Sea Of Ghosts

CHAPTER 10
THE TRIAL OF TOM GRANGER

The emperor’s dragon-hunter-class steam yacht rolled into Ethugra like a circus. The triple-funnel, single-masted Excelsior was far sleeker than Briana’s man-o’-war. Indeed, if Hu’s claims were to be believed, she was looking at the fastest and most luxurious human-built vessel in the world. She slid out of the Glot Madera and into Averley Plaza under steam power alone, accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets from the heralds on her deck. The sails furled along her yards were as crisp and white as marzipan. Her three funnels sat behind the wheelhouse and in front of the mast, disgorging torrents of steam and vaporous whale-oil smoke into the heavens. Her bow sliced through the muddy waters, the copper-clad hull ripple-blown and flashing in the sunlight, her cannons agleam like admirals’ buttons. Half a hundred Imperial pennants hung from her rigging in a riot of red and gold. A massive harpoon gun protruded from her prow, its stanchion gripped in the raised hands of the ship’s iron figurehead. Briana thought that the cast figure was a representation of some thunderbolt-wielding sea god, but as the ship drew nearer to the dockside she realized that its face had been moulded into the likeness of Hu himself. The sculptor had been somewhat liberal in his interpretation of the emperor’s physique.

Trumpets blared again, now joined by the marching crackle of snare drums.

The crowd around Briana cheered.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Briana reached for her poppy water, but someone bumped into her, and she lost the tiny bottle amidst the scuffling feet. It clattered away before she could reclaim it. She fired out a mental warning as powerful as a cannon blast and heard cries of protest from Haurstaf halfway around the world. But not one of the shrieking imbeciles around her paid her any notice. These jailers had skulls as thick as iron, as insensitive as the corpses of the Drowned along the waterfront.

Administrator Grech turned to her and grinned. ‘Heavenly, isn’t it?’

‘A ship like that says a lot about the man who commissions it,’ Briana retorted.

‘Indeed, indeed,’ Grech replied with good humour. ‘Marvellous.’

‘Crass.’

Her reply was lost amidst the general bustle. Grech nodded feverishly.

The emperor’s dragon-hunter docked alongside the Haurstaf man-o’-war. Briana could see Hu’s Samarol bodyguard lining the forecastle, their silver wolf helmets grinning like tribal totems. Now trombones and whale horns joined the chorus of trumpets and drums. The crowd applauded, whistled, waved in response. Bugles shrilled and bass drums began a booming roll as the whole cacophony reached its raucous climax.

And then the ship’s guns fired.

Briana almost dropped to the ground in panic, before she realized that the crowd was cheering even more frantically.

And as her heart calmed, she realized that the Excelsior’s cannons had not been loaded with shells after all. The air was full of silver and gold sparkles. The ship had fired a barrage of foil confetti.

The music ceased abruptly. As the last of the confetti settled over the plaza, the emperor’s Samarol bodyguard began moving down the gangplank. Blind to a man, each of the twenty assassin slaves clutched Unmer seeing knives in their mailed fists, using these uncanny weapons to find their way. Some claimed those blades could see intent and give their owners unnatural reflexes, but Briana had never been able to verify this. No Haurstaf had been able to wield one without lapsing into madness.

When the Samarol had formed a semi-circle around the gangplank, the emperor himself appeared.

Hu was dressed in golden battle-armour. Upon his head he wore a crown of crystallized dragon eyes set in copper. His long red cape was Unmer-made, woven from the silk of Mare Regis spiders, and it fluttered strangely behind his shoulders in the dead air, lifted by a breeze that did not seem to be present. At his side he wore the Transient Sword, a Valcinder copy of the legendary lost Unmer weapon, but striking nonetheless. Its lacquered steel blade was tangerine in colour and festooned with holes supposedly made by void flies, although Briana suspected that particular flaw was merely an affectation engineered by the smiths.

The emperor strolled down the gangplank. ‘Sister Marks,’ he said brightly. ‘Whatever are you doing here?’

She smiled flatly. ‘I’ve been a guest of the Administration for the last three days,’ she said, ‘I want to see Tom Granger.’

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you’ll see him at the trial.’

‘I want to see him before the trial.’

‘Quite impossible,’ the emperor replied. ‘Colonel Granger is a dangerous man. I could never allow myself to put one of the Haurstaf at risk.’

Briana looked at him coolly. ‘If you do not wish to use our services, there are simpler ways of letting us know.’

Hu made a dismissive gesture. ‘Come now, there’s no need for unpleasantness on such a beautiful day. If it’s really so important to you, I’ll grant you an audience.’ He even managed to look magnanimous. ‘May I ask what the interview is about?’

