Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘You’ve heard the commodore’s running orders, now we are getting close to where Daggish seed ships patrol?’ Amelia asked.

‘Many times,’ said Billy, taking a sip of yellow liquid juiced from fruit Ironflanks had discovered during his last rainforest sortie. ‘I don’t need to be told how dangerous these waters are. I can still hear the voice of that poor devil from the comfort auction back at the trading post, parroting his lines at his wife and daughter.’

‘It’s one way to survive in Liongeli,’ said T’ricola. ‘Join the Daggish, become part of the jungle, cooperate rather than compete.’ She rubbed at her armoured forehead in discomfort.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Amelia.

‘Headaches,’ said T’ricola, ‘I’m not sick. It’s the jungle. My body knows Liongeli is out there. I’m changing. I must have grown two inches since we started this damn journey. None of those scrotes that Bull’s assigned me for engine room duty wants to say two words to me now; they think I’ll slice them with my sword arm if they even spill oil on the decking.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Amelia.

‘Don’t worry,’ said T’ricola. ‘It’ll be a while longer before I strap a pair of antlers to my head and start worshipping thunder lizards down in the engine room.’

‘There’s nothing to worry about — your body is working with nature,’ said Billy. ‘The same as if you were carrying a child.’

‘Don’t wish that on me,’ said T’ricola. ‘Out here I’d give birth to a dozen or more young shells rather than a couple of offspring.’

Billy reached out for a refill for his mug, Amelia pushing the jug across towards his fingers. ‘Were you born blind, Billy?’

‘No,’ he smiled. ‘In my younger days I could see just fine. But I caught the waterman’s sickness off the Gambleflowers when I was a lad.’

‘I thought that was fatal?’

‘Usually it is. If you are lucky enough to survive, this is the price.’ He waved a hand in front of his blind eyes. ‘But my ears? I can hear the wind turn the pages of a book and tell you what page number it’s blown open on. There was only one trade really open to me. My family were eelers, selling river crab and water serpent to the submarines that travelled up to Middlesteel docks; they had enough seadrinker friends to make sure I got a job as the phones-man on a boat.’

At the galley hatch, old cooky banged his spoon against the pan to indicate their stew was ready. The off-shift crew mobbed the hatch while Billy Snow stood up and collected a plate of boiled potatoes and green salad leaves, manoeuvring back around the benches as easily as any of the fully sighted crew. Cooky slopped out the mutton, laughing at the sonar man’s slim fare.

Amelia looked over at T’ricola. ‘Is Billy not feeling hungry?’

‘Same reason he doesn’t drink blackstrap or rum rations,’ said T’ricola. ‘Billy has his funny ways. I think it might be religious.’

Amelia shrugged. There were extreme Circlist sects that did not eat meat, but most Jackelians had a hearty taste for a good steaming plate of red meat and roast potatoes drowning in gravy. Out in the shires, the doctors were known to prescribe red wine and hot roast beef to sickening children.

‘My ways are not that funny,’ said Billy, sitting down again.

Sweet Circle, he must have heard the two of them talking halfway across the room.

‘Despite what Bull’s pirates think to the contrary. It never sat well with me, that the price of my existence should be the end of something else’s.’

‘And the juice in your mug rather than a tot of rum?’ asked Amelia.

‘I like a ration of rum as much as the next man, professor, but when you’re running shy of a sense, you take trouble not to dull your remaining ones,’ said Billy. ‘Besides, you’re a fine one to be speculating about my funny ways. Most academics would be happy enough blowing the dust off journals back in Jackals, not dreaming of some ancient paradise that may or may not be lost beneath this green hell we are sailing through.’

There was a weight of things Amelia wanted to reply to that, but she had long since grown weary of trying to haul them out of her past — all the long evening conversations about Camlantis with her father, huddled under a blanket by a snug fire grate while hail tapped against their window — trying to find a way to reawaken that dream, that memory in her present. It was so hard, made her so cursed exhausted, attempting to explain the dream, attempting to justify it. Amelia speared a lump of stewed mutton in her bowl. ‘I guess you’ll just have to think of the lost city as my plate of salad at the spit-roast, Billy.’

Damson Beeton pursued Septimoth down the corridor. ‘What do you mean, the master’s delayed? His supper is waiting for him as dry as a Cassarabian sand garden inside my oven.’

‘His business is keeping him in Middlesteel this evening,’ said Septimoth.

‘Oh it is, is it, you old bird? Appointment with his tailor overrunning? You two will be the death of me.’

‘I am sure we will not, damson.’

‘So you say.’ Damson Beeton produced a bone pipe from beneath the folds of her pinny. ‘If so, then why did I nearly trip over this and crack my skull outside?’

‘My flute!’ Septimoth’s folded wings nearly expanded into their glide position. The seers of the crimson feather had made their decision, and returned his bone flute as a sign. Things must be worse than he had imagined, then, for them to turn to him for help.

‘Your ma’s old spine. Left on the top step of the main hall. I was going into the herb garden and nearly came a cropper tripping over this.’

Septimoth took the flute back and tucked the instrument into his belt. ‘Thank you, damson, I had mislaid it.’

‘Your poor mother,’ said Damson Beeton. ‘I thought her bones were meant to be holy and precious to you. If this is the way you treat them, then you can do me the favour of letting my spine rest in the grave when I move along the Circle, thank you very much. No. No lute for you stripped out of my poor weary back, you careless old bird.’

Septimoth bowed in acknowledgement and made to leave; he was grateful, too, that he wouldn’t have to be called on to perform his people’s death rites on the human housekeeper. Her corpse would be as tough as vulture meat, no doubt.

‘Hang on there,’ cried the housekeeper. ‘You haven’t told me where the master is, or what time I’m to be expecting him back?’

‘Do not worry, I’m sure he will return presently.’

The housekeeper tutted as Septimoth walked away. ‘Where is he, Septimoth? Has he accepted one of the invites to society I’ve been so carefully piling up?’

‘I’m sure he’s enjoying himself,’ Septimoth called back.

‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ whispered the mumbler as Cornelius writhed in the chair. ‘It’s a clever device, the crown of thorns. Not many working parts to go wrong. No.’

Cornelius had to wait for the rogue mechomancer to turn off the crown before he could reply. The trick of surviving a crown was to grit your teeth — so you didn’t bite your tongue off and bleed to death. If these thugs had been professionals, then they might have known that and given him the courtesy of a mouth guard to bite on. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘You can drop the act,’ said one of the thugs. ‘The, oh sir,let’s just settle the debt and be out of here bit. Which worldsinger changed your ugly features?’

‘I don’t-’

The thug grabbed Cornelius’s face and viciously squeezed it. ‘The plate in the floor you stood on by the cloakroom is connected to a transaction engine. Faces are easy to mimic with worldsinger sorcery — but weight? Your weight’s changed by two pounds, you idiot.’