‘Slippery little bitch,’ Creedy said.
Whether the girl was unable to perceive the brine tank, or whether she simply did not notice it in her panic, Ida didn’t know. But she doubted that what happened next was deliberate. The child ran straight into the container’s curved glass wall.
There was a blaze of white light, a sharp bang . . .
And the tank shattered.
A wave of brine erupted out onto the market floor, washing artefacts aside as it surged between the aisles. Ida leapt for the safety of the nearest set of shelves and tried to clamber up among the trove. Her foot slipped, and she felt cold seawater close around the heel of her shoe. The metal stink of brine filled her nostrils. She yelped, snatching her foot away, but it was too late. Her ankle had already begun to itch.
Strong hands gripped her, pulled her up. ‘Relax, ma’am. It’s only your ankle.’
The itching became a strange prickling sensation. Ida’s heartbeat quickened.
She heard Creedy’s voice. ‘That wasn’t our fault. Hu can’t blame us for breaking that.’
‘There she is,’ said another man. ‘She’s splashing through the stuff.’
The prickling sensation in Ida’s foot intensified. She began to shiver with fear. Was this shock? How long did she have before her skin began to change? ‘I need fresh water,’ she said. ‘I need to—’
‘The guns aren’t working, sir. Our shots don’t have enough mass. We’re going to have to overwhelm her.’
Ida pulled off her slipper and stared at her ankle. She couldn’t see any damage yet, but the skin on her heel felt like it was tightening over the bones inside.
‘. . . for something her size?’
‘Five or six tons. But, like I said, it’s a hell of a risk. Hu is still looking for an excuse to bury us. A hole in his city pretty much fits that bill.’
Ida tried to swallow her revulsion, but visions of sharkskin assailed her. Was she turning into one of the Drowned? She felt nauseous, dizzy, as though racked by the effects of some hideous drug. The Trove Market whirled around her in glittering wheels of gold and silver. She leaned over and vomited.
From nearby came a long low wail. The sharkskin woman lying at the bottom of the smashed tank was beginning to dry out. She was writhing about, scooping up brine and rubbing it into her leathery grey flesh. Ida tore her gaze away from the unfortunate creature. Her own ankle was nipping quite fiercely now. So soon? She needed fresh water to clean the wound. She searched around frantically for something, somewhere. . . .
‘Take Swan and Tummel and find the breach. It’ll be a small hole, child-sized. If we scare her enough we might just manage to steer her back there.’
‘We’re supposed to kill any escapees. Hu was very specific about that.’
‘Emperor Hu is not here.’
‘Right, sir.’
‘Creedy, you’re with me.’
‘They can’t blame us for that mess, can they, sir?’
‘Ma’am?’
Ida looked up.
The colonel was holding out a bottle. ‘It’s wine,’ he said.
She gazed at him dumbly.
‘Use it on your ankle. It’ll help.’
Ida took the bottle and poured pink wine over her ankle. Had her skin already begun to toughen and change? Wasn’t that a patch of grey, there, on the side of her heel? Hurriedly, she massaged the wine into her foot, then felt a jab of panic as her fingers began to itch. ‘Colonel,’ she began.
But the colonel did not reply. He was looking past her.
A hundred paces beyond the smashed tank stood a man. He was aiming a bow at the colonel. He was dressed up like a noble from a bygone era: a jewel-studded black jerkin spun about with a platinum sash, black breeches over white hose and sandals of soft dark leather. Rouge coloured his cheeks, but the powdered make-up did little to dampen the sharpness of his features. His out-thrust chin and dagger-like nose were too severe to be considered handsome. He wore his long grey hair in a tight plait pulled back from his face and he glared at them with sharp violet eyes. Ida found him strangely mesmerizing. He seemed somehow more solid than the world around him, a fixed point in a spinning world. She felt her nausea diminish.
The Unmer child had her arms wrapped around the bowman’s leg.
And behind them both stood a berserker dragon.