‘No,’ Briana said. ‘You may not.’ She had all but lost patience with him. Hu had pushed her as far as he could, but even a fool such as him could not risk endangering his campaigns or his empire by removing Haurstaf psychics from his armies and cities. Nevertheless she felt inclined to end his contract with the Guild there and then. But she stopped herself from speaking. Hu’s pride might irk her, but it was still better to have him as a client than a foe.

Administrator Grech chose this moment to slide forward. He gave a low bow. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said in his sing-song voice. ‘We are so deeply, deeply honoured.’ He beckoned towards the waiting crowds of his peers. ‘You will be pleased to know that the, eh, corral has been constructed to your specifications. Might I presume that the… eh

…’

‘Aboard the Excelsior.’ Emperor Hu followed him without so much as another glance at Briana.

Granger watched the celebrations from his cell window. The Haurstaf vessel had been in port for three days now, and yet, for all his pacing and hand-wringing, the visit he’d been hoping for had not materialized. What exactly was the Guild playing at?

The emperor’s ship had arrived with all the pomp and ceremony typical of Hu, although Granger had not been able to see their glorious leader himself from this vantage point. The flags in the rigging blocked his view. However, it seemed that the crowds down there were finally dissipating. Silver and gold sparkles floated in the harbour, slowly turning brown. Would the emperor come to his cell to gloat?

Granger hoped so. Hu was notorious for underestimating his enemies.

When he heard footsteps in the corridor outside, he stood up, his heart thumping.

A man’s voice came from outside the cell. ‘The corridor door is locked, Colonel, and I don’t have the key to it. It ain’t opening for nobody who they can’t see first. And it certainly ain’t opening to save my old skin, or hers. You stand well back now.’

A key clinked in the lock. The door opened.

Sister Briana Marks stood there, accompanied by an old jailer Granger had not seen before.

‘Five minutes,’ the jailer said.

She glared at him. ‘I’ll take as long as I please.’

The old man sighed. ‘Aye, I suppose you will.’ He let her into the cell and closed the door behind her, muttering to himself all the while.

Sister Marks had aged noticeably in the six years since Granger had last seen her. Her face and hair had lost their youthful shine, and frown lines now etched her brow. She regarded him with weary, cynical eyes. ‘The jailer wasn’t lying, Colonel,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t make a very good hostage. The emperor would love nothing more than to see me killed, especially by you.’

Granger grunted. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

The witch glanced around the cell. ‘My men checked your home,’ she said. ‘We didn’t find anyone alive.’

‘She was taken.’

‘Taken? By whom? Where?’

Granger said nothing.

‘Gilders aren’t going to be much use to you now, Mr Granger,’ she said. ‘But I might be able to get you out of here, if you help me find this woman.’

Granger shook his head. ‘Get me out first.’

‘You’re not in a position to make demands. I’ll find her eventually, even without your help.’

‘No you won’t.’

‘A sensitive can’t go undetected forever. She’s bound to give herself away.’

He wasn’t sure how much he should tell her. Too much might risk Ianthe’s life. Too little, and he didn’t have much to bargain with. The witch was right – any normal psychic would eventually give herself away. But he didn’t trust this woman. If she found out what she needed to know, she’d leave him to the emperor. Politics.

‘She’s in danger,’ he said.

The witch raised her eyebrows. ‘Then your silence is risking her life. That doesn’t sound like the man I’ve heard so much about.’ Her expression softened. ‘You embarrassed Emperor Hu in his own court, Mr Granger – in front of his enemies’ representatives, in front of me. You made him look like a blundering fool.’

‘He is a blundering fool.’

‘Of course he is, but he’s also the pettiest and most vindictive man I’ve ever met. You must have known that. How did you think he was going to respond to your comments?’

Granger shook his head. He’d been angry, irritated and suffering from brine burns, but that was no excuse. He’d acted rashly.

‘Hu took it all personally,’ Marks said. ‘Now he plans to execute you in front of the whole city tomorrow morning. A trial by combat, if you can believe it.’ She walked over to the window and peered out at the preparations. ‘The Guild cannot intervene to save you, of course. We must maintain a position of neutrality.’ Now she turned around and smiled. ‘But if it turns out that you have discovered a sensitive, and I can verify her existence, I’ll see to it that you’re charged with her imprisonment and with attempted extortion.’

‘Charged?’

Her smiled broadened. ‘The trial would take place at the Guild Palace in Awl. Not even Hu would dare to interfere with our justice. We’d be compelled to take you out of the empire to await your hearing, Mr Granger.’

Granger thought about this. ‘You’d simply move me from one hangman’s noose to another.’

