Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts (15 page)

The woman and her daughter retreated away from him along the jetty.

Granger fought hard against the line, his rod bending under the strain. He lowered the rod, reeling in as he did so, then heaved it back again. The fish burst out of the water a second time, flashing white and silver in the starlight, spraying foam everywhere. Again Granger lowered the rod, working the reel. Again he pulled back. His pulse was racing. With weary arms he dragged his catch inch by inch closer to the jetty.

The fish stopped suddenly. It felt like a dead weight. Cautiously, Granger pulled back on the rod and reeled in another yard of line. The waters settled. Granger could feel his palms sweating inside his gloves. He reclaimed another yard. Still no reaction from the canal. The line vanished into the black water twelve feet beyond the edge of the jetty. Granger paused, breathing heavily, and eased his goggles down over his eyes. He nudged the landing net closer with his foot. This was the dangerous part.

The fish bolted again, but Granger was ready to take the strain. He leaned back. When he felt the line slacken, he dipped the rod and reeled in once more. Twelve feet became eight, then six, then he could see the creature’s fat silvery form under the inky surface. He lowered his landing net into the water, eased it around the exhausted fish and hauled it in.

Hana gave him a girlish clap. ‘Are they good to eat?’ Granger sat down on the jetty beside the netted fish. He turned to her and grinned. ‘I don’t know about good,’ he said.

Some Ethugrans only bothered to boil brinelife twice, claiming it was safe to eat thereafter, but it was common to see mutations in those families. Granger played it safe. He wore gloves for gutting, and then boiled his catch three times, emptying the pan of ochre scum and refilling it with purified water each time. The fish turned from grey to white. It was after midnight by the time he’d dished it out into bowls and sat down with Hana and Ianthe.

This small, strange family sat on old munitions crates in Granger’s attic, eating by the light of an oil lamp. He’d opened his best bottle of wine, sweetened it with sugar to make it drinkable and dug out some blankets for Hana and Ianthe to use as cushions. The women were silent for once. Granger couldn’t stop himself from glancing over at them. Their clothes were ragged and filthy. He would have to see about getting them some new ones now that he had a bit of money. Mrs Pursewearer might sell him some. She’d know the sort of things they’d need. He’d have to buy planking for their cell, too, to raise the floor properly. Maybe he could stretch to a washbasin, run a hose down from the purifier. Watching Hana eat reminded him of the first night he’d met her at the farm in Evensraum. She been more curious about him than afraid. He suddenly realized he was staring, and she was looking at him.

‘How did you end up here?’ she said.

‘Long story.’

‘I never imagined you’d become a jailer.’

‘It’s only temporary, until I can get my boat fixed.’

She took a sip of wine, and grimaced. ‘Where will you go?’

He shrugged.

‘There’s no one up there, you know?’ Ianthe said suddenly.

Granger turned to face her. ‘Where?’

‘Ortho’s Chariot. There’s no life aboard.’

Granger grunted. ‘You can see that far away?’

She nodded.

He thought about that. ‘What’s the emperor doing now?’ he asked.

The girl stared into space for a minute. ‘He’s in his palace. In bed with three of his slaves. Two of them are—’

‘All right,’ Granger interrupted. ‘You shouldn’t be watching things like that.’ He gathered up the empty bowls, stood up and started for the sink.

‘
You
asked me,’ Ianthe called after him.

‘I didn’t mean for you to spy on people,’ Granger replied gruffly. ‘Have you never heard of common decency?’ He put the crockery in the sink and began to clean up, scrubbing the dishes rigorously with steel wool.

‘Don’t you want to know what your friend Creedy is doing?’

‘No, I don’t!’ Granger set down the bowl he was cleaning and stared at the wall.

Hana eased him aside and started to finish the dishes for him.

‘Why? What is he doing?’

‘He’s driving his boat across the open sea.’

Nothing unusual about that, Granger thought.
He’s probably just running the engine to flex the launch’s muscles, skirting the city to avoid the narrow canals.
He wouldn’t
necessarily
be heading out of the city.

‘I know you don’t trust him,’ she said. ‘Don’t you even want to know where he’s going?’

‘No,’ Granger lied.

CHAPTER 6

Granger let Creedy stew for three more days. He set up the washbasin for his two captives, running a tube down from the purifier on his roof, and he improved the floor in their cell as best he could. He used his own boat to travel to Averley Market, but it leaked so badly he dared not risk the long trip out to the boatyards yet. He bought food, wine and resin, and spent a whole afternoon patching up the hull. It grew hot and humid, and the grey skies pinned the air down over the city as thoroughly as the roof of a bread oven. On the third night he dragged Duka’s body out of the cell and dumped it in one of the narrow nameless canals behind his prison. And then he flagged down Ned and paid him to deliver a message to Creedy.

The sergeant arrived that same evening, with two bottles of beer and a broad grin on his grizzled jaw, as if the two of them had never argued. ‘Enjoying the family life, Colonel?’

Granger sat down and pulled on his galoshes.

Creedy’s grin widened. ‘It was only a matter of time.’

For the next four nights they dredged Ethugra’s canals for trove. Creedy grunted with approval at each new treasure they discovered, before packing them carefully away in his huge canvas satchel. Ianthe’s abrasiveness waned as she relaxed into the task and let the fresh air start to relieve the stress of confinement. She seemed happy to be in the two men’s company. Clearly she enjoyed the work.

