A key clinked in the lock. The door opened.
Sister Briana Marks stood there, accompanied by an old jailer Granger had not seen before.
‘Five minutes,’ the jailer said.
She glared at him. ‘I’ll take as long as I please.’
The old man sighed. ‘Aye, I suppose you will.’ He let her into the cell and closed the door behind her, muttering to himself all the while.
Sister Marks had aged noticeably in the six years since Granger had last seen her. Her face and hair had lost their youthful shine, and frown lines now etched her brow. She regarded him with weary, cynical eyes. ‘The jailer wasn’t lying, Colonel,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t make a very good hostage. The emperor would love nothing more than to see me killed, especially by you.’
Granger grunted. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
The witch glanced around the cell. ‘My men checked your home,’ she said. ‘We didn’t find anyone alive.’
‘She was taken.’
‘Taken? By whom? Where?’
Granger said nothing.
‘Gilders aren’t going to be much use to you now, Mr Granger,’ she said. ‘But I might be able to get you out of here, if you help me find this woman.’
Granger shook his head. ‘Get me out first.’
‘You’re not in a position to make demands. I’ll find her eventually, even without your help.’
‘No you won’t.’
‘A sensitive can’t go undetected forever. She’s bound to give herself away.’
He wasn’t sure how much he should tell her. Too much might risk Ianthe’s life. Too little, and he didn’t have much to bargain with. The witch was right – any normal psychic would eventually give herself away. But he didn’t trust this woman. If she found out what she needed to know, she’d leave him to the emperor. Politics.
‘She’s in danger,’ he said.
The witch raised her eyebrows. ‘Then your silence is risking her life. That doesn’t sound like the man I’ve heard so much about.’ Her expression softened. ‘You embarrassed Emperor Hu in his own court, Mr Granger – in front of his enemies’ representatives, in front of me. You made him look like a blundering fool.’
‘He is a blundering fool.’
‘Of course he is, but he’s also the pettiest and most vindictive man I’ve ever met. You must have known that. How did you think he was going to respond to your comments?’
Granger shook his head. He’d been angry, irritated and suffering from brine burns, but that was no excuse. He’d acted rashly.
‘Hu took it all personally,’ Marks said. ‘Now he plans to execute you in front of the whole city tomorrow morning. A trial by combat, if you can believe it.’ She walked over to the window and peered out at the preparations. ‘The Guild cannot intervene to save you, of course. We must maintain a position of neutrality.’ Now she turned around and smiled. ‘But if it turns out that you have discovered a sensitive, and I can verify her existence, I’ll see to it that you’re charged with her imprisonment and with attempted extortion.’
‘Charged?’
Her smiled broadened. ‘The trial would take place at the Guild Palace in Awl. Not even Hu would dare to interfere with our justice. We’d be compelled to take you out of the empire to await your hearing, Mr Granger.’
Granger thought about this. ‘You’d simply move me from one hangman’s noose to another.’
‘Not necessarily. The Guild would decide a fitting punishment after we have deliberated. I can’t promise anything except that you will still be alive tomorrow evening, and for several weeks afterwards. Much depends on what the woman you imprisoned has to say in your defence.’
‘Girl,’ Granger muttered. ‘She’s fifteen. Her name is Ianthe.’
‘And who has her now?’
Granger didn’t sleep that night, and when dawn came he watched the red sun rise through rags of cloud as brown as brine until it stood fuming above the Ethugran rooftops like a dragon’s eye. He looked down at the plaza for a long time. A dragon-bone corral had been erected on the wharf side. Three walls of teeth and bone formed an enclosure abutting the water’s edge. They had even moved the emperor’s steam yacht back to allow a man – him, to allow him – to leap from the corral down into the poisonous brine if he so chose. But that way lay a more lingering and painful death. Hookmen would soon drag him back from those depths to fight again.
When the crowds began to assemble he turned away from the window and sat down in a corner, naked to the waist and shivering despite the building heat.
They came for him shortly afterwards. Four of Maskelyne’s Hookmen unlocked the cell and seized him and beat the wind from his lungs with blackjacks. They fastened an Unmer slave collar around his neck, riveting it shut with an iron tool like a set of callipers. A wire connected the collar to a small metal box covered in dials and glyphs. The smallest and leanest of the Hookmen lifted the box and said, ‘This is what happens when I turn this dial.’ He turned the dial.
Granger collapsed. His head struck the floor. He could taste blood on his lips, but he felt nothing at all beneath his neck, as though his head had been severed from his body. Whorls of shadow, blacks and browns, gathered at the edges of his vision, squeezing his view of the floor into a tunnel. He smelled something like burning horse hair.
‘Mucks up your nerves,’ the man said.
Abruptly Granger felt his limbs spasm. His senses returned.
‘Get up.’
He got to his feet, and they marched him out of the cell and down the corridor, and down the steps to Averley Plaza. Before they reached the door of the jail, the Hookman with the box twisted the dial again. Granger’s head cracked against something solid, and he found himself lying on the floor again.
‘Quit it,’ said one of the other Hookmen. ‘You fry him too often, he won’t get up.’
