can agree on a mutually beneficial price,” he said, handing over the coin.

Kulvetch glanced at the sovereign, betraying scant interest before handing it back. “You mistake me, Captain,” she said. “It is not money I require, but your service. Vile insurrection has sundered this port in two. I require your assistance in uniting it and”—she fixed him with a steely, implacable gaze, voice taking on a hungry tremor—“ensuring justice is meted out to every last Voter bastard we can lay our hands on.”

“It’s been a stalemate for the better part of a month.” Kulvetch had escorted him to the roof of South Seas Maritime headquarters in Stockcombe, the tallest structure in the port, affording a fine view of the whole city. “As you can see the falls create a natural and impassible barrier between the eastern and western districts. Meaning the only avenues of advance are via the harbour or the wall. The Voters attempted a charge across the wall the day after we secured control of this side. A few massed rifle volleys were enough to see them off. They tried a night attack in boats next. Fortunately, most of the ships in the harbour chose to ally with us and they didn’t even make it to the wharf. Since then they’ve been content to stay in their hovels and cast the occasional shell at us.”

“They have artillery then?” Hilemore asked.

“Two batteries of six-pounders and one eighteen-pounder long-barrelled cannon, whilst we have only four heavy guns. That’s the main reason I haven’t yet ordered an attack of our own, plus lack of numbers. All told I have less than three hundred soldiers under arms, plus just over seven hundred volunteers from the townsfolk. They’re low on training and weapons but keen as a blade.”

“The Voter numbers?”

“The neighbourhoods east of the falls are more populous than on our side, plenty of slum rats over there to recruit to their deluded cause. I’d estimate at least three thousand under arms.”

Hilemore let out a sigh of grim amusement. “I have faced long odds before, Colonel, but never impossible ones. What exactly do you expect a single warship to do against such numerous shore-based opposition?”

“Destroy that damn artillery of theirs,” Kulvetch returned, her tone heating appreciably. She pulled a folded map from the pocket of her tunic and began to unfurl it. “Through careful observation we have pin-pointed most of their guns . . .”

“No.”

She fell silent, clearly taken aback by the flat, uncompromising tone of his refusal. “This plan is sound . . .”

“Colonel.” Hilemore’s voice was pitched just below a shout and he took a moment to calm his rising frustration before continuing. “Do you have any notion of what is happening in the rest of the world?”

She stared at him, confusion and anger adding a red tinge to her face. “Some kind of emergency,” she said. “Drakes and Spoiled running amok. Once the combined might of the corporate world is brought to bear on the savages and beasts . . .”

“Carvenport has fallen to those savages and beasts,” Hilemore broke in. “Morsvale has fallen. Feros has fallen and I daresay other cities have since shared their fate. The might of the corporate world has already been brought to bear and found wanting. And while the world burns this city tears itself apart without a drake in sight. I’ll have no part of your petty war. And if you are unwilling to sell me supplies, perhaps your friends across the water will be more amenable.”

Kulvetch’s face twisted into a snarl, her hands twitching, and Hilemore knew she was resisting the impulse to reach for her carbine. “You would treat with those scum?”

“To fulfil my mission I would treat with all the demons of the Travail.” Hilemore stood to attention and spoke in formal tones. “I am impressed with your achievements here, but you have no hope of victory. I am willing to mediate . . .”

“Piss on your mediation!” Kulvetch’s nostrils flared as she glared at him, breath becoming ragged in her fury. “I should shoot you . . .”

“Then you’ll have my ship’s guns to contend with alongside the Voters’ artillery.” Hilemore gave a salute, which she failed to return, and started towards the stairwell.

Instead of a single authority figure, the Voters presented him with a committee of six. Hilemore was depressed to find them all much the same age as Colonel Kulvetch, with a similarly steely look in their eyes which told him he was in for a very taxing meeting.

He had made his way to the eastern docks in the ship’s launch, standing at the prow with a truce flag in hand. He found the wharf abandoned, though the flicker of movement behind the windows of the surrounding houses indicated his arrival had been noticed. After an interval of several minutes a lone, stocky young man in a Contractor’s duster emerged from a shadowed alley with a revolver in hand. On the sleeve of his duster was an arm-band bearing the cross-and-square emblem of the Voters Rights Alliance. The young man lurked in a crouch at the corner of the alley, wary eyes tracking from Hilemore to the western side of the city. After some further scrutiny he pointed to the launch, scowling at Hilemore.

“Send ’em back,” he said.

Hilemore nodded and called out an order for the launch to return to the ship. The crew were clearly reluctant to leave him in such uncertain company but dutifully dipped their oars and began to row away.

“C’mere,” the stocky man said, gesturing with his revolver before disappearing back into the alley. Hilemore followed him through a short maze of cramped streets until he rounded a corner to find himself confronted by a dozen or so young men and women, all levelling fire-arms at him.

“Search him,” the man in the duster ordered. Hilemore was then subjected to a few minutes’ rough handling at the hands of a trio of rebels, which came to an abrupt end when he jabbed his elbow into the face of a skinny youth who tried to take his pocket-watch.

“Are you Voters or thieves?” he asked as they tensed around him.

“Corprate bastud!” the skinny youth said, lying on the cobbles and clutching a broken nose. “Shood ’im, Coll!”

“Shut it!” the duster-clad man said. “Freeman Towl’s got unfortunate habits,” he told Hilemore. “Comes from growing up living off the scraps allowed us by corporate slavers.”

Hilemore brushed the blood from the sleeve of his tunic and said nothing.

“I’m Freeman Coll and this is the Wash Lane Defence Volunteers,” the young man said, gesturing to the other youths. “Don’t mistake us, Mr. Protectorate Man, you don’t get a second chance.” He slowly lowered his revolver and jerked his head to the left. “This way. Towl, you’re on guard duty tonight. Told you before ’bout thieving.”

Coll led Hilemore to a cobbled square formed by the intersection of several streets. Sitting in the centre of the square was an inn of such antique, slant-walled appearance that Hilemore concluded it must have stood there since the earliest days of the city. An armed guard hauled the door open as they approached, Hilemore following Coll into the gloomy, candle-lit interior. After squinting for several seconds to adjust his sight Hilemore saw Coll taking a seat at a long table alongside five other people of similar age.

There were two men besides Coll and three women, all staring at Hilemore in expectant silence. The inn was clearly a headquarters of some kind. Maps and documents littered the tables and the walls were covered in leaflets and radical propaganda including, Hilemore was both amused and dismayed to see, numerous pages from the Voters Gazette.

Seeing little need to stand on ceremony he took a stool from one of the tables, dragging it across the tiled floor to sit down. “Lieutenant Corrick Hilemore,” he introduced himself. “Commander of the Ironship Protectorate Vessel Superior. Might I know to whom I am speaking?”

“Free men and free women,” one of the six replied, a girl of about nineteen by Hilemore’s reckoning. From the sunken state of her eyes and sallow skin she appeared not to have slept for several days. Despite her fatigue the defiance in her voice and bearing was palpable as she added, “Who will not be cowed by corporate threats.”

“I haven’t made any threats,” Hilemore pointed out.

“How many ships in your fleet?” another of the six demanded, a red-haired and freckle-faced lad with a bandage covering one ear.

“My fleet?” Hilemore enquired.

“Don’t play with us,” Coll growled. “We know Ironship’s been hired to retake this place for South Seas Maritime.”

“Then you know more than I do,” Hilemore told him. “I have no fleet. For that matter, the Ironship Syndicate no longer has a fleet, not in these waters at least.”

“South Seas Maritime agents met in Sanorah with the Interim Ironship Board three weeks ago,” the hollow-eyed girl said. “You presume to tell us you are not here as a result?”

Hilemore gave no immediate reply, gaze narrowing as it tracked over each of them. So young and guileless despite all the blood they’ve spilled. “So, you’re in trance communication with Sanorah,” he said.

This heralded a silence during which the girl lowered her head as her red-haired colleague shot her a glare of reproach.

“I have had no contact with Ironship senior management for quite some time now,” Hilemore went on. “My ship is here on business unconnected with your insurrection. I wish to purchase supplies and I have gold to pay for it. That is all.”

“He’s lying!” the red-haired youth rasped. “Corporatists lie. It’s what they do. Remember Red Lomansday.”

Another silence as they exchanged glances, both fierce and uncertain.

“Red Lomansday?” Hilemore asked.

“The spark that lit the tinder,” Coll replied. “Colonel Kulvetch, the first one, invited our leaders to a meeting. He told them their concerns would be addressed. Told them a new government would be established for this port, a joint government he said. When they turned up he had them stripped naked, flogged, paraded through the streets then shot in the head.” He gave a thin smile. “Hung the bastard myself from the wall and laughed as he dangled and kicked, looked a little like the clown from that circus marionette show they put on for the kiddies. So you see.” His smile faded as he reclined in his seat. “We ain’t too trusting of corporate types these days.”

Hilemore nodded and rose from his stool. He went to the wall, scanning the many pages pinned to it until he found something familiar and ripped it free.

“‘The Shared Guilt of the Corporate Age,’” he read aloud. “‘How the greed and corruption of the modern economy shames us all.’” He moved to the table, placing the page in front of Coll. “By Lewella Tythencroft, Acting Editor of the Voters Gazette. I was actually in her office when she wrote this.” He grimaced, huffing out a small, regretful sigh. “We had quite the argument about it, as I recall.”

“You know Lewella Tythencroft?” the hollow-eyed girl asked, gaze narrowed in doubt.

“I should,” Hilemore replied. “We were engaged to be married until very recently.”

The hollow-eyed girl’s name was Jillett and it transpired that she was the only Blood-blessed left in Stockcombe. After Hilemore’s revelation the committee had him escorted outside before spending the next hour in discussion, some of it quite heated judging by the shouts emerging from the inn. Eventually the voices fell silent and Hilemore was obliged to spend another hour wandering the square, closely watched by the Wash Lane Defence Volunteers.

“You been in battles then?” one of them asked, a hefty boy no more than sixteen years old who seemed intrigued by the medal ribbons on Hilemore’s tunic.

“I have,” he replied.

“Who with?”

“Dalcians, pirates, Corvantines and, most recently, drakes.”

The boy’s features bunched in surprise. “So it’s true then? They’ve risen up, like the Seer said.”

“I’m not sure the Seer foresaw all of this, but yes, the drakes are now making war on us, with the help of the Spoiled.”

“How come they ain’t come for us then?”

Hilemore cast a gaze at the sky and the surrounding cliffs. The lip of the enclosing crater was crowned with a series of defensive forts joined by a wall. To Hilemore’s eyes it seemed too insubstantial and dilapidated to offer much defence in the event of a serious attack. “I don’t know,” he replied. “But I’m sure they’ll get to it eventually.”

“You’re wanted,” Coll called from the inn’s doorway.

“Your first ship,” Jillett said once Hilemore had made his way back inside. She stood reading from a sheet of paper, suspicion still evident in her face.

“The IPV Company Pride,” Hilemore replied.

“Your youngest brother’s name and occupation.”

“Starrick, he’s a schoolmaster.”

“Where and when did you first meet Lewella Tythencroft?”

“During a riot in Sanorah, four years ago.”

“Her dog’s name.”

“She’s never had a dog, preferring cats. Her last cat, Mr. Mewsly, died shortly before I left for Dalcia. He was very old.”

Jillett lowered the sheet and nodded to Coll. “It’s him.”

“Couldn’t they just have shown you a photostat?” Hilemore asked.

Jillett’s lips formed a faint smile. “Apparently Free Woman Tythencroft advised our Blood-blessed contact that she no longer possesses any photostats of you.”

“I see.” Hilemore coughed. “I assume, nevertheless, that she also advised that my word can be trusted.”

“No, she didn’t. Not yet anyway.” Jillett pointed to a table where a stack of blank paper sheets had been placed alongside a pen and ink-well. “Free Woman Tythencroft insists on a full report of your activities and whereabouts for the past year. You will write it, I will memorise it and, once she has been fully apprised of its contents, she will advise us how best to proceed.”

“Advise or command?” Hilemore asked. “It seems Free Woman Tythencroft enjoys considerable authority here.”

“Not just here.” Jillett exchanged a glance with Coll, apparently unsure of how much information to share.

“Thought it was just Stockcombe, did you?” the stocky youth asked. “This revolution ain’t local, Captain. Half of Sanorah is now under Voter control, along with two complete cities in northern Mandinor.”

“You’re telling me Mandinor is now in a state of civil war?”

“There’s been fighting, but no battles as such from what we’re told. Protectorate ain’t got enough troops to do more than hold what they already got. Free Woman Tythencroft is the guiding light at the heart of it all, calming tempers so things don’t slip out of control like they did here. She wants a peaceful end to the corporate world. Myself, I ain’t too fussed about that.” He nodded at the stack of pages. “She’s waiting. Best get to it.”

Hilemore moved to the table and sat down, unbuttoning his tunic. “Might I have some coffee?” he asked, reaching for the pen. “This will take quite some time. I’ll also write a note for you to take to my ship; otherwise, my First Officer is likely to come ashore to look for me, and you really don’t want that.”

CHAPTER 25

Sirus

“It’s always been one of my favourite examples of military pragmatism,” Morradin commented as they watched the ships approach the Subarisk defences. “Given the apparently impossible task of destroying the great fortress of Aben Mael, and thereby ending the siege of Redways Station, Commodore Racksmith chose to regard the ships in his fleet no differently than any other military asset, and all military assets must be expendable; otherwise, what use are they?”

The Malign Influence lay at anchor beyond the range of the many guns in the Subarisk island forts. On either side of the flagship the entire fleet waited, merchant ships crammed with Spoiled towing similarly laden barges. It was some minutes past dawn, which meant the defenders of this port would by now have been fully aware of the size of the armada they faced, not that this appeared to concern Marshal Morradin. “Surprise is not our object here,” he said when Sirus had queried the allotted hour for the attack. “But shock. I want every soldier in that city to see what’s about to happen and know themselves doomed when they do.”

Sirus used a spy-glass to track the progress of the ships they had sent into the approaches. There were twelve in all, two for each of the forts. The force had been split into pairs consisting of a freighter and a warship. Catheline had been reluctant to commit their few military vessels to a mission of this nature but the combined faith of Morradin and Sirus convinced her to grant assent, albeit with a dark warning, “Lose me this battle and I won’t punish you,” she said. “He will.”

Sirus could sense the hungry anticipation of the Spoiled on the ships. They had all been selected for their enjoyment of their new lives and unreasoning loyalty to the White. Many had barely been sane before their conversion and some driven mad by the horrors witnessed since, revelling in slaughter and destruction with a sadistic glee that was painful to share. The need to use such fanatical soldiers was easily explained to Catheline, Sirus managing to conceal his gratification at removing so many maddened souls from the army.

Hearing the echoing boom of cannon, Sirus shifted the spy-glass to one of the forts, seeing several horizontal plumes of smoke erupting from its gun-ports. He tracked the fall of shot, watching the shells raise waterspouts in front of their ships but falling far too short to score any hits.

“Firing too soon,” Morradin grunted with a note of satisfaction. “Nervous. All to the good. The Corvantine commander at Aben Mael made a similar error, wasting much of his ammunition before Racksmith’s stratagem began to play out.”

The ships maintained formation as they drew closer to the forts, the warships limiting their speed to enable the freighters to keep up. They began to return fire as soon as the forts came within range, firing smoke shells rather than explosives. Soon each of the island forts was wreathed in a grey blanket of smoke, but not before their gunners had managed to take a toll on the attackers. One of the warships, the Null and Void, took a direct hit to the bridge, which killed most of the Spoiled in the upper works. This would have been critical damage for a ship with a human crew but not the Null and Void, which continued to steam a true course towards its objective. Guided by the look-outs in the Malign Influence’s crow’s nest, the Spoiled belowdecks steered the tiller by hand, whilst the undaunted gunners on the upper decks kept up a steady barrage.

Two hundred yards east of the Null and Void, the Fatal Indulgence was less fortunate. An expertly aimed Corvantine salvo wrecked her forward gun and port paddle, sending her into an untidy spin. Sirus ordered the starboard paddle halted and set the crew rushing to conduct rapid repairs. But such a conspicuously maimed target soon drew fire from every fort in range and a concentrated barrage tore her apart minutes later.

“Couldn’t be helped,” Morradin sniffed. “Did her job anyway, the freighter’s almost there.”

Sirus felt the marshal’s anticipation swell as the freighter steamed through the smoking debris left by the demise of her escort, making straight for the fort beyond. Shells struck her repeatedly as she swept forward, laying waste to her upper deck and holing her hull in several places, but scoring only one hit below the water-line. Despite the sudden inrush of water, the freighter possessed enough momentum to bring her crashing into the island fort’s rocky shore-line. She settled as her lower decks flooded, shuddering like a great dying monster as the fort’s cannon fired into her at point-blank range.

“I see little point in any delay, do you?” Morradin said.

Sirus nodded and sent a mental command to the five Spoiled in the freighter’s hold, who immediately set about lighting the fuses connected to the massed barrels of powder. The arsenals at Feros, Melkorin and Sairvek had yielded an impressive tonnage of explosive but comparatively few cannon with which to fire it. Morradin’s greatly expanded version of the plan so famously used by Commodore Racksmith provided a fine opportunity to use this surplus. Fully four-fifths of their entire powder stocks had been crammed onto the freighters. The fuses were set for thirty seconds, giving the Spoiled allotted the task of lighting them an opportunity to escape. Even when dealing with deluded monsters such as these the human instinct against suicide could be a barrier to obedience so Sirus was careful to allow them the hope of survival, however illusory.

In the event not a single Spoiled escaped the freighter before it exploded, Sirus feeling their confused, oddly gleeful minds blink out as the ship disappeared in a massive ball of fire. The shock wave reached them before the sound, Catheline letting out an exultant laugh as she staggered in the gale of displaced air. The roar of the blast came next, loud enough to pain the ears sufficiently for Catheline’s laughter to transform into a painful wince.

The fire-ball ascended to at least two hundred feet, dissipating into a thick column of black smoke that towered over the island. Debris fell in a thick rain that made the surrounding water roil until the smoke started to clear and reveal the damage. The freighter had disintegrated completely and for a brief second Sirus concluded the fort had somehow survived the blast, its south-facing wall seeming to be mostly intact. Then he saw the rubble covering the west side of the island and registered the absence of the structure’s domed roof. Flames rose from within the blackened ruin and soon there came the crump of exploding powder as they reached the fort’s magazine.

“Satisfactory,” Morradin concluded, peering through his spy-glass at the carnage. “Though I believe Racksmith managed to destroy Aben Mael completely. Of course, he had only one to contend with.” He shifted his spy-glass to the right where a pair of ships were bearing down on another fort. “I do believe I am about to outdo him by a factor of five.”

“Twenty-five thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six Spoiled confirmed dead,” Veilmist reported with her customary precision. “Six thousand one hundred and thirty-two wounded, of whom approximately half are expected to survive.”

“Approximately?” Catheline asked her, one eyebrow arched in mock surprise.

“It’s impossible to provide an accurate figure for recovery rates . . .” Veilmist trailed off into puzzled silence as Catheline laughed and pressed a kiss to her scaled forehead.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” she said. “Approximately will do perfectly well.”

From the centre of the square came a familiar scream, rich in terror but mercifully brief. Sirus glanced over to see the juvenile Whites squabbling over the remains of a captured Blood-blessed, another Cadre agent who proved a stark contrast to the heroic woman at Sairvek. The portly fellow had been dragged from an attic hideaway during the post-conquest search and taken to the White for what had become a grim ritual. The administrative district of Subarisk was dominated by a broad plaza of fountains and statues commemorating various Imperial heroes, the largest of which was a recently completed marble rendition of Emperor Caranis himself. It lay in several pieces at the base of the tall column rising from the centre of the square, having been toppled by the White, which had chosen to perch its massive form in the emperor’s place.

The Blood Cadre agent begged and pleaded as he was dragged through the surrounding ranks of Spoiled and captives. When confronted with the White he collapsed, gibbering on the paving-slabs and soiling himself. Judging by the satisfaction leaking from the minds of recently converted captives Sirus concluded this man had been something of a terror in the city, both before and after the revolution. His grisly and frenzied demise was therefore greeted with much less horror and dismay than might otherwise have been expected.

Beyond the squabbling juvenile Whites a continual line of captives were being paraded in front of the Blue crystal. The conversion wouldn’t take long, just a moment or two and the terrified prisoner would fall into a dead faint and be carried away, their features already showing the deformities to come. The Blue crystal would occasionally flicker, its light becoming dim whereupon the White would lean down from its perch to bathe it in an intense stream of fire.

