The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

CHAPTER TWO (#ubdd96689-1924-52d1-b61b-4d5639472a5c)

The street urchin his friends called Ducker bent down to scoop up a lump of horse dung with his improvised wooden paddle. Overhall Corner was one of the busiest junctions at the heart of Middlesteel, rich pickings in the greatest city of the greatest nation on the continent. Why, with a full sack of horseshit patties drying out before the fire, you would have fuel enough to cook for a week. Cheaper than coal. And the smell? Well, for the price you paid, you quickly got used to that. But never let it be said that the dung collectors of Overhall Corner did not enjoy their job. From the other side of the boulevard William made a rude gesture, a cry of victory following quickly after the lump of horse-dirt whistling past Ducker’s cloth cap. Scooping up a handful of ammunition, Ducker dodged past the hansom cabs and cask-filled wagons, the whinnies of offended shire horses in his ears, then let his missile of revenge fly back towards his colleague in the dung trade. The dung skimmed the other urchin and narrowly missed a mumbleweed-smoke seller, the man’s tank of narcotic gas battered and rusty from the wet Middlesteel smog.

‘Bloody dung boys,’ the old vendor waved a fist at the two urchins.

‘Take a puff of your own mumbleweed and calm down,’ Ducker shouted back.

Their altercation, the best sport they had come across this morning, was interrupted by a jumpy clatter of hooves along the cobbled street. The whine of a horseless carriage had unsettled the horses, the low hum of its clockwork engine almost beyond the range of the race of man’s ears.

‘By the Circle,’ said William, ‘would you look at that beauty?’

Ducker pushed his friend out of the way for a closer peek. Was Will talking about the lady in the steering hole, or the carriage itself? Shining gold-plated steel, two wheels at the front twice the lads’ own height and four smaller wheels at the rear of the passenger box, an oval stadium-seat of soft red leather mounted on top.

‘That’s not from any Jackelian workshop,’ said William.

‘Catosia,’ said Ducker. ‘The city-states.’ Everyone knew they made the best horseless carriages. Unlike the Jackelian ones, the high-tension clockwork mechanisms of the Catosian League’s manufactories did not suffer from a tendency to explode, showering pieces of carriage across the road. The crusher directing traffic at the junction stopped the flow of cabs, carts and penny-farthings along Ollard Street, waving forward the traffic on the other side of Overhall Corner. Ducker suspected the black-coated policeman wanted to halt the vehicle and gawp at its opulence along with all the other pedestrians.

‘Not much dung out of one of them,’ said Will, enviously.

An idea occurred to Ducker. A way to turn a penny and get a closer look at the carriage at the same time. He advanced on the vehicle and tugged off his cloth cap. ‘Excuse me, sir, wipe your gas lamps, sir? They are looking a little sooty.’

The driver made to get out of the steering hole and Ducker saw beyond the short blonde curls and blue eyes for the first time, noticed her body. She was not just a beauty; she had the physique of someone who worked in the muscle pits. She was a whipper, a fighter for hire.

The sole passenger of the vehicle seemed amused. Young, handsome and as blonde as his driver, he possessed the air of authority that only came to those born to quality. One of the Lords Commercial. ‘You can sit down, Veryann. A little free trade is much to be encouraged. Clean away, young fellow.’

Whether the polishing from his cap was removing the dirt on the lamps or adding to it was unclear, but Ducker did his best and, ignoring the pained expression of the chauffeur-guard – who obviously had a different payment in mind for him – he grinned up hopefully at the commercial lord. The man flipped a coin down towards Ducker and the urchin caught it, then returned to the pavement while the wagons and hansom cabs began moving again.

‘Bleeding Circle,’ said William. ‘You’re a ballsy one.’

‘Look, a crown,’ said Ducker, turning the coin over in his fingers. ‘Not bad for a minute’s work, eh?’

‘Ain’t you seen that gent’s mug in the news sheets, Ducker? Don’t you know who you was hobnobbing with?’

Ducker looked annoyed. His friend knew he did not have his letters – the streets of Middlesteel were his education. He never even looked at the penny sheets. They only reminded him of a world that would never be his; of reading and meals and warm rooms and caring parents.

‘That was Quest, that was Abraham Quest!’

Quest? Ducker was amazed. Circle’s turn; the cleverest man in Middlesteel, it was said. Probably the richest too.

Ducker looked towards the humming carriage disappearing into the distance, a glitter of gold among the dark, sooty streets.

‘You should have asked for two crowns, you bleeding turnip,’ laughed William.

‘I expect we’ll need to fit a footman’s plate to the rear now,’ announced the driver. ‘Because when word of what you just did spreads among his friends, we’re going to be mobbed by guttersnipes at every crossing in the city.’

Abraham Quest stretched back in his seat, unconcerned. ‘Those young children are the future of Jackals, Veryann.’

