The Art of Hunting (31 page)

Sailors were busy with a system of ropes and pulleys, loading crates of provisions and stowing them in the hold. A young man walked past with a goat in his arms and smiled at her. Ianthe thought
she recognized him from her journey here with Briana Marks.

They climbed some stairs up to the quarterdeck and entered the wheelhouse – a hemisphere of Unmer duskglass – where Ianthe was surprised to find Captain Erasmus Howlish conversing
with Duke Cyr.

Howlish was tanned and wore his black hair in a single long plait. He had sailed under Briana Marks for years, and his easy manner and broad grin implied he was just as comfortable sailing under
his new Unmer masters. The man had been a privateer, Ianthe supposed, and therefore used to selling his allegiance. She could still see the raised white lines across the back of his hands where the
Haurstaf had once applied their whips.

‘Your Highness,’ Howlish said.

Paulus acknowledged him with a nod. ‘How soon until we leave?’

‘Half an hour, if it suits you.’

The young prince nodded. ‘That’s fine.’ He turned to Duke Cyr. ‘And how have your own negotiations gone, Uncle? Do you have everything you need?’

Cyr smiled and bowed. ‘As we had hoped, Highness.’

Howlish glanced between them, a trace of unease on his brow. ‘We stowed the crated cargo as the duke instructed – on the cannon deck and the powder stores,’ he said.
‘Away from perishable supplies and the crew bunks.’

‘Good.’

‘Will it require any . . . special attention?’ Howlish added.

The prince wafted his hand. ‘Rest assured, Howlish,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing in those crates but a few artefacts rescued from the palace cellars: objects that should
make our passage somewhat easier.’

‘Weapons?’ Howlish asked.

‘Not exactly.’

Howlish waited a moment, but when it became apparent that the prince had no intention of elaborating, he turned to Ianthe and added, ‘Miss Cooper. Do you have news of the whereabouts of
the
Ilena Grey
?’

This was the ship on which Paulus’s people were sailing from Losoto. News that Emperor Hu had released the Unmer from his ghettos had come from one of the palace psychics – a pretty
girl named Nera, who had so impressed the prince that he’d brought her along on this journey as his personal seer. Ianthe still felt uneasy about this assignation, but was ill placed to speak
out against it. Her objections would only be seen for what they were. Jealousy.

‘We shall locate the
Ilena Grey
once my fiancée has rested,’ Paulus said. ‘We have both endured a rather arduous and jarring carriage ride and need to freshen
up.’

Howlish nodded to one of his officers, who stepped forward to escort them to their cabins.

Ianthe found herself in Briana Marks’s old cabin, with its opalescent walls and floor dusted with crushed pearls. Bereft of all furniture but the bare minimum, it reminded her of the stark
simplicity of the operating rooms and recovery wards in the Haurstaf palace.
Monastic
– that was the word. Briana had undoubtedly intended the décor to be restful, but it left
Ianthe feeling uneasy. It felt as cold and lifeless as the grave and she was bothered by a unsettling sense that she was trespassing. Briana had been decent to her on that last voyage. Now there
was nothing here except painful memories.

As it would not have been seemly for Ianthe to share a bedchamber with her fiancé, Paulus and Cyr had been allocated their own cabins at the front of the warship, as had Nera.

They had brought servants with them. Ianthe’s maid, Rosa, was a young Evensraum girl, no doubt chosen for the connection with Ianthe’s homeland. And yet despite their common
heritage, they rarely spoke. Rosa unpacked her clothes and put them away and then bowed and left. Ianthe didn’t even know where the girl slept. And now that her curiosity had been piqued, she
thought about slipping into her mind to find out.

But she didn’t.

Using her talents to perform espionage in a time of war was one thing. Spying on the staff was something else altogether. And spying on her prince?

The day she did that would be the day their love died.

She thought of Nera suddenly. And in a moment of jealousy she wondered if the girl had been chosen
entirely
for her telepathic ability. But then almost as soon as the thought had
occurred to her, Ianthe felt foolish and guilty. She pushed all such corrupting ideas away. She was going to be a queen, after all.

Soon the anchors were raised and the sails lowered and the
Irillian Herald
slipped out of Port Awl on a stiff northwesterly breeze.

No sooner had they cleared the harbour than Paulus sent a message, telling Ianthe to meet him in Duke Cyr’s cabin. A few minutes later she was knocking on the cabin door.