Energy, Sirus had concluded when first witnessing this spectacle back in Morsvale. It needs energy to work, like any machine.

“A stiff price to pay for victory, Marshal,” he heard Catheline say, turning back to see Morradin meeting her critical gaze with an expression that wasn’t exactly defiant, but neither was it contrite.

“Our casualties were only marginally greater than the estimate,” he replied. “And the capture rate means our losses will be made good within the day.”

Catheline turned a questioning glance to Veilmist, who nodded. “We currently have over eighty thousand captives,” the Island girl said. “Given the success of our sweeps in the outlying districts and surrounding country-side the army should exceed two hundred thousand within six days.”

“Enough to take Varestia, wouldn’t you say, General?” Catheline enquired of Sirus.

“Given the ships we captured, yes,” he replied. “We were fortunate the city authorities had forbidden the harbour doors to be opened since the fall of Corvus.”

The harbour had yielded sixty-three ships in all, together with three Imperial warships, all captured during the massed rush of Spoiled following the destruction of the island forts. True to Morradin’s prediction the sight of so much destruction had unnerved the defenders. When thousands of Spoiled came streaming up the ropes from the barges and ships clustered along the length of the wall, resistance had been patchy. Some Imperial units fought with dogged determination whilst others fled almost immediately. Securing the wall took an hour of hard fighting by which time the waters both within and without the harbour were stained red and littered with bobbing corpses.

Resistance grew fiercer once they had swept over the docks and into the town itself. The garrison commander here was evidently a more able officer than his counterpart in Sairvek. Having correctly deduced that efforts to hold the harbour wall would prove fruitless, he drew his remaining forces back into a series of defensive lines, barricading interlocking streets and making good use of his remaining cannon to blast apart the repeated assaults Morradin launched against them. Sirus felt the man must have known the city would fall and the desperate struggle put up by his soldiers was intended to buy time for the residents to flee. Consequently, he had advised Catheline to forbid further assaults on the barricades, allowing the defenders the illusion of success. Thousands of people fled into the hills to the north, only to be confronted by packs of Greens and Reds who herded them back into the suburbs. Meanwhile Morradin led ten thousand Spoiled in a flanking move through the city’s outskirts, cutting the defending soldiers off from the refugees. It took another two days of vicious fighting to subdue organised resistance, and even now occasional reports would come in of Spoiled patrols being ambushed in the more constricted streets. Despite this the city effectively now belonged to the White.

“How long before we can strike south?” Catheline asked Sirus. “He wishes this matter resolved.”

“We’ll need at least two weeks to prepare the ships,” he replied. “The Varestians will prove fearsome opponents at sea and the more arms and armour we can add to our own vessels the better. Luckily, this port has excellent facilities and a skilled work-force to draw upon.”

“Very good. And where do we strike first?”

Sirus exchanged a barely perceptible glance with Morradin. They had expected this question and knew the answer would be a key factor in any design aimed at breaking the White’s control. “The Seven Walls,” he said, allowing a modicum of heightened concern to colour his thoughts. She would expect some degree of uncertainty. “The Varestian Ruling Council resides there, and it’s the most important port in the region. Varestian resistance will be most likely to concentrate there and around the neighbouring Iskamir Island, meaning we will be able to destroy the bulk of their forces in the first engagement.”

“Destroying their forces is a secondary concern,” she said. “Finding and killing Lizanne Lethridge is our priority, along with anyone she has been in close contact with. Gear all your efforts towards that end.”

Sirus and the other Spoiled present replied with a thought-pulse of subservient agreement, which brought a smile to her lips. “See to your fleet, General,” she told Sirus, moving closer to brush his hand with hers before she strode off towards the White. “I shall expect you for dinner tonight.”

“You take too many risks for my liking,” she told him, tracing a finger along the recently healed scar on his cheek. He had earned it leading a charge atop the harbour wall. It was the legacy of a final bayonet thrust from a wounded Corvantine regular, the needle-pointed triangular blade having come within a fraction of piercing Sirus’s eye and skewering his brain. Forest Spear pushed him aside at the last instant, saving his life and dispatching the doughty regular with a blow from his war-club.

“A commander unwilling to share the risks of his soldiers will lose their respect,” he replied. “Even in this army.”

This was true, at least to a certain extent. He sensed a definite warm regard for him amongst many of the other Spoiled, especially amongst the Islanders and, for reasons he hadn’t been able to divine, the Arradsian tribals. When the time came to move against the White he suspected such a depth of feeling might be useful.

“Morradin takes risks too,” Catheline pointed out, her hand broadening into a caress. “And they all hate him.”

They were in the sitting-room on the upper floor of the palatial mansion she had taken over. It had belonged to the city’s richest merchant family, all now vanished into the ranks of the Spoiled or slaughtered as being of no use. They ate dinner in a capacious, echoing ball-room of gleaming chandeliers and tall paintings. Throughout the meal Catheline allowed him to share a taste of her thoughts and he was surprised at the deep well of contempt she held for her surroundings. Frippery, luxury, empty art for empty souls. Just like those managerial bastards.

There was a discomfiting heat to these thoughts, a genuine hatred simmering beneath the contempt. Sirus was tempted to ask her about this, seek answers to the mystery of why she so detested her own class, but suspected that such enquiry might well be pointless. It was possible there were no reasons, none that made any rational sense given that she was an essentially irrational soul. He maintained a pall of fear to conceal all this contemplation of her nature, something she seemed to enjoy as she led him from the ball-room to her sitting-room.

“You wonder what I want of you,” she said, baring her elongated canines in a smile, hand smoothing over his scaled face. Sinking down next to him on the couch, she leaned close, letting her perfume assail him with all its terrible allure. “What does any woman want of a man she finds so interesting?”

“I am not a man,” Sirus pointed out. “Even before I . . . became this, most would have called me just a boy . . .”

“Before doesn’t matter.” She leaned closer still, Sirus feeling her breath flutter over his remade skin, the heat of it mingling with the effects of her scent to produce something intoxicating. He turned his face to hers so that their lips almost touched. “Now,” she breathed, “is all that matters . . .”

They both let out a pained gasp as a new thought invaded their minds, Sirus forced to his knees by the pain of it. Punishment? he thought, wondering if the White might harbour some dislike for such intimacy between its servants. But then he recognised the dark, alien stain of Katarias’s thoughts and realised it was a shared memory.

Another aerostat, he thought, seeing the elongated oval shape slipping through a darkened sky. It grew in size as Katarias soared towards it, the beast’s excited hunger swelling at the sight of the figure leaning out of the gondola beneath the bulbous air-bag. Drake eyesight was far keener than any human’s or Spoiled’s and, despite the goggles the woman wore, Katarias recognised her instantly.

Lizanne Lethridge! Catheline exulted, Sirus finding himself choking down a retch at the depth of her blood-lust. KILL HER!

CHAPTER 26

Lizanne

Hyran, it transpired, had company when Lizanne slipped into his mindscape, finding it merged with another. At the mid-point of the spice-shop the cabinets and cases sublimed into a stretch of rocky shore-line, dotted with many pools. She could see him wandering a shingle beach close by, a smaller and more slender figure at his side. Lizanne moved to one of the rock-pools, seeing a swirl of colours in the water, vague shapes forming and breaking apart in what one of her tutors had called “the dance of memory.”

Miss Blood?

Lizanne turned to see Hyran standing close by. At his side was a young woman Lizanne had last seen killing Corvantine Imperial troops at the Sanctum. It was the young woman who had addressed her, this being her mindscape.

Jelna, Lizanne greeted her. Good to see you, and please pardon the interruption.

I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t turn up ten minutes ago, Jelna replied, provoking a blossom of embarrassment from Hyran. I’m guessing you’re here for him, not me, she added.

I am.

Jelna nodded, Lizanne seeing the colour bleach from the surrounding mindscape as she prepared to leave the trance. They still talk about you, she said. Some of us have been arguing for a statue in your honour.

Then please stop.

Jelna let out a pulse of warm amusement before her mindscape vanished completely, leaving her alone with Hyran in the spice-shop. When I met her in Corvus, she was of a . . . fiercer disposition, Lizanne recalled.

She’s still fierce enough, he responded. When the need arises. Do your respective organisations approve? One of the Co-respondent Brotherhood dallying with a member of Republic First.

It has become clear to many of us that holding fast to old allegiances is not in the best interests of our new republic.

Although evidently glad to see his former comrade and informal mentor again, Hyran’s thoughts were tinged with a wary suspicion. Lizanne suppressed a small pulse of pride at this, glad to see her lessons during the long march to Corvus hadn’t been wasted. A good Blood-blessed agent should always suspect everyone, even their friends.

I did wonder if I would ever see you again, Hyran went on.

And now you wonder what on earth I could want?

Quite.

She summoned one of her whirlwinds, opening it out to display a recent memory. It was the view of a ruined port city captured from far above during a reconnaissance flight in the Firefly the day before. Blackened buildings stretched away from the docks, smoke still lingering in some places. A few Red drakes glided over the town and a pack of Blues could be seen breaking the surface of the sea beyond the harbour wall. Lizanne magnified the image to bring the many bodies littering the streets into focus, sensing Hyran’s distress at the sight of so many slaughtered children.

They take the adults and kill the young, Lizanne explained.

Where is this? he asked.

Sairvek, what’s left of it. I take it neither the general nor the Electress know about this?

Rumours have been flying lately, but the southern coast is a long way from Corvus and all the Blood-blessed there are Cadre loyalists. Besides, we’ve had plenty to keep us busy in the north.

So not every Corvantine is enamoured with the revolution?

It was glorious at first. General Arberus led one army west and the Electress another north. Jelna went with her, I went with the general. Village after village, town after town all welcomed us, young people flocked to our ranks . . . Then it began to change. Not every region of the Empire suffered under the Regnarchy’s yoke, and some of the most prosperous lands lie in the west. Often the people there had no urge to offer their loyalty to those they saw as traitors and usurpers of the ancient and divine order. There were battles. We lost troops winning them and many in our ranks felt the need to take vengeance on those we had vanquished. The general did his best to stem the worst of it but . . . Things got uglier the farther west we marched. By the time we reached the coast they were calling it “Arberus’s Red March to the Sea.”

I’d wager he didn’t like that.

No. He didn’t.

Where are you now?

Torivek, the largest port on the western coast. Unlike the others it fell without a shot. People are a lot poorer here.

The Electress?

Besieging Merivus in Northern Kestria along with Varkash.

Varkash, the former Varestian pirate and leader of the Verdigris gang in Scorazin, who once said he couldn’t give a sea-dog’s cock for the revolution. I thought he would have sailed for home by now, she commented.

He agreed lucrative terms with the Electress, one-third of the value of any noble property seized. Plus she made him an admiral, which pandered to his vanity. She advanced up the coast roads and he kept her supplied en route with what’s left of the Imperial fleet. It worked well until she got to Merivus. She’s been at it for a good few weeks now. Jelna says her captains keep advising her to by-pass it but she stubbornly refuses to move on. There are rumours she has scores to settle with some of the townsfolk.

Lizanne recalled Electress Atalina’s tale of how she came to end up in Scorazin and felt a brief pang of pity for any Imperial officials she managed to capture alive when Merivus fell. Lizanne also concluded the Electress would be too preoccupied in pursuing her vengeance to have much regard for crises elsewhere, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

Share the memory of Sairvek with Jelna, she told Hyran. Tell her to bring it to the Electress’s attention. You do the same with the general.

I will, he promised. But that doesn’t mean they’ll send any aid. Without the presence of the revolutionary armies this entire country may fall into anarchy.

If the White triumphs in Varestia your revolution will be worth nothing. Feeling her Blue begin to thin, Lizanne prepared to exit the trance, pausing as another notion occurred to her. Make sure Jelna also shares what she knows with Varkash, it’s his homeland after all.

“I’m pregnant, not crippled,” Sofiya Griffan told Captain Trumane, ignoring his further protestations and ascending the gangway to the deck of the Viable Opportunity.

Flustered, Trumane turned to Lizanne. “Couldn’t you . . . ?”

“She’s an experienced Maritime Protectorate Blood-blessed,” Lizanne replied. “And I have a trance connection with her. Besides, I suspect within a few weeks she’ll be as safe aboard your ship as anywhere else.”

She switched her gaze to the Viable, taking in the sight of the newly manufactured Growlers on the upper works and the four Thumpers mounted on the rails. Situated on the fore-deck in front of the pivot-gun was a large canvas-covered object standing over fifteen feet high. At this angle it somewhat resembled an abstract sculpture awaiting an unveiling. She could see her father’s long-coated form moving about as he made adjustments to the revolving circular frame on which the object was mounted. He had wanted to go on this mission but, unlike Sofiya, Lizanne firmly asserted he was needed at the Mount Works, as the inhabitants were now calling it. Instead, a trio of the more mechanically adept workers had been recruited to operate the professor’s latest device.

“You’re confident this will work?” Lizanne asked Trumane. This mission had been his notion, conceived after being advised of the new invention’s capabilities.

“It would have been preferable to do a proper test,” Trumane replied. “But in time of war thorough preparation is a luxury. I trust your father’s engineering above all others. With continual reconnaissance during the approach there’s every reason to expect success.”

“And you’re certain they’ll strike next at Subarisk?”

“It’s the most logical choice, if the enemy’s object is to gather strength. Given their evident efficiency the port may already have fallen.”

Lizanne nodded, discomforted by the grim military logic of this plan, which required Subarisk to be in enemy hands for it to work. “Your new recruits are shaping up, I trust?” she asked. Trumane’s crew had been brought to full strength by a number of former sailors from the refugee fleet. It hadn’t been necessary to draft any recruits as the captain had been swamped with volunteers keen to escape the monotony of the manufactory.

“Only a few have military experience,” Trumane replied. “But they know their way around a ship, which is the main thing. I’ll whip them into shape soon enough.”

Lizanne didn’t like the emphasis he put on the word “whip,” but resisted the urge to voice any concerns. Trumane’s competence had become clear over the preceding weeks, forcing her to overlook his other less admirable qualities.

“As planned, we will conduct the first aerial reconnaissance in four days,” she said. “Advising any course changes to Mrs. Griffan.”

Recent flights had revealed that Blue drakes were surprisingly easy to spot from the air. Even at night the patrolling packs left a tell-tale series of white tracks across the ocean surface. This meant she would be able to guide the Viable around any concentrations of Blues during the voyage to Subarisk. A timetable had been drawn up for frequent trance communication between Lizanne and Sofiya. It made for an inflexible approach but that wouldn’t matter once the Viable was in position and could make full use of her remarkable speed.

“Four days then,” he said, surprising her with a salute before he strode up the gangway.

She waited for her father to disembark and together they watched the Viable sail away, following the course of Blaska Sound east to the sea. “I called it the Tinkerer Mark I,” he said once the ship had rounded a bend and disappeared from view. “Didn’t feel right naming it for myself. Since it’s not really mine.”

“Very generous of you, Father.”

They made their way back to the manufactory via the town, which at this hour was mainly occupied by children liberated from their morning lessons. Lizanne thought them an oddly well behaved lot, given to prolonged silence, little mischief and an absence of laughter, even when they played. They all saw too much at too young an age, Lizanne concluded, feeling for perhaps the first time in her life that her own childhood had been one of comparative ease and security.

“No sign of Tinkerer waking from his coma, I suppose?” the professor asked.

“None,” Lizanne replied. “And Makario’s made little progress with the next movement.”

“Pity. A fellow of many uses, even with his irksome manners.”

“I don’t think he has much say over his manners. It’s just how he’s made.”

They paused at the entrance to his workshop, a large warehouse with a canvas awning where its roof had been. Lizanne glanced through the open doors, trying to gauge the nature of the machine taking shape within.

“There’s still work to do,” her father said, moving to block her view.

“It’s not a Year’s End present, Father,” she said. “You don’t need to surprise me.”

“I would prefer an unvarnished opinion of the finished machine,” he said. “Free of any insights into the narrative of its construction.”

Lizanne gave a bemused shrug and clasped his arm before moving on. “As you wish.”

“I need thicker steel wire,” he called after her. “The coils you gave me were too flimsy.”

She waved her assent in response and went to find Morva for her afternoon lesson.

What do you think she meant? Clay asked after Lizanne had finished sharing the memories recovered from Tinkerer’s mind. The trance connection between them felt different now, the clarity of his mindscape sharper and the exchange of thoughts more rapid. When he had revealed the fact that he could now trance without the aid of product she had been sceptical, but a few seconds of communication had banished any doubts.

The Artisan’s greatest discovery was a tribe of Spoiled? he went on.

No ordinary tribe, Lizanne pointed out. They saved her, and they seemed different to the others. Using spoken language and dressing as individuals.

Never met a friendly Spoiled, to be sure, Clay conceded. But it all happened centuries ago, right? What use is this now?

A question to be answered if I can unlock more memories.

She turned her attention to the images he had shared, particularly the Black crystal and the vial of what the ancient woman called “convergence.” Synthetic product. She allowed her conflicted emotions to colour the shared trance. The very idea of such a thing was both tantalising and incredible, if not ominous in its implications.

You saw what her people built, Clay responded. What they were able to do with the crystals, even though they never really understood them.

If they had they might never have bred the White, for which we would all have been grateful.

She plucked the vial from the mound of moon-dust where he had placed it, turning it over to watch the viscous contents slosh about. An amusing notion sent a disordered twitch through her whirlwinds, provoking a pulse of curiosity from Clay.

Just thinking, she told him. About Madame Bondersil and her obsession with the White. She said its blood promised more than all the other variants combined. But, if this can do what your friend claims, all the blood we might drain from the White’s corpse would be worth only a fraction of the price we could command for this.

Can’t argue with that. As for the White’s blood, seeing the future’s sorely overrated. When we kill it the best thing we could do with its corpse is burn it.

Let’s hope we get the chance. What is your current location?

Lieutenant Sigoral puts us about seventy miles north-east of the Carnstadts. We’re doing a lot more walking the last few days. Getting harder to find Cerath to ride. Skaggerhill says the herds start to thin the closer you get to Black country, those that do graze here are a sight more jittery.

Tomorrow I’ll be flying north where I expect to find another city fallen to the White. Meaning it won’t be long before it has sufficient strength to invade Varestia. Urgency is required, Mr. Torcreek.

I’m aware. As for the White’s gathering strength, I’ve been thinking about that. It uses a Blue crystal to change folk into Spoiled. Destroy or steal that and its army ain’t growing any bigger.

Meaning it’s sure to be well-guarded.

Didn’t say it would be easy.

Point taken. Trance again when you reach the mountains. And if you should feel the urge to try this convergence product, make sure your ancient friend drinks it first.

Mr. Lockbar arrived the next day aboard a bulky freighter with instructions to take delivery of the first consignment of weapons. The hard mask of his face betrayed little emotion when Lizanne met him on the wharf to advise two ships would be required to carry the full load. “You have ships at anchor here,” he said. “Assign one of them.”

“Ships require crews,” Lizanne replied. “And that would denude our work-force.”

“Then tell the rest to work harder. If they need any encouragement we can always cut the food supplies.” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead producing a sealed envelope and handing it to her. “The Board has convened a council of war at the Seven Walls. It meets in twelve days. Your attendance is requested.”

“Requested?”

Lockbar met her gaze, blinked once and turned away. “I’ll expect the second ship to be fully loaded and ready to sail with the morning tide.”

“They’re going to kill you, you know,” Morva said.

Lizanne glanced back from the control panel with a raised eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” Morva insisted. “Arshav and Ethilda don’t share. Now your people are delivering weapons they’ll see it as the perfect time to get rid of you. When you go to this war council of theirs they’ll either come up with a convenient lie justifying your execution, or they’ll arrange an accident. Then the Mount Works and all the weapons will be theirs.”

“How shocking,” Lizanne observed, turning back to the control panel. She eased the pitch lever to port as a gust of wind pushed the Firefly’s nose a few points east of due north. “What terrible people your relatives are.”

“You knew,” Morva said after a short silence.

“I suspected. I find when dealing with people like your cousins it’s best to maintain a healthy paranoia.”

“Oh. Will you kill them first then?”

“One of the first lessons I was taught regarding strategy, and your lesson for the day: Never tell anyone your thoughts.”

Tekela stirred in the right-hand pilot’s seat, coming awake with a groan. “You let me sleep too long,” she muttered, frowning in groggy discomfort as she tapped the clock, which showed four hours past midnight.

“You needed to rest,” Lizanne said, relinquishing control of the aerostat as Tekela gripped the lever and settled her feet onto the pedals. Her natural affinity for piloting this machine was evident in the way it seemed to calm at her touch like a horse responding to a familiar rider. The buffeting that had made the gondola thrum faded into a faint vibration and the slight see-saw action of the compass-needle was replaced by a near-perfect stability.

