Emilie & the Hollow World - By Martha Wells Page 0,18
or so. Emilie thought it might be because there were smaller structures in this area, only a single story tall, covered completely by the flood. But even standing on a chair and craning her neck, she hadn't been able to see any sign of it below the clear water. She had caught glimpses of mosaics, blue and green and flecks of other colors, set in plazas between the towers.
Then a shrill whistle from the bow startled her. She heard footsteps pounding along the upper deck, and rushed to follow. She ducked inside, went up to the top deck, and ran around to the bow, to the open observation area just below the wheelhouse. A few crewmen were already there, and Emilie saw immediately what had caused the lookout to call the alarm.
Some distance ahead, just visible over the top of a half-sunken colonnade, was a ship's mast. “What is it?” Emilie said. From what she understood, they were still a long distance from where Dr. Marlende's airship waited, and this looked like a sailing vessel. “A Cirathi ship?” Maybe Kenar's people had come this way looking for help.
One of the crewmen gave her an odd look. “Don't know, Miss. It looks like a wreck.”
Kenar and Miss Marlende arrived a moment later, with Lord Engal striding up behind them. Miss Marlende was asking Kenar, “Is it your ship?”
He went to the rail, staring hard toward the mast. The crewmen moved away from him a little uneasily. As the Sovereign drew closer, two more masts were visible, but the ship seemed to be sitting at an odd angle. He said, “No, it isn't the Lathi. I don't recognize...”
The Sovereign was moving past the colonnade that had blocked their view, and now they could see the hull of the ship. It was a wreck, lodged half atop one side of the pitched roof of a half-submerged structure. It was a long hull, longer than the Sovereign or even the Merry Bell, but the steam-driven paddlewheel on its listing port side was smaller, as was the smoke stack in the stern. Sails still clung in withered shards to the ruined mast, planking along the deck had rotted, and the metal hull was scraped and discolored by rust. “It's from our world,” Miss Marlende said. “But how-”
“It's the Scarlet Star, by God,” Lord Engal said, lowering his spyglass. “You can still make out the name on the bow.” He turned, waving up at the wheelhouse. He strode away, back toward the hatch that led inside.
“What's the Scarlet Star?” Miss Marlende asked, before Emilie could.
One of the older crewmen said, “She was a cargo steamer, heading toward Meneport, when she went missing in a freak storm. This was about ten years ago. There was always something thought funny about it. There was no sighting from the Southern Light, no wreckage washed up anywhere ashore.” He looked toward the battered wreck again, brow furrowed. “I guess this explains it.”
“How is that possible?” Emilie asked. She hadn't heard the story of the Scarlet Star before, but it had happened a long time ago. “It wouldn't have had an aetheric engine, would it?”
Everyone must have been wondering the same thing, because all the men were looking to Miss Marlende for the answer. Frowning, she said, “No, it couldn't have. But there is a theory that violent electrical storms do cause aetheric currents to act in very odd ways.”
Kenar said slowly, “Very odd, meaning...snatch a ship from the surface world and bring it through the rift in the ocean floor and deposit it here?”
“But it wouldn't have the spell bubble, like we did,” one of the crewmen protested. “It would be crushed when it was dragged under, wouldn't it?” It was the young man who had been helping Abendle with the aetheric engine. He looked as if he had been working all night, his curly hair flat with sweat and his uniform rumpled.
“It wasn't crushed, and it got here somehow,” Emilie pointed out.
“Yes, but Seaman Ricard is right,” Miss Marlende said, leaning on the rail and studying the wreck thoughtfully. “There must have been some protection for it. Perhaps the storm caused a pocket of air to form, and that was what was pulled through the rift, with the ship brought along as part of the pocket.”
Ricard looked at the wreck again. “So there could have been survivors?”
Kenar sound grim. “For a time, maybe. There's no help out here, no fresh water, no food.”