The Art of Hunting

by Alan Campbell

  ‘That was my father’s favourite settee,’ Siselo said.

  Granger got up again and then turned round so his head was higher than his feet. He glanced over at the girl and grumbled, ‘I’ll get him another one.’

  ‘You won’t find another one. It’s about a thousand years old and it’s probably the only one in all Anea or even the world.’

  Granger sighed and closed his eyes. ‘Get some rest, Ianthe. It’s been a long day.’

  ‘My name is Siselo.’

  ‘Right.’

  CHAPTER 8

  THE TOURNAMENT

  The next few weeks saw some major changes in both the city and in Ianthe’s life. Paulus announced his commitment to repair the damage caused by the Uriun and met daily with the Citizens’ Representative Council, as they came to be known. Work progressed quickly and soon the streets were free of rubble and most of the dead had been laid to rest. A few survivors had been pulled from the wreckage at the beginning, but there hadn’t been any for days now. Ianthe feared that those who had still not been found must surely have perished.

  And so it transpired that Athentro’s refugees, those one thousand souls who represented the last of the Anean Unmer, came to live in the same city in which they’d been imprisoned for much of their lives. Apartments were found for them in the abandoned townhouses near to the palace, but several of the older men and women refused such grandeur, choosing instead to return to the ghettos from which they had been released. Ianthe found this difficult to understand, but Howlish merely laughed and said you get used to calling a place home and some people – even the Unmer – dislike change. He also said that a prison was no longer a prison once the locks were opened and the guards had all departed.

  Ianthe was also surprised how quickly and effortlessly the citizens of Losoto accepted Prince Paulus Marquetta as their new ruler. Howlish said, ‘They’ve had Emperor Hu for the last twenty years. Anything would be an improvement. Anarchy would be an improvement.’ Although she didn’t count the former privateer as a friend, she enjoyed his company. He would find her in the palace gardens most evenings and always stopped for a smoke and a chat. ‘People don’t care who sits on the throne,’ he said, ‘as long as they’ve got somewhere to sleep, something to eat, and someone to fuck.’ Upon leaving her he would invariably wander into the great petrified serpent for a dab of ashko on his tongue before heading back to meet his men at the harbour inns.

  Duke Cyr had the council appoint special militias to fill the gap left by the imperial soldiers. These men now kept law and order. Trade began to blossom again. Fishing boats unloaded catches in the harbour, and the morning market reopened. Even the trove sellers in the vaults below the city began to find customers for their treacherous wares. Within a month the city seemed to have recovered, if not to complete normality, then at least to a level of effective functionality.

  Word of the city’s revived prosperity spread through trade and telepathic channels, as did the announcement of the upcoming coronation and marriage. Soon the palace buzzed with visitors who’d come to pledge allegiance to the future king of Anea and his bride-to-be. Wealthy businessmen and landowners came from Do’esto and Valcinder, and prison-keepers travelled from Ethugra. Warlords filled the harbour with brightly painted and goldspun sails. They came to bend the knee and receive assurances that, while a new kingdom would be born out of the palace of an old empire, nothing of consequence would change. Their properties and powers remained safe under Marquetta’s rule.

  Emperor Hu had taken fifty cohorts of his men and fled north, a march that was said to have stripped a dozen villages of wheat and pork and cabbages, but the news coming from that part of the world was that this army had begun to unravel near Hesellan and the Friesnan gorges. Deserters had been spotted heading south in droves and it was rumoured that some had already returned to their families in Losoto. Only the emperor’s Samarol bodyguards remained loyal to him; their silver wolf’s head helmets struck fear in all who saw them.

  Weeks passed. And as the day of Paulus’s coronation drew ever nearer, Losoto went from a recovering city to something that began to resemble a flourishing one. Ianthe could scarcely believe that such a change could happen in such a short time. She began to notice more people than ever in the streets around the palace as Losoto’s upper classes returned from self-imposed exile in the country. Now servants came and went from town-houses that had previously been locked and shuttered. Late summer flowers appeared in window boxes. Horses clopped through the cobbled streets. Ships from every corner of the empire filled the harbour to bursting.

