Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

He handed Charlotte a slightly shorter version of his own shock-spear while the crewmen poked and probed her diving suit to check she was airtight and shipshape. The weapon had a half moon curl of a trigger, enough space for even her gloved hand to slip around it. ‘I’ve never used one of these before.’

‘Act as if you have and you won’t have to. That rebreather pack of yours is seanore, handed down the generations. Remember this, treat it as if it’s the most valuable thing you own, and that the only way someone should get you out of it is to cut your corpse off it.’

Charlotte nodded, ignoring the twinge of guilt stabbing at her. The life he was describing sounded uncomfortably similar to gypsy society. Proud and independent and distrustful of outsiders, wild and free. And one she had already forsaken for the comforts of the capital. The Eye of Fate throbbed between her breasts, reminding her that it had prior owners. Not my first theft. Not my last.

Following Commodore Black’s lead, Charlotte slipped into the airlock pool in the middle of the floor. Once inside, she watched the iron door closing over her head, before a similar one opened by her feet. The commodore checked the buoyancy adjuster on her belt and they exited together, accompanied by a fizzing along the sides of their rebreather packs. Whatever alchemy the device’s innards was working, separating oxygen from the surrounding water, it seemed to activate on contact with the ocean.

If the slope of rock the Purity Queen was drifting over was a hill, the plain below them lay covered by an underwater forest, fronds of red, orange and green kelp climbing as high as twenty feet amidst clumps of hydrophyic plants attached to flotation sacs, coral reefs snaking through it all like veins. Only shoals of orange fish darting above the wavering forest indicated that the vista was submerged, not a scene from the valleys of home. The two of them swam over the forest, slanting rays of light from the surface illuminating the brass of their tanks. To Charlotte, connected to the commodore by the umbilical-like cord of the voice line, this felt like flying, moving solely through the gentle motion of the rubber flippers on her feet. Curious fish wheeled in to watch her before vanishing as her hand reached out towards them. The water was warm too. A reminder that the magma of the Fire Sea wasn’t so far off to the north. Before long, the slope where the double-hulled catamaran-shaped silhouette of the Purity Queen was floating disappeared out of sight, and only the submerged forest was left stretching out in all directions.

It almost seemed a sacrilege to break the spell of the place by speaking, but Charlotte, spooked by the alien immensity of the scenery, felt a need to fill the silence. ‘How do you know the seanore are close?’

‘Look down there, lass…’

She followed the thrust of his diving glove. Rising out of the kelp arched a dome composed of white bones lashed together by seaweed chord.

‘It’s the remains of a whale hunted down by a clan.’

‘Was that the site of their camp?’

‘The seanore leave them behind as a frame for coral to settle around; keeps the forests fresh and growing. Nothing is wasted down here. What can’t be used is returned.’

Similar to the care Madam Leeda used to take removing all signs of their presence in the woods before moving her gypsy caravan on. Or had that been self-preservation to make sure she and Charlotte weren’t followed? There was no mistaking the seanore camp when the two of them came across it, visible in the distance as a series of shadows swaying above the kelp heads. As they swam closer, Charlotte saw the shapes were a series of spherical nets anchored to the forest by lines of kelp rope, nets teeming with large silvery fish and minded by dolphins circling the catch as though they were shepherds’ dogs. Beneath the nets the forest had been felled, the seabed anchoring a varied collection of structures that could best be described as air-filled tents, canvas bubbles tied together by ropes and webbing. In their lee were other structures set into the seabed. Not air-filled, but canvas stretched over frameworks that might have been made of bamboo-like material harvested from the underwater forest. Moving around the assorted structures were hundreds of swimmers, and from their shapes, Charlotte could see that the commodore’s description of the sea nomads as a society as multiracial as Jackals’ own was no exaggeration. As well as human-shaped figures weighed down by helmets and rebreathers, there were figures that had to be related to gill-necks, although a lot less ferocious-looking than their images from the lewd works of popular fiction suggested. Swimming through their midst were some of the other races that the commodore had described back on board the Purity Queen. Sea lion-shaped creatures beating their way through the camp with a powerful mermaid-like tail and arms that seemed too thin to be holding the objects they carried. Heavy, clumsy things that resembled six-legged salamanders, their arms webbed with wing-like skins and working on repairing the fish nets with a surprising level of dexterity. Other beasts that might have been goblinized gill-necks, pointed snout, large eyes, hooked teeth and an oversized proboscis that covered the smooth hairless skin of their lips.

The pair didn’t have to signal the nomad camp, their presence was noticed almost immediately, the tame fish-keeping dolphins arrowing in towards the two intruders. Followed by sudden flurries of activity inside the camp as they realized the intruders might be scouts from an approaching rival clan.

‘Stay still now,’ the commodore whispered to Charlotte, the hushed tones unnecessary since they were still connected by the voice line. Charlotte noticed that the commodore was already covering his heart with his right hand when he talked. ‘Keep your hands away from your shock-spear when they approach.’

The dolphins approached, making loops around Charlotte, the speed of their movement pushing her down towards the kelp forest — her chest-mounted speaker box supplying a series of rapid clicking noises from the creatures. Others were approaching from the camp, seanore armed with shock-spears that looked identical to the weapons the commodore and Charlotte carried slung across their backs.

Charlotte’s sound box picked up their voices passed up to her helmet. ‘Pah, it is not the Clan Coudama, they are surface dwellers.’

‘U-boat traders from the world above.’

‘We do not trade. What belongs to the sea stays in the sea.’

‘We are not from the Clan Coudama,’ spoke the commodore, ‘or any other clan. Nor do we come as traders. If you have not the eyes to recognize Jared Black then take me to Poerava.’

‘Poerava no longer rules the Clan Raldama,’ came the voice of one of the seanore.

‘Is that so? Then we’ll settle for whoever sits as chief of the clan.’

A song-like wailing came over the sound box and the commodore answered with a similar burst of sound.

‘There are children who speak with a better accent,’ said the gill-neck. ‘You who claim to be seanore and issue commands as though you issue edicts.’

‘I speak with my heart, clansman. Now, you just see before you an old white beard and a young girl. If your new chief scares easy enough to be shy of us, then just be saying it and we’ll be on our way.’

‘It’s obvious you haven’t been around the Clan Raldama for a long time, white-haired surface dweller. Come in — but let us see if you thank me for the invite later.’

Seanore hung in the water around them as Charlotte and the commodore made their way into a clearing inside the kelp forest. She noted that some of the tethered buildings had air inside, swelled out, as though the nomads had decided to stake a series of balloons in their midst. The buildings constructed on the seabed, though, were obviously for the nomads’ gills-bearing members — white whalebone frames stretched over with elasticized fabric and shielded with interlocking shells laid over the framework. The shells were a rainbow, mottled and ringed with dancing colours. As Charlotte looked closer, she saw they’d belonged to crustaceans, repurposed for the camp and hung as shields on the surface of the collapsible constructions.