Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘Quest,’ called Amelia. ‘You lying son of a bitch, there’s no crystal-books down here, no information store.’

The mill owner turned from his work and walked towards her, his arms open in supplication. ‘Professor, up at last. No storage for facts, perhaps, but storage of a different nature.’ He pointed to the face-changer. ‘Plenty of room for my friends, down here, as well. This is Cornelius Fortune. He pushed me out of the way of a bullet once, a reaction he must be regretting now.’ Hearing the mockery, Fortune tried to struggle free of his chains but he was too well secured. ‘Walk with me, Amelia, you are entitled to see all the wonders of the tomb you have opened up for us.’

Quest led Amelia — still followed by her escort — to a gantry rail and motioned for her to peer over. A chasm vanished into the darkness of the rock below, the space surrounded by level after level of crystal coffins honeycombed into the sides of the pit.

She looked up. ‘What is this place? There must be millions of coffins down there. We can’t be on Camlantis anymore, that pit is far deeper than the bedrock under the city in the air.’

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ said Quest. ‘The Camlanteans could do things with the fabric of our world; stretch it like the garters of a jinn-house serving girl. No, we’re still in the tomb you opened — it’s just bigger on the inside than the outside. I was hoping the passenger inside your mind might be able to tell us some more about the forces involved in achieving such a feat.’

‘I’m fine now, I told your soldiers.’

‹Warn her,› said her voice. Amelia groaned. The spectre of Billy Snow was still inside her, squatting within her mind like an unwanted toad in a garden.

‘That’s better,’ said Quest. ‘No need to be shy, Billy Snow, or may I address you as a child of Pairdan?’

Amelia cursed her forehead — the throbbing had started all over again. ‹Let her see your paradise .›

‘There are as many coffins down in that pit as there were once citizens in the city,’ said Quest. He indicated a storage area behind them, shelved with hundreds of crowns — the same style of crown that she had seen worn by the Daggish Emperor, the same style as the crown under Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo. Except that these coronets didn’t contain an egg-like crystal-book: instead they were mounted with a circle of tiny gems joined by copper wires.

‘Enough crowns to make you King of Jackals, if you had a throne to go along with it,’ said Amelia. ‘What are you planning, you devious jigger? You knew that this place was down here …’

Quest picked a crown off the rack and slipped it over his mane of golden hair. ‘Can you tell the difference?’

‘It makes your ego look even bigger than it normally is.’

Quest smiled. ‘Perhaps, but when I wear this, it also hides my soul. The fire of my id is cloaked as if I did not exist, as if I was never born. Which is precisely what it was designed to do. The coffins down there perform much the same function, with the added benefit you can sleep in them and they will feed you and keep you alive. You could sleep for centuries down here, protected, hidden away from the world.’

Amelia shook her manacles in frustration. ‘You want to hide from the airships parliament will send after you? There are cheaper ways to buy them off than mounting an expedition like this.’

‘Now don’t be facetious. You and the uninvited passenger inside your head have woken up just in time for our tests, Amelia. After all these years, we need to make sure the Camlanteans’ measures to save the world are still fit for purpose.’

‹You’re not saving the world, you’re stoking the furnaces of hell, you fool.›

‘The majority of your people didn’t think so, old man. There was no coffin for you and your blood-father’s followers down there, was there? You are Pairdan’s child all right, for all the artificial nature of your nativity. You and your rebels preferred entropy and the victory of the Black-oil Horde.’

‹We preferred history and the natural course of things.›

‘Then you’ve had your wish,’ said Quest. ‘For too many thousands of years you’ve had your own way. But I choose to shape our destiny, shape it to an improved pattern.’

He waved to one of his engineers and the wall at the end of the chamber became transparent, revealing a series of rooms, each separated from the others like cages in an underground zoo. In the first of the rooms was an old lady Amelia did not recognize until the uninvited passenger in her mind supplied her name. ‹ Damson Beeton. An agent of the Court of the Air .›

A series of metal boxes lay in an adjacent cell — hex suit-like coffins, only the prisoners’ heads visible. More agents of the Court; the unfortunates who had been given the job of infiltrating the House of Quest. Inside the next cell, T’ricola paced about. Then there was an empty room, followed by a cell holding Ironflanks.

Amelia struggled desperately in the grip of her escort. ‘T’ricola, Ironflanks, what are you doing here? You should be safely back in Jackals!’

‘And your colleagues would be,’ said Quest, ‘if they hadn’t so foolishly decided to betray my trust. That’s something I have learnt from my Catosians, the value of total loyalty. There’s something comforting in their binary philosophy, don’t you think? You, them . Friend, enemy . Loyal, traitor .’ He turned to one of his engineers, pointing to the cell filled with hex-suited coffins. ‘Let’s start with that one.’ He tapped on the transparent partition holding Damson Beeton. ‘I told you I would find something useful to do with your friends from the Court of the Air, damson. They made very poor bookends.’

Quest’s staff moved about the controls on the Camlantean machinery. A slot appeared at the bottom of the agents’ cell, a black liquid starting to puddle out. The fluid fingered across the floor, moving under the coffins, then it began to bubble and froth, a dark mist forming above the floor. It spiralled upwards, higher, rearing above the heads of the trapped agents whose shouts were muffled by the viewing wall. The vapour swayed from face to face, having difficulty choosing with so many trapped in the room.

‘The craynarbian woman next,’ said Quest.

On his order, a similar puddle formed in the corner of T’ricola’s cell, the u-boat engineer backing into a corner at the sight of the liquid. The fluid moved as if it were alive, licking across the floor with slow, curious intent.

‘Now the steamman.’

Ironflanks dipped down to try to block the small slot forming, but to no effect; the inky substance began entering his cell too. The steamman’s voicebox trembled. ‘You soft-body lunatic, what is this foul oil?’

In all three rooms the liquid had started to froth and boil now, angry, furious, becoming a vapour. Quest nodded in approval. ‘This is the final instalment of my payment to you, scout. For taking my coin and repaying me with treachery.’

As he spoke, the mist fell down upon the occupants of the holding cells, the captured agents of the Court of the Air twisting in their hex suits as the mist devoured them. T’ricola banged madly against the glass, her exo-shell boiling in the haze, her body burning away — her flesh transforming, becoming mist, adding to the vapour’s volume.

Amelia kicked fiercely at her guards, but they punched her down, then forced her face towards her friends’ death throes, making her watch the lesson. In the first two cells there was nothing left, every drop of living matter absorbed by the ebony vapour; but in the third, Ironflanks stood untouched, the black gas curling around his metal feet, as flaccid and as harmless as a marsh mist.