On’esse slipped forward on the blade, croaking, trembling. Then the commandant’s shuddering increased, becoming more than just the last dying tremors of a gill-neck, his body shaking, fast and faster, blurring in the air, his form being replaced by something else. Something more or less the same size as On’esse, but with a terrible distended head, wrinkled skin that gleamed slimy, foul and as dark as night.
Boxiron stepped forward to examine the corpse. ‘By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, what is this thing?’
Daunt reached out to stop the steamman, grabbing his arm. ‘Stand back!’ As he was speaking there was a burst of light from the corpse’s chest and a spiral of fierce red energy wrapped the commandant’s body. By the time Dick had blinked the tears and afterimage of the explosion out of his eyes, there was nothing but charred ashes left sinking into the water. A shadow had been burnt into the tree trunk, the now half-melted machete still sunk into the smoking wood.
‘Lords-a’larkey,’ whispered Sadly. ‘I’ve seen a few things, say I, but that, that-’
‘Let’s see if I am right,’ said Daunt, advancing on the sinking mound of blackened residue. He dipped a hand down, searching for something under the water, then came back up with a jewel. ‘Does this look familiar? Rather like the gem that Damson Shades wears around her neck, don’t you think?’
‘What’s happened to him?’ Dick demanded. ‘Did that crystal do that?’
‘I believe it might be expedient if I saved your answers until we have reached the safety of the beach. The guards who fled will doubtless be back soon with larger guns.’
Dick waded through the water, retrieving a rifle and a satchel of soaked shells from the remains of the commandant’s broken boat.
‘There’s no safety on the beach,’ cried Morris, his dripping arms windmilling around the humid air. ‘You think we haven’t tried to escape, man? Every year some green arseholes steal a harvesting raft and make for the sea.’ He jabbed a finger towards the gently shaking carapace of Old Death-shell. ‘There are hundreds just like that beast in the waters around the island. What do you think Ko’marn Island means in the gill-neck tongue? It’s “Death-by-claw Island”! This is one of the islands where tiger crabs lay eggs every summer.’
Daunt smiled, looking meaningfully at Barnabas Sadly. ‘Oh, I think we can do better than a shallow-beamed harvesting raft, a sail made out of tattered shirts and an old punt, don’t you?’
‘What, the cripple? You think he’s got a private sloop tucked up his shirt-tails?’ Morris scoffed.
‘Not a sloop, but a trick up his sleeve. Or rather, inside his cane. How about it, Barnabas?’
Sadly nodded thoughtfully. ‘Your reputation is well deserved, Mister Daunt. How did you work it out?’
‘Many signals, but two matters stood out rather glaringly. Firstly, your clubfoot. Those born with congenital talipes equinovarus in a single limb always learn to compensate with their other foot by the time they reach adulthood, leaving the heel of the good shoe worn away. Someone who came from a family of cobblers should know that. Whereas for you, sir, your good shoe’s heel stands as flat as a millpond. I can thereby deduct that you weren’t born with what is solely a congenital disease. A womb-mage’s alteration of the flesh, I expect? I doubt if that’s the face you were born with, either.’
Sadly nodded in approval. ‘And the second thing?’
‘You told me you hadn’t been born in a poorhouse. There is a good reason why Sadly is such a common surname in the slums of the capital. It is because it is the name automatically entered in the rolls by a workhouse when a male baby is abandoned at a church and handed over to the board of the poor. If you had been an abandoned baby girl, you would have been called Templar, after temple, while Sadly comes from the Ballad of Franklin Sadly, the Saint of the Workhouse.’ Daunt began to hum the tune. ‘In a long and hungry line, the paupers sit at their tables, for this is the hour they dine, with poor Franklin Sadly.’
‘A guinea for you to stop bleeding singing. You are quite a fount of useless trivia, Mister Daunt.’
‘I would say there’s no such thing as a piece of useless information.’
‘And what amongst your vast store of ephemera makes you think I’m going to take you with me?’
‘Us,’ said Daunt, indicating the group. ‘And I think you’ll take us with you because I know the answers to what is really going on here.’
‘Who are you?’ Dick snarled at the informant, the flush of anger rising within him as the truth of the matter started to dawn. ‘Have you played me for a mug, Sadly?’
