She realises that she has lost. Frankie will get away, it’s true. Edie will have completed her mission. But she will have died a secret agent’s death in a far land, and no one will ever know. She wonders if Abel Jasmine will cry, or Clarissa Foxglove. She wonders how many sweethearts of her soldiers will weep into ragged pillows, back home, and whether they will blame Commander James Banister personally, or just curse the fortunes of war. She raises her hands into the most cautious of guard positions, and gets ready to die.
To her surprise, Shem Shem Tsien raises his hand in salute. He looks almost human. And then, a moment later, she sees the pleasure in his eyes at her resignation. Not empathy. The sating of an appetite.
He comes towards her, boots barely brushing the tiled floor. She feels clumsy and small, adjusts her guard. He smiles again. I am killing you piece by piece, Commander.
Salvation comes, all undreamed of. With a sharp crack and a noise like a cornet call, Edie’s burdensome crate flies open, and out charges a small, angry grey object decked in ornate metal plates. It fixes eyes on her purple sash, and places itself stoutly between her and her enemies. Then it raises up its head, and the cornet call sounds again: a shrill, high note, amazingly loud and penetrating. In the near distance, something gives answer: a deep hallooing hunter’s horn, or a tuneless brass band with a tuba the size of a house.
Edie does not recognise the grey object for what it is until the Door of Humility explodes inwards, and through the breach come massive, muscular shapes in a mighty rush, bringing a scent of sweat and dung and spice, and Shem Shem Tsien hurtles backwards away from her, sword tumbling in the air, swatted end over end in one furious motion of denial. She stares, then gives vent to a delighted yawp of victory.
The greatest cavalry force ever raised up from one end of the great Addeh River to the other, from the topless Katir mountains to the wide blue Indian Ocean, stands ready to give answer to her need: in the vanguard, a wall of maternal indignation blotting out the light, ploughing into the soldiers of Shem Shem Tsien and sending them fleeing after their master. Behind this titan are other shapes even bigger, smashing walls and doors and charging onward, trumpeting unleashed fury. All are urged on by the armoured shape of Edie’s newest guardian, shoulder high at best, but bristling with affront and duty.
Dotty Catty’s gift: a baby war elephant.
The tide of the battle turns.
Relative calm; this means there are no guns. All the same, Amanda Baines is doing a great deal of shouting. The reason for this is that her upper turret has a number of holes in it (holes are considered a Bad Thing in the submariner trade) and Edie was supposed to run a covert intrusion and appears instead to have declared war on a minor principality and reduced it to rubble. Worse, she has failed to kill or capture the offended party, which is apparently very important when you launch a de facto surprise attack on a foreign nation. The Cuparah is presently going at one-third ahead towards the open ocean, and no one seriously expects there to be anything between her and that ocean, because the last attempt to block her way is still burning. More than that, it is burning in a somewhat emphatic way which is the product of Amanda Baines completely losing her temper. It is burning in such a manner as to suggest that other ships constructed in the same place or around the same time may also be burning out of sheer sympathy. Amanda Baines has achieved the nautical equivalent of punching the enemy very hard in the crotch and then kicking them repeatedly as they lie incapable on the ground, and the assembled pirates and seamen of the Addeh maritime have noted this action and responded in time-honoured fashion by finding very important things to do on dry land. Not even the Opium Khan’s bounties are sufficient to tempt them into the path of Cuparah. This proactive indifference is not sufficient to quell the wrath of Amanda Baines, who is even now drawing breath to express her further lack of impressedness, but realises at the last minute that she has nothing else to say.
“And,” yells Amanda Baines, as if trying to persuade herself that this is worse than unsponsored declarations of war, “there is a baby elephant in my stateroom!”
“Yes,” Edie says, “there is.”
“Well,” says Amanda Baines, trying not to think about the limpid-eyed beast and how delighted she was when he passed her a woolly hat from the rack, “what are we going to feed him? Eh?”
And at this, Edie Banister is suddenly aware that she is not dead, and has survived, and even done well, and she starts to cry. Amanda Baines, hard-bitten woman of the open water, mutters something about highly strung people and how they should stick to making bad art, and trudges over to examine the wreckage of her periscope.
“This is fascinating,” a new voice observes in Edie’s ear. “But the construction is quite wrong.”
Amanda Baines peers at Frankie Fossoyeur. Frankie peers at the dials on Cuparah’s highly classified bridge. Mockley the Ruskinite, who personally built quite a lot of Cuparah, raises one eyebrow ever so slightly.
“In what way?”
“You make inadequate use of resources. This vessel could be far more impressive than it is.”
“Could it?” Amanda Baines asks levelly.
“Oh, yes,” Frankie Fossoyeur replies.
“How very kind of you to notice.”
“A matter of the greatest simplicity for someone of my capacity,” Frankie continues, matter-of-fact.
“Is it?”
“It is. The construction of your vessel is innovative, but not complex.”
“Oh, good.”
“I could design a schematic for you.”
Amanda Baines unkinks slightly, in spite of herself, then glances guiltily at Mockley.
“A schematic?”
“Of course. Do you have paper? The mathematics is quite interesting, but the practical application is not difficult.”
“That would be very kind,” Mockley interjects. “Have you studied this kind of system before?”
“Non. It is unique, is it not? But very clever. The individual who designed it possesses considerable flair. I shall enjoy improving on his work.”
Mockley hunches a little, then sets his expression in a look of monkish placidity. The face of Amanda Baines takes on a sour expression.
“I suppose you know what to feed an elephant, too.”
“Hein. Of course. A varied vegetable diet. Roots and leaves, bark… ah. I see the problem. We will improvise. Kelp, yes, some other weeds. I shall prepare a list. It would be best if he were not allowed to swim.”
“They swim?”
“Extremely well. And of course, the trunk functions like your snorkel, yes? But it would be very hard to get him back on board.”
“I shall bear that closely in mind.”
From the captain’s cabin, a noise like an accordion landing in a rice pudding. Frankie Fossoyeur shrugs, her narrow shoulders rising almost to her ears.
“Elephants are like people,” she says, without great sympathy. “Not all of them are good sailors.”
Six days later, Cuparah is five hundred foot down and diving, and Edie Banister can hear the riveted sections of the boat growl and yap. The faithful hound is struggling. Far from friendly waters, the Kriegsmarine and the Nippon Kaigun are too many, the cold and the pressure too harsh. Enemy ships have spotted Cuparah—tipped off by a spiteful Khan or merely put in her path by ill luck—and now they are searching the sea and listening for her quiet engine, pouring explosives down into the sheltering deep. Every few seconds the whole cabin shudders and the plates of the walls howl and shriek as Cuparah is kicked and harried, and the dull boom of another depth charge throws her one way and another. No dog should have to suffer this. Indeed, no dog can be expected to take it for long. Cuparah is in danger, here in the dark.