The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

Amelia did something she thought she would not do again — she blinked awake and tried to sit up. A hand pushed her down, human-like fingers backed by heavy shell armour. ‘T’ricola.’

The craynarbian engineer was sitting on the edge of her bunk. ‘Rest, professor. We had to bleed you in a dozen places or your body would have burst like a rotten fruit. You’ve lost nearly a quarter of your blood.’

As the craynarbian spoke, Amelia felt the sting of the wounds, the throb beneath bandages that had been expertly lashed around her arms and legs. ‘I was reliably informed that devilbarb-fish poison is fatal.’

‘To you soft skins,’ said T’ricola, ‘not to us; their sting is painful to craynarbians, like a Jackelian adder bite — but not lethal.’ She raised her serrated sword arm. ‘I opened you with this. My sweat contains an anti-toxin that allowed you to survive. I rubbed my tears over your wounds too, close to an incision I made above your heart.’

‘Then I’m lucky to be alive,’ said Amelia. ‘And I’m sorry that I made you cry.’

‘Even back in Middlesteel, in the streets of Shell Town, it is an important ritual,’ said T’ricola. ‘But you are lucky that part of your flesh has been turned by a worldsinger, yes? The muscles in your arms resisted the poison until I got to you. A normal body would have succumbed far faster.’

‘Once a Shell Town girl, always a Shell Town girl, eh, T’ricola. I owe you my life.’

The engineer slapped the sides of the bulkhead. ‘Shell Town is just where I bunk, professor. I’m a third generation seadrinker, born on a u-boat beneath the Tharian Straits, swaddled alongside the pistons of an engine room. This is my home, not Jackals, and certainly not Liongeli.’

‘An engineer of people as well as submarines — the commodore is lucky to have found you. I hope he’s paying you well for this voyage.’

‘People are not so different from machines — spleen and bone, rather than cogs and grease.’ T’ricola pulled back the bunk niche’s curtain — they were in a far more spacious accommodation than Amelia’s cabin. At the other end of the room Commodore Black sat playing what looked like a game of chess with Veryann across a round oak table. For a moment Amelia was stunned by the size of the chamber. Then she remembered. The Sprite had once been a royalist u-boat, where the skipper was often lord of more than just the vessel.

‘And this must be the first time I have shipped with the commodore and have actually been paid a salary commensurate with my skills.’

‘You can thank the House of Quest for those guineas,’ said Amelia, ‘not that old sea dog.’

Seeing his guest was awake, Black left the mercenary commander pondering her next move and brought Amelia a cup of warm wine, T’ricola leaving to tend her engines. ‘Professor, it’s mortal good to see you back with us. I thought you might be pushing off along the Circle at one point.’

‘Did everyone else make it back alive?’ asked Amelia.

‘That they did, lass. You and Gabriel cleared our screws and we are happily pushing our way up the Shedarkshe as we speak. Ironflanks took a dent or two from the wild shells, but he fights like a fury, and kept them off your backs long enough for Bull’s boys to tickle them away from the Sprite with their tridents. We have gone further and deeper into Liongeli than any Jackelian before us. After we get back to the capital, the Dock Street pensmen will write a whole series of penny dreadfuls full of the wonders we have seen while you slept.’

‘Just how long have I been out, Jared?’

‘Two weeks, lass. Craynarbian tears are a powerful medicine. But you needed it. When I first brought you down here you were swelled up as round as an aerostat. It was a terrible thing to behold.’

Amelia gazed towards a large porthole on the other side of the chamber, small silver fish flashing past outside the armoured crystal. ‘Two weeks! Sweet Circle. I don’t remember a thing.’

‘As well you do not, Amelia. The scrapes we’ve been in. Pursued upriver by the cunning wild shells for a week, intent on paying us back for the brave scrap we gave them. Set upon by a flock of petrodactyls as we came up for air one moonless night, nearly crushed amongst a pod of mating flipbacks. That the Sprite is here for you to wake up to at all is only due to my quick thinking and the guns of Veryann and her fair fighters.’

‘Don’t think I don’t know what you are about, Jared Black,’ whispered Amelia.

