The first of the gill-necks was a large male, green-scaled-shoulders as broad as a weightlifter’s, his mail-like tunic clinging to an expansive, muscled chest. The other gill-neck was a female, her face hidden by a golden mask, a forehead covered by swirls of curling tentacles moulded into the metal for hair.
‘ Them. Well, this is starting out grand,’ Charlotte heard the commodore whisper over the voice line. So, he recognized the clan’s new leaders.
‘I wondered if it was you,’ said the old female, ‘when they said a surface dweller was asking for Poerava.’
‘Poerava passed seasons ago,’ said the large male gill-neck. ‘I lead the clan now.’
‘And a tale in the telling that must be, Vane. You were a wild young buck in my day, always sailing close to being banished by Poerava.’
‘She was old and tired even back then. Too confused to see what a liar and a dark-heart you were.’
‘Who is this Vane?’ whispered Charlotte over the voice line. ‘He sounds like he hates you.’
‘As he should,’ replied the commodore. ‘His father died out hunting with me. We were cut off and became prey ourselves when a pack of tiger crabs turned up.’
‘Do not whisper to each other like thieves,’ Vane’s voice boomed over the speakers. ‘You have come here to speak to the clan leader, you shall speak to me.’
‘Hear him out,’ urged the female gill-neck. ‘He was of the clan once.’
‘Thank you, Tera,’ said the commodore. ‘As surprised as I am to see Vane with the chieftain’s trident, it surprises me not a jot to find you as the clan’s wise-woman.’
‘Wise enough to remember my predecessor’s warnings about your honeyed tongue, Jared silver-beard.’
‘I could’ve told you that,’ said the human woman.
‘Wasn’t it you who said to me that our life underneath the waves was never feted to be, Maeva? Too much air in my veins, you said.’
‘Saying goodbye might have been an expected courtesy,’ said Maeva. There was a resigned tone in the old woman’s voice, as if she’d expected no better. ‘It was I that fished you out of the broken hull of your ravaged u- boat. I that ministered you back to life. Did I not deserve better?’
‘Always better than me, lass,’ said the commodore.
‘You owe her a life debt,’ said Vane, the muscled arms of the leader bunching in anger. ‘You owe my family one, also. How many others among the Clan Raldama?’
‘I had trouble following in my wake,’ said the commodore. ‘I had to flee to Cassarabia. One of the wicked surface traders who’d come among us recognized me as a royalist rebel. If I had stayed, I would have an ocean full of life debts, and a corpse is only good for paying back carrion.’
The wise-woman, Tera, danced from side to side in the water. ‘Do you not have trouble following you now, Jared silver-beard? I can scent it on you like blood leaking from your pores, calling every shark and tiger crab in the territory to us.’
‘It’s brewing up a storm, Tera. But I fear it’s coming your way whether you heed my warnings or not.’
‘Enough!’ cried Vane, jabbing out with the clan leader’s trident. ‘Go now, back to your iron vessel, full of surface air and surface dwelling scum. I smell the gas from its engines fouling our forest’s waters.’
The commodore shook his head. ‘I claim the right of admittance to the clan as one who was once seanore, and protection for me and the girl.’
Maeva’s voice spat over the speaker. ‘Take your old carcass and your fancy piece’s back to the surface. Your time among us ended long ago.’
‘I claim the right of admittance,’ insisted the commodore. He pointed at Tera. ‘Is that within clan law?’
‘It is.’
‘Then I shall take my life debt from you,’ said Vane. ‘Your claim is accepted.’
‘What does he mean?’ Charlotte asked.
‘A duel, lass,’ the commodore said over the voice line. Then he switched to the public speaker. ‘Name your champion.’
‘I will not fight with a champion,’ laughed Vane. ‘And neither will you two. You shall both fight, you and your young surface dweller here.’
‘This is between you and me, Vane. Leave the lass out of it.’
‘Two seek admittance to the clan, two shall fight!’
‘Just my old bones for the clan, then, Vane. Charlotte, make your way back to the Purity Queen.’