‘Not necessarily. The Guild would decide a fitting punishment after we have deliberated. I can’t promise anything except that you will still be alive tomorrow evening, and for several weeks afterwards. Much depends on what the woman you imprisoned has to say in your defence.’

‘Girl,’ Granger muttered. ‘She’s fifteen. Her name is Ianthe.’

‘And who has her now?’

Granger didn’t sleep that night, and when dawn came he watched the red sun rise through rags of cloud as brown as brine until it stood fuming above the Ethugran rooftops like a dragon’s eye. He looked down at the plaza for a long time. A dragon-bone corral had been erected on the wharf side. Three walls of teeth and bone formed an enclosure abutting the water’s edge. They had even moved the emperor’s steam yacht back to allow a man – him, to allow him – to leap from the corral down into the poisonous brine if he so chose. But that way lay a more lingering and painful death. Hookmen would soon drag him back from those depths to fight again.

When the crowds began to assemble he turned away from the window and sat down in a corner, naked to the waist and shivering despite the building heat.

They came for him shortly afterwards. Four of Maskelyne’s Hookmen unlocked the cell and seized him and beat the wind from his lungs with blackjacks. They fastened an Unmer slave collar around his neck, riveting it shut with an iron tool like a set of callipers. A wire connected the collar to a small metal box covered in dials and glyphs. The smallest and leanest of the Hookmen lifted the box and said, ‘This is what happens when I turn this dial.’ He turned the dial.

Granger collapsed. His head struck the floor. He could taste blood on his lips, but he felt nothing at all beneath his neck, as though his head had been severed from his body. Whorls of shadow, blacks and browns, gathered at the edges of his vision, squeezing his view of the floor into a tunnel. He smelled something like burning horse hair.

‘Mucks up your nerves,’ the man said.

Abruptly Granger felt his limbs spasm. His senses returned.

‘Get up.’

He got to his feet, and they marched him out of the cell and down the corridor, and down the steps to Averley Plaza. Before they reached the door of the jail, the Hookman with the box twisted the dial again. Granger’s head cracked against something solid, and he found himself lying on the floor again.

‘Quit it,’ said one of the other Hookmen. ‘You fry him too often, he won’t get up.’

‘Ah, lighten up,’ the first man replied. ‘Don’t make much difference now anyway.’

‘You break that, it’s your head.’

‘Get up, you.’

A boot slammed into Granger’s ribs, just as his senses returned with a jolt. He coughed and spat blood across the floor.

‘Up, I said. Hu’s got something special planned for you.’

Groggily, Granger crawled to his knees, then staggered upright.

The door opened to bright sunlight. Granger shielded his eyes against the glare. Crowds filled the plaza from wall to wall. Men and women jeered and hurled insults at him as the Hookmen led him through towards the dragon-bone corral at the water’s edge. Several large military supply tents had been erected in front of the Imperial Administration Buildings, while a podium in the centre of the quadrangle allowed the emperor and his guests a view of the trial. Hu sat on a throne up there, surrounded by administrators in their dusty white wigs, while his Samarol bodyguards formed a barrier between his Imperial Majesty and the Ethugran populace. There was no sign of Briana Marks.

The Hookmen brought Granger before the emperor, who rose from his throne and raised his arms to silence the crowd. He had dressed for the occasion in platinum mail that shimmered like starlight. On his head he wore the crown of dragon-eye gems. His lobster cape fluttered behind him, lifted by non-existent winds. The cheers dropped to an expectant murmur. Hu looked down on Granger and said, ‘Kneel.’

Granger stood exactly where he was…

… and then slammed into the ground again, as the Hook-man activated his Unmer slave collar. All sensation left his body. He could feel the warm flagstones against his cheek and smell the sweat of the crowd, the emperor’s perfume and something else – a pungent, almost feral odour that did not belong here in the city. Darkness swelled at the limits of his vision, and he fought to remain conscious. Where was the Haurstaf witch?

The voice of Administrator Grech echoed across the plaza, ‘In accordance with the laws defined in section 412, amendment 11 to the Military Operations Mandate, his Imperial Majesty Jilak Hu has found Thomas Granger to be in breach of the said Military Code of Conduct, as per articles 118, 119 and 173, and has therefore, legally and without prejudice, instituted his Imperial right, as described in the so-called Post-Awl Texts, to subject the prisoner to trial by combat.’

A great cheer went up from the crowd.

Granger tried to breathe, but his paralysed lungs would not draw in air. His head began to throb. He felt as if he was about to pass out.

‘For each malfeasance, the prisoner will face an opponent or opponents selected by a committee chaired by his Imperial Majesty, so judged to lawfully represent the severity of the crime. The selection process-’

‘Get on with it,’ Hu growled.

