Sea Of Ghosts

PROLOGUE
A TAPESTRY OF SEX

The shopkeeper stood seven feet tall and wore a fantastic turban, a twist of ice-cream silk laced with pearls. He ran his hand along the bookcase until he found the volume he was looking for and extracted it with the deft flourish of a carnival magician. ‘This is the book you want,’ he said. ‘A Tapestry of Sex explores the art of seduction; it was penned by the greatest lover who ever lived.’ He paused in affected wonder. ‘Herein lie the secrets of Lord Herian Goodman – the methods by which he won the hearts of every man, woman and cauldron abomination he desired. Take it, read it, allow yourself to be seduced by it.’

Ida pressed the pages to her lips and breathed in odours of perspiration and exotic perfume. She could still hear the hubbub of commerce in the cavernous gloom around her, but the noise seemed suddenly distant. As her eye followed the neat printed words, her heart began to race. She had to buy this book.

The Trove Market had grown into a network of enormous brick vaults and sinuous passages that reached underneath the Imperial city of Losoto, its cluttered aisles defining tributaries through which endless streams of tourists flowed. They wandered through vast arched spaces, gaping at shelves ablaze with gold and silver trinkets, at glass orchids and jewelled clocks and alabaster birdcages, at endless stacks of boiled-black dragon bones. Painted saints and figureheads smiled back at them with eyes of candle-flame and lips like glazed cherries. Tiny brass machines chuckled and chirruped meaningless words, pulsing colourful lights to no apparent purpose. Old swords waited in cabinets for new owners. There were boxes of feathers and jars of colourful dust, bottles of jellyfish wine and cloaks woven from the hair of dead princesses. Manatee skulls lay next to miniature tombstones. Sharkskin men and women writhed and danced in tanks of brine, their grey limbs sliding fluidly behind the curved glass walls, their hair like green pennants. A million customers might pass through Losoto’s underground market, plucking at the banks of treasure, and yet the stock never diminished. It could not be eroded. Every artefact in the empire found its way here eventually, to lie in wait for a spark of desire.

Ida clutched her book as fiercely as a mother holds a long-lost child. ‘Goodman was an Unmer Lord?’ she asked the shopkeeper.

‘Lord, libertine and a formidable sorcerer to boot. He lived in a house up there, less than a hundred yards from here.’ He jabbed a finger up at the vaulted brick ceiling, beyond which the streets of Losoto would be basking in the sunshine.

‘Then this book is magical?’

The shopkeeper smiled broadly, displaying the diamonds set in his teeth. ‘Who can say? The Unmer invested so many of their creations with magic. You must read it all to discover its value. Passion, sexual ecstasy, horror and peril. Anything is possible between the covers of such a book.’

She nodded urgently.

‘But there’s more,’ he added. ‘Now that you possess a map of seduction, you must acquire a compass and a sextant, so to speak, to facilitate your success.’ He steered her towards a dark cabinet stuffed with bulbous phials that gleamed like squid. ‘These Unmer potions have been dredged from the beds of sixteen seas. Look here.’ He picked up a green bottle. ‘Drink this to cleanse and revitalize your mind; it tastes like spring rain. And this -’ He chose a tiny, empty jar ‘- is a singularly precious ointment.’

‘What is it?’

‘Clarity.’

‘How much do they cost? I don’t know-’

‘And here is stamina.’ This bottle was sunflower-yellow, the next one pink. He scooped them into his arms like glazed fruit sweets. ‘And lucid dreams and lightness of step – ah, here is an enigma. This tincture allows one to see colours hidden in other people’s shadows and thus perceive hidden intentions. These three are the bottled auras of young boys sacrificed at Unmer altars; their ghosts will be lingering nearby. How long do you plan to stay?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Will you be in Losoto a week from now?’

She shook her head. ‘My ship leaves tomorrow.’

The shopkeeper threw up his hands with mock regret. Suddenly he seemed taller and wilder, an enormous blue-lipped djinn at the centre of the universe. Lanterns suspended from the ceiling whirled around his head like flaming bolas. His eyes blazed. ‘But you’ll miss the rarest treasure of them all. My agent in Valcinder is sending me a jealous knife. They dragged it up from sixty fathoms down. A man died to procure it, and I am told it is superb.’

