chapter TWO
“I don't understand,” Emilie said, too shocked to do anything but stare upward. She thought it was a remarkable understatement considering the circumstances.
The ship was enclosed in a bubble of gold light, traveling underwater. The view was murky, the only illumination coming from the lamps along the deck. But she saw shapes fleeing the ship's lights, a small school of multi-colored umbrella-fish, their jelly-like bodies and drifting tentacles remarkably graceful. Feeling a cold shiver in her midsection, she realized she couldn't see the surface. The air smelled salty, and tinged with seaweed.
Emilie had seen magic before. Mr. Herinbogel, her friend Porcia's father, was a retired sorcerer and occasionally helped the local physician with healing spells. And there had been the occasional traveling conjurer shows at the local fairs. But those had all been very small magics, not like this. This was like something out of a grand gothic novel.
Beside her, the man said, “It's called an aether current. It's carrying us under your sea, to a crack that leads through the bottom of the world.” He looked down at her and added, somewhat unnecessarily, “It's magic.”
“My sea,” Emilie repeated, seizing on that detail. “It's not my sea.”
“It's not mine, either.” He cocked his head at her. “I'm Kenar.”
The Kenar whose word Barshion didn't trust. Kenar who was something-not-human. “I'm Emilie.” It seemed beyond rude to say what are you? even though it was one of the questions she badly wanted to ask. As if they were meeting in her uncle's parlor, she said instead: “Where are you from?”
He seemed to hear the original question anyway. He said, “I'm Cirathi, from the coast of Oragal.”
“I haven't heard of that place. But...” The water was growing even darker. Bubbles streamed by and she realized they were still moving forward, rapidly, away from the harbor. Emilie saw the silvery flicker of a large tail fleeing their lights. The fish was swimming up... No, it was the ship that was still sinking, falling down through the water. “This is all very odd, so maybe that isn't a surprise.”
A ship's officer turned to look down the deck, spotted Kenar, and shouted, “You, back to quarters!”
Kenar's hands knotted on the rail, and he ignored the command. Emilie stepped behind him, using his bulk to block her from view, hoping the officer would be too distracted to notice her. It was a little late at this point to be thrown off the boat. She hoped.
The officer strode down the deck and stopped a pace away. He said, “You heard me. Go inside.”
Kenar's head tilted to regard him, and with a frustrated edge in his voice, he said, “You could use force, Belden.”
The officer's expression tightened, but he didn't give way. He said, “We have to make certain none of the pirates stayed aboard. That will be easier without passengers on the decks and in the corridors.”
Kenar was still for a long moment, then stepped away from the railing. This left Emilie in full view of the officer, who stared at her oddly, startled, then motioned for her to follow Kenar.
Emilie had no idea why the man wasn't raising the alarm that a stowaway was aboard this strange ship, but decided to stay with Kenar, if possible. He seemed disposed to be kind to her; human or not, he might be her only ally in this strange situation.
Two sailors conducted them through the hatch and forward down a passage, where another sailor stood guard at a door. He opened it and they were ushered into a large lounge cabin, paneled with thin strips of fine dark wood. The door was closed firmly behind them.
The lounge was as luxurious as the rest of the ship, with upholstered couches built into the walls, lamps with milky ceramic sconces. Then Emilie saw the large crystal port looking out onto the deck.
She stepped up to it, caught again by the impossible wall of water just beyond the deck rail. It was very dark now, but the ship's lights reflected off a school of small copper-colored fish, vanishing into shadow as the ship sped past. Emilie had never been afraid of water, but she was beginning to fear it now. If it rushed in on the ship, how long would it take for her and the others to swim to the surface? It had to be far longer than she could hold her breath.
Knowing that if she kept thinking about it the sense of pressure would just get worse, she deliberately turned away and looked around the cabin. Dr. Barshion sat on a couch against the far wall, and from his expression he was almost as sour about being confined here as Kenar. And there was a woman standing beside a drinks cabinet, wearing a tweed jacket and a divided skirt. She was Northern Menaen like Barshion, tall and slender, with her blond hair confined in a bun. She turned to Kenar furiously and demanded, “How did those men get on board?”
He folded his arms, but didn't seem to think her fury was directed at him. “They were on the launch. Hickran and his men must have been attacked while they were picking up the last supplies.”