Nera opened the door.

Ianthe blinked with surprise. Paulus and his uncle were hunched over a table under the window. Just why
exactly
did they need a psychic present? She tried to smile at the girl. Nera
smiled shyly in return, her cheeks dimpling. She flashed perfect white teeth. Her blonde hair shone like silk. Her blue eyes sparkled. Ianthe hated her.‘I know we haven’t really spoken
yet,’ Nera said. ‘But I’m sure we’ll become good friends on this trip.’

Ianthe nodded. ‘I’m looking forward to that.’

‘Ianthe,’ Paulus said, beckoning her over. ‘I’ve something to show you.’

She wandered over to the table and found that he had laid out four ichusae – the sorcerous little sea-bottles that were the source of all brine. The glass from which they were formed was
old and woozy and each had a copper stopper jammed into its mouth. She looked up at Paulus, only to find him smiling.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Well, what do you think?’

She glanced at the bottles again, but this time they held her gaze as suddenly she realized they weren’t ichusae at all. Only one of them was actually filled with brine. The others held
different things entirely.

In the first she perceived a tiny flickering light. As she peered closer, she saw that it wasn’t a flame or any such glow from a wick, but rather a miniature pulse of forked lightning. She
reached towards it, but then hesitated. ‘May I?’

‘Be my guest,’ Paulus said.

Ianthe lifted the bottle and stared into it. She could see a tiny cloudscape in there – dark vaporous forms rolling over each other. Lighting flickered between them, illuminating the
underside of the clouds. ‘It’s a storm,’ she said.

‘Rather more than that,’ Duke Cyr said.

‘It’s beautiful.’

Paulus exchanged a glance with his uncle. ‘Think of them as a wedding gift to us,’ he said.

‘From Fiorel?’

He nodded. ‘Look at the others.’

Ianthe replaced the storm bottle and then picked up the next one. This phial held an inch of inky liquid at the bottom – brine, she supposed. Floating on this brine was a tiny model of a
ship, no larger than her thumbnail. She had never seen such wonderful craftsmanship. Every last detail of the ship, from its three masts, to the glass in its portholes, was perfect.

‘It’s wonderful,’ she said.

‘Look at the third bottle.’

Ianthe complied. The third bottle also contained liquid, but this was clear and completely filled the space inside. Floating in the liquid was a maggot. She frowned and put the bottle down
again. ‘I’m not so keen on that one,’ she admitted.

Paulus laughed.

The fourth bottle held nothing but some sort of yellow gas.

‘What are they for?’ Ianthe asked.

Duke Cyr cleared his throat. ‘We don’t yet know. But Fiorel presented them to me in this specific order and told me to open them whenever I felt that we required assistance. The
storm bottle must be opened first, followed by the ship, and so on.’

Ianthe examined the bottles again: the storm, the ship, a maggot, and the gas. She looked up at the prince’s uncle. ‘You brought these back from a dream?’

He nodded. ‘In which I met my patron.’

‘What does he look like?’ she asked.

The old man huffed. ‘Well, that usually depends on whatever mood he’s in. At the moment he has a penchant for snakes. It is not the most relaxing form to be in the presence
of.’

Paulus took her arm and walked her past Nera, and she realized he was leading her towards the door. ‘I can stay,’ she said. ‘I don’t have any other plans.’

‘My uncle and I must discuss strategy,’ Paulus said. ‘You’d only find it boring.’ He smiled. ‘And we would not wish to disturb your search for Conquillas or
your father.’

From then on, Ianthe kept mostly to her cabin. She tried repeatedly to find Conquillas, hurling her consciousness out across the oceans in search of him, skipping from the mind of one dragon to
another. She spent whole afternoons flying with the great serpents, thrilling at the rush of the wind on their faces, breathing in the bitter fuel-oil stench of their exhalations. But the dragon
lord was nowhere to be found. It was as if he had vanished from the face of the world. Her persistent failure began to dishearten her, but Paulus’s optimism never wavered. His support for her
was unerring.
You’ll find him
, he said.
I trust you.
Lately her beloved had been spending a great deal of time with his uncle Cyr. When they were not pondering the
significance of Fiorel’s bottles they were going through the artefacts they had brought with them from the Haurstaf palace. On several occasions she heard strange mechanical whistles or saw
queer lights coming from the gun deck at night. She restrained her curiosity by priding herself on the fact that she did not know what was going on.