Her head spun. ‘Is it an Unmer artefact? What does it do?’

‘What does it do? The jealous knife allows two lovers to exchange tactile sensation. Prick each partner’s finger and thereafter each will experience the other’s pleasure or pain. Thus a lonely wife might please her husband across great gulfs of separation, or a brave man endure the pain of childbirth in his woman’s stead.’

‘But why is it called-’

He made a dismissive gesture. ‘The effect is everlasting. Relationships are not.’

Perhaps Ida could remain a few days and return home on a later boat? She had spent so much money already on this trip, but she absolutely had to have that knife. And possibly an aura or two, an Unmer sonnet, a dragon’s eye, or a few vials of passion drained from a corpse. Leave the gold to the magpies; she would indulge her taste for Unmer sorcery. Yes. She simply must stay. She was about to say as much when she heard a great commotion from another part of the market. A woman screamed.

The shopkeeper stared past her, over the tops of the nearest shelves. And then he turned and walked briskly away down the aisle.

‘Mr Sa’mael?’ Ida called after him. ‘Mr Sa’mael?’

Other people were shoving past her now, quickly. Ida sensed a swell of panic building under the vaulted ceiling. She heard another scream, and what sounded like an explosion. Glass smashed. Suddenly the crowd surged, and someone knocked her to the floor. Ida cried out and cowered under her book as boots thudded past her head.

Silence followed.

Ida wobbled to her feet and swept back the tangled mess of her hair. Dirty footprints bruised her dress. Her arms and legs smarted. The aisles all around were clogged with wreckage from fallen shelves. It looked as if a tsunami had swept through here. The crowds had fled, but the marketplace was not deserted.

Ten yards away a little girl stood at the junction of four aisles, cradling a metal doll in her arms. She wore a red frock composed of many layers and frills that flared out around her boots like the petals of a rose. Her hair and skin were as white as bone dust, and her huge dark eyes brimmed with tears.

‘Oh, you poor tyke.’ Ida moved towards the child.

From behind came the calm sound of a man’s voice: ‘Ma’am.’

Ida turned.

Five Imperial soldiers perched upon the tops of the shelves above her. They had climbed up among the boxes of treasure, three on one side of the aisle, two on the opposite bank. As motley a group as Ida had ever seen, they wore tattered black uniforms adorned with old clasps, buckles and pins. They wore whaleskin boots and gloves and carried swords, gutting knives and hand-cannons fashioned from dragon-bone and silver – these latter clearly salvaged from the seabed, for the stocks still bore the scars of barnacles. The man who had spoken crouched over a leather satchel, gripping the stub of a cigar between his teeth and holding his firearm upright in one fist like a staff. His own uniform bore the bee-stripe epaulettes of an Imperial Guard colonel. He was wiry, tough-looking but ungainly, with oversized joints and a neat cap of brown hair. Grey spots of sharkskin marred one side of his neck, and yet his pale blue eyes were as clear and hard as glass. His raggedy appearance seemed so much at odds with his apparent rank that for a moment Ida wondered if he’d mugged one of Emperor Hu’s finest and stolen the fellow’s getup.

‘She’s Unmer,’ he said. ‘She’ll kill you without meaning to.’

‘She can’t be Unmer,’ Ida retorted. ‘The Haurstaf would have sensed her.’

The colonel looked at her without the faintest glimmer of emotion. ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘Debating the situation further serves no purpose, ma’am. Please move aside, or we will remove you by force.’

Ida did as she was told, stepping through the piles of glittering junk. Now that she thought about it, the girl’s frock did look old enough to be an antique. An original Unmer garment, intact and undamaged by the sea? The sheer value of it astonished her. And wasn’t there an odd graveyard smell in the air?

‘But how did she get out?’ she said.

‘Crawled straight through a wall, I imagine.’

‘But the Haurstaf would have sensed that!’

The colonel puffed on his cigar. ‘The Haurstaf always seem a trifle lax when the emperor neglects to pay his dues on time. If you would be so kind as to make your way towards the nearest exit, we will handle the crisis from here.’

