rifle to indicate he had found something of note. Wading through the fine orange sand alongside the master cardsharp and Coss, Jack saw that the marines were pulling what looked like a white blanket off a man-sized canister jutting out of the sands. Captain of Marines Tempest was running down towards his men and cursing them for fools. Something glinted below the white sheeting, two glass hemispheres filled with liquid, separated by a thin membrane.

‘You perishing idiots,’ yelled the marine office. ‘There’s enough explosives sloshing around in there to blow you back to your barbarian mountains.’

Jack took in the find as he warily approached, the captain of marines shoving his men back. The object they had discovered looked like one of the shells the Iron Partridge’s gunners loaded into the breeches of their cannons, but a hundred times larger. And the material they had pulled off it resembled white silk, connected to the canister by guide lines, an oversized version of the sail rider chutes sailors would use in a last- ditch attempt to abandon a wrecked airship.

‘This canister was floating in the air,’ said Jack, pointing at the silk-like material. Dear Circle, this thing was designed to fly!

The master cardsharp pushed Jack’s hand back down. ‘Careful about it, Mister Keats.’ He pointed to a crown of metal spikes circling the canister’s rim. ‘Those are contact detonators. The ones on its side lying against the sand have been sheared off by a shockwave, which is the only reason this wicked contraption didn’t blast itself and half an acre of desert away when it hit the ground.’

‘It’s a mine,’ said Jack. ‘An aerial mine!’

‘The racks we found in the prize vessel’s bomb bays …’ said Coss.

‘Too big for standard fin-bombs,’ said Jack, ‘just the right size to mount these.’

‘Just waiting to be loaded for war,’ said the master cardsharp. ‘Hindsight makes wise men of many a blessed fool.’

‘You could only release such a weapon into the air if you were following the wind down onto an enemy squadron,’ said Coss.

The master cardsharp took the tool chest out of Coss’s hands and stepped towards the mine, waving away the captain of marine’s protests as he used a screwdriver to lever off a metal plate above the transparent explosive chamber, revealing a throbbing layer of yellow-furred flesh beneath. ‘A fair wind, Mister Shaftcrank, and the foul touch of their womb mages to guide its sails. Those great big flying lizards that their scouts ride can follow the scent of carper to track down an airship and I’ll wager these wicked things can do much the same.’

‘Those bleeding little Cassarabian sand monkeys,’ growled the captain of marines. ‘I’d like to get my fingers around the necks of the ones that did this to our boys.’

‘Here’s mortal progress for you,’ said John Oldcastle. ‘Our ships are racked with fin-bombs to see off their nomads and bandits, while theirs are racked with ship-killers like these. Get the master bombardier down here, Mister Keats. We’ll drain out the charge of this beastie and then load her onto the boat.’

‘How can we possibly defend against something like this?’ Jack asked.

Oldcastle pointed up to the Iron Partridge. ‘The answer’s blowing in the wind, Mister Keats. An iron skin to cover our carper guts. This spiny floating chandelier of the caliph’s is all blast — fine for ripping apart a soft-skinned vessel, but you need to shape an explosive charge if you’re to pierce armour plate properly. Still, I wouldn’t want to risk a cloud of these mines — they could blow off our engines cars and woe betide the skymen with their faces pressed against a porthole when one went off.’

Jack nodded in understanding. Their oddity of a vessel was so different from the rest of the fleet, it was the one thing that the Cassarabians hadn’t planned for when designing their weapons.

Omar’s heart stopped as the monstrous seven-foot-high beyrog sprinted towards the orange tree he was hiding in, ready with the blade of his scimitar to slash down when the creature came clawing up towards the foliage. But it never leapt, crashing instead into the bush beneath Omar’s feet and emerging a second later clutching a small slave boy, a belt around his waist hung with gardening tools.

‘Everyone was ordered out of the gardens tonight,’ said the grand vizier.

‘I arrived late for my duty after supper, your eminence,’ pleaded the boy dangling from the beyrog’s grasp. ‘I never spoke to the master of the gardens, I didn’t know …’

‘What did you see here tonight?’ demanded Zahharl. ‘What did you hear?’

