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The other travellers started pushing them towards the door. Though the platform was lost in the steam of the locomotive, the wind brought the smell of salt and tar from the port. Porters. Taxi drivers. There were two porters with wooden seats on their backs; they were waiting for the two Dwarfs who’d been sitting behind them in the dining car. Being barely three feet tall and trying to push one’s way through a train station was no fun.
They took one of the cabs waiting in front of the station. Fox got off at the square where the ships’ outfitters had their shops, but Jacob instructed the driver to take him to the port. They could only hope Dunbar was right with his theory about the Witch Slayer’s head. But to be certain, they had to find a way to get on board the royal flagship first.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IRON FLANKS
There they lay, hull by hull. The creaking of wet rope mingled with the screeches of gulls and the voices of men readying their ships for departure. Albion’s navy was matched by no other on this side of the mirror. And that confidence was stamped on the faces of every one of the sailors carrying ditty bags up the swaying gangways, and of the officers leaning on the railing. The flag with the crowned Dragon flapped above them all. Albion wasn’t even keeping the fleet’s mission a secret.
Jacob picked up a newspaper from the wet cobblestones. Every letter of the headline on the front page sprouted curlicues yet was as clear as the headlines in his world.
REGAL FLEET TO DELIVER ARMS TO FLANDERS
From Albion’s Factories Springs Hope in the Fight Against the Goyl
They felt very safe. Everybody knew about the Goyl’s fear of the sea. Albion didn’t supply weapons to just Flanders, either. Her ships also took arms to the north, where an alliance was forming against the Goyl. Almost the entire fleet sailed under both steam and wind these days, and its cannons’ firepower was legendary. But that still didn’t seem to be enough for Wilfred the Walrus.
Jacob stared at the sketch printed on the next page. Though he could barely make it out on the wet paper, his heart began to beat at a ridiculous pace, just as it did when he’d seen the aeroplanes in the Goyl fortress. The quest he’d abandoned so long ago. The trail that had always disappeared into nothing. And he’d stumbled on to it again, in a place where he never would have thought to look.
THE VULCAN IN ITS BERTH IN GOLDSMOUTH
Our Tempered Terror of the Seas Embarks on Third Mission to Escort Arms Delivery
Masterpiece of Albian Engineering Sets Goyl Atremble
Jacob put down the newspaper and scanned the row of ships.
To his left lay the ship he’d come to Goldsmouth for: the Titania, flagship of the Albian fleet, named after the King’s mother. Three hundred and Seventy-six crew. Forty-five cannons. The grimy waters of the harbour reflected the figurehead, but Jacob only gave her a cursory glance. His eyes were searching for the ship from the front page.
Where was it?
His glance wandered past wooden hulls and masts until it found pale sunlight reflected on metal.
There she was. At the last berth. Grey, ugly, like a steel shark in a school of wooden mackerel. The low hull rose just a few feet above the water and was clad, like the funnels, in iron all the way down to the waterline. In Jacob’s world, the first iron ships had been instrumental in deciding the American Civil War. This, however, was already a much more modern version.
Jacob! Forget it! But reason didn’t stand a chance. His heart beat in his throat as he picked his way past crates and duffel bags, through groups of seamen hauling munitions and provisions, women saying farewell to their husbands, and children pressing teary faces into their fathers’ uniforms. It was like stumbling through one of his dreams, only this forest was made up of ships’ masts.
Up close the iron ship looked even more impressive. It was enormous, even though most of the hull was hidden beneath the waterline. Four men stood by the gangway that led from the pier up to the deck. Three of them were officers of the Regal Navy, but the fourth was wearing civilian clothes. That man had his back to Jacob. His hair was grey, and he wore it short, just as Jacob did.
What if it was him? After all these years. Turn back, Jacob. It’s over; it’s in the past. But he was twelve again. The moth on his chest was forgotten. Forgotten, too, was what he’d come here for. He just stood there and stared at the iron ship and at the back of a stranger.
Jacob!
A cabin boy ran past him, two boxes of cigars under his scrawny arms. A final errand for the officers. He looked up in alarm as Jacob grabbed hold of him. ‘Do you know who that man is? The one standing with the officers?’
The boy gave him a look as though Jacob had asked him to name the sun. ‘That’s Brunel. He built the Vulcan, and he’s already planning a new ship.’
Jacob let the boy go.
One of the officers looked around, but the civilian still had his back to Jacob.
Brunel. Not a very common name. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was one of his father’s heroes. Jacob had barely been seven when John Reckless had tried to explain Brunel’s iron-bridge blueprints to him.
All those years, and now there were just a few steps left.
‘Mister Brunel?’ How timid his voice sounded. As though he really was twelve again.
hispered across the table: ‘Do you still have money? Or did you spend it all on the blood shard?’