‘It’s not as if you don’t already give generously enough to the Board of the Poor. And there are those children’s academies you sponsor …’

‘As to the need, so to the means.’ A quotation from the Circlist Book of Common Reflections. ‘Do you never ponder, Veryann, why one child eats off a silver platter and sleeps warm under a woollen blanket, while another goes hungry to a bed filled with twelve others equally desperate? Do you never wonder what discrepancy in fate, motivation or resolve leads to the terrible disparities in this land of ours?’

Veryann turned the carriage onto Drury Dials, steering the humming vehicle towards the House of Guardians. ‘Of all people, you should know the answer to that, Abraham Quest – you a workhouse child risen so far. The strong and the cunning and the quick thrive, the weak fail. It is the way of all nature.’

‘Ah, yes, the answer of a true soldier of the city-states.’ Quest glanced back sadly. ‘I was just like that urchin once. I truly was. It is like staring into a mirror thirty years ago. But things do not have to be this way.’

They were meeting in the Strandswitch Club, two streets down from parliament itself. The First Guardian had a delicious sense of irony. Before the Leveller party swept into power during the last election, Benjamin Carl would have been just about the last person in the kingdom to be voted into Middlesteel’s most prestigious political club. Now the club’s committee had no choice at all but to admit the man.

Guardians and civil servants from Greenhall watched Abraham Quest’s progress across the lush carpet and leather armchairs with the startled glances of those who had just found a copper ha’penny abandoned between the cobbles of the pavement. Did they see him, or did they see his wealth? He already knew the answer. Money was power and notoriety, a lens through which his humanity was distorted by any and all who saw him. All save perhaps the politician he had come to see, who had always seemed curiously unmoved by any such consideration. It was one of the reasons they got on so well.

‘First Guardian,’ announced the club butler. ‘Your guest has arrived.’

Benjamin Carl lay down his copy of the Middlesteel Illustrated News and pointed to an armchair opposite the small table that concealed the frame of his wheelchair.

‘Neutral ground, Benjamin?’

‘Tongues would wag if I received you at my offices in parliament,’ said Carl.

‘More speculation on the amount of my donations to the Leveller party, perhaps?’

‘Yes, it is curious how one’s respect for the cheeky tenacity of Dock Street’s pensmen when in opposition adjusts after winning a majority.’

‘Freedom of expression is one of the great marks of our civilization,’ said Abraham, picking up the politician’s newspaper. There was a black linework cartoon on the front cover. The First Guardian facing down a gaggle of Guardians from the opposition parties in a challenge of debating sticks, a cloud of insults rising from the deliberately doll-sized mob of politicians. Benjamin Carl’s wheelchair had been transformed into a war chariot with iron spikes, his wheels crushing the more radical members of his own party. A speech bubble rose out of Carl’s grinning countenance: ‘This ride is too strong for you, m’compatriots.’

‘So it is,’ said the First Guardian, checking to make sure the club’s other patrons were out of earshot. ‘And it is a little frank speaking which I thought we might engage in this morning, Abraham.’

‘I would expect nothing less from the firebrand author of Community and the Commons.’

Carl ignored the jibe about his book – barely off the banned list for as long as his election as First Guardian. ‘The plain speaking is regarding your commercial concerns.’

‘Another donation, perhaps? I heard parliament was getting sticky again about your proposed labour reforms. I do try and set an example with the House of Quest.’

‘It is not your mill conditions which interest me – the long lines of prospective workers that queue up every time you open up a new concern speak well enough for those. It is your output I wish to discuss – more specifically, that of your airship works at Ruxley Waters.’

‘The Board of the Admiralty haven’t been complaining about the quality of the aerostats my mills turn out, have they, First Guardian?’

‘Hardly,’ replied Carl. ‘Your airwrights are the most proficient in Jackals, your airship designs the most advanced – as you well know from the size of your order-book with the navy.’ The politician jerked a finger towards the lady retainer standing discreetly by the door of the club’s dining room. ‘She is a free company fighter? From the Catosian city-states?’

‘Veryann? Yes, she is.’

‘Our nation has a long, regretful tradition of tolerating the rich and powerful keeping private armies under the fiction that they are fencibles, reserves salted away for times of war. I do not intend to be the first leader of parliament who starts tolerating private aerial navies too.’

‘It’s somewhat difficult to test new aerostat designs without celgas to float the airships we build,’ said Quest.

‘Jackals’ monopoly on celgas has kept our state safe for hundreds of years,’ replied the First Guardian. ‘Your test flights are a little too regular and the discrepancies between the gas barrels you are sent and what comes out of your airship hangars at the other end a little too wide of the mark.’

‘I shall have words with the yard’s overseers,’ said Quest.

‘Please do,’ said Carl. ‘We have our merchant marine to serve our trade and we have the Royal Aerostatical Navy to serve our defence. Your proving flights are one thing, but let me make this absolutely clear: there is no room for a third force in the air above Jackals.’