After two days of steaming southwest, Elizabeth could no longer dip a jug fully under the surface of the fresh water. By the morning of the third day she had to tilt the cask and scoop with a mug. And then, when that was no longer possible, she found herself bending half inside it, bailing with a soup spoon into a cup.
That last mouthful she kept for herself. Then it was dry.
Finding the captain’s cabin empty, she climbed out onto the deck. The sky was deep blue above and too bright to look into without squinting. The only cloud was a streak of white near the northern horizon. The ocean had grown calmer the further they steamed. With the engine no longer battling against the swell, their speed had increased. A fine spray from the paddlewheels caught a rainbow on the shadow side of the ship.
She found Siân and Ekua on the quarterdeck, conferring with two of the other Sargassans. Fidelia was standing back, just out of their circle. A large canvas bag lay between them. Elizabeth had seen it hauled across from the underwater ship, but had been given no intimation as to what it contained.
“The water barrel is empty,” she announced, once they’d acknowledged her. “When shall we have fresh supplies?” It was one of those “little” questions that might have returned a big answer, but in reality never did.
Siân said: “You can help us. This job needs many hands.”
Ekua and one of the others got down and delved into the bag. First out were four coils of thin rope, which they placed on the deck, side by side, as if the precise arrangement was important. Then came a bundle of long wooden spars, taller than a man, and numerous shorter ones. Finally they heaved out a great quantity of pale blue canvas, which Elizabeth took to be some kind of tent. But when the spars had been slotted into pockets in the fabric, it began to take the shape of a huge kite.
“Sit on the wing,” Ekua said, snapping her fingers and pointing.
Elizabeth jumped to the task. Fidelia took the opposite side. And just in time, because the wind was trying to lift it. Ekua worked fast, inserting the shorter spars crosswise, stretching squares of canvas. The last of these formed a series of open-ended boxes between the two wings, pushing it proud of the deck.
With this new sail area, the kite began to twitch. Siân fastened ropes, one on each side, and then something that looked like a trapeze artist’s harness. Ekua followed just behind, testing the knots. When everything had been assembled, she stepped to each of the Sargassans in turn and embraced them with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. One woman she kissed full on the lips. It seemed to Elizabeth a kind of ceremony, for everyone knew their part. The lip kiss surprised her, though; not that such a thing would be done, but that it would be done in open gaze.
Ekua put on a pair of goggles and a tight-fitting leather hat. Then she sat on the deck and buckled herself into the harness. The others looped ropes twice around the stern railings at the very rear of the quarterdeck.
“The Unicorn will sail,” Ekua said, with gravity, like a priest intoning the first line of the Lord’s Prayer. The words made no sense to Elizabeth, unless it was a reference to the kite itself.
“Ready?” Siân asked.
“Ready,” said Ekua.
The others took hold of the kite.
“Get off it now!”
Elizabeth obeyed, rolling from the wing as Fidelia did the same on the other side. The entire structure bucked, jumping from the deck, turning as it lifted, passing over the railing and coming to the limit of its short rope with a sound like the thump of a slack drum. There it danced, suspended over the water behind the ship. The ropes of Ekua’s harness were long enough to have remained loose. But now she began to adjust them, standing as she brought them shorter, climbing up to sit on the railing, where she took in the last of the slack.
“Ready?” Siân asked for the second time.
Instead of answering, Ekua made a circle of her thumb and first finger. The others began to let out the ropes. The kite eased away from the stern and she swung free, dangling beneath it. At first it seemed she might be dunked in the ocean, but the kite began to climb again as they let out more rope. Out and up it went until it was level with the crow’s nest. They continued to pay out the rope turn by turn and the kite went higher still, twice as high as the mast. More perhaps; it was hard to tell. Ekua was a dot, swinging below it. Elizabeth felt a kind of awestruck horror as she watched. The solemnity of those parting embraces had been real.
“Why?” she asked. “What’s she doing?”
“She’s going to show us the way.”
Only two of the ropes had been used, the others lay where they’d been placed on the deck.
“We keep them for a day of stronger winds,” said Siân.
