man in the water and held his arm out straight to guide the sailors. The man could swim, at least.
A round of gunshots went off this time, a whole broadside, from somewhere beyond the mechanical ship. Kite still couldn’t see anything, but he could hear the French ship now – someone was yelling orders. More black smoke poured into the fog.
The man in the sea vanished underwater for a few seconds, but he came up again. Still, the mechanical ship showed no flag. The blinking light signal went on and on.
‘Sir, do we engage?’ the second mate’s voice called from near the hatchway.
‘She’s got no colours, she could be anyone’s!’ Heecham bellowed back.
When the man in the water reached the end of the rope, he only rested against it, too tired to pull himself up. Someone yelled at him to tie a bowline knot, but he clearly wasn’t a sailor; he only looked blank. Shrapnel tore into the water next to him. The sailors shouted to hurry the fuck up before he was blown apart.
‘Quiet!’ Kite said to them. ‘Quiet, all of you. Sir,’ he called down to the man in the water, ‘listen. I’m going to tell you how to tie a knot that won’t break your ribs when we pull you in, all right? It’s not difficult.’ Everyone gasped as a cannon ball smashed up a plume of water all of ten feet off the bow. On the quarterdeck, Heecham was still telling the helmsman to hold still, and not far off Kite and the sailors, a midshipman was hauling hard on the signal flag ropes, uncoiling a message up the mast:
URGENT identify yourself
Still nothing from the mechanical ship, no flag to show its nation. More shrapnel.
‘Ready?’ Kite said, in what he hoped was a calm voice. It was Officer Trick Number One. If you could sound calm enough, you could claim that everything was absolutely fine, even if the man next to you had just exploded, and people would believe you.
The man in the water nodded. He was shivering so badly he could barely move his hands, but he was doing a hell of a job at not panicking, and he managed the knot on the first try. The second it was done, the sailors leapt on the rope and hauled him out. Kite leaned down over the side to lift him up. The man folded on to the deck soaked and shivering. Kite knelt to start getting the man’s coat off. The water streaming off him was so cold that it hurt to touch.
Through the rails, Kite saw more gun flashes, and then a mammoth fireball exploded across the mechanical ship’s prow. The heat blasted all the way to the Defiance, along with an acrid smell and plumes of pitchy smoke. Sailors jerked back from the rail, swearing. Something blasted into the water right next to the hull, even bumped it. A chunk of one of those great waterwheels, mangled, and so hot it hissed furiously in the water.
The hull ground along something. The helmsman turned them away.
‘Wait, what about …’ The man trailed off. He looked dazed. Hitting the sea would have felt like smacking into something solid from the height he’d fallen.
‘We can’t sail here blind,’ Kite said. He squeezed his hands to make him listen, because the way he was shivering looked more like fear now than cold. ‘Come on, let’s …’
‘Is he a devil?’ someone asked plaintively.
‘No, he’s just cold,’ Kite said with as much authority as he could muster. ‘Move aside, come on. Back to work.’ He helped the man up as well as he could. ‘Are you?’ he added, less sure. ‘Or – the other thing?’
‘No,’ the man managed. He looked scared. ‘Are you a ghost?’
‘No,’ said Kite, perplexed. ‘I’m a signal lieutenant.’
The man looked even more relieved than Kite felt.
His name was Jem Castlereagh. As soon as he was dry, Kite took him to Captain Heecham who, for all his usual stolidity, listened hard. So did Kite. The two senior lieutenants stood a little distance behind Heecham, the lamplight dotting gleams on the silver stripes on their sleeves.
The name of the mechanical ship was the Kingdom. It was not an infernal invention, nor celestial, but one built by ordinary people. It had come from Scotland. It was a vessel surveying for a lighthouse. Jem had been aboard on a government inspection; he was something to do with Parliament and a project to improve lighthouses all round the coast. But