The Art of Hunting (44 page)

And before she knew it, the big day was imminent.

On the eve of Ianthe’s marriage day the morning was crisp and airy. She found the manicured lawns and the box mazes deep in orange leaves and she saw a convoy of leathershine-black
carriages clopping up the driveway to form a queue leading back from the palace entrance portico. She hurried over, expecting guests, only to discover that the carriages were all stuffed to the
roofs with wedding dresses.

‘Prince Marquetta requested a selection of gowns for your wedding tomorrow,’ said a uniformed man at the door. He introduced himself as Mr Greaves from Salamander Street and he had
been hired that very morning as the prince’s valet.

‘Are these all for me?’ Ianthe said.

Mr Greaves nodded and said, ‘Of course, Milady.’

‘But there must be every dress in Losoto here.’

‘Far more than that,’ said Mr Greaves.

The dresses filled seven of the palace suites. There were garments of spider silk, worm silk and beetle silk, of glazed cotton, flax, lace and velvet in a thousand shades of whites and creams
and colours from the daintiest pastels to bloody reds and chemical blues and chocolate; dresses of every possible shape and design, all pinched, puffed, frilled, embroidered, layered, seamed,
scalloped and rumpled. Dresses so heavy she couldn’t lift them. Dresses as light as newfallen snow. Dresses woven from gold and silver thread or so encrusted with jewels that they stood
perfectly upright even without an occupant. Ianthe wandered from room to room, through these glades of silk and sparkles, and then she threw herself on the nearest bed and shrieked with
delight.

But she could not choose a dress.

The prince supplied her with an army of maids – maids to carry garments from room to room or pile them high upon the beds, maids who gathered around her or rushed around with pins between
their lips and threads wound around their fingers, helping her into one dress after another, forever adjusting cloth, clasping and unclasping, smoothing out or rumpling up, tugging at sleeves and
fixing hems.

They were excellent as servants and seamstresses, but made terrible companions, for Ianthe could not extract from them a single word of honest criticism. Each garment, if Ianthe chose to believe
these meticulously espaliered opinions, made Ianthe look exquisite, beautiful, radiant, regal and sublime.
Sublime
was a favourite. At one point she swore that if she heard the word again
she would send the offending girl to enquire if Paulus had appointed an executioner yet. The servants would not be persuaded to convey anything less than hysterically effusive praise at everything
Ianthe tried on, even when Ianthe herself felt ugly and foolish in the blasted thing.

Finally she dismissed them all and sat alone amid mountains of material. At that moment, more than anything, she wished that her father was there.

Siselo shifted the contents of her plate around with a spoon. ‘This fish tastes funny. Are you sure it’s fresh?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ Granger said.

The two of them were sitting at breakfast in Conquillas’s Losotan hideaway. Half a dozen gem lanterns hung from various hooks and chains around their table, illuminating mounds of gleaming
treasure and broken rocks. Siselo wore a tunic and breeches of hunting cloth, as she called it – a vaguely sorcerous material that changed colour depending on her surroundings. It was just
one of the many possessions she kept in chests in her room. The cave system down here encompassed more bedrooms and bathrooms than the grandest of the mansion houses in the city above them,
although Granger slept on the broken settee in the main hall.

‘How many times did you boil it?’ she said.

‘Three times.’

‘And you changed the water each time?’

He snapped at her. ‘The fish is fine, Siselo!’

She was silent for a moment and then she said, ‘I know why you’re so upset.’

‘I’m not upset.’

‘Yes you are. You’re upset because it’s her wedding tomorrow.’

Granger said nothing. Siselo was right, of course. He’d been cooped up here for weeks, waiting for Conquillas to arrive. But the dragon lord hadn’t shown up yet. And Granger was
starting to worry that perhaps he wasn’t going to show up at all. Lying low was one thing, but Conquillas seemed to have completely disappeared from the face of the earth. He wondered if
Prince Marquetta had actually managed to have the man assassinated. At least then Ianthe would be safe.

Prince Marquetta?

Tomorrow it would be King Marquetta. And Ianthe would be his queen. Inside his gauntlet, Granger’s hand tightened into a fist. He stood up and strode over to his kitbag.

