Encante (4 page)

“By the gods, what now?” Teddy exclaimed, rushing to her. “Mae? Mae can you hear me, child, please . . . ?” He picked up one of her hands and patted and rubbed at it in an attempt to rouse her. She did not so much as flutter her eyes. He prised her eyelids open gently as his fingers sought her wrist, as if to take her pulse. It made me think perhaps the workings of their anatomy—or at least her anatomy—might not be so different to our own, despite appearances. The colour drained from Teddy’s own face and he hurriedly hustled the small group over to an empty bed, opposite the one on which I was still perched.

“What happened?” Teddy demanded. “Surely she’s not been working again so soon?”

“No!” Drusilla exclaimed, clearly horrified at the thought. “She’s been resting as you advised, we’ve seen to that. She’s not left her crib since we took her back to the covey.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked, sliding off my bed and taking a step forward. Drusilla’s head snapped up at the sound of my voice, and she seemed genuinely startled by my presence. I had the sense she was not often startled, and it was testimony to how much the situation was upsetting her that she had not noticed my presence in the room.

“Mister Escher, no, you should not be here.” She span around, deftly tugging a pair of curtains closed around the bed to hide the girl from my sight, but remaining on my side, for the moment at least. Her hand stayed on the divide, ready to pull it back and step through as soon as she was able. “What are you doing in here? Are you unwell?”

She sounded genuinely concerned, although whether it was for my health, or the fact I had clearly seen something she would rather I had not, I could not tell.

“No, no I’m quite fine. At least, I will be thanks to your doc– er . . . Teddy.” I smiled. “I’m sorry, I’m in the way. I shall go. I do hope . . . Mae, is it? Yes, I do hope she recovers.” I raised a hand to tip my hat to her, realising too late I was not wearing it, having lost it in the waters. That brought the ghost of a smile to her lips, but it was quickly chased away when her eyes fell on the bottle of elixir in my hand.

“You’re certain you are well?” she enquired.

“Quite sure.” I smiled again. “Only a precautionary measure, after my impromptu swim.” She frowned, glancing over her shoulder to where Teddy could be heard barking orders behind the curtain.

“Well, I should go.” I said.

“Yes, you should.” She looked back at me over her shoulder. “But be well, Mister Esher.”

I nodded and turned to leave.

“Be well,” I heard her whisper once again as I walked out of the medical bay.

*

There was no doubt I felt welcomed aboard Captain Everett’s vessel. That said, there was much of the ship that had been kept from me, and I was unsure if Axel was aware that I knew this. He had shown me the obvious places readily enough. The command bridge, bustling with sailors, was crammed with far more controls and gadgetry than I had ever seen aboard an airship, and piloted by a man, reclined as if for a repast, with the most elaborate set of bronze goggles I had ever seen covering his eyes and much of his head. They would, I knew, feed into the navigation systems and allow him to see where he was going, although not in the literal sense. I had seen similar devices elsewhere, but never had I imagined they could be used to pilot a vessel upon which you could see nothing that took place around you with your own eyes.

The engine room was much the same, but grubbier, populated by both humans and encante, while command had held only the former. Axel made a brief gesture towards the crew quarters as we passed, although I would not be staying there; as an honoured guest, the captain had ordered the third mate to give up his officer’s accommodation for the duration of my stay. He was a surly man by the name of Reuben Williams, and I had the distinct impression he was more inclined to have me keelhauled than let me sleep in his bunk. I’d found enough sense of direction and order, however, to orientate myself and realise there were large areas of the Narwhal that had been left out of my tour, and if I wasn’t mistaken, at least one lower deck that both the captain and his nephew had done their best to conceal entirely.

The notion of a secret underbelly to the already rebellious submarine heightened my curiosity to such a degree that I found myself willingly accepting an invitation to stay for the duration of the expedition. Cecelie would, of course, be furious when I returned home so late, but the possibility of an ally on Idele, a world on which we currently had few truly reliable sources, let alone friends, was something I would have been unable to walk away from, even if it had not come with the possibility of a place that was truly completely out of reach of the Kabbalah.

