changeling virus. But I do not believe the grand vizier intends to let me peruse his private library.’
‘That will be a small matter to me, your majesty,’ said Omar. ‘I am the last son of your great and most loyal House of Barir. I have already achieved the impossible by rising from the rank of slave to serving as a guardsman. I am the apprenticed cadet of the great Farris Uddin, who taught me that no situation is without hope. We shall break out of here and make for the barracks where your bodyguard of beyrogs waits. With their strength we shall seize one of the producer’s tanks and expose the nature of the abominations the grand vizier had built his airship fleet around. The Sect of Razat might wish to hide the truth, but there are at least enough womb mages from other sects inside the citadel who are not party to the grand vizier’s twisted conspiracy that he must post warnings for them not to enter his flesh library.’ Omar knelt before the young caliph. ‘I am your guardsman, your majesty, and you are still the ruler of rulers.’
‘Well then,’ sighed the caliph. ‘It seems we still have our old roles to play.’ He looked towards First Lieutenant Westwick. ‘You have the teachings of both the Pasdaran and the Jackelian secret police. Have you no craft that might free us from this cell, sweet lady?’
Indicating the commodore, the deadly woman scowled. ‘We used specialist State Protection Board machinery to break the locks to reach you, your majesty, but my colleague here is reputed to have some small talent in that field.’
‘Don’t ask me that, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘Has poor old Blacky not done enough, already? Stuffed into an airship like the filling of some cheap sausage, shot and hacked at, dragged across the sands and led to some cursed pit in the ground filled with wicked sorcerers. Now you want to test my poor, tired genius against the most secure cell in this whole terrible citadel?’
‘You know your duty.’
‘It’s a mortal hard thing to be lectured about it by a Pasdaran double agent, lass. You only came down here to see why your handlers in the Pasdaran had vanished on you; why the side you were really working for had gone quiet.’
‘Our missions are both here, however they started,’ said Westwick, ‘yours and mine.’
‘Ah, well, blessed duty will have to wait until I have been fed, lass. I can’t work when I’m starving. They’ll have to feed us, won’t they, Maya? Two strapping young lads being made ready to give birth to their terrible monsters?’
‘We need to get out now, old man,’ said Omar. It was like coaxing a child. Is this how the old nomad Alim felt about him back at the water farm? ‘Before the grand vizier gets around to poisoning the Caliph Eternal’s beyrogs.’
‘My genius needs a little mortal feeding first,’ insisted the commodore.
And so, discovered Omar, it did, the four of them having to wait until four portions of lumpy gruel had been pushed through a slot in the armoured door. Omar felt so sick he could hardly look at the food, although the Caliph Eternal seemed able to eat the oatmeal and keep it down, while the commodore greedily finished his portion, then spooned all the others’ remaining rations into his mouth.
‘Ah now,’ the commodore noted, smacking his lips, ‘if only they had served us with a little wine along with their lumpy muck.’
‘Womb mages forgo such stimulants,’ said the Caliph Eternal. ‘It is part of the order’s code. You would be lucky to find a single bottle in the whole of Mutantarjinn.’
‘That may be so,’ whined the commodore, ‘but I have heard that the sultan of Fahamutla produces the finest wines in the world, the grapes tickled into maturity by the sea breezes on their slopes. A legend only among the vintners of my acquaintance, for none is allowed to be exported outside that province. No bottle has ever made it as far as the Kingdom.’
The caliph finally lost his patience. ‘For the love of the one true god, if you get us out of here, I shall give you a whole vineyard’s worth from the sultan’s private cellar.’
‘Well, my need is now,’ complained the commodore, collecting the four small spoons from the empty bowls. ‘I will have to imagine your wine’s fine taste on my dry lips as I toil.’ He began to rub the heads of the spoons, working as if to polish them.
Omar looked on, puzzled, as the cutlery began to bend. ‘What manner of fakery is this, Jared Black?’
‘This is my sorcery, lad. The sorcery of locks. Hard learnt from all the prisons and cells I’ve been thrown in over the years. The kind of sorcery you must master when you don’t have a little box of tricks pushed on you by some too-clever gang of enginemen in the pay of the State Protection Board.’
Omar watched in astonishment as the commodore fashioned a set of tools out of their eating implements, and then began to use one of them to prise open a panel in the cell wall, humming with pleasure at what he found. ‘Will you look at this, now. Such fiendish cleverness. Triple encryption on a set of three transaction-engine drums combined with three sets of physical locks too. You not only need old Blacky here, you need him to have the arms of an octopus to take on this challenge.’
‘Can you get us out of here?’ demanded Omar.
‘The fellow that designed this was a cunning one, lad. The kind of man who you’d frisk, lift five knives and a brace of pistols off, and he’d just reach out for a copy of the
They were about to find out, watching the old man cursing and wheedling as he sweated over the exposed mechanism inside at times demanding complete silence from the other three prisoners, at times begging them to join him in humming obscure Jackelian ale-house songs. The commodore seemed to be possessed of a manic energy as he worked, shouting at the delicate machinery as if it could be made to leap to his command through the sorcery of his will alone, wheedling the locks, promising them riches and then threatening them with his makeshift tools.
There were times when Omar wondered if the shock of seeing their cruel fate mapped out for them had driven the old u-boat man insane. How had the infidel’s secret police ever trusted such a man with the fate of their nation? If half the things the cur of a grand vizier had said about him were true, his service could hardly be relied upon.
‘The fate of the empire,’ whispered the Caliph Eternal. ‘And it hinges on a set of broken cutlery.’
‘No, your majesty,’ said the commodore, as the bolts rattled open along all four sides of the vault-like door. ‘It hinges on the nimble fingers and quicker mind of the last great player of the great game.’
Captain Jericho stood in the centre of the bridge where everyone could see him and lifted the speaking trumpet from the central station that would transmit his words throughout the airship. ‘When we joined the RAN we took an oath to parliament’s name, but those of you who have studied the words in detail will know that we did not give it to parliament, they only took it as agents: our word was given to the people of the Kingdom of Jackals. To protect them — to guard our wives, our daughters and sons, our parents and our sisters and brothers. It’s what those who took the oath before us in the fleet have been doing for over six hundred years. That oath is without limit. No distance can diminish it; no number of enemy vessels can undermine it. I know of no god strong enough to smite the love I feel for our people; I know of no foreign emperor deserving enough to make Jackelians chattel, and I know of no better crew I would serve alongside here, today. There is a reason why the figurehead on our vessel clutches two bolts of lightning in her talons: those who would make slaves of Jackelians must first face the storm. What will they face?’
‘Jack Cloudie!’ roared the sailors on the bridge; echoes of the crew’s roar carrying from every part of the airship.
‘What will they face?’ Jericho asked again.
‘Jack Cloudie!’
‘Give them the storm, gentlemen,’ said Jericho. ‘To your stations and to your duty.’
The captain turned to Jack and indicated the old cardsharp’s station on the bridge. ‘See those covers off, Mister Keats — reset the vessel to full automation and if you are wrong, may our next life along the Circle’s turn prove kinder to us both.’
A sailor passed his cutlass to Jack and he sliced away the cords fixing the canvas to the metal board, every eye on the bridge hot upon the back of his neck as it slid away to reveal a long panel studded with dials and switches, a punch-card injector dead centre. Jack extended a small round seat on a metal arm from below the panel
