Sea Of Ghosts

CHAPTER 17
OVER AWL

Dear Lucille,

Let’s not be under any doubt that some trumped-up, officious envelope-steamer who has been awarded her pointless role within the Haurstaf due to a lack of any real psychical ability will have read this letter before it reached you. If said person realizes the truth of that statement, and if she is insecure enough to feel threatened by it, she will undoubtedly wield what little power she possesses by immediately utilizing her censoring pen. However, upon realizing her pettiness was predicted, she should then feel embarrassed enough to wish to destroy the entire letter.

But she won’t.

She won’t do this because I coated the envelope in a fast-acting anemone poison capable of being absorbed through the skin. Our envelope-steamer will be dead in minutes. I have arranged for the letter itself to be removed from her corpse by a highly paid accomplice, who will pass it on to you, my dear, in a plain blue, non-toxic envelope. If the envelope containing this missive was not blue, then something has gone fearfully wrong, and I apologize.

I miss you and Jontney terribly. Awl Palace is an empty shell without you here. There is an academy – in which our vicious little trove-hunter has been enrolled – and a modicum of artefacts for me to study. The sisters float around in their robes as aimlessly as whiffs of cloud, soaking up gossip from the ends of the world. They have no interest the greater mysteries of life, but, like the majority of their sex, are content to twitter vacuously among themselves. It’s a blessing I cannot hear telepathic conversation, for every spoken conversation I have overheard eventually leans towards the subject of hair.

Briana Marks is different. She is cruelly unsubtle, but clever, and finds deep enjoyment in the power games between her own organization and the empire. A woman like her expects to find treachery in every shadow. Sadly, because of her distrust I have failed to impress upon her the importance of my work.

Nevertheless, I believe I have achieved a major breakthrough in my understanding of the Unmer’s source of power. If I cannot convince Sister Marks of the importance of this, I must leave at once for Losoto to gain an audience with Emperor Hu. Be ready, Lucille. I will soon come for you both.

Maskelyne was pacing his room when someone slid a piece of folded paper under the door. He raced over and snatched it up. He had been expecting a reply from Lucille, but this note startled him. It was a coded message from his contact.

32/3/44/51/163/33/29/29/32/19/32/3/67/8/56/9/163/3/7/80/17/18/3/89 /18/76/33/88/1/50/127/43/2/16/127/22/21/70/246/70/13/3/18/33/9/29/79/1 1/263/99/3/32/101/106/61/119/32/12/44/3/57

Maskelyne cursed. His contact had repeated several of the numbers, which meant that any fool might decipher the message without the pass. How many times did he have to tell the man? Even the staff who delivered the messages might easily unravel such an obvious formula. He went over to the bookshelf and pulled out a volume of Clarke’s Almanac, then sat down, turned to page 412 and began counting through the script to find the letters corresponding to each number. A short while later, he had his answer.

Ianthe officially Haurstaf. They’re going to execute you. Awaiting signal.

Maskelyne crumpled up the paper and popped it in his mouth. While he chewed, he decided it was probably a good idea to leave sooner rather than later.

He went out onto the terrace, where his scattered trove gleamed in the bronze evening light among potted plants and stone garden furniture. Reefs of golden cloud filled the western sky behind the mountains. Maskelyne leaned on the balustrade and looked out across the valley. Smoke rose from a dozen military encampments located in cleared areas of forest below the palace. Several artillery emplacements occupied strategic ridges and hilltops, their steel barrels trained on the heavens. A foot patrol was marching south-east along the banks of the Irya towards Port Awl. He filled his lungs with cool mountain air, so sharp with the antiseptic scent of pine, and he waited for the sun to set.

Mountainous shadows crept across the valley floor. A few lights winked on in the military bases, and fires flickered between the trees. The sky grew darker. Maskelyne watched the first stars appear overhead. Cloud cover would have been better, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. He licked his finger and held it up to test the direction of the breeze. The evenings frequently brought cool air down from the mountains towards Port Awl and the sea, and he was relieved to find such conditions tonight. He picked up the gem lantern from the table he used as a workbench, opened the shutter so that its light spilled out and went back inside.

From under his bed, he took out a brown paper parcel and tore it open to reveal a Guild soldier’s uniform and a specially adapted leather harness. Maskelyne stripped, then donned the uniform. The heavy cotton was lined with wool and fitted him snugly. Warm enough, he supposed. Then he secured the harness over the jacket, tightening its padded straps around his waist and under his arms. Its many pockets had originally been used to hold ammunition, but Maskelyne’s contact had had these enlarged and reinforced with wire. A further addition had been the ring of brass hooks around the base, each of which supported a small burlap sack full of sand.