The beast was small for its species, perhaps sixty feet from its snout to the tip of its tail. It wore a suit of glazed white armour chased with silver, each plate exquisitely shaped to hug its serpentine body and its short, powerful limbs. Shards of crystal glinted on its gauntlets and again on its long, tapered helmet, wherein burned blood-red eyes. It nuzzled the Unmer child until she giggled.
Like all dragons, it had been human once – a warrior remade by Unmer sorcery into this new and bestial form. It unfolded great nacreous wings that glittered like rainbows, and then it lowered its equine head and began to lap at the poisonous brine. In creating this species for war, the Unmer had given it unholy addictions. The seawater would be acting like a drug, fuelling its rage in preparation for battle. When it raised its head again, brine dripped from ranks of bared white teeth.
The bowman smiled. ‘Do you enjoy tormenting children?’
Creedy said, ‘Fuck.’
Now the colonel hefted his own hand-cannon. ‘The child was in no danger from us,’ he said. ‘Take her back to the ghetto, and we’ll allow you to leave here unharmed.’
‘Allow me to leave?’ the archer said incredulously. ‘In what way do you suppose you can harm me? Your weapons are like those of ghosts.’ Behind him, the dragon growled words in a strange, guttural language. The archer listened and then replied in the same twisted speech. Finally he turned back to the colonel. ‘Yva is hungry,’ he said. ‘She has begged me to allow her to remain here, so that she may devour you at her leisure.’ He smiled again, inclining his head towards the sharkskin woman writhing on the ground. ‘Of course Yva is lying. She wants that Drowned woman and is too ashamed of her addiction to admit it.’
‘Who are you?’ Ida asked.
The bowman looked at her with utter disdain, as though the question was one that ought to have required no answer. ‘I am Argusto Conquillas,’ he said, ‘Lord of Herica and the Sumran Islands.’
‘I know who you are,’ the colonel said. ‘You’re a long way from Herica.’
Creedy grunted. ‘He’s Lord of shit now, a dragon fetishist and a Haurstaf toy.’
Conquillas shot him.
Creedy tried to turn away. He was fast, but not fast enough. The arrow tore through the air like a thunderbolt, crackling with black fire. It passed clean through the bridge of Creedy’s nose and then out of the right side of his skull behind his eye, before disappearing into the vaulted wall sixty yards behind with a sudden bang. Ida gaped at the spot where it had vanished. She could still hear a furious snapping sound receding into the distance as it continued on its path beyond that wall and through the foundations of the city itself.
In the heartbeat before Creedy howled and clutched at his face, Ida glimpsed a bloody mess where his right eye had been.
The colonel’s men reacted with uproar. Banks grabbed Creedy, who was screaming and worrying his head with bloody fingers. The crows yelled and lifted their hand-cannons. Wheellock dogs clicked back.
‘Hold your fire!’ the colonel shouted.
Conquillas was holding up a green glass bottle the size of his thumb. It had a small copper stopper wedged in its neck. An arrogant smirk formed on his lips. Behind him, the dragon leaned closer and purred deep
ly.
‘You know what this is?’ Conquillas said.
Ida’s moistened her lips. Was that a sea-bottle? One could buy an apartment in Valcinder with one of those.
The colonel lowered his gun. ‘There are innocent people in here.’
‘No human is innocent.’ Conquillas unplugged the stopper and threw the bottle high into the air, towards the soldiers. Great arcs of dark green brine sprayed out of its open neck – too much liquid, far more than such a tiny container could possibly hold. The bottle bounced three times, then clattered across the ground and, still spewing brine, disappeared under one of the shelves.
The colonel hissed. The liquid had splashed his shoulder, soaking his uniform. He jumped down, his whaleskin boots slapping into the wet floor, then turned to his men and said calmly, ‘Find that ichusae and seal it, please.’
Banks clambered down after the officer and was quickly joined by the two crows. The colonel was already on his knees, crawling across the ground as he tried to reach under the opposite bank of shelves. But then he muttered in frustration and stood up again. ‘Give me a hand to push it over.’ He pressed his body against the shelf, heaving at it with his shoulder. The other three men joined him, and together they pushed.
