The Kingdom Beyond the Waves. Stephen Hunt

       CHAPTER FOUR

      ‘When you said you were going to pick your own crew,’ said Amelia, ‘I had imagined you would take the usual route and pin up a hiring notice outside the drinking houses of Spumehead.’

      Commodore Black tapped his cane on the roof of the hansom cab, and there was a clatter of hooves outside as the horse drew to a stop. ‘I want officers I have worked with, lass, and seadrinkers who have some knowledge of the rivers of Liongeli. Not the tavern sweepings of Jackals’ ports; nor Quest’s cautious house-men, for that matter.’

      The cabbie jumped off his step behind the carriage and opened the door for them. Outside, the boulevards of Goldhair Park were still crowded with revellers despite – or perhaps, because of – the late hour. Women wore their finest shawls to warm themselves against the cold evening air, their escorts a sea of bobbing dark stovepipe hats.

      ‘I was under the impression that you had buried most of your last crew on the Isla Needless after your boat was wrecked.’

      ‘Don’t speak of those terrible times, Amelia,’ implored the commodore. ‘It was not the Fire Sea or the rocks around the island that did for my fine lads, it was the things on the island, along with the fever that near carried me away along the Circle’s turn.’

      Amelia looked about. They were at the west end of Goldhair Park’s manicured gardens, near the gambling pits along the Tulkinghorn Road. ‘What are you up to, Jared? The days when I needed to finance an expedition by betting on cock fights are behind me now.’

      ‘Yes, there is you, flush with the jingle of that clever boy’s coins in your pockets,’ said the commodore. ‘But it’s a different sort of fight we have come to see tonight.’

      A slight drizzle started to fall and promenading couples scattered for the trees and pavilions, parasols opening like flowers. Commodore Black took Amelia through a gate in the railing, towards the entrance of one of the brightly lit gambling pits. A grasper with a ruff of red fur poking out of his doorman’s uniform admitted them with a nod towards the commodore. Inside, a narrow corridor led them to a large chamber where three separate seat-lined pits stood crowded with guests and gamblers. Lit by cheap-burning slipsharp oil, the top of the circular hall was lined with bars and food-serving hatches.

      Amelia had to shout over the rumble of the crowds. ‘I said I would help you find a crew, not a book-maker.’

      One of the pits lay temporarily empty; while in the second a pair of snarling upland mountain cats circled each other, ignoring the roar of the crowd and the jabbing lances of their handlers. In the third pit a pair of men squatted, each trying to lift a heavier weight than his rival, dumbbells lined up in front of them in increasing size. Each of the muscle men was muttering a chant, trying to channel the capital’s leylines and tap into the worldsong. It was a petty use of sorcery, for if either of the competitors had any real talent, they would have been admitted to the order of worldsingers and taken the purple robes.

      Amelia followed the submariner down the steps to the empty pit, squeezing past the expectant Jackelians waiting there. At the end of the row, a female craynarbian sat next to a short old man with pale, staring eyes. The craynarbian appeared to recognize Jared Black, the clan patterns on her shell armour glimmering orange in the artificial light.

      ‘A fine evening for it, is it not?’ said the commodore.

      ‘What ill tide has carried you in here?’ asked the cray-narbian woman, not bothering to hide the suspicion in her voice.

      ‘Cannot a poor fellow go out for an evening’s entertainment without his motives being impugned?’ said the commodore. ‘Although now you mention, I did recall hearing that the pair of you had blown in here with Gabriel.’

      As the craynarbian glowered at the commodore, Amelia realized the short man next to her was blind.

      ‘It’s a mortal terrible thing,’ Black told Amelia, ‘the superstitious nature of submariners. You’re on a boat that gets sunk by a pod of calfing slipsharps and you’re one of the lucky ones that gets to a breather helmet and reaches the surface. Why, you’d think you’d thank your stars for your good fortune. But not a u-boat crew, no. Seadrinkers fear such people. Call them Jonahs. Shun them in case they put a hex on their screws or a curse on their air recyclers.’

      ‘You should know all about keeping an unlucky boat, Jared Black,’ said the blind man.

      ‘Not so unlucky,’ said the commodore. ‘My beautiful Sprite might have taken a few bumps, but she saw me return safe to Jackals with the treasure of the Peacock Herne in my sea chest. But I can forgive you your waspish tongue. You see, professor, Billy Snow here is one of the finest phone-men this side of the west coast. With his old ears pressed up against a sonar trumpet he can tell you if it’s a school of tuna or barracuda swimming a league beneath you, or listen to a slipsharp’s song and tell you if it be a cow or a bull.’

      ‘Much good did it do when the pod attacked us,’ said the craynarbian woman.

      ‘Ah, but then if your last u-boat’s skipper had decided to make a break for it rather than foolishly fighting it out, you would have been running away on the best-kept pair of expansion engines under the water, what with T’ricola’s four sturdy arms to keep the boat humming and her pistons turning …’

      Two figures stepped out onto the sawdust of the pit and the crowd around them hollered, the commodore’s remaining words lost in the frenzy.

      ‘Damsons and gentlemen—’ announced the barker ‘—make your wagers now, before these two titans of pugilism engage in their noble art for your satisfaction, your delight, and, if the stars of fortune smile upon you, your profit!’

      ‘And there is the third member of my trio of seadrinker artists,’ said Black to Amelia.

      ‘It is my privilege,’ shouted the barker, ‘nay, it is my honour, to give you Gabriel McCabe, the strongest man in Jackals.’

      The light of the gambling pit glimmered off the giant’s dark skin as he took an iron bar from the barker, bent it and tossed it with a clang onto the sawdust.

      ‘He fits inside a submarine?’ said Amelia.

      ‘Lass, a first mate has to be able to crack a few heads together. Keeping order is a serious matter on a boat.’

      ‘And facing this colossus from a legendary age, we have the most vicious fellow ever to step onto this floor … Club-handed Cratchit.’

      Amelia did not fancy the chances of the commodore’s friend. The second pugilist had had his right arm twisted by the same back-street sorcerers that had given the professor her own over-sized arms. The bones of his right hand had been swollen and flowed into a massive anvil, an instrument of blunt force, muscles twisted into a corded engine of flesh. Stepping up to his reputation, Club-handed Cratchit did not wait for the barker to announce the start of the bout; he attacked Gabriel McCabe from behind as the submariner was taking the applause of the crowd. Cratchit’s bony mace rebounded off McCabe’s back, sending him sprawling into the pit’s boundary rope, then he tried to kick the legs out from under the commodore’s friend.

      McCabe slipped to the floor, scissoring his legs around his opponent’s