Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘Our merchant friend knows who Billy softbody really is,’ said Ironflanks.

‘No, I think Quest recognized what he is,’ added T’ricola.

‘Not a wolftaker, though,’ said the commodore. ‘Not an agent of the wicked Court of the Air. Not if Veryann is telling the truth, which on this matter, at least, I think she is.’

‘There are only two people with the answer,’ said Ironflanks. ‘Our erstwhile employer and Billy softbody himself. Of the two, I believe I would be inclined to trust our old sonar officer far more than the fastblood who has been paying our wages. If Abraham Quest has told a single truth about this expedition since he engaged my services, it has been by accident.’

‘Ah, but I have already asked to see my nephew in his cage on the brig,’ said the commodore. ‘Veryann just laughed at me. I doubt whether we’ll be getting visiting hours with our Billy.’

‘How then?’ asked Ironflanks.

Commodore Black tapped the metal duct beneath their feet. ‘An airship is not so different from a u-boat when she’s running at this altitude, eh T’ricola? Nothing to breathe outside, only her tanked air to keep us going. They have to breathe down in the brig as well, now, don’t they?’

‘There may be an intruder detection system running in the vents,’ said T’ricola. ‘Quest seems the cautious sort.’

The commodore scratched his beard. ‘Then we’re lucky to have the finest engineer to grace the Sprite’s decks along with us to throw a spanner in it.’

‘I am too big to crawl through such a confined space,’ said Ironflanks.

‘But you have two grand eyes,’ said the commodore, ‘like a pair of telescopes bought from Penny Street; and sound baffles so delicate I dare say you could tell me the weight of a stalking sleekclaw from her prowl. You’ll do fine standing on watch.’

‘It will be dangerous,’ said Ironflanks.

‘Your people once risked a whole company of steammen knights in Liongeli to recover one of your own. Besides, I want the mortal truth out of Billy Snow.’

‘There is an ancient saying,’ noted Ironflanks, ‘originating, I believe, from you fastbloods. The truth will set you free.’

‘No, old steamer,’ said the commodore. ‘In my experience, the truth will get you sent to the bottom of the ocean with an anchor chain wrapped around your legs to buy your silence. But it’s the truth I need, all the same.’

It was also the truth that occupied the mind of Abraham Quest, standing more or less squarely on the spot that the commodore was planning to break his way into. Billy Snow waited on the other side of the viewing port, as unconcerned by the presence of the airship’s master as by the existence of the cursewall fizzing between them.

Billy pointed to the motionless, abacus-like screen on the wall. ‘You could have used your Rutledge Rotator to talk to me.’

‘The one in your cell seems to have stopped working,’ said Quest. ‘Even though none of my mechomancers can find a fault with the equipment anywhere on the airship.’

Billy shrugged. ‘You can’t get the staff, can you?’ He raised his arms, free of their shackles. ‘They didn’t even secure me properly.’

‘Actually, normally I can get the staff,’ said Quest. ‘If you shaved your beard off, Mister Snow, and dyed your hair a shade darker, you would be the very spit of a man who tried to kill me a little over a year ago.’

‘Obviously he failed.’

‘Obviously,’ agreed Quest.

‘What happened?’

‘After the assassin died, my friends in the Department of Blood at Greenhall ran his sample through their great transaction engine halls. Not only did they find no record of his existence as a Jackelian native, but he had a previously unknown type of blood pumping through his veins.’

‘Probably foreign then,’ said Billy.

‘Not entirely dissimilar to some of our own blood types in Jackals, but unique enough to be classed as an aberration. An aberration of one.’

Billy glanced over to where Damson Beeton sat in the corner of the cell under the weight of her hex suit. She was doing a very good impression of minding her own business. ‘Aberrations happen.’

‘True enough,’ said Quest. ‘Mules are born when the race of man interbreeds with craynarbians or graspers.’

‘Craynarbians and graspers are part of the race of man,’ said Billy. ‘Just changed by the circumstances of their environment, their bodies whittled to a different pattern by the flow of life.’

‘So our learned journals would have it,’ said Quest. ‘But now it seems my would-be assassin is no longer an aberration of one, but of two. And my medical staff have been sent into an apoplexy because your blood work is not just similar to the dead rogue that tried to murder me last year, it is absolutely identical — not even the difference of twins to separate you.’

Billy shrugged. ‘Small world. What’s the chance of that happening?’

‘I have heard rumours such things may be possible in Cassarabia, womb mages turning out copies of the caliph’s favourites when their immortality drug has lost its potency on members of his clique.’

Billy inflated his cheeks like a frog. ‘I’m a little too fair-skinned to be one of the caliph’s children.’

‘You may look like one of us,’ said Quest. ‘But the workings of your body are so off the scale, you might as well be a different species — a lashlite or a steamman.’

Billy smiled and wiggled his fingers at the side of the metal straightjacket he had been jammed into. ‘I certainly feel like a member of the race of man.’

‘Would there by any point in my bringing one of my worldsingers down here for a truth hexing?’ asked Quest.

‘It would certainly help pass the time.’

‘And there are other forms of interrogation. The sort my friend Veryann and her people specialize in.’

‘I am sure she is very accomplished,’ said Billy. ‘But those techniques only work against people who can’t deactivate their pain receptors at will. As I’m sure you know, if you took one of me alive a year ago.’

‘Why?’ said Quest. ‘Why don’t you want me to reach Camlantis?’

‘Because I think you know what is up there,’ said Billy, ‘and even if you don’t, I’d probably still try to stop you.’

‘You don’t think I’m ready?’ asked Quest.

Billy nodded. ‘You. Jackals. The continent, the whole damn race of man.’

‘We need it,’ said Quest. ‘We need your knowledge.’

‘A knife can be the tool that cuts the barley and feeds your family,’ said Billy, ‘and it can be the tool that you pull across your neighbour’s throat before you steal his fields. Trust me, Abraham Quest, none of you are ready.’

‘If you don’t want anyone to open the door, why leave a key under the mat?’ asked Quest.

‘Because you don’t burn books,’ said Billy. ‘But equally, you don’t give your books to young children to deface. You give your knowledge to them when they’re wise enough to respect the gift.’

‘And you get to decide when we’re old enough?’

‘That’s what librarians do,’ said Billy.

‘Then it’s a pity you are locked up down here,’ said Quest, ‘while we’re outside, running around the shelves.’

‘A grave pity.’

‘I’m surprised I haven’t seen more of your people,’ said Quest.

‘There were only seven of us, and as you know, we are only too mortal.’

‘A little more than that, I think,’ said Quest.

‘Our anti-aging treatment was only perfected during the last days of Camlantis and there was the civil war and the barbarian incursions to distract us.’

‘It can’t have been easy. All these years, going on and on, while everyone around you moves along the Circle sooner or later.’