Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [157]
Sister Ulla shook her head, but her two companions looked at each other for a few moments. ‘There’s no going back if you decide to take that route,’ one of them said. ‘She’ll be bound to us for good or ill.’
Briana made a face. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic, Bethany,’ she said. ‘We can always kill her later.’ She moved her lips close to Ianthe’s ear. ‘I’m joking. But your acceptance into the Guild will have other consequences. Maskelyne will be executed for his crimes.’
Ianthe looked up at her for a long moment. ‘What about his wife? His son?’
Briana looked surprised. ‘You want them dead, too?’
‘No, I mean—’
‘We must protect our family from the Maskelynes of this world,’ the witch said. ‘Family is important, don’t you think?’
Ianthe’s eyes filled with tears again. She nodded.
Briana extended her hand. ‘Then come with me.’
What happened next happened quickly. Ianthe found herself whisked away from that room. Briana Marks led her on through the palace, through glassy black corridors and halls and rooms where women Ianthe did not know looked on in grim silence. They descended one stairwell and then a second and a third and a fourth, until Ianthe lost count and it seemed to her that they must be deep with the earth itself. Finally they came to a nondescript door in a small stone antechamber. Briana turned a key in the lock.
They stepped out onto a balcony set high on one wall of an enormous, brightly lit chamber – one of four platforms connected by a cruciform steel catwalk. Thousands of gem lanterns depended from the vaulted ceiling overhead, filling the entire space with harsh white light. Below the catwalk lay a maze of roofless concrete cells, each about six feet to a side. Hundreds of small openings, barely large enough for a man to squeeze through, connected each cell to one or more of its neighbours in a seemingly haphazard fashion. Ianthe strolled to the edge of the balcony and looked down. A network of pipes suspended beneath the catwalk fed an array of shower heads, one located above each cell. Their purpose was presumably to wash the occupants below.
Hundreds of Unmer filled that grey labyrinth, either alone in a cell or gathered together in small groups. All were naked and painfully thin. They slouched against the bare walls or sat on the floors or lay sleeping. The murmur of conversation gradually ceased as they became aware of their observers in the gallery above.
‘It used to be a mental faculty test,’ Briana said, her voice echoing far across the chamber, ‘but we ended up using the place to store the breeding stock. They’re all leucotomized, of course, so security isn’t much of an issue here. Food can be thrown down, filth washed away, and we use acid to direct test subjects to the gate for removal.’
Ianthe’s throat grew dry. They were all looking up at her.
‘The leucotomy procedure allows them privacy,’ Briana said. ‘We don’t need psychics to monitor them constantly.’
‘They look so miserable.’
‘Misery is the price of freedom,’ Brian replied. ‘We can’t have them walking through walls or vanishing matter at will. They’re happy enough. Come now, I’ll take you to the zoo.’ She set off across the catwalk at a brisk pace.
Ianthe hesitated. ‘The zoo?’
‘That’s where we keep the able-minded ones,’ the witch called back.
Ianthe waited a moment longer, then ran after her. The catwalk rattled under her boots. She kept her gaze level, afraid to look down at the pitiful creatures below. She caught up with Briana just as she reached the opposite balcony. Briana unlocked another door and ushered her into a corridor lit by gem lanterns recessed behind copper mesh. A door at the end of this passage led to yet another stairwell, which descended even further beneath the earth.
By the time they reached the bottom, Ianthe was quite out of breath. They had reached a circular chamber with walls clad in blood-coloured seawood inlaid with curlicues of copper. Recessed lanterns