Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts (13 page)

Ianthe looked up from the water. ‘A sea-bottle.’

The two men exchanged a glance. The empire paid three thousand gilders for each ichusae removed from the ocean, but they were worth even more on the black market. Certain warlords had been known to use them as weapons.

This last treasure seemed determined to elude them. After a dozen attempts with the hooked line, Granger still hadn’t snagged the thing. He couldn’t see anything in the dark water but his own hideous face, the grey, paper-creased cheeks, the goggles like cavities in his skull. He abandoned the hooked line in favour of a claw, a tool more suitable for grabbing smooth objects. By manipulating two cords he could open and close the tool’s jaws like a pincer. It was tricky, but on his second try, he thought that the line became a little heavier.

Gently, he began to draw the line in. It snagged on something. He pulled harder.

Something underwater wrenched it back.

Granger reacted instinctively, dropping the line. Two yards of it whizzed across the bow wale, then came to a rest.

Creedy stood up. ‘Dragon?’

‘In
Ethugra
?’ Granger replied. There wasn’t space between these buildings to harbour such a monster. Whatever had taken the line was more likely to be much smaller: an Eellen, a Lux shark or thresher-fish, perhaps even one of the Drowned. ‘What do you see, Ianthe?’

The girl did not reply.

‘Ianthe?’

‘A Drowned boy,’ she replied. ‘He’s playing with you.’

Creedy lifted his boat hook. He walked over to the side of the boat and picked up the loose line in his other hand. ‘Little shit,’ he said, wrapping the rope around his gloved fist. ‘I’m going to make you breathe air.’ He gave the line a sudden, powerful, yank.

It didn’t budge.

Creedy let the line go slack. ‘Bastard’s snagged it on something.’

The line snapped taut, almost pulling Creedy into the canal. His unusually quick reactions saved him. With his feet planted square under the port strake, he dropped to a crouch, allowing the weight of the vessel itself to resist the force. The launch skimmed sideways across the pool, pushing a wave of black seawater before it, before thumping into the prison façade. Brine sloshed over the gunwales, over the tarpaulin, over Ianthe.

She cried out.

‘
Hu-shan,
’ Granger hissed the old Imperial curse. ‘Are you burned?’

Ianthe was flapping water from her whaleskin cloak.

‘
Did it touch your skin?
’

‘No.’

Creedy got to his feet, cursing, the line still wrapped around his fist. He untangled himself and then spun the line around one of the steel oarlocks on that side of the boat. Then he turned to Ianthe. ‘Drowned fucking boy?’ he snarled. ‘What was it? Shark? Rock-caster? Eellen?’ When she didn’t answer he raised the boat hook as if to strike her.

‘Sergeant,’ Granger said quietly.

Creedy halted, and lowered the weapon.

‘We’re going back,’ Granger said. ‘It’s getting lighter, and we have enough trove for now.’ He looked at the pile of artefacts heaped next to the wheel console: the engine, the pendant, the tangled wire, the dragon harness and the spheres. A thousand gilders’ worth of unfathomable rubbish. Even with Creedy’s half deducted, it was enough to feed his captives for several months.
Or a down payment on a new boat.
That had been his original plan, after all, and he shouldn’t forget it.

Creedy took the treasure away with him to find a buyer. Before he left, Granger offered to let him have the Unmer doll too. ‘No sense in keeping it here,’ he pointed out. But Creedy was strangely reluctant to accept.

‘Sell it later if you need to,’ he said. ‘I’m tired, I’m going home.’ He didn’t want to come up to Granger’s jail, and he didn’t want to wait at the jetty.

Granger returned Ianthe to her cell.

Hana looked up sleepily. ‘How did it go?’

‘She did well,’ Granger said.

‘She always does.’

Granger just nodded. He went back upstairs and opened the box in which he kept the doll. But the doll was missing. He wasn’t particularly surprised. He stood there for a long moment, wondering why he didn’t feel angrier at Creedy.

The sun was up by the time he went to bed, and the garret was already becoming uncomfortably hot. As he lay in his bunk, he thought about the treasure hunt. Granger himself had stared into those lightless canals and seen nothing at all. How had Ianthe done it? Uncanny vision did not explain how she’d known about Duka, the drawer and the four hundred gilders. No matter how many different possibilities went through his head, he couldn’t figure out the answer. His gut told him that his captives were lying.

She can’t read minds.

If that was so, then why did Hana want to keep her daughter from the Haurstaf?

The Haurstaf will murder her.

Granger frowned. If Ianthe
was
psychic, the Guild would embrace her. And
if
she truly possessed nothing more than heightened physical senses, she posed no threat to them. They might or might not use her, but they had no reason to harm her.

He stared at the ceiling, watching sunlight ripple across the joists. At this hour of the morning the mists would have burned off Halcine Canal, and the water would be shining like a vein of gold.

Perhaps he was approaching this from the wrong direction?

What if she was completely normal – not psychic or special in any way? Granger’s own grandmother – Ianthe’s great-grandmother – had come from Awl without a glimmer of the telepathic ability so entrenched in her race. There had been nothing there for Ianthe to inherit. Could an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl have found a way to beat the Haurstaf at their own game? What if her strange powers were not merely a quirk of nature, that one-in-a-million mutation that appeared in the blood of western women, but rather the result of something that could be attained by
anyone
? Something sorcerous?

An Unmer artefact.

