Secrets Of The Fire Sea Part 17

'She's alive!' And the converse was also true. Hannah's father was truly dead. But her mother hadn't been on the u-boat when it was crushed by the s.h.i.+fting walls of magma scuttled by Maggs, who was no doubt paid to do the terrible deed by Vardan Flail.

'Your mother was was alive,' cautioned Jethro. 'A decade ago. That is the only hope you can trust.' alive,' cautioned Jethro. 'A decade ago. That is the only hope you can trust.'

'What was the expedition at Amajanur she mentioned?' asked Hannah.

'Amajanur was spoken of in the Pericurian scripture found in Bel Bessant's possession, dear girl,' said Amba.s.sador Ortin, enthusiastically. 'It sounds exceedingly similar to one of the chapters in my people's scriptures: The Gateway of Amaja The Gateway of Amaja, the tunnel that Reckin urs Reckin and his wife used to escape his treacherous brother and sister-in-law's city after the war of the heavens.'

'It's a gateway to trouble, lad,' said the commodore. 'That much I know and you so happy, amba.s.sador, you'd think you'd found a long-lost uncle's will and discovered yourself rich from it.'

'It is indeed a legacy,' said the amba.s.sador. 'But one for all of my people. Proof that our scriptures have a historical basis as well as a religious one will allow the reformers to gain the upper hand in the court once more.'

'The Jagonese have been living on this island for thousands of years,' said Nandi. 'If we can find evidence of a Pericurian settlement on Jago that predates settlement by the race of man, then our history books will have to be completely rewritten.'

'History, dear girl, I will leave to the sweep of time and the pens of archaeologists such as yourself,' said the amba.s.sador. 'But if I can change the present of my nation for the better, then I must seize the chance.'

The commodore shook his head ruefully. 'You want to seize the chance, but I can see that it's poor old Blacky that's going to be asked to do the bleeding for Pericur's bright new future.'

'You're going after my mother!' exclaimed Hannah.

'Ah, la.s.s, it's a pretty pickle,' complained the commodore. 'William of Flamewall goes off exploring after the trail of his murdered lover, your mother follows him, and now we're to be emulating the whole pack of them when not a blessed soul ever came back to boast of it.'

'I'm coming too,' Hannah blurted. 'My mother's still hiding out there somewhere, I can feel it.'

'Yes, you are,' said Jethro.

Hannah was about to start arguing when she actually processed the words and gawped in amazement at the ex-parson.

'Going will be no less dangerous for you than staying here,' said Jethro. 'Alice wasn't holding onto the two active pieces of the G.o.d-formula because she wanted to use them. She was keeping them in case the Inquisition needed to develop a counter-weapon against anyone who actually tried to use the code to attain G.o.dhood. She was murdered to stop her doing that, and her killer came after you on the mere chance that you had seen what was inside your locket. There is a ruthlessness and coldness to these acts that is rare to see, even by such as Boxiron and myself with the cases that we have worked on. That peril still holds true. In fact, it now holds true for all all of us. Each of us is in terrible danger every day that we stay here.' of us. Each of us is in terrible danger every day that we stay here.'

There was something in Jethro Daunt's voice that unsettled Hannah. 'You're not coming with us, are you?'

Jethro shook his head. 'There's something about sitting the church's exams you're already thinking in the manner of a Circlist priest, Hannah. You are correct. I must stay here in the capital with Boxiron. I was sent to Jago to uncover Alice's murderer, and that is what I intend to do. We have a great advantage over her killer, or killers, now. We know that William of Flamewall and your mother both travelled into the island's interior. They don't. Alice's murderer is still here in the capital and this is where I must stay to uncover them.'

Hannah was surprised to find the ex-parson was right insights did seem to be forming more quickly ever since she'd sat the cathedral's exams. It was as if the grease in the Entick helmet had lubricated the cogs of her mind; her brain running so much faster, with a diamond-sharp clarity. Hannah stopped. Jethro Daunt wasn't saying everything. He-he didn't trust himself with the G.o.d-formula.

