Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [110]
She was still on the ship, but now it had returned to its former decrepit state. Warped iron, ash, the blackened, rusted tower. But these men . . . ? She had returned to the present, and these sailors standing around her were not Unmer, but Maskelyne’s own crew. From this borrowed viewpoint she spied the first officer, Mellor, gripping her in his arms, while another sailor passed her spectacles over to Maskelyne himself. Four other men looked on.
Maskelyne put the spectacles on and stood for a long moment, gazing around him. Finally he took them off again and stared down at them grimly. ‘Unmer memories,’ he said. ‘How long have you been wearing these? Do you even understand the danger?’
‘Give them back,’ she yelled.
Maskelyne just looked at her. ‘They don’t belong to you, young lady.’
Ianthe held her tongue.
Maskelyne studied her for a while longer, as if weighing something up in his mind. At last he said, ‘You’ve been trying to harm my son.’
Ianthe snorted. ‘What?’
‘Scheming,’ he went on. ‘Ever since you’ve been aboard, you’ve been scheming, planning the murder of a child.’
‘You killed my mother!’
Maskelyne’s brow’s rose. And then he frowned. ‘Who told you that, Ianthe? It’s not true.’
‘Liar.’
Maskelyne glanced at Officer Mellor, who just shrugged. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he sighed. ‘Over the side with her, I suppose?’
‘She’s too valuable,’ Maskelyne replied. He sighed and tapped the spectacles against his leg. ‘Do you suppose Roberts could fashion some stocks from the packing crates?’
‘Stocks, sir?’
‘Head and wrists. You know the sort of thing.’
Mellor nodded.
‘Strip her,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Put her in the stocks, and let each of the men have their way with her. God knows, we could all use something to lighten the mood a bit round here.’ He looked wearily at the spectacles in his hand. ‘Clean her up once they’re done and lock her in her cabin.’
Mellor hesitated. ‘Sir?’
Maskelyne’s expression darkened. ‘I gave you an order, First Officer.’
Ianthe’s heart was thumping. Her limbs felt numb. She wanted to cry, but no tears came. Mellor started to drag her away, and for a moment she lost sight of herself.
Not one of Maskelyne’s men was looking at her.
Granger looked out of the port window. The Ethugran pursuit ships were little more than a smudge of smoke on the western horizon. None of them had been able to match the Excelsior’s speed across open water. Granger himself had scarcely been able to believe the rate of knots she’d accomplished. He turned his attention to the shimmering sea ahead. Maskelyne’s fortress sat atop Scythe Island’s quartz cliffs like a crown. A faint mauve aura surrounded it, as though it had been built from whisperglass. Below the sheer rocky drop at its base, a private wharf extended from a sparkling crescent of beach. The industrial harbour and dredging operation would be tucked into the shadows just around the headland, momentarily out of sight.
Air exposure had dried out and toughened Granger’s skin. His hair had fallen out, and his eyes smouldered like embers in the grey wasteland of his face. Occasionally he’d catch a glimpse of himself in the chromic sheen of a chronograph or some other ship’s instrument, and it seemed to him that he looked like a man clad entirely in old leather armour. At other times he perceived himself as some hideous golem, a thing spawned from the depths of the earth itself. His own flesh creaked when he moved. His joints continued to throb dully and remained stiff enough to impede his movement. But he didn’t care. He was alive. His muscles still worked. His brain still worked. And Maskelyne wasn’t yet dead.
There was no way to approach the island without being seen, so Granger set a direct course. He slid he throttle forward again, and the emperor’s yacht responded with a powerful surge of her engines.
As he took the Excelsior around the headland, the island’s main deepwater docks, whale-oil factory and shipyard came