Encante (2 page)

The man produced a boxlock pistol from his pocket and levelled it at my head; I promptly shut my mouth.

Chapter Three

“Y
ou ‘old it there,
sir,”
—the man mocked me with the inflection—“while I fathom what this damn buor’s gone an’ landed me with.”

He groped around himself, evidently searching for more than the pistol, as I took in the filth on his skin, bare from shoulders to wrists, and the patched fabric of his meagre clothing—a simple homespun vest and breeches. His free hand, clad in the same oiled leather as his boots and equally worn, finally tugged something from the short apron he wore. It was a box, apparently mechanical in nature.

“Ned,” he snarled into it, and I took that to mean it was a radio of some description. “Blow the Cap’in, we gorra stowaway. He’d better get down ‘ere before I do down on ‘im.”

“Sir, I can assure you, there’s no need for the gun. I’ve no ill intentions.” The barrel of the boxlock jammed into my left shoulder and the man’s face inched closer to my own. His breath reeked of coca, and I immediately took him for a bolear addict, both from the smell and the tell-tale lump beneath his lip. His top lip sported bacca-pipes that curled back towards his nostrils, which were almost as hairy as the moustache.

“You stay down,” the lips informed me, “an’ wait for the Cap’in.”

I was forced to sit, as he wedged the barrel further into my shoulder joint. Beside me, still in the water, the girl shifted, and I almost thought I caught the sound of her trying to speak. If she were attempting to however, it was in a way I was unable to fathom, although it seemed evident the man with the pistol understood her just fine.

I remained at his feet, shivering ever more violently in my sodden clothes, as we awaited the arrival of his captain. I distracted myself from the gun by taking in the warren of interconnected staging attached to my own platform, and a large belvedere set a little off-centre in the room. Beneath all, the luminous water silently undulated. The ocean looked alien within this vessel, far different to that which I’d seen on arrival; the jade waters were riddled with plants, which cast odd shadows and reflections. Schools of small silver fish swam in formation, and I caught the occasional flash of something larger and more colourful. I wondered which world I was on, and prayed it was not Sinfin; two nightmares coming to pass in one day would be more than I could handle. The home world of the Kabbalah was the only world I had never previously stayed on longer than it took to ascertain to which world I had come.

Almost, I asked him where I was, but the pressure of the pistol’s barrel was already burning into my shoulder joint and, staring up at this man, I had no trouble believing he would blow that joint out if I gave him any trouble. It wouldn’t kill me, it would just hurt like hell, and quite likely render that arm crippled for the rest of my life. What would CC think of me then? It was one thing to endure my absences at the behest of her father, it was another to be seen in public with someone so . . . malformed.

At length, more boots sounded on the floating walkways, and several people emerged from the far side of the belvedere. The man leading the group I took to be the captain due to the elaborately feathered tricorn gracing his head, his general demeanour, and his cleanly aspect. Behind him followed a smaller man with a neat monocle and a scorch of red hair, who wobbled slightly in his passage towards us, supported by a cane of such bespoke design I immediately took him to be someone of import, or at least wealth.

To my surprise, the third individual was a woman. She dressed much like the captain, in a calf-length frock coat over a double-breasted vest and trousers. She wore a lace obsidian blouse beneath, in place of the captain’s regular white shirt, and where his suit was a deep royal blue, tailored for a man, her own was a dark russet of crushed velvet, and had been shaped for curves, clinging tightly to her figure. She wore no hat, only an auburn scarf binding her black curls gypsy-style, knotted on the side of her head and falling within the mane of ebony hair. Her feet were bare. For a moment I thought her the strangest woman I’d ever seen, until I recalled the tentacle-haired girl still clinging to the side of the platform.

“Garrett.” The captain eyed me curiously but clearly addressed my captor. “Where did he come from?”

“Showed up with the damn dollymop, Cap’in, straight out the water.”

“How can that be?” The captain glanced at the girl. “Vee, where did you find him?” The girl tilted her head towards the him, her slightly webbed fingers struggling to cling to the platform.

