Coggler's Brood (Work in Progress)

Chapter 8

"I keep telling you, I am not Anabella Steenkamph."

Jack and I are locked in adjacent cells in the Summertown jail. It is late, darkness has already fallen. The Sheriff and the tall Constable Captain are questioning me, yet again. We have been through this same pantomime several times already.

"So you say." The Sheriff doesn't believe me.

The cell block contains four cages for the holding of prisoners: two on one side of the room and two on the other. During the day the dingy room is lit by a tiny bared window in the far wall between the two rows of cells. If I stand close to the bars of my cell, I can just make out a few stars through the gap.

Night time, a single flickering oil lamp illuminates a small circle between the cages. The Sheriff and constable stand in this pool of light to interrogate me.

I try again. "I'm not a pirate. I and the Sequestria's cargo are legitimate. You can have a look if you like."

"Oh, we are," the Sheriff replies, without looking up from his file, "and when we have finished tearing what is left of your ship apart, I assure you we will find whatever it is you are smuggling. Of course, there's still the matter of crashing your airship on the quay."

"I've told you already, it was the only way to escape him," I stare pointedly at the lanky constable, "and his murderous intentions." Either they are playing dumb or just winding me up.

The constable sniffs and peers down his nose at me. "What I still don't understand, Ms Steenkamph, is why, if you had nothing to hide, you ran from our ships in the first place."

I put my face right up to the bars. "I am not Anabella Steenkamph." I scream for his benefit. "And you had no intention of stopping to ask me nicely. You thought you had cornered this Steenkamph person and just wanted to blast her ship out of the sky. Everyone knows how these inter-state operations end and it is not with an arrest. I was saving my crew."

"I'm sure I have no idea what you are talking about." The Captain manages to keep his face deadpan and turns away.

In the silence that follows I can hear the shuffling of another prisoner in the shadows of the cell opposite. Personally, I don't care who they are or what they have done, but even though I cannot see them in the dark of their cell, I have the distinct feeling they are taking a keen interest in my interrogation. And that bothers me; that bothers me a lot.

When we first arrived, I didn't even realize the opposite cell was occupied. It took me a while to work out that the bundled blanket on the sleeping bench was in fact a person. The light from the window was too week to show any details, but they grunted a few time as they turned in their sleep

From outside the sound of hammering afflicts the night. The Sheriff has already gleefully informed me they are constructing a gallows.

The Sheriff pretends to frown at a document he didn't have at the earlier interrogations. I'm sure he is enjoying this. "You claim to be one Nina Stonejack?"

"That's what my papers say."

"Which is interesting, because I have a warrant for her arrest too."

Uh-oh. I should have known Stan Wellingham would saddle me with a dodgy identity, but I was beguiled by the gift of those wonderful guns and weapons.

The Sheriff holds up an old poster for the arrest of Nina Stonejack, Assassin: wanted 'for murder most foul,' with a nondescript portrait that could be any girl with long hair, and a reward for her capture 'Dead or Alive!"

"Personally, I thought she was long dead, and you do seem a mite young to fit the bill, but the quality of the personalized weapons I took from you do suggest otherwise."