to gawk at the bastard daughter of one of their own, fallen, capering about for their amusement. I learnt the craft the hard way: memory tricks, cold reading, sleight of hand, pickpocketing and hypnotism. I studied under the best in Jackals and stole to pay for it. And you know what, we’re the best in the world. I can read any mark for their weakness and I know what the sea-bishops’ real flaw is — it’s their bloody sense of superiority.’
‘Push a sabre in these poor old fingers and I’ll take on any horde of demons, but I can’t beat a pack of monsters with their own arrogance.’
‘I think you can,’ said Charlotte as she leant in. And began to tell the commodore the truth.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘All I wanted when I was younger,’ said Morris, the gas rifle shaking against his shoulder as he fired behind the sandbags, ‘was to be rich. And now I’m older, all I can think about is getting a little peace.’
‘I would settle for a little peace myself,’ muttered Daunt.
There was scant cover in front of them now, the parkland cleared and barren. Trees felled by the Nuyokians to give a clean field of fire and ornamental gardens churned to pieces by the Advocacy’s artillery. Zigzagging gill- neck skirmishers fell as they advanced. The town’s militia had held onto the ruins of the library for as long as anyone could have expected them to, only falling to the massed ranks of gill-neck columns advancing up the transparent streets, countless thousands of the invaders in the city now. Their enemy had numbers enough that they could afford to ignore the surviving groups of militia guerrillas still holed up in the porcelain towers, other citizens using the maintenance levels under the city to pop up behind gill-neck positions, loose a few bursts, then disappear into the subterranean warrens under Nuyok. There were telltale columns of yellow smoke rising up. The gill-necks pumping dirt-gas into the undercity, trusting the respirators on the militia’s masks would expire before the invaders’ supplies of war gas. How many of Daunt’s decoy signals were broadcasting now, in imitation of King Jude’s sceptre? Probably only the real one locked in the Court’s hidden depths. On the foot of the slopes, Daunt could gaze out across Nuyok’s length. Its white porcelain symmetry, the hexagonal perfection of her spires shining in the light of the tropical sun. The hypnotizing symmetry of avenues broken where towers had fallen, lying in piles of rubble. Fires burned uncontrolled through the landscape, palls of smoke blending in ugly rainbows with poison gas and the smoke of the gill-necks’ guns.
The Advocacy forces were massing on the other side of the ruined library, using the burning rubble to shield themselves from the militia’s sniping. They had cleared enough of a passage to bring up rolling-pin tanks, clambering uncertainly onto the rubble, clacking tracks halting, leaving the armour a clear field of fire onto the militia survivors ranged against them. The rate of fire of their respective weaponry was dictating both sides’ tactics, exactly as Daunt had counted on. With single shot rifles, each old charge needing to be cleared and a new one breech-loaded, the gill-necks were coming at the Nuyokians in columns and massed squares, the traditional marching lines the Kingdom’s regiments used. The gas rifles supplied by the Court lacked their enemy’s range, but put out a ferocious rate of fire in comparison. Each soldier able to pour a company’s fusillade against the gill-necks. Daunt had his forces scattered and dispersed, small units operating in support of each other, but the time for hit and run was disappearing with every foot of territory lost.
This was the future of warfare Daunt was inventing here. Of all the prizes to claim, this was a terrible accolade Daunt had never imagined possessing. If the ex-parson had any consolation, it was only that nobody would survive on the island to enter his name in the history books for originating this slaughter. Not the Nuyokians, not the gill-necks. The invaders didn’t want to be here, fighting in this alien realm. Whatever lies the sea-bishops among the Advocacy’s leadership had concocted to set their invasion force against the Isla Furia, the invaders had no passion for it — fighting the surface-dwellers outside the womb of the sea, dying in the beating heat across such strange, unfamiliar streets. No desire to die here. Only a grim murderous determination now to repay the casualties inflicted upon them. A butcher’s bill unlike any battle in history. Slaughter on an industrial scale. The Jackelians had mills for everything, now one of their numbers had established a manufactory for murder. All hail the pacifist commander — inventor of the scientific method, warfare as science.
