by Stephen Hunt
Commodore Black stumbled towards the porthole, trying to snatch a last look at the Daggish nest and his u-boat. ‘My Sprite, my beautiful Sprite. You’re leaving her here.’
‘No,’ said Veryann. ‘One of our assault craft has orders to scuttle her. The less of our engineering the Daggish have access to, the better we will like it.’
The commodore collapsed into the navigator’s seat at the news. ‘Lass, say that’s not true. We can belay that order. With this mighty airship of yours you can pound the Daggish to pieces and winch my Sprite up to safety. I’ll pilot her back to Rapalaw Junction myself with the help of T’ricola and Bull; maybe him in leg irons just to be safe.’
‘I’m truly sorry, Jared,’ said Veryann. ‘I must abandon a division of my finest fighters behind, and you must leave your ancient craft. We only have a brief window of flight time while the Daggish flame guns are incapacitated. If we are still within range above the city when their cannons are repaired and re-crewed, our fate will not be a kind one.’
The hooks clamped around the bathysphere’s catapult-like roof assembly began to winch them upwards into an opening hangar, the airship climbing for height as they were drawn into her belly.
‘No,’ said the commodore, an unruly glint in his eyes. ‘No kinder than the fate of that burnt-up airship we found crashed by the borders of Prince Doublemetal’s kingdom of loons. That was no derelict blown in from Jackals’ last war with Quatérshift, was it? That was your people, learning the hard way that an expedition by air to Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo is a mortal dangerous thing to attempt. Far better to bribe poor old Blacky and his brave, foolish friends, to sneak into the greenmesh for you on the Sprite.’
Veryann said nothing, but her silence spoke volumes.
Amelia watched as they were hauled into the airship’s hangar, rising up past gantries and empty launch rails for Catosian glider capsules. ‘This is no RAN vessel. Has Quest gone insane? Parliament will declare him a science pirate – he’ll be hunted to the ends of the earth as an outlaw for building this aerial folly.’
Veryann pointed towards the party waiting for them in the hangar. ‘There he stands, you can tell him yourself in a minute. You’ve followed the path of your obsession, professor, as Abraham Quest has followed his. Whatever the cost to you both. Were it not for your gender, I believe I would find it hard to tell the two of you apart sometimes.’
With the bathysphere raised into a docking cradle, their hatch was popped, fresh air replacing the febrile mix that had been cooked up by the expedition members. Veryann was first on deck, then the semi-conscious forms of Ironflanks, Bull Kammerlan and Billy Snow were pulled out by the airship crew.
‘Put these two in the brig,’ said Veryann, pointing at Kammerlan and Snow. ‘Chains for the old man and make sure they are strong – he can fight in witch-time.’
Abraham Quest walked over and grasped Veryann’s arm in the Catosian style. ‘You have it?’
She held up Amelia’s Camlantean crown. ‘Did you ever doubt me?’
‘It was as dangerous a thing as I have ever asked you to do.’ He looked at the motley group climbing out of the bathysphere, drenched in sweat, their clothes torn by long months in the jungle. ‘So few … did none of the others make it?’
‘My boys are gone,’ whined the commodore. ‘Walking dead among the Daggish or made proper corpses along the way of our voyage, left rotting in that Liongeli hell. You promised me my beautiful boat back, but even that’s gone now.’
‘You might yet have it returned,’ said Abraham Quest. ‘Stranger things have happened.’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ spat Amelia. ‘We’ve been shot at, gassed, imprisoned, seen glimpses of Camlantis at the bottom of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, and had members of our own crew turn on us, all for the sake of that crown.’
‘For which I apologize.’ Quest looked at the prone form of Billy Snow being fitted with a metal cuirass, his arms strapped inside the steel straightjacket at a painful angle. ‘He looks a little like the last one who came after us, don’t you think?’
Veryann waved her soldiers forward to stand guard over Billy while he was being restrained. ‘Like a brother, perhaps, if you shaved his beard off.’
