The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

CHAPTER TWELVE

Fumes from the liquid below — a dark oil that steamed and bubbled up from the well — kept the commodore coughing and cursing his fate as the others clutched onto the bars of their cage, trying not to make the box swing on the end of its precarious cable. It would not do to hit any of the other cages lowered into the pit on tethers. Not that the other occupants would mind. Whether as a warning, or simply out of pure neglect, their nearest neighbours hanging over the oily well were the carapaces of three craynarbian warriors, flesh long since rotted away through starvation. The smallest of the craynarbians had the sword arm of one of its fellows piercing its thorax, testament to how they had turned to cannibalism in their last desperate days.

‘I shall never complain about the wicked fogs of a Middlesteel peculiar again,’ said the commodore, ‘not if I have to walk through the mills of Workbarrows on a hot summer’s day without a linen mask, then swear in front of a magistrate that the air there is as sweet as the scent of the lilies along the hills of the western downs.’

‘I think the chance of you ever standing in front of a magistrate in Middlesteel are looking distinctly slim right now,’ said Gabriel McCabe, staring at the corpses in the other cages.

‘We know very little of our captors’ motives,’ Billy Snow pointed out. ‘Although I think we can presume they are not benevolently disposed towards us.’

‘Damn feral steammen,’ said T’ricola. ‘I wish Ironflanks hadn’t been taken away. He might have had a few answers for us.’

‘They are not steammen,’ said Billy Snow. ‘I can hear the difference in how they move. Steammen have an honest clunk about their walk; those things that captured us move like panthers in armour, they’re light on their feet, almost organic.’

‘It’s answer enough for me that they dragged Ironflanks away whistling in terror,’ said the commodore. ‘The old steamer recognized those monsters. He’s had prior dealings with them for sure.’

‘Our captors are the beasts that slaughtered the survivors of the airship crash we found,’ said Veryann. ‘Ironflanks intimated in the jungle that the masters of this territory are the architects of the gas wall the Sprite encountered. You do not have to smell the rot from the other cages to know that this metal tribe are a hostile and formidable force.’

The commodore clutched a handkerchief to his nose. ‘Ah, Coppertracks, my fine old friend, I should have listened to you back in Jackals. He said there were dark things in Liongeli that he would not speak of and fool that I am I ignored his mortal advice — left the comforts of Tock House and plunged into this green hell blinded by the inducements of the great Abraham Quest.’

‘He offered you what you wanted,’ said Veryann. ‘He offered all of you what you wanted. For you, Jared Black, a chance to get the Sprite back, for your officers a chance to serve on a seadrinker vessel again when no other master would take them onto their pay list.’

‘And what did he offer you?’ T’ricola asked Veryann.

‘My honour and my life,’ said Veryann. ‘For the soldiers of a free company the two are indivisible.’

‘There we are then,’ said the commodore. ‘We’ve all got what we wanted, fine and sure now. For Ironflanks his chest of silver Jackelian guineas he will never spend, for me a beautiful boat that has been stolen away by my scheming nephew, and for you, your warrior’s death at the hands of some feral steamers.’

‘I do not welcome death,’ said Veryann. ‘But I do not fear it.’

The commodore took off his jacket, his shirt covered in sweat from the heat of the pit below. ‘Noble words, lass, but it’ll break old Blacky’s heart to see your golden head dangling like a shrunken apple on the necklace of the terrible beasts that have taken us.’

There was a jolt on the cage and it began to be lifted out of the steam of the bubbling black oil, raised high on its joist. As they cleared the wall of petrol mist they saw the village of their captors stretched out below, geodesic domes in the same style as the encampments the steammen knights set up when on campaign, covered by creepers and jungle bush. It had been raining an hour before, a deluge that had left puddles in the mud, each pool broiling now with the return of the febrile heat. When the arm holding them swung across to the ground, they had a brief glimpse of a second pit next to theirs, deeper, but not filled with oil. The head of Queen Three-eyes turned towards their cage, a brief look of recognition in her eyes as she caught the scent of her fellow prisoners, followed by disappointment that her mortal enemy Ironflanks did not count among their number. She may have been free of the bubble-like substance that had trapped her, but the queen of Liongeli was as much a prisoner as the officers from the Sprite.

