Sea Of Ghosts

CHAPTER 5
BETRAYAL

Dear Margaret,

Thank you. Mr Swinekicker paid off Maskelyne’s Hookman, at least for the time being. Mr Swinekicker says I shouldn’t worry about the future. He’ll sort something out. Some new prisoners arrived the other day – an Evensraum woman and her teenage daughter. It’s going to take them time to adjust. It’s hard to come to terms with the idea of staying here for the rest of your life. I survive because the money you send makes my life bearable. Without your help, I don’t think I could go on.

Love,

Alfred

Granger woke late in the afternoon to the smell of fried eels. Hot sunshine poured into the garret through open windows, throwing ripples across the ceiling. He rubbed his eyes.

Creedy was busy at the stove. ‘Six hundred gilders,’ he said, turning so that his clockwork eye flashed in the sun.

‘Each?’

‘Between us,’ Creedy replied, returning his attention to the frying pan. ‘The pendant wasn’t worth shit, and that engine wouldn’t even bark. Your share’s on that crate.’

Granger got up and stretched. He noted the stack of coins and bills piled on the munitions crate; it was far less than he would have believed possible for a haul like that. He thought about challenging Creedy, but then decided against it. Right now, he needed him. And if the sergeant’s help came at a price, at least it was one he could afford. ‘What time did you get here?’ he asked.

‘About an hour ago.’

‘Do you ever sleep?’

‘I thought we might try for that sea-bottle again.’

Granger shook the fog of sleep from his head. ‘Give me a minute.’ He went over to the window and took a piss, then put a pot of water on the stove to boil. His shoulder still ached from this morning’s confrontation. He ran a hand over the tough grey skin. It felt as hard and cracked as a dry riverbed.

Creedy scooped the eels onto a plate and sat down. He didn’t offer Granger any. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘about what we talked about before – about deepwater salvage.’

‘There’s nothing more to discuss. We don’t have the resources.’

‘Not now,’ Creedy admitted. ‘But a few more hauls like last night, and we could start attracting some real investment. There are people in Ethugra with deep enough pockets. We’d make a hundred thousand in the first year.’

Granger shook his head. ‘You’re talking about going up against Maskelyne.’ He didn’t want to tell Creedy his real concerns about expanding the operation. Deepwater salvage wasn’t something you could go into quietly. You needed a large ocean-class vessel, cranes, power winches, deep-sea nets and a good-sized crew to keep everything running. It would be difficult to hide an operation like that. People would notice, and talk. He couldn’t risk exposing Ianthe to that level of attention. Her talents were far too valuable to put on display.

His deaf-blind daughter. He thought about her walking down the wharf, stopping whenever he looked away. She had not been able to see the ground in front of her, except when he looked in her direction. He tried to imagine her growing up in Evensraum, unable to hear the wind in the trees unless someone else was there to hear it too. What kind of life was that for a child? The implications of all this were too intricate for him to unravel at once. He needed to think them through.

‘We don’t need to compete with him,’ Creedy said. ‘He has all the deepwater gear we’d need.’

Granger looked up. ‘A partnership?’

The other man shrugged. ‘Maskelyne’s a businessman.’

‘He’s a criminal,’ Granger said, ‘and a murderer.’

Creedy chewed his food slowly.

Granger picked up the money from the crate. With these gilders and the four hundred from yesterday, he could pay off his debts at the boatyard and maybe convince Maddigan to order in some new planking for his boat’s hull. Once the old girl was fixed up, he could trade her in against a storm-sealed deepwater cruiser, hopefully a tug or even an ex-naval vessel. About thirty or forty thousand would buy him something sturdy enough to cross the open ocean.

He poured two mugs of tea, then joined Creedy. ‘Somebody stole that Unmer doll.’

Creedy scraped eel jelly from his plate and spooned it into his mouth. ‘Lot of thieves about.’

‘So it seems.’

‘It’s no big deal,’ Creedy said. ‘Now we have the girl.’

‘Assuming she agrees to keep working with us.’

Creedy grunted. ‘She doesn’t have shit to say about that.’ He finished his meal and stood up. ‘Are we going, or what?’

