Johannes Cabal the Detective

smiled but managed to turn it into a frown of self-importance, nodded curtly, and headed for the field apron. The further away he was from the police agents that cluttered the concourse, the happier he would be.

* * *

Lieutenant Hasso was Karstetz’s replacement, and was already demonstrating himself to have the charismatic flair of his predecessor. “So, this Cabal wallah beat you? And now he’s loose? Is that it?”

“He did not beat me,” grated Marechal in a patently dangerous voice that Hasso blithely failed to detect. The Count Marechal was rubbing feeling back into his recently freed hands, the pieces of bellpull rope that had bound him now lying severed on the floor.

“You are the finest swordsman in all Mirkarvia, aren’t you?” asked Hasso, trying to get his facts straight.

“Forget about swordsmanship. Cabal cheated.”

“Ahhh.”

Marechal looked at him furiously. “What do you mean, ‘Ahhh’?”

“Oh. You know.” Hasso shrugged. It was obvious he didn’t. “‘Ahh.’ As in … ‘Oho!’ I should think.”

“‘Oho’?”

“I should think.”

“Yes, you should.” Marechal decided there were more important things to do right that moment than murder new adjutants. “Is there any word of Cabal?”

“The chap who beat you?” Hasso finally caught the count’s look. “Or should I say, didn’t beat you,” he added hastily. He winked conspiratorially. “Ahhh. Oho!”

“Is there?” demanded the count.

“No. Nobody’s seen him. As soon as he beat … as soon as he’d finished here he just vanished into thin air. Some sort of magician, isn’t he? Izzy wizzy, wands and all that? Rabbits?”

“He’s a necromancer, you idiot, not a children’s entertainer. He can no more vanish in a puff of smoke than you can. Regrettably. Are all the ports being monitored? The borders? Mountain passes?”

“There is a rebellion going on out there, old man. Our chaps are terribly, terribly busy crushing the proletariat. But fear not, the orders have been sent out. Just have to hope that he shows his face.”

* * *

Business or pleasure?” asked the customs man.

“Pleasure,” replied Cabal. “The pure animal pleasure of presenting these government documents to my counterparts in Katamenia.” The officer looked at him blankly, and Cabal decided that this wasn’t going to be a meeting of minds. “A little joke. A very little joke. I’m on government business.”

“Oh? Pertaining to what?”

“Agricultural policy. I’m not permitted to say more.”

“Very fortuitous timing, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir,” said the officer, riffling through the stolen papers for the fourth time. Cabal wasn’t worried. The man obviously wasn’t reading them. “What, with all this trouble? You just happen to be leaving the country. Very fortuitous.”

“Yes,” said Cabal, pleasantly. The customs man was clearly trying to imply that Cabal was some sort of moral coward for abandoning his country in its hour of need. Cabal didn’t mind implying exactly the same thing back. Anything to annoy the hirelings. “Isn’t it? Aboard a beautiful new ship like the Princess Hortense, too. Lucky old me, hmm?”

“Yes. Very, very lucky. Fortuitously lucky.” The officer seemed to believe that it was possible to win some sort of implication prize if he kept it up long enough.

“You have it there in a nutshell. Are you finished with my hand baggage?”

The officer waggled his moustache and looked in Cabal’s Gladstone. “What’s this?” he asked when he found the roll of surgical tools.

Cabal quickly undid the knot and unrolled it. Sitting in a spare pocket, the switchblade looked like it belonged. “Surgical equipment. My job sometimes includes pathological examinations of sick animals.”

“You’re a veterinarian?” The officer was suddenly interested.

“In a manner — ”

“Do you do parrots?”

“Not by choice.”

“What’s scales and falling feathers?”

Cabal paused. “Is this a riddle?”

“Great scales, like … sort of … dandruff.”

“Is this a test?”

“No, no.” The officer shook his head urgently. “My Liese’s got mange.”

“Liese being your parrot?”

“I thought I’d said that? Or at least as much?”

“So you did, eventually. I’m only licensed to dissect cows and sheep,” lied Cabal, having to use more inventiveness than seemed necessary or fair after all he’d been through. “I’m afraid I know nothing of” — he endeavoured to sound knowledgeable — “exotics.”

The customs officer looked at him askance and sniffed. “Well, that’s a shame. Thank you, Herr Meissner. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

“Not at all. We do what we do for the good of the state, yes?”

“Of course. The good of the state. Enjoy your trip, sir.”

“Thank you.” As Cabal walked out of the customs building, he had the feeling that could have gone a lot better. Then he saw the Princess Hortense and forgot all about the customs officer.

The customs officer, however, hadn’t forgotten all about him.

* * *

Lieutenant Hasso stamped into Marechal’s presence and performed a salute that was a lot of everything but brief. “He’s been spotted, sir! A customs officer at the port got suspicious and checked the wanted list.”

“Trying to leave the country, eh?” It always paid to state the obvious when dealing with men like Hasso — it would save a lot of explanation later. “We’ve got him now. I want a patrol of the household guard ready in five minutes, understood?”

* * *

Unaware of the excitement at the palace, Cabal took a long minute to gaze up in appreciative silence at the Princess Hortense. She sat in her cradle, a huge basket of pylons and girders that supported the hull where it was designed to bear this weight. Despite appearances when airborne, aeroships like the Hortense were not lighter-than-air dirigibles. Instead, they nullified their weight with banks of Laithwaite gyroscopic levitators and pulled themselves through the air using magneto-etheric line guides that located and attached the vessel to the earth’s own magnetic fields. The gyroscopes were out of sight within the aeroship’s upper hull, but the line guides — four massive aerodynamically smoothed nacelles twenty feet in length and ten square — were held at a distance from the ship’s skin by pylons jutting out just below the dorsal surface, fore and aft port, fore and aft starboard. Although these provided both propulsion and steering, there were also four great rudders set wide to aft, two thrusting downwards and two — bearing the MirkAir colours and the crest of the Imperial Warrant — up. Along her sides were the rectangular cabin portholes and, to aft, the wide picture windows of the salon. At her prow, the nose was constructed almost entirely of glass panels exposing the bridge, its command stations, control linkages, and aluminium mesh floor plates. From either side of the bridge thrust covered walkways, each ending in glass observation spheres that contained a crew station, reminding Cabal a little of the horns of a snail. These would be “flying bridges” analogous to those on a large oceangoing vessel, he guessed, there to give clear sight of the docking cradle during the approach. Members of the bridge crew were visible moving around the bridge and looking out at the field. Cabal nodded slightly with satisfaction; he respected good engineering for its purity of thought, and the Princess Hortense was clearly that.

Passengers were embarking from a balcony that extended directly from the side of the departure lounge, and he belatedly realised that he had come out of the wrong entrance. Rather than walk all the way back around again, he made for an iron spiral staircase within the cradle itself that seemed to be the crew’s entrance. Deciding not to