The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

Billy reached out for a refill for his mug, Amelia pushing the jug across towards his fingers. ‘Were you born blind, Billy?’

‘No,’ he smiled. ‘In my younger days I could see just fine. But I caught the waterman’s sickness off the Gambleflowers when I was a lad.’

‘I thought that was fatal?’

‘Usually it is. If you are lucky enough to survive, this is the price.’ He waved a hand in front of his blind eyes. ‘But my ears? I can hear the wind turn the pages of a book and tell you what page number it’s blown open on. There was only one trade really open to me. My family were eelers, selling river crab and water serpent to the submarines that travelled up to Middlesteel docks; they had enough seadrinker friends to make sure I got a job as the phones-man on a boat.’

At the galley hatch, old cooky banged his spoon against the pan to indicate their stew was ready. The off- shift crew mobbed the hatch while Billy Snow stood up and collected a plate of boiled potatoes and green salad leaves, manoeuvring back around the benches as easily as any of the fully sighted crew. Cooky slopped out the mutton, laughing at the sonar man’s slim fare.

Amelia looked over at T’ricola. ‘Is Billy not feeling hungry?’

‘Same reason he doesn’t drink blackstrap or rum rations,’ said T’ricola. ‘Billy has his funny ways. I think it might be religious.’

Amelia shrugged. There were extreme Circlist sects that did not eat meat, but most Jackelians had a hearty taste for a good steaming plate of red meat and roast potatoes drowning in gravy. Out in the shires, the doctors were known to prescribe red wine and hot roast beef to sickening children.

‘My ways are not that funny,’ said Billy, sitting down again.

Sweet Circle, he must have heard the two of them talking halfway across the room.

‘Despite what Bull’s pirates think to the contrary. It never sat well with me, that the price of my existence should be the end of something else’s.’

‘And the juice in your mug rather than a tot of rum?’ asked Amelia.

‘I like a ration of rum as much as the next man, professor, but when you’re running shy of a sense, you take trouble not to dull your remaining ones,’ said Billy. ‘Besides, you’re a fine one to be speculating about my funny ways. Most academics would be happy enough blowing the dust off journals back in Jackals, not dreaming of some ancient paradise that may or may not be lost beneath this green hell we are sailing through.’

There was a weight of things Amelia wanted to reply to that, but she had long since grown weary of trying to haul them out of her past — all the long evening conversations about Camlantis with her father, huddled under a blanket by a snug fire grate while hail tapped against their window — trying to find a way to reawaken that dream, that memory in her present. It was so hard, made her so cursed exhausted, attempting to explain the dream, attempting to justify it. Amelia speared a lump of stewed mutton in her bowl. ‘I guess you’ll just have to think of the lost city as my plate of salad at the spit-roast, Billy.’

Damson Beeton pursued Septimoth down the corridor. ‘What do you mean, the master’s delayed? His supper is waiting for him as dry as a Cassarabian sand garden inside my oven.’

‘His business is keeping him in Middlesteel this evening,’ said Septimoth.

‘Oh it is, is it, you old bird? Appointment with his tailor overrunning? You two will be the death of me.’

‘I am sure we will not, damson.’

‘So you say.’ Damson Beeton produced a bone pipe from beneath the folds of her pinny. ‘If so, then why did I nearly trip over this and crack my skull outside?’

‘My flute!’ Septimoth’s folded wings nearly expanded into their glide position. The seers of the crimson feather had made their decision, and returned his bone flute as a sign. Things must be worse than he had imagined, then, for them to turn to him for help.

‘Your ma’s old spine. Left on the top step of the main hall. I was going into the herb garden and nearly came a cropper tripping over this.’

Septimoth took the flute back and tucked the instrument into his belt. ‘Thank you, damson, I had mislaid it.’

‘Your poor mother,’ said Damson Beeton. ‘I thought her bones were meant to be holy and precious to you. If this is the way you treat them, then you can do me the favour of letting my spine rest in the grave when I move along the Circle, thank you very much. No. No lute for you stripped out of my poor weary back, you careless old bird.’

Septimoth bowed in acknowledgement and made to leave; he was grateful, too, that he wouldn’t have to be called on to perform his people’s death rites on the human housekeeper. Her corpse would be as tough as vulture meat, no doubt.

‘Hang on there,’ cried the housekeeper. ‘You haven’t told me where the master is, or what time I’m to be expecting him back?’

‘Do not worry, I’m sure he will return presently.’

The housekeeper tutted as Septimoth walked away. ‘Where is he, Septimoth? Has he accepted one of the invites to society I’ve been so carefully piling up?’

‘I’m sure he’s enjoying himself,’ Septimoth called back.

‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ whispered the mumbler as Cornelius writhed in the chair. ‘It’s a clever device, the crown of thorns. Not many working parts to go wrong. No.’

Cornelius had to wait for the rogue mechomancer to turn off the crown before he could reply. The trick of surviving a crown was to grit your teeth — so you didn’t bite your tongue off and bleed to death. If these thugs had been professionals, then they might have known that and given him the courtesy of a mouth guard to bite on. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘You can drop the act,’ said one of the thugs. ‘The, oh sir,let’s just settle the debt and be out of here bit. Which worldsinger changed your ugly features?’

‘I don’t-’

The thug grabbed Cornelius’s face and viciously squeezed it. ‘The plate in the floor you stood on by the cloakroom is connected to a transaction engine. Faces are easy to mimic with worldsinger sorcery — but weight? Your weight’s changed by two pounds, you idiot.’

Cornelius silently swore to himself. They weren’t the gang of simple bludgers he had taken them for. Smarter than the revolutionaries across the border in Quatershift, certainly. He had badly underestimated the sophistication of the flash mob.

‘You must be new in town,’ said the thug, ‘if you think you can come onto the Ruby Belle and count cards at our tables. You think that our boss likes to be swindled? You think she goes to bed with a big smile on her face knowing that scrotes like you have been dipping your hand in her pockets?’

His companion waved a sheaf of illustrations and real-box pictures in front of Cornelius; face after face of known card counters and cheats. ‘So here’s what you’re going to do, new boy. You’re going to give us the name of the back-street sorcerer that did your mug for you, then you’re going to tell us the system you were planning to use to swindle the house, and finally, you’re going off to meet the eels in the Gambleflowers.’

‘You three are good,’ said Cornelius. ‘They should have you upstairs as the entertainment.’

One of them backhanded Cornelius. ‘You’re the amusement, jigger. Tell us what we need to know and we’ll make your death a little easier.’

‘You’re not thinking big enough,’ said Cornelius. ‘I’m not here to count cards; I’m here working for a rival crew. And the rest of what I’ve got to say is for the Catgibbon’s ears only.’

That stopped them short.

‘I could tell you, but the Catgibbon is as like to kill you, when she finds out that you know what I have got to say.’

‘Get her,’ ordered the thug; then he turned to Cornelius. ‘If you’re playing us false …’

‘I know. Little pieces; eels; feeding.’

He smelt her before he saw her, the faint scent of honey, a scent designed by womb mages to drive men wild. The Catgibbon. An ugly name for such an alluring creature; but none of her other names would have done. Not for a high lord of the flash mob.

‘Hello, Jasmine,’ said Cornelius.