‘The, ah…’ Grech’s throat bobbed. ‘The selection process in no way infringes upon the prisoner’s rights as defined in the so-called Post-Awl Texts. A funeral will be provided at a cost to the empire of no more than fourteen gilders. May he rest in… Is he quite all right?’

Sensation returned to Granger’s body in a rush. He sucked in a desperate breath, trying to shake the dizziness and confusion from his head. The world swam around him, a hot whirlpool of sweating faces and fists.

Strong arms wrenched him to his feet, dragged him backwards and pitched him roughly into the corral. Granger staggered, but remained upright. He felt for the wire at his collar, but it had been removed. The corral gate closed in front of him, leaving him trapped on three sides by an unbroken wicker of dragon bones and teeth. Behind him lay open water, and the shining hull of the Excelsior at anchor thirty yards out from the harbour edge. He scanned the crowd in desperation. Where was that damned witch?

‘Bring forth the first opponent,’ Grech called out.

The crowd moved back as two Imperial Army soldiers threw back the flap from one of the military tents. Granger could sense the uneasiness and excitement of the people nearby. Men pushed and shoved each other to get a look at the thing they dragged from that tent, while others, closer to the tent, pushed back.

It was a hound, one of the emperor’s own hunting stock, judging by its enormous size. The great black beast growled and snapped at the handler, who was struggling to hold it at the end of a long leash-threaded pole. Evidently it had been starved and beaten, for its eyes were wild with hunger and rage.

‘All the way from the emperor’s own Summer Palace,’ Grech announced. ‘Mauler of four wolves and three score Evensraum warriors. Devourer of devourers. Dragon bane. The only war hound to have survived four full seasons in the Contest Pits with nary a scratch. Long of tooth and wild of temper. The emperor gives you… the Beast Arun!’

The handler alternately pushed and dragged the hound towards the bone enclosure, whereupon Maskelyne’s Hookmen reopened the gate. By shoves and kicks they forced the snapping animal into the pen and loosed it from its leash.

It crouched before Granger, drooling and snarling through its bared teeth, and regarding him with baleful eyes. Granger backed away towards the water’s edge.

The hound rushed at him.

The crowd roared with anticipation.

The hound leaped.

Granger stepped sideways.

The hound disappeared over the edge of the dock and splashed into the brine below. It managed one pitiful yelp, before the burning waters closed over its body.

Silence. All eyes turned from Granger to Emperor Hu.

Hu could not contain his rage. He jerked to his feet and roared at the soldiers waiting beside the tents, ‘The next one! Bring the next one!’ Administrator Grech cowered at his side, speaking hurriedly in a voice Granger could not hear, but the emperor just batted him away, returned to his seat and glared at Granger.

Granger took a deep breath. He looked for Briana Marks again, but she was still nowhere to be seen. By now the sun had risen high above the Administration Buildings and beat down mercilessly on him. He wiped sweat from his brow and turned to see who or what his next opponent would be.

Administrator Grech stood up. ‘For your amusement,’ he said, ‘brought to Ethugra from the emperor’s own dungeons… despised by all who hear of their deeds… petty thieves, arsonists, traitors, and defilers of women…’

Three soldiers stepped out of the tent. They wore Imperial steel hauberks over boiled leathers and plain cap helmets with nose- and cheek-guards, and each carried a standard-issue short sword in his left hand and a light buckler strapped to his right forearm. Two were tall but stooped, somewhat hesitant and shambling in the way they moved, but the third, shorter man walked with a litheness that implied youth.

‘The cunning behind Imperial Infiltration Unit Seven… the most bloodthirsty and the most notorious men in all of history… responsible for three thousand allied deaths at Weaverbrook… Emperor Hu gives you… the last of the infamous Grave-diggers.’ Grech took a breath. ‘Gerhard “The Rook” Tummel, Swan “The… eh. .. Swan” Tummel, and Merrad “Grave-digger” Banks!’

Swan? Tummel? Banks?

The corral gate opened, and the three men walked in. The younger man took off his helmet, blinked up at the sky and then smiled meekly. ‘Bastard of a day for it, Colonel, if you don’t mind me saying.’

Banks looked as if he had been wandering the borderlands of death. His cheeks were hollow, his skin anaemic but bruised under his eyes, his hair lank and uneven. But his eyes still brimmed with the same quick humour Granger had known him for. After a moment, his two companions also removed their helmets, and Granger recognized them for who they were.

Swan and Tummel had appeared old and wretched when Granger had last seen them six years ago, and yet now they looked like they had lived their lives all over again since then. Swan was toothless with a sagging, stubbled face and rheumy eyes – the sort of visage one expected to find in a coffin. His brother, Tummel, looked ten years older.