“We’re ten miles due south of Subarisk,” Lizanne said. She unbuckled from the pilot’s seat and moved to the rear of the gondola to peer at the glass viewport Jermayah had set into the floor. Depressing the second button on the Spider, she scanned the ocean passing below, seeing no sign of any patrolling Blue packs.

“Green,” she instructed Morva. “I need you to be our eyes whilst I’m in the trance.”

Morva nodded and pressed the appropriate button on her own Spider. Jermayah had made new devices for all the Blood-blessed at the Mount Works, an improved design which cut down on the weight and added a quick-release catch for swift removal. Lizanne injected a small amount of Blue, sinking into the trance where Sofiya waited in her fairy-tale forest.

The starting point is clear, Lizanne reported. We’ll hover here then track your progress when the Viable commences the attack.

Acknowledged, Sofiya responded. The trance connection faded almost immediately but not before Lizanne had the opportunity to note that the sky above the forest had taken on a strangely reddish hue, the clouds frozen like a painting of sunset. Lizanne found herself unable to decide if this was a good or a bad sign regarding Sofiya’s mental stability. Sunset means the onset of night, she thought. But also the promise of a new day.

She blinked and found herself back in the gondola, finding to her annoyance that Morva was peering through the starboard port-hole rather than observing the sea below. Her rebuke died, however, when Morva said, “There’s something out there.”

Lizanne moved swiftly to her side, peering at the darkened sky beyond the port-hole. The cloud-cover was intermittent at this height, slipping by like wisps of powdered silver and growing into an obscuring fog farther out. A short scan of the sky with her Green-enhanced sight revealed nothing.

“Drake?” she asked Morva.

“It was hard to make out, and gone in an instant. It was there,” she added in response to Lizanne’s frown.

“Stand by at the ignition tube,” she said, reaching to retrieve her Smoker before returning her gaze to the port-hole. “Light the blood-burner on my order. Tekela, increase height by five hundred feet then begin to circle.”

Lizanne levered a round into the Smoker’s chamber then opened the starboard hatch. She was obliged to don a pair of welder’s goggles before leaning out into the icy chill, eyes roaming the sky. The clouds thinned as Tekela brought the Firefly higher, becoming a patchy blanket through which she could see the light of two moons glittering on the ocean. The aerostat tilted as Tekela began to turn, Lizanne gripping the handhold above the hatch and leaning out yet farther, still finding no sign . . .

It was the snap of the beast’s wings that saved her, reaching her ears barely a second before it attacked and giving her enough time to lurch back from the hatch. The Red’s jaws thrust through the opening and came together less than six inches from Lizanne’s flailing foot. The Firefly shuddered and went into a spiralling descent as the Red latched its claws onto the gondola’s hull. Lizanne had time to register the fact that it was the largest Red she had ever seen, matching the size of an adult Black. Its eyes were bright with hate above the snout, jaws widening and throat rattling as it summoned its flames.

The continuing spin forced Lizanne to clamp a hand to the support strut as she aimed the Smoker one-handed at the beast’s eyes and fired. Blood and scales erupted as the explosive round impacted, the snout vanishing from the hatch. From outside came a shrieking roar of pain and rage, followed by a chorus of answering shrieks. There’s more than one, Lizanne concluded.

Hearing a pained exclamation from the pilot’s seat, she rushed forward, finding Tekela clamping a gloved hand on her neck. “Let me see,” she said, pulling the hand away to reveal the blackish, reddened welt of un-Blessed skin subjected to undiluted drake blood. Lizanne reached for the satchel containing their reserves of product, extracting a vial of Green and emptying the contents over the burn. Tekela let out a strangled yell, shuddering in her seat.

“Can you still fly this thing?” Lizanne asked her.

Tekela took in a series of ragged breaths before straightening, flexing her fingers to banish the shudder then gripping the control lever. “I can fly,” she said, voice hoarse but steady.

“Due south,” Lizanne told her, moving back to the hatch and chambering another round. Peering out she saw that the huge Red’s attack had forced them back down into the clouds, making observation difficult. As the Firefly angled itself southwards a glance to the rear revealed at least six dark shapes, wings sweeping in rapid beats as they drew closer.

“Light the blood-burner,” she told Morva, turning to find her clutching the ignition tube with both hands, eyes wide and unseeing and face a frozen pale mask. She stirred when Lizanne reached out to deliver a hard shove to the side of her head, blinking and looking around as if waking from a nightmare. “Light the blood-burner,” Lizanne repeated in emphatic and deliberate tones.

Morva stared at her for a second then nodded and put her eye to the tube, depressing the forefinger button on her Spider. The thermoplasmic engine came on-line a split-second later, Lizanne bracing herself in the hatch against the sudden acceleration. Turning her gaze to the rear once more, she saw that one of the pursuing drakes had drawn close enough for her to make out the bloody, smoking wound on the side of its head. As the Firefly began to draw away, the drake worked its wings with furious energy to match their speed, spewing flame in copious blasts that fell just short of the aerostat’s tail rudder. The huge Red let out another shrieking roar as the Firefly’s speed increased, leaving it behind to be swallowed by the clouds, although Lizanne could still hear its roar for what seemed a very long time.

“One hundred and thirty miles an hour,” Tekela reported from the pilot’s seat, voice strained with forced humour. “A record.”

Lizanne closed the hatch and made her way forward, extracting another vial of Green from the satchel. “Drink this,” she said, handing it to Tekela, whose face was now grey with suppressed pain. She didn’t argue, tipping the entire contents of the vial down her throat and letting out a groan of relief. Lizanne checked her burn, finding the blackening gone but a raw, puckered scar some three inches long remained that no amount of Green could banish.

“It’s alright,” Tekela said with a weary smile. “I’m sure I’ve seen worse.”

Lizanne squeezed her shoulder and returned to Morva, pushing the Smoker into her trembling hands. “Take this,” Lizanne said. “Keep watch. I need to trance again.”

“I . . .” Morva said. “I never saw one . . . Not a real one . . .”

“It’s always a bracing experience,” Lizanne agreed. “Inject some Green. It’ll steady your hands.”

She settled back into the rear seat and injected Blue, slipping instantly into the trance. Sofiya’s mindscape took a few minutes to appear, Lizanne noting that the redness of the sky had deepened considerably.

Captain Trumane has just ordered the attack run, Sofiya informed Lizanne, an oddly serene smile on her lips.

We were intercepted, Lizanne told her. Reds. Tell the captain to abort the mission.

Sofiya pursed her lips in momentary consideration, then shook her head. No, I don’t think I’ll do that.

The White will be alerted. Lizanne added a forceful, commanding resonance to her thoughts. And we can no longer provide warning of any Blues. Abort the mission, Sofiya.

The other woman replied with a small, apologetic smile. I’m sorry, Miss Lethridge, but I don’t recall signing a contract with you. My contract is with the Ironship Maritime Protectorate, a body which, to all intents and purposes, no longer exists. I believe that makes me effectively a free agent. Excuse me, but I must bid you farewell for now. I really don’t want to miss the show.

SOFIYA!

But she was gone, Lizanne’s shouted thoughts vanishing into the void left by her absent mindscape. “Seer damn her to the Travail!” she fumed upon exiting the trance.

“Something wrong?” Morva asked. She stood at the rear port-hole, Lizanne taking some comfort from the fact that the woman’s hands no longer shook as she held the carbine.

Lizanne looked through the rear portal at the vortex of disturbed vapour coiling in the Firefly’s slip-stream. Turning back to resume the fight with the Reds was the courageous thing to do, another chapter to add to the legend of Miss Blood, a legend she had already made the mistake of believing. “Yes,” she said. “But nothing we can do anything about.”

CHAPTER 27

Sirus

“Seer damn that bitch!” Catheline’s fury chased him all the way to the docks, her seething frustration at the Lethridge woman’s escape a constant ache in his head. “She must be here for something. Find out what it is.”

Any consideration of shared intimacy had vanished and Sirus had been swiftly dispatched to the harbour to put their defences on alert whilst the White sent every Red in its thrall to scour the skies for the aerostat. Despite the continuing ache of Catheline’s anger, Sirus had carefully examined Katarias’s shared memory, fixating on one particular image: a young woman seated at the front of the gondola, doll-like face turned to regard the sight of the drake as it attempted to flood the craft with flame. It was no more than a glimpse captured in the instant before a bright flash of agony had seen the Red cast out from the aerostat, thrashing in rage and smelling the stench of its own burnt flesh.

Tekela. She’s still alive. He cloaked the knowledge with a flare of genuine fear. The thought of what Catheline might do should she discover these particular memories was truly terrifying.

The security contingent atop the harbour wall was at full strength by the time he arrived, Sirus having already roused the near by garrisons with a thought-command. Forest Spear had charge of the contingent and Sirus joined him on the roof of the old lighthouse that stood to the left of the harbour door.

“Anything?” Sirus asked, speaking in Varsal in deference to the tribal’s linguistic preferences.

“Nothing,” Forest Spear replied. “But the Blues seem agitated.”

It was a two-moon night and the tide was high, the sea only a dozen feet from the top of the wall. The water displayed deceptive calm apart from a disturbance a few hundred yards out, Sirus recognising the signature splashes of a Blue pack. He sent out queries to the look-outs they had posted amongst the ruins of the island forts and received successive negative responses until the most southerly fort reported a ship on the horizon.

Just one vessel, Sirus told Catheline, conveying the image of the fast-moving frigate. A warship, and a blood-burner.

Why would they send only one ship? she asked.

Reconnaissance most likely. If it doesn’t turn away it will be in range of our cannon in four minutes. Or the Blues could deal with it.

There’s no point risking them for only one ship. Blast it out of the water then return to me. I should like a distraction from this most irksome night.

Sirus sent a pulse of agreement and raised a spy-glass. The frigate was close enough for him to make it out now, the white crest below the prow broadening on either side as the paddles churned the sea. Sirus had seen fast blood-burners before but this one was the most impressive, coming on at a rate of knots beyond his experience. Also, she showed no sign of veering off. He began to send a command to the cannon batteries atop the wall to prepare to fire, then saw a bright orange plume erupt on the frigate’s fore-deck.

“She’s firing,” Forest Spear said.

“Pointless at this range,” Sirus mused, puzzled by the bright flaming track the projectile painted across the darkened sky. Cannon shells often left a trail of smoke to describe their trajectory but it was only discernible after the shell had impacted on its target. By contrast Sirus was able to track the progress of this shell, if that’s what it was, as it ascended to at least a thousand feet in height before commencing a downward plunge. The fiery trail died as it descended but not before Sirus was able to make out a long, pointed shape plummeting down with arrow-like straightness towards the harbour door.

The warning he sent out to the Spoiled on either side of the door came too late, every one within twenty feet of the impact died instantly. The explosion sent Sirus and Forest Spear flying from the lighthouse roof. As he careened through the air Sirus managed to take in the sight of the huge spout of water just in front of the western side of the door, resembling an inverted waterfall as it rose high above. He landed amid a hard rain of falling sea-water, Forest Spear grunting as he came down a few feet away.

They both scrambled to their feet and rushed towards the door, then reared back as the walkway to the left of the lighthouse crumbled and collapsed into a white torrent of water. The western casement holding the harbour door in place had vanished and the door itself blasted aside. The force of the two-moon tide soon tore the door away completely before sweeping on into the harbour.

The ships . . . Sirus thought, watching the harbour waters rise, taking the vessels with them as they deluged the quayside and the warehouses beyond. The inrushing tide didn’t stop there, swallowing the mercantile district north of the docks, the ships it carried adding to the destruction as their iron hulls tore buildings into flotsam. He could see bodies amongst the surging fury of the flood, thousands of bodies, all Spoiled and all screaming in confusion in his mind before they blinked into the void.

“I’m sorry,” Catheline said, red-black eyes downcast and face tense with genuine regret. Then she sent a bolt of purest agony into Sirus’s mind.

He was no stranger to torture and had considered the torments visited upon him by the Imperial Cadre to be the worst pain he was ever likely to endure. He had been wrong. His body bent taut like a bow, jaws clamped together so tight he couldn’t even scream as he convulsed. His mind fragmented under the weight of agony, rationality disappearing into a jumbled haze of discordant memory, glimpsed only for an instant before the pain took them away. There was one image he managed to hold on to longer than the others. Tekela’s face . . . The scorn she had shown him in Morsvale, the pity in Feros and the fear as she looked upon Katarias. Her face became his saviour, like the wreckage he had clung to after the battle with the Ironship cruiser, a single point of comfort in the storm of pain.

When it ended he found himself lying on the floor of Catheline’s ball-room, one-half of his face damp from the drool that had gushed from his lips. The relief was almost like pain in itself, being such a jarring contrast to what he had just endured, and he found he had to choke down a scream.

“Even if we could refloat the ships,” he heard Morradin say, “without a working harbour Subarisk is useless as a port.”

“Tell me, at least, that you caught that fucking ship,” Catheline said.

“The Blues gave chase but she was so confounded fast.” Morradin’s voice was controlled but possessed of a wary tone, as if expecting his own bout of punishment at any second. “The Blues tracked it south for a time but it seems they can’t swim faster than a blood-burner, at least not this one.”

Catheline let out a sigh of exasperation. “How can just one shell from one ship destroy an entire city?”

“It wasn’t a shell,” Sirus said, grimacing as he got to his feet. “It was a rocket.”

The council of war were standing a few feet away, each one maintaining a carefully neutral visage, except for Catheline, who offered him a brief, relieved smile.

He wanted to feed you to his brood, she said in his mind. I persuaded him otherwise, told him you were still our best hope for victory. Don’t prove me a liar, General.

“A rocket?” Morradin said, heavy brows bunched in doubt. “Never seen one with that kind of range or that kind of punch.”

“Clearly, this one is something new,” Sirus replied, straightening his tunic and moving to Catheline’s side. “Launched out of range of our guns during a two-moon tide. And not aimed at the harbour door itself but the sea just in front of it. Water has a strange effect on explosions, at depth the pressure greatly magnifies their power. Even a comparatively small amount of explosive would have achieved the same result provided it was placed with sufficient accuracy.” He paused, scaled brows raised in reluctant admiration. “Miss Lethridge is either very clever or has some very clever friends.”

He turned his gaze to Veilmist. “Casualties?”

“Twenty thousand, six hundred and forty-two Spoiled dead,” she replied, prompt as ever. “Plus five thousand two hundred captives who hadn’t yet been converted. Also”—she shot a guarded look at Catheline—“two hundred and twenty-three Greens and eighteen Reds.”

So few? Sirus thought, masking his regret with fear. “The fleet?” he asked instead.

“We have five ships in working order, only one a warship.”

Sirus looked at Morradin, who kept his face rigid although their shared minds reached the same conclusion. “So, an invasion of Varestia is now impossible,” Catheline said, reading their thoughts.

“Not for several months,” Sirus replied. “At least not by sea. There is one alternative.”

“A land invasion,” Morradin elaborated. “We march overland to the Varestian Peninsular. There are numerous towns and villages en route where more recruits can be harvested.”

“What’s to stop our enemies simply sailing away?” Catheline enquired.

“We can assume the Varestians will stay and defend their homeland,” Sirus said. “And since it seems clear that Miss Lethridge is now allied with them, so will she.”

“You assume a great deal, General.”

“With Varestia in our hands we will have all the ships we’ll need. Enough ships to carry this army to every corner of the world.”

Catheline fell silent, her face taking on the unfocused blankness that told of communion with the White. From outside came a roar, rich in frustration and loud enough to shake the windows. Catheline began to tremble as the roar descended into a low growl that persisted for some time. Eventually it faded and she let out a gasp, falling to her knees, shuddering. Sirus crouched at her side, placing a tentative hand on her shoulder, feeling the flesh tremble beneath her shawl.

“We . . .” she began, voice faltering into a cough. Catheline swallowed and spoke on, “We have leave to march on Varestia, but He wishes to educate our army first.”

Sirus’s gaze snapped to Morradin as the marshal let out a strangled yell and collapsed to the floor, swiftly followed by Veilmist, Forest Spear and the other Spoiled present. Only Sirus and Catheline remained immune. From beyond the windows came a strange murmuration, the massed discordant chorus of thousands of souls thrashing in pain but unable to scream. Sirus moved to the window, knowing what he would see. He could feel their pain and confusion, his entire army lying amidst the ruined streets of Subarisk, convulsing beneath the weight of the White’s punishment.

“He promises so much,” Catheline said, moving to join him at the window. Sirus felt her hand slip into his, grasping it tight. “But great works require great sacrifice.”

CHAPTER 28

Clay

The Carnstadt Mountains were less tall than the Coppersoles but somehow more threatening in appearance. They rose in sheer-sided monoliths from a thick blanket of encroaching jungle, flanks shrouded in drifting mist. The company had already spotted their first Black the day before, a youthful female according to Skaggerhill’s experienced opinion. They had dismounted from their final Cerath ride the previous morning and spent the next two days trekking through the increasingly verdant plains north of the mountains. The Black appeared at noon, a dark silhouette in the sky that circled them well out of longrifle range before flying off to the south.

“Guess they know we’re coming,” Clay said, watching the drake fade into the distance.

“Think she’s gonna go tell her folks they got visitors?” Skaggerhill said, a note of humour in his voice that faded when he saw Clay’s expression.

“Yeah,” Clay told him. “That’s exactly what I think she’s gonna do.”

“They’re still animals,” Skaggerhill insisted, a certain stubborn sullenness creasing his brow. “It’s a mistake to imagine they think like us, talk like us.”

“These ain’t the dumb beasts you imagined them to be all these years,” Clay replied. “You gotta know that after everything we seen. And no, they don’t think like us, or talk like us. But they do think.” He turned his gaze to the south once more, the Black now no more than a speck above the mountains cresting the horizon. “And they do talk.”

The plains gave way to sparse forest as they neared the mountains, which soon grew into thick jungle. Clay called a halt with the onset of evening and they settled down to eat a meal of roasted Cerath meat. Whilst the others talked over their options Clay sat in silent contemplation of the map Hilemore had given him.

“Climbing the first mountain we come to seems like the best bet,” his uncle said. “Find us a nesting drake and Miss Kriz can do what she does with the crystal. Females don’t fly when they’re nesting.”

“You think they’ll let us get anywhere near a nest, Captain?” Skaggerhill said. “Nesting female will be sure to have a big mean male close by who’s likely to roast us before we manage to scale more than a few feet. I say we do what we did last time, ’cept we try for a capture ’stead of a kill. Preacher’ll shoot us some game and we leave the carcass out in a clearing. Black’ll come along sooner or later, most likely a young ’un as they’re less wary than the adults, be easier to rope up too since they’re smaller. After that the lady can do her thing and . . .” Skaggerhill shrugged. “I guess we’ll see iffen it works.”

“Worth a try, I guess,” Braddon said after some thought. “Be right tricky, though. Might end up killing any beast we catch, given how they can be . . .”

“No,” Clay interrupted, looking up from his map. “We ain’t doing any of that.”

“Then what d’you suggest, cuz?” Loriabeth asked. “We all just go strolling on in there and wait for one to come say hello?”

“Not all.” Clay scanned them with a steady gaze, making sure they all understood his next words to be sincere and not subject to argument. “Just me and Kriz. The rest of you are gonna skirt the mountains and make for the coast. I’ll trance with the lieutenant along the way to let you know how we’re doing. If I don’t trance for three days straight, head for Stockcombe.”

Loriabeth let out a disparaging laugh, quickly echoed by his uncle. “Clay, if you think I’m gonna let you walk in there on your own . . .”

“They remember!”

Braddon fell silent, his laughter fading as Clay’s shout echoed through the jungle.

“Drakes ain’t like us, like I said,” Clay went on, voice lowered. “One thing that makes ’em different is their memory. It don’t die with them, they carry it. Every Black holds the memory of its parents, and its grandparents, and their grandparents, going all the way back for thousands of years. You’ve been here before so they know your scent and they know what you did. They’ll kill you.”

“I ain’t been here before,” Loriabeth said. “I should come too.”

“You carry your pa’s scent, cuz,” Clay said, shaking his head. “I ain’t risking it.” Braddon began to say something more but Clay cut him off. “It’s settled, Uncle. You made me captain, well, I’m giving orders. You head for the coast.” He turned to Kriz. “We’ll set off in the morning, if you’re willing.”

He detected a slight hesitation before she replied with a nod and a forced smile. “Of course. There was a city here in my time. I’m keen to see if there’s anything left of it.”

They parted the next morning after a brief farewell that saw Loriabeth fighting tears and Braddon make a last and fruitless attempt to persuade Clay to another course of action.

“Course is set, Uncle,” he replied, turning to walk away before pausing for a second to add, “And don’t try tracking after us.”