‘Nothing, your eminence. I saw nothing.’

‘A wise young slave, who sees no evil and hears no evil.’ The grand vizier turned to the caliph. ‘You know what to do.’

‘He is just a child,’ said the caliph.

‘You too must prove yourself to me this night.’

‘I cannot,’ begged the caliph, trying not to look at the struggling slave’s face.

‘Then have your beyrog do it.’

‘That would be the same as if I had done it myself.’

‘You are right,’ sighed the grand vizier. He grabbed the slave by his rough gardener’s robes, lifting him out of the hulking beyrog’s grasp. ‘And if you must do these things, they are better done by your own hand. Then you know they shall be done properly and efficiently.’ He took the boy’s head and thrust it down into an irrigation channel next to the path. ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, and now, speak no evil ever again.’

Omar watched in disgust as the boy’s legs spasmed and jerked while the grand vizier drowned him. The murder done, the grand vizier stood up and pointed past the foliage of the orange tree where Omar was hiding. ‘The poor lad. He must have slipped from the terrace up there and landed unconscious in the water where he drowned. A good thing he is of no account to anyone.’ Zahharl indicated the beyrog, standing dispassionately on the other side of the path. ‘Order your hound away.’

The caliph did so and Zahharl marched behind the beyrog, shutting the garden’s doors behind the bodyguard and the other sentries standing outside. As he returned towards the caliph, the grand vizier’s right leg lashed out and caught the empire’s leader in the gut, doubling him up.

‘I asked for one simple thing to prove your loyalty and you failed me.’

‘Please, don’t,’ coughed the Caliph Eternal as the grand vizier’s leg lashed out again, catching him between the thighs and sending him sprawling across the slave’s corpse.

‘You are too weak,’ said the grand vizier, advancing on the figure whimpering against the tiles of the hanging garden. ‘And if you want to see progress done, you must be strong, as strong as our brave new age demands. You want a strong empire, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ begged the caliph, raising his arms up to ward off any more lashes from the grand vizier’s boot.

‘That is good,’ said Zahharl. ‘For that is what I want also.’ He removed his boots and sat down on the slab where Shadisa had been tied down, soaking his feet in the water channel at the slab’s base before pushing his soles out towards the caliph. ‘Rub my feet for me, and then dry them on your clothes. Show me how much you love me. Then I shall reward you.’

Omar watched in silent horror as the empire’s ruler of rulers prostrated himself before Immed Zahharl, massaging the killer’s feet before rubbing them dry with the silk of his own robe. The Caliph Eternal could cry out in a second, call in his bodyguard of beyrogs outside and have them rip the limbs off this sly, devious murderer, one by one. Yet here he was, supposedly the most powerful man in the empire, bowing down before the grand vizier as if he was no more than a slave from one of the capital’s many bathhouses. What sort of devil is this grand vizier, that he can turn Shadisa against me and treat the Caliph Eternal like a hound to be whipped on his whim?

‘Kiss them now and I shall give it to you,’ said the grand vizier, and as the Caliph Eternal moaned and pressed his lips against the feet of his advisor, the grand vizier brought out a syringe filled with a blood-red liquid. ‘Stay still,’ commanded the grand vizier. He leant forward and shoved the needle into the base of the caliph’s neck, pushing the plunger down and releasing the substance into the ruler’s body as he lay down moaning. ‘Aren’t you glad I’m here for you,’ cooed the grand vizier. ‘Someone to look after you and protect you.’

‘Yes,’ wailed the Caliph Eternal. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, then,’ said Zahharl, tossing the empty syringe into a bush, ‘get to your feet now. We have a war to prosecute and the Imperial Aerial Squadron will bring you victory after victory. In the end, even you may begin to tire of accepting the triumphs that are to come.’

Once the caliph and the grand vizier had departed the hanging garden, Omar dropped to the ground beside

Вы читаете Jack Cloudie
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