Alan Campbell - Sea Of Ghosts

Ianthe could sense large numbers of people behind each of the doors. Her inner vision fluttered with the lights of their perceptions: a hundred of them, maybe more. And yet she held back in spite of all her nervous excitement – forcing her mind to remain in her own body. She was about to witness the Haurstaf’s greatest secret with her own eyes.

Briana opened the door.

Ianthe’ first impression of the chamber beyond was that it was upside down. Light poured into the room through huge slabs of glass set into the floor. These panes were all of various shapes and sizes: squares and oblongs and long strips. In the centre of the room stood a tall, thin wooden structure, like a small watchtower or an improbably large high-chair. A ladder on the near side gave access to a cushioned seat at its summit. Upon this sat a young witch in plain white robes. She had been peering down into the glass floor below her but now glanced up as Briana and Ianthe entered.

‘Any mischief?’ Briana asked.

The witch on the high-chair did not reply.

‘Verbally,’ Briana said

The other woman cast a curious glance at Ianthe. ‘Not in here,’ she said. ‘But we had an incident in suite seven.’

‘Who was in the chair?’

The younger woman shrugged. ‘Some new girl. She overreacted.’

‘Did the prisoner survive?’

‘Sort of.’

As Briana and Ianthe approached, Ianthe looked down through the glass pane under her feet. Below lay a bedroom, as richly furnished as any other in the palace, with silken sheets and plump pillows on the bed, Evensraum rugs on the floor. Paintings and tapestries adorned the walls, giving the room a rather stately feel. One of the two doors led to a bathroom, with a smaller glass pane for a ceiling. Ianthe walked over it and found herself gazing down at a huge copper bathtub with a matching sink. The other bedroom door opened into an enormous lounge, also roofed with glass. Through this pane, Ianthe could see a young man reclining on a red settee, reading a book. He glanced up at her without expression, before returning his attention to the pages. To the right of the lounge lay a small library containing a writing desk flanked by bookshelves. The witch’s high-chair allowed her to look down into any of the rooms below.

Briana stood directly over the man in the lounge. She tapped her heel against the floor and said, ‘How is the prince today?’

The young man yawned, but didn’t look up.

‘He’s been ignoring me for months now,’ said the witch in the high-chair. ‘Not so much as a glance.’

‘But you must be used to that,’ Briana said. ‘A face like yours. ..’

The witch did not reply.

Ianthe walked across the glass floor. She couldn’t take her eyes off the young man. He couldn’t have been much older than her, and yet he appeared so much more relaxed and confident in his surroundings. A touch of arrogance, even? He was clearly aware of the women in the chamber above him, but chose to dismiss them, casually turning the pages of his book with long white fingers. He had a pale, slightly effeminate face framed by an unruly mop of hay-coloured hair, and he wore a flamboyant smoking jacket of red velvet trimmed with gold.

‘He hasn’t been leucotomized,’ Ianthe said.

Briana looked up. ‘We couldn’t do that to the king’s son. It wouldn’t be civil.’ She glanced down again. ‘Not as long as he behaves himself.’

An Unmer prince? It seemed odd to think of the Unmer having a kingdom of their own.

‘The first emperors tried for years to devise a physical prison to contain the Unmer,’ Briana said. ‘No psychics, no monitoring, just walls. They submerged their prisons under the sea. They used chains and cables to suspend them over pits.’ She paced the glass floor, watching the young man below. ‘Nothing worked.’

‘Wouldn’t they just fall through the ground at the bottom of the pit?’ Ianthe asked.

‘Oh, they can keep that up for a while,’ Briana replied. ‘Fifty feet into solid rock, a hundred feet, maybe more. But there’s a limit to the amount of matter they can destroy before they get tired. Sooner or later, the fall catches up with them.’ She stopped pacing. ‘No, that wasn’t the problem. The problem wasn’t what they destroyed, but what they made when you weren’t watching them.’

‘Trove,’ Ianthe said.

‘They’ll sit for days over a chunk of stone or scrap of metal, running their fingers over it, chanting and muttering to themselves. It’s almost as if they’re praying. And when they’ve finished, the piece of stone or metal isn’t a piece of stone or metal any more.’

‘So you watch them all the time?’

‘For their own protection,’ Briana said. ‘Otherwise we’d have to kill them.’ She tapped her heel against the glass floor again. ‘Isn’t that right, Marquetta?’

The young man continued to ignore her.

Briana’s lips narrowed, and all of a sudden Ianthe sensed something in the air around her – a reverberation like a musical note too low to hear. The young man in the room below cried out suddenly. He dropped his book, clamped both hands against his temples and rolled over in agony.

‘Their minds are like wine glasses,’ Briana said. ‘Easy to crack, easy to shatter.’

‘Stop it!’ Ianthe cried.

Briana exhaled, and the sensation in the air abruptly disappeared. Down below, the young man slumped forward and held his face in his hands. He was breathing heavily, his shoulders trembling slightly.

Briana turned to Ianthe and smiled. ‘Now let’s go find you one to practise on,’ she said.

Dear Lucille,

Let’s not be under any doubt that some trumped-up, officious envelope-steamer who has been awarded her pointless role within the Haurstaf due to a lack of any real psychical ability will have read this letter before it reached you. If said person realizes the truth of that statement, and if she is insecure enough to feel threatened by it, she will undoubtedly wield what little power she possesses by immediately utilizing her censoring pen. However, upon realizing her pettiness was predicted, she should then feel embarrassed enough to wish to destroy the entire letter.

But she won’t.

She won’t do this because I coated the envelope in a fast-acting anemone poison capable of being absorbed through the skin. Our envelope-steamer will be dead in minutes. I have arranged for the letter itself to be removed from her corpse by a highly paid accomplice, who will pass it on to you, my dear, in a plain blue, non-toxic envelope. If the envelope containing this missive was not blue, then something has gone fearfully wrong, and I apologize.

I miss you and Jontney terribly. Awl Palace is an empty shell without you here. There is an academy – in which our vicious little trove-hunter has been enrolled – and a modicum of artefacts for me to study. The sisters float around in their robes as aimlessly as whiffs of cloud, soaking up gossip from the ends of the world. They have no interest the greater mysteries of life, but, like the majority of their sex, are content to twitter vacuously among themselves. It’s a blessing I cannot hear telepathic conversation, for every spoken conversation I have overheard eventually leans towards the subject of hair.

Briana Marks is different. She is cruelly unsubtle, but clever, and finds deep enjoyment in the power games between her own organization and the empire. A woman like her expects to find treachery in every shadow. Sadly, because of her distrust I have failed to impress upon her the importance of my work.

Nevertheless, I believe I have achieved a major breakthrough in my understanding of the Unmer’s source of power. If I cannot convince Sister Marks of the importance of this, I must leave at once for Losoto to gain an audience with Emperor Hu. Be ready, Lucille. I will soon come for you both.