Finally dressed, he checked all of the straps a second time. The harness was heavy and cumbersome, and the weight of the sandbags put an uncomfortable strain on his shoulders. He wandered into the bathroom and set the gem lantern on top of the cistern. He lowered the commode seat and stood on top of it. From here he could reach the eight chariot ballast spheres resting upon the ceiling. One by one, Maskelyne took them down and fed them into the pockets on his harness, securing each firmly with a brass buckle. The harness began to strain upwards against his chest, wanting to rise, but his weight kept him grounded. When the last sphere was in place, he stepped off the commode.

He drifted slowly down the floor.

No good. He had to shed some weight.

He raised the commode seat again and unbuttoned his fly. A few moments later, his head touched the ceiling. He buttoned himself up again, then grabbed the gem lantern. Its extra weight was just enough to bring him back to earth. By traversing the bathroom in a series of slow leaps, and by pushing himself along the walls, he made his way back through the doorway and into the bedroom. At the door to the terrace, he stopped and reached inside the gem lantern, making a small adjustment to the feedback mechanism he had fitted inside. The light began to grow brighter immediately. Quickly, he set down the lantern and pushed himself through the terrace doorway. His boots scraped the flagstones for an instant, but then he was rising swiftly into the star-encrusted sky. Up past the palace pinnacles he soared, watching the terrace drop away below him. The breeze carried him southeast, out over the forest towards the army encampments and the coast. The palace dwindled behind him, its windows all glimmering like the facets of a jewel.

But the light from his bedroom already outshone all others, and was growing brighter still.

Maskelyne drifted out across the valley, enjoying the cold, pine-scented air. Acres of dense woodland swept by under his feet. To the east he could see the mercurial ribbon of the Irya gleaming faintly among patchwork fields, with the dark mass of the mountains towering behind. His flight path would take him directly over a Guild army camp, but that couldn’t be helped. He had to hope that any spotters would have their telescopes fixed on the palace by now.

The light from his gem lantern was blazing like a small white sun. Even from this distance he found it difficult to look at directly. The feedback mechanism couldn’t last much longer. Maskelyne knew it had to fail, and fail soon.

Any moment now…

The light flickered. And then a fireball bloomed in the heart of the palace. A heartbeat later, the sound of the concussion reached Maskelyne: a sharp crack, followed by a prolonged rumble. The blast wave punched through the air around him, pushing him onwards with a noticeable jolt. A cry came from one of the military camps down below, followed moments later by the rising-falling cycle of an attack siren. Maskelyne drifted onwards, out into the night, a single tiny mote among billions of stars.

The higher he rose, the colder and thinner the air became. It soon felt like ice in his lungs. The harness was starting to chaff and pinch under his shoulders. He blew into his hands and rubbed them constantly to try to keep the blood moving through his veins. His lips and face already felt completely numb. After a while, he unbuckled one of his harness pockets and released a chariot stone, which duly shot up and away to be lost forever in the heavens above. Maskelyne wondered how many there were, floating up there in the vacuum between worlds. He began to descend again, more rapidly than he would have liked, so he opened one of the sandbags and scooped out handfuls of ballast until his descent slowed.

On he drifted, over fields and hedgerows and hayricks, floating through the darkness like some strange wandering sorcerer. He passed over a farmhouse with bright windows spilling firelight across an empty yard. No one was around to notice him. He crossed the River Irya and followed a country lane for a short while, before the breeze carried him back out over the water and the farmland beyond. At one point he sailed above a clump of woodland, his boots skimming the tops of the trees, while he frantically bailed out more sand.

Eventually, he came within half a mile of the Crossing Inn, where the palace road crossed the river. The breeze was blowing him west, further away from the road and his arranged meeting place, so Maskelyne decided to land. He released another chariot sphere, controlling his quickening descent by dropping more sand.

He landed easily in a grassy field several yards behind the road, whereupon he rubbed his hands and set off for the inn.

His contact was waiting for him in a corner of the bar. Firelight played across the roughcast walls. A few long, dusty tables lined the walls, but the communal benches were all empty at this late hour. Even the innkeeper had retired for the night, leaving his single guest to pour his own mead. He looked up when Maskelyne entered, grinned and then shoved a clay goblet across the table towards him.

‘Cold outside?’ he asked.

‘Good to see you, Howlish,’ Maskelyne said, rubbing his hands fiercely. ‘Be a good fellow and put some more wood on that fire.’

The captain leaned over and pitched a few logs onto the fire. Flames snapped and crackled.

Maskelyne joined him at the corner table. ‘You’ve seen my wife?’

‘Recovering well, by all accounts.’