Jethro fixed her with his sad eyes. 'If you find the third piece of the G.o.d-formula, you must destroy it. We are all weak, Hannah. A dead child or a sick wife, which of us wouldn't be tempted to change such a misfortune? You'd just bring them back and then instantly relinquish your power, that's what you'd tell yourself. Do that one small thing and then you could go back to the way things were before. Except-'

Hannah thought she understood. 'Until the first time you saw a hungry urchin in the Lugus Vaults, until you saw an act of cruelty you knew you could stop, a war you could halt, a leader elected to the senate you didn't agree with.'

'There would be no end to it,' agreed Jethro. 'Everything fixed to your will, more and more to be rectified, growing angrier and angrier with those that defied you. Until you started acting as a real G.o.d, and then you wouldn't be able to stop, not without abandoning your absolute grip on your perfect, burning world. The first two parts of the G.o.d-formula will have to be enough for us to preserve in case the Inquisition ever needs to develop a counter-weapon. The third part must be destroyed forever.'

Hannah nodded. It had taken both her parents from her, Alice too. The G.o.d-formula deserved to be destroyed. Unless, whispered a nagging voice from somewhere deep within her, she could use it. Use it to bring Alice back, to right all that was wrong with Jago.

'Alice's killer,' said Hannah, 'they want to be become more than just human. They would use the G.o.d-formula to gain ultimate knowledge and ultimate power.'

'Just human,' sighed Jethro. 'And they would be wrong. Infinitely folded in on themselves and out into the universe, the ultimate paradox given living expression. But lacking the wisdom of an infinite lifetime. human,' sighed Jethro. 'And they would be wrong. Infinitely folded in on themselves and out into the universe, the ultimate paradox given living expression. But lacking the wisdom of an infinite lifetime. Just Just human with ultimate knowledge. What an angel of fire that would be, and what a h.e.l.l they would make of Earth if they chose to stay here.' human with ultimate knowledge. What an angel of fire that would be, and what a h.e.l.l they would make of Earth if they chose to stay here.'

'But a truly good person might be able to control it?' asked Hannah, hopefully. 'Couldn't they change things for the better?'

Jethro smiled grimly. 'It's a temptation, isn't it? Thousands of years ago, Bel Bessant thought she was pure enough to survive it and still be human enough to end the dark reign of terror the Chimecan Empire and their bloodthirsty G.o.ds were threatening Jago with. Thank the Circle she had a man who loved her enough to kill her. I doubt that the person who killed Alice has such a love in their life. No, the third part of the weapon must be destroyed, never used. The Inquisition was always sure to appoint its officers to the archbishop's seat on Jago, Hannah, but I suspect that they never knew the full details of the secret. Only that a terrible weapon existed here and that their incomplete portion of it had to be kept hidden by their brightest and their best. Alice was such a woman. The secret would have been pa.s.sed from archbishop to archbishop, limiting the temptation of taking the G.o.dhead to a bare minimum. We know Alice's killer is seeking the G.o.d-formula and so now it must be extinguished forever. Do this for the church you're about to be sworn into, Hannah, and do it for me.'

And she would do it for her father. Her dead dead father. father.

It was going to be strange to be in one of the giant iron walking machines with the open sky above her head, rather than the roof of the turbine halls, Hannah mused. The trapper Tobias Raffold and his men moved with the same easy confidence in their RAM suits that the charge-master's staff had shown in theirs. The expedition was lucky to have secured Raffold's services, thanks to the significant financial backing of Amba.s.sador Ortin and some truly magnificent humble-pie eating on the part of Commodore Black the old u-boat captain muttering under his breath about the fact that his precious boat would be hauling animals across the seas for Raffold for the next decade to satisfy the trapper's bargain.

Including herself, Nandi, the commodore and Ortin urs Ortin, there would be twenty members of the expedition to find the final resting places of her mother and William of Flamewall. Most of those men were lounging around behind the safety of Hermetica City's main gates, rolling dice on the rocky ground while their RAM suits received their final checks from the city's lodge of mechomancers. Bales of supplies and crates of victuals were being winched up and belted around the hulls of their machines by a crowd of merchants.

The iron plating of the RAM suits had been painted with a geometric patchwork of purple, white and grey mottling to blend in with the territory outside. And if their camouflage failed its purpose, the right arm of each suit would be brought to bear mounted with a magnetic catapult and circular ammunition drums of sharpened disks. There were other subtle differences between these suits and the ones used down in the turbine halls. The domes that covered the pilot's heads contained more gla.s.s for better visibility in the mist-shrouded wilds, but the suits had less armour plating since they were not being exposed to the electric fields that dominated life in the turbine halls. And these suits were bigger and taller, the better to cover rough terrain quickly.

