Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

Robur appeared to be calming down, now that his tormentor was being bound in chains. ‘You think that the child of Pairdan will try to harm the professor?’

‘Amelia is the closest thing our expedition has to a true-breed Camlantean. With the stakes being what they are now, murdering her would be a logical step to help ensure we don’t breach the systems that will be protecting the tomb.’

‘You’re as dead as this city, Quest,’ shouted Cornelius Fortune, his face disturbingly half-melted between his natural features and those of the Catosian officer he had been impersonating. ‘We’re not meant to be here and the city will kill you, even if I don’t.’

‘I wouldn’t place too much faith in whatever Billy Snow told you,’ said Quest. He pointed down the barren slope, towards Camlantis beyond. ‘His rebels murdered millions here to achieve their ends, but they couldn’t murder the idea of a perfect society. Once something has been imagined, it cannot simply be unimagined, it can only be hidden away.’

‘I’ll see you dead,’ yelled Cornelius as he was dragged away by the soldiers. ‘You and your utopia, both.’

‘You first, then,’ laughed Robur, finding the courage to step out from behind the table. His body had become a bag of nerves in the presence of the assassin. ‘You first, you filthy demon of darkness.’

Amelia was inspecting a series of artefacts under glass, the cabinets in the centre of a hall illuminated by sun globes that had risen to hover on columns of compressed air as they entered the museum. Her party were making notes and sketching each of the finds, ignoring the sound of the whining from the walls; the revived building’s systems struggling to cope with the cold of their altitude. They had not tried breaking open any more of the cabinets, not after forcing the first one had cracked its objects, turning them to dust and cold rubble with the sudden inrush of air into vacuum. Whatever method had been used for preserving these ancient artefacts, it wasn’t compatible with the Jackelians’ current brutish methods of archaeology. But how ancient were they, that was the question? The Camlanteans seemed to have reconstructed a prehistory that was as far removed from their own age as their ancient civilization was distant from modern Jackals. Artefacts ranged from the simple — a shard of pottery handsomely painted with miniature swans on a lake — to the indecipherable: a yellow egg that looked as if it was moulded in hardened gutta-percha covered in buttons with a clean panel at its centre. It was a pity that the golden rods lined with voicebox grilles next to each case had not survived the eons-long exile of Camlantis. What commentary would these rods have spoken if they had functioned? What forgotten histories could they have revealed?

Amelia was examining a case displaying a piece of granite embedded with fossilized cogs and gears when Billy Snow struck from the shadows, a shard of broken glass in his hand in place of his confiscated witch-blade. She ducked down and reacted on instinct, using her arms to add momentum to his flying kick, tossing him over a case to land sprawled across the floor. As fast as she was, she was too slow to avoid a pass of the shard ripping open the muscles on her forearm. Her terrified team of young academics had scattered like an explosion of squawking chickens. Unlike them, Billy didn’t have a breathing mask; somehow the old man was managing to thrive on the thin, cold air, back on his feet again, his arms moving in a slow dance-like style of combat, a cobra trying to hypnotize a mouse.

Behind her, she heard the barks of more new arrivals to the museum. Orders to clear the way. The first of the Catosians’ shots exploded into Billy’s chest, barely slowing him down as he ran towards Amelia. He was running against the force of a storm, the crack of glass shells behind Amelia building to a crescendo. She could hear the soldiers shouting and yelling at each other, shocked at how little effect their rifle volley was having on the escaped prisoner. Still Billy Snow came, shuddering and jerking against the hail of fire. It was as if he was trying to prove the old maxim of the Jackelian redcoat regiments: the false boast that it took a man’s weight in lead to kill him. Amelia crouched, mesmerized, as the blood-covered shell that was Billy Snow finally collapsed in front of her.

‘Why Billy, why?’

‘Get back from him,’ shouted Veryann. ‘He may be feigning.’

Feigning, her right foot. The old sonar man had taken a man’s load of lead and there wasn’t enough of him left to crawl another inch.

‘Why, Billy?’ Amelia repeated.

‘Because — you can — never — find — Camlantis,’ coughed Billy. ‘You have — to — build — it.’

She ignored the warnings and bellows of the Catosians and knelt down to hold him. His hand reached up weakly, taking Amelia’s arm, kissing the skin where he had wounded her. Then the old man rested his head back and moved no more.

‘You damn fool,’ swore Veryann, poking Billy’s corpse with her boot, keeping a pistol trained between the blind eyes on his grizzled skull. ‘He came to kill you.’

‘He was one of them, wasn’t he? One of the people of Camlantis.’

‘He was a weapon, professor,’ said Veryann. ‘As much a sword as that living witch-blade of his. And I would hazard a guess that he and his rebels caused more deaths in this city than every battle-match fought by every free company in the Catosian League combined.’

Cold air from outside spilled into the hall as the museum’s glass doors opened. ‘We’ve found it!’ shouted an airship sailor. ‘Come quick, we’ve found it!’

‘What’s he talking about?’ demanded Amelia.

‘The reason Billy Snow wanted you dead. A challenge worthy of your talents at last,’ said Veryann. ‘Come. It is time we finished this.’

In the cold of the monitorarium, surveillant twenty-four pressed the pedal by her foot to rotate her seat away from her great cannon of a telescope, turning towards the monitor on the gantry. As if a personal appeal face-to-face would have more effect than the angry exchange of words they had just had over her speaking tube.

‘I’m telling you, there’s a new landmass above the Sepia Sea, well outside the location of any mapped or known floatquake atoll.’

‘And I’m telling you that I have logged it for the day watch to follow up,’ came the monitor’s answer over her phones. ‘We have sweep orders for three missing airships and half the counties of the uplands still left to examine.’

The surveillant swore under her breath. As if the missing airships would be heading south for Cassarabia. What need did Abraham Quest have for the caliph’s gold, when he had just thrown away a mountain of his own money by absconding with the property of the navy?

‘Orders are orders,’ said the monitor. ‘Leave the creative thinking to our analysts. Report and view, view and report. Save your amateur geography for someone who doesn’t need to have a sheaf of sweep reports filled in by daybreak.’

Surveillant twenty-four reluctantly placed her face back into her rubber viewing hood, the transaction engine clicking and filtering the view, turning down to the mountains and lochs of the south — searching for incongruities that might indicate camouflage nets large enough to cover an airship.

Which was a pity, because if she had increased the magnifi cation where her scope had previously been angled, she might have seen the lonely figure sitting on top of a Camlantean spire with a stolen helioscope, cursing every one of his unlucky stars and counting down how many hours of air remained in his mortal tank as he flashed his urgent message out.