It was the Abysmal Child, the sub that had brought the Hidden Lady back to Lady’s Crave.
Her broken oars had been replaced by new ones, their wood paler and untarnished. The broken rear panels looked as though they had been mended, too. Could this be Vyne’s secret project?
None of my business. It’s her research into Marks I care about.
Hark was just about to creep forward toward the warehouse when he heard someone to his right clear their throat and spit. He froze, then peered in the direction of the sound. Thirty feet away, on a little rocky platform, a young man leaned against a small cannon, idly pushing a wad of tobacco into his mouth. His scruffy blue jacket and the lead buttons on his cap proclaimed his League allegiance. A musket lay across his knees.
Hark picked up a stone and tossed it hard and high, back the way he had come. It landed amid the vegetation with a soft plap! A startled egret burst from the hidden ditch in a blaze of white wings.
The young man leaped to his feet and stared through a spyglass in the direction of the hillside. Hark seized his chance and sprinted to the warehouse, flattening himself against its west wall out of sight of the sentry post.
Hark edged along the wall and peered around the corner. Nobody was close by, and the warehouse door was mere feet away. He darted through it before he could think twice.
He found himself in a little office. The walls were covered in bookshelves and maps, and the desks with logbooks and sketches. On one shelf he saw a row of jars in which pickled deep-sea fish floated in a cloudy yellow fluid. To the left was another door, presumably leading to the rest of the warehouse.
Hark almost missed the gray book because it was too obvious. After the acrobatic break-in at the museum and the long scramble down the hill, part of his mind expected it to be locked in a cabinet or hidden at the bottom of a traveling trunk. Instead, it lay open in the very middle of one of the desks, showing neat handwritten paragraphs and a detailed sketch of a foot with webbed toes.
He stared at it. Picked it up. Turned pages. Stared at drawings of an eye with two pupils, a stubby fin on an elbow . . .
There was no mistake. This was the right book.
I’ve found it. I can take it back to Quest.
I can save Jelt.
Hark stared at it, waiting to feel relieved. He’d risked everything for this, and now he had it. Why did his lungs feel so full and so empty at the same time? The book was heavy as lead in his hands, and the thought of climbing back up the hill suddenly seemed exhausting.
No, I can’t, came the thought unbidden. I can’t. I can’t save him.
Outside, the gull cries erupted in a sudden uproar, as if they were trying to drown out the thought. No, no, no, no! they seemed to be shouting. It was only when Hark heard a crunch of footsteps outside that he realized why the birds had been disturbed.
Hark leaped for the other door, opened it and slipped through into darkness. He closed the door behind him, just as the main entrance creaked open.
For a few moments he stayed perfectly still, his ear pressed to the door. From within the office he could hear a male voice speaking quietly and the sound of one or more people moving around. Hark could just about catch some of the words.
“. . . sticking to the same story . . . claims she knew nothing about any . . . if we did, it might send a strong message to her gang . . .”
This sounded rather ominous, but at least the new arrivals didn’t appear to be talking about him. However, they didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave, either. He heard a scrape of chair legs, as if someone had pulled one up to sit.
If they’re going to settle in for a good long chat, then I need to find another way out of here, he thought.
He looked around, blinking hard to acclimate his eyes to the dark. A little light seeped in from eight small glass windows set in the roof, showing him a shadowy, cluttered room, far larger than the office, probably taking up the rest of the warehouse.
There was a strong odor in the room, one that Hark recognized. It was the nerve-tingling, rotten, salty reek of Undersea water. There were other scents too: the vinegar tang of pickling, the smell of oil, and the queasy after-stink of scare-lamps.
To the left, crates and casks were stacked against the wall, next to barrows and a couple of small dock cranes, their chains and hooks glinting dully. To the right, trestle tables were crowded with delicate silvery tools, bottles of brown and black liquids, and huge glass lenses clamped to marble countertops.
