The Iron Ship (20 page)

“There is an area for it, master,” said Tuvacs.

“Lem, find where it is, take the dogs, bring them back here.” Now it was Lem’s turn for disappointment. “You’ll be in the tavern soon! None of you are to get drunk or wander off, do you hear? No fighting, no whoring. I plan for us to leave as soon as we can. I’ll not be chasing you out of cathouses. If you’re not here when we leave, you’ll stay here. There’s a train setting out from Gravo tomorrow, and I want us to be on it. The boy here’s going to take me to find a draymen, Rusanina will choose us a good team. We’ll be back soon.”

Boskovin, Tuvacs and the dog set off. Rusanina barked harshly at her consorts when they tried to follow; they sank lower into themselves, and went to stand by Lem.

“This is all going swimmingly,” said Boskovin happily as they left the station.

“H
ERE SIR
! H
ERE
, the finest dogs!”

Tuvacs shook his head. “Not this one. I do not trust his face.”

“How so?” asked Boskovin.

“It is his manner, he is too desperate. He looks like he has nothing to lose.”

Boskovin nodded. “I’m getting gladder by the minute I bought your crime out, boy. What about here?”

They stopped by a kennels with an ostentatious archway made of punched metal. There was no barker outside to drag people in.

Tuvacs nodded. “This is a good place. The way here in Mohacs-Gravo is that those who do not need to advertise, do not advertise.”

They stepped through into a walled compound. Dogs were tethered all around the periphery. When Rusanina came in, they began baying loudly and leaping about at the end of their lines. A man hurried out of a small door let into one wall. When he saw the men, his face lifted. When he saw Rusanina, his face fell.

“Welcome sirs!” he said in passable Maceriyan. “You are here looking for dogs?”

“We are,” said Boskovin. “I need one team of eight. I have my own lead.” He rested his hand on Rusanina’s back.

“A Sorskian dog?” said the man.

“Yes,” Rusanina answered.

The kennelmaster’s manner veered between wonder and wretchedness. “I have not had the pleasure of seeing such an animal,” he said. “She will pick the dogs?”

“Of course,” said Boskovin. “So no rubbish.”

The kennelmaster sighed resignedly. “Sale or rental?”

“We are going to the Gates of the World.”

“Sale then,” said the kennelmaster. His mood picked up.

The kennelmaster went about his patter, pointing out various of his teams, then individuals within each team.

Rusanina sniffed, craning her neck forward, passing her nose over the air. She approached one team. The dogs greeted her warily, allowing her to smell their necks, facial and anal glands. She was brief, and did not provoke them.

“No good, no good,” she said. “This one smell sick. This one crazy. This one angry with two-leg master and four-leg leader. This one old.” So it went. The draymaster allowed them to inspect two more teams, but Rusanina was dismissive of them all. They passed a group of lead dogs who bared their teeth at her, but she held her head high and ignored them.

They left the man wheedling at his gate.

As they went from kennelmaster to kennelmaster Tuvacs found himself looking over his shoulder. The Street of Dogs ended at the canyon that separated the twin cities. Here the upper reaches of the Olb flowed. Not ten miles further upstream, the distant sea finally relinquished its dominion of the waters and the tides held no sway. Like all dirty businesses, the kennels were located in Gravo. But even here was wealthy compared to where Tuvacs had grown up, on a shelf carved into the cliffs, raised by a gang of gleaners. He wondered if he’d see anyone he knew; it could be dangerous if he did, for he had broken his bond when he and Lavina had run away. He doubted it, and doubted too if anyone would recognise him. It was three years ago, and he had filled out greatly.

Mohacs’ side was higher than Gravo’s, and the richer city was in full view. He kept his eyes firmly on that. If he ever returned to the twin heart of the Imperium, it would be to live on the other side.

They found a suitable place. The prices the kennelmaster charged were double some they’d been quoted, but Rusanina was satisfied, and that was what was most important to Boskovin. Contracts were exchanged, a deposit paid and the remainder of the monies displayed. The chosen dogs were marked with blue dye. Boskovin sealed the deal with sweet plum brandy. The kennelmaster promised delivery of the teams to the station within three hours.

The evening deepened. The warmth of the day was bleeding off.

