And dragons of course. Most of all Jontney loved his dragons.
‘I have a tincture we might try,’ Doctor Shaw said, although he looked as doubtful now as he did when he came in. Evidently he could see nothing wrong with the child. ‘To calm his riotous airs,’ he added with a nod.
‘What is in the tincture?’ Maskelyne inquired.
The doctor waved his hand. ‘Oh, the usual. Kelp and leech-blend and such.’
Maskelyne sighed. ‘Very well.’
Doctor Shaw produced a spoon and a medicine bottle from his satchel. He filled the spoon with dark green liquid and, with surprising deftness, manhandled it into the child’s mouth. Jontney looked startled. He coughed, and his eyes welled with tears. Then he lifted his small fist. He was holding something shiny.
In that awful moment, Maskelyne saw that it was a scalpel.
Jontney plunged the blade into the doctor’s thigh.
The doctor cried out and struck the child with the back of his hand. Jontney reddened and began to wail. Blood was streaming from the doctor’s leg, covering the rug, the toys. His face whitened with shock. He clamped his hands over the wound and exclaimed, ‘He cut me, he cut me.’
Maskelyne just scooped his son up into his arms and carried him out, leaving the doctor fumbling in his satchel for bandages and alcohol.
He found Lucille in the morning parlour. She glanced up at him and smiled, then she saw Jontney, and her smile withered. She stood up.
‘Take him,’ Maskelyne said.
‘What happened?’
‘He’s fine,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘Just frightened. I need to take care of the doctor.’ He dumped his son into Lucille’s arms.
‘He’s covered in blood.’
‘It’s not his blood!’
‘Ethan!’
But he was already hurrying away. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he called, and slammed the door after him.
On his way back to the playroom he stopped at the armoury.
Racks and cabinets packed with Unmer weapons filled every wall. There were swords of blue and yellow poison-glass and burning-glass with wicked amber edges, seeing knives of the type used by Emperor Hu’s blind bodyguards, carbine weapons and hand-cannons for launching sorcerous or cursed missiles, devices that drank blood and whispered or screamed spells and Unmer war songs, jewelled dragon harnesses and mirrored armour, black stone armour and platinum runic plate, death vision helmets and torcs and rings of every conceivable warrior’s nightmare. Ten score objects sparkled in the gloom, treasures salvaged from drowned battlefields across the world. And every single piece of it exacted some horrible price from the wielder or wearer, what the Unmer would refer to as Balance.
Maskelyne opened a mahogany box full of silver pins, each with a crystal head of a different colour. He shifted through them carefully, selected one and held it up. A faint blue light shone from the tiny translucent sphere. He listened to the crystal for a moment and shivered.
Suitable payment.
Doctor Shaw was still in the playroom. He had bound his thigh with bandages and was in the process of easing his breeches back on over his wound. He looked up nervously when Maskelyne entered. ‘A high-spirited lad,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I should have kept a more careful eye on my satchel.’
‘Indeed, you should have,’ Maskelyne said.
The doctor’s throat bobbed. He moistened his lips. ‘Give him a spoonful of medicine a day for seven days. That ought to sort him out.’
Maskelyne produced the pin with a flourish. ‘Your payment, sir.’
‘No payment necessary,’ the doctor said.
‘But I insist,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘Do you know what this is?’
‘I’m not much of a collector, Mr Maskelyne.’
‘It’s an alchemist’s pin. Would you like to see how it works?’
The doctor looked uncertain.
Maskelyne approached him and held the pin over the doctor’s wounded thigh. It began to thrum in his hand. The crystal head changed from blue to gold and then finally began to glow white. ‘The Unmer used these to sterilize wounds,’ he explained.
The doctor frowned. He gazed at his wound for a long moment, then touched the bandages tentatively. ‘That’s . . . extraordinary,’ he said. ‘The pain has gone.’
‘Now watch.’ Maskelyne pushed the pin straight into the doctor’s leg.
Doctor Shaw flinched and began to protest, but then he stopped. ‘I feel nothing at all,’ he said.
Maskelyne nodded. ‘That’s because the nerves are dead.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Can’t you feel the numbness spreading along your leg?’
The doctor looked suddenly worried. He pinched the pin between his thumb and forefinger and tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge. A look of desperation came into his eyes. ‘What is it doing to me?’
Maskelyne smiled. ‘These pins were the precursors to ichusae sorcery,’ he said. ‘They change one substance into another substance. Brine changes flesh into sharkskin. An alchemist’s pin is far less subtle. It alters the minerals in your blood.’
‘What?’ The doctor seized the pin head and pulled with all his strength, but it remained firmly embedded in place. A strange cracking sound came from his leg. He gave a short yelp. ‘What substance? What’s happening to me?’
‘Are you familiar with starfish, Doctor?’
The doctor’s eyes were wild.
‘When one severs the limb of a starfish,’ Maskelyne said, ‘it simply grows a new one. But the interesting thing is that the severed limb grows into a new starfish. Now, are those two starfish different organisms, or are they actually the same creature?’
