by Stephen Hunt
‘We’re not on the u-boat any longer, then?’ noted the steamman, his metal body smoking with condensation as the sun sliced through the canopy, burning off the morning dew from his hull.
‘You tell us,’ said Gabriel McCabe. ‘You’re the expert on this damned jungle.’
‘Your bender has seen us marooned,’ explained the commodore. ‘While you were out of your metal skull, Bull and his gang of pirates ran us up a channel and into a wall of gas that had us barking at the moon as if we belonged in an asylum.’
‘A wall of gas?’ Ironflanks hissed what might have been a sigh out of his voicebox. ‘Then I know where we are, and it isn’t anywhere we want to be. What supplies do we have?’
Veryann pointed to the two pistols, a belt of charges and a pile of water canteens behind them.
‘The pistols are enough to annoy most of what we will encounter in Liongeli,’ said Ironflanks. ‘No boiler-grade coke for me?’
The commodore shook his head.
‘Excellent,’ said Ironflanks. ‘I do so love the taste of wet leaves burning inside my body.’
‘Where are we?’ asked Veryann. ‘I thought we had entered Daggish territory?’
‘We are near their border, at the edge of the nest’s patrol area. But there are some things that even the greenmesh does not want to absorb into its hive.’
Ironflanks stared past the commodore’s bulk to where Billy Snow was holding T’ricola, the craynarbian engineer shaking worse than he was. ‘She has acclimatization sickness?’
‘My armour is expanding,’ said T’ricola, ‘I’m moulting all over.’
‘You are nearly at your full jungle height,’ said Ironflanks. ‘Direct exposure to Liongeli is accelerating your body’s natural cycles.’
‘I detest this place,’ moaned T’ricola.
‘Then it is fitting you survive it,’ said Ironflanks.
‘You know the route back to Rapalaw Junction from here?’ asked T’ricola.
‘We are not going back,’ said Veryann. ‘My company is on the Sprite and my mission is at the source of this river.’
‘Your mission is over,’ said Gabriel McCabe. ‘Your people are slaves that haven’t been sold yet, and even if we caught up with the Sprite, the six of us are not going to be able to storm the boat and take her back.’
‘Gabriel is right,’ said the commodore. ‘I would walk to the end of the Shedarkshe if I thought I would get my precious Sprite back and free our friends, but Bull’s rascals would raise lances and fry us like eels in a frying pan if they saw us clambering over her hull. Our best hope is to make it back to the Junction and send word to Quest. With his resources we can lay an ambush downriver, wait for the Sprite to return and net her on Jackelian territory.’
‘You may be correct,’ said Ironflanks. ‘But you are missing one thing, my softbody friends. I am not going back to Rapalaw Junction. I am taking myself and any of you that want to accompany me to Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo. Quest will not pay me for a missing u-boat and a failed expedition.’
‘It was difficult enough sneaking up the river in the safety of my lovely boat. What chance do the six of us have on foot, against an empire? What will you be doing with Abraham Quest’s blessed coins?’ demanded the commodore. ‘Melting them down to make yourself a set of gold-plated arms?’
‘If you only knew,’ said Ironflanks. ‘You are welcome to try to return to Rapalaw Junction by yourself. Follow the river northwest, walking along the west bank – avoid any and all villages you come across. In fact, avoid anything that is bigger than you.’
‘Quest’s money cannot be that important to you,’ said Gabriel McCabe.
‘As I said, you have no idea,’ replied Ironflanks.
Veryann picked up one of the water canteens and looked meaningfully at the group.
‘We should go with them,’ said Billy. ‘See our mission through. Let’s face it, the chances are we’re going to die either way, and I’d rather have it said that I passed along the Circle running towards danger than running away from it.’
‘Is that it, then?’ said the commodore. ‘I am to finish as a pile of bleached bones hidden in the jungle, used as a nest for snakes while my friends back home in Tock House raise a glass to poor old missing Blacky each Midwinter, his genius as lost to the world as the temples of ancient Camlantis.’
‘The free companies have a saying,’ said Veryann. ‘You are not dead until you have taken a hundred with you.’
