Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [81]
Trumpets blared again, now joined by the marching crackle of snare drums.
The crowd around Briana cheered.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Briana reached for her poppy water, but someone bumped into her, and she lost the tiny bottle amidst the scuffling feet. It clattered away before she could reclaim it. She fired out a mental warning as powerful as a cannon blast and heard cries of protest from Haurstaf halfway around the world. But not one of the shrieking imbeciles around her paid her any notice. These jailers had skulls as thick as iron, as insensitive as the corpses of the Drowned along the waterfront.
Administrator Grech turned to her and grinned. ‘Heavenly, isn’t it?’
‘A ship like that says a lot about the man who commissions it,’ Briana retorted.
‘Indeed, indeed,’ Grech replied with good humour. ‘Marvellous.’
‘Crass.’
Her reply was lost amidst the general bustle. Grech nodded feverishly.
The emperor’s dragon-hunter docked alongside the Haurstaf man-o’-war. Briana could see Hu’s Samarol bodyguard lining the forecastle, their silver wolf helmets grinning like tribal totems. Now trombones and whale horns joined the chorus of trumpets and drums. The crowd applauded, whistled, waved in response. Bugles shrilled and bass drums began a booming roll as the whole cacophony reached its raucous climax.
And then the ship’s guns fired.
Briana almost dropped to the ground in panic, before she realized that the crowd was cheering even more frantically.
And as her heart calmed, she realized that the Excelsior’s cannons had not been loaded with shells after all. The air was full of silver and gold sparkles. The ship had fired a barrage of foil confetti.
The music ceased abruptly. As the last of the confetti settled over the plaza, the emperor’s Samarol bodyguard began moving down the gangplank. Blind to a man, each of the twenty assassin slaves clutched Unmer seeing knives in their mailed fists, using these uncanny weapons to find their way. Some claimed those blades could see intent and give their owners unnatural reflexes, but Briana had never been able to verify this. No Haurstaf had been able to wield one without lapsing into madness.
When the Samarol had formed a semi-circle around the gangplank, the emperor himself appeared.
Hu was dressed in golden battle-armour. Upon his head he wore a crown of crystallized dragon eyes set in copper. His long red cape was Unmer-made, woven from the silk of Mare Regis spiders, and it fluttered strangely behind his shoulders in the dead air, lifted by a breeze that did not seem to be present. At his side he wore the Transient Sword, a Valcinder copy of the legendary lost Unmer weapon, but striking nonetheless. Its lacquered steel blade was tangerine in colour and festooned with holes supposedly made by void flies, although Briana suspected that particular flaw was merely an affectation engineered by the smiths.
The emperor strolled down the gangplank. ‘Sister Marks,’ he said brightly. ‘Whatever are you doing here?’
She smiled flatly. ‘I’ve been a guest of the Administration for the last three days,’ she said, ‘I want to see Tom Granger.’
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you’ll see him at the trial.’
‘I want to see him before the trial.’
‘Quite impossible,’ the emperor replied. ‘Colonel Granger is a dangerous man. I could never allow myself to put one of the Haurstaf at risk.’
Briana looked at him coolly. ‘If you do not wish to use our services, there are simpler ways