To be certain, he called a halt after he and Kriz had covered the first few miles and waited, hearing and seeing no sign that they were being followed. “Is it true?” Kriz whispered as they crouched in the undergrowth.

“What?” Clay asked.

“About drake memory. It’s not just something you told them to spare them danger?”

“’Course not.” He turned to her, frowning in realisation. “You didn’t know?”

Her face took on a sheepish grimace. “Clearly we had much left to discover.”

“Seems to me the more I find out about your people, the more dumb they seem. You didn’t know how the crystals work but you used them anyway. You didn’t know what the White was capable of but that didn’t stop you breeding the damn thing. Also, turns out you barely know shit about the animals you spent years studying.”

“All knowledge is . . .”

“Precious and dangerous. Yeah, I remember.” Clay waited for a few moments more and, satisfied they were in fact travelling alone, rose and resumed the southward trek towards the nearest mountain. He stopped when he realised Kriz wasn’t following, turning back to find her standing with her gaze averted, hands fidgeting on the straps of her back.

“What?” he asked her.

“Thousands of years,” she said. “Their memory goes back thousands of years.”

“So?”

“So . . .” She raised her gaze, eyes wary with reluctant admission. “So, they might well remember me. Remember what I did, all those years ago.”

Clay took a step towards her, finding his voice had hardened when he spoke on. “What you did?”

“Experiments.” She closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “Dissections.”

Clay came to a halt and they stared at each other for a time, Kriz forcing herself to meet his eyes, Clay realising the depth of his ignorance about this woman.

“As you said,” she went on, breaking a lengthy silence, “we barely knew shit about them.”

“We can still find the others,” he said in a flat weary voice, starting back down the trail. “You’ll go with them . . .”

“No.” She was emphatic, unmoving. “No. You need me to activate the crystal. If they remember . . . then we’ll just have to hope the crystal conveys sufficient understanding for them to hear a heart-felt apology.”

“Do we climb?” Kriz asked, her voice betraying an ill-concealed reluctance as she gazed up at the granite flanks of the mountain. A thick mist concealed the summit and, although the cliff-face before them featured numerous ledges and cracks, Clay found the prospect of climbing it distinctly unappealing.

He glanced around at the jungle canopy surrounding the low, grassy hill where they stood. Once clear of the jungle the air took on a clammy chill adding to the sense of exposure. The clouds that seemed to linger constantly over the mountains could conceal any manner of threats and Clay was beset by a persistent sense that a dark-winged shape would come swooping out of the white sky at any moment.

“No,” he said, unslinging his pack. “We’ll camp here tonight. Keep moving south come the morning.”

“There’s no cover,” she pointed out, casting a hand at the sky.

“That’s kinda the point. We want to be found, remember?” He set his pack down, resting a hand on the bulbous shape within. Come a long way, young ’un, he thought, smoothing his palm over the egg’s grainy shell. Hope your kin are pleased to see you.

They took turns on watch through the night, which proved uneventful if somewhat tense. Like all jungles this one generated a nerve-straining chorus of combined animal chatter and creaking branches. The only potential sign of a drake came during Clay’s watch in the small hours when the night was blackest. The clouds parted for a short time allowing a patch of moonlight to play over the jungle. Clay gazed at the pale blue light playing on the tree-tops, making them glitter as it caught the innumerable leaves, then started as a swift shadow swept across the scene. His gaze jerked upwards, honed instincts making one hand reach for his revolver whilst the other went to his wallet of product. He checked himself and forced his hands back into his lap, eyes roving the sky as the clouds closed in again. He heard no drake call, nor flap of wings but the feeling of being observed raised a prickle to his skin.

“I know you’re up there,” he whispered, hearing the quaver in his voice. “Why not come say hello?”

His hand went to the vials around his neck, the fruits of his sojourn in the enclave beneath the ice. White blood and Black heart-blood, the existence of which he had chosen to keep from Captain Hilemore. He hadn’t explicitly told Lizanne either but, given her facility for trance communication, it was possible she already knew. Once again, the notion of drinking White played through his mind.

It might show me where to go, he thought. Where to find them. The vial’s contents were dark, catching only a marginal gleam from the camp-fire. With no plasmologist dilutions to preserve it the blood had congealed, making it appear a thick, oily sludge he knew would be the foulest thing he had ever tasted. Only when everything else has failed, he decided, letting it fall from his grasp and turning his gaze on the vial of heart-blood.

It was similarly congealed but even darker. The pain of drinking the Blue heart-blood still lingered in his mind. Also, he knew now the connection was not inevitable. This was not a magic potion from some fable that would cast a spell over any drake he chose. It allowed the joining of minds and his control over Jack had been possible only because the drake’s mind had been fractured and susceptible to remoulding. Miss Ethelynne had forged a connection with Lutharon but he had been an infant at the time. Somehow he doubted a sane adult Black would present an easier prospect.

Another last resort, he concluded, concealing the vials beneath his shirt and looking at his pack and the round shape within. Looks like it’ll be down to you, young ’un.

They moved on come the morning, Clay following a course that would lead them into the heart of the Carnstadts. The jungle was similar to the country east of Krystaline Lake, though the trees were less tall and the ground-level vegetation thicker. He was wary at first, recognising this as perfect Green country and walking with his revolver drawn. He holstered it after trekking for several hours during which he saw no claw tracks on the jungle floor or any of the markings Greens habitually left on tree-trunks to mark their territory. Not Green country, he thought, peering up at the sky through the canopy. They steer well clear of this place. This is Black country.

“So, what was it called?” he asked Kriz when they paused in a clearing some miles on. “The city that used to sit here?”

“Devos Eluzica,” she said, speaking in her own language as they both did most of the time now. “It means ‘The Divine Tree.’” She gave a wistful sigh as she gazed around at the enclosing wall of jungle. “It was beautiful, Clay. An entire city built by a subsect of the Devos Caste. They chose to build without the aid of any crystals, in fact shunning their use entirely, believing the Benefactors had sent them as a test rather than a gift.”

“A test?” Clay asked. “Of what?”

“It’s all a little confused,” she said, drinking from her canteen and frowning in remembrance. “But then I always had trouble comprehending the vagaries of the Devos. It had something to do with our worthiness, our value as a species. They felt we had lessened ourselves by using the crystals, become as pampered children in the eyes of the Benefactors. Only by rebuilding our civilisation with our own hands could we win back their favour; otherwise, they were sure to punish us with a great cataclysm of some kind.”

“Maybe they had a point, given what was coming and all.”

“They were hypocrites. The city they built here was small at first. Just a series of interlinked houses crafted to sit amongst the tree-tops in supposed harmony with nature. But as time went on it grew taller, coming to resemble a great tree itself, adorned with glowing baubles when night fell. But they would never have been able to build it without the engineering knowledge acquired since the dawn of the crystal age. And, as the decades passed, successive generations crafted convenient sophistry to enable them to use crystals, eventually forgetting their heresy altogether, and the great tree grew ever taller. In my time, it rose higher than some of the mountains.” She paused, voice becoming sombre and her fond smile fading. “It must have been quite a sight when it fell.”

Clay was about to ask more then stopped when his gaze alighted on something in the gloom beyond Kriz’s shoulder: the fire-light playing on the outline of a crouched figure. He scrambled to his feet, drawing his revolver, Kriz doing the same. “What is it?” she whispered, moving to his side.

“Company.” Clay trained his revolver on the outline, eyes flicking left and right for any sign of another intruder, seeing only darkened jungle. After several long seconds in which nothing happened he began to discern the unnatural stillness of the crouched figure. Even a Spoiled couldn’t sit still for that long, he decided, nevertheless keeping the revolver aimed at the figure as he crept closer.

“Seer-damn statue,” he muttered in relief as the figure came fully into view. The statue was cracked and mostly covered with vines. However, enough of its original form remained to make out the shape of a kneeling man, hands clasped together but head raised to stare directly ahead.

“Spoiled,” Clay said, running a hand over the statue’s scaled features, feeling the stunted spines on its forehead. He was no scholar of the arts but there was something familiar about the way the stone had been worked, the sharp angles and blockiness of the statue putting him in mind of the hidden city near Krystaline Lake. But there were also subtle differences, a more curved line than he had seen before and, as a quick inspection of the statue’s base confirmed, it had been decorated with a markedly different form of writing. The characters adorning the statues in the hidden city had a flowing, almost organic quality whilst these were much more regular and dense, almost like words in a printed book.

“Miss Ethy might’ve been able to read it,” he murmured, running a hand over the inscription.

“Who?” Kriz asked.

“Friend of mine. She died. And I was too dumb to look at her note-books when I had the chance.”

“Oh.” She reached out to smooth a hand over the statue’s upper arm. “Finely worked. Whoever made this was very skilled. But there was nothing like it in my time.”

“Yeah, I guessed it didn’t come from your holy tree city.”

Clay straightened as something occurred to him. Where there’s one there’ll be more. He extracted a vial of Green from his wallet and drank a small amount, casting his gaze about at the revealed jungle. “There,” he said, pointing as his enhanced gaze picked out another crouching figure some twenty yards away. A brief inspection revealed it to be mostly identical to the first one, albeit with a greater level of damage. Further investigation revealed another two statues farther on, each spaced at what seemed to be precisely the same distance.

“And there’s another one,” Clay said, nodding to the next figure in what was clearly a long line of statues. “Looks like we got a trail to follow come the morning.”

They counted over two hundred statues by the time the trail ended in a broad clearing about three miles from where they had camped. They changed in form as the trail continued, the kneeling figures rising to a crouch, then standing, then with arms stretched out in front. Clay began to suspect they were in fact looking at a sequence depicting the same Spoiled captured at different stages in some kind of ritual. The final statue was the most damaged of all. The head was gone and half the figure’s vine-enmeshed torso had tumbled into dust long ago. One outstretched arm remained, however, the hand closed into a fist with a stunted finger extended.

The Artisan’s memory, he realised, following the direction of the pointed finger. They were in the same clearing from the memory Lizanne had shared with him, but instead of the statue pointing to a jagged outline above the tree-tops, it pointed only at empty sky. “Must’ve fallen to ruin since,” he murmured.

“What must have?” Kriz asked.

“A temple,” he said, starting forward. “This way . . .”

He staggered as a gust of wind swept down from above, raising enough dust to blind him whilst his ears were assailed by the roar of an enraged drake. A shudder ran through the ground as a large Black descended directly to his front, wings spread wide and mouth open. More shudders followed in quick succession, Clay whirling to see two more Blacks landing to their rear.

“The crystal,” Clay said and Kriz immediately reached into her pocket. The Black to their front let out a squawk of alarm at this, lowering itself into a crouch, smoke rising from its nostrils.

“Hey!” Clay raised both arms, presenting his empty hands to the Black, hoping to buy time for Kriz to activate the crystal. “We’re friends! See, no weapons! And we brought a gift.”

He unshouldered his pack, swiftly undoing the ties and extracting what was inside. “Peace offering,” he said, setting the egg down in front of the Black. Its aggressive posture didn’t change, though it did lower its gaze a fraction to take in the sight of the egg. Letting out a suspicious grunt, the Black dipped its head to sniff the egg, huffing in what Clay took for recognition. “Young ’un needs a new home,” he said. “Brung him a long way to find it.”

The Black’s eyes narrowed, a low, guttural rumble sounding from its throat as it enclosed the egg in its claw, dragging it back as it hissed in warning. Clay watched as the beast’s gaze tracked from him to Kriz where it lingered, narrowed further then flared into a deep angry recognition. Shit! he thought, turning and dragging Kriz into a protective huddle as the Black roared and unleashed its flames.

CHAPTER 29

Lizanne

“You were right,” Lizanne told Captain Trumane. “Mrs. Griffan is not suited to service aboard your ship.”

Trumane glanced to where Sofiya was fussing over some of the children, her face showing a rare animation and joy. “The mission was a success,” he said. “I believe she acquitted herself well.”

“She should have passed on my order to abort,” Lizanne insisted. “We were compromised.”

“War-time operations are not intelligence missions, Miss Lethridge.” Trumane’s tone was mild but his gaze betrayed a twitch of resentment she realised came from her use of the word “order.” “They cannot be abandoned due to mere compromise,” Trumane went on. “War is an exercise in the management and acceptance of risk. If Mrs. Griffan had passed on your order I may well have discounted it in any case, considering the advantage we stood to gain. A sea-borne invasion of the Red Tides is now impossible, at least for some considerable time. In short, the risk was worth it.”

Is it pride, Lizanne wondered, trying not to let her burgeoning anger show on her face, that makes me dislike this man so? Do I hunger for power? Like Countess Sefka, or the Electress.

Despite her resentment she knew there was merit in his judgement. It was two days since the Viable Opportunity had returned from its mission, during which time Tekela and Lizanne had made a brief reconnaissance flight. They flew in daylight with Morva and a volunteer from the militia, both armed with mini-Growlers. They kept a wary eye on the surrounding sky as the aerostat drew close enough to Subarisk to confirm it mostly ruined by flooding and the White’s fleet wrecked, save for a few vessels seen floating in the harbour. More disturbingly, there was no sign of any drakes or, as they drifted lower, no Spoiled either.

Lizanne had decided to risk an inland flight, having Morva stand by to ignite the blood-burner as they flew north. The tail end of the White’s army came into view some ten miles beyond the city, the huge host raising a pall of brownish dust as it snaked away across the landscape. The sight of dark-winged specks flying above the horde was enough to convince Lizanne to turn back. The conclusion was obvious: The White had abandoned Subarisk and commenced an overland march. Its eventual destination was not hard to divine. They had won victory and precious time, but this war was very far from over.

“Ah,” Trumane said, turning towards her father’s workshop as a sudden upsurge in noise rose from beneath the awning. “I believe we are about to be treated to an unveiling.”

The work-force had been granted the afternoon off to witness this event, a reward for exceeding their production targets and also a pragmatic measure intended to obviate the exhaustion of many. The patch of bare ground that lay in front of the workshop had been converted into a park of sorts complete with benches and gravel paths. Some former gardeners from Lossermark had even planted flower-beds, though it would be some weeks before they blossomed. It was mainly used as a playground, carpenters and metal-workers having used their infrequent spare time to construct swings and a climbing frame for the children. Today the park was crowded with off-duty workers, mostly clad in their overalls, though Lizanne saw some who had taken the time to change into finer garb somehow salvaged from their previous lives. Despite the tiredness evident on most faces, there was a distinct sense of celebration in the air, as if the unveiling of the professor’s latest marvel might even be a cause for optimism.

The noise from the workshop rose to a greater pitch, sounding to Lizanne like the buzzing of a thousand giant hornets. Ripples spread across the awning and it began to snap with increasing energy before the ties holding it in place were either deliberately undone or it was torn away by the gale raging beneath. As the awning peeled back from the workshop’s roof a large curved shape began to rise drawing an awed gasp from the onlooking crowd. Lizanne had expected the Mark II aerostat to be larger than the Firefly, but this was on another scale entirely.

The gas envelope that rose from the workshop was at least four times the size of the Firefly and different in shape. Instead of an elongated egg it put Lizanne in mind of a headless whale, being flatter and wider. Also, its smooth surface was broken by a cupola on its topside. She instantly recognised her father’s tall form standing in the cupola, giving a hesitant wave as a cheer rose from the crowd at the sight of him. Four rudders protruded from the stern, two vertical and two horizontal, swivelling in response to Tekela’s touch on the controls.

The aerostat rose higher, the source of the great buzzing noise soon revealed as two propelling engines fitted to either side of the gondola that seemed to sprout like some organic growth from the craft’s underside. The engines were angled so that the propellers pointed at the ground, blurred to invisibility as they pushed the aerostat higher still, drawing it clear of the workshop. It slowed to a hover some fifty feet off the ground at which point the spectators all burst into applause.

“Impressive,” Captain Trumane said, Lizanne turning to see a corner of his mouth curling in an infrequently seen expression of pleasure, or perhaps anticipation. “I wonder if it can lift a rocket.”

“It looks like a whale,” Morva said. “That’s what we should call it, the Flying Whale.”

“We’re not calling her that,” Tekela insisted. “She’s the Typhoon. I’m the pilot so I get to name her.” She turned to Lizanne with an expectant smile. “Isn’t that so?”

“I couldn’t care less if you call her the Flying Turd,” Lizanne said. “As long as she performs as expected.”

Her gaze tracked over the interior of the gondola. After a brief circuit of the Mount the new aerostat had been tethered to one of the taller chimneys. Lizanne, Morva and Trumane had climbed a rope ladder for an inspection. She estimated the compartment was sufficiently spacious for at least a dozen crew with wide hatches in the hull to which gun mountings had already been fitted.

“She can carry two Thumpers or five Growlers,” Professor Lethridge said, descending a ladder which extended from the centre of the floor into an opening in the ceiling. “Or a mix of the two. Plus another Growler in the upper observation point.”

“A clever modification, Father,” she complimented him. “Drakes do like to attack from above.”

“It might not be entirely necessary,” Captain Trumane put in, glancing up from an inspection of the control panel at the front of the gondola. “Is this altitude indicator’s maximum level accurate, Graysen?”

“A reasonable estimation based on the lifting capacity,” the professor replied. “There will be variations depending on atmospheric conditions, of course.”

“Ten thousand feet,” Captain Trumane said, tapping one of the dials. “I’m no drake-ologist but I believe no Red has ever been observed to fly higher than six thousand feet. Something to do with the thinness of the air, I believe.”

“Speed?” Lizanne asked her father, although it was Tekela who answered.

“On standard power we think she might get up to eighty miles per hour,” she said. “Two engines, you see? Once the blood-burners are lit, however . . .” She smiled. “Well, I’m very keen to find out just how fast she’ll go.”

“So,” Lizanne mused, moving to one of the gun mountings, “we have the advantage of height, speed and fire-power.”

“Whilst they possess greater numbers,” Trumane pointed out. “One ship doesn’t make a fleet.”

“With the materials already on hand,” Professor Lethridge said after a moment’s mental calculation, “we could produce perhaps two a month.”

“That won’t be enough,” Lizanne said. “Destroying the White’s ships has bought us time, but we can expect its army to reach the Varestian Peninsular within four to five weeks.” Growing larger with every village and town it destroys along the way, she added to herself.

“It’s a matter of labour rather than resources,” her father said. “With an expanded work-force . . .”

“You’ll have it,” she promised. “It’ll mean reduced production of weapons but that can’t be helped. Without more of these I doubt we have a chance.” She turned to Tekela. “I’m appointing you Chief Pilot. Your first task is to identify and train others in how to fly this thing.”

Tekela’s face took on a puzzled frown. “How do I do that?”

“Find people with relevant experience. Former helmsmen, locomotive-drivers and the like. Madame Hakugen should be able to help. Failing that just ask people to volunteer. I’m sure there are many keen to get out of the manufactory.” She turned to her father. “Captain Trumane voiced a pertinent question earlier,” she said, “regarding rockets.”

Ethilda and Arshav convened their war council in the observation tower crowning the Navigation. Lizanne had arrived alone in the Firefly an hour before, piloting it herself to land on the building’s expansive front lawn. Mr. Lockbar and his gang duly arrived, failing to deliver a formal greeting of any kind before conducting a thorough and ungentle search of her person for product and weapons. He then escorted her to the meeting where Lizanne was surprised to find Alzar Lokaras in attendance along with a half dozen captains of varying clan allegiances.

Ethilda hadn’t bothered to introduce any of the captains, though a few possessed sufficient manners to make themselves known to Lizanne before the meeting began. The most courteous was a trim woman clad in a long, waxed-canvas jacket and sea-boots, the least expensive garb of any other captain present. She was about Lizanne’s height and build and would have seemed much the same age but for her hair and lined face.

“Mirram Kashiel,” she said, removing her broad-brimmed hat and performing a low bow. “Captain of the Sunrider and Chief of Clan Kashiel.”

“Lizanne Lethridge . . .”

“Oh, I know who you are. They call you Miss Blood.” The woman straightened with a grin. “But I won’t. Bit of a silly name, don’t you think?”

“Extremely. I didn’t choose it.”

“Got our first delivery of your marvellous guns yesterday. Very impressive, ’specially the big ones. Could do with a lot more, though.”

“They’re on their way,” Lizanne assured her.

“If you’re finished with your chatter,” Arshav broke in, eyes hard and face set in as serious an expression as Lizanne had yet seen. “We have a war to plan.” He turned to Ethilda as the room fell silent. “Mother?”

Ethilda moved to stand next to the oil painting depicting the Varestian region. She held a thin ivory baton and wore a dress which had been adorned with various military accoutrements, including shoulder epaulets and a yellow sash of the kind worn by marshals of the late Mandinorian Imperium. Lizanne somehow knew Ethilda was already imagining the portrait of her in this dress that would one day adorn the halls of this building.

