The Art of Hunting (37 page)

‘It must have been awful.’

‘My family were luckier than most,’ he said. ‘Aria’s troops captured my mother and father fleeing across the Anean hills, but because of their status they were taken to
Awl. They never saw the ghettos.’ He shook his head and then stared up into the heavens. He spoke in a furious whisper, forcing the words out between clenched teeth. ‘Half a million
souls . . . decimated by starvation and disease . . . reduced to this, to less than a thousand.’

‘How will you take the city?’

‘I shall open our third wedding gift,’ he said.

‘The worm?’

‘No mere worm, I suspect. When we first saw Fiorel’s dragon wraiths I recognized them from legend. They are from the Otiansel Mestra – the first of the four Great Rifts Fiorel
is known to have created. And if he has given us access to his private domains, then I have my suspicions about that worm’s true nature.’

‘What is it?’

‘The Uriun,’ he said. ‘It is probably the largest creature in existence – certainly the largest we know of. It is the worm that inhabits a rift as large as this world,
Otiansel Vadra – the domain of swamps.’

‘And what about the gas?’

‘If the third bottle contains the Uriun,’ Paulus said, ‘then the gas must provide a way to send it back to its own realm. Otherwise it would destroy this world.’

Ianthe shuddered. ‘Why did Fiorel create these things?’

‘Why does anyone create anything?’ he replied. ‘Some are weapons, others are useful in different ways. Besides Mestra and Vadra, there is Otiansel Cama, a land which was
destroyed by a great war – a thousand leagues of ruin and blasted earth. It is a terrifying place full of the spectres of the dead. The last of the major four is Otiansel Hurulla, the City of
Pain, to which Fiorel exiles his enemies. There are just the Great Rifts, but there are countless minor ones. This ship came from one such rift. Your father’s sword contains
another.’

‘His sword?’

‘The place where the replicates reside.’

Ianthe wondered where her father was now. She
had
been looking for him, although she would never have betrayed his location to Paulus. But in a world as vast as this, he might be
anywhere. She desperately hoped he had freed himself from that terrible weapon.

But, as frightening as Granger’s sword had been, it was nothing next to the horror Duke Cyr had unleashed from one of these tiny bottles. Images of the slaughter at Doma still lurked in
her mind. And that had been nothing but an isolated clutch of rocks. Losoto was a city.

‘A tournament?’ Maskelyne said.

‘In the Halls of Anea,’ Halfway replied. ‘Just as soon as the Unmer retake the city.’

‘And what does the emperor have to say about that?’

‘Don’t suppose he’s very happy about it, Captain.’

‘No, I don’t suppose he is.’

They were lunching in the officers’ dining room in the rear of Maskelyne’s dredger. Mellor and their strange new Bahrethroan sorcerer Cobul had barely touched their soup when Halfway
had arrived with this startling news. Maskelyne returned his attention to his engineer, and specifically to the small trumpet fixed to the man’s ear. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he
said. ‘I thought you’d . . . eh . . . ever so slightly exaggerated the abilities of that earpiece. You still don’t know whom it is you’re listening to?’

‘Only that they’re in Losoto.’

Halfway had been picking up excited chatter through his earpiece all morning. If any of it was to be believed, then Losoto was expecting an Unmer invasion. Prince Paulus Marquetta was planning
to have his coronation and subsequent marriage to Ianthe in Hu’s own capital. What’s more, he had already sent word far and wide, inviting combatants to attend the celebratory
tournament. And yet before all this could happen, there remained one small detail he had to attend to. He must first depose the emperor and take the city by force. Emperor Hu had mustered his navy
and ordered them out to sea with instructions to parley with the Unmer. Or so he claimed. Maskelyne imagined that Hu meant to sink his enemies before they ever got to land and threaten his imperial
self.

‘That is confidence verging on arrogance,’ Maskelyne remarked.

‘Argusto Conquillas is coming to the tournament,’ Halfway said. ‘He has declared vendetta against Marquetta and Duke Cyr.’

‘Now
that
would be an interesting match,’ Maskelyne said.

‘If it were ever allowed to happen.’ He thought for a moment, wondering how Paulus planned to get out of that one. Would he simply have Ianthe incapacitate the dragon lord?That
didn’t seem likely.

