And the sceptre’s jewel, the jewel tormenting Charlotte with these visions, it served as a key and a map combined. A key jealously guarded by the commander of each seed-city launched towards an unknown reality. For on some of the shadowy mirror worlds, creatures of greater power than the sea-bishops lurked — other sea-bishops more technologically advanced, or human analogues raised to near god-hood by the fruits of super-science. The sea-bishops were paranoid that their world would in turn become prey to some variant of humanity more powerful than themselves. The sceptre’s gem held the secret co-ordinates of the sea-bishop’s reality and it would only to be activated by the seed-city commander if a prey-world was judged susceptible to the sea-bishop’s forces. Elizica had frustrated the sea-bishops’ original plans, uncovering the plot during their first attempt to spark a war between the Jackelian tribes and the gill-necks. She’d worked to steal their precious key. Elizica had liberated the Eye of Fate and with the help of a great mechomancer, she had altered it along with six other amulets stolen from the corpses of dead sea-bishops. Changed the gems to allow humans to change their appearance. Seven heroes had infiltrated the seed-city of the sea-bishops, led by Elizica, stealing the key-gem and preventing the enemy from opening the gateway to their hellish home. Before they had escaped, the heroes had plundered part of the seed-city’s engine works, a shield that had protected the sea-bishops from the hideous destructive forces of being flung across the barrier of reality. Machinery which could create a bubble of space-time sitting outside of existence, the only shield capable of surviving the crossing. Elizica and the two surviving members of the raiding party had buried the device in the walls of the underwater trench and activated the shield, trapping the seed-city in a trap of time, sealing the enemy inside eternity’s cold grip.
Daunt moaned opposite Charlotte and she felt Elizica siphoning his memories, the ones the ex-parson had glimpsed during his interrogation by the sea-bishops. Elizica drew them out and gave them context and meaning. Charlotte saw what the sea-bishops had seen, returning back to the world after the shield engine crystal had been dislodged by a landslide brought about by depth charges and Gemma Dark’s blundering vessel. A desperate pirate trying to escape the Kingdom’s navy. The sea-bishops had nearly fed on Gemma and her crew until they had realized that here were allies. That was the sea-bishop way. Powerful as they were, the scouts of the seed-ship were limited in number. They used trickery to sow dissent and weaken the host races of the mirror world they landed on, preparing them for an effortless conquest. The Advocacy had been targeted first, the gill-necks’ Judge Sovereign and the Bench of Four an easy mark, a moribund society constrained to follow ancient laws, unquestioning of new rulings once issued. Then, helped by Gemma Dark and her rump of royalist survivors, the Kingdom of Jackals next, the most powerful nation on the continent, key members of its government and the House of Guardians subverted, followed by the generals at House Guards and the admirals of the RAN, the fleet sea arm, the secret police, and the editors of the most important newssheets. Slowly, slowly the two sides were pushed towards mutually assured destruction. And finally, with two nations subverted, the sea-bishops tracked down the lost key to their world-crossing gate, hidden centuries before by Elizica’s descendants inside the royal sceptre of the Jackelian state. Protected by the whole apparatus of the House of Guardians and dozens of automated sentry systems. Too many people to murder and replace. But not a difficult problem to solve. Charlotte winced as she saw how easily the sea-bishops had drawn her into their web of corruption — the most infamous cat burglar in the Kingdom, always pushing her luck. Ripe to be baited into stealing the sceptre, then murdered and her corpse offered up as the thief who had stolen it. And the sceptre? Oh, undoubtedly fenced and stripped and melted by now, but look, we caught the sly, wicked woman behind the theft. No need to search for the perpetrators of the crime now. Charlotte felt herself drawn deeper into the sceptre’s gem, layer upon layer of information etched into its crystalline structure, encryption so dense it would take the great transaction-engines of the civil service thousands of years to crack it. But for the sea-bishops, only a minute, the time it would take to slot it into their seed-city’s machines and open up a bridge. Those seconds, the death sentence for every creature on Earth. The sceptre grew hotter, the warmth of Charlotte’s contact with it burning, igniting her soul. With a screech of pain she broke the connection, lurching back and seeing the spell broken for Dick, Sadly and Daunt, the men panting with their faces as pale as alabaster and stamped with horror.
