Encante (9 page)

“Not intentionally. He realised very quickly that she was still nursing, and did everything he could to hide the fact, but Uncle took a liking to her—this was long before Vee was aboard, you understand.”

I was beginning to see where this was going, and I did not care for the direction at all. “He took her as his . . . companion?”

“Yes. Teddy told him she was in no state for any kind of work, and Father had made it clear that she belonged to him, not Cage, but Uncle has never been one to accept what he is told. She was aboard his ship, under the care of his physician, as far as he was concerned that meant he owned her. It wasn’t long before he realised she was nursing. He confronted Teddy, who confessed, fearing for his own life. Cage expected to find a childling encante, instead he found my sister. Teddy’s never forgiven himself.”

“And your uncle reported Drusilla’s mother?”

“No, Escher, my uncle
killed
Drusilla’s mother.” He stared at me for a long moment, his face hardened to the reality. “He would have killed Drusilla too, had she not shown so much potential.”

“You mean to say Drusilla is forced to . . . exist here, with the man who murdered her own mother? That’s horrific! Does she know he did so?” I checked myself. “Of course she does, how could she not?”

“Had she not gleaned it from either my father or uncle, my own mother would have ensured she knew. Minerva takes great pleasure in tormenting my sister with that particular fact. She abhors the notion of ‘half-breeds’. If she knew there was another encante aboard capable of conceiving one, she would take action herself.”

“You can’t mean to say . . . ?”

“That is exactly what I mean to say. They’re twins, you know, my mother and uncle. That’s why he has Liza and Beth aboard: he has an odd fixation with twins. Never were two siblings so alike as my mother and uncle. If my mother knew about Mae, she would kill the girl herself. I sometimes find myself wondering if Mae wouldn’t be better off dead.”

“Surely not!”

“Imagine it, Simeon.” He grabbed my arm and shook it with far more ferocity than I would have expected. “Imagine someone repeatedly killing your children. Would you not sooner die yourself?”

That silenced me.

A noise startled us both, and we spun in unison, expecting to see Garrett and his damnable boxlock. It was only Piccolo, however, glancing at us curiously before sliding into the water and disappearing from sight.

“He wears no tail,” I observed. “What prevents him from simply leaving?”

“An infernal device of another sort. Piccolo is charged with ensuring none enter the water without their tails. He is always here. Somewhere. I’m honestly not at all certain he even sleeps. Garrett, however, is not always here to mind him, and as you saw when you arrived, those tails are weighty; they leave the encante exhausted. He has a different machine, implanted in his spine. It works in a similar manner: if he goes too far from the hull it paralyses him. Despite their resilience and abilities underwater, they do need to breathe also. Eventually he would drown.”

“Why do they not all have this device? As disgusting as they are, they must surely be better than those tails. They seem such a burden.”

“They’re expensive, and difficult to implant. Three of my uncle’s other farmers died in the attempt to perfect it.”

I leant against the side of the gazebo, my vision blurring slightly, the lights of the eerie waters suddenly seeming too bright. Dizzying. Too many things about this ship sickened me to my core. Axel seemed flustered at having been seen by the farmer, but that did not stop him clasping one of my arms, hauling me upright and leaning in to whisper to me once more.

“You have the means to leave this place, Simeon. Do so now, while you still can. And take my sister with you.”

I was still reeling from the shock of his comment when he abruptly released my arm and vanished, leaving me staggering.

The darkness of the belvedere beckoned and I stumbled inside, intending to collapse on the cushions that reminded me so much of Drusilla—the very sight of them soothed my head.

A moment’s rest
, I thought,
and I’ll feel well enough to return to my cabin.

Instead, I was startled half out of my skin by a movement in the shadows, and the sudden knowledge of another presence in close proximity. Vee scurried out of the gazebo, pushing past me and flitting away across the platforms. She was soundless upon her bare feet, and appeared almost weightless; her passage failed to cause the suspended walkways to sway as they did when trod upon by booted human feet.

I stared after her, recalling the last time I had stumbled upon Axel here: the open wine, the flower I had so carelessly taken for Drusilla, which had quite clearly been intended for someone else. Why had I not thought to wonder for whom the boy had brought it? Or, for that matter, why he had been alone in the dark drinking wine. I recalled how he’d spoken so passionately about the treatment of the encante, how he’d been raised with a clearly beloved sibling who was half their species, and how his own father had apparently fallen in love with one such as Vee.

Like father, like son
, I thought wryly, returning to my cabin in a mild daze, my mind awash with speculation.

It was in one of the corridors I first noticed the innocuous sound—a tapping so quiet I’m certain I would not have noticed it had it not been the middle of the night. The ship was as silent as the grave, and even the music I had heard earlier had fallen silent.
Tittle-tattle
, it seemed to follow me, and when I paused to look about me, it paused also, as if holding its breath, waiting for me to move once more. It was only by continuing, as if I were untroubled and wasn’t listening for it, that I came to notice the spider, scuttling along in my wake. It moved beneath the gridded floor at my feet, venturing out occasionally and scurrying part way up the wall, to navigate a junction, or a cluster of piping. Small and metallic, bronzed to a dulled shine, it sported legs articulated by complex mechanisms, allowing them to disjoin and move in the most peculiar ways. Its back was awash down one side with tightly packed cogs, like the innards of the clocks the Kabbalah had for so long withheld from us. It whirred away at an almost inaudible level.

I knew of such creatures, creations of Bravas, a metal world populated by metallic beings, the birthplace of some of the finest technology in the Fifteen Solars. Even the Kabbalah couldn’t rival Bravasian ingenuity. I had seen such spiders aboard vessels before, most often sky ships, which required constant maintenance but had very small crews, usually only one engineer, a handful at most. Yet something told me this was not for maintenance. It was not just the fact the creature was following me, nor was it the fact it had not so much as paused as it passed a faulty pipe that spewed steam—it was the large, multifaceted gemstone embedded in the other side of its back, glinting, oscilating, and if I wasn’t very much mistaken, staring straight at me.

