The Art of Hunting by Alan Campbell Page B

‘What if Hu decides to act before we get there? He might simply panic and leucotomize all of
them.’
    ‘The emperor will not harm them,’ Cyr insisted. ‘Even Hu is not that foolish. He’ll keep his own psychics close by. He’ll wait and he’ll watch. If we’re
lucky, he’ll use our kin to make the only sensible political move he can make.’
    ‘What move?’
    ‘To ally himself with us,’ Cyr said. ‘With Ianthe on our side, the Haurstaf can no longer threaten us. The emperor can no longer use them as a shield.’ He gave a sudden
chuckle. ‘That will save him vast amounts of money at least,’ he added. ‘A clever ruler would release his Unmer captives as a gesture of conciliation.’
    Paulus shook his head. ‘But that’s my point exactly,’ he said. ‘Hu is not a clever ruler. You overestimate him, Uncle.’
    Cyr raised his eyebrows. ‘And perhaps you underestimate me, Paulus.’ He gave a short bow. ‘I will personally guarantee our people’s safety. You can have my head if
I’m wrong.’
    The young prince laughed. ‘You see how he manipulates me, Ianthe? My own uncle? I should hope he is wrong or else fear for my throne!’
    Ianthe smiled sweetly. The duke merely nodded.
    Paulus took his uncle’s arm and moved to lead him away. ‘About this extravaganza . . .’ he said quietly.
    ‘Diplomacy is hardly an extravaganza,’ Cyr replied. ‘We must cement our relationship with both the Guild soldiers and the Port Awl authorities. An empire is like a palace: it
must be built upon solid ground.’
    ‘Yes, yes. Buy them, you mean.’
    ‘With Haurstaf money, My Lord,’ Cyr said. ‘Such a delightful irony, don’t you think?’
    The prince nodded impatiently. He glanced back at Ianthe and then whispered something in the duke’s ear. Cyr smiled once more and then rested his hand on top of Paulus’s own. A
gesture, Ianthe guessed, designed to reassure the young prince. Then he said loudly, ‘But come, if it pleases you, release me to answer my wife’s summons. I feel stricken with a sudden
and brief sense of mercy, and thus temporarily and inexplicably endowed to cope with her poor crippled charges.’
    ‘You? Merciful?’ Paulus said. ‘This we have to see.’
    They left the grand hallway and strolled along a corridor in the north-west wing of the palace, which had wholly escaped Maskelyne’s bombardment. Ianthe knew these lesson rooms and
libraries well from her time as a student here. They were all empty now, the desks and chairs stacked away, the chalkboards wiped clean. Paulus led her to the far end of the wing, towards the
dormitories formerly occupied by year one students.
    She heard the patients before she saw them. From the last few rooms there came a great maniacal howling and then a cacophony like the cries of wounded beasts. This, then, was what had become of
those Unmer upon whom the Haurstaf had experimented. The leucotomy process involved severing the link between the lobes of the brain, thus stripping the recipients of their innate and peculiarly
destructive powers, as well as most of their higher functions. Leucotomized Unmer were used to train Haurstaf combat psychics in safety.
    They walked through the first dormitory door and there found rows of pale men, women and children strapped or chained to beds. Each bore a scar upon his or her forehead, a mark showing where the
Haurstaf surgeons’ knives had done their work.
Decreation.
That was what Paulus called the process by which his kind could extinguish whatever they touched. Matter was not destroyed,
he said, but simply displaced through entropic manipulation. Through will. Nothing vanished from the cosmos; it was merely scattered and displaced. Sometimes he referred to it as
entropic
trade
. A simple punch from an Unmer warrior could send a fist-sized lump of his opponent to the other end of reality.
    Upon sensing the presence of new arrivals the patients turned their wild and haunted eyes on Paulus, Cyr and