Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘It may yet come to that,’ said Cornelius. ‘But this isn’t the same as taking our vengeance against a Commonshare leader, this is one of our own we are talking about. If I put a bullet in Quest’s skull, we’ll have the Ham Yard crushers and the army after us, possibly the Court of the Air’s wolftakers too, no more sanctuary inside Jackals for the pair of us. We cannot bring down the Commonshare on the run, hiding in barns and travelling on false papers.’

‘You forget our blood oath, Cornelius Fortune. If this merchant is abetting the Commonshare’s designs, I shall tear his heart out myself.’

‘If Quest was in the pocket of the First Committee, he wouldn’t have needed to trick us into freeing Robur. The mechomancer could have been quietly smuggled out to Quest, dropped off on the coast by a shiftie submersible.’

‘And yet the seers of the crimson feather have been prodded out of the cave of the oracle to seek out a disgraced outcast such as I. This is not happening merely because a Jackelian trader thought his commercial concerns would profit by having a Quatershiftian tinker broken out of the camps and employed on his staff.’

‘Robur,’ said Cornelius. ‘This mystery started with that damn mechomancer and he is the key that will unlock the puzzle.’

Septimoth flashed his talons. ‘Then it is time to pay Ruxley Waters a visit.’

‘Not me,’ said Cornelius, pulling out the mask of Furnace-breath Nick and slipping it down over his skull. ‘But me!’

The dark laughter faded inside Dolorous Hall’s banqueting room as Damson Beeton’s remote viewing spell dwindled away to nothing. In the old days, the people of Jackals would have burnt her as a witch for such tricks. She chuckled and resumed sorting the day’s delivery of food. It was about time those two lackwits started making some progress on this affair.

Damson Beeton suspected their instinct was a good one, though. Robur was the key, and if he was secreted away at the airship works at Ruxley Waters, then that was a revelation she could use. The thing that worried her most was the assassin Cornelius had spoken of. The description of the methods used in the assassination attempt sounded worryingly familiar, but not so worrying as the fact the assassination had failed in the first place. That spoke of desperation, foolhardiness from quarters that should have been coldly calculated in their choreography of such a murder.

Her mind was awhirl with the possibilities, until she found the missing bag of salt under the cabbage and swore. Now she would have to apologize to the damn delivery boy tomorrow morning.

The two sailors dragging Amelia into the commodore’s old quarters were careful to keep their carbines at the ready as they pushed her in front of the large hardwood navigation table. Bull Kammerlan looked up, prodding aside a pile of papers in irritation — not charts but mission documents, carefully compiled by the House of Quest’s researchers and added to during the voyage by Amelia.

‘Have you developed a taste for archaeology?’ asked Amelia.

‘Have you developed a taste for quarters other than a hold filled with resentful Catosians?’ Bull retorted. ‘I brought you along to make sense of this rubbish, to do the job Quest paid you to do.’

‘I may be on Quest’s pay book, but I wasn’t mounting this expedition for him,’ said Amelia.

‘Leave off with the nobility of science speech, dimples,’ retorted Bull. ‘You’re a looter of tombs, a history thief with letters after your name that were paid for by your rich family. I know the way Abraham Quest’s mind works better than you do, and a man like him isn’t doing all this to fill the bowls of the poor with milk and honey.’ Bull leafed through the papers in exasperation ‘There were wonders in that ancient time, things we can only dream of now. That’s the knowledge your rich shopkeeper friend is after. Artificers’ tricks to swell his pockets.’

‘Quest is already the richest man in Jackals,’ said Amelia. ‘He doesn’t need more money.’

Bull shook his head sadly. ‘He doesn’t need it to pay his pantry bill, girl, but he needs it all right. Needs it like an itch — because it’s how his kind keeps count.’

‘Even if we make it to Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, even if we unearth the location of the city in the heavens from those ruins on the lake bed, what makes you think he’ll pay you for it?’

‘Oh, he’ll pay all right, Guardian’s daughter. I wager he won’t even ask what happened to poor old Blacky, or you, or his army of golden-haired killers. He’ll just ask if we have the location of Camlantis for him. Then he’ll whistle up the lads from his counting house with as many bags of Jackelian guineas as I have a care to ask for.’

‘What if he won’t pay?’

Bull smiled. ‘Then it won’t just be your companions down in the hold that I sell on the trading block in Cassarabia. What do you reckon the caliph will pay for the location of Camlantis?’

Amelia recoiled in disgust. ‘You’d betray Jackals.’

‘My Jackals stopped existing six hundred years ago. I’d sell the location of Camlantis to the First Committee in Quatershift if they had enough gold in their vaults left to buy a loaf of bread.’

‘And what will you do with your newfound wealth? Rebuild Porto Principe? Pay for the daughters of the new regime to lay down with you in your underwater kingdom?’

‘I’ve never needed to pay for it, girl,’ said Bull, ‘and it might shock you to know that not everyone finds arms as large as a side of beef appealing.’

Amelia walked to the bunk and patted the blankets, then rested her hand on the dolphin-encircled ornament there. It would need to be easy to find, for a skipper surprised in his sleep by a mutinous rabble, but not so easy as to be obvious. ‘Of course you don’t need to pay for it. Not with a hold full of Catosians who’re going to end up on the slave market anyway.’

Bull started to laugh a retort, but Amelia found the cover and the switch hidden underneath, the slaver’s words turning to a yelp as a hidden capacitor fed the copper-veined marble floor with its charge, a sheet of blue energy scything across the chamber, tossing the two guards into the wall as Bull’s chair was hurled back with the force of his convulsing muscles.

Amelia’s boots stood on the square of thick woollen carpet surrounding the bunk alcove — more than just insulation against the cold seas the Sprite had passed through, as the three unconscious figures sprawled across the commodore’s luxurious quarters attested to. ‘You were right, Jared, the river dolphins did come to my rescue.’

Amelia scooped up one of the carbines and unclipped the belt of charges for the gun. Her mind raced with the possibilities. One woman against more than ninety of Bull’s crew. She could try to even the odds by releasing the Catosian fighters, but their hold was the most heavily guarded pos ition in the Sprite , she had already seen that. Bull’s people were rightly paranoid that the fighters would chew their way out of their manacles and throttle the crew in their sleep. Revenge was a matter of principle for a betrayed city-state free company. She could take Bull Kammerlan hostage — put a gun to his head and demand the Catosians’ release. But perhaps not. The slavers would as like allow Bull to swing, then gleefully knife each other for the vacant position of skipper.

If only Commodore Black were here, he’d have a way to even the odds. A second secret pilot room able to override the first, a hidden tank of gas just as vile as the ambush mist Bull had ridden them into — but the other secrets of the Sprite were as lost to Amelia as her friends marooned out in the jungle.