When I subtly questioned my guide regarding those areas of the ship I’d yet to see, I found the galley appearing suddenly in our path, as if this might appease me. It was not as much as I had hoped for, but I have never been one to look a gift horse in its proverbial. If nothing else, it confirmed for me that the fish-like people worked alongside the human occupants of the vessel. I met Lafe, the chef, a man easily seven feet tall who appeared to be all limbs and little torso. Even his head was elongated, and the only deference afforded him as the chef was that he wore a flag.

Despite Axel’s amiable chatter, I began to get the distinct impression that the things he was hiding from me were complex, far more so than the relative simplicity of areas of the ship the captain did not wish me to see. Perhaps this was to be expected; I was a stranger, and I sensed not a small amount of apprehension about their mission lingering in the air around the crew, a surly bunch to say the least. It was not only the possibility of failure and death, should they run out of air before finding the Hollow Earth Everett sought, that seemed to have the crew worried, although that alone was worry enough; it was the possibility that the Kabbalah might come after them.

I knew little of underwater travel, but I knew the ships of the Kabbalah could easily out-fly all but the most expensive airships of my home world, and a few Bravasian vessels with technological advancements. I had no difficulty believing they would be in possession of a submersible capable of catching up to, or overtaking, the Narwhal.

In a strange way, their mistrust was comforting, but I’d begun to question why they had accepted my story so readily. I had no proof to offer them, save the tattoo creeping down my spine and the bizarre nature of my appearance in this world, an appearance that was only seen by one person, a girl who apparently could not speak. I still harboured a suspicion that the enigmatic Drusilla was able to understand the odd little noises Vee had made.

And so it was that I came to be the one carefully leading Axel, with my questions and the subtle choosing of corridors, while he continued to believe he was the one in the lead. It took some time, but eventually I coaxed him back to the room I’d seen when I first came aboard. Axel himself was as jemmy as his rather elaborate coat, something he never seemed to remove despite the fact we were in an enclosed and decidedly balmy vessel. He had his uncle’s strong jaw and hair, but eyes far softer—or perhaps they were simply younger. His clothes were much like his uncle’s, though all black save a glimpse of a cream cravat and fogle. His boots were polished to such a high shine I wondered how long he spent on them, before realising he likely had a manservant to do such things for him.

I myself could not abide Eldon, my own manservant, whom Cecelie had insisted upon hiring for me. He pried into everything, and while Cane assured me that he was fully supportive of our ends, I could not help but feel uncomfortable in his presence. Perhaps I feared he would discover more than he should know. Cecelie, after all, knew next to nothing of our endeavours for her own safety, and no matter how long I spent with Eldon, he always felt more like her servant than mine. Perhaps it was simply because there was nothing he did that I had not managed to do myself for years before Cecelie’s father became my personal benefactor.

I tried to track how many hours I had been gone, and what she would be doing by now. Sleeping, most likely, if she wasn’t furious after another row with her father, who would undoubtedly have refused to tell her where he had sent me.

As much as I liked to refrain from hiding things from her where possible, there was one thing she could never know: that I was in possession of the compass. Such knowledge was dangerous—too dangerous—certainly for one as delicate as Cecelie. Upon that point Cane and I had always been in complete agreement; the rebellion was not an endeavour fit for his daughter. I wondered if she had thought of me since I left, then berated myself for such foolishness; it had been mere hours, she would barely have noticed I was absent, and then only to become angry that she didn’t know where I was.

“Do you have a sweetheart, Mister Escher?” Axel enquired, as if sensing my thoughts. We stepped over the threshold of the hydroponics lab and, once again, I found myself surrounded by that ethereal blush of emerald water and plants reflected from walls of metal.

“As it happens I do, lad,” I told him. “My lady’s name is Cecelie, Cecelie Whitten, or CC as I call her.”