The light here allowed Emilie to see his face better. His straight nose and high cheekbones belonged to a handsome man, though they were coated with tiny black scales instead of skin. His brows were feathery fur, and his hair was dark and plush, almost a mane, that didn't quite conceal the extra folds of reptilian skin at the back of his neck. The greatcoat, the dark brown shirt, trousers, and boots he was wearing concealed most of the rest of him, but his hands had scaly skin too, with mats of dark fur across the back. That, combined with the gold eyes and the pointed teeth, should have made the whole effect horrific. Maybe the shock of the pirate attack and the steamship plunging underwater in a protective bubble of spells had softened the impact, but... He doesn't look monstrous, Emilie thought. He looks like this is how he's supposed to look. And there was something about his voice that was reassuring.
Barshion frowned at Kenar and asked, “How did you get out of your cabin?”
Kenar lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He said, “Someone left the door unlocked.”
“He fought the pirates and threw some of them off the boat,” Emilie said. She wasn't certain why she was defending him, except that apparently someone had to.
Possibly it was ill considered. The others turned to stare at her in blank surprise. The woman said, “Who are you?”
“I'm Emilie.” Emilie had no intention of giving her last name, even if she was on a magic underwater steamship. After everything else, she didn't want news of her exploits getting back to her family, not until she was safe in Silk Harbor. She prompted politely, “And you are...?”
The woman blinked, compelled by courtesy to reply, “Oh, sorry. I'm Vale Marlende.”
Marlende. She must be related to the Dr. Marlende that Lord Engal had spoken of rescuing. “I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Marlende.” Emilie took a deep breath and plunged in, feeling it was better to admit the worst and get it over with. Not that it had ever worked out that way at home. “I'm here because I'm a stowaway. But I didn't mean to stowaway on this ship. I was aiming for the Merry Bell. I'm going to Silk Harbor to live with my cousin at her school for girls and I didn't have the money for the passage ticket.”
“A stowaway?” Barshion said, astonished. He regarded Kenar with suspicion. “What was she doing with you?”
Kenar was looking at Emilie, his scaled brow quirked in surprise. “I found her on deck. I thought she was one of Engal's daughters.”
Barshion said, “Even Engal wouldn't be mad enough to bring his daughters on this voyage.”
Hah, Emilie thought. Lord Engal was Southern Menaen too; she thought the resemblance ended there, but no one would have been looking closely at her during a pirate attack. It explained the crew's reaction to her, surprised but not alarmed. It was too bad she hadn't known that while there had still been a chance to get off this ship.
“You swam over from the dock, I suppose, which explains why your clothes are wet.” Miss Marlende frowned at her. “Couldn't your cousin have wired you funds for your trip?” she asked.
Emilie set her jaw, sensing an implication that she had somehow failed to think of this sensible alternative. It stung more, since she hadn't thought of it. But she hadn't known she didn't have enough money until she had gotten to the ticket office, and it would have been too late by then to wire and get a reply. And if she had waited a day, Uncle Yeric might have had time to track her down. .
She had no intention of explaining that. Before she could think of a reply, Barshion cleared his throat. “We can discuss that later, Miss Marlende.” He looked at Emilie, stern and skeptical. “You really expect us to believe that your arrival, at the same time as the ship is attacked, was a coincidence?”
“It was a coincidence for me,” Emilie told him, exasperated. Again, she was being accused of things she hadn't done and being questioned like a criminal. Maybe it's me, she thought. Maybe her face and manner were guilty and suspicious, and she had never noticed before. Whatever it was, she was damn well sick of it. She planted her hands on her hips. “I'm a sixteen year old girl from the country, of a good family. Do I really look like someone who would be scouting for pirates or dock-robbers or whoever those men were?”
“She has a point,” Miss Marlende said to Barshion.
Emilie seized the opportunity to change the subject. She asked Kenar, “Are we really going down through a crack in the bottom of the world under the sea? Is that where you're from?”
Kenar nodded to Miss Marlende. “You explain it better.”
Miss Marlende turned to her. “He's from the world inside ours, the inner world. My father, Dr. Marlende, is a philosophical sorcerer, an expert in aetheric currents.” She eyed Emilie a little uncertainly. “Your family don’t take any of the journals of the various Philosophical societies, do they?”
