Emilie & the Hollow World Read Free Page B

She looked up to see Lord Engal stood at the rail above her. He shouted, “Get off; jump, you bastards, if you don't want to go with us!” He fired a pistol into the air, emphasizing the order.
    That seemed to convince the few remaining bluecoats that retreat was a good idea. Three went over the rail. Two others paused to drag a fallen comrade upright and toss him over, then they jumped after him.
    The roar of the engines reached a deafening pitch, and Emilie had to follow them, before the ship broke apart. She pushed to her feet, staggered as the deck rolled violently, then flung herself at the rail.
    “No!” someone shouted, and grabbed the back of her jacket, jerking her to a halt. “Too late!”
    Barely three steps in front of her a glimmering gold wall sprang up along the rail and arched to form a dome over the ship. “What's that?” Emilie demanded. She looked up, realized it was the not-human man who had grabbed her. She tried to pull away, and he let her go.
    He looked toward Lord Engal, who was still on the deck above them, and seemed to be studying the gold barrier with an air of great satisfaction. The man said, “The way home.”
    “Whose home?” Emilie tried to ask, but the roar of the engines blotted out the words. The deck shook and water rushed up all around them, the brown churning water of the harbor, kept out by the gold wall. No, the water wasn't rushing up - the ship was sinking, sinking fast, as if something was dragging it below the surface.
    As Emilie stared upward in baffled horror, the water covered the dome of light overhead as the ship sunk faster and faster, and the brownish water gave way to deep blue.
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
    “I don't understand,” Emilie said, too shocked to do anything but stare upward. She thought it was a remarkable understatement considering the circumstances.
    The ship was enclosed in a bubble of gold light, traveling underwater. The view was murky, the only illumination coming from the lamps along the deck. But she saw shapes fleeing the ship's lights, a small school of multi-colored umbrella-fish, their jelly-like bodies and drifting tentacles remarkably graceful. Feeling a cold shiver in her midsection, she realized she couldn't see the surface. The air smelled salty, and tinged with seaweed.
    Emilie had seen magic before. Mr. Herinbogel, her friend Porcia's father, was a retired sorcerer and occasionally helped the local physician with healing spells. And there had been the occasional traveling conjurer shows at the local fairs. But those had all been very small magics, not like this. This was like something out of a grand gothic novel.
    Beside her, the man said, “It's called an aether current. It's carrying us under your sea, to a crack that leads through the bottom of the world.” He looked down at her and added, somewhat unnecessarily, “It's magic.”
    “My sea,” Emilie repeated, seizing on that detail. “It's not my sea.”
    “It's not mine, either.” He cocked his head at her. “I'm Kenar.”
    The Kenar whose word Barshion didn't trust. Kenar who was something-not-human. “I'm Emilie.” It seemed beyond rude to say what are you? even though it was one of the questions she badly wanted to ask. As if they were meeting in her uncle's parlor, she said instead: “Where are you from?”
    He seemed to hear the original question anyway. He said, “I'm Cirathi, from the coast of Oragal.”
    “I haven't heard of that place. But...” The water was growing even darker. Bubbles streamed by and she realized they were still moving forward, rapidly, away from the harbor. Emilie saw the silvery flicker of a large tail fleeing their lights. The fish was swimming up... No, it was the ship that was still sinking, falling down through the water. “This is all very odd, so maybe that isn't a surprise.”
    A ship's officer turned to look down the deck, spotted Kenar, and shouted, “You, back to quarters!”
    Kenar's hands knotted on the rail, and he ignored