Chalph urs Chalph emerged from the gatehouse and Hannah waved to attract his attention as he glanced up at the Pericurian mercenaries patrolling the battlements above.

'I'm glad to see you managed to get here in the end,' Hannah called.

'One last chance to try to convince you not to go,' said Chalph. 'You've got everything you wanted entry into the church, a chance to be free. Why do you need to go on this fool expedition?'

'You know why,' said Hannah. 'My mother's out there.'

Chalph shook his large furred heard in irritation. 'She didn't come back. Just like your ancient phantom, William of Flamewall. Neither of them ever returned.'

'I will,' Hannah promised. 'You'll see.'

'I might not be around to see.'

'What do you mean?' Hannah demanded.

Chalph's lips cracked into a ferocious smile, flas.h.i.+ng his ursine fangs. 'The house's boat from Pericur has just docked and I got the news straight from its first officer. They've couriered the baroness an order from the archd.u.c.h.ess herself. Our house's trading licence for Jago has been cancelled. We're going home, Hannah Conquest! A few weeks to settle our commercial affairs and the next boat that comes here will be to take us all off.'

So much change, so quickly. The happiness that Hannah felt for her friend was tempered by the knowledge that things would never be the same for him or her again.

'Then you've got what you wanted, too.'

'Don't look so glum,' said Chalph. 'Even the archd.u.c.h.ess and her new conservative-packed council can't deny the House of Ush a new trading licence somewhere somewhere. Most of our people here speak your furless tongue better than we do our own. We'll end up with the trading caravans down south, doing business overland with the settlers in Concorzia. You could find yourself a parsonage down that way after your training...'

Leave Jago? Well, it wouldn't be the same without Chalph or Alice, with herself in the seminary of the rational orders. And when all the visitors like Jethro, Nandi and the commodore had gone home, what would be left? Dour old Father Blackwater and the resentment of every member of the Guild of Valvemen she happened across? Perhaps a new start had its attractions after all. And there wasn't much of a seminary programme on Jago any more. She might well find herself a.s.signed to a cathedral in the Kingdom of Jackals, or to one of the fledgling orders in Concorzia, whether she wanted to stay on Jago or not.

'I still have to go out there,' said Hannah. 'I have to know!'

Chalph didn't look as if he understood, but then ursines had large litters and only female cubs were truly prized by the mother the father was uninvolved beyond his initial contribution. It was the house that mattered in Pericurian society, not the parents.

'I don't want to leave this d.a.m.n island without knowing whether you're even dead or alive,' said Chalph.

'But you'll leave anyway,' said Hannah. 'You won't have any choice and soon enough you won't have much to complain about. Not the smell of the ca.n.a.ls or the taste of dome-grown food or being called a dirty wet-snout by the Jagonese.'

'That'll be a thing to see,' agreed Chalph. 'Real forests, with a real sky above filled with stars you can actually glimpse at night. Cities raised from Pericurian oak and streets teeming with hundreds of thousands of ursine. And you could see them too...'

'I will, one day.'

Just then, the man engaged to make sure she lived long enough to keep that promise stepped out of the gatehouse behind Chalph. Tobias Raffold's bulldog face was set in its habitual frown as he strode up to Ortin urs Ortin and the commodore.

'We can't wait for the last of the supplies,' said the trapper. 'We have to bleeding leave now.'

'I'm sure the expedition's letters of credit are good for the required provisions, dear boy,' said Ortin urs Ortin, tipping out his monocle to clean it.

'You just worry about my my bleeding payment,' warned the trapper. 'First Senator Silvermain is trying to get my hunting concession revoked, but he needs a sitting of the senate to do it. He's putting one together as we speak.' bleeding payment,' warned the trapper. 'First Senator Silvermain is trying to get my hunting concession revoked, but he needs a sitting of the senate to do it. He's putting one together as we speak.'

'We're not just paying you for your skills, lad,' said the commodore. 'It's your connections we need. I thought you and the lord of this dark place were meant to be firm s.h.i.+pmates.'

