The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Bull thrust the bathysphere hard to starboard as the seed ship’s spine weapon flashed past leaving a trail of highly compressed air bubbles in its wake. The Daggish ruler had obviously grown suspicious during their prisoners’ absence in the Camlantean underworld. Two of its latest submersible seed ships had been waiting in ambush for them when they exited the gate of light on the bed of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo.

‘I thought they wanted the crown back in one piece,’ said Bull.

‘Whatever’s in those spine heads, it won’t damage the crown,’ said Amelia, clutching onto her seat, ‘you can be sure of that.’

‘Poison, then,’ speculated Bull. ‘Dirt-gas, or their version of it.’ He dropped the bathysphere, using the manoeuvrability of their vessel to push down towards the ruins. ‘I don’t want to find out the hard way.’

More shots came past, well wide, disappearing into the crater beneath.

‘Kill the lights.’ Bull’s hands closed the illumination reservoir to the gas spots. ‘Let’s see how good their sonar is.’

‘Better than ours.’ Amelia peered out of the rear porthole. ‘We don’t have any!’

Beyond the glass she could see luminescent strips along the side of the submersible following them, a blood marker from whatever underwater creature the Daggish had used to create its seed ship design. Their craft were slow to turn due to their size, but that bulk meant they were carrying a lot more air than their small bathysphere. The two expedition survivors were down to half an hour’s charge; even if they escaped into the Shedarkshe, the chase downriver was going to be over before it started.

‘They’re piloting those two boats like they’ve broken into the grog rations,’ sneered Bull. ‘It’s small wonder their vessels have been ending up in the graveyard down here. They’ve got a dead hand on the stick.’

‘Head for the river,’ called Amelia, as a spine head from the second pursuer flashed past, ‘or there’ll be two corpses in this boat.’

Schools of tiny fish scattered as their bathysphere powered through the water, chased by the whale-like outlines of the Daggish submersibles turning after them with an organic grace, like fish themselves.

‘We’re nearly there,’ said Bull. ‘We’re in the river currents now and-’

He yelled in alarm. A wall of anti-u-boat netting had been laid ahead, stretched across the wide entrance to the river. Bull turned the sphere, the expansion engines whining as loudly as Amelia had ever heard them. Missing the metal gauze by less than a foot, they turned away from the rigid mesh, running along the crater wall with the pull of the current buffeting them.

‘Dead hand on the stick!’ Amelia cursed the slaver. ‘They weren’t trying to catch us, just corral us in here.’

‘I didn’t see those nets on the way in,’ said Bull. ‘What’s that jigger Tree-head Joe done that for? You’d think that he didn’t trust us.’

‘You were brigged on the way in, you lackwit.’ Amelia looked through the rear porthole. The two Daggish craft were turning after them — they had only been slowing to avoid being caught in the nets. ‘And they’ve absorbed enough feral craynarbians into the hive to know the tales of a u-boat making slaving calls along the river villages.’

Bull laughed, twisting the bathysphere around to face their pursuers.

‘What are you doing?’

Bull slammed the pilot stick forward. ‘Attacking!’

Amelia ran for the exo-claws at the back, pushing her arms into the control gloves. She’d had plenty of practice sifting through the debris on the lake bed. She dialled them up to maximum strength, the clockwork amplification feeding the claws with so much energy that they shook every couple of seconds as if they were possessed with palsy. Good enough. Taken aback by the attack of this minnow, the modified seed ships tried to pull to port, but they had slowed too much to avoid colliding with the anti-sub netting. The bathysphere’s shadow passed over the nearest of the craft and Amelia lashed down with both her claws at the illuminated compound eye-shaped conning dome on the hull. Bull’s words came back to her. You are going to need to dish out a walloping with themwaldos. She had a brief glimpse of shattering panels, the pressure of the water imploding the dome, drowning Daggish drones, then the submersible’s light flickering and dying.

The second seed ship had turned enough to bring her aft tubes to bear, two spine heads powering forward faster than they had any right to, a trail of bubbles in their wake. Bull dived their craft down, but the second of the spines glanced off the bathysphere’s screws, smashing open the engine assembly. Pressurized expansion engine gas hissed out into the waters of the lake, spinning them around. Bull twisted the pilot stick and slammed his fist into the control panel but nothing he could do was making any difference to their gyrations.

‘I’m going to blow the tanks,’ shouted Bull. ‘Grab hold of something and make for a hard rise.’

Amelia cursed the slaver. He should have held his nerve and left her to tear open the anti-submarine netting with their waldos. Now their fallback plan was to break surface and swim for it. To a shore where every organism they blundered into for a hundred miles would be controlled by the hive. As their ballast tanks emptied at high velocity, they found a new direction, corkscrewing upwards, erupting out of the lake in a spout of water before smashing back down to the surface. They had stopped their demented pirouette now, the bathysphere’s engine fuel bleeding out into the air. Amelia caught a glimpse of the armada of seed ships on the surface waiting for them, her view blocked by the remaining Daggish submersible breaking the surface beside the bathysphere. Bull spun the wheel on the top hatch lock, pulling himself out, Amelia close behind, still clutching her precious crown. An iris door on the Daggish u-boat’s conning dome was cycling open. It was searing outside, a wall of bright heat after their confinement in the cool, deep waters of the lake.