The traffic worsened, and it took them a long while to recross the canyon back into Mohacs, and twenty minutes to find the tavern where Marko and Julion were, once there. The men were half-drunk, reluctant to leave.

“It’s going to be a cold night,” said Julion when they stepped outside. The men shivered and stamped their feet.

“Then work harder,” said Boskovin. “We don’t have long. Get the gear packed up. The dogs will be here in two hours from Gravo. Get the carts put together.”

The men grumbled as they made their way back to the station. Under glimmer lamps, they unpacked their dog cart from its cases and bolted it together. It was a skeletal, light thing made of steel and wood, designed for rugged terrain and easy repair, with wheels that could be removed to allow it to run on its runners. Presently, the kennelmaster arrived with the dogs. Rusanina inspected them all, ensuring they were the animals they had paid for. The rest of the money changed hands. For an additional small fee, one of the kennelmaster’s men stayed on to guide Boskovin’s men through the cities to the station on the far side of Gravo.

Almost as soon as he had arrived back home, Tuvacs was to leave.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The National Interest

G
ARTEN HAD HIS
office deep inside the Admiralty Building. Trassan sat therein, upon an uncomfortable chair; too small, the ribs too fine, the padding hard. Being so enabled it to achieve the high curved effect on the cushion so beloved of Molliger Holm’s workshops, but it was damned unpleasant to sit on. Trassan moved his backside across it, trying to find a position that did not feel like he was permanently damaging his coccyx. He failed, so he stood and began to impatiently pace.

A huge clock upon a marble table installed solely to house it clicked loudly. Ceilings in the Admiralty were high, the pronounced echo they produced encouraging the bureaucrats responsible for Karsa’s sea power to whisper. This one was twenty feet above the polished oak floor. Give or take. Trassan calculated the overall dimensions of the room—six hundred feet squared, far too big for its tiny fire to heat. Then he figured out the loading stress required for the beams holding up the roof. The ceiling was broad, vaulted, heavy with complicated plaster cornicing and roses from which hung three large brass chandeliers. The candle holders in them had been modified to take glimmer lamps, and not long since; the solder lines were still brighter than the surrounding brass. The smooth spaces of the ceiling were dominated by a massive fresco of Tiritys, exiled god of the sea, and his twenty-one daughters. One, Ionatys, had been hideous where the others were beautiful. In the painting, she cowered in a deep cave, rejected by her sisters. She had had the last laugh, Trassan recalled, being the only one of Tiritys’s children to escape Res Iapetus’s wrath. Allegedly she still dwelt in the deepest parts of the ocean, creeping out of the sea to devour the children of coastal villages. It was a Farisles legend, one from the immense cluster of little lands that huddled around the far southern edges of Karsa. Trassan had no idea if it were true or not. He suspected so, there were worse things under the water than Ionatys.

One of them was why he was there.

The clocked let out a miniature carillon. He glanced at it, a monstrous ormolu thing under a heavy glass dome. Independent wheels set into the face gave the phases of the White Moon, Red Moon and Twin relative to one another, a huge dial occupied the bottom third of its face, a tidal table crammed with writing so miniscule a jointed arm bearing a magnifying glass had been fitted to the clock case to allow one to read it. Four cavorting dolphins held it aloft, an emperor anguillon coiled around its base, mouth ready to strike at one of them. Altogether the clock must have weighed as much as a man. The gold plating must have cost the sanity of at least one gilder. He calculated how much quicksilver they must have got through. Anything to stop him looking at the hands creeping around their digits and reminding him how late his bloody brother was.

The door banged open. Garten strode in, flicking through a dossier as he came. His heels clicked loudly on the parquet.

“Trassan!” he said with a smile. “I am sorry to keep you waiting. The High Legate’s illness has the place in uproar. I’ve had the palace bombarding me with messages for the last three days.”

“That’s not your purview, surely?”

“Not Admiralty business, no, but Duke Abing has been given the nod as the emissary to Maceriya in the ah, unfortunate event of the Legate’s death for the election. I’ve been given my own nod that I will accompany him.”

“Well done,” said Trassan. “You’re going up in the world.”

