Secrets of the Fire Sea. Stephen Hunt

parts. His embassy, Nandi suspected, was about to be upgraded with the fruits of the latest Jackelian science.

      Commodore Black walked away to present the papers he had been given by Mister Walsingham to the local customs officials, and by the time he had finished with them, he looked to be in a dark mood. ‘The raw-faced cheek of it, lass. We’ve been allocated rooms in city-centre lodgings with not a choice in the matter, and we’re to be escorted there by these green-uniformed popinjays as if we were prisoners being given our afternoon constitutional by the warders.’

      ‘Maybe they don’t trust us,’ said Nandi.

      ‘They trust sailors well enough,’ said a voice behind them. ‘They trust them to act like sailors in any port and they’d rather not have Jagonese men and women claiming marriage rights with any of your lads or lasses when you sail out of here.’

      Nandi looked at the short, broad man that had spoken – dressed in a Jackelian waistcoat with a battered leather trapper’s coat over it, rather than the brocaded velvet clothes of the islanders. No local, this, and too scruffy to be one of the Jackelian embassy staff.

      ‘Ah well,’ said the commodore. ‘Lucky that my friend is here to study and not to find her fine self a husband.’

      ‘I’ve been married twice,’ said the man. ‘But never to anyone on Jago. I’m an outsider and they only tolerate me because they find my skills useful.’ He pointed to a set of cages on the side of the docks, iron bars holding back snarling, hooting specimens of the local wildlife. Nandi recognized the giant bear-like ursks from the illustrations in her college tomes, huge feral versions of the Pericurian ambassador who had travelled here with them. And by their side a cage filled with something else she had only glimpsed in books before, ab-locks. Leathery-skinned bipedal creatures with ape-like faces. They were a head or two under a man’s height, furless on the front but with a silver mane striped down their stooped backs.

      ‘My name is Tobias Raffold,’ said the trapper, ‘and I’ve been contracted by the Jackelian Zoological Society to deliver these creatures back to the Kingdom.’

      Nandi noted the metre-long gap between the ursks’ cage and the one holding the ab-locks, the inhabitants of each crate snarling furiously at one another.

      Tobias Raffold picked up a crowbar from the floor and drew it along the bars, turning the creatures’ growling attention towards him, hands snapping at the bars and trying to reach through to claw at him. ‘The only thing they bleeding loathe more than us is each other. Ursks and ab-locks rip each other apart when they cross onto each other’s territory.’

      Nandi watched the ab-locks’ fierce red eyes burning as they pushed up against the bars. ‘They can be tamed, can’t they?’

      ‘Not at this age,’ said Tobias Raffold. ‘Trap ab-locks when they’re young and geld them and they can be taught basic orders well enough. They’re used in the Guild of Valvemen’s vaults to porter for them. Ab-locks last longer than us before they’re killed by the energies of the turbine halls.’

      ‘Feral or tamed, I’m not carrying the likes of these in the Purity Queen, Mister Raffold,’ said the commodore. ‘I don’t transport live cargoes. They can die, they can escape, and even if they don’t their stench and racket will make my crew restless. They’re not a lucky cargo for old Blacky.’

      The trapper waved a wad of money at the two of them. Jackelian paper notes drawn on Lords Bank. ‘I can make it lucky enough for you.’

      ‘Not with those you can’t,’ said the commodore. ‘I’ve been paid well enough to sail here and I already have an outbound cargo for Pericur. Taking these mortal whining things on board is a mite too close to slaving for my tastes.’

      ‘Don’t give me that cant,’ said the trapper. ‘You’ve got a cat on board your bloody boat to keep down the rats, haven’t you? Abs and ursks are nothing more than dumb beasts.’

      Commodore Black wrinkled his nose and turned his head away from the whining ab-locks’ clamour. ‘Not dumb enough for me, Mister Raffold. You can wait for your regular Pericurian boat to put in and ship your pets away for the mortal Jackelian Zoological Society. I’ll not be taking them with me.’

      ‘I’ll have to wait a month for the next Pericurian boat, man. I just missed the last one!’

      Nandi and the commodore left the Jackelian trapper on the dockside, cursing the old u-boat skipper for a superstitious fool.

      As the two of them caught up with the other u-boat passengers and their guard, the gathering crowds coming to see the u-boat parted to allow another police escort to pass in the opposite direction. The second group of police militia were pulling an ursine towards the harbour, heavy chains bound across long leather robes inscribed with the symbols of the Pericurian religion. They passed closed enough to Nandi and the others for Ambassador Ortin to take a quizzical interest in one of his fellow nationals being so rudely manhandled.

      ‘That is a preacher of the Divine Quad you are mistreating,’ Ortin urs Ortin protested to the officer leading the way. ‘Dear boy, can you not—’

      Nandi and the ambassador lurched back as the ursine priest threw herself at the new arrivals, the police struggling to hold her. ‘You filthy heretic, you’ll burn in hell for this! Your presence here is hastening the apocalypse. This is sacred soil – sacred soil that you defile. Your fur will be burnt away with the wrath of Reckin urs Reckin. You will be left as hairless as these twisted, dirty infidels, the foul descendents of Amaja urs Amaja. You will burn along with all those malignant traders with their blind eyes that can see only profit, standing on the cursed soil where our ancient temples once stood. Their eyes will burn in their sockets for their sins, then they will know true blindness!’

      ‘You’ve had your answer, sir,’ said the officer in charge of the group as his men fought to bundle the giant priest away. ‘Now move along.’

      ‘What is going to happen to that lady?’ demanded the ambassador.

      ‘She stowed away on the boat from Pericur,’ said the officer. ‘Now she’s going back. She attacked some of your own traders down in the main market, turning over their stalls. You know we deport any of your preachers that try to sneak in. We could have arrested her for the damage she did.’

      ‘A zealot,’ said Ortin, sadly. ‘Treat her as kindly as you can.’

      ‘Nothing for the archduchess to complain about, sir.’

      Nandi watched the disappearing figure of the preacher, still yelling about the end-times and the fall of paradise, railing against the laughing Jagonese crowds who were jeering and taunting her. ‘Does all of the race of man look like devils to you, ambassador?’

      ‘I think there is a little bit of the devil in all of us, dear girl,’ said Ortin. ‘Whether you have a fine pelt like we do, or even if you don’t.’

      Nandi nodded in agreement. So many tensions came from the misreading of history. All so avoidable.

      The preacher’s voice grew fainter as they walked towards the capital.

      ‘The last judgement is coming, all of you…doomed!’

      Jethro looked out of the window of their lodgings while Boxiron finished unpacking the last of the travel cases he had been too tired to start the day before. It was a grand hotel, the Westerkerk, but the fact that the connected rooms they had been given were almost as large as their lodgings back at Thompson Street did not disguise the fact that this place was as a good as a prison cell for them. As soon as they’d arrived they had noticed the police militia posted at all the hotel’s entrances, and while the soldiers were obviously busy turning away Jagonese claiming they had business with the Purity Queen’s crew, Jethro knew that their presence was a double-edged blade.

      ‘We have quite a view of the cathedral across the Grand Canal,’ noted Boxiron.

      ‘A view,’ said Jethro, ‘but not an unobserved way to present the Inquisition’s credentials