Jack Cloudie

redesigning the Iron Partridge to work manually with a full crew — and the airship still didn’t fly well enough. Our main job here is to make sure that the transaction engines don’t get in the way of the crew. The systems still try and come back fully online every now and then, working their automated mischief. These transaction engines were buried too wicked deep into the fabric of the ship for us to allow the boilers to run cold and still their drums altogether. Just enough power to let her tick over and no more, that’s what we must be about.’ He pointed to a line of hammocks hung up behind the spherical boilers, the sailors’ wooden air chests sitting beneath. ‘You can bed down there. You’ll be glad of the boilers when we’re running high and cold. Warmest place on the Iron Partridge, so it is. The watch in the crow’s-nest dome down the corridor come in here after they’ve stood a duty, to toast their gloves against our plates.’

Better than the cramped confines of the crew’s quarters on the lower deck where Jack had been camped until now, he supposed. Blanket Bay, as the airship’s sailors referred to the long swathe of hammocks.

‘Is it only us up here?’ asked Jack.

Oldcastle nodded sadly, gesturing to the rows of empty punch-card writers and injection desks opposite the boilers. ‘There’s not many trained enginemen and cardsharps with a taste for the navy’s foul food and parliament’s meagre pay. Even our two stokers are on loan from the captain of marines.’

Jack nodded. So, was this pit of broken thinking machines the reason the RAN had been so eager to rescue him from the gallows? But then there had been the man in court. Jack knew his face from somewhere. But where?

‘We might have been the pride of the fleet,’ said Oldcastle with a melancholy expression pinching his cheeks. ‘Gliding over the battlefield like an eagle and letting enemy cannon fire bounce off our hull while our mortar shells found the foe’s helmets as if the very steel in our guns were bewitched. But here we are instead, on another desperate voyage, with cruel fate carrying us far from home. Damn my unlucky stars.’ He looked at the curious faces of Jack and Coss. ‘But I mustn’t say too much about that. The first lieutenant’s orders are the first lieutenant’s to keep.’

‘You mean the captain’s orders?’ said Jack.

‘Indeed, Mister Keats. Too much heat in here. It dries a man’s mind without a little wine to help moisten the thinking.’

‘It is clear we are travelling south, warrant sky officer,’ said Coss Shaftcrank. ‘Every sailor on this ship can read that from the sun and the stars.’

‘Master cardsharp, if you please, old steamer,’ said Oldcastle. ‘A title you would normally hear when saluting the supply clerks of Admiralty House, I admit, but it is mine for this voyage.’

‘And the newssheets have been full of talk of war, master cardsharp,’ said Jack. ‘With Cassarabia to the south. Now that they can build ships like ours.’

‘Oh, they have always been capable of building ships like these, lad,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Floating them with a gas that doesn’t explode like a grenade when you strike a spark in the lifting chamber has been a trick that’s proved a little harder for the empire to master, but one they seem to have got hold of now.’

‘Will it be war, sir?’ asked Jack.

‘Always, lad. There’s two cocks-of-the-lane swaggering down the street, and only enough space on the cobbles for one of them. And the caliph has to build a great new temple every century or so, with Cassarabian tradition demanding it be paid for by tribute taken from heathens and new conquests, not by his own people. Booty for his army and supporters, to keep them all on-side and well greased. Yes, there’ll be war alright, now that the Cassarabians have airships to take on the Royal Aerostatical Navy. The only question is when. And whatever the answer to that, you’d better hope that we’re not on board the ship when it breaks out. Not that you’ll hear such a view coming from Admiralty House. They think that because the RAN’s been sailing in the clouds for centuries, our tactics and experience will see the Cassarabians off like cheap whipped hounds if they dare to drift across our border with mischief in mind.’

‘You don’t think we will?’

‘I’ve never been privy to an easy victory, Mister Keats,’ said the old officer. ‘No, indeed, I don’t think I know what one of those even looks like.’

