There was a splash as a metal panel ejected from the bathysphere and hit the water, followed by a boom as something fired out of their diving ball’s hull.
‘A rocket,’ said Ironflanks, tracking the projectile heading towards the firmament.
‘You don’t carry rockets on a submersible,’ said Bull, confused. ‘You carry torpedoes.’ He looked up. ‘And that one’s missed the fleet.’
Commodore Black made to throttle his nephew, before changing his mind and running to the patrol boat’s rail. ‘Veryann, get yourself out of that blessed sphere. Billy, hold your fire on the u-boat, she’s dead in the water now. Can you-’
But Billy Snow had already abandoned the cabin and was coming out of the door, the seed ship left a mindless derelict with the controlling witch-blade in the sonar man’s hand.
Amelia glanced behind him into the cabin. ‘Billy, what in the name of the Circle is going on here?’
‘A long tale for a less desperate time,’ said Billy. ‘I am glad that you survived, Amelia — but not to see you with that.’ He pointed at the crown in Amelia’s hand.
‘This is what we came all the way out here for,’ said Amelia. ‘The things we’ve seen under the lake’s waters, I can’t begin to tell you. The crown holds the secrets to the location of Camlantis in the heavens, I can feel it.’
‘It holds many things,’ said Billy, ‘but the location of Camlantis isn’t one of them.’
‘You can’t know that.’
‘Give it to me,’ said Billy.
‘What for?’
Billy extended his witch-blade, the evil thing thrumming, tasting the opportunity for fresh trouble. ‘You know what I’m going to do. What you should have done, rather than bring that terrible thing back into the world.’
Bull rushed at Billy Snow, and the sonar man kicked out almost gently, tapping Bull’s left leg above the knee. The slaver collapsed, howling as if Billy had cut off his limb, silenced into unconsciousness as the old sonar man ducked down and tapped him on the back of the neck.
‘Have you lost your mind, Billy?’ shouted the commodore. ‘If that gem is a crystal-book, then it’s what we rolled all the way up this wicked devil’s river for.’
Billy waved his sword at the approaching commodore. ‘You came for it. I only came to make sure you didn’t get it.’
‘Billy,’ begged T’ricola, ‘I don’t know what this is about and I don’t care, but while we’re arguing the Daggish are getting closer.’
Amelia stepped back. ‘The knowledge on this crystal-’
‘You’re not ready for it. Jackals isn’t ready for it,’ said Billy. He nodded at the approaching Daggish fleet. ‘They’re certainly not ready for it. Give it to me now. I don’t want to hurt you, professor, but I’ll take off your arm along with the crown to obliterate that terrible thing.’
‘You can’t destroy a crystal-book, you can’t destroy knowledge. I was meant to find this!’
‘Prophecy is a poor substitute for intellect,’ said Billy, advancing menacingly. ‘And that thing is not just a crystal-book.’
Ironflanks had been slowly trying to edge behind Billy, but the sonar man wagged a finger at the steamman. ‘I may be blind, old steamer, but I know all about your militant order’s fighting forms. Your voicebox won’t work on me, my body is hardened against the frequency the knights steammen use for paralysis.’
‘You were the traitor on the u-boat,’ said Ironflanks accusingly. ‘I thought it was the commodore’s nephew trying to force us to turn about, but all the time it was you sabotaging the
‘Billy,’ pleaded T’ricola. ‘That isn’t true?’
‘If you only knew what was at stake, you would understand.’ Billy Snow lunged at Amelia, faster than the eye could follow, striking her wrist and capturing the falling crown. Amelia punched out with her massive gorilla-sized arm — the good one he had left her — but the sonar man wasn’t there anymore. His boot kicked out and she got a taste of what Bull had received. Pure nerve fire pulsed along her left leg, as if the bottom half of her limb had ceased to exist. She fell back, trying not to scream.
‘My steam is up,’ roared Ironflanks, charging Billy while the sonar man was busy incapacitating Amelia.
