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MR JYVES HAD A SMALL apartment on the third floor of the north wing. For one of the servant classes this was a modest luxury, but in fact he could have had better. For five years his superior Stanislaw Flue had been trying to persuade him to take one that did not fall into shadow in the afternoons, but Jyves had his reasons to stay.
The main one being that his coil-inductive aetherwave transmitter was hidden in the secret chamber behind the fireplace and the signal-boosting aerial conveniently stuck up the chimney. Three floors down, in his ‘pantry’ as it was traditionally known, he had an extra set of controls hidden inside an old disused oven.
Locking himself into his pantry despite Darthiby’s panicked pleadings for advice and guidance, Jyves eased open the oven, connected the circuit to the batteries and took out his code book while the electrical components warmed up. This was not going to be the usual simple message. How to phrase it? ‘THREE ARRIVING VIA OLD SLUICEWAY’?
Carefully, ignoring the pleading and hammering at the door, he set the pins on the coding wheel, loaded it into the spinner, and set the clockwork in motion. Hastily he shut the old oven door lest the pinging of the pins should be heard, took a quick shot of brandy to give explanation to his unseemly act of privacy, then braced himself to calm the storm outside.
#
RODNEY AND KARLA HURRIED down a steep set of stairs after the Firetail, whose tiny light didn't do much for those coming behind. For a long time no-one spoke. Rodney stumbled twice in his horrible court shoes. Karla tried to count the steps but soon lost count, but she didn’t lose her grip on Rodney’s jacket nor her grip on her own panicking feelings. The stairway changed direction twice, narrowed, widened, narrowed again, then became very steep. Each of them remained focused on staying upright and keeping silence. Neither was easy.
Gradually a sound grew stronger down below. It was like a steady stream of water that was receiving the occasional gush and splutter of smaller contributions from the side. Judging by the smell, they had taken the wrong door and were about to fall into a sewer. Rodney was just raising the courage to say as much to the Firetail when he stumbled on a final step that wasn’t there and realized he’d reached a floor. He dimly saw a large arched chamber, but still feared a sudden drop into the noisome water that now sounded so very close. Romarny had turned left and was holding her light within an alcove or cupboard, so there was little to see. Rod turned to Karla, recalling her fear of the dark, and received her.
They waited while Romarny fumbled in the lamp cupboard, and heard her twice mutter, “Dammit!” A few moments later a light was struck.
There were plenty of lamps on the shelf, all dusty. She passed her matches to Rodney and said, “Get another lit.” But it was not so easy. The lamps were old, and the oil half-dried. He got one going just as the match reached his fingers. He flicked it out and sucked on his burn, suppressing the urge to yelp in pain.
As the light improved, they looked around.
It was a large barrel-vault chamber but with a deep channel running down its centre: presumably the Sluice itself. The water sprang from an ancient pipe at the left hand end of the chamber but with only enough volume to quarter-filled the entire channel. At the downhill end it vanished into a low tapered tunnel – the top of the tunnel being like a little hump-backed bridge to the opposite quay. Other pipes seemed to have been laid in at a later date and it were these that occasionally delivered vile gushes into the main stream.
Poised well above the water on two rusty iron frames that crossed from quay to quay was a curiously shaped boat. The lower part was the boat; long and narrow with squat ends and sideways wheels mounted along its edges; while the upper part was like a complete lid ready to slide neatly to the gunwales guided by six brass rods.
Terribly like a coffin, it was.
There was another craft there as well, but this second boat was apart. Its lid was lying on the opposite quay. The once-elegant leather seats were out too, stained and spotted with mould. There were davits but they were swung away and disconnected. It seemed the place had been abandoned halfway through repairs.
“Oh I’ve heard of this!” said Karla in a voice somewhat reminiscent of her father’s at full throttle, “It was built hundreds of years ago to give the king of the time a bolt-hole in case of war. The tunnel flows all the way to the Eleanor Fields!”
“Ah!” said Rodney, beginning to understand why the whole thing had been built.
She added, “It even got used, once.”