‘What?’
‘The Unmer believe that mankind is a single organism,’ Maskelyne went on, ‘that every man and woman is merely a part of the same creature. And when we breed, we create new parts of that same creature, like branches on a tree. So sex is actually asexual – it’s simply the method by which the whole . . . human entity grows. Do you understand?’
‘Help me,’ the doctor said, ‘please.’
‘If you believe that – and there are days when I do believe it,’ Maskelyne explained, ‘then an assault on a child is an assault on the father and the mother, and on every other living person. It’s an attack against mankind itself.’
The doctor stared at him in fear and disbelief. ‘Assault?’
‘You struck my child.’
‘But I meant no harm.’
Maskelyne shrugged. ‘You caused harm.’
Now the doctor’s gaze searched the ground. He was trying to comprehend this. ‘But now you’re hurting me,’ he said. ‘It’s the same thing.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Maskelyne admitted. ‘But it’s too late now.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I wonder if we could justify your death if we assume that mankind isn’t a single organism, but is actually two organisms. That way, I could be part of one . . . and you could be part of the other.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, that works. You die, while I maintain the moral high ground.’
‘What? You’re completely insane.’
Maskelyne sat down beside him. ‘You’re not a psychiatrist are you, doctor?’
Shaw shook his head.
‘No, I didn’t think you were.’
‘Please . . .’ The doctor was ga
sping now, trying to move his rapidly stiffening leg. ‘Stop this.’
‘Can’t be done,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Your blood is changing.’
The doctor grabbed his trouser leg and pulled it up. Green crystals had already begun to form on his skin. He let out a wail. ‘Changing into what?’
‘Exactly what it looks like,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Your widow is going to be a very rich woman.’
Ianthe withdrew her consciousness from the whirlwind of terror in the doctor’s mind. She lay in darkness and focused on the rising and falling of her chest as she breathed. Maskelyne’s wife, Lucille, had put her in a small bright room in the west wing of the fortress. The views she’d seen through the other woman’s eyes had been of a sickle-shaped island with deepwater docks and industrial buildings down by the shore. Heavy iron ships waiting in their moorings in the bay. A metallic beach flashing in the sunshine, lapped by the tea-coloured sea. The scent of brine of the breeze. They were three leagues east of Ethugra, but she hadn’t been able to see the city from Lucille’s perspective.
She could feel silk cushions under her. She knew they were blue.
For a long while she lay there, thinking. Should she try to reach her father again? She hadn’t been able to locate him since Maskelyne’s men had captured her. Had he even returned to the prison on Halcine Canal? Had she simply missed him, or had he abandoned her again? She didn’t even know if he was alive or dead. And with a million people living in Ethugra, a million perspectives to explore, she might never know the answer to that question. Her frustration quickly turned to anger. Nothing really mattered but punishing Maskelyne for what he’d done. And she had the means to accomplish that.
She slipped into Jontney’s mind, but found him cuddling his mother, and so she quickly departed again. She didn’t want to feel Lucille’s arms around her. Maskelyne was in a storeroom next to his armoury, where he was busy rummaging through a box of tools and humming to himself. He had already looked out a hammer and a stone chisel.
Ianthe let her mind fly through the abyss between minds like a comet racing through the heavens. The inhabitants of Scythe Island formed a small but intense constellation beneath her, surrounded by a plain of countless lights burning under the sea. To the west she perceived Ethugra as a great conflagration of dusty spots, a galaxy formed by tens of thousands of people. As she neared the city, she became aware of a fine ship berthed in Averley Harbour. A group of people had gathered on the plaza before the Administration Buildings. And all of them were looking at one woman.
* * *
CHAPTER 10
THE TRIAL OF TOM GRANGER
The emperor’s dragon-hunter-class steam yacht rolled into Ethugra like a circus. The triple-funnel, single-masted Excelsior was far sleeker than Briana’s man-o’-war. Indeed, if Hu’s claims were to be believed, she was looking at the fastest and most luxurious human-built vessel in the world. She slid out of the Glot Madera and into Averley Plaza under steam power alone, accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets from the heralds on her deck. The sails furled along her yards were as crisp and white as marzipan. Her three funnels sat behind the wheelhouse and in front of the mast, disgorging torrents of steam and vaporous whale-oil smoke into the heavens. Her bow sliced through the muddy waters, the copper-clad hull ripple-blown and flashing in the sunlight, her cannons agleam like admirals’ buttons. Half a hundred Imperial pennants hung from her rigging in a riot of red and gold. A massive harpoon gun protruded from her prow, its stanchion gripped in the raised hands of the ship’s iron figurehead. Briana thought that the cast figure was a representation of some thunderbolt-wielding sea god, but as the ship drew nearer to the dockside she realized that its face had been moulded into the likeness of Hu himself. The sculptor had been somewhat liberal in his interpretation of the emperor’s physique.
Trumpets blared again, now joined by the marching crackle of snare drums.