So Ianthe kept herself to herself. She read from some of the books she’d brought from the palace. Her literacy had improved considerably since she’d been able to see through her own
eyes, rather than piggy-backing the minds of others. Paulus had given her a fine gold chain for her lenses, to prevent her from losing them. He had also showered her with jewels and rings taken
from the palace coffers, although if she was honest she considered them to be rather vulgar and so only wore those in his presence. But the chain was different, more personal somehow.

They sailed south-east, taking advantage of the prevailing westerlies, but soon the weather changed and a storm came hurtling down on them from the north. The Mare Verdant frothed and churned,
the waves looming like hillocks of tar behind the portholes in Ianthe’s bedroom. But she was long used to the sea and had witnessed more violent weather. The booming and crashing of the
ocean, the creak and roll of the hull – it all felt strangely exhilarating to her.

The storm continued for two days and was still raging when they reached the dragon nesting grounds of Carhen Doma. That evening she stood with Paulus and Cyr in the
Irillian
Herald
’s duskglass wheelhouse and watched the huge serpents soaring over the rocky cliffs and the partially submerged temples. Doma was much smaller than the Dragon Isle and had been
abandoned by men even before the seas began to rise. The leaden clouds brought an early gloom to the scene, and the dragons filled the air with fleeting and murderous shadows. Rain lanced down and
drummed against the wheelhouse panes while out in the distance spume exploded against stacks of black rock. The sea around them heaved like liquid coal, but in the west the dying sunlight suffused
and pierced the storm and turned both cloud and brine to flame.

The duke watched with hooded eyes. ‘Our presence here will be reported to Conquillas,’ he remarked. ‘He will see that we move to Losoto, just as we have claimed.’

‘You expected an answer from him?’ Paulus said. ‘Here?’

‘Perhaps,’ Cyr said. ‘He knows Doma lies on our route.’ He was silent for a moment, and then his lips drew back and he smiled and pointed up to the tumultuous heavens.
‘Could this be it, I wonder?’ He turned to one of Howlish’s officers. ‘My cloak. Goggles. Come,Your Highness. And Howlish, bring your men.’

To the west Ianthe could see a vast winged silhouette turning against the fiery clouds. It had broken away from the main group of serpents and was now bearing down on them.

Paulus hurried into his storm cloak and face mask and pulled a pair of brass navigator’s goggles over his eyes. Howlish and two of his officers did likewise. Ianthe glanced at Cyr, then
back out at the approaching dragon, and then she grabbed her own cloak and wrapped it around her and hurried after the departing men.

Outside, the wind shrieked and almost blew her across the quarterdeck. She could smell the sea all around her, the bitter tang of metal salts, but also the clean rain driving against her skin.
The ship was pitching heavily, ploughing deep into ocean troughs and then rising to burst through the crest of the waves. Storm clouds thundered overhead. Pale blue lightning flickered in the
north.

She slipped on wet timbers but grabbed a support rope lashed to the deck hatches and pulled herself after the others, reaching them just as they clambered up the steep stairs onto the
foredeck.

From here she had a clear view of Carhen Doma – its cadaverous temples rising from that black and stinking ocean, roofless, their gables broken and battered by brine and spray, mullioned
windows gaping. Whale bones and shark bones and the bones of seals lay mounded and glistening under cliffs of wet and rotten stone. Cold gales shrilled. Sunset lay in a red line across the western
horizon, a hot wound in the burgeoning darkness, but the clouds above it were dark and copper veined and monstrous. Against these flew the dragon.

It was a red male. As it grew nearer, its great shadow engulfed the ship. All these dark and cruciform shapes that flitted across the storm-blown heavens were truly monsters.

The dragon descended quickly and then braked hard, thumping the air with wings as vast as warship sails. Its hind claws raked the foredeck and then one of them seized the forecastle rail and
crushed it. With a great awkward clatter and stink it thrashed one wing again, inadvertently taking out a line of rigging and a cleat, and then it settled on the bow of the ship. Ianthe felt the
vessel tilt forward heavily. The timbers gave an ominous groan. And then the serpent swung its long neck down, under the foreyard, where it huffed and glared at the party with eyes like embers.