Elizabeth had to shade her eyes to look at the kite. From such a vantage point Ekua would be able to watch over a great expanse of ocean. It was said that from the top of the crow’s nest, a sailor with a keen eye could spot another tall ship from twenty miles, should the air be crystal clear. Ekua’s view would be far wider. The Sargassans seemed to have no means of signalling at night from ship to distant ship. They’d marvelled at the Iceland Queen’s helio. Yet here they were, sending an observer hundreds of feet into the air, something the Company couldn’t do. The technology was simple, yet to Elizabeth it seemed breathtaking in its audacity.
All on deck were staring at the kite; a dot in the vast sky. She could feel their excitement. Then one of them exclaimed: “She’s moving!”
It took a moment for Elizabeth to understand what was happening. The kite had dipped and was swinging around towards the starboard side of the ship.
“She can steer it?”
“She shows us the way!” cried Siân. And then, to one of the others: “Bring us around. Ten degrees to port!”
Elizabeth gripped the railing as they began to turn and the deck tilted under her feet. She watched the ropes shift back into alignment with the ship. The kite lifted once more, attaining its greatest height. Then it was descending again.
“Bring her in,” called Siân.
They began to haul, three to a rope, keeping time, coiling each line on the deck as they went, loop after loop.
“Where are we going?” Elizabeth asked; a big question this time.
“Home,” said Siân. “We’re going home to Mother.”
Ekua, Siân and the other women took to standing near the prow whenever they could, staring at a smudge of haze hanging low in the sky directly ahead. As the hours passed, the haze resolved into a column of smoke, and then into several separate columns, which Elizabeth supposed to be ships. And somewhere among them would be the flagship of the floating nation.
The world she had come from seemed the opposite of the world she was entering. The Company was an outpost of the Gas-Lit Empire. By contrast, she’d been told that the Sargassans were a nation of eels, an assemblage of runaways and pirates. The Company dominated the ocean through the statement of its mighty presence. The Sargassans kept hidden, attacking from below the waves. She’d had to disguise herself as a man to be commissioned as scientific officer. Now she’d had to reveal herself as a woman to avoid being imprisoned by the Sargassans. Yet, for all these oppositions, it seemed that both sides had chosen to call their flagship “Mother”.
“Have you ever been free?” asked Ekua, when Elizabeth went to stand with them at the prow.
“When I was a child.”
“Siân said you were born in a travelling show?”
“It’s true.”
“And you did magic?”
“Yes.”
“Did your mother teach you?”
Elizabeth thought before answering. “I don’t remember my mother.” Then, to avoid more questions coming, she asked one of her own: “Were you always Sargassan?”
Ekua shook her head. “I was born Ashanti. When I was twelve, my father decided to take me to London. It was the best thing he ever did for me. Our ship was wrecked off Cape Verde. I thank all the gods of the ocean that I came to be free.”
Elizabeth had yet to make out the profiles of ships ahead, though the columns of smoke were ever more distinct and it seemed they couldn’t be far. “Siân said that when we arrive, I’m to be tested. What kind of test will it be?”
The women glanced at each other; an unspoken consultation. Then Ekua said, “The prisoners will be hungry. You best go feed them.”
It was Lena, a woman of Scandinavian appearance, who did much of the guarding duty. She wasn’t large or conspicuously muscled but she walked with the flow of a dancer. Or a knife fighter. Elizabeth had seen enough of both to recognise the signs. No movement happened by chance. It was she who escorted the cook to the galley, then stood in the passageway to watch as he organised the meal. Even in stillness she was a study in precision.
“There’s no water,” Elizabeth said.
“Then what would you have me do?” asked the cook.
“There are apples. And there’s still hardtack from yesterday.”
“You mean there’s no water for no one? Or no water for us below?” Anger edged his words.
Elizabeth patted the side of the cask. The hollow sound was answer enough.
“We’ll die,” said the cook.
Elizabeth shook her head.
“Then are we to make land?”
Elizabeth glanced at Lena. Finding no clue in the woman’s impassive expression, she said: “Water will come.”
“And what happens when we do make land? Will they kill us then?”
“No! Surely not.”
“There’s talk. They’re saying we’ll be roasted in fires – that they’re cannibals.” This he hissed under his breath.
