Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts (22 page)

Maskelyne turned his gaze away from the cabinet and helped himself to a drink of honey-coloured spirit. Then he filled a glass with wine from a carafe on the bar and handed it to Ianthe.

‘Your vision seems entirely unlikely,’ he said. Through his perception she watched herself accept the glass of wine. Darkness was gathering in her own eyes. She forced herself to look away from him. ‘And yet here we are,’ he went on. ‘An unmolested dragon’s cadaver, just as you said. One ichusae recovered, and a skybarque to boot.’

‘A skybarque?’

‘An Unmer vessel,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘You’ve seen Ortho’s Chariot at night?’

She nodded.

‘Same thing. When the Unmer realized they couldn’t defeat the Haurstaf, they used airbarques to distribute their hideous little bottles across our oceans.’ He made a sound somewhere between a snort and laugh. ‘If
we
can’t have the world, then
you
can’t have it either. My two-year-old son has already developed a more mature attitude, and
he
has a psychopath for a father.’ He chuckled at his own joke, and took another drink. ‘Anyway, an airbarque is a rare find. With any luck we might find a thousand ichusae inside it’ – he sounded like he was smiling – ‘and so remove another source of pollution from the oceans.’ He held up the tiny bottle they had recovered from the seabed for Ianthe to see. ‘Puzzling little things,’ he remarked. ‘Where does the poison come from? Why does liquid flow out of the bottle and not back into it at higher pressures? And why does copper stem the flow?’ He glanced at her again. ‘All this matter must come from
somewhere
, after all, don’t you think?’

He moved behind the bar and began hunting around, looking for something. ‘If I removed this stopper,’ he said, ‘this room would eventually fill with brine. We’d sink.’ He located a heavy brass corkscrew. ‘And yet when we break the container . . .’ He placed the tiny bottle on the bar and raised the corkscrew over it.

Before Ianthe could yell at him to stop, Maskelyne struck the ichusae hard with the blunt end of the corkscrew. Instinctively, she raised her hands to protect her eyes . . .

But something unexpected happened. The bottle smashed, leaving only a small pool of brine on the surface of the bar. Maskelyne looked down at it. ‘Magic,’ he muttered. ‘There’s nothing inside, nothing that I can find. No portal, no trick, no . . .’ She sensed his jaw clench. ‘How can I hope to understand such lunacy? And yet this is the way I must save the world.’

‘What do you care for the world?’

‘I like the world,’ he said. ‘I live there.’ He took a swig of his drink, and Ianthe felt the raw spirit burn his throat. ‘And I, unlike so many others, am in a position to do something. What sort of man would I be if I didn’t at least
try
?’ He sounded angry. ‘What sort of
father
would I be?’

Murderer!
Tears welled in Ianthe’s eyes, and she fought to keep them back. Her thoughts tumbled over themselves, backwards to the moment when Maskelyne’s men burst into the cell. They were seizing her, Creedy shouting:
Get the girl out. Hold the mother till Granger gets back. Maskelyne wants them brought to Scythe together.
All these lies for her benefit! And then they were carrying her along the corridor and up the stairs, and she was kicking and spitting, and Granger wasn’t there. Her jailer. Her protector. She cast her mind out, searching for him, but there were too many people in Ethugra. Boots thumping on the stairs. Sunlight. And then she looked out through her mother’s eyes—

‘How large were the dragon-bones?’ Maskelyne asked.

‘What?’

‘Fallen chariots, airbarques, they’re like catnip to dragons. Like gold, or . . .’ He raised his glass and gazed into the swirling amber liquor. ‘You should see how they fight over them. One usually finds that the larger the resident beast, the larger the hoard.’ He downed his drink and poured himself another. ‘Either we were lucky enough to find a deserted site, or the bones down there are trophies and our resident dragon is off hunting somewhere nearby. Unfortunately the latter is more likely. Even the most deranged addict must occasionally leave his hoard of drugs to feed.’

‘He’s not boring you with his dragon stories?’

