She grunted.
Granger climbed up one side of the steel net and found the locking clasp that held the draw cable fast. It was tight and would normally have required a hammer blow to open it, but his power armour made the job effortless. He pulled the clasp open with such force it actually sheared, and the draw cable slackened at once, allowing the neck of the net to be opened like a purse. Chain steel links slid from the dragon’s back. She moved her tail and forced her back against the heavy mesh.
‘Easy,’ Granger said. He leaped down from the beast’s back and clambered back to shore. He noted, with satisfaction, that the welding team in the steamer’s tender were crying out in alarm. They suddenly gunned the engine of their small boat, and it took off, leaving in its wake a broad tail of froth.
Finally, the last of the net fell away, and the dragon’s long neck rose, dripping, from the brine. She stretched out her vast gas-blue wings and let the breeze fill them. And then she gave a violent shudder and the sea seemed to fume and mist around her, rising in smoke-like curls from her aquamarine hide. She gazed after the departing crewmen for a long moment, and then turned her long bony head to face Granger. ‘What is your name?’
‘Thomas Granger.’
‘I amYgrid,’ the serpent replied.‘I was a daughter of Hanmer of Ashellomen. You know the place?’
‘It’s underwater.’
‘Everywhere is underwater,’ Ygrid replied. ‘I haven’t been there in many years.’ She flexed her wounded leg and grimaced. ‘My father was human once, but said he could no longer remember what it felt like. I myself have never known.’ She moved forward through the shallows towards him, and then lowered her neck and rested it on the shore. ‘I have always considered myself to be fortunate in that respect.’ She grinned. ‘You may sit between my shoulders. Grip the riding hoops tightly. You are so tiny that I doubt I would notice if you fell.’
‘Are you fit enough to fly?’
‘Let us find out.’
Granger climbed onto the dragon’s neck and padded up to the shallow depression between her shoulder blades. There he found two alloy hoops emerging from her hide. The presence of such metalwork indicated that this was a very old dragon indeed. The Unmer had driven these pins into her bones many, many centuries ago, so that she might carry a dragon lord to war. She was, then, a war dragon. A veteran like himself. Granger squatted with his knees wide for balance. He looped his kitbag strap through the hoops and then wound it a couple of times around his wrist. He felt Ygrid’s huge muscles moving under him as she turned from the shore.
‘You are,’ she grumbled, ‘considerably more massive than you appear.’
‘If I’m too heavy for you . . .’ he began.
‘And yet still small enough to eat.’ She stretched out her wings on either side of him.
And then she lifted her head and thumped her wings down against the shallow waters, once, twice, their powerful motions creating a tremendous gale. Brine-scented air buffeted Granger as he clung to the hoops in her shoulders. Ygrid thrashed her wings again and again and now rose from the emerald sea into a clear blue sky. She turned, her long neck curving to the left before him, her wings compressing the air with each ferocious beat, and it seemed to Granger that it wasn’t the dragon who was turning against the world, but the world turning around the dragon.
‘We make for Peregrello Sentevadro,’ Ygrid said. ‘The Dragon Isle.’
The harbour at Losoto was full of warships. Briana Marks stood on deck with Acanto as the Silver Flame rounded the breakwater. On either side of them the ship’s oars dipped and pulled through bromic seawater, leaving little spirals of yellow froth in their wake. The docks were crowded three deep with ships of steam and oil and sail, men-o’-war and frigates and huge iron-hulled cannon ships. A great clutter of mast and funnel. The harbour itself bustled with activity as stevedores saw to the loading or refitting of vessels for war.
Acanto smiled. ‘Do you suppose word of an Unmer invasion has reached our good emperor?’
‘I sent word of it myself,’ Briana said. ‘Although, to tell you the truth, I’m actually surprised he’s got round to doing something about it.’
‘Not a man of action, then?’
‘Depends on the action,’ Briana replied. ‘I mean, if it were bathing . . .’
‘The man’s a walking cliché.’
‘He doesn’t do all that much walking.’
