Every square inch of the inner walls of the crater were covered in crazily coloured tenements, and narrow winding streets. Massive barge-palaces floated on the lake. Gondolas and sky chariots flashed through the air. The sky over every tower was filled with pirate ships, hanging in groups like desert vultures flocked over the body of a dying sand lizard.
By the lakeside Ulrik could see a titanic new building, tall, cathedral-like, gargoyle encrusted, the largest man-made structure in the city, built over the long abandoned spot where once a Temple to the Demon Princes had stood. Molok’s citadel looked like a man-made mountain carved to resemble the ship that had attacked The Pride of Karnak on a cyclopean scale. Seen from the air, it had the same shape and lines on a massive scale. It had not been there when Ulrik had left the city. It seemed impossible that so imposing a structure could have been built in so short a time but there was no denying the evidence of his own eyes.
Long lines of people snaked through the streets towards the demonic tower, like pilgrims trudging to a sacred place in search of enlightenment and redemption. The wizard’s power had indeed grown while Ulrik was away.
Over the citadel hovered a fleet of black ships of the same shape. Although dwarfed by Molok’s fortress, each was a gigantic warship of enormous power.
He felt a growing sense of anticipation. He had expected to die in the Pit. Now he was back and Hydra lay beneath him as much a promise and a challenge as it had ever been. His family were buried down there somewhere in a plague pit. The thought twisted his heart. He could not even visit them in death.
The ship reversed its engines and slid slowly to a halt at its dock, a monumental platform in the side of a gigantic pylon. Lines were lowered and the airship pulled into place. Moments later landing ramps swung into position and the gates in the side of ship swung open to let them descend.
All around was the bustle of a loading dock. Porters man-handled bales of cloth and crates of ancient artefacts. Pirates and slavers discussed deals, and wizards haggled for alchemical components.
A group of red tunicked sky pirates, led by a tall thin man in clerk’s broadcloth, stood nearby. The man checked something on a list and strode over to Serena. Beside him was a man in hooded black and scarlet robes, a wizard by the look of him.
Ulrik scanned the clerk with his enhanced vision. Subtle protective enchantments enshrouded him but no more than were to be expected by a high ranking functionary of a great House. He stepped forward and bowed deeply to Serena. “Welcome to Hydra, mistress,” he said. “Your safe arrival gladdens me.”
“Thank you, Garder,” said Serena.
“Who is that man watching us over there?” Valerius asked, nodding in the direction of the black-robed mage.
Serena said. “Please answer Valerius’s question. I am keen to know myself.”
Garder looked over his shoulder and lost a little colour. “He is an acolyte of Lord Molok. He has awaited your arrival since your messenger skiff arrived. He claims that you are bringing in an important prisoner. The Lord Molok requests you surrender the wizard who escaped from The Pride of Karnak to him.”
“How did he know about that?” Serena asked.
“Perhaps his demons whisper it to him,” said Garder. He looked significantly over her shoulder towards the ship. “Or perhaps someone in your crew had a message crystal.”
“I find the former more likely,” said Serena.
“Perhaps that is because you do not wish to believe the latter,” said Valerius. “What are you going to do about Lord Molok’s request?”
“It is not really a request, is it?” said Serena. She sounded almost apologetic.
“You would be wise to grant this particular request, mistress,” said Garder.
The sorcerer moved closer, seeming to drift on air more than he walked. “Lord Molok has authorised that you be reimbursed the value of the man’s ransom, and you may keep his slaves.” His voice was high and unpleasant.
“What if I don’t want to?” Serena asked. There was defiance in her voice.
“This is a matter of some urgency. The Council of Captains is behind him on it. If you do not wish to aid us in this the Council will look askance on such disloyalty. And Lord Molok will be displeased.”
Serena paused for a moment, her lips compressed into a tight line, a frown furrowing her smooth brow. Her fists clenched on the pommel of her sword. For a moment, Ulrik thought she might defy the black-clad mage, but then she pouted and shrugged. “The man is a scion of House Karnak. His ransom is worth fifty-thousand denarii.”