‘Petty thieves?’ Granger said. ‘Arsonists?’ He paused. ‘Defilers of women?’

‘That last one’s pretty good,’ Swan said. ‘I quite like it.’

‘That’s because it’s the only one you haven’t done,’ Tummel said.

‘I could have if I’d wanted to.’

Tummel grunted. ‘You couldn’t run fast enough.’ He turned to Granger. ‘He did, however, burn down a grog shop.’

‘One grog shop,’ Swan muttered. ‘What is it with you and that? You never even liked the place.’

Banks glanced back as the corral gate closed behind him. ‘They picked up Swan and Tummel in a card den last year,’ he said. ‘Somebody turned them in over bad debts.’

‘What about you?’ Granger said.

Banks shrugged. ‘I was sending money home,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how they traced it, but they came for me a couple of months ago. It was either this or death.’

‘You stayed in Losoto?’

Tummel nodded. ‘Right up until three days ago. We had a half-arsed plan to overrun the emperor’s guards and capture the Excelsior,’ he said. ‘But we couldn’t wake up Swan.’

‘What do you intend to do now?’ Granger asked.

Banks sighed. ‘We were hoping you might have a plan, sir.’

Granger looked out into the crowd. They had begun to chant: death, death, death.

‘We’ll drag it out,’ he said, ‘and hope for intervention.’

‘That’s the plan?’

‘Do you have a better one, Banks?’

The other man shrugged. ‘Have at you, then,’ he muttered.

The three Gravediggers took up a fighting stance around Granger, who backed away and readied himself to dodge. Swan made a hesitant jab, but the tip of his sword fell deliberately short of Granger. Banks cried out and leaped into the fray, swinging wildly, allowing his opponent to sidestep easily.

The crowd began to jeer with disapproval.

‘You’ll need to do better than that,’ Granger said.

‘You’re unarmed, sir,’ Banks replied. ‘And I’m rather good at this. Barracks champion three years on the trot.’

‘Don’t underestimate me.’

Banks sighed again, and this time came at Granger hard. But he opted for another down-cut, giving Granger more than enough time to avoid the blow. His sword sparked against the flagstones. Swan and Tummel moved to flank his rear, just as they would have done in a real fight.

Banks should have pressed forward, but he chose not to. ‘How’d you get past the dog?’ he said, backing away again. ‘That bastard spent the whole journey from Losoto chewing through the bars between our cages.’ He shrugged. ‘Didn’t help that Swan kept teasing it.’

‘I didn’t tease it,’ Swan said.

‘You made faces at it,’ Banks replied.

‘What faces?’

‘That face you’re making now.’

‘I can’t help that. I was born like this.’

Granger didn’t say anything; he was waiting for a pincer movement from his flanking opponents. But even that manoeuvre never came. Swan and Tummel made more pitiful swings and jabs with their blades. Whether through weakness, or a reluctance to injure their opponent, Granger didn’t know. Either way the fight was rapidly becoming a farce.

The crowd began to boo and shout abuse.

Emperor Hu stood up on the podium, and inclined his head.

One of his Samarol bodyguards slotted his seeing knife into the bracket atop a carbine rifle. Then he raised the barrel.

‘Banks,’ Granger growled.

Banks turned just as the rifle fired.

Granger heard the lead ball zing past his ear. It struck Swan in the side of his head and knocked him down. He lay there unmoving, blood leaking from a hole above his ear. Banks stood dead still, a look of horror on his face.

Tummel was silent for a moment. Then he roared and rushed at the corral wall, shouting, ‘Come in here, you bastard, come in here.’ He smashed his sword repeatedly against the mesh of dragon-bones, hacking fragments from it. ‘Come in here and fight me you blind bastard. Fight an old man, you coward. Fight an old man.’

Hu merely looked impatient. ‘Get on with it,’ he said. ‘And try to make it entertaining. I don’t want to waste another rifle-ball.’

Granger picked up Swan’s sword. ‘Banks?’

The private continued to stare at his companion’s corpse.

‘Banks!’

His eyes met Granger’s.

‘Fight me for real, Banks.’

‘Sir?’

Granger rushed at him, pushing him back with a solid flurry of blows that forced the other man to raise his buckler and block. Banks began to parry, almost reluctantly at first, and then with more urgency as the strikes continued to come down on his left side.

Tummel sat on the ground and lay down his sword.

Granger broke away from Banks and whispered, ‘You’re going to have to try and kill me.’

Banks just shook his head.

