‘Where is the girl?’ Walsingham demanded. ‘Where is my sceptre?’
‘Probably out in the colonies by now,’ shrugged Daunt. ‘We split up. The commodore and Damson Shades sneaked a berth on a RAN airship across to Concorzia. We took the slow route by liner.’
Gemma Dark shook her head in disappointment. ‘How easily the lies trip off your tongue. There is a missing u-boat from the convoy’s logs, one that bears a suspicious resemblance to the lines of my brother’s current craft.’
‘Mere coincidence.’
‘He’s a slippery fish, my brother, an eel covered in grease. I’ve been trying to kill him for years, but he runs and hides so well. You know that Jared Black isn’t his real name? He was born Samson Solomon Dark, a duke’s blood in the cause he betrayed.’
‘I know a little of his history,’ said Daunt. ‘Betrayal is rather strong a word. I think perhaps he just outgrew you and your royalist friends’ need for revenge.’
‘Outgrew!’ the woman shrieked. ‘This is who we are. Our history — our land, everything stolen from us by Parliament’s thieving shopkeepers. The cause is not a waistcoat you grow too fat for and discard. He ran when he should have fought. A coward and a traitor.’
‘But not always,’ said Daunt. ‘Sometimes he fought when he should’ve run. Like the time when he had your son released from Bonegate jail. A convicted river slaver offered parole in return for acting as a pilot, and that was a voyage he didn’t return from.’
‘You snivelling pious bastard,’ she screamed. ‘You dare call him a slaver? Treat us like outlaws and how do you-?’
‘Hold your tongue,’ advised Walsingham. ‘The churchman is manipulating you. He wants to use your anger to goad you into filling in the copious gaps in his knowledge.’
Daunt shrugged behind the bars. ‘I should take that as a compliment coming from you, Mister Walsingham, alias Captain Twist. Who would’ve imagined, such a high-ranking secret policeman assuming the mantle of a royalist bogeyman? What complicated webs we do weave.’
‘It’s not a compliment,’ spat Dick Tull angrily gripping the bars between his hands. ‘A traitor to all he believes in. It’s a sodding insult.’
‘That rather depends on what he believed in to start with. A little like the good commander of our convoy, Vice-admiral Cockburn. I believe he was a friend of yours?’
Tull sank wearily onto one of the bunks. ‘What are you talking about, amateur?’
‘You should listen to your friend, sergeant,’ said Walsingham. ‘He’s a clever man indeed. Dangerously clever, in fact.’
‘You want him, then?’ asked the commodore’s sister.
‘A defrocked parson of the Circlist church?’ Walsingham mused. ‘Such an obtuse organization with no real power in the Kingdom. When you believe in nothing, you believe in anything. Still, waste not, want not. Take him out of the cells. We shall kill two birds with one stone.’
She indicated Dick Tull and Sadly. ‘These two?’
‘A blunt knife and his diseased lapdog. I think not. Cannon fodder. They can die in the camp.’
Tull lunged through the bars, but Walsingham stepped back.
‘I’m still sharp enough to snap your neck, Walsingham.’
‘You have surprised me, sergeant. The duties I set you were specifically allocated on the basis of your complete lack of utility and possession of the scruples of a sewer rat. In the end, you’ve proved just good enough at your job to get yourself killed. It won’t be fast for you, but I guarantee you will make yourself useful before you waste away. Give him a beating for his insolence. Remind him of the proper forms that should be observed between master and servant.’
As the wall of bars retracted up into the ceiling, Boxiron moved in front of Daunt as the gill-neck soldiers swarmed in. ‘Do not touch him!’
Gemma Dark laughed as the guards easily restrained the steamman while others laid into Dick Tull. ‘You’re just strong enough to slave for us in the camp, old steamer, but your days of cracking skulls are over.’
Daunt leant in to the steamman and whispered words of reassurance before the gill-necks seized his arms and dragged him out.
‘Where are you taking him?’ Boxiron demanded.
‘I need to gauge just how clever your ex-parson actually is,’ Walsingham said.
‘I imagine the process will be quite painful,’ sighed Daunt as he was bundled out.
Walsingham followed with the commodore’s sister fast behind him. ‘Torture usually is.’
CHAPTER NINE
Voices were crackling so rapidly from Charlotte’s speaker box that the device was having problems interpreting the cacophony of shouts and calls; the box collapsing into an intermittent rack-rack-rack noise as it was overwhelmed by the seanores’ cries. There was no point trying to work out which of the nomads was signalling, the crowd encircling tall seabed impaled rotor-spears, seanores beating their chests as they hollered and whooped. Their spears were arranged in a field-sized semicircle along the rocky seafloor, the sketched out arena bounded by the chasm of a supposedly bottomless trench. If the proximity of the trench was meant to add an additional frisson of danger to their trial of admittance into the seanore’s ranks, then Charlotte considered the choice of venue largely superfluous. It wasn’t as if she was going to last longer than a couple of minutes against a mass of deadly muscle such as the clan’s chieftain, Vane.
‘This stands against all the blessed forms,’ the commodore protested, close enough to sound loud and clear over the jeering assembly. ‘It’s old Blacky who should be fighting you first.’
The clan leader shook his head, ‘It was you that sought admittance, silver-beard, not I that offered it. And I say your surface dwelling fancy piece shall fight me first.’ He glanced meaningfully towards Charlotte, then back at the commodore. ‘You shall know loss before I meet you in the arena.’
‘Ah, Vane. I’ve known loss since I left the clan. I lost the woman who would have been my wife and seen my own daughter perish. I’ve lost friends by the dozen and my mortal pride by the pound as I’ve scurried and run from my enemies. But this lass is not my blood, there is no need for you to involve her in our vendetta.’
‘Then you will not mind greatly when I slice her apart in front of you before tossing her carcass down into the darkness.’
‘The forms do not require that this be a death match,’ said Tera, the clan’s wise woman bobbing behind the chieftain.
‘Nor do they forbid it!’ He beckoned to Maeva and the old woman came forward bearing a case embedded with polished crab shells. Opening it, she revealed two short spears topped by jagged blades of diamond.
‘No rotor-spears in this trial,’ Vane said to Charlotte. ‘You must be close enough to look into my eyes when you come at me. To seek admittance to the clan you must understand us, know your blood and ours.’
No rotor-spears, but Charlotte had something else. She touched her diving suit below her neck, the Eye of Fate nestled reassuringly beneath the thick canvas. Will the amulet work underwater, beneath the suit? If I can throw him off for a second, paralyse him, then maybe I can live through this after all?
‘I’ve known more than a few bastards in my time,’ said Charlotte. ‘I don’t need to be close enough to you, honey, to smell your stink.’
He laughed. ‘A little spirit from you at last. I may hope for a show after all.’
They moved through a gap in the weapons and inside the semicircle of spears.
Vane traced a line in front of the rotor-spears. ‘Stay inside this space during the trial of admittance. Pass no further than fifty feet above the seabed. Flee our circle before the trial ends and we will slaughter you.’
The commodore moved in to disconnect their voice line, whispering over the private line as he did. ‘Vane will toy with you first, lass. He wants to draw the wicked game out to make me squirm and please the clan. Before he finishes you, he’ll swim behind and sever your rebreather’s air hose. Wait for that moment and jab behind. Go for his neck. His scales are weakest there, for flexibility. Until then, just play the damsel in distress.’
Play? This is one act I won’t have to study for. ‘All right.’ Charlotte was trying to fight down the rising feeling