“Lord Molok will transfer the funds to you immediately.”
Serena looked at Valerius and shook her head. “Sorry,” she said, almost too softly to be heard. “I would not wish this on my worst enemy.”
“Never fear, dear lady,” said Valerius. “I won’t hold it against you. I look forward to learning more at the feet of this master mage.”
Molok’s acolyte laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.
“And what about us?” Ulrik asked as they watched Valerius marched off to a gondola under the watchful eyes of the Black Sorcerer and his bodyguards.
The pirate princess looked at him. “You are now my property it seems.”
“I am a captain of Hydra,” said Ulrik.
“You were,” she said, “And you and your friend did me a favour back when the demons attacked, so I am going to let you and the cat-girl go free.”
In spite of himself, elation touched Ulrik’s heart. He was free and he was back in Hydra. Things had worked out better than he had hoped. Except of course for the fact that Valerius was in Molok’s clutches and might die there, with catastrophic consequences.
“Just like that,” said Rhea. “We are free to go?”
“If you prefer I could arrange to have you mounted on a slave block and sold to the highest bidder, girl,” said Serena in a tone that said her temper had its limits. Ulrik could understand. It must have been hard for a woman as proud as she was to bow down before Molok’s acolyte. It spoke volumes for the power the wizard had acquired that she had felt the need to do so.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Ulrik. “We are grateful. I am at least. And I am a man who repays his debts.”
“I believe in paying mine too,” Serena said. “Which is why you are free to go.”
She threw something to Ulrik. It was the purse Valerius had given him back in the village where they had been captured. “Take it. You will need some money to get you on your feet. If you need work I can always use a fighting man.”
She said it as if she did not really expect him to accept it, and he understood that too. She knew just how hard it would be for someone who had once been a captain to accept a subordinate’s place. He needed to be tactful though.
“Thank you. I shall keep that in mind. But just now I would like to see the city again. It’s been a long time.”
“Very well. Come back if you want to take me up on the offer. It won’t be long before the whole city needs fighting men, unless I miss my guess.”
“One question if I may,” Ulrik asked.
“Yes,” Serena said.
“The Tower of Molok was not there when last I dwelled here.”
“It was raised in one night. Some say by a legion of demons. No one knows. There was a terrible storm and odd howling was heard in the street. Those who were wise stayed indoors. Those who went outside vanished.”
“I believe you,” said Ulrik.
“Till we meet again, Captain Ulrik.” She left the statement hanging in the air for a moment, and then turned and walked away.
They took a gondola marked with the insignia of Serena’s House to the edge of the Caldera. It set them down in a landing square. Ulrik scanned the crowd and saw that more than a few people were paying attention to them. That did not surprise him. Serena’s family were well known in the city, and their friends as well as allies would be interested in any reports of their doings. There were informers who eked out a living
doing nothing but carrying such tales to those who were interested. He wished that he had his own crew with him now, some lads who could be relied on but they were all dead.
Instead he had Rhea who was an unknown quantity still.
She seemed as excited as a school-girl allowed out of her convent as they took to the streets. She tried to look cool and calm but her nostrils twitched as the air of Hydra attacked them, and her eyes constantly widened as she took in their surroundings. All around them loomed gigantic, half-ruined buildings, inscribed with ancient symbols, covered in greenish moss. The ancient stone-work had a cyclopean quality to it, as if the city had not been built by men but by giants. In the spaces between the ancient buildings were a hodge-podge of every sort of shanty. Crowds swarmed around them.
He felt that way himself, as if he had just arrived from his mesa-top village. This time, though, he even had money chinking in a purse by his side.
Rhea looked at him sidelong and said, “What are we going to do now?”
He shot her a warning glance. “This is not the place for such talk. We need to find some place more private.”