Miss Marlende didn't seem to think she was capable of understanding the explanation. Emilie would be more angry about that, if she wasn't so afraid that it was true. She had done a great deal of reading, but not of Philosophical Society journals. But there was one thing that she did understand. “I've read about aether-navigators, and how they work,” she said. There were aetheric currents in the water and the air. They were what sorcerers used to make magic, and were invisible and intangible to ordinary people. Though there were always rumors that they could make people or animals ill, or that if a house was built in or near one it would suffer hauntings. But recently, philosophical sorcerers had invented a way for ocean-going ships to navigate by known aetheric currents, as an alternative to compasses and celestial navigation. The novel Lord Rohiro of the Far Seas had explained it in great detail - in between sea battles and pirates and the wooing of foreign princesses.
Miss Marlende seemed relieved. “Oh, then this won't seem quite so odd. Well, not entirely, anyway.” She continued, “My father had been fascinated with the theories that there was another world inside the earth, that the center of the earth was hollow and that it was a nexus of aetheric currents. He began experimenting with aetheric currents in the sea, and below it, as a possible way to contact that world. It all turned out to be far more complicated than the original theory implied, but eventually my father developed an engine that could travel within the aetheric currents, powered by them, and he built a ship to test it on.”
Caught up, Emilie said in a rush, “And he took the ship on an expedition to the Hollow World, and something happened and he and the crew were trapped, and Kenar came to tell you where he was and get help.” Miss Marlende blinked in surprise, Barshion frowned, and Kenar lifted a brow. Emilie winced at herself. She had to remember, she couldn't trust these people, and they really had no reason to trust her. Pretend you're at home, and you have to watch every word you say, she told herself. But at the moment, there was nothing she could do but explain, “When I was hiding on board, I overheard Dr. Barshion and Lord Engal talking about that part. But the rest was new.”
“When did you overhear this?” Barshion asked, still watching her skeptically.
“When you were in that lounge with the porcelain stove. I was in the steward's cubby,” Emilie said, glad she was able to prove it. She was a runaway, not a liar.
“Oh, yes.” Barshion sat back with a sigh. “We did discuss it there. And only someone who was hiding in the steward's cupboard would know that.”
Mollified, Emilie felt the tension in her shoulders relax. At least Barshion was willing to admit that she was telling the truth. And she really didn't want to talk about herself anymore. She looked at Kenar, reminded of all the questions she wanted ask him. “Are all the people down in the Hollow World like you?”
“No,” Kenar said, absently, looking past Emilie and Miss Marlende, at the port. “The Cirathi are explorers, traders. We travel far, and see many different places and kinds of people. We learn languages with great speed, compared to others; I learned Menaen from Dr. Marlende and Jerom and the rest of their crew, before coming here.” His voice turning wry, he added, “Lord Engal finds that suspicious.”
Miss Marlende said wearily, “Sometimes I think he finds everything suspicious.”
She was looking out the port too, and Emilie turned and saw the water beyond the rail was now dark as pitch, impenetrable by the ship's lights. There was nothing out there to betray that they were traveling through water, not even bubbles. A shudder crept up Emilie's spine. They must be very deep underwater, already, and some distance out to sea. And we're going even deeper.
Dr. Barshion stood, moving to the port. With a trace of concern in his voice, he said, “The bubble seems to be holding.”
“Seems?” Miss Marlende lifted her brows. “If it wasn't, I think we'd know by now.”
Emilie realized the faint sensation of falling, and of forward motion, had ceased. “It doesn't feel like we're going down,” she said. But it was growing colder in the cabin, and moisture trickled down the inside of the port.
“The bubble - the spell protecting the ship and allowing us to breathe - compensates, so we don't feel the weight of the water above us,” Barshion told her.
“Or we'd be crushed like an egg,” Miss Marlende explained.
Emilie nodded. She hadn't thought about the weight of water before, except when she was trying to carry it in a bucket, but now it seemed obvious that all that water above them must be very heavy. Heavy enough to bend or break metal and glass. “How will we get to the Hollow World, again?”
“There are fissures in the sea floor,” Miss Marlende said, her face thoughtful. “Deep ones that lead all the way through, connecting the outer layer of the world with the inner. Passing through them would be impossible, of course, except within the aether currents.”
“Most of this, of course,” Dr. Barshion said dryly, “Is theoretical.”
