“You know it?” the captain asked the Varestian woman.
“I know of it, as I should. My father died there.” Zenida gave a rueful grimace as she surveyed the map, a more detailed rendering of the south Arradsian coastal region than that offered by the antique maps of long-dead Captain Bledthorne. “The last of his many foolish and expensive jaunts in search of mythical treasures. I never knew what truly became of him. He went off exploring and never came back. I hoped to go looking for him myself one day but the pressures of commerce always prevented me. And I had a daughter to think of.”
Clay opened Scriberson’s note-book as something chimed in his memory. Thanks to the leather binding, the pages hadn’t been ruined when he dropped his pack in the sea. “Mr. O.,” he said after finding the series of entries that corresponded to their journey across the lake. “The River Maiden was charted by a Mr. O.”
“For Okanas.” Zenida frowned at him, her gaze fixed on the note-book. “What is that?”
“A dead man’s journal,” Braddon said before going on to relate the story of their time on Krystaline Lake. “It was Dr. Firpike who had the most interest in it. Pity we left all his papers in the grave where we buried him in the Coppersoles.”
“Looks like Scribes took plenty of notes,” Clay said, continuing to leaf through the book. “Guessing he didn’t trust Firpike to share what he knew later on.” He stopped as he came to a particular notation, a line of text underscored with the words “Translated Dalcian text—Early Satura Magisterium.” “‘A vessel of wonder,’” Clay read aloud. “‘Unbound by earth or sea, come to rest with precious cargo ’neath the silver waters.’” He raised his gaze to Zenida. “You have any notion what it all means?”
“Relations between my father and I were . . . poor in the three years before his disappearance. I know that he spent the better part of two years paying out a good portion of his wealth to an artificer. A renegade Corvantine who had a design for an apparatus that would enable a man to breathe underwater. So whatever he was after will not to be easy to reach. The location would be marked on one of his many maps, but they are all locked away in the family archive at the High Wall.”
“Firpike said the story came from a Dalcian legend,” Braddon said, brow creased as he strove to recollect the details. “Close to three thousand years old, he said.”
Clay turned to Kriz. “Seems too recent to be Hezkhi.”
“The legend may be three thousand years old,” she said. “But the story that inspired it could be much older. And we don’t know exactly when he woke. He could have been sleeping for centuries.”
Clay sighed as Zenida and Braddon squinted at Kriz in bafflement. “It’s . . . a really long story,” Clay began.
Kriz yelped and shrank back as the flames consumed the candle in one fierce blast of heat, leaving a patch of dripping wax on the stern-rail. “I don’t get why you ain’t better at this,” Clay said, watching her straighten quickly, smoothing a hand through her hair in an effort to cover her embarrassment. “You can fashion a crystal into a rose but you can’t light a candle with Red?”
“Red plasma was never my speciality,” she said, somewhat stiffly. “The blessing, as you call it, was only marginally understood in my time. Your people have had centuries of practice. As for the crystals, they were much more easily manipulated than other material. It was almost like they wanted to be altered.”
“We’ll try again.” Clay took a box from his pocket and extracted a single match. “Something smaller might work better,” he said, setting it down on the rail and stepping back. “Concentrate on the head. The fire goes where your eyes go. You can feel it, right? The Red in your veins. Try to think of it as a barrel, full of power. You only need to let out a little at a time.”
Kriz kept her gaze locked on the match, frowning in concentration. Clay was soon gratified to see a slight heat shimmer appear between her and the rail just as the match-head flared into life. The fire was still too fierce, consuming the match in a fraction of a second to leave a speck of black ash on the rail, but it was her most controlled effort so far.
“I want to try again,” Kriz said. “Something bigger.”
“The captain’s got us on a strict product ration,” Clay said. “No more than a few drops at a time, just for practice.”
“This ship truly runs on Red plasma?” she asked, casting her eyes over the frigate’s upper works.
“Didn’t think we had just sailing-ships, did you?”
From her slightly chagrined expression he saw that she had in fact been thinking that very thing. Although they had shared much in the trance, it was clear they still understood relatively little about each other and the eras that had produced them. Contempt, Mr. Torcreek, Sigoral had said during their sojourn through the strange world down below. That’s what she thinks of us. To her we are just useful primitives.
“It’s called a thermoplasmic engine,” he said, watching closely to gauge her reaction. “Just a vial or two of Red is enough to shift this whole ship at a right old lick, and she’s a tiddler compared to some.”
“Remarkable,” Kriz murmured, though her gaze darkened as it alighted on the rear gun-battery. “So much progress, and yet you’re still fighting wars.”
“It’s a big world. Guess there’s a lot to fight over.”
They both turned in unison as an upsurge of shouting came from the deck of the Farlight moored some fifty yards to port. It was still early as Hilemore wanted to wait for a fully risen sun before commencing the voyage north. However, there was ample light to make out the tall spines cutting through the Whirls towards the three ships. Although the Blue-hunter’s crew had been warned that Jack no longer posed a threat and might appear at some point, it seemed their long-held instincts were not so easily assuaged. Clay saw a group of sailors feverishly loading the ship’s forward harpoon cannon as others formed up along the side with rifles in hand.
“Lesson number two,” Clay said, opening his wallet and extracting a vial of Black. “How to stop a missile in flight.”
The harpoon cannon fired just as Jack raised his head above the water, blinking in apparent bemusement at the sight of the huge barbed length of iron as it hovered in mid air a few yards away. Clay knew he was showing off and burning more product than he should, but it wasn’t just Kriz who needed to learn a lesson. The harpoon gave a loud squeal as Clay twisted the arrow-head point back at a sharp angle. The crew on the Farlight could only stare in shock and then duck as he hurled the projectile back at them. It slammed into the Blue-hunter’s stack with sufficient force to leave a sizable dent.
Clay cupped his hands around his mouth, raising his voice to full volume. “Any of you fuckers casts so much as a nasty look in his direction again and I won’t blunt it next time!”
He heard a faint hiss of steam and turned to see Jack letting out a contented puff of flame as he slipped below the water.
CHAPTER 7
Lizanne
She exhausted most of her Green rowing to the aerostat, the oars blurring like paddles as they propelled the launch through the choppy sea. By the time they reached the craft it had settled on the waves, the boat-like gondola bobbing on the swell and sinking ever lower as water lapped over its shallow sides. Above, the elongated gas-filled balloon swayed in the wind, threatening to twist the ropes that bound it into a tangle that would no doubt see it fall and the whole craft subside along with it into the ocean. It appeared to have been fashioned from overlapping panels of silk, which fluttered as the gas inside grew thinner by the second. There were three people in the gondola and the sight of them flooded Lizanne with a relief that made her pause in her labour, though it was shot through with an awful realisation. Father, Jermayah, Tekela . . . No Aunt Pendilla.