Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts (25 page)

The administrator who greeted her had a deformed spine and walked like a man forced to drag an invisible burden around with him. He moved by sliding one foot forward and then dragging his other foot along the ground after it. He had a prominent nose like a great knuckle of bone, and eyebrows like clods of wool under his white horsehair wig. He seemed so much older and mustier than the others, if such a thing was possible. ‘Sister Briana Marks,’ he said. ‘Such a pleasure – indeed, an honour – to welcome you to our proud city.’ He spoke infuriatingly slowly, crawling over his syllables in a singsong voice. ‘My name is Administrator Grech, and I am wholly at your service. If there is anything I can do for you, anything at all, it will be my. . . er . . . pleasure and honour.’

Briana detested his manner at once. ‘I’ve no intention of staying in this ghastly place a moment longer than is absolutely necessary,’ she said. ‘I’m here to see a prisoner, one Thomas Granger – former colonel of the Gravediggers.’

‘Ah yes,’ Grech muttered. ‘Oh dear.’

Briana glared at him with impatience. Verbal exchanges could be so tedious.

‘We responded to your message immediately,’ he added. ‘But I fear your man-o’-war had already departed Losoto.’

The other officials stood around in silence, waiting in the baking heat. Averley Plaza was so quiet Briana fancied she could hear the roar of distant fires within the sun.

‘Alas,’ Grech said. ‘Fate has been cruel to both of us. Had we known of your wishes earlier, we would have striven to accommodate them.
Striven
, Sister Marks, for you know that Ethugra has always been a loyal friend to the Haurstaf, and one must—’

‘Get to the point, you hideous little man.’

‘His execution is scheduled for three days hence.’

‘His trial, you mean?’

‘Trial, yes. As you say.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m well aware of that. The verdict means little enough to me. Colonel Granger has information I require. I’ll see him now.’

Grech cringed. ‘Alas, alas. But we have had word from the Imperial Palace. When Emperor Hu learned that the leader of the Gravediggers had been captured, he decided in his great wisdom to sit in judgement on the case himself.’

‘Hu is coming
here
?’

‘He has cut short his stay at the summer palace and is sailing from Losoto as we speak. We are deeply honoured.’ Grech wrung his hands. ‘But, and forgive me if I say alas again, but he has ordered that no one be permitted to see the prisoner until the trial.’

Briana looked at him coolly. ‘Did he know
I
was coming here?’

Grech bowed so low he seemed to fold in on himself. ‘Assuredly not, your graciousness, but—’

‘Then obviously the orders don’t apply to me.’

The administrator cringed. ‘His instructions were
very
clear. My life would be forfeit if I failed to carry them out.’

‘That’s fine with me. We’ll see the colonel after lunch.’

Grech’s lips quivered. ‘I beg you to wait, madame. Two or three days more, and Hu will be here himself.’ He reached toward the sleeve of her dress then stopped himself and wrung his hands again. ‘Please accept my hospitality in the meantime. My wife’s mother is from Awl, she’ll cook for you herself.’

‘God, how awful.’

He stood there with a pleading look in his eyes. Briana sighed. She would have had it out with Hu right now if the emperor kept a telepath on his ship. She looked at Grech again. ‘Your hospitality had better be exceptional.’

‘Everything I have is yours.’

‘You’d better hope that it’s enough.’

‘He looks at me strangely,’ Maskelyne said. ‘It’s almost as if there’s someone else in there.’

The moment he said this, Jontney lowered his eyes and went back to his toys. Maskelyne found this all the more disconcerting. His son looked like a normal two-year-old, but his perception of his environment seemed altogether more
mature
. Maskelyne had the distinct impression that the little boy was very much aware of what his father had just said and had tried to disguise that knowledge. Jontney banged his toy dragon against the floor.

Doctor Shaw frowned.

‘Those bruises are self-inflicted,’ Maskelyne said. ‘We found him twisting his arms through the bars of his cot, howling with pain.’