Ianthe turned to face the voice out of habit, but she saw the new arrival through Maskelyne’s eyes – a slender woman in a simple white dress, she had come into the chamber through a door in the back. Her auburn hair gleamed under the gem lanterns like brandy. Her bright blue eyes sparkled with humour. In her pale arms she cradled a toddler, who gaped at Ianthe for a moment before burrowing its face in its mother’s hair.

‘Tell me that’s not troche she’s drinking,’ the woman said.

‘It’s my best Evensraum red,’ Maskelyne protested. ‘Four hundred gilders a cask.’

The woman came close to Ianthe and smiled. ‘He can be so stingy with his guests.’ She extended her hand. ‘I’m Lucille.’

‘My wife,’ Maskelyne added.

For a brief moment Ianthe found herself holding the woman’s fingers.

Lucille bounced the baby in her arms. ‘And this little tyke is Jontney.’ The boy looked at Ianthe again, then hid his face. ‘Oh don’t be so shy,’ his mother said. She passed Jontney to Maskelyne, who started fussing over him at once.

‘Ming,’ Jontney exclaimed.

‘Have you fed him?’ Maskelyne asked.

‘He’s just being greedy,’ Lucille replied. She turned to Ianthe. ‘Ming is milk.’

‘Agon want ming.’

‘Agon had his ming too,’ his mother said.

Jontney peered shyly at Ianthe from his father’s arms.

All this time, Ianthe’s ego had been darting between the minds of Maskelyne and Lucille, unconsciously weaving the gamut of their perceptions into an ever-changing tapestry of light and sound inside her own head. She herself was part of that creation – the wild-haired, blank-eyed girl in a whaleskin cloak standing between the man and his wife. There was something horribly inhuman about her – something, she felt, that deserved to be hated. Suddenly angry, she bulled her consciousness into Jontney’s mind and heard him bawl suddenly in response.

Children were more sensitive that way. Their own egos had not yet fully developed, leaving room for influence.

Maskelyne frowned kindly at the child. ‘Hey, hey, hey. What’s the matter with you?’

The child’s distress filled Ianthe. She could hear his screaming through his own ears, feel the warmth of tears on his cheek, the snot bubbling in his nose, the after-taste of his mother’s milk. He was hot, flustered, annoyed. But he was receptive. She
pushed
a single thought into the boy’s mind, and he lifted his hand and struck Maskelyne across the face.

‘Hey you.’ Maskelyne tried to soothe his son to no avail.

‘Let me take him,’ Lucille said.

Maskelyne passed the screaming boy to his wife. ‘He’s not usually like this,’ he explained to Ianthe. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him today.’

Ianthe withdrew her consciousness from the child, pulling it back out into the void. She was about to settle back into Maske-lyne’s mind, when she sensed something nearby – a great sphere of perception moving quickly through the darkness between the living. It was underwater and it was coming at them fast.

At that same moment, alarms sounded on the deck above.

‘That will be our dragon,’ Maskelyne said. He strolled over to the weapons cabinet and took out his blunderbuss. Then he opened a nearby hatch in the floor, revealing an insulated compartment packed with ice. Freezing vapours swirled within the open hatch. He scraped away at the frost until he had uncovered several black glass globes. He examined each carefully, before selecting one and putting it in his pocket. He grinned at Ianthe’s puzzled frown. ‘Ammunition,’ he said.

Upon opening the hatch, Maskelyne found his men scrambling and slipping across the deck amidst the clamour of bells. He did not approve of this chaotic urgency. He looked for Mellor, finding the first officer standing by the port-side bow gun.

One of the crew shouted, ‘Captain on deck.’

Mellor turned.

Maskelyne grinned. He strolled forward and called out in a cheerful voice, ‘Am I the bravest man you men have ever known?’

The crew replied as one: ‘Aye, sir.’

‘Am I the smartest man you men have ever known?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Am I the man to slay the beast we see before us now?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Then let’s bloody the sea.’

The crew cheered.

Maskelyne reached Mellor and gazed out past the deck rail.

There the dragon flew above the sea. It was an enormous female, a great brown drunken monster with a meat-swollen belly and teeth as old and black as fossils. Its scales were dull and crusted with rime from centuries of brine. Its claws were as yellow as a smoker’s teeth. The tips of its mighty wings thrashed the tops of the waves, flinging up spume. As it drew nearer they could see that it carried the corpse of a Drowned man in its jaws.

