Chapter 3

 

Within the moderately luxurious surroundings of his private express carriage, en route from the Union capital of Lexigrad to Tardale in northern Maord state, Lord-Delator Robert Calderon – Federal Chief of Police, Chairman of the Executive, and a bachelor at forty-seven (since no lady of fashion would dream of marrying a man whose status depended on an appointment reviewed every four years, or so it pleased him to think) – was an even less happy fellow than usual. His private secretary, Mr. Palgrave, had noticed this from the scowls which his master was persistently shooting at him over the edge of the Union Gazette, but after forty-five years in the civil service and only three away from pocketing his well-earned pension, he was not the sort of man to invite needless trouble. In any case, Calderon soon added a voice to the looks, and one that matched them beautifully in its venomous restraint:

        “Mr. Palgrave: the meaning of this, if you please,” whereupon he handed him the paper. The banner headline – Northern regiment captured in Rowana Coup: Lord Robert Calderon sent on emergency mission – was sufficient to shock the unfortunate secretary into immediate self-defence:

        “Sir! I don’t know nothing about this! I never let that through the office! I never even saw it in my life! I swear by the Goddess herself, I never–”

        “Oh, spare me the religion, Palgrave! I know now it wasn’t you, unless you did it in your sleep!” Palgrave, in his moment of desperation, had quite forgotten that his master, in his final year at the Grand Lyceum, had majored in classics and telepathy. This was just as well, or subconscious anxiety might have given Palgrave the mental appearance of guilt. Although occasionally a useful diplomatic and interrogative tool, telepathy in this day and age was an inaccurate science at best, and one that Palgrave had rarely been grateful for in his master.

        “Nevertheless,” continued Calderon, “someone’s head is going to roll! And I thought we had everything covered.” Then, after a moment’s reflection. “What goddess? What the hell sort of cult do you belong to, Palgrave?”

        “No cult, sir, with respect. Very old and established, is the Church of the Fata Morgana. My family’ve been in it for generations. Got my education at the Morganian Academy. Shorthand, classics, arithmetic, you name it, they teach it.”

        “Human sacrifice? Dancing naked round open fires? Summoning dark primordial entities to barter souls with? No offence, I hope, Mr. Palgrave, but I think I would be correct in identifying your family church with the goddess of death, fate, and precious little else of note. You wouldn’t call that a rather pessimistic outlook?”

        “Some might call it a rather realistic outlook, sir, though I know there are those that like nothing so much as a priest telling ‘em how they’re special to their god. Very likely, I think not! And I see nowt wrong with looking forward to oblivion, when you think what some of the alternatives might be.”

        “Still, at your age, I hope my ambitions may be a little less stark. Tell me: did you bring your assistant along?”

        “Young Prentis? Yeah, I booked him in second class somewhere. Did you want to see him now?”

        “No, no. Just interested,” whereupon the carriage relapsed into silence, broken only by the railroad ambience of clattering iron and the occasional blast of a steam whistle from several less well-appointed carriages up the line. Calderon took a silver coin out of his waistcoat pocket, turned it over a few times whilst subjecting it to baffled looks, sighed, and threw it to Palgrave. “Make anything of that, can you?” he asked, uninformatively.

        “Eh, not much. Coin with, err, two tails? One a dragon, the other a shield. Where’s this from, sir?” he asked, passing it back.

        “It’s an Albinor shilling,” answered Calderon, “and it’s the only currency minted on that wretched island. For royal and military use only, I believe. The rest of the people are lucky to get fed and watered. A discriminating folk, are the Albinor. Now, from her activities in Rowana, not to mention her very sudden ascension, one would have assumed that this ‘Gloriana’ creature was the most appalling tyrant. However, if we are to do her justice, we must acknowledge her to be an incredibly modest tyrant. I’d have had my face on the coins, first thing.”

        “Ah. If that’s the case, sir, I think it’s mystery solved. If you’ll just let me give you the low-down on our new friend Gloriana- .”

        “Good heavens, you know about her?” asked Calderon, sitting up with sudden interest. “But how on earth–? She came out of nowhere! I haven’t been able to trace her back further than two years, after the death of their last king!”

        “Actually, I don’t know for sure, sir, but I have a good lead. It was after we got that report back from the battle at Rowan Head – the one we did manage to keep to ourselves. I remember what that idiot journalist thought fit for the public ear.”

