Granger frowned. Ifs and mights were not good enough. He didn’t like being fobbed off. He glanced over at the yacht again. He could hear music coming from the vessel again.
He untied his kitbag from Ygrid’s saddle hoops. ‘Let me stretch my legs while I consider your offer,’ he said. ‘My joints are frozen solid.’
Ygrid bowed and pressed herself flat against the ground, allowing Granger to clamber down her spine and slip off her tail. He hefted his kitbag over his shoulder and then walked around to her front. ‘Might I use the yacht’s head?’ he asked, inclining his head towards Conquillas’s boat.
The dragon shook its head. ‘I do not possess the authority to grant that request.’
‘Two minutes,’ Granger said.
‘I’m sorry.’
Granger grunted and mumbled under his breath, ‘Can I at least take a shit among the goddamn rocks, then?’
‘Of course,’ Ygrid replied. ‘But do not wander far.’
Granger wandered in the direction of the yacht. As he did so, he slid the kitbag from his shoulder and let it drop.
He picked up his pace.
He felt the air stir suddenly, and Ygrid’s voice growled behind him. ‘Do not approach that yacht, human.’
Granger exploded into a run.
‘Stop!’ Ygrid cried.
He scrambled up the rocks towards the gangplank, sensing a change in the light as the huge dragon moved behind him. He glanced back . . . to see Ygrid clawing across the rocky ground towards him, closing the gap quickly. He had to hope his shield would repel her fire.
Granger reached the top of the outcrop and pounded across the gangplank.
A hatch led below. Granger rushed across the deck towards it, his muscles tense, the whole time expecting a deluge of fire at his back. His metal boots thundered across solid planking. And still the fire did not envelop him. He reached the hatch and pulled it open just as a shadow loomed overhead.
Granger leaped down six steps and landed hard in the passageway below. He rolled to break his fall, and came to rest on his back, staring up at the open hatchway, and the dragon beyond.
Ygrid glared down at him with murder in her eyes. Her teeth were as large as the opening through which Granger had just passed. Her breath filled the passageway with noxious vapours. She could have burned him to ash where he lay, or ripped the yacht to splinters to get to him.
But she didn’t.
For either of those actions would have wrecked her master’s home.
She did, however, speak. ‘Conquillas is not at home, you fool,’ she roared. ‘He is not on this island. Your actions have earned you nothing but my distrust.’
Granger got to his feet.
The dragon was probably lying. Someone had been playing that lute, and he meant to find out who. He turned away and opened a door at the end of the passageway.
Beyond the door he found a sumptuous parlour with walls inlaid with tropical woods and metal. Dozens of tiny gem lanterns hung from ceiling joists carved to resemble whale bones. In one corner stood a lacquered white harpsichord – one of many delicate objects and furniture situated in this chamber. On a stool next to the harpsichord sat a young girl.
She was younger than Ianthe, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, and she held a lute in her small pale hands. Her bone-white hair and fair skin were clearly Unmer, as were her violet eyes, and yet she had a rounder, fuller face than most of her kind. Granger suspected her blood might possess a hint of human ancestry.
On seeing him, her eyes widened with alarm, and she rose sharply from the stool, clutching her instrument to her chest. There was a crackling sound and the strings snapped suddenly, loudly – like a series of gunshots. The girl cried out and dropped the instrument.
It fell to the floor in pieces, destroyed by that peculiar Unmer trick of decreation. Her fingers had evidently passed through wood and wire as easily as air.
And yet no sooner had he registered the surprise and fear upon her face than the expression vanished. She glared at him with a look of utter condescension. ‘How dare you intrude here,’ she said in Unmer. ‘You must leave at once!’
Granger’s thoughts stumbled. He had expected to find Conquillas here. The girl was a surprise. At the same time he realized how frightening his brine-scarred face must look to her. He raised his hands in a placatory manner. ‘You’ve nothing to fear from me, child,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for Conquillas.’