Billy’s witch-blade flexed to the diameter of a sewing pin and without turning around he stepped back, the tip of the impossibly thin sword emerging from the back of the steamman’s hull. Billy stepped forward and Ironflanks fell sideways, grasping for the side of the boat and as weak as a kitten.
‘I’ve sliced your circuit line for spatial balance,’ said Billy, making the slightest bow in the direction of the fallen steamman. ‘You should be able to reroute around the damage using your self-repair routines. But not-’ he rested the crown on the boat and converted his witch sword into something capable of smashing a near- indestructible crystal, all claws and blades, ‘-before I’ve had a chance to account for this filthy thing …’
‘My body,’ begged Ironflanks. ‘Please, I need that crown to pay for my body to be cleansed of my siltempter corruption.’
‘Not with this,’ said Billy, raising his sword to strike. He hesitated as something like a meteor hit close to them, a whistling trail of heat, followed by a spout of lake water erupting into the air — then the firmament above was filled with fiery scratches impacting all around them. As Billy moved to smash the crown into pieces, a pair of weighted bolas wrapped around his abdomen, the attached net landing on his back and shimmering with a field of sparks. It was as if a wall had collapsed on top of the sonar man. He fell to his face with a single moan.
Veryann’s legs were wedged around the bathysphere airlock, a discharged bola launcher resting against her arm. ‘That was designed to paralyse a Daggish drone, but it seems to work as well on our unusually adept sonar operator.’
Amelia tried to pull herself up, massaging life back into her leg and ignoring the pain in her sprained wrist. Had the world gone mad? Billy Snow turning on them, a rain of fire falling from the heavens? On the distant shore, the Daggish nest’s flame cannons were jouncing in their cradles, answering the volley coming down on them with streams of fire of their own. The objects Amelia had mistaken for meteors were surfacing across the lake in their hundreds, long iron capsules opening like metal flowers to give birth to boxy-looking landing craft. Periscopes, steam engine stacks and clockwork-stabilized cannons pushed out from the landing crafts’ hulls, metal lobsters extending their claws.
Veryann leapt back across to the seed ship. ‘Don’t touch Billy Snow,’ she warned the crew. ‘Leave him in the incapaci-tator net. If anyone tries to free him, I’ll kill him.’
More capsules came thumping down towards the edge of the lake, against a background of tinny explosions from the Daggish city, a pall of smoke rising above the jungle canopy of Liongeli and the twisted organic towers of the nest city. There was a second rain following now, silk chutes, detached from the engines of war they had been designed to slow, following in the invaders’ wake like a rain of blossom.
Amelia shaded her eyes against the bright afternoon sun. The invaders were pushing out of the lake and up onto the distant shore — amphibious horseless carriages moving on caterpillar tracks similar to those some of the steammen favoured. Tiny figures dismounted from the rear and moved up beside them as they trundled along.
The commodore came to Amelia’s side, helping her try to raise Ironflanks back onto his feet. ‘We’re in the middle of a shooting war now, lass.’
‘And I think I know whose …’ Amelia looked with resentment at the Catosian officer.
‘A raid,’ said Veryann, ‘not a war. With a very specific objective.’
On the centre of the lake the Daggish armada was scattering, heading for the shore to protect their city. Tree-head Joe must be in apoplexy by now — far more than a few gnats in danger of penetrating his sanctum and threatening his ancient purity.
‘You can’t beat the Daggish, Veryann,’ said Commodore Black. ‘They’re like a blessed weed. You’d have to burn down hundreds of miles of greenmesh to finish them off.’
‘We’re just giving their kind something to think about,’ said Veryann, picking up the fallen crown. ‘Into the bathysphere, if you want to live.’
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Amelia.
‘Preserving your crown’s precious knowledge. We haven’t got long. You have two choices. Enter the bathysphere and live, or stay on board the Daggish boat and die.’ She tossed the prone weight of Billy Snow over her shoulders. ‘Help the steamman to his feet. As for him-’ she pointed at the limp form of Bull Kammerlan, ‘-leave him here like he left us marooned in the jungle.’