        “As do I, Mr. Palgrave,” replied Calderon, producing the draft of the suppressed article from his leather valise, “and I’ve been running over the wretched thing time and again, and have yet to find a bright side to it. Just listen to this: ‘As I stood on Rowan Head, I could see the first wave of the new ships known as skirmishers emerging from the fog-banks which increased their advantage, though probably did not determine the outcome of the battle. These ships,’ lo and behold, ‘are carved with prows in the fashion of dragons and sea-monsters, as are all ships of the A-R-N, but driven after the fashion of the ships of antiquity, with banks of oars: a necessity caused by the domed roofs of iron plating with which they protect their upper surfaces from enemy artillery. This armour is continuous from bow to stern, save one or two hatchways from which are deployed the chain-gun.’ Never going to forget this part. Here’s technology for you, Mr. Palgrave. I think even your goddess might applaud! ‘This newly-developed machine-driven firearm is capable of firing in the region of two hundred and fifty rounds per minute.’ You’d knock a few holes with that, and I’m rather afraid they did. ‘Those of the defenders at the beach who were not killed in the intensive bombardment were completely routed. When the skirmishers landed, being small enough to be beached and later floated, they deployed heavily-armed platoons of marines from hatches in their flanks, below the armour. Yet there was no-one for them to engage with: only a scene of carnage, corpses, and debris.’ Cheerful fellow, this Mr. Stenson. He should quit the Gazette and take up being a full-time doom-prophet, if there’s any money in that racket. Even if there isn’t, I may have to leave him with no choice, in light of his recent masterpiece!” at which he cast a glance of fresh acid at the Lucinian Union’s premier monthly news-sheet.

        “It isn’t going to be that bad, is it sir?” asked Palgrave, semi-rhetorically. “I mean, they’ve got no reason to hold our boys–”

        “But they’ve held them anyway, Mr. Palgrave! For three wretched months, and they’ve turned our ambassadors away, and does that give you much confidence? And now I have to go crawling to this woman, in the vague hope that all she wants is our utter humiliation before she caves in! I just pray the Lord-Delator will sate her appetite for condescension, though I’m half expecting nothing less will do the trick than the entire senate on its knees before her, with sackcloth, ashes, the full deal. Not that I’m resentful,” he muttered, with forced tolerance. “By all means, the Northern Borderers did the right thing, surrendering. No-one wanted our boys to die defending Fort Rowan, of all gods-forsaken places. It just would have been so much better, if only they’d been able to retreat with a little more alacrity! Then we should be spared all of this, and I could suffer this Gloriana and her horde to help themselves to that sorry little domain, and much good may it do them! Would have saved us a mark or two, at any rate: we’ve been giving Queen Rowan handouts ever since the sixties, after all that business with our miners settling their land – that is, if an antiquated and translation of some obscure daemon holy book is to be accepted as a title deed. What did the Albinor do to Queen Rowan, incidentally?”

        “Nothing much, sir: she got out before the siege, with a few of her court favourites. Actually, she was at the consulate in Lexigrad just before we set out, demanding we take action to restore her.”

        “My heart bleeds. What about this Gloriana, then? What’s your lead?”

        “These new guns, sir. From what little we know of the Albinor, they couldn’t have made ‘em without outside help or divine intervention, and I ruled out the latter. That suggests the services of one hell of a gunsmith, and I tracked her down.”

        “Her? I know we live in an adaptable age, but I still wouldn’t have said that was much of a trade for women.”

        “Wasn’t ever, sir. That was the problem. She was, if I’m not mistaken, Virana Kitson: born in the twenty-second year of the Union to as poor a family of disgraced aristocrats as ever supported the losing side in the Revolution.”

        “Familiar name, that. What do I know that from?”

        “Your family are holding her family’s old lands, sir.”

        “No; my elder brother might know her from that, but I don’t ever expect to be intimately acquainted with those lands. You don’t think I’m in this job for the glamour, do you? Something else, it was.”

        “Well, sir, there’s plenty more to tell. She got a scholarship at the Lyceum, poor girl. Could have told her she’d learn nothing to help her to a decent trade there, begging your pardon, sir. I know how it’s different for senators and the like, and you being a gentleman of means, and all that–”

        “No; you really are thinking of my brother. Back to Miss Kitson, if you will.”

        “Well, that’s how it came out, sir. She left with honours, but they don’t bring the bread in, and it’s not like she could have stood for senator. So she tried to set up as a gunsmith – which is what her father did, after the Revolution, only he turned a better trade than she ever managed. And in the end–”

        “She was a gun-runner! During the Concession Conflict! I remember now!”

