‘Is that you talking, lass, or that ancient phantom knocking round your noggin?’ asked the commodore, his sweaty fingers clutching the glass of alcohol. ‘Three tasks, and each of them larger than the number of brave souls we have in our band to carry them out.’
‘It’s the only way,’ insisted Charlotte. ‘I don’t want to take this on any more than you do. I didn’t ask for this. My easy life finished when that monster masquerading as Walsingham chose me as the sceptre’s thief and a convenient corpse he could turn over to the constabulary. One thing I do know, we’re not going to beat the enemy sheltering on this island, waiting for the gill-neck fleet to arrive and bottle us in here.’
Sadly nodded. ‘Warning the Kingdom will be my job, says I. I’m as like to get it officially anyway, when our analysis section decides its time to move in and clean house back home.’ He glanced at Dick. ‘Will Algo Monoshaft believe news of the sea-bishops’ invasion if we get it to him?’
‘He’s as mad as a bag of badgers, that one,’ said Dick. ‘Paranoid enough to believe his own staff were traitors. But the head might believe it, if it’s me that tells him. He was halfway to getting to the truth as it was… he knew something was rotten in the Kingdom and it was Monoshaft who told me that the Court of the Air was back in the great game. I thought he was mad at the time.’
‘As my old ma said, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’
‘Getting to him won’t be easy, and that’s if he’s still alive,’ said Dick. ‘They might have already topped him by now. I don’t think the sea-bishops can con us into thinking they’re steammen, otherwise the head of the board’d be dead already.’
‘No,’ said Sadly. ‘I reckon they like the shadows and pulling the strings from the backroom.’ He looked at Daunt. ‘There were lots of numbers twos and threes on your list from the graveyard, Mister Daunt, but not many number ones. The spotlight doesn’t suit the sea-bishops.’
‘As elusive as they have been,’ said Daunt, ‘I have a disturbing feeling that is going to change. How do you propose taking the fight to the sea-bishops, Charlotte? Or should we be asking Queen Elizica?’
Charlotte felt the queen’s presence swell inside her.
‘You may ask me, priest of the Circle. The only way to beat them is to enter their seed-city and steal another shield unit from their craft, use it to lock them away in a loop of time again,’ said Elizica.
‘Ah, you terrible phantom,’ begged the commodore. ‘There must be another way.’
‘I can think of only one other way of stopping them,’ said Elizica. ‘And we should not attempt it, as it’s too dangerous. Stealing one of their shield generators and trapping them in time is the best course of action. It worked before.’
‘Before, my royal bloody highness, you had seven great heroes to sneak into the seed-city, and what do we have here? An ex-parson that even the church doesn’t want, a thieving stage trickster, a couple of double-dealing spies, and poor old Blacky, tired and dying.’
‘And with myself and Boxiron, I count seven,’ said Elizica.
‘The long dead and the near-dead is it?’ whined the commodore. ‘Is that how we will make up our numbers? Let me stay here. Let poor old Blacky stay here with a few jars of corn whisky and guard the sceptre from these demons and my wicked sister and their gill-neck puppets.’
Charlotte felt the queen make her mind up almost as soon as the old u-boat man had finished speaking. ‘That is not the role I have for you. Jethro Daunt must stay on the Isla Furia to guard the sceptre. Am I right?’
‘I cannot in good conscience abandon Boxiron here, as wounded as my friend is. I will stay to assist his recovery and if it falls on me to keep the key-gem and the sceptre safe, then I shall do all that I can to ensure it stays out of the sea-bishops’ hands.’
‘Well then,’ said the commodore. ‘If Daunt is to stay here and prepare for a siege, and Dick and Sadly are to warn the Kingdom of the monsters that walk among us, just who do you expect to be sneaking into the sea-bishops’ evil city?’
‘You and I,’ said Charlotte, as the queen relinquished her voice. The plans of the spirit drifted in Charlotte’s mind as if they were her own. ‘An old thief and a young one. Who better?’
‘Ah lass, I would come gladly with you, but it can’t be done. You say the demons’ seed-city is on the bottom of the great trench that cuts the world’s seabed like a scar? No u-boat can go so deep, no bathysphere can withstand that pressure, not even the Court of the Air’s queer submersible. You’re talking about over eight tons per square inch; our hull would crumple like rice paper at six-thousand fathoms deep.’
