suddenly so familiar with allow me to set the number of lashes.’ He pointed to the Benzari marine holding the cat- o’-nine-tails, the knotted lines of the whip dangling dangerously by his side. ‘The minimum. Ten lashes only.’
‘That’s far too soft a sentence,’ objected the first lieutenant.
‘This is not a flogging ship. You have duties to attend to, first lieutenant. The officers we took prisoner have been made ready on the prize vessel.’
‘I see no prize vessel.’
‘You will find her firmly tied off against our starboard side, first lieutenant.’
‘Read your orders again, captain. We have a very specific objective to accomplish and it does not include losing weeks we cannot afford on a round trip to tow a Cassarabian airship all the way back to the border just so you and your crew can line your pockets with Admiralty House’s bounty money.’
That drew furious murmurs from the crew. It was the greatest bugbear of any airship crew that the only time they got to claim prize money was when they helped the Fleet Sea Arm capture enemy u-boats and frigates on the surface of the ocean. Now the skymen finally had an enemy their equal in the air and they had shed their blood to capture one of the foe’s vessels. That share of the admiralty’s prize money was their right!
‘That is not our tradition, d’you see?’ said the captain.
‘Damn your bloody tradition, sir,’ said Westwick. ‘Orders trump tradition and the articles of war, both. We’ll learn what we can from the prisoners and take what we need from the captured Cassarabian aerostat and then you’ll mine her and you’ll blow her.’
Her words drew a collective growl from the crew. Whether it was seeing their captain treated like a pet hunting hound by the first lieutenant, or the prospect of losing a sailor’s share of a thousand guineas’ prize money, Jack couldn’t say.
‘Master Engineer Pasco,’ barked the first lieutenant, ‘I don’t believe our marine has the height to make a mere ten lashes count. Step forward and take the cat-o’-nine-tails from him.’
Jack groaned as the mean bullying officer did as he had been ordered.
‘This is your fault, thief,’ whispered Pasco, pulling Jack’s shirt up. ‘She’s only doing this out of spite because you wouldn’t take your ninety licks like a man. You’ve stolen six month’s extra salary out of the pockets of every Jack Cloudie on board the ship.’
The marine drummers started the rattle of their instruments and the count began. Pasco had the size to make the lashes count alright. Jack got to seven numbing lashes before he passed out, the biting taste of the saliva-soaked cloth fading from his mouth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Where is your mind today?’ demanded the cadet master, cutting left and right with the practice sabre as if he was punishing the air rather than Omar.
‘It is the day for the womb mages to sample his flesh for a new drak to be grown for him,’ called Boulous from the other side of the fencing mat.
The cadet master snorted at Omar. ‘Pray you can honour your sword when your drak is ready for you. It is not a womb mage’s ritual that is on your mind, cadet. Command. Tell.’
‘I was thinking of a girl,’ growled Omar, dripping in sweat from the exercise. ‘A girl I know who was taken by brigands.’
‘Well then,’ said the old swordsman, flicking Omar’s sword up to guard readiness with the tip of his sabre, the position called third tierce. ‘Brigands and guardsmen often meet, and when we do, the business is not much different from ours this morning. Except these brigands will not have Farris Uddin quite so angry at them for running a sword through a cadet’s foolish, mooning guts.’
Omar felt anger rise in him at the old man’s scorn and disrespect for his feelings towards Shadisa. Not taking his eyes off the old swordsman, Omar raised his free hand towards the weapons racked by the practice hall’s walls — swords of all shapes and sizes: sabres, rapiers, longswords, fencing foils, foreign blades. ‘I have mastered your weapons.’
‘Have you then, young fool?’ sneered the cadet master. ‘You are as blind as one of the snake charmers’ nobbled pythons down in the bazaar. Those aren’t weapons in that rack. Your sword is not the weapon.
‘What is this?’ demanded Omar. ‘Something for the palace gardeners to grow their beans around?’
‘A lesson,’ said the cadet master. ‘My father was a jinn trader and I grew up travelling with him across the infidel lands. Those bean sticks are what you get when you make duelling with edged weapons a crime for hundreds of years. The Jackelians call them debating sticks, and any Kingdom street rat would be able to stick one right up your sorry arse and make you twist around it as though it was one of their Maypoles.’
Omar felt the heft of the thing, deceptively heavy. Had it been weighted inside with lead?
‘Come on, boy. It’s not a real weapon, is it?’ said the cadet master. ‘Just a little stick. See what you can do against the commander’s retainer. Boulous’s blood runs Kingdom-red, even if his heart is as true a guardsman’s as ever walked this fortress. Have a little prod at each other. Show me your great mastery of my arts.’
Omar struck out at Boulous with the staff, but the retainer was as quick with it as he was with a practice scimitar, ducking back and not even needing to block Omar’s strike. Angered, Omar tried to windmill the staff, turning it and jabbing from multiple angles and directions, but Boulous was able to step around each strike, his boots flowing as though he were dancing. They hadn’t even touched wood yet.
‘Enough, Boulous,’ spat the cadet master. ‘Plant the cadet’s beans for him.’
Boulous swept his staff around, tripping Omar onto the floor before he could attempt to jump or manoeuvre, the flat end of the staff hovering an inch away from his nose.
‘That staff isn’t a weapon,’ the cadet master shouted at Omar on the floor. ‘A sword isn’t a weapon, nor a stick nor a stone. The guardsman is the weapon, and in his hands, so is anything he touches.’ He waved at Boulous. ‘Do I need to press my point, retainer? Shall I show this young fool how to take that staff away from you and give you a few lumps in payment for it?’
Boulous smiled thinly and shook his head. ‘I still remember you laughing at me during our empty hand sessions, cadet master.’
‘A little shame worked well as a spur with you, retainer.’ The cadet master shook his head sadly at Omar. ‘But you learn well enough without it, cadet. I don’t know why, but being a guardsman seems to run in your lazy, skiving blood. Have nothing on your mind when you train with me. Bring me some foolishness about a woman again and I’ll show you where the flat end of the length of infidel wood is meant to be inserted.’
Omar and Boulous bowed and left as the next cadet entered to receive his punishment.
Omar had imagined that his first visit outside the environs of the guardsmen’s towering fortress, venturing into the Jahan Palace below, would have been an occasion to partake of the legendary sensual pleasures of the Caliph Eternal’s bounty. Instead, Omar’s passage down the monstrous granite staircase that had been carved into the rock face in the shadow of the fortress was filled with dread. It was the retainer’s warning that had done it for Omar — that the womb mages who would sample his flesh to create a drak for him were bound up with the Sect of Razat. Omar had escaped the extermination of his house using the last of his slave’s luck, and now he had none left to protect him from the dark sorceries of his enemies.
What if the womb mages gave him a deadly disease when they sampled his flesh? Something to leave him gasping and rolling around the cells of the fortress in a week’s time, when the sect’s involvement in his murder could be denied? Or they might twist and warp his body in revenge for escaping the sack of Haffa. He remembered the work of the womb mages back in his hometown: creating changeling viruses to heal and cure, or curse and kill, depending on whose coin had been taken in payment. How welcome would Omar be among the ranks of the guardsmen if they found him growing a third leg or an extra set of arms one morning?
Omar felt a fraud every step of the way down to the great domes below, the wind whipping his cloak about his black leather armour. Even the presence of the retainer Boulous to lead the way and lend authority to his