The soldier beside him grunted. ‘Fucking extortion is what it is.’ A great dark brute of a man, he crouched on his high perch like some enormous ape, with the butt of his firearm pressed firmly into his massive shoulder and the barrel aimed at the child. On the back of his hand he bore a small black tattoo. It looked like a shovel.

‘Language, Sergeant Creedy.’

‘Well, it is,’ the other man persisted. ‘They let this one escape to teach Hu a lesson.’

‘Then they’re not coming?’ Ida said.

‘It seems unlikely, ma’am,’ the colonel replied.

She was about to protest the woeful inadequacy of this when the child cried out suddenly, ‘I want my mother.’ Her voice reverberated strangely in the vast space; it was accompanied by a queer crackling sound, like distant cannon fire.

The colonel reached into his satchel and pulled out a fist-sized ball of baked clay. A short fuse extended from its wax-sealed top. He examined the munition carefully, then glanced up at the vaulted ceiling. ‘Banks,’ he said to the second man sharing his side of the aisle. ‘I’d like your opinion on the roof.’

This soldier was much younger than his companions, but he surveyed the gloomy space above them with the grim demeanour and confidence of a much older man. He sniffed and rubbed at his nose. ‘The Unmer built this whole place,’ he replied. ‘Those corbels date back to the Lucian Wars. The problem is, I can’t tell exactly what’s above them from down here. We blow that roof, and we might bring down more than just rubble.’ He paused and sneezed into his hand. ‘Dragonfire would be better.’

‘Did you bring a dragon, Banks?’ the colonel said.

The younger soldier looked as if he was about to say something, then he shook his head wearily and returned his gaze to the ceiling. ‘We must be close to the Unmer ghetto, sir,’ he said. ‘Bring that down on our heads and the emperor will not be happy.’

‘What do the maps say?’

He blinked watery eyes, then gave a grunt. ‘What maps? Hu doesn’t consider the Trove Market close enough to his palace to warrant the expense of a survey. The Haurstaf would know, but-’

‘Blow the roof?’ Ida exclaimed. ‘What do you mean, blow the roof?’

‘Standard procedure, ma’am,’ the colonel said. ‘Nothing for you to be concerned about.’ He stood up, stared intently at the little girl for a moment, then turned to the big soldier by his side. ‘Fire a round at the child, Sergeant Creedy. Aim for her head.’

‘Aye, sir.’ The huge soldier pulled back the weapon’s firing lever, with a click.

Ida rushed in front of the child to block his shot. ‘What in heavens do you think you’re doing?’ she said, brandishing her book. ‘She’s just a little girl.’

‘I need you to stand aside, ma’am,’ the colonel said.

Ida didn’t budge.

‘We are here on Emperor’s Hu’s orders,’ he added. ‘If you fail to comply we will arrest you for resisting Imperial troops in a time of war. The punishment for such a crime is typically six to nine months’ incarceration.’

She folded her arms.

He observed her for a moment with cold eyes. ‘I don’t think you fully comprehend the danger,’ he said. ‘That crackling noise you heard when she spoke was the sound of air turning to vacuum in her lungs. She can’t help herself. Unmer children lack the restraint of adults.’

Ida glared at him. ‘She’s not doing anybody any harm.’ From the corner of her eye she noticed the child move close behind her.

The colonel glanced across at the two men perched on the shelves on the opposite side of the aisle and raised his eyebrows. These two were like ancient crows: scrawny, bow-legged creatures with wild black hair and noses shaped for pecking. They might both have been the sons of the same unfortunate woman. They held their heavy guns easily enough, but their narrowed, squinting eyes did not inspire confidence. One of them shook his head and spoke in a thick Greenbay accent, ‘Not without hitting the woman, sir.’

Creedy grunted. ‘You couldn’t hit the ocean from a boat, Swan. I can end all this time-wasting with one shot. If we dynamite the woman’s body afterwards, it’ll look like the Unmer child killed her.’

The colonel raised his hand. ‘No, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘We will adhere to the law.’ He thought for a moment, before turning his attention back to Ida. ‘Do you have a receipt for that book, ma’am?’

She blinked. ‘I hadn’t bought it yet.’

‘We are authorized to shoot looters on sight.’

Creedy laughed.

