The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

now.’

Billy Snow flicked a switch on his console and the craynarbian engineer’s voice vibrated out of a voicebox above them. ‘Two minutes more, skipper, maybe five.’

‘Gabriel?’ The commodore looked across at his first mate.

‘Diving stations aye, commodore. We’re locked and sealed.’

‘Time to show our teeth,’ said the commodore.

Amelia borrowed the periscope. The war rafts were larger now, almost on top of the u-boat. ‘They’re too small to hit with torpedoes, Jared?’

‘I would not be wasting my precious glass-tipped fishes on these beasts, professor,’ said the commodore. He turned to Billy Snow, the blind sonar man’s head heavy with an iron dome and cables hanging off his skull. ‘Port lances?’

‘Can you not hear them humming for you, skipper?’

‘Those crabs up there are close enough to my lovely old lady now, Billy. Let them hear the hum too.’

Billy’s fingers punched the console in front of him. Outside the hull there was a low hiss as pneumatic tubes opened, pushing out a series of serrated spikes from the u-boat’s two conning towers, twin crowns of metal thorns emerging from the Sprite.

‘Wild power,’ said Amelia. ‘Sweet Circle, you’re carrying a capacitor on the Sprite.’

‘The power electric,’ said Billy, throwing down a switch.

She remembered the strange burned tiles she had seen exposed after their engine-room fire; it appeared they were insulation against more than just the cold of the open ocean. Amelia returned to the periscope. Beyond the u-boat, the river was lit by an undulating circle of lightning flickering from the Sprite’s two towers, the waters burning, devilbarb fish fried in mid-flight, the blow-barrel grenades of the wild craynarbians detonating as the chambers of explosive sap were joined by the force electric. Pieces of wooden raft and smoking craynarbian exo-shell rained down around the u-boat, dead river creatures floating up to the surface of the Shedarkshe before being carried downstream, towards Jackals. ‘It used to work better, the wild power,’ said Billy. ‘Something that people could control and direct. For peaceful uses too, not just war. But the world changed.’

Commodore Black took back the periscope from Amelia and gazed at the carnage across the water. Craynarbians on the far shore were already massing for a second attack, darts streaming over towards the Sprite of the Lake. ‘You’re a fine one for old legends, Billy Snow. The power electric works blessed well enough for my tastes.’

The voicebox sounded above their heads. ‘Skipper, you havethe scrubbers back again.’

‘Take us out, Gabriel,’ ordered the commodore. ‘Take us out slow and steady.’

Sailors bustled around their posts in the pilot room, but the only answer to their efforts was a hollow knocking running along the hull. It grew louder every second, the hull vibrating with a fury.

‘First mate?’

‘Something is wrong.’ McCabe ran over to the double pilot seats.

‘Kill the propellers,’ ordered the commodore, ‘shut down the screws before my girl burns out.’ He turned his periscope towards the tail of the u-boat. ‘Ah now, there’s the wicked thing.’

One of the exploding war craft had been approaching the Sprite’s stern and the force of it striking the u-boat had twisted one of their iron rudders into the path of a propeller. They were jammed and beached.

The first mate surveyed the damage through the periscope. ‘The rudder’s only slightly bent, but it’s enough to foul the rotation of the screws.’

For the first time since the trip began, Amelia started to feel the claustrophobia the seadrinkers called the black tunnel.

‘Can’t we heat it up with welding torches, bang the rudder back into shape?’

‘Do we have enough power left for a second tickle on the lances, Mister Snow?’ asked the commodore.

‘They’re spent, skipper. Pistons need to be turning to recharge them.’

‘Well then, there it is.’ Black looked at Amelia sadly, as if he was disappointing a favourite granddaughter. ‘A work crew will take too long. With our lances working we could hold the craynarbians back, give them a taste of the wild juice when they get too snappish. But without them …’

‘There is another way.’ Gabriel McCabe stood to his full height, his heavy frame nearly brushing the copper pipes along the pilot room’s ceiling. ‘If I go now, before the shells have a chance to reform their ranks, I might be able to bend the rudder back into shape.’

‘That’s suicide,’ said Billy. ‘The tribes’ braves will be swarming over our hull and Rapalaw’s walls like wasps smoked out of their nest.’

‘You heard the applause of the crowds in the gambling pits, Billy Snow, when I bent steel bars for their wagers.’

‘I had assumed that was a Circle-damned parlour trick, old friend.’

‘Does the trick work as well for two?’ Amelia’s worldsinger-twisted arms lifted up to clutch onto the rungs of the conning-tower ladder.

‘You do not have to do this,’ said McCabe.

‘To get away from this cursed corner of civilization and send us towards the foundation stones of Camlantis? Yes. Yes I do.’

‘Let her go,’ begged one of the sailors, ‘she’s a bloody Jonah. If we keep her on the boat we’ll all-’

Commodore Black swung around, landing a pile driver on the submariner’s face and the ex-convict spun onto the deck, unconscious. ‘No annoying the cargo, lads. If it weren’t for the professor, your mortal luck would have left you all swimming back in the tanks at Bonegate. You ponder on that. If I hear any more fiendish talk of a Jonah on the Sprite, I’ll walk the next of you rascals to speak such filth through the sea lock without a helmet.’

Gabriel showed Amelia how to suit up in the conning tower closest to the Sprite’s screws; their rubber suits their only protection — not from the water, but from the waves of dirt-gas still being mortared out of Rapalaw Junction towards the attacking savages. Shaped like one of the seashells children in Jackals pushed against their ears to hear Lord Tridentscale’s whispers, Amelia’s copper helmet screwed down tight into her neck plate. Her crystal visor was barely wide enough to allow her to see her air tank, before the first mate slipped the tank’s straps over her shoulders.

As Amelia finished suiting up, the handle on the sea lock spun and Ironflanks stepped into the small chamber. ‘Excellent, Amelia softbody, I see that you have made a start without me.’

‘This could be a one-way trip, old steamer,’ said Amelia.

‘I’ll return from this trip in penury unless I get you to the source of the Shedarkshe,’ said Ironflanks. ‘If we stay behind here, the second half of my fee is going to stay locked up inside Abraham Quest’s counting house.’

‘You’re quite the mercenary,’ said Amelia. ‘Most steammen of my acquaintance are happy enough with a pail of coke for their boiler and a single room to lay their head down at night.’

Ironflanks squawked a burst of what might have been laughter through his voicebox. ‘For a short period, my boiler heart shall run as well on dirt-gas as it does on air. And as for your rich countryman’s Jackelian guineas, don’t you worry, I’ll find something to squander his silver on.’ Gabriel McCabe moved his massive bulk — made even larger by the diving suit — towards the conning tower’s outer lock. ‘We will not be able to evade their spears in these suits.’

‘You two see to this submersible’s rudder,’ said Ironflanks. ‘I shall deal with your mammal-shell cousins when they come hunting for us.’

Choking green clouds muffled the sound of the water lapping against the Sprite’s hull and the echo of rifle fire from the trading post. If the hell denied by the Circlist church’s vicars existed, it might have looked something like this. Amelia’s lead-lined boots clanked against the hull as blind shots from the garrison spouted in the river. She could hear Ironflanks’ feet clanking behind her, the steamman sweeping the empty mist with the business end of his massive thunder-lizard gun.

Dead craynarbians bobbed in the water, shuddering as something still left alive in the river gnawed at their shells. She could just make out the war song of the savage craynarbians, a whistling fluting thing, followed by the