‘And Jontney?’

‘Fine, fine. They’re expecting us before dawn.’

Maskelyne took a sip of mead and leaned back in his chair. ‘I was thinking we might postpone our escape.’

Captain Howlish looked at him.

‘For a few days, at least,’ Maskelyne added.

The other man took a long draught of mead, then set down his goblet. ‘It’s your money, Maskelyne, but I think you’re making a mistake. News travels fast here. There are a lot of psychics on this island.’

‘Those psychics have taken something that belongs to me,’ Maskelyne said. ‘A man in my position simply can’t allow thefts like that to go unpunished. It’s a matter of my own survival.’

‘They’re not going to give you the girl back.’

‘No,’ Maskelyne admitted. ‘I don’t expect they will.’ He took out a scrap of folded paper from his uniform jacket pocket and handed it to the captain. ‘I wonder if you could collect some more items for me.’

Howlish unfolded the paper and read through it. ‘The rifles are easy,’ he said. ‘Cutting tools, brine gas, ichusae if you have the money. No problem.’ But then he shook his head. ‘Forget void flies. I didn’t even know there were any left in the world until you brought out that damned blunderbuss.’ He grunted. ‘And what’s with all these lanterns? Are you planning a war or a party?’

‘A little bit of both.’

‘It would easier to explain this without a pistol pointed at my head,’ Herian said.

Granger kept the pistol aimed at the old man. It was the same weapon Herian had tried to use on him earlier and, as far as he could tell, the only thing in this godforsaken trap he could be sure didn’t have a nasty surprise in store for an unwary handler.

They were standing beside the shattered pedestal in the transmitting station’s main chamber. It was reassuringly gloomy in here without the crystal’s radiance, however most of the trove around him now appeared to be defunct. Herian had assured him it wasn’t.

The old man threw up his hands. Then he wandered over to the nearest pile of trove and sat down. ‘There’s a story about a human who once made deal with the Unmer,’ he said. ‘He was a slave, of no real value to anyone, but he proposed something that piqued the interest of the greatest entropic sorcerer of the age. You see, the slave thought he had devised a method by which he might live forever.’

Granger listened.

‘He imagined that if he could trap his reflection between two mirrors,’ Herian went on, ‘then it would remain there indefinitely. And so some part of him would always be preserved.’ He shifted uncomfortably, frowned and moved some shiny piece of trove out from under him. ‘However, although he could place two mirrors so that they faced each other,’ he said, ‘the slave could never duck out from between them quickly enough to leave his reflection behind.’ He looked up at Granger. ‘But the sorcerer decided that if he could slow down light enough, the reflection might remain. He didn’t care about the slave, of course, only the problem he presented.’

Granger sat down nearby. He balanced the pistol on his knee.

‘So the sorcerer tried everything to slow down light. He filled the space between the mirrors with all sorts of gases, liquids and prisms. Nothing worked. And then he had an idea. He didn’t have to slow down light. All he had to do was increase the distance between the mirrors. If the light from the slave’s face took long enough to reach the mirror and rebound, the slave need not even be there when the reflected light returned. The hard part would be to create two perfect mirrors, and place them far enough apart.

‘After many years of labour he finally created the mirrors. But he knew that the distance he required between them would be phenomenal. There wasn’t enough space in all of Anea to place the mirrors far enough apart. So he put the slave and the mirrors in a chariot. And then he flew up into the void beyond the earth.

‘The sorcerer had constructed a suit to supply him with all the air and food and water he’d ever need, and to keep him warm during his journey across the freezing wastes. The slave didn’t have a suit, of course, and died quickly, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t actually have to be alive to cast his reflection. The sorcerer set one mirror adrift in the void, and then he took the slave’s body and the other mirror away with him deep into the unknown.’ Herian shrugged. ‘And nobody ever saw him or heard from him again.’

Granger grunted. ‘Is there a point to all this?’

‘The point is,’ Herian said, ‘don’t get involved with things you don’t understand. The artefacts you call trove were designed to study different facets of the cosmos around us. You are no different from the slave. You cannot wield any these weapons safely unless you understand the forces at work.’

‘So teach me.’

Herian shook his head. ‘It took me years to learn. It would take you a lifetime.’

Granger got up and walked over. He placed the barrel of his pistol against the old man’s head. ‘This gun turns things to ash,’ he said.

Herian snorted. ‘Ash? It increases entropy.’

Granger’s finger tightened on the trigger. ‘I don’t care what you call it,’ he said. ‘It’ll hurt just the same.’

‘You have no idea what you’re getting into.’

Granger shot him in the foot.