She snorted. ‘I do not fear you,’ she said. ‘And any chance you had of an audience with my father died the moment you came storming into our home.’
Her father? Conquillas has a daughter?
‘Is he here?’ Granger said.
‘He is not.’
‘Then where can I find him?’
‘You will not find him,’ the girl said. ‘But his arrow will most certainly find you.’ She kicked the remains of her lute aside and took a step forward, her brow now furrowed with derision. ‘Now get out, before I skin you like a fish.’
Granger raised his hands again. ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
She laughed. ‘Hurt me?’ she said. ‘Whatever makes you think you could hurt me?’ She advanced across the parlour towards him, her arms now outstretched. From the tips of her fingers came a furious snapping sound as she destroyed the air around her hands, creating vacuum in its place. A single touch from those hands would just as easily destroy him. He felt a breeze stir.
And then a sudden movement to one side snagged his attention, and he glanced over to see Ygrid peering in through one of the yacht’s portholes. The dragon looked furious.
‘All right,’ he said to the girl. ‘I’m going.’
The child halted and lowered her hands. The noise from her fingertips ceased at once, and the breeze died.
From outside came Ygrid’s voice: ‘The first wise decision you’ve made since we arrived, Colonel Granger.’
‘Granger?’ the child said, suddenly tense. ‘Your name is Granger?’
He shrugged. ‘What if it is?’
Suddenly she shrieked and came rushing towards him in a furious rage, her hands like outstretched claws.
Oh crap. Granger scrambled out of her way, dragging a carved wooden settee between them. She swiped at the settee and her hands simply passed through it. It collapsed into pieces and she kicked those aside.
‘Have you forgotten?’ she said. ‘The trove market in Losoto all those years ago.’
Granger’s memories raced. He recalled the incident that had brought him, injured, before Emperor Hu. An incident involving Conquillas, a dragon, an ichusae, and an Unmer child . . .
This Unmer child?
Oh crap.
‘You ordered your men to shoot me!’ she cried.
He continued to back away. He’d assumed her to be some waif allowed to escape from the Losotan ghettos as a political stunt by the Haurstaf. But now he saw the truth. Conquillas had been in Losoto with the girl – with his daughter – all along. That’s why he’d turned up at such an opportune moment. ‘We didn’t harm you,’ he said. ‘We only meant to scare you back to where you came from.’
‘The ghettos?’ she said.
‘Well . . .’
She flung herself upon him, her small hands crackling with that strange power. Granger shoved her aside, taking care not to hurt her, but not before she’d reduced his cloak to tatters. Now it hung over his armour like so many ragged scraps.
The child screeched and threw herself at him again.
Again, Granger diverted her attack. A large section of his cloak fell to the floor. Amazingly, his armour had not been compromised in any way.‘Just calm down,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘No you’re not!’ she yelled, and ran at him again.
Granger stepped back, but the back of his leg struck something solid, and he almost toppled. He had staggered into the pieces of broken settee. He turned back, too late. The child leaped on him, her hands outstretched, knocking him back. There
was a flash of light.
And then a cry of frustration.
Granger realized that her fingers were scrabbling against the alloy breastplate of his armour, unnervingly over where his liver would be. And yet the surface remained intact, unblemished. White sparks flew from the metal where she clawed at it, but it continued to resist her sorcerous assault.
Granger threw the girl off him again.
‘Entropathic armour?’ she yelled. ‘Where did you get that?’
He said nothing.
She began to sob.
Granger let out a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry Creedy shot you in the face.’
She hid her face in her elbow.
‘What’s your name?’ he said.
‘Go away.’
‘I have a daughter about your age. Her name’s Ianthe.’
The girl continued to weep into her elbow.
‘That’s why I’m here,’ he said. He sat down on the floor beside her. ‘She’s gone and fallen for a . . .’ He let out a weary sigh. ‘An Unmer prince called Paulus Marquetta.’