        “That’s right, sir. The old delator had a thing going with a ‘friendly’ legion of daemons, so he secretly paid her to take them a consignment of muskets. She took ‘em, but it all went pear-shaped. Queen Rowan and the delator sorted it all out over the table, in the end, and she was just a criminal caught in the act. And to make matters worse, one of those daemon scum–”

        “Palgrave! Where are we heading to, now? Have a think.”

        “Sorry sir. Northern upbringing, and all.”

        “I fail to see the connection.”

        “I’m just saying, sir, it’s easier to be fair-tongued when the only daemons you ever see are those miserable sods who troop into the sweatshops at the crack of dawn and out of ‘em at the midnight bell. In the provinces, folk sometimes get a little bit irritable, what with the ones raiding the farms at the dead of night, or stealing kids away out of their homes, or their cradles, come to that.”

        “Err. Aren’t we veering rather into the territory of old wives’ tales, here?”

        “Begging your pardon, sir, but no. We all know why they do it. Granted, they’re poor – who isn’t? Hungry, too, and no-one likes that. And most of ‘em aren’t able to have kids of their own, as if that’s an excuse for swiping ours and making changelings out of ‘em.”

        “Pardon me! I’m sorry, but this is getting beyond the realms of reason, Mr. Palgrave! It may surprise you to hear, that in accordance with the illustrious Mr. Lingate’s theory of Adaptations, we have now widely given up assuming that any vaguely odd-looking creature, or person, is some antediluvian monster left over from the times when myth makes do for history! Going by this very reliable rule, anyone will now tell you that the daemons – and I am sorry to have to break this to you, but it had to come – are merely a wretched little offshoot of humanity, adapted – however grotesquely – for survival in harsh conditions. Sensible, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

        “Sure is, sir. Ain’t true, though, and if you’ll bear with me, you’ll see for yourself how it can’t be. Miss Kitson, now. This daemon officer – as I was saying – took a fancy to her. Not shared, I might add, but that didn’t matter to this brute. He let his clerics work upon her, and the Goddess only knows how, but they made her into a daemon herself. You can imagine how that went down. They say the daemons are ten times as passionate as your average person, and she was – raging angry, that is. Can’t blame her, really. Studious girl, trying to make her own way, when a bunch of brigands try to sell her across the conference table as some officer’s whore. Bless her, mind: he never got the chance. Went cool on the idea, after she nearly had his face off. Queen Rowan offered to put her up instead, and she accepted, more fool her. The time came when she wanted Miss Kitson to make guns for her legionaries, so she could raid our farms and our freight trains all the better, but she wasn’t up for that. So Queen Rowan had her indicted for treason. Always was the touchy type.”

        “True enough. I’m actually surprised your Miss Kitson’s still alive.”

        “Oh, they never killed their own, sir. Like I said, they don’t have many children, and not many willing recruits for decades. Living two hundred-odd years is all very well, but what’s the point if you’re going to spend the extra time starving in the shanties, or the ditches? If they’d have hung all the malcontents, they’d have died out years ago. So they haven’t, not for ages.”

        “I see. What did she get, then? Life imprisonment?”

        “No sir. Mutilation. Check your coin.”

        “Ah.” Calderon looked again at the ‘shield’ face of the silver shilling, and now recognised the pattern of the eye-holes and the mouth-slit which he had previously dismissed as simply some rather unimaginative coat of arms. “Mystery solved, indeed. Though I do wonder what sort of sense of humour, or lack of, it takes to have the face of one’s mask embossed on the official currency. What happened next?”

        “She escaped. Some courtier finally took pity on her. That must have been a bloody novel experience. They made for the coast and joined some other daemon outcasts, who’d stolen one of Queen Rowan’s sloops. Those ones we sold them during the naval cutbacks, if you remember.”

        “Then I imagine this must be fairly recent.”

        “Yes sir. Around about U. 123. We’d just stopped paying the Concession grants, because of all them train robberies which Queen Rowan was denying all knowledge of, surprise surprise, and her folks had started preying on the fishing ships from Albinor to make up their deficits. Nowt the Albinor could do about it, back then. They had a great big navy, but it was all as old as the hills, and those surplus sloops were fast little buggers. Now, I reckon a spot of piracy was all those outcasts were planning, but Miss Kitson had other ideas.”

        “To arm the Albinor with ‘skirmishers’ and ‘chain-guns’?”

        “Looks very much like it, sir. Done all right out of it, hasn’t she though?”