Now Jack could see why the crew seemed so restless on board the airship, pressed men and the scrapings of the barrel, sailing on an unpopular scrapyard vessel towards trouble. Whatever their mission was, it was obvious that Admiralty House hadn’t wanted any part of it. And that meant politics. Army interference, or parliamentarians in the House of Guardians ramming it down the reluctant throats of the braided naval uniforms who thought they knew best.

The three of them were meant to ensure that the chamber of thinking machines didn’t interfere with the running of the ship. But who is going to ensure that I return alive to keep Alan and Saul safe?

Omar yelled as the great winged lizard, the drak that Farris Uddin had named as Quarn, banked and began to descend towards Bladetenbul. Never in all his years as a slave had Omar expected he would see Cassarabia’s capital city — and if someone had told him a week ago that his introduction to its immense spill of streets, souks and towers would be from a saddle at a hundred feet, he would have joked that the speaker had been exposed to the heat of the sun for too long.

The light of Bladetenbul is the light of the world, ran the old saying, and from this high up Omar could see why. There was a great fortified wall running around the outside of the seven hills the city sprawled across, and behind the fortifications stood the capital’s sun towers, each fluted construction filled with boilers and capturing the reflected light of the thousands of great mirror arrays that circled Bladetenbul. Water into steam, steam to drive the city’s machines, and the steam caught again and fed back into the system of reservoirs and pipes — far too precious a resource to waste on the sky under god, as the heathen northern nations were said to.

Light from the mirrors seemed to reflect off the drak’s green-scaled skin, dazzling Omar where he sat behind Farris Uddin, strapped above the base of the creature’s long sinuous neck. The rushing of the wind and the drumming of the drak’s wings made it hard to communicate with Farris Uddin — not that the taciturn killer had much to say to Omar. He really was an imperial guardsman, that much was certain. Sand dogs and bounty hunters did not ride such creatures as this, that Omar knew. As much effort as the womb mages of Omar’s old house had put into the breeding and nurture of salt-fish, it was child’s play compared to the skill and resources needed to create and raise something as large and complex as a drak.

They whisked lower over the city, low enough for Omar to see the bazaars crowded with canopy-covered stalls selling silks and spiced rice, iced-water sellers weighed down with gas-cooled tanks on their backs, importuning the clients coming out of the great domed bathhouses. The drak followed the line of the stone pipe network that fed the capital with its precious water supplies, flying so near to the ground that Omar winced as they banked around minarets, the breeze from their passage ruffling the robes of the watermen at the major tap-points, officials inspecting the lines of those waiting for any sign of unpaid water taxes.

On the drak hurtled, riding the thermals from the whitewashed city below and hardly beating a wing now, gliding up towards the tallest of the hills where the Jahan Palace waited. Not for nothing was this called the Jahan — simply, the world. A tower-tall crystal dome on the brow of the hill, ruby coloured and surrounded by smaller emerald green domes. World enough for the Caliph Eternal and his court. Sultans and emirs came here to renew their vows and the pledges of their nations to the mighty emperor of emperors, Akil Jaber Issman, blood descendent of the legendary Ben Issman himself, his name be blessed. What chance would the barely freed slave of an outlawed heretic house have when swimming in such perilous currents?

Farris Uddin’s massive drak glided towards a series of fortifications sitting watchfully behind the massive central dome of the palace. Embedded on top of a rocky rise, it was the eyrie of the guardsmen that protected the caliph and his realm. Tilting back, the drak used its wings to break, two massive clawed feet touching down on the rock floor of a cave-like opening, then swinging forward to walk them into a hangar where jagged walls were hung with rows of colourful shields. A stableman emerged from a door in the wall and ran a cable through the drak’s harness, before receiving Farris Uddin’s instructions on the creature’s care. As the young stable hand led the drak away, Farris turned to Omar. ‘That is Boulous, my retainer. He is a slave, and though his blood is originally of Jackelian stock, his heart has been raised to be as stout as any guardsman that serves the order. I chose him for his keen mind. Let his caution, wisdom and loyalty become yours.’