The Kingdom Beyond the Waves. Stephen Hunt

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘You have found her!’

      Quest’s hand swept along the black hull of the submarine that filled the chamber, a double-turreted conning tower built low towards the rear of the long u-boat. ‘Handsome isn’t she? Now. She was not quite so pretty when I found her, though, beached and broken on the shore of the Isla Needless in the heart of the Fire Sea. I doubt there has ever been a recovery operation more difficult or more dangerous, but Amelia did so insist. I still don’t know why. She could have had her pick of the u-boats built by my own yards … modern craft.’

      ‘The Sprite of the Lake,’ said the commodore, wiping the tears from his cheeks. ‘Oh my beauty, my gorgeous girl. I thought you had died on the other side of the world.’

      ‘According to the laws of salvage, I think you will find she is currently my beauty,’ said Quest. ‘And believe me, she had died. With the money I spent on repairing and refitting this damn craft, I could have paid for new boats for half of the free traders running from Spumehead to Hundred Locks.’

      ‘Refitting!’ Commodore Black was outraged. ‘The Sprite of the Lake is a classic. If you have ripped her soul out, you’ll need more than Amelia’s strong arms to drag me off your wicked corpse.’

      Quest waved the submariner’s protests away. ‘I only hire the best, sir. My engineer for this project was Robert Fulton – I trust you are familiar with his work?’

      ‘Fulton? Yes, I can see it in the lines of her hull, where the breach has been repaired. Those are Fulton lines. Old Bob himself; so, if there was ever a man to do justice to my girl …’

      ‘Fulton seemed to feel the same way about the vessel as yourself, commodore,’ said Quest. ‘He dated her as nearly six hundred years old. The last of the royalist war boats was his estimation, a Queen Belinda-class seadrinker. Rated for thirty knots and sixty torpedoes. Personally speaking, I would be tempted to make her next berth the maritime wing of Middlesteel Museum.’

      Commodore Black pointed to a spherical bulb forward of the two conning towers. ‘What in Lord Tridentscale’s name is that carbuncle?’

      ‘A bathysphere. We added it along with a new docking ring.’ Quest looked over at Amelia. ‘You haven’t told him what we need the u-boat for?’

      ‘I just told Jared about the expedition into Liongeli,’ said Amelia. ‘It seemed a little superfluous to mention the underwater archaeology at the end of the journey.’

      ‘Mortal me,’ wheezed Black. ‘Amelia, you are not taking my beauty up that river of hell? Say it is not true. Has the Sprite not already gone through enough? Boiled under the waters of the Fire Sea, fired upon by the rogues of Porto Principe, hunted by the warships of the Holy Kikkosico Empire. You cannot take her into such peril again.’

      ‘I am afraid we can, commodore,’ said Amelia. ‘That’s why I need you to skipper her for the expedition.’

      ‘You can go with the sprite of the lake as her master; her owner after you return safely from Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo,’ said Quest. ‘Or I can get one of my own seadrinker skippers to take her up the Shedarkshe.’

      ‘Oh, you rogues,’ cried the commodore. ‘Oh, you pair of pirates. Is that to be my choice? Damned to lose my own boat, or damned to pilot her into the mouth of hell itself?’

      ‘You’ll understand when you see what we are trying to find,’ said Amelia. ‘The difference it could make to the people of Jackals.’

      ‘Jackals be damned, lass. What has Jackals done for me? Except to line up her greedy Greenhall bureaucrats with their claim on the treasure of the Peacock Herne and their hands grasping for every honest coin my intrepid ventures ever gained.’

      Quest walked up to the nose of the Sprite of the Lake and tapped the dark hull under the shadow of her bowsprit, a female warrior thrusting a lance forward towards the cavern wall. ‘I think Fulton did an exceptional job, all things considered.’

      Black seemed to crumple in front of them. ‘Damn your wicked cunning eyes, Quest. I’ll do it. But on one condition: I will pick my own crew.’

      ‘I would expect nothing less,’ said Quest. ‘Just as Amelia has free choice for her members of the expedition. There will be a complement of marines on board too, well-armed to fend off any difficulties you may encounter.’

      Black nodded in acquiescence, turning his gaze to the beautiful craft. His craft. The wily mill owner did not have to say that the marines would also be there to ensure he did not just turn the Sprite around and head for the ocean.

      Heads turned in the jinn house as the well-dressed lady walked in. She did not look like any of the usual drinkers in the Bernal’s Bacon, where ‘drunk for a ha’penny, dead drunk for two’ was the usual maxim.

      She adjusted her bonnet and set a path towards the bar through the rowdy crowd of navvies that had been renovating the capital’s canal navigations. She looked down with distaste at the sawdust streaking her fashionable leather thigh-boots, then met the neutral gaze of the jinn-house owner.

      ‘Small, medium or large?’ He pulled out three sizes of glass from under the counter.

      The unlikely-looking customer sniffed and opened her palm, placing a small purple flower on the counter. It was a purpletwist, the rare plant whose pollen was favoured by sorcerers. Snuff to enhance the power of the worldsong that burned through their bodies.

      ‘Oh, ho, I see.’ The man opened his bar counter and led her through a back room stacked with jinn barrels. He unlocked a door and indicated she should step through. ‘This way, damson.’

      ‘There’s nothing here, fellow,’ she protested. ‘This is your back courtyard?’

      ‘I don’t need to know what occurs out here, damson,’ said the jinn keeper. ‘You just wait a minute now.’

      He shut the door and the woman looked around in disapproval. The clatter of a mill doing night work drifted over the yard’s tall walls, the shadows of the shambling towers of the Middlesteel rookeries hiding the broken bottles and rubbish strewn over the mud.

      A fluttering noise made her turn. There was a lashlite standing on the wall like a statue, the lizard creature’s wings folded in. Behind her stood Furnace-breath Nick, his devilish mask staring accusingly at her.

      ‘You have been asking a lot of questions,’ he said, ‘among the refugees. Trying to find me.’

      She noticed the mask was changing his voice, making it sound inhuman. ‘Many of those refugees owe their life to you. You saved them from the revolution, you brought them to Jackals from Quatérshift.’

      ‘There are two types of people that come to stand in this yard,’ said Furnace-breath Nick. ‘There are the Quatérshift agents with gas guns in their pockets and daggers in their boots. And then there are those who need my help.’

      ‘I don’t have a dagger,’ sobbed the woman. ‘You are my only remaining hope. I have spent my every last coin trying to get my father out of Quatérshift, but my resources have been stolen by traitors and squandered by tricksters.’

      ‘Tell me of your family.’

      ‘My father is Jules Robur, he was a member of the Sun King’s СКАЧАТЬ