Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [92]
Lucille complied, and soon the child had brought back up the solution.
‘Again.’ Maskelyne lifted the pot to the boy’s lips.
Lucille looked terrified. ‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘Crespic salts react with acid to produce an endothermic reaction,’ Maskelyne said. ‘If he’s swallowed any, it could have frozen his stomach. We need to wash it out, warm him up. Now, there, make him bring it up again.’
The child was sick a second time, spattering wine across the rugs and the map table.
Maskelyne studied him intently. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He seems . . . fine. I think we’ve been lucky.’
Lucille cradled the little boy and tried to soothe him. She spoke softly, but with venom in her voice: ‘How could you let this happen?’
‘Me?’ Maskelyne regarded her with amazement. ‘You were supposed to be watching him.’
‘That hatch should have been locked!’ she retorted. ‘What if he’d got to the void flies?’
‘It was locked. Evidently someone got it open for him. Where did you say you were?’
She looked at the floor. ‘I’ve not been feeling well. The sea air . . .’
Maskelyne looked at her for a long moment. And then he sighed. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped at you.’ He took her and the child in his arms. ‘Gods, Lucille, I’ve never been so frightened.’
She began to sob. ‘What’s happening, Ethan? Is someone trying to hurt us?’
Maskelyne didn’t say anything, but he had his own suspicions.
Granger hit the brine and plunged under it, and for an instant the world became a haze of brown and gold: sunlight rippling across the rooftops of the old Unmer dwellings down below; the Excelsior’s anchor chain; a shoal of marionette fish hanging in the deep like harvest festival baubles. His ears resounded with gloop and clang of sudden pressure change.
And then the pain hit him.
His whole body burned. He felt as if his corneas were shrinking, his salted flesh crackling over an open flame. He ignored it and swam on towards the stern of the emperor’s ship. Samarol bullets streaked by him, leaving short trails of bubbles before their own velocity tore them to shreds.
After a dozen strokes he realized that he was going into shock. A sense of panic and confusion overcame him. He fought against it, desperate to keep his muscles moving, desperate to reach that anchor chain now twenty paces ahead. Now fifteen. Ten.
Every nerve in his body cried out to him to stop. Strange thoughts whirled through his consciousness: The seawater was roasting him alive. He was swimming through the sun and it was not composed of fire but of molten glass. And now he could see that the glass formed the medium through which all thoughts and dreams passed. A lens at the heart of the universe; it was the source and destination of all things. The eye of Creation. He realized that he could die here in peace, and that all would be well. The pain was leaving him now. All he had to do was accept the brine’s embrace.
Yet some internal spark would not let him give up. He saw a vision of Ianthe, her face blurred by the waters, her black hair aflame, and it spurred him on. And suddenly the pain returned with horrific vigour, as if the lapse had been nothing but a sorcerous whisper, a Siren’s call, and the Mare Lux had chosen to bare her teeth once more. He swam and swam through the gnawing brine and, as he crashed onwards through the limits of his own endurance, he bared his own teeth and grinned madly at the agony of it all.
He reached the anchor chain and pulled himself up, fist over fist, until he broke the surface of the waters and drew in a great shuddering breath.
The Excelsior’s copper-clad hull loomed over him, her port lifeboat snug against the bulwark, while higher still her yards cut across the Ethugran sky like lines of cirrus cloud. Hand over fist he pulled himself up the chain, teeth set, muscles screaming, his eyes burning like hot coals in his skull.
He reached the capstan hatch and slipped inside the ship.
Granger found himself in a dim corridor above the gun