Deepwater King

by Claire McKenna

  By the time they reached the House of Abaddon, far too late for a furtive entrance, Malachi’s face had taken on a pale tinge of green.

  The guard Harmal waited for them at the deck of the House of Abaddon. His expression grew stonier as Arden heaved herself up the ladder.

  ‘Been away too long,’ he grunted accusingly.

  ‘Where’s Miss Quarry?’ she asked carefully. Chalice had not shown her face, when she should have been tapping her foot alongside Harmal.

  ‘Lord Abaddon has escorted her into town,’ he replied, and gave a grey, gimlet stare at Malachi. ‘He was not happy to find you gone.’

  ‘We brought a peace offering,’ Arden said and pointed at the object by which their return would be smoothed over. Two sack loads of sea-serpent meat cut from a cryptid spine, almost as big as a man.

  ‘What … what is that?’ Harmal suddenly dropped his air of unapproachable stoniness. All of a sudden he looked like a child given a precious gift only dreamt of. One clear, rockblood plastic sack bulged, and he saw within the opaline bone, the dark blood, the promise of a feast. All his planned chastisements were forgotten.

  ‘Give it to the chef. I’m certain he’ll prefer this to the usual long pork.’

  He sniffed, as if trying to show disapproval. Ratcheted the bloody package up on the lift platform nevertheless.

  ‘Where are the others? Mr Le Shen, Mr Modhi?’

  ‘The librarian is still in. The boy tells me he is out with boat business.’

  Arden exchanged a pained glance with Malachi. By now David would have discovered both Sean and Saudade gone.

  Arden took her leave of the men, hung up her skirts in the drying-closet and – too tired even to take off her damp gloves – collapsed upon the satin daybed as if she’d been felled by a divine and ironic arrow.

  Jonah Riven murmured in her memory, and in her agitation she might have lingered upon his ghostly voice. The morphium of the night pressed too hard upon her to stay awake, and before she could even cobble together a pleasant thought, she …

  The commotion woke her. A yelling in the foyer.

  She thought about pulling herself back into her damp skirts, but the urgency of the moment combined with the added torment of having to stand up when her head whirled so had her settling on one of Malachi’s faux-silk robes instead.

  She stepped barefoot along the corridor to find David Modhi remonstrating angrily with Harmal.

  ‘Where the hell would they have taken him, guy? Where could an entire boat go?’

  Arden cleared her throat. ‘Mr Modhi, it’s all right. It is under control.’

  David Modhi shoved past Harmal, gasping with panic. ‘Mx Beacon, my God, they’ve taken Sean!’

  She caught him by his shoulders before he could rampage any further.

  ‘Calm down. Keep some wits about you, Mr Modhi. I know where Sean is.’

  David stared at her as if he had been slapped. ‘You do?’

  This was not a conversation she wanted in front of Lord Abaddon’s guard. The guard squinted at them, no doubt considering that they both be tossed into the street. Arden snatched David’s elbow and led him through the dank oily corridor and back into the guest room, and the modicum of privacy it offered.

  Once inside, she shut the louvre doors and pushed him onto a shabby ottoman the colour of a bruise.

  ‘Sean is fine. He is.’ Arden sucked her lips, and realized she could still taste serpent sauce and sweet fig tea from the meal Mr Cleave had given her and Malachi before sending them on their way. Deeper still, the kelp spirit lingered on her breath. Now she’d been thrust into an unwanted position of responsibility. David would hear her voice first, her argument. Malachi might come later, but he was a stranger bearing the news of Sean’s decision. Arden would have more influence on David’s eventual decision. Suddenly the duty weighed on her and she silently admonished Malachi Abaddon for putting her in such a position.

  David would not let her go. ‘Mx Beacon … Sean. The boat …’

  ‘Sean’s with Malachi’s people on the northern shore.’

  He shook his head, not understanding. ‘He’s where? How did he get out there?’

  She threw up her hands, helpless to explain it all without falling apart herself. ‘If Sean had a choice, he would stay there, rather than in this poisonous house in this cannibal city. But David, they also took her. Saudade. They took Jonah’s boat. And where the hell is Chalice? Shouldn’t she be back by now?’

