The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

‘Oh, isn’t that dandy?’ said Amelia. ‘Now I’m the strumpet for some pit-floor blade.’

The commodore turned to Billy Snow and T’ricola. ‘Now then, mates, let’s you and I talk about hearing the hiss of an honest gas scrubber in your ears and once more feeling the bob of a deck below your feet.’

‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ Gabriel McCabe’s eyes darted between Billy Snow and T’ricola. ‘I always knew this old goat would end up impaled on a reef, but are you so intent to join him?’

‘It is a boat,’ said Billy Snow, ‘and a berth. Those two have not been in over-supply for the three of us of late.’

‘You cannot keep on taking punishment out there,’ said T’ricola. ‘Sooner or later someone like Cratchit is going to leave a fatal dent in your skull.’

‘Better we take pit money than this,’ said McCabe, looking at Amelia and the commodore. ‘There’s a reason no sane sea-drinker vessel ventures east of Rapalaw Junction, and that is it is suicide to do so.’

‘There’s never been a good enough reason to try before,’ said Amelia. ‘We’re not slave traders or big-game hunters, and we’re following the river Shedarkshe, not trying to explore the interior of Liongeli.’

‘You are sailing into the heart of Daggish territory, damson,’ said McCabe. ‘Even the RAN’s Fleet of the East does not overfly Daggish territory for fear of being brought down by their flame guns. The hive’s heart beats with the reason of sap and bark, and they have all the care for our kind that you would show towards an oak tree that needs to be felled for lumber.’

‘Our luck can be turned,’ insisted Billy Snow. ‘We can lift the sinker’s curse that’s been put on us. Black and his friends are sailing for treasure.’

Gabriel McCabe ran a hand through the stubble of his midnight scalp, still sweating after his bout with Club-handed Cratchit. ‘Jared Black came back to Jackals with the treasure of the Peacock Herne. What he did not come back with was his last crew.’

‘Ah, lad, that is low. I cared for those boys and girls like my own children,’ said the commodore. ‘It was a mortal cruel quirk of fate that led me to survive while their brave hearts perished on that terrible island.’

‘And yet it is you that sits in a fine mansion in Middlesteel,’ said McCabe, ‘while the Sprite of the Lake rots on the rocks of your last folly along with your crew’s bones.’

‘This is no whim of the commodore’s,’ said Amelia. ‘The Sprite of the Lake is in a dry dock in Spumehead and our expedition is backed by the House of Quest. We are going into Liongeli provisioned with the best equipment and fighting force his money can buy.’

That news seemed to take McCabe aback. Following the commodore was one thing. Following the cleverest money in Jackals was quite another.

‘All right,’ said McCabe. ‘Let us say the three of us agree to officer for you, I as your first mate, Billy piloting on the phones and T’ricola in the engine room. Where exactly do you propose to find the rest of a crew so foolish as to follow you? With all the settlements opening up in the colonies now, there is hardly an unemployed seadrinker left between here and New Alban. River work is dangerous at the best of times, and you are talking about navigating the perils of the Shedarkshe …’

‘I thought I would ask Bull,’ said the commodore.

‘Bull?’ McCabe roared with laughter. ‘If you convince Bull Kammerlan to ship with you, I shall follow you, Black. I shall follow you to Lord Tridentscale’s bedroom and back and play you to sleep in your cabin each night with a tune on his seahorse’s harp.’

Amelia followed the commodore as he left the gambling pit, the first mate’s laughter still thundering after them. ‘I thought we agreed to pick the rest of the hands from Quest’s merchant fleet?’

Commodore Black shook his head. ‘McCabe is right. We need deep-river experience, lass, and a crew with fighting spirit who are Liongeli-wise. Not some soft cargo-shifters for whom danger is an undercooked pie in a Shiptown jinn house.’

‘You know where you can lay your hands on that kind of training, Jared?’ asked Amelia. ‘Because if you do, Quest’s recruiters must have missed them.’

‘That is because they were trawling Spumehead’s drinking houses and the free traders’ haunts, lass, and not the cells of Bonegate Prison!’

Bonegate was quite unlike Jackals’ debtors’ prisons. In the sponging-houses, at least, desperate relatives could purchase a few basic comforts for the inmates. At Bonegate, the only comfort was the hope of transportation instead of the quick drop of the noose on one of the scaffolds outside. It was said that the guards made so much money out of selling prime viewing spots in the square on hanging days, that they even bribed juries to ensure a ready supply of victims to dance the Bonegate jig.

Quest’s money, it seemed, was good in the prison also. His powder-wigged lawyer stood by the door while Amelia and the commodore listened to the clank of prisoners’ chains in the corridor outside, the stench of urine and unwashed bodies strong even in the visitors’ chamber.

‘How much longer are they going to keep us waiting?’ asked Amelia.