‘Who is Billy Snow, Quest? Who is he really?’ asked Amelia. ‘He claimed the location of Camlantis wasn’t going to be found in the crown’s crystal-book.’
‘He’s something ancient, professor. One of the texts mentioned something very much like him being grown in the old days.’
‘What texts? I didn’t read—’
‘You read only what you needed for our expedition to succeed,’ said Quest. ‘Something else that you have my apology for.’
Amelia bridled at the deception. ‘You were holding out on me? I risked my life for that crown!’
‘And you will find the risk was worth it. I needed your passion to be pure, Amelia. The truth would have made you doubtful; you might even have refused to go in search of Camlantis. I risked everything I have on this throw of the dice, and my methods have not always been as honourable as I would otherwise have had them. Some of the crystal-books’ secrets I kept back.’
‘What secrets? What in the name of the Circle would have stopped me from going in search of Camlantis?’
‘Camlantis is everything we thought it was and more, but its final days on Earth were not the best of times. Threatened by the Black-oil Horde, there was a schism in the Camlantean consensus on how to handle the barbarian invasion. The crystal-book I omitted showing you contains details of their civil war.’
Amelia’s mouth hung open in shock. ‘But that can’t be. Their whole civilization was based on pacifism, they were not capable—’
‘They were facing extinction,’ interrupted Quest. ‘Some of their people felt they had no choice but to take alternative action. That terrible decision tore Camlantis apart. It was no accidental floatquake that struck a looted and ruined city, and neither was their ascent into the heavens a noble act of mass suicide to prevent their knowledge from being perverted by the barbarians. The Camlanteans were at least as advanced in the worldsinger arts and geomancy as we are today. Camlantis was destroyed in a civil war. Leylines were strategically altered and the city blown into the heavens during the fighting.’
Tears ran down Amelia’s cheeks. ‘No!’ But she knew it had the ring of truth. The pocket world under the waters of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo, its halls of else-when, a prophetic warning of the dangers of conflict. This was the warning from her father’s shade, an admonition that had come true, this was the bitter laughter of a desert witch in Cassarabia.
‘They sacrificed themselves, gave their lives rather than commit acts of violence,’ Amelia whispered.
‘Just another war, Amelia, a stupid senseless war and a small imperfection in an otherwise untarnished record. The Camlanteans lived for two-thousand years in peace and only faltered in their final months when they were nearly extinct – how can we judge them for that?’ Quest held up the gleaming Camlantean crown. ‘And look where your passion has led you.’
Amelia pointed at Billy Snow being dragged away across the hangar floor. ‘I told you, he said the crown doesn’t hold the location of Camlantis.’
‘A half-truth,’ said Quest. ‘The crown does not contain the location of the city. It contains the key to unlock her gates.’
‘A key? It’s a jigging key! Then you already know where Camlantis is?’ gasped Amelia. ‘All this time and you knew?’
‘You might say I know where it isn’t,’ smiled Quest. ‘Which amounts to the same thing in this instance.’
‘You’re a thorough bastard,’ said Amelia.
‘I needed your knowledge and your expertise,’ apologized Quest, ‘and I preferred to limit the facts of the expedition’s true objective to Veryann. If the Daggish had captured her, she had access to a herb that would have ensured the green-mesh did not take her alive. Would the rest of your crew have sacrificed themselves to keep the people of Jackals safe? Even t
he Camlanteans failed that test in the end.’
‘Well, we’ve passed your blessed test now,’ said the commodore, ‘those of us who’ve made it back alive. We’ll take our money and be on our way.’
‘Really?’ said Quest. ‘Do you have no curiosity? You are all welcome to travel with me to Camlantis. You’ll see sights that no one has seen in millennia, travel higher than any aerostat in the history of Jackals. This is your chance to touch the stars.’
‘The only sights I want to see are the warm corridors of Tock House,’ said the commodore, ‘and the only things I want to touch are the fine bottles of wine I have stored away back in my pantry. You can keep your dead city with its dead secrets, Abraham Quest.’
