The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

a pile of papers in irritation — not charts but mission documents, carefully compiled by the House of Quest’s researchers and added to during the voyage by Amelia.

‘Have you developed a taste for archaeology?’ asked Amelia.

‘Have you developed a taste for quarters other than a hold filled with resentful Catosians?’ Bull retorted. ‘I brought you along to make sense of this rubbish, to do the job Quest paid you to do.’

‘I may be on Quest’s pay book, but I wasn’t mounting this expedition for him,’ said Amelia.

‘Leave off with the nobility of science speech, dimples,’ retorted Bull. ‘You’re a looter of tombs, a history thief with letters after your name that were paid for by your rich family. I know the way Abraham Quest’s mind works better than you do, and a man like him isn’t doing all this to fill the bowls of the poor with milk and honey.’ Bull leafed through the papers in exasperation ‘There were wonders in that ancient time, things we can only dream of now. That’s the knowledge your rich shopkeeper friend is after. Artificers’ tricks to swell his pockets.’

‘Quest is already the richest man in Jackals,’ said Amelia. ‘He doesn’t need more money.’

Bull shook his head sadly. ‘He doesn’t need it to pay his pantry bill, girl, but he needs it all right. Needs it like an itch — because it’s how his kind keeps count.’

‘Even if we make it to Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, even if we unearth the location of the city in the heavens from those ruins on the lake bed, what makes you think he’ll pay you for it?’

‘Oh, he’ll pay all right, Guardian’s daughter. I wager he won’t even ask what happened to poor old Blacky, or you, or his army of golden-haired killers. He’ll just ask if we have the location of Camlantis for him. Then he’ll whistle up the lads from his counting house with as many bags of Jackelian guineas as I have a care to ask for.’

‘What if he won’t pay?’

Bull smiled. ‘Then it won’t just be your companions down in the hold that I sell on the trading block in Cassarabia. What do you reckon the caliph will pay for the location of Camlantis?’

Amelia recoiled in disgust. ‘You’d betray Jackals.’

‘My Jackals stopped existing six hundred years ago. I’d sell the location of Camlantis to the First Committee in Quatershift if they had enough gold in their vaults left to buy a loaf of bread.’

‘And what will you do with your newfound wealth? Rebuild Porto Principe? Pay for the daughters of the new regime to lay down with you in your underwater kingdom?’

‘I’ve never needed to pay for it, girl,’ said Bull, ‘and it might shock you to know that not everyone finds arms as large as a side of beef appealing.’

Amelia walked to the bunk and patted the blankets, then rested her hand on the dolphin-encircled ornament there. It would need to be easy to find, for a skipper surprised in his sleep by a mutinous rabble, but not so easy as to be obvious. ‘Of course you don’t need to pay for it. Not with a hold full of Catosians who’re going to end up on the slave market anyway.’

Bull started to laugh a retort, but Amelia found the cover and the switch hidden underneath, the slaver’s words turning to a yelp as a hidden capacitor fed the copper-veined marble floor with its charge, a sheet of blue energy scything across the chamber, tossing the two guards into the wall as Bull’s chair was hurled back with the force of his convulsing muscles.

Amelia’s boots stood on the square of thick woollen carpet surrounding the bunk alcove — more than just insulation against the cold seas the Sprite had passed through, as the three unconscious figures sprawled across the commodore’s luxurious quarters attested to. ‘You were right, Jared, the river dolphins did come to my rescue.’

Amelia scooped up one of the carbines and unclipped the belt of charges for the gun. Her mind raced with the possibilities. One woman against more than ninety of Bull’s crew. She could try to even the odds by releasing the Catosian fighters, but their hold was the most heavily guarded pos ition in the Sprite, she had already seen that. Bull’s people were rightly paranoid that the fighters would chew their way out of their manacles and throttle the crew in their sleep. Revenge was a matter of principle for a betrayed city-state free company. She could take Bull Kammerlan hostage — put a gun to his head and demand the Catosians’ release. But perhaps not. The slavers would as like allow Bull to swing, then gleefully knife each other for the vacant position of skipper.