‘Gaze upon the future, Mister Morris. I am the master of it,’ said Daunt. How am I better than the sea- bishops? They have their dupes lined up for the slaughter and I have mine. And here in this peculiar city of the past and city of the future, our proxies are dismembering each other to decide which race will endure.
‘Nothing modern about this vicar. We’ve been at it long before you lifted the marshal’s baton.’ Morris glanced back up at the volcano’s slope, noticing the guns had fallen silent in their camouflaged bunkers. ‘We’re not going to fall back under barrage?’
Daunt pointed to the massing forces in the ruins of the once palatial library opposite. ‘There’s more of the enemy now than Lord Trabb has shells left in the stronghold’s magazine.’
‘So we’re only to fire when we see the whites of their eyes. Not that you can see their peepers with those fish tanks they’ve got on their heads.’ Morris spotted something out of place on the farm terraces above them. Figures moving among the spouts of fire being thrown up by the Advocacy artillery. ‘What’s that? Tell me some arseholes aren’t still ploughing and watering the paddy fields up there?’
‘I’ve made arrangements with Lord Trabb,’ said Daunt. ‘Something more gainful for his labour force of mechanicals to be doing than tunnelling fresh mining shafts.’
Morris shielded his face against the high sun with a hand. ‘They’re digging a network of fire steps up there!’
‘Trenches,’ said Daunt. ‘Trenches are what they’re digging.’
Yes, Daunt had formulated an equation for his new style of warfare. And the Advocacy was about to discover that as hideous as their losses had been to date, they could get a lot worse.
Dick Tull shivered as he woke up, his teeth chattering and his fingers trembling against the frost-covered pile of rotting vegetation. Circle’s teeth, it was night cold outside. At least the hill of decaying turnips, corn heads and blackened potatoes serving as his bed were frozen solid enough for his body to be laid across the top of the mound, rather than drowned underneath a rotting slush.
There were dozens of other bodies thrown across the mound, the mummified sacks left by the sea-bishops’ feeding, and Dick had to work hard not to retch at the sight as he pulled himself up. He recognized the tall buildings surrounding him, the grand crystal canopies glinting in the moonlight. This was the State Protection Board wing of the civil service complex at Greenhall. So, they had dragged his corpse out of the cells without feeding on his poisoned flesh. And all I had to do was stop my heart for an hour to get here. Dick smelt the tang of his jacket, rank even to him. Garlic powder the contents of his cane’s suicide pill, along with the Court of the Air’s cardiac drug. Garlic. He tried not to chuckle through the cold burning agony of his throat. It was strange how many myths had their basis in reality.
There was a clanking from inside the bottom storey of the building, the light of a furnace burning inside. Best to be out of here before the sea-bishops on the janitorial staff showed up and tried to feed him into a fire.
Dick patted his jacket pocket. Still there. It wouldn’t do for Algo Monoshaft’s sacrifice to be for nothing.
Gemma Dark’s men opened the cell door and pushed her coughing brother, manacled anew, out into the corridor. Gemma glanced behind her. The dregs of Parliament’s cowardly Fleet Sea Arm were cowering along the back of the soiled chamber, along with Jared’s fancy piece, still standing tall, defiant to the end.
‘You won’t be so cocky, thief girl, not after Walsingham has run you through his mind ripper. You’ll only be provisions for his people’s larder after that.’
The dirty little whore flashed Gemma her fingers in an inverted ‘V’. That obscene gesture of defiance, the lion’s teeth, never went out of fashion back in the Kingdom. Gemma snorted in amusement and sealed the cell door.
Commodore Black tried to say something but broke into a fit of coughing, unable to cover his mouth with the weight of his chained hands.
‘Don’t worry brother. She’s got an hour or two before my allies come for her. Your troubles, however, are a lot more immediate.’
‘Come on now, Gemma, you won’t do any harm to me. We’re family, aren’t we?’
‘Blood’s thicker than water? Let’s spill some of it and see.’
‘At least let the blessed girl go free, then. What harm has that poor lass done to you?’
