Art of Hunting Read online

  Ianthe watched it soar skywards, diminishing as it headed south across the valley. And then she turned to Paulus. The prince smiled and took her hand. Was that pride she saw in his eyes?

  He led her back inside the palace, accompanied by his uncle. When the three of them were alone, the young prince closed the door behind them and came over. For a moment he just stared into her eyes, a half-smile on his lips.

  Then he slapped her.

  Ianthe gasped.

  The prince clenched his fists and half-turned, fuming. ‘Foolish girl,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you want the world to think I hide behind women?’

  She stared at him in silence, her face flushing as the sting spread across her cheek. And then she said, ‘I did it to help you. To show my loyalty . . . my love.’

  ‘You helped him by embarrassing me!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Cyr laid a hand on Paulus’s shoulder, but he spoke to Ianthe. ‘His Highness knows that you acted out of love,’ he said. ‘That you had his best interests at heart. His anger is not directed at you, Ianthe, but at himself for permitting you to be put in danger.’

  Paulus closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. When he opened his eyes again, his temper had cooled. He moved to take her hand, but she flinched away from him. Suddenly his eyes flashed regret. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I acted . . . Please forgive me.’ He reached for her hand again.

  Ianthe pulled her hand away.

  ‘Cyr is right,’ Paulus said. ‘I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. I blame myself.’

  She turned to go.

  He seized her. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Ianthe, please, hear me.’

  She could have driven him to his knees with a single thought, or ripped his mind apart like so much scrap paper. But instead she looked down at his pale hand, his skin so smooth and cool against her own, and she forced herself to relax.

  ‘Forgive me, please. I promise never to strike you again.’

  ‘I’m sorry, too,’ she said, blinking back tears. ‘But I can’t just stand back and watch you die in a tournament when I could stop it with a thought. You can’t ask me to do that.’

  ‘He won’t kill me,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t know that!’

  Paulus smiled. ‘But I do. I will come to no harm, Ianthe.’

  She hesitated. ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘You’ll just have to trust me.’

  She took his hand and clutched it desperately. ‘But what about Emperor Hu? You’ve just declared war on Anea.’

  The prince smiled. Even Cyr chuckled.

  ‘Hu is the least of our worries,’ Cyr said. ‘Thanks to you the Haurstaf are leashed. Our only foes are human, and we do not intend to mount a campaign against them.’

  ‘Cyr’s patron will deliver Losoto into our hands,’ Paulus said.

  ‘Your patron?’

  The two men exchanged a glance. Paulus said, ‘Do you remember when we first met, Ianthe? I told you that the Unmer speak to our gods in dreams.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Cyr’s patron is named Fiorel.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘The Father of Creation!’

  ‘Fiorel appeared to Cyr in a dream,’ Paulus said. ‘He has promised to give us the means to take the city. Losoto will fall.’

  ‘But why is he helping you?’

  ‘All I can tell you is that it is to our mutual benefit.’

  Paulus lifted her hand and kissed her fingers.

  Ianthe felt a tingle as his lips brushed her skin. The sensation was so electric she half-expected to see a drop of blood fall from her palm.

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘And I’ve been such a fool.’ He held her shoulders and gazed deeply into her eyes. ‘Do you forgive me?’

  Her whole body trembled. She smiled up at him. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘And I do trust you. I’ll never spy on you, Paulus. You know that, don’t you?’

  He leaned forward and kissed her. ‘I know,’ he said.

  Crouched in a shadowy alcove behind a nearby pillar, Granger watched Ianthe depart. Marquetta and Duke Cyr remained in the entrance hall for a minute longer. They waited until Ianthe had gone.

  ‘She was naive and foolish,’ Cyr said, ‘but you can’t deny her bravery.’

  The young prince shook his head irritably. ‘I don’t need a brave wife,’ he said. ‘I need a loyal one. The words she spoke out there might well come back to haunt her in the form of a void arrow.’ He raised his hands before him and stared at them as though he might throttle someone by will alone. ‘I cannot revoke my future queen’s words. We must keep her safe and hope Conquillas intends to spare her until after the tournament.’

