by Rob May
‘Anywhere but here,’ Lula said. ‘I love the Islands, and I wanted to save them, but I can never stay in one place for long. If Sirensbane ever resurfaces, I’ll be back in a shot, but until then … maybe I’ll head east. I’ve never been to the Empire of the Moon. Have you?’
Kal nodded. ‘Briefly. Ben sent me there once. I’ve been to most places in the world—most places where there are people, at least. You know where I’d really like to go? North of the Starfinger Mountains. See if the gods really had an ice palace at the top of the Improbable Mountain. Or south to Vorpalore. Find the Dragon, if he’s actually there.
Lula didn’t answer. Kal knew that her friend hated her throwing the Dragon’s name around lightly. They both stared down into the dark water below, passing the cigar back and forth between draws.
‘I was thinking of all the treasure that was in the hold of the Swordfish when it sank,’ Lula said. ‘But I don’t know if I care anymore or not.’
‘I don’t,’ Kal said. ‘I’ve spent my whole adult life chasing money, at the expense of making friends and being there for my friends. Everyone I know—Ben, even Zeb—is a colleague first and a friend second. Everyone except you, of course, Lu.’
‘So let’s leave together,’ Lula said. ‘Let’s travel the world, and enjoy it for its own sake, and not because of some smuggling job or mad quest.’
Kal was staring out to sea. Her gaze shifted up to the dangling nautilus.
Suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle clicked together in her mind.
‘There’s something I have to do first,’ she said. ‘Something we have to do.’
Lula caught Kal’s sudden excitement. ‘What?’ she said.
‘We have to deal with Sirensbane. I just worked out where he’s hiding.’
V.iii
Fifty Fathoms
Kal strapped herself into the pilot’s seat of the nautilus and spent a few moments trying to familiarise herself with the controls. There were lots of brass rimmed dials; one was marked ballast, with the labels air and water at opposite ends of a scale; there was another that indicated both depth and pressure, so Kal figured that the two were related. Behind the seat was a firebox full of coal. Kal knew how this worked: its purpose was to heat the boiler, where steam was produced to drive the propellers.
Kal lit the firebox with her cigar.
The top hatch of the sub was sealed with a watertight ring, made from flexible cuchuck. Visibility was provided by two large thick-glass half-spheres that were fitted either side of the sub like fish eyes. Kal looked through the one on her left and gave Lula the thumbs up.
Lula wound the handle that lowered the winch. It was a two-person job really, and she soon lost control. The nautilus fell into the water with a slap and a splash. Lula dived in after it, and Kal flipped up the hatch to let her in. Quickly, she pulled it closed, and sealed the hatch by spinning a wheel that screwed it tightly in place.
‘Ready?’ Kal said.
‘Let’s do this before we change our minds,’ Lula said. ‘I’m betting that the trip over is going to be just as dangerous as the confrontation with Sirensbane himself.’
‘Trust me,’ Kal said. ‘I’m a natural with technology. Remember that horseless carriage I told you about? The one that Nim built as a present for Ben when he became consul.’
‘Yeah. You said you drove it into the river.’
‘Exactly. I have experience with underwater vehicles.’
Kal was in a good mood. Whenever she could leave the complex and confusing world behind, and single-mindedly focus on one objective, her spirits rose and she felt calm and confident. Reckless, even, but tempered by the detached part of her brain that could still calculate how risky and dangerous the situation was.
She turned the wheel next to the ballast gauge and saw jets of bubbles outside the portholes as the sub expelled air. Slowly, they sank beneath the waves, and Kal only wound the wheel back when they were twelve feet (or two fathoms) clear of the Mort Royal’s keel. She then pushed on a lever that operated the rear propellers, and the nautilus began to move. They headed west. When they passed over a shelf, and could no longer see the sea floor, Kal took them down another five fathoms.
On Kal’s instruction, Lula was thoroughly searching the cabin. ‘So where are we going?’ she asked. There had been no time to explain earlier, lest they miss the chance to commandeer their ride.
‘We are heading twenty leagues west of here,’ Kal said, ‘to the last known location of a sea dragon.’ She couldn't keep the excitement out of her voice.
