The Art of Hunting (35 page)

‘Captain.’ The call had come from behind, and Ianthe turned to see one of the crewmen peering out from an open hatchway built at a forty-five-degree angle to the deck, through which
steps led down into the ship’s interior. ‘Your Highnesses, My Lady,’ he added quickly,‘we’ve found something odd down below.’

‘
Odd
in what way?’ Howlish asked.

‘It’s a room of mirrors,’ he replied, glancing between the captain and the two Unmer lords. ‘I’m not sure how best to explain it. You really need to come see it for
yourself.’

He led them down the steps, which then turned around and descended a second flight. They arrived in a short wooden passageway from which there led many doors – cabins, Ianthe supposed. The
walls around her glowed with soft ethereal light. The sailor, whom Howlish introduced as Gaddich, then brought them to a single door at the end of the passageway, where waited another, younger,
man.

Gaddich picked up a gem lantern from the floor and opened the door to admit the party.

They found themselves in one of the strangest rooms Ianthe had ever seen. It was about ten paces across on each side, and yet seemed infinitely larger, for both the floor and the ceiling of the
room each consisted of a single huge and flawless mirror. This arrangement of mirrors produced an optical illusion. To look up or down was to see countless copies of the room and its occupants,
each marginally smaller than the last one and stacked one upon the other to infinity. The walls of this strange room consisted of regular panels of some dark and polished hardwood. And in each
panel there hung yet more mirrors – these of varying shape and size and age and yet all presented in exquisitely carved gilt frames. There were four on each wall and two more flanking the
door, fourteen in total.

It was only then that Ianthe realized something was different here. Neither the mirrors nor the panelling upon the walls looked unusual: they did not glow nor pulse nor coruscate with ethereal
flame. This was the only room in the ship that looked perfectly normal.

‘It gets weirder,’ Gaddich said. ‘Have a look in one of the mirrors. Any one you like.’

The party separated, each approaching one of the mirrors hung upon the walls, except for Ianthe, who clung to Paulus’s arm and walked with him. The first gasp came from Captain Howlish . .
.

. . . and before she realized it, she had cast her own consciousness into his mind . . .

He was looking into the mirror and yet the mirror did not return a reflection of his face. Instead it showed a ghostly figure peering out from darkness. The visage before him could almost have
been human – perhaps distorted by some warp or sorcery within the glass. Otherwise he was looking at the true image of an alien being. It had a long backward-sloping forehead and an
out-thrust chin as sharp as a horn. Its flesh was as hard and white as bone, its eyes oddly elongated and wholly white with mere pinprick dots for pupils. It had its mouth open in a peculiar smile
or grin, revealing too many tall and narrow teeth.

She heard Paulus give a sharp intake of breath . . .

. . . and returned her mind to her own body . . .

Her fingers were clutching Paulus’s sleeve. The mirror before her now was larger than the one into which the captain had been gazing. And in this glass she perceived something even
stranger and more terrible than the apparition Howlish had witnessed.

Again it stood against darkness. But this monster lacked any hook by which one might attach it, however tenuously, to humankind. It was a writhing mass of blood-red tentacles – more like
some hideous nest of engorged leeches than a single organism. And yet Ianthe saw that the part before her now was merely a fraction of a much larger creature – the tip of an arm that was
itself one of countless more such appendages that flailed in the deep abyss behind the glass.

Other looking-glasses held yet more horrors: one humanlike but horned and bestial and clad in mountains of bronze armour, another corpse thin and encased in a queer geometry of metal wire and
glass, a spinning box from which peeled arcs of light, pulsing blue things like squid, a vast maze of grey stone paths wreathed in lurid green veins of vegetation. This last structure retreated for
untold miles into the void.

In the periphery of Ianthe’s mind, she sensed all of them lurking nearby. Even the maze had a discernible presence. Their minds were oddly distant and yet, at the same time, terrifyingly
near, as though they inhabited a rift or fracture in the Sea of Ghosts. She understood the mirrors to be membranes through which she could propel her own consciousness if she chose to. But nothing
in the world could have persuaded her to send her mind into any of those foul intelligences.

‘They are travellers,’ Cyr said.

‘Travellers?’ Howlish said. ‘I don’t understand. What is this place?’