‘Soldiers coming,’ Bull called.

‘That’s the least of our problems,’ Amelia replied, steadying herself on one of the sphere’s gas lamps as the wake of a passing seed ship struck them. She stretched out to dive for the water, but the heat blast from the seed ship’s forward guns knocked her back. Not directed at them, but towards the Daggish submersible, a visor on the boat’s flame cannon twisting up as a stream of flame licked down the u-boat’s hull. Incinerated drones were flung back towards the open iris, the submersible bucking in agony at the scorch marks blistering down its hull. Curving around the submersible, the patrol craft bore down on them. Amelia gripped tighter as the wash from the seed ship tidal-waved towards them.

Had civil war broken out among the hive? Some fundamental disagreement over what to do with the crown? Then Amelia saw a sight that she never thought she’d see on a Daggish patrol boat — a steamman, a four-armed steamman on the deck no less. Ironflanks! His seed ship cut through the lake waters, interposing itself between the bathysphere and the enemy submersible, the flame squirt on the prow whistling as compressed incendiary fire licked out along the length of the Daggish u-boat. Whatever prohibition stopped members of the hive from attacking one another had been broken by the prize vessel, and the seed ship was wreaking havoc in the confusion. Overjoyed at seeing Amelia still alive, Ironflanks spun in a frenzied tribal dance on the prow.

Bull spotted his uncle standing behind Veryann at the rear of the cabin as the seed ship drew up alongside the bathysphere ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

‘Who’s piloting that boat, old steamer?’ Amelia tossed across the bathysphere’s guide rope so both craft could moor together.

‘Billy Snow,’ Ironflanks called back, his eyes extending telescope-like towards the Daggish armada on the centre of the lake, the enemy seed ships making full speed towards them.

Veryann leapt across the gap before the two craft tied up, landing on the bathysphere’s hull. Bull stepped back, expecting an assault as payment for his marooning of her, but she ignored both Amelia and the slaver, instead diving inside the craft. None of the other expedition members looked as if they had been expecting the Catosian woman to plunge inside Amelia’s bathysphere, but Commodore Black had other fish to fry.

‘Bull,’ roared the commodore, hauling the bathysphere in to thud against the seed ship’s bony hull. ‘Bull, you treacherous stain on the House of Dark, where’s my Sprite? Where’s my beautiful u-boat?’

Bull thumbed at the hive’s approaching fleet. ‘Talk to her new owners, old man.’ He slapped the top of the bathysphere. ‘You can have this diving ball back for your troubles.’

Ironflanks and T’ricola had to restrain the commodore from trying to leap across at the news. Amelia jumped the gap, landing on the aft of the Daggish prize vessel. ‘They’ve laid anti-submarine nets across the mouth of the Shedarkshe. We’re going to need to break them to get out of here.’ She glanced across at the Daggish fleet. ‘Sweet Circle, how many ships have they got? And how did you know-’

‘Billy softbody said you would be here,’ answered Ironflanks. ‘He told us he felt your presence.’

Amelia looked at the steamman as if he had lost his mind — if he had ever fully possessed it to begin with. Bull crossed the gap between the bathysphere and the patrol boat, making sure he stayed out of reach of the commodore. ‘And I feel the presence of half the Daggish Empire coming down on us.’

Two explosive cracks from the bathysphere made Amelia flinch. It wasn’t incoming fire from the Daggish. There was a splash as a metal panel ejected from the bathysphere and hit the water, followed by a boom as something fired out of their diving ball’s hull.

‘A rocket,’ said Ironflanks, tracking the projectile heading towards the firmament.

‘You don’t carry rockets on a submersible,’ said Bull, confused. ‘You carry torpedoes.’ He looked up. ‘And that one’s missed the fleet.’

Commodore Black made to throttle his nephew, before changing his mind and running to the patrol boat’s rail. ‘Veryann, get yourself out of that blessed sphere. Billy, hold your fire on the u-boat, she’s dead in the water now. Can you-’

But Billy Snow had already abandoned the cabin and was coming out of the door, the seed ship left a mindless derelict with the controlling witch-blade in the sonar man’s hand.

Amelia glanced behind him into the cabin. ‘Billy, what in the name of the Circle is going on here?’

‘A long tale for a less desperate time,’ said Billy. ‘I am glad that you survived, Amelia — but not to see you with that.’ He pointed at the crown in Amelia’s hand.

‘This is what we came all the way out here for,’ said Amelia. ‘The things we’ve seen under the lake’s waters, I can’t begin to tell you. The crown holds the secrets to the location of Camlantis in the heavens, I can feel it.’

‘It holds many things,’ said Billy, ‘but the location of Camlantis isn’t one of them.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘Give it to me,’ said Billy.

‘What for?’

Billy extended his witch-blade, the evil thing thrumming, tasting the opportunity for fresh trouble. ‘You know what I’m going to do. What you should have done, rather than bring that terrible thing back into the world.’

Bull rushed at Billy Snow, and the sonar man kicked out almost gently, tapping Bull’s left leg above the knee. The slaver collapsed, howling as if Billy had cut off his limb, silenced into unconsciousness as the old sonar man ducked down and tapped him on the back of the neck.

