The Art of Hunting (22 page)

The dragon raised its neck and thrashed its tail and broke through the surface of the waters in a glittering eruption of seawater. Water sparkled like a cascade of gemstones. Ahead of them
loomed the cliffs and pillars of the Dragon Isle. The serpent slapped its wings against the waves, twice and thrice, and the cold wind blew it higher into the air once more.

‘The Unmer modelled us dragons on the great sea snakes of old,’ it said. ‘Dead and forgotten seven thousand years now. But you saw the ships below? Armoured with the petrified
bone and scales of those old monsters. We faced such vessels in the war.’ The serpent chuckled. ‘They hunted them, you know?The old sorcerers. Sea snake bones and blood were used in
entropic rituals. The corpse of a worm, a young specimen, is said to reside in the gardens of Hu’s palace, although I have never seen it myself. Here, my girl, we have arrived.’

Towards them rushed black cliffs pocked with the openings to many caverns and passages, the great mass of rock towering over a small bone-littered curve of beach. The dragon threw out its wings
and lashed at the air, landing amidst an expanse of shattered black rock and scree. Deeper in the cave Ianthe could see an old yacht with a scrollwork-patterned hull. But here on a bluff before
them there stood a tall and very pale man with striking violet eyes and a bow slung over his shoulder. He regarded them coolly.

‘Does the girl ride with you?’ he said in Losotan.

The dragon laughed. ‘Either she does, or I’ve been conversing with myself over all these leagues. The truth is, Argusto, I cannot sense her presence any more than I can sense my
liver. However, given the nature of my conversation with her fiancé, I’ll wager she’s there.’

Conquillas?
He was frailer than Ianthe had imagined. His face evinced weariness, but there was something else in those eyes – cynicism mixed with an icy detachment, as if his
instinct at each encounter was first to analyse a person to determine their risk to him. Strangely, this reminded her of Granger. One got the impression with the dragon lord that he was prepared,
at any moment and at any provocation, to draw his bow and fire.

The beast gave a great exhalation. ‘The boy prince intends to invade Losoto and force Hu from the throne. And then, as tradition demands, he will reopen the Halls of Anea and hold a
contest there to celebrate his coronation. The first in over three hundred years. He invites you to face Cyr and himself openly in the arena.’

Conquillas regarded the dragon without emotion.

‘You have to admire his bravado,’ the dragon went on. ‘Of course, he’ll try to assassinate you during the competition, or else prior to it.’

‘I am no stranger to assassins,’ Conquillas said. ‘But he’s courting danger by reopening the halls. Sealing that hell was the only sensible decision the emperor ever
made.’

‘Well . . .’

‘Where does the girl stand?’ Conquillas asked. ‘His betrothed, Ianthe.’

The dragon sighed. ‘Firmly beside her future husband,’ it said. ‘She refuses to avert her gaze.’

It seemed to Ianthe that Conquillas looked sad for an instant. Then he nodded and stared straight into the dragon’s eyes. ‘I must assume you are there, Ianthe. I had no quarrel with
you. Indeed, I had hoped to meet you under different circumstances. You will see me again one more time, and that will be during the last moments of your life.’

The Unmer lord reached behind him and pulled out a strip of cloth. Then he tied it around his head as a blindfold, obscuring his vision. ‘Now look away,’ he said.

And the dragon complied.

‘Well?’

Ianthe hesitated. Finally, she said, ‘I can’t follow him.’

‘What do you mean you
can’t
?’

‘He blindfolded himself.’

Paulus snorted. ‘But how does he expect to shoot a bow? How does he expect to
travel
to Losoto?’

He stood up and strode over to the window and stared out as though he might be able to see Conquillas from here. His quarters in the Haurstaf palace were a network of bright marble cubes hung
with silver cloth and silver chandeliers. They occupied most of one floor of one entire wing. The view from this particular parlour looked south across the Awl valley. The servants had opened all
the windows to admit glorious golden sunlight and a breeze that lifted and puffed out the gauzy curtains. Paulus’s hair shone like spun gold, his fine white hand rested upon the jewelled
pommel of his rapier. His mouth was open slightly, his lips as red as cherries.

‘Occupy another one of his dragons. Track him that way.’