‘Ah, lass, I’ll follow you to the heart of the dark territory of the Daggish. For you and my blessed Sprite I’ll go. But I’ve killed a hundred or more in duels when I was young and had a temper as red as the blood that runs through my veins. So don’t be surprised if poor old Blacky gets carried off by a petrodactyl or trampled by a tauntoraptor; I’ve got my hundred lined up in the halls of the dead waiting for me to fall into their dreadful clutches.’
Billy Snow got up, leaning on his old cane which the Sprite’s new masters had contemptuously tossed into the raft before casting them off. ‘Sometimes I’m glad I can’t see what we’re getting ourselves into.’
They set off and the jungle closed around them. Something like a snake crawled out of the bush, its metal carapace scraping along the floor, turning a single jewel-sized eye towards the trail left by the departing officers from the u-boat. Normally the gas would have been enough to finish the intruders off. How foolish of these creatures to forsake the safety of their craft for the embrace of deepest Liongeli.
Switching its sight to heat vision, the metal scout slithered silently after them.
Cornelius pushed open the door to the banqueting room of Dolorous Hall, largely empty except for the rows of mirrored suits of armour, Damson Beeton’s reflection distorted in the breastplates as she busied about, sorting the day’s delivery of victuals from Gattie and Pierce. She noticed Cornelius’s entry into the room. ‘Don’t even bother turning up for breakfast, you and that old bird both.’
‘I was out late last night,’ explained Cornelius. ‘The final evening of the House of Quest’s big function. I thought you would be pleased I had accepted one of the society invites at last.’
‘If you accepted a few more, perhaps you would develop your manners enough to come down in time to see the now-cold fare I cooked for you when the sun was coming up.’
‘Thank you, but I am not hungry. Have you seen Septimoth this morning?’
‘Pah.’ Damson Beeton dismissed his inquiry with a cursory wave. ‘No. And I have to sort through these boxes. They’ve either forgotten to send the salt, or that crooked delivery boy has cheated us out of it. Next time he rows this way, I’ll give him what for. How can you cook without salt?’
‘How indeed?’ Realizing he wasn’t going to get any sense out of the housekeeper, Cornelius beat a retreat to the lifting room and rode the chamber up to the aerie. Septimoth was waiting inside, resting his back with both wings unfolded against a y-shaped wooden frame that had been built in facsimile of the lashlites’ simple pine furniture.
‘If you were my coachman, I would release you from my service,’ said Cornelius.
‘If I were your coachman I would ask for danger money,’ said Septimoth.
‘Where did you get to yesterday evening?’
‘Our friends in the flash mob were at Quest’s residence,’ said Septimoth, lifting himself from the frame and pulling his massive leathery wings in. ‘They left with a cargo of eviscerated steammen.’
‘That would explain why I didn’t find anything at the mansion,’ said Cornelius. ‘You followed the thugs from the flash mob?’
‘I did,’ said Septimoth, ‘until my wings ached from it. They switched horses at staging posts twice and rode across two counties. They finished their journey at the airship works at Ruxley Waters, and waiting for them was the same mouse I scooped up for you by the cursewall in Quatérshift.’
‘Robur!’ Cornelius swore under his breath. ‘So, Quest’s money is paying for the grave robbing. It was our hands
omely moneyed friend who set Furnace-breath Nick up to grab Robur from the Commonshare, too. I came across Robur’s so-called daughter at Quest’s house, nicely fitted out in the cherry uniform of one of his fencibles.’
‘The woman in the jinn house?’
‘The same,’ said Cornelius. ‘Good for more than making fools out of us, too; they earn their keep, those ladies of his. An assassin paid an uninvited visit to Quest’s reception last night, broke a skylight and came sailing down a cord like a spider. I thought the topper was after me for a moment, but he’d come for Quest – who’s been suspiciously well trained in the art of combat, by the way. His Catosian fighters were on the assassin like a hunt falling on a fox. Fast enough that I wager they were expecting trouble. So then, what mischief do you think that Quest and Robur are up to at the airship works?’
‘I know only two people guaranteed to have the answers to that. We should snatch the merchant,’ said Septimoth. ‘If he is an agent of the Commonshare I shall enjoy myself finding ways to make him talk.’
‘Quest is too well protected,’ said Cornelius. ‘I saw some of his set-up at Whittington Manor. He has an army salted away up there, with blood machines at sentry points inside. I can change my face and body within limits, but I can’t mimic flesh at a fundamental enough level to fool a blood machine.’
