underwater race from a bloody long distance away from the Kingdom.’
‘Names, names, I heard you, sergeant, just as I heard the vampire. Sea-bishops, the Mass. They feast on human flesh, they can alter their form, and they walk unseen among us. What else would you have me call them but vampires?’
‘Fair dos,’ said Dick. ‘But this cane isn’t going to find them.’ He pulled out the detection device, locating the tiny white pill sunk on a small velvet-lined niche underneath.
‘What do you mean? That is a device of the Court of the Air, is it not?’
‘One of the civilians I’ve been working with, Damson Shades, otherwise known as the Mistress of Mesmerism. Before I left for the capital she whispered something in my ear as I was saying my goodbyes. Your detector doesn’t work. Tell no one, until it’s too late.’
‘By the beard of Zaka of the Cylinders, sergeant, why would the Court send you here with a defunct vampire detection mechanism?’
‘Bugger me if I know. But a force that’s been around the maypole a few more times that you or me has possessed the girl. Let’s see what this cane does do, then.’ He re-inserted the tube of coiled machinery and twisted the handle as Lord Trabb had instructed him back on the Isla Furia. The eyes on the copper boar’s head started glimmering orange just as Sadly’s cane had done within Victory Arch. But unlike the fierce orange glow, the illumination of Dick’s cane’s ornamental handle spluttered and flickered weakly. That’s it then? Just broken like the girl said it was?
Algo Monoshaft seized the cane from Dick’s hands, and for a moment, Dick thought the batty old steamer was going to use the confirmation of the light to accuse him of being a sea-bishop, but the head of board seemed intent on the handle’s eyes.
‘What is it, sir?’
‘A coded message,’ said Algo. ‘From someone who knows a very ancient secret… that steammen can pulse their vision plates to communicate privately between each other, and an individual who also has access to King Steam’s royal cipher. Ah, here’s the writer’s signature. Did you meet a Lord Trabb inside the Court of the Air?’
‘That I did. Your opposite number in the Court.’
The flashing in the handle finished and the steamman unscrewed the knob, pulling away the detection apparatus. Algo tapped out the suicide pill, holding it up gently between his iron digits. ‘It is time for your vampire friend to lose his wager, sergeant. You are going to have to ingest this pill.’
Dick looked at the senile old sod as if he had gone mad.
‘It’s only fair, sergeant, as I fear I am going to have to commit suicide too.’
Whether through good timing or having to slowly navigate their way against the current of nightsoil and effluence, by the time Charlotte, the commodore and Maeva dislodged the sewer port into the gill-neck’s capital, the city’s defence — and their diversion — was already well under way. Charlotte’s suit carried the distant sounds of the underwater battle, amplified and tinny to her ears. She hardly noticed the clash, last out of the claustrophobic tunnel, the commodore and Maeva helping her out into a tight space between two buildings.
Lishtiken, remote and hidden from all surface dwellers’ sight, was even more imposing close up. It seized the light of its own lamps and hurled the illumination across the cityscape, dancing and reflecting from a thousand crystal surfaces, mirrored and distorted by the planes and waters. Only the constant movement of swimmers and their submersible vehicles anchored the vista as real, rather than a hall of mirrors glimpsed through the prism of a glass of water. The scale of the city and the way its illumination twisted and shimmered around Charlotte was enough to make her feel dizzy. Many of the crystal surfaces were transparent, exposing chambers inside — a few filled with liquid, others airtight, betraying the gill-necks’ origins as an amphibious offshoot of the race of man. At close quarters she could observe the organic nature of the vast steepling constructions running together like a cliff line, crystalline buildings branching out to search for the surface’s scant light. On the outskirts of the city low flashes of light bounced around Lishtiken’s margins, rotor-spears exploding and the distant magnesium flashes of shock-spears discharging bolts of wild energy. How many nomads were losing their lives out there, buying them the time to carry out her plan? When Charlotte looked closer, the flow of traffic between the buildings was bustling with a single purpose now — getting to cover. She touched the reassuring heft of the shock-spear holstered like a splint against her calf. They had decided not to enter the city with the man-high rotor-spears… waving one of the ranged weapons would have been akin to unfurling a nomad standard in the centre of Lishtiken.
