know why it must be. We cannot allow our race’s sentience to be copied by the fast-blooded creatures of our world. We cannot allow them to pick apart our corpses like carrion and reanimate our people as their zombie-machines. If the race of man learns how to copy our pattern, they will create a race of sentient slaves, and down that road lies perpetual warfare between the softbodies and the people of the metal. I favour the way of peace and friendship, not war.’
And I choose death, signalled Boxiron. I have tired of stumbling through life as a pale shadow of my former self, of being an outcast among the people of the metal and a brutish curiosity among the race of man. Let me honour my vows as a steamman knight; let me pass into the great pattern.
Boxiron sensed a wave of sadness from the steamman ruler washing over him.
‘It would be the right thing to do,’ said King Steam. ‘Wherever our pattern has been corrupted by outsiders, self-termination is the only honourable course of action.’
Then help me, pleaded Boxiron. Burn away this softbody gel that sustains my wounded corpse. Melt my soul-board and let me walk at last with the Loas.
King Steam’s astral projection drifted above the tank. ‘One day, Boxiron. But not today.’
Why?
‘Expedience. The cruellest of masters, and one before even I must sometimes bow my knee. I have been visited by an old acquaintance, Elizica of the Jackeni, and she has helped me travel the threads that lie before us. They were not comfortable precognitions to entertain. If you die here tonight our race dies too.’
No!
‘The enemies that walk hidden among the softbodies are as foul a race of monstrosities as creation is capable of producing and they have a deep loathing of our kind. They cannot drain our bodies for nourishment or rip memories from our encrypted minds, so terror of the steammen is their sole refuge. On all the worlds along the infinite string they have visited where they have found sentient people of the metal, they have burnt us out like a farmer pouring oil over a wasp’s nest discovered hanging inside his barn.’
This is your law, yelled Boxiron. Suffer not an abomination to exist. My pattern has been corrupted, end me!
‘My law to waive. And your sovereign to obey, by your rites of birth and your knightly vows.’
Please.
‘I created you once,’ said King Steam. ‘And now I will do something I have never done in all the history of the people of the metal. I shall create you anew.’
The astral projection cascaded into the tank and the pink gel began to change colour. Without sound it began to glitter and spark, a constellation of a million burning lights.
Exhausted, Daunt slept in his chair, which was probably just as well. Bearing witness to a resurrection was not a matter that would sit easily with a man who had once been a Circlist parson. It was always easier not to believe in gods when they didn’t come calling on you.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Daunt stood on the edge of the Isla Furia’s u-boat pens, the hull of one of the Court of the Air’s strange sleek submersibles swarming with crewmen making last minute maintenance checks before she dove. Above the pens, on the slope of the volcano, part of the mountainside had been drawn aside, camouflaged doors retracted to reveal a dark sphere, an urban legend — the gas-filled globe of an aerosphere ready to lift off when Dick Tull and Sadly boarded.
‘You shouldn’t dally,’ Sadly warned Charlotte and the commodore. ‘We’ve detected a darkship approaching the island. They know the sceptre is here and it’s only a matter of time before more of them show up to test the island’s defences.’
‘It’ll make our job easier,’ said Charlotte. ‘If they’re here, they won’t be protecting the seed-city.’
The commodore still looked ill at ease with the plan. ‘This is where we are, then. Not even waiting for the wicked demons to come and try and winkle us out of the Court’s well-defended lair, an island where a man can secure a warm berth for the night and a drop of hot totty to stave off the terrors of war. No, poor old Blacky must go out and uncover a whole nest of monsters and poke them with his sabre until they swarm out to sting him to death.’
‘That’s all you can ever choose,’ said Sadly. ‘Where you’re going to die.’
‘What do you care, Blacky?’ said Dick. ‘We’re all dead men walking now, same as you. Home, here on the island, or their hole at the bottom of the sea, the odds aren’t exactly in our favour are they?’
‘Ah,’ said the commodore. ‘All the adventures and terrible scrapes I’ve been in over the years. My luck’s dwindled away and left me beached here. Curse my mortal stars. All my luck’s been used up and this is my last throw of the dice.’
Dick Tull shrugged. ‘How’d you think it was going to end, you old pirate? Jared Black propped up on a swan feather pillow, surrounded by tearful grandchildren levering open the mansion’s windows so he can take one last peep at the stars in the sky above? This is how men like us go. A sabre in one and hand a pistol in the other and surrounded by all the enemies we haven’t outlived. At least you’re going out rich. My pension’s good for an evening’s gratitude at an alehouse and one cold meal a day at Sadly’s dung hole of an eatery.’
‘Let us rather focus on that life we have left before us,’ said Daunt. ‘And what we might achieve with it.’
Dick Tull didn’t look convinced. ‘Let me know how that goes for you, amateur, when the entire gill-neck fleet’s anchored off the coast. Maybe we’ll meet again on the Circle’s next turn. Maybe not. You used to be a churchman; you tell me where we’re going.’
No heaven, no hell. The Circlist mantra echoed in Daunt’s mind.
‘You owe me a drink after this, Blacky, in that escape hole of an alehouse you’re got at the bottom of your grounds,’ said Dick.
‘If I’m around to serve it, you better check it for my bladder water,’ whispered the commodore. ‘What’s the blessed world coming to when some State Protection Board man is as much a friend as an enemy?’
A sedan chair emerged from the entrance to the u-boat pens, borne with ease by two of the clanking mechanicals the Court used in its gas mines. They knelt down, lowering the chair to the ground. Silk curtains along its side were pulled back revealing Lord Trabb, the acting head of the Court swinging his legs out and dismounting uncomfortably, working the age out of his joints before approaching the group. He had two Jackelian style gentlemen’s canes in his hand, but he wasn’t using them to steady his gait. Instead, he tossed one to Dick Tull, the other out to Sadly. ‘A departing gratuity for you both.’
‘Sword cane or shotgun, sir?’ asked Sadly, examining his. Made of stout rosewood, they had copper boar’s heads as handles.
‘Neither,’ said Lord Trabb. ‘We have fitted a working prototype of our sea-bishop detection device inside each of the canes. Rotate the handle counter clockwise and push it down and the boar’s eyes will glow when you are in the presence of a sea-bishop wearing one of their mesmerism crystals. The fuel source is only rated for twenty minutes of continuous operation and once the detector is activated, it cannot be turned off, so only use the cane when you absolutely need to.’
‘No room for a shooter, then?’ said Dick. He sounded disappointed.
‘Only a suicide pill. If you pull out the detection apparatus you will find it concealed underneath. I trust you won’t be requiring it, or we shall all be royally tallywacked.’
‘Only when I absolutely need to,’ said Dick.
Charlotte stepped in and kissed Dick Tull on the cheek, whispering a quick goodbye in his ear. The State Protection Board agent looked at her with surprise, as if he didn’t quite believe his luck, then Dick and Sadly walked away towards the mountainside and the waiting aerosphere.
‘You make sure your old steamer gets better,’ Charlotte told Daunt. ‘I’m going to need Boxiron to keep my sceptre safe. I have a feeling that the Court’s engineers aren’t going to be much use in a fight.’
‘It’s not my place to put faith in what you’ve got whispering away in your head,’ said Daunt. ‘But if I did, I would ask it to keep you safe.’
‘Goodbye, Jethro Daunt, from myself and Elizica.’