On the ground a small party of natives waited for them, their metal bodies filed down, sharp razors visible on any hull-part not covered by animal furs and shell armour scalped from craynarbian tribesmen. All but one of their reception committee were hulking things, steel gorillas that hissed steam from outlets along their armour while they waited. The odd tribesman out was a quarter of his companions’ size. He wore a cheetah cape and a segmented metal tail swung behind him as he capered to and fro, poking at the air with a rusty iron staff topped with an eagle sculpture. Dirty water leaked across the cage floor as the box thumped down, one of the tribe inserting his hand in the door lock — interfacing with the cage and springing their door open. The commodore looked on with interest. He knew a thing or two about locks, and the primitive appearance of their captors belied the sophistication of the cage the expedition members had been held in. These tribesmen might look like feral skull hunters, but there were few properties back in Middlesteel that had such well-protected doors.

‘What have you done with our scout?’ Veryann demanded as she stepped out. ‘Why have you separated Ironflanks from our company?’

The small steamman danced in amusement. ‘Ironflanks is an old friend and now he is an uneasy rider.’

‘Uneasy rider? Are you talking about the Steamo Loas, is Ironflanks being ridden by one of your blessed spirits?’ said the commodore, shuddering. The steamman gods had always made him nervous. Ever since one of the Loas had ridden Coppertracks and his warrior mu-bodies on the Isla Needless, driving off an attack of the rock-like creatures that bided there. The steammen gods were fickle things and numerous — you could never tell which of them might come calling when invited in during the Gear-gi-ju rituals.

The commodore’s question seemed to tickle the little metal creature, steam shrieking out of his stacks. ‘Once a Loa, once a Loa, you fat hairless monkey.’

There were no more half-answers forthcoming and the exped ition officers were led into a passage deep into the jungle covered by steel netting over arched girders — the rib bones of a mechanical whale holding out the press of the forest. Billy Snow had been right, there was something animal-like about these things. They had a strutting gait quite unlike that of the calm, meticulous steammen found back in Middlesteel. Their path through the jungle led them to a rocky hillock, a crumbling temple carved into the rock face. Whoever the original architect of the construction might have been, their artifice had been chiselled over and carved out with new statues and bas-reliefs — crudely done, but obviously remade into the form of steammen.

‘I thought your people lacked an eye for art,’ muttered the commodore.

‘Not to be confusing us with the people of the metal in your monkey land,’ said the guide. ‘We follow the true path of Lord Two-Tar.’

‘And I’m sure a fine path it is too,’ said the commodore. ‘But how about you let us leave now, rather than be bothering about a miserable small band of travellers just making their honest way through Liongeli?’

‘But you are our guests,’ giggled the little creature. ‘We have a duty to entertain you. Or is it the other way around? It is so easy to be confused.’

Inside, the temple corridors were lit — barely — by jagged green crystals wired to chemical batteries in braziers, the steam and fizz of wild energy lost as the sound of drums grew louder. The officers were jabbed forward into a wide shadowed chamber under the centre of the hill, straight into the middle of a frenzied celebration — creatures of the metal ducking and turning in front of a pit filled with red molten coals. Many of the wild steammen had worked themselves into a manic frenzy and were detaching limbs — arms, legs, vision plates, voiceboxes — and fixing them on a spiked totem pole, then grabbing other pieces of assembly and pressing their new components into the burning coals before thrusting them into their empty sockets and continuing their dance. As a result of this insane limb-trading some of the tribesmen were loping on arm pincers or swinging legs from their shoulder sockets.

The expedition members found themselves in front of a pool containing the same black oil that had filled the prison pit. A steamman luxuriated on his back — almost corpulent in his design, a massive belly slick with oil, round lines broken by a brush of golden metal curls running down the side of his frog-like mask of a face.

Raising a goblet spilling with oil, the bathing steamman seemed to toast them. ‘So, these are the hairless monkeys that were on Queen Three-eyes’ supper menu? Mark me, they hardly look fit to be an appetizer for the thunder lizard.’

‘And don’t think we are not grateful to you for rescuing us,’ said the commodore. ‘You can have the thanks of old Blacky before we continue on our way in peace.’

‘Silence!’ The guards struck their prisoners with their needle-lined fists. ‘You do not address Prince Doublemetal without his permission.’

