Jack Cloudie

presence seemed only a salve to the situation.

‘A cadet is still invested with the authority of the order,’ said Boulous, as if sensing Omar’s mood. ‘You are a custodian of the Caliph Eternal’s law inside the palace.’

‘I will be quick to sever the hands of any courtiers I find fighting unlicensed duels,’ said Omar. ‘What did Master Uddin mean up on the walls when he warned you not to repeat what you said about the grand marshal? It is clear the grand marshal has lived a long life. Who would object to hearing that?’

‘It is not his age,’ said Boulous. ‘It is how the grand marshal came by it — or rather the speed by which he came by it. Until two years ago, the grand marshal was subject to the caliph’s bounty, you understand? He was given the drug that blesses a man with eternal youth. The grand marshal might have lived to be three hundred years old, but now its blessing is his no more and his true years advance fast on him.’

‘More politics,’ said Omar.

‘We are not in favour, Cadet Barir,’ said the retainer. ‘The guardsmen are traditionalists, and we live in an age of progress. That is why the Caliph Eternal’s new armada of the heavens was given to the control of the navy’s admirals, salt-stained fools who know more about tides and sounding depths than they do of aerial navigation in the face of sandstorms.’

‘There was an old nomad I was friends with at home,’ said Omar. ‘He would have shrugged his shoulders and said such a misfortune must be god’s will.’

‘Perhaps, but it is also the will of the same sect that saw yours cast down from the Holy Cent,’ said the retainer. ‘You need to watch your tongue in the palace below. It was not just your father’s house and its allies that were destroyed by the new sect’s rise to ascendancy. The Pasdaran was dissolved by the Caliph Eternal last year when they were supposedly discovered plotting against the empire.’

The Pasdaran! But they were the caliph’s secret police. Even in Haffa just the invoking of the name of the caliph’s shadowy torturers had been enough to scare overactive children to sleep. It was said they had spies in every town, spirits in every house listening in for any fool reckless enough to dare speak treason against the caliph.

‘They are gone?’ said Omar, sounding astonished.

‘Their reward for standing against the appointment of the new grand vizier, Immed Zahharl,’ said the servant. ‘Immed Zahharl is also the head of the order of womb mages and he stands as high keeper for the Sect of Razat. The secret police declared publicly that Zahharl’s appointment was contrary to the tradition that a vizier must renounce all house, guild and sect and accept only the Caliph Eternal as his one true prophet. The “treason” among the secret police was uncovered soon after they spoke out against the new grand vizier.’

‘I remember when I was growing up,’ said Omar, ‘I thought the Pasdaran were demons hiding under my cot. I felt such fear. Of course, I was not as brave then as I am now.’

‘Oh, oh, there’s still plenty to be feared in the palace. But not from the hands of the secret police, nor any more from the swords of guardsmen.’ He reached out and touched the back of Omar’s cloak imploringly. ‘It is not the Caliph Eternal’s fault, not when sorcerers whisper in his ear. Sometimes I think the new sect has him half- bewitched, and they will hate you twice over. Once for the house that was yours in your old life, and once for the guardsman’s mantle you wear in your new one. When we walk inside the palace, remember, in imperial script there is only one syllable’s difference between the word for favoured and the word for executed.’

‘Do not fear, Boulous Ibn Jahani,’ said Omar. ‘You are a servant of the order and the order’s sword is here to protect you.’

Omar almost managed to sound as if he truly believed it.

Jack gazed with despair at the small transaction-engine-room pit of the Cassarabian airship, as ruined as his red-raw back. The wrecked room had been adequate enough to give them navigational control of the enemy vessel, but Jack was struggling with the differing standards when it came to symbolic logic, not to mention the fact the enemy calculation drums had been scuttled by her own crew when they realized their ship was falling to the Kingdom’s boarding parties. The prize vessel’s crew hadn’t been very forthcoming so far, but the airship — named the Kochava Saar — was slowly revealing its secrets. Unlike the Iron Partridge, its main structure wasn’t made of the iron-strong paper composite, carper, but some light material that seemed to be part bone and part wood, no doubt secreted like silk by one of the twisted creatures given life by the caliph’s womb mages. There were other mysteries, though. Such as the non-standard racks in the vessel’s bomb bays, seemingly built to hold fin-bombs several orders of magnitude larger than any found on a Jackelian vessel, yet completely empty of ordnance — the pair of enemy airships running light for long-distance patrol. What on earth would fit inside one of those monstrous frames?

