Unmer sailors beat the sterncastle with sodden blankets, while their companions continued to drag up buckets of water. Smoke boiled through the struts of the ship’s tower. Metal groaned. Embers darned the air like red flies. Meanwhile, two-man teams operated a number of strange bronze cannons fixed at regular intervals inside the bulwarks. The whirrs and droning sounds were coming from these devices. Ianthe watched as three of the teams on the starboard side fired together. Crackling circles of blue energy burst from the conical ends of the barrels and shot away into the fuming sky with a shrieking hum.
And there she saw the dragons.
Three of the great serpents bore down on the Unmer ship, their black wings thrashing the air, their long bodies clad in flashing silver armour. Each seemed as big as the ship itself, and on the back of the central, and largest, beast rode a man.
He was wearing golden armour and held aloft a spear to which he had attached a fluttering red pennant. Ianthe could not see him clearly from down here, but she fancied that he was as lean and tall as the sailors around her.
A bell began to ring somewhere aft. Men shouted:
‘Kabash raka. Nol.’
‘Sere, sere.’
Ianthe could not translate their cries, but she recognized the urgency in their voices.
Shrieks came from the ship’s electrical weapons, as their Unmer operators let loose a further barrage. Blue circles of flame made vortexes through the tumbling smoke as they shot skywards. The dragons split formation, the outermost two peeling away as the central and largest of the three dropped low underneath the onslaught and dived towards the ship. Its armoured belly gleamed red by the light of the burning sea; its rider’s long white hair blew behind his head.
Ianthe heard a cry from somewhere very close: ‘Brutalist!’
She sensed movement nearby and shrank back as a hugely muscled man stepped past her, without as much as a glance in her direction. He was naked to the waist, his skin inked with hundreds of numerals and concentric circles, all stitched together with copper wire. He stood motionless, his fists resting on his hips and his teeth set as he glared up at the approaching serpent. One of those fists held a massive iron ring. An Unmer Brutalist. A combat sorcerer.
‘Conquillas,’ he yelled.
The dragon opened its maw and vented a spume of liquid fire.
The Brutalist abruptly dropped to one knee and raised the ring above his head. A sphere of green light bloomed from this object, encircling him instantly in a tremulous haze. Black sparks raced across the shimmering surface, accompanied by a series of frantic snapping sounds and the steadily building howl of gales as smoke rushed inwards towards the globe. The air itself was being consumed, driven out of existence. Ianthe realized that the iron ring was amplifying the sorcerer’s own innate ability. And then came sounds, like the clattering of iron-shod hooves. Through the shifting curtains of radiance and shadow Ianthe caught a glimpse of the Brutalist’s face – grim and determined, his eyes fixed in concentration. His lips moved as he chanted words she could not hear.
Dragonfire burst across the ship, exploding through the struts of the tower and cascading down over the deck in blazing streams and drips. Incredibly, for a moment the Unmer sailors withstood the onslaught. Black fire erupted from their own flesh as they struggled to banish the heat and flames to non-existence. But the vacuums they were creating around themselves merely served to suck in more fire. It was too much. They were quickly overwhelmed, and man after man began to fall all around Ianthe, their screams filling the air. Ianthe cried out in terror as the liquid fire engulfed her – and it took twenty rapid heartbeats before she realized she felt no heat at all. She wasn’t really here. A ghost, a ghost, a ghost. The fire washed up against the bulwark and broke and surged in waves to aft and stern. She found herself chanting the words over and over in her head, but it didn’t lessen her fear.
The whole ship was burning. The tower crackled and spat and roared like an enormous pyre. Unmer sailors howled and rolled on the deck, consumed by fire, white-toothed grimaces visible in their scorched, bloody faces. The dragon rushed by overhead, a massive silver shape that whipped the flames in its wake.
The big man stood up.
Incredibly, the fire had not touched him at all. A circle of deck around him remained unblemished.
‘Conquillas!’ he yelled. ‘Nash, nagir seen awar, Conquillas!’
And then he turned and looked directly at Ianthe.
Darkness.
Ianthe struggled against some unseen force. Someone was holding her tightly. She let her mind slip into the void and saw lights of people all around her. She was still surrounded, but she could no longer see by whom. She chose the nearest mind and hurled her consciousness into it.
She was still on the ship, but now it had returned to its former decrepit state. Warped iron, ash, the blackened, rusted tower. But these men…? She had returned to the present, and these sailors standing around her were not Unmer, but Maskelyne’s own crew. From this borrowed viewpoint she spied the first officer, Mellor, gripping her in his arms, while another sailor passed her spectacles over to Maskelyne himself. Four other men looked on.
Maskelyne put the spectacles on and stood for a long moment, gazing around him. Finally he took them off again and stared down at them grimly. ‘Unmer memories,’ he said. ‘How long have you been wearing these? Do you even understand the danger?’
‘Give them back,’ she yelled.
Maskelyne just looked at her. ‘They don’t belong to you, young lady.’
Ianthe held her tongue.
Maskelyne studied her for a while longer, as if weighing something up in his mind. At last he said, ‘You’ve been trying to harm my son.’
Ianthe snorted. ‘What?’
‘Scheming,’ he went on. ‘Ever since you’ve been aboard, you’ve been scheming, planning the murder of a child.’
‘You killed my mother!’
Maskelyne’s brow’s rose. And then he frowned. ‘Who told you that, Ianthe? It’s not true.’
‘Liar.’
Maskelyne glanced at Officer Mellor, who just shrugged. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he sighed. ‘Over the side with her, I suppose?’
‘She’s too valuable,’ Maskelyne replied. He sighed and tapped the spectacles against his leg. ‘Do you suppose Roberts could fashion some stocks from the packing crates?’
‘Stocks, sir?’
‘Head and wrists. You know the sort of thing.’
Mellor nodded.
‘Strip her,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Put her in the stocks, and let each of the men have their way with her. God knows, we could all use something to lighten the mood a bit round here.’ He looked wearily at the spectacles in his hand. ‘Clean her up once they’re done and lock her in her cabin.’
Mellor hesitated. ‘Sir?’
Maskelyne’s expression darkened. ‘I gave you an order, First Officer.’
Ianthe’s heart was thumping. Her limbs felt numb. She wanted to cry, but no tears came. Mellor started to drag her away, and for a moment she lost sight of herself.
Not one of Maskelyne’s men was looking at her.
Granger looked out of the port window. The Ethugran pursuit ships were little more than a smudge of smoke on the western horizon. None of them had been able to match the Excelsior’s speed across open water. Granger himself had scarcely been able to believe the rate of knots she’d accomplished. He turned his attention to the shimmering sea ahead. Maskelyne’s fortress sat atop Scythe Island’s quartz cliffs like a crown. A faint mauve aura surrounded it, as though it had been built from whisperglass. Below the sheer rocky drop at its base, a private wharf extended from a sparkling crescent of beach. The industrial harbour and dredging operation would be tucked into the shadows just around the headland, momentarily out of sight.
Air exposure had dried out and toughened Granger’s skin. His hair had fallen out, and his eyes smouldered like embers in the grey wasteland of his face. Occasionally he’d catch a glimpse of himself in the chromic sheen of a chronograph or some other ship’s instrument, and it seemed to him that he looked like a man clad entirely in old leather armour. At other times he perceived himself as some hideous golem, a thing spawned from the depths of the earth itself. His own flesh creaked when he moved. His joints continued to throb dully and remained stiff enough to impede his movement. But he didn’t care. He was alive. His muscles still worked. His brain still worked. And Maskelyne wasn’t yet dead.