'He's heard about your expedition and the paranoid old b.u.g.g.e.r thinks that it's a foreign plot to scout out where his new cities are going to be built, a conspiracy between Jackals and Pericur to nip his plans in the bud, the rest of the world being jealous of the island's greatness'n all. I don't think he wants me to lead you outside the city.'

'I say,' coughed the amba.s.sador, 'you're not convinced by that lunacy, I trust?'

'It don't matter to me, matey. It's lunacy to go as deep into the island's interior as you're set on, and frankly, I don't give a tinker's cuss if you're going out there to toss bombs down into his empty city caverns or you're looking to find the lost tomb of some bleeding heathen Pericurian deity. You're paying me enough to be able to get off Jago and never worry about coming back again. I was in Quaters.h.i.+ft before the revolution, working in the forests for their king, and that country had the same bad stink in the air as this, right before the n.o.bles started getting tossed into the mincer.'

'Old Blacky can see that you're n.o.body's fool, Tobias Raffold. You can smell the way the wind's turning out here. Once this little jaunt's done, I'll be only too happy to cast off from Jago with you and never set foot on these black sh.o.r.es again.'

A flurry of activity followed the trapper's warning, the mechomancers making final checks to the suits being shooed away lest the expedition fold before it had even departed. Chalph helped Hannah raise her supplies up to the loading platform behind her RAM suit, pulleys squealing as sacks flew upwards. Hannah slipped the harness belts over her suit as though she had been born a trapper.

Hannah thought they had beaten the senate leader's mad whim to cancel their journey when the captain of the Pericurian mercenaries, Stom urs Stom, came jogging out of the gatehouse towards them, a line of her soldiers following, each ursine weighed down by a turret gun, with its ma.s.sive ammunition drum and bra.s.s tank of compressed air.

'There's no bleeding way there's been a full and legal sitting of the senate yet!' the trapper growled at Stom urs Stom.

'There has not,' said the captain, 'but you would be well advised to consider who your master is on Jago.'

'The difference between you and me, matey, is that I get to hunt for more than one person.'

'First Senator Silvermain considers the contract between you and he to be of an exclusive nature.'

'He can consider what he likes,' spat the trapper, placing himself squarely between the officer and her ma.s.sive troops. 'I've brought in abs for him and for the guild and for anyone else with the coin to pay me. Now, unless you're carrying a legal revocation of my fully paid-up hunting concession, you can sod off back to guarding the ramparts.'

'He's got b.a.l.l.s,' hissed Chalph to Hannah. 'I've never seen a Pericurian talk to her like that, let alone one of your people.'

Hannah shushed him she wanted to hear this. They crept closer, near enough to see the s.h.i.+ne on the ma.s.sive Pericurian's black leather armour. The outcome of this standoff might decide whether Hannah would find her mother or not.

Amba.s.sador Ortin came over to attempt to mediate. 'Now see here, Stom urs Stom, you know there's as much chance that I'm going venturing into the wild to drop grenades down some empty cavern the First Senator thinks will be his new city, as there is of the archd.u.c.h.ess selecting me to be one of her new husbands.'

'What I believe is not of relevance here, amba.s.sador,' said Stom. She produced a wax-sealed envelope addressed to Ortin urs Ortin. 'You will acknowledge receipt of your express instructions from the First Senator. If you venture anywhere near the plains you and your staff will be immediately expelled from Jago, and the stained senate will request a new diplomatic mission be dispatched to the capital from Pericur.'

'Please a.s.sure your master I am ever his servant,' said Ortin. 'I have no intention of leaving the island in disgrace. We won't be heading anywhere close to the plains or the coast quite the opposite, in fact. We are heading deep into the interior on a purely archaeological mission.'

Stom glanced doubtfully at the archaeologist, Nandi standing alongside her RAM suit. 'If that is the case, amba.s.sador, then I would say that your mission has a very slim chance of returning.'

Her warning delivered, the captain and her troops turned and left, the slow stamping of their march echoing around the gate yard. Hannah realized she had been holding her breath. She was going after her mother after all, as long as they could depart in the next few minutes while Tobias Raffold still had his papers to operate on Jago.

'There was something strange about that,' said Chalph.