The shelf tilted back and then slammed to the ground, spilling trove everywhere. Scores of relics fell and smashed. Brine coursed and bubbled across the floor between them. The four soldiers were raking through the treasure, kicking and flinging it aside. ‘Here we are,’ the colonel said, reaching down.
Ida felt a gust of wind batter her face. She looked up to see the dragon take to the air. Conquillas and the child had disappeared. With its wings shimmering, the beast seemed vague, illusory. Its crystal claws flashed. It roared.
‘Wings!’ Banks cried.
‘Thank you, Private.’ The colonel already had his hand-cannon trained on the dragon. In his other hand he held up the bottle. Gallons of brine continued to bubble and froth out of the tiny container, soaking his gloved fist. He forced his thumb down on to the open neck to try and stem the flow, but the pressure was too great. Jets of green liquid sprayed across the fallen treasure. ‘I’ll need that stopper, Private Swan,’ he said. ‘As soon as you can.’
‘Here, Colonel!’ One of the crows had located the stopper.
The great serpent spread out its wings and then fell upon the sharkskin woman lying on the ground sixty paces from the soldiers. Ida turned away just as its open jaws darted down. The woman’s scream was cut short by the sound of crunching bones.
By now the colonel had sealed the Unmer bottle. He wiped it dry on the edge of his whaleskin boot and then slipped it into a pocket on the front of his uniform.
The dragon raised its head, blood and brine dripping from its maw. Nothing remained of the sharkskin woman’s corpse but a few scraps of meat. It snapped its teeth; its neck reared back like a viper about to strike.
The colonel walked towards it, his hand-cannon levelled at its head, and spoke in that same guttural language the serpent had used. ‘Yva feroo raka. Onolam nagir.’
‘Onolam?’ the dragon replied. A prolonged booming noise, perhaps a laugh, came from its throat. ‘Nash, nagir seen awar. Bones and blood, little mortal. The laws of men mean nothing to me.’
‘Conquillas was right,’ the colonel said. ‘You are ashamed of your addiction.’
The dragon lowered its long neck, hunched its body behind its forelegs and hissed. Ida could smell the sea upon its breath – the heady stench of salt and metals. Red eyes burned malevolently in the gloom.
And then it pounced.
The sheer power and speed of the creature was astonishing. It shot forward, a blaze of white armour and crystal, its bloody maw open wide.
The colonel fired his hand-cannon into the creature’s mouth. To the sound of an enormous detonation, the dragon’s head blew apart and spattered across the vaulted ceiling. Chunks of meat rained down far across the marketplace. The massive jaws slid to a stop against the colonel’s boot.
He turned to face his men. ‘How is Creedy?’
Banks was cradling the sergeant’s shoulders. ‘He’s lost his looks, but he’ll live. The pair of them were covered from head to foot in dragon blood. Banks looked around at the mess and grinned. ‘Supper’s on you then,’ he said.
The colonel shook his head. ‘I never much liked the taste of dragon.’
* * *
CHAPTER 1
HU
An aide held up the bottle for Emperor Hu’s inspection. Sweat trails ran down his powdered blue cheeks and through the rouge around his eyes, and he clutched the Unmer container in both trembling hands, clearly terrified of dropping it. The emperor, for his part, looked just as uncomfortable. From a distance of five feet away, Hu leaned his long white face towards the cause of this morning’s woes.
‘A sea-bottle,’ he remarked, rubbing his pointed chin. ‘It never ceases to amaze me how such tiny things can cause so much trouble. What do the Unmer call them?’
‘Ichusae, your Majesty,’ the aide said.