“Where’s all this talk from, then? Is it dreams? Or has someone had a vision down there in the hold?”
“It’s talk. That’s all.”
“Then put it aside! Let’s make the best of things. We’ve a good supply of meat.”
“With no water?”
“It’s what we have.”
She selected the best looking of the hams from the store room and hefted it back to the galley. Salt crystals on the skin crunched against the table as she laid it down.
When the cook reached for the knife, Elizabeth saw Lena adjust her stance. It was no more than a shift of balance but it told a story. When he set to carving the joint she returned to her original balance.
The serrated blade cut easily through the cured meat, revealing pink flesh below the outer surface. Ordinarily the cook would have been the one to measure out the stores and make sure no one took overmuch. There’d be times when this put him on the wrong side of the crew. As a fellow prisoner his role had been reversed. She saw him cutting the slices extra thick. They might thank him for it at first, but there’d be no water until they reached the Sargassan fleet. Hunger might be better than the thirst they’d suffer after so much salt.
When it came to sorting the apples, the cook picked up the keg, looked inside and shook it. “There’s few enough left,” he said. “I’ll take the lot.”
Lena didn’t object and Elizabeth was happy to let it pass. She was left to carry a load of meat and hardtack, which had been heaped together on a large wooden tray.
Their first stop was the engine room. The chief engineer nodded a greeting towards her, but didn’t smile. The cook delved in the barrel and handed him two apples. Elizabeth held the tray for him.
“No water?”
“I’m sorry.”
“And we’re burning through the oil,” he said. “We can’t keep up this speed for long.”
“I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”
“Do you think so?”
He selected a small slice of the ham and a larger square of hardtack. “Be careful who you make alliances with, Miss Barnabus.”
“That name’s gone,” said Lena. “Her name’s Elizabeth now.”
At the door of the cargo hold, Lena peered through the grille, checking left and right before turning the key. The cook went in first. Elizabeth took a deep breath before following. There were too many men in too small a space and the slop buckets were never emptied soon enough. The smell had grown worse by the day. The insults too. They’d called her traitor at first. Now they muttered worse things whenever she was within range of hearing.
The cook squatted and lowered the apple cask to the floor. He reached inside it and seemed to select one for himself before standing. There’d been an awkwardness to his hand movement in the barrel. A premonition prickled at the back of her neck.
“You’re a whore!”
The words had come from the back of the room, spat with such hatred that they caught in her mind, distracting her from the thing that she should have been thinking about as she knelt to place the tray of food next to the cask.
She felt the move before it happened; a shift in the rank air, a hiss of shifting cloth. The cook barged her shoulder and she went sprawling. Hands grabbed her wrists and one of her ankles. She was being dragged. She twisted one arm free. But they still had her. Someone grabbed her hair.
No words were said, but in that fraction of a second the prisoners all scrambled back from the door. They hauled her to her knees. Something cold pressed against her neck. She glimpsed the cook’s hand and a flash of polished steel before they yanked her hair again, pulling her head up. The blade’s serrations pricked the underside of her jaw.
“Back off or she’s dead!”
She couldn’t see who’d said it.
Lena was standing just beyond the doorway, a pistol raised. She shifted back half a step, then flicked her left hand forwards. Elizabeth felt her hair released. The serrated galley knife clattered to the floor. The cook dropped and twisted onto his side. The handle of a throwing knife projected from his face. He brushed at it, as if it was no more than a speck of dirt, though the blade was buried deep in his skull.
Then he was still and everyone else had started to move.
Elizabeth felt her arms grabbed from behind. Locklight snatched the galley knife from the floor. Lena aimed the gun at him. He froze. Then she raised her aim above his head and fired. The gunshot reverberated from the metal walls, disorientating. Locklight rushed towards Lena, but she slammed the door closed before he could reach her. The sound of voices came back first; shouts sounding like whispers. Sulphurous gunpowder smoke hung in the air.
The knife was at her throat again. They pushed her up to the door, ramming her face to the grille. Lena was reloading her pistol, standing beyond any attempt to grab through the bars. Her movements were unhurried, tamping down the shot, tipping a pinch of black powder into the pan, cocking the hammer.