‘None of them is looking at him.’

‘But how will we know what he’s up to?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose that’s the point of the blindfold.’

He glared at her, and she regretted her words at once. ‘I’ll find him in Losoto,’ she added hastily. ‘He can’t force everyone to ignore him there. He’ll
attract attention. People will notice a dragon lord.’

‘Not if he’s in disguise,’ Paulus said. He turned away from the window and paced the white stone floor. ‘I had hoped to follow his movements leading up to the contest. He
could be plotting to undermine us.’

‘Is that likely?’ she said. ‘You said yourself how eager he was to meet you in the arena.’

He gave her a strange look. ‘Eager to meet me on an even footing. But if he thinks you’re going to protect me . . .’ He hesitated. ‘He might just put an arrow through the
back of your head.’

‘Not with a blindfold on,’ she said. ‘As soon as he takes it off to shoot at me, I’ll see him.’

Paulus didn’t look convinced.‘What if he shoots you without taking the blindfold off?’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘Conquillas does not know the meaning of that word.’

Ianthe thought for a moment. ‘How long will the tournament last?’

‘Ten days or more.’

‘And are all the fights to the death?’

‘Only vendetta matches,’ he replied. ‘In competition games, a combatant may yield to his opponent.’ He shrugged. ‘Most fights end that way. It is considered poor
etiquette to kill a man who yields. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen occasionally.’

‘Then there’s no chance he might be killed before he even has to face you?’

Paulus seemed detached. ‘There is always a chance.’

She huffed. ‘Isn’t there anyone else with a vendetta against Conquillas?’

‘I expect some will declare it,’ he said, ‘in the hope that sacrificing themselves will win favour for their families.’

‘But that’s terrible.’

He grinned. ‘Actually it can be quite amusing.’

Ianthe couldn’t see what was funny about that. ‘But how can you be sure you’ll defeat him?’

‘You have to trust me.’

‘If you told me . . .’

He shook his head. ‘I cannot. The less you know, the safer you’ll be.’

Her heart clenched. She admired his courage, and yet his determination to keep his plan secret aggravated her. The more she knew, the easier it would be to protect him if the plan failed. She
would be there at the tournament, watching, ready to destroy Conquillas if it looked like her beloved Paulus was in danger. But of course she could never tell him that. He would have to believe
that he had killed the dragon lord without her help. She hadn’t yet figured out a way to hide her involvement, but she would. She loved him too much not to.

She smiled and reached out and hugged him.

He stiffened – for just a moment, but Ianthe felt it nevertheless. Then he relaxed and returned her embrace. His nose nuzzled her ear. ‘There is something else, Ianthe,’ he
said. ‘I must ask you another favour.’

‘Anything.’

‘I need you to direct your vision upon another traitor. A murderer. I need you to find him for us.’

‘You need only name him.’

The prince’s lips thinned. ‘It is your father, Ianthe. He killed a guard and fled the palace this morning.’

Granger arrived on the outskirts of Port Awl at dawn the next day. He was weary eyed and itching from his long trek from the palace. To avoid detection he had shunned the
foot-worn trails that followed the river in favour of a circuitous route through the forest, picking his way due south along the bluffs and the steep wooded slopes. His power armour alleviated
physical fatigue, allowing him to move more quickly across difficult terrain, but it had nevertheless demanded concentration. Consequently he felt exhausted mentally.

Rather than head to the harbour, where the Unmer would have undoubtedly posted men to watch for him, he set off on an eastern coastal trail, where he hoped to find one of Awl’s smaller
fishing settlements, and a captain in need of some money.

He had to hope Ianthe wasn’t watching him.

Soon the sun had climbed above the green hills and fields and beat down on him. He wore a grey Haurstaf militia cloak over the buzzing alloyed plates of his armour. The sword and shield he
carried in a loose canvas kitbag over his shoulder, along with numerous smaller items he’d taken from the armoury. Among the objects he’d stolen were a pouch of dull coins from the
guard he’d killed and three Unmer daggers of exceptional quality. The coins each bore an imprint of the Haurstaf seal on one side and the head of Briana Marks on the other and it was now
likely they’d be worth little more than their weight in metal. But the knives were the real find: a quicksilver knife, a tempest knife and a prison skull blade, any one of which should have
been more than sufficient to pay for transport from one side of the empire to the other.