In the center, filling most of the room, was something huge and irregularly shaped, just visible behind a wall of sailcloth screens. Hark padded over, too curious to resist. Very carefully, he moved aside the nearest screen so that he could see through.
The object within was twenty feet long. It lay upon a rough wooden platform, like the sort Hark had seen sometimes in a marketplace so that fresh fish could be laid out without dumping them on the ground. Catch of the day, thought Hark madly.
It was a nightmare of chitin, iridescent glass, and pallid flesh, constructed with horribly meticulous symmetry. From its upper part jutted a dun-colored tube filled with concentric rows of blunt teeth, like a lamprey’s mouth. Great, serrated claws with a mottled shell extended on either side, resting on iron supports. Wires and copper pipes glinted between plates of barnacle-studded armor. Pale sacs of fluid sagged against the thing’s flanks.
At the center of it, connected to a dozen snaking glass tubes, was a foot-wide gray slab of flesh with a dark, curling slit in its surface. It was the Hidden Lady’s gills.
But . . . Vyne’s supposed to be working on a submarine! She said she was!
Or had she? Now that Hark thought back, he couldn’t recall her ever using the word “submarine.”
At last Hark understood why the Vigilance League had chosen an unpopular island for their new base. He understood why they had hidden their project away and defended it with armed sentries so that nobody knew what they were building. He knew why Vyne hadn’t wanted him or anyone else to come into the village.
They weren’t working on a submarine. They weren’t making something for people to ride in at all.
They were building a god.
Hark was still staring mesmerized at this creature when the god-heart chose to beat.
The dark slit of the gills suddenly closed and clenched. Yellow liquid surged through the surrounding glass tubes, drawn by a violent suction. A shudder passed through the shadowy hulk on the platform. Armor rattled. One great claw jerked clear of its support and fell to the stone floor with an echoing crash.
Hark leaped backward, blood banging in his ears. He could hear sounds of confusion and uproar in the office. As the adjoining door was thrown open, he darted into the little fort of screens. Through the sailcloth of the screens he could see the brilliance of a purple scare-lamp.
“There’s someone in there! I saw him! Over there!”
He fled around the side of the great sprawled shape, hoping to hide behind it, but in vain. Running steps approached, and then several pair of hands dragged away the screens and cast them aside. He was spotted, he was cornered, he was blinded by purple light. He was grabbed by the arms and hauled out of his corner, into full view.
“I’m supposed to be here!” he shouted, deciding to give his last wild gambit a fair chance. “I’ve got a note from Dr. Vyne! I’ll show you!”
The two men who had seized him changed their hold so that he could reach into his belt pouch and pull out the note. When the third man stepped forward, Hark realized that it was the Leaguer captain he had met before. The captain stared at him in recognition, then snatched the paper out of Hark’s hand and read it with a frown.
“Doctor,” he called out, “do you have an explanation for this?”
Dr. Vyne walked into the room, a small bone saw in her hand. The note was thrust into her hand, and her eyebrows rose.
“You said I should come here if I had news!” said Hark frantically.
“I never said you sho
uld come right into the camp,” Vyne pointed out without apparent anger. “In fact, I told you specifically not to do that. It’s a shame that you misremembered something so important. Your memory’s usually so good.”
Hark could see her looking at him once again with her skeptical, analytical eye, and then noticing the scattered screens behind him and the exposed monstrosity.
“Oh, Hark,” she said. “You really shouldn’t have seen that.”
“I won’t tell anyone!” he said quickly. “You know I won’t!”
She sighed and shook her head. No, said her smile. You won’t.
Different people turned against you in different ways, Hark had always known that. Some did it angrily. Some did it calmly, or sadly, or coldly. And some, it turned out, wore a rueful, self-deprecating smile when they became your enemy.
The smile faded as Vyne noticed that one of the great claws had fallen onto the stone floor. She scowled and strode over, then stooped to examine it, running a gentle finger over the claw’s armor in search of cracks.
