Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [175]
He hunched over the steering console, his feverish eyes darting to and fro as he used one brine-scarred hand to spin the controls erratically in order to keep the craft on an unpredictable course. In his other hand he clutched the grip of the Replicating Sword he’d taken from the transmitting station. He wore a suit of mechanical nerve armour that clicked and whirred softly whenever he moved. His belt held an assortment of small blades, pistols and other small artefacts. And he wore a blood-red crystal shield strapped across his back.
A series of concussions battered the chariot’s hull, knocking it momentarily off course. Smoke blotted the view screens and wafted in through the open hatchway. The engines howled and began to judder violently. Sparks erupted from the console. Granger shut down systems and readjusted the controls with lightning speed, the metal nerves in his mechanical suit compensating for the limits of his own tortured body. The shield on his back started to glow with alternating colours as it absorbed the smoke, using the sudden rise in entropy to energize its sorcerous portals.
As the fumes cleared, Granger spied the artillery position once again, now less than two hundred yards below him. Maskelyne’s man was frantically spinning the gun carriage wheel, trying to bring the cannon’s barrel round to bear on the rapidly approaching craft. But where was Maskelyne himself? Granger grinned. There. He spotted the metaphysicist fleeing for his life across the compound. Granger was going too fast to stop now, so he threw the craft sideways to intercept him.
The rock outcrop filled the view screens.
The chariot struck the ground like a meteor, exploding into a cloud of pulverized rock and metal.
Granger watched the impact from a spot several hundred yards above the compound. The seven simulacrums who stood in the forest around him watched it, too, but none of their positions offered him a better view of the events that had just occurred. It had all happened too quickly. He couldn’t see Maskelyne. But had he actually hit the man? He felt a sudden vibration in the grip of his sword, and his eighth simulacrum appeared. This copy of himself cricked his neck and flexed his shoulders. Good.
That made nine of him again.
He turned away and headed for the palace at a run.
Ianthe’s pain returned the moment she slipped back into her own body. She was lying on the floor. Her chest convulsed and she retched up blood. Every nerve felt shredded. Tears streaked her face. One of her eyes had swollen shut behind its lens, and through the other she saw Mara and his accomplice leaning over her.
‘I thought I’d lost you for a moment there,’ the torturer said. ‘My assistant was a little too eager.’ He scraped the chair through the blood on the floor and sat down. ‘Step one was less successful than I’d hoped,’ he said. ‘But I think we’ll see more results with step two.’
Ianthe tried to speak, but no words came out. Instead, she threw herself into the torturer’s mind.
The sight of her own ruined body lying on the floor sent a pang of despair through her heart. They had been beating her in her absence. Her legs and buttocks were dark with purple bruises. Her robe lay in bloody tatters around her. One of her arms was clearly broken, and lay at an odd angle against her chest. From the torturer’s perspective, she watched herself start to weep.
‘That’s much better,’ he said.
Ianthe reached out, as she had reached out into the Haurstaf minds, trying to embrace the whole of the torturer’s thoughts and emotions. But there was nothing there for her to sense. His human mind would not allow her inside.
‘We’re going to try something different now,’ Mara said. ‘I want to try to associate certain words I say to the particular sensation my assistant makes you feel when I say them. It’s like a game. The idea is to break down any previous associations you have already made with the words, so we can start anew.’ He sniffed and rubbed his hand under his nose, then