The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘Not I,’ said the commodore. ‘But old Blacky knows a certain shopkeeper who does.’

The fight seemed to go out of the convict. ‘So, you’re in the House of Guardians’ pocket now, then?’

‘And you are sitting in mine,’ said the commodore, patting the side of his jacket. ‘And we’ll have lots of well-armed soldiers on board, with sharp steel and shells a-plenty to keep your compass true to my course.’

‘Just in case you get any ideas about taking off with our u-boat,’ added Amelia.

Black winked at the convict. ‘You’ll like them when you see them, Bull, that you will.’

Being a good soldier of the People’s Revolutionary Second Brigade, the blue-coated trooper cracked his bayonet-tipped rifle on the floor as he recognized Compatriot Colonel Tarry. Like all trusted Carlists, the compatriot wore a red feather in his tricorn hat, not that Tarry’s loyalty to the revolution could ever be called into question. Not safely, anyway.

Tarry ran a finger along the soldier’s bayonet, testing the edge. ‘I see there is at least one guard in this camp who knows how to use a whetstone on his cutlery.’

The trooper stood to attention even straighter. ‘You do not forget what you learn in the field, compatriot colonel. A sharp bayonet is an effective bayonet.’

‘A man of action, good.’ The colonel leant in closer to the soldier; not that there was anyone else in the corridor to overhear them, but a little paranoia was a healthy reaction to the mores of Quatérshift’s current society. In fact, a lot of paranoia was the healthiest reaction. ‘Prisoner seventy-six is not being productive. The camp committee have been making excuses for him for months now, but I am frankly … disappointed. Have you heard any of the camp committee here speak against the community?’

‘The prisoner is an aristocrat, compatriot colonel,’ said the trooper. ‘We mollycoddle him with coal for his fire and feed him two meals a day. To make a leech such as him productive, a more direct approach is required …’

‘Direct, yes, I like that,’ said the colonel. ‘Yes, into the Gideon’s Collar, a bolt through the neck and let his remains fertilize the people’s fields. Well, we shall see. Open up. I have much to discuss with Compatriot Robur. Let us see how well this pampered aristocrat begs for his miserable life. If you hear any screams …’

‘My hearing is much diminished by the damp of this miserable corridor, compatriot colonel.’

Inside the cell, a hand lay poised above an ink well, a steel quill quivering in the cold, hovering above a sheet of drawing-paper pinned to a draughtsman’s board that had seen better days.

‘You are Robur?’

The prisoner pulled the soiled blankets that lay wrapped around him a little tighter, as if they might protect him from the violence of the colonel. ‘I am Robur, compatriot.’

The officer picked up the cheap sheet of paper on which the prisoner had been sketching his designs. ‘And what, pray tell, do you call this?’

‘What the First Committee has instructed me to create for them, compatriot. A cannon with a firing mechanism controlled by a transaction engine. The improved accuracy will …’

‘Such toys will not assist the revolution,’ shouted the colonel. ‘The people are starving in every province! Will your damn cannon feed our cities, will it put bread on our tables?’

‘You seem well fed enough,’ said Robur, regretting the words the moment they came out of his mouth.

Colonel Tarry backhanded the prisoner, knocking him to the ground. ‘Maggot! You aristocratic, anti-revolutionary scum. You have been sabotaging our war efforts, dragging your heels, just to be fed while your compatriots starve in the world beyond your cell’s comfortable four walls. Starve because your aristocrat friends have sabotaged all our farms. Now you shall pay the price for your treachery.’

The trooper, who had been eavesdropping, opened the door, smiling, sensing an end to his cold vigil outside the cell.

‘Take him,’ ordered the colonel, leading the way. ‘I will not sully my hands by touching this uncommunityist criminal.’

The steel door at the other end of the corridor opened and a chilly gust blew down from Darksun Peak. Of all the organized communities in Quatérshift to be assigned to as a guard, Darksun Fortress was undoubtedly the most miserable. Before the Sun King’s overthrow it had held only the most dangerous Carlist revolutionaries. Now that the men and women it had once held as prisoners sat on the land’s ruling committees, the mountain-dug dungeons had been refilled with the dwindling number of recalcitrants from the old regime.

Colonel Tarry pointed down to the Gideon’s Collar in the centre of the courtyard. The steam-driven killing machine was slowly rocking on its wooden stilts as its boiler hummed a lament. ‘A quick and painless death for you, Robur. Although if I had my way, you would not receive such mercy from the Commonshare. I would pass you to the king’s old torturers and let them quarter you alive after they had dragged the names of all your treacherous friends from your lips.’

