Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts

by Alan Campbell

  ‘Wakey wakey, son,’ he said.

  The man’s eyes flicked open. He would surely have screamed if Creedy’s gun hadn’t entirely obscured his lips. He managed a gasp and tried to get up, but the sergeant just shook his head. ‘Where do you hide your trove?’

  Granger stepped onto the platform and dragged his kitbag after him. He inspected the skiffs. One was leaking from holes in the hide, but the remaining two looked sound enough. He helped Banks and Swan out of the other canoe, then reached an arm down to assist Tummel. The old soldier groaned and complained about stiffness in his legs.

  ‘More brine than blood in my veins,’ he muttered.

  ‘More whisky, you mean,’ Swan said. ‘Give me hand with that skiff.’

  ‘Your stash,’ Creedy said, holding the barrel of his weapon firmly over the trover’s mouth. ‘Where d’you keep it?’

  The man began to choke.

  ‘Leave it,’ Granger said. ‘We’re only here for the boats.’

  Creedy spat. ‘We’ll need money where we’re going, sir.’

  ‘We’re not thieves, Sergeant.’

  Swan and Tummel had untied the soundest of the skiffs. It was also packed with nets, hooks and lines – larger versions of the equipment in the canoes – along with goggles and whaleskin cloaks to protect the treasure hunters from caustic sea spray. Granger unfastened the other boats and kicked them away from the dock. Then he shoved the two canoes out after them.

  The four men clambered into the open-decked craft, leaving Creedy pinning the trover to the dock.

  ‘Sergeant,’ Granger said.

  Creedy leaned his big ugly face closer to his captive. ‘Tell me where it is, you son of a bitch.’

  ‘Sergeant.’

  Creedy gave a growl of frustration, then released the trover and stood up. He kicked the man hard in the ribs and swung back his boot to do it again.

  ‘We’re leaving, Sergeant,’ Granger said. ‘Right now.’

  Creedy stomped over and got into the stern seat beside Tummel, while Swan and Banks slotted oars into the rowlocks midway along the hull. Granger stuffed his kitbag down by his feet and pushed off from the bow.

  They crossed the ballroom, leaving the stranded trover gazing after them.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he shouted. ‘You’re not Imperial soldiers.’

  Creedy raised his hand-cannon.

  ‘Lower you weapon, Sergeant,’ Granger said.

  They rowed the skiff out through one of the windows.

  The street outside was broader, and the sea noticeably rougher, here. Waves washed through the roof spaces of ruined houses. The land below must have fallen away more steeply beyond this point, because the five men reached the edge of the Sunken Quarter after only three blocks. Ahead lay open ocean, silver in the starlight. To the west they could see foam thrashing against the dark ridge of the harbour breakwater. On the landward side stood the cannery, with the Fortress peninsula behind. Lanterns burned on the decks of an old iron dragon-hunter moored at the cannery loading ramp.

  The skiff pitched and rolled, but Banks and Swan kept her bow pointed towards the waves. The wind was fresh, but manageable, and they made good progress. Every man aboard had sailed in worse. They wore the trovers’ goggles and whaleskin cloaks to guard against sea spray, and they stuffed scraps of sackcloth into the rowlocks to muffle the sound of the oars. They didn’t speak, lest the wind carry their voices back to the shore. Soon they had cleared the breakwater and were heading back into the harbour.

  Unseen in the dark, they slipped past the port side of the dragon-hunter. The silhouettes of her harpoons could be seen overhead, pointing at the stars. Her engines throbbed inside her iron belly. The rich odour of meat filled the air here, mingling with the ever-present shipyard aromas of brine and oil.

  Creedy directed them to a ladder beside the cannery loading ramp at the rear of the ship, where the sea was red with blood. Granger held the skiff while his men disembarked, then tied her bow line to the ladder and hefted his kitbag over his shoulder before climbing up the greasy rungs after them.

  The sea door at the rear of the dragon-hunter had been lowered onto the loading ramp below, revealing the ship’s cavernous interior. At the top of the ramp, a massive steel winch waited beside an overhead conveyor system of hooks and chains designed to uplift carcasses and carry them through an enormous doorway obscured by flaps of whaleskin.

  Three big stevedores worked to unload the vessel. Two of them dragged a pair of hooked chains down the blood-soaked loading ramp below the winch and disappeared with them into the darkness of the ship’s hold. After a moment, one of them called out, ‘Pull.’