‘I see.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘No, I mean, of course.’

The doctor rummaged through his satchel, avoiding eye-contact with Maskelyne. He appeared to be looking for something, but then changed his mind. He reached down and pressed a hand against the boy’s forehead. ‘No fever.’

Jontney bit his hand.

Shaw cursed and jerked away, knocking his satchel over. Phials, bandages, clamps and pincers spilled out across the floor. ‘And no lack of vitality,’ he added, scooping everything back into the case.

The playroom was evidence of that. Great mounds of toys of every shape and colour covered the floor: manatees and cloth jellyfish and boats carved from real wood, soldier dolls and brightly lacquered houses and wagons, clatter-clatters and sponge throws, pyramids,stack-rings,thrumwhistles,bricklets,woof-woofs,huckle-henrys, twistees, wibble-wobbles and a hundred other objects still known by the idiot names the Losotan shopkeepers had given them. The bastardized vernacular irked Maskelyne, but he bought the toys – mountains of them – for Jontney. He could not refuse his son anything.

And dragons of course. Most of all Jontney loved his dragons.

‘I have a tincture we might try,’ Doctor Shaw said, although he looked as doubtful now as he did when he came in. Evidently he could see nothing wrong with the child. ‘To calm his riotous airs,’ he added with a nod.

‘What is in the tincture?’ Maskelyne inquired.

The doctor waved his hand. ‘Oh, the usual. Kelp and leech-blend and such.’

Maskelyne sighed. ‘Very well.’

Doctor Shaw produced a spoon and a medicine bottle from his satchel. He filled the spoon with dark green liquid and, with surprising deftness, manhandled it into the child’s mouth. Jontney looked startled. He coughed, and his eyes welled with tears. Then he lifted his small fist. He was holding something shiny.

In that awful moment, Maskelyne saw that it was a scalpel.

Jontney plunged the blade into the doctor’s thigh.

The doctor cried out and struck the child with the back of his hand. Jontney reddened and began to wail. Blood was streaming from the doctor’s leg, covering the rug, the toys. His face whitened with shock. He clamped his hands over the wound and exclaimed, ‘He cut me, he
cut
me.’

Maskelyne just scooped his son up into his arms and carried him out, leaving the doctor fumbling in his satchel for bandages and alcohol.

He found Lucille in the morning parlour. She glanced up at him and smiled, then she saw Jontney, and her smile withered. She stood up.

‘Take him,’ Maskelyne said.

‘What happened?’

‘He’s fine,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘Just frightened. I need to take care of the doctor.’ He dumped his son into Lucille’s arms.

‘He’s covered in blood.’

‘It’s not his blood!’

‘Ethan!’

But he was already hurrying away. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he called, and slammed the door after him.

On his way back to the playroom he stopped at the armoury.

Racks and cabinets packed with Unmer weapons filled every wall. There were swords of blue and yellow poison-glass and burning-glass with wicked amber edges, seeing knives of the type used by Emperor Hu’s blind bodyguards, carbine weapons and hand-cannons for launching sorcerous or cursed missiles, devices that drank blood and whispered or screamed spells and Unmer war songs, jewelled dragon harnesses and mirrored armour, black stone armour and platinum runic plate, death vision helmets and torcs and rings of every conceivable warrior’s nightmare. Ten score objects sparkled in the gloom, treasures salvaged from drowned battlefields across the world. And every single piece of it exacted some horrible price from the wielder or wearer, what the Unmer would refer to as
Balance
.

Maskelyne opened a mahogany box full of silver pins, each with a crystal head of a different colour. He shifted through them carefully, selected one and held it up. A faint blue light shone from the tiny translucent sphere. He listened to the crystal for a moment and shivered.

Suitable payment.

Doctor Shaw was still in the playroom. He had bound his thigh with bandages and was in the process of easing his breeches back on over his wound. He looked up nervously when Maskelyne entered. ‘A high-spirited lad,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I should have kept a more careful eye on my satchel.’