‘Argusto Conquillas never could resist a tournament,’ Cobul said. ‘I heard he regularly won the contests in Herica, before he left those isles for Awl. They say he got
bored.’ He grinned. ‘But then he never did face me.’

Maskelyne thought for a moment. ‘I had intended to speak with Prince Marquetta, although the timing could be better.’ He turned to the Bahrethroan sorcerer. ‘At full steam we
should be able to reach Losoto in a month, less than twenty days with a wind behind us. I imagine your prince will have already taken the city by then, married his woman and declared himself king
of Anea.’

Cobul slurped his soup. ‘He’s not my prince.’

This surprised Maskelyne. ‘Surely you don’t side with Conquillas?’

‘I side with neither of them,’ Cobul said. ‘Unmer lords have always looked down on men like me.’ He looked up. ‘Mongrels, I mean.’ He dipped a hunk of bread
in his soup and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing as he went on: ‘But if you’re planning to visit the capital, I’d be grateful for a lift there.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You have, eh . . . friends in Losoto?’

Cobul grunted. ‘No friends. I’ll go because I could use the money.’

‘Money?’

‘For winning the tournament.’

The dragon flew Granger and Siselo across the Sea of Lights to Losoto. The young Unmer girl stood upon Ygrid’s shoulders or skipped lightly between the alloy saddle hoops
with the easy grace and confidence of someone who had spent her entire life flying with dragons. Ygrid did not moderate her flight to accommodate her youthful passenger, but swooped and banked as
fiercely as she had done before. If anything, it seemed to Granger that the dragon had flown more gently during her first flight with him.

Ygrid had remained in a sullen silence for most of the day. Granger felt sure she would have shucked him from her shoulders and eaten him whole in an instant if Conquillas’s daughter had
not been present. Perhaps the dragon was still angry that he’d deceived her, or perhaps it was simply that she couldn’t get a word in edgeways. Siselo, as it turned out, liked to
talk.

‘But of course I’ve been to the ghettos many times,’ she said breathlessly. ‘There are ways to slip under the Haurstaf radar if you know how, but that takes years of
training and I haven’t yet mastered it, although Father says I’m nearly there, which is good for someone so young, don’t you think?’ With barely a pause to wait for his
reply, she went on. ‘He calls it
mental silence
. You have to sort of empty your mind and think about absolutely nothing because the Haurstaf sense conscious thought even if they
can’t always read it. That’s how they get you! But it’s really difficult to do because how can you even walk anywhere without thinking? You can’t! You can’t stop
all
thoughts, but Father says you have to learn to do as much as possible by instinct, because that’s subconscious and is harder to detect. And it won’t work if the witches are
looking for you, only if they’re not really paying attention, which actually happens quite a lot.’

Granger nodded. ‘Maybe you could demonstrate?’

He heard the dragon huff.

‘I can’t do it now!’ Siselo cried. ‘You have to prepare yourself like when you prepare for a hunt or when you get ready to sneak into the Losotan ghettos. I only tried it
once and I nearly managed it, but then one of those witches sensed me and father had to kill her.’

It went on like this for hours. The Mare Lux stretched to every horizon, the waters an endless slab of heavy bromine brown that started finally to glimmer with lighter copper-metal hues as the
angle of the sunlight changed. Sunset was still a couple of hours away when they spotted on the northern horizon a great flotilla of ships.

Ygrid then uttered the first words she had spoken all afternoon. ‘The Imperial Navy sails west.’

Granger knew better than to question the serpent, whose eyesight was reputed to be far keener than his own. There could only be one reason why Emperor Hu would send his navy so far out from
Losoto: to meet the Unmer prince at sea before he reached the capital. They were hunting Prince Marquetta.

And Ianthe?

She had to be at sea with him. He needed her to protect him.

‘Head west,’ he said to Ygrid.

The dragon growled. ‘Is that an order, Colonel? How amusing.’

‘Merely a request,’ he said. ‘They’re after Marquetta’s ship. My daughter is aboard that ship.’

‘And you wish to warn the prince and your daughter? The same two who plan to assassinate my master – and Siselo’s father – by their deceit?’

‘My daughter has nothing to do with the prince’s plan.’