Mellor said, ‘Takes a hellish cunning for them to reach such a size.’

‘Don’t forget yourself, Mr Mellor,’ Maskelyne replied.

‘She’s coming into cannon range now.’

‘Let her dive.’

Mellor looked like he was about to protest, but then he said, ‘Aye, sir.’

The serpent had seen the boat and would know its purpose. But Maskelyne had no doubt that the creature’s own addiction would drive it under the sea before it attacked. Fearing that its hoard of ichusae had been plundered, it would dive down to check. Once there it would discover the theft and resurface enraged. And anger could unbalance the wisest of foes.

Sure enough, as the beast drew nearer, it plunged beneath the waves.

Marksmen and feeder crews stood silently by the six batteries of guns. Maskelyne took a black glass bulb from his pocket and fitted it into one of the protrusions on the stock of his blunderbuss, twisting it secure with a click. He checked the weapon’s mechanism, then raised it and sighted along its length. The white metal felt unpleasantly cold to the touch. Several of the runes carved into stock had razor-sharp edges, and seemed all too keen to pluck blood from the wielder. The skull fused to the barrel ends made the gun feel unbalanced and clumsy, as though it had not been designed for human sensibilities.

He pulled his whaleskin cloak more tightly around him and lowered his goggles over his eyes.

The crew did likewise.

The sea to port erupted in an explosion of brine as the dragon burst forth from the depths in a great brown storm of wings and scales. Its eyes burned as yellow as molten rock, full of old rage, and something else . . .
Madness,
Maskelyne realized. The creature was insane. It loomed above the deck rail in a haze of rainbows as seawater steamed from its body. A wet gale blew Maskelyne backwards. He aimed along his gun.

‘Fire to port!’ Mellor cried.

The ship’s three port cannon batteries fired in rapid sequence.
Thud, thud, thud
. Maskelyne had been counting on the barrage to drive the serpent back from the ship, but the panicked crew had been in too much of a hurry. Even at this close range, two of the shells missed their targets and flew harmlessly out to sea. The third one tore through the dragon’s left wing.

The beast roared and then dived straight at the midships gun.

Claws clacked and skittered on steel. Maskelyne felt the ship tilt under the dragon’s weight, heard the slap and suck of the sea against the hull. Metal groaned. The serpent’s great brown neck lunged across the deck and knocked the bathysphere aside, its black teeth snapping at the fleeing crew. And then it lashed its head skywards, dragging a screaming man from a knot of his comrades and hurling him high into the air. Men hollered and slipped and scrambled away in every direction. The bow and stern gun crews ratcheted their cannons inwards as far as they would reach, but the barrels could not be brought to bear upon such a close target.

Maskelyne cursed and lowered his blunderbuss. To shoot the weapon down at such an angle would endanger his vessel. He ran his hand across the glass bulb. It was beginning to warm up dangerously. He leaped down to the midships deck.

The serpent crouched in the centre of the ship, snapping its jaws and lashing its tail back and forth. It turned its golden eyes upon Maskelyne and spoke in Unmer, ‘Return what you have stolen or I will crush this ship and send you all to the deep.’ It raised its head as if about to strike down at Maskelyne.

Maskelyne lifted the blunderbuss under the beast’s chin. ‘You’d do that anyway,’ he replied in the dragon’s own language. Then he squeezed the trigger.

The weapon clicked gently, and then became suddenly hot as a ball of flame swirled inside the glass bulb he had fitted to the stock. Vibrations ran though his hands, accompanied by a faint whining sound from inside the gun’s mechanism. And from the skull-topped barrel erupted a swarm of void flies.

The tiny black insects came pouring out of the blunderbuss, steered by the runic spells etched into in its barrel and unravelling into an ever-broadening spiral. Crackling wildly as they reduced the air around them to vacuum, these Unmer creations would remove every particle of matter with which they came into contact, whether it be stone, steel or dragon flesh. In a heartbeat a cloud of them had engulfed the great brown serpent . . .