Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘Go back to your game, Jared. For your sake, I hope that Veryann is as quick with her wits as she is with that side-dagger strapped to her leg.’

‘When I was younger, lass, I would not have needed to prove myself on the chequered board of glory. Ah, I was a fast fellow back then, with a sabre arm that could see off twenty in a duel, a lucky twinkle in my eye that could melt the heart of even such as Veryann.’

‘You’ll need all your luck if you go biting the pillow with Abraham Quest’s tame cobra,’ said Amelia, her advice interrupted as the u-boat began to judder, the water outside the porthole flooding with light. ‘We’ve surfaced?’

‘So we have, professor. Ironflanks says there is a freshwater pool inland, half an hour away from our position. Our steamman guide has recovered from a little snit, after Veryann found a stash of quicksilver in his cabin and took it away from him. My darling girl’s drinking system could do with a top-up now. This wicked river is as feverish as the Fire Sea in high summer. You should take a watch above, clear your head with a breath of the fresh stuff.’

Amelia got out of her bunk and nearly bashed her head on a copper ornament, a replica of the female lance warrior that swept out of the nose of the Sprite , except that this lady of the lake was surrounded by a school of dolphins leaping around her. She went to straighten the ornament where she had knocked it, but the commodore stayed her hand.

‘Don’t be bringing my lucky dolphins down on your head, Amelia. You’ve had enough of a convalescence already.’

Amelia steadied herself on the side of the bunk, vertical for the first time in weeks, the blood rushing to her head. On the other side of the captain’s chamber, Veryann had stood up, checking the two pistols in her breast holsters. She gave Amelia an indecipherable look. Surely the mercenary did not regard her as competition for the vessel’s commander?

Out on deck, Amelia saw that the river had grown broader during her recuperation, and was now at least the width of one of Jackals’ great upland lochs. Ahead, the river forked and an obelisk rose out of the waters to the side of the junction. Amelia caught her breath and took a leather-lined telescope from one of the watch, focusing in on the figure on top of the granite carving. It was worn and dirty from the rainforest’s wet seasons, but the lines of the statue were clear enough. It was a woman clutching a book to her breast.

Ironflanks came clunking over to her, his dirty human clothes lashed with an explorer’s backpack dangling with machetes, iron cups and tent spikes. ‘One of your Camlantean friends, Amelia softbody?’

‘Not Camlantean, not even Chimecan,’ said Amelia. The dress the statue was wearing could almost have been Jackelian — she would not have looked out of place buying fruit from a stall alongside the Gambleflowers or strolling through the gardens of Goldhair Park. ‘With the amount of weathering on it, it could pre-date both those civilizations. Sweet Circle, how much history is there buried under this jungle?’

‘There are such oddities all over Liongeli,’ said the hulking steamman. ‘The statue may not be as old as you think. The jungle rots and wears away at the craft of both our peoples faster than you might imagine. If you built a home out here and then abandoned it, it would look a thousand years old after only two rain seasons. As an archaeologist, you know well the story of Isambard Kirkhill?’

Amelia nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘What I am sure your colleges have omitted is that there was a side-history played out here. Forgotten, like everything else, under the weight and decay of the jungle. Following the civil war in Jackals there were schisms in his parliament’s alliance — some of the more extreme factions attempted to set up colonies in Liongeli. Isolated communities where they could hold to their utopian ideals without interference. I often come across their bones and relics when I lead hunters out this way.’

‘A lost colony of diggers, all the way out here? I have read of such finds in Concorzia, but never this far east. Well, old steamer, here’s another heresy for the High Table to chalk up against me.’ Amelia stared at the statue: no, the clothes were just wrong; they weren’t of the civil war period. Not royalist fancy or parliamentarian plain. The carving had to be older than six hundred years. She felt it in her bones. ‘I need a flake from that statue. I can try to date its weathering when I get back to Jackals.’

If the eight universities allowed her to. Jigger them, she could set up her own college with the size of the fee Quest was paying her.

Ironflanks pointed one of his four arms towards an opening in the jungle behind the statue-topped obelisk, a doorway of crushed trees. ‘That’s the trail to the freshwater spring. Neropods drink from it too.’ He noticed the look on Amelia’s face. ‘Plant eaters, my little softbody friend. They’ll crush you if you try to bring one of their pod down, but if you ignore them they’ll leave you unmolested.’

Amelia glanced along the deck. Veryann’s mercenaries were assembling an iron raft to shuttle them to the shore, a small rotary paddle on the rear powered by a steam engine. They had swapped their carbines for long bulky rifles, each tipped by a bolt resembling the sharp petals of a steel flower. Hanging off their unnaturally drug-swollen shoulders were heavy quivers of replacement bolts.

Ironflanks saw Amelia peering at the odd-looking rifles. ‘Abraham Quest’s ingenuity runs to more than hiring my services as your guide, it seems. The commander claims their weapons are designed to break the scales of a thunder lizard, penetrate the flesh and rotate inside their organs, inflicting maximum damage.’

‘Have they ever been tested?’

‘Not by Liongeli,’ snorted Ironflanks. ‘I sense the symmetry of your transaction engines in their modelling.’

Amelia shrugged off the disdain in the steamman’s tone. ‘Are our transaction engines so different from the minds of the Steammen Free State?’

‘One third of my contempt is reserved for the slow-turning drums of your softbody calculating machines,’ said Ironflanks. ‘I reserve the remaining two parts for your people’s understanding of the jungle and its life. This place is an organism, a system. You cannot model its complexity from the bones of thunder lizards glued back together in Middlesteel Museum, you cannot understand its language by leafing through tomes of flora and fauna pulled from the shelves of your Royal Society. Even our river is alive. You could boil it nine times over and when you drank from it after the tenth time, the fevers would claim your life in a single night.’

He let out a strange hoot and from inside the canopy came a reply annoyed at being disturbed, louder and fiercer. ‘That is the language of this place.’ He patted the cannon-sized firearm hanging from his shoulder. ‘And this is my translator. If you wish to hear the jungle’s whispers, come with me to the spring. You think this statue is a curiosity to behold? You’ll love the relics inland.’

Amelia cursed the steamman under her breath. It seemed it was not just the language of this green hell he was fluent in. He knew well enough which levers he needed to press inside her.

It took eight sailors from the Sprite to pull the cart — a flatbed with eight empty barrels for wheels — through the passage and towards Ironflanks’ freshwater spring. On the way back it would be slower going due to the gallons of drinking water they would be carrying. Led by Bull Kammerlan, the sailors had the burden of their tridents and capacitor packs to contend with as well. Ironflanks had argued against the unnecessary weight, claiming the wild energy would as like annoy the larger of the thunder lizards as bring them down, but the convict crewmen could not be dissuaded. Of the Catosians’ strange rifles, the steamman made no further comment. Picking her way over the trail of crushed vines and ferns, Amelia found it hard to ignore the assault of smells that accompan ied their passage. From rotting vegetation at the ground level, to plants as tall as their Catosian escorts, still dripping from a recent rain and emitting honey-like scents to attract insects for food. Liongeli was alive with a vibrancy of colour and life that was jarringly different from the bleak moors and dark oak forests of Jackals.