“Subarisk,” Ethilda said, tapping the tip of the baton to the relevant section of the painting. “Fallen to our enemy and since abandoned, thanks to an unsanctioned action by our supposed ally.” She fixed Lizanne with a glare before moving the baton westward. “Denied ships, the enemy is now marching towards the peninsular.”

“Where they will no doubt visit all manner of vile havoc on every Varestian they get they claws on,” Arshav added. Unlike his mother he didn’t glare, though Lizanne recognised the set of his features, having seen the face of many a man set on murder.

Subarisk, Lizanne decided, recalling Morva’s words. That will be their pretext.

“With ships they would have invaded the Red Tides within days,” she pointed out, keeping her tone mild. “Now we have weeks to prepare.”

“For a land campaign,” Ethilda said. “Varestians are not accustomed to fighting on land. At sea we would have had a much better chance of victory, especially with the new weapons.”

A small murmur of agreement came from the other captains, though by no means all. “Many ships aren’t yet armed,” Alzar Lokaras said, voice flat, though his animosity to his cousins shone in his eyes clearly enough. “And there are only a few hundred of the new carbines. I also note my cousin Arshav has barely managed to gather more than ten thousand fighters.”

“I can’t be held accountable for the cowardice of others,” Arshav said, a snarl creeping into his voice.

“It isn’t cowardice, cousin,” Alzar replied. “It’s you. No true Varestian wants the stain on their honour that comes from serving under your flag.”

“Careful, cousin,” Arshav returned, his hand straying towards the hilt of his sabre. “Challenges may be forbidden in time of war, but don’t imagine that will protect you.”

Alzar met Arshav’s gaze squarely, a sneer forming on his lips. “From what?”

“Enough!” Ethilda barked as Arshav’s fist closed on the sabre hilt. “This avails us nothing.” She focused her gaze on Lizanne. “We have a disloyal ally to deal with.”

Lizanne had prepared an initial response to this trap, a short but effective speech highlighting Arshav’s and Ethilda’s many and obvious faults in both character and judgement. It was designed to stoke the pre-existing resentments of the other captains, perhaps even to the point where they might be tempted to stage a coup. But the Okanas’s clumsy intrigues were proving sufficiently tiresome for her to proceed directly to the alternative option.

“I take it Mr. Lockbar is outside awaiting some form of signal,” she said, arching a quizzical eyebrow at Ethilda. “Soon he’ll come bursting in to arrest me for breach of contract whereupon I’ll be marched off to some dungeon, perhaps making a doomed and fatal escape attempt along the way.”

Ethilda stared at her with an expression that mingled poorly hidden surprise with unconcealed animosity, her eyes flicking towards Arshav as they exchanged an uncertain glance. Lizanne gave a disgusted sigh and strode towards the large telescope opposite the huge oil-painted map. She swivelled the tube on the tripod to point it towards the large window, setting the correct angle before checking the focus through the eyepiece.

“Please,” she said, stepping back and gesturing at the telescope. “I should like you to see my father’s latest invention,” she added as mother and son exchanged another glance. They continued to stand in rigid and enraged immobility so Alzar stepped forward.

“What is that?” he asked, brows creasing as he squinted through the eyepiece.

“She’s called the Typhoon,” Lizanne replied. “A Mark II aerostat, currently hovering at a height of six thousand feet, well outside the range of any current artillery piece. Please note the object below the gondola.”

“I see it,” Alzar said after some more squinting.

“We call that the Tinkerer Mark I rocket. It’s identical to the one that destroyed the harbour door at Subarisk. You will also note it is aimed directly at this building. Should I fail to fly away from the Seven Walls within the hour it will be fired, and please harbour no illusions that it will miss its target.”

She turned to Ethilda and Arshav, speaking in clear, precise tones to ensure there would be no mistaking her intent. “Our contract is hereby voided on grounds of corporate duplicity and negotiations undertaken in bad faith. Should you make any attempt to reassert the provisions of said contract the Typhoon will return and destroy this building. It will then destroy every ship your family owns. The Mount Works Manufacturing Company is of this moment a separate entity and free to negotiate its own contracts. Your business, however, is not welcome and your authority over the Varestian region is no longer recognised.”

She stepped away from the telescope and bowed to the other attendees. “Captains, should you wish to engage in serious discussions regarding the defence of the Red Tides you can find me at Blaska Sound. All munitions will be supplied free of charge to any who choose to ally with us.” She bowed again and moved to the door. “Good day.”

CHAPTER 30

Hilemore

“I’m sorry, Corrick. But you can expect no help.”

Hilemore reread the last line of the communique several times, it being the only sentence to convey any sense of intimacy. The rest of the missive contained a brief and depressing summary of recent events in Mandinor and assurances that she had advised the Voters Rights Alliance in this city to render assistance to him “subject to a reciprocal arrangement compatible with your honour.” This was followed shortly after by an observation he felt had been intended as much for his hosts’ eyes as his: “I’m sure all parties will benefit from your advice and calm counsel.”

“So you see,” Coll said after Hilemore had finished. “You want our help, you help us win this city back.”

“That,” Hilemore replied, “is not her intent.”

“Reads that way to me,” the stocky youth replied to a murmur of agreement from the other committee members. “We got supplies, you want ’em. So take your boat across the harbour and pound that bitch Kulvetch’s headquarters to rubble . . .”

“That’s not going to happen,” Hilemore interrupted, glancing over the communique once more before consigning it to his pocket. Lacking intimacy or not, it was the only correspondence he had received from Lewella in many months and he found himself unwilling to part with it. “You forget that I know Free Woman Tythencroft far better than any of you. Her intention, misguided though I believe it to be, is for me to negotiate a ceasefire between the Voters Rights Alliance and corporate forces, and subsequently to assume leadership of this city.”

Hilemore rose from his stool, scanning each of the young, angry faces before him and feeling far older than his twenty-eight years. Twenty-nine, he reminded himself, recalling his uncelebrated birthday on the ice. “Clearly,” he said, “had she met Colonel Kulvetch or any of you lot, she would have known this to be a hopeless prospect, as is any further negotiation with me.”

“Wait!” Jillett said as he started towards the door. Hilemore turned back to find her on her feet exchanging hard glares with her fellow committee members. She snatched her arm away as Coll reached out to restrain her. “We need to know,” she hissed at him.

“Know what?” Hilemore enquired.

“Your report to Free Woman Tythencroft,” she said. “How much of it is true?”

Hilemore had been circumspect in revealing full details of his eventful life since boarding the Viable Opportunity all those months ago, but saw little point in being overly secretive. His account had omitted the exact nature of the Longrifles’ mission to the Interior but confirmed its importance in resolving what he had termed “the current emergency.” “Every word,” he said.

“So there’s really an army of drakes and Spoiled rampaging across the world,” Jillett persisted.

“Indeed there is.”

“We ain’t seen ’em,” Coll said. “How do we know this ain’t all a pile of horse shit?”

“There is an entire fleet of merchant ships in your harbour terrified of putting to sea,” Hilemore pointed out. “Also, how long has it been since a Contractor crew, or anyone else for that matter, turned up at the gates?”

More exchanging of glances, though much of the previous hostility had given way to uncertainty.

“The world is in chaos,” Hilemore went on, “whilst you sit here indulging your petty squabbles and childish politics. I don’t know why you’ve been spared so far, but sooner or later they will be coming for you. Still”—he straightened his tunic and turned to leave once more—“on the bright side you may well have slaughtered each other before they get here.”

“Kulvetch won’t sell to you ’less you fight for her!” Coll called after him. “Where you gonna get your supplies?”

Hilemore had to admit it was a good question. Although, as he made his way back to the wharf and the crowded harbour came into view, it occurred to him that there was in fact a third party in this port who might be open to more rational negotiation.

“You want to sail away from the only safe port left on this continent?” Captain Tidelow asked, weathered brow creasing in doubt. “So’s we can go off and fight in a war all the way across the ocean?”

“I do,” Hilemore replied, voice raised so that all the other captains present could hear it. It appeared the master of every vessel in the harbour had come in answer to his invitation, so many in fact that he had been obliged to hold this conference on the Superior’s fore-deck. This had the added benefit of ensuring that both Colonel Kulvetch and the Voter rebels would be made fully aware of the proceedings. The captains were a mixed lot, North and South Mandinorian, Dalcian and Varestian, even a few Corvantines. Some had charge of company vessels but most were independents and habitually inclined to resent corporate authority.

“On whose say-so?” one of the other captains asked, a Dalcian woman of diminutive height but with the bearing and the scars that told of a piratical past.

“I am issuing no orders,” Hilemore said. “Merely appealing to reason and common sense.”

“Sailing off to fight a horde of drakes and Spoiled doesn’t sound particularly sensible,” one of the Corvantine captains observed in accented but precisely spoken Mandinorian. He was a tall man with a studious look, though his salt-reddened cheeks bespoke many years at sea. “It took weeks of hard perilous sailing to find a refuge for my ship and my crew,” the Corvantine went on. “One it will not be easy to persuade them to give up.”

“This is not a refuge,” Hilemore told him. “It’s a trap, and you are snared here by your own delusions. Do you really wish to be caught between these hate-filled children when they start fighting again? Because they will. And even if they don’t you are anchored in what may be the last occupied human settlement in Arradsia. Any time you spend here is borrowed time.”

He allowed a moment to let his words sink in, knowing each skipper present had their own epic of survival to ponder and that he was asking a great deal. “I make no promises and offer no reassurances,” he continued. “Only a chance to join a fight that needs fighting.”

“How’re we s’posed to get there?” the Dalcian woman asked. “My coal bunker’s barely a third full.”

“I don’t have the reserves to make it out of the harbour,” the Corvantine added.

“We pool our resources,” Hilemore told them. “Gather together all the coal we have and decide how many bunkers we can fill.”

“Meaning you intend some ships to be abandoned,” the Corvantine concluded.

Hilemore faced them, replying in a tone he hoped was both confident and regretful. “Yes.” This provoked an instant growl of protest but he continued, voice loud enough to override the grumbling. “There are ships at anchor here in such poor repair they’ll never sail again. You all know this. Others are too frail and slow for any kind of war-service. Their crews will be allocated to other ships, no sailor will be left behind.”

“Pox on this,” the Dalcian woman said, casting a dismissive hand at Hilemore and stomping towards the rail. She added something in her own tongue as she swung a leg over the side and began to scale the rope netting to her boat. Hilemore’s Dalcian was rusty and imperfect but this phrase was one he had heard often enough to translate: “Corporate swine are always selling you shit and telling you it’s gold.”

Hilemore resisted the urge to plead with them as other captains quickly followed the Dalcian woman’s example. He had neither the authority nor the power to compel them, and his conscience forbade making any false promises as to the likelihood of victory or any rich rewards. Had the situation been reversed he had to admit that he might well have taken the same course. Therefore, it was surprising to find about half the captains still standing on the fore-deck when the exodus had ended. The Corvantine had remained, as had Captain Tidelow.

“Not all my crew will come,” the Blue-hunter skipper mused, fingers playing through his lengthy beard. “But I reckon I can talk maybe two-thirds of them round.”

“My crew will follow my orders,” the Corvantine asserted. “They’re all former sailors in the Imperial Navy, as am I. And we’re very tired of running.”

The subsequent discussion with the other skippers confirmed similar sentiments, although with one important proviso. “We can’t fight without weapons,” the Corvantine said. He had introduced himself as Captain Gurkan of the merchant vessel Holloway, a swift three-paddle clipper built for the tea trade. Although not a blood-burner Hilemore knew she would make perhaps the most valuable addition to his makeshift flotilla.

“Weapons are being produced in a manufactory in Varestia,” he assured them. “New weapons of far greater power and accuracy than anything we have.”

“Lots of sea ’twixt here and there,” Tidelow pointed out. “Blues too, I’d reckon. And we don’t have your pet monster to guide us any more.”

“I’m reliably informed the Blues are concentrated in Varestian and Corvantine waters. Meaning we should have an unmolested journey, at least until we arrive.”

Hilemore clasped his hands together, briskly moving on before Tidelow asked him to elaborate. In actuality he had no such intelligence regarding the whereabouts of any Blue drakes but a lack of certainty was an obstacle just now, and a modicum of dishonesty a necessity. “I shall require full manifests of all cargo, crew and supplies for each of your ships. My chief engineer will conduct a thorough inspection of all vessels and will have the final word on what sails and what doesn’t.”

In all, Chief Bozware advised that some eighteen vessels out of a total of twenty-two were in a sufficient state of repair to make an ocean voyage to Varestia. Unfortunately, the parlous state of the combined fuel stocks meant they had only enough coal for a dozen vessels.

“Twelve’s better than one, Chief,” Hilemore said.

“Turns out there’s a jewel in the dung pile,” Bozware went on, handing Hilemore one of the manifests. The name ECT Endeavour was scrawled at the top of the sheet in laboured Mandinorian above a crew list of only six names and a cargo schedule containing mostly worthless sundries but one item of considerable importance.

“One full flask of Red,” Hilemore read.

“She’s a blood-burner,” the chief confirmed. “Fast Eastern Conglomerate Mail Packet working the route between Dalcia and Arradsia. Crew told me all about their misfortunes when I went to look her over. Turns out a Blue gave them a terrible mauling south of the Razor Sea, lost their skipper, company Blood-blessed and most of their mates. Somehow they managed to sail her all the way here. The upper works are a mess but the hull and the mechanicals are sound.”

“She’ll need crew,” Hilemore said. “A Blood-blessed . . . and a captain.”

“What do you think?” he asked Zenida a short while later. They had taken a boat to the Endeavour, the sparse crew welcoming them aboard with a refreshing display of relief and gratitude.

“Thought we was gonna just rot here,” the bosun said, apparently the only senior sailor left on board. He was a burly fellow but young for his rank, Hilemore suspecting he had earned it mostly through physical strength and, judging by the way the other crewmen avoided his eye, no small amount of intimidation. Still, he had managed to salvage his ship and sail it for hundreds of miles to a safe harbour, which indicated at least some facility for leadership.

“Nothing some decent carpentry and a lick of paint wouldn’t fix,” Zenida said, voice rich in irony as she surveyed the scorched and partly shattered wheel-house.

“I’ll assign you a work crew,” Hilemore told her.

“Me?” She stared at him in bafflement for a second, then frowned as realisation dawned. “A new command,” she mused, a mix of wariness and anticipation playing over her features as she once again looked the ship over. “Who will fire the Viable’s engine?”

“Lieutenant Sigoral, or Mr. Torcreek.”

“Assuming either of them actually survives to make it here.”

“There is at least one other Blood-blessed in this port. In extremis, I’m sure I can persuade her to join us.”

“Persuade or kidnap?”

“I did say, in extremis.”

“You always were a ruthless man, Captain.” She let out a soft laugh as she scanned the ugly mess of the vessel’s upper deck. The Endeavour was a one-stack, two-paddle ship with a narrow hull. Built for speed not comfort, Hilemore’s grandfather would have said.

“I had such fine hopes for my next ship,” Zenida commented. “I even had the plans drawn up. She would have been called the Flameheart, fastest ship afloat, and one day Akina would have been her captain.”

“That can all still happen,” Hilemore said. “When this war’s over.”

“Perhaps.” Zenida gave a wistful laugh. “The plans would need to be redone. I suspect all future ships will be propeller-driven like the Superior. We stand at the dawn of a new age, Captain. Let’s hope we live to see it, eh?”

“We will,” Hilemore said, voice flat with a certainty they both knew to be false.

Zenida nodded and cast a final glance over the ship. “I accept my new commission,” she said. “But with one condition.”

“I am not staying here!”

Hilemore ducked to let the spanner Akina had thrown sail over his head, making a loud clang as it collided with the engine-room bulkhead. The girl’s grease-besmirched face was bunched in fury as she reached into her tool-box for another missile.

“Akina!” Zenida said, voice hard with a rarely used parental authority. She stepped between her daughter and Hilemore, snaring the girl’s wrist in a tight grip as she drew her arm back for another throw. “This is my wish, not his,” she said in quietly spoken Varestian. “Are you my daughter?” She tugged Akina’s arm, the wrench in her grasp falling to the deck. “Are you my crew?”

Akina stared up at her mother, the fury vanished from her face to be replaced with naked fear. “I should be with you,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t leave me here, please, Mama.”

Zenida released Akina’s arm, Hilemore seeing how she resisted the impulse to pull her close. “Daughters obey their mothers,” she said. “Crew obey their captains. You are ordered to stay here and follow our sea-brother’s instructions. You are his crew now.”

Akina pressed herself to her mother, arms enclosing her waist, the only sob Hilemore had ever heard from her escaping her lips and she clung on tight. Feeling like an intruder, he turned away, moving to the hatchway then pausing as a low whistle sounded from the speaking-tube.

“Signal from the crow’s nest, sir,” Talmant’s tinny voice reported. “Drake in sight overhead.”

“It’s definitely a Red, sir,” Steelfine said, spy-glass raised high as he tracked the winged silhouette across the sky. “Just one, though.”

“That’ll change soon enough,” Hilemore heard Scrimshine mutter at his back.

He scanned the surrounding ships, seeing the multitude of sailors crowding the decks, faces all turned skyward.

“It’s just out of rifle-range,” Steelfine went on. “That mad Contractor marksman might’ve been able to take it down. The rest of us would just be wasting ammunition. We could try a shot with the pivot-gun.”

“Also a waste of ammunition, Number One,” Hilemore said. “It’s already seen us in any case.” From his conversations with Clay he was well aware that what one drake saw, so did the White. It knows this ship, he thought. And now it knows where we are.

“Signal lamp, sir,” Talmant said, pointing to a blinking light on one of the neighbouring ships. It was a broad-beamed one-paddle freighter with Dalcian lettering on the hull. Hilemore could see the diminutive pirate captain at the lamp, signalling in plain code: I changed my mind.

Within minutes more lamps began blinking on other ships and soon it appeared every vessel in the harbour was sending out variations of the same message. “It appears,” Hilemore said, “we have a fleet after all.”

CHAPTER 31

Clay

He pulled Kriz close, trying to cover them both with his duster. A blast of heat prickled his skin as the Black’s flames swept over the Green leather. Then the heat abruptly vanished and the ground shuddered as something heavy came to earth near by, Clay grimacing as a drake’s roar filled his ears. It was different from the challenging screech of the Black that had just tried to roast them. This was the deep, throaty roar of a mature male, and he had heard it before.

He drew the duster back to find himself bathed in shadow. A large claw scraped the earth close to his head and a glance upwards revealed a massive scaled rib-cage that swelled and contracted as the beast above let out another roar. It was answered by a chorus of screeches from the other drakes, the huge shape shifting above Clay and Kriz, the air whooshing as its tail whipped and its wings flared. Clay saw the other two Blacks spread their own wings, but in obvious supplication rather than challenge. They lowered their heads and backed away, emitting small, low-pitched grunts as they retreated. The third Black, however, was not so easily cowed.

Clay ducked as another blast of flame rushed between the male Black’s rear legs. The duster protected them from the worst of it but not all, Clay letting out a shout as fire licked at the back of his left hand, scorching the flesh. The shadow and the claw disappeared as the male Black leapt, the ground trembling when it landed a split-second later.

Clay looked up from his scorched hand to see the two drakes locked in a fierce if brief struggle. The larger male had the smaller female pinned beneath his forelegs, jaws clamped on her throat. She let out a defiant roar, earning a fierce, punishing shake of the head from the male. He held her there for several seconds, jaws slowly tightening until she grew still and let out a low-pitched grunt.

The male released her, folding his wings and settling into a resting crouch, tail twisting placidly. He didn’t look at the female as she rose and darted forward to retrieve the egg she had been offered. Clutching the prize in her jaws, she cast a final glance of deepest antipathy at Clay and Kriz, then turned about and launched herself into the air after a short sprint. Clay turned at the snap of wings, seeing the other two drakes following suit.

“Here,” Kriz said, taking out a vial of Green and tipping half the contents over his hand. Clay took a moment to let the product banish his pain before approaching the male, having motioned for Kriz to stay put.

He moved into the beast’s eye-line, extending a tentative hand to smooth the scales of his foreleg. Lutharon let out a low rumble as the human skin met his own, the muscle shuddering much as it had done back on the Superior the night Clay sent him away. “Hello again, big fella,” Clay said. “I gotta say, it’s awful nice to be remembered.”

Lutharon lowered his head, letting out a rumble of greeting that took on a much more ominous tone when his gaze flicked to Kriz. She stood at a decent remove, the Black crystal hovering before her and producing a familiar tinkle as it expanded.