T’ricola nodded in agreement and Ironflanks pulled himself straight, leaning against the craynarbian, his voicebox tinny after self-repairing his wounded systems. ‘I will take the second part of the payment you promised me and leave with my soft-body friends.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Quest. ‘It was money you all signed up for and if that is what matters to you, it is money you shall have. Triple the agreed fee if you wish. My holdings in Jackals have been, shall we say, liquidated by circumstances. Mere money is the least of my concerns now.’ He glanced over at his airship’s captain.
‘We will be over Jackals in two days, sir, I would not advise flying low enough to be reachable by the cannons of the RAN fleet, though.’
‘Load a glider capsule onto the racks,’ ordered Quest, turning to the expedition survivors. ‘We’ll fire you off somewhere out of the way. No one need ever know you were involved with the mad schemes of a rogue commercial lord.’
‘That will suit me just fine,’ said the commodore.
‘And what of you, professor?’ asked Quest. ‘Our journey’s end lies above the Sepia Sea. In four to five days’ time you could be walking the empty streets of ancient Camlantis, touching towers and spires you have only glimpsed before in crystal-book images.’
‘Damn your eyes, you know the answer as well as I do,’ said Amelia.
‘Don’t go, lass,’ pleaded the commodore. ‘Sailing around the sky like the queen of the clouds, tweaking parliament’s nose by your very presence. It can only end in a wicked bad way. The life of an outlaw is no life for you; you can trust me on that. Come back with old Blacky to Jackals and stay a week or two with me in Tock House while we forget all about our part in this sorry adventure.’
‘I’m sorry, Jared. I’ve risked everything to have this chance, to be standing here – and I have so very little left to return to back home. I’ll make those prigs on the High Table eat their words, I’ll bring back an airship full of Camlantean artefacts and fill the corridors of Middlesteel Museum with the expedition’s finds as a reminder of their bloody-minded ignorance.’
‘I believe you’ve made the right decision,’ said Quest.
Amelia looked at the crown of Camlantis in his hand, the inset crystal gleaming like a devil’s egg. She had made the only decision she was able to, but as to the rightness of it, all she could hear was the mocking laughter of an old hag roaming the Cassarabian desert.
‘You jiggers,’ shouted Bull Kammerlan. ‘I find your second-rate shopkeeper’s precious crown for him, and this is how you pay me back?’
One of the Catosians dragging him to the cell rabbit-punched him under his armpit. ‘You haven’t had your payment yet for betraying our master.’
Billy Snow stood by sadly, listening to the beating, his arms weighed down by metal restraints. The officer of the brig glanced up from her desk at her two new tenants. She had empty cells, but it was always easier to concentrate them in a couple of holding pens and keep an eye on what they were up to. She sized the two new lads up and pointed at Bull. ‘Put the mutineer in with the lashlite and his insane friend.’ She tapped Billy’s straightjacket. ‘Does this grizzled old fellow really need this?’
‘High security at all times,’ replied the soldier. ‘The First says he can fight in witch-time.’
‘Even sightless?’ said the brig officer. ‘Impressive.’ Another damned problem prisoner. She pointed past the cells along the corridor and indicated the stairs down to the armoured hold. ‘Lock him up with the Court of the Air’s agent, then. They are both of an age, and it will give the old woman someone to complain to other than myself about the disrespect we show our elders.’
Bull moaned.
‘The mutineer has cloud sickness,’ warned one of the escorts. ‘He threw up outside the glider capsule hangar.’
‘You would think he’d have better air legs,’ laughed a soldier.
‘I’m a seadrinker,’ snapped Bull. ‘U-boats don’t move like this, blondey-locks.’
The brig officer pushed him angrily into the entry lock of a cell. ‘You make me clean out your cell floor, Jackelian, we’ll be seeing if no rations for a week improves your gut’s disposition.’