‘Indeed, you should have,’ Maskelyne said.

The doctor’s throat bobbed. He moistened his lips. ‘Give him a spoonful of medicine a day for seven days. That ought to sort him out.’

Maskelyne produced the pin with a flourish. ‘Your payment, sir.’

‘No payment necessary,’ the doctor said.

‘But I insist,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘I’m not much of a collector, Mr Maskelyne.’

‘It’s an alchemist’s pin. Would you like to see how it works?’

The doctor looked uncertain.

Maskelyne approached him and held the pin over the doctor’s wounded thigh. It began to thrum in his hand. The crystal head changed from blue to gold and then finally began to glow white. ‘The Unmer used these to sterilize wounds,’ he explained.

The doctor frowned. He gazed at his wound for a long moment, then touched the bandages tentatively. ‘That’s . . . extraordinary,’ he said. ‘The pain has gone.’

‘Now watch.’ Maskelyne pushed the pin straight into the doctor’s leg.

Doctor Shaw flinched and began to protest, but then he stopped. ‘I feel nothing at all,’ he said.

Maskelyne nodded. ‘That’s because the nerves are dead.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can’t you feel the numbness spreading along your leg?’

The doctor looked suddenly worried. He pinched the pin between his thumb and forefinger and tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge. A look of desperation came into his eyes. ‘What is it doing to me?’

Maskelyne smiled. ‘These pins were the precursors to ichusae sorcery,’ he said. ‘They change one substance into another substance. Brine changes flesh into sharkskin. An alchemist’s pin is far less subtle. It alters the minerals in your blood.’

‘What?’ The doctor seized the pin head and pulled with all his strength, but it remained firmly embedded in place. A strange cracking sound came from his leg. He gave a short yelp. ‘What substance? What’s happening to me?’

‘Are you familiar with starfish, Doctor?’

The doctor’s eyes were wild.

‘When one severs the limb of a starfish,’ Maskelyne said, ‘it simply grows a new one. But the interesting thing is that the severed limb grows into a new starfish. Now, are those two starfish different organisms, or are they actually the same creature?’

‘What?’

‘The Unmer believe that mankind is a single organism,’ Maskelyne went on, ‘that every man and woman is merely a part of the same creature. And when we breed, we create new parts of that same creature, like branches on a tree. So sex is actually asexual – it’s simply the method by which the whole . . .
human entity
grows. Do you understand?’

‘Help me,’ the doctor said, ‘please.’

‘If you believe that – and there are days when I
do
believe it,’ Maskelyne explained, ‘then an assault on a child is an assault on the father and the mother, and on every other living person. It’s an attack against
mankind
itself.’

The doctor stared at him in fear and disbelief. ‘Assault?’

‘You struck my child.’

‘But I meant no harm.’

Maskelyne shrugged. ‘You
caused
harm.’

Now the doctor’s gaze searched the ground. He was trying to comprehend this. ‘But now
you’re
hurting
me
,’ he said. ‘It’s the same thing.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Maskelyne admitted. ‘But it’s too late now.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I wonder if we could justify your death if we assume that mankind isn’t a single organism, but is actually
two
organisms. That way, I could be part of one . . . and you could be part of the other.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, that works. You die, while I maintain the moral high ground.’

‘What? You’re completely insane.’

Maskelyne sat down beside him. ‘You’re not a psychiatrist are you, doctor?’

Shaw shook his head.

‘No, I didn’t think you were.’

‘Please . . .’ The doctor was gasping now, trying to move his rapidly stiffening leg. ‘Stop this.’

‘Can’t be done,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Your blood is changing.’

The doctor grabbed his trouser leg and pulled it up. Green crystals had already begun to form on his skin. He let out a wail. ‘Changing into
what
?’

‘Exactly what it looks like,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Your widow is going to be a very rich woman.’