Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘I travelled with you for the sake of my boat, lass, and now she’s at the bottom of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo. And I came to keep you safe, too, but I won’t travel any further. You’ll make me an outlaw twice over and old Blacky needs his few remaining comforts, not a new life on the run. There’s only so many times a worldsinger can re-mould my face before I forget who I am and why I’m blessed running.’

‘Then this is goodbye,’ said Amelia.

‘So it is then. I’ll pass your good wishes onto T’ricola and Ironflanks.’

‘You be careful, Jared. Ironflanks may claim some experience pushing around a sail rider, but there’s a big difference between jumping off a cliff on the Mechancian Spine with a chute of silk above you and piloting down a hot glider capsule.’

Amelia noticed Commodore Black peering over at her assistants; as if he would prefer they were not present at their parting. Odd, Jared had never come over as reserved before. She had seen the submariner skipper walk into a hardcore parliamentarian jinn house and sing long-forgotten royalist songs just to get a rise and think nothing of it.

‘Mad old Ironflanks used to be in the Pathfinder Fist,’ said the commodore, trying harder than he should have to raise a smile. ‘You could drop him out of the airship’s fin-bomb bays and he’d just bounce on his landing.’

‘And T’ricola has her hard skeleton shell to protect her,’ said Amelia. ‘But all you’ll have to cushion your landing is the weight of Quest’s silver coins, so you glide down safe all the same.’

Veryann watched the last of the commodore’s crates of money being loaded into the glider capsule, the silk-lined wings being furled to her side by the sailors. The Catosian soldier wouldn’t be staying in the hangar when the three survivors of the expedition launched — the lack of air at this altitude would asphyxiate anyone without an air mask within a minute. Veryann crossed the hangar, pulling her high-altitude coat tighter to ward off the cold in this unheated section of the vessel.

‘You need to launch now,’ one of the hangar crew was advising the commodore, T’riocla and Ironflanks. ‘We’re approaching the edge of western Jackals. You’ll be floating in Spumehead harbour and praying for a fishing boat to see your lights before you sink if you leave it much longer.’

Commodore Black was staring at Ironflanks climbing inside the capsule to finish off their pre-flight checks, T’ricola following to inspect the engineering. The old u-boat officer turned back to the airship crewman. ‘I can see your iron pigeon is no seadrinker vessel. We’ll head for the western downs right enough and leave the pleasures of the sea until we’re back on solid ground.’

‘No more adventures for you, then?’ asked Veryann.

‘If I had wanted to sail the heavens on one of these aerial battleships I would have taken the RAN’s silver shilling, lass, and become a jack cloudie. You’d be as wise to join me.’

‘The free company owe Abraham Quest a blood debt.’

‘Then I hope you and your fighters have enough blood left to pay it.’

‘We never did finish that last game of chess we started,’ said Veryann. ‘Drawing pieces in the dirt of the cage floor back in Prince Doublemetal’s realm. There’s a real board or two on the Leviathan . Who knows, I might even let you win — and that’s not an offer I make often.’

‘You’ve a sharp mind, lass,’ said the commodore, ‘and the vigour of youth besides, but I would have beaten you in the end.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because you are a touch too predictable. You follow your warrior’s code, but when you make that the heart of you, you give up something in return.’

‘I think you have a code,’ said Veryann, ‘even though you pretend that you do not.’

‘No, lass. There’s no code for me, anymore. I just let myself be pushed around by the cruel tides of fate and survive as best I can.’

Something was nagging at the Catosian officer. Was it the haste with which the expedition survivors were trying to load the money into their glider capsule? Or was it the stiffness in the commodore’s manner — an unease that should have been well sweetened by a glider stuffed full of Jackelian guineas; enough money to outfit a flotilla of new u-boats and more besides. The commodore should have been dancing a jig at the thought of leaving the danger of their high-altitude exploration of the firmament behind.

Veryann followed her instincts. ‘Stay a while longer, Jared. You should see your nephew before you go. He may be a filthy oath-breaker, but you should at least say goodbye to him before you leave. It may be your last chance for a very long time. Quest will have him thrown back in Bonegate to finish the rest of his sentence when we return.’

The commodore picked up the last remaining chest of coins, wheezing under its weight. ‘Now, if only you had been so reasonable the other day when I asked. As it is, we are running out of the green and pleasant land of Jackals to make a soft landing on. If I say my fare-thee-wells to Bull, poor Ironflanks will be paddling us back to the coast on his back and my treasure will be waiting on the seabed for a fisherman’s nets to claim it.’

Veryann nodded as if in sympathy. Quest might not understand the deep loyalty of the crew of a seadrinker boat, but she did. They were not so different from the bonds of a Catosian free company. ‘There is that. But we’re still holding onto the child of Pairdan in the cells. You can get both your farewells over at once.’

‘Two farewells would take longer than one.’

Veryann signalled her sentries forward from the hangar lock. ‘Maybe you should say goodbye to them anyway.’ A line of soldiers raised their rifles up towards the expedition members. ‘While you consider telling me just how it is you know Billy Snow’s real name.’

‘Uncle silver-beard,’ said Bull, glancing up as Commodore Black, Ironflanks and T’ricola were pushed into his cell. ‘Misery loves company, eh? The food’s better than the slop that came down the feeding tubes in the tanks at Bonegate, but the conversation here isn’t up to much.’

‘You are this braggart’s kinsman?’ said Septimoth, ruffling his wings in annoyance. ‘This cell isn’t half as big as it needs to be to contain two from the same family.’

Commodore Black looked over at the frenzied figure squatting behind the flying lizard, scrawling an intricate line of writing on the cell floor with the smeared remains of their last meal, coughing and shuddering as if in the grip of a fit. ‘You’ve got that right, my lashlite friend.’

Turbulence shook the deck of the Leviathan’s bridge, which was more crowded than Amelia had ever seen it. Not only were the command crew of the airship in attendance, but there were engineers preparing the mountains of equipment that Quest promised would prove the mechanism to unlock Camlantis — some of the components strangely familiar to Amelia: shades of the tower Coppertracks had been building at Tock House to communicate across the void. Helping supervise the work was the strange Quatershiftian exile — Robur — whom Quest had assured Amelia possessed a genius to match the mill owner’s own.

A gust caught the airship and even with the stat’s bulk she tipped to the side, Amelia’s hand snaking out to grip a guide rail. The Leviathan’s crew showed steadier air legs, the sailors in their green-striped shirts barely moving with each shift of the bridge’s wooden decking. Not one of them had lost the cap off their head yet, unlike the engineers, sliding and cursing as they made their final adjustments to the transmission mechanism. The question was, the transmission mechanism to what? Outside the sweeping arc of armoured glass that was visible past the steersmen’s two wheels, the sky seemed preternaturally clear. Amelia’s own airship voyages — previously confined to Jackals’ merchant marine and her university’s pocket aerostat — had never ventured even a tenth as high as their present altitude. But even with Amelia’s limited experience, she doubted that the airstream this high up should be so vicious in an empty, cloudless sky.