Secrets of the Fire Sea

CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Father Baine looked up as he heard footsteps coming down the corridor to the chancery office. The cathedral’s architects had built the passage to specification, he suspected. Nobody could ever sneak up on the archbishop’s office while it was occupied. Not that the owner of the approaching footsteps would find much if subterfuge was their intent. Only the unappreciated clerk working into the early evening to clear the backlog of paperwork that came from trying to run a cathedral without a sitting archbishop to oversee the dioceses’ official bureaucracy.

There was a knock and the door opened to admit one of the novices who was meant to be standing duty on the cathedral’s main bridge.

‘Father,’ said the novice, ‘the ursine Chalph urs Chalph is outside asking for you.’

Father Baine looked up at the carriage clock at the edge of his desk, just visible behind a pile of profiles of those who had recently passed the church’s entrance exams, each mind as unique as the whorls of skin on their fingertips.

‘He said it was urgent,’ noted the novice, ‘and relating to a private matter between the two of you.’

Father Baine cleared his throat and made to stand. ‘Ha. So.’

‘He is a believer,’ said the novice, as if this revelation wouldn’t have occurred to Father Baine at some point.

‘We all believe in something,’ sighed the father. ‘Even if it’s something slightly more sensible than the Divine Quad. Such as what is right and rational.’

Chalph was waiting at the edge of the Grand Canal. Father Baine left the novice at the midpoint of the main bridge and crossed to where the ursine was loitering – in some agitation, if he interpreted the creature’s body language correctly.

‘Father Baine,’ called Chalph, ‘is Jethro Daunt with you?’

‘He was – but he left. He spent a good few hours poring over the records of the draft ballots in my office, although why he should bother escapes me. Even if Hannah’s induction into the Guild of Valvemen was crooked, she is marked for the rational orders now.’

‘I have to see him immediately,’ demanded Chalph. ‘Where did he go?’

‘I think he went to see if his steamman friend was still working in the public records office, though much good will it do them. Everything filed with the office as paper documents is first released by and filtered through the guild’s transaction engines. Vardan Flail is too canny to allow details of his feud with the archbishop to be openly catalogued. Is this urgency related to Alice Gray’s death?’

‘No,’ growled Chalph. ‘It’s far worse than that. I have to see him. Tell him I’ve been doing my own investigating and what I’ve found – it’s unbelievable!’

He was turning to jog away.

‘Can I help?’ Father Baine called after him.

‘Only if you’ve started to work for your people’s Inquisition,’ Chalph shouted back. ‘I don’t even know if Jethro Daunt and his metal friend can do anything about this.’

‘Is there no more that I can tell him?’

‘Tell him it’s about a letter that was given to the expedition.’

Father Baine watched the young ursine run off, wondering if the foreign trader was entirely in possession of his senses.


Jethro was walking alongside Boxiron across one of the waterways close to the Grand Canal, ignoring the hopeful cries of the street vendors, when the pair ran into a force they couldn’t so readily ignore. Stom urs Stom, the commander of the mercenaries, flanked by four of her fighters.

‘They look as if they mean business,’ whispered Boxiron.

‘None that is good for us, I fear, old steamer,’ said Jethro.

Stom urs Stom raised a large paw to stop them, close enough to Jethro’s face that he could smell the well-worn leather of her Pericurian war jacket. It would have been a mildly pleasant smell under other circumstances.

‘No need to go any further, Jackelian.’

‘Good captain,’ said Jethro. ‘I presume your employer is interested in another update on our progress?’

‘Not this time,’ said the hulking ursine. Two of her mercenary fighters stepped forward, seizing Jethro while the other two levelled their massive weapons at Boxiron, the copper segments of the gas pipes on their turret guns jangling as loudly as the steamman’s limbs jerking in surprise. Boxiron scanned the soldiers intently, looking for any break in their concentration.

‘Do not attempt to interfere,’ the mercenary officer warned Boxiron. ‘You may possess the strength of the life metal, but the steel pitons in our rifles will drive through your body as easily as they would man-flesh.’

