Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [4]
Strong hands gripped her, pulled her up. ‘Relax, ma’am. It’s only your ankle.’
The itching became a strange prickling sensation. Ida’s heartbeat quickened.
She heard Creedy’s voice. ‘That wasn’t our fault. Hu can’t blame us for breaking that.’
‘There she is,’ said another man. ‘She’s splashing through the stuff.’
The prickling sensation in Ida’s foot intensified. She began to shiver with fear. Was this shock? How long did she have before her skin began to change? ‘I need fresh water,’ she said. ‘I need to—’
‘The guns aren’t working, sir. Our shots don’t have enough mass. We’re going to have to overwhelm her.’
Ida pulled off her slipper and stared at her ankle. She couldn’t see any damage yet, but the skin on her heel felt like it was tightening over the bones inside.
‘. . . for something her size?’
‘Five or six tons. But, like I said, it’s a hell of a risk. Hu is still looking for an excuse to bury us. A hole in his city pretty much fits that bill.’
Ida tried to swallow her revulsion, but visions of sharkskin assailed her. Was she turning into one of the Drowned? She felt nauseous, dizzy, as though racked by the effects of some hideous drug. The Trove Market whirled around her in glittering wheels of gold and silver. She leaned over and vomited.
From nearby came a long low wail. The sharkskin woman lying at the bottom of the smashed tank was beginning to dry out. She was writhing about, scooping up brine and rubbing it into her leathery grey flesh. Ida tore her gaze away from the unfortunate creature. Her own ankle was nipping quite fiercely now. So soon? She needed fresh water to clean the wound. She searched around frantically for something, somewhere. . . .
‘Take Swan and Tummel and find the breach. It’ll be a small hole, child-sized. If we scare her enough we might just manage to steer her back there.’
‘We’re supposed to kill any escapees. Hu was very specific about that.’
‘Emperor Hu is not here.’
‘Right, sir.’
‘Creedy, you’re with me.’
‘They can’t blame us for that mess, can they, sir?’
‘Ma’am?’
Ida looked up.
The colonel was holding out a bottle. ‘It’s wine,’ he said.
She gazed at him dumbly.
‘Use it on your ankle. It’ll help.’
Ida took the bottle and poured pink wine over her ankle. Had her skin already begun to toughen and change? Wasn’t that a patch of grey, there, on the side of her heel? Hurriedly, she massaged the wine into her foot, then felt a jab of panic as her fingers began to itch. ‘Colonel,’ she began.
But the colonel did not reply. He was looking past her.
A hundred paces beyond the smashed tank stood a man. He was aiming a bow at the colonel. He was dressed up like a noble from a bygone era: a jewel-studded black jerkin spun about with a platinum sash, black breeches over white hose and sandals of soft dark leather. Rouge coloured his cheeks, but the powdered make-up did little to dampen the sharpness of his features. His out-thrust chin and dagger-like nose were too severe to be considered handsome. He wore his long grey hair in a tight plait pulled back from his face and he glared at them with sharp violet eyes. Ida found him strangely mesmerizing. He seemed somehow more solid than the world around him, a fixed point in a spinning world. She felt her nausea diminish.
The Unmer child had her arms wrapped around the bowman’s leg.
And behind them both stood a berserker dragon.
The beast was small for its species, perhaps sixty feet from its snout to the tip of its tail. It wore a suit of glazed white armour chased with silver, each plate exquisitely shaped to hug its serpentine body and its short, powerful limbs. Shards of crystal glinted on its gauntlets and again on its long, tapered helmet, wherein burned blood-red eyes.