“Hark!” she exclaimed accusingly. “What have you been doing to my god?”
As if in reply, the god-heart pulsed once more. Again the gills convulsed and drew in sickly gold liquid through glass veins. The hulk rocked and shuddered. Wires broke free, and a metal band snapped loose, shooting a rivet across the room.
Vyne turned to stare at Hark.
“Search him!” she shouted.
Hark struggled as hard as he could, biting and kicking, as he was wrestled to the ground. All of Quest’s warnings about the heart returned vividly to his mind—the return of the gods, an eternity as the slaves of monsters. Far too late, Hark tried to smash the swaddled god-heart with his elbow. All was in vain. The captain pulled the sling out of Hark’s sleeve and tugged off the cloth. He held up the heart, peering at its perforations in bemusement.
Vyne took it from him and handled it reverently, her eyes wide with undisguised hunger.
Chapter 33
“This is what that girl described!” exclaimed the captain. “A white, pulsing ball of godware!” He still looked suspicious, but he seemed to be catching some of Vyne’s enthusiasm.
“It’s exactly what we’ve been looking for,” whispered Vyne. “The ‘core’ mentioned in the archive scrolls! A reverberator. A source of vibrations to imbue the rest with life, change, motion . . . and it’s active!”
She walked over to her creation and peered at it intensely.
“Look at this!” Her smile was almost childlike in its brightness. “The gills have started to meld with the glass tubes I inserted! The reverberator is triggering mutations, just as I hoped! With this, we can get all the parts to accept each other!”
She turned to Hark.
“Where did you get this? How much do you know about it?”
Hark stayed mulishly silent, and Dr. Vyne’s smile faded.
“Well, let’s see how it interacts with the rest.” Hands shaking with excitement, the doctor leaned across the great construct and pulled wires loose from a device like a tiny accordion. She removed the contraption and laid the heart in its place, nestled against the Hidden Lady’s gills.
“Don’t!” shouted Hark. “You’ll bring it to life!”
“Well, I certainly hope so.” Vyne began tethering the heart in place with wires and straps. “I had been tuning a special instrument in the hope of producing the right vibrations, but this is much, much better! With this at the center, we might create a self-sustaining system. Now, come on, my beauty, give us another pulse . . .”
A few seconds passed, and then the heart obeyed. Again the great hulking shape convulsed, but this time more violently. The armored plates rose, as if the thing were drawing a breath, and for a moment Hark thought the whole nightmarish mass might slowly rear up. The next instant it subsided with a clatter of chitin and a groan of metal. A glass valve cracked. There was silence, except for the faint sound of ichor dripping onto the floor.
“What’s wrong with it?” asked the captain. “Why did it stop moving again? Why does it keep breaking things?”
“I don’t know!” snapped the doctor, who was hastily working to stop the ooze in the cracked flask from leaking away. “I’ll need to make the bonds stronger. And . . . I think we’ll need better quality Undersea water to feed into the gills—a lot more of it, too.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” yelled Hark.
“I have a doctorate in practical theophysics!” retorted Dr. Vyne. “If anybody can understand this, it’s me!” She pushed her hair out of her eyes with her forearm. “I will solve this, but I need to concentrate! Everyone out of here!”
“What about the boy?” asked the captain.
“I’ll want to question him later,” said Vyne, without looking up, “so don’t shoot him more than you have to.”
She didn’t even glance at Hark as he was carried bodily out of the warehouse.
Hark was manhandled through the village, still kicking out at anyone close enough. He was in a blind, vengeful, desperate rage now. Everything was lost, so he might as well cause as much damage as possible. He hardly felt the blows he received in return.
Two men carried him to one of the wooden shacks. One of them lifted a heavy bolt and opened the door, and the other threw him inside. He lay on the floor, hearing the door slam behind him and the bolt drop back into place.
Carefully, he sat up, feeling his lip and cheek sting. Pain was fine, he didn’t mind pain. He deserved it. His mind was on fire.