“In a war?”
“No, King Attagronne the Third ran away with the Queen’s handmaiden...”
“Enough with the history!” snapped Romarny, “Can’t you see that we’re seriously screwed here! The good boat is behind the useless one! We’ll never get away!”
“Wait,” said Karla firmly, as if she was well practiced at quashing panic. She took the lamp, squatted at the edge, and peered down at the frames that held the useable boat in place. “See. Rusted. We’ll force it down, then float under the bad boat.”
“We need tools,” said Rodney.
“There,” said Karla, pointing. On the opposite quay were tools, ancient-looking things tossed down and furred with rust and dust, “Let’s get some more lights! We can do this!”
#
KING ATTAR THE FIFTH sat by an empty bed in the west wing of the Havens Royal Hospital. It was the best room in the hospital; the one reserved for him alone. He had the best chair in the building, the best silverware, the best brandy, and five attendants. No, he did not want his feet washed. No, he did not want a late supper. No, he did not want the fire built up. No, he did not want musicians.
“I just want my son!”
“The surgeons are doing their best, sire,” soothed Stanislaw Flue.
“I want him here, alive! Alive by my side!”
“He is still alive, sire. The last word was that ...”
“I know what they said! I want him unharmed, standing right there, laughing and joking and drinking brandy with me!”
“He doesn’t like brandy, sire.”
“I know! That’s the damn trouble! He’s not the son I wanted. His mother was not the wife I wanted. This is Not What I Wanted!”
“No, sire. It’s a terrible thing, sire. We’re all deeply shocked, sire. He was very brave ...”
“He was a fool!”
“He tried to save another man’s life...”
“The life of that foreigner isn’t worth a jot to me, and even less now. Ever since he arrived here there has been nothing but trouble. In the colonies. In the newspapers. That damned Firetail loose in my homelands ... and now flaunting her red arse in my very own palace, at my very own Ball! That invader is cursed, I tell you, he’s brought a curse upon my house! And now my little boy is dying! Dying!”
“Yes, sire. But there may be a smidgen of good news in all this.”
“What’s that?”
“We didn’t want to tell you, sire, until it was confirmed, but Lady Radiata is convinced now she is pregnant. There are definite signs.”
“You told me that earlier.”
“Oh, ah, yes indeed I did, Sire. Sorry, I’m trying to find the good in all this.”
“Thanks, thank you, Sorry Stan. But Gods! These last hours have been appalling, quite appalling for me. Disaster after disaster! Any sign of Mennase?”
“No, sir. As you know ...”
“Yes! I know! I’ve got some idea where he will be.” Attar swore again – an oath as pungent as any a man could produce from the very gutters of town, then rubbed at his face. “Thank you, Stan, yes, alright, I’ll treat it as a sign of hope. I wonder what put the juice back into the boy?”
“Not ‘what’, sire, but ‘who’.” Flue seemed to become hesitant all of a sudden.
“Well come on, then? Who put the juice back into the boy?”
“The, um, the Britisher, sire. Captain Hoverrim.”
“No! No I don’t believe it!”
“He had a private session with Lancieur the day after he arrived. Immediately, the lad sprang from his bed and set to his labours. Everyone was amazed by the transformation.”
“Why wasn’t I informed? There was time for an airship to reach me.”
Once again Flue hesitated. “Sire, I know your son has grieved you these many years and I... I didn’t want to spoil your homecoming by raising the subject too soon.”
“Well it’s already utterly ruined, so now the subject is having quite the opposite effect upon me.” Attar studied the fire for a moment, then sat back slightly. He raised his brandy glass and tried to raise his spirits with it. “Hoorah. A grandson on the way! Never thought I’d see the day. Well they say there’s always a fleck of gold in every bucket of muck. Here, have a brandy ...” at which point there came an interruption, “...What is it?”
Attar's senior footman had arrived at the door. Attar hesitated with the bottle in his hand, wondering what news had arrived. He set it down carefully and they both braced for the worst. The messenger bowed. “My apologies for interrupting, sires, but there has been some sort of trouble at the science works.”