‘It is merely a viewing room,’ Cyr replied. ‘Entropic sorcerers once used such chambers to gaze into the void that lies beyond the universe. To stare into the infinite dark.
The travellers you see before you now have ventured into that void and become trapped, or else they were exiled there. These mirrors are used to lure them to this boundary, so that one might learn
from them.’

Howlish stared in horror and disbelief. ‘Learn what?’

‘Whatever can be learned.’

‘Is it safe?’ Howlish said.

Cyr frowned. ‘In what way?’

‘I mean, can they get out?’

‘No,’ Cyr said. ‘They can never escape.’

Howlish gave an immense sigh of relief.

Cyr smiled. ‘Come, now, I suggest we lock this room and forbid the crew from entering. There is nothing to be gained here.’

They left the room and, after a quick search, located a padlock for the hasp. Cyr locked it and took the key himself.

It was only later, when Ianthe found a moment alone with Paulus, that she asked him, ‘Did the original
St Augustine
have a room like that?’

He seemed momentarily startled. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘She would have been a merchant vessel.’

‘Then why should such a room exist now?’

‘Because this is Fiorel’s own ship.’

‘He made it for himself?’ she asked.

Paulus smiled. ‘A fine wedding gift, don’t you think?’

CHAPTER 7

Ygrid soared over the Mare Regis and Granger knelt between her shoulder blades and clung to the alloy hoops in her spine. His cloak was sodden and heavy with rain and pulled at
his shoulders in the icy, rushing air. The plates of his armour chilled and grated his brine-burned shoulders and his gauntlets chafed his wrists, but he knew that without their sorcery he would
have collapsed with physical exhaustion days ago. And yet there was no escape from mental exhaustion. Another sleepless night had taken its toll on his nerves. He had to rest, and rest soon.

When he pulled off his gauntlet to examine his hand he saw that his flesh looked grey and dead and he could not move his fingers at all. He struggled for a while, concentrating with all his
might, trying to force one finger to twitch, but he failed. The effort left him gasping with pain and exhaustion.

He pulled the gauntlet back on.

The dragon’s great wings stretched out on either side of him, glimmering aquamarine in the morning sun. The ocean below was an immense crimson slab that changed to the clarity of thin wine
in the shallows around the island of Peregrello Sentevadro.

There were other serpents in the sky, but they kept their distance. Granger could see them towards the south, their wings folding as they dived, their long lithe bodies plunging deep beneath the
poison waves in explosions of candy-coloured froth. They would not be hunting for food this close to the Dragon Isle, for they would long ago have stripped the seas here bare. It seemed more likely
they were tending to some ichusae hoard, supping at the source of the very drug that had corrupted the oceans of the world.

Ygrid had hardly spoken for the duration of the trip, but now as they neared this mass of black rock and scallops of beach she said, ‘Conquillas is absent.’

Granger shouted over the wind. ‘How do you know?’

‘There are signs,’ she said. ‘Signs a dragon can read.’

‘Well, where is he?’

Ygrid made no reply. As she banked in the air, the sunlight flashed briefly across the scales of her back and over Granger, and for one glorious moment he felt warm. And then she swooped down
into the shadow of a vast cavern in the island’s cliff face. Her powerful wings thumped at the air, raising a storm of grit and sand and sending smaller stones scuttling across the uneven
ground. And then she landed.

Ahead, Granger could see a rare and antique Unmer yacht set amongst pillars of black rock and the scattered bones of the Drowned. A vessel such as this was old enough to have sailed untainted
seas. She was exquisitely crafted. Her grey wooden hull still possessed its original metal scrollwork cladding. One of the duskglass portholes lay open and from this he could hear music. Someone
inside was playing a lute.

Conquillas?

A sudden loud and bestial
huff
grabbed his attention.

To the right another dragon appeared. He was a young male, half the size of Ygrid, and had been lying curled in a hollow as black as his hide. Now he uncoiled his slender body. His claws shifted
a mound of skulls and bones that spilled and clattered across the rocky ground. He raised his head and gave a low growl, followed by a curious clicking sound.

Ygrid reciprocated, making a similar noise.

It seemed to Granger that they were talking in a language he had never encountered before.