The emperor’s hall contained a great expanse of air so pungent with clashing perfumes that one wondered if it was safe to breathe. Sunlight slanted down through high windows in the opposite walls and baked wedges of pink marble floor. Several hundred courtiers had gathered to see the Unmer bottle: a score of the emperor’s aides bedecked in jewels and silk kamarbands, legislators huddled together like great red bears in their fur-lined robes, administrators in white wool wigs and grey sacking, shipping magnates from Valcinder, and assorted noblemen and women, favoured artisans, poets and fools, military officers and concubines wearing little but beads. Sworn-blood representatives of at least three enemy warlords were also present, each heavily adorned with gold clasps and chains that had doubtlessly been stolen from Hu’s own ships. Their crooked grins suggested mouths full of other men’s teeth. Two lines of blind Samarol bodyguard stood between the emperor and his guests, clad in silver mail and eyeless silver helms forged into the likeness of snarling wolves and clutching Unmer seeing knives
‘Which means what exactly?’ Hu retorted.
The aide looked uncertain.
‘It means a doorway.’ This answer came from the Haurstaf witch standing nearby. Sister Briana Marks was fair-skinned and flushed with youth. A great tumble of golden hair gathered in the sinuous hollow at the back of her white frock, flashing with sunlight whenever she moved.
Granger’s right shoulder was still burning from its exposure to the brine. The weird ichor was gnawing on his nerve-endings like an army of ants as it worked its spell on him, and it took a supreme effort of will to maintain his composure. He did not wish to show weakness in front of Banks, Tummel and Swan. The three privates waited six paces behind him. Sergeant Creedy had remained with the barrack surgeon.
‘Doorway,’ the emperor muttered. ‘What strange creatures the Unmer are.’
A general mutter of agreement passed through the assembled crowd. Fans waved and heads nodded. Strange creatures indeed.
‘One sea-bottle hardly matters when thousands more remain scattered across the ocean floors,’ Sister Marks said. She gave the emperor a perfect smile, her blue eyes gleaming with impudence, and strolled across the dais to the throne. For a moment Granger thought she was actually going to sit in it. But she simply hovered there, one slender hand resting on the gilded arm rest.
‘My navy is occupied,’ the emperor retorted.
‘If your navy was less intent on expanding your empire and more focused on finding these ichusae,’ the witch replied, ‘there would be no further need for expansion. But you’d have them respond to the symptoms rather than cure the
disease.’
Emperor Hu dismissed his aide and fixed a look of disdain on the witch. ‘Where would the Haurstaf have me search?’
‘Why, everywhere, of course.’
A fresh jolt of pain stabbed Granger’s damaged shoulder. His collar bone felt like hot iron, and his nerves screamed. Three more days. Three more days before it healed or turned to sharkskin. He’d washed the wound thoroughly in clean water, but not soon enough after exposure to be certain it wouldn’t alter his flesh for good. Either way, he’d probably lose a great deal of flexibility in the right arm. And that would mean retraining to bring his fencing skills up to par.
The emperor snorted. He raised his voice for the benefit everyone present. ‘The Haurstaf would have me leave my empire unguarded while I hunt the seabed for little green bottles.’
A nervous laugh swept through the crowd.
Sister Marks only smiled. ‘Without the Haurstaf,’ she said carefully, ‘you would not have an empire to guard.’
Hu was turning red. ‘I could afford a hundred dredgers for what you charge for your services,’ he said through his teeth. ‘If you would only kill the last of the Unmer and take your witches back to Awl, I would have the resources with which to search the seas.’
‘Kill the Unmer?’ Marks said in affected tones. ‘But that would be wrong.’
He glared at her.
‘If you’re not happy with our little arrangement,’ she said. ‘We’ll gladly leave you to deal with the Unmer yourselves. After all, we do have other clients.’
Granger noted a sharp intake of breath from a few of the assembled guests. One of the warlords’ men chuckled. The witch simply regarded Hu with a vague air of contempt. No ordinary telepath, this one. Few Haurstaf would have been so arrogant as to humiliate the emperor in his own hall.
Hu’s expression darkened. ‘Warlords and privateers,’ he growled. He flashed a look at the representatives of these same men, before his attention settled on Granger. ‘What is wrong with you?’