At the clan leader’s gesture, the seanores’ shock spears lowered, a circle of bristling violence being thrust towards the pair. ‘The claim’s validity has been accepted, you vile dark-heart. Both must fight, both must win.’
‘Do I look like a seanore warrior to you?’ protested Charlotte.
‘No,’ said Vane. ‘You look like bait for the hunt. But then, death always did follow the silver-beard like a shadow. Today it shall be yours.’
Jethro Daunt groaned as the vision returned to his head, the sound of scraping ground bumping below him. He was lying on a makeshift stretcher, a thick sheet of canvas lashed between two iron pipes, the litter being dragged by Boxiron. They were part of a trudging line, prisoners from the convoy by the damp, bedraggled appearance of the sailors — fleet sea arm as well as merchant seamen. In front of the steamman was Barnabas Sadly, limping along on his cane and the State Protection Board agent, Dick Tull. The latter had his leg in a temporary splint and was hobbling too, a pair of invalids among many. The Jackelians carried a resigned air of defeat with them as palpable baggage. But carried, where? Hearing him moan, Boxiron turned around and Daunt noted the addition of a new metal device over the steamman’s chest, hiding his rotating transaction-engine drum. It lent the steamman the bizarre appearance of a metal cleavage, all he needed was a dress and he could’ve been performing in a panto as an old widow.
‘Have you been repairing yourself in the field, old steamer?’
‘This further foul violation of my architecture,’ said Boxiron, tapping the device’s front plate with one of his hands and nearly spilling Daunt out of his stretcher, ‘is our captors’ idea of a leash for my race. It is an inhibitor for my boiler heart. I hardly have the strength to pull you along, let alone make a break for freedom.’
Daunt lifted up his arm and the steamman bent down to help put him up. ‘No need, I can stand, I think.’ He let the sudden sensation of dizziness pass, his nose filling with the lush, rich scent of wherever they had ended up. The line was marching along a well-worn track, grasses as high as a man’s knee off the path. Ten feet further on either side stood thick rain forests dripping after a recent rainfall, steaming mist rising among the clammy, tropical heat of the place. Eschewing the path for the grass, a gill-neck came along, his golden mask hooked up on either side by two rubber pipes feeding into a tank-like backpack. A diving suit in reverse. But why? Wouldn’t we be more secure as prisoners if we were held in cells in one of their cities under the waves, at a depth where any attempt to escape would mean drowning?
‘If you no longer wish your metal servant to drag your useless carcass along the ground, surface dweller, then march.’ He thumped Daunt in the ribs with the butt of his weapon. Urged on by the guard, Daunt stumbled alongside Boxiron, the steamman supporting him with an iron arm, the stretcher left abandoned in the grass.
‘Where are we?’
‘An island, Jethro softbody. We were on an Advocacy transport submarine for a couple of days after we were taken prisoner. That places us in the heart of the gill-neck kingdom.’
‘An area of the atlas left disappointingly vague by the Advocacy’s refusal to allow foreign surface craft to traverse their territory, old steamer.’
‘It is called Ko’marn, Mister Daunt,’ called Sadly hobbling in front of the steamman. ‘One of the gill-necks said I was welcome to the place when he pushed me off their u-boat’s gangway.’
‘Perhaps that’s their word for hell,’ Daunt mused. ‘Offered by way of irony. After all, by the lights of their thinking, only the cursed and misbegotten snub the sea for dry land.’
‘I’m wagering it ain’t their word for hotel, amateur,’ snarled Dick Tull, pulling his injured leg along. ‘I’ve never seen a prisoner of war camp that I wanted to stay in.’
Daunt bit his tongue. He had a feeling there was more to this place than a camp for holding captured surface dwellers. ‘What a pity. I was hoping we might get to see one of our captors’ legendary crystal cities. If I recall correctly from the commodore’s anecdotes, the gill-neck capital is called Lishtiken, and the few who have visited it speak of it as one of the wonders of the ocean.’
Daunt gazed at the gill-neck guards walking either side of the line of shuffling captives. The Advocacy soldiers
