The soldier shook his head. He hesitated a moment, then strode over to the barrier and raised it. ‘I want your attachment verified as soon as the telepath gets back. You can put your gear in the store.’ He pointed at one of the earthen buildings, then turned around and marched back towards his hut.
‘You heard him, Mr Mellor,’ Maskelyne said.
The wagon moved forward into the encampment and into the shadow of the gun.
‘The Haurstaf abandoned you,’ Torturer Mara said. ‘Which, I am sorry to say, means you are now under the protection of the Guild military.’ He inclined his head at the large soldier, who lifted his baton and struck Ianthe across the face.
Ianthe fell off her chair and hit the floor. She couldn’t stop sobbing. The soldier picked her up again and shoved her back into the chair. Perspiration covered his broad forehead and dripped down his heavy jaw. He had taken off his jacket and shirt, and his muscles shone like marble under the harsh cell lights.
‘Your friend abandoned you,’ Mara went on. ‘Aria chose to deliver you here in exchange for an assured future with the Haurstaf.’ He glanced at the soldier again, who struck Ianthe across the face a second time.
Her jaw cracked against the floor. She clutched her spectacles to her face and wailed miserably, her whole body convulsing with sobs. The concrete floor swam behind a haze of blood and tears. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard them turn on the tap. They hosed her down, blasting her body with freezing water until her limbs were numb.
‘Briana Marks abandoned you,’ Mara said. ‘She ordered me to carry out this procedure. The faster we get to the end, the faster we can proceed with your dissection. For me, that’s where the real interest lies. I expect to find some Unmer in your brain.’
The soldier picked Ianthe up from the floor with one hand. Then he stove his forehead into her nose. She heard the cartilage snap. Her spectacles flew off, and she was plunged into darkness. He let her drop.
She jumped into his mind only to see her own miserable body scrambling across the wet floor. Her robe hung from her like a torn rag; her elbows and knees were bruised and bloody. She picked the spectacles up again and fumbled to put them back on.
The torturer peered down at her, his face expressionless. ‘Your own father abandoned you,’ he said. ‘Did you know he arranged to sell you to the Haurstaf? I’ve seen the letter myself. Of course the Guild does not negotiate with people like that.’
The soldier kicked Ianthe in the stomach.
She felt his boot break her rib. The pain made her vomit. Her lenses shifted to one side, and she felt herself slipping into darkness. She reached up and dragged them back over her streaming eyes. She coughed and sputtered and drew in a shuddering breath. The air tasted of bile.
‘Your mother abandoned you,’ Mara went on. ‘Didn’t she fail to protect you when the Hookmen came?’ He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘She simply allowed herself to slip under the brine.’
Ianthe screamed. She tried to crawl away, but the soldier dragged her upright once more. He punched her in the face, then let her drop. Pain filled every fibre of her body. She couldn’t move, but simply lay on the floor and stared at the drain, shivering uncontrollably.
‘Even Maskelyne abandoned you,’ the Torturer said. ‘Like everyone else, he saw you as a means to an end, a tool to increase his personal fortune. Up until now that’s really all you’ve ever been, Ianthe – something to be used by others.’
He crouched down beside her and spoke softly. ‘But I’m not like them, Ianthe. Can’t you see that I’m the only one who wants to understand you?’ He brushed back her hair. ‘I want to help you achieve something with your life. I’m finally giving you a purpose.’
She closed her eyes.
Mara sighed. ‘Again,’ he said.
While his men unloaded the trunk of gem lanterns from the wagon, Maskelyne went to explore the three earthen buildings within the cliff-side compound. The first held stores of food, water and ammunition. The second turned out to be a small barracks in which he found the gunnery sergeant asleep on his bunk, while two other soldiers played dice on top of a crate. Maskelyne nodded amicably. He tapped the metal door lightly and then ducked back outside and wandered over to the last building. Here he found a tidy chamber containing a single bed, table and chair, and a wardrobe full of pressed linen – evidently the captain’s quarters.
He returned to his men. ‘All good,’ he said. ‘Howlish deserves a medal.’
Mellor looked up from the contents of the trunk and inclined his head in the direction of the hut beside the barrier. ‘What about him?’
Maskelyne puffed out his cheeks. ‘It will have to be done quietly.’
One of the four others slipped a knife from his belt, but Maskelyne shook his head. ‘I’ll deal with it.’ He walked over to the hut and opened the door.
The soldier with the thin moustache was seated at his desk, writing out a report. He put his pencil down when Maskelyne came in.
‘Your gunnery sergeant wants a word,’ he said.
The soldier hissed. He got up and followed Maskelyne out. They walked over to the earthen bunker, whereupon the soldier ducked inside. Maskelyne pulled an ichusae from his jacket pocket, unplugged the stopper and tossed it into the building after the man. Then he closed the door and locked it with the padlock he kept in his other pocket.
‘Watch the door,’ he said to Mellor, ‘in case they try to shoot out the lock.’
His first officer nodded.
The men in the bunker screamed for the first six or seven minutes and then fell silent. Soon afterwards, an endless stream of brine flowed out through the gaps between the door and the frame. Countless gallons of the toxic water surged over the rocky ground and washed along the bottom of the palisade wall, before leaking through and cascading over the edge of the precipice in a honey-coloured waterfall.
‘So much for Awl,’ Mellor said.
‘All good things, Mr Mellor,’ Maskelyne replied.
As two of his men opened the trunk and began lifting out gem lanterns Maskelyne, Mellor and the others dismantled the wagon bed with crowbars. They ripped up planks from the floor, revealing the hidden compartment where they had stored the gas tanks and cutting torches. And then they carried the lot over to the cannon.
Ianthe lacked the courage to return to her body and so she drifted in a sea of ghosts. She floated through a darkness patterned by the things that other people saw. She was a passenger, riding in carriages that didn’t belong to her, a thief who stole moments from other people’s lives, and that knowledge filled her with shame. Deep down she knew that Mara was right. The world she inhabited had never embraced her. She’d never really been a part of it. She would return to him in time and beg him to end her life quickly. By sifting through the wreckage of her life, they might even find some purpose.
But not yet. Her fear held her back, even as it deepened her shame. And so she wandered on through the darkness, a ghost afraid of her own death. She saw the Haurstaf scattered throughout their grand palace, the thousands in the woodland camps outside and the nebulous haze of the millions in the world beyond. She drifted down through the unseen spaces between occupied rooms, past the bright arena of the Unmer rat maze and down to the glass-roofed suites in the foundations.
She found him kneeling on the floor beside his bed, sobbing into his hands. Scraps of a letter littered the floor around him. The shock of seeing him like this almost broke her. All of his armour had gone. He was naked before her, naked before the gaze of the Haurstaf witch in the high-chair above. He had covered his face, as if that could somehow hide his despair.
A sudden fury gripped Ianthe. What gave the Haurstaf the right to preside over the lives of others? Over his life? Over hers? They weren’t mankind’s liberators but its new enslavers. Ianthe reached out into the mind of the witch, gathering together all of the woman’s perceptions and thoughts into a single all-enveloping embrace.