Beneath the Waves: The Golden City, #6

By J. Kathleen Cheney

Cristiano Tavares and Emilia Atkinson have been working for years to perfect the newest experimental craft for the Tavares Boatworks: their first submarine. The government is offering a contract to the boatmakers who can prove their worthiness by winning a race from Lisboa to the Golden City.

 

It's perfect timing for the boatworks. They just need to get into the water. They have the best boat, a determined crew, and even a sereia to help guide the boat underwater.

 

But someone else has other plans for the race, and their simple quest to get from one place to the other may end up leading to their deaths....

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Kathleen Cheney
• Release date: May 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393702382

J. Kathleen Cheney

J. Kathleen Cheney is a former teacher and has taught mathematics ranging from 7th grade to Calculus, with a brief stint as a Gifted and Talented Specialist. She is a member of SFWA, RWA, and Broad Universe. Her works have been published in Jim Baen's Universe, Writers of the Future, and Fantasy Magazine, among others. Her novels, The Golden City, The Seat of Magic, and The Shores of Spain, are published in by Ace/Roc books. Her website can be found at www.jkathleencheney.com

Book preview

1

9 April, 1907

The Golden City

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Emilia chewed her lower lip, watching the main shop floor of the Tavares Boatworks from the office window. The workshop floor was currently dominated by a pair of rabelos—flat-bottomed boats—currently being refitted for the traditional race during the Festa de São João in June. But those boats weren’t what held her eye. Instead Emilia found herself watching Diamantina Athayde talk with their mutual employer, Cristiano Tavares.

When Dia started talking, Mr. Tavares had been on the ground peering under the nearer boat’s cradle, likely to evaluate the state of the hull. Emilia was surely imagining the irritation in the set of his shoulders as he dusted off his sleeve and then drew on his dark brown frock coat. He ran fingers through his overlong brown hair and pinned a patient expression on his handsome face.

Emilia knew she wasn’t the only one who considered him handsome. Dia rarely missed a chance to lay her webbed hand atop his, to press closer than was proper to laugh merrily at whatever Cristiano had to say—so much more obvious since she wore leather trousers that fit so tightly that they left little to the imagination of the workers in the shop. It annoyed Emilia for some reason she had no intention of examining further.

Despite that, Emilia couldn’t help liking the sereia woman. When Dia first came to the Golden City to work with the Tavares firm, Emilia has offered to share her flat, saving Dia the trouble of finding her own. Despite a few initial misunderstandings, Dia proved to be an enjoyable companion. She shocked everyone around them, dressing like a man most of the time and often wearing her pale blonde hair unbound. It was the inherent advantage of being a foreigner and a non-human—no one expected her to be like them. She never wore gloves so they could all see her webbed fingers, and often choosing loose-necked shirts that allowed her gills to… breathe, Emilia expected.

And Dia was brave, even reckless. She was tall and strong, her assertive demeanor a product of being raised in a country where females dominated. She was a perfect choice to serve as the pilot for the submarine and possessed the fortitude to think it all a lark. At least that was how she seemed to feel about the upcoming race.

It was a far more serious endeavor for Emilia. While Cristiano had designed the submarine in question, Emilia had supplied most of the calculations that determined its dimensions. She had worked up the navigation charts, collecting maps of the Portuguese coast. She had worked with the local harem of selkies to verify the locations of sandbars outside the mouth of the Douro. They had shifted from the most recent maps she’d found. Not far, but enough that a mistake in navigation could direct a submarine aground on one. The design made the submarine workable, but the navigational calculations would make the difference between winning the race—and thus the royal contract—and losing.

If the submarine won, then perhaps no one would laugh any longer at the Tavares firm’s foolishness in hiring women.

Emilia pushed her spectacles up her nose, sniffed, and admonished herself to get back to work. She didn’t need to watch Dia flirting with Cristiano. That would go on whether she observed it or not.

She settled at her desk and regarded the topographic map that lay there. It showed the coast of Portugal, and she’d made neat notes in red, hoping there would be consistent light inside the boat to read them. There had been a problem with the electrical power only a couple of days ago, one of the main reasons they hadn’t towed the boat down to Lisboa yet. Several of the competitors had already moved into the mouth of the Tagus, getting into position for the start of the race. Even so, if all went according to plan, they should reach Lisboa with time to spare.

Nodding briskly to herself, Emilia rearranged all the charts, rolled them up, and slipped them into the carrying tube. A spare set of charts had already been sent ahead by rail to Lisboa, stashed in her trunk, but it never hurt to have extra charts.

But once the new boat was in the water, she would have to return to her apartment and change out of the severe brown suit she’d worn for the office and dress for dinner with her father. She was dreading that. Her father was aghast that she’d volunteered to be one of the crew.

For the last six years, he had been unfailingly supportive. When she’d gone to Coimbra to enroll in the College of Mathematics, he’d funded her stay there. When she’d taken a position with the Tavares Boatworks, he’d been patient, even though he’d despaired of her marrying at that point. Who would marry a girl who was so determinedly mathematical? Now that she was twenty-six, it seemed her father had completely written off her matrimonial chances. Even so, that didn’t mean he liked her risking her life in a marginally-tested boat, even if she had worked on the design.

