The young man was a normally pale southerner whose sunburnt skin now glowed a painful red, and instead of the traditional savant’s multi-pocketed grey coveralls he was dressed in short britches and a loose floral shirt of the style favoured in Zana – but despite his comical appearance he busied himself proficiently with attaching a network of fat electrical cables around the outside of the Spinner, while the deckhands put together and heaved overboard a large floating target tethered from the stern. Around the target was arranged a loose circle of fifteen fishing buoys, all heavily customised with mirrored panels, copper coils, capacitor blocks, and other technological encrustations at whose function Berylin could barely guess.
Its appearance was greeted with laughter from the rest of the crew, and even she was forced to suppress a smile. Someone had painted on it a crude but accurate portrait of Runce looking suspiciously like an intimate part of the male anatomy.
He grunted when he saw it. ‘Someone’s a proper bloody artist, aren’t they?’
Harcourt took off his glasses and polished them in embarrassment. ‘They threatened me,’ he explained, indicating the sniggering deckhands.
‘I’m sure they did.’
‘You asked for something to contain a subornation at sea,’ Harcourt said to Berylin. ‘Obviously the electrical conductivity of the water itself proves the most significant obstacle, but what you see here is, on a small scale, something which should suffice.’
‘Does it work?’
Harcourt considered this, seemingly for the first time. ‘It works in theory,’ he ventured.
‘Let us see if reality agrees, shall we?’
The young engineer relayed orders to the engine room, who put on more steam, powering a large dynamo which in turn fed the capacitors on the buoys. His hand hovered near a large switch as the charge built, and a deep humming of electrical energy grew in volume, like the swarming of a million wasps under their feet and in the air all around. The crew glanced at each other nervously. Buster whined and disappeared below. Glowing candles of St Elmo’s fire sprang into life at the point of each spar and strut.
‘Do you think…’ started Berylin.
‘Wait!’ Harcourt was peering intently at a bank of instrument meters, whose needles were trembling disturbingly close to their red sections. ‘Almost there,’ he murmured.
The buzzing, now very loud indeed, was attended by a crackling which sounded like the air itself as about to catch fire, and she felt her hair begin to stir and rise. She was about to order him to turn the thing off before it killed them all, when he shouted ‘Now!’ and threw the switch.
Purple lightning arced from one buoy to the next, burning away the insulation from the cables and destroying several of the mirrored panels in a series of explosions which sent the onlookers ducking for cover from flying shards. These were followed closely by a fine rain of seawater and blackened fragments of electrical equipment pattering to the deck.
Cautiously, Berylin raised her head.
The water inside the circle was steaming, but the circle itself was no longer intact; several of the buoys were nothing more than blackened cinders, and two had exploded completely. The wooden target was undamaged, except by debris. As she watched, a dozen dead fish floated to the surface.
‘Cheer up, son,’ said Runce, patting the stricken-looking Harcourt on the back as he headed below. ‘At least you’ve caught us dinner. And cooked it, too.’
3
‘This is absurd,’ said Captain Mair, as they ate a forlorn supper in the officers’ mess that evening. ‘Even if you could get it to work – which I’m sure you will,’ he added hastily, seeing Harcourt turn a deeper scarlet than he already was, ‘how big a device would you need? We’ve been told that the subornation zone is miles across. Miles. You’d need thousands – maybe dozens of thousands – of those buoys, and there’s no possible way they could be kept functioning. The cost in man-hours alone would be huge. The Amity must know this. They might not have our level of know-how, but they’re not stupid.’
Harcourt shook his head. ‘I can’t believe that they would simply waste time and effort on such a futile undertaking. It must be possible.’ He’d barely touched his fish and was absently doodling equations on his napkin. The officers’ mess was small but well furnished; they were dining off decent crockery and white linen and drinking a clear white Rozelle from actual glasses. Mair had done well for himself out of the contacts he’d made during the Spinner’s requisition as a minelayer, and he’d taken full advantage of Berylin’s DCS expense budget, it seemed.
‘You assume that the point is to succeed,’ said Berylin.
‘Why on earth would they expect us to fail?’ demanded Mair.
‘I have a suspicion that neither success nor failure are anywhere near as useful to them as the sight of an Oraillean survey vessel steaming around in contested waters, flying their colours.’
Harcourt looked shocked. ‘You think this is political? That they would use an Event like this for nothing more than cheap point-scoring?’
Runce spoke for the first time that evening. He’d forgone the crystal and was sipping wine from his battered army-issue tin mug. ‘I’m assuming you were bullied at school.’
‘What does that have to do with it?’
‘Just that you should know better than anyone that when you’re little, becoming chums with the big boys is a very good tactic for keeping the bullies away. Or provoking them into doing something stupid.’
‘Dear Reason,’ the engineer murmured. ‘They might very well be that stupid.’
‘But Elbaite will never believe that Oraille will take sides in another regional dispute,’ protested Mair. ‘Not after Jassit.’
‘Of course they won’t,’ she replied. ‘The Amity knows this. And Elbaite knows that they know, and so on, ad nauseum. It’s called brinkmanship – they’re flicking each other to see who flinches first, not because they actually think the other will do anything about it, but so that each Minister of War can outface the rivals in his own court. It doesn’t matter who you’re at war with, just so long as you are at war.’