‘Lass, what do you mean?’

‘The gymnasia of the Catosian League is what I am talking about, you old dog. Trial by arms and flesh is only part of what free company fighters practise — they value trial by mind and wit equally well, don’t they? Strength of arms being meaningless without strength of mind.’

The commodore looked red-faced. ‘That may be so, lass.’

‘You must prove yourself fit before you bed a Catosian, demonstrate the superiority of your blood lineage,’ mimicked Amelia. ‘How many games of chess have you lost already, Jared? You should be ashamed of yourself. You are old enough to be her grandfather.’

‘Ah, but professor, she is a fine figure of a woman, is she not? You must admit that; she has the beauty of a Jackelian princess and the poise of a sleekclaw. As fine a prize as any skipper ever sailed for.’

‘A sleekclaw has a glossy coat, Jared, but that doesn’t disguise the heart of a killer beating within its chest.’

‘You would not deny a bit of comfort to poor old Blacky, would you? I should be back in Tock House, resting my weary bones with a pot of beef gravy and a steaming loaf of bread by my side. Instead I am risking the precious hull of the Sprite for the sake of your career and the promise of the House of Quest’s meagre pension, sailing into the heart of darkness, where no Jackelian has ever set foot and lived to speak of it.’

‘Go back to your game, Jared. For your sake, I hope that Veryann is as quick with her wits as she is with that side-dagger strapped to her leg.’

‘When I was younger, lass, I would not have needed to prove myself on the chequered board of glory. Ah, I was a fast fellow back then, with a sabre arm that could see off twenty in a duel, a lucky twinkle in my eye that could melt the heart of even such as Veryann.’

‘You’ll need all your luck if you go biting the pillow with Abraham Quest’s tame cobra,’ said Amelia, her advice interrupted as the u-boat began to judder, the water outside the porthole flooding with light. ‘We’ve surfaced?’

‘So we have, professor. Ironflanks says there is a freshwater pool inland, half an hour away from our position. Our steamman guide has recovered from a little snit, after Veryann found a stash of quicksilver in his cabin and took it away from him. My darling girl’s drinking system could do with a top-up now. This wicked river is as feverish as the Fire Sea in high summer. You should take a watch above, clear your head with a breath of the fresh stuff.’

Amelia got out of her bunk and nearly bashed her head on a copper ornament, a replica of the female lance warrior that swept out of the nose of the Sprite, except that this lady of the lake was surrounded by a school of dolphins leaping around her. She went to straighten the ornament where she had knocked it, but the commodore stayed her hand.

‘Don’t be bringing my lucky dolphins down on your head, Amelia. You’ve had enough of a convalescence already.’

Amelia steadied herself on the side of the bunk, vertical for the first time in weeks, the blood rushing to her head. On the other side of the captain’s chamber, Veryann had stood up, checking the two pistols in her breast holsters. She gave Amelia an indecipherable look. Surely the mercenary did not regard her as competition for the vessel’s commander?

Out on deck, Amelia saw that the river had grown broader during her recuperation, and was now at least the width of one of Jackals’ great upland lochs. Ahead, the river forked and an obelisk rose out of the waters to the side of the junction. Amelia caught her breath and took a leather-lined telescope from one of the watch, focusing in on the figure on top of the granite carving. It was worn and dirty from the rainforest’s wet seasons, but the lines of the statue were clear enough. It was a woman clutching a book to her breast.

Ironflanks came clunking over to her, his dirty human clothes lashed with an explorer’s backpack dangling with machetes, iron cups and tent spikes. ‘One of your Camlantean friends, Amelia softbody?’

‘Not Camlantean, not even Chimecan,’ said Amelia. The dress the statue was wearing could almost have been Jackelian — she would not have looked out of place buying fruit from a stall alongside the Gambleflowers or strolling through the gardens of Goldhair Park. ‘With the amount of weathering on it, it could pre-date both those civilizations. Sweet Circle, how much history is there buried under this jungle?’

‘There are such oddities all over Liongeli,’ said the hulking steamman. ‘The statue may not be as old as you