by Stephen Hunt
The rumbling grew louder, shouts of alarm sounding as some of the transaction engines overloaded, oily smoke pouring upwards and drums cracking under the stress, grease monkeys converging on the danger spots in a swish of pulley lines.
‘Look,’ cried one of the engine men. ‘The Rutledge Rotator.’
His screen was starting to spin, the abacus-like beads flowing from left to right.
‘Who left it on screen output?’ shouted the cardsharp. ‘We need paper output, paper! This isn’t some bloody dockside inventory count we’re handling!’
One of them switched the settings just in time, the first of the result cards falling into a collection bin, a backup spool of paper winding around at speed alongside. The cardsharp snatched the result card and sighed in relief. The initial symbols on it were validly formed. This was the first of many cards that would be returned.
‘Make sure the blanks aren’t sticking together,’ ordered the cardsharp. ‘And send word to the master. The key codes to open Camlantis have been deciphered. Tell him. Just tell him, the gates are open …’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘Billy,’ hissed the commodore. ‘Billy Snow, are you in there?’
A face appeared on the other side of the viewing slot, its features distorted by the shimmer of the cursewall. ‘What are you doing here, Jared Black? Our next cell check is due in ten minutes.’
‘I know,’ whispered the commodore. ‘I’ve been watching your wicked Catosian maiden come and go from the other side of the ventilation grille, my old frame squeezed between her jail’s walls like the meat in a sausage roll.’
T’ricola crept past, taking position at the bottom of the armoured hold’s stairs, her ears and the fine hairs on the back of her armoured skull quivering for any sound of the guard’s return.
Billy shook his head. ‘If they catch you down here …’
‘Ah, Billy, we’ve risked a lot to reach you. Creeping like tiny little rats through these infernal shafts, nearly chopped into pieces by rotating fans, squeezing through spaces so small you wouldn’t send in a vent girl to risk her neck to clean them, some so iced up we needed chisels to break through, others wired with snares and wicked devices of Quest’s invention. But none of them were of any concern for old Blacky and your brave crewmates.’
An elderly female voice sounded behind Billy. ‘Who is it?’
‘A fool,’ answered the sonar man, ‘come to get himself killed on my account.’
‘Ah, they’ve given you a lady friend to keep you company,’ winked the commodore. ‘They are not as bad as they seem, then. As for us, we don’t leave our own behind, or we’re no better than Quest and his gang of renegade mill hands.’
‘You need to go,’ insisted Billy. ‘Your skill with locks is no match for this hold. It makes our old cage back in the siltempters’ jungle kingdom look like the lock on a toy music box.’
‘Don’t say that, Billy. My genius has never been bested yet, and as clever as Quest is, he knows more about countinghouse ledgers than he does of tumblers and cursewalls.’
‘Maybe,’ said Billy. ‘But we’re certainly not going to be sprung from here before the next cell check is due.’
‘Take a little heart,’ said the commodore. ‘I’ll crack this yet.’
‘There are greater things at stake. My fate is settled, but there may yet be hope for the race of man. You need to return to Jackals and come back with help.’
‘Who is to fly as high as this monstrous fleet of Quest’s?’ whispered the commodore. ‘The RAN has no airships that can pursue a flotilla at this altitude.’
‘I’m not talking about running to Admiralty House,’ said Billy. He pointed at the woman sharing his cell. ‘Her people. I know you have had dealings with their profession before, black aerospheres that can climb as high as these airships of Quest’s.’
‘A blessed wolftaker is she?’ The commodore stepped back in alarm. ‘Don’t ask me to make contact with the Court of the Air, old friend. They’ll have my poor suffering bones in a cell half the size of this one and a hundred times more secure within an hour of muttering my first “good day”.’
Billy sighed. ‘I know all about your royal blood, Jared — or should I say, Duke Solomon Dark. But this is more important. My companion here can give you pass phrases, pass phrases that will overrule any desire the Court may have to toss an aging royalist into their cells. Listen to me. I have a story to tell you. The true story of ancient Camlantis, reduced to five minutes of telling with a spare minute for you to squeeze back into your air vent.’