Humming happily, the Second Brigade trooper slung his rifle over his shoulder so he didn’t lose his balance; the steps down to the courtyard of this bleak fortress were treacherous enough at the best of times. Usually by now, an aristocrat would be begging for his life. Promising to offer up hidden caches of gold and gems they had buried as the revolution began. But not Robur. The miserable scarecrow had no real wealth, as the trooper well knew, given the number of times his watch had tried to shake him down for a centime or two.

On the battlements below, a gaggle of soldiers quick-stepped, one of them shouting something up that was lost in the cold of the perpetual mist that shrouded the fortress.

‘Damn fools,’ swore Colonel Tarry. ‘Ignore them and bring the traitor over here.’

‘But—’

Something was wrong. The trooper peered over the battlements at the group, looking down towards the crimson, angry face of – it could not be possible – Colonel Tarry!

The closer of the two Colonel Tarrys lifted the trooper’s boots and flipped him over the battlements, his blue uniform flapping as he fell towards the courtyard below.

The gaunt figure of Robur stumbled back as Colonel Tarry’s face melted and reformed into … a mirror image of Robur’s own, right down to his sunken eyes and sallow, starved cheeks!

‘Who are you?’ Robur demanded.

‘I have many faces, many names,’ Robur’s double hissed back at him, pushing him away from the steps and the sprinting soldiers. ‘You may inquire after them later, should you live.’

‘They’ll shoot us both now, you fool.’

‘They’ve had their pound of flesh from me,’ laughed Robur’s reflection, a finger on his left hand uncurling to reveal an iron barrel that began juddering as a stream of blue marble-sized spheres fired towards the guards, shattering and layering the steps with a veil of gas.

As the real Robur was shoved towards a nearby turret, he had to admire the design of the mechanical arm. You could barely tell it was artificial, even when you knew where to look for the signs of mechomancy. Balls from the guards’ rifles began to hit the wall behind them, showering them both with shards of granite. The troopers were shooting blind through the gas. Robur turned. His insane rescuer was pulling up a pack that had been roped on the outside of the citadel’s walls, left dangling from the crenellations. Once unfastened, the pack unfurled into a bone-like structure, bundles of silk hanging underneath, waiting to fold open. Robur had seen such a thing in journals, before the revolution: but only one nation in the world had a use for them.

‘An airship’s kite-chute. You’re from Jackals! They said you would come, but I did not believe—’

‘They said I would come!’ Robur’s reflection grabbed him and slung a leather harness over his shoulders, clipping Robur to a similar yoke concealed under the fake colonel’s uniform. His face twisted in fury. ‘Who said I would come?’

‘One of the guards was bribed.’ Robur was terrified now, lest his strange rescuer abandon him here on the peaks of Darksun Fortress. ‘They said someone would come from Jackals for me. I thought it was just another of their games to break me.’

His doppelgänger lifted him up and flung them both off the battlements, the silk rustling out into a triangular sail that crackled above their heads – falling – falling – then picking up into the freezing mist that whistled past the mountain. Robur was screaming, but his voice was drowned out by the wind and his liberator’s animal-like howl of victory.

‘If I drop you, Robur, you’ll bloody break. I don’t know why your fool family didn’t just hand out personalized invites to the Committee of Public Security to come and view your break-out.’

Their hair-raising flight terminated ten minutes later in a soggy meadow at the foot of one of the alpine crags, a hard landing which sent Robur rolling into a goatherd’s fence. A sixer lay tethered nearby, the horse scratching at the mud in its eagerness to be off, all six of its hooves shod in expensive, shining steel.

Stumbling to his feet, Robur turned to face his dangerous reflection. ‘Who are you?’

The figure pulled something out of the horse’s saddlebag and swivelled around, a demonic mask staring straight back at him. Furnace-breath Nick. The very devil himself.

‘Here is my true face.’

Robur liked it little better than when the demon had stolen his own. He was backed into the fence now, without even realizing he was trying to flee. ‘The Second Brigade will have their mountain trackers out of barracks and riding across the entire province by the end of the day. Every pass from here to the ocean will have a checkpoint. Unless you have an aero-stat to get us over the cursewall …’

Furnace-breath Nick advanced on the emaciated figure. ‘I do not.’

‘Then how in the sun child’s name are you going to get us out of Quatérshift?’

Furnace-breath Nick’s arm twisted up. Robur heard the grinding from a clockwork mechanism beneath a torn fold of false skin on the arm. So, a trooper’s rifle ball had shattered one of the cogs during their escape. Robur knew he could fix the demon’s arm, but before he could make the offer – and see this marvel close up – there was a burst of air from an artery in Furnace-breath Nick’s artificial wrist. Robur just had time to pluck the tiny feathered dart from his chest before he plunged to the grass, his limbs tightening as if he was crafted from clockwork himself. Paralysis became unconsciousness.

‘That would be my problem,’ said Furnace-breath Nick, scooping the aristocrat’s body up from the grass.