Even if she tried not to let others see it, she had to admit she was frightened. But she was going to do this. She was going to prove her worth, to prove they hadn’t made a mistake in hiring her. She slid the strap of the carrying tube over her shoulder and looked about the office to make certain she hadn’t forgotten anything. At the last second, she recalled the spare set of spectacles she kept in her desk and pocketed them. One never knew when one would need them.

Are you almost ready, Miss Atkinson? Cristiano Tavares leaned inside the office door, his handsome face lit with anticipation. His brown hair brushed his shoulders now; he often forgot such mundane things as visiting his barber. He dressed in a conservative fashion, his somber brown waistcoat and plain black tie very commonplace garb among businessmen of the Golden City. Dia had joked about his understated attire from time to time, to which Emilia always responded that Cristiano had no need of flashy clothes.

I’ve got everything, she responded to his query.

The tide’s in, he said. They’re going to start rolling the boat down to the slip.

The boat had actually been built at a borrowed shipyard on the Douro’s edge, as the Boatworks’ main shop didn’t have room for a boat this long. The shop specialized in smaller boats, mostly fishing vessels and yachts, but they’d also constructed several experimental craft. At just over sixty feet, the submarine would be their largest yet, with over a hundred tons of displacement. This race would be a test for Cristiano’s designs as well as her computations, but he seemed to have unflappable confidence in both his work and hers.

Let’s go then. Emilia followed him out to the main bay, where the submarine in all its metal glory had begun its slow progress toward the river’s edge and the slip. Dia perched on the pilot’s seat in the ‘forward tower’, with one large, booted foot propped carelessly on the railing.

Strictly speaking, she didn’t need to be there, since the submarine wouldn’t submerge until they got it out to depth. Navigating the silted Douro River would be enough of a challenge the first time without being underwater, but this time it would be all Emilia’s responsibility. Coming back—that would need both of them working together.

The mouth of the Douro River was an estuary, the water’s level lifting and falling with the tide. It was at its peak now, so the time was right. The submarine’s cradle moved on a series of metal rollers that groaned under the boat’s weight but didn’t give. It trundled down the gravel-paved slip toward the water. Emilia followed Cristiano as he jogged along the high stone wall on the left side of the slip, her eyes anxiously on the submarine’s hull. The boat didn’t scrape the stone, though, its double-walled hull intact as is slid the last of the distance into the water. To the cheers of a small crowd of onlookers, twenty workers pulled on their lines to ease the boat about and, after some careful maneuvering, they tied it off at the edge of the quay. They began constructing a temporary gang plank that would shift a dozen times with the tide before they cast off in the morning.

Still in the boat’s pilot seat, Dia waved at them. It didn’t sink!

Some faith she has, Cristiano complained to Emilia, but his dark eyes danced with laughter. Ah, well, she doesn’t understand the science, does she, Miss Atkinson?

I think not, Mr. Tavares, Emilia admitted. But where would we be without her?

True, he said with half a shrug.

With Dia in the pilot’s chair, they would be able to navigate far better. Cristiano had rigged up the body of a Remington typewriter to the pilot’s podium, and that would allow her to communicate via telegraph wires with them inside the vessel, to warn them of approaching dangers, maps that weren’t accurate, or of other vessels in their area. It would give them an edge that none of the other boats would have, having someone who could be on the outside of the vessel.

The Tavares Boatworks had a singular advantage: they had ties to both the selkie communities in the Golden City and along the coast of Portugal, and to the sereia government out on the islands. Both of Cristiano’s elder brothers had married sereia women, and one of them had served as the Portuguese ambassador to the islands, so the Tavares firm could easily find sereia willing to serve on their boats. Dia had, Emilia knew, once been in the sereia navy, although their navy was far different from Portugal’s. The sereia specialized in leading others astray, using their siren’s call to distract and mislead ships away from their territory. The Portuguese navy preferred to fight.

But the recent sereia treaty with the Portuguese allowed for mutual support. Their navy had already tentatively agreed to supply women to pilot a handful of submarines should the Tavares firm win the contract with the throne. Now all that remained to be seen was whether a human navigator inside the submarine and a sereia pilot outside it could work together.

2

9 April, 1907

The Golden City

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Cristiano walked through the body of the boat, one hand running along the cool steel. So far everything was watertight, although initial tests had left him with little doubt of that. The diesel power plant had run flawlessly, the dive planes and rudder moved smoothly, even the distance typewriter had functioned perfectly. But soon they would be underwater testing those same systems and, if nothing else, history had shown that a single mistake in a submarine vessel usually meant death.

A prayer to São Pedro, the patron saint of shipbuilders, was scrawled on the side of the aisle, varnished over so it would stay there. Cristiano laid one hand atop the words and repeated the prayer, hoping that the saint would bless his builders’ efforts.

The interior of the submarine