“Do you love her?” he asked.

I was slightly taken aback by the impertinence of the question, then recalled his youth, and sensed that perhaps he had love on his mind.

“We are to be married soon after my return,” I told him.

“And how long will you stay here?”

“I do not yet know,” I said truthfully. “There is much to learn.” I gestured at the water beneath us. “For example, I wouldn’t have the first idea how to go about growing plants such as these in a false environment, nor how to cultivate and harvest them.”

“That’s Garrett’s area. Although, truth be told, he knows little of it himself. He may keep the farmers organised, but he doesn’t teach them to farm.”

“Farmers?”

“Like Dane over there.” Axel nodded, brown hair flopping into his eyes in the process. He pointed across the walkways to where the finned man I’d seen earlier was hauling his filled nets from the water. Now he was out of the water, his tail had been removed and he walked like a man.

“He farms the rushes and main crops,” Axel continued. “Then there’s Orville, he’ll be sleeping this time of day, as the crops he tends run in different cycles. I’m told you met Piccolo earlier?”

“Piccolo?”

“Smells like salt water, and has . . .” He gestured about his head.

“Ah.” I chuckled. “The gentleman with the seaweed hair? Yes, hard to miss.”

Axel laughed. “He’d like to be called a gentleman. I’ll be sure to tell him.”

“And the young lady who helped me?” I enquired, for she was the true reason I’d engineered this return visit. “Vee, I believe your sister called her?” Axel tensed at the name and there was no mistaking it. He turned away from me slightly, and the boy who had only seconds ago been so open and honest suddenly looked far more like his uncle.

“Vee, yes.” He shook his head. “She isn’t working now.”

“Might you take me to her?” I ventured. “Only I never had a chance to thank her for saving my life.” He frowned, sizing me up as if wondering something. Something of his friendly demeanour was lost to me, and I wondered if Vee had found some way of explaining the carapace to them. Did they know I had technology that kept me safe beneath the surface, at least for a little while?

“She’ll be sleeping now.”

“Perhaps later then.” I glanced once more at Dane. “You know, I’ve never seen anything like them before, they seem so human and yet so . . .”

“The encante are no different to us, really.” Axel smiled once more. “They may look different in some ways, they may breathe differently, but beyond all that they’re much like we are.”

“I wonder how people would react on my world if they encountered a similar species. But then, I suppose it’s different when you’ve always coexisted with such creatures.” It was a hunch, and he bit.

“We haven’t—”

“Axel!” Franklin Garrett’s boots sounded on the walkways and I turned to find him glaring at me. “What business ‘ave you ‘ere?”

“The captain requested I give our guest a tour.”

“Well, our
guest
‘as already seen in ‘ere. Off with y’.” The boy’s cheeks flared and he looked for an instant as if he would argue, but instead he drew me away, leading me out of the bay and taking me to the cabin I had so scurrilously stolen from Reuben Williams.

*

“You’ll be truly tired of seafood by the time you return home, Mister Escher.”

“I admit I’ve never before eaten a meal comprised entirely of seafood.” I smiled at Minerva Everett, a homely looking woman in clothing so fine it didn’t suit her. “But then,”—I eyed the dishes as they were cleared from the table by one of the encante serving us—“I can’t say I’ve ever so much as tasted shellfish before this evening, let alone eaten so much of it.”

We were in a luxurious dining room, so expertly dressed that, had you told me I was in a room in a submersible, I would not have believed you.

“I hope you’re enjoying your meal?” Drusilla smiled from the seat to my left, looking every inch as elegant and beautiful in a simple, corseted gown of deep burgundy, as Minerva looked uncomfortable and ungainly in her elaborately layered dress. From her attire when we first met, I’d taken Drusilla for a bit of a masher, but she seemed as comfortable in ladies’ clothes as she was in the clothing of a gentleman, so I was at a loss as to how to interpret her character, beyond the fact I found it captivating.