‘Not if you’re one of them as is doing the fighting,’ put in Runce, darkly.
‘Exactly. Regardless of who wants what from whom, there are innocent people caught up in the middle of this – in the middle of that subornation – and they’re our first priority, no matter what their nation. As far as we possibly can, we’ll be nice and polite and play everybody’s games by their rules, but here’s the bottom line: our job is to ascertain the extent of whatever is out there in the Tourmaline Archipelago and put a stop to it. Nothing can be allowed to compromise that. Nothing.’
The change which came over her expression was startling. The lines of her face had hardened around an intense glare which seemed focussed on something far beyond the walls of this room; the expression of something relentless and implacable scanning a distant horizon. Something predatory. The three men shared an uneasy look and finished their meal in silence.
Chapter 14
Drava
1
Four days out from the Babel Reefs they saw smudges of land on the north-eastern horizon and passed the first Dravanese fishing boat. The fisherman stopped to gawp at the approach of the great steel-hulled monster which chuntered past, billowing smoke and steam and making his tiny single-masted ketch bob like a cork in its wake.
Only a few island-states of the Tourmaline Archipelago possessed the werewithal or the inclination to sustain steam technology; the absence of significant coal or iron reserves – as opposed to an abundance of wood – making it prohibitively expensive to maintain. A handful of powerful individuals ran such vessels, purely as status symbols, but steam ships were still rare enough for their appearance to cause small children to run screaming into their mothers’ skirts, for old people to mutter that no good would come of such things, and for the h
earts of young men to quicken with the excitement of adventure and distant lands. One of the deckhands was overheard to remark to another that by the time word of their arrival had reached Drava, the tale would have each of them with two heads and the Hooper woman swinging bare-breasted from the rigging – for which he earned a tirade from Captain Mair and a day’s duty in the bilge.
They passed dozens of small islands before they even came in sight of their destination. Some rose in steep, forested slopes with villages clustered safely at the edges, to forbidding peaks which smoked ominously and were wreathed in clouds of their own vapour. Others were labyrinthine eyries of limestone arches and stairways where people lived in houses carved directly into the cliffs. Many were uninhabited – little more than strips of sand and jungle a few feet above sea level – but even so they saw villages built on stilts over less ground than that, apparently rising straight out of the crystalline waters. By no means were all of them mapped. Not all of them could be. Some had coastlines which changed with the seasons or phases of the moon. Some were nomadic, floating on a bedrock of pumice at the mercy of tide and weather. Berylin even saw one island which appeared to be floating in the sky – by which miracle of Natural Law she couldn’t begin to imagine – and tethered to its earth-bound cousin by cables and rope ladders which the inhabitants used to climb up and down on their daily business.
But it was the ocean itself which was the most wondrous sight by far. She had never seen such colours, nor imagined their existence. A childhood spent in drab, rainy Oraille, with the occasional family holiday outing to grey seaside resorts like Trowsby or Codmaston, had left her unprepared for the overwhelming variety of hues which gave the Tourmaline Archipelago its name. She lost hours staring at the shimmering turquoise water shot through with shoals of opalescent fish, and in the shallows where the underlying sand changed it to watermelon and citrine. In several places she swore she could see gold coins strewn all over the sea bed; ‘nixie gold’, Mair called it, explaining how the first explorers had lost so many men to drowning in pursuit of it that for centuries thereafter mariners believed it to be a trick of mischievous water sprites. Harcourt theorised that it was more likely due to a combination of light refracting through sea-water and reflecting from some peculiar arrangement of mineral crystals in the sand, and doubtless he was right, but something in her mourned the loss of ‘nixie gold’ as an explanation.
Above all, she longed to swim in these waters – to immerse herself in their pure, crystalline beauty – and more than once gave serious thought to abandoning the rules of propriety which forbade it and simply diving right in. But the Captain warned that his men, though basically decent and well-mannered, had spent nearly three weeks at sea, and the sight of a bathing woman would be a challenge to ship’s discipline which he wished to avoid if at all possible. She couldn’t have cared tuppence for his prurience, but when he also pointed out the black, triangular fins which were often to be seen in these waters, she resigned herself to staying high and dry. Slapping a cheeky sailor was one thing; she didn’t think it would be so effective with a shark.
2
Berylin and Captain Mair were in the high wheel-house, looking at their somewhat sketchy charts of the region and discussing likely areas for the subornation to be drifting, when Runce appeared.
‘Welcoming committee,’ he said simply. ‘Dravanese patrol.’ And left.
On deck, they found that the Spinner was being hailed by a sleek and swift-looking two-masted war sloop. She flew Amity colours: twenty-three stars of the island states against a blue field, topped by the crown-and-nederi crest of Drava. Marines in azure uniforms aimed long muskets at them, and the gun-ports on her single row of cannon were open.
‘Ware, foreign vessel!’ hollahed an officer. ‘State your intentions in these waters!’
‘We are a survey ship out of Oraille, come at your country’s request,’ called Berylin in reply. ‘I was told that you would have orders expecting us.’