I wish I’d smashed the heart when Quest told me to. Or when I first thought about it, that night on the beach.
But I didn’t. All of this is my fault. That heart was doing no harm where it was, lying on the seabed. But I brought it up with me and gave it to Jelt. If I hadn’t, none of this would have happened. Jelt wouldn’t be a monster. Those men he killed on Wildman’s Hammer would still be alive. Then I brought the heart here. And now Dr. Vyne has what she needs to bring her homemade god to life, so that’s it. No more hope. Just an age of nightmares that never ends.
There had been times in the past when Hark had felt stupid or worthless, but never before had he wished he could wipe himself off the world like an ugly smear. He wanted to be nothing. He wanted all his years of life not to have been. All he could do was sit there, numb with exhausted misery, hating himself.
His skin tingled as though the eyes of an angry universe were fixed on him. It took him a while to realize that he was being stared at, but by someone rather smaller.
The other figure was pressed against the back wall of the shack, perfectly still, her large, bright eyes wide and wary. A little light filtered in through a hole in the roof, allowing him to see her tied-back hair, angular features, and mottled freckles.
It was Selphin, alive but not as well as the last time he had seen her. She looked tired and drawn, her dark hair dank with neglect.
“Selphin!” exclaimed Hark in shock. “What are you doing here?”
Selphin shook her head urgently and threw a meaningful glance toward the door. However, Hark’s head was filling with a jumble of memories—the frantic search for Selphin, the mysterious armed men emerging from the shadows on Wildman’s Hammer.
“You double-crossed us all!” he hissed. “You—”
Selphin scowled furiously and raised a finger to her lips. She grimaced, pointing to the door, and this time Hark understood. Perhaps the guards were listening in. He started to notice other details, the blanket rumpled on the floor, and the wooden plate and water jug nestling in a corner next to a chamber pot. Evidently Selphin was as much a prisoner as he was.
I know you went to the League behind everyone’s backs, he signed. You told them about the relic, so they’d attack us and take it!
Selphin gave an angry, little shrug and glared at him unapologetically.
Nobody listened to me! she answered. I had to do something! I had to protect myself and my crew!
Every inch of her was tensed. She
was bracing herself for a fight, Hark could see. Looking at her, however, Hark realized he had no fight to give her. He was acting out a remembered anger without really feeling it. All of his rage was turned on himself. He didn’t seem to have any extra for anyone else.
I don’t care. He exhaled, and delivered the sign with an exhausted flick. I don’t care.
When he continued to show no sign of hate-filled frenzy, Selphin gradually relaxed her battle-ready posture a little.
How long have you been here? he asked.
Four days, came the answer.
It had been five days since he had last seen her, diving into the frenzied waves. If she had been a prisoner for four days, the rumored sightings of her at the Pales must have been false.
Why are you a prisoner? Hark signed. If Selphin had given the Vigilance League such a valuable tip, why had they locked her in a dark shack?
The League didn’t trust me, replied Selphin, her signs bitter but matter-of-fact. They thought I might be sending them into a trap. They said they wanted to keep me prisoner until they had the relic, just to be sure. I said yes. Then your friend killed lots of them. The League decided it was a trap after all. They kept me for questioning. She shrugged and gestured at her cramped prison.
Hark wasn’t surprised by the Leaguers’ anger. They must have lost a dozen of their number that night.
How are my crew? The signs tripped off Selphin’s hands as if she had been aching to ask this from the start. Her eyes were wide and concerned.
She was probably worried that some of her gang had been caught up in the carnage on Wildman’s Hammer. Then why risk double-crossing everyone in the first place? Hark was about to give an acidic reply, when he remembered how the attacking Leaguers had pulled their blows at first. Somehow she had persuaded a group of hardened fanatics that they didn’t want to rush in with their blades drawn. Maybe the rumors of Selphin in the Pales had been deliberately spread to make sure the smuggler gang were elsewhere looking for her.
Deeplight Page 27