  ‘We could ask him to,’ Cyr said. ‘Ianthe isn’t his primary target. His vendetta is against you and I. If you sent him a message, I believe he would honour a request to leave Ianthe alone. He is still an Unmer lord.’

  Marquetta gaped at him in disbelief. ‘You want me to beg Conquillas?’

  ‘Well, then we must keep our faith in the current plan and hope the archer enlists.’

  ‘He will enlist. Conquillas will not be able to resist the opportunity to fight either of us in open combat.’

  ‘But he’s cunning,’ Cyr said. ‘He’s known for his ability to smell a trap.’

  ‘Even so,’ Paulus said. ‘Conquillas will come to Losoto anyway. He’s that arrogant. Tell me, Uncle, in what form did Fiorel appear to you?’

  ‘As a yellow butterfly.’

  ‘Then he was in good humour. And what form will he assume at the tournament? One of our own sorcerers, perhaps? Or a humble sellsword?’ The prince grinned. ‘That might dampen the dragon lord’s legend.’

  ‘He would not say.’

  ‘We will know him when he stands over the archer’s corpse.’

  Cyr nodded.

  ‘Something is bothering you, Uncle?’

  ‘I was just thinking. What if Conquillas kills him?’

  The prince frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If Conquillas kills Fiorel at the tournament, what’s to prevent him from going on to kill us? We could not withdraw without losing all honour.’

  ‘Conquillas won’t kill Fiorel.’

  ‘He killed Duna.’

  ‘Duna was a reckless child,’ Marquetta said. ‘Fiorel is one of the oldest and most powerful entropaths in the cosmos, the architect of four great rifts – a being who can assume any form he chooses. There will be no contest.’

  ‘Perhaps we should have a reserve plan,’ Cyr said. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘You doubt your own patron?’

  ‘No, I . . .’ Cyr was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘But I feel the hand of more than one player in this. I think Thomas Granger has a patron too, although he doesn’t know it. His acquisition of that sword and armour was not part of the plan. Someone is helping him.’

  ‘An entropath?’

  ‘I do not have an answer to that, Your Highness.’

  ‘Why would Fiorel’s kin contrive against him? They need this world as much as he does.’

  ‘It might not be an entropath at all. A traitor among the Unmer? Or else the sword itself has some great designs of its own. These old blades are cunning and treacherous.’

  ‘And how does Granger fare today?’

  Duke Cyr shrugged. ‘No word from his chambers.’

  The pair began to walk away. They continued to converse but Granger could no longer discern the words. He had been unable to hear the dragon’s conversation from his bedroom window, and so had come to the palace entrance to eavesdrop. Now he stood there for a long moment, mulling over what he had heard. A patron? That merely confirmed his own feelings.

  As he stepped out from behind the pillar and headed off into the west wing of the palace, he was deep in thought. That the prince and his uncle were plotting to murder Conquillas came as no surprise. He could have guessed that without hearing it from the conspirators’ own lips. Eve
n Conquillas himself would guess as much. The dragon lord had a reputation as a formidable warrior. Marquetta and Duke Cyr knew it would be suicide to meet him in the arena.

  So the duke’s patron, the shape-shifter Fiorel, would be at the tournament. One of the most powerful gods in the cosmos was going to disguise himself as a mortal man and slay Conquillas in a public arena. Such a plan benefited both sides. Fiorel would rid the Unmer of their most formidable foe, while exacting revenge for his daughter’s death.

  Fiorel would not even have to reveal his true identity. He might assume the form of a simple sellsword or footsoldier. For an Unmer lord like Conquillas to die at the hands of an ordinary man would be a terrible humiliation: the legendary warrior cut down in the opening rounds of a public brawl.

