Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

The brig officer pushed him angrily into the entry lock of a cell. ‘You make me clean out your cell floor, Jackelian, we’ll be seeing if no rations for a week improves your gut’s disposition.’

True to the guard’s words, Bull’s cell contained a lashlite, the winged lizard sitting uncomfortably in a corner while a wide-eyed man rocked and moaned on his knees.

‘How do, boys. So which one of you is the lashlite and which one is the madman?’

Down below, the round armoured door shut and Billy Snow inspected his new quarters, his senses curving outwards to test the prison. No bars on the door like the cells he had observed upstairs; instead a single viewing hatch the size of a cheap penny dreadful, except that even the hole was shimmering under the protection of a cursewall. He doubted any of the other cells contained an old woman bent under the weight of a full hex suit, either. They circled each other warily, the old woman breaking the uneasy silence first.

‘And who are you?’

‘Obviously not someone as dangerous as you.’ He clanked his arm chains. ‘Or perhaps they only have one full hex suit on board.’

She moved her fingers under the weight of her gauntlet in what might have been taken for a nervous twitch.

Billy smiled. ‘I’m not a wolftaker.’

‘Then how did you know what I was signing? And more to the point, with those milky dead eyes of yours, how in the Circle’s name can you tell I’m even in a hex suit, let alone see what my fingers are doing? I may be buried away inside this armour, but I can still connect to the earthflow and you are no sorcerer — there’s not been a twinge of sorcery in this cell since you entered.’

Billy shrugged. ‘There are different sorts of magic, damson. Borrowing the powers of the leylines is one, but there are others. There are the natural powers, the powers of science, even the power of learning is a kind of magic, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Damson Beeton. ‘I would say that’s true enough. I always go with my first instincts when it comes to people, old man, and I have decided to trust you.’

‘Call me Billy. Billy Snow.’

Veryann found Abraham Quest in the transaction-engine chamber on the Leviathan . He was standing on the gantry, listening to the turning drums of the massive calculating machines below. Some of the initial data from the information gem they had recovered from the lake was revolving on those drums now. Transcribed into Simple — the ancient language of the transaction engines — by the house’s cardsharps and engine men. How the mill owner found peace amongst the clacking and the din of such places was something she could never understand.

‘The keys to Camlantis are inside the crown’s gem?’ asked Veryann.

‘Oh yes,’ said Quest. ‘Three to four days left before we arrive, and we shall have the key by the time we get there.’

‘It was made difficult to decipher?’

‘Naturally,’ said Quest. ‘But mathematics has not changed over the millennia, even if much else has. And the ancients wanted their legacy to be understood, eventually.’

‘By those worthy to follow in their footsteps,’ noted Veryann.

‘You think we are not?’

‘There is an old man in the brig who clearly believes that to be the case,’ said Veryann.

‘So there is,’ sighed Quest. ‘Yes, it’s about time he and I had a chat.’

‘He will tell you nothing,’ said Veryann, ‘and you should trust not a word that comes out of his mouth.’

‘Indeed. But I do owe it to him to try.’

‘Speaking of debts,’ said Veryann, ‘Amelia Harsh has requested access to your second crystal-book.’

‘I had hoped she would be distracted by the contents of the crown’s gem,’ said Quest. ‘There is enough data inside its structure to keep her busy for the next thousand years.’

‘She suspects your two crystal-books were transcribed by opposing sides in the civil war,’ said Veryann, ‘and she is enough of a historian to know that there are two sides to every tale of conflict.’

‘Give her the second crystal-book, then. But give it to her raw. It took my engines years to reconstruct the material at the end that was struck by information blight — the work will keep her occupied for the next three days at least.’

‘Don’t underestimate her,’ warned the Catosian. ‘She is clever and those arms of hers could toss you through a porthole before we shot her down.’

‘When we have done away with hunger and poverty and war we will need a historian to record our age of miracles,’ said Quest. ‘Even if the hands that hold that pen could snap the spine of a bear.’

Veryann watched the engine boys below moving over the calculating machines on their web of pulleys and guide ropes. ‘There is more to the woman than I can fathom.’

‘The chattering of the craynarbian witch doctor you told me about?’ smiled Quest. ‘I believe in the fate we choose to make, not the toss of bones and cogs, or the throw of magic potions into the temple fire.’

‘She has the luck of the devil.’

‘We’re Jackelians,’ said Quest. ‘We did away with our devils when we cast down our gods.’

The commodore looked around the chamber — an open space surrounded by tethered ballonets, the room shaking with the turning rotors on the other side of the hull. There was a gantry with a machine for opening up the lifting globes and filling them with celgas under pressure — Quest’s unique high-lift mix — but it was the noise that attracted the commodore here. Little chance of being overheard. Or noticed.

‘You did not want Amelia softbody to be party to our plot?’ asked Ironflanks.

‘Just yourself and T’ricola,’ said the commodore.

‘I think we could trust her,’ said Ironflanks.

‘It’s not a matter of trust, old steamer, although I won’t pretend that thought hasn’t crossed my mind,’ explained the commodore. ‘Now we’re no longer about his mad goose chase, Quest has written the three of us off. But he still wants Amelia working for him. I’ve seen the way Quest makes sure there’s always at least one of his people standing around by the professor, watching her. Making sure we don’t change her mind about leaving for home.’

‘So,’ said T’ricola. ‘Billy Snow.’

‘Yes. Billy. Bad, mad Billy Snow,’ the commodore nodded. ‘He’s served with me twice before, navigated my boat through fields of mines and sat silent by my side while the God-emperor’s bully boys tried to tickle us to the surface with their depth charges. He’s shared my salted jerky and saved my life and if Quest knew anything more about seadrinkers than the cost of a cargo run across the Sepia Sea, he’d know we don’t leave our own behind.’

‘But is he our own?’ asked T’ricola, the bony hand of her manipulator arm opening and closing nervously. ‘He deep-sixed us back on the surface of the lake.’

‘After leading us safely through the greenmesh,’ pointed out Ironflanks, his voicebox set low. ‘That cut he gave me on the seed ship was the strike of a master swordsman! I could count on one hand the number of steammen knights who could duplicate such a feat. If he had meant to make me deactivate, my thread on the great pattern would surely have been severed by now. He was trying his best not to harm us, even as he fought us to destroy the Camlantean crown.’

‘There’s a blessed sight more to this affair than Quest has admitted to,’ said the commodore. He looked at T’ricola. ‘How long have you known Billy?’

‘I’ve crewed with him for years, for as long as anyone. I didn’t even know he carried a sword in that cane of his, let alone a witch-blade.’

‘I met a boy like him once,’ said the commodore. ‘A fey lad with wild blood in his veins and a talent for getting into scrapes. Billy’s older, but he always did move about like a cat on my u-boat — like no blind man I have ever seen before or since. Crewing on a seadrinker craft is a mortal clever way to travel around the world undetected, always another sailor in port to vouch for you, no ties to the land to gainsay your stories or your identity.’