Andrew Stewart - We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

“Re-Remy?” a cautious voice asks, confused, blinking away the light, unfolding herself from her curled position cautiously. Here, now standing before me, Adolphine. A face I have only seen in profile. But a voice I know well. My confessor these past weeks.

She’s a lean and sinewy woman. Her black, braided hair, pulled back, featuring a gaunt face. Her eyes are the only thing familiar, other than her voice.

“We have to go forward with the plan… now,” I whisper, glancing quickly at either end of the chapel hatchways and ladders. Still clear.

“But… but it’s early,” she says, understanding now what is happening. “We’re a day early, isn’t that right? We’re not at the coordinates.”

“There’s no choice,” I whisper. “No time to explain. We’ll be caught if we don’t act now. The Forgotten. They’re taking control of engineering as we speak.”

She blinks in response, stares forlornly at the deck. As though she is confused. Lost.

“You… you have the key with you?” she asks. Perhaps she didn’t hear me. “The missile key?”

“Yes,” I say, removing it from my robe pocket, holding it in my hand.

“Good,” she says, oddly, looking at me—or, perhaps through me.

She’s dazed. Hungry. Exhausted.

“Hurry now!” I turn to rush aft, but she doesn’t follow. Instead, she has seized my wrist tight.

“What?” I ask as she pulls the key free from my hand.

In her expression, both fright and fury. “It’s too soon,” she whispers. “I haven’t finished fixing the missile yet.”

“That’s good, isn’t it? Come…” I try to pull her along, but she will not budge. She remains at the doorway of her cell.

My heart sinks, looking back at her, into her brown eyes.

“This is our only chance,” she says. “Our last chance to take out the Liánméng fleet. They’re all docked… in one place. If we act now, then it’s over. The war will be over.”

I try to pull away now, but she won’t let me. She’s gripping my arm so tightly, it burns.

Deep dread pours all over me. Seizes my bones. “I… I thought you said… you said there would be peace.”

“There will be. I promise you that,” she says. Her eyes darken.

“Liar…” I whisper.

“I know, child,” she says, patting my hand. “This was always our mission. One missile left in the world… one last chance to end the war. We had to find the Leviathan, to make it operational again. To launch it. I could not have done it without you.”

“Lazlo… we were going to save him… the others.” I finally manage to pull away, but she seizes my shoulders, fingers digging in, yanks me close to her.

“You forget that boy, hear me?” she whispers now. “You can still save yourself… slip away from them when we are at launch depth… that will be no more than two hundred feet. You can ditch at that depth. Remember what I told you—”

“No,” I say, breaking down, crying. Not believing it.

She, too, is crying. This stranger. She kisses my cheek. Now she has taken both my arms, gripping them tight. Not to embrace but to restrain me. To keep me from fleeing.

“ Save yourself, ” she whispers hotly into my ear. Then she shouts. “ Here! ” Louder than any voice has uttered on this boat. “He’s trying to escape!”

I WAKE TO DIMNESS. Smell of rust, rancid oil. Vision blurry, a figure takes shape. I am on the deck, in Caplain’s quarters, hands bound behind my back. Wrists at painful angles, numb.

Marston is seated at his desk, parchment laid out before him, three oil lamps lit, flames guttering.

He’s humming an energetic tune.

I try to move. Can do little more than lift my head.

“I’m finishing our final hymn,” he says, without turning or looking. He must have heard me stir. “What we shall sing as we descend. The final song we shall sing into the deep.”

He turns in his chair. About his neck hangs the missile key. The real one. In his hands, folded sheaves of parchment. He blows on the ink to dry it, then shows me the cover of the folio. Penned there, in ornamental lettering, the words Cantio Maris.

Song of the Sea.

“I’ve known you can read for some time—Latin as well,” he says, setting the folio on the desk behind him. Then he leans in close. “I know many of the secrets you and Caplain Amita shared. But the big one—I only just sussed that out a few years ago.”

“You knew?” I lick my lips. An arc of fire. I taste dried blood.

“He didn’t tell me—Caplain Amita. I figured it out on my own. I heard it in your voice, eventually. There’s a… unique quality to the castrati voice. Beautiful, yes. But a shade away from natural. Not yours, though.”

“And why have you kept me alive, then? So long after Caplain Amita’s death.”

“Because of your voice, child. Faith needs nurturing… our little flame, here in the darkness, in need of stoking,” he says, peering up, to an unknown height. “You have lifted us up for so long. That is why Caplain kept your secret, no doubt. He knew your… utility.

“My, my, but you have kept your own confidences and kept them well.” He looks down at the key hanging about his neck. “This, I did not know about. That Amita had kept the real key hidden all this time. That he gave the real one to you.”

“He didn’t trust you…” I say, throat dry.

“He was the one not to be trusted, Remy,” Marston says, standing now. So very tall from this position. Crooked. “He knew all along the missile would not fire. He had no intention of delivering the Last Judgment.”

“There is a world out there…”

“Sinners.”

“People. Good people…”

“People like this woman. Adolphine. She who lied to you, who took advantage of you to serve her own whims? She’s told me everything. About your plan for escape, for rescue. The message you sent.” He shakes his head.

“What happened to her?”

“You care? After all she has done? After her betrayal?”

Survive, she whispered to me.

“I do,” I say.

“She finished repairing the Last Judgment. Then she was returned to the sea. Where she belongs. God will decide the fate of her soul. Whether she redeemed herself.”

I close my eyes.

“She reprogrammed the missile,” I say. “It won’t strike where you want it to. It isn’t even targeted at Sydney any longer. Without her, you won’t be able to reprogram it.”

Marston laughs gently to himself, oddly.

“You think it matters where the missile strikes? It is the last. Blessed by God. It will usher in the end of days regardless.”

These words. I once believed them. How, now, is it that they sound so unfamiliar?

“There will be no rescue, dear Remy,” he says with a mock sympathy. “Even the closest Coalition ships are days away. And the Liánméng submarine that attacked has not followed us into these waters.”

I fight the urge to cry, even though a heat is building. A stinging.

“I see in you the same weakness as our beloved Caplain,” Marston says, staring down at me fixedly. Disappointed. “The same I saw in Brother Calvert’s eyes. Yes, I know he was the one who turned on us. Divulged the secrets of our order to the Topsiders. Oh, how you’ve been seduced… how easily, by his lies. The lies of your friend, Adolphine. You were ready to leave us… to abandon our order, after we have given you everything.”

“You’ve starved us… beaten us… mutilated us. Lied to us,” I say. I know now these are words I’ve wanted to speak out loud, to utter, for longer than I even knew.

“To try and purify you… but I can see that has not worked. Not for you or for Lazlo.”