Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

There was no reply. Bull snorted. ‘Nobody visiting the zoo today, then?’

Amelia checked the collection nets behind the bathysphere. They had been emptied of all the debris she had collected from the bottom of the lake, but there were still fronds of wet lake weed wrapped around the wire mesh. Giving up on the boat, Amelia prowled the boundary of the chamber, feeling the walls for any sign of a hatch, an exit. When she approached the final side of the chamber, a section of the wall dis appeared, simply dissolved as if it had never existed, the newly formed entrance revealing a corridor receding into absolute darkness. Jumping back in alarm, Amelia watched the wall become solid again as she moved away. Bull came running over, laying both of his hands on the section of the wall that had vanished. It was rock hard. Nothing happened as he thumped it. Amelia stepped forward and the wall vanished again, the corridor illuminating this time, as if it was encouraging her to enter.

‘It likes you, girl,’ said Bull.

Amelia glanced around the chamber holding the bathysphere. ‘There’s nothing for us here.’

‘Well, I’m not staying around here on my lonesome,’ said Bull, stepping closer to her, as if he was fearful that the wall might close up and leave him trapped behind.

‘I thought you believed I was a Jonah?’ said Amelia.

‘Stuck in Circle-knows where, with half the Daggish fleet waiting for us at the other end, what would make you think that?’ Bull said. ‘Besides, I’m a practical man. Something created this — and it sure wasn’t Tree-head Joe or the spirit of Lord Tridentscale. What was it you said about traps?’

‘They mean treasure.’

‘That’s the part I like,’ said Bull. ‘You can tell me more about that.’

‘They also mean death concealed in a hundred different cunning ways,’ said Amelia, annoyed by his flippant tone. ‘I’ve worked with a lot of people over the years — none of them have lasted the course.’

‘Yeah, I can tell,’ said Bull. ‘But you haven’t worked with a superior pedigree like mine before. I survived life in the fleet-in-exile, I survived working the river along Liongeli and the holding tanks of Bonegate. All this-’ he gestured down the corridor ‘-is just meat on the bone to a man like me.’

‘You’re poured from the same pot as Jared Black,’ said Amelia. ‘I can see that much from your boasting.’

‘He’s a useless old man who gave up on what he believed in,’ said Bull. ‘That’s not something I would ever do.’

Amelia indicated they should go into the corridor, the slaver first. ‘The commodore cut his cloth to fit the times. I would take that as a sign of intelligence.’

A couple of seconds after they had passed through, the wall solidified behind them. She resisted the temptation to walk back and see if it would open as willingly for her again as it had when she had been inside the chamber.

Halfway down the corridor, and the air around them seemed to be getting warmer — a tepid wind playing down the passageway. Amelia stopped, suspicious now, and checked the floor and the walls. They were as featureless as the chamber holding the bathysphere.

‘What is it?’ said Bull.

‘It’s getting hotter.’

‘You expecting us to be chased down the corridor by a wall of fire?’

‘At the very least.’ She traced her hand across the wall, not quite enamel, not quite glass. ‘No dust down here, no leaks of water, no dirt. Just like our chamber. This could have been cleaned a couple of minutes ago.’

‘The walls here are a different colour,’ said Bull, tapping the side of the passageway. ‘It feels different to the touch too.’

The sides of the passage changed even more as they progressed down the corridor — from the strange smooth grey material to something that resembled green glass. Amelia was walking with her finger running down the cool surface when the glass turned completely transparent. Bull whirled around. Dazzling light flooded the corridor, multiple oblong-shaped sheets of green glass rotating on the other side of the now translucent wall. As they watched, the revolving oblong planes began to be filled with scenes, images and sounds of the world beyond — grey rain-filled clouds scudding over the pneumatic towers of Middlesteel, a drover leading a flock of geese down a small country lane. There was no order to the images, some familiar, others scenes from nations so exotic that Amelia could only guess at their identity.

‘There’s the town square at Coldkirk,’ said Bull. ‘I stayed there for a winter, when I was on the run from the crushers in Jackals.’

‘And Cassarabia, too,’ said Amelia. ‘The royal water gardens at Bladetenbul. They’re like the imagery from a crystal-book.’ She pressed her hand against the barrier. Not even a smear was left on the surface. ‘But with this wall, I think it’s the glass that holds the recording.’

Bull pointed at the scenes of Jackelian life floating on the sheared planes beyond. ‘That’s no ancient record from a crystal-book. That’s happening now .’

As they moved further down the corridor the scenes began to transform. Subtle changes at first — streets from Jackelian cities, but with their fashions slightly off kilter — women wearing Quatershiftian bonnets and soldiers on leave strutting about in brigade blue rather than the wine-red coats of the new pattern army. Further still, and the clothes changed to an austere parliamentarian cut, the kind of fashion favoured hundreds of years earlier — but updated in a sinister military style. The streets of Middlesteel grew darker, less colourful. The buildings taller and more imposing, but all individuality of dress vanishing from the citizenry — a sea of grey and black, as if everyone in the capital was serving in the army.

‘What is this?’ hissed Bull. ‘This isn’t Jackals.’

Amelia’s head had begun to throb again. ‘It is. Look at the streets, the buildings. It’s the capital.’

In the vision floating in front of them, a massive roaring sounded from the crowds lining the boulevard, the silhouettes of a fleet of airships thrumming across the sky. Their hulls were not painted in the chequerboard colours of the RAN, but were instead pitch black, apart from a single circle filled with a blood-red gate — the gate of parliament, solitary, without the lion that flew on the true flag of Jackals. Along the boulevard marched the Special Guard — black cloaks instead of red, their muscled arms wearing armbands bearing the same crimson gate that adorned the aerostats. Their sweeping march, so precise and strong, was made menacing in this vision. Stamping the road, shaking the street. Between their ranks were carts loaded with cages full of prisoners — starved, broken wretches still wearing the rags of other nations — Cassarabian gowns, Catosian togas, Kikkosicoan ponchos. The crowd bayed their hate, soldiers accompanying the carts striking through the bars with their whips when the mob had roared loud enough to be rewarded with blood.

A Cassarabian woman hidden under black robes shielded her daughter, the whip cracking across her back. ‘Whip the child,’ someone yelled from the pavement. The call was taken up by the mob until one of the Special Guardsmen yanked the mother back to expose her ten-year-old girl to their fury.

‘No,’ Amelia moaned, ‘that’s not us, that’s not Jackals.’ Her words were lost in the fury of the vision, a sea of standards bobbing in front of her tear-stained eyes, each bearing an eagle clinging to the sharpened teeth of parliament’s gate.

‘What is this cursed place?’ said Bull.

Words came to Amelia in answer, but it was as if they were drawn deep from something ancient lurking within her. ‘These are the corridors of else-when, that which might have been, the resonance of the parallel path.’