Siselo stood up on the dragon’s shoulders and peered out at the ships. ‘Is there going to be a battle?’

‘Almost certainly,’ Granger said.

‘Can we watch it, Ygrid?’

The dragon grunted. ‘Your father would never forgive me.’

‘Please.’

‘No.’

Siselo screwed up her face. ‘What if
I ordered
you to take us there?’

‘I’m not your pet, child.’

Ygrid banked in the air, her vast wings fluttering in the cold air, and turned to the north-east, away from the direction in which the Imperial Navy were heading and away from the setting
sun.

The
Ilena Grey
accompanied the
St Augustine
as she sailed east through the night. Ianthe could see the other ship’s lights when she looked out of the
porthole next to her bed. And sometimes she could spy those lights through the fabric of the
St Augustine
, which continued to shift between the ethereal and the corporeal.

All but that one chamber.

She rolled over and leaned out of bed. Down through the ghostly floorboards and the decks and bulwarks below she could just make out the viewing room; it appeared to her eyes as a solid white
cube at the heart of the ship.

In the part of her mind attuned to other people’s perceptions, she sensed someone in there. Ianthe closed her eyes and saw the ship as a patchwork of images adrift in the void beyond sight
and sound. She was seeing the
St Augustine
through the eyes of all those people around her. Their disparate perceptions formed a composite whole, but that composite appeared to be
constructed from normal, mundane, timber. The ship was no longer a phantasm.

A single mind occupied the viewing room. Ianthe slipped inside it.

The room appeared no different to the last time she’d seen it. Its mirrored floor and ceiling induced a giddy sensation of vertigo. Mirrors hung on the wall before her, all of which looked
into the rift Paulus had told her about or else framed the weird visages of the creatures he’d called travellers.

Ordinary mirror glass would have immediately revealed Ianthe’s host to her, but this was not ordinary glass and so it took her a few moments to deduce whose body it was she now inhabited.
Whoever it was, they were pacing, apparently agitated. It was clearly a man, and from his dark grey clothes she supposed him to be Duke Cyr – a supposition that was confirmed a moment later
when she heard him speak.

‘Volsh nem do-er nem,’ he said, angrily waving an arm. ‘Hanyewl.’

Ianthe had come to learn a few words in Unmer, but she recognized none of them in his speech. However, she had promised Paulus that she wouldn’t spy on him or his uncle.

But just as she was about to leave the old man alone, a strange thing happened. Another voice replied, also in Unmer. It was deep and forceful; it resounded around the room, and yet Ianthe could
not locate its source. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. ‘Nem katarloes,’ it said. ‘Par Marquetta yenshlo.’

She heard the duke grunt. He batted his hand at the air in agitation or disagreement.

They continued to converse for a few minutes more, during which time the duke appeared to become more and more resigned to some unpalatable possibility. Ianthe heard Marquetta’s name
mentioned several more times, along with Conquillas’s and two Unmer words she recognized:
olish-gadda
, which meant tournament, and
hesh
, which she gathered meant battle or
war. Apparently they were discussing the events to come.

Cyr paced a short while longer, and then turned abruptly and strode up to one mirror in particular.

Ianthe’s breath caught in her throat.

While the other mirrors looked out upon the void and the travellers therein, behind this glass there lay an ocean underneath a jet-black and starless sky. And yet it was not dark, for the ocean
itself exuded a tremulous light. It shivered and pulsed, the waters changing colour as Ianthe watched. A million scintillations danced across its surface, while scores of sombre hues throbbed in
the deeps.

‘Olmaneiro hesh ast tobia,’ Cyr growled at this image.

‘Nem hesh,’ a voice replied. And at that moment Ianthe sensed a powerful mind lurking in that pulsing brine. The scope of its perceptions was so vast they seemed to stretch forever.
If she had thrown herself into that alien intelligence, she would have been utterly overwhelmed.

Ianthe recoiled, yanking her own consciousness back into her body with a fearsome jolt. Her eyes snapped open and she lay in bed, gazing up at nothing, breathing heavily.

What the hell was
that
?

She got up and dressed quickly.

And then she slipped out of her cabin and hurried down the passageway. She stopped at the door four down from her own and rapped her fist against it quickly.

She waited a moment, her heart thumping.