The Ruby Celeste Series - Box Set, books 1 - 3: Ghost Armada, Dire Kraken, and Church of Ife

by Nicholas J. Ambrose

  Ruby could manage the moment no longer. “I’d better go. If you want to head off until your shift starts properly, feel free.”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll start. Wren and Owen will be here soon.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Brie.”

  Brie did not respond; simply shuffled into her usual seat without looking at Ruby.

  Ruby slipped past and out of the door.

  2

  The sun had just disappeared below the horizon, casting the sky in low blue, when the door between top deck and Harbinger’s interior opened behind Ruby.

  “There you are.”

  Ruby didn’t turn. “Hello, Natasha.”

  Natasha strolled to where Ruby stood fore of the ship, hands encircling the railing. Twilit air had rendered the dark steel cold, but the places beneath Ruby’s palms were warm.

  “I tried calling a couple of times,” said Natasha.

  “Oh.”

  “It’s nothing important. Brie drew my attention to some anomalous traffic in the ship’s systems.”

  Ruby closed her eyes. “Of course she did.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Do we know what it is?”

  “Just glitches. She and Wren ran diagnostics, rebooted the OS, and checked it out again. No problems after that.”

  “Great.”

  “I thought you ought to know,” said Natasha. “Just in case. We might be due a tune-up. Brie says the software is four years out of date, so it wouldn’t hurt.”

  Ruby nodded. “I’ll keep it in mind.” She eased out a long breath, and cast her gaze back to the horizon. A single star had appeared.

  “What’s wrong?” Natasha asked at last.

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing.”

  “It’s nothing new,” Ruby said. “So there’s no point going over it.”

  “Of course there’s a point.”

  Ruby snorted.

  “It’ll help,” said Natasha.

  Ruby huffed. She would not talk about things she had already clashed with Natasha over—but before she could stop herself, she uncapped the bottle.

  “Francis is stuck on an island miles away, putting his life on the line for a job I should be doing. And no matter how much I want to go back and help him, I can’t, because, unfortunately, you’re all right: it will ruin all the work he’s done since leaving us. He’s over there, I’m over here, and I can’t do anything.” Ruby sighed heavily. “And Brie’s mad at me.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Ruby shot Natasha a dark look. “Who did Brie call to inform of tonight’s software hiccups, Natasha?”

  Natasha had no counter to that. To her credit, she did not try.

  “She has been angry at me since leaving New Calais,” Ruby grumbled.

  “Of course she has,” said Natasha. “Francis left, and as far as she’s concerned, you let him.”

  “I didn’t want to. And he decided!”

  “I didn’t say that’s the only reason she’s mad.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Natasha’s only answer was a knowing look.

  Ruby balled up her face in frustration. She smacked the Harbinger’s rail with her palm.

  “Why is this so hard?”

  Natasha smiled. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you say that about anything.” She patted Ruby’s shoulder. “I’ll leave you to your thoughts. If the technicians tell me of any other problems, I’ll let you know.”

  Footsteps broke the night as Natasha headed back up the deck. The open and close of the door … and Ruby was alone: with the dark, and a cool night breeze. It ruffled her curls, but did nothing to silence her endlessly circling thoughts. They wove mad patterns: from Francis, to Brie, to New Calais, to the parents he had been stolen from, to Ruby’s promise to get him home.

  Back and forth and back again, and still they went.

  Beneath the Bells

  (Chapter Ten)

  1

  According to Francis’s communicator, the time was seventeen minutes past four. He ought to be studying.

  Yet he could not. Concentration would not come. Had not come for days, in fact.

  Sighing, he folded closed his copy of Impartations. He pressed his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

  Why couldn’t he focus?

  The sermon?

  He supposed that could be it. It had been eating him for the week since Abraham had sprung it. With it, he would be a true member of the Church of Ife. He would have gained the full trust of these people, Abraham included. And with it, he could ascertain the information he needed: whether or not the church posed a threat once Ruby returned with the Harbinger, ready to steal Francis back, and the shroud along with him.

  This in mind, he should have been able to throw himself into study. Every moment counted, after all. The more he learned, the sooner he could put together some coherent message, some lesson, to impart to the church’s disciples. He should be working madly, not just in his personal study time, but the free time he found in his evenings, too.

  But try as he might, he could not.

  Why?

  Maybe it wasn’t just the sermon. Maybe it was … something else.

  Francis screwed up his eyes.

  He needed to get out. Just for a while. Away. The same as he would escape his quarters, and with them his thoughts, on the Harbinger by heading out onto the top deck in the evenings.

  Slipping Impartations back into his drawer, he crept up. Peering out both of his windows, he searched for people. He could see none. Good. He didn’t know if trouble awaited him for breaking his personal study, but he intended on avoiding the possibility.

  He twisted the key in his lock and stepped out. The door closed quietly behind him. He re-locked it with the softest click.

  He let his feet carry him.

  New Calais was strangely silent.

  Its population was small compared to the sheer size of the city. Even abuzz, it was more muted than some of the other places Francis had been.