Someone was wailing. “They’re going to kill us! They’re going to kill us all!”
A low boom reverberated around the hold. A sharp line of daylight broke in from above as the cargo hold covers swung away. The hands that had kept her pressed to the door now wrenched her away from it, twisting her around. Silhouettes interrupted the square of sky above.
“We’ll kill her!” shouted Captain Woodfall.
A shot sounded. He crumpled. There was blood this time, spreading from a hole in his chest.
Two of the other men dropped to their knees and raised their hands. But Locklight hauled Elizabeth sideways along the wall to the corner of the hold, keeping his body behind hers. The serrated knife was at her throat. They might still shoot him, but it would take a steady hand if the bullet wasn’t to go through her body first.
“What do you want?” called Siân from above.
“Let the crew free,” shouted Locklight. “You can keep me. I’m a captain. I’m a valuable hostage. And keep the Iceland Queen. In return, you get this woman back alive.”
“I give you a choice,” called Siân. “Kill her if you’ve a fancy for it. She’s not yet one of us. But know that if you do, I’ll use that same knife and cut the balls from every one of you. Either way, you’ll be alive – if you don’t bleed too bad. I give you one minute to decide.”
The silhouettes moved back, leaving the sky as an empty square.
“It’s a bluff,” hissed Locklight. “We wait and we press our bargain.”
“She said they won’t kill us,” said Ryan.
“That’s not what she said!”
The two men who’d previously surrendered now lowered their hands, but didn’t get up from their knees, as if caught between two thoughts. The bass rhythm of the engine vibrated through the hold, measuring away their allotted time. The cook lay still. A line of blood was creeping from Woodfall’s body, following the join between two metal plates in the floor. When it had all but reached the feet of one of the sailors, Elizabeth spoke.
“I know you hate me. And you may not believe this, but I’ll say it anyway – they’re not going to let you out of here, except on their terms. Nor would you if things were the other way about. Any threat they make, I believe they’ll carry out – to the letter. But I’ll make you this promise, yield as they’ve asked and I’ll argue your case when we get wherever it is we’re going. If they’ll let me.” Then, turning her head to look back at Captain Locklight, she added: “I’ll argue for your loved ones too, if they’re still alive.”
She could feel the trembling in his arm; Locklight, the man of iron. Taking his hand, she eased it away from her neck and unpeeled his fingers from the galley knife. Then she stepped to the door and offered it through the grille, hilt first.
“And the other one,” Lena said.
The men backed away as she approached the dead cook. Fighting nausea, she braced one hand against his still-warm forehead and gripped the handle of the knife with the other. It took strength to wrench it free. Only then would Lena turn the key and let her out.
Whilst she’d been held – the whole thing could have lasted no more than a couple of minutes – Elizabeth’s experience had flowed with a kind of super-real clarity. Almost a calm. The trembling set in as she left the hold. By the time she was climbing the stairs, she’d broken out in a sweat and her stomach was squirming into a knot.
“The knife… It must have been… He’d hidden it in the barrel…”
Lena stroked her hair. “You’re a warrior, Elizabeth.”
“Two men died.”
“It was their choice.”
Elizabeth’s stomach heaved. She dropped to her knees and threw up. After that she retched three more times. Sitting on the step, she placed her face in her hands. There was no fresh water to wash away the taste. Lena brought her a cup of sea water.
“Swill and spit,” she said, then wiped Elizabeth’s face with a damp cloth. “They did what men do. It’s not your fault.”
“I should have taken more care.”
“No woman’s been left dead by their hands.”
She swilled and spat again. They sat together for a time as Elizabeth’s sweat dried.
“Can you stand yet?” Lena asked.
Elizabeth nodded.
“Then come up top. There’s something you should see.”
On deck, Siân and Ekua beckoned her over. She followed their gaze and saw an island immediately ahead. But not an island like any she’d seen before. It spread, wide and flat. Low trees grew everywhere. Smoke rose from the chimney pipes of houses. But the most unnatural sight were the landlocked ships that seemed to form part of the island itself. Every one of them was upside down, keel pointing to the sky.