Amelia looked about. They were at the west end of Goldhair Park’s manicured gardens, near the gambling pits along the Tulkinghorn Road. ‘What are you up to, Jared? The days when I needed to finance an expedition by betting on cock fights are behind me now.’
‘Yes, there is you, flush with the jingle of that clever boy’s coins in your pockets,’ said the commodore. ‘But it’s a different sort of fight we have come to see tonight.’
A slight drizzle started to fall and promenading couples scattered for the trees and pavilions, parasols opening like flowers. Commodore Black took Amelia through a gate in the railing, towards the entrance of one of the brightly lit gambling pits. A grasper with a ruff of red fur poking out of his doorman’s uniform admitted them with a nod towards the commodore. Inside, a narrow corridor led them to a large chamber where three separate seat- lined pits stood crowded with guests and gamblers. Lit by cheap-burning slipsharp oil, the top of the circular hall was lined with bars and food-serving hatches.
Amelia had to shout over the rumble of the crowds. ‘I said I would help you find a crew, not a book- maker.’
One of the pits lay temporarily empty; while in the second a pair of snarling upland mountain cats circled each other, ignoring the roar of the crowd and the jabbing lances of their handlers. In the third pit a pair of men squatted, each trying to lift a heavier weight than his rival, dumbbells lined up in front of them in increasing size. Each of the muscle men was muttering a chant, trying to channel the capital’s leylines and tap into the worldsong. It was a petty use of sorcery, for if either of the competitors had any real talent, they would have been admitted to the order of worldsingers and taken the purple robes.
Amelia followed the submariner down the steps to the empty pit, squeezing past the expectant Jackelians waiting there. At the end of the row, a female craynarbian sat next to a short old man with pale, staring eyes. The craynarbian appeared to recognize Jared Black, the clan patterns on her shell armour glimmering orange in the artificial light.
‘A fine evening for it, is it not?’ said the commodore.
‘What ill tide has carried you in here?’ asked the cray-narbian woman, not bothering to hide the suspicion in her voice.
‘Cannot a poor fellow go out for an evening’s entertainment without his motives being impugned?’ said the commodore. ‘Although now you mention, I did recall hearing that the pair of you had blown in here with Gabriel.’
As the craynarbian glowered at the commodore, Amelia realized the short man next to her was blind.
‘It’s a mortal terrible thing,’ Black told Amelia, ‘the superstitious nature of submariners. You’re on a boat that gets sunk by a pod of calfing slipsharps and you’re one of the lucky ones that gets to a breather helmet and reaches the surface. Why, you’d think you’d thank your stars for your good fortune. But not a u-boat crew, no. Seadrinkers fear such people. Call them Jonahs. Shun them in case they put a hex on their screws or a curse on their air recyclers.’
‘You should know all about keeping an unlucky boat, Jared Black,’ said the blind man.
‘Not so unlucky,’ said the commodore. ‘My beautiful
‘Much good did it do when the pod attacked us,’ said the craynarbian woman.
‘Ah, but then if your last u-boat’s skipper had decided to make a break for it rather than foolishly fighting it out, you would have been running away on the best-kept pair of expansion engines under the water, what with T’ricola’s four sturdy arms to keep the boat humming and her pistons turning …’
Two figures stepped out onto the sawdust of the pit and the crowd around them hollered, the commodore’s remaining words lost in the frenzy.
‘Damsons and gentlemen-’ announced the barker ‘-make your wagers now, before these two titans of pugilism engage in their noble art for your satisfaction, your delight, and, if the stars of fortune smile upon you, your profit!’
‘And there is the third member of my trio of seadrinker artists,’ said Black to Amelia.
‘It is my privilege,’ shouted the barker, ‘nay, it is my
The light of the gambling pit glimmered off the giant’s dark skin as he took an iron bar from the barker, bent it and tossed it with a clang onto the sawdust.
‘He fits inside a submarine?’ said Amelia.
‘Lass, a first mate has to be able to crack a few heads together. Keeping order is a serious matter on a boat.’
‘And facing this colossus from a legendary age, we have the most vicious fellow ever to step onto this floor … Club-handed Cratchit.’
Amelia did not fancy the chances of the commodore’s friend. The second pugilist had had his right arm twisted by the same back-street sorcerers that had given the professor her own over-sized arms. The bones of his right hand had been swollen and flowed into a massive anvil, an instrument of blunt force, muscles twisted into a corded engine of flesh. Stepping up to his reputation, Club-handed Cratchit did not wait for the barker to announce the start of the bout; he attacked Gabriel McCabe from behind as the submariner was taking the applause of the crowd. Cratchit’s bony mace rebounded off McCabe’s back, sending him sprawling into the pit’s boundary rope, then he tried to kick the legs out from under the commodore’s friend.
McCabe slipped to the floor, scissoring his legs around his opponent’s on the way down and flipping the club-handed brute into the sawdust, then he twisted around to land a kick on Cratchit’s face. They both stood up and warily circled each other. McCabe might be the strongest man in Jackals, but with his bulk, he was certainly not the fastest. Club-handed Cratchit got another strike in, his mace hand slapping McCabe’s chest as if it was ringing off the hull of the commodore’s u-boat. Cratchit went in to beat McCabe’s ribs again, but the giant caught him with both arms and lifted the ferocious fighter off the ground. Club-handed Cratchit was spun around, flailing helplessly in the air.
Then the giant saw Commodore Black seated next to his two old comrades and a strange look crossed his face. Moving his right leg back for leverage, McCabe flung his opponent towards the commodore, the crowd momentarily falling silent as Professor Harsh caught the fighter a second before he crashed into Black.
‘That’s nice work,’ said Cratchit, gazing down admiringly at Amelia’s gorilla-sized arms.
The professor flung Club-handed Cratchit back into the ring where McCabe caught the fighter and turned him over in the air, slamming him into the floor and unconsciousness.
‘Strength trumps guile and viciousness,’ called the barker, recovering from astonishment a second before the crowd, ‘with a little help from his, umm, lady friend in the audience.’
‘Oh, isn’t that dandy?’ said Amelia. ‘Now I’m the strumpet for some pit-floor blade.’
The commodore turned to Billy Snow and T’ricola. ‘Now then, mates, let’s you and I talk about hearing the hiss of an honest gas scrubber in your ears and once more feeling the bob of a deck below your feet.’
‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ Gabriel McCabe’s eyes darted between Billy Snow and T’ricola. ‘I always knew this old goat would end up impaled on a reef, but are you so intent to join him?’
‘It is a boat,’ said Billy Snow, ‘and a berth. Those two have not been in over-supply for the three of us of late.’
‘You cannot keep on taking punishment out there,’ said T’ricola. ‘Sooner or later someone like Cratchit is going to leave a fatal dent in your skull.’
‘Better we take pit money than
‘There’s never been a good enough reason to try before,’ said Amelia. ‘We’re not slave traders or big-game hunters, and we’re following the river Shedarkshe, not trying to explore the interior of Liongeli.’
‘You are sailing into the heart of Daggish territory, damson,’ said McCabe. ‘Even the RAN’s Fleet of the East does not overfly Daggish territory for fear of being brought down by their flame guns. The hive’s heart beats with