  He remembered New Harlem. It had been enormous, and packed. Further back, his first look at this world: The Pharmacologist’s Eden. Its noise had hit him like a freight train, and not just because he had spent the previous two days locked in a cell toward the rear of the port, away from the Eden’s hustle and bustle. Even sedate Survoix had been noisier than New Calais at its peak.

  But that low hum of activity was gone now. Francis was treated to real quiet. It was the sort he expected came from setting foot on one of those uninhabited islands he saw from time to time. Only nature to hear: birds twittering, soft breeze whickering. Nothing human to break the reverie. No voices; no footsteps (except his own).

  Francis wondered what it might be like to come to one of those little islands.

  He pictured it as he walked. There would be no dirt tracks cut by boots and shoes. No settlements erected to interrupt the green. Just nature and its noise; and in the middle, Francis beneath afternoon sun.

  Ruby came. Her footfalls gave her away; the soft crunch-crunch of dried leaves beneath her boots. Francis would look up, and he’d smile. She would sit down next to him, and grin back. The big one; the sort that showed her teeth, and their faintly uneven line. The grin that made the end of her nose twitch.

  Natasha would be with her. And Mikhail. The workhands, all of them: Reuben, Glim, Herschel. Trove, with the clipboard he was so rarely without, and a steadily growing bald spot on the back of his head. Darrel. Vala. Stefan. The technicians: Amelie, Sia, Wren, Stefan, Owen … Brie. They’d all sit in a wide circle. Together.

  Together.

  Francis’s feet took him automatically into the cathedral, up its stairs, and through its side rooms. Just the same as New Calais, it was silent. Francis had an echo, as he moved along a hall full of paintings and carvings, of his first visit. He remembered how much the place had felt like a museum.

  Now he walked its floors in solitude, it felt more like it than ever.

>   He trekked up another two flights of stairs without thinking.

  Only when he reached the top, and stepped out, did he reengage and realise where he was.

  He’d come to the bell tower. The roof curved far above, all nine of the church’s bells hanging at different heights from it. Stained glass windows split the walls, and purple light cast curving patterns.

  The bottom floor of the bell tower was not entirely enclosed. One wall was open to a balcony. Soft wind blew in. It whispered off coils of rope, and gently flicked Francis’s sleeves with wavelike undulations.

  He stepped to it, and held the rail.

  New Calais stretched before him. Storeys below, the central island: its flagstone paths, white marbled buildings, parks and fountains and trees and flowers and hills and miniature ponds. A bandstand. Francis could just see its roof.

  Beyond were the long, rigid walkways affixed to the satellite islands. Turning left to right, Francis could see three clearly. If he leaned forward enough to poke his head over the edge of the railing, and craned as far around as he could, he might just make out the edges of two more.

  The air was cool. So far up, the effects of New Calais’s hordes of Volum had started to diminish. Outside their sphere of influence, buffeting winds blew. Here it was enough to send chill tongues up the sleeves of his robes.

  He did not know how long he had been standing there before the voice came.

  “Francis.”

  He jerked around, heart hammering.

  Abraham stood by the door. Grace was with him.

  “Abraham!” Francis said. “I—I’m sorry. I was just—”

  Abraham waved him off with a weathered hand. “You don’t have to explain to me, friend. You’re not the only person to come up here when he has a lot on his mind.”

  Abraham joined Francis’s side. He gripped the balcony with one hand. The other touched Grace’s back. Faintly yellowed eyes looked out. The irises were a striking blue; as though the years had stripped much of their vibrant colour, leaving them too-light behind his gaze’s watery cast.

  He breathed deep. “It’s very clear up here.”

  Francis nodded. “It is.”

  “I used to come up here a great deal,” said Abraham. “In my younger days. I don’t suppose I need to tell you those were a long, long time ago.” He said this with a sidelong look and a smile. Francis gave a polite laugh back.

  “Time always catches us. But it goes in cycles, too. And so I have found myself walking these steps more these past months than in the same number of years before. Isn’t it strange?”

  “What brings you up here?” Francis asked.

  “I expect the same as what has brought you. Troubles.”

  “You’re troubled? About what?”

  Abraham gave a wave of disinterest. “We’re all troubled in our own ways, Francis. That’s what makes us human. I’m no different from you, nor all those people down there. We sometimes forget that. But we’re all people, and we all have our own lives. Anyway,” he added a moment later, “my troubles are those of an old man, and they are a sort only an old man can work through. What about you, Francis? What troubles have brought you up these steps this afternoon?”

  Francis exhaled. “It’s … this sermon,” he said. “I’ve been trying to put something together the past week, but I just … I don’t know if I can.”

  Abraham said, “I see.”

  “It’s not that I’m unable,” Francis said hastily. “I know I can. But … I don’t know.” He struggled to articulate something which had been eating him the past couple of weeks. “I’ve been reading Impartations, and taking in its stories—and I can’t seem to make it fit. Ife was a wonderful person, and I know she wanted us to take her words and live life with the same virtues she held dear. But then I look at this place.” He turned back to the bell tower. “Stained glass illustrations. Paintings. Carvings, everywhere.” He looked at Abraham. “Would Ife have wanted this?”

  Abraham looked solemn. “What do you think?”

