‘Fire to port!’ Mellor cried.
The ship’s three port cannon batteries fired in rapid sequence. Thud, thud, thud. Maskelyne had been counting on the barrage to drive the serpent back from the ship, but the panicked crew had been in too much of a hurry. Even at this close range, two of the shells missed their targets and flew harmlessly out to sea. The third one tore through the dragon’s left wing.
The beast roared and then dived straight at the midships gun.
Claws clacked and skittered on steel. Maskelyne felt the ship tilt under the dragon’s weight, heard the slap and suck of the sea against the hull. Metal groaned. The serpent’s great brown neck lunged across the deck and knocked the bathysphere aside, its black teeth snapping at the fleeing crew. And then it lashed its head skywards, dragging a screaming man from a knot of his comrades and hurling him high into the air. Men hollered and slipped and scrambled away in every direction. The bow and stern gun crews ratcheted their cannons inwards as far as they would reach, but the barrels could not be brought to bear upon such a close target.
Maskelyne cursed and lowered his blunderbuss. To shoot the weapon down at such an angle would endanger his vessel. He ran his hand across the glass bulb. It was beginning to warm up dangerously. He leaped down to the midships deck.
The serpent crouched in the centre of the ship, snapping its jaws and lashing its tail back and forth. It turned its golden eyes upon Maskelyne and spoke in Unmer, ‘Return what you have stolen or I will crush this ship and send you all to the deep.’ It raised its head as if about to strike down at Maskelyne.
Maskelyne lifted the blunderbuss under the beast’s chin. ‘You’d do that anyway,’ he replied in the dragon’s own language. Then he squeezed the trigger.
The weapon clicked gently, and then became suddenly hot as a ball of flame swirled inside the glass bulb he had fitted to the stock. Vibrations ran though his hands, accompanied by a faint whining sound from inside the gun’s mechanism. And from the skull-topped barrel erupted a swarm of void flies.
The tiny black insects came pouring out of the blunderbuss, steered by the runic spells etched into in its barrel and unravelling into an ever-broadening spiral. Crackling wildly as they reduced the air around them to vacuum, these Unmer creations would remove every particle of matter with which they came into contact, whether it be stone, steel or dragon flesh. In a heartbeat a cloud of them had engulfed the great brown serpent . . .
. . . and passed straight through it. Like ten thousand tiny blades, they ripped the dragon’s body to shreds as they forged unstoppable trails through scales, bone and flesh. Scraps of meat fell like rain. Only the dragon’s lower body and tail remained mostly unscathed. It slumped heavily to the deck amidst a haze of blood.
The void flies continued onwards, a crackling stream that spiralled up towards the distant clouds and the heavens beyond.
Maskelyne wiped gore from his goggles and lowered the gun. ‘Clean up,’ he said.
* * *
CHAPTER 9
THE HAURSTAF
‘Here,’ Torturer Mara said, ‘is where we made the leucotomy, and here . . .’ he used a glass rod to push a section of the patient’s brain tissue aside ‘. . . is the cavity I told you about.’ The patient gave an involuntary twitch. His hands clenched at his sides, and he made an odd yowling sound.
Sister Briana Marks breathed through her fingers. ‘Well that settles it once and for all,’ she said. ‘The Unmer actually do posses a hole in their heads.’ She squinted at the exposed brain and frowned. ‘It looks like the inside of a chicken.’
Torturer Mara withdrew the rod and plunked it into a beaker, then wiped his hands on his apron. His stained garment was the only thing less than pristine in this operating room. Sunlight poured in through tall windows, gleaming on the white-tiled floor and steel tables. ‘A very different animal to modern man,’ he said. ‘The cavity would have acted like an echo chamber, amplifying telepathic thought. It’s probably a vestigial organ from an earlier stage in the development of their species. It became redundant as soon as the lobular bridges formed.’
‘The Unmer traded their telepathic ability for the power to dispatch matter?’
Mara shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t say traded. That word has uncomfortable implications. Besides, there’s nothing to suggest they were ever telepathic. Empathic, perhaps. The cavity is a rudimentary structure, like the worm-fish lung or the nomio’s spinal ganglion. We think early humans possessed a similar type of brain, but then developed in a different way.’
The patient began to bang the flat of his hands on the table.
‘Must he do that?’ Briana said.
Mara picked up a scalpel and made a small incision in the brain. The patient became still.
‘Thank you,’ Briana said. ‘You’re very deft with that thing.’
The torturer’s smile rearranged every wrinkle on his face. ‘Practice,’ he said.
‘You know what this discovery means?’
‘Well, it explains why they’re vulnerable . . .’ Mara began.
‘No, no, it means I’ve lost ten thousand gilders,’ Briana retorted. ‘Hu is going to parade this in front of his whole empire. He’ll use it to embarrass us.’ She gave a long sigh. ‘How can we possibly be related to these oiks? It sends shivers down my spine.’
The patient suddenly spoke in a loud, clear voice: ‘Kurese, I will not stand. Replace it to me.’ His fingers reached out in the direction of the table next to him, where Mara had placed the sawed-off top section of his skull, still resplendent with its white mane of hair.