‘Have you lost your mind, Billy?’ shouted the commodore. ‘If that gem is a crystal-book, then it’s what we rolled all the way up this wicked devil’s river for.’

Billy waved his sword at the approaching commodore. ‘You came for it. I only came to make sure you didn’t get it.’

‘Billy,’ begged T’ricola, ‘I don’t know what this is about and I don’t care, but while we’re arguing the Daggish are getting closer.’

Amelia stepped back. ‘The knowledge on this crystal-’

‘You’re not ready for it. Jackals isn’t ready for it,’ said Billy. He nodded at the approaching Daggish fleet. ‘They’re certainly not ready for it. Give it to me now. I don’t want to hurt you, professor, but I’ll take off your arm along with the crown to obliterate that terrible thing.’

‘You can’t destroy a crystal-book, you can’t destroy knowledge. I was meant to find this!’

‘Prophecy is a poor substitute for intellect,’ said Billy, advancing menacingly. ‘And that thing is not just a crystal-book.’

Ironflanks had been slowly trying to edge behind Billy, but the sonar man wagged a finger at the steamman. ‘I may be blind, old steamer, but I know all about your militant order’s fighting forms. Your voicebox won’t work on me, my body is hardened against the frequency the knights steammen use for paralysis.’

‘You were the traitor on the u-boat,’ said Ironflanks accusingly. ‘I thought it was the commodore’s nephew trying to force us to turn about, but all the time it was you sabotaging the Sprite. Destroying the scrubbers, calling in the thunder lizard when we were filling up for water …’

‘Billy,’ pleaded T’ricola. ‘That isn’t true?’

‘If you only knew what was at stake, you would understand.’ Billy Snow lunged at Amelia, faster than the eye could follow, striking her wrist and capturing the falling crown. Amelia punched out with her massive gorilla-sized arm — the good one he had left her — but the sonar man wasn’t there anymore. His boot kicked out and she got a taste of what Bull had received. Pure nerve fire pulsed along her left leg, as if the bottom half of her limb had ceased to exist. She fell back, trying not to scream.

‘My steam is up,’ roared Ironflanks, charging Billy while the sonar man was busy incapacitating Amelia.

Billy’s witch-blade flexed to the diameter of a sewing pin and without turning around he stepped back, the tip of the impossibly thin sword emerging from the back of the steamman’s hull. Billy stepped forward and Ironflanks fell sideways, grasping for the side of the boat and as weak as a kitten.

‘I’ve sliced your circuit line for spatial balance,’ said Billy, making the slightest bow in the direction of the fallen steamman. ‘You should be able to reroute around the damage using your self-repair routines. But not-’ he rested the crown on the boat and converted his witch sword into something capable of smashing a near-indestructible crystal, all claws and blades, ‘-before I’ve had a chance to account for this filthy thing …’

‘My body,’ begged Ironflanks. ‘Please, I need that crown to pay for my body to be cleansed of my siltempter corruption.’

‘Not with this,’ said Billy, raising his sword to strike. He hesitated as something like a meteor hit close to them, a whistling trail of heat, followed by a spout of lake water erupting into the air — then the firmament above was filled with fiery scratches impacting all around them. As Billy moved to smash the crown into pieces, a pair of weighted bolas wrapped around his abdomen, the attached net landing on his back and shimmering with a field of sparks. It was as if a wall had collapsed on top of the sonar man. He fell to his face with a single moan.

Veryann’s legs were wedged around the bathysphere airlock, a discharged bola launcher resting against her arm. ‘That was designed to paralyse a Daggish drone, but it seems to work as well on our unusually adept sonar operator.’

Amelia tried to pull herself up, massaging life back into her leg and ignoring the pain in her sprained wrist. Had the world gone mad? Billy Snow turning on them, a rain of fire falling from the heavens? On the distant shore, the Daggish nest’s flame cannons were jouncing in their cradles, answering the volley coming down on them with streams of fire of their own. The objects Amelia had mistaken for meteors were surfacing across the lake in their hundreds, long iron capsules opening like metal flowers to give birth to boxy-looking landing craft. Periscopes, steam engine stacks and clockwork-stabilized cannons pushed out from the landing crafts’ hulls, metal lobsters extending their claws.

Veryann leapt back across to the seed ship. ‘Don’t touch Billy Snow,’ she warned the crew. ‘Leave him in the incapaci-tator net. If anyone tries to free him, I’ll kill him.’

More capsules came thumping down towards the edge of the lake, against a background of tinny explosions from the Daggish city, a pall of smoke rising above the jungle canopy of Liongeli and the twisted organic towers of the nest city. There was a second rain following now, silk chutes, detached from the engines of war they had been designed to slow, following in the invaders’ wake like a rain of blossom.

Amelia shaded her eyes against the bright afternoon sun. The invaders were pushing out of the lake and up onto the distant shore — amphibious horseless carriages moving on caterpillar tracks similar to those some of the steammen favoured. Tiny figures dismounted from the rear and moved up beside them as they trundled along.

The commodore came to Amelia’s side, helping her try to raise Ironflanks back onto his feet. ‘We’re in the middle of a shooting war now, lass.’

