how well they like playing the fool with me when Furnace-breath Nick comes to call.’
Dred muttered, but he did as he was bid.
Cornelius’s eyes narrowed. Something was wrong here, deeply wrong. Was Jackals in danger again from her ancient foe to the east? If so, the old enemy would count themselves lucky if they lived to regret it. That was the thing about invasions. In the end, it just meant the shifties were coming to him.
‘What is going on here?’ Gabriel McCabe pushed past the ring of sailors urging on the fight; one of the seadrinkers trading blows – badly – with a Catosian soldier in the confines of the Sprite’s mid-deck. The first mate grabbed his sailor, Veryann moving in to pull off her fighter at the same time.
‘She broke my jigging nose!’ shouted the sailor, clutching a kerchief to stem the flow of blood as McCabe held him in the air.
‘He gave challenge to me,’ retorted the soldier, bridling and pushing her blonde hair back out of her face.
Commodore Black slid down a ladder and dropped to the deck, quickly followed by Amelia. ‘A blessed challenge is it? The Sprite of the Lake is too small to be fighting duels.’
The sailor pointed at Veryann’s soldier. ‘It was no challenge. I only suggested to her that when we get to Rapalaw Junction we find a nice room and get down to the hey-jiggerty.’
Veryann stepped between the sailor and her mercenary. ‘What manner of fool are you? No free company fighter will submit to mate with you until you have beaten her in combat. You must prove yourself fit before you bed a Catosian, demonstrate the superiority of your blood lineage. You issued a challenge to my fighter, duel or not.’
‘Ah,’ said the commodore, ‘I do not think any of us in Jackals do things in that way. There now, a simple misunderstanding of cultures. So let’s be putting away our knives and cudgels before I have to bring out the keys for the Sprite’s brig.’
Amelia did not like the gleam that had entered Black’s eyes as he looked at the commander of their force of mercenary marines. That gleam meant mischief on its way.
Gabriel let go of his sailor and indicated the group of Catosians who, up until a few minutes before, had been wrestling on the deck, their taut bodies gleaming from the effects of the muscle-growth stimulant favoured by the Catosian regiments – the sacred drug shine. ‘Must your people spar naked like that? Most of our crew were locked up in Bonegate before they came on board. Your soldiers are driving them crazy down here.’
‘We need to maintain our edge,’ insisted Veryann. ‘It is the fighters’ way. If your sailors have an issue with discipline, you should raise the matter with Bull Kammerlan, first mate.’
‘No disrespect intended, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘It’s a fine thing to see such a sight, indeed it is. But if you could see your way to modifying your fighters’ code to include a few clothes when you spar, I may still have some sailors left alive when we reach Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo.’
‘Town ho,’ called a sailor from the hatch above. ‘It’s Rapalaw Junction.’
‘At last,’ said Amelia. ‘A chance for solid land and fresh air.’
The commodore climbed back up the ladder. ‘Let us hope that they have the facilities to fix our gas scrubbers, professor, or this expedition may be limping back home next week with nothing but empty pockets to show your rich Mister Quest. Run up the cross and gate, lads.’
A sailor came past with the Jackelian flag, a red field bisected with a white cross, the portcullis of the House of Guardians on the upper right-hand corner, the lion rampant in the lower left. Now that was out of place. She knew how Commodore Black felt about that flag, what it would cost him inside to raise parliament’s standard above his boat.
‘He’s not my Mister Quest,’ said Amelia. She gazed up at the Jackelian flag, running up to flutter in the warm river breeze. ‘Why the flag? I thought Rapalaw Junction was a free port.’
‘Free it may be,’ said Commodore Black, ‘but the only law here belongs to the garrison of redcoats attached to our ambassador’s residence, minding the trade and keeping the river open for Jackals this far out. Everything else at Rapalaw is far from free. Yes, the repairs’ll be costing us a pretty farthing, unless their traders have changed their ways since I was last in these parts.’
A beaten-up collection of narrow-draught barges and river boats lay moored to a line of piers in front of the crumbling walls of the town; occasionally a listless figure propping up a rifle appeared above its baked adobe battlements. A few hired hands lethargically pushed carts filled with buckets of fruit away from a barge, as if they had all the time in the world to move them out of the range of the green buzzing insects circling the crop. Women dangled their feet off the wooden pier, mending fishing nets that looked as if they had seen better days. Plenty of craynarbians mingled with the junction traders, larger than their brethren in Middlesteel, shell armour glossy in the sunlight, not dulled by the smog and grime of a Jackelian city.
Drawn by the sight of the large u-boat coming towards port, a small crowd of children and onlookers began building by the gate, heads shielded from the sun by wide straw hats. As the Sprite lay mooring up, a more official-looking figure bypassed the ranks of children, followed by two soldiers in kilts, their bright but tattered uniforms at odds with the simple white cottons of the town folk.
Amelia was one of the first to cross the gantry that the Sprite’s seadrinkers swung out to the pier, Commodore Black close on her heels, pulling on his blue officer’s jacket, polished epaulettes gleaming in the bright jungle light.
‘I’m with the residence,’ said the official in the bored tones of Middlesteel’s quality. He whipped at his face with a brushlike insect swatter. ‘You would be Damson Veryann?’
Amelia pointed back to the Sprite’s deck. The Catosian soldiers were taking position along the hull, holding short stocky carbines that would serve them as well in the confines of the jungle as along the passages of the u-boat. Their leader crossed the gantry; her pale skin and blonde hair serenely cool while the rest of them sweated like dogs in the febrile afternoon heat of Rapalaw’s rainforest.
The official walked up to Veryann. ‘The ambassador promised we would extend every courtesy to Abraham Quest’s expedition. Bit of a change of plans, then, what? I understood you were going to lay up north of here and we would resupply you on the quiet.’
‘The situation has changed.’
‘A little bad luck coming down here,’ explained the commodore. ‘We’ll have need of your workshops before we can put out again.’
‘Bad luck is one fruit you will always find growing on the vines of Liongeli.’ The official gave a languid wave towards the other craft in port. ‘Rapalaw Junction’s shipwright business isn’t much to look at, but such as it is, you’re welcome to use what the town has. I’m sure the town’s council will appreciate your money; just as I’m sure Abraham Quest’s counting house has enough coinage to keep even the grasping rascals that run the free port happy. Will you still be requiring the services of your guide?’
‘Guide?’ said Amelia, bemused.
Veryann stepped in. ‘We will.’
‘Bit of bad luck there, too,’ said the official. ‘Ironflanks is in the garrison stockade at the moment. A couple of my uplanders dragged him in for disturbing the peace. Smashed up a place three nights ago. Nearly broke the neck of a drinking-house owner.’
Amelia could not believe her ears. ‘That’s a steamman name, surely? A steamman smashed up a jinn house?’
‘He’s not the normal sort of chap you find coming down from the Steamman Free State,’ said the embassy man, ‘that I will grant you. I suspect