Hannah glanced across and mistook her friend's narrowed eyes for worry over her own chances of coming back. 'She was just trying to intimidate us into not leaving.'

'No, it was the letter, I think-' Chalph shook his head. 'I'm tired. I've been up since dawn checking the boat's manifest. But it's the last trading boat I'm ever going to have to wake up for on Jago.'

Hannah hugged her friend, his fur soft and silken against the skin of her arms. 'I hope that Pericur is everything you thought it would be.'

'You just stay alive,' chided Chalph. 'Stay away from Vardan Flail and his people. What is it that your G.o.dless priests say to each other in your cathedral?'

'May serenity find you,' mouthed Hannah, her eyes moistening.

Yes. And it would only find her when she knew what had really happened to her mother, somewhere out there. In the cold dark heart of Jago.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Perhaps naively, Hannah had a.s.sumed that climbing the capital's air vents with Chalph to watch the u-boats from Jago's black cliffs had made her into something of an expert on conditions above ground. Her first few days in the company of the trapper Tobias Raffold soon expunged any superiority she'd felt over the vast majority of Jagonese who were only too glad never to leave the regulated comfort of their vaults.

As the expedition pushed towards the interior, they left behind the heat of the Fire Sea, and Hannah came to realize that it was no accident that almost all of Jago's cities had been cast like a necklace around the coastline, attracted to the warmth of the magma. Or how much of the tinted light on the surface came from the vast undulating currents of molten rock, painting the Horn of Jago crimson even when the steam storms had obliterated the milky sun behind the clouds.

Ironically, the worst of the danger seemed to have been awaiting the expedition immediately beyond the battlements where hordes of animals appeared drawn to the wall's electric field like moths to a lantern's flame. The trappers had exited the city with their magnetic catapult arms pointed upwards, and a few chattering bursts of razor-edged disks into the air had quickly marked their rights to the territory, sending the creatures lurking in the mists scampering back towards the dark, stunted pine forests. The beasts were intelligent enough to know the difference between Jagonese in RAM suits and the exiles that were thrown out on foot.

The expedition followed the iron girders of the great eastern aqueduct through the forests and up into the low foothills. Bright yellow lights embedded behind protective metal mesh lined the aqueduct's high ridges, making it easy to follow despite the murkiness of the daylight.

One of the controls inside Hannah's suit was a set of temperature adjusters and she became engaged in a continual battle to keep the heater at its optimum level. Too cold and she would feel the tips of her toes growing numb from frostbite; too warm, and the transparent dome on top of the suit would mist up with condensation. The trappers leading them had either cracked the balance through long experience out here, or they were men of iron, impervious to the chill. Hannah could tell from the clear crystal on top which of the RAM suits held a trapper and which misted up like her own held Nandi, the commodore and the Pericurian amba.s.sador.

Halfway along the aqueduct they had come across the rusting sh.e.l.l of an abandoned RAM suit a more primitive model, larger and less streamlined than theirs possibly hundreds of years old. Tobias Raffold had pointed to the top of the aqueduct and explained how ursks would climb the structure, block the water's flow, and then wait for a group of maintenance workers to come out from the city before trying to smash their viewing domes with rocks. In this case they had obviously succeeded, cracking the suit like an egg. The aqueduct maintenance workers still pa.s.sed down the tales an object lesson in never underestimating the animal cunning of the creatures of the interior. The trapper didn't say what had happened to the unlucky city worker and Hannah was content not to know the person's grisly fate remembering the hot, foetid breath of the ursk that had broken into Tom Putt Park, she could imagine well enough.

Shortly after the expedition had reached the wolds, the aqueduct ended in a large sealed concrete pumping station and Hannah felt a twinge of unease that they were leaving behind the last visible sign of the race of man's presence on the island. It was only an ugly iron construction, but she had become used to the aqueduct's yellow lights leading the way through the mists. Now it really did feel as if they were entering the unknown. Had her mother followed the same route all those years ago? Had she felt the same twinge of fear when she looked back and saw that last yellow dot of civilization dwindling to nothing?