Briana made a face. ‘You see that? Half his head off, and he’s still vain.’
‘Shall I patch him back up again?’
‘I suppose you’d better,’ Briana said. ‘Sister Ulla’s girls can still use him as a pin cushion. Staple him up and put him back in the maze.’
The man on the table said, ‘Replace it to me. We will war the Haurstaf.’
‘You’ll sit in a corner and dribble,’ Briana said. ‘Do you think we should give him a haircut while the skull’s off? I suppose he could cut it himself—’ She stopped as she sensed the presence of a third person in the room and turned to see a pretty young girl standing in the doorway with a look of horror on her face.
What do you want?
The girl started. ‘Eh? I’m sorry, I . . .’
We have company, Briana said, driving the words into the young witch’s mind like nails into wood. Torturer Mara is Hu’s own physician. So, under the circumstances, which do you think is the proper form of communication – thinking your words? ‘Or squawking them out like a fat little crow?’
‘Thinking?’ the girl said.
‘You’re not the brightest thing, are you?’
Mara paid them no heed. He picked up the staple punch and the scalp and calmly went to work on the Unmer patient’s head. The girl in the doorway looked positively sick, and it took a moment before she regained enough composure to form a mental reply.
This letter arrived for you, she said, holding out a soiled scrap of folded paper. An Ethugran fisherman brought it here. He’s waiting outside the palace. I think he expects some sort of payment for it.
Briana cast her mind out, but failed to sense the fisherman at all. He was no more psychic than a sewer rat, and therefore just as invisible to her from here. She took the letter and opened it.
To Sister Briana Marks:
My name is not important. I am a jailer in Ethugra who has recently, and legally, been granted incarceration rights to a powerful psychic. Given this p
erson’s value to your Guild, I would be glad to hand them over in return for a finder’s fee of two hundred thousand gilders. If this is agreeable, please have a Guild representative (yellow-grade only) meet me at Averley Plaza on the 30th HR. I will find her.
Faithfully,
A Friend
‘Oh, this is extortion,’ she said. ‘Two hundred thousand gilders!’ She looked up at the girl. ‘How much did we pay for you?’
‘Nothing, Sister.’
‘Nothing,’ Briana confirmed. ‘You see how good we are at putting a precise value on talent?’
‘My parents thought it a great honour—’
‘Oh shut up,’ Briana said. ‘Your parents were lucky we didn’t have them executed for foisting you upon us. But this Ethugran jailer . . .’ she shook the letter in Mara’s face ‘. . . . has the audacity to demand a fortune for a potential.’
‘Such is the world we live in,’ Mara said wearily.
‘We will war upon the Haurstaf,’ the Unmer patient added.
Briana growled. ‘Snip something, Torturer, please.’ Did they have any representatives in Ethugra? She broadcast the question to every psychic in the palace, and they answer came back at once: No.
She’d have to send someone.
But who?
As she gazed at the letter, thinking, she noticed something else. Somebody had scrawled something, very faintly, across the bottom margin. At first she’d taken the scribble to be a stain, but now that she looked closer she could definitely make out the words. They looked like they had been written in brine. There was a date, and a name. And she recognized the name.
Briana smiled. Hu would recognize that name too and pay the Guild a considerable sum to learn of its owner’s whereabouts. Prepare a carriage for me, she said to the girl. I’m leaving the palace at once.
‘Yes, sister.’
‘Wait,’ Briana added. ‘On second thoughts, I’ll arrange it myself.’ She gave the girl a long, clinical look and then turned to Mara. ‘Torturer, I was just thinking. Is it really necessary to let the emperor know the results of this anatomical exploration? I mean, aren’t we just fuelling his prejudices? Wouldn’t he be happier, deep down, if he believed that the Haurstaf – and by extension all humans – are completely unrelated to the Unmer?’
The Torturer made a gesture of non-committal. ‘He’s not convinced the Haurstaf are human. I believe his favoured term is brine mutants, although he has been known to use the phrase inhuman parasites. Of course, when he’s really angry he—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Briana said. ‘But look at that pretty little creature at the door. Does she look like a mutant to you?’
‘Of course not,’ Mara replied.
‘Then you agree. Keeping Hu in the dark would be beneficial for all concerned. Think of it as propagating peace and harmony between our communities.’
Mara grunted. ‘I’d be risking my position in his court.’
‘We’d compensate you for that.’ Briana inclined her head towards the young girl in the doorway. ‘I could offer you the opportunity to do a little more anatomical research?’
The girl glanced from the torturer to Briana. ‘Sister?’
Mara looked the young witch up and down, stroking his chin.
‘In more comfortable surroundings,’ Briana added. ‘You must stay as our guest for a few more nights. I insist.’
‘Hu’s gone to Lorimare for the summer,’ Mara said. ‘I could actually delay my return by several weeks.’
‘Take months if you like.’
The girl was turning red. ‘I will not,’ she said.
‘You absolutely will,’ Briana said.
The girl burst into tears and ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.