The girl lowered her elbow and looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. Granger could see that the name was familiar to her. She was curious.
‘Marquetta has challenged your father to public contest.’
She sniffed. ‘My father will kill him.’
‘The prince plans to cheat.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ she said.
‘The contest is rigged. Your father is going to face a god named Fiorel in the arena.’
She stopped and stared at him. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘He’s going to be disguised as a human combatant,’ Granger said. ‘This is what I came to tell Conquillas – that we have a common enemy in Prince Marquetta and that he has found a powerful ally.’
‘You came to ask for help? After what you’ve done?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you have to understand, back in Losoto, you were never in any danger from my men. Our weapons couldn’t have harmed you.’
She sniffed again, nodded.
‘But I also came to ask another favour of your father. My daughter is still a child. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Her fiancé and his uncle are merely using her. I came to beg your father to spare her life.’
‘My father doesn’t kill children.’
‘He’s vowed to kill anyone who stands in his way,’ Granger said. ‘And my daughter will certainly try to do that. She can’t see beyond this boy’s looks.’ He noticed the girl’s choked noise and looked around for something to use as a handkerchief. He picked up a scrap of his cloak from the floor and handed it to her.
After a moment’s hesitation, she accepted it.
‘That’s why I need to know where he is.’
‘I don’t know where he is,’ she said. ‘He always leaves me and never tells me. I only know where he’ll be.’
Granger sighed again and rose to his feet. ‘Then I have to hope Ygrid keeps her promise to carry me to Losoto,’ he said, squinting through the portholes. ‘Right now, I think she means to eat me.’
The girl laughed and blew her nose.
‘She’s very protective,’ she said. ‘But she’ll listen to me. I’ll convince her not to harm you.’
Granger nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘Wait there while I pack.’
He frowned. ‘Pack?’
‘Pack! For Losoto.’
‘You’re not going to Losoto.’
She folded her arms. ‘I’m not staying here,’ she said. ‘Not when my father is in mortal danger.’
‘I didn’t say mortal danger. From what I gather—’
‘He’s in mortal danger,’ she said, stamping her foot to emphasize the point. ‘And you wouldn’t know how to find him. You haven’t been trained as a hunter.’
‘I’m not bringing you with me . . .’
‘Siselo,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘My name is Siselo. And, no, you’re not bringing me with you, Colonel Granger. I am going to Losoto withYgrid.’ She smiled thinly. ‘However, if you behave, I may decide to bring you along with me.’
From Carhen Doma they sailed east for five days before Ianthe located the Ilena Grey. She had cast her mind adrift in the Sea of Ghosts and finally stumbled upon a shining beacon of perception amidst that vast dark plain lit only by the isolated glimmers of marine life.
She relayed to Paulus the Ilena’s position and informed him that all of the passengers were, as far as she could tell, alive. However, she did not speak of their condition lest he fall into despair. Paulus instructed Captain Howlish to sail with all speed towards the other vessel, some three days east and several degrees north of them. Through trial and error they closed the gap and by dawn on the fourth day the crewman in the crow’s nest cried out the news that he had spied a sail on the horizon.
By mid-afternoon the two ships – their own strange barque together with a huge Losotan merchantman – lay side by side and their corbuses crashed down with a series of iron-bound thunks. Ianthe stood on deck with Paulus and his uncle as they welcomed nine hundred and twenty-three of their kin aboard.
Back in Awl, whenever Ianthe had thought about the Losotan Unmer, her imagination had always painted them as noble lords and ladies, draped in the jewels and precious metals and finery she had come to associate with her fiancé’s race. She had expected flamboyance, even ostentation. She had come to understand the Unmer’s propensity for extravagance as a symptom of their explosive elevation from relatively humble roots to masters of both creation and destruction. And yet the people who came aboard the St Augustine that afternoon were cruelly thin and ragged. They carried with them no possessions other than the filthy vestments on their backs and the simple rations with which the emperor had supplied them. Many of them seemed near death.
