The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

to catch a couple of smugglers out plying the coast’s oldest trade. Having the lad with him was a risk, all the same. Of all the cargoes the canny submariners of the Pip Sissy smuggled out of Quatershift to bring into Jackals, the contents of Tom’s sack were going to prove the most lucrative this cold night. The lad kicked his heels against the frost and the darkness. He obviously wished he were bunking back in the warmth of their u- boat too.

‘If there weren’t revenue men abroad tonight, I’d burn this rubbish to warm my fingers and damn the risk of the firelight,’ said Tom, swinging the sack nervously between his hands.

The older moonraker laid his hand menacingly on his belt dagger. ‘Then you’d be a right fool, Tom. It’d be a tuppence turn of a coin whether our customer would slit your throat before the skipper tied you to the Pip Sissy’s conning tower and towed you back to Quatershift for the crabs.’

‘Why should someone pay us good money for this rubbish, Chivery?’ The lad pulled out a handful of yellowed pamphlets from the sack and read out a few of the titles in the moonlight. ‘Directives of the First Committee. The heroes of theFaideaux carriage works — an exhortation to labour. Equality’sTongue: the thoughts and purity of the revolution. There ain’t anybody in Jackals that collects this revolutionary guff anymore, not since the war.’

Chivery lit the bull’s-eye lamp he carried with him, making the signal that they were ready to trade. He took advantage of the tightly focused light to unroll the penny sheet he had brought with him. The Northern Monitor: respectable opinions, honestly and directly expressed. Its front cover bore an illustration of the First Guardian, Benjamin Carl, holding a four-poles bat with the words Jackelian oak carved on it. Bounding off the wood was the head of one of the First Committee of Quatershift, while various caricatures from parliament clapped politely on the sidelines. There was a speech bubble rising from the leader of the opposition, Hoggstone, which read ‘Your game m’lord.’

The great terror was still in full swing in Jackals’ neighbouring nation. Every month the Pip Sissy made its smuggling run, and every month their friends, contacts and colleagues in Quatershift seemed gaunter and more malnourished. Made prematurely old by the upheavals — purge after purge — famine after famine — entire families dragged from their villages to the quick, deadly mercy of a Gideon’s Collar, the steam-driven killing machines that dominated every town square in Quatershift. As Chivery’s news sheet indicated, even a high position within the Commonshare elite was no protection against the twitchy paranoia of the shifties’ secret police units or the whims of the street mob. Quatershift was not a functioning republic any more — it was a dog gnawing on its own wounded, diseased flesh. The smuggler shook his head sadly. People got themselves into the strangest of pickles with their damn fool passions. If anyone in Jackals started carrying on like that, why, their neighbours would sneak them a visit one evening and give them a right good dewskitching — look on it as a favour done to them, too.

‘What’s that noise?’ Tom looked around.

A whistling from the sky, then a dark monstrous shape dropped through the canopy of trees, leathery wings folding up like an angel of hell. Yelping, the lad stumbled back and fell over a branch.

Chivery picked up the boy’s fallen bag from the grass. The lad looked on in astonishment. It was not one monster — it was two. The reptilian flying creature had dropped his passenger in the middle of the clearing and stepped back, wrapping his wings around his sides. It was a lashlite. A lashlite carrying a human-shaped figure. But was it a human? Dark high boots, black cape, a face concealed underneath a devil’s mask. Now the tales came back to the boy. The scourge of Quatershift, vengeance taken human form. Furnace-breath Nick.

Some said Furnace-breath Nick was the ghost of a Quatershiftian nobleman come back from hell to haunt his executioners. Others claimed that he was a member of the Carlist revolution who had been betrayed and purged by the new rulers of the land — a spirit of death hunting his old compatriots. A few maintained that Furnace-breath Nick was a dark angel of the Quatershiftian sun god, sent to punish the newly atheist republic that shared half of Jackals’ border.

‘Do you have it?’ The devil’s voice echoed around the clearing as if it was being sucked up from hell. Something inside the figure’s mask was altering his voice, making his words hideous.

Chivery was not bothered. He had gone through this ritual many times before. ‘For the money, I have it.’

A black-gloved hand lashed out, and a purse of coins spun across to be caught by the smuggler. Chivery bounced the coins in his palm, jangling them. ‘A bargain well met.’ He tossed the sack filled with Quatershiftian propaganda over to Furnace-breath Nick.

‘I trust there will be another delivery next month?’

‘It’s getting harder,’ said Chivery. ‘Not because of the Carlists, mind. They’re still in a right old state. The First Committee wouldn’t notice if we snuck into the Palace of Equality and painted their arses blue right now.’

‘There will be no extra money,’ Furnace-breath Nick told the smuggler.

Chivery went on, ignoring the comment. ‘It’s our own damn navy. They’ve stepped up airship patrols along the coast. It’s getting so we can’t break the surface off a Quatershiftian cove without some RAN stat chasing us down.’

‘When the drinking houses of Hundred Locks run dry of smuggled brandy, I shall believe it’s too dangerous for you to break the blockade,’ said Furnace-breath Nick. ‘Until then … besides, like your boy says, this literature is just worthless junk.’

Terrified, the young smuggler tried to crawl back into the woods. Furnace-breath Nick had been secretly listening in to his conversation.

‘Worthless to some,’ said Chivery, clinking the bag of coins again. ‘Yet you seem to place some value on it.’

‘Oh yes,’ laughed Furnace-breath Nick — not an encouraging sound. ‘But sink me, don’t people say I am quite insane?’

With that, Furnace-breath Nick was seized by the lashlite, the beating of the creature’s wings sending the two smugglers’ tricorn hats blowing off into the trees as the devil-masked figure and the winged beast that served him vanished into the sky.

‘That was him,’ said young Tom. ‘The one in the sheets. Furnace-breath Nick.’

‘It was,’ agreed Chivery. ‘And you thought moonraking was boring, eh?’

‘But he’s the devil of Quatershift, ain’t he, the scourge of the Commonshare? What does he want with a sack full of useless shiftie political pamphlets?’

‘Something to warm his fire during a cold evening, boy? Damned if I know. In fact, if I did know, I probably would be damned. Just, I suspect, like he must be.’

CHAPTER THREE

Quirke opened his door, the sadness in the academic’s normally sparkling eyes a fair indication of what was to follow. ‘Amelia, do come in.’

Professor Harsh followed the head of the School of Archaeology at Saint Vine’s College into his comfortable old office, the sense of foreboding in her gut mounting. The table by the window held a steaming pot of caffeel, rising vapour from the brew obscuring the quad below, where gaggles of brown-gowned students were being called to seminar by the steam-driven whistles running along the battlements of the ancient university. The brew’s presence settled it. Quirke might as well have placed an executioner’s cap on his desk.

‘Do sit down, my dear.’ The elderly fellow pulled a polished gem out of his tweed waistcoat’s pocket and placed it on his desk. It was the same jewel Mombiko had removed from the tomb in Cassarabia’s mountains.

‘I thought the university would have that under museum glass by now — or sold off by one of the Cripplecross auction houses?’ said Amelia.

‘The High Table does not know of its existence yet, Amelia.’

She looked across at Quirke, puzzled.

‘This arrived for you while you were gone.’ He passed a cream vellum envelope across to her. Taking the copper letter opener from the academic’s desk, Amelia sliced the envelope open. She unfolded the notepaper, going numb as she read the words.