  “I … I think … I don’t think she would. She would want her message to be carried on. But I don’t think she would want to be worshipped. Not like this.” Francis finished with a lame shrug. “That’s why I’m struggling.”

  It was true. The further into Impartations he came, the harder he’d found it to look at the iconography through which Ife was so regularly rendered. None of it fit with a woman who was so simply kind—and surrounded by it, Francis had been almost paralysed now it came to putting his own takings from the book into a sermon.

  He waited, braced as Abraham assessed, ready for the old man to tell him perhaps he was not ready after all …

  Then the old man’s face broke in a smile.

  He took Francis by the shoulder.

  “I wholeheartedly agree.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. I do. And when I was your age—no, older; I have a feeling you’re wiser than I ever was—when I was in perhaps my late twenties, I thought the same thing. This island was much the same back then, you see. If you could go back in time, I think you’d be surprised at just how closely New Calais then resembles New Calais now. And I came to your same conclusion. Ife was a virtuous woman, with moral messages we should hold high and proud. Those alone were the memory she would want us to carry down through the years. Not statues and paintings, like these.

  “But much later, I learned something else, too. Something I believe you have caught a glimpse of. As I said a moment ago: all of us are different people, with our own lives, our own minds. And all of us reach Ife in different ways. Some of us—those like you and I—discover her by teachings alone. Others need something solid by which they can perceive her love. Something like a painting, or a carving, or an image rendered in coloured glass.

  “This is what the Church of Ife is. Our doctrine is one, but we do not force any single way of reaching it. You understand now, I hope, why our study time is personal. We take the lessons that mean most to us, not those I, or any other ‘leader’ of the church, might primarily bestow. And you see now, perhaps, why I asked you to prepare a sermon.”

  “So I could share what I’ve learned,” Francis finished.

  Abraham nodded. “That is correct.”

  There was a moment of quiet. Grace looked serenely up at Francis and Abraham, then cast eyes out between the balcony’s vertical posts. Her dark hair swayed in the wind.

  “Francis,” Abraham said. “Can I trust you?”

  His heart quickened.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  Abraham assessed. The moment was brief, no more than a second, but Francis’s heart had burst up into his throat and thudded spikes of adrenaline through him.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Abraham said, “I have something I’d like to show you.”

  2

  Abraham led Francis back to the cathedral’s main room. Instead of guiding them outside, he approached the lectern.

  “I’d stand back,” he warned.

  Francis waited. Grace waited beside him.

  Abraham twisted the lectern rightward. At first it did not give. Then he gave it a small upward jerk, as if to free it, and the entire thing twisted. It came ninety degrees, and set into place with a soft thunk.

  Francis frowned. “What—?”

  Abraham leaned against the lectern’s edge. “Give an old man a hand?”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Moving it. Put your shoulder here and push.”

  Eyebrows knitted, Francis obeyed.

  The lectern was not insignificant. With the two of them pushing, though, it slid away.

  Francis looked down. He was shocked to see runners—and, where the lectern had just been, a door with an iron ring for a handle.

  Abraham took the ring and hefted it up.

  Inside was a dark stairway. Francis peered down. The steps were stone, and descended in a spiral. For its coiling turn, he was unable to see more than the first few metres.

 
“Where does that go?”

  “To what I’d like you to see. Come on. We must be quick. I’ll go first.”

  Abraham descended. Francis waited for Grace to go next. She paused a moment to peer up at him. Her face was unreadable. Then she, too, took to the stairs. Where Abraham’s shoes sounded a receding click-click, Grace’s bare feet gave only silence.

  Uneasily, Francis joined the steps and followed. His heart hammered in his chest. He was suddenly aware that he might be walking straight into a trap. What if someone had searched his room on one of the many days he’d been here? He was away for hours at a time, often on one of the satellite islands. It would not be difficult for someone to let themselves in. All they would need would be a spare key. And it would not take long for them to find the radio he had stashed in his rucksack … or the gun. A gun which Francis suddenly wished he had stowed under these robes.

  Relax. You have no reason to think you’ve been found out. If you had, they’d have apprehended you immediately, not led you down here.

  He didn’t believe it. But he did his best to steady the raging pulse of his heart as he followed behind Grace, her dress always just a few steps from going out of view around the spiral staircase’s curves.

  After the fourth turn, Francis stepped into a short corridor. It was cut from rock, like the wending tunnels beneath Knot. A single lamp partway along the ceiling cast a dank glow. The air smelled stale.

  “Where are we?” Francis asked.

  Abraham answered, “Nearly there.”

  He led down the corridor, Grace following. Francis cast a momentary look back at the stairs—debating the ramifications of climbing out and away from wherever Abraham had taken him—then, deciding all his efforts might be nullified if he left, he followed.

  The corridor opened out. A metal walkway etched the room’s bowl-shaped edge, and stairs led down. And beneath, on a plinth in the dull glow of a single lowly bulb, was …

  Francis had to keep from blurting. Good thing he did. He was not sure what would come out if he had opened his mouth. It might be “The shroud!” or it might be his heart, unable to crawl any further up his throat without erupting in a crimson arc.