He could feel the sorcery within them murmuring against his shoulder, and realized with dismay that something else – either his armour, shield or sword – was feeding on them,
draining their power.

He cursed and took them out of his kitbag, but it made no difference, so he packed them away again. With luck, they’d still have some sorcerous properties remaining by the time he came to
sell them.

His destination was the city of Ethugra, where Maskelyne owned and ran a number of jails. If the metaphysicist wasn’t in the city itself, then he would most likely be at his fortress on
nearby Scythe Island. Granger’s main concern was that Maskelyne was off on one of his trove-hunting expeditions. He might be out on the open ocean for months, and almost impossible to
find.

But there was no point dwelling on that possibility. Granger had no choice but to hope that the man was home. He also had to believe that Maskelyne – a man who had kidnapped Ianthe and
murdered her mother – would help him, but in that respect Granger felt most confident. The metaphysicist would have sold his own son for the artefacts Granger now carried. Or even to learn
the location of the Unmer transmitting station whence they’d come. If Maskelyne could free him from the sword’s psychic grip, then Granger would be glad to hand the thing over to
him.

The problem was reaching Ethugra in time.

He had no idea how many more days of freedom he had left. A week? A month? He could feel the weapon’s presence, gradually insinuating itself into his mind. Everything he wanted to do
required a stronger force of will than normal. Making decisions was like moving through quicksand. And when he slept he had started to dream of a strange faceless figure. Granger worried that a
ship wasn’t going to get him to Maskelyne in time. Lacking a functioning Unmer chariot, he had to find the next best thing.

A dragon.

The great serpents hunted far and wide across the Mare Verdant, but generally kept away from people. He might stumble across one out on the open water, but that was by no means certain. Trade in
their meat was still commonplace, and he would certainly find a living serpent at the market of any large port or city. Ironically, dragon hunters commonly refuelled at Port Awl, and the odds were
reasonable that he’d find one there. Unfortunately, he couldn’t risk such an excursion. The other ports were all weeks away by ship. That left their regular haunts. And the nearest of
those was Carhen Doma. This island group lay three days south-east from Awl. Sometimes called the Halls of Songs, Doma was a cluster of rocky mounds and partially submerged temples built by a
Losotan cult who had tried to halt the rising seas by prayer. Now the priests were gone, dragons used the vast stone halls to nest.

Intruding on a nesting site was not ideal, and yet Doma was the nearest place en route to Losoto where Granger was certain to find one of the winged serpents. All he had to do now was persuade a
local captain to take him there, and then convince a dragon to carry him the rest of the way to Ethugra. It wasn’t going to be easy, but then what the hell was? He began to wonder if his
stolen – and constantly weakening – knives were enough.

The trail headed east, following the base of the ridge over which the town of Port Awl had spread like peculiarly angular coral. Buildings clustered around steep zigzag roads shrouded in the
dust from horse and cattle carts. Columns of smoke rose from scores of chimneys amidst jumbled slopes of umber terracotta and white-walled hovels and faded into the blue sky. A few buildings
extended from the base of the ridge, crammed around the main road into the town, but apart from this one incursion every inch of the land on the plains beneath the town had been turned over to
agriculture. Sheep, horses and cattle grazed on green grass. Fields of rape and barley shone yellow and bronze in the sun.

Granger left the port town behind and continued east, walking the dusty trail with the sun climbing over the coastal hills ahead of him. To his left the immense Awl valley rose in a grand and
gentle sweep into summer pollen haze penned by gaseous mountains. For the first time since he had murdered the weapon-room guard, he felt good. He removed a gauntlet and ran his hand across the dry
stone walls, savouring the touch of warm stone grizzled with lichen. Insects buzzed. A smell of woodsmoke and cut hay hung in the air.

After he had walked for an hour, the land buckled and rose to join the eastern edge of the township ridge. Here the trail plunged into forest and meandered onwards and upwards through the
southern foothills of the Irillian mountains. Above the trees loomed blinding swathes of broken rock and tails of scree driven into meltwater runnels.