He moved behind the bar and began hunting around, looking for something. ‘If I removed this stopper,’ he said, ‘this room would eventually fill with brine. We’d sink.’ He located a heavy brass corkscrew. ‘And yet when we break the container…’ He placed the tiny bottle on the bar and raised the corkscrew over it.
Before Ianthe could yell at him to stop, Maskelyne struck the ichusae hard with the blunt end of the corkscrew. Instinctively, she raised her hands to protect her eyes…
But something unexpected happened. The bottle smashed, leaving only a small pool of brine on the surface of the bar. Maskelyne looked down at it. ‘Magic,’ he muttered. ‘There’s nothing inside, nothing that I can find. No portal, no trick, no…’ She sensed his jaw clench. ‘How can I hope to understand such lunacy? And yet this is the way I must save the world.’
‘What do you care for the world?’
‘I like the world,’ he said. ‘I live there.’ He took a swig of his drink, and Ianthe felt the raw spirit burn his throat. ‘And I, unlike so many others, am in a position to do something. What sort of man would I be if I didn’t at least try?’ He sounded angry. ‘What sort of father would I be?’
Murderer! Tears welled in Ianthe’s eyes, and she fought to keep them back. Her thoughts tumbled over themselves, backwards to the moment when Maskelyne’s men burst into the cell. They were seizing her, Creedy shouting: Get the girl out. Hold the mother till Granger gets back. Maskelyne wants them brought to Scythe together. All these lies for her benefit! And then they were carrying her along the corridor and up the stairs, and she was kicking and spitting, and Granger wasn’t there. Her jailer. Her protector. She cast her mind out, searching for him, but there were too many people in Ethugra. Boots thumping on the stairs. Sunlight. And then she looked out through her mother’s eyes ‘How large were the dragon-bones?’ Maskelyne asked.
‘What?’
‘Fallen chariots, airbarques, they’re like catnip to dragons. Like gold, or…’ He raised his glass and gazed into the swirling amber liquor. ‘You should see how they fight over them. One usually finds that the larger the resident beast, the larger the hoard.’ He downed his drink and poured himself another. ‘Either we were lucky enough to find a deserted site, or the bones down there are trophies and our resident dragon is off hunting somewhere nearby. Unfortunately the latter is more likely. Even the most deranged addict must occasionally leave his hoard of drugs to feed.’
‘He’s not boring you with his dragon stories?’
Ianthe turned to face the voice out of habit, but she saw the new arrival through Maskelyne’s eyes – a slender woman in a simple white dress, she had come into the chamber through a door in the back. Her auburn hair gleamed under the gem lanterns like brandy. Her bright blue eyes sparkled with humour. In her pale arms she cradled a toddler, who gaped at Ianthe for a moment before burrowing its face in its mother’s hair.
‘Tell me that’s not troche she’s drinking,’ the woman said.
‘It’s my best Evensraum red,’ Maskelyne protested. ‘Four hundred gilders a cask.’
The woman came close to Ianthe and smiled. ‘He can be so stingy with his guests.’ She extended her hand. ‘I’m Lucille.’
‘My wife,’ Maskelyne added.
For a brief moment Ianthe found herself holding the woman’s fingers.
Lucille bounced the baby in her arms. ‘And this little tyke is Jontney.’ The boy looked at Ianthe again, then hid his face. ‘Oh don’t be so shy,’ his mother said. She passed Jontney to Maskelyne, who started fussing over him at once.
‘Ming,’ Jontney exclaimed.
‘Have you fed him?’ Maskelyne asked.
‘He’s just being greedy,’ Lucille replied. She turned to Ianthe. ‘Ming is milk.’
‘Agon want ming.’
‘Agon had his ming too,’ his mother said.
Jontney peered shyly at Ianthe from his father’s arms.
All this time, Ianthe’s ego had been darting between the minds of Maskelyne and Lucille, unconsciously weaving the gamut of their perceptions into an ever-changing tapestry of light and sound inside her own head. She herself was part of that creation – the wild-haired, blank-eyed girl in a whaleskin cloak standing between the man and his wife. There was something horribly inhuman about her – something, she felt, that deserved to be hated. Suddenly angry, she bulled her consciousness into Jontney’s mind and heard him bawl suddenly in response.
Children were more sensitive that way. Their own egos had not yet fully developed, leaving room for influence.
Maskelyne frowned kindly at the child. ‘Hey, hey, hey. What’s the matter with you?’
The child’s distress filled Ianthe. She could hear his screaming through his own ears, feel the warmth of tears on his cheek, the snot bubbling in his nose, the after-taste of his mother’s milk. He was hot, flustered, annoyed. But he was receptive. She pushed a single thought into the boy’s mind, and he lifted his hand and struck Maskelyne across the face.
‘Hey you.’ Maskelyne tried to soothe his son to no avail.
‘Let me take him,’ Lucille said.
Maskelyne passed the screaming boy to his wife. ‘He’s not usually like this,’ he explained to Ianthe. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him today.’
Ianthe withdrew her consciousness from the child, pulling it back out into the void. She was about to settle back into Maske-lyne’s mind, when she sensed something nearby – a great sphere of perception moving quickly through the darkness between the living. It was underwater and it was coming at them fast.
At that same moment, alarms sounded on the deck above.
‘That will be our dragon,’ Maskelyne said. He strolled over to the weapons cabinet and took out his blunderbuss. Then he opened a nearby hatch in the floor, revealing an insulated compartment packed with ice. Freezing vapours swirled within the open hatch. He scraped away at the frost until he had uncovered several black glass globes. He examined each carefully, before selecting one and putting it in his pocket. He grinned at Ianthe’s puzzled frown. ‘Ammunition,’ he said.
Upon opening the hatch, Maskelyne found his men scrambling and slipping across the deck amidst the clamour of bells. He did not approve of this chaotic urgency. He looked for Mellor, finding the first officer standing by the port-side bow gun.
One of the crew shouted, ‘Captain on deck.’
Mellor turned.
Maskelyne grinned. He strolled forward and called out in a cheerful voice, ‘Am I the bravest man you men have ever known?’
The crew replied as one: ‘Aye, sir.’
‘Am I the smartest man you men have ever known?’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Am I the man to slay the beast we see before us now?’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Then let’s bloody the sea.’
The crew cheered.
Maskelyne reached Mellor and gazed out past the deck rail.
There the dragon flew above the sea. It was an enormous female, a great brown drunken monster with a meat-swollen belly and teeth as old and black as fossils. Its scales were dull and crusted with rime from centuries of brine. Its claws were as yellow as a smoker’s teeth. The tips of its mighty wings thrashed the tops of the waves, flinging up spume. As it drew nearer they could see that it carried the corpse of a Drowned man in its jaws.
Mellor said, ‘Takes a hellish cunning for them to reach such a size.’
‘Don’t forget yourself, Mr Mellor,’ Maskelyne replied.
‘She’s coming into cannon range now.’
‘Let her dive.’
Mellor looked like he was about to protest, but then he said, ‘Aye, sir.’
The serpent had seen the boat and would know its purpose. But Maskelyne had no doubt that the creature’s own addiction would drive it under the sea before it attacked. Fearing that its hoard of ichusae had been plundered, it would dive down to check. Once there it would discover the theft and resurface enraged. And anger could unbalance the wisest of foes.