Jack Cloudie - Stephen Hunt

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crowded with canopy-covered stalls selling silks and spiced rice, iced-water sellers weighed down with gas-cooled tanks on their backs, importuning the clients coming out of the great domed bathhouses. The drak followed the line of the stone pipe network that fed the capital with its precious water supplies, flying so near to the ground that Omar winced as they banked around minarets, the breeze from their passage ruffling the robes of the watermen at the major tap-points, officials inspecting the lines of those waiting for any sign of unpaid water taxes.

      On the drak hurtled, riding the thermals from the whitewashed city below and hardly beating a wing now, gliding up towards the tallest of the hills where the Jahan Palace waited. Not for nothing was this called the Jahan – simply, the world. A tower-tall crystal dome on the brow of the hill, ruby coloured and surrounded by smaller emerald green domes. World enough for the Caliph Eternal and his court. Sultans and emirs came here to renew their vows and the pledges of their nations to the mighty emperor of emperors, Akil Jaber Issman, blood descendent of the legendary Ben Issman himself, his name be blessed. What chance would the barely freed slave of an outlawed heretic house have when swimming in such perilous currents?

      Farris Uddin’s massive drak glided towards a series of fortifications sitting watchfully behind the massive central dome of the palace. Embedded on top of a rocky rise, it was the eyrie of the guardsmen that protected the caliph and his realm. Tilting back, the drak used its wings to break, two massive clawed feet touching down on the rock floor of a cave-like opening, then swinging forward to walk them into a hangar where jagged walls were hung with rows of colourful shields. A stableman emerged from a door in the wall and ran a cable through the drak’s harness, before receiving Farris Uddin’s instructions on the creature’s care. As the young stable hand led the drak away, Farris turned to Omar. ‘That is Boulous, my retainer. He is a slave, and though his blood is originally of Jackelian stock, his heart has been raised to be as stout as any guardsman that serves the order. I chose him for his keen mind. Let his caution, wisdom and loyalty become yours.’

      ‘I shall be at least twice as loyal as he; you have my word under the sight of god and Ben Issman, his name be blessed. Are they in the palace below, master? The priests of the new sect that had my house declared heretic?’ asked Omar.

      ‘Indeed they are,’ said Farris Uddin, splashing cooling water on his shaved head from a wall-mounted basin.

      ‘Do not sell me to them, master. I shall work harder for you than a dozen—’

      Farris Uddin raised his hand for Omar to stop and pulled out the young slave boy’s roll of indenture papers. He pointed to the sigils sitting in the bottom corner. ‘Can you read that?’

      ‘It is the code stamp of a transaction engine, master.’

      ‘I know what it is. I asked can you read it?’

      Omar traced his fingers across the embossed code of vertical bar shapes. ‘It is the date I became a freeman.’ Omar ran his fingers across the code again, confused. ‘But—’

      ‘Always read the small print, Omar Barir,’ instructed the guardsman. ‘Your papers as a freeman were drawn up by your father two months ago. Long enough for you to have travelled over the desert with a water caravan and made your way to civilized company on your own. Before, mark you,’ he raised a warning finger, ‘before the House of Barir was declared heretic.’

      ‘I do not understand, master?’

      ‘A slave cannot serve as the cadet of an imperial guardsman,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘But a freeman can. And in the service of the Caliph Eternal you become Centless. Those in military or civil service are not permitted to follow any one sect. Your oath is directly to the lawful descendents of Ben Issman, unifier of the one true god, and the empire, his name be blessed. No other loyalties are permitted. Not nation, not tribe nor house or sect.’

      ‘But why am I to be your cadet?’ Omar blurted out. Why did you venture all the way out to the western coast to spare me from a heretic’s fate?

      ‘Because my last one fell off a drak,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘And because it will annoy the keepers of the new sect endlessly to see the last blood of the House of Barir walking the palace wearing guardsman’s robes. And for many other reasons too, but they are not yours to know.’

      ‘What call did my father have on you?’ said Omar. ‘He sent for you, did he not? That is why you came to Haffa.’

      ‘Call enough,’ growled the guardsman. ‘Now hold your tongue and save your questions, boy. A cadet calls his guardsman master as well as a slave does.’

      ‘Yes, master.’

      ‘Down there,’ Farris Uddin pointed out of the hangar towards the palace, ‘under those great domes rules the most powerful man in the world. Sultans from Zahyan, Seyadi, Fahamutla and a dozen other kingdoms come to beg favours, offer tribute and remind the Caliph Eternal what good, loyal clients their countries make for the empire. The high keepers of the hundred sects of the Holy Cent jostle each other aside to shower the emperor of emperors with his share of temple tithes. Womb mages vie for favour and peddle promises of miracle cures and prodigiously lethal new creatures. Viziers plot their way to higher council, while generals and admirals struggle to obtain new commissions and appointments. Courtiers and courtesans are as the grass you will walk on, the sighs of their greed, envies, hopes and ambitions are the breeze you will feel on your cheeks. Down there is opulence without equal in the world, but it is not a safe place. You will quickly come to yearn for a world of simple fishermen and uncomplicated water farming.’

      Omar nodded. The waves from that world down below had already lapped out and destroyed his own familiar existence, setting him adrift. There was an irony that of all the places in the empire, the tides of fate should have carried Omar here.

      You have a cruel sense of humour, my lady fate. You cut away my chains and then you steal my world. And here you are now, pushing a sword into my hands. Whatever weapons this killer gives me I shall master, and when I am as great a guardsman as I was a slave, I shall find the people who killed my father and burnt my home to the ground. And one day I will find and free Shadisa, this I swear.

      CHAPTER SIX

      ‘Help me,’ begged the six-year-old stuck down the claustrophobically tight shaft. ‘I can’t breathe down here, I’m choking, please—’

      But Jack couldn’t help. He was running for his life through the vaults of Lords Bank, hissing waves of poison gas swirling at his heels, the shouts and shots of the bank guards and the constabulary whistling around him. Maggie was waiting for Jack at the breached wall, trying to stop him ducking back out into the sewers.

      ‘Go back for them, you can’t just leave the boys in there.’

      ‘It’s little Tozer,’ said Jack, ‘he’s stuck – we’ll all die if we try to pull him out.’

      ‘It’s not just Tozer,’ shouted Maggie, ‘he’s in there with your brothers, Jack. Your brothers are thieves now, just like you.’

      ‘No!’ screamed Jack, but the bank’s wall had collapsed behind him. He scrabbled at the fallen masonry with his nails, digging until his fingers were broken and bleeding.

      Boyd was laughing in Jack’s ear, shaking him by the shoulders until he felt as if he were rocking on the deck of a ship. ‘Leave them to die. Leave all the runts to die.’

      Jack gasped as he woke, his cheeks wet with tears. For the boy he couldn’t save, or for the two brothers he had abandoned to their fate?

      ‘Damn me for a coward,’ whispered Jack to himself, rubbing his eyes as the makeshift bed swung gently. For that is what I am. Try as he might, Jack couldn’t get used to sleeping in a hammock, the sling of fabric between the boilers permitting its occupant no shifting or rolling from side to side. It was an all-enveloping swaddle that moved of its own accord with the trims and turns of the airship.

      As if this alien way of sleeping wasn’t enough, there was the noise of the ship: the Iron Partridge’s croaking beams, the crackling from behind

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