Ida felt strength draining from her legs. She cried out, ‘It doesn’t give you the right to shoot an unarmed-’

She didn’t get a chance to finish. The girl bolted away from her, down the aisle.

Ida half-turned.

And Creedy fired.

A flash erupted from the weapon, accompanied by a tremendous boom. The child shrieked as a second burst of light bloomed against her back. She dropped like a rag doll. Ida’s heart clenched in desperate panic. She felt as if the air had been sucked from her lungs.

Smoke leaked from the barrel of Creedy’s gun. He lowered the weapon and said, ‘Damn.’

Ida’s ears still rang with the sound of the detonation. It took her a moment to realize that the Unmer girl had not been harmed. Still clutching her doll, the poor child was trying to push herself upright amidst the piles of fallen treasure.

‘I shot her in the back,’ Creedy said.

‘Reload your weapon, Sergeant,’ the colonel said.

Creedy was shaking his head. ‘The round just vanished.’

The child was sobbing. She got to her feet and edged backwards away from the men. Behind her loomed one of the Trove Market’s many brine tanks, twelve tons of poisonous seawater glowing faintly behind its glass walls. A sharkskin woman stood in that brown gloom, watching the child approach. She thumped a fist against the inside of her container, but her warning made no sound.

Banks shouted, ‘The tank, Colonel.’

Creedy was hurriedly pouring powder into his gun.

The colonel nodded to the crows on the opposite bank. ‘Swan, Tummel, please do try to avoid any sort of mess.’

They raised their weapons.

The child wailed.

Explosions rattled the air. A hail of pellets crackled against the child’s red frock and flared out of existence. She screamed and dropped her doll. Through a veil of white smoke Ida saw her turn and flee.

‘Slippery little bitch,’ Creedy said.

Whether the girl was unable to perceive the brine tank, or whether she simply did not notice it in her panic, Ida didn’t know. But she doubted that what happened next was deliberate. The child ran straight into the container’s curved glass wall.

There was a blaze of white light, a sharp bang…

And the tank shattered.

A wave of brine erupted out onto the market floor, washing artefacts aside as it surged between the aisles. Ida leapt for the safety of the nearest set of shelves and tried to clamber up among the trove. Her foot slipped, and she felt cold seawater close around the heel of her shoe. The metal stink of brine filled her nostrils. She yelped, snatching her foot away, but it was too late. Her ankle had already begun to itch.

Strong hands gripped her, pulled her up. ‘Relax, ma’am. It’s only your ankle.’

The itching became a strange prickling sensation. Ida’s heartbeat quickened.

She heard Creedy’s voice. ‘That wasn’t our fault. Hu can’t blame us for breaking that.’

‘There she is,’ said another man. ‘She’s splashing through the stuff.’

The prickling sensation in Ida’s foot intensified. She began to shiver with fear. Was this shock? How long did she have before her skin began to change? ‘I need fresh water,’ she said. ‘I need to-’

‘The guns aren’t working, sir. Our shots don’t have enough mass. We’re going to have to overwhelm her.’

Ida pulled off her slipper and stared at her ankle. She couldn’t see any damage yet, but the skin on her heel felt like it was tightening over the bones inside.

‘… for something her size?’

‘Five or six tons. But, like I said, it’s a hell of a risk. Hu is still looking for an excuse to bury us. A hole in his city pretty much fits that bill.’

Ida tried to swallow her revulsion, but visions of sharkskin assailed her. Was she turning into one of the Drowned? She felt nauseous, dizzy, as though racked by the effects of some hideous drug. The Trove Market whirled around her in glittering wheels of gold and silver. She leaned over and vomited.

From nearby came a long low wail. The sharkskin woman lying at the bottom of the smashed tank was beginning to dry out. She was writhing about, scooping up brine and rubbing it into her leathery grey flesh. Ida tore her gaze away from the unfortunate creature. Her own ankle was nipping quite fiercely now. So soon? She needed fresh water to clean the wound. She searched around frantically for something, somewhere…

‘Take Swan and Tummel and find the breach. It’ll be a small hole, child-sized. If we scare her enough we might just manage to steer her back there.’

‘We’re supposed to kill any escapees. Hu was very specific about that.’

‘Emperor Hu is not here.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘Creedy, you’re with me.’