Herian howled as half his toes vaporized in a puff of grey-coloured ash. He clamped his hands across the stump, but there was no blood at all. His crown fell off, and he began to shudder and wail.

‘I think I just increased some entropy there,’ Granger said.

‘You bastard.’

Granger grabbed the old man’s neck and lifted his face so he could look into those terrified eyes. ‘Tell me how these weapons work,’ he said. ‘All of them.’

Herian just stared at him with utter contempt.

Granger raised the pistol again.

‘All right,’ Herian said. He let out a growl of pain and frustration. ‘There are two main schools of Unmer sorcery: Entropic and Brutalist. Brutalist sorcery concerns the movement of energy. Gem lanterns, wave cannons, air stones, perception devices, they’re all made using those principles. Entropic sorcery focuses on matter, its destruction and creation. It’s how trove is made.’

‘How do I use the Replicating Sword?’

‘I’ll come to that!’ Herian cried. ‘Just give me a moment. Give me a moment!’

Granger had no means to judge the passage of time inside that gloomy tower. He sat and listened for hours as the old man talked about the principles behind many of the artefacts around them. Most of it he didn’t understand, but he learned enough to be both frightened and respectful of these things the Unmer had made. Some objects, it seemed, had no discernible purpose other than to test a theory about the cosmos, while others had been deliberately crafted to torture and kill. The deadliest weapons were not always the ones that looked dangerous. Seemingly innocuous objects worked horrors Granger could scarcely comprehend. There were pins that turned flesh to gemstones and screaming rings that, once worn, could never be removed. In one corner Herian unearthed a crib once used to smother human children. Devices for exchanging perceptions abounded, and Granger wondered if he might use one of them to communicate with Ianthe. But he was afraid to try anything in the old man’s presence that might affect his own mind in ways he couldn’t predict.

It must have been late into the night when Herian finally slumped to the ground and begged Granger to let him rest. Granger left him alone and took the chariot back out into the frozen wilderness to find a place where he himself might sleep safely.

The sun was rising over the Mare Verdant, and the waters lay under a veil of green vapour. Not a breath of wind disturbed the snow. Granger flew the chariot leagues into the north until he could no longer see the transmitting station tower. Still the ice stretched on forever. The curve of the world bowed before him under ink blue skies.

There he slept, wrapped in his fur jacket and clutching his pistol, while the chariot hovered twenty feet above the bitter ground.

At dusk, he turned the machine around and headed back to the transmitting station. He had no doubt that the old man would by now be armed and waiting for him, but Granger decided to take that risk. He had so much more still to learn.

Two soldiers strapped the Unmer man to a chair, then ripped off his blindfold, revealing the leucotomy scar on his forehead. He was a rag of a man, skeletal, limp-haired and savage-looking. He glanced feverishly around the room, before his gaze settled on Ianthe.

Briana paced behind Ianthe’s chair. ‘Just do what you did with Caroline, but tone it down a thousandfold.’

‘Constance,’ Ianthe said.

The man’s eyes filled with fury. His cheeks moved rapidly behind his gag. His naked chest rose and fell. Sweat dripped from his forehead, causing him to blink. Behind him, the Guild soldiers retreated to the far wall. One of the pair brushed a speck from his blue uniform sleeve and then stood to attention. The other man yawned. They were young, these two, but their blank expressions verged on boredom. They’d seen torture before.

Mirrors covered the three walls of the room facing the prisoner. Ianthe could see nothing in them but the room’s reflection, and yet she sensed dozens of figures waiting behind those huge panes. She cast out her mind…

… and found herself among a group of old women seated on tiered benches, their faces rapt as they studied the young Evensraum girl in a room behind a glass wall. The mirrors worked in one direction only. Ianthe flitted between the minds of her hidden observers, watching them through the eyes of their own peers. They were ancient, older than any Haurstaf Ianthe had seen. She sensed expectation, perhaps even excitement, in that secret room. She could see it in their eyes, in the twitching of skeletal fingers, the pursed lips.

‘Start with…’ Ianthe returned to her own body, ‘… a point behind his eyes,’ Briana said. ‘Sometimes it helps to picture a tiny tuning fork located there. Concentrate on the image until you begin to hear the fork vibrate. Haurstaf use such techniques to visualize and manipulate unconscious processes.’

Ianthe tried to picture a silver fork between the Unmer man’s eyes. Immediately, he began to struggle against his restraints, thrashing his head left and right. Had he been sensitive to that simple act of visualization? She wasn’t convinced. She imagined the fork vibrating, and she imagined the sound it made, but it didn’t seem to affect him in any way. ‘What do I do next?’ she said.