‘Keep their attention away from Tummel,’ Granger urged. ‘Make it real. Make it entertaining.’ He saw an opening and thrust his sword at Banks’s undefended left. The private responded instinctively with his own blade, but not before Granger raked the younger man’s hauberk, the edge of his weapon rasping across the steel links.

From the podium he heard Emperor Hu laugh. ‘They’re getting into it now, aren’t they?’ he called out with delight.

Granger kept the pressure on Banks, forcing him back towards the corral wall, towards Tummel. The old Gravedigger merely sat on the ground and stared back at the body of his brother. It seemed that all life had deserted him.

‘On your feet, seaman,’ Granger growled.

But Tummel wouldn’t respond.

Banks, meanwhile, must have realized Granger’s real intentions, for he broke suddenly from the fight, turning his back on Granger even as the colonel’s blade was raised to strike. He grabbed Tummel by his armpits. ‘Get up, you old fool. Get up and fight.’

Granger cursed at Banks’s manoeuvre. The private left himself open to a killing blow. In what he hoped would look like a desperate mistake, he swung the blade furiously at Banks’s right side, striking the top of the buckler hard. The sword skimmed off and stuck into an enormous dragon-bone bar above Banks’s head.

‘It’s a charade,’ the emperor said. ‘Shoot the other one.’

Banks screamed at Tummel. ‘Get up, you old fool!’ He started to drag him upright.

A shot rang out.

Tummel’s head jerked forward. Blood spattered across Bank’s face.

Banks released Tummel’s body and looked up at the Samarol bodyguard, who was now lowering his carbine rifle for the second time. The huge blind warrior detached his seeing knife from the weapon’s barrel and turned it slowly in his fingers. His silver wolf-head helmet grinned blankly.

Banks turned to Granger, a pained expression on his face.

Granger freed his sword from the corral wall and backed away from the other man, assuming a fighting stance.

‘You’d kill me?’ Banks said.

‘If you let me.’

‘Forgive me for saying so, Colonel, but this is the shittiest plan you’ve ever had.’

Granger had no answer for his friend. He glanced over at the the crowd again, but there was still no sign of Briana Marks. Sudden movement caught his attention.

Banks came at him in a desperate fury, now wielding his sword with all the skill Granger knew the younger man possessed. And Granger was hard pressed to parry these blows. Steel clashed and clashed. The plaza seemed quiet but for the crack of swords and the scuffs and grunts of each opponent. And then Banks slammed his buckler into Granger’s face.

Granger recoiled, shaking his head.

A great roar went up from the crowd.

Banks was breathing heavily, his eyes full of pain and fear. He rushed at Granger a second time, that quick mind of his composing a flurry of feints and blows that tested Granger’s own skill to the limits. He seemed detached from his actions, indeed possessed of a strange sort of madness. Only when the two men clashed and wrestled did Banks finally break away. Now Granger could feel pain rising in his chest as the strain of exertion began to take its toll. He doubted he could beat his opponent.

And then he saw Briana Marks.

He realized he had heard the launch’s engine somewhere in the back of his mind, but had not registered it until now. The Haurstaf witch alighted from the slender deepwater craft, and hurried up the dock steps to the plaza. She was wrapped in whale-skins and wore goggles on her forehead. Ianthe was not with her.

Banks turned his sword over and made to move at Granger again.

‘Wait,’ Granger said.

But the young man was already lost to whatever madness or battle lust gripped him. The look in his eyes suggested that perhaps he no longer even recognized his opponent. Everything was about the fight, about survival. He launched a vicious attack with sword and buckler both, thrusting and punching with consummate skill.

Granger parried, but not fast enough. Banks’s sword sliced through his right shoulder.

Banks lunged forward for the killing strike, but Granger managed to break away, more by luck than design. He jogged backwards. Briana Marks had by now reached the podium. The emperor bowed and then waved away one of the administrators to offer her a seat. She glanced over at Granger and shook her head.

What did that mean?

Granger ran towards the corral wall. ‘Sister Marks?’

She lowered her gaze.

‘Sister Marks?’

Still she refused to acknowledge him. Emperor Hu glanced between Granger and the witch and then frowned. He spoke quietly to Marks, but she ignored him completely and simply continued to stare at her hands.

Granger heard Banks approaching from behind and turned to find the private with his sword already raised to strike. In that moment he saw the pain and despair in his young opponent’s eyes. Granger lifted his own blade in a desperate attempt to fend off the blow, but he already knew it was too late. Banks had the advantage.

But he didn’t take it.

He stopped, and just stood there for a heartbeat with his sword raised, staring down at Granger. Then he threw his weapon away. It clattered off the flagstones and came to rest several yards away, gleaming like a mirror. Silence settled over the plaza.

A third shot rang out.