  Ianthe stayed in the palace grounds for all this time, for Duke Cyr had warned her against venturing outside. She remained a target for Conquillas or even agents of the emperor. The gardens were so extensive that she never felt claustrophobic. But, as the chain of days grew long, the city beyond the painted iron became less threatening and more enticing. Paulus was always so busy, she hardly saw him. He visited her occasionally to enquire about her ongoing search for Conquillas. She kept looking for the dragon lord but she never found him. She didn’t search for her father at all. She couldn’t think of him without thinking about his replicates – those dead-eyed fiends who walked with him. She didn’t search for him because she was afraid she would find him.

  The laying of the crown on her fiancé’s head and the placement of his ring upon her finger were to happen on the last day of autumn – the month known as Hu-Suarin in the old imperial calendar, or Reth in the Unmer one. In preparation for the tournament, a detachment of workers was dispatched to uncover the entrance to the Halls of Anea.

  But, as the coronation and the marriage drew nearer, Ianthe’s doubts continued to grow. Her fiancé’s rise to power, the palace in which they now lived, the servants who waited on them, the soldiers who paraded for them, the citizens who paid tax to keep them – none of it could have happened without Ianthe. She was the shield that had kept the Unmer safe from the surviving Haurstaf. And, as long as Paulus was to stay in power, he would need that shield.

  But did he love her?

  Sometimes Ianthe thought he did. But other times it all seemed like a charade designed to keep her on his side. And still her life rolled inevitably towards the marriage. Could she stop it even if she wanted to?

  To keep her mind occupied, she passed her mornings on the terrace outside her quarters, practising her writing and reading dozens of books. Most often she spent her afternoons in one of the many quiet corners of the emperor’s gardens, helping the old gardener, Mr Doorum, to root out weeds, or else simply sitting in the cool green shade under a tree and watching sparrows hop and twitter among the branches. Paulus admonished her for helping the servants, but Ianthe enjoyed it. What else was she supposed to do here? She grew to love the gardens. It was the only place since her childhood in Evensraum that she could see wild birds every day.

  And before she knew it, the big day was imminent.

  On the eve of Ianthe’s marriage day the morning was crisp and airy. She found the manicured lawns and the box mazes deep in orange leaves and she saw a convoy of leathershine-black carriages clopping up the driveway to form a queue leading back from the palace entrance portico. She hurried over, expecting guests, only to discover that the carriages were all stuffed to the roofs with wedding dresses.

  ‘Prince Marquetta requested a selection of gowns for your wedding tomorrow,’ said a uniformed man at the door. He introduced himself as Mr Greaves from Salamander Street and he had been hired that very morning as the prince’s valet.

  ‘Are these all for me?’ Ianthe said.

  Mr Greaves nodded and said, ‘Of course, Milady.’

  ‘But there must be every dress in Losoto here.’

  ‘Far more than that,’ said Mr Greaves.

  The dresses filled seven of the palace suites. There were garments of spider silk, worm silk and beetle silk, of glazed cotton, flax, lace and velvet in a thousand shades of whites and creams and colours from the daintiest pastels
to bloody reds and chemical blues and chocolate; dresses of every possible shape and design, all pinched, puffed, frilled, embroidered, layered, seamed, scalloped and rumpled. Dresses so heavy she couldn’t lift them. Dresses as light as newfallen snow. Dresses woven from gold and silver thread or so encrusted with jewels that they stood perfectly upright even without an occupant. Ianthe wandered from room to room, through these glades of silk and sparkles, and then she threw herself on the nearest bed and shrieked with delight.

  But she could not choose a dress.

  The prince supplied her with an army of maids – maids to carry garments from room to room or pile them high upon the beds, maids who gathered around her or rushed around with pins between their lips and threads wound around their fingers, helping her into one dress after another, forever adjusting cloth, clasping and unclasping, smoothing out or rumpling up, tugging at sleeves and fixing hems.

