Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘What are you going to do with him?’

‘What I normally do when I find trespassers on my land,’ said Quest. ‘Hand them over to the constabulary. Ham Yard can ascertain which of my competitors paid for his services.’

‘You know why I’m here! You didn’t find us all, you jigger,’ yelled the assassin, his words muffled by the gas mask before he was shocked into unconsciousness by the Catosian soldiers’ weapons. One of the Catosians pulled his mask off, revealing a thin face with round spectacles. An unlikely looking assassin: always the best kind.

‘Ah,’ said Quest. ‘Mister Zaker Browne, which I think we can now take is not his real name.’ He turned to Cornelius. ‘One of my clerks from my counting house in Middlesteel. That explains how he got into Whittington Manor with such ease.’ ‘Somebody must want you out of the picture very badly indeed to go to the trouble of infiltrating your staff,’ said Cornelius. ‘Toppers very rarely play the long game. They prefer the direct approach.’

‘My enemies are learning subtlety at last. Well, as always Ham Yard will have a tediously long list of suspects to interview. I must apologize to you,’ said Quest. ‘Normally my guests have a much more pleasant experience at Whittington.’

‘Not at all,’ said Cornelius.

Not at all. He knew a lot more than when he had come to this grand house on the edge of the capital. But he still didn’t know why . And that, unfortunately, was just about the most puzzling piece of the jigsaw to be missing.

Watching the lifting room door close on their master and his guest, the Catosian soldiers lifted up the unconscious prisoner. One of them pulled out a knife to cut the assassin’s throat, but their officer stayed her hand. ‘Did you not see the master’s hand signal before he departed? We need to secure him with the others. We are to keep him alive, at least for now.’

‘This one will make for a very dangerous hostage.’

‘Nothing of value can be won without danger,’ said the officer. She looked at the pale face of the assassin. ‘Cleverer than the others, to avoid detection among us for so long.’

‘He would be less clever dead,’ said the soldier, pushing her knife back into her belt.

‘You have your orders! Obey them.’

It was not the place of a free company fighter to voice such doubts, so the officer kept her peace. But inside she agreed with every word of her soldier’s sentiments. Some hostages were far better off dead.

Amelia could tell her arms were shackled even as she was waking up. She could barely remember where she was through the waves of nausea; but the line of trussed-up Catosian free company soldiers lying comatose in the low-roofed chamber brought it all back to her. The Sprite of theLake . And it wasn’t just the mercenaries bundled down here — there was Billy Snow, his grizzled old head lying sprawled unconscious on one of the Catosians, while at the far end she could just see Gabriel McCabe and an armoured set of foot claws that had to belong to T’ricola.

‘Breathe deep, lass,’ said a voice. ‘You took a bad lungful of the vapours out on the deck.’

‘Commodore? Jared, are you here?’ Amelia tried to peer down the dimly lit chamber, but then she realized the voice was coming from behind her.

‘Where else would I be, professor? Captain of my own boat and now master of nothing more than this old storage hold.’ The commodore wriggled into the corner of her vision, his legs tied and arms bound like Amelia’s. ‘What do you remember?’ ‘I was outside on the deck and reality was breaking down. People were changing into things, becoming monsters, even parts of the boat were coming alive.’

‘It was no more than your mind breaking down, lass. We sailed into a wall of river mist — but it turned out to be something more potent, a defensive wall of gas laid out to snare anyone foolish enough to come visiting.’

‘A Daggish weapon?’ said Amelia. ‘But that makes no sense. They have living creatures in their cooperative, animals that would be affected by the gas. And where are the sailors, where are Bull’s people?’

‘Who do you think led us into the trap? Ah, they played me for a fool, so they did. Us on the surface venting the stale air out of our corridors. Bull and his cronies in suits, scraping off barnacles below our hull, knowing they would have all the time in the world to seize the boat when we ran into that wicked wall of vapours. Snug in their wet suits while the rest of us were out of our gourds.’

‘Whose wall of vapours, Jared? Whose, if not the Daggish empire’s?’

‘Bull was in here gloating an hour ago, but he did not say, although I have a terrible idea who it may belong to. Something that would not be affected by any amount of madness-inducing vapours. Our mutual friend Coppertracks used to hint at an evil that dwelled in Liongeli, when he dared, when he was off his guard … something so fearful he would never say much more.’

‘That gas didn’t come out of one of your old steamer’s ghost stories,’ said Amelia. Circle, her head was throbbing now. ‘It was real enough.’

Like most steammen, Coppertracks had never been given to exaggeration. A thought occurred to her. ‘Where’s Ironflanks?’ ‘Off flying with the tree monkeys,’ laughed a voice.

It was Bull Kammerlan, three of his sailors behind him, now armed with the Catosians’ carbines.

‘We’ve kept him on the sauce, as much Quicksilver as he can snort into his boiler, bless him.’

‘You filthy jigger,’ spat Amelia. ‘You were the traitor! Poisoning the old steamer and wrecking the Sprite .’

‘Me?’ Bull smiled. ‘Well, I spiked your scout, there’s no denying that. We could hardly have Ironflanks warning you that the channel we were taking had a nasty surprise halfway up it, could we? But am I your traitor? No. I’m not that. It wasn’t me behind the games on the Sprite . I’d not want to damage the old girl, would I, dimples? She’s my boat now, and the old gang are back in business, I should say.’

‘Don’t do this, Bull,’ pleaded the commodore. ‘You have a pardon waiting for you. You and the lads can be free, as legal as the powder on a magistrate’s wig back in Jackals.’

‘Free!’ Bull roared. ‘Free! Free to pay taxes on my beer to the rabble that turned our families off our land and stole everything we owned? Free to bend my knee to their law and kiss their populist arses once a five-year at the ballot? You’ve forgotten what we once were, old man, hiding your real name and pretending that the cause is dead.’

‘It is dead, Bull — you, me, a few others scattered to the winds, we’re all that’s left of the royalist fleet now. We need to survive, you and I — why do you think it was old Blacky that sprung you out of Bonegate?’

‘I intend to do more than survive,’ said Bull, ‘I intend to live! If Quest was going to pay you for a few antiques scraped off the bottom of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, then he’ll pay us too, I fancy. What with his money and the coins we’ll raise from selling these killer Catosian princesses on the block down Cassarabia way, I reckon we’ll have enough loot to kick off the cause again in a grand old style. Guns and boats and a whole ocean’s worth of Jackelian shipping to plunder. They’ll curse my name in the House of Guardians for a thousand years after I have made them bleed, after I cut off their precious trade and shake the pennies from their dirty, thieving pockets.’

‘Bull, I’m begging you …’

‘And don’t think I don’t like the sound of you doing it.’ The u-boat man turned to his sailors. ‘Just remove the people I talked about, boys. You’ll get your chance to “survive” now, commodore, that’s the least I owe you for giving me the Sprite and setting us back on the water and back in the game.’