The two men took Creedy’s launch back to the basin behind the Bower family prison in Francialle, leaving Ianthe behind. Creedy switched off the engine and stared into the brine with open hostility, as though he expected resistance from whatever lay below, and was fully prepared to counter it with force. They began to dredge the gloomy waters with a claw.

But again the bottle eluded them.

Shadows gathered in the basin and the canal beyond as evening approached. The sky between the buildings turned golden with the setting sun. Creedy grew irritable and then angry. His clockwork eye ticked and whirred as though struggling to focus. In his long whaleskin gloves, cloak and goggles he looked like some infernal golem. He hauled in the rope for the hundredth time, examined at the empty claw and then smashed it down on the deck. ‘She’s messing with us,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing down there. You said yourself the Unmer only dumped ichusae in deep water.’

‘Francialle used to be full of Unmer forges,’ Granger replied. ‘Conceivably, they could have made thousands of ichusae here. Changed ordinary glass phials and copper stoppers into something else.’

‘How did they get all the brine inside them?’

‘I don’t think they did.’

A voice from above called down: ‘You changed your mind about the map yet?’

Granger looked up to see an old man peering down at them from one of the barred windows above. His face was gaunt, his cheeks hollow from malnutrition, lending emphasis to his wildly protruding eyes. He gripped the bars of his cell with skeletal hands.

‘Shut your damn mouth,’ Creedy replied.

‘I told you there was no trove down there,’ the old man said. ‘Maskelyne’s men cleaned it all out years ago. You want to be looking near the Glot Madera, but I ain’t telling you where unless you buy my map.’

Creedy must have returned to this spot sometime after dawn, Granger realized. No doubt he had tried to look for the bottle on his own. This bothered him less than he would have expected. It wasn’t against the law.

‘Madman,’ Creedy muttered.

‘The original map was drawn by the Unmer,’ the old man retorted. ‘I saw it in a collection in Maggog, copied it exact from memory.’

Creedy snatched up his baling tin, scooped it full of brine and then hurled it up at the barred window. The old man yelped and disappeared as seawater splashed across the prison facade. Some of the brine must have splashed him, for he began to howl in pain.

‘Sun’s almost down,’ Creedy said. ‘We’d best go get the girl.’

‘Not tonight,’ Granger said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean exactly that, Sergeant,’ Granger replied in a tone that implied the conversation was over.

Creedy looked at him for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, Tom.’

They returned in silence. As Granger alighted on his wharf, Creedy looked up at him with malice in his eye. ‘Tomorrow night, then?’

‘Maybe. I’ll send you a message.’

The sergeant spat into the canal, then gunned his launch away, spewing muddy foam in his wake.

Granger looked at his own boat. She was a common skiff, sixteen feet long from bow to stern, and built here in Ethugra three decades ago from sea-forest wood. Most of her hull spars and seats had been replaced by dragon-bones, but her hull was entirely original, and thus rotting. He ought to make some temporary repairs while he was still wearing his brine gear, and while it was still light enough to see what he was doing. Carefully, he climbed aboard, easing his whaleskin boots into the partially flooded bilge. The old wooden planks creaked under his boots. From the bow storage compartment he took out his foot-pump, tools, storm lantern and an open tin of resin. The resin had hardened, leaving the brush jammed upright like a handle, so he placed the lantern on the wharf, lit it and balanced the tin on the lantern’s metal hood. While the resin was warming, he pumped water out of the bilge. Ideally, he should have raised her out of the water, but he didn’t need a perfect repair. Just enough to get her to the boatyard.

He spent an hour applying the sticky resin into the caulking between the hull planks. It was fully dark when the job was finally done, and his oil lantern glowed like a lonely beacon among the glooming prison buildings. A cloud of moths flitted around the flame, while scores more drifted past like grey confetti on the black water.

Granger spied another light moving down there in the depths. He snuffed his own lantern.

Several fathoms down, the Drowned man Granger had seen earlier emerged from a submerged doorway under Dan Cutter’s jail. He was heading south, hurrying across the uneven canal bed, swinging his gem-lantern to and fro as if searching for something amidst the rubble. The child who had accompanied him previously was nowhere to be seen.

