Secrets of the Fire Sea. Stephen Hunt

for a redcoat’s cherry attire, they might almost be taken for a military force.’

      ‘You marked the coral defences ringing the island on the way in,’ said Boxiron. ‘The commodore told me they have battlements surrounding the capital’s surface structures almost as impressive.’

      Jethro rubbed his chin. ‘An interesting frame of mind, don’t you think? All your enemies are external, all your defences facing out to protect you. But what do you do if you find there is a rot within? How would you cope with that?’

      Boxiron did not get a chance to reply – there was a knock at their door and when the steamman opened it, Ortin urs Ortin stood there, filling the doorframe with his impressive furred bulk.

      ‘Good ambassador,’ said Jethro. ‘You’re not rooming in the hotel, are you? I thought your embassy would have taken you in.’

      ‘The deputy ambassador claims that she wasn’t told I was coming and that she’s taken the opportunity of my predecessor’s departure to remodel my apartments. I won’t be able to move into my embassy rooms for weeks.’

      Jethro frowned. ‘You suspect a slight?’

      ‘Of course I suspect a slight, dear boy,’ said Ortin urs Ortin. ‘I am a rare male office-holder in a matriarchal society, and it seems my banishment here is not to be made a comfortable one. But even they can’t stop me taking up my duties. I have a summons to present myself to the stained senate this morning, as do you…’

      ‘Me? I’m a private party, good ambassador, not a representative of the Kingdom’s foreign office.’

      ‘There’s still a couple of reformers left on my staff here, despite the best efforts of the archduchess’s conservatives, and my house’s friends have caught wind of a few worrying circumstances brewing here,’ said the ambassador, moving to the window. ‘And that’s one of them.’

      Jethro followed the direction of the large furred finger and saw an officer of the police militia striding towards the hotel.

      ‘Colonel Constantine Knipe, a particularly charmless fellow who seems to hold a low opinion of my appointment here that’s not far removed from that of my own enemies in Pericur. He’s already intercepted me and warned me to restrict my duties to a bare minimum and now I suspect it’s your turn. Well, at least I’ve beaten the old fruit here to you. I counsel saying little…’

      True to the ambassador’s words, Colonel Knipe arrived outside their rooms a minute later, his appearance preceded by the clump-hiss of his mechanical leg. He glowered at Ortin urs Ortin as though his presence implied that all three of them were involved in some plot. Then Knipe turned his attention towards Jethro, his eyes skipping briefly past Boxiron – the steamman surely an exotic oddity on the island – and waved a sheet of paper at the ex-parson. ‘Jethro Daunt, citizen of the Kingdom of Jackals. The same Jethro Daunt, I am presuming, who was the consulting detective that retrieved the Twelve Works of Charity when the painting was stolen from the Middlesteel Museum.’

      ‘The same, good colonel. Although it would be truer to say that the painting never actually left the museum, it was merely switched and falsely identified as a forgery by the thief. You are exceedingly well informed.’

      ‘Our representatives in the Kingdom still collect your penny sheets,’ said the colonel. ‘And our transaction-engine vaults are still one of the wonders of the world.’

      ‘So I have heard,’ smiled Jethro. ‘And I see from the paper in your hand that their retrieval speeds match all that I have heard about their superiority.’

      ‘Why have you been summoned to the senate floor, Daunt?’

      ‘That, I’m afraid, only your stained senate can answer,’ said Jethro.

      ‘Your services have not been engaged by them?’

      ‘No,’ sighed Jethro. ‘Sadly, my visit here is of a private nature.’

      ‘There is nothing private on Jago when it comes to keeping our people safe,’ said the colonel. ‘I will have the reason for your appearance on our shores. We haven’t had a Jackelian u-boat call for over thirteen months.’

      ‘If you will,’ said Jethro, stiffly. ‘I have come here to pay my respects to a recent grave. That of Damson Alice Gray.’

      ‘The archbishop?’ said the colonel, surprised. ‘What is she to you?’

      ‘She and I were engaged to be married, although sadly the loss of my original living prevented our union.’

      Colonel Knipe looked shocked, as though he wouldn’t have been more disturbed if Jethro had admitted he and Boxiron were grave robbers come to whisk the woman’s corpse out of her grave for sale to medical students in need of surgical practice meat.

      ‘If the Jagonese embassy back home have been thorough in sending you copies of the Middlesteel Illustrated News, you will find the posting of our banns in your archives, I am sure. A little relic of my personal history buried among so much of yours, good colonel.’

      ‘You have missed the funeral,’ noted the colonel.

      ‘Word travels slowly from Jago these days,’ said Jethro. ‘But I am here now.’

      ‘Better for you to have missed the funeral,’ said the colonel, his manner softening slightly now that he thought he understood the rationale for Jethro’s presence on Jago. He pointed at Ortin urs Ortin. ‘One of your friend’s primitive cousins was released into the city thanks to the incompetence of the Pericurian mercenaries the senate has seen fit to hire to protect us. You have your memories of the archbishop as she was, not as she was left after the ursk attack. It is better that way.’

      ‘A terrible accident,’ said Jethro. He did not say that he hadn’t been able to properly remember Alice Gray’s face for many years. He could recall their courtship, the places they had visited together, but the cruelty of time had erased her features from his memories. He was a different man now. Like so many men, he had defined himself by his relationship with her. What she had left behind would have been wretched, wrecked and worse even without the old gods’ touch of madness.

      ‘We killed four ursks in the canals that night,’ said the colonel. ‘Not much of a recompense for a life lost, but some consolation. I believe we still have one of the furs on the wall in the militia fortress. I could let you have it, if you think the use of it as a rug would bring you peace when you look at it.’

      Jethro nodded. ‘You are exceedingly obliging, good colonel.’

      ‘I shall take you to the senate,’ decided the colonel, graciously. He waved Ortin away, noting that the ambassador was expected to present himself first. Jethro watched the Pericurian leave eagerly enough, happy to be out of the militia officer’s company with all his talk of skinning ursks. When the ambassador had left, the colonel shook his head knowingly. ‘And on the way I will tell you what you need to know to keep you safe here.’

      ‘Safe?’ said Jethro. ‘I understood the Jagonese were exemplars of courtesy and the abidance of laws.’

      ‘By nature, our people are,’ said the colonel. ‘But the wheel has turned and things on Jago are not as they once were.’ He stared at Boxiron, ‘Is it safe to talk in front of this one?’

      ‘I trust Boxiron with my life,’ said Jethro. ‘And despite the best efforts of the Jackelian underworld, as my living presence here attests, I have yet to be disappointed.’

      ‘Are you from the Steammen Free State?’ the colonel asked Boxiron. ‘Or an automatic milled by the race of man? You are not as I imagined you.’

      ‘I am a little of both,’ replied Boxiron, his voicebox juddering.

      ‘My friend’s is a sad and difficult story,’ said Jethro, ‘and it would pain him to relate it. Suffice it to say, Boxiron is a better and more reliable friend than all others have proven over the years. He’s a topping old steamer.’

      Satisfied,