We have to destroy it, smash the crystal, Charlotte told Elizica.
‘You don’t think I tried girl-child? I hawked that gem around the nations of the world, looking for alchemical sorceries strong enough to destroy it. No blades, however sharp, can cut it, no drills scratch it, no projectiles shatter it, no weights crush it, no energy disintegrate it. I spent twenty years after the exile of the sea-bishops neglecting my Kingdom and trying to destroy the key-gem. In the end, I could only hide it somewhere I trusted future generations would protect it.’
The royal sceptre of Jackals.
‘The first of the sea-bishops, the seed-city commander, the one you call Walsingham. It is said he has a way of changing the key-gem’s composition and rendering it breakable. But he would only use it if he thought we posed any kind of threat to the sea-bishop’s home. And that I fear, we do not. Even in my age, we only managed to wall the enemy away. Temporarily, as it transpired.’
Dick Tull rubbed his unshaven cheeks. ‘I know when they must have replaced Walsingham. He was operating out in the colonies, running the State Protection Board’s operations against Pericur. When Walsingham came back it was as if he was a changed man. He rose to the top of the board like a meteor, second only to the head. It was unnatural how fast it happened.’
‘Unnatural indeed, good sergeant. But in hindsight, quite understandable,’ said Daunt.
‘It’s mine,’ said Charlotte, lifting up King Jude’s sceptre. ‘The sceptre is mine and those stovepipe hat-headed jiggers are not laying one scaly claw on it.’
‘In that little matter, you’ll have the support of the Court,’ promised Sadly. ‘We’ll try to keep it out of the sea-bishops’ hands.’
‘Try?’ said Dick. ‘You better do more than sodding try. You saw what’s waiting for us if those monsters get the key-gem. They’ll finish off everyone in the world.’
‘It’s not like the old days,’ said Sadly. ‘The Court of the Air isn’t what it used to be. You’ll see.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Commodore Black came onto the bridge of the submersible, Daunt noticed it was with the support of a cane and trailed by Maeva, the old u-boat man shushing the woman and protesting her attentions, accusing her of being a ‘blessed clucking hen’.
Daunt was glad to see that the commodore had healed relatively rapidly, but the sight of him back on his feet was a painful remainder that Boxiron was nowhere close to a similar recovery. Quite the opposite, in fact. Every day at sea seemed to bring a fresh challenge in keeping the steamman clinging onto life. It wasn’t the fault of the small surgical bay — it had been equipped to deal with patients from the race of man, not a failing citizen of the Steamman Free State. The logical part of Daunt’s mind knew that a single person’s life was an insignificant matter in the balance of the great game they had been caught up in. But his friend’s dwindling reserves of energy and increasingly tenuous hold on the great pattern somehow seemed far more concrete than the prospect of the sea- bishops opening up a gateway back to their infernal home.
‘So here we are again, good captain,’ Daunt greeted the commodore. ‘Wedged between that rock and a hard place. How is-?’
‘Boxiron’s a tough old bird,’ said the commodore. ‘And this boat’s surgeon is game for a challenge. He got my creaking old bones back on their feet.’ He waved Maeva away. ‘Stop fussing, lass. There’s plenty that’s lining up to kill old Blacky, but it won’t be a spot of exercise that does for me.’ He hobbled over to the chart table and traced the headings mapped out on the table. ‘What’s this — this heading can’t be right?’
Daunt peered to where the commodore’s attention lay. The ex-parson wasn’t an expert, but to his eyes the temperature gradients of the chart seemed to be running significantly hot. They were aiming for the margins of the Fire Sea. ‘You’ve navigated us through worse than that before, surely?’
‘No, lad, I haven’t. This-’ he stabbed his finger on the centre of the bearing. ‘This is the Isla Furia. No sane sailor crosses that part of the Fire Sea.’
‘The island doesn’t appear to be located far inside the magma fields?’
‘There’s no need for it to be positioned any deeper, Jethro Daunt, for a sensible skipper to avoid it. There’s an underwater vent in the region mortal fiery enough to cook out even the best u-boat’s cooling system. The Isla Furia