The crowd around Briana cheered.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Briana reached for her poppy water, but someone bumped into her, and she lost the tiny bottle amidst the scuffling feet. It clattered away before she could reclaim it. She fired out a mental warning as powerful as a cannon blast and heard cries of protest from Haurstaf halfway around the world. But not one of the shrieking imbeciles around her paid her any notice. These jailers had skulls as thick as iron, as insensitive as the corpses of the Drowned along the waterfront.
Administrator Grech turned to her and grinned. ‘Heavenly, isn’t it?’
‘A ship like that says a lot about the man who commissions it,’ Briana retorted.
‘Indeed, indeed,’ Grech replied with good humour. ‘Marvellous.’
‘Crass.’
Her reply was lost amidst the general bustle. Grech nodded feverishly.
The emperor’s dragon-hunter docked alongside the Haurstaf man-o’-war. Briana could see Hu’s Samarol bodyguard lining the forecastle, their silver wolf helmets grinning like tribal totems. Now trombones and whale horns joined the chorus of trumpets and drums. The crowd applauded, whistled, waved in response. Bugles shrilled and bass drums began a booming roll as the whole cacophony reached its raucous climax.
And then the ship’s guns fired.
Briana almost dropped to the ground in panic, before she realized that the crowd was cheering even more frantically.
And as her heart calmed, she realized that the Excelsior’s cannons had not been loaded with shells after all. The air was full of silver and gold sparkles. The ship had fired a barrage of foil confetti.
The music ceased abruptly. As the last of the confetti settled over the plaza, the emperor’s Samarol bodyguard began moving down the gangplank. Blind to a man, each of the twenty assassin slaves clutched Unmer seeing knives in their mailed fists, using these uncanny weapons to find their way. Some claimed those blades could see intent and give their owners unnatural reflexes, but Briana had never been able to verify this. No Haurstaf had been able to wield one without lapsing into madness.
When the Samarol had formed a semi-circle around the gangplank, the emperor himself appeared.
Hu was dressed in golden battle-armour. Upon his head he wore a crown of crystallized dragon eyes set in copper. His long red cape was Unmer-made, woven from the silk of Mare Regis spiders, and it fluttered strangely behind his shoulders in the dead air, lifted by a breeze that did not seem to be present. At his side he wore the Transient Sword, a Valcinder copy of the legendary lost Unmer weapon, but striking nonetheless. Its lacquered steel blade was tangerine in colour and festooned with holes supposedly made by void flies, although Briana suspected that particular flaw was merely an affectation engineered by the smiths.
The emperor strolled down the gangplank. ‘Sister Marks,’ he said brightly. ‘Whatever are you doing here?’
She smiled flatly. ‘I’ve been a guest of the Administration for the last three days,’ she said, ‘I want to see Tom Granger.’
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you’ll see him at the trial.’
‘I want to see him before the trial.’
‘Quite impossible,’ the emperor replied. ‘Colonel Granger is a dangerous man. I could never allow myself to put one of the Haurstaf at risk.’
Briana looked at him coolly. ‘If you do not wish to use our services, there are simpler ways of letting us know.’
Hu made a dismissive gesture. ‘Come now, there’s no need for unpleasantness on such a beautiful day. If it’s really so important to you, I’ll grant you an audience.’ He even managed to look magnanimous. ‘May I ask what the interview is about?’
‘No,’ Briana said. ‘You may not.’ She had all but lost pati
ence with him. Hu had pushed her as far as he could, but even a fool such as him could not risk endangering his campaigns or his empire by removing Haurstaf psychics from his armies and cities. Nevertheless she felt inclined to end his contract with the Guild there and then. But she stopped herself from speaking. Hu’s pride might irk her, but it was still better to have him as a client than a foe.
Administrator Grech chose this moment to slide forward. He gave a low bow. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said in his sing-song voice. ‘We are so deeply, deeply honoured.’ He beckoned towards the waiting crowds of his peers. ‘You will be pleased to know that the, eh, corral has been constructed to your specifications. Might I presume that the . . . eh . . .’
‘Aboard the Excelsior.’ Emperor Hu followed him without so much as another glance at Briana.
Granger watched the celebrations from his cell window. The Haurstaf vessel had been in port for three days now, and yet, for all his pacing and hand-wringing, the visit he’d been hoping for had not materialized. What exactly was the Guild playing at?
The emperor’s ship had arrived with all the pomp and ceremony typical of Hu, although Granger had not been able to see their glorious leader himself from this vantage point. The flags in the rigging blocked his view. However, it seemed that the crowds down there were finally dissipating. Silver and gold sparkles floated in the harbour, slowly turning brown. Would the emperor come to his cell to gloat?
Granger hoped so. Hu was notorious for underestimating his enemies.
When he heard footsteps in the corridor outside, he stood up, his heart thumping.
A man’s voice came from outside the cell. ‘The corridor door is locked, Colonel, and I don’t have the key to it. It ain’t opening for nobody who they can’t see first. And it certainly ain’t opening to save my old skin, or hers. You stand well back now.’
Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts Page 20