The coxswain gave a shout and the oarsmen raised their oars and held them above the water. The Silver Flame glided to rest in the lee of a privateer frigate. Acanto ordered the anchor dropped and the tender launched.
‘I do believe,’ Acanto said, gazing at the various ships’ flags, ‘that the emperor has mustered every single pirate clan.’ He grinned. ‘I wonder if they are all lodging in one place?’
‘That’s one party I intend to miss,’ Briana said.
‘You are averse to thieves, rapists and looters?’
‘I’m averse to ships’ captains in general.’
The tender motored them across the harbour, heading for a small quay next to the dragon cannery. None of the large hunter ships was presently in dock, and Briana could see up the cannery’s massive blood-stained loading ramp to where the steel hooks clustered at one end of the overhead conveyor. With the presence of so many warships, the normal merchant traders had been forced to unload at one small section of the docks, leaving their associates to queue in the open water beyond. Come nightfall, the shore taverns and lodges would be seething with frustration and bitterness directed at these strange and lawless crews. Blood would certainly flow.
‘Are you staying ashore?’ she asked Acanto.
‘I might dine ashore,’ he replied.
‘I recommend the Solus Tavern,’ she said, pointing to a large white building in the centre of the bay. Scores of foreign revellers packed the street outside, drinking and singing. Crews hollered curses at other crews. A few had already succumbed to the booze and were slumped unconscious against walls.
‘The place with the large group of cut-throats outside?’
‘It’s popular,’ she said.
Acanto clicked his tongue.‘Anyone would think you’re trying to get me killed.’
She smiled.
They landed at the quay, where Briana bid farewell to Acanto. Actually she had grown quite fond of him. He planned to remain in Losoto for at least three days in order to restock his ship, although he admitted it might take considerably longer than that, given this hellish congestion. If she needed him, he would probably be around.
Briana left him and hailed a horse carriage to take her to the palace. Moments later, she found herself relaxing to the sound of hooves as they meandered up the Yanda Promenade with its countless trinket traders on either side. The quantity of goods on display was so great that it seemed as if the shops themselves had burst, outpouring their wares upon the cobbles. At one crossroads she was able to look out west upon the flooded districts of the capitol, where grids of once noble town-houses had been abandoned to rot under the rising brine. They looked like buildings steeped in tea. Further along the coast would be the Unmer ghetto, where three of her peers yet worked for the emperor. She could sense them in the back of her mind, but chose to ignore their chatter and keep her own thoughts veiled from them. They were expecting her, and yet she saw no reason to announce her arrival. She did not want her presence here broadcast through psychic channels.
Of course such discretion might be superfluous, for the future Unmer queen might be looking through her eyes at this very moment. ‘If you are a passenger, dear Ianthe,’ she said quietly, ‘then you’ve seen the force arrayed against your lover. For his sake, keep him in Awl. At least until he’s all grown up.’
‘Beg your pardon, miss?’ the driver said.
‘Oh shut up,’ she replied.
The carriage continued to wind its way up the hill. It left the harbour district and reached the birch-lined avenues wherein the master merchants and Losotan busines
smen displayed their wealth in grand palazzos. Orange leaves whispered in the wake of the turning carriage spokes. White stone porticoes flanked black iron doors and black ironwork surmounted white stone balconies. Everywhere one looked one saw precision: in the manicured kerbs and balustrades and in arched blue glazing; in alloy beehive doorknobs and gleaming gold bootscrapers; in the birches themselves, placed like rows of flaming spears.
Utterly soulless, Briana thought. She found herself beginning to hate this place, without knowing precisely why. And then it dawned on her. She despised the conformity of it all. Hu’s palace had been called the mouth of Losoto in wry reference to its occupant’s phenomenal degree of consumption, among other things. If the palace was the mouth, then these buildings must surely be its teeth. Tall and white and uniform. Cleaned regularly.
She was still toying with ways to expand this metaphor when they arrived at the palace gates.