The commodore listened and the terrible truth dawned on him. He was going to have to contact the wicked dogs of the Court of the Air after all. There was simply too much at stake. Nothing else would do.
Amelia looked up. The assistant from Quest’s team had brought back another ream of translated papers. This must be what it was like to be appointed to the High Table, an army of scribes and undergraduates following every twitch of your efforts — doing the donkey work, copying and translating and cross-referencing and looking up facts in dusty volumes it would have taken her days to get permission to view back home. She thanked the boy and noticed he had brought in something else on his coattails — Commodore Black.
‘Jared.’ She glanced at the carriage clock on the corner of her workbench. ‘Is that really the time?’
‘Time for us to be going, lass. We’re nearly out of Jackals’ acres and over the Sepia Sea.’
‘So many days have passed already?’ She had become so engaged in her work that she would have been hard-pressed to say whether it was currently day or night outside the airship.
Another of Quest’s people was admitted by her Catosian sentry, a bunch of cables clutched in the boy’s hand as if he had brought flowers for the professor’s desk. ‘The fault in the crystal-book reader has been located and fixed. It was-’
Amelia waved him away. ‘Thank you. I’ll be down to the reader room in half an hour.’
‘You could still come with us,’ said the commodore. ‘You could be back on the grand, solid soil of Jackals within the hour.’
There was a sense of urgency seeping through the commodore’s words that seemed out of place. Amelia half noticed it, but wrote it off to her tired imagination playing tricks on her. How long had she been working now? Snatching sleep at her desk in hourlong stretches. So much to do, so much to achieve and read and soak into her brain. If only the worldsingers could work their sorcery on her mind as they had on her arms.
‘My place is here now, Jared. The real expedition is only just beginning.’
‘I’ve left my beautiful boat behind,’ said the commodore. ‘Don’t be making me leave you behind too.’
‘I’ll see you again, you old sea dog. Under very altered circumstances. Parliament will pardon Quest when they see what we discover up in Camlantis. Do you think the Guardians will want the secrets of the Camlantean civilization landing on one of the city-states of the Catosian League? Catosia’s more advanced than Jackals in many fields of science already. The House will write off Quest’s theft of their proving vessels as the erratic prank of a childish genius and offer him a title for his troubles, you wait and see. It was you who once told me that success has many fathers …’
‘… And failure is an orphan,’ echoed the commodore. ‘My own blessed words coming back to haunt me. All the same, lass, you should be coming with us.’
‘I could say the same to you,’ said Amelia. ‘You travelled with me all the way up the Shedarkshe to peek at the mere ruins of the Camlantean basin — now we’re a day or two away from the greatest archaeological discovery of our age, the sundered city itself. Don’t you want to see that?’
‘I travelled with you for the sake of my boat, lass, and now she’s at the bottom of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo. And I came to keep you safe, too, but I won’t travel any further. You’ll make me an outlaw twice over and old Blacky needs his few remaining comforts, not a new life on the run. There’s only so many
times a worldsinger can re-mould my face before I forget who I am and why I’m blessed running.’
‘Then this is goodbye,’ said Amelia.
‘So it is then. I’ll pass your good wishes onto T’ricola and Ironflanks.’
‘You be careful, Jared. Ironflanks may claim some experience pushing around a sail rider, but there’s a big difference between jumping off a cliff on the Mechancian Spine with a chute of silk above you and piloting down a hot glider capsule.’
Amelia noticed Commodore Black peering over at her assistants; as if he would prefer they were not present at their parting. Odd, Jared had never come over as reserved before. She had seen the submariner skipper walk into a hardcore parliamentarian jinn house and sing long-forgotten royalist songs just to get a rise and think nothing of it.
‘Mad old Ironflanks used to be in the Pathfinder Fist,’ said the commodore, trying harder than he should have to raise a smile. ‘You could drop him out of the airship’s fin-bomb bays and he’d just bounce on his landing.’