‘What is the meaning of this?’ demanded Jethro.

‘Your letter of credit was found lodged with a merchant in support of the outfitting of a recent expedition which left the capital. One led by the Jackelian trapper Tobias Raffold and crewed by various Jackelians who arrived with you here.’

‘Yes,’ said Jethro resignedly, adding, ‘what of it?’

‘Your letter of credit has the backing of your church, and more specifically, the militant order known as the Circlist League of the Rational Court.’

Jethro groaned to himself. He was a fool. Of course someone with the First Senator’s resources could trace the origin of Jethro’s funds within the capital’s banking system.

‘The recent expedition is on a mission of sabotage, one which the First Senator has discovered is acting as a tool of foreign interests.’

‘This is ludicrous,’ spluttered Jethro. ‘You have my word that my friends have embarked on an archaeological expedition, no more. You cannot believe these accusations…’

‘What I believe is not at issue,’ said the mercenary commander. ‘The First Senator has requested that I sever both your arms as a statement of his disappointment and displeasure at your betrayal of his trust.’

Jethro struggled in the grip of the two soldiers while the other two jabbed Boxiron back with their turret rifles’ barrels.

‘Where is the process of law in this?’ demanded Boxiron.

‘The First Senator is invoking the ancient law of extraterritorial reciprocity,’ said the mercenary commander. ‘In this case, the Jackelian law where the ruling monarch has their arms incapacitated to stop them being raised against the people.’

Jethro groaned in agony. The massive paws were pinning his arms in place, as tight as iron bands. Extra-territorial reciprocity was intended to automatically trigger corresponding trade duties when a foreign power slapped extra tariffs on a category of goods, but the mad ruler of Jago had obviously found a loophole to stretch a particularly nasty Jackelian tradition to him.

A curious crowd had gathered on the canal-side street. There would be no shortage of witnesses to the First Senator’s savage revenge – even if it wasn’t going to be quite up to the standards of the baying mob that assembled in Parliament Square to see the surgeon royal remove the new Jackelian monarch’s arms.

‘I demand to see an official from my embassy.’

‘My apologies, Jackelian,’ said Stom. ‘This is not personal. You may crawl up to the embassy circle after we have fulfilled our liege-lord’s orders.’

The two mercenaries on either side of Jethro shoved him down onto the cobbles and Stom drew out her short sword from the scabbard strapped to her leg. She raised it high. It looked every bit as sharp as the First Senator’s wrath.


Drifting clouds of steam distorted the terrifying howls of the ursks circling around the expedition, as though a siren tied to a cable was being spun around their camp on the hilltop. Tobias Raffold’s trappers held their nerves and their fire, not expending ammunition into the white sea that surrounded them, waiting until the ursks exploded roaring from the mist, launching themselves at the camp from multiple directions.

Then the noise was unbelievable – the shouts of the trappers intermingled with Raffold’s barked orders through the speakers in Hannah’s suit as magnetic catapults exploded into action all around her. Hannah held her fire as she had been ordered, but tried to direct her target sight onto the ursks breaking out of the mist. There were fractional seconds when the crosshairs coincided with the position of one of the massive black shapes leaping towards their camp – but they were more accidental than intentional, despite her best efforts. Short of holding down the trigger and keeping it depressed until the ammunition drum on her arm was depleted, Hannah wasn’t going to hit a thing with her magnetic catapult.

The wolds opposite their camp ran dark with loping ursks diving down into the mist of the surrounding valley. Again and again they came at the camp, heedless of the whining arcs of flying steel cutting them down and sending them flying back into the mists. The expedition’s defiance just seemed to enrage the ursks more, as if they expected the trappers simply to lie down and let the horde overwhelm them.