“Gods!” The woman stepped forwards and knelt by my feet. Now that she was closer, I saw she was far younger than I’d imagined, certainly younger than I.

“Franklin Garrett,” she snarled, “have you taken leave of what small sense you have? Get her out immediately! Have you had her hanging here in it this whole time?”

“I ‘ad more pressin’—”

“Well you don’t anymore,” she snapped. “Uncle, he’s telling the truth, Vee brought him in; she found him just beyond the bow, he would have drowned had she left him.” I stared at the woman, wondering how she could know this. The only possible explanation was that the girl, Vee, was indeed talking in some manner, and this woman understood her.

“Are there more?” the captain demanded.

“No, Uncle, just this one.”

The captain nodded at the man they called Garrett, and the boxlock was lowered. Garrett bent and hauled the girl from the water, laying her out on her side. She collapsed, exhausted, as the black-haired beauty fussed around her, and Garrett set to removing the tail which was, indeed, mechanical. I was astonished to see it disengage itself from the girl and retract into a much smaller size. I’d never seen the like—and I’d seem some spectacular things in my time with Cane.

“You seem surprised, sir.”

I glanced up as the captain addressed me. “I confess I am; I’d not thought her to have legs beneath that tail.”

Garrett made a sound not unlike that the girl herself had made, and another figure joined us on the platform. My eyes lingered on the man loping towards us, equally as naked as Vee, equally as strange. His hair was more seaweed than tentacles, brown and curling. The distinct aroma of fish and brine clung to his opalescent skin. He bent to the tail that had been removed from Vee’s legs and, between them, he and Garrett hauled it away. Given how heavy it obviously was, I wondered how she had managed to swim in it.

“Is she well?” I enquired, crouching to check on my rescuer. A cane impeded me, stabbing the platform between us and blocking me crossways. I followed it up to its owner, the tidy little monocled man with the fierce red hair.

“You’re the one who shall be answering questions, stowaway.” He lowered his cane and proceeded to fan me, patting at my dripping clothing, presumably in search of concealed weaponry.

“I’m no stowaway, sir,” I told him. “I happened upon your ship by chance.” I glanced more closely at the riveted walls. “We are aboard a submersible, are we not?” I grinned stupidly. “Forgive me, but we’ve nothing like this at home, it’s quite splendid.”

“Home?” the captain demanded.

“Yes, sir, I wasn’t born of this world.”

“Kabbalah,” the monocle man growled, and levelled a pistol of his own at me.

“He’s not, Newt!” The woman stood, stepping between us. “He’s an explorer.”

“He has a portal,” Newt responded. “He must, how else could he come to be so deep beneath the ocean?”

“That does not make him Kabbalah.” She glared at him, and while I was tempted to interpret her fierce defence of me as genuine concern for my safety, I had the distinct impression that there was, in general, no love lost between this man and the captain’s niece.

Newt’s face crinkled in derision. “Your arrogance astounds me; you think you can know a man from a single thought?” He snorted a derisive laugh. “Men have been hiding things from their women for millennia, you are no different.” He leant towards her, smiling in a rather unpleasant manner. “You are not
special
.”

“Enough, Newt,” the captain snapped. “Recall to whom you speak;
you
may not regard her as special but I most certainly do, far more so than I do you. You’d do well to remember that.”

Newt straightened. “Yes, sir. My apologies. I only meant to say, she is not infallible.”

I watched the proceedings in silence, wondering if they had forgotten my presence completely. The captain fixed Newt with a stern glare that told me, quite categorically, that this man was far more formidable than his appearance might indicate. I watched him for a moment, wondering how best to deal with him when he did recall I stood beside him.

“If that is what you meant to say, Newt, perhaps you should have said it. Keep your ugly thoughts to yourself.”

“A great deal of good that would do me.” He glared once more at the woman. “He could be the Harlequinn for all you know, girl.”