‘And T’ricola has her hard skeleton shell to protect her,’ said Amelia. ‘But all you’ll have to cushion your landing is the weight of Quest’s silver coins, so you glide down safe all the same.’
Veryann watched the last of the commodore’s crates of money being loaded into the glider capsule, the silk-lined wings being furled to her side by the sailors. The Catosian soldier wouldn’t be staying in the hangar when the three survivors of the expedition launched — the lack of air at this altitude would asphyxiate anyone without an air mask within a minute. Veryann crossed the hangar, pulling her high-altitude coat tighter to ward off the cold in this unheated section of the vessel.
‘You need to launch now,’ one of the hangar crew was advising the commodore, T’riocla and Ironflanks. ‘We’re approaching the edge of western Jackals. You’ll be floating in Spumehead harbour and praying for a fishing boat to see your lights before you sink if you leave it much longer.’
Commodore Black was staring at Ironflanks climbing inside the capsule to finish off their pre-flight checks, T’ricola following to inspect the engineering. The old u-boat officer turned back to the airship crewman. ‘I can see your iron pigeon is no seadrinker vessel. We’ll head for the western downs right enough and leave the pleasures of the sea until we’re back on solid ground.’
‘No more adventures for you, then?’ asked Veryann.
‘If I had wanted to sail the heavens on one of these aerial battleships I would have taken the RAN’s silver shilling, lass, and become a jack cloudie. You’d be as wise to join me.’
‘The free company owe Abraham Quest a blood debt.’
‘Then I hope you and your fighters have enough blood left to pay it.’
‘We never did finish that last game of chess we started,’ said Veryann. ‘Drawing pieces in the dirt of the cage floor back in Prince Doublemetal’s realm. There’s a real board or two on the Leviathan. Who knows, I might even let you win — and that’s not an offer I make often.’
‘You’ve a sharp mind, lass,’ said the commodore, ‘and the vigour of youth besides, but I would have beaten you in the end.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because you are a touch too predictable. You follow your warrior’s code, but when you make that the heart of you, you give up something in return.’
‘I think you have a code,’ said Veryann, ‘even though you pretend that you do not.’
‘No, lass. There’s no code for me, anymore. I just let myself be pushed around by the cruel tides of fate and survive as best I can.’
Something was nagging at the Catosian officer. Was it the haste with which the expedition survivors were trying to load the money into their glider capsule? Or was it the stiffness in the commodore’s manner — an unease that should have been well sweetened by a glider stuffed full of Jackelian guineas; enough money to outfit a flotilla of new u-boats and more besides. The commodore should have been dancing a jig at the thought of leaving the danger of their high-altitude exploration of the firmament behind.
Veryann followed her instincts. ‘Stay a while longer, Jared. You should see your nephew before you go. He may be a filthy oath-breaker, but you should at least say goodbye to him before you leave. It may be your last chance for a very long time. Quest will have him thrown back in Bonegate to finish the rest of his sentence when we return.’
The commodore picked up the last remaining chest of coins, wheezing under its weight. ‘Now, if only you had been so reasonable the other day when I asked. As it is, we are running out of the green and pleasant land of Jackals to make a soft landing on. If I say my fare-thee-wells to Bull, poor Ironflanks will be paddling us back to the coast on his back and my treasure will be waiting on the seabed for a fisherman’s nets to claim it.’
Veryann nodded as if in sympathy. Quest might not understand the deep loyalty of the crew of a seadrinker boat, but she did. They were not so different from the bonds of a Catosian free company. ‘There is that. But we’re still holding onto the child of Pairdan in the cells. You can get both your farewells over at once.’
‘Two farewells would take longer than one.’
Veryann signalled her sentries forward from the hangar lock. ‘Maybe you should say goodbye to them anyway.’ A line of soldiers raised their rifles up towards the expedition members. ‘While you consider telling me just how it is you know Billy Snow’s real name.’