  The third man had remained at the winch. He clanked a lever forward, whereupon the chains tightened and then slowly began to reel back onto a huge spool. As Granger watched, the carcass of a dragon emerged from the ship’s hold. It was a common red from the Sea of Kings, about eighty feet from snout to tail-tip. The chain hooks had been rammed into the flesh between the scales at the nape of its neck. Its crumpled wings scraped over the bloody concrete as the chain dragged it up the ramp towards the huge factory doorway. The stevedores emerged from the ship again, following a few yards behind. The dragon was still bleeding out from a harpoon wound in its chest. At the top of the ramp, the third man stopped the winch. His two comrades unhooked the carcass from one set of chains and hooked it up to another pair fixed to the conveyor system above.

  ‘That’s Davy,’ Creedy said, pointing to a fourth man who had just appeared through the factory doorway. He was a lean, hard-faced fellow, draped in bloody oilskins. A cheroot hung from the corner of his mouth. He carried a head-spade like a staff. He glanced at the carcass, then pulled a lever on the wall behind.

  Another clunk, and the dragon carcass rose from the concrete floor, pulled up onto the overhead conveyor system by hooks in its neck and in the base of its tail. When it was fully off the ground, Davy halted the mechanism and then threw another switch.

  The conveyor gave a jerk, a rattle, and then rumbled forward, carrying the suspended carcass through the whale-hide doorway.

  ‘Davy!’ Creedy called.

  The hard-faced man looked up. He frowned and then jerked his head over his shoulder. And then he disappeared back through the doorway into the factory.

  ‘Come on,’ Creedy said.

  Granger and the others followed the sergeant along the edge of the loading ramp, while the two stevedores below returned the chains to the ship to hook up another carcass. Creedy pushed through the whaleskin flaps covering the conveyor doorway.

  Davy was waiting for them on the other side. He glared at Creedy and growled, ‘I said two.’

  They were in an enormous butchering hall, where dozens of dragon carcasses trundled along the overhead conveyor system. Workers slewed off scales with head-spades and opened bellies to spill out guts and hacked off wings and flesh with heavy machetes. White bones glistened among red meat. Blood ran in runnels across the floor and collected in frothing channels. The smell and heat was overpowering.

  ‘Two, five, what’s the difference?’ Creedy said.

  ‘The difference is, I only got two suits,’ Davy replied. ‘The price was for two. We already agreed that.’

  Granger stepped between them. ‘What does he mean?’ he said to Creedy. ‘The arrangement was for all five of us.’

  Creedy looked at the ground. ‘You couldn’t afford five,’ he said. ‘Those suits aren’t cheap.’

  Granger took a deep breath. ‘What did you think was going to happen when we got here?’

  Creedy shrugged. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Maybe wha
leskins. Hell, what was I supposed to say? I thought you’d figure something out. You always figure something out.’

  Davy laughed. ‘Whaleskins? You’ll be dead in a day.’

  Granger turned to him. ‘Show me.’

  He led them through the butchering hall and through a set of hangar doors into a cold room. Here, lying among blocks of ice, was an enormous green dragon. It was twice the size of the reds. Its mouth had been propped open with a head-spade, revealing the pink tunnel of its throat. One of its eyes stared glassily at the ceiling, the other had been mangled into red pulp. On the floor beside it lay two bulky brass diving suits. They looked perilously old and rotten.

  ‘You were lucky,’ Davy said. ‘We’ve not seen a monster like this in months.’ He rested a hand on the dragon’s snout. ‘She sank two ships, dragged them straight to the bottom, before the third put a harpoon through her eye.’

  Banks blew through his teeth. ‘That is one phenomenally ugly bitch,’ he said. ‘She reminds me of someone.’ He looked over at Creedy. ‘Can’t think who, though.’

  Creedy gave him a grim smile.

  ‘You aren’t gonna survive in there without a suit,’ Davy said. ‘Not all the way to Ethugra, anyways. These greens have guts like acid. Burn a man alive.’

  ‘Can you get more suits?’ Granger said.

  Davy snorted. ‘Tonight?’ He stared at the dragon for a long moment. ‘Maybe for sixteen thousand, I can get one.’

  ‘I don’t have that sort of money.’

  ‘Then you’re screwed, aren’t you? Ship sails at dawn.’

  Banks stepped up to Granger. ‘You and Creedy go,’ he said. ‘We’ll follow when we can.’

  Granger shook his head.

  ‘Creedy knows Ethugra,’ Banks said. ‘You’ll need him once you get there.’

  ‘Makes sense to me,’ Creedy said.

