Free From the Deep of the Dark by Stephen Hunt Page B

commodore reluctantly led Dick through to the kitchen and pantry, coughing and complaining all the way.
    That cough. I have heard that kind of sodding chest before. Yes, indeed.
    Sitting down at a long oak table, its surface a battlefield of chopping knife scars, Dick watched the commodore’s chubby fingers pouring a measure of wine into a clear crystal glass, and Dick kept his fingers raised until the glass was sloshing with the thick, ruby liquid.
    ‘Drink up,’ said the commodore. ‘And I’ll tell you what I told Algo Monoshaft last time I saw the old steamer. I’m done with the blessed board. I’ve put my carcass in the way of assassin’s blades and foreign powers’ bullets for the last time for you and yours. I have lied and fought and spied in foreign fields from Cassarabia and Pericur through to the black shores of Jago and I am too mortal old for the great game anymore.’
    Dick sloshed the wine about the glass, watching the liquid run slowly down the sides of the crystal.
Good legs on it. Expensive.
‘You don’t need a board pension, Blacky. Not sitting in this pile. And we don’t give them out to royalist turncoats anyway. Here’s the thing, I think you’re still in the great game, but playing for whom, that is the question?’
    The commodore started to cough, slugging a measure of wine to still his hacking. ‘I’m out of it.’
    ‘Is that what you told Symons when he came visiting?’
    Watch his face closely now. See how he reacts to me knowing about his late night royalist visitor.
    ‘Did you catch him, then? Poor old Rufus. How many of his fingernails did you have to remove before he blew on me?’
    He’s already dead, you old pirate. Did you kill him? Let’s see how much you spill when you’re on the defensive and shook up. Let’s press my advantage.
‘No more than he deserved. But you know how it is. I need your story to match Symons’. Come on, I need to know you’re still on Parliament’s side.’
    The old man’s face flushed redder still with anger. ‘I’ve never been on Parliament’s side. Your people winkled me out of hiding and strong-armed my poor carcass into your service. Anything I did, I did for the people of Jackals, not your parliament of shopkeepers and mill owners. The Lords Commercial have paid for your wicked soul, not mine.’
    ‘What did Rufus Symons say to you last night?’
    The commodore folded back into his chair, toying wistfully with a plate of cold sliced beef sitting between them. ‘There’s been a split in the cause. A dividing of the ways over how the rebels should seize the Kingdom back from Parliament.’
    ‘That we knew,’ Dick lied. ‘Why did Symons come to you?’
    ‘To ask for help. And I told him the same thing I told you. I’m out of it.’
    ‘Why would you want to help him and not the rival royalist faction?’
    ‘Because it’s my sister who’s been helping the gill-necks, Tull. Gemma Dark, captain of the fleet-in-exile now and war leader of the Star Chamber.’
    Sweet Circle. The underwater nation, the Advocacy. It was true then. The head’s paranoid rantings. But which side had Symons been serving?
    Dick felt the lines of his greying moustache. ‘And how do you feel about that?’
    ‘Well, there’s a blessed good question. It makes no sense to me. The gill-necks had no time for us surface-dwellers when I skippered for the cause. The Advocacy called us pirates too, hunted our u-boats as keenly as Parliament’s fleet ever did. As for helping the cause overthrow Parliament, why should we trust the gill-necks? Why should they trust us? Symons felt the same way. So did a lot of rebels. Helping the Advocacy fight the Kingdom felt a might too close to treachery to him. My sister and her new allies purged the royalist dissenters, and now they’re on the run from her, you, and the gill-necks both!’
    ‘What about your sister? Why would you—’
    ‘Didn’t they let you read my file, Tull? Gemma’s a hardliner. When Parliament