The gates were thirty feet high, thirty feet wide and three feet deep, a jungle of metal vines, flowers, thorns, and small creatures painted in a thousand colours. This was one of four entrances through the massive limestone walls that had once formed the old town boundary. They were also, Briana decided, the only gates in Losoto (and probably the world) that could actually induce despair. Despair that someone had actually designed them to look like this. Despair that someone else had wasted many tons of metal in their construction. And then yet more despair that such an extravagantly ugly creation had then been further debased by what looked like a paint fight. The sight of them now made her feel faintly nauseous. Every noble visitor and warlord who came here would see the same sight. It was like reaching the gates of vulgarity itself.
Thankfully, the palace guards waved her through with minimal delay. Even a buffoon like Hu knew better than to try her patience.
The gates closed behind her carriage and the imperial palace loomed ahead of her like a peach and gold mirage. Acres of gardens surrounded them, the floral sprays and whorls of lawn and box hedge dotted with finely carved dragon-bone gazebos and colonnades and statues of warriors and courtesans in chalcedony and pink quartz. Fountains glittered like broken crystal.
Songbirds shrilled and twittered in gilt wire cages hung from an ancient spreading yew.
Briana despised the sickly sweet beauty of it all. Real grandeur, she felt, could only be achieved through restraint.
But then they reached the Caxus Serpent and, as ever, she fell into silent awe.
The Caxus Serpent was the preserved corpse of an ancient sea snake, some three hundred feet long and twice as tall as a man at its thickest. These monstrous serpents pre-dated dragons and, indeed, were known to have been used as a template when the Unmer set about creating the modern beasts. The specimen before her now had been killed by one of Hu’s predecessors over eight hundred years ago. Columns of white alabaster held its great maw open and, as the carriage passed, Briana could look deep inside the creature’s gullet, where a hundred gem lanterns marked a sinuous path through its fossilized innards. There was, she knew, a small shrine in the snake’s tail – a carved statuette in the shape of an old and forgotten god that Hu’s antecedent had believed to be patron of the great snakes. They were hunted by emperors as a rite of passage, but also for ashko, the psychoactive drug extracted from their poison glands. The specimen before her now, Briana mused, would have contained enough ashko to get an entire empire high. And that was just a baby.
The carriage passed the snake and finally came to a halt on a red-brick piazza outside the main palace entranceway. Servants of the emperor helped Briana down, paid the driver, and ushered her on through the doors and into a vast antechamber of white and gold stone. Before her, a broad cascade of stairs rose to a circular gallery hung with hundreds of paintings and statuettes on quartz plinths. A second team of manicured youths arrived, headed by a powder-faced old cretin in an ivory frock coat and ruffs.
This man clutched a handkerchief in one upraised hand, as if cautious that the smell of Briana might offend him. He said, ‘His Highness Emperor Hu is presently attending a war council.’
‘Take me to him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the lackey replied in a tone that implied the very opposite. ‘But he cannot be disturbed.’
Briana huffed through her teeth. She spoke with slow, cold precision. ‘Do you know who I am?’
The servant smiled thinly. ‘It doesn’t matter—’
‘Answer my question.’
He shrugged. ‘I presume you are a Guild representative?’
‘I am the head of the Guild.’
His smile suddenly disappeared. ‘Miss Marks? Oh, I do beg your pardon. His Highness was not expecting you for weeks yet. Please, please, forgive me. I expect that the emperor would greatly value your input at the war council.’
‘I’m sure he would,’ she remarked. ‘If I ever make it there.’
‘Yes, of course.’ He bowed and fluttered his hands and then led her up the marble stairs to a circular vestibule that formed the jewel in the gallery’s ring. Painted images of Emperor Hu looked down upon them, oozing derision. Onwards they swept, through a sparkling corridor boasting a thousand silver mirrors, eventually arriving at a single golden door.
‘The council is within,’ he explained. ‘Please wait a moment while I inform His Highness of your presence.’
Briana ignored him and barged through.