“What are you doing?” Clay asked.

“What we came here for,” she said, gaze locked on Lutharon. Clay saw that she held a vial of Red in her hand. “It needs energy to activate,” she said.

“Be better if I did it,” Clay said, moving towards her. “He knows me.”

“And hates me.” Kriz’s eyes were wide, features the rigid mask of one who has recently escaped death. “All of them do. If I do this, perhaps they won’t . . .”

Her words were drowned out as Lutharon let out another roar, wings flaring once more as he sank into a threat stance. Clay noted how the drake’s eyes were focused on the now fully expanded crystal. It revolved slowly, resembling some kind of hole in space in the way it exuded no light save for a small glimmer on the tips of its spikes.

“Stop,” Clay said. “He doesn’t like it.”

“He doesn’t have to . . .”

Lutharon gave a sudden intake of breath followed by the throaty rattle that told of disgorging combustible gas. Clay lunged towards Kriz, dragging her aside. Lutharon let out a fierce and sustained jet of flame, aimed not at Kriz but at the crystal. With Kriz’s focus distracted the stream of Black keeping it in the air vanished and it fell to the ground, a dark smudge amidst the torrent of flame.

Lutharon’s fire died, leaving a sizable blaze in its wake. Clay squinted through the flames to make out the jagged shape of the crystal. It seemed to be completely undamaged, the centre of it still as dark as before but the spikes glowing brighter. Lutharon evidently found this unacceptable and began to take another large breath.

“Don’t!” Clay shouted, moving to stand in front of the Black, arms raised.

“Clay . . .” Kriz said. “It’s active.”

“What?” He turned, blinking in confusion at the sight that confronted him.

The crystal hung in the air once more, risen from the flames. Its jagged spikes now glowed with a fierce white light, though its centre retained the same absolute darkness.

“You doing this?” he asked Kriz.

“No. The fire. Energy, remember?”

Clay took a step back as the crystal drifted closer, finding himself backing into Lutharon. The Black didn’t move, Clay glancing up to see that the drake’s gaze was now fixed on the crystal, not with rage, but rapt fascination.

“How do we shut it down . . .” Clay’s voice trailed off as his gaze returned to the crystal, finding it snared by the dark, light swallowing void at the centre. Like a hole in the world, he thought before he fainted. Something you can fall into . . .

“You look older.”

Clay blinked, finding his eyes filled with bright sunlight and his head buzzing with disorientation. He staggered a little, steadying as a hand gripped his elbow. “Quite a trick you’ve pulled this time, Claydon,” a young female voice said. “Making your way in here. You must tell me how you did it.”

He blinked again and his vision cleared to reveal the small, oval face of a diminutive woman about his own age. Despite her youth he knew her instantly. It was the eyes, as bright, open and inquisitive as he remembered, and the half smile playing on her lips. It held a hint of mockery but betrayed mostly the simple affection of greeting a valued friend.

“Miss Ethy,” he said, the name emerging in a laugh as he drew her into an embrace.

“Just Ethelynne will do,” she said, voice muffled against his shoulder. “As I told you before.”

She drew back, eyes searching his face as a frown put a single line in her otherwise smooth forehead. “How long has it been since . . . ?” She grimaced and shrugged. “Well, you know.”

“Months,” he said, his joy muted by the knowledge that this was a trance. Another ghost, he thought. Like Silverpin.

He looked around seeing a tall mountain range. It wasn’t the grim majesty of the Coppersoles or the jungle giants of the Carnstadts. Here the air was far colder, and the peaks not as tall and placed closer together to create a maze of deeply weathered stone. The landscape had a gnarled, twisted appearance conveying an impression of ruin, even though there was no sign of civilisation.

“Only months?” Ethelynne asked, gaze still roaming his face. “You really need to take better care of yourself.”

“A lot happened after you . . . left.”

“And not for the good, I assume?”

He shook his head and gestured at their surroundings. “I’ve never been here,” he said. “Wherever it is. How can I craft a trance from somewhere I’ve never seen?”

Her smile returned, the mockery more in evidence now. “You haven’t. This isn’t your mind, it’s Lutharon’s.”

Clay took another survey of the mountain range, finding it as perfect a mindscape as he had ever seen. Even Lizanne would have had trouble matching the precision of detail, the slight variation in the chilled air. But he saw no vestige of drake perception in it. His trances with Jack and the drake memories Ethelynne had shared gave him an understanding of how they perceived the world, and it wasn’t like this.

“No drake saw this,” he said. “This is a human memory.”

“Quite right. How perceptive you’ve become.”

She turned, moving to the edge of the broad summit on which they stood. “The Cragmines of western Arradsia,” she said, spreading her arms wide. “As captured by my very own eyes quite some time ago, when I was still spry enough to climb all the way up here. Fascinating geography, don’t you think? No one’s really all that sure how they formed. There is evidence of glaciation but that’s only a partial explanation.”

“I got a new friend who might be able to help with that,” he muttered, fighting a sudden lurch in his chest as he watched her take in the view. She seemed so real, so alive it inevitably summoned memories of her death, a death he hadn’t been able to prevent. A ghost, he reminded himself. Living in Lutharon’s mind like Silverpin lived in mine.

“The White . . .” he began but she waved him to silence.

“I do seem to recall your doing your damnedest to ensure I didn’t follow you,” she said.

“If you hadn’t maybe you’d be talking to my ghost just now.”

“Ghost?” She pursed her lips. “A name that fits, I suppose. Though I would hate to think Lutharon feels he’s being haunted.”

“It was you. You kept him by me after the White rose.”

“Not entirely. I merely encouraged an impulse that was already there. He does seem to like you, you know. Thank you for making him leave, by the way. He would certainly have perished on the ice.”

“Least I could do.” He looked around at the mountains once more. “Was it the heart-blood? Is that what kept you here?”

“Lutharon and I shared minds for many years. I suppose I am the echo of that connection.” She beckoned to him and started to descend the steep, rocky slope below the summit. “Come on. I would like you to see something.”

Clay followed her, traversing a series of narrow ledges and granite boulders protruding from the mountain side. Ethelynne appeared almost childlike as she hopped from ledge to boulder with all the sure-footed skill of someone who had followed this course many times. Clay was markedly more careful, forcing her to loiter with amused impatience as he navigated the often-damp rock.

“You never did like heights, as I recall,” she observed. “It does rather make one wonder, though. I mean, would it make any difference if you fell? We are both just a collection of memories. It’s not like we have any bones to break.”

“Feel free to try it,” Clay replied, inching his way along a ledge. “I ain’t too keen on finding out.”

“No, me either.” She leapt nimbly onto a granite outcrop and paused to peer down. “But it’s strange that it hasn’t occurred to me before. All the time spent in this place and I’ve never been tempted to just jump and see if I go splat.”

“Maybe Lutharon won’t let you. It’s his head. Guess he makes the rules.”

A ten-minute descent brought them to a narrow crevice where the flank of the mountain levelled out. An infant Black crouched at the edge of the fissure, small wings and tail twitching as it peered into the depths, a series of soft plaintive grunts issuing from its snout.

“This is where I found him,” Ethelynne said, moving to crouch a short distance from the keening infant. “All those years ago.”

The infant whirled at her approach, a warning hiss emerging from its mouth. It seemed to have no awareness of Clay, its gaze fixed on Ethelynne, jaws snapping as she extended a hand holding a morsel of meat. Clay moved to the edge of the crevice, looking down to see the large, crumpled form of an adult Black far below.

“He was barely two days old when the Contractors killed her,” Ethelynne said. “I couldn’t just leave him to perish. But there was only one way to save him. And it scared me.”

“Heart-blood,” Clay said, eyes lingering on the drake corpse. “I had my own taste not long ago. Ain’t got any plans to repeat it anytime soon.”

“You drank heart-blood?” Ethelynne straightened, a mix of sympathy and fascination on her face. “What species?”

“Blue. A great and fearsome Blue of terrible reputation . . . He died.”

“I’m sorry.”

Clay nodded, casting a final glance at the dead drake and moving away. “We got things to talk about,” he said. “Plans to make.”

“Plans?”

“Yeah. War plans. The White’s got itself an army now, and they’re killing a lotta people. Those they don’t kill they turn into Spoiled. We’re fighting it, but things ain’t going so well.”

“And you want Lutharon to join your war?”

“Not just him. The Blacks. All of them. They fought it before, we know that. We need them to fight it again, and finish it this time.”

Ethelynne folded her arms, her head tilting and lips pursing in an expression he knew indicated her fearsome mind was hard at work. “Just how did you get in here, Claydon?” she asked. “You still haven’t told me.”

He looked down, exerting his own will in a brief experiment as he wasn’t sure he possessed any power here. The rock beneath his feet obligingly turned to moon-dust, a portion of which he raised and moulded into the Black crystal.

“What is that?” Ethelynne asked, moving closer to extend a finger to one of the glowing spikes. Clay assumed it had been quite some time since she had seen something so completely unfamiliar.

“Be easier to show you,” he said, expanding his will further. The surrounding mountains transformed into the forest that greeted him when he first stepped into the strange world beneath the ice. “Welcome to the last enclave of the Philos Caste . . .”

“Incredible.” Ethelynne let out a small laugh as the enclave faded around them, shifting back into the Cragmines. He had shown her all of it, every scrap of memory he could summon regarding the enclave, every morsel of information he had acquired.

“All those years in the Interior,” Ethelynne went on, shaking her head. “I had no idea, no clue whatsoever. I thought the temple builders must have been the first people to walk this continent. But all the wonders they crafted were just an echo of something greater.” She paused, summoning the vision of the Black crystal he had shared. Ethelynne’s gaze darkened as she stared at the glowing spikes revolving around the void. “Or perhaps,” she said, “it was something worse. Something best consigned to the past.”

“We need it,” Clay insisted. “We need it to ally with the Blacks . . .”

“Ally? Or enslave? The ancients did remarkable things, but committed the most vile acts in the process. There are memories in here, deep and very old. So nightmarish and confused it’s hard to make sense of them, and they’re so painful I only tried once. Were I to delve deeper would I find your friend there, scalpel in hand?”

Clay saw little point in denial. “Yeah,” he said. “She’d be there. But she ain’t what she used to be. None of us are. And it don’t change the fact that we got a war to fight. When the White’s done with us you know it’ll come for them. It remembers and it don’t forgive. Lutharon and all his kin will have to fight it anyways. With us they got a better chance.”

The rock beneath their feet began to shudder and the sky darkened from misty grey to red-tinged black. A cacophony of fracturing rock assailed Clay’s ears as the mountains began to twist and grow. Cliff-faces became wings and boulders claws. What had been a jagged ridge slowly revealed itself as the spiny neck of a huge drake. They rose all around, wings spreading, tails and necks uncoiling. The crescendo of shattered stone subsided into a low murmur, reminding Clay of distant thunder as the host of giant drakes lowered their heads to regard him, eyes shining with a bright red glow.

“It’s not me you need to convince, Claydon,” Ethelynne told him. “It’s them.”

CHAPTER 32

Lizanne

“Remarkable,” Alzar Lokaras said, looking at the photostats arrayed on the Viable’s ward-room table. They had been taken by a nervous young man who had emerged from the ranks of the Mount Works employees some days before, camera in hand, to offer his services. He was an apprentice photostatist who increasingly found the life of a manufactory worker less than pleasant. It had been Captain Trumane’s notion to pack him onto the Typhoon for a reconnaissance flight to the north. The aerostat was able to hover in place long enough for an exposure of decent length and Jermayah provided the required chemicals and equipment to develop the plates. The result was a visual record of northern Varestia far more accurate than any map, Imperial cartographers having neglected the area through fear of banditry for many years.

“You can see the passes clearly,” Alzar went on, finger tapping three points on a series of photostats that had been aligned to produce a continuous image. It captured the central span of the mountain range dominating the region the Varestians referred to as “the Neck.” There were three channels through the mountains, each separated by a ten-mile gap with the largest and most easily traversed one in the centre. This was known as the Grand Cut, whilst the eastern pass was the Small Cut and the western the Little Cut.

“The gateways to the peninsular,” Alzar went on. “They used to be fortified but the defences were destroyed by the Corvantines during the occupation. No one’s bothered to repair them since.”

“Meaning the enemy’s line of advance is wide open,” Trumane said.

There were only three of them in the ward-room, Alzar acting as the sole representative for the host of Varestian captains who had deserted Ethilda and Arshav’s authority. A dozen pirate vessels and armed freighters had arrived in Blaska Sound that morning. Alzar duly came ashore with a delegation to inform Lizanne that he was now Admiral of the Varestian Defence League before enquiring as to the progress of his niece’s education.

“She does very well,” Lizanne assured him, gesturing to where Morva waited near by. “Feel free to ask her yourself.”

“Business comes first,” he said after the briefest glance in Morva’s direction. “Here,” he went on, handing Lizanne a folded document. “I know how you corporate types like your contracts.”

The contract terms were sparse and simple: The Mount Works Manufacturing Company would supply weapons and personnel to assist in the defence of the Varestian Peninsular in return for continued safe harbour within Blaska Sound and provision of food and medical supplies guaranteed by the Varestian Defence League. There was no mention of patents, shares or allocation of future profits. Lizanne thought it a clumsily worded document but, as she doubted it would ever require scrutiny before an arbitration court in any case, was happy to sign it there on the wharf.

“Not necessarily,” she told Trumane now, sliding another photostat across the table showing a magnified view of the Grand Cut. The image had been captured at a slight angle, giving an impression of the steepness of the cliffs rising on either side of the track that snaked through the pass. “Even without fortifications, the terrain would seem to offer a singular opportunity to a defender.”

“With your aerial contraption we could shift some cannon onto the cliff-tops,” Alzar agreed after a moment’s consideration. “And your newfangled guns. Any army that tries to make it through will suffer a fearful toll.”

“You forget their command of the air,” Trumane said. “We know the enemy is far from stupid. They’ll send drakes to secure the cliff-tops before marching through.” His gaze narrowed as he turned it on Lizanne. “I believe Miss Lethridge has another stratagem in mind.”

“I do,” Lizanne said, playing a hand across the three passes. “We use explosive to block the Small and Little Cuts, leaving the Grand Cut open.” She pointed to the northern end of the pass. “We will still have to mount a meaningful defence, but it will take the form of a fighting withdrawal so as to draw the White’s forces in, and we’ll need all the Blood-blessed in our ranks and all the product we can gather to make it work.”

“I brought twenty-three Blood-blessed,” Alzar said. “But only half can be spared. The rest are needed to power the few blood-burners we possess. As for product.” He grimaced and shrugged. “Stocks are thinner by the day and those that hold them loath to sell except at extortionate prices.”

“Write promissory notes,” Lizanne advised. “Make the Mount Works Manufactory the guarantor if you like. If that fails the stocks will just have to be seized. The time for observing the legal niceties of trade is over.”

She turned back to the photostats, her finger tracing to a point two-thirds of the way along the Grand Cut. “The pass is at its narrowest here,” she said. “And overlooked by a promontory. I propose that we prepare the promontory with explosives and once the bulk of the White’s army reaches this point we bring it down. All three passes will be blocked and we will have killed a large number of enemy troops.”

“It won’t stop them,” Trumane said. “The passes can still be cleared. And the White will be sure to gather more strength to clear the rubble.”

“It will buy us time,” Lizanne replied. “As for the White’s ability to gather strength, I have an idea about that.”

She watched Tinkerer’s face closely as Makario lifted his hands from the pianola and the last note faded. The Follies of Cevokas, according to the musician’s judgement, was as inane and trite a piece of musical doggerel as he had ever heard. However, once he had reproduced the entire score on paper close examination of the text revealed one short melody of interest in the third act. It was hidden in a lyrically dense song known as “Cevokas the Genius,” in which the ever-pompous titular character reeled off a list of his intellectual achievements accompanied by a jaunty high-tempo tune. Once the tempo was slowed something far more elegant and familiar began to emerge.

“It’s definitely her,” Makario reported. “Empress Azireh’s handiwork concealed within a comic operetta of little distinction. It’s rather like finding a pearl in a pile of turds.”

“A shared joke, perhaps,” Lizanne mused, her gaze still lingering on Tinkerer, his face as pale and immobile as before. “A secret between lovers.” She imagined Azireh playing the tune for Alestine, first at the original speed then faster, perhaps improvising the lyrics. How they must have giggled together, she thought. Another secret shared between the princess and the Fiddly Girl.

“When this is over,” she said to Makario, “you might want to examine some other operettas of the period. I suspect Azireh penned quite a few. Doctor,” she went on, glancing at Dr. Weygrand, “if you would, please.”

Madame Hakugen had given over a large two-storey building for use as the settlement’s clinic, though it had required considerable repair and cleaning before Dr. Weygrand consented to occupy it. Tinkerer had been placed in an upstairs room along with a pianola where Makario laboured to craft the music that might wake him. However, the artificer remained as immobile as ever, forcing Lizanne to conclude that another trance was required.

The doctor betrayed some hesitation before moving to the bottle suspended from a metal stand at Tinkerer’s bedside. The bottle contained a mix of saline and powdered nutrients needed to keep the comatose patient alive these past weeks. A rubber tube trailed from it, ending in a needle inserted into the vein in Tinkerer’s forearm. Despite the attentions of Dr. Weygrand and his small staff of orderlies, Tinkerer had grown ever more thin and pale as the days went by and Lizanne didn’t need any expert advice to deduce he didn’t have many more left.

“The last trance didn’t do him much good,” Weygrand pointed out. He had prepared a syringe of Blue, high-quality Ironship product provided by Alzar Lokaras, but seemed reluctant to push the needle into the cork seal at the base of the bottle. “Who’s to say the next one won’t kill him?”

“He’s already dying,” Lizanne said. “And we need him. Please proceed, Doctor.”

Weygrand nodded, swallowing a sigh as he depressed the plunger on the syringe, sending a cloud of amber fluid into the bottle. Lizanne waited until the product had faded, indicating it was all now running through Tinkerer’s veins, then gestured for Makario to play the tune once more. She unstoppered her own vial of Blue and kept careful watch on Tinkerer’s face as the melody filled the room. At first there was no reaction, then she saw the faint circular shadow on his closed lids as his eyes began to move—a clear signal of a dream state.

“This may take some time,” she said, raising the vial to her lips.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Makario promised, which made her smile just as the room disappeared and she found herself in darkness.

At first she thought she had been cast into a void, some blank vacuum left by Tinkerer’s vanished mind, but then she saw a burst of yellow flame directly ahead. It was bright enough to illuminate the uneven walls of the tunnel in which she stood, at the same time filling it with a roar of pain and rage of sufficient volume to force her to clamp her hands over her ears. The flame faded along with the roar, although this time the darkness wasn’t so absolute. The flames had evidently found a target judging by the flickering glow rising from a dark shape lying at what she recognised as the end of this tunnel.

Lizanne started forward then stopped as her foot came close to tripping over something. Looking down she saw the disordered and scaled features of a Spoiled, slackened in death. Alestine’s friend from the clearing, she realised, recognising the monochrome war-paint on the Spoiled’s face. Tree Speaker.

Another gout of flame snapped her gaze to the end of the tunnel, although the roar that accompanied it was far weaker now. As the flames faded she heard a ragged rasp of indrawn breath followed by a high-pitched rattle that told of a drake in immense pain. Remembering Alestine’s warning about the real risk of injury in this trance, she waited until the rattle had died away before starting forward again. Sinking to her haunches at the end of the tunnel, she crouched close to the wall and peered out at a huge cavern, the floor of which featured a tower of some kind.

Bone tower, she surmised, recalling Clay’s shared memories of the White’s lair and Arberus’s tale of his expeditions to the Interior. The tower rose from the centre of a scorched circle on the cavern floor. Slumped against its base was a White Drake, blood seeping in a thick stream from the large iron spike protruding from its rib-cage. It let out a plaintive moan as Lizanne stepped out from the tunnel, but seemed to show no sign of noticing her presence, tail coiling in twitches of diminishing intensity. Lizanne judged its size as perhaps half that of the beast Clay had found beneath the Coppersoles, which still made it larger than an adult Red and comparable to a youthful Black. The only light came from the flaming corpse lying a few yards within the scorched circle. The flames had consumed it so completely it was impossible to tell if it had been human or Spoiled.

Lizanne gave a start as a cascade of dust descended from above, along with a shower of displaced stones. Her gaze jerked upwards to the roof of the cavern, her ears detecting the sound of claws frantically skittering on stone.

“We thought there would only be one.”