‘Visualize pain in your own head,’ Briana said. ‘You can imagine someone driving a nail into your skull. As soon as you start to feel it, push the sensation across into the tuning fork. If you’ve made a connection with the subject, he’ll feel that pain, greatly amplified.’

Ianthe found it hard to comply with the witch’s instructions. No matter how many imaginary tortures she inflicted on herself, she couldn’t spark the merest glimmer of a headache. After a while, she gave up. Thankfully, the Unmer prisoner appeared not to have suffered any ill effects from her efforts. She looked up at Briana. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘You did it with Car… Constance.’

‘That was different.’

‘How?’

‘She angered me.’

Briana snorted. ‘That’s easy enough to fix.’ She nodded at one of the two Guild soldiers. ‘Remove his gag.’

The soldier untied a knot at the back of the prisoner’s head.

The Unmer man spat out his gag. ‘Mutants,’ he said. He spoke Anean clearly, but with a heavy accent. ‘This is what happens when entropy is retarded.’ He shook his head in exasperation. ‘Unsterilized, unchecked, a rotten branch poisoning the whole tree. Your own deformity prevents you from recognizing the truth!’ For a long moment he regarded Ianthe with narrow, cynical eyes. And then his expression softened. ‘Little girl,’ he said. ‘Look at yourself. Look at them. Do you want to be like these old women?’ He was almost pleading with her. ‘For the sake of the cosmos they should all have been drowned at birth.’

‘The tragedy is,’ Briana said, ‘that he genuinely believes what he’s saying.’

The prisoner shook his head again.

‘He was part of what the Unmer called their Branch Evaluation and Reintegration Programme,’ Briana said, ‘one of three thousand workers, tasked with altering aberrant “low entropy states”. Ask him how he accomplished this.’

‘There was nothing immoral about it,’ the Unmer man said.

‘Then tell her.’

The man shrugged. ‘We drowned people.’

Ianthe stared at him.

‘Thousands of people,’ Briana said. ‘They were experimenting with brine long before they dumped all those bottles in the seas.’

The man gave a bitter smile. ‘Brine is simply a medium for reworking dangerously retarded entropic states. Would you rather we extinguished you altogether?’ He looked down wistfully at his bound hands and feet. ‘And this is how you reward our restraint? With imprisonment, torture and degradation? That’s the difference between us. You lock up everything that threatens you. We set it free.’

Ianthe felt Briana’s hands on her shoulders. The witch leaned close and whispered, ‘Picture a fork behind his eyes.’

But Ianthe couldn’t. The prisoner’s frank admissions had provoked the anger that Briana had doubtlessly intended, and yet those feelings weren’t directed at him. They were directed at herself. She had allowed herself to pity the young Unmer prince in the palace dungeons, to be fooled by his beauty, to spend so many waking moments thinking about him. And now she felt betrayed and humiliated by a man she’d never even met. She closed her eyes and let the world’s perceptions flood into the darkness around her.

And she could see the dungeons down there through the eyes of the Unmer, the concrete maze under its cruciform catwalk, its starved and naked inmates. She allowed herself to drift down through the unperceived void below it, down to the glass-floored suites where the witches sat on high-chairs. Twelve suites. Ianthe had been foolish not to show herself the extent of it before. She wandered from one Haurstaf mind to another, until she found the chamber Briana had shown her. The prince was sitting at a desk in his library, writing a letter. With a hammering heart, Ianthe slipped into the mind behind his eyes.

Dearest Carella,

This ugly language frustrates me. It lacks the finesse to fully express my feelings. And yet you must not forget that the Haurstaf, by binding us within their petty laws, admit their own weakness. As much as they grub through each other’s minds, they can never peer into ours. They can only see what we choose to let them see.

How can what we show them not shame them?

Your last letter filled me with such despair I felt that I must surely destroy this place or die in the attempt. My rage would carry me through the heart of the world. Only your strength holds me back. Every day I kneel before the gods and beg them to transfer your suffering to me. Every night my dreams bring me to your bedside so that I can hold and kiss you, and mop the sweat from your fevered brow. We lie in each other’s arms and talk about that summer in Forenta: the old dragon cave that father showed us, Mistress Delaine waddling around without her shoe, our lunches in the rose gardens, the field behind the orchard. Have hope, my love, and do not be afraid. My arms are always around you.

‘Ianthe?’

The voice came from a world away. Ianthe opened her eyes and found herself back in the mirrored room. Briana was looking at her strangely. Her thoughts, however, remained with the Unmer prince and his letter. Those had not been the words of a heartless fiend, but of a thoughtful and caring young man. Ianthe couldn’t help but wonder who the real monsters were.

‘Ianthe? What’s wrong? You’re a million miles away.’

