for you, lass,’ said the commodore, resting down his crate. ‘The blessed voice of reason at last. I said this scheme was fit for nothing but the plot of a celestial fiction yarn when Aliquot started spending our precious few remaining coins on it.’
Amelia picked up the crate. ‘I’ll take this down to your orchard for you, Jared. You can listen to what I have to say, then tell me if I still sound like the voice of reason to you …’
‘Liongeli,’ spluttered the commodore in the shadow of a lashed-together tower of steel and crystals. ‘Amelia, lass, it cannot be done. Nobody has ever navigated that far up the Shedarkshe before.’
‘But the river is deep enough,’ said Amelia. ‘It’s more like an inland sea along many stretches of the jungle.’
‘Deep enough your river may be.’ Black scratched nervously at his dark bushy beard. ‘But there is a mighty fine reason why no u-boat or surface ship travels further east than the trading post at Rapalaw Junction. There’s things biding in the jungle – in the river too – creatures that make the terrible beasts of the ocean I have faced look like so many pilchards on a plate.’
‘There would be money, commodore, for mounting that kind of expedition.’
The commodore tapped the makeshift tower rising in Tock House’s orchard. ‘You can pile those guineas on my grave, lass. I will be staying here and helping Coppertracks build his mad tower to send messages out to the angels. The last time I listened to you, we both ended up being chased across the pampas of Kikkosico by those devils from the god-emperor’s legions while trying to avoid the rebel army. I just need a few years to rest my mortal bones now. Good hearty food and a bottle of warm wine before I turn in for the night, that’s enough excitement for me.’
‘Just give me a day to change your mind, you old dog,’ said Amelia. ‘You owe me that much.’
‘I’ll give you your day,’ said Commodore Black. ‘But you might as well take a year, lass. Blacky’s mind is not for changing anymore, not when it comes to putting my neck on the block for more fool adventures.’
Amelia smiled and produced two elegant-looking punch cards from her jacket.
‘And what would those two be now, professor?’
‘Boarding passes for an airship running out of Maydon Statodrome,’ said Amelia. ‘We’re going for a day trip to Spumehead.’
Spumehead harbour lay crowded with the craft of commerce resting on the waters, as befitted the largest port on the west coast of Jackals. There was a familiar comfort to the sight. Commodore Black watched the clipper sails billowing as they turned to avoid cumbersome paddle steamers heading out for the colonies. Some of the larger vessels sailed in convoy, the shadow of RAN aerostats dark on the waves as the aerial navy escorted their merchants out through the pirate runs of the Adelphi Straits. Black’s keen eye spotted the white trails of underwater boats tracing past the stone Martello towers guarding the harbour fortifications. He sighed as a submarine broke the surface next to a line of tramp freighters, ugly triple-hulled affairs designed to bypass the Garurian Boils and the dangerous tracts of the Fire Sea.
The commodore looked across at Amelia, her pocket book unusually flush with banknotes to spend on two expensive airship berths to the coast. His suspicious hackles had been prickled. ‘I know a fine jinn house nearby, lass, if you have brought us here to feed and water poor old Blacky in an attempt to sign him up for your perilous enterprise. But I will warn you again, it’ll take more than a sniff of salt down by the water of the harbour to make me find my sea legs.’
‘Lunch later, Jared,’ said Amelia. ‘Whether you agree to skipper for me or not.’
‘You seem blessed confident, professor.’
She led him down through the town, along quays covered with drying fishing nets, past traders wheeling barrows of food and victuals to vend off the skiffs plying the harbour. A large building had been built into the cliff at the opposite end of the harbour and a figure in a crimson-lined velvet cloak was standing by the iron gates of its entrance, waiting for them.
‘Amelia,’ the man greeted them, ‘Commodore Black. I do not believe I have had the privilege before.’
With a start the old sea dog realized who he was looking at, that striking profile familiar from so many line-drawn cartoons in the capital’s news sheets. ‘Abraham Quest! Now I know why the professor’s pockets are suddenly fat with jingling pennies. What is this place, man, and what is your part in this fool enterprise of Amelia’s to sail into uncharted Liongeli?’
‘These are the Spumehead submarine pens,’ said Quest. ‘The House of Quest’s submarine pens, to be precise. Amelia has led me to believe that you might be familiar with them.’
‘Pah,’ said the commodore. ‘An independent skipper ties up on the surface and pays day-labour to scrape the barnacles off his hull, not your expensive grease monkeys. Are you here to offer me vast sums of money, Abraham Quest, to pay me to sail up the Shedarkshe? It’s a one-way trip, I can tell you that.’
‘Yes,’ said Quest. ‘I did rather assume that you still had enough of the treasure of the Peacock Herne left in the ledgers of the capital’s counting houses to make any financial inducements I might offer you seem of limited appeal.’
The commodore and Amelia followed Quest through the mountain-carved passages of the submarine pens, into a gas-lit chamber, the flicker of large triple-headed lamps illuminating dry docks and water pens. Rows of underwater craft were being hammered and repaired by sturdy-looking jacks in leather aprons.
‘You’ve been reading up on me,’ said the commodore. ‘But then, it must take a mortal clever mind to keep all this industry of yours ticking over.’
Quest seemed pleased at being flattered, although with his wealth, the mill owner should have been well-used to it. ‘Clever enough to notice the discrepancies on your citizenship record, commodore. But the professor here believes you are the best skipper for our expedition, and I have come to trust her judgement in such things.’
Quest took them into a side-chamber sealed off from the other pens, and pulled on a chain, lamps hissing into life along a rock-hewn wall.
‘Sweet mercy!’ Commodore Black nearly choked. ‘You have found her!’
Quest’s hand swept along the black hull of the submarine that filled the chamber, a double-turreted conning tower built low towards the rear of the long u-boat. ‘Handsome isn’t she? Now. She was not quite so pretty when I found her, though, beached and broken on the shore of the Isla Needless in the heart of the Fire Sea. I doubt there has ever been a recovery operation more difficult or more dangerous, but Amelia did so insist. I still don’t know why. She could have had her pick of the u-boats built by my own yards … modern craft.’
‘The Sprite of the Lake,’ said the commodore, wiping the tears from his cheeks. ‘Oh my beauty, my gorgeous girl. I thought you had died on the other side of the world.’
‘According to the laws of salvage, I think you will find she is currently my beauty,’ said Quest. ‘And believe me, she had died. With the money I spent on repairing and refitting this damn craft, I could have paid for new boats for half of the free traders running from Spumehead to Hundred Locks.’
‘Refitting!’ Commodore Black was outraged. ‘The Sprite of the Lake is a classic. If you have ripped her soul out, you’ll need more than Amelia’s strong arms to drag me off your wicked corpse.’
Quest waved the submariner’s protests away. ‘I only hire the best, sir. My engineer for this project was Robert Fulton – I trust you are familiar with his work?’
‘Fulton? Yes, I can see it in the lines of her hull, where the breach has been repaired. Those are Fulton lines. Old Bob himself; so, if there was ever a man to do justice to my girl …’
‘Fulton seemed to feel the same way about the vessel as yourself, commodore,’