Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [123]
Briana turned to Howlish. ‘Just get them all aboard.’
‘Very good, ma’am.’
‘May I ask where you’re heading?’ Maskelyne said.
‘Awl,’ Briana replied.
Maskelyne frowned. ‘I don’t suppose you could drop us off at Scythe Island? I’d make it worth your while.’
She gave him a thin smile.
‘That’s what I thought.’
Evacuation of the deadship continued until after dark. Three of the Herald’s crew escorted the metaphysicist and his family to a stateroom, where their needs were to be attended to under armed guard. Maskelyne’s wife Lucille began to sob. Her relief at departing that derelict vessel was palpable. The boy, Jontney, simply watched everything with quiet wonder. Maskelyne’s crewmen were herded into the brig, although they seemed much less dissatisfied with their new accommodation than any of its former occupants. Howlish ordered his mariners to strip the ironclad of anything valuable and stow it in their own hold.
Ianthe was a problem. The girl seemed determined to remain on the deadship. She struggled against her two captors, scratching and trying to bite them until they restrained her thoroughly. Even then she wouldn’t stop screaming.
Briana fired a mental blast directly at the girl, a wordless surge of anger that should have stunned a trained psychic. It was enough to stress the entire Haurstaf telepathic network, eliciting moans of pain and fright from every corner of the empire. Ianthe, however, did not appear to notice it. Briana stood and watched the girl for a long moment, this furious crow-haired child. Have I made a mistake? She reached out with her mind again, more tentatively this time, hoping to sense the source of the girl’s anguish. At first she perceived nothing at all, just the featureless plane of human consciousness around her – a place known to Guild witches as the Harmonic Reservoir, where ripples of Haurstaf thought could resonate undetected by the great mass of humanity in the depths below. And then she noticed a glitch, an almost imperceptible fracture in the surface of these perfect waters. The reservoir was cracked. Curious, Briana pushed her thoughts towards that tiny imperfection . . .
Suddenly she was on the brink of falling. There was nothing to grab hold of – no emotions, no thoughts at all, just a dark and bottomless void below the sea, a vacuum that seemed to want to drag the Haurstaf witch inside.
Briana recoiled.
She found herself standing on the Herald’s deck once more, clutching Howlish’s arm to steady herself. She had never sensed anything like that before. It was like a force of nature, a storm, but without wind or substance – an abyss.
‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ Howlish asked.
Briana couldn’t answer. She was still fumbling to locate her own wits. What had just happened? She raised her head to find Ianthe gazing at her with a curiously detached look in her eyes.
‘Did you just do something?’ the girl said.
Briana swallowed, then took a deep breath. Her thoughts still spun. That break in the reservoir had been so tiny she might easily have overlooked it, and yet it had contained a space so vast it had overwhelmed her. ‘We’re not trying to harm you,’ she said.
‘Then let me go,’ Ianthe said. ‘Get these idiots off me!’
Briana nodded to the Guild sailors, who released the girl.
Ianthe bolted immediately. She ran back across the boarding ramp onto the Unmer ship. Briana watched her go with mute incomprehension, before she realized what was happening. She cursed and raced after the girl.
‘Ianthe, wait!’
The girl reached the sterncastle hatch, threw it open and plunged inside.
Moments behind, Briana hurried down the steps after the girl. She found herself in a narrow wooden space with doors leading off both sides. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom – and then she spotted Ianthe stumbling along the passageway ahead, her hands held out like those of a blind woman trying to feel her way. The girl reached a door at the end of the passageway and burst through it.
This door led to the