‘The Advocacy is not used to this,’ said the commodore in a coughing chortle of mischief. ‘They’ve had mastery of the mortal deeps for so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to have their noses tweaked. I have the feeling they don’t much care for it.’
‘Lishtiken has never been attacked,’ said Maeva. ‘Not in my memory. The Temple of Judgements is over there. If we meet anyone who questions our presence, tell them we’re with your sister’s people. You can still pretend to be a royalist can’t you, Jared?’
‘I’ve spent most my life pretending not to be one; the reverse won’t be any harder.’
Charlotte slipped into her old familiar routine. Just another theft from the rich and powerful. Something she needed to do. Not to alleviate her poverty this time; an extra layer to the blanket of wealth she used to keep the desolation at bay, all her fears of being abandoned with no one willing to help her. Her commission was stealing one of the enemy’s darkships. A way to transport her into the monsters’ lair. She could hardly enjoy her life if every iota of her blood was sucked out to satisfy some horde of fish-scaled monsters, could she? The sea-bishops had immense power. They were greedy beyond avarice, and like so many back home, they had tried to use Charlotte, then discard her. Arrogant. Selfish. Calculating. They were overdue for a fall and who better to humble them than Charlotte Shades, Mistress of Mesmerism?
The raiding party kept to the lower levels of the city, as Maeva led them through the shadows of the gem-like towers, a maze of pipes and gantries, exotically coloured seaweed clinging to any stretch of seabed not built over. At one point, the nomad woman led them on a diversion to skirt an access station for the transport tubes sending gill-necks to far-off sectors of the city. The way ahead was thronged with locals trying to get into the heavily overcrowded transport system; to travel home and check their families were safe from the raiders. Squadrons of armed and armoured gill-necks manoeuvred past, soldiers riding something Charlotte hadn’t seen before. Massive squid-like creatures, rubbery flesh saddled with a single rider above stabilising fins; flashes of sinuous skin and quivering tentacles as the squadron propelled past.
‘Monitors, lass,’ said the commodore, keeping low on the seabed next to Charlotte as he watched them flash down the gap between the towers. ‘Same as our Kingdom constabulary.’
‘They are stabled at the Temple of Judgements,’ said Maeva, sounding pleased. ‘Fewer of them for us to bluff our way past.’
Shaped like a crown rising majestically out of the surrounding buildings, the Temple of Judgements reached up as grand as any palace. Charlotte ran her eyes over the fortress-sized structure as she squeezed out of a narrow passage. Dozen of crystalline towers climbed out of a central wheel structure, points on its coronet circled by spirals of pearl-white bubble-buildings, each wreath set among a helix of winding arches.
‘Can you still feel the darkships inside there?’ asked the commodore. There was a tone to the old u-boat man’s voice that made Charlotte suspect he would have been relieved if she said no.
Charlotte pointed to the side of the Temple of Judgements, near the seabed where the red crystal wall sloped dotted with tunnel entrances. ‘They are inside those passages.’
‘U-boat pens,’ said Maeva. ‘They’ll be mostly empty by now. Anything with torpedo tubes will be out chasing our warriors.’
‘They won’t have sent the darkships, not yet,’ said Charlotte. That wasn’t the sea-bishop way. They might send their forces to tip the balance, but why risk their precious lives when they commanded so many expendable cattle to exhaust first? ‘I can sense at least two vessels inside.’
Elizica was worryingly silent on the matter. Yes, because I’m doing such a good job by myself.
Charlotte gazed up at the waters above the city. Was it her imagination, or were the flashes of fighting at the margins of the capital growing less frequent now? Savages against the well-defended heart of the Advocacy’s hegemony, how long had she expected the nomads’ war party to be able to mount a diversion? Charlotte singled out an entrance down which she sensed the darkships lurking and they quickly crossed the open plaza to the temple.
Inside the tunnel entrance, the water was dark and still. They only took a minute to swim along the smooth crystal surfaces. As the light inside the submersible pen began to brighten the water, Charlotte realized the sloping