‘Ah, lighten up,’ the first man replied. ‘Don’t make much difference now anyway.’
‘You break that, it’s your head.’
‘Get up, you.’
A boot slammed into Granger’s ribs, just as his senses returned with a jolt. He coughed and spat blood across the floor.
‘Up, I said. Hu’s got something special planned for you.’
Groggily, Granger crawled to his knees, then staggered upright.
The door opened to bright sunlight. Granger shielded his eyes against the glare. Crowds filled the plaza from wall to wall. Men and women jeered and hurled insults at him as the Hookmen led him through towards the dragon-bone corral at the water’s edge. Several large military supply tents had been erected in front of the Imperial Administration Buildings, while a podium in the centre of the quadrangle allowed the emperor and his guests a view of the trial. Hu sat on a throne up there, surrounded by administrators in their dusty white wigs, while his Samarol bodyguards formed a barrier between his Imperial Majesty and the Ethugran populace. There was no sign of Briana Marks.
The Hookmen brought Granger before the emperor, who rose from his throne and raised his arms to silence the crowd. He had dressed for the occasion in platinum mail that shimmered like starlight. On his head he wore the crown of dragon-eye gems. His lobster cape fluttered behind him, lifted by non-existent winds. The cheers dropped to an expectant murmur. Hu looked down on Granger and said, ‘Kneel.’
Granger stood exactly where he was . . .
. . . and then slammed into the ground a
gain, as the Hook-man activated his Unmer slave collar. All sensation left his body. He could feel the warm flagstones against his cheek and smell the sweat of the crowd, the emperor’s perfume and something else – a pungent, almost feral odour that did not belong here in the city. Darkness swelled at the limits of his vision, and he fought to remain conscious. Where was the Haurstaf witch?
The voice of Administrator Grech echoed across the plaza, ‘In accordance with the laws defined in section 412, amendment 11 to the Military Operations Mandate, his Imperial Majesty Jilak Hu has found Thomas Granger to be in breach of the said Military Code of Conduct, as per articles 118, 119 and 173, and has therefore, legally and without prejudice, instituted his Imperial right, as described in the so-called Post-Awl Texts, to subject the prisoner to trial by combat.’
A great cheer went up from the crowd.
Granger tried to breathe, but his paralysed lungs would not draw in air. His head began to throb. He felt as if he was about to pass out.
‘For each malfeasance, the prisoner will face an opponent or opponents selected by a committee chaired by his Imperial Majesty, so judged to lawfully represent the severity of the crime. The selection process—’
‘Get on with it,’ Hu growled.
‘The, ah . . .’ Grech’s throat bobbed. ‘The selection process in no way infringes upon the prisoner’s rights as defined in the so-called Post-Awl Texts. A funeral will be provided at a cost to the empire of no more than fourteen gilders. May he rest in . . . Is he quite all right?’
Sensation returned to Granger’s body in a rush. He sucked in a desperate breath, trying to shake the dizziness and confusion from his head. The world swam around him, a hot whirlpool of sweating faces and fists.
Strong arms wrenched him to his feet, dragged him backwards and pitched him roughly into the corral. Granger staggered, but remained upright. He felt for the wire at his collar, but it had been removed. The corral gate closed in front of him, leaving him trapped on three sides by an unbroken wicker of dragon bones and teeth. Behind him lay open water, and the shining hull of the Excelsior at anchor thirty yards out from the harbour edge. He scanned the crowd in desperation. Where was that damned witch?
‘Bring forth the first opponent,’ Grech called out.
The crowd moved back as two Imperial Army soldiers threw back the flap from one of the military tents. Granger could sense the uneasiness and excitement of the people nearby. Men pushed and shoved each other to get a look at the thing they dragged from that tent, while others, closer to the tent, pushed back.
It was a hound, one of the emperor’s own hunting stock, judging by its enormous size. The great black beast growled and snapped at the handler, who was struggling to hold it at the end of a long leash-threaded pole. Evidently it had been starved and beaten, for its eyes were wild with hunger and rage.
‘All the way from the emperor’s own Summer Palace,’ Grech announced. ‘Mauler of four wolves and three score Evensraum warriors. Devourer of devourers. Dragon bane. The only war hound to have survived four full seasons in the Contest Pits with nary a scratch. Long of tooth and wild of temper. The emperor gives you . . . the Beast Arun!’
The handler alternately pushed and dragged the hound towards the bone enclosure, whereupon Maskelyne’s Hookmen reopened the gate. By shoves and kicks they forced the snapping animal into the pen and loosed it from its leash.
It crouched before Granger, drooling and snarling through its bared teeth, and regarding him with baleful eyes. Granger backed away towards the water’s edge.
The hound rushed at him.
The crowd roared with anticipation.
The hound leaped.
Granger stepped sideways.
The hound disappeared over the edge of the dock and splashed into the brine below. It managed one pitiful yelp, before the burning waters closed over its body.
Silence. All eyes turned from Granger to Emperor Hu.
Hu could not contain his rage. He jerked to his feet and roared at the soldiers waiting beside the tents, ‘The next one! Bring the next one!’ Administrator Grech cowered at his side, speaking hurriedly in a voice Granger could not hear, but the emperor just batted him away, returned to his seat and glared at Granger.