        “Mr. Palgrave; if I should have the very unlikely fortune to live to the age of... let’s see. She must be, what, one hundred and four by now, give or take. If I make it that far, I hope I shall have amounted to more than a gunsmith with a fancy title. No; what you’ve told me convinces me that this ‘Regent Gloriana’ cannot possibly be in any real command of the Albinor. Which is good, I suppose. There’s every chance we shall be able to find a reasonable mind to deal with. Incidentally, I’m... err... I’m sorry I didn’t seem to take your information all that seriously, back there. The truth be told, Mr. Palgrave, I know almost nothing about the daemons, except what I get from complaints: at least in Lexigrad, your ‘average’ daemon seems to be either the very worst type of thief and layabout, or the most hard-done-by wretch in the whole of fair Lucinia, depending on who’s doing the complaining. What they do in their natural habitat, apart from raiding the railroads and spending our money, I’ve no idea.”

        “Well, sir. I think there may be more than a few folk around these parts prepared to give this Gloriana the benefit of the doubt, as long as they don’t catch any of her marines making off with their stock or their kiddies.”

        “These parts? Good grief, and we do seem to have come rather a long way,” remarked Calderon, glancing out of the window at the bleak but majestic uplands of Maord state. “Tempus fugit, or words to that effect. On that matter, what am I in danger of missing while I’m on this little jaunt?”

        “Meeting of the Executive on the fourteenth, sir.”

        “Oh, I expect the prefects will be able to get a blazing row going perfectly well without my assistance. Anything important?”

        “Senate review board, sir? The question of your re-appointment.” A pained, and rather panicky expression flitted across the Lord-Delator’s face, but was quickly suppressed. The same could not be said for the corresponding urgency in his voice:

        “Date! The date, Palgrave!”

        “The twentieth, sir.” Calderon relaxed somewhat.

        “Damn it, Palgrave. You really had me going there. We can be back for the twentieth, alright. Certainly, we can.”

        “And if they give us any trouble over the hostages?”

        “They’d better not,” he replied, rather unconvincingly, since both of them were well aware of the implications of provoking a war with the Albinor. Even assuming a victory – which, in view of the recent demonstration of Albine technology, they hardly dared – it was certainly not the sort of thing which Calderon needed on his resumé a week before his review came up. “Besides,” he continued, doubtless grasping for more salient hopes, “no doubt she just wants us to squirm a little more, as I said. They’ve made no demands, so it can’t mean that much to them or to her. A quick bite of humble pie, and no doubt we can be on our merry way, then I shall make a point of giving a certain journalist something he can really write about! Well, within reason. I believe I am still officially Inquisitor Grande, but it’s not an office I ever dreamt of resurrecting in practice. However, my not being inclined to actually hack off Mr. Stenson’s hands and take out his rumour-mongering tongue, is not going to help him any great deal the next time he tries to get one of his doom-laden ‘exclusives’ off the popular press! Take a memo, Palgrave. ‘First thing to do on return...’ make that, ‘First thing to do after the review board: silence the hack.’ Then we can all sleep much easier.”

        As Palgrave took the memo, uncertain as to the seriousness of the request but, as ever, erring on the side of caution, the train drew into the valley and city of Tardale, on the very southern edge of the majestic (and utterly useless, and thus hitherto uncontested) mountains of Rowana. The hub of industry for northern Lucinia, Tardale sat uneasily somewhere between civilised society and the other sort of society created when prospectors, miners, profiteers, and related service trades (often involving large quantities of alcoholic relief and red lighting) are in a mad rush to settle in the vicinity of a major resource. The ancient village of Tardale had, give or take the ruins of an abbey and the stumps of a stone bridge, been wiped off the face of the earth by the march of progress, and certainly no daemons had set foot there for well over a century. For all their vices – which Palgrave considered were substantial enough – he had to grudgingly concede them one redeeming feature: their hatred of industry in all its manifestations. Knowing Calderon’s views on industrialisation, scientific advances, land enclosures, and suchlike subjects, Palgrave had always been very careful to express none of his own opinions, and barely a flicker of distaste crossed his countenance as the train wound its way through the avenues of blackened brick chimneys and into the depot.

        At least, he reflected, they wouldn’t be stuck in this minor circle of Hades for very long, since their plans dictated an instant ride into the beautiful, extremely hazardous mountains of Rowana, and to what end only the Goddess herself could know. He would have prayed, had he any belief in the power of prayer, but the Church had ruled that out centuries ago, along with bloodthirsty jihads and human sacrifice. These days, one could only really reverence the Morgana by dying at the appropriate time. It was a simple creed to follow, at any rate.