Lizanne spun in alarm as Alestine stepped into the light, offering a grin of welcome that seemed impossibly broad, too many teeth gleaming in the glow of the fire. Burned, Lizanne realised as Alestine turned her gaze upward. Much of the flesh around her lower jaw and upper neck had been seared, along with her left ear. The impossible grin was in fact the result of half her lips having been burned away.

“Actually, there were two,” Alestine went on, speaking in a wet rasp. “A male and a female, and she was pregnant. I had hoped her wounds were fatal.” She pointed at a stream of blood visible in the continuing cascade of dust and stone. “That she would crawl away and die somewhere along with the egg growing in her womb. But in my heart I knew it could never be that simple.” Her gaze settled on the dying male White. “I had to know. Excuse me a moment.”

Alestine abruptly collapsed onto her hands and knees and began a slow painful crawl towards the dying White. It lay almost immobile now, chest rising and falling in ever-slower and more laboured breaths. But its eyes were still bright, Lizanne recognising the hate in its gaze as Alestine crawled near.

“One of my last inventions,” she said upon reaching the beast’s side, her voice free of the pain that made her arm tremble as she raised it to grip the iron spike protruding from the rib-cage. “Or rediscoveries to be fully accurate. The ancients had an alloy that could pierce anything if fashioned into a point and projected with sufficient force. I had enough Black for a killing thrust, but we only had one spear.”

She gripped the spike tighter and jerked it, provoking a convulsive thrash from the White. Blood steamed in the heat blossoming from its maw as it raised its head, neck coiling in a final attempt to roast its tormentor. Alestine raised herself up, grunting with the effort of twisting the spike then driving it deeper. The White’s last flames subsided into smoke, its head thudding onto the stone floor. The tail and the wings continued to twitch but the dull, empty gleam of its eyes told the tale clearly.

“Tree Speaker’s people carried the old stories,” Alestine said, slumping against the dead drake’s flank. “Treasured them throughout the ages. At first, I could scarcely believe what they told me. The White was real, and once it came close to burning this continent to ash, perhaps the rest of the world into the bargain. So great was its malice that it twisted the people here, made them into deformed two-legged versions of itself, a whole continent of willing slaves. But there were those who resisted, kept the kernel of humanity burning within themselves, and in time they fought back, with the help of the Blacks.”

“How?” Lizanne said, moving closer to crouch at the Artisan’s side. “How did they beat it?”

“The White could control all drakes but the Blacks. It could control humans it Spoiled, but not the Blood-blessed. It needed something to match them, match their abilities, but it never found it. Through battle and guile and courage the Blood-blessed freed enough Spoiled to ally with the Blacks and bring it down, though by the time the war was won their civilisation that once flourished here had fallen to rubble. The enslaved Spoiled, maddened by the loss of their god, hunted their free enemies mercilessly. After decades and centuries of persecution, only Tree Speaker and his tribe were left.”

Alestine cast a stricken, wet-eyed glance at the burning corpse lying close by. “Meeting me sealed their fate. When I told them I had deciphered writings telling of an ancient White sleeping in the caverns beneath this temple they had no choice but to follow me. Every warrior they sent died here, meaning their young will be defenceless. The other Spoiled will destroy them now. But what else could I do?” She turned to Lizanne, tears streaming from her eyes into her ruined flesh. “It couldn’t be allowed to rise again. They knew that.”

She held Lizanne’s gaze, beseeching some kind of absolution. But Lizanne was not a priest.

“What did it need?” she said, seeing the distress on Alestine’s face dissipate at the hardness of her tone. “You said it needed something to match the Blood-blessed. What was it?”

“What else could it be?” the Artisan said with a shrug. “A Blood-blessed of its own of course. One with the right kind of mind.”

“What kind of mind?”

Alestine blinked and turned away, grunting in pain as she shifted closer to the rivulet of blood still flowing from the wound the iron spike had torn in the White’s hide. “Madness is a common trait amongst humans,” she said. “But the non-Blessed are many and we are few. And it needed to be the right pitch of madness, coloured with enough cruelty, envy and resentment to see what it intended for the world as right and just. All those centuries ago it never found the right mind. In your time, it would be more fortunate.”

She leaned closer to the stream of blood, face tense in expectation and fear.

“You drank,” Lizanne said. “You drank and saw that it would rise again.”

“I saw . . .” Alestine lifted a trembling hand and touched her fingers to the blood, wincing as the tips turned white in the flow. “Many things, Lizanne. Terrible and beautiful, cruel and kind. For that is life, and I saw it all. But there was a greater gift to be had here.”

She reached into her pocket and drew out a flask, drinking down the contents in a few gulps before tossing it aside. Lizanne saw the strength flood Alestine’s body as the Green took hold, the woman rising to her feet and taking a firmer grip on the iron spike with both hands. A few hard tugs and she had drawn it out, raising it to let the diminishing flames play on the dark, near-black substance on the spear-point tip.

“The heart-blood of a White,” she said. “For someone who had spent much of her life seeking knowledge, how could I resist it?”

Alestine pressed her ruined mouth to the spear-point, jerking in agony as the blood made its way past her exposed teeth and down her throat. The cavern disappeared, leaving them floating in what Lizanne at first took for some kind of giant fish-bowl. Forms swirled around them, some indistinct, others vibrant and shimmering with colour. They were constantly shifting, a formless misty swirl one second then a human face or a fully realised body, sometimes naked, sometimes clothed. There were men and women, infants and elderly. Lizanne realised she could hear them, a thousand voices babbling at once. Not voices, she realised. Thoughts. These are minds.

“Indeed they are,” Alestine said. She floated close by, whole and beautiful once again, a mix of wonder and dismay on her face as she surveyed the swirling minds. “Every Blood-blessed drawing breath at the moment I drank the White’s blood. And they were all mine. All I had to do was reach out and take one.”

One of the shimmering minds veered towards them, Lizanne recognising the face of a woman in the misty shape. “Curious thing about heart-blood,” Alestine mused. “The abilities it conveys never fade. They are seared into your being, an eternal gift . . . or a curse. And one that can be shared.” She flicked her hand and the woman’s mind flew away, soon lost amongst the multitude.

“This is how you called the first one to you in Scorazin,” Lizanne said. “And how he called the next.”

“Yes. A great and unforgivable sin. But one I had to commit if this world was to survive. There wasn’t just heart-blood on the spear. I saw what was coming, and I saw you and I saw the clever boy and knew it was my role to bring you together.”

The huge fish-bowl turned into a grey mist, which soon coalesced into something familiar. Lizanne found herself regarding walls of uneven stone lit by the light of an oil-lamp. She turned at the sound of scraping chalk and saw Tinkerer at the smooth patch of wall he used as a blackboard. The flat surface was covered in an incomprehensible mélange of numbers and formulae, some of it so dense the stone was completely covered in chalk. He gave no sign of having noticed Lizanne’s presence, his hand moving in a blur as it added yet more wisdom to the wall.

“It wasn’t like this when I lived here,” Alestine said in a croak, appearing at Lizanne’s side. “The others must’ve enlarged it over the years.” Her form had recovered its wounds, though the burns appeared much older now, the scars pink and mottled rather than puckered and blackish red. Lizanne could see wrinkles on her undamaged skin and she stood with a pronounced stoop, grey hair hanging over her ruined face in slack, unwashed tendrils.

“How did you come to be here?” Lizanne asked.

“I wrote a letter to an old friend when I returned to the Empire.” Alestine moved to peer at Tinkerer’s wall, frowning in bafflement. “And I thought I was clever,” she muttered.

“Azireh,” Lizanne said. “She put you here.”

“It was what I asked for, somewhere to hide and remain hidden for all time. A reward for all the marvellous trinkets I brought back from Arradsia. She was effusive in her thanks and prompt in granting my request, but never came for a visit, not that I blame her. No doubt the Imperial agents who escorted me here gave her a fulsome report on my appearance. Hey, boy!” She snapped her fingers beside Tinkerer’s ear. “Not polite to ignore your guests, you know.”

Tinkerer’s chalk kept moving and he betrayed no indication of having heard her. “Always knew he’d be a rude bugger,” Alestine said, aiming a cuff at the back of Tinkerer’s head but her fingers passed through. “Not my mind, y’see,” she told Lizanne. “This is all his. Doesn’t want to see me so he doesn’t.” She leaned closer to Tinkerer, shouting into his ear. “Can’t stay in here forever though, can you?”

Lizanne went to stand at Tinkerer’s shoulder, looking closely at his face, which displayed the habitual blankness that overtook him when he lost himself in a task. Perhaps he doesn’t want to come back, she thought, turning her gaze on the mass of calculus. Perhaps this is all he wants. She fought down an upswell of guilt as she raised her hand and placed it over his, stopping the chalk in its tracks. What he wants doesn’t matter. Alestine had a task and so do I.

“Looks like he’s happy to see you,” Alestine said, moving away. “Time for me to go, I think.”

“Wait,” Lizanne said. “You said the ancient Blood-blessed freed some of the Spoiled. How?”

“I don’t know. Tree Speaker’s people had no tale to tell on that score. The White’s blood showed me a battle, great and terrible, Spoiled and human and drake locked in a struggle to the death. You were there, Lizanne, fighting and bleeding.”

“Do we win?”

Alestine’s aged and stooped form slipped away and she was once again the same woman Lizanne had met in the clearing, beautiful and brave but now with a vast weight of guilt behind her eyes.

“I saw nothing beyond this,” she told Lizanne. “This song is played out and now will end, as all songs must.” She cast a final, unreadable glance at Tinkerer and stepped away, disappearing into the wall and leaving them alone.

Lizanne turned back to Tinkerer, finding herself shocked by his wide and fearful eyes. “I . . .” he began, faltering over the words in a halting rasp. “I have been here a very long time. Months, I think. Perhaps years. Perhaps longer. I couldn’t count the minutes, or the hours or the days. It was . . . disturbing.”

“I’m sorry,” Lizanne said. “But we can leave now.”

He frowned at her, utterly baffled. “How?”

“She’s gone. This is your mind and your trance. Just decide to wake up.”

Tinkerer’s brow smoothed, eyes sliding from her face as he lost himself in momentary calculation. “Oh,” he said. “Very well.”

Lizanne blinked and found herself in darkness once again, though the moonlight streaming through the window revealed her to be back in Tinkerer’s infirmary room. The lack of light was puzzling, however, as was the chill in the air which she assumed resulted from the fact that the window was open. She saw Makario slumped at the pianola and began to speak his name, then stopped when she saw something dark dripping over the keys. Tearing her gaze away she scanned the room, coming to a halt at the sight of Dr. Weygrand’s body lying close to the door.

“Awake at last,” Mr. Lockbar said, rising from the shadows beneath the window, his knife gleaming bright in the moonlight. “They wanted you to know,” he explained before leaping towards her, blade outstretched.

CHAPTER 33

Sirus

A cluster of old people huddled together beneath the tower of their village temple. It was an old Oracular church long since converted to the Imperial cult, the tower crowned by a bronze bust of Emperor Caranis. The elderly villagers, about twenty in all, displayed mixed reactions to their imminent fate. Some kept their gaze firmly on the rain-muddied ground. Others stared at Sirus and the other Spoiled in unabashed defiance whilst a few cast repeated glances at the bust of the recently dead Emperor above, as if even now he possessed some divine power of deliverance.

“This is all?” Sirus asked Forest Spear.

“Every house is empty,” the tribal reported. “We found cart-tracks leading to the west, but they’re a few days old. Just like the others.”

It had been the same for the past week. The White’s host had enjoyed a period of success early in the march, capturing a string of towns and villages and swelling their ranks in the process. Veilmist calculated the daily recruitment tally at over eight thousand and Catheline communicated the White’s satisfaction to the entire army. But it hadn’t lasted.

The farther south they marched the farther news of their coming travelled. At first the villages were only half-deserted, the inhabitants caught in the midst of their panicked flight. Later they found a large town empty of all but the sick and the old but, with the aid of the Reds, had managed to pursue and capture the bulk of the populace a few miles to the south-west. It had been a messy business, the yield of recruits limited thanks to the Reds, who had been permitted a bout of indulgent slaughter. By the time the first Spoiled battalions arrived fully half the adults and most of the children were dead, the corpses scattered about the country-side in ugly, half-eaten mounds as the Reds squawked and gorged themselves.

They require rewards too, Catheline explained in response to Sirus’s frustrated query. For a drake, flesh is the spoil of victory.

Since then every village had been like this one, the people fled so far and fast that any attempt to capture them would entail an unacceptable delay. All that remained were those too old or infirm to run.

“Leave them for the drakes?” Forest Spear asked, flicking his war-club at the huddle of old people.

Kinder to kill them, Sirus thought. One bullet each to the head. Left alive the Greens would most likely claim them, or worse, the White’s hideous brood of juveniles might see them as a source of amusement.

He began to issue the order then stopped as one of the old people stepped forward, a tall man in threadbare clothing but possessed of a sturdy bearing despite his age. Sirus suspected the man had once been a soldier, probably a sergeant judging by the volume in his voice as he cried out, “Monsters!” before bending to retrieve a stone from the muddy ground. “Filthy, demon monsters!” he yelled, wrinkled face red with fury as he threw the stone at Sirus. He ducked and it sailed harmlessly overhead, the old man immediately crouching to search the ground for another missile.

Don’t, Sirus commanded as Forest Spear unslung his rifle.

Unable to find a stone, the old man settled for a handful of mud, casting it at Sirus with impressive aim. It struck him squarely on the breast of the Corvantine general’s tunic Catheline insisted he wear. The old man straightened from the throw, gnarled fists bunched as he glowered in defiance. It was clear that he expected a swift death. Sirus returned his stare, unmoving and expressionless. The old soldier let out a snarl and quickly bent to fill both his fists with more mud, hurling it at Sirus then immediately crouching for more ammunition. Sirus allowed the missiles to strike him on the head and shoulder, doing and saying nothing.

Apparently emboldened by this display, and the lack of reaction from Sirus or the other Spoiled, a few of the old man’s companions began to join in his assault. Two old women, one so bent and crook-legged she had to hobble forward with the aid of a stick, scraped mud and stones from the ground and hurled it at the impassive monsters, accompanied by a torrent of colourful insults.

“Demon shit-eaters!”

“Cock-sucking freaks!”

Soon what had been a cowed and miserable huddle had become an enraged mob, the air filled with arcing mud and stones that rained down on the immobile Spoiled. Sirus held them in place, forbidding retaliation as the barrage continued. He felt a range of emotions from his fellow Spoiled, from anger and frustration to cruel amusement. But there was also grudging admiration, even from Forest Spear and a few of the other tribals. Normally they viewed the un-Spoiled with a mixture of contempt and indifference, now it appeared they were capable of more feeling than he suspected.

He allowed the assault to continue, wondering how long it might take for these old folk to exhaust themselves as his uniform became increasingly caked in mud. The question proved moot, however, when a dark-winged shadow swept over the village. The barrage instantly stopped, the mob’s defiance vanished as all eyes turned upwards, wide and bright with terror. All eyes except those of the old soldier.

“Kill me, you fucker!” he raged as the shadow swept over them once again, both fists raised to the sky. “Go on kill me, if you got the balls!”

Catheline’s half-amused, half-baffled query slipped into Sirus’s mind. What is this? He looked up to see her perched on the back of Katarias, the Red’s wings blurring as he hovered fifty yards above.

An oddly irrational display, he replied. You know I can’t help but be curious.

Be curious later.

Katarias stilled his wings and went into a dive, streaking down to unleash a torrent of fire that consumed first the old soldier and then his terrified companions. The fire was so swift and intense none had a chance to run and soon a pile of twisted, blackened corpses lay beneath the temple tower.

Come, Catheline ordered as Katarias bore her towards the edge of the village. I have something to show you.

It was a drake memory and therefore not instantly comprehensible. Soon, however, Sirus’s mind shifted to accommodate the difference in perception and what had been a blur of smudged colours became a jungle viewed from above.

Arradsia, he concluded, recognising some of the trees as unique to the continent.

Yes, Catheline responded, her thoughts tinged with impatience. This is from this morning. Watch . . . There at the edge of the trees.

Sirus concentrated on the required portion of the view, soon picking out the sight of a pair of human figures emerging from the jungle into a region of sparse bush-country. The height of the drake that had seen this was too great to make out any details.

Spoiled? he asked, so far failing to perceive the significance of this memory.

No. Catheline’s mind had darkened considerably, rich in the same rage as when she shared visions of the Lethridge woman. The image magnified as the drake focused on the two figures, Sirus making out the features of a man and a woman, both young and of South Mandinorian heritage. They wore the garb typical of the corporate Contractors who, until recently, had roamed the Interior in search of drakes.

So a few Contractors are still alive, he thought. Hardly surprising. It’s a big land-mass.

These aren’t just Contractors. Her rage blossomed to new heights, possessed of the kind of intensity he knew could only be compelled by the White. They are as dangerous as that Lethridge bitch, perhaps even more so.

The memory shifted again as the Red that had captured it began a descent, gaze fixed on the pair below. They grew in size as it streaked down, Sirus feeling the beast’s killing urge and the heat of the gases rising from belly to throat. It never got a chance to ignite its flames. The vision turned completely red and Sirus felt something hard and sharp clamp onto the Red’s neck. After that the memory fragmented into a discordant series of images and brief flashes of agony that told of a furious struggle, and a losing one at that. Catheline froze it just as the Red coiled its neck for a final snap at its assailant, Sirus finding himself confronted by the sight of a very large Black drake, the lower jaw partially obscured by the thick stream of fire it had called forth.

“They were saved by a Black,” he said as Catheline withdrew her mind.

She paced back and forth on a patch of muddy ground a short distance from the village. Lately she had taken to wearing a Corvantine cavalry officer’s uniform, complete with short jacket, sword, riding britches and knee-high boots. Of course it had been tailored to fit her pleasing proportions making for what would normally be a striking appearance. But today her boots and britches were stained with mud and the continuing drizzle had disordered her hair. The frantic expression she struggled to keep from her face, and the way she kept her arms tightly crossed, made this the least attractive impression she had yet made on him. He found he didn’t enjoy seeing her like this. For all her red-black eyes and fearsome abilities, now she appeared merely human, and he preferred her a monster. A monster will be easier to kill when the time comes.

He concealed the thought with a suitable degree of fear but Catheline barely seemed to notice.

“You know what this means,” she said, inhuman eyes flashing at him from behind a damp veil of displaced hair.

“Actually, I don’t,” he replied honestly.

“The Blacks!” She bared elongated teeth in a snarl. “The Blacks will be coming against us.” Her voice subsided into a murmur, gaze becoming distant. “Just like before. He thought with their allies destroyed they would keep themselves removed, to be dealt with later. But somehow . . .” Her lips twitched, brows furrowed in fury. “Somehow these two have formed an alliance with them. They will be coming.”

“There’s a great deal of ocean between Arradsia and Varestia,” Sirus pointed out.

“And many ships here.” She pushed another memory into his head, a top-down view of a crater situated on a stretch of coast-line and resembling a huge bite mark, within which lay a harbour city Sirus had only ever seen in books.

“Stockcombe,” he said, noting the fleet in the harbour. His attention was immediately drawn to the only warship present, an unusual design in that it lacked paddles. The Red capturing the image evidently sensed a similar significance in the warship for its gaze focused on the upper decks. Sirus saw a tall man standing there, spy-glass raised as he returned the drake’s scrutiny.

“Many ships can carry many Blacks,” Catheline said. Sirus could sense a desperate need for guidance in her, powerful enough to birth a compulsion to cooperate that no amount of fear or inner resolve could dispel.

“There are still drakes left in Arradsia,” he said. “Are there not?”

“Thousands,” she replied. “Those that couldn’t be gathered for the crusade. But they’re scattered.”

“Gather them now,” he advised. “Send all you can to Stockcombe. Without a fleet the Blacks won’t be going anywhere.”

“But the Blacks might get there first. The harbour could be empty by the time an assault could be made.”

“As I said, there’s a great deal of ocean separating this continent from that one. And we have a means of commanding the ocean, do we not? A means not required for our current campaign.”

The Blues were dispatched that evening, each of them filled with the desire to make for southern Arradsia and sink any ship they found. Previously they had been engaged in blockading the Red Tides in order to prevent the Varestians acquiring supplies or reinforcements from elsewhere. Marshal Morradin had contested the move, arguing that limiting the enemy’s sea-borne communications would have a crucial effect on the land campaign. Sirus considered the marshal had been lucky that Catheline’s punishment for dissent amounted to only a five-minute bout of agony, her mood being so fraught and intolerant of argument.

She’s frightened, he knew. Or rather, she is the vessel of the White’s fear. The Blacks, those Contractors, Lizanne Lethridge. He fears them all.