Hannah's mother would have been travelling out this way when Alice Gray had been trying to explain to a young child how her parents had moved along the Circle and wouldn't be coming back to collect her. How the church would be her family now. It can't have been an easy thing for the archbishop to have done, Hannah realized, and she still remembered her guileless response. One that only a child could make. That it was all right. If Hannah were taken to see her parent's bodies, she would kiss them on the forehead and they would come alive again, just like in the stories that her mother had read her. A kiss to bring them back to life. kiss to bring them back to life. But the Fire Sea didn't leave bodies in the water, only ashes. And nor did Vardan Flail's schemes. Well, Hannah had cheated him of a life of servitude within the guild, and if she could follow her mother's trail in the footsteps of William of Flamewall, she would cheat Vardan Flail out of getting his filthy hands on the last piece of the G.o.d-formula, too. But the Fire Sea didn't leave bodies in the water, only ashes. And nor did Vardan Flail's schemes. Well, Hannah had cheated him of a life of servitude within the guild, and if she could follow her mother's trail in the footsteps of William of Flamewall, she would cheat Vardan Flail out of getting his filthy hands on the last piece of the G.o.d-formula, too.

After they made camp in the foothills, Hannah saw why Tobias Raffold had been so particular about the location of their site and discovered the purpose of the large steel components that two of the trappers had been lugging distributed across their suits, a heavy load even with a RAM suit's amplified strength. The parts were a.s.sembled into a circular frame holding a turbine vane, pieced together over a steam blowhole that had been previously marked by the trappers with a fluttering pennant. After heavy rubber cables had been attached to the device, the ends of the leads were plugged into their RAM suits' chemical batteries. With the portable turbine whining as the steam hole drove it into action, a stench of bad eggs began to circulate within the confines of Hannah's suit. Circling the disk-capped blowhole, connected by the cables, the twenty suits would have seemed to observers like some strange variety of iron flower, a night orchid emitting a bizarre stench as they recharged their batteries.

The increased size of the trappers' RAM suits wasn't just to accommodate the larger batteries needed to cover great distances it had other uses, too, such as allowing the pilot frame to rotate back into a sleeping position, the lightly cus.h.i.+oned spine making a serviceable, if not particularly comfortable, bed. Hannah was selfishly glad that the number of trappers the expedition had engaged was large enough that she wouldn't be required to stand a turn on sentry duty not that the hard, taciturn trappers were likely to have trusted her even if she had offered. They stood duty two at a time, the sensing mechanisms in their suits set to violently judder the pilot cage if they detected a lack of movement consistent with sleep.

After a hard day pus.h.i.+ng the suit forward over endless miles of terrain harder even than duty in the turbine halls sleep was really not a problem. It swallowed Hannah up, rising out of the suit like a spinning vortex and cutting off the smell of sweat, oil and recharging battery packs.

In the days that followed, most of the places where they made camp were the same: low rocky wolds with enough of a view of the surrounding landscape for them to ensure that stalking ursks weren't trying to crawl up on the resting RAM suits although when the mist filled the low valleys, it was as if they were sitting on an island surrounded by smoking white rivers. And who knew what nightmares were swimming through their depths?

There was one site that got Nandi excited, a hill where the blowhole they were using to tap the steam lay in a dip and the crest of the hill was a rock formation that resembled a cup melted along one side. The archaeologist swore that there were tell-tale signs the rock had once been the foundations of a building and pointed down into the valley to indicate contours which she said were further indications that there had once been constructions on the surface.

'I'm not so sure, la.s.s,' said the commodore, his RAM suit turned to face the ridges on the hill opposite. 'There's no bricks or mortar on this slab of rock it looks as blasted and natural as the black cliffs on the coast to me and those ridges could be where the storms have carved the soil away from the top of the hill.'

'That's because you don't know what to look for,' insisted the archaeologist.

'Well, I've spent more of my life sandwiched between the hull of a boat than I have between the shelves of the library at St Vines College and I'm no doubt the worse for it,' said the commodore, 'but old Blacky's seen the sunken streets of the city of Lost Angels on the seabed, and scoured by the tides though the ruins were, they still had the look of streets to his tired old eyes.' He called across to Ortin urs Ortin's RAM suit their domes retracted as they took in the fresh cold air. 'What say you, amba.s.sador?'

'I say it may be,' said Ortin urs Ortin. 'The deeper we push into the island the more I see echoes from the scripture of the Divine Quad. The blasted plains of paradise and the crumbled cities that our people once inhabited.'