  As Granger hurried along a corridor, he was all too aware of the weakness in his limbs and pain in his chest. It felt as if his heart was overworked. The tournament was of little concern to him; he had more pressing matters to consider. Ianthe was safe here for the moment at least. Prince Marquetta clearly despised Granger’s daughter, and yet he needed her: enough to lie to her, enough to marry her, enough to apologize to her – which was unheard of. The poor girl was too lovestruck to see through his deceit. Granger’s own safety, however, was far less assured. His Unmer hosts had already tried to kill him once. Since the sriakal had failed to do its job, they would undoubtedly find some other way to murder him if he remained here. Simple poison would suffice, or even a blade in his guts while he slept. Evidently they were not prepared to wait until the sword enslaved him. Even in his weakened and addled state, even so close to death – and for Granger enslavement would surely mean death, for there would be nothing left of his mind – these Unmer lords had chosen not to dismiss him.

  That simple fact continued to give Granger hope that there might still be a way to rescue the situation. The sword hadn’t taken him over completely yet. He could still resist its desires. But for how much longer? There had to be a way to halt the process. He needed an expert on Unmer artefacts. He needed to find Ethan Maskelyne.

  And find him fast.

  Granger arrived at the armoury and opened the door.

  A stone partition wall topped by a wire grille divided the chamber in two, with a door providing access between the two sections. This would be locked, leaving a well in the stonework as the only way items could be passed back and forth between the two sections. Behind this barrier were kept the racks of Unmer and Haurstaf weaponry – including, Granger hoped, his sword, his shield and his armour. The guard behind the grille glanced up from a book he was reading, then closed it quickly and sat up. He was one of the former Haurstaf guardsmen – a native Awler by the look of him – and had probably held this position before the Unmer ever escaped their cells. His gaze wandered over Granger’s brine-scarred face.

  ‘Colonel Granger,’ he said. Then he frowned. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Just here to collect my things.’

  The guard looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m not allowed to release them.’

  ‘It’s my property.’

  ‘I appreciate that, sir,’ he said. He seemed genuinely torn. ‘But I can’t let them go without word from the prince or his uncle.’ He gave Granger a regretful shrug. ‘Orders.’

  Granger grunted. ‘What if I paid you an obscene amount of money?’

  ‘Look,’ the guard said. ‘I’m going to do you a favour and pretend I didn’t hear that.’

  Granger nodded. He wasn’t going to get his stuff back without force, and that would cause as many problems as it solved. He’d just have to beg, borrow or steal something in Port Awl. He glanced back at the guard. ‘Sorry to have bothered—’

  But then his breath caught in his throat.

  Ten feet behind the guard, on the other side of the grille, stood a dark and wild-eyed figure. He recognized it as one of the sword replicates. It wore his power armour and carried his phasing shield and in its fist it clenched the Unmer blade.

  A blade it now raised, as it rushed towards the guard.

  ‘Wait,’ Granger cried. ‘No!’

  The guard looked up at Granger with surprise.

  But the replicate coming up behind him ignored Granger’s pleas. The seated guard half-turned, in time to see the hellish eyes and brine-scarred face and teeth. The upraised blade. The replicate thrust the sword downwards savagely, puncturing through the skin under the guard’s clavicle and burying the steel tip deep into his heart. He twisted it once.

  A short gasp escaped from the guard’s throat.

  And then he collapsed to the floor, dead.

  Granger stood there, his heart thumping, his breaths coming hard and fast as he watched the guard’s blood spill out across the floor. He looked at the replicate and the replicate returned his gaze. There was nothing in those eyes but a savage emptiness.

  And then the replicate stooped and ran its fingers through the dead man’s blood and brought it to its lips and supped. It rose again and stepped forward and placed the sword into the well below the grille. He released the handle.

  And vanished.

  Granger felt a sudden sensation of dizziness and nausea. The light itself seemed to shift, fracturing subtly, as though the air immediately around him had momentarily possessed a different quality.

  He looked at the sword with dread. It had wanted Granger to free it. It had been waiting for him to come. But had it summoned him here? Would it still serve his will? Would the replicates obey him? Or would they obey the sword? Was he, Thomas Granger, to blame for this innocent man’s death?