‘They can’t blame us for that mess, can they, sir?’

‘Ma’am?’

Ida looked up.

The colonel was holding out a bottle. ‘It’s wine,’ he said.

She gazed at him dumbly.

‘Use it on your ankle. It’ll help.’

Ida took the bottle and poured pink wine over her ankle. Had her skin already begun to toughen and change? Wasn’t that a patch of grey, there, on the side of her heel? Hurriedly, she massaged the wine into her foot, then felt a jab of panic as her fingers began to itch. ‘Colonel,’ she began.

But the colonel did not reply. He was looking past her.

A hundred paces beyond the smashed tank stood a man. He was aiming a bow at the colonel. He was dressed up like a noble from a bygone era: a jewel-studded black jerkin spun about with a platinum sash, black breeches over white hose and sandals of soft dark leather. Rouge coloured his cheeks, but the powdered make-up did little to dampen the sharpness of his features. His out-thrust chin and dagger-like nose were too severe to be considered handsome. He wore his long grey hair in a tight plait pulled back from his face and he glared at them with sharp violet eyes. Ida found him strangely mesmerizing. He seemed somehow more solid than the world around him, a fixed point in a spinning world. She felt her nausea diminish.

The Unmer child had her arms wrapped around the bowman’s leg.

And behind them both stood a berserker dragon.

The beast was small for its species, perhaps sixty feet from its snout to the tip of its tail. It wore a suit of glazed white armour chased with silver, each plate exquisitely shaped to hug its serpentine body and its short, powerful limbs. Shards of crystal glinted on its gauntlets and again on its long, tapered helmet, wherein burned blood-red eyes. It nuzzled the Unmer child until she giggled.

Like all dragons, it had been human once – a warrior remade by Unmer sorcery into this new and bestial form. It unfolded great nacreous wings that glittered like rainbows, and then it lowered its equine head and began to lap at the poisonous brine. In creating this species for war, the Unmer had given it unholy addictions. The seawater would be acting like a drug, fuelling its rage in preparation for battle. When it raised its head again, brine dripped from ranks of bared white teeth.

The bowman smiled. ‘Do you enjoy tormenting children?’

Creedy said, ‘Fuck.’

Now the colonel hefted his own hand-cannon. ‘The child was in no danger from us,’ he said. ‘Take her back to the ghetto, and we’ll allow you to leave here unharmed.’

‘Allow me to leave?’ the archer said incredulously. ‘In what way do you suppose you can harm me? Your weapons are like those of ghosts.’ Behind him, the dragon growled words in a strange, guttural language. The archer listened and then replied in the same twisted speech. Finally he turned back to the colonel. ‘Yva is hungry,’ he said. ‘She has begged me to allow her to remain here, so that she may devour you at her leisure.’ He smiled again, inclining his head towards the sharkskin woman writhing on the ground. ‘Of course Yva is lying. She wants that Drowned woman and is too ashamed of her addiction to admit it.’

‘Who are you?’ Ida asked.

The bowman looked at her with utter disdain, as though the question was one that ought to have required no answer. ‘I am Argusto Conquillas,’ he said, ‘Lord of Herica and the Sumran Islands.’

‘I know who you are,’ the colonel said. ‘You’re a long way from Herica.’

Creedy grunted. ‘He’s Lord of shit now, a dragon fetishist and a Haurstaf toy.’

Conquillas shot him.

Creedy tried to turn away. He was fast, but not fast enough. The arrow tore through the air like a thunderbolt, crackling with black fire. It passed clean through the bridge of Creedy’s nose and then out of the right side of his skull behind his eye, before disappearing into the vaulted wall sixty yards behind with a sudden bang. Ida gaped at the spot where it had vanished. She could still hear a furious snapping sound receding into the distance as it continued on its path beyond that wall and through the foundations of the city itself.

In the heartbeat before Creedy howled and clutched at his face, Ida glimpsed a bloody mess where his right eye had been.

The colonel’s men reacted with uproar. Banks grabbed Creedy, who was screaming and worrying his head with bloody fingers. The crows yelled and lifted their hand-cannons. Wheellock dogs clicked back.

‘Hold your fire!’ the colonel shouted.