‘What? Are you crazy?’
‘No,’ Kal said. ‘Your friend Briney is here. And wherever we find Briney, that’s where we’ll find Sirensbane—both him and his drugs. Just make sure we haven’t got any on board ourselves.’
‘We’re clean,’ Lula confirmed, slamming shut the overhead lockers and squashing herself back beside Kal in the pilot’s seat.
Kal remembered how they had been chased half of the way to the Auspice Islands by the sea monster, and how Lula had got it off their back by tossing it a bag … a bag Kal now realised had been full of Sirensbane. Briney was just as addicted to the drug as any of the Islanders.
‘But how can Briney be this close to Port Black?’ Lula said. ‘And why now? … Oh, of course!’
Kal nodded. ‘He came in through the channel that the Eldragoran Armada blew through the reef.’ Had Sirensbane foreseen such an eventuality? Kal wondered if perhaps she and Lula would turn up to find a ruined hideout and a zombie dragon instead of the man they were after. She wasn’t sure which eventuality she would prefer.
Lula had found a sea chart, and spread it out on her lap. ‘There’s no way that Sirensbane could have hidden a base on any of the islands around here,’ she said. ‘But then, I guess, with vehicles like this, the base could be under a cliff, with an underwater entrance!’
Kal pointed to the spot on the map where Ben’s painted miniature had been placed. ‘There’s no island nearby,’ she told Lula.
Lula traced the contour lines on the map with her finger. ‘Kal,’ she said, ‘there’s a trench there; it starts at fifty fathoms, but who knows how deep it goes! You can’t be saying that the hideout is down there?’
‘Let’s find out,’ Kal said. She released more air from the tanks, and the nautilus sunk another five fathoms. The water darkened a shade, and the hull of the submarine made a metallic creaking sound.
They went on in silence for a time, taking direction from a compass needle that bobbed in a water-filled glass globe. But to find out how far they had come, Kal had to take the submarine even deeper, until they could see the terrain of the sea floor. The moonlight didn’t reach this far down, but a lamp in the nose of the nautilus threw out, via a cage of mirrors, a cone of light that revealed a world of rock and coral teeming with lobsters, sea-worms and colourful fish. The occasional rotten spar of a wreck showed how unwelcome humans were down here. They followed a turtle for a while as it lazily drifted with an underwater current; and they disturbed an octopus, which threw up a cloud of sand as it scuttled off on eight legs. Kal shivered as a school of sharpfin circled them for a while. She remembered an old enemy meeting his doom by their razor sharp teeth,
Lula’s voice brought Kal out of her memories. ‘What did Azul say, before he died?’
‘Azul? He was just being his usual crude, joking self. He was a brave man at the end, though.’
‘Did he mention me?’
‘He was too busy thinking up new curses to throw at Sirensbane,’ Kal said. ‘Why, Lu? Don’t tell me you cared about him. After all he did to you! Chaining you up, keelhauling you, marooning you!’
‘He had a kind of honour,’ Lula said. ‘He let me live when he could have fed me to sharks. We weren’t so different, me and him. We both loved life too much to deserve to die.’
‘Nobody deserved to die,’ Kal agreed, thinking back over the past week. ‘Not Azul, not Bosun, Che, Che’s girlfriend … what was her name?’
‘Rosey, I think.’
Kal nodded. ‘Only one more person will die today, I guarantee you, and that person does deserve it.’
Lula returned the nod. There would be a reckoning, and soon: they were getting closer and closer to their destination. The depth gauge read thirty fathoms. Sirensbane was out there, Kal could almost feel it. Surely fate would not be so cruel as to deny the confrontation.
She remembered the dread premonition that her nemesis had made the first time they had met, in the fortune teller’s tent in Port Black. Twenty-nine lives, he had said Kal would take. Kal counted them off in her head …
The two zombies she had hacked to pieces that day Lula and Jako had taken her out into the jungle.
Twelve more during the attack on the Blue Mahoe.
The Nubaran pilot of the nautilus she had knocked on the head with her pistol butt—he must have drowned, surely.
