Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘Who do you work for, dearie?’

He gargled something unintelligible and she placed a boot on the seat of his trousers for extra purchase. ‘Come on now, young man. You know enough to turn off the pain centre to your ears. Give me my answer.’

‘Here’s your answer,’ said a voice behind her, as the dart buried itself in her back.

Damson Beeton just had time to turn to see the squat conning tower of the small river submersible rising on the other side of the pier, behind the figures in diving rubbers. One of the divers pulled off her mask, giving the unconscious housekeeper a prod with her boot.

‘She was expecting someone else.’

‘Obviously,’ said the second diver, replying in fluent Catosian.

‘You didn’t say anything about this,’ moaned the sole survivor in the barge, untangling the strangle cord from his neck. ‘She was fighting in witch-time. She could have killed us all.’

‘Yours is a risky profession,’ was all that the diver on the pier had to say. Then to her comrade, ‘Check her empty crates for hidden signals. She was expecting a courier exchange.’

‘You are aware of what she is?’ asked the other diver. Behind them, their submarine was discharging a row of soldiers in heavy padded uniforms onto the isle.

‘Yes, but ours is also a risky profession.’

A lone man stepped out onto the pier, flanked by female soldiers. The only sign of his identity were the scars on his forehead where the purple flower tattoos of a worldsinger had been badly removed. The dive commander looked at the ex-worldsinger with distaste. Anyone willing to sell out his allegiance to his own people was not to be trusted. A necessary evil.

‘How many left?’ she asked.

‘Just two that I can sense,’ said the turncoat sorcerer. ‘A lashlite and a man. The man’s body is not normal. I have felt nothing like him before.’

‘Interesting. It appears like the Catgibbon was telling the truth about him, then. You are sure there are only two more?’ She looked up at Dolorous Hall. ‘In a place this size?’

‘That is what I sense. But they’re not up in the house. They’re below the water: the island extends out onto the riverbed.’

‘Clever,’ said the diver. ‘They obviously value their privacy, but I wonder how good the seals on their construction are?’

‘We need them alive,’ said the other raider.

‘If their maid of all works here is anything to go by, I think we shall settle for alive and wet.’

Cornelius was looking at the county map for Ruxley Waters when Septimoth’s head swivelled. His hunter’s sense had detected the first crack of the glass above them, but Cornelius did not need to be a lashlite to hear what followed. A wall of water burst through the shattering glass, landing on their stolen transaction engine then smashing over statues of royalty long dead and curiosities milled hundreds of years before. The old Middlesteel Museum was rejoining the other submerged buildings beneath the Gambleflowers as a breeding room for river crabs and eels. The two of them scrambled for the corridor leading to the isle’s concealed lifting room, trying to keep on their feet as waves of water fountained past their legs, rising higher with each second.

‘The crystal can’t have cracked,’ shouted Cornelius, evading a man-sized vase flowing past with the force of a battering ram. ‘I designed it with sandwich layers to withstand five times the weight above us.’

‘Your calculations seem to be a little at fault,’ said Septimoth. One of the glass skylights in a side hall gave way and a second wave rode in with tidal force, sending both of them sprawling towards the rear of the museum. Behind them another wave of the Gambleflowers loosed its way across the museum. Buffeted in the crosscurrents, Septimoth spun away to slam into a wall, the press of water dislodging a display of swords on top of him, large cutlass-style affairs with clockwork driven rotating teeth raining down. Cornelius could tell his friend was unconscious by the way his wings unfolded limply out, a leathery stingray spiralling around on top of the water pouring in. Cornelius ejected the gutta-percha breathing tube from his artificial arm, biting down on the mouthpiece, then swam out towards the lashlite, each second pushing him higher towards the ceiling of the hall. Would the lifting room work with this amount of water in its mechanism, even if he could reach it now? He doubted it.

Cornelius grabbed his friend and pulled him close. Septimoth was oddly buoyant. Of course! The lashlite’s nostrils had closed, the two air humps on his back filled and sealed. In unconsciousness his body had triggered his high flight reflex, a useful gift of nature when hunting skraypers in the airless upper atmosphere — higher even than RAN aerostats could climb. If Cornelius could swim them both to the surface they wouldn’t drown. With only a foot of air left in the flooding chamber, Cornelius dragged them both down. It was devilish hard work with his lashlite friend inflated like a puffer fish, and Cornelius had to use the wall to pull them towards the shattered skylight. Kicking out the remaining shards of crystal so they were not eviscerated escaping the museum hall, Cornelius launched them out, using Septimoth as a buoy to lift them towards the surface. There was just enough light this deep underneath the Gambleflowers to see the remains of the flooded quarter of Middlesteel, slimy black buildings that had once been shops and homes, fish swimming out of broken windows while river crabs scuttled across gaping doorways. Cornelius tried to hold Septimoth back as they rose to the surface. He was uncertain about lashlite physiology, but he had heard enough tales in the submarine sailors’ taverns along the waterway to be wary of the bends should they ascend too fast.

Something was wrong, he could feel it. Then they appeared. Two figures swimming out from behind the spire of a Circlist chapel, the spear guns in their hands the same golden colour as their dolphin skull-moulded helmets. Now Cornelius had sighted them, he didn’t even need to look behind him to confirm the presence of the others rising up from concealed positions around the roof of the submerged museum. The warning shot of a spear powering closely past his chest was largely unnecessary. He and his winged friend were surrounded, and even if he could make a break for it without being pin-cushioned with spearheads, he would not abandon Septimoth. One of the underwater ambushers pointed to the two of them and then gestured to the dark hull of a small river submersible sinking down behind the spire.

Cornelius lacked the free air to sigh. He let himself be led to the submarine. A prisoner.

Most of the Daggish that had captured Amelia looked like walking cacti. Except that cacti did not have a single cyclopslike eye slit and their hard bark-like skin was not covered in a fuzz of foul-smelling green moss. But it was not these walking plant-animal hybrids that disturbed Amelia — not their rotting-plant smell, nor the dagger-sharp spines that they liberally applied at the first sign of disobedience among their prisoners; not even their disconcerting habit of suddenly stopping still and emitting chattering clicks at each other as if their minds were infected by crickets. It was the things they had with them that unsettled Amelia. Shambling sleekclaws that were allowed enough of their original minds to lope off as scouts, their beautiful coats veined green and putrid. Moss-covered gorillas that would stare with inhuman intelligence at the Sprite’s crew, before lumbering off with their backs bent by baskets filled with ripped-out instrumentation from the u-boat. While the Sprite of the Lake was being towed by two long seed ships into the heart of the Daggish realm, the crew were kept split up, locked in random rooms in the submersible, giant plant-soldiers standing sentry outside.