Secrets of the Fire Sea. Stephen Hunt

coastline, leaving its glacial interior to monstrous beasts. Nandi saw a final flash of magnesium light through the mists, shimmering out from the flare-house on top of the Horn of Jago, and then the mountain disappeared and boiling water covered the bridge’s armoured viewing window. As they sank beneath the Fire Sea, Nandi could see the tug that had guided the Purity Queen in sinking before them, bubbles fleeting towards the surface from its pressure seals.

      The Purity Queen followed the tug down, the water outside turning darker with every league of their increasing depth. As they neared the seabed, the commodore ordered his two steersmen to follow the tug’s example and head for the mouth of one of the titanic brass carvings of octopi, cuttlefish and nautili wrought into the underwater base of the island’s submerged basalt cliff-line. Nandi saw that they were entering a long tunnel illuminated by a strip of green lights running along its side. The tunnel ended in a door which irised open to admit the Purity Queen into a large dark space which started to drain of water and descend at the same time, a lifting room and dry-dock combined. As their descent drew to an end, the front of their lifting room opened out onto an underwater anchorage giving Nandi her first look at the great harbour vault of Hermetica City. The warm green stretch of the underwater pool was bounded by the concrete arc of the harbour at the opposite end of the chamber where hundreds of tugs similar to the one that had guided them were moored inside gated locks. From above glowing yellow plates partially hidden by wisps of condensation cast a diffuse light over the port’s warm waters. If Nandi hadn’t actually been present during their underwater approach, she might have taken the subterranean vault’s walls for a cliff-side and believed that they had simply sailed into one of the mountainous harbours back in the Kingdom’s uplands rather than entering Jago’s underground civilization.

      ‘We’re the only vessel in harbour,’ said Nandi, staring around her at the quiet lock gates, power houses, travelling dock cranes, sheds and warehouses. At least, they were if she discounted the idle tugs of the Jagonese home fleet. It was a lonely feeling.

      After the Purity Queen had moored up, the commodore ordered all hatches open and reached for his jacket. ‘Best take yours too, lass. It’s warm enough during the day in the vaults, but at night they vent in air from the plains above to make it cooler underground.’

      ‘Just like the real world,’ said Nandi.

      ‘It’s different enough in Jago, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘I’ve never had a liking for this place. If it wasn’t for your blessed professor twisting my arm, I’d be Pericur-bound and leaving Hermetica City’s underground vaults to the Jagonese with a welcome-they-be for them.’

      Nandi looked at the customs officials joining the tug crew on the dockside outside the bridge, a gaggle of velvet-cloaked functionaries pushing past the sailors in their rubber scald suits. ‘You don’t like living underground?’

      ‘You can’t be claustrophobic in my trade, lass. Maybe it’s the crackle of the wild energy they’ve tamed to power this place, or the dark creatures from the interior you’ll hear singing and whining outside the city walls up on the surface. Maybe it’s just that the more they try and make this place seem like home, the stranger it seems to me, but I’ve no love for this island or the shiver I feel when I walk its sealed-up streets.’

      Out on the dockside the collection of velvet-cloaked officials had been joined by green-uniformed militiamen whose main function seemed to be to keep back the townspeople filtering through the otherwise deserted harbour front. Nandi and the commodore were the first out onto the gantry that swung across to the Purity Queen’s deck, Nandi fishing in the pockets of her short tweed jacket for the letter of introduction she had been given. Sealed in red wax with the crest of Saint Vine’s college.

      By the time the police had finished warning the commodore of the penalties if he were to take onboard any Jagonese passengers without senate-stamped exit visas, Jethro Daunt and his curious jerking steamman friend had followed Nandi out, no doubt enjoying their first taste of solid land for weeks. More and more Jagonese were heading for the line formed by the police, presumably the hopeful emigrants that the Purity Queen’s master had just been warned of, waving and calling at the crew coming out of the u-boat, brandishing money, papers, or just their empty hands. The tug service’s sailors must have spread word among their friends and family. A rare chance to get off Jago.

      One of the men standing by the custom officials strolled over to Nandi and Commodore Black. Judging by his dark frock coat and stovepipe hat, he was Jackelian rather than a local. He nodded at Nandi and the commodore before clearing his throat. ‘I am Mister Walsingham, an officer attached to the Jackelian consul here. I have cleared your arrival with the Jagonese Board of Aliens.’ He passed each of them a wax-sealed wallet. ‘You have full papers, captain, your crew and passengers have subsidiary visas attached to your own – Jagonese law can be swift and severe, do try to make sure they don’t start any brawls in taverns.’ He smiled weakly towards Nandi. ‘The crew, that is to say, not your passengers.’

      ‘Any that do will answer to me before they answer to the Jagonese magistrates,’ said the commodore, balling a fist.

      ‘A tight ship, eh. Good, good. If you need us, the Jackelian embassy is inside the Horn of Jago. But do try to stay out of trouble here, there’s a good fellow. We don’t have much leverage with the locals these days, so if any of your sailors end up in the police militia’s fortress, they’re rather on their own I’m afraid.’

      ‘A grey little suit,’ said the commodore as the officer walked away, ‘and just the same as a thousand of his friends in the civil service back home, no imagination for anything save creating new taxes to lighten my pocket-book. As much use as a blunt stick in a sabre duel. We’re on our own here, lass.’

      But not quite as alone as would suit Nandi. ‘You don’t have to wait for me, whatever the professor told you. I’m hardly likely to get into trouble researching ancient history. You can leave me here in the capital, deliver your cargo to Pericur, and then pick me up on the return leg of your voyage. The more time I have to root through Jago’s archives, the better I shall like it.’

      The commodore scratched at his dark, forked beard. ‘A promise is a promise, now. Your fine professor has gone out on a limb for me more times than I care to count and I wouldn’t want her to use those great big arms of hers on my noggin. Old Blacky’s crew and the Purity Queen will stay here and feed pennies to a suitably grateful tavern owner while you avail yourself of the archive access Saint Vine’s College has so handsomely paid for.’ He winked at her. ‘Besides, shipping to Pericur and back via the island will mean double navigation fees for these Jagonese pirates and they’ve had their thieving hands deep enough inside my pockets as it is.’

      Nandi felt a brief stiffening of the same hackles that Professor Harsh so frequently raised. Wrapped in cotton wool, handled with kid gloves, overlooked for any foreign archaeological dig where there was even a hint of danger. Where else were you going to find sand-buried cities but in Cassarabia, with its bandits and wild nomads? Creeper-covered temples were two-a-penny in the jungles of Liongeli – but so were sharp-clawed thunder lizards, feral tribesman and river pirates. And here it was again. Jago, the heart of the enlightenment, but Commodore Black was still going to wait around while she poked through the Guild of Valvemen’s archives. What were he and his crude, lewd crew of rascals and brawlers going to do for her? Start a fight with the guild if it didn’t grant her the complete access the college had paid for?

      What no one else seemed to realize was that every dig, every position she was barred from, was just another reminder of the hole left in her life by the death of her father, his bones lost in the sands outside the Diesela-Khan’s tomb thanks to a single poisoned rifle ball. Nandi had ostensibly come to Jago to fulfil Doctor Conquest’s work, but in reality she was completing another expedition. One that had ended disastrously in the great southern desert. When she was finished here and standing back on the soil of the Kingdom of Jackals, her work circulating through the corridors of the college, then her father’s restless spirit would finally have his grief eased. Perhaps if she took her own sweet time in her studies, the commodore might grow bored and make for Pericur anyway, giving her an extra month or two alone here in Jago’s capital.