The two mercenaries in the dreadnought, and one of the guards at the magazine door.
Seventeen … she was not even close to the final count yet. Unless Sirensbane had been talking about lives that would not have been lost if she had never come to the Islands. How many of the Swordfish’s crew had died when the ship briefly became the Black Lotus under Kal’s captaincy. Kal felt a chill, and it wasn’t just the coldness of the cabin at this depth. The total body count was too close to call. Had it been a mistake to bring Lula with her tonight? Would her friend’s life tip the balance?
Don’t let him mess with your head, she told herself. Don’t lose the only advantage you have over him!
Something sped across the beam of light in front of the sub and made for the shelter of a rocky arch. Kal turned the sub’s nose to face it. The light lit up a mereswine, a small dolphin-like creature with a stubby snout. But there was something odd about …
‘It’s wearing a collar,’ Kal said. Her mind registered several things at once: the collar, the mereswine’s frightened face, the shaking of the sub as if by a strong current, the greenish glow that encroached on the rock arch and lent it a sinister glow …
‘Kal!’ Lula shouted. ‘Move!’
Kal wrenched the control lever forward and to the left. The firebox behind her roared into life as the sub’s compressed-air tanks fed the engine; the fins on one side flattened, and they peeled away from the arch at speed. They made it clear just in time: a gigantic green shape passed overhead and smashed the arch to pieces. The nautilus almost rolled over in the resulting shockwave.
‘What just happened?’ Kal asked, as they sped away. Her hands were shaking on the control stick.
‘That mereswine was wearing a collar packed with Sirensbane,’ Lula said. ‘It must have been let loose to try and divert Briney’s attention from the hideout.’
It made sense. ‘Well, that’s good news,’ Kal said. ‘Bad news for the mereswine, but good news for us. It means that we’re close … and that Sirensbane is still alive. I’d hate for Briney to get him before we did!’
* * *
After an indeterminable amount of time—in the dark, dangerous silence under the sea, one tense minute stretched out to an hour in Kal’s mind—they came upon the trench. At first, they could see nothing, just a ridgeline that fell away into black depths. But when they crossed it, Sirensbane’s lair came into view.
Perched on an outcropping of rock just below the ridge, fifty fathoms deep, was a large domed structure, surrounded by several smaller domes. The largest dome was as twice as large as the one atop the Basilica back in Amaranthium. The domes were constructed of glass and metal—hexagonal glass tiles, each about four yards across, set in a metal framework. They glowed yellow from within, and the honeycomb pattern made by the tiles put Kal in mind of a malevolent hornets’ nest.
‘How is that even possible?’ Lula said, staring out at the underwater structure in awe.
‘It must have been built on land, floated out here, and then sunk,’ Kal reasoned. ‘And it must have cost a fortune! The metal must be water-resistant for a start; Nim made me stainless blades, and they cost enough. Glass windows that big must be at least a foot thick. How could Sirensbane even conceive of such a thing, let alone afford it?’
‘Never mind that,’ Lula said. ‘How are we going to get in without being seen?’
‘We can’t,’ Kal said. ‘We’ll just have to hope they think we’re a survivor from the battle reporting in. We’ll just drift straight up to the front door. No tricks, Lu—I’m going straight for Sirensbane. I just hope there aren’t many guards … I mean, why would you even need guards inside a place like that?’
They drifted close to the largest dome, but the glass panels were all steamed up, as if there was a lot of moisture inside. Kal took them down to the base of the domes, looking for an entrance, but the honeycomb pattern of the surface was unbroken all over. ‘The entrance must be in the rocky base,’ Kal said.
‘Or below it,’ Lula added.
Kal nodded in agreement. She and Lula had used a diving bell to explore a sunken wreck the last time they had visited the Auspice Islands together. Trapped air inside the massive iron bell meant that the water level never rose beyond the bottom of the bell, forming a round pool which you could dive into, and then swim back up for air, without having to return to the surface.
