The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

that had been cooked up by the expedition members. Veryann was first on deck, then the semi-conscious forms of Ironflanks, Bull Kammerlan and Billy Snow were pulled out by the airship crew.

‘Put these two in the brig,’ said Veryann, pointing at Kammerlan and Snow. ‘Chains for the old man and make sure they are strong — he can fight in witch-time.’

Abraham Quest walked over and grasped Veryann’s arm in the Catosian style. ‘You have it?’

She held up Amelia’s Camlantean crown. ‘Did you ever doubt me?’

‘It was as dangerous a thing as I have ever asked you to do.’ He looked at the motley group climbing out of the bathysphere, drenched in sweat, their clothes torn by long months in the jungle. ‘So few … did none of the others make it?’

‘My boys are gone,’ whined the commodore. ‘Walking dead among the Daggish or made proper corpses along the way of our voyage, left rotting in that Liongeli hell. You promised me my beautiful boat back, but even that’s gone now.’

‘You might yet have it returned,’ said Abraham Quest. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ spat Amelia. ‘We’ve been shot at, gassed, imprisoned, seen glimpses of Camlantis at the bottom of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, and had members of our own crew turn on us, all for the sake of that crown.’

‘For which I apologize.’ Quest looked at the prone form of Billy Snow being fitted with a metal cuirass, his arms strapped inside the steel straightjacket at a painful angle. ‘He looks a little like the last one who came after us, don’t you think?’

Veryann waved her soldiers forward to stand guard over Billy while he was being restrained. ‘Like a brother, perhaps, if you shaved his beard off.’

‘Who is Billy Snow, Quest? Who is he really?’ asked Amelia. ‘He claimed the location of Camlantis wasn’t going to be found in the crown’s crystal-book.’

‘He’s something ancient, professor. One of the texts mentioned something very much like him being grown in the old days.’

‘What texts? I didn’t read-’

‘You read only what you needed for our expedition to succeed,’ said Quest. ‘Something else that you have my apology for.’

Amelia bridled at the deception. ‘You were holding out on me? I risked my life for that crown!’

‘And you will find the risk was worth it. I needed your passion to be pure, Amelia. The truth would have made you doubtful; you might even have refused to go in search of Camlantis. I risked everything I have on this throw of the dice, and my methods have not always been as honourable as I would otherwise have had them. Some of the crystal-books’ secrets I kept back.’

‘What secrets? What in the name of the Circle would have stopped me from going in search of Camlantis?’

‘Camlantis is everything we thought it was and more, but its final days on Earth were not the best of times. Threatened by the Black-oil Horde, there was a schism in the Camlantean consensus on how to handle the barbarian invasion. The crystal-book I omitted showing you contains details of their civil war.’

Amelia’s mouth hung open in shock. ‘But that can’t be. Their whole civilization was based on pacifism, they were not capable-’

‘They were facing extinction,’ interrupted Quest. ‘Some of their people felt they had no choice but to take alternative action. That terrible decision tore Camlantis apart. It was no accidental floatquake that struck a looted and ruined city, and neither was their ascent into the heavens a noble act of mass suicide to prevent their knowledge from being perverted by the barbarians. The Camlanteans were at least as advanced in the worldsinger arts and geomancy as we are today. Camlantis was destroyed in a civil war. Leylines were strategically altered and the city blown into the heavens during the fighting.’

Tears ran down Amelia’s cheeks. ‘No!’ But she knew it had the ring of truth. The pocket world under the waters of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, its halls of else-when, a prophetic warning of the dangers of conflict. This was the warning from her father’s shade, an admonition that had come true, this was the bitter laughter of a desert witch in Cassarabia.

‘They sacrificed themselves, gave their lives rather than commit acts of violence,’ Amelia whispered.

‘Just another war, Amelia, a stupid senseless war and a small imperfection in an otherwise untarnished record. The Camlanteans lived for two-thousand years in peace and only faltered in their final months when they were nearly extinct — how can we judge them for that?’ Quest held up the gleaming Camlantean crown. ‘And look where your passion has led you.’

Amelia pointed at Billy Snow being dragged away across the hangar floor. ‘I told you, he said the crown doesn’t hold the location of Camlantis.’

‘A half-truth,’ said Quest. ‘The crown does not contain the location of the city. It contains the key to unlock her gates.’

‘A key? It’s a jigging key! Then you already know where Camlantis is?’ gasped Amelia. ‘All this time and you knew?’

‘You might say I know where it isn’t,’ smiled Quest. ‘Which amounts to the same thing in this instance.’

‘You’re a thorough bastard,’ said Amelia.

‘I needed your knowledge and your expertise,’ apologized Quest, ‘and I preferred to limit the facts of the expedition’s true objective to Veryann. If the Daggish had captured her, she had access to a herb that would have ensured the green-mesh did not take her alive. Would the rest of your crew have sacrificed themselves to keep the people of Jackals safe? Even the Camlanteans failed that test in the end.’

‘Well, we’ve passed your blessed test now,’ said the commodore, ‘those of us who’ve made it back alive. We’ll take our money and be on our way.’

‘Really?’ said Quest. ‘Do you have no curiosity? You are all welcome to travel with me to Camlantis. You’ll see sights that no one has seen in millennia, travel higher than any aerostat in the history of Jackals. This is your chance to touch the stars.’

‘The only sights I want to see are the warm corridors of Tock House,’ said the commodore, ‘and the only things I want to touch are the fine bottles of wine I have stored away back in my pantry. You can keep your dead city with its dead secrets, Abraham Quest.’

T’ricola nodded in agreement and Ironflanks pulled himself straight, leaning against the craynarbian, his voicebox tinny after self-repairing his wounded systems. ‘I will take the second part of the payment you promised me and leave with my soft-body friends.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Quest. ‘It was money you all signed up for and if that is what matters to you, it is money you shall have. Triple the agreed fee if you wish. My holdings in Jackals have been, shall we say, liquidated by circumstances. Mere money is the least of my concerns now.’ He glanced over at his airship’s captain.

‘We will be over Jackals in two days, sir, I would not advise flying low enough to be reachable by the cannons of the RAN fleet, though.’

‘Load a glider capsule onto the racks,’ ordered Quest, turning to the expedition survivors. ‘We’ll fire you off somewhere out of the way. No one need ever know you were involved with the mad schemes of a rogue commercial lord.’

‘That will suit me just fine,’ said the commodore.

‘And what of you, professor?’ asked Quest. ‘Our journey’s end lies above the Sepia Sea. In four to five days’ time you could be walking the empty streets of ancient Camlantis, touching towers and spires you have only glimpsed before in crystal-book images.’

‘Damn your eyes, you know the answer as well as I do,’ said Amelia.

‘Don’t go, lass,’ pleaded the commodore. ‘Sailing around the sky like the queen of the clouds, tweaking parliament’s nose by your very presence. It can only end in a wicked bad way. The life of an outlaw is no life for you; you can trust me on that. Come back with old Blacky to Jackals and stay a week or two with me in Tock House while we forget all about our part in this sorry adventure.’

‘I’m sorry, Jared. I’ve risked everything to have this chance, to be standing here — and I have so very little left to return to back home. I’ll make those prigs on the High Table eat their words, I’ll bring back an airship full of Camlantean artefacts and fill the corridors of Middlesteel Museum with the expedition’s finds as a reminder of their