Hannah heard the warning yell over her speakers just as a dark shape covered her skull dome. The ursks must have found a weak spot in the circled RAM suits! Hannah could feel the extra weight of the suit’s left leg as she swivelled, trying to throw off the beasts clawing at her – and she remembered the head trapper’s warning. One of the creatures was trying to gnaw through the rubber seal of her knee joins, trying to bring her suit crashing down onto the rocks.

Someone else’s suit came lumbering past Hannah, a leg lashing out and briefly clanging off hers. The ursk on her leg was sent flying and then the dark mass clambering over her head unit was picked off and tossed flailing into the mist of the valley. Hannah saw the pilot in the RAM suit that had rescued her. It was Ortin urs Ortin. She mumbled shocked thanks into the voicebox on her pilot frame, but the sound was lost in the roar of stone chips flying up and ricocheting off both their suits’ armour. More ursks had broken through and the trappers were firing their magnetic catapults down towards them. Hannah joined in the shooting in a mixture of panic and revulsion; as though madly brushing off insects crawling up her legs. Was she hitting anything? It was impossible to tell, but there was shrieking as her razored disks found targets among the river of maddened fur flowing around her legs.

Tobias Raffold shouted a command to cease fire and a relative silence fell, leaving only the muted growls and whines of dying ursks and the crackle of recharging catapult arms. Ursks were still circling them down in the mist-covered valley, but their attempt to overrun the camp had failed. Hannah looked over at the distant wolds and saw more and more ursks flooding towards them. The next attack couldn’t be far away.

‘Retreat back to the steam tap, lass,’ urged the commodore’s voice. ‘You too, Nandi.’

‘Ammunition count,’ ordered Tobias Raffold.

Shouts rang out with the number of disks each suit had left in their ammunition drums. Hannah glanced at her dial – its hand had rotated around to red. She was empty! And she wasn’t the only one.

‘The ammunition crates are next to the steam tap,’ announced Tobias Raffold.

Hannah glanced back to the pile of supply bales and crates that had been slung around the trappers’ suits during their march.

‘Lowest charge goes down.’

The truth of the situation dawned on Hannah. They were going to have to send someone down there, out of their suit, to crack open the crates and load up the drums. The manipulator claws that acted as the RAM suits’ hands were fine for lifting heavy loads, but the claws didn’t have the flexibility needed to break open the crates and slide the rolls of steel disks into their ammunition drums. There was a cruel logic to the choice of the poor unfortunate who was going to have to slide their canopy open – the RAM suit with the lowest battery charge was least likely to survive being pursued by the ursks.

Their luckless candidate selected – one of the trappers – the other RAM suits formed a tight circle around the crates, giving the trapper as little ground to cover as possible.

Then Tobias Raffold shouted a command that Hannah didn’t catch, but the cage on the back of one of the RAM suits sprang open and a handful of terrified ab-lock cubs leapt for the ground and scattered in all directions. As the mad diversion was released, the selected trapper slid his canopy open and began scrambling down the handholds on his suit’s chest, leaping the last few feet towards the supplies below. The tenor of the ursk song rising up through the mist changed, indicating their confusion as the sudden outbreak of ab-locks pelted past them in the valley. There was a truly hideous screeching sound as some of the young ab-locks fell to the claws of their much larger adversaries.

‘Hold fire,’ Tobias Raffold ordered. ‘Let’s keep the ursks focused on the bloody abs, not us.’

Once the first of the ammunition crates was cracked open, the RAM suits lowered their catapult arms towards the ground, the trapper on foot striking the top of each drum to spring them open, then frantically pushing rolls of razored disks into the rotation feeders that lay exposed inside. The trapper had reloaded perhaps half of his colleague’s catapults when the feint came, three ursks running in from the west side of the hill. The suits’ catapult rails roared in answer, spitting spinning steel at the charging beasts. Seconds later, and almost too quickly to follow, another black shape flashed between their legs and the loader vanished without even a cry. Hannah moaned. The ursks’ second assault began in earnest.

Hannah raised her empty catapult arm towards the creatures’ attack, as if the whine of the magnetic accelerator alone would be enough to stop them.