The next two days brought an unexpected increase in numbers when they encountered a town where the inhabitants had taken the admirable if unwise decision to defend their homes rather than flee. They had made strenuous efforts to fortify the place with a line of trench works and an impressive array of cannon, the place being home to an Imperial armaments works.

“A grand battery of cannon and a host of new recruits,” Morradin said with grim relish as he reordered his columns for an assault. “What a generous gift they have made for us.”

Whilst the town had many with the skills to manufacture cannon, it transpired they had few skilled in using them. Morradin spent the day surrounding the place and sending small forays towards the defensive lines to entice the town’s gunners into revealing their positions, which many obligingly proceeded to do before nightfall. In the small hours of the morning Reds were used to drop parties of Spoiled on all the pin-pointed batteries. They were all swiftly seized and the captured cannon duly turned on the defenders. Informed by one party of raiders of a stretch of line which had suffered the most casualties, Morradin sent forward twenty thousand Spoiled in a massed attack. At the same time he assailed the rest of the line with small-scale attacks to prevent the defenders switching forces to contest the main assault.

It was over before dawn save for some street skirmishes in the town itself. By the afternoon Veilmist reported another twenty-five thousand additions to their ranks for the cost of less than two thousand casualties. For once Morradin was happy to share his thoughts. Neatest and most complete victory I ever won, he told Sirus as they toured the southern fringes of the town. The marshal’s mind seemed to shine with satisfaction at his own tactical acumen. Sirus found it distasteful to share in such self-regard but also recognised that Morradin was at his core a man who relished command in battle. Expecting him not to take pride in such a victory was like expecting a carpenter not to take pride in a perfectly crafted table.

“I doubt there will be any more neat victories ahead,” Sirus said aloud in Eutherian, nodding at the mountains jutting above the southern horizon. This town was the last settlement of reasonable size to be found north of the peaks marking the boundary between the Corvantine Empire proper and its lost dominion of Varestia.

“The passes,” Morradin grunted, Sirus feeling his mood darken. “Where, if our enemy has any brains at all, they will seek to kill as many of us as they can, if not halt us completely.”

“How would you defend them?”

Morradin’s lip curled in the sardonic grin of a professional suffering the questions of an amateur. “I wouldn’t. I’d block them, force us to waste time clearing them or make for the coastal route to the east. Numbers won’t count for much there. Mountains on our right flank and the sea on our left with only a few miles frontage. No room for manoeuvre, for us or them. If they choose to fight us there that will be a bloody day indeed.”

Sirus summoned his fear at this last statement, using it to conceal the mental communication that followed, speaking aloud as he did so. “We’ll use Reds to drop Spoiled, seize the heights covering the largest pass.” Have you thought any more about my proposal?

“We can expect some nasty surprises waiting for them.” A proposal is one thing, boy. A plan is another. As yet I see no prospect of one emerging.

“Scouting parties will go ahead. We’ll only commit to the assault when we know the way is clear.” She’s afraid, so is He. Something’s coming, something that will change our fortunes, I’m sure of it. But we need to buy time.

“It might be better to avoid the passes altogether, or at least mount a feinting attack. Make them think we’re heading for the mountains whilst we steal a march by immediately making for the coast.” One more failure and she could well kill one of us, or both. And you can bet it won’t be quick.

“We’ll put both options to her. She can decide.” I saw something the other day. He shared the memory of the old man inciting his fellow doomed left-behinds to engage in one last act of defiance. A man who accepts the necessity of sacrifice need never be afraid.

Easy to say when it’s not you doing the sacrificing.

Sirus cast another glance at the distant peaks before turning away. He started back to the village where the screams of the captured children were rising into the morning air, determined to witness it all. It will be.

CHAPTER 34

Clay

The glowing eyes of the mountainous drakes shone like search-lights in the misted air as they converged on Clay. Then they waited, emitting a low, expectant rumble as he gaped up at them in blank-minded silence.

“Who are they?” he asked Ethelynne.

“Memory accrues over time,” she replied. “Like sand washed onto a beach where the tide is unending. Over thousands of years all those countless grains of sand will come together”—she smiled, raising her arms to the rumbling giants above—“to form mountains. You might want to say something. Old as they are, they can get a little grouchy if you keep them waiting.”

Clay’s gaze shifted from one glowing-eyed behemoth to the other, feeling much as an ant must feel when confronted with a vast creature beyond its understanding that might crush it on a whim. “You know me,” he began. “At least Lutharon does, and I’m guessing you know everything he does. So you know I’m his friend, which makes me your friend.”

The rumbling rose in pitch, one of the giants giving a shake of its head that resembled a horse fidgeting in irritation.

“Getting a little too human for their liking,” Ethelynne warned. “Drakes don’t really understand friendship. There is enemy and non-enemy and family. That’s all.”

“What does that make me?”

“If you want their help, you need to be family.”

Clay sighed in frustration, mind wrestling with the gulf between his needs and his knowledge. “I travelled far with Lutharon,” he began again. “We saw and risked much together. He was bound to me but I let him go. To save his life I let him go. So you know you can trust me. And you know what we found beneath the mountain.”

He summoned the memory of his encounter with the White in all its fiery, terrorised glory. The giants reared back from the vision of the White bathing the eggs in the waking fire, eyes blazing in distress as their rumbling became a snarl.

“You’ve seen this before,” Clay went on. “You fought it before. Now it’s back. It will remember you, and you know it won’t forgive.”

The giants swung their heads back and forth, eyes flickering in confusion, and Clay quickly realised forgiveness was another concept beyond drake understanding. “Your kind are still a threat to it,” he said. “It will want you dead. All of you. You know this.”

He summoned another image, Jack’s memory of the battle at sea where Reds and Blues fought Blacks with human riders. “Once we fought together. Once there was trust between us.”

The giants settled at the sight of his shared memory, their search-light eyes converging on him once more. One of them dipped its head, averting its gaze to focus the beams from its eyes on the ground close by. The light flickered and Clay saw images playing out in the beam: an infant Black lying dead beside the corpse of its mother, both with blood leaking from bullet-holes to the head . . . passing mountains viewed from behind the thick bars of a cage . . . two-legged creatures approaching with knives and gouges and buckets . . .

Clay winced at the pain and distress leaking from these images, but forced himself to share it, despite a certain dreadful expectation building in his breast as the memories played out. When the last sequence came he viewed it with a wrenching sense of inevitability.

. . . thrashing against the chains clamped to his limbs . . . crying out in rage as the harvester enters the vat to thrust the spile into his neck . . . pain and anguish as his blood leaks out . . . the female two-legged creature lands in front of him, clutching an infant . . . his chains are shattered . . . a glory of vengeance as he tears the harvesters apart, demolishes walls and houses, feeling his life seep away but determined to visit all the pain he can on his tormentors before it’s gone . . . assailing ships in the harbour until something freezes him in place, holds him tighter than the chains until a sudden final jolt and blackness.

Clay let out a gasp and sank to his knees as the memory ended. “It was you,” he breathed. “One of you . . . all of you.” The rage was unjustified, irrational, but he couldn’t help it. “You bastards killed my mother. You know that?” He looked up at them, teeth bared in fury and loss. “You killed my mother! Do you know what you did to me?”

“You lost a mother, Clay,” Ethelynne said. “But Lutharon lost his father that day. He was only half-grown when he felt it, his father’s memories slipping into his, all that rage. He came close to killing me, and I had raised him. But he didn’t, for our minds were linked and he saw my guilt and my grief.”

Clay looked again at the giants staring down at him with their search-light eyes. Grief, he thought, trying to quell the myriad memories of his mother summoned by the vision of the rampaging Black. They don’t know forgiveness but they do know grief, and we gave them a whole lot to grieve over.

“It’ll end,” he said, getting to his feet. “Fight with us and it’ll end, we won’t hunt you no more. There’ll be no need. We found something, y’see? A new kind of product. Fight with us and we’ll leave you in peace.”

He meant it, with every ounce of his being. There were no lies in the trance and he knew they saw all of him now. But that also meant they saw the small kernel of doubt, the awareness that whatever offer he made here might well be ignored in the aftermath of victory.

“My promise is all I can give,” he said. “But it’s something. And you know you’ll only get death from the White. It’s got human blood as well as drake, which means it hates what it can’t control. Fight with us, like you did before. I know you still hold those memories, you still remember the time when human and drake lived in peace. Together you fought the White and you freed the Spoiled. Come with me and free them again.”

The beam focused on the ground flickered, Clay seeing new images appear in the light. The beam grew in size, the light swallowing Clay so that he stood in the shared memory. Another city, he realised, gazing round at the temples and buildings, noting how many were scorched and damaged, rubble littering the streets along with numerous corpses. Dead Greens and Reds lay alongside human and Spoiled, smoke rising above the carnage. Here and there he could see the body of a Black. However, there was still life in this city, people crouching beside the fallen, others wandering in a daze. Close by he could see a group of people standing in a circle. A large male Black stood outside the circle, neck coiled as it peered at what lay inside it.

Moving closer Clay heard voices raised. Two people amongst those gathered, a man and a woman were engaged in a bitter argument. She wore a long blue robe whilst he was clearly a warrior judging by the spear he carried. He was evidently fresh from the battle that had raged here, Clay noting the livid burn mark on the bronze skin of his shoulder and the dark blood that covered the head of his spear. The woman was uninjured but her face was stained with a mix of soot and blood, meaning she hadn’t been idle in the conflict either. He realised there was something familiar about her clothing, her robe and her head-dress of feathers stirring his memory of the mosaic in the hidden city.

“Blood-blessed,” he said. “A priestess.”

“One who has drunk heart-blood,” Ethelynne said, appearing at his side, nodding to the male Black.

“Can you tell what they’re saying?” Clay asked as the man and the woman continued to argue, their words meaningless to him.

“Only a small part of it. Lutharon’s kind have a fractional understanding of human language. I’ve often delved into his more ancient memories, trying to learn more about the vanished civilisation I spent so many years searching for. Some words and phrases have become clear but . . .” She paused, grimacing in consternation. “Without my note-books translation is ever a frustrating task.” Her gaze narrowed as she noticed something beyond the warrior and the priestess. “However, I suspect their discussion has much to do with him.”

There was a Spoiled within the circle, tightly bound with rope that had been secured with pegs thrust into the earth, keeping him on his knees. He looked around at his captors with no sign of fear, his deformed face betraying nothing beyond mild curiosity. Even when the priestess ended the argument with a shout and a hard slash of her hand, the Spoiled barely reacted as she strode towards him and sank to her haunches. She stared directly into his eyes, gaze unwavering, commanding whilst the Spoiled blinked in response and spoke a short few words in a dull monotone.

“Any notion of what that was?” Clay asked Ethelynne.

“He’s speaking the same language,” she said, frowning in concentration as she tried to translate. “‘Soon . . . you and I . . . walk mirror . . .’ No. Not walk mirror.” Ethelynne gave a huff of self-annoyance. “‘Become as one. Soon you and I will become as one.’”

Clay turned back as the woman replied, Ethelynne providing a halting translation. “‘No . . . soon you . . . will fly, no, ascend . . . to life.’ I think they use the words ‘life’ and ‘freedom’ interchangeably.”

Clay watched the priestess reach for something around her neck, seeing her remove the stopper from a small copper vial. She kept her gaze locked onto the Spoiled’s as she drank, then took on the stillness that indicated a trance state. The Spoiled suddenly jerked, straining against his bonds, elongated teeth bared in a grimace as he tried vainly to tear himself free, then he stopped. All expression left the Spoiled’s face as his struggles ceased and he took on the same stillness as the priestess.

“She’s trancing with him,” Clay concluded. “But how? He didn’t drink.”

“I don’t think he’s even Blessed,” Ethelynne said, then let out a short laugh of realisation. “We know they communicate mentally, and the only known means of doing that is via a trance state. Meaning the Spoiled must be in a permanent trance state from the moment of their conversion. It’s how the White controls them. Any Blood-blessed could trance with a Spoiled if they form a connection.”

The trance continued for some time, priestess and Spoiled remaining in absolute stillness. The surrounding circle of people grew restless, the warrior the priestess had argued with pacing back and forth with his spear clutched in readiness. Seeing the way he looked at the crouching woman Clay realised the man’s opposition to this attempt had been based on concern rather than suspicion. Was he her lover? Husband perhaps? Did she even know he loved her? All questions he knew would never be answered.

Finally, the priestess opened her eyes and stood up. As she did so the Spoiled collapsed, all strength seeming to seep out of him as he lay, head nuzzling the dirt. He seemed to be twitching but then Clay heard the soft sounds coming from his throat and realised he was weeping. A shadow of guilt passed over the priestess’s face as she looked down at the Spoiled before she straightened, putting a commanding expression on her face as she turned and issued a curt command to the warrior. He approached the Spoiled with a wary reluctance, peering down at the sobbing deformed face with a mixture of disgust and bafflement.

The woman spoke again, flicking a hand impatiently as Ethelynne translated. “‘Life . . . is given . . . Freedom is given. He is free.’”

Clay was about to ask a question but the warrior voiced it for him. “‘How?’”

“‘Freedom lives . . . exists in all . . . head, minds . . . Allowed him . . . memory . . . remember.’”

“He remembered being free,” Clay said. “And now he is. Can it be that simple?”

Ethelynne’s gaze clouded with sympathy as she looked at the Spoiled who continued to lie on the ground sobbing even after the warrior had cut away his bonds. “I doubt that, for him, anything was ever simple again. It seems you can free a mind from bondage, but not the memory of crimes committed in that bondage.”

The scene became dark, the tableau of the freed, guilt-wracked Spoiled lying between the warrior and the priestess faded into shadow. When the light returned they were back on the mountain side with the giant drakes looming above. Their eye-beams slowly shifted to converge on Ethelynne, the giants issuing a loud inquisitive rumble.

“I trust him,” she told them. “The gift you have given is gratefully received. But he is one, and the White has many in its thrall, and he tells the truth of it; if the White lives, we will perish.”

The giants’ rumbling became a discordant rattle that sounded like an avalanche. They reared back from Clay and Ethelynne, eye-beams lancing into the darkened sky as they let out a roar. Clay staggered under the weight of the sound, feeling as if it were tearing into him, pulling him apart. The surrounding vision shattered and swirled into a maelstrom of gravel, Clay feeling the sting of it in his skin, a sting that soon grew into a sharp continuous pain.

“A drake’s mind laid bare,” Ethelynne told him, standing placidly amidst the swirl. “Not something a human mind can stand for long, but he has to do this to call to them.”

She moved to Clay, reaching out to take his hands, which, he saw, were bleeding from a thousand or more tiny cuts. “Good-bye, Claydon,” she said with a warm smile. “It’s probably best if you don’t visit again. Not for a long time anyway. But, if you ever get the chance, do see if you can recover my note-books.”

He tried to reply but his mouth filled with gravel that burned like a swarm of tiny bees. Ethelynne gave a sympathetic wince and leaned forward to press a kiss to his cheek.

He blinked awake to find his gaze immediately assaulted by a bright beam of sunlight streaming through the jungle canopy. Letting out a grunt of pain he sat up, blinking watery eyes until Kriz’s concerned face came into focus. “How long?” he asked.

“A day,” she said. “And a night.”

Time moves differently in the trance, he remembered.

The tread of clawed feet on soft ground drew his gaze to Lutharon as he turned about, sinking to his haunches and angling his back towards them. Clay felt a faint sensation of impatience which he quickly realised wasn’t his own. Before his connection with Lutharon had been a vague thing, often feeling like he was trying to communicate through a thick fog. Now the drake’s mind was a clear and constant presence in his own. It was similar to his connection to Jack, but somehow felt deeper, Lutharon’s mind stronger and more coherent than the often-confused and scared soul Clay had poured into the fractured mess of Jack’s mind.

“Looks like we’re going somewhere,” he said, getting to his feet.

“We’re going to ride it?” Kriz asked with a doubtful pitch to her voice he knew had once coloured his own when presented with the same option.

“Him,” Clay corrected. “And it’s easy once you know how. Ain’t no skill to it. Just a matter of holding on and letting him take you where he wants to go.”

He moved to retrieve the Black crystal, which lay a few feet away, now shrunk once again into a small shard. Unsure whether it would be needed again but certain it would be a bad idea to leave it behind, he consigned it to his pack and strode towards the waiting drake.

Kriz took some coaxing to climb up behind him. Lutharon seemed to have abandoned his previous antipathy towards her and barely shuddered when she tentatively grasped one of his spines, but she retained an understandable nervousness.

“He hasn’t forgotten, has he?” she asked having finally settled herself onto Lutharon’s back.

“I don’t think they can forget,” Clay said. “But they do recognise more pressing concerns. Hold on,” he added as Lutharon flared his wings, “and if you throw up, don’t do it on me.”

A short loping sprint and they were air-borne, Lutharon pushing them higher with a few beats of his wings. The jungle fell away into a vast green blanket broken by the mist-shrouded, wedge-shaped bulk of the mountains. Clay let out a laugh at the familiar thrill of flying, something it turned out he had missed greatly, although he had forgotten how chilled the air could get only a few hundred feet off the ground.

Lutharon angled his wings and flew south, gliding for a time as he let out a long, loud call. It was different than the other calls Clay had heard him make, pitched higher than a roar but with a sustained volume that ensured it would carry for miles. The mountains and the jungle slipped beneath them for the length of several miles before he saw it, another winged shape gliding through the sparse mist below. Lutharon let out another call, identical to the first, and this time there was an answer. The other drake repeated the call as it rose to fly level with Lutharon. It was a young male perhaps two-thirds Lutharon’s size, coiling its neck to take in the sight of Clay and Kriz but displaying no sign of aggression.

Lutharon banked and began to fly in a wide circle, he and the other male continuing to call out. Another reply sounded to the rear and Clay looked over his shoulder to see two more Blacks rising to follow, with three more behind. Within the space of an hour the sky around them became filled with drakes, Clay losing count at twenty as it became impossible to keep track of them all as the ever-growing flock swirled around. The sound of their calls was extraordinary, a vast chorus of greeting and agreement that thrummed the air for miles around.

Clay leaned over Lutharon’s side to peer down at the mountains below, seeing drake after drake rise from the broad summits. He also saw that not all the Blacks were answering the call. Some looked up at the huge whirlwind of drakes in obvious agitation but showed no inclination to join it.

Guess they ain’t your kin, huh? he thought, running a hand over the scaly patch at the base of Lutharon’s neck.

It went on for over an hour by which time they were flying in shadow, so great were the number of wings obscuring the sun. Lutharon let out a final call, longer and louder than the others, and the great flock of Blacks answered with a vast cry of their own, so loud Clay’s ears throbbed with it. Lutharon levelled out, the jungle seeming to blur beneath them as he beat his wings, a thousand or more Black drakes following as he flew south.

They found the Longrifles trekking through the bush-country south of the jungle, keeping close to the tall cliffs that marked this stretch of the southern Arradsian coast. Clay obtained their location from Sigoral via the Blue-less trance, the Corvantine’s thoughts betraying a mounting but tightly controlled alarm at the sight of so many Blacks filling the sky. Lutharon set down a few yards from the company, all formed into a defensive knot with weapons at the ready. Contractor habits were hard to break.

Clay dismounted and went to greet his uncle, receiving a warm but distracted embrace in response as Braddon’s gaze roved constantly over the Blacks as they circled overhead or folded their wings to descend to the cliff-top.

“Seer damn me if you didn’t actually do it, Clay,” he said, fingers twitching on the stock of his rifle.

“Best if you keep that slung, Uncle,” Clay told him. “You really don’t wanna stir up any unpleasant recollections amongst our present company.”

Braddon nodded and slung his rifle over his shoulder, barrel down as marksmen always did, motioning for the others to do the same.

“Seems like you brought every Black in Arradsia,” Loriabeth said, coming forward to hug him.

“Not quite.” Clay raised his eyes to the host above. “Just hope it’s enough.”

“Reckon we’ll find out soon enough,” Braddon said. “Great many Reds flew over three days gone. We hunkered down in a fissure in one of the cliffs so they didn’t see. Next day we saw more Greens than I have in my life, all moving in one great pack.”

“Where to?” Clay asked.

“Same as the Reds, south.”

“Stockcombe.” He moved to the cliff edge, shielding his eyes to peer at the distant flank of the peninsular which led to the port. The White, he thought. Should’ve known it’d keep looking.

“Mount up,” he said, turning about and striding towards Lutharon. “We got a lotta distance to cover.”

“To where?” asked Braddon.

“Mount what?” asked Loriabeth.

“Stockcombe, where else?” Clay climbed onto Lutharon’s back, quickly followed by Kriz, who seemed to have lost her reluctance during the flight from the mountains. He grinned at Loriabeth and pointed at one of the drakes perched at the cliff edge. “And what else?”