Granger took a deep breath. He looked for Briana Marks again, but she was still nowhere to be seen. By now the sun had risen high above the Administration Buildings and beat down mercilessly on him. He wiped sweat from his brow and turned to see who or what his next opponent would be.
Administrator Grech stood up. ‘For your amusement,’ he said, ‘brought to Ethugra from the emperor’s own dungeons . . . despised by all who hear of their deeds . . . petty thieves, arsonists, traitors, and defilers of women . . .’
Three soldiers stepped out of the tent. They wore Imperial steel hauberks over boiled leathers and plain cap helmets with nose- and cheek-guards, and each carried a standard-issue short sword in his left hand and a light buckler strapped to his right forearm. Two were tall but stooped, somewhat hesitant and shambling in the way they moved, but the third, shorter man walked with a litheness that implied youth.
‘The cunning behind Imperial Infiltration Unit Seven . . . the most bloodthirsty and the most notorious men in all of history . . . responsible for three thousand allied deaths at Weaverbrook . . . Emperor Hu gives you . . . the last of the infamous Grave-diggers.’ Grech took a breath. ‘Gerhard “The Rook†Tummel, Swan “The . . . eh . . . Swan†Tummel, and Merrad “Grave-digger†Banks!’
Swan? Tummel? Banks?
The corral gate opened, and the three men walked in. The younger man took off his helmet, blinked up at the sky and then smiled meekly. ‘Bastard of a day for it, Colonel, if you don’t mind me saying.’
Banks looked as if he had been wandering the borderlands of death. His cheeks were hollow, his skin anaemic but bruised under his eyes, his hair lank and uneven. But his eyes still brimmed with the same quick humour Granger had known him for. After a moment, his two companions also removed their helmets, and Granger recognized them for who they were.
Swan and Tummel had appeared old and wretched when Granger had last seen them six years ago, and yet now they looked like they had lived their lives all over again since then. Swan was toothless with a sagging, stubbled face and rheumy eyes – the sort of visage one expected to find in a coffin. His brother, Tummel, looked ten years older.
‘Petty thieves?’ Granger said. ‘Arsonists?’ He paused. ‘Defilers of women?’
‘That last one’s pretty good,’ Swan said. ‘I quite like it.’
‘That’s because it’s the only one you haven’t done,’ Tummel said.
‘I could have if I’d wanted to.’
Tummel grunted. ‘You couldn’t run fast enough.’ He turned to Granger. ‘He did, however, burn down a grog shop.’
‘One grog shop,’ Swan muttered. ‘What is it with you and that? You never even liked the place.’
Banks glanced back as the corral gate closed behind him. ‘They picked up Swan and Tummel in a card den last year,’ he said. ‘Somebody turned them in over bad debts.’
‘What about you?’ Granger said.
Banks shrugged. ‘I was sending money home,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how they traced it, but they came for me a couple of months ago. It was either this or death.’
‘You stayed in Losoto?’
Tummel nodded. ‘Right up until three days ago. We had a half-arsed plan to overrun the emperor’s guards and capture the Excelsior,’ he said. ‘But we couldn’t wake up Swan.’
‘What do you intend to do now?’ Granger asked.
/>
Banks sighed. ‘We were hoping you might have a plan, sir.’
Granger looked out into the crowd. They had begun to chant: death, death, death.
‘We’ll drag it out,’ he said, ‘and hope for intervention.’
‘That’s the plan?’
‘Do you have a better one, Banks?’
The other man shrugged. ‘Have at you, then,’ he muttered.
The three Gravediggers took up a fighting stance around Granger, who backed away and readied himself to dodge. Swan made a hesitant jab, but the tip of his sword fell deliberately short of Granger. Banks cried out and leaped into the fray, swinging wildly, allowing his opponent to sidestep easily.
The crowd began to jeer with disapproval.
‘You’ll need to do better than that,’ Granger said.
‘You’re unarmed, sir,’ Banks replied. ‘And I’m rather good at this. Barracks champion three years on the trot.’
‘Don’t underestimate me.’
Banks sighed again, and this time came at Granger hard. But he opted for another down-cut, giving Granger more than enough time to avoid the blow. His sword sparked against the flagstones. Swan and Tummel moved to flank his rear, just as they would have done in a real fight.
Banks should have pressed forward, but he chose not to. ‘How’d you get past the dog?’ he said, backing away again. ‘That bastard spent the whole journey from Losoto chewing through the bars between our cages.’ He shrugged. ‘Didn’t help that Swan kept teasing it.’
‘I didn’t tease it,’ Swan said.
‘You made faces at it,’ Banks replied.
‘What faces?’
‘That face you’re making now.’
‘I can’t help that. I was born like this.’
Granger didn’t say anything; he was waiting for a pincer movement from his flanking opponents. But even that manoeuvre never came. Swan and Tummel made more pitiful swings and jabs with their blades. Whether through weakness, or a reluctance to injure their opponent, Granger didn’t know. Either way the fight was rapidly becoming a farce.