Attar visibly relaxed. “Another explosion?” he growled sardonically, “Has he finally done it this time and blown himself to pieces? After what we have already had tonight, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
“No, sire, seems there has been some sort of an altercation; shots fired and the like. A man has been taken to the hospital and two others have been arrested in a drunken stupor. I have the Captain of The Watch outside right now.”
“Oh for the sake of all the gods!” roared Attar, “I don’t care about someone’s drunken brawl right now!”
At which point the chief surgeon arrived, looking troubled.
“Sire, mixed news, I’m afraid.”
“Where is he?”
“I’m sorry, we cannot move him for several days. His future is in the balance and we must do all we can to allow him to heal.”
“Then lead on! I shall go to his side!”
“As you command, but please, do not embrace him. Do not even touch him. His condition is extremely delicate.”
“Oh gods how many times have I heard that before?” Attar was heard to mutter as he hurried for the door.
“Sire,” called the messenger, “what shall I tell the Captain of The Watch?”
“Oh just throw them in with the pigs for all I care!”
#
KARLA, HER ARMS SEASONED from years of wielding spanners and hauling on chain-blocks and wrestling stubborn valves into place, strained on the end of the long steel crowbar. Below, the first of the rusted frames yielded to her ministrations. The boat dropped six sudden inches.
“Easy!”
“We’ve got to keep the noise down,” hissed Romarny from her watch position, “we’re not far from the roller line, and the guards are probably on alert by now.”
“What is the roller line?” asked Rodney, heaving on his bar opposite Karla.
“Just a more modern version of this: a railway line exclusive for the King. Except it can run both ways.”
“I see.” Rodney slowly bent the frame back from the masonry like a spring and the boat dropped on his side too. “This is all very well, but I fear it’ll slip away before we board.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Romarny, “the flood will lift it off the frame. Stop at the waterline.”
“Flood?”
“Yes. How else did they send off the boats with enough speed?” She lifted her lamp towards the uphill end of the chamber. Finally Rodney began to make out a big circular iron door, stained from who-knew how many years it had been holding back who-knew how much water. It was surrounded by an elaborate mechanism of brass bars and gears fixed into dozens of rusty cast-iron gudgeons. He wondered what was on the other side of the door.
“Ninety thousand gallons.” Romarny said, as if she had read his mind.
“That’s a lot.”
“It’s enough.”
Karla heaved again. Her side dropped some more. The boat was looking less steady. The front frame was at a different slant to the back. The boat rocked.
“Got to keep it balanced.”
“Yes.”
Creak – Bang/Scrape!
“Hush! Less noise!”
“Not possible.”
“Make it possible!”
“Relax, we’ll get it.”
“You do that! I’m just feeling like a rat in a hole here.”
Rodney strained. He had the most difficult one, the one least rusted. It bent, moved, the boat shuddered lower.
“Nearly there.”
“Get the bow well in the water, but keep the stern higher.”
“Why?”
“The flood will push it off easier.”
“I keep hearing this word ‘flood’, but how do we get it going?”
“Karla, you want to take a look at those control bars?”
“In a minute!” It came out very snappy, as if maybe she had heard those sorts of demands too many times before. Rodney gazed across at his love, wondering what he could say to sooth her. By gosh, she looked good in her frillies! Where Romarny was all muscle and suntan and nearly as straight as a boy, Karla was far more solid and womanly. Her milky skin glowed red with the effort she was putting into her work.
Now what had he been about to say?
“Your turn,” she was saying at him.
“Hmm?”
“Your side. Another foot lower and we’re there.”
“Oh, right.” He heaved on his bar, having to bend almost double now to reach to the greater depth, and with a loud fart-like noise his trousers ripped all the way from his crotch to his cummerbund. Karla was instantly reduced to a fit of the giggles.
