Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘Do you really believe my vision is so limited?’ said Quest, sadly. ‘I helped design half the vessels serving with the Jackelian navy today — I know their weaknesses and their strengths — I could give them quite a run for their money, if that was my intent. But it is not. The Leviathan here and her two sister ships are not vessels of war, they are vessels of exploration.’

‘I glided past many Jackelian aerostats when I hunted,’ said Septimoth, ‘but I have never seen anything like these craft.’

‘No,’ said Quest, turning to the elderly wolftaker, ‘but you have, haven’t you, damson? When you’ve visited the Court of the Air. A configuration of modified aerospheres bound together in an aerial city. All the better for keeping the celgas under pressure, every square inch of extra lift we can squeeze out of our ballonets.’

‘How high are you planning to take us?’ demanded Damson Beeton.

‘A little further than the Court of the Air’s station in the sky,’ said Quest. ‘I intend to find Camlantis with my three explorers of the heavens.’

‘Cam-’ Cornelius could not believe what he was hearing. ‘You’ve lost your bloody mind. Camlantis is a penny dreadful tale — bad history that makes for good novels. You might as well fly off to find the cottage of Mother White Horse or the ancient kings of Jackals sleeping under their hill.’

‘Scholars said the same about the city of Lost Angels before its ruined towers were discovered rotting under the ocean,’ said Quest. ‘In fact, people say something very similar about you now in Quatershift, Compte de Speeler … that you are a myth, not a man: They seek him here, they seek him there,the furnace-breathed killer with the demon stare .’

‘You declared yourself an outlaw when you launched your three stats,’ said Cornelius, fighting down the urge to yell. ‘You’ve thrown away your entire commercial empire in Jackals. And you’ve done all that for the sake of a child’s tale?’

‘Easy come, easy go,’ said Quest. ‘You think I had true wealth, the man who bought Jackals, only to have his bill of sale cancelled when he presented it? I was never rich, before now. I just had piles of trinkets to spill onto my grave like some dirty great barbarian chief. What’s inside our minds, what we think, what dreams we can achieve, that’s our true wealth. With the secrets of the ancients unlocked, we shall rewrite not just our understanding of prehistory, but the face of the world itself!’

Cornelius looked at Damson Beeton and Septimoth. The lashlite seemed entranced by the scale of the high-lifters they could see turning slowly against the sky. Damson Beeton shook her head sadly, only her ancient eyes visible under the heavy visor. Abraham Quest was quite clearly insane — his wealth, his reputation, all his holdings — he had destroyed his entire life on a mere whim and the three of them were now being pulled along in the jet stream of his preposterous obsession. Prisoners, until they plunged down ice-heavy from the airless heavens, or were shot to pieces by squadrons of RAN vessels enraged by these three interlopers threatening Jackals’ carefully crafted balance of power on the continent.

Commodore Black clutched tightly onto the cage’s bars as they swung out of the petrol mists and over the edge of the pit. That was odd; the normal reception committee of iron apes did not seem to be waiting for them. Instead it was the small siltempter with a prehensile tail and a cheetah cloak working the winch mechanism below, alone.

‘It’s that capering fool,’ said the commodore. ‘Maybe his job is to give us breakfast and fatten us up before we are fed to the thunder lizards.’ His stomach grumbled at the thought. They hadn’t been fed in days ‘A nice slice of jungle boar with plenty of crackling on the side for me to crunch through, and a little blessed cold wine to wash it down with.’

‘They feed their boilers with tar-soaked charcoal,’ said Ironflanks. ‘I doubt if any of the siltempters have much experience with the murdered meat you softbodies consume.’

‘They can pick fruit from their trees, can’t they?’ whined the commodore. ‘Just a little energy, to help us run around their infernal fighting pit. That’s not too much to ask, is it?’

‘I can feel something,’ said Billy Snow. ‘A presence. Can you not sense it, too?’

‘The hunger is playing tricks on your mind,’ said the commodore.

But it was not in his mind.

‘Something is not as it should be,’ said Veryann. ‘Look at the siltempter.’

Their cage lodged on the mud in front of the small metal creature — his dark hull faintly illuminated, not with the glow of the fireflies that flitted above the burning oil in the prison pit, but with a light that was pure white, whiter than anything had a right to be.

‘Keep your voices down,’ said the siltempter. ‘Most of the tribe are deep in thoughtflow. Only the perimeter pickets are awake.’

He extended his iron fingers and white light flowed from the tips of his pincers, suffusing the transaction lock with its glow. As the light entered the lock, the tiny transaction-engine drums inside the construct started rotating at a blinding speed, steam rising from the metal as they spun so fast they began to melt. There was a dull thud as the cage door opened, the remains of the lock engine dripping molten tears onto the mud, coalescing into a cooling steel puddle.

‘Ayeeee,’ Ironflanks bowed — half in reverence, half in fear. ‘You are no siltempter, you are ridden. Which Loa …?’

‘Quiet, Ironflanks of the Pathfinder Fist,’ instructed the siltempter. ‘I am not from the halls of your ancestors — no Loa, I.’

‘I have been party to a steamman possession before,’ said the commodore, ‘on the Isla Needless, when I was on the trail of the treasure of the Peacock Hearne , and you will beg my pardon, sir, if I point out that you appear to be no siltempter now.’

‘He is inhabited by the spirit of the wreckage they have imprisoned in the temple,’ said Billy Snow. ‘You are the Hexmachina.’

‘I see that I am recognized,’ said the possessed siltempter. ‘Well met, Snow of the race of man.’

‘You live!’ Ironflanks hissed in surprise through his voicebox. ‘I thought you fully deactivate.’

‘You have the measure of me, then, for I am spent,’ said the Hexmachina, ‘close to death. Once I could cross the walls of the world and beard the darkest of gods in their dens. Now I only have enough life force to watch from my cage and perform parlour tricks on weak minds such as this vessel I ride.’

‘Why?’ begged Ironflanks. ‘Why come for us now? You never appeared before, you never came for us when a whole order of steammen knights perished to free you from the siltempters.’

‘There was not enough of me left to free,’ said the possessed siltempter, ‘and you had the means to escape among your own number. I do not expend my last reserves of energy for the sake of a party of innocent travellers, Ironflanks of the Pathfinder Fist. My centuries imprisoned here have seen countless slaughtered who did not deserve their fate. There is more to your mission than your personal survival. I see a disturbance in the great pattern surfacing on the paths of probability and your threads are bound tightly to it. Much rests on your survival. More than your mere existence — and more than mine.’

‘I must rescue you,’ said Ironflanks. ‘I still carry the charge from King Steam for your release.’

‘Your mission is over,’ said the Hexmachina. ‘I am fading now. Follow your own path on the great pattern.’

The diminutive siltempter stumbled to his knees, a single arm reaching for something he had tucked under his cheetah cloak. He pulled out Billy Snow’s cane sword, with its hidden witch-blade. ‘I am dying, now; my hold on this vessel weakens. This form cannot be allowed to raise the alarm.’