seeing the cardsharp at work he held his tongue. He was senior. He had some understanding of the art that was going on up here — unlike the young upland turnip swinging from his girdle, dripping oil onto the floor from the cans dangling from his belt.
With a final bash of the keyboard, the punch card lifted out of its cradle, held by an automatic arm. ‘There,’ spat the cardsharp. ‘Inject that into the system.’
One of his runners snatched the card and sprinted away.
‘Carefully, lad,’ called the senior engine man. ‘Gutta-percha tears if you push it in too fast. More haste, less speed.’
The cardsharp looked over the paper imprint that had been left behind on the punch-card writer. It was too late now if there were errors in the code, but he checked his work anyway. He should have had a partner logic- checking his efforts, but there were few in the House of Quest that could follow the master’s work. In the cardsharping game, it was often said the difference between the fourth and fifth best coder in the business was that the fifth best could look at the fourth’s work and not understand a line of what had been written. You flew lonely when you flew so high.
From the depths of the pit, the transaction engines changed their pitch, the thunder of the rumbling drums absorbing the new instruction set. Few laymen could tell the difference, but to everyone in this chamber it was as if a completely new hymn was being sung down below. The cardsharp tapped his desk nervously, not daring to rise. There were so many possibilities for error. All the raw data from the crown’s crystal that composed the key had been laboriously copied and transferred. What effect would too high an error rate in that data have on their attempt to crack it? Nothing good. Nothing productive, that much was certain.
The rumbling grew louder, shouts of alarm sounding as some of the transaction engines overloaded, oily smoke pouring upwards and drums cracking under the stress, grease monkeys converging on the danger spots in a swish of pulley lines.
‘Look,’ cried one of the engine men. ‘The Rutledge Rotator.’
His screen was starting to spin, the abacus-like beads flowing from left to right.
‘Who left it on screen output?’ shouted the cardsharp. ‘We need paper output, paper! This isn’t some bloody dockside inventory count we’re handling!’
One of them switched the settings just in time, the first of the result cards falling into a collection bin, a backup spool of paper winding around at speed alongside. The cardsharp snatched the result card and sighed in relief. The initial symbols on it were validly formed. This was the first of many cards that would be returned.
‘Make sure the blanks aren’t sticking together,’ ordered the cardsharp. ‘And send word to the master. The key codes to open Camlantis have been deciphered. Tell him. Just tell him, the gates are open …’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘Billy,’ hissed the commodore. ‘Billy Snow, are you in there?’
A face appeared on the other side of the viewing slot, its features distorted by the shimmer of the cursewall. ‘What are you doing here, Jared Black? Our next cell check is due in ten minutes.’
‘I know,’ whispered the commodore. ‘I’ve been watching your wicked Catosian maiden come and go from the other side of the ventilation grille, my old frame squeezed between her jail’s walls like the meat in a sausage roll.’
T’ricola crept past, taking position at the bottom of the armoured hold’s stairs, her ears and the fine hairs on the back of her armoured skull quivering for any sound of the guard’s return.
Billy shook his head. ‘If they catch you down here …’
‘Ah, Billy, we’ve risked a lot to reach you. Creeping like tiny little rats through these infernal shafts, nearly chopped into pieces by rotating fans, squeezing through spaces so small you wouldn’t send in a vent girl to risk her neck to clean them, some so iced up we needed chisels to break through, others wired with snares and wicked devices of Quest’s invention. But none of them were of any concern for old Blacky and your brave crewmates.’
An elderly female voice sounded behind Billy. ‘Who is it?’
‘A fool,’ answered the sonar man, ‘come to get himself killed on my account.’
‘Ah, they’ve given you a lady friend to keep you company,’ winked the commodore. ‘They are not as bad as they seem, then. As for us, we don’t leave our own behind, or we’re no better than Quest and his gang of renegade mill hands.’
‘You need to go,’ insisted Billy. ‘Your skill with locks is no match for this hold. It makes our old cage back in the siltempters’ jungle kingdom look like the lock on a toy music box.’
‘Don’t say that, Billy. My genius has never been bested yet, and as clever as Quest is, he knows more about countinghouse ledgers than he does of tumblers and cursewalls.’
‘Maybe,’ said Billy. ‘But we’re certainly not going to be sprung from here before the next cell check is due.’
‘Take a little heart,’ said the commodore. ‘I’ll crack this yet.’
‘There are greater things at stake. My fate is settled, but there may yet be hope for the race of man. You need to return to Jackals and come back with help.’
‘Who is to fly as high as this monstrous fleet of Quest’s?’ whispered the commodore. ‘The RAN has no airships that can pursue a flotilla at this altitude.’
‘I’m not talking about running to Admiralty House,’ said Billy. He pointed at the woman sharing his cell. ‘Her people. I know you have had dealings with their profession before, black aerospheres that can climb as high as these airships of Quest’s.’
‘A blessed wolftaker is she?’ The commodore stepped back in alarm. ‘Don’t ask me to make contact with the Court of the Air, old friend. They’ll have my poor suffering bones in a cell half the size of this one and a hundred times more secure within an hour of muttering my first “good day”.’
Billy sighed. ‘I know all about your royal blood, Jared — or should I say, Duke Solomon Dark. But this is more important. My companion here can give you pass phrases, pass phrases that will overrule any desire the Court may have to toss an aging royalist into their cells. Listen to me. I have a story to tell you. The true story of ancient Camlantis, reduced to five minutes of telling with a spare minute for you to squeeze back into your air vent.’
The commodore listened and the terrible truth dawned on him. He was going to have to contact the wicked dogs of the Court of the Air after all. There was simply too much at stake. Nothing else would do.
Amelia looked up. The assistant from Quest’s team had brought back another ream of translated papers. This must be what it was like to be appointed to the High Table, an army of scribes and undergraduates following every twitch of your efforts — doing the donkey work, copying and translating and cross-referencing and looking up facts in dusty volumes it would have taken her days to get permission to view back home. She thanked the boy and noticed he had brought in something else on his coattails — Commodore Black.
‘Jared.’ She glanced at the carriage clock on the corner of her workbench. ‘Is that really the time?’
‘Time for us to be going, lass. We’re nearly out of Jackals’ acres and over the Sepia Sea.’
‘So many days have passed already?’ She had become so engaged in her work that she would have been hard-pressed to say whether it was currently day or night outside the airship.
Another of Quest’s people was admitted by her Catosian sentry, a bunch of cables clutched in the boy’s hand as if he had brought flowers for the professor’s desk. ‘The fault in the crystal-book reader has been located and fixed. It was-’
Amelia waved him away. ‘Thank you. I’ll be down to the reader room in half an hour.’
‘You could still come with us,’ said the commodore. ‘You could be back on the grand, solid soil of Jackals within the hour.’
There was a sense of urgency seeping through the commodore’s words that seemed out of place. Amelia half noticed it, but wrote it off to her tired imagination playing tricks on her. How long had she been working now? Snatching sleep at her desk in hourlong stretches. So much to do, so much to achieve and read and soak into her brain. If only the worldsingers could work their sorcery on her mind as they had on her arms.
‘My place is here now, Jared. The real expedition is only just beginning.’
‘I’ve left my beautiful boat behind,’ said the commodore. ‘Don’t be making me leave you behind too.’