If only Commodore Black were here, he’d have a way to even the odds. A second secret pilot room able to override the first, a hidden tank of gas just as vile as the ambush mist Bull had ridden them into — but the other secrets of the Sprite were as lost to Amelia as her friends marooned out in the jungle.

Amelia made up her mind. The bathysphere attached to the Sprite’s hull. If they lost that as well as her knowledge of Camlantis, the expedition was as good as over — unless the slavers fancied blundering around the ruins on the lake bed in their diving suits, trying to distinguish ancient crystal-books from two-thousand-year-old rubble. She would scupper their chances and use the bathysphere as an escape capsule at the same time.

As Amelia stepped out of the commodore’s quarters, the corridor’s lights changed from the standard yellow to a muted crimson hue. Was this to do with her escape? There were no claxons, though. Unless the sudden surge of capacitor juice had thrown an alarm somewhere, drained the boat’s power, nobody outside of the thugs lying shocked in the skipper’s quarters should know she had activated Black’s secret switch.

Amelia crept through the corridors, as silent as the rest of the boat. The Sprite had stopped moving now, her engines stilled. Pulling herself up the cold steel of a ladder, Amelia climbed two decks, heading for the rear conning tower. At one point she passed the Sprite’s engineering bay and risked a glance through its slightly ajar hatch. The bay’s lathes and workbenches were at a halt, maintenance work quieted while the crewmen inside nervously held onto the ceiling pipes. It was as if by stunning Bull Kammerlan she had cut the marionette cords on the rest of his gang of slavers; they were just waiting there in the stale tinned air for their leader to awake kraken-like from his slumbers.

Her luck did not hold. Amelia dipped into the passage leading to the bathysphere and a sailor at the other end saw her, then did a double take as he realized she should be locked up below in the hold with the Catosians. He grabbed for a holster on his belt and Amelia let him have the round in her carbine, the sailor bouncing from the wall and collapsing in front of her — she had hit him square in the chest: he was dead before the crack of the stubby rifle had finished echoing down the boat. There goes caution, Amelia sighed. She teased another charge from her ammunition belt even as she ejected the broken crystal from the first onto the deck. Slid the new shell into her carbine.

Amelia found the entrance to the bathysphere barred to her — a simple rotating combination lock. With no hope of guessing the sequence she placed the muzzle of the carbine an inch from the metal and turned her head as the blast from the short rifle jounced off the hatch. Hot metal lanced her hand. The lock was mangled, but it still held. She beat the butt of the carbine on the hatch, exposing the locking mechanism. Curse the Sprite for being so well built by its long-dead royalist engineers. Desperation grew in Amelia as she heard stirrings from the lower decks. She smashed the rifle as hard as she could against the lock, shattering the wooden butt with the impact. On Amelia’s last blow the Sprite shook violently as if a fire squid had scooped up the u-boat from the river to rattle it around, a muffled detonation that knocked Amelia off her feet, and landed her across the dead sailor. Then all was still again, an unnatural silence tinted only by the eerie crimson light.

A head popped up through the floor hatch — it was cooky, the grizzled old chef still wearing his oil-spattered apron. He looked down the corridor, took in the dead sailor and the carbine still in Amelia’s grip, then pulled himself up, running terrified to the bathysphere hatch, practically sobbing when he saw the ruin that was all that was left of the locking system. Amelia got to her feet, covering him with the carbine, but he was so horrified that he showed no sign of even being aware of the weapon.

‘Did you not see the red light?’

Amelia glanced up at the illumination strips. ‘The red light?’

‘Silent bloody running,’ moaned the crewman. ‘There’s a pair of seed ships above us and your gunshots have blown us to them. They’ve depth-charged our engines, we’re dead in the water.’ He started pulling distraughtly at the door, but it was beyond use. There would be no escape that way. A hissing sound came from inside the rear conning tower.

Old cooky gave up, slumping to the deck in despair. ‘Jonah. Jonah. We never should have kept you here.’