Secrets of the Fire Sea. Stephen Hunt

the guttural cry of a free company mercenary followed by the howl of depressurizing gas from the brass tank on the fighter’s back. As she fired her turret rifle spouts of water erupted where her pitons struck. A forest of bobbing torches and the insistent cries of the crowd up on the streets indicated that the mercenary had found one of the intruders.

      ‘There!’ cried Hannah as a black shape glided under another gondola. The gondola slammed into the air, unseating both the gondolier and his mercenary passenger. The man fell into the water screaming and disappeared thrashing inside a bubbling maelstrom, while the mercenary hit the water silently. She must know that she would be next, after the ursk swimming underneath finished off the weakest victim – the gondolier. She didn’t even try to swim to the side of the canal.

      ‘Shoot the water!’ the militiaman next to Hannah shouted at the mercenaries. ‘Shoot the water, she’s dead down there anyway.’

      But none of the massive Pericurian mercenaries was listening. A couple of seconds after the gondolier had disappeared, the mercenary fighter was pulled under the water, vanishing as quickly as if she had just winked out of existence. Almost instantly a massive plume of water gushed up in her place, showering the bridge where Hannah stood with steaming water.

      A guttural humming sounded from the mercenaries, and they raised their fists towards the vault’s roof as they sang the death hymn for their comrade. Hannah glanced down at her clothes. The water that had spattered her was tinged crimson with the blood of the ursk and of the dead foreign mercenary.

      ‘It was her kill,’ said Stom to the militiaman, patting the belt of spherical grenades looping around her waist. ‘That is why we did not fire. It was her kill. Turret rifle bolts are slowed by water. The ursk we hunted knew that.’

      ‘She killed herself,’ said the militiaman in disgust. ‘You people truly are savages.’

      Hannah looked at the tall mercenary commander silently scanning the water. No. The ursine were a force of nature. Fractious, quick to temper, but magnificent. Quite magnificent.

      ‘There might be more monsters in the canals,’ said Hannah.

      ‘If there are, the presence of the crowds will keep them in the water,’ said Stom, grimly.

      But word of the ursks infiltrating the city was to come quicker than any of them had anticipated. Another militiaman came running up to the bridge and after a brief exchange with his superior, the green-uniformed man turned to Stom. ‘Your fighters are requested to deploy in the Seething Round, wet-snout. There has been an attack there.’

      Hannah looked with horror towards Chalph. An attack on the vault where she lived.

      ‘Where?’ demanded Hannah. ‘Where inside the Seething Round?’

      ‘The cathedral,’ replied the militiaman. ‘It’s the archbishop. She’s been torn apart by the bloody beasts.’

       CHAPTER THREE

      It was the same dream that Jethro Daunt always had. He was back inside the confessional of his parsonage at Hundred Locks. They didn’t even know – many of the refugees who came to him – what a Circlist church meant. Its stone didn’t look much different to that of the churches across the Kingdom of Jackals’ borders. It wasn’t as if the refugees could look at the flint walls and know there were no gods inside them. The churches in Quatérshift were filled with the paraphernalia of the Sun Child, and a light priest’s cassock wasn’t so different from a Circlist parson’s clothes – the golden sunburst of their deity replacing the silver circle. But there were no gods in this church, no gods.

      Jethro sweated on his side of the confessional, his cubicle a claustrophobic trap. He heard a scratching on the other side of the grille, a claw dragging across the filigree of equations etched across the walls. Not one of the refugees, this time, then. One of the others. The ancient things that usually visited his dreams afterwards. Black and silver fur brushed against the grille, and a snorting like that of a bull wading in a water meadow sounded from the other side. Badger-headed Joseph. An ancient god that was meant to have lightning for sight, except Jethro never got to see its eyes.

      ‘Fiddle-faddle fellow,’ growled Badger-headed Joseph, in the kind of voice that you would expect to come from something half-man and half-beast. ‘Are you shy, Jethro Daunt, little man, little fiddle-faddle fellow? Too shy to open the Inquisition’s post?’

      Jethro glanced down towards his lap. There was the package, still unopened, the gift of the Inquisition’s highly placed emissary. ‘It is not my business; it is the Inquisition’s. I reject it and I reject you, Badger-headed Joseph.’

      More scratching sounded from the other side. ‘Do you reject curiosity, too, fiddle-faddle fellow? Part of you must want to know what’s in the folder. Whose name is in the folder? The same part of you that stuck your hand in the fire when you were a child. When your grandfather warned you to watch out for the embers.’

      ‘I am Jethro Daunt, I am my own man. I serve the rational order.’ He tried humming the algebra-heavy mantra of the first hymn that sprang to mind, but the scratching grew louder, breaking the concentration needed to enter a meditation.

      ‘Take care, little fiddle-faddle fellow. You make your intellect your god – it has powerful muscles but a poor personality. Not like me. Here comes the rain…’ There was a moaning noise of relief on the other side of the confessional booth and a powerful stench assailed Jethro’s nose. The ancient god was urinating against his side of the booth.

      ‘This is a rational house,’ shouted Jethro, retching. ‘It has no place for you, Badger-headed Joseph. No place for the old gods. I cast you out!’

      ‘You’re not a parson anymore,’ growled the voice behind the grille. ‘Make me happy, fiddle-faddle fellow; indulge your curiosity with the packet.’

      Jethro Daunt woke with a start. His bedroom was dark save for the illumination of the triple-headed gas lamp in Thompson Street burning beyond his window. Just enough light to see the tightly bound folder from the Inquisition.

      He looked at it, the echo of his grandfather’s warning as his hand reached for the fire grate whispering across the darkness.

      Boxiron thumped along the corridor. He had trouble enough approximating sleep during the small hours, the hearing folds on the side of his head wired into the inferior routing mechanisms of the man-milled neck join randomly amplifying the sounds of the night.

      Opening the door with far more vigour than he had expected – or requested – from his arm servos, Boxiron was faced with a sight strange even for their chambers at Thompson Street.

      Jethro Daunt was in the middle of the floor, the folder from the Inquisition cut open with a letter knife. Papers and notes sodden with the consulting detective’s tears were scattered across a rug in the centre of the room.

      Glancing up, Jethro noticed the steamman as he entered. ‘She’s dead. After all these years, she’s dead.’

      The light in the centre of Boxiron’s vision plate flared with anger. This was the Inquisition’s work. It wasn’t just Jethro Daunt who was an expert at staring into a softbody’s soul. Curiosity. Curiosity could always be counted on to undermine Jethro’s resolve. Every time. The Loas damn the devious minds of the Inquisition.

      ‘You’re going to do what they want, aren’t you? You’re going to take their case.’

      Jethro rested his spine against the foot of the bed and stared up at the ceiling, a blank look on his face. A mask. ‘Of course I am.’

      And where Jethro went, Boxiron would inevitably follow. As he so often did, Jethro began to hum one of his mad little ballads as he leafed through the papers spread around him. He didn’t hum church hymns anymore, that pained him too much; but he had picked up many ditties from the drinking houses their informers frequented. ‘Well of all the dogs