‘Well. Perhaps this fat ape might give Queen Three-eyes a few mouthfuls before he is made deactivate,’ mused the corpulent steamman. ‘Though in truth, I grow weary of what sport there is in seeing thunder lizards rip apart softbodies. It is all over so quickly. What do you think of that, fat little monkey, do you think that you might run fast enough to last more than a few seconds in the pit?’

‘I’m a great one for running,’ said the commodore. ‘I’ve something of a royal title myself and it’s made me a mite unpopular back in Jackals, although I have found the steammen back home to be a little more forgiving in that regard than the race of man.’

The chief of the wild things sat up and oil dripped off the gold curls moulded onto his chest assembly. ‘Oh ho, do not dare compare the siltempters with the people of the metal, my noble-titled monkey friend. We have advanced far beyond their meagre ambitions. We call Loas that they shun, receive wisdom that their slaves’ boiler hearts are too small to contain. We change our own bodies, swap parts as it pleases us — why, I even allow the most courageous of my siltempters to function with cogs and crystals that have once been part of my own august being!’

‘Very wise,’ agreed the commodore.

Prince Doublemetal raised an arm out of the bath and pointed it accusingly at the expedition members. ‘What do you want with the sixth?’

‘The sixth?’ said Commodore Black ‘There’s only five of us.’

‘Do not play games with me, you portly softbody scum!’ roared the prince. ‘I know why you have defiled our realm. Has King Steam sunk so low that he now sends such as you to continue the war between our two people, to steal our relics? Does the Free State have no more steammen knights brave enough to travel to our land?’

The commodore looked at Veryann, T’ricola and Gabriel McCabe, but it was clear they had no idea what this mad frog-faced machine was talking about. Billy Snow held to his silence, grimly.

‘You’ll have to forgive me, your highness,’ said Commodore Black. ‘The steammen back home don’t really talk about your fine kingdom out here in Liongeli — save a passing mention with a little trepidation.’

‘And well they should fear us. They have memories long enough to remember the schism between the siltempters and the steammen, even if it has faded from the frail minds of meat and water possessed by your kind.’ Prince Doublemetal gestured to his warriors. ‘Let these filthy softbody liars see the sixth they have come stealing into our realm to seize. Let them tremble at its splendour.’

At his urging a section of the floor rumbled back, a platform rising slowly into the chamber. Mounted like a jewel in a coronet on the platform was a cube of the same material that had been sprayed around Queen Three-eyes, imprisoning the thunder lizard. But this confinement glue held no organic creature — instead, a battered white globe was set immobile inside — a machine — the material of its spherical skin quite unlike anything of this world, save where its surface had been blackened and scarred, and there it resembled a copper-coloured lava.

‘Behold, the sixth,’ said Prince Doublemetal. ‘Tell me now you have no idea what this holy of holies is. Let me hear the lie tumble from your lips. Let me hear that you were not paid by King Steam to rob the siltempters of this glory of ours.’

‘I have never seen such as this before,’ said Veryann. ‘Although it is obviously damaged, a war machine — perhaps part of a steamman fighting frame?’

‘Sweet Circle preserve me, but I have seen one of these terrible things before,’ whispered the commodore. ‘And heard a little more of it from my Molly back at Tock House. Something like this appeared during the battle of Rivermarsh and helped break the army of demons conjured up by that madman Tzlayloc. Seven of them, there were. Seven Hexmachina to preserve the world. But I thought they were all dead, all save Molly’s one curled up sleeping snug in the veins of the world deep below Middlesteel.’

His news seemed to alarm the siltempters, the little cheetah-cloaked one scampering back, squealing as it clutched its sound baffles.

‘Calm yourselves,’ called the prince. ‘Of course this hairless monkey knows of the Hexmachina. Even a softbody can press his ears to the dirt and feel the throb of power of the holy of holies within the earth. There are two Hexmachina left — and we have one of them!’

The commodore looked doubtfully at the broken thing they had captured — or preserved — inside the amber-like cube. If this was their talisman, it showed none of the raw power of the thing he had seen intervene in the invasion of Jackals when the god machine had tossed Quatershift’s demon allies back through the pit of hell they had crawled out of.

‘We have not come for your treasures,’ said Billy Snow. ‘We are bound for Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo and the ruins of Camlantis.’