‘And I think I know whose …’ Amelia looked with resentment at the Catosian officer.

‘A raid,’ said Veryann, ‘not a war. With a very specific objective.’

On the centre of the lake the Daggish armada was scattering, heading for the shore to protect their city. Tree-head Joe must be in apoplexy by now — far more than a few gnats in danger of penetrating his sanctum and threatening his ancient purity.

‘You can’t beat the Daggish, Veryann,’ said Commodore Black. ‘They’re like a blessed weed. You’d have to burn down hundreds of miles of greenmesh to finish them off.’

‘We’re just giving their kind something to think about,’ said Veryann, picking up the fallen crown. ‘Into the bathysphere, if you want to live.’

‘What are you doing?’ demanded Amelia.

‘Preserving your crown’s precious knowledge. We haven’t got long. You have two choices. Enter the bathysphere and live, or stay on board the Daggish boat and die.’ She tossed the prone weight of Billy Snow over her shoulders. ‘Help the steamman to his feet. As for him-’ she pointed at the limp form of Bull Kammerlan, ‘-leave him here like he left us marooned in the jungle.’

‘I can’t be doing that,’ said the commodore. ‘There’s precious few of my blood left now, for me to be abandoning the mortal few that survive. Don’t ask me to do such a terrible thing.’

‘If he is truly of your line, you will be uncontaminating it by removing him from the breeding pool,’ said Veryann.

‘You may be right, lass, but your people follow a hard code — abandoning the runt of the litter on a mountainside is not something old Blacky can do.’

Amelia limped over and scooped Bull’s unconscious body up, trying to avoid using her burning, sprained wrist. ‘You help Ironflanks, Jared, I’ll carry your damn nephew.’

‘How can such a powerful nation be populated by such weaklings?’ Veryann shook her head in disgust. ‘You make a religion out of your softheartedness. The fact that Jackals has endured intact to this day without falling to one of your enemies is one of life’s eternal mysteries.’

T’ricola and the commodore heaved the barely functioning body of the steamman across to the bathysphere, his limbs shaking as he tried to re-establish enough control to leave the seed ship.

‘You appear to have been touched by some of our beliefs, then,’ said Amelia, nodding towards the sonar man.

Veryann lowered Billy Snow through the hatch. ‘You think saving his life is an act of compassion? I assure you it is not, professor. In his way, this old man may be just as valuable as your Camlantean crown.’

Commodore Black wheezed, half the weight of Ironflanks on his shoulder. ‘I’ve seen those fighting tricks before, when Billy’s kind come down from the sky to make a shambles of the honest rest of a poor old seafarer, long retired from adventure and danger.’

‘Snow, an agent of the Court of the Air?’ Veryann’s lips pursed into a thin smile. ‘He is no wolftaker, of that much you can be certain.’ She tossed the man’s inactive witch-blade into the bathysphere. ‘Inside quick, I’m sealing the sphere.’

The interior of the bathysphere had changed since Amelia had abandoned it for the Daggish patrol boat — a whole new suite of hidden instruments had been exposed, while an open panel to the right of the controls revealed a previously concealed rack of weapons, an empty space for the Catosian’s bolas launcher.

Amelia tapped the near-empty oxygen dial. ‘We’re not going far on three minutes’ worth of air.’

‘Further than you think,’ said Veryann.

‘We’re crammed in here like blessed sardines,’ complained the commodore.

‘We’d be one lighter without your mutinous nephew,’ said Veryann, kicking Bull’s unconscious body in anger.

Amelia glanced through the porthole. Outside, the Daggish seed ship was turning in idiot circles on one hydro-tube, the mind of the craft trying to establish itself now it had been freed from the witch-blade’s control. But it was hopeless — too much of the ship’s brain had been overwritten by Billy Snow’s strange weapon.

Veryann had their bathysphere’s small periscope trained on the distant shoreline and after a couple of minutes she nodded in satisfaction and began to work the controls again. Amelia took the scope, pressing her face against the viewing hood. The Daggish city was ablaze. Neon-yellow smoke overshadowed the haze of the attack, columns of it pouring into the sky. Amelia might have taken it for dirt-gas were it not for the fact that nozzles on their own hull seemed to be leaking the same vapour, tears of bronze dye forming on the bathysphere’s portholes.

‘Who are you signalling?’ Amelia demanded.

‘The long-range flame guns of the Daggish have been spiked now,’ said Veryann. ‘It’s safe to be picked up.’ She pulled on a lever, and two antennae with a cable strung between them rose above the dome of the bathysphere.

‘Your troops are out there,’ said Amelia. ‘Is there enough space in this bathysphere for all of them?’

‘They have achieved their objective,’ said Veryann.

‘Achieved …’ Amelia stared in disbelief at the Catosian officer. ‘You’re leaving them behind!’

‘Our losses in the nest will not be significant,’ said Veryann. ‘Our worst-case plan of battle was that the Daggish would attain the Crown of Pairdan and that a full-scale occupation of their capital would be necessary while simultaneously holding off an assault by the rest of the greenmesh.’

‘In the name of the Circle, those are your own people out there!’

‘They will have warriors’ deaths, selling themselves dearly against creatures that would make slaves of our whole race if they could. If that was my duty, I would welcome such an end.’