  Granger reached for the sword, but then stopped himself. The weapon wanted him to pick it up, he could feel it in his heart, but Granger resisted. His hand trembled, inches from the blade.

  ‘On my terms,’ he said. ‘You hear me.’

  He wanted to pick it up. Every part of him yearned to reclaim the blade. Granger hissed through his teeth.

  ‘On my terms!’ he cried.

  He snatched up the sword and then used it to break the armoury lock. He stepped over the spreading pool of blood and went to look for his armour and his shield, dimly aware of the eight ghoulish figures who had appeared in the shadows around him.

  Maskelyne’s chief engineer and metallurgist, Milford ‘Halfway’ Jones, had a gift for fixing broken Unmer artefacts and adapting others to create new devices: most notably the miniature trumpet horn strapped to the left side of his own head that allowed him, after a certain amount of tweaking, to hear – or so he claimed – conversations in an as yet unidentified Losotan-speaking household somewhere in the world, and the monocle he wore perpetually over his left eye that enabled him (again, if his claims were to be believed) to determine at all times the location of his wife. Maskelyne had no doubt that these were merely fables intended to boost his reputation across the Sea of Lights, and yet he could not help but admire the man’s ability as an engineer. By dawn the new device was ready and fitted into the wheelhouse of Maskelyne’s deep-water dredger, the Lamp. He kept the ship in a constant state of readiness, but he’d had her crew working overnight on the numerous last-minute details required for any lengthy voyage. Now he stood in the wheelhouse and examined Jones’s handiwork.

  The crystal had been mounted in a spherical wire cage set atop a gyroscope. Around the cage, the adapted gem lantern could swing on a pivoting arm, which could be tightened or locked into place during high seas. By revolving the lantern around the crystal to the spot where it was brightest, Maskelyne’s navigator would be able to follow the line of greatest energetic radiance and thus discover whatever artefact was presently drawing on that energy.

  Whatever it was, Maskelyne suspected it would be in a locked case or cabinet.

  It could only be the object for which the Drowned continued to bring him keys. They had, in their mindless way, sensed something extremely powerful lying on the seabed. And they knew Maskelyne to be a man who dredged up such objects by their thousands. He wondered if they even knew what the ob
ject was. Did they intend Maskelyne to have it for some unknown, and possibly unknowable, purpose? Or did they simply want it removed from their domain?

  That last thought gave him pause.

  So it was with a chill in his heart that he waved goodbye to Jontney and Lucille and boarded the Lamp. The crew were busy loading the last fresh fruit and animals, and he found himself skipping sideways to avoid a largess of maniacally bleating goats.

  They steamed out from Scythe Island on a calm morning with the sea like a polished bronze plate reflecting a red sun and the scent of northern snows still sharp in the air. A sunny day still trying to shrug off its winter coat. Even the heavens seemed to shine like lacquered metal, purple ranging to gradients of orange in the east. The gentle booming of the ship’s engines failed to lift his spirits as it usually did. And his mood was pervasive, for he noticed several of his crew standing quietly to aft, where they could watch that lonely rock diminish.

  His first officer, Mellor, came down from the bridge. ‘One sixty-eight steady, Captain.’

  Maskelyne nodded.

  ‘Are we to expect a traverse?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Mellor. The artefact might lie ten leagues from here, or a thousand.’

  Mellor gazed out to sea. ‘The weather can be unpredictable around the southern fluxes, particularly at this time of year. You know Tom Gascale?’

  ‘Lost his eye during a storm down there.’ Maskelyne grinned. ‘You see? I do sometimes listen to their tales. The knowledge that my men have experience of the area gives me great confidence.’ He studied the small, thin-faced officer. ‘Your father drowned in the confluxes, did he not?’

  ‘He went there looking for grandfather’s ship. Never found a trace of it.’

  ‘And your grandfather?’ Maskelyne enquired. ‘He didn’t, by any chance, go looking for a long-lost great-grandfather?’

  Mellor’s lips twitched in what was not quite a smile. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then there’s no curse to speak of.’