Ianthe glared at the witch. ‘I can’t do it,’ she said.

‘It takes time-’ Briana began.

Ianthe rose from her chair. ‘I don’t want to do it!’

‘Ianthe?’

She strode towards the door. ‘Leave me alone.’

Briana hurried after her. ‘Listen…’

Ianthe rattled the door handle, but it was locked. ‘Let me out of here.’

‘… I only want to-’

‘Open the door!’

Briana put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Ianthe, please.’

That single touch was a spark to a flame. Ianthe spun round, her anger bunched like a fist inside her. She threw the witch’s hand aside and cried out, ‘Leave me!’ And in that moment something happened that she did not plan and could not control. She compressed all of her rage into a single, desperate thought, like a mental scream, and released it.

The wall-sized mirrors exploded. In the galleries behind, Ianthe glimpsed the witches reeling and clutching their heads. Many had bleeding, lacerated hands. Sobs, wails and groans came from their midst. Briana Marks took three steps back, her face white with shock. She wiped away blood from her nose and gaped at it dumbly. The Unmer man lay slumped forward in his chair, unmoving. Only the two Guild soldiers seemed unaffected. For a moment they looked on in stunned disbelief, and then one of them unstrapped a baton from his belt and came for Ianthe.

She cried out, raised her hands to defend herself.

He swung the baton, and everything went dark.

‘This is an Unmer infiltration,’ Commander Rast said, ‘The girl is a spy and an assassin, the explosion… clearly designed to distract our troops while she carried out her mission.’

‘Designed to distract troops by drawing their attention to the palace?’ Briana said.

The commander’s face reddened, and his lip-whiskers twitched. Murmurs swept around the table, vocally among the other Guild commanders and mentally among the Haurstaf contingent. Seven combat psychics were in attendance, led by Sister Ulla, although in light of recent events, the term combat psychic now seemed little more than an embarrassing misnomer. Ianthe had wrecked the minds of six of their best with one thought.

One thought. Briana was still reeling from the girl’s attack. The sheer scale of the power she’d sensed coming from Ianthe had shocked her to the core. It had been like catching a glimpse of a howling abyss, some raw, savage, primordial vortex of energy. Even now ripples still spread through the entire Harmonic Reservoir, that abstract plane the Haurstaf used to envision the telepathic network. Ianthe could not have generated such a force herself, Briana felt sure. The girl had to have accessed and channelled it – much as the Unmer channelled their sorcery – from somewhere else. They had been naive to try to bring her into the Haurstaf. This girl was on a different level altogether.

‘What about the eyeglasses?’ she asked.

Torturer Mara looked up. ‘A simple perception transference device,’ he said. ‘They appear to contain the mind image of an Unmer sea captain – one of the old Brutalist sorcerers who fought Conquillas’s dragons at Awl. One can look back through his eyes into past moments of his life, which is somewhat unnerving, but not particularly useful to anyone except a historian.’ He tapped his pencil against the table. ‘Nevertheless, two odd things about them have come to light. Ianthe had the focus wheel set to the present time, which meant she was essentially looking at the world around her through his perceptions rather than her own. The sorcerer’s image in turn must have been able to see through her eyes.’

‘Then she was spying,’ Rast exclaimed.

Mara snorted. ‘Spying for a ghost,’ he said. ‘And an impotent ghost, to boot. That Brutalist is merely an image, an optical illusion trapped forever within those lenses.’ He raised a hand to stop the commander’s objections. ‘If you listen, Rast, I have better ammunition for your cause. What’s more perplexing is that Ianthe managed to wear the lenses at all. Because the mental link happens both ways, she sees through his eyes and he sees through hers. But the Brutalist’s mind is essentially trapped in the past. He cannot perceive events in our present time without creating a paradox that the lenses don’t allow. Any attempt to do so produces an unbearable strain on the wearer’s mind. The human volunteers we used to test them could not bear to wear the blasted things for more than an instant.’

‘And what effect on Haurstaf?’ Briana asked.

Mara rolled his pencil between his fingers. ‘We did try them on one girl, but I should probably speak to you about that in private. The results were… dramatic and rather messy. Suffice to say, a sensitive mind reacts much more severely to the lenses, which begs the question as to why Ianthe should be immune to their effects.’

Rast gave a bellow of frustration. ‘The lenses were obviously created for her. The facts here are clear. She attacked a room full of Guild psychics and left the single Unmer prisoner unharmed.’