  David tugged at his sweat-slick hair in agitation before making a non-committal gesture towards town. ‘Still in Burden, with the Lord Abaddon.’

  He turned a trapped-rat circle within the pink-pillowed confines of the room before returning to Arden.

  ‘How did they take Saudade? She didn’t have an engine. Sean hired guards!’

  ‘We had eyes upon us in the harbour. She has a history of ownership. Now she’s been acquired by former owners who think they have a claim on her. The same people who have Sean. The deepwater folk of the northern shores and …’ Arden brought herself up short. Miah had feared the reach of Lyonne deeply enough to discard his birth name.

  ‘And Miah Anguis.’ Arden nodded.

  ‘Miah Anguis! You found him?’

  ‘And found him odious. He’s the one claiming Saudade. Even he himself admits she’s too much boat for them, but he won’t give her back.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have offered something? Money? Kraken oil? Your blood, or mine?’

  She felt her face twist. ‘I offered all of them. Mr Anguis wanted something else. Something I couldn’t give.’

  ‘What? Mx Beacon, you have to give them what they want! Tell them we’ll pay anything.’

  ‘It’s not so simple, David! Think, lad. Don’t make me spell it out! What would a brute like that demand from me?’

  Her cry seemed to correct David’s mood somewhat. He paused, and in his face came the gradual awareness of just what sort of terrible payment she meant. He deflated from his position of high dudgeon. ‘Cup’s definitely not in harm’s way, then?’

  ‘Not yet.’ She sighed, knowing that soon Malachi would wake up and tell David the offer. ‘I am not so certain about us, however. Did Chalice even give an inkling of when she intended to return?’

  It turned out that Chalice would stride haughtily into the foyer not long after their difficult conversation. Little in her bearing suggested that she’d had anything less than a most pleasant squiring about town, but she coolly let them know Lord Abaddon had developed an illness and would not be able to join them for supper.

  ‘Indigestion,’ she said matter-of-factly to Arden. ‘Which is a shame, as I have an interest in going out again. Seeing the sights that I missed. Hearing what my sanguis friend was up to last bloody night when we lost both a boy and our bloody boat.’

  She shot daggers of reproach at Arden. David folded his arms and took a great interest in his feet.

  Arden sighed and fetched her travelling coat.

  As they walked along the worn limestone boulevard by the cloacal river, Arden relayed to Chalice an abridged account of her journey with Malachi to the northern crest of Equus, and the itinerant folk who scratched an existence out of sea-monsters and kelp harvesting. Although Arden could not quite see Chalice’s face, there was no mistaking her level of upset, judging by her verbal objections.

  ‘Oh Arden, darling, what compelling nonsense could anyone find in north Equus? Most of it is a mess of broken lich-machines and rockblood bandits.’

  ‘I was safe enough from bandits. We went by the channel course with a very experienced river-pilot.’

  ‘Oh devilment, right through the badlands!’

  ‘Well, I needed to know!’ She heaved a breath through her charcoal mask. ‘All this time, in my journey from Bellis’ army, from Vigil to here, I’ve been told of a man who is invulnerable to Bellis Harrow—’

  ‘—and you wanted to see if you’d missed anything, am I right? See if there is something either your poor d
ead fisherman or you, our poor living woman, could have done against her?’

  ‘It weighs on me. The curiosity made me a little reckless,’ Arden admitted.

  ‘More than a little, I would say.’

  ‘It was a good thing I did go in the end. How else could I have known who had both Sean and Saudade?’

  ‘Darling, let them take care of themselves. You could have been killed out there! Strangled by a pipe! Ravished by a bandit and left for dead! Leave the espionage to the experts, please.’ She tapped her chest.

  ‘We must get them both back. Is there anything in your Lion purse you could pull out to help, Chalice? Look, I saw—’

  ‘Another Riven?’

  Arden was startled into silence. How had Chalice guessed?

  Chalice continued, ‘It is rumoured that not everyone died that night when your fellow came into his monstrous talent. One got away, the Order thinks, rumoured to be on Equus shores.’