The captain roared with laughter at that, looking me over and dismissing me with a glance, correctly concluding there was not even the remotest possibility I could be the elusive Kabbalahn dropper. “I hardly think the Harlequin would be sent on such a lowly mission as to retrieve us.” He narrowed his eyes at me, considering. “And if my niece says he is not Kabbalah, then he is not Kabbalah.”

He lifted the sopping hair curling around my ear and examined the skin beneath it. There he saw the network of interlacing cogs nestled inconspicuously behind my ear, before one by one coiling their way across my neck and descending down my spine. Cecelie loathed the tattoo of course; it was far too uncouth for her genteel taste.

“He’s Loth Lörion,” the captain announced, and I heard his niece’s sharply indrawn breath. “All that is left of The Eldars.” The captain eyed me for a moment longer, his interest clearly piqued, then released my hair, allowing it to flow back across my shoulders and into my eyes. Another reason Cecelie despised the tattoo: the need to keep my hair so long in order to cover it. “You’re sure he’s unarmed, Newt?”

At a nod from Newt, the captain’s gaze jumped to his niece, who also nodded, almost imperceptibly, and I had the strangest notion that she’d told him I spoke the truth. Satisfied, he smiled broadly.

“Captain Micajah Everett,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder and offering me his hand. “You’re welcome aboard. You’ll not find us flat, so mind yourself. Tell me, what kind of fool are you, taking yourself to the bottom of an ocean? I’ve always wondered how the Loth Lörion travelled. How exactly did you end up at the bottom of the ocean, without any form of submersible? Or did you know we were here?”

“Simeon Escher.” I shook his hand firmly, as my father had always taught me to do. “And I’d no notion you were here until this young lady brought me aboard . . . It was sheer luck.” I looked down once more at my saviour, grateful for an excuse to change the subject—I was not so foolish as to tell them about the compass.

“I have always presumed you have portals in your possession,” the captain said, eyeing me as if wondering where I might have concealed one. “But that’s a dangerous business, hopping worlds using a timeless portal, no notion of when the next shift will occur. It’s not as if you can just jump home if you find yourself in bother.”

“Indeed.” I smiled affably, hoping he’d drop it.

“You were fortunate, then, that Vee happened upon you when she did; you would surely have drowned before the next time shift otherwise.”

“That seems more than likely. A remarkable creature, Vee. But what’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing a rest won’t cure,” the captain’s niece said, producing a radio much like Garrett’s. “Stella, can you send Tofa and Fanny up to hydroponicsm, please. That imbecile Garrett left Vee hanging on the rail in her tail too long; she can’t make it down alone.” The radio clicked off. “I’ll wring that lazy pig’s neck,” the woman declared.

Evidently satisfied I was no longer in danger of being shot, she stalked off down the walkway in the direction Garrett had taken. Something about her slender ankles and soft-footed walk reminded me of the girl at my own feet.

“Your niece is extraordinary also, sir,” I murmured, “if you don’t mind my saying.” I watched the retreating tails of her coat and marvelled as I realised her hair was adorned with a score of silver bells. They sang to each other merrily as she walked, as if eager to see Garrett reprimanded.

The captain and I stared at each other for a long moment, as if he were sizing me up, deciding whether or not he would allow me to keep my secret. “I mind not at all, although she’s not truly my niece.”

I suppressed a sigh, grateful he had not pressed me further. Still, I sensed it would not be the end of it; one way or another, Captain Everett would learn how I travelled. He had that way about him, the bearing of a man who always got what he wanted. I had the unsettling feeling that the only reason he had permitted me to evade the question at all was the fact he had realised my affiliations and sensed an ally. His clemency would last exactly as long as he thought he had something to gain, and no longer, of that I was certain. I would have to be sure to leave before this period of grace expired.

The captain led me away from the prostrate form of my saviour, even as the sound of raised voices floated to us from the far side of the room. I should perhaps have thought it odd we were leaving Vee so, but I was too addled from my arrival, my encounter with Garrett, and now this strange and forcible woman.