She leaned in so close that he could feel the warmth of her body, and said, “I’m all for that.”
It was well done and it seemed sincere, and no one looking at them would wonder why they were looking for somewhere quiet and alone. Already he was attracting some envious looks, which in a city like Hydra brought their own dangers.
Drunken sailors, men with the plunder of a lifetime advertised by their weapons, amulets and mystical tattoos, filled the street. Magical signs glowed ghostly in the daylight advertising the services of wizards and alchemists and magewrights. Whores, as close to the beauty of princesses as cosmetic sorcery could make them, solicited for business on every street corner. Every second shop front seemed to house a tavern or a dreamsmoke house. Music sounded from every doorway underlying the shouts of the hawkers and the crude jokes of the drunks. Beggars howled for spare coppers.
Two sailors who only moments before had been pledging eternal friendship drew hook-knives and did their best to cut each other to pieces. No one tried to stop them. A few of their comrades were placing bets on the outcome. Ulrik thought the smaller of the pair looked quicker and less drunk but he was not going to risk any money on the outcome.
He was glad to be back. There was no city like Hydra. No other place mixed squalor and wealth, grandeur and ruin in quite the same way. Everywhere there were people of a dozen different races and types: green-haired witchlords from the Viridian Mountains, monstrously misshapen Ogres from the Jattangar Wastes, renegades from Chromea garbed in checked trousers and jerkins. There were folk whose skins blazed with mystical tattoos and who had endured the wildest augmentations imaginable by the practitioners of the fleshgrafter’s art. There were men with massive, barnacled demon-claws instead of hands, women whose skin had been replaced with leathery hides thick as a wagon-lizard’s. There were many more magically augmented people than he remembered.
In a fountain near the Square of Silver an Aquatic elemental played, its humanoid outline rising from the water and then merging with it once more. Not for the first time, Ulrik wondered what strange trick of sorcery had left it trapped there.
Stalls lined the streets. Shops crammed the alcoves in the walls of the buildings. Every second structure was in ruins, as if an army of drunken giants had wandered through the city kicking down everything they did not like. Lichen grew on the cracked stonework. Wind had weathered the broken building blocks and melted away the edges of statues and gargoyles so that in places they bore only the faintest resemblance to the shapes their makers had intended.
Dreamsmoke rose in clouds from lean-tos and the mouths of alleys. Men lay drunk or dead in pools of their own blood and vomit. Everywhere there was noise: raucous singing, the bellowing of hawkers, the angry ranting of arguing drunkards.
As they walked, the differences came to Ulrik. The city had always had an edgy violent atmosphere but something had changed in the time Ulrik had been away. Things seemed even more desperate and there was a sense of expectancy, as if people were only waiting for some sign to leap on and rend one another. Overhead demons shimmered as they soared. They were most likely bound by their summoners but there were many more of them than he remembered.
As he studied his surroundings and found himself once more submerged in the rhythm and voice of the city he began to notice things. Crews eyed each other with more than the usual wariness. Hands were never too far from the hilts of weapons. Protective spells shimmered around their owners even in the day-lit streets. There were more beggars, some of them blank-eyed from drugs. The gaze of others glittered sinisterly, as if something else lurked in their brains and peeked out of their eye-sockets.
The space between his shoulder blades tingled in anticipation of a knife in the back. He told himself that he was imagining things, that it was himself and not the city that had changed, that he simply felt more vulnerable after being away for so long. He did not fall for his own deceptions.
He was not the only one who constantly gazed around as if expecting violence to erupt momentarily. He saw similar wariness in the eyes of every stall keeper and most of the passing sailors, even the drunk ones. Hydra had always been a place where you kept one hand on your purse and a weather eye open for trouble but he had never known it to feel quite so on edge.
Rhea took this in her stride, which was unsurprising. She had never been here before, had never seen the city in any other way. He felt the urge to find out more himself, to confirm his suspicions.