Briana thought about this. ‘He survived because she didn’t target him directly,’ she said. ‘But he didn’t escape unharmed. His mind lost all of its higher functions.’ She leaned over the table. ‘Ianthe’s anger was directed at the room, at those who were pushing her to do something she didn’t agree with. I was there. What I saw was an emotional outburst from a sixteen-year-old girl, not a carefully engineered plan.’ She left the rest of her reasons for doubting the commander unspoken. It had seemed to her that Ianthe had held back.

And yet she couldn’t deny that the girl had much in common with the Unmer: her resistance to any ill effects caused by the lenses, her channelling of power from somewhere outside her own body, her uncanny ability at finding lost trove. Had Maskelyne spotted the connection, too? Briana had been foolish to underestimate him once, and now she had a sixty-foot-wide hole in the side of the palace to remind her of that fact.

‘And what news of Maskelyne?’ she said.

The Guild commanders shook their heads. Rast himself looked suitably ruffled. ‘He couldn’t have passed through the lines,’ he exclaimed. ‘Either he’s still in the palace, or he martyred himself in that explosion.’

‘He didn’t seem like the martyr type,’ Briana muttered.

‘If he’s alive,’ Rast added, ‘then he’ll stay close to the girl. The two of them are in this together.’

Briana experienced a moment of doubt. Could the commander be right, after all? Maskelyne’s timely disappearance suggested that someone had informed him of his impending execution. She shook her head. She simply couldn’t imagine Ianthe in that role. Given Maskelyne’s background, the traitor was more likely to be someone in the military. After all, back in Ethugra, he had recruited mercenaries and privateers as a matter of course.

‘What do you want me to do with the girl?’ Torturer Mara said.

‘Execute her,’ Rast said. ‘No fuss, no ceremony, just put her down before she wakes up.’

‘Not yet,’ Briana said. ‘She’s channelling power from somewhere. I’d like to know where she gets it from and how she does it, before any of our other girls learn how to do the same thing. Her powers are growing stronger all the time. We don’t yet know what else she’s capable of.’

Sister Ulla sat up. ‘I agree,’ she said. ‘We have a chance here to study something completely new.’

‘A thorough dissection would tell us a lot,’ Mara said.

‘You’ll get your moment, Torturer,’ Briana said. ‘But in the meantime, I want her broken, stripped down. Peel back the layers until you’ve bared her soul. I want to know what’s in there.’

Ianthe dreamed she was in a ballroom with tall shuttered windows and golden chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. A blonde Unmer girl sat on a three-legged stool, gently plucking a harp. She was pale and terribly thin, and her physical weakness translated into the music she played. Every fragile note seemed to quiver on the edge of oblivion.

Ianthe had never heard anything so sad and so beautiful before. She stood there for a long time, listening. And then the music suddenly stopped, and the girl was looking at her defiantly. ‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘Just a friend.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to deliver a letter.’

The blonde girl shook her head. ‘You’re with them,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know that I could destroy you? As easily as this…’ She moved her hand through the harp strings, and they snapped one by one with a series of sharp, discordant sounds. ‘I’ll take away your fingers and pieces of your skin.’ She stood up, knocking the harp away so that it crashed to the floor.

Ianthe was suddenly afraid. She turned to flee but halted when the door swung open behind her. A procession of revellers poured into the room, young men and women in fancy party clothes and exotic bird of paradise masks – a squall of peacock feathers and silvered beaks, gemstones and perfume. They were drunk and laughing. The men led the women, who shrieked and giggled and stumbled in their arms. They flowed around Ianthe, filling the room with their breathless gaiety.

A man in a white mask rapped a staff against the floor and said, ‘Music! We must have music!’

The harp began to play, but this time the music was brisk and lively. It did not seem unusual to Ianthe that the broken instrument could produce these sounds. She could no longer see the blonde girl, for the revellers had formed a circle around Ianthe. As the music soared they started to dance. They moved in pairs, each man holding his partner’s hand high. Their bird masks dipped and flashed under the chandeliers – a whirlwind of feathers and jewels. Their heels struck the floorboards with staccato barks. They clapped and laughed and bowed. None of them appeared to notice Ianthe at all.

Ianthe wanted to leave, but to do so would mean breaking through the circle. The music became louder and more delirious, and the dancers kept pace, spinning wildly in a great vortex of colourful silks. Ianthe moved towards the door, but the dancers forced her back. She tried to find another way through, and yet another, but there was no space among the flailing arms and stamping heels. And no space in the music. Notes clashed with their neighbours as the whole merged into an appalling cacophony. Like the shrieking of wild birds. Ianthe could hardly tell one dancer from another. They seemed to merge into one great fluid entity, circling her faster and faster, revolving out of control. And someone screamed.

