Lye Street (12 page)

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
authorised 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 socked 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 realise 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 tones 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 tonnes. 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 mesmerising. 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?" the colonel asked.

The bowman looked at the soldier 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."