nose piece dangled from his face where the breather helmet had been removed.
Two guards in black crushers’ uniforms shoved Kammerlan to sit on a stool opposite Amelia and Black, departing quickly and leaving them with only Quest’s silent lawyer for a witness.
‘Not like diving off a boat on Porto Principe?’ said the commodore.
Bull’s eyes had difficulty focusing on them after so long in the darkness of the immersion tank, but he recognized the voice. ‘Still alive, you miserable old goat? I thought the gout would have taken you by now, the rate of knots you must have been gorging yourself using the trinkets and jewels of the Peacock Herne to pay the bailiff.’
The commodore patted the paunch under his waistcoat. ‘And I’m looking blessed good on it, too, Bull.’
‘You’ve a cheek, old man, coming in here to see me. I only have to shout and tell the crushers who you really are, and they’d have you tossed in the tank alongside me and the boys, tossed in as soon as spit on you.’
‘Nothing hasty now,’ warned the commodore. ‘Or you’ll see both our necks stretched for royalists. Let us use our fine new names in this dark place.’
‘You weren’t in the royalist cause, Black,’ said Bull in a low voice, ‘you were just seated at its breakfast table, that’s all. You were too soft and the fleet-in-exile was burned in its pens by the RAN because of you and your kind’s weakness.’
‘Ah, Bull, let’s forget the old politics and our grievances with the House of Guardians, for parliament still has you and your lads in its cells, even if it is for slavery rather than piracy and sedition. And I have an offer for you and yours that might let you all see the light of day again.’
‘How are you going to do that?’ said Bull. ‘You been elected First Guardian, fat man? Is dimples here the new Chief Justice?’
Amelia leant forward. ‘Dimples is all for tossing you back in the tank for the dirty slaver scum you are, sailor-boy.’
Bull laughed. ‘Oh, I like this one. You always did have a taste for them spicy, Black. My little slavery jaunts up the Shedarkshe was just to pay the bills, girl, and I was doing them a favour. Why do you think the craynarbians carry that crab armour of theirs around on their backs? Compared with life in the jungle hell-hole of Liongeli, standing on a Cassarabian auction block has a lot to recommend it.’
The commodore pulled Amelia back before she could knock the prisoner off his stool. He looked Bull dead in the eyes. ‘Isn’t it a mortal shame the Jackelian airship that caught you on the surface with your holds packed full of pitiable craynarbian flesh did not feel the same way.’
‘Jigger Jackals,’ swore Bull, ‘and jigger you too, fat man. We did what we needed to, to survive. You’ve gone native, Black, you’ve forgotten the cause; bought off with soft bedsheets and honeyed hams, paying your taxes to parliament each year like a good fat little shopkeeper.’
Amelia turned to their clerk by the door. ‘Get his helmet and toss him back in the water, we’ve finished with him.’
‘Damn your eyes,’ shouted Bull, ‘I haven’t said I won’t help you.’
‘That’s it,’ said the commodore. ‘You remember all your crew floating alongside you in your tank, you start thinking like the skipper you once were, rather than the man you’ve become. Here’s the offer: you and your people crew for me, lad, a little jaunt up-river into Liongeli. I’ll see your water sentences are converted into nominal transportation – not to the colonies, but to the plantations up at Rapalaw Junction. I’ll hold your papers, and anyone who makes it back alive with me to Jackals will be sailing as a free citizen by the end of our trip.’
‘You have that kind of influence, now?’
‘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