Kenar snorted quietly. Apparently it wasn't theoretical for him. “But Dr. Marlende did it, didn't he?” Emilie said.
“My father took a different route,” Miss Marlende told her. “He used an airship, and went down through the extinct cauldron of Mount Tovera, on the island of Aerinterre. Kenar took the same route up. The trip has never been made by sea, before.”
That wasn't encouraging. Emilie was still having trouble believing she was here. It had all happened so fast. She asked Kenar, “But why did you come here? I mean, I know it was to get help for Dr. Marlende, but why...? It must be a long way.”
Kenar said, “I owed him a favor.” He turned away from the port and said, “So why does a young girl of good family from the country flee her home?”
Emilie thought, Uh oh. The others hadn't bothered to ask, so she had been hoping to avoid the subject entirely. “I wasn't fleeing,” she said, to buy time. It was a complete lie, she had been fleeing, but the last thing she wanted to do was explain why.
She was saved from further questioning by Dr. Barshion, who said in frustration, “There must be some word by now...”
He went to the door and opened it, and began to interrogate the guard about where everyone was and what was happening. Miss Marlende moved closer to listen, then turned away, muttering to herself in a disgruntled fashion. She said, “It sounds as if we'll be here for a while. They think there might still be some intruders on the ship.” She walked back to the drinks cabinet, frowning at it. “I'm desperate for tea.”
“The steward's cubby should have a tap and a gas ring,” Emilie said, glad to show that she was a little useful. She didn't know much about aetheric magic, but she could do tea. “We can make some, if there's any here.”
Miss Marlende went to ransack the cabinets in the cubby, while Dr. Barshion argued with the guard, Kenar watched the dark water, and Emilie found some mugs and tried to get over the strangeness of doing something so normal in the oddest place in the world.
Emilie made tea, which everyone drank but Kenar, and waited. Miss Marlende and Dr. Barshion talked about aetheric currents in technical detail, with Kenar joining in occasionally. Emilie tried to listen, because some of it was interesting, but it had been a long hard day, and the couch was soft and comfortable. After a time, she drifted off to sleep.
She woke abruptly when the deck shuddered, a vibration that traveled up through the couch and rattled Emilie's bones. She sat up, startled wide awake. “What was that?” The wall clock said she had been asleep almost three hours.
The others were sitting bolt upright, frozen, listening hard. Staring out the port at the bubble, Dr. Barshion said, “I don't know. It's not a terribly good sign.”
Head cocked to listen, Kenar said, “We hit something?”
“I don't think so.” Frowning anxiously, Miss Marlende added, “Perhaps it's just an aberration in the flow-”
The deck shuddered again, more violently, and Emilie's heart dropped to her stomach. She swallowed hard, very aware again of the water pressing in on their fragile bubble. Dr. Barshion strode to the door and pulled it open. The sailor-guard was braced against the wall, looking uneasy. Dr. Barshion said, “I must be allowed to go to the engine rooms. If there is some sort of interruption to the aether current-”
The sailor was saved from the decision to disobey his orders by a thunderous shout from the other end of the corridor. “Barshion!” Lord Engal demanded, “Where the hell are you?”
“Here!” Dr. Barshion stepped out.
“Come along, we've got a problem!”
Barshion hurried away, Miss Marlende and Kenar right behind him. Emilie followed, having no intention of being left behind.
Lord Engal led them down the first stairwell, saying, “Abendle doesn't believe the problem is in the protective spells, but in the motile itself.”
Barshion said, “By 'problem' he means...?”
Taking the stairs two at a time, Engal glanced up at him, his face grim. “He thinks it's not getting enough power from the conventional engines.”
“What's the motile?” Emilie said, keeping her voice low. Her knowledge of the interior workings of steamers ended at Lord Rohiro's fictional pirate ships.
With an impatient glance at her, Miss Marlende replied, “The motile is the engine that my father invented. It lets us travel in the aether by taking in the aetheric stream and expelling it for locomotive power. The aether helps protect the ship from the pressures and forces outside the current, as we travel through the fissure.”
