Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [172]
He crouched down beside her and spoke softly. ‘But I’m not like them, Ianthe. Can’t you see that I’m the only one who wants to understand you?’ He brushed back her hair. ‘I want to help you achieve something with your life. I’m finally giving you a purpose.’
She closed her eyes.
Mara sighed. ‘Again,’ he said.
While his men unloaded the trunk of gem lanterns from the wagon, Maskelyne went to explore the three earthen buildings within the cliff-side compound. The first held stores of food, water and ammunition. The second turned out to be a small barracks in which he found the gunnery sergeant asleep on his bunk, while two other soldiers played dice on top of a crate. Maskelyne nodded amicably. He tapped the metal door lightly and then ducked back outside and wandered over to the last building. Here he found a tidy chamber containing a single bed, table and chair, and a wardrobe full of pressed linen – evidently the captain’s quarters.
He returned to his men. ‘All good,’ he said. ‘Howlish deserves a medal.’
Mellor looked up from the contents of the trunk and inclined his head in the direction of the hut beside the barrier. ‘What about him?’
Maskelyne puffed out his cheeks. ‘It will have to be done quietly.’
One of the four others slipped a knife from his belt, but Maskelyne shook his head. ‘I’ll deal with it.’ He walked over to the hut and opened the door.
The soldier with the thin moustache was seated at his desk, writing out a report. He put his pencil down when Maskelyne came in.
‘Your gunnery sergeant wants a word,’ he said.
The soldier hissed. He got up and followed Maskelyne out. They walked over to the earthen bunker, whereupon the soldier ducked inside. Maskelyne pulled an ichusae from his jacket pocket, unplugged the stopper and tossed it into the building after the man. Then he closed the door and locked it with the padlock he kept in his other pocket.
‘Watch the door,’ he said to Mellor, ‘in case they try to shoot out the lock.’
His first officer nodded.
The men in the bunker screamed for the first six or seven minutes and then fell silent. Soon afterwards, an endless stream of brine flowed out through the gaps between the door and the frame. Countless gallons of the toxic water surged over the rocky ground and washed along the bottom of the palisade wall, before leaking through and cascading over the edge of the precipice in a honey-coloured waterfall.
‘So much for Awl,’ Mellor said.
‘All good things, Mr Mellor,’ Maskelyne replied.
As two of his men opened the trunk and began lifting out gem lanterns Maskelyne, Mellor and the others dismantled the wagon bed with crowbars. They ripped up planks from the floor, revealing the hidden compartment where they had stored the gas tanks and cutting torches. And then they carried the lot over to the cannon.
Ianthe lacked the courage to return to her body and so she drifted in a sea of ghosts. She floated through a darkness patterned by the things that other people saw. She was a passenger, riding in carriages that didn’t belong to her, a thief who stole moments from other people’s lives, and that knowledge filled her with shame. Deep down she knew that Mara was right. The world she inhabited had never embraced her. She’d never really been a part of it. She would return to him in time and beg him to end her life quickly. By sifting through the wreckage of her life, they might even find some purpose.
But not yet. Her fear held her back, even as it deepened her shame. And so she wandered on through the darkness, a ghost afraid of her own death. She saw the Haurstaf scattered throughout their grand palace, the thousands in the woodland camps outside and the nebulous haze of the millions in the world beyond. She drifted down through the unseen spaces between occupied rooms, past the bright arena of the Unmer rat maze and down to the glass-roofed suites in the foundations.
She found him kneeling on the floor beside his bed, sobbing into his hands. Scraps of a letter littered the