The Island of Birds Read online

  The Island of Birds

  Book Two in the Dark Sea Trilogy

  Austin Hackney

  Newcastle, UK

  http://clockworkpress.co.uk

  The Island Of Birds first published in the UK by Clockwork Press 2016

  Copyright ©Austin Hackney 2016

  First Smashwords Edition: July 2016

  Austin Hackney asserts the moral and legal right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalog record of this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-0-9935367-3-1

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9935367-4-8

  Editor: Eve Merrier

  Cover design and formatting: Streetlight Graphics http://streetlightgraphics.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  The novels in The Dark Sea Trilogy are meant to be read in the following order:

  Book One: Beyond the Starline

  Book Two: The Island of Birds

  Book Three: The Fabled Forest

  If you haven’t read Beyond the Starline yet, sign up to the mailing list at http://clockworkpress.co.uk to get an ebook edition in the format of your choice absolutely free.

  “Come, let’s away to prison;

  We two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage.”

  —William Shakespeare. King Lear (Act V, Scene 3)

  Publisher’s note: As most readers of this book are outside the UK, American spelling has been used throughout.

  Chapter One

  Princess Annabel rushed to the window behind her throne. She lifted the iron latch, swinging the leaded glass panes open, her eyes closed. The sunlight was warm on her face. She gulped in the crisp, clean air. Her hand trembled on the casement. I’m a princess in a tower from a book of fairy tales, she thought. Her eyes wandered the city streets. How many people living their ordinary lives could imagine I’m a prisoner in this palace?

  She sighed, wishing her father hadn’t died and left her alone. She shook her head free of such thoughts and looked out again. Her heart thumped. Her neck flushed with heat. What is…that?

  Beyond the palace gardens, beyond the ivory and gilt towers, beyond the chattering forests and rivers of the island, something had dipped out of the Dark Sea and appeared in the blue sky.

  Annabel squinted, trying to make out what it was. But it was still a long way off and the sun was behind it. She shaded her eyes with her hands. The object appeared to be moving closer. It can’t be a comet. It must be a flying machine, she reasoned. But it’s nothing like the ornithopters. Where is it from?

  Her heart fluttered like a bird trapped in her rib cage. I’ll get a closer look. She went to the Throne Room door and poked her head out.

  A guard snoozed in the corridor, slumped in a velvet-upholstered chair, one hand resting on his electrostatic gun. Annabel glanced both ways and listened. Nothing but gentle snoring. She was going to close the door again when the figure of Lord Cranestoft, High Steward and Regent, came sweeping round the corner and along the corridor. Drat and blast. What does he want? She swallowed her instinct to run and, leaving the door open, went back and slumped on her throne.

  A moment later the Regent, in full military regalia, darkened the doorway. Annabel picked up the heavy golden orb resting on the adjacent table and rolled it between her hands.

  “Are you playing games, Princess?” Dark eyes mocked her from beneath craggy eyebrows.

  Annabel didn’t smile. He should call her Your Highness, but if she reprimanded him, he would only laugh in mock indulgence.

  The old man advanced toward her. He took the orb from her and tossed it up through the cool palace air. It landed back in his palm with a soft thud. Like a spider’s legs around its prey, his fingers closed around the gilt sphere. He smiled, replacing it on the table.

  “Today we prepare for war, Princess,” he said.

  “And who are our enemies this time?” Annabel sighed.

  “Do you care?”

  “Do you care if I care or not?” she countered.

  He laughed.

  “The princess should care when her country is on the brink of war. Don’t you think so?”

  What could she say? If she said no, it meant she wasn’t fit to be a princess. If she said yes, it meant she conceded to the endless wars.

  “A princess,” she said, “cares when her people are forced into unnecessary wars to serve the interests of a few.”

  “Your naivety is charming. You express an admirable sentiment – and a complete failure to understand the political complexities. Your late father was right to appoint me Regent until you come of age.”

  “Yes, on my next birthday. Just a few days to go! If you continue to treat me as a child, how am I supposed to be ready to take the Throne by then?”

  “It may be wise to consider that a monarch rules not on the basis of personal whim, but under good counsel. That was the path your father chose, and no doubt the path he would have wished you to follow.”

  You mean you intend to rule from behind the throne and you expect me to cooperate. You treat me like I’m your prisoner, a royal puppet to play out your war games.

  Lord Cranestoft muttered and turned in the direction of the wide, arching windows behind the throne. Annabel’s heart leapt. She started toward him. Don’t look! But his head bowed in thought as he squared his back to the window.

  The alien flying machine was closer.

  The Regent’s voice recalled her attention. “This land,” he said, “must be protected. Is there any want here? Does anyone go hungry? Is there illness or disease in any corner? Are the forests not full of game? Do the waters not run clean?”