But the dance went on. The cry became part of the music, just another hideous note swept away by the shrieks and laughter that followed. A girl was pleading: Please don’t, please don’t. Ianthe spied blood on the floor. The dancers’ shoes slid through it; bloody heels clacked down, and up, and the men clapped their hands and carried their swooning partners’ along. Some of the ladies were unconscious. Some were struggling to break loose. All were bleeding from countless wounds. And as they danced on their masks and frocks began to fall away like feathers. Scraps of silk and lace fluttered around them or lay strewn across the wet floor.

The laughter died. There was no longer any sound from the ladies, only the stamp of feet and the chaotic music as the bird-masked men whirled their naked, mutilated partners around and around the ballroom.

‘You don’t have a partner.’

Ianthe turned to find the man in the white mask standing next to her. He extended a slender, almost effeminate, hand. ‘Please, will you honour me with a dance?’

‘Ianthe?’

She was looking down at herself lying in hospital bed. A yellow gem lantern made a pool of harsh illumination in the otherwise dark ward. The sheets and pillows smelled of soap. Someone wearing Haurstaf robes was tugging at the straps securing her hands to the bed frame. And whoever it was was acting as a host for Ianthe’s own befuddled mind.

Ianthe suddenly put a name to the voice she’d heard. ‘Aria?’

‘Shush. They’d kill me if they knew I was here.’ Aria freed Ianthe’s other hand, and stood back. ‘We have to leave.’

Ianthe watched herself sit up. One of her eyes looked black and swollen. ‘What happened?’

‘Don’t you know?’

Ianthe recalled the room of mirrors, and her heart cramped. ‘I hurt Briana,’ she said.

‘She’s all right,’ Aria said. ‘But everyone knows. It’s not safe for you here.’

‘My lenses? Where are they?’

Aria rummaged in her robe pocket and brought out the Unmer spectacles. ‘Torturer Mara’s office,’ she said. Ianthe thought she heard a smile in the other girl’s voice. ‘I spotted them when I got the key. I knew you’d want them back.’ She handed them over to Ianthe, who put them on at once.

Then she left Aria’s body and flitted back into her own. And suddenly she could see Aria standing over her, her eyes twinkling, and a broad smile on her earthy face. Ianthe breathed a sigh of relief. She pulled back the covers and got out of bed. Her robe flapped around her ankles. The cold tiled floor under her bare feet sent a shiver up her spine, but she couldn’t see her shoes anywhere.

‘I didn’t try them on,’ Aria said.

‘What?’

‘The eyeglasses. Do they make it easier? Everyone thinks that’s how you did it.’

Ianthe shook her head. ‘They just help me see. I’m blind without them.’

Aria’s expression became grim. ‘Then you’re in even more trouble than I thought.’

They left the ward and hurried along the adjoining corridor. Windows looked into white rooms full of metal tables. Most were empty, but in one Ianthe glimpsed the partially dissected corpse of an Unmer man. Something about him seemed familiar. Did he have a scar on his forehead? She paused, but Aria just grabbed her and dragged her onwards. ‘We have to hurry,’ she said. ‘A driver is waiting to take you to Port Awl. He’s a friend. He’ll get you through the checkpoints. From there you can take one of the merchant transports to Losoto. John knows someone who can sneak you aboard.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ Ianthe said.

‘Because you’re the only one who would have done it for me,’ Aria replied. ‘I don’t have any other friends here.’ She stopped suddenly, pulled a small roll of gilders from her pocket and thrust it into Ianthe’s hand. ‘You’ll need this. I’m sorry it’s not much. It’s all I have.’

Tears welled in Ianthe’s eyes. ‘Thank you.’

Aria smiled. ‘Come on, we’re nearly there.’

They took a left down another corridor, then reached a sturdy metal door.

‘Wait,’ Ianthe said. She sensed people waiting on the opposite side of the door – two men, their perceptions as bright as lanterns in that perpetual gloom beyond her lenses. A military uniform. She reached out to stop the other girl. ‘Aria, there’s someone there.’

‘It’s just the driver’ Aria said. ‘He’s meeting us here.’ She took Ianthe’s hand, opened the door, and led her through.

It wasn’t the driver at all. The door opened into a small round cell with a concrete floor and walls. A drain occupied a depression in the centre of the floor. The space was bare but for a metal chair and a coil of hosepipe connected to a tap. Torturer Mara waited beside a large soldier in Guild uniform. The man was loosening his shirt collar. In one hand he clutched a wooden baton. Ianthe heard a click behind her.

Aria had closed the door.

‘What is this?’ Ianthe said.

The other girl just lowered her head.

Torturer Mara cleared his throat. ‘It’s the start of a very long process,’ he said. ‘Please take a seat.’