The sound of clanging, banging, and the chug of the engines grew louder until they reached a lower deck with a stained metal floor, low ceilings, and warm damp air. Lord Engal turned down a corridor and led them past several metal hatches. Passing one, Emilie got a glimpse of a room filled with mist and smelling thickly of wet earth and green plants. She stopped, startled, peering inside. All she could see were clusters of white things like balloons, or like stuffed sheep's bladders. An older crewman in a disheveled uniform was poking one with a dubious expression. The others were leaving her behind and she hurried after them, asking Kenar, “What's that room for?”
“It's part of the spell that cleans the air inside the bubble,” he said over his shoulder. “I don't know how it works, either.”
The air was growing warmer, and, from the clanging and chugging that seemed to be coming from the deck below them, Emilie thought they must be just above the boiler room. Then they came to an open hatch. Dr. Barshion and Miss Marlende followed Lord Engal inside, but Emilie stopped on the threshold with Kenar.
The cabin was filled with big pipes and tubing, all connected to a round plinth in the center with a large copper dome atop it. Dials and knobs surrounded the base of the plinth, and two crewmen stood there, tools scattered on the floor around them, pointing to the dials, arguing. They stopped as Engal stepped inside. “Any luck, Abendle?” Engal asked.
“No, My Lord.” The man who answered was Southern Menaen also, with grizzled dark hair and deep lines in his face. Both crewmen looked sweaty and exhausted, as if they had been battling something down here for the past hour. “The adjustments didn't help. I don't know-”
His voice tense, Dr. Barshion said, “Open the cover, please.”
As the younger crewman lifted the copper dome, misty steam filled the room, though Emilie couldn't tell the source. Under the dome was a glass ball, and floating inside it was a bubble of silvery white light. Emilie leaned forward, squinting to see. It wasn't a light, it was a liquid. She could tell from the way it moved. It had an opalescent quality to it, as if it were a liquid drop of pearl. Blue light crackled under the glass, like a miniature lightning strike, and Emilie flinched.
So did everyone else. Miss Marlende said grimly, “That shouldn't be happening.”
“What is it?” Emilie whispered to Kenar.
“It's quickaether,” he told her softly. “It powers the motile, and the other spells the ship needs to travel the aether currents.”
The crackling light inside the glass flickered suddenly. The deck shuddered in response and the ship around them groaned. Emilie swallowed in a suddenly dry throat. That couldn't be good, she thought. The ship sounded as if it was strained nearly past bearing.
Barshion checked all the dials, spoke quietly to the older crewman Abendle, and turned some of the knobs. Then he stepped back from the plinth. His expression wasn't encouraging.
Watching him worriedly, Lord Engal said, “You look blank. I'd like to believe that's a clever ploy to frighten me right before you tell me that of course you know how to fix it.”
Barshion shook his head, baffled. “I don't understand what's wrong- All the spell's parameters are correct, but the engine is still failing.”
Miss Marlende took a sharp breath. “Then we've got to surface. How close to the boundary are we?”
Engal said, “We've just passed it. We entered the fissure just off the coast and the current's carried us through, just as we theorized.”
Kenar didn't seem surprised, but Dr. Barshion and Miss Marlende stared at Engal. “You didn't inform us,” Barshion said, startled and angry. “If you-”
“I was rather busy; we had three dock-raiders holding out in the forward hold who decided to fight to the death.” Engal lifted his brows. “We may be past the boundary, but we're still some distance from your father's last known position. I estimate several more hours of travel, at least. If we leave the current now-”
“But we can surface, that's the important point,” Miss Marlende said urgently.
Barshion waved an impatient hand. “I don't think we have a choice. It's either surface intact, now, or surface later as a smashed mass of metal.”
Engal nodded sharply. “Then we'll surface now.”
Emilie and Kenar stepped hastily out of the way as Lord Engal plunged out of the cabin and back down the corridor. Dr. Barshion stayed behind, but Miss Marlende dashed after Lord Engal, her boot heels tapping on the metal floor. Kenar followed her and Emilie hurried after him. Boundary, fissure, surface, she thought. It couldn't mean what it sounded like. Except that it couldn't mean anything else. She asked, “We're not going back up, back to the harbor, are we? We're already there, in the center of the world? That's what the black water meant?”
“Yes.” He sounded more relieved than worried, and she remembered they were going toward his home.
“But so fast...” She had thought it would take days.
“The aether currents move through water and air at a pace faster than anything could travel without magic.” He threw a quick glance down at her. “But we're here sooner than I expected. It must have something to do with the sea.”