What was it Axel had said about his uncle’s infernal devices? I couldn’t quite recall, but something told me I had just encountered one. And it appeared to be tasked with monitoring me as covertly as it possibly could.

Chapter Eleven

I
t was around evenfall the following day when I was called to the captain’s lounge. Time had started to elude me by that point, in so much as time was ever understandable in a universe bereft of time. I often wondered what life must have been like before the Kabbalah imprisoned the Horae, locking Time away in the clock tower along with the goddesses who controlled it. I wondered what it would be like to be permitted to own a device as simple as one which told you the time. I was conscious that days on Idele did not equate to days on Howl. One did not need a watch to know that sunlight lasted longer on one world than it did on another, that darkness was endless on a third world but almost nonexistent on a fourth. There were fifteen worlds in our universe and I had visited them all. Days passed, planets turned, weeks became months became years became decades, and before you knew it, a millennia or more had passed since the Kabbalah robbed the worlds of Time. Time passed, yet time was imprisoned.

Only the Kabbalah controlled time; only the Kabbalah could move from one world to another whenever they chose. It was a strange state of existence, this odd power they held over all of us, simply by being in control of Time. I am certain the philosophers would explain it better than I; Oswald Deryn, now there was a man who understood, a man who perhaps understood far better than the Kabbalah themselves. But he was gone now, and that understanding had died with him. Cane, try as he might, could not equal his mentor any more than I could equal my own. I was left floundering, knowing only that something had been taken from us, something so fundamental to human existence that our very freedom was compromised without it.

In the hierarchy of existence in this universe, humans stood over encante as the Kabbalah stood over humans, and the goddesses, who should have presided over all, were chained in a metal tower. I was beginning to sympathise with them, having spent so long now within the metal walls of the Narwhal.

I was starting to miss the feel of sunlight on my skin, of wind in my face, and despite my early enjoyment of the local cuisine, I was developing a stringent detestation for shellfish. Perhaps my enjoyment of the food had simply been soured by a greater understanding of the living conditions endured by those who prepared it.

The sailor who brought me Everett’s summons also lead me to the room in which I was to attend him, yet another place I’d previously been unaware existed. I was beginning to think of the ship as a rabbit warren: endless tunnels leading up and down and around and back, burrows, dens, lairs and hideaways. The sailor identified himself only as Pipkin and I was at a loss as to whether that was his first or last name. It became quickly evident he was Everett’s lackey, and fiercely loyal to his captain.

After a confounding journey through the belly of the ship, Pipkin released the seal of a door the same as any other aboard, and beckoned me through. I stepped across the threshold, for once managing not to trip, with the expectation of some form of drawing room.

“By the gods!” I exclaimed.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Everett stood braced against the railing of an immense balcony. Beyond, a great eye of glass expanded beyond the sides of the ship, exposing crystalline views of the ocean on all sides, save a narrow strip directly behind him where it attached to the hull. The window descended below, at least two more decks, and above as many again, yet it was neither the size nor the presence of the view that so astonished me.

“What’s happened to the ocean?” Far from the darkening waters of the deeps I had seen upon my arrival, and again only that morning when Piccolo had taken me on my promised tour of the fields, the water was now rubescent, undulating with light as if touched by the rays of the sunlight I so craved. Schools of fish were abundant and, as I watched, a larger shadow appeared in my peripheral. I leaped back, startled, as a great whale drifted by.

“He’s not nearly as close as he looks,” Cage informed me. “Don’t worry yourself.”

“He’s magnificent.” I watched as the great beast’s tale retreated. “We have similar creatures at home, but they could never be found at these depths; they need to come up for air.”

“As do we, and soon.” I glanced at Everett and my hand strayed without thinking to the compass in my pocket. His eyes noted the gesture but he said nothing. “I told you we had a limited air supply. It’s been running short for two days—I’ve had Hoffrey ration it.”

That explained why I’d felt as if the air were getting thinner the longer I was aboard—it was. “Have we enough to return to the surface?”

“No. That was never an option. However our friend there,”—he nodded at the whale—“has just demonstrated there is no need. Our whales need to breathe just as yours do, Escher, and tell me, from whence do you think that light is coming?” He gestured outside.

“I’d assumed more of the plants and fish, like those in the hydroponics bay.” I stepped towards the railings and stretched out for a better look. “Although . . .” I braced one arm on the railing and twisted myself around, contorting so as to see up as far as possible. “It looks to be coming from above.”

“And so it is!” Everett thundered a laugh that echoed around the window. “I’ve done it, lad.” He slapped me on the back. “I’ve found it!”

“This is the passageway you sought?” I had to admit feeling a sudden thrill at the prospect. “You’ve truly found an entrance into your Hollow Earth?”

“More than that, I believe we’re already within.”

Even as we spoke, I saw what he meant; the ocean without was lightening, while the air pressure within was subtly changing. A few moments more and my ears popped painfully. I swallowed hard, attempting to equalise.

“We’re ascending.”

“Indeed.” Newton crossed the room towards us, his cane clacking on the metal deck. “But ascending into
what?”
Behind him trailed his assistant, Harrow, his face equal parts bemusement and anticipation. “Our instruments indicate we’re far beneath the surface of the ocean, and yet . . .”

He let the sentence hang in the air as the four of us turned our attention to the window. I found myself expelling a breath I’d not meant to hold as the submarine rocked suddenly and then righted itself. I caught hold of the rail to keep from falling as I was flung sideways by the motion. I gasped, my mind catching up with my eyes.