  Arden wrapped herself in false disdain. ‘I was going to say I saw them pull a sea-serpent out of the water. A maris anguis. I thought they were extinct at least. Goodness, Chalice, a Riven? One of Jonah’s people, still alive? Why have you not told me of this rumour before today?’

  ‘And provide more reasons to go off half-cocked for some family reconnaissance? I’m not even entirely certain the information is reliable, myself.’

  ‘And did this information come from Mr Absalom’s locket too? Why, he must have kept a veritable encyclopaedia on a square of silk.’

  ‘No need to be snooty. Right now the Order is rather upset with you having run off on them. An unaccounted-for survivor might have been influence we could have used to placate the old Lions when we get home. They rather take a dim view of gaps in their genealogical knowledge.’

  Arden shook her head again. ‘If there were people there who held deepwater names, they were distant relations to Jonah only. His family left these shores a century ago.’

  ‘And what about this Miah Anguis who aggrieved Bellis so much? What kind of man was he?’

  ‘I was not in a position to ask much of him,’ Arden replied frostily. ‘Their leader was a man named Amos Cleave.’

  ‘Ah, like Jonah’s stepfather, Ishmael?’

  Arden nodded. ‘Yes. He seemed quite the patriarch. There are a lot of Cleaves on that coast, I think.’ She stopped and made Chalice stop in front of her. ‘So what are we going to do now? Miah Anguis is as impenetrable as a stone wall, but Amos Cleave seems someone very open to suggestions.’

  Chalice appeared to think briefly. ‘Perhaps you don’t need suggestions. Or the boat for that matter.’

  ‘What are you on, Chalice? We need her!’

  ‘I may have already come up with a solution. This changes everything, darling. I’ve heard a whisper of another Order contact in the city. He arrived this morning from Maris Island, flying the Queen’s colours apparently. Someone who might know what has actually happened to your benighted fellow.’

  Chalice Quarry, who always knew the most right and wrong things to say. Chalice Quarry, who had lied to her before. Arden found herself rooted to the spot, as if her feet had petrified into the stone.

  ‘You mean … he’ll know what actually happened to Jonah?’

  ‘Well, are you coming?’ Chalice pressed, when Arden didn’t follow her. She was reliving the moment when Jonah was last alive, how hurt he was, how vulnerable …

  ‘Is it the truth this time?’

  ‘When we meet them, you’ll know if they speak truth or not.’

  Arden took a deep breath and steadied herself. ‘I follow because I’m running out of options, Chalice. Not because a Lion has won me over with a fantasy.’

  Chalice took Arden’s gloved hand and brushed her thumb over the coin. ‘The fantasy is that you have any options left.’

  Burden Town pressed in about them, concrete, canvas and stone. Her Lion took Arden through a different path to the one she’d taken to see their scoundrel of a holy man. An older section of city, still bearing the remnants of that lost and forgotten civilization. The narrow streets took on the slanted camber of old stones worn by a million footsteps.

  Chalice used no map this time, only steered them down a broad flight of stairs that should have been at the front of a grand hall or library, except no such things existed here. The street became an expansive underground space, a remnant of a sunken amphitheatre or courtyard that had been built over by successive generations, leaving only a low, deep gallery.

  A sizable crowd of people milled in the subterranean dark. The crowd made the space damp, and hot, and the few petralactose light-fittings gave off a yellow cast, like a sickness. An acetone smell tainted the air, smell of too many people, not enough proper food. Bodies bunched in knots and fists, murmuring like a wasp-nest drone. Much to Arden’s dismay, Chalice marched over to a sullen group guarding a staircase in some iron-gated mezzanine, her shoulders set squarely. One of the taller men she tapped on the shoulder.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Is there no help for the Widow’s Son?’

  The man whom Chalice had interrupted mid-conversation turned about. An iron-grated brazier flame reflected in his goggles, his face obscured in his charcoal mask.

  Arden’s thumbs twitched. Was she going to have to drag Chalice away to safety? She should have brought David along, then she might have the chance of creating the same kind of fire as she had on the Equus beach.

  Instead of challenging this odd woman who asked strange questions, the man slid his mask down to his chin and revealed a Lyonnian smirk.