True to the guard’s words, Bull’s cell contained a lashlite, the winged lizard sitting uncomfortably in a corner while a wide-eyed man rocked and moaned on his knees.
‘How do, boys. So which one of you is the lashlite and which one is the madman?’
Down below, the round armoured door shut and Billy Snow inspected his new quarters, his senses curving outwards to test the prison. No bars on the door like the cells he had observed upstairs; instead a single viewing hatch the size of a cheap penny dreadful, except that even the hole was shimmering under the protection of a cursewall. He doubted any of the other cells contained an old woman bent under the weight of a full hex suit, either. They circled each other warily, the old woman breaking the uneasy silence first.
‘And who are you?’
‘Obviously not someone as dangerous as you.’ He clanked his arm chains. ‘Or perhaps they only have one full hex suit on board.’
She moved her fingers under the weight of her gauntlet in what might have been taken for a nervous twitch.
Billy smiled. ‘I’m not a wolftaker.’
‘Then how did you know what I was signing? And more to the point, with those milky dead eyes of yours, how in the Circle’s name can you tell I’m even in a hex suit, let alone see what my fingers are doing? I may be buried away inside this armour, but I can still connect to the earthflow and you are no sorcerer – there’s not been a twinge of sorcery in this cell since you entered.’
Billy shrugged. ‘There are different sorts of magic, damson. Borrowing the powers of the leylines is one, but there are others. There are the natural powers, the powers of science, even the power of learning is a kind of magic, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Damson Beeton. ‘I would say that’s true enough. I always go with my first instincts when it comes to people, old man, and I have decided to trust you.’
‘Call me Billy. Billy Snow.’
Veryann found Abraham Quest in the transaction-engine chamber on the Leviathan. He was standing on the gantry, listening to the turning drums of the massive calculating machines below. Some of the initial data from the information gem they had recovered from the lake was revolving on those drums now. Transcribed into Simple – the ancient language of the transaction engines – by the house’s cardsharps and engine men. How the mill owner found peace amongst the clacking and the din of such places was something she could never understand.
‘The keys to Camlantis are inside the crown’s gem?’ asked Veryann.
‘Oh yes,’ said Quest. ‘Three to four days left before we arrive, and we shall have the key by the time we get there.’
‘It was made difficult to decipher?’
‘Naturally,’ said Quest. ‘But mathematics has not changed over the millennia, even if much else has. And the ancients wanted their legacy to be understood, eventually.’
‘By those worthy to follow in their footsteps,’ noted Veryann.
‘You think we are not?’
‘There is an old man in the brig who clearly believes that to be the case,’ said Veryann.
‘So there i
s,’ sighed Quest. ‘Yes, it’s about time he and I had a chat.’
‘He will tell you nothing,’ said Veryann, ‘and you should trust not a word that comes out of his mouth.’
‘Indeed. But I do owe it to him to try.’
‘Speaking of debts,’ said Veryann, ‘Amelia Harsh has requested access to your second crystal-book.’
‘I had hoped she would be distracted by the contents of the crown’s gem,’ said Quest. ‘There is enough data inside its structure to keep her busy for the next thousand years.’
‘She suspects your two crystal-books were transcribed by opposing sides in the civil war,’ said Veryann, ‘and she is enough of a historian to know that there are two sides to every tale of conflict.’
‘Give her the second crystal-book, then. But give it to her raw. It took my engines years to reconstruct the material at the end that was struck by information blight – the work will keep her occupied for the next three days at least.’
‘Don’t underestimate her,’ warned the Catosian. ‘She is clever and those arms of hers could toss you through a porthole before we shot her down.’
‘When we have done away with hunger and poverty and war we will need a historian to record our age of miracles,’ said Quest. ‘Even if the hands that hold that pen could snap the spine of a bear.’
Veryann watched the engine boys below moving over the calculating machines on their web of pulleys and guide ropes. ‘There is more to the woman than I can fathom.’