Private Merrad Banks remained standing for a moment longer as his life blood surged from a hole in the centre of his forehead. He started to lift a hand up towards the wound and then he paused and sat down on the ground. His body slumped forward.

Granger rushed to him and held him. He could smell Banks’s sweat and blood, feel the heat from the other man’s sun-warmed steel epaulettes, but there was no life left in that body. Everything Banks had been had come to an end here in this rotten corner of the empire. He heard the corral gate scrape open behind him.

‘Finish him off,’ Hu said. ‘But do it slowly. No less than fifty cuts.’

Grech took to the podium again. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘jailers of Ethugra, protectors of the Imperial law. For the final trial, our gracious ruler has chosen, for your pleasure, to pit against the traitor the strongest, the fastest, and the most merciless of all combatants!’ He raised his hand to quell the excited chatter from the crowd. ‘Three score years in the training! His mortal flesh empowered by Unmer sorcery, his eyes scorched from his own skull from gazing into the furious reaches of infinity. Ladies and gentlemen.. . the emperor presents to you, his very own… Samarol!’

The crowd went wild.

The bodyguard who had fired the shots now detached his seeing knife from his rifle for the final time and held it lightly in one mailed fist. Despite his great size he moved with the grace of a wolf. His helmet grinned fiercely, but its silver eyes evinced a rage that did not belong to its wearer. It was the fury of the empire carried by a surrogate. It was an executioner’s mask. And was it possible to think of the Samarol in any other way? What mortal man could hope to prevail in a fight against one?

The Samarol stepped into the corral, and the gate closed behind him.

Granger glanced at Briana Marks, and, for an instant, their eyes met.

She stood up and called out to the emperor, ‘Wait.’ And then she hurried over to the corral gate and beckoned Granger to approach.

‘Maskelyne wasn’t at Scythe Island,’ she said. ‘He’s out at sea somewhere. I couldn’t reach him.’

‘So that’s it? You’re leaving me here to die.’

‘I’ve no evidence he has a hostage with him at all, Mr Granger, let alone a psychic one. I can’t sense another seer within three hundred miles of here. And I cannot interfere with an Imperial trial on your word alone.’

‘You could,’ he replied. ‘But you choose not to.’

He could see from her expression that he’d struck upon the truth. The Haurstaf had the power to ostracize and thus bring down empires at their whim, and yet that that power could only be maintained through strict impartiality and honesty. Those emperors and warlords who paid so much for psychic communications in wartime needed to know that the information they received was not influenced by others – that all parties were paying for the truth. Briana Marks could stop Hu if she desired, but she wouldn’t risk Haurstaf honour to do it. His life wasn’t worth that much to her.

As she turned to go, he said, ‘Look for her again, after the trial.’

She nodded and walked away.

‘Proceed,’ the emperor said.

The Samarol came at him running, astonishingly quickly for a man of his size. His leather boots made no sound on the flagstones. His seeing knife flashed. Granger feinted left, but then pushed himself away from the corral wall in the opposite direction. The bodyguard turned like a dancer and passed by in a blur.

Searing pain ran up Granger’s arm.

He stared in astonishment at blood welling from a knife cut across the back of his right wrist. It was deep. He hadn’t even seen the bodyguard’s attack.

The crowd shouted, ‘One!’

The Samarol relaxed into a jog, and made a circuit of the corral. Granger turned with him, following the other man’s progress with the tip of his sword. Blood flowed freely over his right hand, spattering the flagstones at his feet. As the bodyguard drew near, he picked up his speed, flipping the knife from one hand to the other and back again.

Granger thrust his blade up at the man’s head.

The Samarol ducked and pivoted, and spun away.

‘Two,’ roared the crowd.

Granger felt warm blood spilling down his leg. A second cut had sliced through his breeches and split the skin on his thigh. He clamped his hand across the wound and turned again to follow the bodyguard’s progress.

The Samarol made a second leisurely circuit of the arena, and as he ran he wiped his knife against a leather patch sewn across his belt. He closed on Granger a third time, the seeing knife now clenched in one back-turned fist, his wolf helmet gleaming.

Granger swiped his blade in a wide arc, hoping to drive his attacker back. After all, he had the advantage of reach.

But the bodyguard caught the sword on the edge of his knife, and turned the blow up, over his own head. Granger had never seen reflexes like it. The man was inhuman. Within a heartbeat he had ducked again, moving inside Granger’s reach. And then came that same strange pirouette, and Granger felt something scrape his rib.

‘Three.’