Amelia pointed an accusing finger at Veryann. ‘That Camlantean crown last saw the light of day when Catosia was a scratch on the map, yet you now suddenly value it enough to exchange a whole division of your troops! You guessed that Billy Snow was going to try to destroy the crown, too …’

‘Of all people, professor, I would expect you to know the value of being well read. Now brace yourselves.’

There was a whining outside, growing louder. Just in time for Amelia to recognize it as the noise made by the rotating propeller blades of an airship. Then the floor of the bathysphere was pulled out from under their feet, the seven of them sent sprawling as they swung pendulum-like, ripped out of the waters of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo. Bull groaned when the dead weight of Ironflanks slid into him, Amelia barely hanging on as the commodore lost his grip and came tumbling towards her. Stability returned and they were rising. The hull of an impossibly large airship was just visible above them, cannons in rotating mounts jolting as they poured shells downwards. Three aerospheres bound together in a reinforced frame, short black stabilizer wings like the flying fish of the Shedarkshe. And damned if she could see any flag. Amelia gaped, wordlessly. This airship was clearly a man-o’-war, but she lacked the chequerboard belly of a RAN craft, instead sporting a curved black shell broken by gun ports and engine casings. There was a traitor’s death waiting for someone back in Jackals. She glanced back down at the rapidly receding jungle below. If there were any Daggish gunners left with the wit to try to bring them down, Amelia could not see their answering fire.

Commodore Black stumbled towards the porthole, trying to snatch a last look at the Daggish nest and his u-boat. ‘My Sprite, my beautiful Sprite. You’re leaving her here.’

‘No,’ said Veryann. ‘One of our assault craft has orders to scuttle her. The less of our engineering the Daggish have access to, the better we will like it.’

The commodore collapsed into the navigator’s seat at the news. ‘Lass, say that’s not true. We can belay that order. With this mighty airship of yours you can pound the Daggish to pieces and winch my Sprite up to safety. I’ll pilot her back to Rapalaw Junction myself with the help of T’ricola and Bull; maybe him in leg irons just to be safe.’

‘I’m truly sorry, Jared,’ said Veryann. ‘I must abandon a division of my finest fighters behind, and you must leave your ancient craft. We only have a brief window of flight time while the Daggish flame guns are incapacitated. If we are still within range above the city when their cannons are repaired and re-crewed, our fate will not be a kind one.’

The hooks clamped around the bathysphere’s catapult-like roof assembly began to winch them upwards into an opening hangar, the airship climbing for height as they were drawn into her belly.

‘No,’ said the commodore, an unruly glint in his eyes. ‘No kinder than the fate of that burnt-up airship we found crashed by the borders of Prince Doublemetal’s kingdom of loons. That was no derelict blown in from Jackals’ last war with Quatershift, was it? That was your people, learning the hard way that an expedition by air to Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo is a mortal dangerous thing to attempt. Far better to bribe poor old Blacky and his brave, foolish friends, to sneak into the greenmesh for you on the Sprite.’

Veryann said nothing, but her silence spoke volumes.

Amelia watched as they were hauled into the airship’s hangar, rising up past gantries and empty launch rails for Catosian glider capsules. ‘This is no RAN vessel. Has Quest gone insane? Parliament will declare him a science pirate — he’ll be hunted to the ends of the earth as an outlaw for building this aerial folly.’

Veryann pointed towards the party waiting for them in the hangar. ‘There he stands, you can tell him yourself in a minute. You’ve followed the path of your obsession, professor, as Abraham Quest has followed his. Whatever the cost to you both. Were it not for your gender, I believe I would find it hard to tell the two of you apart sometimes.’

With the bathysphere raised into a docking cradle, their hatch was popped, fresh air replacing the febrile mix that had been cooked up by the expedition members. Veryann was first on deck, then the semi-conscious forms of Ironflanks, Bull Kammerlan and Billy Snow were pulled out by the airship crew.

‘Put these two in the brig,’ said Veryann, pointing at Kammerlan and Snow. ‘Chains for the old man and make sure they are strong — he can fight in witch-time.’

Abraham Quest walked over and grasped Veryann’s arm in the Catosian style. ‘You have it?’

She held up Amelia’s Camlantean crown. ‘Did you ever doubt me?’

‘It was as dangerous a thing as I have ever asked you to do.’ He looked at the motley group climbing out of the bathysphere, drenched in sweat, their clothes torn by long months in the jungle. ‘So few … did none of the others make it?’

‘My boys are gone,’ whined the commodore. ‘Walking dead among the Daggish or made proper corpses along the way of our voyage, left rotting in that Liongeli hell. You promised me my beautiful boat back, but even that’s gone now.’

‘You might yet have it returned,’ said Abraham Quest. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ spat Amelia. ‘We’ve been shot at, gassed, imprisoned, seen glimpses of Camlantis at the bottom of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, and had members of our own crew turn on us, all for the sake of that crown.’

‘For which I apologize.’ Quest looked at the prone form of Billy Snow being fitted with a metal cuirass, his arms strapped inside the steel straightjacket at a painful angle. ‘He looks a little like the last one who came after us, don’t you think?’

