Free The Ebb Tide by James P. Blaylock

which sailed along with us like a misplaced figurehead before another jolt knocked it free. Then suddenly we were ascending smoothly, and we hauled ourselves gratefully onto the seats again, taking stock of bruises and abrasions.
    We passed through the stasis layer into the murk of the sands, St. Ives letting out ballast to aid our ascent, and I reminded myself not to be quite so prematurely satisfied in the future, gloating over a victory before the enemy had left the field. Now we were clear, though. He could hardly follow us into the pool of quicksand. “Nothing broken?” I asked St. Ives.
    “My chronometer, I’m afraid.” He held up the shattered timepiece. “I’d rather break an arm, or very nearly. But not a bad bill to pay, all in all.”
    We continued to ascend in silence for another minute or two, but then abruptly stopped.
    “Perhaps a fouled line,” St. Ives said. “They’ll be at it again directly.”
    But the minutes passed, and still we sat there, my mind turning in the silence. It came to me that I should make a clean breast of my long-held suspicions while I had a quiet moment. “I’m a little worried about an element of this entire business,” I said.
    “Out with it, then.”
    “We’ve had some good luck,” I told him. “And it seems we’ve been clever. But consider this: what if Frosticos knew what we were about, and I mean from the beginning. That business at Merton’s—knocking poor Merton on the head like that—what if it was meant to move us to action? For my money Frosticos wasn’t foxed by the false map for more than a moment. He knew we had the original, and he intended for us to lead him to the box. He provided us the means by lending us this diving chamber. We were at the mercy of the tides once we arrived here at the Bay, and it was no great feat for him to lurk about the subterranean reaches watching for us when the time was right. Then he played a helpful light on our endeavors until we had succeeded, at which point he tried to murder us in cold blood, having done with us.”
    St. Ives sat thinking, but there was only one element of the theory that required any thinking. He reached up and gave us another gasp of air. “You say he wasn’t foxed by the map,” he said carefully. “You’re suggesting…”
    “I don’t mean to suggest anything,” I said, looking out into the by now thick sands, “only that we might have been played like fiddles.”
    “I sense that you don’t want to cast any blame on Finn Conrad, but he might easily be the necessary link in the chain? His appearance outside Merton’s was certainly convenient.”
    “It was,” I said, “although it’s as easily coincidental. Perhaps Merton’s forgery was simply no good, and Frosticos saw through it.”
    “You’ve seen his handiwork,” St. Ives said.
    “Yes, but suppose Frosticos had come here straightaway by some subterranean route and had already found the map useless before our arrival, thereby suspecting it to be a forgery and lying in wait for us. When he saw us in our lighted chamber meddling on the sea floor…” I shrugged and gave us more air.
    “But we’ve got to consider that Finn was our means of finding the boatyard and discovering this chamber. We were forced to flee in it in order to avoid drowning or being shot by men who seemed to have known we would come along when we did.”
    “One other thing,” I said. “You were careful to slip the true map into your coat pocket, but Merton wasn’t half so careful, especially with his insanely detailed letter, which he placed directly into Finn’s hands before sending him post haste to the Bay.”
    “I find the idea distressing,” St. Ives said wearily. “I don’t say that I find it unlikely, just distressing.”
    “I’ve been distressed by it for the past days,” I told him, “and I should have spoken up earlier. But I like the boy, and I don’t want to malign him, especially when there’s the chance that he’s