‘Pah,’ said Prince Doublemetal. ‘The realm of that brooding cabbage who rules over the creepers contains nothing but ancient dust and rubble. Do you really expect me to believe you are not in service to King Steam and his minions?’

‘Your ancient enemy has nothing to do with our voyage,’ insisted Billy. ‘Have you not discovered as much from Ironflanks?’

‘Ironflanks,’ said Prince Doublemetal. ‘Dear Ironflanks. He is almost family to me. Let us see what he has to say.’ He clicked his iron fingers and a heavy frame was lowered from one of the temple levels above, Ironflanks hanging limply from the mesh, his shredded safari suit clinging to his body like peeling flesh. ‘Not that I would be inclined to believe too much of what he says. Poor exiled product of the Free State. Desperately trying to amass enough money to pay a mechomancer from the race of softbodies to extract the superior components we so kindly donated to his inferior architecture the last time he was our guest.’

Ironflanks’ telescope eyes extended weakly out — oil dripping like drool from his head. Too weak to speak in a higher language after hours of torture, his voicebox emitted a pitiful squawk of static in machine language.

‘You see,’ said Prince Doublemetal, refilling his goblet with oil from his pool. ‘You see how ungrateful he is. We brought him into the fold, gave him components from our holy bodies and how does he repay us? He escapes from his cage and goes running back to the mongrel traders of Rapalaw Junction. Could they help you, weak little fool? Would King Steam lift a finger to correct the “corruption” of your architecture? It pains me, Ironflanks. My own components sparking inside you, my own design imposed on your pattern and how do you repay your new father? You reject me for that weak monarch of compromise, that ruler of the maybe and the middle way you foolishly call sovereign in the Free State. Tell me that you were not coming here in search of the Hexmachina again, tell me you do not recognize the armour of the steammen knights you once dared to lead here now adorning the bodies of my warriors.’

Instead of answering with his voice, Ironflanks extended two fingers out from one of his manipulator arms and made the shape of the inverted ‘V’ — the lion’s teeth, the traditional Jackelian gesture of defiance.

‘There, do I lie?’ Prince Doublemetal sighed with regret; sad his words had been borne out. ‘An ingrate. But there are better ways of getting to the truth. Where is my tosser of the cogs?’

‘Here, your highness.’ An emaciated siltempter emerged from the shadows of the chamber, a dark cloak covering his tall, mantis-like body. As he loomed closer, the commodore saw the cloak was a patchwork map of different skins — pard, sleekclaw, craynarbian — oiled and shiny. A tripod of legs clacked him across to the bath of oil. Prince Doublemetal topped up his goblet and passed it to the shaman. As he did so the siltempters behind the expedition officers seized the arms of the softbodies, vice-like fingers clamping their iron tightly around muscles, giving the commodore and his friends not an inch to squirm.

‘Which of these do you require to perform the ritual?’

‘I have no preference, your highness,’ said the shaman.

‘Take the craynarbian woman, then. I never tire of hearing the crack of their shells.’

Gabriel McCabe struggled in the grip of the metal apes binding his arms, trying to stop them dragging the engineer away. ‘Let T’ricola go — if you have a challenge, let me face it.’

‘A challenge?’ laughed the shaman. ‘Do you know nothing of Gear-gi-ju? We do not require your sport to invoke the Steamo Loas!’

‘I have seen the rituals of Gear-gi-ju,’ said the commodore. ‘Coppertracks draining his own oil and throwing his cogs to read the future in their patterns.’

The shaman lifted the goblet of black liquid his prince had passed him. ‘Here is our oil — holy sap of our bodies — it has been filtered through each of us here. But Lord Two-Tar does not come riding for such as this, though it still be required for the calling.’

Prince Doublemetal waved a languid pincer hand in the direction of Gabriel McCabe. ‘Take the big one at his word, then. Keep the craynarbian woman for the thunder lizards — she will be mauled as well under their jaws as she will in the calling. You’ll get more system juice out of the giant, besides.’

‘Gabriel!’ T’ricola cried as the metal savages dragged the first mate away from his friends. Gabriel struggled with all his strength, but the beetle-shelled machines held him tight and dragged him towards an altar, pushing his spine down to the stone. The strongest man in Jackals was no match for the strongest siltempter in Liongeli. Leather straps were lashed down across his arms, chest and legs. When they were finished the nearest siltempters started lurching around the altar, forming a drunken circle, their voices chanting in the machine language. Whether activated by their dark hymn or by an unseen switch, a stone block in the ceiling began to crunch down, lowering inexorably towards the first mate.