  They were excellent as servants and seamstresses, but made terrible companions, for Ianthe could not extract from them a single word of honest criticism. Each garment, if Ianthe chose to believe these meticulously espaliered opinions, made Ianthe look exquisite, beautiful, radiant, regal and sublime. Sublime was a favourite. At one point she swore that if she heard the word again she would send the offending girl to enquire if Paulus had appointed an executioner yet. The servants would not be persuaded to convey anything less than hysterically effusive praise at everything Ianthe tried on, even when Ianthe herself felt ugly and foolish in the blasted thing.

  Finally she dismissed them all and sat alone amid mountains of material. At that moment, more than anything, she wished that her father was there.

  Siselo shifted the contents of her plate around with a spoon. ‘This fish tastes funny. Are you sure it’s fresh?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ Granger said.

  The two of them were sitting at breakfast in Conquillas’s Losotan hideaway. Half a dozen gem lanterns hung from various hooks and chains around their table, illuminating mounds of gleaming treasure and broken rocks. Siselo wore a tunic and breeches of hunting cloth, as she called it – a vaguely sorcerous material that changed colour depending on her surroundings. It was just one of the many possessions she kept in chests in her room. The cave system down here encompassed more bedrooms and bathrooms than the grandest of the mansion houses in the city above them, although Granger slept on the broken settee in the main hall.

  ‘How many times did you boil it?’ she said.

  ‘Three times.’

  ‘And you changed the water each time?’

  He snapped at her. ‘The fish is fine, Siselo!’

  She was silent for a moment and then she said, ‘I know why you’re so upset.’

  ‘I’m not upset.’

  ‘Yes you are. You’re upset because it’s her wedding tomorrow.’

  Granger said nothing. Siselo was right, of course. He’d been cooped up here for weeks, waiting for Conquillas to arrive. But the dragon lord hadn’t shown up yet. And Granger was starting to worry that perhaps he wasn’t going to show up at all. Lying low was one thing, but Conquillas seemed to have completely disappeared from the face of the earth. He wondered if Prince Marquetta had actually managed to have the man assassinated. At least then Ianthe would be safe.

  Prince Marquetta?

  Tomorrow it would be King Marquetta. And Ianthe would be his queen. Inside his gauntlet, Granger’s hand tightened into a fist. He stood up and strode over to his kitbag.

  ‘You’re not practising now, are you?’ Siselo said. ‘I was going to read.’

  Granger ignored her. He rummaged through the bag and pulled out his replicating sword. The moment his hand closed on the grip, he felt his replicates start to appear. Only this time they did not appear in the space around him, but rather in the space inside him. Phasing, Siselo had called it. She’d said it was something to do with matter and energy being the same thing, but Granger didn’t much care for the science or philosophy behind the sorcery. What he cared about was the effect.

  So he gripped the sword hilt and concentrated. He found phasing to be much easier than using the sword to create spatially distinct versions of himself. Those outwith his own body were independent. They possessed their own disparate perceptions and reactions, which made them harder to control. Phased replicates, however, shared the same body as he did and thus shared his view of the world. He didn’t have to assign different parts of his mind to different tasks. By creating versions of himself inside himself, Granger found that he was able to increase his strength to superhuman levels. And that was before the power armour amplified it.

  Granger willed forth dozens of replicates. In his mind he imagined them as cards falling one on top of the other and yet the card pile never increased in size. He felt his entire body grow massive inside his own armour. The alloy plates began to tremble and hum as hundreds and then thousands of sword phantoms shuddered into existence inside it.

  ‘You’re overdoing it!’ Siselo said.

  Granger grunted and took several steps forward. The stone floor cracked under his armoured boots. His suit began to spark and shed arcs of rainbow light as it struggled to cope with the immense energies contained within. This number of replicates would have stopped the heart of a normal man, but Granger’s heart was sustained even in death by his armour and could not be stopped. He strode forward to the cavern wall and made a fist with his left gauntlet and then placed it against the rock.

  He pushed.

  His fist remained where it was, but his boots slid away from the wall.