Veryann waved her soldiers forward to stand guard over Billy while he was being restrained. ‘Like a brother, perhaps, if you shaved his beard off.’

‘Who is Billy Snow, Quest? Who is he really?’ asked Amelia. ‘He claimed the location of Camlantis wasn’t going to be found in the crown’s crystal-book.’

‘He’s something ancient, professor. One of the texts mentioned something very much like him being grown in the old days.’

‘What texts? I didn’t read-’

‘You read only what you needed for our expedition to succeed,’ said Quest. ‘Something else that you have my apology for.’

Amelia bridled at the deception. ‘You were holding out on me? I risked my life for that crown!’

‘And you will find the risk was worth it. I needed your passion to be pure, Amelia. The truth would have made you doubtful; you might even have refused to go in search of Camlantis. I risked everything I have on this throw of the dice, and my methods have not always been as honourable as I would otherwise have had them. Some of the crystal-books’ secrets I kept back.’

‘What secrets? What in the name of the Circle would have stopped me from going in search of Camlantis?’

‘Camlantis is everything we thought it was and more, but its final days on Earth were not the best of times. Threatened by the Black-oil Horde, there was a schism in the Camlantean consensus on how to handle the barbarian invasion. The crystal-book I omitted showing you contains details of their civil war.’

Amelia’s mouth hung open in shock. ‘But that can’t be. Their whole civilization was based on pacifism, they were not capable-’

‘They were facing extinction,’ interrupted Quest. ‘Some of their people felt they had no choice but to take alternative action. That terrible decision tore Camlantis apart. It was no accidental floatquake that struck a looted and ruined city, and neither was their ascent into the heavens a noble act of mass suicide to prevent their knowledge from being perverted by the barbarians. The Camlanteans were at least as advanced in the worldsinger arts and geomancy as we are today. Camlantis was destroyed in a civil war. Leylines were strategically altered and the city blown into the heavens during the fighting.’

Tears ran down Amelia’s cheeks. ‘No!’ But she knew it had the ring of truth. The pocket world under the waters of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, its halls of else-when, a prophetic warning of the dangers of conflict. This was the warning from her father’s shade, an admonition that had come true, this was the bitter laughter of a desert witch in Cassarabia.

‘They sacrificed themselves, gave their lives rather than commit acts of violence,’ Amelia whispered.

‘Just another war, Amelia, a stupid senseless war and a small imperfection in an otherwise untarnished record. The Camlanteans lived for two-thousand years in peace and only faltered in their final months when they were nearly extinct — how can we judge them for that?’ Quest held up the gleaming Camlantean crown. ‘And look where your passion has led you.’

Amelia pointed at Billy Snow being dragged away across the hangar floor. ‘I told you, he said the crown doesn’t hold the location of Camlantis.’

‘A half-truth,’ said Quest. ‘The crown does not contain the location of the city. It contains the key to unlock her gates.’

‘A key? It’s a jigging key! Then you already know where Camlantis is?’ gasped Amelia. ‘All this time and you knew?’

‘You might say I know where it isn’t,’ smiled Quest. ‘Which amounts to the same thing in this instance.’

‘You’re a thorough bastard,’ said Amelia.

‘I needed your knowledge and your expertise,’ apologized Quest, ‘and I preferred to limit the facts of the expedition’s true objective to Veryann. If the Daggish had captured her, she had access to a herb that would have ensured the green-mesh did not take her alive. Would the rest of your crew have sacrificed themselves to keep the people of Jackals safe? Even the Camlanteans failed that test in the end.’

‘Well, we’ve passed your blessed test now,’ said the commodore, ‘those of us who’ve made it back alive. We’ll take our money and be on our way.’

‘Really?’ said Quest. ‘Do you have no curiosity? You are all welcome to travel with me to Camlantis. You’ll see sights that no one has seen in millennia, travel higher than any aerostat in the history of Jackals. This is your chance to touch the stars.’

‘The only sights I want to see are the warm corridors of Tock House,’ said the commodore, ‘and the only things I want to touch are the fine bottles of wine I have stored away back in my pantry. You can keep your dead city with its dead secrets, Abraham Quest.’

T’ricola nodded in agreement and Ironflanks pulled himself straight, leaning against the craynarbian, his voicebox tinny after self-repairing his wounded systems. ‘I will take the second part of the payment you promised me and leave with my soft-body friends.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Quest. ‘It was money you all signed up for and if that is what matters to you, it is money you shall have. Triple the agreed fee if you wish. My holdings in Jackals have been, shall we say, liquidated by circumstances. Mere money is the least of my concerns now.’ He glanced over at his airship’s captain.

‘We will be over Jackals in two days, sir, I would not advise flying low enough to be reachable by the cannons of the RAN fleet, though.’

‘Load a glider capsule onto the racks,’ ordered Quest, turning to the expedition survivors. ‘We’ll fire you off somewhere out of the way. No one need ever know you were involved with the mad schemes of a rogue commercial lord.’

‘That will suit me just fine,’ said the commodore.

‘And what of you, professor?’ asked Quest. ‘Our journey’s end lies above the Sepia Sea. In four to five days’ time you could be walking the empty streets of ancient Camlantis, touching towers and spires you have only glimpsed before in crystal-book images.’