Granger’s chest had been punctured on his left side. A third stream of blood now flowed from his flesh. He staggered back a few steps, gaping at his own lacerated body. His muscles were starting to ache and soon they would fail him altogether. The Samarol meanwhile continued his performance for the crowd, cleaning his seeing knife again as he jogged away. He had been deliberately inflicting shallow, non-lethal wounds. He was carving Granger up for the emperor’s amusement.

Granger watched his opponent wiping the edge of that unholy knife against the leather patch on his belt. The Unmer metal was conveying its surroundings to the blind warrior, while granting him unnatural swiftness. In this battle the blade was Granger’s real enemy.

The Samarol turned inwards for a fourth attack.

And Granger let him come. He feinted an uppercut with his sword, leaving his right shoulder vulnerable to attack. The bodyguard spotted the opening and struck out with the knife, but Granger was ready for him.

As the attack came, Granger dropped his sword and grabbed his opponent’s wrist. And then he plunged the knife even deeper into his own shoulder. A grunt of surprise came from behind the wolf helmet. The Samarol tried to withdraw the knife, but Granger now seized the other man’s wrist in both hands and held it fast. He had momentarily denied the bodyguard his sight.

Still fiercely gripping the other man’s wrist, he swung him around, and around again in a circle, hoping to further disorientate his opponent, hoping to break his grip on the Unmer blade. But the Samarol folded his knees and buckled in one fluid movement, dragging Granger down to the ground with him.

Granger landed heavily against the man. For several heartbeats they wrestled, the Samarol trying to wrench the knife from Granger’s flesh, while Granger tried to stop him. The pain was intolerable. He felt the edge of the blade raking against his clavicle. He felt his grip loosened by his own blood. He couldn’t hold on. He was going to lose this struggle.

But then he thought about Swan and Tummel and Banks, their dead eyes staring lifelessly at the ground, the blood leaking from the holes in their skull as the emperor applauded. He imagined Creedy’s brute face looking on as the Hookmen threw Hana into the brine, and he let the sound of her screams fill his heart. He pictured Ianthe in the hands of that bastard Maskelyne, using the girl to enrich his wretched little empire. Hu, Creedy, Maskelyne – Granger saw each of their faces behind that shining wolf’s mask before him now. And it filled him with rage.

He seized the brim of the warrior’s helmet and wrenched it backwards with all of his strength. He felt the chinstrap stretch and then suddenly snap as the helmet came away and flew across the arena.

The Samarol cried out. He released his hold of the knife and clamped his hands across his face. That face had only been exposed to the light for a heartbeat, but that was long enough for the horror of it to be burned in Granger’s mind.

No flesh clung to the man’s skull. It was as if the Unmer sorcery had consumed his living tissues, leaving nothing behind but raw bone. The eye sockets and nasal opening were covered by a smooth brass plate, utterly featureless and without ornamentation, and yet the bodyguard groped at it as if the light was searing his very nerves. He scrambled away from Granger on his hands and knees, howling like a child as he sought to reclaim his helmet. But without the knife in his hand and the helmet to cover his metal visage he could not find it.

Granger plucked the seeing knife from his shoulder and tucked it into the band of his breeches. He was weak and giddy and struggling to breathe against the pressure mounting in his chest. His hands and torso streamed with blood. But he thought he might now survive today after all. He stared at the corpses of his friends, Swan, Tummel and Banks, and a terrible grief came over him. That he should survive this trial at their expense. He could not forgive Hu for this.

All the crowd were silent as he turned to face the emperor. ‘I survived your trials,’ he said. ‘Will you honour the law and release me?’

Briana Marks’s face looked ashen, but the emperor’s own was red with rage. ‘How dare you speak to me?’ he cried. ‘Look at what you’ve done here! Do you have any idea how much Samarol cost? How many years it takes for the absorption to hold?’ His thin chest rose and fell rapidly beneath his golden mail. He turned to the crowd. ‘This man has shown himself to be a cheat. This is a mockery of justice!’

The crowd remained silent.

Administrator Grech came alongside the emperor and tried to speak, but Hu just slapped the old man across the face. He raised his Imperial hand again and pointed at Granger. ‘Shoot him,’ he said. ‘Shoot him now.’

Outside the corral, the remaining Samarol reached for their carbine rifles. Nineteen knives slotted into nineteen barrels.

Granger looked to the Haurstaf witch for help, but she simply buried her head in her hands.

‘Kill him!’ the emperor roared.

There was nowhere for Granger to go, and nowhere to hide. Walls of dragon-bone caged him on three sides. The gate remained sealed.

The Samarol lifted their weapons.

Granger glanced at his fallen comrades one last time. And then he ran, away from the emperor and his Samarol. And as the bodyguards’ fingers closed on the triggers of their rifles, Granger reached the harbour’s edge and dived headlong into the brine.