  “But are we under attack?” She glanced over his shoulder again. He didn’t notice.

  “We have learned not to wait to defend ourselves. In the old days people believed war was a last resort, and it devastated the old lands. Now war is effective. We anticipate our enemies and strike before they know it. Our island prospers.”

  “And the islands of our enemies?”

  “What does it matter? They are our enemies.” He paced toward her and leaned over, whispering in her ear. “To speak well of our enemies is the crime of treason, Princess. Even you are not above the law.”

  He straightened. “Now, let us proceed with our duties.” He pressed a scroll into her hands. “This is the Declaration of War. Your ladies-in-waiting will prepare you. You will proclaim the speech here, from the Throne Room balcony, at the sixth hour, after the Parade of the Bright Mechanicals.”

  Cranestoft gave a curt bow and turned on his heel. At the door he paused, his fingers tip-tapping the handle. His voice resonated through the room: grave, dark with threat. “If I ever thought you entertained treasonous ideas, Princess, do not doubt that I would carry out my duty under the law.”

  Annabel ope
ned her mouth to protest, but he had gone. She glared at the polished marble floor. She saw Cranestoft’s face sneering at her from its surface, as if projected by a magic lantern. She tossed the scroll on the table, snatched up the golden orb and threw it to the floor, obliterating the Regent’s image as the tile shattered into a hundred tiny shards.

  Annabel ran back to the door. She opened it again and peered out. Lord Cranestoft’s back receded along the corridor and vanished around the same corner from which he had appeared. The guard was sleeping again.

  Annabel stepped back into the Throne Room, closed the door, and turned the key in the lock. A tapestry, depicting fountains and unicorns, hung the whole height of the adjacent wall. She looked back through the window at the mysterious flying machine and pulled back a corner of the heavy weave. She slipped behind it.

  The wall gave way to a narrow passageway. Annabel followed it in darkness, her hands outstretched until she touched a small door. From her bodice, she lifted a silver key hanging from a chain at her neck. She inserted it in the keyhole and twisted it first left, then right, and then left again, listening for the coded click, clack, click, click, clack. The door sprang open.

  With a quick breath of relief, Annabel slipped into the room. She closed and locked the door behind her. Inside she exhaled her life of frustration in the palace and inhaled the wonder of this secret place.

  “Light please,” she said, and smiled as the voice-activated electrostatic wall lantern fizzed and popped into life, settling to a steady glow, revealing her father’s hidden laboratory.

  It was a large, high-ceilinged room. Bookcases lined the walls, stocked with a library of scientosophical works such as only a king could afford. Annabel was working her way through them whenever she had opportunity – when the Regent thought her engaged in the idle pursuits of a puppet princess; pricking her fingers at needlepoint or thumping out clumsy scales at the clavichord. But she studied whenever she could. Along with the physical key to his laboratory, her father had left her the intellectual and practical keys to unlock its secrets.

  Annabel understood the purpose and operation of most of the scientosophical instruments arrayed on the workbenches. She’d spent many hours in the first months after her bereavement indexing the books; organizing instruments and materials; cataloging and arranging; enjoying touching, smelling, hearing the things her father had touched, smelled, and heard. She felt at home among the cogs and clutter, the phials and filtrations, the specimens and spectrometers of her father’s hidden world.

  But now she had one particular instrument in mind: the vicinity scope. It was an extraordinary invention of her father’s. A stiffened leather tube enclosing a complex of lenses and mirrors, it permitted the user to see distant objects as if they were just before her eyes.

  A buzzing fly distracted her. Now how in the world did that get in here? There were no windows.

  The fly landed on a large device to the right of the main workbench. Two steel arms arced up from the crystal at its base. Copper tubes spiraled around them. Each arm ended in points aimed at a copper plate.

  The crystal thrummed. Electrostatic energy shot from both points. Zap! The fly vanished in a tiny puff of smoke.

  Her father had hoped the device could be used in the manufacture of large ornithopters. But the prototype was too dangerous. Annabel had tried to disconnect it, but she was not well versed in crystal technology. In the end, she had decided simply to avoid it until she could figure out how it worked. The fly never had a chance.

  Annabel took the vicinity scope and tucked it under her arm. She rested her fingers on the worn surface of her father’s scientosophical table and imagined that by doing so she was still, in some strange way, in touch with him. “Lights off,” she said, and slipped out the door, locking it behind her.

  Back at the Throne Room window, she raised the instrument to her eyes and pointed it toward the mysterious, alien flying machine. It had moved closer although it was still a long way from the island. Annabel held her breath, suppressing excited anticipation as she twisted the tube, sliding the lenses closer and further apart. An image came into focus.

  In the circle of vision, she saw a large, lozenge-shaped balloon. Suspended beneath it by cables, a ship of wood, brass, and steel flashed at the edges, catching the sun. It had porthole windows and propellers spinning so fast they were little more than a blur. It looked like a sailing ship, but with that astonishing balloon in place of sails.