Paulus eschewed all formality. He clasped their hands and hugged these pitiful men, women and children close to him.
And while he welcomed his kin with smiles and rousing words of encouragement and victory, Ianthe could see that the encounter moved him close to tears.
It soon became apparent that among the new arrivals the older men and women saw nothing odd in the construction of the St Augustine, for their eyes were used to sorcery. And yet the younger Unmer and the children saw the vessel with awe-struck eyes. They marvelled at its shifting translucency, at the pale, ethereal flames that played endlessly across the yards and gunwales.
If Howlish’s crew had been nervous with two Unmer aboard, they seemed positively twitchy at the prospect of having more than nine hundred ensconced in the cabins and holds below decks, but the good captain promised Duke Cyr that he’d keep their rum rations low and their workload high: too sober and too occupied for strained nerves to foment trouble, as he put it.
The last to leave the Ilena Grey was a very old and frail man named Raceme Athentro, who had been a highly distinguished naval officer in his youth and had thus taken charge of the refugee ship on her voyage from Losoto. Athentro had had the luxury of discovering among his fellows a considerable number of men with sailing experience, and had chosen his crew from the fittest of these. He offered to continue to helm the Ilena so that she might accompany the St Augustine wherever she might head, but Paulus would not hear of it. Instead, the prince ordered Howlish to find a crew for the Ilena from among his own men.
The Ilena would be provisioned, Paulus explained, and the refugees would be split between the two vessels. Both ships would return to Losoto, where they would witness Emperor Hu kneel and beg forgiveness for his crimes.
And so, with Howlish’s men divided between the two ships, they turned their bows south-east towards Losoto.
Later that evening Ianthe found Paulus at the bow of the St Augustine, staring out at the horizon as if searching for the city still over a hundred leagues away. He didn’t acknowledge her as she stood by him and she could see that he was in a dark mood.
‘There used to be half a million Unmer in
Losoto,’ he said, his eyes still fixed on the horizon. ‘Before the Revolution. When the Haurstaf arrived, they crammed most of those people into sixty city blocks.’
‘It must have been awful.’
‘My family were luckier than most,’ he said. ‘Aria’s troops captured my mother and father fleeing across the Anean hills, but because of their status they were taken to Awl. They never saw the ghettos.’ He shook his head and then stared up into the heavens. He spoke in a furious whisper, forcing the words out between clenched teeth. ‘Half a million souls . . . decimated by starvation and disease . . . reduced to this, to less than a thousand.’
‘How will you take the city?’
‘I shall open our third wedding gift,’ he said.
‘The worm?’
‘No mere worm, I suspect. When we first saw Fiorel’s dragon wraiths I recognized them from legend. They are from the Otiansel Mestra – the first of the four Great Rifts Fiorel is known to have created. And if he has given us access to his private domains, then I have my suspicions about that worm’s true nature.’
‘What is it?’
‘The Uriun,’ he said. ‘It is probably the largest creature in existence – certainly the largest we know of. It is the worm that inhabits a rift as large as this world, Otiansel Vadra – the domain of swamps.’
‘And what about the gas?’
‘If the third bottle contains the Uriun,’ Paulus said, ‘then the gas must provide a way to send it back to its own realm. Otherwise it would destroy this world.’
Ianthe shuddered. ‘Why did Fiorel create these things?’
‘Why does anyone create anything?’ he replied. ‘Some are weapons, others are useful in different ways. Besides Mestra and Vadra, there is Otiansel Cama, a land which was destroyed by a great war – a thousand leagues of ruin and blasted earth. It is a terrifying place full of the spectres of the dead. The last of the major four is Otiansel Hurulla, the City of Pain, to which Fiorel exiles his enemies. There are just the Great Rifts, but there are countless minor ones. This ship came from one such rift. Your father’s sword contains another.’