2

Twenty minutes later, fed, whisky-ed, and watered, Madman Mallarcky left the Cheap & Cheerless with a promise to meet Lanyard and Skink in an hour's time at the harbour where the air-ships were tethered. First, though, he had another appointment to keep; he had to conclude the business which had brought him to the Tibesti Static in the first place.

He walked along the narrow alleyways with the pleasantly heavy weight of fifty gold marks in his pocket, and the unpleasantly heavy weight of the camel-hump stroganoff in his belly. One lump of gristle too many, maybe; but to call it 'indigestion' presupposed he had been expecting to digest his meal in the first place. He spat into the dust, and a street-cat went chasing after something shiny that skittered through the pools of pale yellow lantern-light.

The dark desert night was drawing in, and behind him, on the main streets near the Western Gate, the evening trade in food, drink, and just about anything else a traveller might want was starting up in earnest. But the alleyways that Mallarcky sought out were empty except for the echo of his own footsteps and the scrawny cat playing with its new toy.

Down an alleyway so deep and so narrow that the white-walled houses either side seemed to have forgotten it was there, Mallarcky stopped and rapped hard on a heavy metal door. A grille opened in it, and there was the flash of a pair of eyes through the slits; eyes, or something that was sharp and dangerous.

"Mallarcky," he said gruffly, and bolts went back with the noise of gunfire. The door creaked open, a shadow in the shadows, and Madman Mallarcky vanished inside.

The man on the door led Mallarcky through one of the leaning white-walled houses that bordered the alleyway. He said nothing; the strong and silent type. Strong, certainly – his hands looked like they could twist the head off a Zagwan battle-rhino – and as for silent, there was a scar running down his chin that some of the local tribes used to mark out those whose tongues had been cut out for thieving. The man also had a pair of wide-open eyes tattooed on the back of his shaven head, but even without the sight of them bobbing in front of him, Mallarcky knew that he was being watched the whole time.

After a twist and a turn, Mallarcky and his escort entered an open courtyard. It was filled with the sound of water tinkling from a fountain and the smell of apricots from a bush that sprawled on the sunny-side. A man was sitting in a very comfortable chair beneath the fronds of a small palm tree.

"Ah, Mr Mallarcky," the man said, his Airsperanto vowels oozing with the Tibesti accent. "Please, sit."

Akhenaten Alkazar gestured to a seat opposite his own, and Madman Mallarcky sat down. As he did, he glimpsed more sharp and dangerous flashes from several of the windows that faced into the courtyard. The seat he was sitting in was out in the open, overlooked from every possible angle.

"I have heard that you suffered some inconvenience on your journey to Tibesti," Alkazar said. "I am both glad and grateful that you have arrived here in one piece."

"Word gets around," Mallarcky said.

"Please accept my apologies for any trouble you may have suffered on my behalf. And an extra twenty gold marks on top of the agreed fee. I hope that goes some way to offsetting your costs."

Mallarcky grunted without looking too happy.

The meaning of the grunt was not lost on Alkazar. "Send me the bill and I will of course also pay for any repairs to your ship," he said, and he tutted sympathetically. "For a single unaccompanied Anti-Tractionist Fox Spirit to be so far west is unusual indeed."

"I thought so."

"Curious," Alkazar's lips flickered with a faint smile. "But you are here, the gods be praised! So. Do you have it?"

"Of course. Or I wouldn't have come," Mallarcky said.

Slowly, and with an eye on the windows above, he reached inside the innermost folds of the coat. Unseen watchers focused all their attention on what he was about to do next, and he could feel the atmosphere in the courtyard tightening around him like a noose. But when he drew his hand out again, it held nothing more than a small jewelled box. The atmosphere in the courtyard relaxed a little.

Madman Mallarcky placed the box on the table in front of him, and one of Alkazar's men stepped forwards out of nowhere, picked up the box, and vanished again.

"Excellent!" Alkazar said. "I had heard you were the kind of man to see a job through." He snapped his fingers, and another man stepped out of the shadows and placed a bag of money on the table where before the box had been. "Your fee. With those twenty extra marks for your trouble."

Mallarcky kept his eyes fixed on Alkazar and weighed the bag as he took it. "Much obliged," he said with a smile, satisfied with what he felt.

"And now, Mr Mallarcky, if you will excuse me," Alkazar gave a little bow, but already he was wrapping his robes around himself and getting to his feet, "I have other business to attend to. My thanks to you. I hope one day we may have the pleasure of working together again."

"Likewise," Mallarcky slipped the bag of gold into his coat and heard the rustle of the coins as they made themselves at home there. And then the man with the eyes in the back of his head appeared to lead him back to the alleyway and the night sounds of Tibesti.

Akhenaten Alkazar wandered out of the courtyard and into one of the reception rooms furthest from the street. His sandals skipped across the cool tiles, and he held the jewelled box in his fingers. A lantern flared from red to yellow, its light suddenly filling the room.

"You know, it is curious," he said to the person sitting next to the lantern, "that a lone Anti-Traction League Fox Spirit should be so far west."

"Stranger things have happened," Perfidy Lanyard replied.

"Stranger, perhaps," Alkazar agreed. "But…"

"But what?"

Alkazar shrugged.

"You have a suspicious mind, Alkazar."

"Thank you, Miss Lanyard," he inclined his head. "If nothing else, it has kept me alive."

"And made you very rich into the bargain," Perfidy Lanyard waved a heavy pouch full of coins in the air. "I think our business is all wrapped up this time around," she said, dropping the pouch onto the table with the lantern. "My thanks."

Alkazar tried to ignore the gold, but his eyes moved away from it reluctantly. "Always a pleasure to be of service to Magnus Crome and the London Guild of Engineers." He held out the box. "Your delivery."

"Keep it," Lanyard said. She stood up and slipped a small key onto the table next to the gold. "It's of no further use to me. Now, I have an appointment at the air-harbour. If your men could show me to the back exit."

"Of course," Alkazar nodded, and clapped his hands.

He sat down in the seat that Perfidy Lanyard had occupied and watched her go. When her steps had receded down the hallway, he picked up the pouch of money and spilled its shining contents into his lap. His eyes darted this way and that, like a lizard on a dungheap trying to decide which fly to pick off first, and he reassured himself that his fee was all there. With fingers that caressed each and every gold mark, he coaxed and cajoled the coins back into the pouch, and replaced it on the table.

Then he took up that box again. It didn't make any sound when he rattled it, and it wasn't particularly heavy, either. He got one of his men to unlock it, just in case – someone in his position could never be too careful, working for both Tractionists and the League – and when he was certain the box was safe, he looked inside. The box was empty.

A strange business, Alkazar thought to himself, to have someone carry an empty box all the way across the desert. An even stranger business for that someone to encounter a rogue airship from the Anti-Traction League on the way. It was Magnus Crome's business, not his, but all the same Akhenaten Alkazar couldn't help wondering what – apart from himself – Madman Mallarcky had actually been paid to deliver.

6