‘Uncle silver-beard,’ said Bull, glancing up as Commodore Black, Ironflanks and T’ricola were pushed into his cell. ‘Misery loves company, eh? The food’s better than the slop that came down the feeding tubes in the tanks at Bonegate, but the conversation here isn’t up to much.’
‘You are this braggart’s kinsman?’ said Septimoth, ruffling his wings in annoyance. ‘This cell isn’t half as big as it needs to be to contain two from the same family.’
Commodore Black looked over at the frenzied figure squatting behind the flying lizard, scrawling an intricate line of writing on the cell floor with the smeared remains of their last meal, coughing and shuddering as if in the grip of a fit. ‘You’ve got that right, my lashlite friend.’
Turbulence shook the deck of the Leviathan’s bridge, which was more crowded than Amelia had ever seen it. Not only were the command crew of the airship in attendance, but there were engineers preparing the mountains of equipment that Quest promised would prove the mechanism to unlock Camlantis — some of the components strangely familiar to Amelia: shades of the tower Coppertracks had been building at Tock House to communicate across the void. Helping supervise the work was the strange Quatershiftian exile — Robur — whom Quest had assured Amelia possessed a genius to match the mill owner’s own.
A gust caught the airship and even with the stat’s bulk she tipped to the side, Amelia’s hand snaking out to grip a guide rail. The Leviathan’s crew showed steadier air legs, the sailors in their green-striped shirts barely moving with each shift of the bridge’s wooden decking. Not one of them had lost the cap off their head yet, unlike the engineers, sliding and cursing as they made their final adjustments to the transmission mechanism. The question was, the transmission mechanism to what? Outside the sweeping arc of armoured glass that was visible past the steersmen’s two wheels, the sky seemed preternaturally clear. Amelia’s own airship voyages — previously confined to Jackals’ merchant marine and her university’s pocket aerostat — had never ventured even a tenth as high as their present altitude. But even with Amelia’s limited experience, she doubted that the airstream this high up should be so vicious in an empty, cloudless sky.
‘There’s nothing here,’ she opined to Quest as his airmaster rolled up the sky charts and passed them over to one of his jack cloudies, folding the compass back into the map table. ‘What good is your key now? There’s no lock for you to fit it into.’
‘It’s not that sort of key,’ said Quest.
‘Oh, is that so? Then why here?’ asked Amelia. ‘We’re so high up I can barely see the
Sepia Sea underneath us any more.’
‘This is where we need to be, Amelia. I have had months to scrutinize the contents of the other crystal-book of the pair my antique dealer turned up for me back in Middlesteel. The second book contains the plan for the sundering of Camlantis — exactly where the rock formations would need to be split by the force of the leylines. How much earthflow energy would need to be concentrated to reverse the gravity of the rock layer under Camlantis, the trajectory, the height the city was to be set adrift at. If you know that, then you know where in the sky to search for the lost city.’
‘There’s nothing here now.’
‘That’s what the key inside the crown you brought back is for,’ said Quest. ‘The city is here, just folded away, caught between the cracks in the walls of the universe.’ He indicated the glowing crystals protruding from his machinery. ‘Stand back and watch.’
‘There’s one thing that puzzles me,’ continued Amelia. ‘As best as I can tell, the losing side in the Camlantean civil war seemed to be in the majority. Most of the Camlanteans favoured a direct solution to the Black-oil Horde when it seemed like their civilization would finally fall.’
Quest folded his arms behind his back. ‘Actually fighting the barbarians to preserve their civilization. Yes, from what I have seen, I would certainly say that was the case. The Camlanteans were desperate in their closing days.’
‘Yet, it was the few that still clung to the tenets of pacifism who attacked Camlantis, denying the city to the horde and murdering their enemies in the civil war. Doesn’t that strike you as more than a little perverse? Surely it should have been the faction that favoured violent action that should have been willing to attack their pacifist rivals with the tools of aggression, not the other way around?’
The mound of machines on the bridge began to throb, an uncomfortable sound, just drifting in and out of the range of hearing.