He paused for a moment to buy some roast ulsio from a street vendor, a pock-faced teenager little more than a boy. “What’s up?” he asked as the lad prepared the skewered meat. “Everybody looks as if they are expecting news of a Typhonian raid.”
The vendor looked at him as if trying to judge whether he was safe to be seen talking to. “Just get in? Been out a while?”
Ulrik nodded.
“You don’t look like a newcomer.”
“I’ve been in town before. I was captured and enslaved but I escaped and made my way back.”
“That sounds like a story worth hearing.”
“Another time. What’s all the excitement about? I can taste it in the air.”
“Big meeting of the Council soon. Things are going to be set to rights. Or so they say. There’s talk of a war fleet being assembled.”
“A war fleet.”
“Molok had promised the Council an empire. That’s what all the sorcery is about. That’s what all the new ships are for. Seems he’s working a big ritual.”
“He’s not the first who’s dreamed of an empire,” said Ulrik. “No one has ever united the Council either.”
“He’s got the city behind him. His weapons are powerful, his spells work and fleshgrafts are cheap and good. And he’s made worship of the Demon Princes fashionable again. The temples are full. Bleeding hearts are offered up on the hour every hour.”
“That so?” Ulrik offered some of the skewered ulsio to Rhea. Ulrik ate some more. It was a cheap dish, made from the giant rodents found in the ruins, and he strongly associated it with Hydra. There was a certain nostalgia in just the eating. It brought back memories of his earliest times here. Faces of men long dead suddenly swam into his mind, and glimpses of views seen from the rooftops of places he had not been in a decade returned.
“When did Molok get so powerful?” he asked, passing over a coin for another skewer. The vendor seemed to think he had said too much. His mouth snapped shut and he gazed around shiftily.
He looked as if he wanted to say something, but caution warred with what seemed a natural garrulousness. “Speak up,” Ulrik said. “There’s coin in it for you. It might get me killed if I go shooting my mouth off in the wrong place.”
“I might disappear if folk hear me say the wrong thing,” said the vendor from the side of his mouth. Ulrik wondered if the man was sincere or if he was an informer just trying to pro
voke Ulrik into speaking out.
Some people had already shuffled away from him, eyeing him as they went. Ulrik shook his head. He had never known the citizens of Hydra to be so easily disturbed. They had always been a rambunctious, brawling, drunken mob of roisterers who would spit on a demon’s shadow if it crossed theirs. Their nervousness was starting to make him nervous.
“Got you,” said Ulrik. “Thanks for the warning.”
He grabbed Rhea by the elbow and steered her away from the stall.
“What’s up?” she asked, as they rounded a corner and entered the Plaza of the Titan. Ahead of them stood a huge statue of an armoured man, most of his features whittled away by aeons of erosion. He raised one massive blade, the size of a small tower as if threatening all the passing airships overhead. Children played around the base of his plinth. They moved into the cool of his shadow and Ulrik glanced around to see if anyone was following them.
“Things have changed around here,” said Ulrik. “I’ve never seen everyone so nervous before.”
“It does feel like the night before a watch sweep in the under city,” said Rhea. She seemed more amused than anything else although it was hard to read her lovely, inhuman features.
“Let’s find a place to talk,” said Ulrik.
“I thought you would never offer.”
Afterwards they lay panting on the bed in the inn room. Ulrik lay on one shoulder and looked down at the cat-girl.
“What are we going to do about Valerius?” Rhea asked.
Ulrik rose from the bed and went to check the heavy bronze door was locked and there were no eavesdroppers, then he strode over to the table and poured himself a goblet of sour wine from the pitcher. “I don’t know. I don’t even know where he is right now.”
“Molok has him.”
“Yes but where?” He glanced around the room. Once he would have considered it a fine place but now it just looked dirty and poor. The drapes were tattered. The glowglobe was dim. The bed was ancient and creaky. The luxury of Karnak Tower had spoiled him for places like this.