‘Damn your eyes, you know the answer as well as I do,’ said Amelia.

‘Don’t go, lass,’ pleaded the commodore. ‘Sailing around the sky like the queen of the clouds, tweaking parliament’s nose by your very presence. It can only end in a wicked bad way. The life of an outlaw is no life for you; you can trust me on that. Come back with old Blacky to Jackals and stay a week or two with me in Tock House while we forget all about our part in this sorry adventure.’

‘I’m sorry, Jared. I’ve risked everything to have this chance, to be standing here — and I have so very little left to return to back home. I’ll make those prigs on the High Table eat their words, I’ll bring back an airship full of Camlantean artefacts and fill the corridors of Middlesteel Museum with the expedition’s finds as a reminder of their bloody-minded ignorance.’

‘I believe you’ve made the right decision,’ said Quest.

Amelia looked at the crown of Camlantis in his hand, the inset crystal gleaming like a devil’s egg. She had made the only decision she was able to, but as to the rightness of it, all she could hear was the mocking laughter of an old hag roaming the Cassarabian desert.

‘You jiggers,’ shouted Bull Kammerlan. ‘I find your second-rate shopkeeper’s precious crown for him, and this is how you pay me back?’

One of the Catosians dragging him to the cell rabbit-punched him under his armpit. ‘You haven’t had your payment yet for betraying our master.’

Billy Snow stood by sadly, listening to the beating, his arms weighed down by metal restraints. The officer of the brig glanced up from her desk at her two new tenants. She had empty cells, but it was always easier to concentrate them in a couple of holding pens and keep an eye on what they were up to. She sized the two new lads up and pointed at Bull. ‘Put the mutineer in with the lashlite and his insane friend.’ She tapped Billy’s straightjacket. ‘Does this grizzled old fellow really need this?’

‘High security at all times,’ replied the soldier. ‘The First says he can fight in witch-time.’

‘Even sightless?’ said the brig officer. ‘Impressive.’ Another damned problem prisoner. She pointed past the cells along the corridor and indicated the stairs down to the armoured hold. ‘Lock him up with the Court of the Air’s agent, then. They are both of an age, and it will give the old woman someone to complain to other than myself about the disrespect we show our elders.’

Bull moaned.

‘The mutineer has cloud sickness,’ warned one of the escorts. ‘He threw up outside the glider capsule hangar.’

‘You would think he’d have better air legs,’ laughed a soldier.

‘I’m a seadrinker,’ snapped Bull. ‘U-boats don’t move like this, blondey-locks.’

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.’

‘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.’

‘A rock in the stream while the water passes,’ said Billy.

‘And you have been fashioned to survive. You are capable of violence.’

‘Most of pacifism is social conditioning and meditation, only a very small part of Camlantean society was based on blood engineering.’

‘Still …’ said Quest.

‘I was created to be capable of accessing a part of the brain the race of man have long suppressed — the snake part, the ancient lizard that lurks in all of us; the devil hiding in our soul that urges violence and murder and rape and hate. But unlike your kind, I get to turn it on and off at will. In a little twist of irony, we obtained the blood marker for the genetic switch from one of the greatest psychopaths or our age, the Diesela-Khan. A hair sample obtained by one of our heralds.’

‘Just a barbarian warlord,’ said Quest. ‘You really should have been able to stop him.’

‘The Camlantean tools of mass psychological manipulation had one fatal weakness: they worked a lot better when the tribes were unaware of the techniques we were using. The end came very quickly after the Diesela-Khan captured one of our expert passive-defence groups and began running counter-cultural interference through the horde’s druids. Our allies and the buffer states collapsed one by one until only we were left.’

‘How ironic,’ said Quest. ‘If I could go back in time and change things, I would. A single airship like this and a couple of companies of redcoats and I could rout the Black-oil Horde.’

‘What is gone is gone,’ said Billy. ‘All things come to an end.’

‘Including the age of darkness we’ve been suffering since the fall of Camlantis?’

‘You know the price for ending that …’

‘I do,’ admitted Quest.

‘Then you are not fit to possess it.’

Quest paced the corridor. ‘At least some of your people had a different idea. Perhaps even the majority of them. One side of a civil war is always branded the rebel side — and I’m guessing your creators were the minority that rose up. You were on the rebel side … the winning side.’

‘Nobody ever truly wins a war, Jackelian,’ said Billy. ‘There are only degrees of loss, and there was none greater than that of the Camlanteans.’

Quest smiled. ‘But you got to write the history of the winners, didn’t you? I can see traces of your hand all over that. The noble people of Camlantis — the great pacifist race that committed mass suicide so that their legacy would not be corrupted.’

‘The story is true enough. In a manner of speaking,’ said Billy.

‘A very loose manner, I think. I’ve seen your crystal-books, old man. Your own side’s and theirs.’

‘Bloody things,’ swore Billy. ‘I’ve hidden away more of them than I care to remember. Of all the books you had to find, why couldn’t it have been the poem-recordings of some self-absorbed child finishing their schooling?’

‘One last chance,’ said Quest. ‘Will you help me decode the key to enter Camlantis?’

‘No.’

Quest shrugged and looked down the corridor. It was time for him to go. ‘I’ll unlock it without you. Your people buried the key deep in encryption, but codes were meant to be cracked.’