Conquillas was holding up a green glass bottle the size of his thumb. It had a small copper stopper wedged in its neck. An arrogant smirk formed on his lips. Behind him, the dragon leaned closer and purred deeply.

‘You know what this is?’ Conquillas said.

Ida’s moistened her lips. Was that a sea-bottle? One could buy an apartment in Valcinder with one of those.

The colonel lowered his gun. ‘There are innocent people in here.’

‘No human is innocent.’ Conquillas unplugged the stopper and threw the bottle high into the air, towards the soldiers. Great arcs of dark green brine sprayed out of its open neck – too much liquid, far more than such a tiny container could possibly hold. The bottle bounced three times, then clattered across the ground and, still spewing brine, disappeared under one of the shelves.

The colonel hissed. The liquid had splashed his shoulder, soaking his uniform. He jumped down, his whaleskin boots slapping into the wet floor, then turned to his men and said calmly, ‘Find that ichusae and seal it, please.’

Banks clambered down after the officer and was quickly joined by the two crows. The colonel was already on his knees, crawling across the ground as he tried to reach under the opposite bank of shelves. But then he muttered in frustration and stood up again. ‘Give me a hand to push it over.’ He pressed his body against the shelf, heaving at it with his shoulder. The other three men joined him, and together they pushed.

The shelf tilted back and then slammed to the ground, spilling trove everywhere. Scores of relics fell and smashed. Brine coursed and bubbled across the floor between them. The four soldiers were raking through the treasure, kicking and flinging it aside. ‘Here we are,’ the colonel said, reaching down.

Ida felt a gust of wind batter her face. She looked up to see the dragon take to the air. Conquillas and the child had disappeared. With its wings shimmering, the beast seemed vague, illusory. Its crystal claws flashed. It roared.

‘Wings!’ Banks cried.

‘Thank you, Private.’ The colonel already had his hand-cannon trained on the dragon. In his other hand he held up the bottle. Gallons of brine continued to bubble and froth out of the tiny container, soaking his gloved fist. He forced his thumb down on to the open neck to try and stem the flow, but the pressure was too great. Jets of green liquid sprayed across the fallen treasure. ‘I’ll need that stopper, Private Swan,’ he said. ‘As soon as you can.’

‘Here, Colonel!’ One of the crows had located the stopper.

The great serpent spread out its wings and then fell upon the sharkskin woman lying on the ground sixty paces from the soldiers. Ida turned away just as its open jaws darted down. The woman’s scream was cut short by the sound of crunching bones.

By now the colonel had sealed the Unmer bottle. He wiped it dry on the edge of his whaleskin boot and then slipped it into a pocket on the front of his uniform.

The dragon raised its head, blood and brine dripping from its maw. Nothing remained of the sharkskin woman’s corpse but a few scraps of meat. It snapped its teeth; its neck reared back like a viper about to strike.

The colonel walked towards it, his hand-cannon levelled at its head, and spoke in that same guttural language the serpent had used. ‘Yva feroo raka. Onolam nagir.’

‘Onolam?’ the dragon replied. A prolonged booming noise, perhaps a laugh, came from its throat. ‘Nash, nagir seen awar. Bones and blood, little mortal. The laws of men mean nothing to me.’

‘Conquillas was right,’ the colonel said. ‘You are ashamed of your addiction.’

The dragon lowered its long neck, hunched its body behind its forelegs and hissed. Ida could smell the sea upon its breath – the heady stench of salt and metals. Red eyes burned malevolently in the gloom.

And then it pounced.

The sheer power and speed of the creature was astonishing. It shot forward, a blaze of white armour and crystal, its bloody maw open wide.

The colonel fired his hand-cannon into the creature’s mouth. To the sound of an enormous detonation, the dragon’s head blew apart and spattered across the vaulted ceiling. Chunks of meat rained down far across the marketplace. The massive jaws slid to a stop against the colonel’s boot.

He turned to face his men. ‘How is Creedy?’

Banks was cradling the sergeant’s shoulders. ‘He’s lost his looks, but he’ll live. The pair of them were covered from head to foot in dragon blood. Banks looked around at the mess and grinned. ‘Supper’s on you then,’ he said.

The colonel shook his head. ‘I never much liked the taste of dragon.’