Ygrid seemed troubled by whatever was said. Finally she turned to Granger and said, ‘Conquillas is unavailable. No one will be able to reach him until Marquetta’s tournament in
Losoto next month.’

‘Next month is no good,’ Granger growled. There was no way he would be able to hold out against the sword that long. He might only have days, perhaps a week, before it had complete
control of him. He could no longer even use the blade. His own replicates now obeyed the weapon, not him. He shot a glance at the yacht’s open porthole. ‘I only want to speak to
him.’ He spoke loud enough, he hoped, to alert the lute player within the yacht, for it must surely be the man he sought.

Now the smaller dragon bared his fangs. ‘Your daughter has made this necessary,’ he said to Granger. ‘Our master does not want to be spied upon. Nor does he want to be targeted
by assassins. And, as much as I imagine he’s deeply concerned with your predicament and anxious to help you, Colonel Granger, we have our orders. Conquillas is indisposed until the contest.
No dragon will help you locate him before then.’

Granger glanced at the yacht again. The music had stopped. ‘Your master is in great danger.’

‘Conquillas likes it so,’ the black serpent said.

‘There is no way to send him a message,’ Ygrid said. ‘We must wait until he resurfaces before we can warn him. Or else we must expose Marquetta’s plans at the tournament.
Let it be known that Fiorel himself intends to be among the competitors. Perhaps we can force him to reveal himself.’

‘But what about me?’ Granger said. ‘I can’t last till then. You must take me to Ethugra.’

Ygrid’s great neck curled and she brought her head down to Granger’s level. He turned away from her chemical exhalations. She said, ‘You pin your hopes on Ethan
Maskelyne?’

Granger cast another glance at the yacht. ‘Do I have a choice?’

Ygrid spoke with the other dragon in that strange language for a few moments. It seemed to Granger that the small male chuckled. Finally Ygrid turned back to him. ‘Ethan Maskelyne is not
in Ethugra. His dredger was spotted passing the Clutching Rocks, three days to the south of the prison city.’

‘Will you take me there?’

‘This news is over a week old. He might be anywhere by now. I will take you to Ethugra if you still desire, but I think you should travel onwards to Losoto to await Conquillas’s
arrival. If he knows Ianthe’s father is looking for him, he might seek you out.’

Granger frowned.
Ifs
and
mights
were not good enough. He didn’t like being fobbed off. He glanced over at the yacht again. He could hear music coming from the vessel
again.

He untied his kitbag from Ygrid’s saddle hoops. ‘Let me stretch my legs while I consider your offer,’ he said. ‘My joints are frozen solid.’

Ygrid bowed and pressed herself flat against the ground, allowing Granger to clamber down her spine and slip off her tail. He hefted his kitbag over his shoulder and then walked around to her
front. ‘Might I use the yacht’s head?’ he asked, inclining his head towards Conquillas’s boat.

The dragon shook its head. ‘I do not possess the authority to grant that request.’

‘Two minutes,’ Granger said.

‘I’m sorry.’

Granger grunted and mumbled under his breath, ‘Can I at least take a shit among the goddamn rocks, then?’

‘Of course,’ Ygrid replied. ‘But do not wander far.’

Granger wandered in the direction of the yacht. As he did so, he slid the kitbag from his shoulder and let it drop.

He picked up his pace.

He felt the air stir suddenly, and Ygrid’s voice growled behind him. ‘Do not approach that yacht, human.’

Granger exploded into a run.

‘Stop!’ Ygrid cried.

He scrambled up the rocks towards the gangplank, sensing a change in the light as the huge dragon moved behind him. He glanced back . . . to see Ygrid clawing across the rocky ground towards
him, closing the gap quickly. He had to hope his shield would repel her fire.

Granger reached the top of the outcrop and pounded across the gangplank.

A hatch led below. Granger rushed across the deck towards it, his muscles tense, the whole time expecting a deluge of fire at his back. His metal boots thundered across solid planking. And still
the fire did not envelop him. He reached the hatch and pulled it open just as a shadow loomed overhead.

Granger leaped down six steps and landed hard in the passageway below. He rolled to break his fall, and came to rest on his back, staring up at the open hatchway, and the dragon beyond.