‘Not a mug, good sergeant,’ said Daunt. ‘And he’s treated you no differently from the rest of us. That’s the purpose of bait, isn’t it? To be impaled on a hook and dragged through the water to see what bites. Well, your mission has been successfully completed. You’ve caught quite a whopper, and now you’re going to make sure that we’re the ones that got away.’
‘I’m going to need a taste of that fish,’ said Sadly. ‘Just to make sure you’re telling the truth.’
‘I would expect nothing less from a trade that deals in lies and deceits.’ Daunt reached under his breeches and removed a bamboo rod that had been tied to his leg. He tossed it to Sadly. ‘From the graveyard here. Read the name engraved on the marker.’
Sadly did so, a worried frown creasing his rodent-like features. Then he pitched it back to the ex-parson. ‘All right then, consider that your ticket out of here.’
Dick stuck his hand out. ‘Let me see it.’
Daunt passed it across and Dick scanned the name on the grave marker, then looked at the date of the burial. The feeling of confusion swelled within the sergeant. ‘How can that be?’
‘A riddle, indeed,’ said Daunt. He passed the marker across to the obviously curious steamman. ‘What do you think, Boxiron? How can Walsingham have been buried in the camp’s graveyard two years past, when the good sergeant’s employer was only just interrogating me? Quite a curiosity, and enough to stump even-’ Daunt pointed to Sadly, ‘-an agent of the Court of the Air.’
Daunt pushed back the undergrowth in his way as they cut a passage through the everglades, the harvesting machetes put to a use their gill-neck captors would not have approved of. Sadly was not limping quite so badly now, the act of his cover identity abandoned for expediency’s sake as they slashed their way to freedom.
Boxiron was hacking in front, Dick Tull and Morris behind the steamman, the State Protection Board agent surly and uncommunicative towards the man he’d believed was his informant. It was not an easy thing, to flip from predator to prey with such speed, and the sergeant’s professional pride was clearly wounded worse than anything his capture by the gill-necks had inflicted upon him. Boxiron released the exhaust of his labours from his stacks in brief, short bursts, nothing to draw attention of the pursuit by the camp’s soldiers that had to be underway by now. If the State Protection Board officer’s pride had taken a beating, Daunt hoped that Boxiron’s had been restored by his victory over Old Death-shell. Even limited by the gill-necks’ device, he was still a steamman knight. I just hope he knows it, and that his plunge towards the tiger crab was to save me, not a suicide attempt.
‘Walsingham wasn’t the only one in the graveyard, was he?’ Sadly said, cutting at the bush with his cane.
‘No. It was a veritable notables’ list of Jackelian quality — admirals, vice-admirals, generals, industrialists, mill owners, members of the House of Guardians, and those were just the names I recognized.’
‘The Court of the Air will need them all,’ said Sadly. ‘Along with everything else you know about how they got there.’
Daunt fished in his pocket, withdrawing with a Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drop. He looked at the sticky mess in disappointment then replaced it back again. Inedible. Perhaps it would dry out later? ‘First things first, good agent. We need to locate the commodore, Charlotte Shades and King Jude’s sceptre before the commodore’s sister and the gill-necks do. Otherwise there won’t be much of a Kingdom left to save.’
‘You’ve a cheek, Mister Daunt. We’re not your bleeding private carriage service.’
‘I know what the Court of the Air is for,’ said Daunt. ‘You must have suspected that your dealings over the centuries have come to the attention of the Inquisition?’
‘What do you know of the Court?’
‘When Isambard Kirkhill seized power in Parliament’s name after the civil war, he had only one fear left — and that was the throne. The army wanted Kirkhill to become king. Old Isambard had to fight them off with a sabre to stop them crowning him the new monarch. Then there were our royalists-in-exile plotting a counter-revolution and restoration. Kirkhill knew that if Parliament’s rule was to last, it would have to resist both the plots without and the ambitions of its own politicians. So Kirkhill established a court sinister as the last line of defence, a body that was to act as a supreme authority and ultimate guarantor of the people’s rule. But it was to be a court invisible. While the House of Guardians knew the Court existed, they knew nothing of its location, its staff, its methods and
