Emilie & the Hollow World - By Martha Wells Page 0,8
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