Garten threw the dossier down onto his enormous desk. “It’s not a certainty. It would just be my luck to do all the work only for some sycophant to get the job. That would upset Charramay, she’s dead set on my going.”

“How is Charramay?”

“She and the children are fine,” Garten replied distractedly. He pulled out his chair and sat. “Take a seat.”

“No thank you. That chair is bloody uncomfortable.”

“Heh, yes they are. But they are very fashionable.”

“Right.”

“And they help us prevent people outstaying their welcome.” He smiled again, less broadly this time. “Look, Trassan, I’ll get to the point.” Garten’s expression became serious.

“What is it?”

Garten pushed at a paperweight on his desk, glass with the emblem of the Admiralty imprisoned inside. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“You can’t issue the licence. Why in the fifteen hells not?” Trassan’s cheeks flushed.

“Look, I did warn you. I looked into it, and the answer was no. Emphatically so. I’ve been warned off quite forcefully. There are protocols to follow, Trassan. The treaty with the Drowned King; your expedition is going to go right across his territory.”

“So?”

“It has to go through the proper channels, Trassan.”

Trassan paced back and forward. “For fuck’s sake, Gart! This is in the national interest. Who the hell is going to object? Do we want the Maceriyans to get there first? You have heard, haven’t you? The moment Vand put the notice of his discovery out, Persin announced construction of his own fleet.”

“Yes. Yes I did hear,” said Garten quietly. “‘Race to the Pole!’ was plastered all over the papers, brother. And still is.”

“Floatstone! Did you hear that? Four refitted ships. He’s going to be ready long before the
Prince Alfra
is completed.”

“Your ship is faster. You told me only an iron ship had a hope of getting through the ice to the shore.”

Trassan rubbed his head. “Yes. Yes, but there is another way, to leave the vessels and travel over the ice. Very dangerous, but there is always a chance he might make it. Do you want to risk that?”

“What I do not wish to risk is the safety of this nation’s trade routes.”

“Really?” shouted Trassan. His voice boomed from the high ceiling. “What you do not wish to risk is your career, more like. You would deny me the chance of advancing the cause of our country to move your peg a few rows up the game board? What do you think the broadsheet editors might feel about that?”

A cough interrupted Trassan’s tirade. Garten’s secretary was poking his head around the door at the far end of the office. He looked comically small so far away.

“Is there anything wrong, master?” said the man.

“No, no,” Garten said. “My brother and I are engaged in a robust discussion.”

The man looked from brother to brother.

“That is all, Meesham,” said Garten.

“Very good, sir.”

The door clicked shut.

“Do us both a favour, Trassan, and keep your voice down,” hissed Garten. “This is an office of dignity, not the province of dockers and shipwrights. Any licence that infringes on the rights of the Drowned King must be signed by Duke Abing. As it is, with you wishing to drive a spike of iron right across the king’s territory, it’ll have to go to a full inquiry. And don’t think to threaten me, you stupid bastard. I’m on your side!”

“It doesn’t feel like it. Why can’t you issue the licence now? The inquiry will almost certainly grant it in the national interest.”

“I fully expect it to. And that will be my recommendation.”

Trassan looked out of the window. Wind had cleared the sky of fog, and it was cold, full of rain. “A recommendation, is that all you can do? If it’s so certain, why not just issue it?”

“Because I can’t! Look, a recommendation is a lot better than nothing.”

“Not by much, brother. Not by much. You are going to look like a fool for this. Imagine that Persin gets there first, and plunders the whole site. That will be on you.”

“Of course I’ve taken that into consideration! But the wheels of bureaucracy turn to the urging of their own engine, not to that of public opinion.”

“Fuck the proper channels.”

Garten shuffled papers, tapping them on the desk until he judged them properly aligned, then laid them down. “If it were anybody else, Trassan, I might not offer my recommendation. It is my judgment that there is a high chance you will fail. Then you will provoke the Drowned King for no reason. The last thing Prince Alfra needs at this time is an army of the dead creeping around the high tide mark. Can you not understand that? Perhaps, do you not think, it’s better that Persin upsets the undersea kingdom and the king looks to Maceriya for a time? Do you see?”

“Perfectly!” Trassan threw up his hands. “I understand that you have no confidence in your brother, and you would risk our national interest for the sake of your own advancement.”