‘You’re not practising now, are you?’ Siselo said. ‘I was going to read.’

Granger ignored her. He rummaged through the bag and pulled out his replicating sword. The moment his hand closed on the grip, he felt his replicates start to appear. Only this time they did not
appear in the space around him, but rather in the space
inside
him.
Phasing
, Siselo had called it. She’d said it was something to do with matter and energy being the same
thing, but Granger didn’t much care for the science or philosophy behind the sorcery. What he cared about was the effect.

So he gripped the sword hilt and concentrated. He found phasing to be much easier than using the sword to create spatially distinct versions of himself. Those outwith his own body were
independent. They possessed their own disparate perceptions and reactions, which made them harder to control. Phased replicates, however, shared the same body as he did and thus shared his view of
the world. He didn’t have to assign different parts of his mind to different tasks. By creating versions of himself inside himself, Granger found that he was able to increase his strength to
superhuman levels. And that was before the power armour amplified it.

Granger willed forth dozens of replicates. In his mind he imagined them as cards falling one on top of the other and yet the card pile never increased in size. He felt his entire body grow
massive inside his own armour. The alloy plates began to tremble and hum as hundreds and then thousands of sword phantoms shuddered into existence inside it.

‘You’re overdoing it!’ Siselo said.

Granger grunted and took several steps forward. The stone floor cracked under his armoured boots. His suit began to spark and shed arcs of rainbow light as it struggled to cope with the immense
energies contained within. This number of replicates would have stopped the heart of a normal man, but Granger’s heart was sustained even in death by his armour and could not be stopped. He
strode forward to the cavern wall and made a fist with his left gauntlet and then placed it against the rock.

He pushed.

His fist remained where it was, but his boots slid away from the wall.

Granger let out a roar of frustration. Still gripping the sword, he smashed both fists against the rock, again and again, pummelling it with left and right hooks. His armour whined as it
amplified the force of a thousand replicates. The rock broke under his assault. Great chunks of stone fell to the floor. Dust clouded around him.

‘Stop!’ Siselo cried. ‘You’ll break the suit.’

Granger halted. He stood there, breathing heavily, shrouded in dust, and surveyed the destruction he had caused. A four-foot-square section of the cavern wall had collapsed around him.

Siselo stared at him as if he was insane. ‘What did that wall ever do to you?’ she said.

Granger looked at her. ‘I can’t wait for your father any longer,’ he said. ‘If I’m dead then I’m dead and I’ll just have to live with that. Tomorrow I
leave.’

‘Leave? For where?’

‘I’m going to my daughter’s wedding.’

Despite the destruction to the imperial capital, Losoto’s harbour was so full that there was no suitably large berth available for the
Lamp
. Maskelyne briefly
considered sinking one of the warlord’s galleons to make room for his own dredger, but then decided against it. The water wasn’t deep enough and he might snag his hull on the sunken
vessel’s masts.

So he ordered his crew to drop anchor in the centre of the bay and then he clambered down into the tender with Mellor and the Bahrethroan sorcerer named Cobul. The chatter Jones had picked up on
his ear trumpet these last few weeks had proved accurate. Marquetta had unleashed some vast and terrible creature upon Losoto, for no apparent reason other than to demonstrate that he could.

As they sped across the choppy waters, Maskelyne gazed out at the damage the thing had caused. From here it looked as if they were rebuilding the entire city.

Other news had been more mundane, if a royal wedding could be called mundane. They had arrived in time to witness Prince Marquetta’s coronation and his marriage to the Lady Ianthe Cooper
of Evensraum. This would have been fortuitous if Maskelyne had any intention of attending. He didn’t, so the timing was more of an annoyance to him. He had hoped for an audience with Prince
Marquetta, but that seemed unlikely given the current situation. The prince would undoubtedly be busy until after all this nonsense had passed. And what if the pair then took a honeymoon?

‘You look agitated,’ Cobul observed.

‘That’s because I am agitated,’ Maskelyne replied.

Cobul looked at him for a minute longer. When Maskelyne did not elaborate, he turned away.

By the time the tender had knocked against the quay, Maskelyne was in a more philosophical mood. After all, he thought, there was nothing like a good honeymoon to cheer a king up. And a cheerful
king was more likely than a dour one to offer the metaphysicist a job.