There was a moment of consultation aboard the sloop before the officer reappeared. ‘It is so. You are most welcome, friends from Oraille. Please allow us the honour of escorting you safely to harbour.’
Runce murmured: ‘That’s the most polite way I’ve heard anybody say “keep your hands where I can see them and don’t try anything funny”. They’ve got manners, this lot, at least.’
3
On their charts, Drava looked a bit like a knight on a chessboard, with a long spine of mountain range running the length of the mane and around the base, sending out spurs of lower ranges into the forested foothills and arable lowlands of the horse’s head and chest. A wide river flowed into the bay where these met, and at its mouth was the city of Bles Marique, built on the many rocky islets of the river delta and linked together by arched bridges and causeways. It was a city of towers and tall houses, steeply winding streets and precipitous stairs. Dozens of ships rode at anchor or were moored at the long fingers of stone quays, with scores of smaller, flat-bottomed boats poling around between them, ferrying cargo and people under the bridges and around the city islands. In one part of the harbour – heavily protected by ramparts, towers, and a great sea-chain – they could make out the tall masts of many war vessels.
As they approached, there was a terrific plume of black smoke from amongst the warships, and steaming out from their midst came the heavy bulk of an ironclad. Plainly it was the pride of their armada and sent out to both greet and impress the visitors, even though its massive riveted plate armour and paddle-wheel propulsion were decades behind Oraillean technology, and it was jarringly ugly compared to the streamlined grace of the other Dravanese sailing vessels. On its deck, ranks of marines stood at attention with their steel breastplates gleaming mirror-bright and their long muskets at order arms.
At their head stood a flamboyantly dressed civilian in a frock coat, pantaloons and broad-brimmed hat, which he swept from his head in a gesture so extravagant that, had it been fitted with any sort of a blade, would have surely caused dismemberments and decapitations amongst the nearby soldiers.
‘Welcome!’ he called. ‘A thousand times welcome to our most excellent friends and allies from the south. I am Matalo Cheyne, cultural liaison to the Conclave of Drava and the Union of Amicable Island Territories, on whose behalf I am sent to extend to you the freedom of our city and invite you to a feast this night in honour of your arrival. Might I know if I am addressing the esteemed Sir Berlin Hooper?’
Berylin sidled up to where Harcourt was watching proceedings from the ship’s rail, and nudged him. ‘Over to you, Sir Berlin,’ she said under her breath.
He jumped and stared at her in terror. ‘What – me?’
‘They’re expecting a man. Don’t worry, I’ll put them right, but I’m not going to embarrass this fellow Cheyne in front of his subordinates. Nice and polite and playing by their rules, remember?’
‘But I’m not… I don’t…’
He spluttered through some polite formalities which Berylin fed him from aside, and if Cheyne found anything jarring about the behaviour of the stammering young man he was, of course, too courteous to let anything show. Presently the Dravanese ironclad withdrew and moved to escort them on the other side from the patrol sloop as they entered the harbour.
In the meantime, a very different sort of welcoming committee had formed on a neighbouring civilian quay: fishermen, merchants, goggle-eyed children, and a flock of whores who cooed and flashed their glitter-painted breasts at the crew. It was a testament to Captain Mair’s discipline that he was able to control the men long enough to get the ship moored properly. When he finally had them lined up, agitated and grinning, he scowled at them thunderously.
‘Right,’ he growled. ‘You know the rules. One: end up in jail and nobody’s coming for you. Two: whores only. No civilians, or I’ll fucking geld you myself. Got that?’
‘Yes, sir!’ they chorused.
‘Fine.’ He waved them off. ‘Go, enjoy the sights of this exotic land.’ He turned, found Berylin listening to this, and blushed scarlet. ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am. My language just then…’
‘It’s quite alright, Captain. I find your concern for your men’s well-being touching. But will you not be going ashore too? I mean, obviously not for the same, ah, that is…’ Now it was her turn to blush.
‘No, ma’am. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the old girl until things die down a bit. When the lads have got it out of their system, so to speak, I’ll be able to go and have a quiet drink somewhere.’
They were both rescued from this conversation by the official armed escort, which arrived and began breaking up the crowd by the generous application of musket-butts, opening a space for the widely beaming visage of Cultural Liaison Matalo Cheyne.
4
Berylin had brought precisely nothing resembling the kind of evening dress she imagined one might wear to an ambassadorial banquet. Rather naively, she had assumed that her interactions with Dravanese officialdom would stretch no further than the scientific and investigatory – it simply hadn’t occurred to her that there would be a diplomatic dimension, and while she liked a pretty dress as much as the next girl, she detested official functions and positively loathed being the centre of attention at them. Reluctantly she prevailed upon Cheyne to provide her with assistance for such a purchase – what in the upper circles of Oraillean society would have been called a dress maid – in response to which he sent along his younger sister Meria, who was so deliriously excited by the whole affair as to be practically inarticulate half the time. Berylin began to allow herself the tiniest guilty thrill at being treated like minor nobility, and together they toured the dressmakers’ establishments of Bles Marique’s more fashionable quarter.
Tourmaline Page 13