  Granger let out a roar of frustration. Still gripping the sword, he smashed both fists against the rock, again and again, pummelling it with left and right hooks. His armour whined as it amplified the force of a thousand replicates. The rock broke under his assault. Great chunks of stone fell to the floor. Dust clouded around him.

  ‘Stop!’ Siselo cried. ‘You’ll break the suit.’

  Granger halted. He stood there, breathing heavily, shrouded in dust, and surveyed the destruction he had caused. A four-foot-square section of the cavern wall had collapsed around him.

  Siselo stared at him as if he was insane. ‘What did that wall ever do to you?’ she said.

  Granger looked at her. ‘I can’t wait for your father any longer,’ he said. ‘If I’m dead then I’m dead and I’ll just have to live with that. Tomorrow I leave.’

  ‘Leave? For where?’

  ‘I’m going to my daughter’s wedding.’

  Despite the destruction to the imperial capital, Losoto’s harbour was so full that there was no suitably large berth available for the Lamp. Maskelyne briefly considered sinking one of the warlord’s galleons to make room for his own dredger, but then decided against it. The water wasn’t deep enough and he might snag his hull on the sunken vessel’s masts.

  So he ordered his crew to drop anchor in the centre of the bay and then he clambered down into the tender with Mellor and the Bahrethroan sorcerer named Cobul. The chatter Jones had picked up on his ear trumpet these last few weeks had proved accurate. Marquetta had unleashed some vast and terrible creature upon Losoto, for no apparent reason other than to demonstrate that he could.

  As they sped across the choppy waters, Maskelyne gazed out at the damage the thing had caused. From here it looked as if they were rebuilding the entire city.

  Other news had been more mundane, if a royal wedding could be called mundane. They had arrived in time to witness Prince Marquetta’s coronation and his marriage to the Lady Ianthe Cooper of Evensraum. This would have been fortuitous if Maskelyne had any intention of attending. He didn’t, so the timing was more of an annoyance to him. He had hoped for an audience with Prince Marquetta, but that seemed unlikely given the current situation. The prince would undoubtedly be busy until after all this nonsense had passed. And what if the pair then took a honeymoon?

  ‘You look agitated,’ Cobul observed.

  ‘That’s because I am agitated,’ Maskelyne replied.

/>   Cobul looked at him for a minute longer. When Maskelyne did not elaborate, he turned away.

  By the time the tender had knocked against the quay, Maskelyne was in a more philosophical mood. After all, he thought, there was nothing like a good honeymoon to cheer a king up. And a cheerful king was more likely than a dour one to offer the metaphysicist a job.

  Mellor cut the engines and tied up and the three men climbed the steps up to the quayside.

  The docks were busy with sailors, porters and merchants. Groups of men in woollen caps and coats smoked and warmed their hands at braziers. A blind beggar rattled his cup against the ground. Other workers pushed goods to and fro, the trolleys squeaking and bumping over the steel crane rails set into the concrete. The crane itself was currently positioned at the end of the dock, unloading a steamer from Valcinder. It loomed over their heads, a great hissing metal-slatted monster. Crowds parted around the three men as they stood there and surveyed their surroundings. Directly in front of them Maskelyne noticed a board covered in lists.

  ‘Now that is fortuitous, Cobul,’ he exclaimed. ‘For I do believe these are the tournament lists.’

  Sure enough, the names inked onto the papers covering the board were those of tournament entrants. There had to be half a hundred of them down already. Maskelyne peered at the names, but could not find Conquillas’s among the combatants. He turned to a dock worker who was slouching against the board with his arms folded and his cap pulled down over his eyes.

  ‘Are you a tournament official?’

  The man started, then snatched his cap back from his eyes. ‘I am, sir, yes.’

  ‘Are these all the combatants?’

  ‘As of last night, sir. There’s another board on Pilemoth and one outside the palace, but I don’t have the new additions from there yet. We update the three at dusk.’

  ‘So Conquillas hasn’t arrived in Losoto?’

  The man tilted his cap and drew a hand across his brow. ‘We would have noticed him, sir.’ He leaned closer. ‘There’s a rumour going round that he was killed in Vale.’