Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [124]
‘You can’t stay here,’ Briana said quietly.
‘Help me find them.’
‘Find what?’
‘The lenses, the spectacles.’
‘What?’
Ianthe gave a shriek of frustration. ‘Spectacles! Unmer spectacles!’
Briana glanced around her. There was a bed, a wardrobe, a chest and a large workbench under the stern windows that held an amazing assortment of telescopes, boxes, prisms, magnets and wires. Among all these objects she spotted a slender silver-frame pair of spectacles.
‘That’s them!’ Ianthe cried. She got to her feet, snatched the spectacles from the table and put them on with shaking hands. Then she stared at Briana. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now we can go.’
Night was encroaching by the time they sailed away. Clouds covered the stars, and the Mare Lux glimmered faintly like old brass in last rays of dusk. Briana stood on the Herald’s sterncastle and watched the icebreaker recede into the distance. It seemed to her that the abandoned ship was turning in the wind, its melted figurehead coming about to watch them depart. She smelled rain and lifted her face to the skies. Banks of thundercloud moved overhead, as dense and massive as continents. Lightning pulsed soundlessly across the far northern horizon and again, dimly, in the west. When she lowered her gaze again, the deadship had disappeared.
A few of the Herald’s crew were busy setting out basins and pots to collect rainwater from the expected storm. As she crossed the deck, Briana acknowledged their greetings with a few sullen nods. She didn’t stop to talk. What did she have to say to these people? She went below deck to the galley, where she filled a bowl with thrice-boiled shrimp and land kelp and poured two mugs of coffee. She put the lot on a tray and took it to Ianthe’s cabin.
The girl was lying on her bunk, still wearing her spectacles. She turned round as Briana came in.
‘Hungry?’ Briana said.
Ianthe ignored her.
Briana set the tray down on a small table beside the bunk, then sat down on the stool opposite. Steam rose from the bowl of shrimp, filling the cabin with the vaguely unpleasant aroma of detoxified seafood. The room was large and airy with freshly painted white clapboarding and a floor of crushed pearl. On the wall beside the wardrobe hung a painting of the Guild Palace at Awl – its black and pyrite towers and minarets in striking contrast to the deep greens of the surrounding forest. In the background rose the mountains that formed the spine of Irillia, their layered peaks blurring into a gaseous blue haze. Briana looked at the girl. ‘Must you wear those things?’
‘What do you care?’
‘Actually I do care. They’re Unmer, so they’re probably dangerous. I don’t want you running to me when your brain starts trickling out through your nose.’
Ianthe grunted.
Briana took a sip of her coffee. Gently, she reached out with her mind again, gliding across the abstract plane of the Harmonic Reservoir until she found the same glitch she’d discovered earlier. This time she approached more cautiously, stopping when she felt the pull of the void beyond. It wasn’t like touching the mind of another psychic, but more like exposing herself to a crack in the substance of perception itself. Beyond lay powerful forces, and yet they seemed raw and utterly mindless. It was like standing on the edge of an abyss with the wind howling at her back; another step and she’d lose herself completely. She backed away quickly, afraid to go further. Ianthe gave no sign that she’d even noticed Briana’s presence in that other realm. But she had noticed before, Briana recalled. Did you just do something?
‘Your father told me you’re good at finding trove,’ she said.
‘He’s not my father.’
‘He seemed to think he was.’
‘I don’t care what he thinks.’
Briana set her coffee down again. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Ianthe said. ‘I can’t read minds.’
‘Very few psychics are born with any demonstrable ability,’ Briana said. ‘It takes years of training to develop the