  ‘Why,’ he said in reply. ‘There is always help for the Widow’s Son, if the Widow asks nicely enough.’

  He slid his goggles up upon his silver head and smiled at Chalice, one tooth gold and winking.

  It was Mr Absalom. Bellis Harrow’s sergeant-at-arms.

  11

  You have made a journey indeed

  ‘You have made a journey indeed,’ Mr Absalom said, fixing his charcoal kerchief about his neck as if he were fixing a scarf. ‘Truthfully, I worried that the Widow’s Son might not make it.’

  He had taken them up the rusted staircase to seat them at a small balcony table, a high place for men of status, or what little passed for status in this city.

  ‘Did you come alone?’ Arden asked Mr Absalom breathlessly, still not having yet recovered from seeing Bellis’ right-hand man. When last they’d met, it was upon the ghostwood Sehnsucht, Mr Riven half-burnt from a fire he’d survived and Mr Absalom admitting that he was in actuality a Lion spy there to inform upon Bellis.

  ‘I was unable to bring many people with me. Bellis’ influence grows unchecked, since recent events. As has her capacity for seeking revenge on anyone who has slighted her.’

  A cold, invisible hand brushed along Arden’s arms. Of all the things she had told herself to make Jonah’s passing easier, it was that he had died without suffering. Not long enough to be hurt, or tortured. Mr Absalom’s words did not suggest a quick ending, or that Bellis had not humiliated him first.

  Arden could bear their casual exchange no longer.

  ‘Tell me what happened to Jonah, Mr Absalom. What did she do to him?’

  ‘Arden,’ Chalice snapped. ‘Be patient. There are other issues of equal importance here.’

  Mr Absalom leaned back from Arden’s passionate plea, and circumscribed his gin glass with a gold-tipped finger. The quinine in the gin made the glass glow with the blue of arc lightning across an electrical coil. He wore rings of pig-iron, a yellow druzy on his thumb the size of a crooked sovereign.

  ‘She did not kill him that day on the Sehnsucht.’

  His evasiveness made her fretful. ‘Tell me, sir, what happened to him. Tell me, and I’ll go back to Lyonne. I will do whatever the Order asks.’

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see Chalice suck in her cheeks. Arden was Chalice’s prize to bring back to the Lyonne Order, not Absalom’s.

  ‘Your absolute compliance in exchange for informat
ion?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He took the glass and swallowed the contents abruptly. Gazed at the remains as if he were inspecting a document of deep mysteries.

  ‘I can give you something better than information.’

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Give me this night to make the arrangements. Tomorrow I will bring Jonah Riven to Burden Town.’

  The words were not making sense. ‘His body?’

  ‘The man.’

  Her chest tightened. The air became thick, like treacle in hot sun. The cold press of her skin became hot. Alive.

  ‘He is alive how, sir?’

  Mr Absalom leaned in close. ‘Mx Beacon, I know where Jonah Riven is being kept. On an island not far from Equus. The Queen could not bear him alive, but could not bear him dead either. He was sent into exile.’

  ‘If he is alive then … oh, did Bellis hurt him?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not physically.’

  The crowd on the floor below stirred and muttered. Some sharp words sounding above the din. A fight starting, and it became clear the focus was on a man about to be thrown to his death for meat and his companions not altogether happy about it. The time to move on had come.

  Chalice tapped the glassware with a fork. ‘I hope we can wrap this up now,’ she said. ‘Coming so far just to end up on the menu is not on my agenda. We have transport that must be arranged since Arden has misplaced Jonah’s boat.’

  ‘I have transport,’ Mr Absalom said. ‘And I can secure Riven’s freedom. But you must keep this promise, Mx Beacon. You must return to Lyonne at once. Bringing Jonah Riven here ruins my standing, destroys my cover forever. I will never be able to return to these islands.’

  ‘I promise, sir. Bring Jonah back to me and I will go wherever you ask.’

  Mr Absalom stood up, reapplied the goggles to his face. They gave him the appearance of an insect with eyes of flame.

  ‘Tomorrow night, meet us on the market harbour at the Cloaca’s mouth. The man you seek will be there. And then you will come back with me to Clay.’