Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell

The shopkeeper stood seven feet tall and wore a fantastic turban, a twist of ice-cream silk laced with pearls. He ran his hand along the bookcase until he found the volume he was looking for and extracted it with the deft flourish of a carnival magician. ‘This is the book you want,’ he said. ‘A Tapestry of Sex explores the art of seduction; it was penned by the greatest lover who ever lived.’ He paused in affected wonder. ‘Herein lie the secrets of Lord Herian Goodman – the methods by which he won the hearts of every man, woman and cauldron abomination he desired. Take it, read it, allow yourself to be seduced by it.’

Ida pressed the pages to her lips and breathed in odours of perspiration and exotic perfume. She could still hear the hubbub of commerce in the cavernous gloom around her, but the noise seemed suddenly distant. As her eye followed the neat printed words, her heart began to race. She had to buy this book.

The Trove Market had grown into a network of enormous brick vaults and sinuous passages that reached underneath the Imperial city of Losoto, its cluttered aisles defining tributaries through which endless streams of tourists flowed. They wandered through vast arched spaces, gaping at shelves ablaze with gold and silver trinkets, at glass orchids and jewelled clocks and alabaster birdcages, at endless stacks of boiled-black dragon bones. Painted saints and figureheads smiled back at them with eyes of candle-flame and lips like glazed cherries. Tiny brass machines chuckled and chirruped meaningless words, pulsing colourful lights to no apparent purpose. Old swords waited in cabinets for new owners. There were boxes of feathers and jars of colourful dust, bottles of jellyfish wine and cloaks woven from the hair of dead princesses. Manatee skulls lay next to miniature tombstones. Sharkskin men and women writhed and danced in tanks of brine, their grey limbs sliding fluidly behind the curved glass walls, their hair like green pennants. A million customers might pass through Losoto’s underground market, plucking at the banks of treasure, and yet the stock never diminished. It could not be eroded. Every artefact in the empire found its way here eventually, to lie in wait for a spark of desire.

Ida clutched her book as fiercely as a mother holds a long-lost child. ‘Goodman was an Unmer Lord?’ she asked the shopkeeper.

‘Lord, libertine and a formidable sorcerer to boot. He lived in a house up there, less than a hundred yards from here.’ He jabbed a finger up at the vaulted brick ceiling, beyond which the streets of Losoto would be basking in the sunshine.

‘Then this book is magical?’

The shopkeeper smiled broadly, displaying the diamonds set in his teeth. ‘Who can say? The Unmer invested so many of their creations with magic. You must read it all to discover its value. Passion, sexual ecstasy, horror and peril. Anything is possible between the covers of such a book.’

She nodded urgently.

‘But there’s more,’ he added. ‘Now that you possess a map of seduction, you must acquire a compass and a sextant, so to speak, to facilitate your success.’ He steered her towards a dark cabinet stuffed with bulbous phials that gleamed like squid. ‘These Unmer potions have been dredged from the beds of sixteen seas. Look here.’ He picked up a green bottle. ‘Drink this to cleanse and revitalize your mind; it tastes like spring rain. And this –’ He chose a tiny, empty jar ‘– is a singularly precious ointment.’

‘What is it?’

‘Clarity.’

‘How much do they cost? I don’t know—’

‘And here is stamina.’ This bottle was sunflower-yellow, the next one pink. He scooped them into his arms like glazed fruit sweets. ‘And lucid dreams and lightness of step – ah, here is an enigma. This tincture allows one to see colours hidden in other people’s shadows and thus perceive hidden intentions. These three are the bottled auras of young boys sacrificed at Unmer altars; their ghosts will be lingering nearby. How long do you plan to stay?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Will you be in Losoto a week from now?’

She shook her head. ‘My ship leaves tomorrow.’

The shopkeeper threw up his hands with mock regret. Suddenly he seemed taller and wilder, an enormous blue-lipped djinn at the centre of the universe. Lanterns suspended from the ceiling whirled around his head like flaming bolas. His eyes blazed. ‘But you’ll miss the rarest treasure of them all. My agent in Valcinder is sending me a jealous knife. They dragged it up from sixty fathoms down. A man died to procure it, and I am told it is superb.’

Her head spun. ‘Is it an Unmer artefact? What does it do?’

‘What does it do? The jealous knife allows two lovers to exchange tactile sensation. Prick each partner’s finger and thereafter each will experience the other’s pleasure or pain. Thus a lonely wife might please her husband across great gulfs of separation, or a brave man endure the pain of childbirth in his woman’s stead.’

‘But ......