She found herself in a vast hall with three tall windows overlooking the gardens. Before one such window, a group of people stood around an enormous map of the Anean peninsula set upon a carved oak table. The war council was rather more eclectic than Briana had prepared herself for. It comprised Emperor Hu, an admiral of the Imperial Navy, several officers and court advisers, half a dozen flouncing young noblemen who looked like poets or artists, together with what appeared to be a sizeable retinue of their friends, lovers or courtesans and at least twenty servants waiting at the far wall. In addition to all of these people were four of the emperor’s blind Samarol bodyguards and three score of foreign warlords. It didn’t look like a council so much as a carnival.
The warlords would not have looked amiss deserting a burning ship with armloads of loot and women. They wore necklaces of bones and beads or trinkets of glass and silver and leather skullcaps or wide-brimmed hats, printed head-scarves or turbans, beaded sword belts and amulets and they kept their hair in long braids dyed blood red and green or spun with coloured thread. Tattoos covered faces, arms, necks, knuckles and lips. Their jewellery clinked and gleamed. A riot of jewellery. Their mouths contained marginally less gold than the chandeliers above their heads and also teeth from men who were evidently not present.
‘You!’ the emperor cried, stabbing a finger at Briana.
‘A formidable deduction, Hu,’ Briana replied.
‘What are you doing here?’
The servant had followed her in and was about to make an announcement, when Briana pushed him aside with a raised hand and a warning glare. ‘I’m here,’ she said, turning back to Hu, ‘to make sure you don’t mess things up.’
The emperor reddened. Several of the warlords grinned.
Briana marched up to them and regarded the map table with disdain. ‘You have one chance, Hu,’ she said. ‘Hit Marquetta’s armada with everything you have. Crush it before it reaches land. Drown them all.’
‘Don’t tell me how to fight,’ Hu said. He gripped the table in both hands and fixed his gaze upon the map. ‘As a matter of fact, we won’t need to engage the Unmer at all.’
‘What?’
Hu pointed to the tip of the peninsula. ‘We merely need to station combat psychics here, and . . .’
‘You’re not using my psychics,’ Briana said.
‘They’re my psychics,’ Hu replied in a low dangerous tone. ‘I pay you well enough for them.’
‘Ianthe will simply kill them.’
Hu snorted. ‘Here we have the advantage of surprise.’
‘Surprise?’ she said, aghast. ‘What surpri
se?’
He said nothing, but the murderous glare he gave her was enough to make Briana suddenly regret having taken such a confrontational approach with him. Here before these foreign warlords he had everything to prove. And they themselves would not prevent him from courting disaster. Men such as these resented the empire. They guarded its boundaries and gathered taxes and for that they were given a certain degree of autonomy. But they knew that Hu would act quickly to crush dissent. If Briana was going to convince him, she had to be subtle.
She swallowed. ‘Ianthe’s powers are growing,’ she said. ‘The range at which she is capable of detecting and destroying a psychic’s mind is now greater than ever.’ She took a deep breath, mustering conviction for the lie she was about to tell. ‘And it’s no longer just Haurstaf who are vulnerable.’
Hu’s eyes narrowed.
‘Everyone here is in danger,’ Briana added.
‘She could destroy any of us?’ Hu said.
Briana nodded. ‘With a single thought.’ She paused to allow this misinformation to sink in. ‘That’s why the armada needs to be attacked at sea. As far from here as possible.’
The emperor studied her warily. ‘That strikes me as particularly convenient for you, Miss Marks,’ he said.
‘You think I’m lying?’
‘Actually, I do.’
‘Then I won’t waste any more time here,’ she said. ‘I’ll take my sisters and go.’
‘You are lying,’ Hu said. ‘And what’s more, I think you have threatened me for far too long, Miss Marks.’ He turned to his bodyguards. ‘Seize her.’
Two Samarol warriors rushed forward, their silver wolf’s head helmets grinning. They each grabbed one of Briana’s arms and held her firmly. She cried out, ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Your psychics are cowards,’ Hu said. ‘They are afraid to face the Unmer as long as Ianthe is with them. But they do not understand the value of tactics. They’re women, not warriors. I need to offer them some . . . what is the word?’
‘Discipline?’ one warlord ventured.
‘No.’