‘Whatever his plans, there is a sure way to stop them. If we can’t get close enough to seize Quest, we can get close enough to kill him,’ said Septimoth. ‘I can drop you past his close-quarter protection – he travels in the open, he has commercial concerns to run, he can’t stay inside that fortress of his forever.’
‘It may yet come to that,’ said Cornelius. ‘But this isn’t the same as taking our vengeance against a Commonshare leader, this is one of our own we are talking about. If I put a bullet in Quest’s skull, we’ll have the Ham Yard crushers and the army after us, possibly the Court of the Air’s wolftakers too, no more sanctuary inside Jackals for the pair of us. We cannot bring down the Commonshare on the run, hiding in barns and travelling on false papers.’
‘You forget our blood oath, Cornelius Fortune. If this merchant is abetting the Commonshare’s designs, I shall tear his heart out myself.’
‘If Quest was in the pocket of the First Committee, he wouldn’t have needed to trick us into freeing Robur. The mechomancer could have been quietly smuggled out to Quest, dropped off on the coast by a shiftie submersible.’
‘And yet the seers of the crimson feather have been prodded out of the cave of the oracle to seek out a disgraced outcast such as I. This is not happening merely because a Jackelian trader thought his commercial concerns would profit by having a Quatérshiftian tinker broken out of the camps and employed on his staff.’
‘Robur,’ said Cornelius. ‘This mystery started with that damn mechomancer and he is the key that will unlock the puzzle.’
Septimoth flashed his talons. ‘Then it is time to pay Ruxley Waters a visit.’
‘Not me,’ said Cornelius, pulling out the mask of Furnace-breath Nick and slipping it down over his skull. ‘But me!’
The dark laughter faded inside Dolorous Hall’s banqueting room as Damson Beeton’s remote viewing spell dwindled away to nothing. In the old days, the people of Jackals would have burnt her as a witch for such tricks. She chuckled and resumed sorting the day’s delivery of food. It was about time those two lackwits started making some progress on this affair.
Damson Beeton suspected their instinct was a good one, though. Robur was the key, and if he was secreted away at the airship works at Ruxley Waters, then that was a revelation she could use. The thing that worried her most was the assassin Cornelius had spoken of. The description of the methods used in the assassination attempt sounded worryingly familiar, but not so worrying as the fact the assassination had failed in the first place. That spoke of desperation, foolhardiness from quarters that should have been coldly calculated in their choreography of such a murder.
Her mind was awhirl with the possibilities, until she found the missing bag of salt under the cabbage and swore. Now she would have to apologize to the damn delivery boy tomorrow morning.
The two sailors dragging Amelia into the commodore’s old quarters were careful to keep their carbines at the ready as they pushed her in front of the large hardwood navigation table. Bull Kammerlan looked up, prodding aside a pile of papers in irritation – not charts but mission documents, carefully compiled by the House of Quest’s researchers and added to during the voyage by Amelia.
‘Have you developed a taste for archaeology?’ asked Amelia.
‘Have you developed a taste for quarters other than a hold filled with resentful Catosians?’ Bull retorted. ‘I brought you along to make sense of this rubbish, to do the job Quest paid you to do.’
‘I may be on Quest’s pay book, but I wasn’t mounting this expedition for him,’ said Amelia.
‘Leave off with the nobility of science speech, dimples,’ retorted Bull. ‘You’re a looter of tombs, a history thief with letters after your name that were paid for by your rich family. I know the way Abraham Quest’s mind works better than you do, and a man like him isn’t doing all this to fill the bowls of the poor with milk and honey.’ Bull leafed through the papers in exasperation ‘There were wonders in that ancient time, things we can only dream of now. That’s the knowledge your rich shopkeeper friend is after. Artificers’ tricks to swell his pockets.’
‘Quest is already the richest man in Jackals,’ said Amelia. ‘He doesn’t need more money.’
Bull shook his head sadly. ‘He doesn’t need it to pay his pantry bill, girl, but he needs it all right. Needs it like an itch – because it’s how his kind keeps count.’
‘Even if we make it to Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, even if we unearth the location of the city in the heavens from those ruins on the lake bed, what makes you think he’ll pay you for it?’