For Creedy’s benefit she kept up the pretence of staring into the black waters, as though she was able to perceive details in that murk with her useless eyes. Whenever they found trove, Granger knew that there must be Drowned nearby, that Ianthe had spotted the treasure only because they themselves had seen it. He imagined multitudes of them moving about down there while the surface world remained oblivious. It was like the way the empire viewed the liberated territories: one did not observe the under-classes unless one was obliged to. In Granger’s experience such an attitude was inherently dangerous. When the under-classes occupied the foundations of a society, it was all too easy for them to undermine it.

Creedy and the girl showed genuine interest in the objects they retrieved. But Granger couldn’t shake his dark mood or bring himself to enthuse about their finds. Relatively common items made up the bulk of their discoveries: bright shards of pottery, rusted clasps and hinges, parts of old Unmer sailing vessels. Few were worth more than a handful of gilders. But every so often they found something rarer.

In Malver Basin they pulled up a trepanned skull. After they had emptied it of brine something could be heard rattling around inside, and when Granger listened closely he could swear he heard the sound of flutes coming from the unknown object. It was tuneless and ethereal, and he sensed it served no good purpose. But they would sell it to one of Creedy’s buyers, and it would end up god knows where, and the responsibility for returning it to the world would remain on Granger’s shoulders. He needed the money.

From a tar-black sink on the outskirts of Francialle they retrieved a phial of blood-red crystals, which Creedy tried to open.

‘Best leave it be, Sergeant,’ Granger said.

Creedy held the phial close to his eye lens. ‘They could be rubies,’ he muttered.

‘Maybe,’ Granger replied. ‘Maybe not. Let the buyer take the risk.’

This was their problem. Neither of them really knew what most of this stuff
did
, or, for that matter, what it was truly worth. There were a few Unmer experts in Ethugra, but no one they could trust. What looked like treasure to them them might be worthless in the marketplace, while what appeared to be common might actually be priceless. They were at the mercy of their own ignorance.

But late on the fourth night, Ianthe led them to a discovery that Creedy recognized at once.

On a hunch Creedy had steered the launch deep into the Helt, where the canals formed a precise grid and the massive iron-stitched prison blocks rose sheer above them for more than ten storeys. Finds were sparse here, but Creedy insisted they keep searching. They must have traversed the same intersection four times before Ianthe raised her hand for them to stop.

‘An amphora,’ she said.

It was heavy. If Granger had known beforehand just how much effort would be required to pull it up, he might just have left it on the seabed. And when he saw its dreary bulk resting in the hull, he almost pitched it back in to save himself the trouble of carrying it further.

Creedy stopped him. ‘I know what that is,’ he said excitedly. ‘Hell’s balls, man, I know what that is.’

Granger peered down at the object. It was a clay amphora sealed by a wax stopper. He’d seen hundreds of them for sale in Losoto. ‘Wine,’ he said. ‘Or whale oil. Either way, it’s not worth much more than twenty gilders.’

Creedy shook his head. ‘It’s an olea,’ he said. ‘These markings on the front show a record of its battles.’

Granger frowned at the indecipherable writing scrawled across the container. ‘A fish?’

‘Jellyfish,’ Creedy said. ‘The Unmer used to breed them for sport.’

‘That’s an old amphora,’ Granger said.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ the other man replied. ‘Olea are sorcerous.’

‘It’s still alive?’

He nodded. ‘And seriously pissed off. Imagine how you’d feel being cooped up in a jar for two hundred years.’ He grinned, and his eye-lens glittered in the lantern light. ‘Might get eight hundred for it at market, but a collector would pay more. Up to four thousand for a good specimen.’

Granger stared at the amphora. With his half share, he’d manage a down payment on a deepwater vessel. It was more than he’d dared hope for in such a short space of time. He could be out of Ethugra by the end of the year. ‘Do you know any collectors with that kind of money?’ he asked.

The sergeant was silent for a moment. Then he shrugged. ‘The only one in Ethugra who collects them,’ he said, ‘is Ethan Maskelyne.’

A hollow feeling crept into Granger’s gut.
Ethan Maskelyne
. Maskelyne the Metaphysicist, Maskelyne the Unappointed, the Wizard of Scythe Island – Ethugra’s unofficial boss had more sobriquets than the tides. He was an amateur scientist, and an avid collector of Unmer esoterica. But to Granger, the title of Maskelyne the Extortionist seemed most fitting. His Hookmen supposedly protected the city from the Drowned, but they took in payment nine out of every hundred gilders earned by the land-living. Once in a while they’d drag a few sharkskin men or women up from the depths and chain them out in Averley Plaza to die in the sun.

‘Eight hundred in the market?’ Granger said.

Creedy looked up. ‘But five times that from Maskelyne himself.’

Granger didn’t like it. Maskelyne would want to know exactly where the olea had come from. Were there any more? How did two jailers come to be in the trove business in the first place? What else had they found? Granger did not want to be scrutinized by a man like Maskelyne. But something else bothered him even more. Finding this treasure had been too . . .
convenient
. Creedy had wanted to bring Maskelyne in as a partner and now he had a perfect excuse to approach him. And why had Creedy been so insistent that they come here at all? Granger peered down at the amphora again. It remained as unremarkable as any he’d seen, covered with scratches that might be some ancient Unmer script, or not. Anyone might have scrawled them. A fighting jellyfish? Or a jar of vinegar?

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll sell it through the market.’

‘Aye, sir,’ Creedy said evenly, although the darkness in his expression said otherwise.

Towards dawn, Granger sat with Ianthe and Hana on the roof of his jail, eating thrice-boiled fish baked in sugar and cinnamon that Hana had prepared while they’d been away. A small oil lantern rested on the brine purifier nearby. Ianthe was telling her mother about the amphora.

‘What did it perceive?’ Hana asked.

Ianthe snorted. ‘I don’t know! Jellyfish don’t have any eyes or ears, do they?’