A sense of unease crept over Granger, although he couldn’t say why. He suddenly felt very cold. As he turned to go back inside, he happened to glance up. The sky was moonless and clear, crammed with stars that sparkled like fragments of mica. He spotted the constellations of Ulcis Proxa and Iril, and part of Ayen’s Wheel glimmering low in the north. A tiny cluster of lights was travelling across the sky there. It stopped abruptly, then altered course, moving off in a westerly direction. Granger paused to watch it go. He’d not seen Ortho’s Chariot for five or six years, and as he stood there he couldn’t help but wonder what it might be. The last Unmer airbarque, travelling forever beyond the reach of the Haurstaf and Emperor Hu’s raging indignation? The occupants must surely be dead by now. Or was it just a star that had lost its way?

He went back inside.

He’d been gone longer than he intended to, and his prisoners would be hungry. He went downstairs to check on them.

Ianthe watched him moodily from under her hair. Hana looked drawn and weary. ‘Inny tells me it’s a beautiful night,’ she said. ‘You saw Ortho’s Chariot?’

Granger nodded. ‘It’s supposed to be a bad omen.’

‘Evensraumers don’t think so,’ she replied. ‘Inny told me about your argument with Creedy.’

‘She’s been spying on me?’

Hana raised her eyebrows. ‘Don’t blame her for that, Tom. What would you do in her position?’

Granger glanced at his daughter. Of course her mother was right. He was Ianthe’s jailer before he was her father. Still, he didn’t like her prying into his affairs. ‘Then you’ll know I didn’t get to the market today,’ he said, ‘and there’s not much left in the cupboard. Supper is porridge.’

‘I hate porridge,’ Ianthe said.

‘Eat it or go hungry,’ Granger replied. ‘Decide which one of those two you hate the most.’

‘There are fish in the canal,’ she said. ‘You could catch us some supper.’

‘Forget it.’

‘Please,’ she wailed. ‘Just for an hour. It’s so dark and smelly in here. I can tell you where to cast.’

Granger found himself considering this, despite himself. He hadn’t gone fishing for months, and it was a nice night. His prisoners weren’t likely to go anywhere. ‘It’s too risky,’ he said. ‘If someone sees us…’

‘They won’t,’ Ianthe insisted. ‘I’ll be able to sense them long before they can see us. Please, please, please.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s final.’

An hour later he was standing on his jetty with his fishing rod, casting a line out across the canal waters.

‘Not there,’ Ianthe said. ‘There!’ She pointed in the direction of Cuttle’s jail. ‘There’s a shoal of angel fish around that pontoon.’

‘That’s where I cast,’ Granger insisted.

‘No you didn’t.’

Granger reeled in the line again, grumbling. He’d been at this for half an hour already.

Hana was lying on her back, stretched out on the jetty planks, breathing deeply of the fresh night air as she gazed up at the stars.

Ianthe let out a moan of frustration. ‘Mother! I need you to watch me.’

Hana’s gaze flicked to her daughter. ‘I’m sorry, Inny.’

Granger flicked out the line again. This time, his bait plopped into the water a yard beyond Cuttle’s pontoon. Ianthe scrunched her eyes up and seemed to be concentrating. After a moment she said, ‘You scared them away.’

‘You told me to cast there.’

‘Not right on top of-’ She paused. ‘Wait, there’s something else coming. Something… it’s swimming straight for the bait.’

Granger stared into the canal, but could see nothing in the black depths. ‘A fish?’

‘I don’t know what it is!’ Ianthe exclaimed. ‘It isn’t looking at itself, is it? It’s going for the bait… now.’

A splash disturbed the waters out by the pontoon. Granger saw something large and silvery flash in the gloom, and then his line gave a sudden jerk, bending the fishing rod near double. This was a good-sized fish.

Hana sat up. ‘You got one?’

‘Of course he got one,’ Ianthe snapped.

Granger grunted and pulled back on the fishing rod. He began to wind in the slack. Out in the canal, the fish exploded out of the water and then thrashed across the surface. The creature was about three feet of solid muscle, with a blunt, fist-like head crammed with teeth.

‘A grappler,’ Granger growled. ‘Get back, both of you – it’s likely to splash brine everywhere.’

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.