‘Oh, he’ll pay all right, Guardian’s daughter. I wager he won’t even ask what happened to poor old Blacky, or you, or his army of golden-haired killers. He’ll just ask if we have the location of Camlantis for him. Then he’ll whistle up the lads from his counting house with as many bags of Jackelian guineas as I have a care to ask for.’
‘What if he won’t pay?’
Bull smiled. ‘Then it won’t just be your companions down in the hold that I sell on the trading block in Cassarabia. What do you reckon the caliph will pay for the location of Camlantis?’
Amelia recoiled in disgust. ‘You’d betray Jackals.’
‘My Jackals stopped existing six hundred years ago. I’d sell the location of Camlantis to the First Committee in Quatérshift if they had enough gold in their vaults left to buy a loaf of bread.’
‘And what will you do with your newfound wealth? Rebuild Porto Principe? Pay for the daughters of the new regime to lay down with you in your underwater kingdom?’
‘I’ve never needed to pay for it, girl,’ said Bull, ‘and it might shock you to know that not everyone finds arms as large as a side of beef appealing.’
Amelia walked to the bunk and patted the blankets, then rested her hand on the dolphin-encircled ornament there. It would need to be easy to find, for a skipper surprised in his sleep by a mutinous rabble, but not so easy as to be obvious. ‘Of course you don’t need to pay for it. Not with a hold full of Catosians who’re going to end up on the slave market anyway.’
Bull started to laugh a retort, but Amelia found the cover and the switch hidden underneath, the slaver’s words turning to a yelp as a hidden capacitor fed the copper-veined marble floor with its charge, a sheet of blue energy scything across the chamber, tossing the two guards into the wall as Bull’s chair was hurled back with the force of his convulsing muscles.
Amelia’s boots stood on the square of thick woollen carpet surrounding the bunk alcove – more than just insulation against the cold seas the Sprite had passed through, as the three unconscious figures sprawled across the commodore’s luxurious quarters attested t
o. ‘You were right, Jared, the river dolphins did come to my rescue.’
Amelia scooped up one of the carbines and unclipped the belt of charges for the gun. Her mind raced with the possibilities. One woman against more than ninety of Bull’s crew. She could try to even the odds by releasing the Catosian fighters, but their hold was the most heavily guarded pos ition in the Sprite, she had already seen that. Bull’s people were rightly paranoid that the fighters would chew their way out of their manacles and throttle the crew in their sleep. Revenge was a matter of principle for a betrayed city-state free company. She could take Bull Kammerlan hostage – put a gun to his head and demand the Catosians’ release. But perhaps not. The slavers would as like allow Bull to swing, then gleefully knife each other for the vacant position of skipper.
If only Commodore Black were here, he’d have a way to even the odds. A second secret pilot room able to override the first, a hidden tank of gas just as vile as the ambush mist Bull had ridden them into – but the other secrets of the Sprite were as lost to Amelia as her friends marooned out in the jungle.
Amelia made up her mind. The bathysphere attached to the Sprite’s hull. If they lost that as well as her knowledge of Camlantis, the expedition was as good as over – unless the slavers fancied blundering around the ruins on the lake bed in their diving suits, trying to distinguish ancient crystal-books from two-thousand-year-old rubble. She would scupper their chances and use the bathysphere as an escape capsule at the same time.
As Amelia stepped out of the commodore’s quarters, the corridor’s lights changed from the standard yellow to a muted crimson hue. Was this to do with her escape? There were no claxons, though. Unless the sudden surge of capacitor juice had thrown an alarm somewhere, drained the boat’s power, nobody outside of the thugs lying shocked in the skipper’s quarters should know she had activated Black’s secret switch.
Amelia crept through the corridors, as silent as the rest of the boat. The Sprite had stopped moving now, her engines stilled. Pulling herself up the cold steel of a ladder, Amelia climbed two decks, heading for the rear conning tower. At one point she passed the Sprite’s engineering bay and risked a glance through its slightly ajar hatch. The bay’s lathes and workbenches were at a halt, maintenance work quieted while the crewmen inside nervously held onto the ceiling pipes. It was as if by stunning Bull Kammerlan she had cut the marionette cords on the rest of his gang of slavers; they were just waiting there in the stale tinned air for their leader to awake kraken-like from his slumbers.