A moment of silence passed before Briana said, ‘So ungrateful. We take them from the fields and slums, train them up and offer them a life of luxury and ease, and this is how they repay us. I blame the parents.’
‘Such is the world,’ Mara muttered. ‘Shall we just say five thousand then?’
Briana took his arm and led him away. ‘Let’s not discuss money,’ she said. ‘It’s so vulgar.’
The steel motor launch moved between the ships in the bay. Maskelyne followed her progress from a high window in his castle. He lost sight of her as she passed behind the older of his two Valcinder dredgers, the Lamp, and then spotted her again rounding the vessel’s bow. She was battered and rusty. From up here he could not make out her name or the name of her port painted on the hull, but he heard her engine rattling. He guessed she was from Ethugra. She looked like a jailer’s boat.
‘Is it Hu?’ his wife Lucille asked.
‘No.’
‘But it’s heading for our house dock.’
Maskelyne smiled. ‘The emperor would rather submit to torture than be seen aboard a tub like that,’ he said. ‘I suspect this is our Mr Creedy, come to negotiate his partnership share.’
She wilted against his shoulder and murmured in his ear: ‘Or maybe it’s your secret lover.’
Maskelyne raised his eyebrows. ‘Mr Creedy is not my secret lover.’
‘I don’t like him.’
‘That seems like an appropriate and reasonable reaction.’
‘Will you kill him?’
Maskelyne turned to face her. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘To save money.’
‘I’m married to a sociopath.’
She turned away, drawing his arm after her before letting it go. ‘Aren’t men of your reputation supposed to murder on a whim? What do they call you now? Maskelyne the Butcher?’
‘The Executioner,’ her husband replied. ‘I don’t think Mr Creedy’s death would do much to enhance my standing among the city jailers. He is innocent of any crime, after all.’
‘He sold his friend’s daughter into slavery.’
‘Like I said,’ Maskelyne remarked, ‘innocent.’
The launch docked at the stone pier on the westernmost end of Key Beach. A large man wearing a grey whaleskin cloak alighted. The blue lens of his clockwork eye flashed in the sunlight. He was carrying an enormous kitbag over his shoulder. He tied up, then stood alone for a long moment, apparently watching the deepwater wharfs, where Maskelyne’s stevedores were unloading the Unmer chariot from the hold of the Mistress. Then he looked directly up at the the very window in which Maskelyne stood and waved.
‘It is him,’ Lucille said. ‘I’d recognize that eye anywhere.’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘I wonder what he has in his bag.’
‘Some sort of bomb, I imagine.’
Mr Creedy began strolling up the pier, but then he stopped again and stared down at the crescent beach to his right. Evidently he had noticed its unusual composition. A few of Maskelyne’s men were wandering across that strange silver shoreline, stopping every now and then to pick up likely keys from the tens of millions deposited there and trying them in the locks of boxes they carried.
Maskelyne smiled. ‘Now that will have him wondering.’
‘I’m going to check on Jontney,’ Lucille said. ‘I’m worried that he’s coming down with something. It’s not like him to behave this way.’
‘Have you spoken to the doctor?’
She shook her head.
‘Call for
him anyway,’ Maskelyne said.
His wife looked at him sadly. ‘What will you do about the bomb?’
Maskelyne kissed her on the cheek. ‘Take our son for a walk.’
Maskelyne decided to receive Mr Creedy in his laboratory. He rang for his manservant, Garstone, ordered him to prepare lunch for one and to throw open the laboratory terrace doors to dispel the monstrous odours in there. Then he told him to direct the Ethugran jailer to the anteroom and ask him politely to wait.
By the time Maskelyne had lunched and dressed in his laboratory overalls, his visitor had been waiting for almost an hour.
The laboratory boasted four enormous glass tanks, each flooded with brine from a different sea and connected to the ceiling by a wide glass tube. Daylight filtered through the vessels from tall windows on either side of the laboratory and was changed by the waters into hues of red, brown, yellow and green. The two Drowned men in the Mare Regis tank were turning cards, but looked up from their table when Maskelyne ushered Mr Creedy in. In the gloomy red seawater their faces appeared dim and monstrous. The girl who had formerly occupied the Mare Lux tank had been removed for dissection – but her twin sister peered out through the glass of the Mare Sepsis tank opposite. She had acclimatized well to the change in seawater. The sores on her face had all but disappeared, although her hair and eyes had changed colour. It seemed that Mare Sepsis brine was not as toxic to the Drowned as sailors claimed. When she saw Maskelyne, she became suddenly excited. She scribbled something on her slate, then turned it round to show him.
OJUJH WAW.
Maskelyne had no idea what it meant, and he doubted the girl did either. She’d been submerged in that brine for nearly two months now, quite long enough for her mind to have become pickled.
In the last tank, the remains of an old man sat on a stool and brooded. The green seawater gave him the pallor of a decayed corpse and, indeed, the Mare Verdant brine had already dissolved a great deal of his muscle mass and flesh, leaving naked bones visible at the clavicle, hip and both thighs. In time he would vanish entirely, but not before his skeleton paced for many days behind that glass wall.