She meant to ask him if it had been a long journey for him, flying up through the volcano, but Engal was already pounding back up the stairs and Emilie had no breath to talk.
They hurried after him, forward down a passage, passing a couple of short corridors lined with cabin doors. Everything was as rich as the lounge areas: fine wood, polished brass. They went up a set of stairs to the bridge, to a passage that opened directly into a chartroom. There was a big table in the center, and large cabinets for maps against the walls.
Four crewmen were there, all in the black livery. The oldest man looked up, frowning. It was the officer who had ordered Kenar off the deck and sent him to be confined in the lounge. He said, “Lord Engal, are we-”
“We're going to surface, Captain Belden, prepare the crew,” Engal said, moving past the crewmen into the wheelhouse.
The wheelhouse had a curved outer wall, with large ports all along it, now looking out on the black water. There was also a brass-bound wheel, a speaking tube, and an engine telegraph, for transmitting the captain's commands to the men in the engine rooms. In the center was a waist-high cabinet of polished wood, the top formed out of a heavy glass hexagon. Beneath the glass, something was glowing with a faint silver light. Engal stepped to it and carefully lifted off the top. Emilie edged closer, and saw that there were metal plates inside, rings and wheels, something like an astrolabe. He made a minute adjustment, and Emilie felt a sudden push upward, as if the deck was moving up under her feet. She stumbled, sudden vertigo making her head swim.
Kenar and Miss Marlende went to the railing at the front of the wheelhouse. In the chartroom the captain was frantically giving orders to secure the hatches, batten down this and that.
The water was growing lighter, and Emilie made out the shapes of rock, like a cliff face, a short distance off their bow. She gasped, suddenly realizing just how fast they were moving. Faster than the fastest train, as fast as falling down a cliff, only in reverse. It was the most exhilarating sensation, like how she had imagined flying.
Then the rock fell away and the light was turning blue-green, coloring everything inside the wheelhouse. The ship was moving up through something that looked like an underwater forest, tall stalks of frilly seaweed bending away from their bow and the bubble of magic protecting it. Emilie moved along the port, fascinated, watching the quicksilver flashes as fish raced away from the intrusion.
She could tell the ship was slowing down; bubbles rushed up past the ports as they left the seaweed forest behind. Emilie felt the deck push at her feet again, as if the ship had been lifted on a wave. Her heart pounding, she stepped forward to grab the rail.
A bell rang somewhere in the depths of the ship and Captain Belden took the speaking tube, saying, “All hands, brace for surfacing.”
And then the ship rolled over onto its side. Some people staggered, but no one fell. Emilie held onto the rail, gritting her teeth against the urge to scream. Water rushed past outside, the whole ship bobbed upright like a wooden toy in a pond, and Emilie wished she hadn't eaten that sausage roll back at the tap house. But then the motion gentled, and they were floating on fairly low waves. Emilie stared out the port, but couldn't see anything past the golden bubble.
“We did it,” Miss Marlende said, awe in her voice.
Kenar let out his breath in a hiss, then leaned on the railing. His shoulders slumped in relief.
Miss Marlende turned to Lord Engal. Sounding a little breathless, she asked, “Should we lower the spell bubble?”
Lord Engal looked down at the device inside the plinth. “From what Barshion said, I don't think we'll have to. It was about to shatter at any-”
Past the port, the golden light of the bubble dissolved, and they were looking out over a sea.
There is a sky, was the first thing Emilie thought. It was a crystal blue, bright and pure, streaked with the white of clouds. And the water under the ship was clear as glass. She could see a school of blue and yellow fish, flickering some distance below the surface.
“What is this place?” someone whispered in astonishment.
Emilie turned to look out the other side of the port, and drew in a breath of pure wonder. They were floating past a flooded city.
She moved to the railing, staring in amazement. It was spread out all across the starboard side, all made of gray-white mottled stone. The tops of square pylons, columned walkways, and towers with odd spiral curves gleamed above the expanse of clear water. Tall feathery trees stood in the sea, waves lapping against their trunks, their soft emerald green foliage vivid against the sky.
Emilie looked up at Lord Engal, standing next to her, and said, “It's beautiful.”
He glanced down at her, smiling, then took a second startled look. His brows drawing together, he said, “Who the hell are you?”