‘You’re a clever man, I can see that.’

‘Clever enough for this task.’ Quest started to walk away. ‘Even though you’re blinded, I can see you have Pairdan’s eyes.’

‘Children were not left to chance in the old days,’ said Billy. ‘We took a little from all of our parents. Grown in bottles, the way science intended. I believe around thirty percent of my body’s pattern was inherited from Pairdan.’

‘I believe that makes you a bastard,’ noted Quest.

‘Yes,’ said Billy, ‘we share that in common. Except that you’re a self-made man.’

Quest shook his head in sadness at Billy’s decision to hold onto Camlantis’s secrets and disappeared.

‘You’re an interesting fellow,’ said Damson Beeton when she was alone again with Billy Snow. ‘There’s more to you than meets the eye.’

‘I don’t suppose the Court of the Air has any more agents left on Quest’s airship fleet?’

‘No,’ said the old woman, ‘I think he’s rolled us all up.’

‘Then we’re done for,’ said Billy. ‘We are all royally done for.’

In the transaction-engine rooms on the Leviathan, the cardsharp nervously lifted his pile of blank punch cards, dropping them into the inscription position in his typewriter-like machine before brushing the keys for luck. This last instruction set would either validate the previous day’s work and move them forward (perhaps even to the end; but don’t even dare think that), or knock them right back to the start.

‘We’re overheating,’ called a voice from above. It was one of the grease monkeys, the uplander lad hanging from the gantry lines. ‘The drums are running fit to burst.’

‘We need to hold the revolutions steady,’ said the cardsharp. ‘We’re close. I can feel it.’

‘You’ve been saying that all afternoon,’ complained the grease monkey. ‘We’re burning up in there.’

‘Vent in more cold air from outside,’ said the cardsharp. ‘Use the next grade of oil. Just keep the drums turning.’

‘We’re running on special oil right now,’ said the grease monkey. ‘The transaction engines cannot take it any more.’

It was true. There was a smell of burning beer in the chamber. The engine men cut the oil with the good stuff from Jackals’ drinking houses, swearing it got them better performance from an engine running seriously overclocked.

‘Just a little bit longer,’ muttered the cardsharp. His fingers flickered over the keyboard, translating the genius maths sent down from the master’s quarters upstairs, symbol keys jouncing with a satisfying resistance, the tattoo of holes in the punch card getting ever more complex. Even though this wasn’t his program design, even though he was acting as a proxy to the genius of the great Abraham Quest on this project, there was still art in what he was doing. His fingers were on fire. His translation of the maths would make the difference between failure and success. The whine from the engines below acted like adrenalin, supplying the urgency, feeding him with the pressure he needed to produce his best work.

One of the chief engine men climbed out of the pit of machines to repeat the grease monkey’s concerns, but seeing the cardsharp at work he held his tongue. He was senior. He had some understanding of the art that was going on up here — unlike the young upland turnip swinging from his girdle, dripping oil onto the floor from the cans dangling from his belt.

With a final bash of the keyboard, the punch card lifted out of its cradle, held by an automatic arm. ‘There,’ spat the cardsharp. ‘Inject that into the system.’

One of his runners snatched the card and sprinted away.

‘Carefully, lad,’ called the senior engine man. ‘Gutta-percha tears if you push it in too fast. More haste, less speed.’

The cardsharp looked over the paper imprint that had been left behind on the punch-card writer. It was too late now if there were errors in the code, but he checked his work anyway. He should have had a partner logic-checking his efforts, but there were few in the House of Quest that could follow the master’s work. In the cardsharping game, it was often said the difference between the fourth and fifth best coder in the business was that the fifth best could look at the fourth’s work and not understand a line of what had been written. You flew lonely when you flew so high.

From the depths of the pit, the transaction engines changed their pitch, the thunder of the rumbling drums absorbing the new instruction set. Few laymen could tell the difference, but to everyone in this chamber it was as if a completely new hymn was being sung down below. The cardsharp tapped his desk nervously, not daring to rise. There were so many possibilities for error. All the raw data from the crown’s crystal that composed the key had been laboriously copied and transferred. What effect would too high an error rate in that data have on their attempt to crack it? Nothing good. Nothing productive, that much was certain.

The rumbling grew louder, shouts of alarm sounding as some of the transaction engines overloaded, oily smoke pouring upwards and drums cracking under the stress, grease monkeys converging on the danger spots in a swish of pulley lines.

‘Look,’ cried one of the engine men. ‘The Rutledge Rotator.’

His screen was starting to spin, the abacus-like beads flowing from left to right.

‘Who left it on screen output?’ shouted the cardsharp. ‘We need paper output, paper! This isn’t some bloody dockside inventory count we’re handling!’

One of them switched the settings just in time, the first of the result cards falling into a collection bin, a backup spool of paper winding around at speed alongside. The cardsharp snatched the result card and sighed in relief. The initial symbols on it were validly formed. This was the first of many cards that would be returned.

‘Make sure the blanks aren’t sticking together,’ ordered the cardsharp. ‘And send word to the master. The key codes to open Camlantis have been deciphered. Tell him. Just tell him, the gates are open …’