Prince Doublemetal’s amused laughter drowned out the shouts of anger from the struggling officers. Now the purpose of the blood-encrusted rivulets in the altar had become clear, the channel at the foot of the stone leading to a stained granite basin where goblets could be filled with the oil — or blood — of their sacrifices.

Gabriel McCabe was staring in terror at the crushing press only a foot above him, the gap closing every second, when Billy Snow broke free of the grip of his captor, the ape-like machine turning in the air as if it had become the cog in an invisible machine. The blind sonar man moved his feet as if he was following the footsteps of a dance that had been sketched onto the chamber floor, gracefully avoiding the frenzied wave of sharp-edged siltempters reaching and thrusting for him with their spears. His cane had split open, expelling a shining swordstick that licked out, severing steel limbs and opening iron chests with deft flicks. Where Billy Snow danced the warriors fell back, clutching their metal bodies, crystals sparking fire and tubes pumping dirty oil onto the floor.

He was almost at the altar, his blade raised to plunge into the stone control panel, when a steamman with a large pepper-pot gun connected by tubes to his boiler came out of the crowd, a hail of darts pin-pricking the sonar man’s legs. Billy Snow collapsed, paralysed by the wicked poison on the dart-tips. The last look on Gabriel McCabe’s face before the press bore down on him was one of incredulity at the blind sonar man collapsing by his side — as if he had glimpsed the metamorphosis of his friend into a deadly butterfly. Then the rock ground down and there was a brief, horrific scream, followed by a sickening wet crunching sound, the first mate’s blood draining out in a dark river down the channels of the altar.

‘Sorry, Gabriel,’ whispered the commodore. T’ricola was sobbing with anger even as the shaman began filling cups with their shipmate’s blood, chanting and mixing the remains of the first mate with the oil from the tribe’s own bodies.

‘Excellent,’ applauded Prince Doublemetal from the pool. Two of his people dragged Billy Snow’s paralysed form back to where the surviving officers stood. Prince Doublemetal extended his hand out for Billy’s sword. ‘You poor miserable hairless monkeys have no idea how hard it is to surprise me, to relieve the monotony of my exulted, long-lived existence.’ He rotated the sword in his hand. ‘Living metal, a witch-blade. Of course it can cut through our armour. Not one of those poorly smithed blades from the east either, this is ancient. Who was responsible for searching the prisoners?’

A siltempter crept forward, his vision plate averted from the sword the prince was gesturing with. ‘The sightless one needed his cane to move around without being led by our warriors. To remove it would have inconvenienced the guards.’

‘Yes, I see that,’ said the prince.

Three of the hulking siltempters dragged their colleague to the side of the prince’s oil pool, forcing him to kneel by the edge. Prince Doublemetal lashed out, severing the steamman’s head from his shoulder hull, before pushing the blade into the unfortunate lackey’s chest, a jet of superheated steam cleansing the blade of the oil smeared onto its silvery surface as he found the boiler heart. ‘Well, there we are. Sorry to “inconvenience” you.’

He indicated that his guards should drag the corpse over to where the shaman was finishing draining Gabriel McCabe’s body. ‘Waste not, want not.’

Laying the goblets out at the points of a floor-chalked dodeca hedron, the shaman spilt an offering of the mix of oil and blood at each corner of the shape. A hush fell on the chamber as the emaciated shaman entered the centre of the diagram and began a slow gyratory dance, calling the Steamo Loa from the hall of spirits to ride his body. Mist seeped upward from the goblets, liquid spilling out as they frothed with an unholy energy. Coalescing into the shape of something horned and angular, the mist seeped around the rivets of the shaman, cloaking him with a transparent nimbus. Behind the commodore, the crowd let out gasps of awe from their voiceboxes as the shaman started to convulse, his dance moving into a fit of juddering metal limbs. He straightened up, filled with a power that made the folds of his hull creak and pop as he capered around the inside of the diagram, his fingers shaking, and pointing at the warriors in the ancient temple.