  And it flies without wings! She recalled a plan her father and their friend, Dr. Ravensberg, had been developing. A vessel to be suspended in the air by a large envelope inflated with gas. Could it be these aliens were from a civilization more advanced than hers?

  Annabel twisted the vicinity scope again as the ship turned in the sky, adjusting its course. The full brilliance of the sun illuminated the deck and Annabel saw human figures: a young man – no, a young woman with cropped hair, dressed in breeches and jerkin; next to her, a large monkey, only a few inches shorter than the girl, dressed in striped pantaloons, a leather jacket, brass goggles around his neck, and a cap pushed back on his head at a jaunty angle. What is this? Who are they? I’ve never seen anything like it.

  The loud whiz and clatter of two ornithopters shocked her from her reverie as the aircraft whooshed overhead, wings flapping, skimming the palace roof before swooping up into the sky toward the flying ship. In the same moment an urgent rap-rap-rap sounded on the Throne Room door. The handle rattled. “Princess! Open this door! Your Highness!”

  Cranestoft.

  Annabel yanked the window shut and threw the bar in place. Three more ornithopters joined them, heading toward the alien vessel. Is it to do with the war? Her heart fluttered.

  “Open the door!”

  Annabel looked back at the tapestry. No time. She hid the vicinity scope behind the window shutter.

  “Damnation! I know you’re in there! Open up!”

  Annabel adjusted her hair, patted her dress down, and stepped up to the throne. I’ll open the door to him only when I’m ready. One trembling hand resting on her throat, Annabel lifted her chin – just as the lock exploded in sparks and splintering wood.

  The door slammed open as the Regent stormed in, the smoking electrostatic gun he’d wrested from the bewildered guard still clenched in his right fist, his eyes burning with anger and suspicion.

  “My Lord?” she said, holding her chin out. “Was that necessary?”

  The Regent grunted, looking at the gun in his hand as if he wondered how it had got there. “I thought…” he said, but changed his mind. “It is time for you to prepare. The parade is soon to begin.”

  The servant cranked the handle on the side of the trumpeting machine, winding it up tight. Annabel watched with interest as the clockwork mechanism danced into play, cogs spinning with an elegant, mechanical rhythm. The leather bellows heaved and sighed. The princess’s eyes scanned the sky, but there was no sign of the alien craft. Whether it was only visible from the tower or it had landed, she couldn’t guess.

  The large brass trumpets swung into place and the fanfare sounded, loud and brassy. The Parade of the Bright Mechanicals had begun.

  Annabel loved the parade. It was one of the rare occasions when she could escape seclusion in the palace. She had often gone with her father on clandestine trips to meet other scientosophists, but since his death the Regent had tightened his grip. She pushed aside the recollection she was going to announce another war. Life’s pleasures were few enough without wasting this once-in-the-year event by worrying through it.

  She sat on a smaller throne than the elaborate one that occupied the Throne Room. It was set up on a temporary platform opposite the State Prison. How ironic, she thought. The clockwork machine’s trumpeting faded as the mechanism wound to a stop. How much the mechanism could be improved if only we could apply a few scientosophical principles to the design, Annabel tho
ught. Clockwork is a fine thing – but imagine what we could do with steam: the sheer force of it.

  A great cheer interrupted her thoughts.

  Thousands crowded the Place of Assembly: young and old, from every quarter of the city; their faces eager and delighted as the double doors to the palace swung open, and they brought out the first of the mechanicals.

  Annabel had made her own mechanical, too, this year – a simple clockwork sparrow. It hadn’t been easy to persuade Lord Cranestoft to allow her to “dress down” and work in the clockwork workshops. She’d adored the workshops, even accompanied by an armed guard, and even if she’d only been allowed in after hours. Two soldiers stood at her shoulders constantly while her First Maid, Katy, bustled and fussed and tutted her to distraction. Still, she had produced a beautiful mechanical, she thought.

  It was unusual for a member of the Royal Household to enter the parade and compete for the prize. Annabel had insisted her entry should be presented by one of her maids and the true identity of its creator be kept secret.

  The palace was splendid in the warm spring light. The white marble walls reflected the sun, warming the sand. Even above the hushed chatter and occasional laughter of the assembled population of the island (she was sure everyone attended this event) she could hear the songs and whistles of colorful birds – and even caught the occasional glimpse of bright feathers flitting through the distant canopy.

  Two smiling gentlemen carried the first of the mechanicals out to a burst of applause. They reached the center of the Place as the crowd hushed in anticipation.

  Other necks besides Annabel’s strained to catch a glimpse as the cloth covering the mechanical fluttered in the breeze. Annabel knew it was going to be a bird. But what kind and what could it do?