Secrets of the Fire Sea - By Stephen Hunt Page 0,1

the power charging the battlements doesn’t fail on your watch?’

‘It won’t come to that,’ said Hannah. But she knew how optimistic her words sounded even as she spoke them. There were press gangs operating across the city now, and even the senate’s latest raft of anti-emigration legislation wasn’t going to fill all the empty vacancies in every trade from the tug service to clerks for the ministries. ‘In the cathedral they’re saying that the new ambassador from Pericur is going to be one of your modernizers. He’ll argue against any attempt to embargo Jago.’

‘Of course he’s a modernizer,’ laughed Chalph – although there was little humour in his growl of a voice. ‘Jago’s been a dead-end posting for embassy staff for centuries. The new ambassador is being sent here as a punishment! He was ambassador to the Kingdom of Jackals before. A bit of a demotion, don’t you think? From the most powerful nation in the world to this cold, dying place.’

‘How can you say that, Chalph? You were born here!’

‘You weren’t,’ said Chalph. ‘You should go home. Go anywhere there’s a future for you.’

‘This is my home.’

‘No,’ Chalph insisted. ‘The Kingdom of Jackals is your real home, this is just where you ended up.’

Hannah shook her head. ‘Jago is all I’ve known.’

‘It’s all I’ve known too,’ said Chalph. ‘But there’s more out there than this place.’ Chalph picked up a piece of rock and angrily tossed it in the direction of the Horn of Jago, the vast peak rising up behind them out of a cluster of the capital’s domed greenhouses. He threw the stone as if he might break one of the tall stained-glass windows along the senatorial palace circling the mountain. Hannah winced as the flare-house at the very top of the summit erupted with magnesium phosphorescence. A brief flash of light to help guide in the traders that had long ago stopped calling on the island.

‘It’s just that I don’t want you to go back to Pericur,’ said Hannah, trying to placate her quick-tempered friend. ‘Alice says there might be war between Pericur and the Kingdom of Jackals now there’s a new archduchess sitting on your throne.’

‘War? No, that’s foolish talk. I’m sure the archduchess would be happier if the Kingdom’s colonies disappeared from our southern border, but traditionalist though our new baronial council may be, they understand well enough the power of the Kingdom’s Royal Aerostatical Navy. The archduchess might close the border and hope the rest of the world goes away, but she won’t be invading Jackelian possessions anytime soon. Your people have airships, mine don’t.’

‘The Jagonese are my people,’ said Hannah.

‘Your parents were both Jackelian,’ said Chalph. ‘The senate can’t stop you leaving the island. You have a choice, at least. More of a choice than I have. I’m bonded in service to the House of Ush. I go where the baroness sends me, just like the baroness has to trade where the archduchess sells her the charter to operate. But you, you can travel to the Kingdom, to Concorzia, go to the Catosian city-states if the fancy takes you. But all you do is stay here. You’re wasting your life away on this island.’

‘It doesn’t feel like a waste to me.’

‘It should do,’ said Chalph. He pulled out a large Pericurian timepiece from a pocket in the heavy dark leather clothes that were the fashion among his nation. ‘You’re the cleverest person I know, but you’re surely one of the laziest too. The entrance exam is beginning now. You’re meant to be back at the cathedral, not watching steam shapes above the ocean.’

‘Yes,’ sighed Hannah, ‘I suppose I am.’ She pointed at one of the clouds of mist leaping up off the sea. ‘That one’s a lion.’

Chalph responded to the game and pointed at another wall of steaming mist rolling up behind the first. ‘And look, that one’s my future. Come on, let’s see if we can’t find you one too.’

It was a measure of how determined Chalph was to secure a life for Hannah off Jago that he had personally come to fetch her back to the cathedral. Ursine might be more or less the same height as their counterparts in the race of man, but the dense flesh and thick muscles of the bear-like people meant that a citizen of Pericur usually weighed twice as much as a similarly sized human. And Chalph urs Chalph had dragged his weight up every rung lining the air vent before wrestling open the