Granger sat upright in his cot. That made a lot of sense. Suppose Ianthe
had
unearthed some rare treasure – a pendant, ring or pin that granted her these inhuman abilities? The Haurstaf would certainly not flinch from murder to keep it a secret. Emperor Hu could use such an object to challenge the Guild of Psychics and break their monopoly of power. The Haurstaf’s very existence would be threatened. If such an object existed, it would be worth more to the empire than a fleet of battleships.

A magic pendant, ring or pin?

Was Ianthe hiding it somewhere on her body even now?

He jumped out of bed, threw on his galoshes and stormed downstairs.

Ianthe was already asleep, curled up on her pallet, but Hana lifted her head, looked up at him and smiled. That smile disarmed him now, as it had all those years ago. She became the same young woman he’d known in Weaverbrook, and for an awful moment he didn’t know if he could do what he’d come down here to do. But then he understood the purpose behind her smile. She was tricking him, making a fool of a brine-rotten old jailer. His anger stirred again.

‘Wake her,’ he said.

Hana frowned.

‘I said, wake her.’

For a moment Hana looked uncertain, but then she shook her daughter awake.

‘Where is it?’ Granger asked the girl.

‘Where is what?’ Hana replied.

‘I’m not going to play any more games with you. Show it to me.’

Mother and daughter looked at each other. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Hana said.

‘All right.’ Granger let out a sigh. ‘Strip.’

‘What?’ Hana said. Ianthe looked suddenly fearful.

‘Strip,’ Granger repeated to Ianthe. ‘Take off your clothes and hand them over.’

Hana moved between Granger and their daughter. ‘Why are you doing this?’

Granger felt his face fill with blood. ‘I’m not going to harm you,’ he said through a clenched jaw. ‘But if you don’t give me the artefact right now, I’ll find it myself. Even if that means stripping you naked here and now.’

Ianthe let out a sob. ‘I told you what he’s like,’ she cried. ‘He’s no better than the others.’

‘Don’t do this, Tom. Please.’

‘Then tell her to do as I say.’

Hana shook her head incredulously. ‘You think she
stole
something?’

He said nothing.

‘I have no idea what you think she’s taken, but you are
not
laying one finger on her.’

Granger grabbed Hana by the arm and dragged her away from the girl. Ianthe gasped and scrambled away from him, her eyes wide with fear. He reached for her, but she shrieked and kicked out wildly. Her boot caught his shoulder, causing his old wound to flare in pain. He grunted and surged forward, grabbing her arms to pin her up against the wall. She spat in his face.

‘Stop it,’ Hana yelled.

Granger was shaking the girl. ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘A ring? A pendant? Show it to me.’

Hana seized him by the neck and head. She was clinging to his back, trying to pull him away, her fingers scrabbling across his sweating face. Ianthe screamed. Granger turned and slammed himself, and Hana, against the wall, again and again until he felt her grip relax. His chest tightened with pain, but he ignored it. He tore her arms loose and pushed her away from him.

Now he was furious. ‘Where is it?’

‘She doesn’t have anything like that,’ Hana sobbed.

‘Then what is it? How does she know the things she does?’

‘She can see through the eyes of others.’

Granger stopped. He was breathing heavily, his lungs straining to suck in air. His shoulder throbbed where the girl had kicked it.

Hana was sobbing. ‘She knew about your money because you
saw
it,’ she said, ‘and she knew what your friend said because you
heard
him say it. Inny was born with a . . .’ For a moment she seemed to struggle to find the right word. ‘I suppose it’s a gift,’ she said at last. ‘She can only see and hear things that other people see and hear. It’s the same with smell and touch – she tunes into their senses. But she can’t read their thoughts any more than you or I can.’

A
brine
mutation?
Granger considered this.
She didn’t see me fill the jug with poison because it was
dark
?

‘What about the trove?’ he demanded

‘The Drowned have eyes too,’ Hana retorted, ‘and their vision is attuned to the gloom. They can see better than any human can. You never notice them, but they’re down there. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands.’

Disassociated perception? Given the right heritage, one in a million conceptions might produce a psychic child, but Granger had never heard of a condition like this – not in Awl, not anywhere. His anger egged him to argue with her, to beat the truth from her. He was sick of being lied to. And yet Hana’s comment explained everything. ‘She can see through
my
eyes,’ he said, ‘listen through
my
ears? Even when I’m somewhere else?’

‘You could be on the other side of the world.’

‘And she can do this trick with
anyone
?’

‘Almost any living thing.’

‘Haurstaf?’

Hana nodded.

Now Granger understood why she was such a threat to the Guild of Psychics. The Haurstaf openly sold their powers to every warlord who could afford them. In battles it was not uncommon to find telepaths on both sides, each reporting on the other’s position. Emperor Hu might rage at Sister Marks, cursing both their expense and their infuriating neutrality, but he was helpless to act against the Guild. If his enemies used their services then so must he.

But if Ianthe could sneak behind the eyes and ears of anyone she chose to, she would be the perfect spy. There could be no secrets while she lived, not even among the Haurstaf themselves. She was worth more to the empire than a hundred psychics. Surveillance was an essential expedient of control. And Ianthe’s talents could be turned against anyone.

‘
Almost
any living thing,’ Hana repeated. ‘But there is one person whose eyes she cannot see through and whose ears she can’t hear through.’

‘Who?’

‘Herself,’ Hana said. ‘Your daughter is deaf and blind.’

CHAPTER 5