The Art of Hunting

by Alan Campbell

  ‘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 th
rough 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.

  The door opened and Paulus stood there, wearing a red silk gown. Looking vaguely annoyed, he stepped out and partially closed the door behind him. ‘Ianthe?’

  ‘What is brine?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Brine!’ she said. ‘Where does it come from?’

  ‘It’s poison. Ianthe, what’s going on?’

  She hesitated. If she told him the truth, she would have to admit spying on Duke Cyr. ‘I had a dream,’ she said. ‘It scared me. Can I come in?’

  He frowned. ‘This isn’t a good time, Ianthe.’

  ‘I won’t—’ She stopped, suddenly aware that someone was in the room with him. She could sense their presence hovering behind the door. She felt it at the periphery of her consciousness, yet held back from reaching out with her mind to investigate. She stiffened against him, and drew back. ‘Who’s there with you?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘In your cabin. Who’s that in your cabin?’

  He glanced away. ‘It’s just Nera.’

  ‘Nera?’ A knot tightened in Ianthe’s gut.

  ‘I told you it wasn’t a good time,’ Paulus said. ‘The imperial armada is currently two leagues south-east of us. Nera is communicating with it.’

  The pressure in Ianthe’s stomach didn’t lessen. ‘Communicating?’

  ‘One of the emperor’s psychics has turned,’ he said. ‘She’s agreed to help us in exchange for her own life. She doesn’t want to face you, Ianthe.’ He closed the door behind him and then took her hands in his. ‘But there’s another Guild witch with the fleet and that one has already sensed Nera and given our position to her captain. We don’t yet know if she’s betrayed her colleague, but we expect the Imperial Navy to engage at first light. I must be ready and so must you, Ianthe.’ He squeezed her hands lightly. ‘Go and get some sleep.’

  Ianthe’s gaze shifted from Paulus’s earnest face to his closed cabin door. She could easily have slipped behind Nera’s eyes, or even crushed the girl’s mind with a thought, but that path could only lead to despair. She trusted Paulus implicitly, didn’t she? Then what was this knot that kept twisting inside her?

  ‘Perhaps I should stay up with you?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I need you well rested and alert for tomorrow.’ He leaned down and kissed her cheek. His perfume lingered on her skin.

  His perfume?

  ‘Goodnight, Ianthe,’ he said.

  Ianthe glanced at his cabin door again. What she wanted to say was, Do you love me? But she was afraid she’d see a lie in his eyes. Instead she said, ‘Goodnight.’

  Sleep was a long time coming for her. Her mind kept replaying the events of the evening: Nera’s presence in Paulus’s cabin and the sight of that alien sea in Cyr’s mirror. He had been conversing with it. He had been talking about the tournament, she felt sure.

  These thoughts spun around in her mind for hours. She began to feel as if she’d never fall asleep.

  And then she awoke suddenly, her eyes blinking at the orange glare filtering through the opaque cabin wall. The sun was already climbing above the horizon. Ianthe felt exhausted. A bell was ringing above decks.

  She filled a metal basin and splashed water on her face, trying to dispel the fog of sleep. If only it were as easy to dispel the knot of anguish in her stomach.

  There was an urgent knocking at the cabin door.

  She opened it to find Paulus standing there, dressed in his finest velvets and leathers. A pale grey sealskin cloak enveloped his shoulders, parting at his waist to reveal the jewel-crusted pommel of an exquisite rapier. On his head he wore a set of brass navigator’s goggles, held securely by a leather strap with tiny end-springs. His face was pale and drawn, and yet he exuded a sort of nervous energy. ‘They’re moving to attack,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve just woken,’ she protested.

  ‘Dress quickly and meet me above deck.’ He turned to leave.

  ‘Paulus?’

  He stopped and looked b
ack at her.

  ‘Do you love me?’

  He looked startled, and Ianthe couldn’t help but sense a vague air of annoyance in his reply. ‘Of course I do,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ll see you in five minutes.’ Then he hurried away.

  Ianthe watched him go. His attitude left her with an empty feeling in her heart. He was taking her help for granted. At that moment she wished that she had no preternatural vision and no power over the Haurstaf. She wanted to be normal. But she was also terrified of what that would mean. All this time she had been unwilling to admit to herself the real reason Paulus was marrying her. She had forbidden herself from asking the question because she was afraid to know the answer. She was so used to viewing the world through other people’s eyes that she had clung to a comforting perception of her relationship with Paulus, rather than look at the naked truth. She had created her own fiction.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  She still felt hollow as she dressed in loose comfortable clothing, choosing the least ostentatious of the garments with which she had been supplied: a light grey spider-silk blouse and dark grey woollen breeches. She draped a patterned scarf around her neck and then grabbed her hooded sealskin cape on her way out.

  The eastern sky was starfish pink and the low sunlight turned the St Augustine’s deck candle-flame orange. Ianthe spotted her fiancé standing by the starboard gunwale with Duke Cyr, Captain Howlish and Nera. The Haurstaf psychic cast a nervous glance in Ianthe’s direction, then folded her arms and looked away. Even now Ianthe felt a stab of jealousy. In this light, the girl’s hair shone as brightly as gold, and a touch of pink coloured her pale cheeks. All three of the men were looking out towards the north-east. As Ianthe joined them, her breath caught in her throat. The sight before her cut through her dark mood.

  Ships covered the ocean to the north. At least a hundred of them: destroyers, frigates, galleons and men-o’-war, their hulls clad in copper or brass or blue, black, brown, green and red dragon scales in solid swathes or motleys gleaming like boiled candy. Innumerable painted sails rose above the dark waters, their stylized designs depicting ancient gods or weapons or beasts of legend or one of scores of noble crests. Metal-bound bows smashed waves to spume. Purple and gold imperial pennants fluttered from countless masts. From everywhere came the glint of armour and brass cannon.