‘The fellow we’re due to see is serving a water sentence,’ said the commodore. ‘He’s got to be fished out of the tanks and cracked out of his immersion helmet. They keep thousands down in the tanks, and even though each suit carries a number, it’s mortal hard to tell those crabs apart down in the basement levels.’

‘You sound like you’ve sailed close to being tanked yourself.’

‘Not these poor old bones,’ said the commodore. ‘They have never seen the inside of this cursed place, nor will they.’

Amelia held her tongue. She was one of the few people in Jackals to know the commodore’s true identity. The House of Guardians and its political police considered the once notorious rebel duke long dead, but if they ever found out he had been resurrected as Jared Black, the flotation tanks of Bonegate would be the least of the commodore’s travails.

‘This Bull Kammerlan has an entire crew in here?’ asked Amelia.

‘Such is the fate of slavers,’ said the commodore, ‘since the abolitionists had their way and the RAN has been enforcing the suppression act.’

‘Slaving’s a vile trade. You can’t trust the type of pond scum that deals in human cargoes.’

‘The caliph has it legal enough,’ said the commodore. ‘It’s only when you are caught on the wrong side of the Saltless Sea that Jackelian law applies, and although I have no love for that foul trade myself, it’s to the likes of Bull that we must turn for knowledge of your dark river, because there is no one else who sails the Shedarkshe for a profit.’

A clinking at the door signalled the arrival of Bonegate’s ‘guest’. Thanks to the chains connecting his ankles, Bull Kammerlan took small waddling steps. His rubber immersion suit still dripped, soaking the flagstones, and a bone-white nose piece dangled from his face where the breather helmet had been removed.

Two guards in black crushers’ uniforms shoved Kammerlan to sit on a stool opposite Amelia and Black, departing quickly and leaving them with only Quest’s silent lawyer for a witness.

‘Not like diving off a boat on Porto Principe?’ said the commodore.

Bull’s eyes had difficulty focusing on them after so long in the darkness of the immersion tank, but he recognized the voice. ‘Still alive, you miserable old goat? I thought the gout would have taken you by now, the rate of knots you must have been gorging yourself using the trinkets and jewels of the Peacock Herne to pay the bailiff.’

The commodore patted the paunch under his waistcoat. ‘And I’m looking blessed good on it, too, Bull.’

‘You’ve a cheek, old man, coming in here to see me. I only have to shout and tell the crushers who you really are, and they’d have you tossed in the tank alongside me and the boys, tossed in as soon as spit on you.’

‘Nothing hasty now,’ warned the commodore. ‘Or you’ll see both our necks stretched for royalists. Let us use our fine new names in this dark place.’

‘You weren’t in the royalist cause, Black,’ said Bull in a low voice, ‘you were just seated at its breakfast table, that’s all. You were too soft and the fleet-in-exile was burned in its pens by the RAN because of you and your kind’s weakness.’

‘Ah, Bull, let’s forget the old politics and our grievances with the House of Guardians, for parliament still has you and your lads in its cells, even if it is for slavery rather than piracy and sedition. And I have an offer for you and yours that might let you all see the light of day again.’

‘How are you going to do that?’ said Bull. ‘You been elected First Guardian, fat man? Is dimples here the new Chief Justice?’

Amelia leant forward. ‘Dimples is all for tossing you back in the tank for the dirty slaver scum you are, sailor-boy.’

Bull laughed. ‘Oh, I like this one. You always did have a taste for them spicy, Black. My little slavery jaunts up the Shedarkshe was just to pay the bills, girl, and I was doing them a favour. Why do you think the craynarbians carry that crab armour of theirs around on their backs? Compared with life in the jungle hell-hole of Liongeli, standing on a Cassarabian auction block has a lot to recommend it.’

The commodore pulled Amelia back before she could knock the prisoner off his stool. He looked Bull dead in the eyes. ‘Isn’t it a mortal shame the Jackelian airship that caught you on the surface with your holds packed full of pitiable craynarbian flesh did not feel the same way.’

‘Jigger Jackals,’ swore Bull, ‘and jigger you too, fat man. We did what we needed to, to survive. You’ve gone native, Black, you’ve forgotten the cause; bought off with soft bedsheets and honeyed hams, paying your taxes to parliament each year like a good fat little shopkeeper.’

Amelia turned to their clerk by the door. ‘Get his helmet and toss him back in the water, we’ve finished with him.’

‘Damn your eyes,’ shouted Bull, ‘I haven’t said I won’t help you.’

‘That’s it,’ said the commodore. ‘You remember all your crew floating alongside you in your tank, you start thinking like the skipper you once were, rather than the man you’ve become. Here’s the offer: you and your people crew for me, lad, a little jaunt up-river into Liongeli. I’ll see your water sentences are converted into nominal transportation – not to the colonies, but to the plantations up at Rapalaw Junction. I’ll hold your papers, and anyone who makes it back alive with me to Jackals will be sailing as a free citizen by the end of our trip.’

‘You have that kind of influence, now?’