Mellor cut the engines and tied up and the three men climbed the steps up to the quayside.

The docks were busy with sailors, porters and merchants. Groups of men in woollen caps and coats smoked and warmed their hands at braziers. A blind beggar rattled his cup against the ground.
Other workers pushed goods to and fro, the trolleys squeaking and bumping over the steel crane rails set into the concrete. The crane itself was currently positioned at the end of the dock,
unloading a steamer from Valcinder. It loomed over their heads, a great hissing metal-slatted monster. Crowds parted around the three men as they stood there and surveyed their surroundings.
Directly in front of them Maskelyne noticed a board covered in lists.

‘Now that is fortuitous, Cobul,’ he exclaimed. ‘For I do believe these are the tournament lists.’

Sure enough, the names inked onto the papers covering the board were those of tournament entrants. There had to be half a hundred of them down already. Maskelyne peered at the names, but could
not find Conquillas’s among the combatants. He turned to a dock worker who was slouching against the board with his arms folded and his cap pulled down over his eyes.

‘Are you a tournament official?’

The man started, then snatched his cap back from his eyes. ‘I am, sir, yes.’

‘Are these all the combatants?’

‘As of last night, sir. There’s another board on Pilemoth and one outside the palace, but I don’t have the new additions from there yet. We update the three at dusk.’

‘So Conquillas hasn’t arrived in Losoto?’

The man tilted his cap and drew a hand across his brow. ‘We would have noticed him, sir.’ He leaned closer. ‘There’s a rumour going round that he was killed in
Vale.’

‘Killed.’

‘Assassinated.’

Maskelyne laughed. ‘I doubt that.’ He glanced at Cobul. ‘I suppose my friend here would like to know how much is in the prize fund. What’s the cost to enter?’

‘The Lord’s List is ten thousand sir, so the winner is currently looking at about half a million, but it’ll likely be double that by the time the contest starts. There’s
also a fifty-gilder pit game running for the first three days. That’s open to all. The winner of that one gets a ticket to the Lord’s List.’

‘Warm-up sport, eh?’

‘The best, sir.’

Cobul looked concerned.‘I don’t have ten thousand gilders,’ he said. He grunted and shrugged his shoulders. ‘To tell the truth, I don’t even have fifty for the
grunts’ league.’

‘I would lend you the ten thousand if I had it,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Nothing would please me more. Unfortunately I don’t carry that much in cash aboard the
Lamp
. If
we were only in Ethugra . . .’

‘I’d never ask you for a loan,’ Cobul replied. ‘I’ll join the pit contest as soon as I can muster the fifty.’

‘Oh, I’ll pay the fifty,’ Maskelyne said.

‘I cannot accept,’ Cobul said. ‘It is too much.’

‘Nonsense,’ Maskelyne said. ‘I plan to spend more than that on our lunch.’ He handed the official the amount in coins and collected a contestant’s ticket for the
sorcerer. ‘Now, let’s see if any of my favourite restaurants are still standing.’

As it turned out, none of them was. The Unmer monster had razed them all to the ground. Eventually they found a small place off one of the main shopping thoroughfares, where they ended up
crammed into a corner table, drinking rather poor Awl valley wine while they waited on three plates of wild venison and creamed potatoes.

Cobul was attracting glances from all the other patrons.

Maskelyne observed this while he munched on breadsticks. ‘I suppose you’re the first sorcerer to come here in, what, two hundred and seventy years,’ he said to Cobul.

‘There were sorcerers in the ghetto,’ Cobul replied.

‘But they were in the ghetto,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Out of sight.’

He watched Cobul carefully. ‘I expect Marquetta will pay them into the Lord’s List.’

‘Expect he will.’

‘The competition doesn’t bother you?’

Cobul sipped his wine and then leaned back in his chair. He looked at the restaurant patrons and they looked back at him. ‘King Jonas hired me for a reason,’ he said. ‘He hired
me despite my . . .’ He made a gesture, indicating his face.

‘Your what?’ Maskelyne said.

‘My race.’

‘Your father was Unmer, though? And a formidable sorcerer too, I imagine.’

Cobul nodded. ‘You won’t have heard of him, Maskelyne.’