“Focus. Focus!” snapped Romarny, trying to listen up the stairway for any trouble coming. Rodney, suddenly feeling a cold draft at the rear, pushed down his pole again, got the tip into a good spot, and heaved. The boat skidded down a good fifteen inches, slipping better now that it had reached the slime line. He moved to the second cross-frame and got that down a long way too. His side seemed ready. The running water was spraying where the front end touched the surface.
“Your turn,” he called softly across to his beloved.
But Karla was still helpless with laughter. As she bent down to jab her steel pole into the best vantage point it suddenly slipped from her hands, clanged into the frame below, and vanished into the water with a splash. She sobered up at once. “Sorry!”
Romarny growled.
“Go look at those controls,” said Rodney kindly, “I’ll finish it.”
Karla, looking sheepish and biting her top lip like a girl embarrassed, hurried away with her lamp. Rodney crossed the bridge to her side and applied his pole to the frames with gusto. The boats skidded lower, and lower. There, it was ready.
Karla came back, looking worried. “It’s padlocked,” she told the Firetail
“Damn,” said Romarny, immediately reaching for one of her bombs.
“Ahhh, haven’t you got the keys?”
“Oh, yes.” She passed them over, “Little bit easier I suppose.”
Karla unlocked the padlock, and with a lot of struggle she got it off. It secured a stained copper cover about the size of an attaché case, which she now forced open. Underneath was a stout cluster of clockwork. Rod heard her utter a tiny sound of dismay.
“What is it?”
“We can’t do it. Rust everywhere. It used to turn this shaft, which would have opened the sluicegate, slowly. Very controllable, but now...”
Romarny bent to take a closer look. “No problem. Break that, break that, then force it here. Bang.”
“And it blows open. Whoosh, all at once.”
“We’ll survive.”
Footsteps hurried over. It was Rodney. He peered at it too. “It’s all or nothing. No, maybe if we broke this, forced a bend into that: ...”
“It would still blow,” said Karla, and she would know more about things blowing open than anyone else, thought Rodney.
Romarny impatiently started tugging something from her belt. “Less talk, more bomb!” She pointed at the boat. “Check the boat, make sure the lid works. Karla, you get in too. And the luggage. And a lamp. I’ll get this ready.”
Rod, now seriously worried for the woman’s sanity (and his own safety) hurried to the ugly little boat, now with its gunwale below the edge of the quay, and wormed his way down into it. Karla passed in their lamp, then the luggage. Now Rod was inside a luxurious cabin with red leather seats, polished woodwork and brass handles all around.
Well, it had once been luxurious, now it just stank of mould.
The under-frames creaked under his extra weight, and creaked again as Karla gingerly stepped aboard. He moved across to ensure their weight was evenly distributed. She came in with a wriggle and a grunt. She was sweaty. It smelled good.
“Let’s try these cranks,” she said, moving with great care as the craft continued to complain. Rod took the nearest one and applied force. It was stiff and sticky at first, then began to turn passably well. It was soon apparent, however, that the lid would not come down unless all six handles were turned together.
Karla, taking the upper end of the cabin, tested her two. They moved well enough.
“Excellent. Now stay there,” he said, “I’ll check the front ones.” Moving quickly but carefully, he descended to the front down the central isle.
But, as before, the ancient frames that supported them in this nasty ditch were not quite parallel to each other. As Rod passed a critical point, the balance on the boat shifted suddenly to the left. It went clunk and he lurched that way. This one small action was to set off a catastrophic chain of events.
The bow frame suddenly and entirely collapsed into the water, pitching the boat steeply into the shallow stream. Bow in but with its stern still hooked on something, the fat little boat began shaking vigorously from side to side, banging repeatedly into each flank of the stonework trench. Karla squealed in alarm.
Rodney swore. Standing unsteadily he put his head out, “Hurry up!”
#
ROMARNY WAS POISED to light the fuses. As the boat suddenly lurched, then seemed to collapse with a bang and a scream from Karla, Romany wanted to run for it, but held herself in check. The bombs!
