Jack Cloudie
A tale of high adventure and derring-do set in the same Victorian-style world as the acclaimed The Court of the Air and The Secrets of the Fire Sea.Thanks to his father's gambling debts, young Jack Keats finds himself on the streets and trying to survive as a pickpocket, desperate to graft enough coins to keep him and his two younger brothers fed.Following a daring bank robbery gone badly awry, Jack narrowly escapes the scaffold, only to be pressed into Royal Aerostatical Navy. Assigned to the most useless airship in the fleet, serving under a captain who is most probably mad, Jack seems to be bound for almost certain death in the far-away deserts of Cassarabia.Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Omar ibn Barir, the slave of a rich merchant lord finds his life turned upside down when his master's religious sect is banned. Unexpectedly freed, he survives the destruction of his home to enter into the service of the Caliph's military forces – just as war is brewing.Two very similar young men prepare to face each other across a senseless field of war. But is Omar the enemy, or is Jack's true nemesis the sickness at the heart of the Caliph's court? A cult that hides the deadly secret to the origins of the gas being used to float Cassarabia's new aerial navy.If Jack and his shipmates can discover what Cassarabia's aggressive new regime is trying to conceal, he might survive the most horrific of wars and clear his family's name. If not…
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Stephen Hunt
Jack Cloudie
Contents
Epigraph
Chapter One
Jack Keats was pushed aside by the others in the…
Chapter Two
There was only one upside to being a slave, Omar…
Chapter Three
Jack stumbled to the rail at the front of the…
Chapter Four
Jack didn’t know the name of the airship field the…
Chapter Five
Omar ran through the great house’s central garden. Everywhere there…
Chapter Six
‘Help me,’ begged the six-year-old stuck down the claustrophobically tight…
Chapter Seven
‘Where is your mind today?’ demanded the cadet master, cutting…
Chapter Eight
Jack watched First Lieutenant Westwick walk across to where he…
Chapter Nine
Omar returned to the palace. There was a chiming noise…
Chapter Ten
Standing in the corridor that led to the great library…
Chapter Eleven
Jack rubbed his brow, half covered by a turban and…
Chapter Twelve
The grand vizier angrily sent a goblet spinning across the…
Chapter Thirteen
Captain Jericho leafed through the ship’s dispositions in his cabin…
Chapter Fourteen
Omar dodged aside as a miniature beyrog-like monster slashed at…
Chapter Fifteen
Jack was helped to his feet by Lieutenant McGillivray, the…
Chapter Sixteen
‘Heaven’s teeth, can’t you do this any quicker?’ asked the…
Chapter Seventeen
There were shouts verging on panic from the spotters on…
Chapter Eighteen
Omar was running through the Citadel of Flowers’ oppressive halls…
Chapter Nineteen
Omar winced as the gaggle of the citadel’s surgeons and…
Epilogue
‘Now then, laddies,’ said the gruff lieutenant on the desk…
About the Author
Other Books by Stephen Hunt
Copyright
About the Publisher
If you can smell the scent of death on the air and you do not know where the smell is coming from, then the smell is coming from you.
Ancient Cassarabian proverb
CHAPTER ONE
Middlesteel, the Kingdom of Jackals’ capital city
Jack Keats was pushed aside by the others in the gang as the shout echoed out from the shaft in the wall. They were deep in the bowels of Lords Bank, having broken in through the sewers. But even so, if the boy kept yelling like that, one of the bank’s night watchmen would hear the racket and then every member of the young gang would be done for.
‘I told you it was a mistake bringing the boy,’ said Jack. ‘He’s too young.’
‘Shut your cake-hole,’ snarled Boyd. It was hard to tell whether the gang’s leader was snapping at Jack for questioning his authority, or venting his aggression towards the boy crawling deep into the shaft running alongside Lords Bank’s main vault. Boyd leant into the dark shaft, looking in vain for any sign of the small boy’s flickering gas lantern.
‘He’s scared down there,’ said Jack. And of course, my fingers aren’t trembling from fear. That’s just the cold.
‘He should be more scared of me,’ spat Boyd, bunching his fist in anger before turning on Jack. ‘Yeah, and you’ve got two brothers his age locked up in the sponging house. And that’s where they’ll stay unless we get inside this vault. So you think of your kin, not ’im down there.’
‘The workhouse,’ said Jack. You ignorant fathead. ‘They’re in the workhouse now, not the debtors’ prison.’
The five others standing behind the gang chief sniggered at the distinction and Jack’s superior tone of voice, all of them grimy and dust-covered from breaking through the brick foundations of the sewer to get this far. Maggie was with them and she gave him a despairing look – the kind that said this was not a good time to be wearing his education on his sleeve. She had shown him the ropes of street life in more ways than one. Eating stone-hard bread in a debtors’ prison and broken by the family debts, or washing down the same rations with the gravy water that passed for soup in the workhouse. Any difference between the two was paper-thin, and Maggie knew it.
‘Well, pardon me,’ laughed Boyd. ‘You’re not the son of a gentleman farmer down ’ere. You’re shit, just like us. On the job, on the make.’ Boyd pointed down the shaft towards the young boy. ‘He’s small, useful shit. You’re clever shit, and I need your fingers, so don’t give me no excuse to break some of ’em for you.’
Jack guessed this wasn’t the time to point out the meaning of a double negative to the hulking thug. ‘And what about you, Boyd?’
‘I’m the biggest shit of ’em all, Cracker Jack. I dream up the juicy jobs; I saw how your clever fingers might drag us all out of the gutter. After we pull off this job we’ll dress like swells and eat like lords from the best the city’s got to offer.’
Jack stared into the dark shaft where the boy was coughing. But only if their little shaft rat found the vault’s timing mechanism and managed to jam it, only if he held his nerve and kept the special tool Jack had forged wedged into the machinery for long enough. And only if Jack was every bit as good as he believed himself to be.
‘Talk to the runt,’ Boyd ordered Maggie. ‘Steady his nerves.’
Maggie moved to the hole and started whispering and cajoling. She was as much a mother as most of the young street children and pickpockets in the slums behind Sungate had known, although she was barely an adult herself. Her pleas and support must have had the desired effect, though, because Jack heard the cogs of the transaction-engine lock they had just exposed snap into place. It had shifted from its nighttime lockdown mode to its daytime setting, and that meant the vault could now be opened. Provided you bore the two golden punch cards of the chief cashier and chief clerk of Lords Bank, inserted in unison. Or, failing that, if you possessed a talent for opening such things.