The shaman’s words made no sense to Jared Black, they were raw machine code, but a code mixed with something else — the crackling of furnaces, the pop and splinter of the ovens where steammen components were melted down. This was their hell. This was their death communicating with them. Steam leaked from the shaman’s voicebox as he accused and insulted in the ancient tongue. Then the shaman pointed up at the grille where the tortured body of Ironflanks hung limply and began clanging his tripod legs on the floor as if the spirit that had possessed him was trying to drum out a message. Around the perimeter of the dodecahedron the goblets were melting, the heat of the steaming blood and oil too much for the copper vessels.

‘You said you share your residence in Middlesteel with a steamman,’ Veryann whispered to the commodore. ‘Is this their usual form of their worship?’

The commodore dragged his gaze away from the crushed remains of Gabriel McCabe. There was the rest of the crew to think of, those with lives still left to lose. ‘That it is definitely not, lass. The people of the metal record the future by reading the cogs they toss in their own oil and the Steamo Loas come calling to ride them of their own accord. This Lord Two-Tar must be a standoffish spirit — I believe he is shunned by the people of the metal back home, for I have never heard my friend Coppertracks speak of him, nor come across any wicked temple to him in Steamside.’

At last, the possession of the shaman was at an end and the sorcerer was left trembling inside the pattern, his wasted form shrouded by the fizzing remains of his offering to Lord Two-Tar.

‘What knowledge have you gained while you were ridden?’ demanded Prince Doublemetal. ‘The mighty lord was not pleased with us, he cursed us all and called down terrible blessings in his song to us.’

‘These monkeys are telling the truth,’ said the shaman, recovering his composure enough to talk again. ‘Ironflanks was guiding them to the realm where the writ of the Daggish runs.’

‘That turnip,’ hissed the prince, ‘that ruler of the walking trees. What has he that is worthy of the journey to steal? The siltempters have the holy body of one of the Hexmachina — what does the empire of the Daggish have to offer?’

‘Life,’ said the shaman, ‘and death!’

‘They shall find the latter here, without troubling to travel across our border with the Daggish.’

‘Lord Two-Tar counsels us to put these softbodies to death at once. Their deaths may lead us to great power very shortly.’

‘Wonderful news,’ said Prince Doublemetal. ‘The softbodies’ part in the great pattern shall end in the gut of Queen Three-eyes. I have a new thunder lizard to feed.’

‘Their immediate death is required,’ said the shaman. ‘It would not be wise to keep them for the arena.’

‘Wise!’ Prince Doublemetal furiously tossed a goblet at the shaman. ‘If the Loa disagrees with my wisdom let it ride me now, let it impart its vision in this matter to me! No? Then I shall decide for us. I decide that a spear plunged into these dogs’ softbody bellies is too quick and affords me no amusement. They shall die between the jaws of the thunder lizards. These water-filled organics have invaded our realm, led by this ingrate Ironflanks — a traitor who has spurned my gifts to his architecture — a traitor who keeps on coming to our land leading our enemies fast behind him. First with King Steam’s knights, now with the Free State’s Jackelian allies. We shall give them to the thunder lizards for breakfast tomorrow and watch such sport as they might provide, scampering about in the pit before they are consumed. I understand Ironflanks and Queen Three-eyes are old friends. Let them be reacquainted tomorrow.’

Ironflanks’ semiconscious body was lowered from the ceiling and had to be dragged across the chamber floor with the paralysed form of Billy Snow by his side.

‘You’re no prince worthy of the name,’ shouted the commodore. ‘You’re just the king of the loons out here.’

‘While you, my fine, fat friend, are kilasaurus fodder,’ giggled Prince Doublemetal. ‘We’ll see how full of puff and monkey bravado you are when you swagger out onto the sand to face my new pet.’

‘For the death of our comrade,’ said Veryann quietly, with a coldness that left no doubt it was not an idle boast, ‘with no sword in his hand, with no honour when he had offered you combat, I shall watch your death throes, you dirty steamer.’

‘Yes, yes. Of course you will.’ The prince waved the prisoners away, his languid gaze returning to the carnival frenzy of the dancing warriors, swapping components in their unholy revelry. ‘Be seeing you all for breakfast.’

Prodded by the spears, the surviving members of the expedition were taken back to their cage, leaving behind the stench of Gabriel McCabe’s smouldering blood and the siltempters’ insane celebrations.