“Hurry up!” she heard Rod Hoverrim shout. It did nothing to quell her panic. Taking up the lamp she immediately smashed its chimney on an iron protrusion. Its flame began fluttering and smoking, but at least she had fire. Forgetting the fuse-order she’d been planning she quickly lit one bomb, then the next, but the last one refused to take. “Come on, come on,” she said to it, but still it would not light. In desperation she smashed the lamp entirely, leaving a streak of burning oil down the wall, and sprang away.
“Coming!”
She ran for the boat, leaped onto its stern, and thus caused the rear frame to skid down some more, but only on one side. The vessel tilted even more and there were cries of alarm from within. She nearly went off the side.
“We’re taking water!”
She clambered around to the highest point, glanced back once at the bombs, and hastily wriggled into the cabin under the raised lid.
“Close it, close it!”
Rodney and Karla needed no encouragement. They seized the closing cranks and turned them with gusto. Immediately the lid was jammed. Frantically they all tugged and heaved at their cranks, trying to figure out which one was the cause.
“Now, together, smoothly!” Ordered Karla.
“How long... ” began Rod, but got no further.
BA-BANG!
The concussion, and then some dirt, came hurtling through the remaining gap. Bits of metal pinged and thudded across the cabin cover. Something large struck the top and went rattling over the bow.
“Still good, keep turning!”
As the last debris settled outside, the lid gap closed down to a finger’s thickness, then nothing.
“Done!”
“We should be away any second.”
But they weren’t. Nothing was happening.
“So, ... this flood thing?”
“Alright so I panicked! I just want to get out of this hole!”
“Let’s try rocking the boat.” Karla heaved herself to one side, then to the other. Rodney and Romarny joined in. They stayed stuck.
“It’s not working,” growled Rod immediately, “You got any more bombs?”
“No!” snapped Romarny, then she patted at her pouches as if rethinking. “Yes, one.”
“It’s going to have to do.”
“But Rod, it’s a blackglass bomb.”
“Gods!” cried Karla in dread, “We can’t use that!”
“Karla, it won’t work in here. It needs daylight.”
They all slumped again. “You got any other ideas?” asked Rod, finally.
“No!”
“Perhaps there’s simply no water left in that reservoir,” suggested Karla.
“Oh great!” raged Romarny, “So we’re going to sit here while the entire palace comes looking for us? Not on my watch!”
“Right,” said Rodney, grabbing for the nearest crank, “I’m getting out to ...”
“No!” shouted both the women at the same time. They glared at each other.
“Something’s hooked on our keel.” said Rod.
Karla, in the stern seat, suddenly began peering down and all around. Moments later, just behind the last seat, she found something. “Got it! There’s a release lever!”
“Wait wait wait wait! We still need the flood.”
She still reached for it. “Well we haven’t got the flood!”
“We’ll use the blackglass bomb,” said Rod very decisively.
Romarny repeated herself crossly, “It won’t trigger! It needs daylight!”
Rod said nothing, just lifted the carpet bag and patted it meaningfully. Romarny’s eyes narrowed as if thinking. Rod saw her shoot a glance at Karla. Ah! Worried about the Charm. Or more precisely, worried about Karla learning its secrets.
“It’s unavoidable!” he snapped, “We have to get going!”
Romarny did not seem to want to agree, but in the end she did. “Alright!” She grabbed the nearest cranking handle and began. The lid went up. She put one of their two remaining lamps out on the deck, then wriggled upwards, fumbled out her bomb, aimed, and carefully lobbed it as near as she could to the stubborn iron door that still held back their promise of escape. They heard the glass shatter on the quay right where they had stood earlier.
It did not explode.
She wriggled back in and turned to Rod. “Right, your turn. We’ll close the lid to the minimum, then you do the next stage.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Karla.
“Trust us,” said Rod, all too aware of how much he sounded like Romarny right then. He got out the Charm, and once the lid was positioned as best they could contrive to protect their rear, he sat still and meditated upon the strange device for a moment. It had been two weeks since he had held it, two weeks since he had – just that once – managed to divine one of its strange secrets. Had Karakuri ruined it by his meddling?
He was about to find out.