Under the rocky outcropping on the side of the trench wall, they found the entrance: there was indeed a rectangular opening almost the exact size of the nautilus. Kal spun the wheel that injected air into the ballast tanks, and carefully rotated the sub to line up with the dock. When they broke the surface of the pool, they found themselves under one of the smaller domes. It was brightly lit by the same soft phosphorescent lights Kal had seen aboard the dreadnought. And like on board the dreadnought, there was a welcome committee on hand to greet them …
There must have been at least a hundred zombies inside the dome, engaged in carrying crates and barrels to and fro across the vast floorspace. They all stopped what they were doing when they noticed the nautilus bobbing in the pool. A hundred pairs of unseeing, black eyes turned in Lula and Kal’s direction.
‘I’m beginning to wish we hadn’t come now,’ Lula said.
Kal flashed Lula a nervous grin. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘You know that a bit of risk is part of the fun. When you come on a date with me you have to expect some scrapes, but I always show you amazing things, and take you to incredible places you’ve never been.’
Lula bared her teeth in reply, but it was more scowl than smile.
‘I bet you say that …’ she hissed, ‘to all the girls.’
V.iv
Rule the Sea and Live Free
Kal popped the hatch of the nautilus and clambered out onto the hull. The air under the dome tasted metallic and bitter, but it was breathable—an amazing feat of ingenuity in itself. Kal swallowed her curiosity; she was not here for a site inspection. She double-checked she had her cutlass and cleaver at her belt, but she didn’t draw them … not yet. The zombies were milling around all four edges of the dock, but they didn’t seem able or willing to jump the two-foot gap to get to her.
Lula climbed out too, and looked out over the zombie crowd. She didn’t say, but Kal knew she was looking out for her father. Every zombie encounter they had ever had was made that shade harder by the knowledge that one of creatures, somewhere out there, was Levon Pearl—a simple fisherman who had vanished, along with the rest of his village, as Sirensbane took control of the Islands.
After a time, Lula’s eyes flicked back to Kal. ‘How are we going to get past this lot? We can’t kill them. We promised: no more deaths.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Kal said. ‘Watch this.’
She hopped off the hull and onto the stone floor of the dock, gripping the shoulders of two zombies for support as she landed. The surrounding creatures just shuffled to one side to make room for her. Kal turned back to Lula. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’
Lula made the jump, but cringed as she pushed through the zombies. ‘Why ar
en’t they trying to chew out faces off?’ she asked Kal.
‘Because nobody told them to,’ Kal said. ‘They act on Sirensbane’s orders, remember. And right now, he doesn’t know that we’re here.’
They took a few moments to investigate the contents of the boxes and barrels that were stacked up around the dock. On one side, the boxes were full of glossy black shards of Sirensbane. Each batch was packed in a slim, rectangular package of broken shards, like a mirror that someone had taken a hammer to. Kal estimated the weight of each slab as around ten pounds … with an estimated market value of a quarter of a million crowns. There were hundreds of crates ready for shipment. No wonder Sirensbane could afford to build an underwater fortress: his business was worth billions.
Kal took her cleaver to one of the barrels on the other side of the dock. The fishy-smelling liquid that dribbled out of the gash was the same stuff Dogwood had discovered in the hold of the Swordfish. ‘What is this?’ Kal asked Lula.
‘It’s called napazane,’ her friend said. ‘It’s made from naptha and azane, and I guess it’s the main ingredient of Sirensbane. We used to collect it in bulk from the factories and chemical works in Amaranthium, then hide it among our water supplies for the voyage back to the Islands.’
As soon as they moved away, a zombie stepped in and hoisted the leaking barrel up onto its shoulder like it weighed nothing. Kal and Lula followed it to the entrance to the dome, where a metal door was sliding open to allow zombies to leave or enter, and then sliding shut behind them.
As they fell in beside the zombie workers, Kal realised that the door was a kind of airlock—another door six yards further down the corridor was opening and closing in sync with the first, so that one of the doors was always shut at any one time. Kal’s best guess was that this preserved, at least as much as possible, the air pressure inside the dome, so that the sea didn’t rush in and flood it. But there had to be a fresh supply somewhere, topping up the air and oxygen levels. Surely even zombies had to breathe.