‘You are quite right,’ said Charlotte. ‘That’s why you and I are going to need to steal the one kind of craft that can withstand that pressure, just as Elizica’s raiding party did before. We need to hijack a darkship!’
Daunt and Charlotte followed the Court’s white-coated functionary through a narrow corridor lined with pipes, leaking steam from ancient joins. It was warm inside. Daunt was glad they had a guide to lead them through the Court’s labyrinth inside the volcano; with few clues to differentiate one area from the next, even his memory would be stretched trying to trace his steps. Opening a large metal door at the end of the passage, the guide led them into a cavernous chamber. It was small wonder the volcano still appeared active outside, venting the steam from the mine works and all of this. The chamber they stood in was just the first of many interconnected recesses, the neighbouring vault holding enormous transaction-engines, the thinking machines’ heat driving the temperatures in the chamber close to the level of a sauna.
The first chamber they had been led to was filled with unfamiliar devices, and, of more immediate concern to Daunt, the horizontal form of Boxiron. His steamman friend lay stretched out in an open-lidded tank, half-floating in a pool of pink liquid while being tended to by engineers in white coats and leather aprons. One of the men in attendance was Lord Trabb, the lens of his hexagonal spectacles splattered with the soupy liquid covering Daunt’s friend.
‘You servant’s recovery is progressing well,’ said Lord Trabb, noting the two newcomers’ arrival.
‘He’s not a servant,’ said Daunt.
‘Colleague, acquaintance, friend,’ said Lord Trabb, wiping his glasses. ‘The label you choose has no bearing on the process we are using.’ He indicated the open casket. ‘We are feeding his steamman components, which have a remarkable capacity for growth and healing, while inserting new components from our own automatics into the nutrient gel to be absorbed by his structure.’
Daunt gazed down into the tank. There was a spider’s web of filaments stretched out over the gaping holes and missing limbs of Boxiron’s original body, hundreds of new components laid out like a child filling in a cardboard silhouette of a figure with crystals, boards and cogs. There were more parts ready on a cart next to the tank — armoured plates and hull pieces, as if a knight in armour’s plate had been assembled ready for the joust. But he’s still not conscious. Still not reanimated back into life. If anyone could bring him back, these people could. Some of the staff moving around the chamber were under guard, their legs and arms bound by heavy sets of chains as they shuffled between the machinery. These were the more pliant prisoners the Court of the Air had snatched out of the world. Mad geniuses and master criminals and science pirates, their talents kept under check by imprisonment inside the Court’s cells. Their capacity to create mischief forcibly redirected into the service of the state.
Daunt dipped a finger into the healing gel. It felt warm, like touching skin, the consistency of a conserve jam. On the other side of the tank, much to Daunt’s amazement, he saw Lord Trabb fish into his pocket to emerge with a familiar old friend. ‘Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drops?’
‘I find their consumption conducive to the efficacy of my mental quality,’ said Lord Trabb.
‘Indeed,’ said Daunt.
‘I do hope you are not a proponent of those scurrilous libels spread by their rivals in trade.’
‘Not at all,’ said Daunt. ‘I was actually hoping to impose myself on your hospitality for the gift of one. I did have my own supply, but I’m afraid they survived the privations of the Advocacy’s labour camp as little more than a swamp-water melange.’
‘A tragedy,’ said Lord Trabb. He eased the paper bag out of his pocket and passed it to Daunt. ‘You must have these. I keep a private stock laid in from our provisioning boat to the Kingdom.’
Manners nearly made Daunt refuse, but a sweet tooth and the knowledge that the next nearest bag was lingering hundreds of miles across the sea prodded the ex-parson to override the social niceties. He took the bag, extracting a sweet.
‘You prove my theory, Mister Daunt, that all of the Kingdom’s greatest minds find succour in Bunter and Benger’s aniseed drops.’ Lord Trabb obviously counted himself among that august company, but standing here with the scale of an ant surrounded by the Court’s massive machinery, the purpose of half of which Daunt found it hard to fathom, who was he to gainsay the acting head of the Court of the Air?