‘What are we looking for?’ asked Jack, running his fingers down the strangely arranged symbols of the enemy punch-card writer.

‘Anything that might indicate where these Cassarabian lads are getting their celgas from, Mister Keats,’ said John Oldcastle, helping Coss lift up a spilled bank of machinery, the metal casing bent out of shape by wrecking hammers.

‘Searching for the source of their celgas is our mission?’ asked Jack.

Oldcastle indicated the debris filling the enemy transaction-engine chamber. ‘An airship is just canvas and metal with some clever papier-mache and chemicals all brewed up together. But what the Cassarabians are using to float their ’stats with, lad, that’s pure gold.’

‘It is neither RAN celgas nor gold,’ said Coss, ‘that much I am sure of, master cardsharp. I helped our crew tap some barrels of enemy gas on the Iron Partridge. Tear my transfer pipes, it had a most unpleasant smell — although it is non-flammable and appears to have a similar lifting capacity to our own airship gas.’

‘Get the furnace going, Mister Shaftcrank; we’re going to tickle some life back into their calculation drums. Mister Keats, you’ll search for anything to do with the enemy gas. Where the Cassarabians loaded it, how much was taken on, and if you’ve even a sniff of how or where they get it from, you inform me right away.’

‘Their writer layout isn’t the same as ours,’ said Jack pointing to the punch-card machine. And it looks as if it’s been put together by a half-drunk blind man.

‘Best efforts, lad, best efforts.’

Jack was halfway through puzzling out the foreign systems, when two of their Benzari marines appeared escorting a Cassarabian prisoner, a thin-faced man whose sunken cheeks were covered with an elaborately greased and embroidered beard, his tanned skin still marked with soot from the fires that had been burning across the stricken airship.

The marines pushed him roughly down onto the chair and secured him to it.

‘Ah, just the fellow,’ said Oldcastle, cleaning his engine-oiled hands on a rag. ‘You’ve been fingered to us as one of the clever jacks that used to run this room.’

‘I have nothing to say to you,’ said the Cassarabian, ‘and you will find I am worth no ransom to your people.’

‘Here it is, my fine friend,’ said Oldcastle, ‘we might lock you away for a prisoner exchange later, but we won’t sell you, not even to your own side. We’re not slavers in the Kingdom.’

‘I know what you are,’ snarled the Cassarabian. ‘I have heard the screams of the others after they were taken away.’

‘That would be our first lieutenant,’ said Oldcastle. ‘She a direct lass, so she is.’

The Cassarabian spat at the master cardsharp’s feet. ‘I expect no honour from you, infidel.’

‘You’ll have to forgive our first lieutenant,’ said Oldcastle moving behind the prisoner and putting his hands on the man’s shoulders. ‘Her mother was one of your escaped slaves, crossed the desert to the uplands to get away from the empire. Not just any sort of slave, our good lady officer told me, but a producer.’ Oldcastle looked at Jack. ‘They’ve got some funny ways in Cassarabia, Mister Keats. All those creatures bred by their womb mages. They come out of the thighs of slaves when they’re born. Not a very pleasant job I would say; bottom of the slave pecking order when you draw that duty. The ones that are forced into the trade are known as producers. Most women that draw that wicked straw only last for three years, but the first lieutenant’s mother was a tough old bird. She was at it for five years before she escaped.’ He patted their prisoner on the back. ‘You can imagine the kind of stories the first lieutenant was raised on, can’t you? I think that’s why she treats her job so mortal serious. But it could be worse for you lads, you could have her old ma here, instead, asking you the