  ‘No,’ Granger insisted. ‘I’m not leaving anyone behind. Banks and Swan can use the diving suits. The rest of us will have to wrap up in whaleskins. Once the carcass is aboard, we’ll climb out and look for another place to hide.’

  Creedy grunted. ‘It’s a goddamn prison ship. Where you going to hide?’

  ‘We’ll deal with that problem when we have to,’ Granger said.

  ‘The sergeant’s right for once,’ Swan said. ‘We wouldn’t stand a chance on a ship like that, not outside that big green bastard. You and Creedy take the suits.’ He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘To be honest, I never much liked the idea of Ethugra anyway.’

  ‘Absolute shit-hole,’ Tummel agreed. ‘Too many jailers and not enough publicans.’

  ‘Gambling’s illegal in Ethugra,’ Swan muttered.

  ‘Everything’s illegal in Ethugra,’ Tummel said.

  Banks nodded. ‘We’ll take our chances here.’

  Creedy had already chosen the better of the two diving suits and began to pull it on.

  Granger wouldn’t have ordered them to obey him if he still had the power to do so. They were his men – the last and best of his men – but more than that, they were their own men. He couldn’t order them, but he didn’t have to abandon them either. ‘I’m staying here,’ he said. ‘One of you can have that suit.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand, sir,’ Banks said. ‘If you don’t go, the suit stays empty.’ He glanced over at Swan and Tummel, and then the three of them turned around and walked away.

  Banks looked back once over his shoulder. ‘Tell Creedy we’re going to find the trover’s stash.’

  The sergeant had lifted the heavy brass helmet onto his shoulders, but hadn’t yet clamped it down. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he muttered, his voice muffled by the cumbersome headpiece. ‘Just our luck if the bastard finds it.’

  ‘The suit filters will take worst of the brine out of the air,’ Davy said, ‘and there’s a jerry can of water already in there. Don’t take off your helmets except when you need to drink. And for god’s sake, don’t damage the dragon. It’s going to a collector.’ He glanced between the two men. ‘That’s it, except for the money.’

  Granger pulled out a wad of gilders from his kitbag and gave it to Davy. It was everything he had. Then he gathered up the other diving suit and began to clamber inside it. Creedy snapped down the last of his helmet clamps and peered out through the circular window at his own gloved hands. ‘How do I take a piss?’ he said.

  ‘The usual way,’ Davy said. ‘Good luck.’

  Creedy got on his hands and knees and crawled inside the dragon’s mouth. After a moment, he called back, ‘Holy shit, Colonel, you’ll never guess what this thing has eaten.’

  * * *

  SIX YEARS LATER

  * * *

  CHAPTER 2

  A OO A APEE

  Dear Margaret,

  Thanks to Mr Swinekicker, I’m now officially dead. This means you can make the payments directly to him without losing half of it to tax, which will save you money and allow me to remain here in prison for twice as long. Yesterday I saw a bird soaring above my cell window. I don’t know what sort it was, but it was white and it had something clutched in its claws. Didn’t birds like that once dive for fish?

  I wonder what this one had?

  All my love,

  Alfred

  The brine had risen another inch in the week since he’d last been down here. All the books he’d piled upon the floorboards to act as stepping stones had now vanished under its toxic brown surface. Granger stood at the bottom of the steps with his lantern raised and peered along the flooded corridor, wondering how he was going to get the prison register out of the storage room at the far end. He only had one more book left, and sacrificing that one wouldn’t help. The air down here had a burned-salt, chemical aroma, like the air in a whaling station. He pulled his goggles over his eyes, then squatted down as close to the water as he dared, swinging the light around him. Dead beetles floated everywhere. Blisters of green paint and brown ichusan crystals marred the walls along the waterline, but the cell doors on either side of the passage looked intact.

  ‘Anyone still alive down here?’ he called.

  He heard a thump and a splash, as if something had been thrown against one of the doors, then a man’s voice called back from the shadows: ‘Give me some food, you son of a bitch.’

  Granger raised his goggles and went back up the stairs.

  Creedy had tilted his chair back on its rear legs and sat with his boots resting on the munitions crate Granger used as a table. A huge man with a boxer’s face and hair shaved close to his skull, he still possessed an aura of brute savagery. Even now he was gnawing on a dragon knuckle, sucking at the cartilage and ripping shreds of meat free with soft, bestial grunts. Most men with a past like his would have chosen to hide it, but William Patrick Creedy still wore the Gravediggers’ tattoo on the back of his hand openly, proudly, challenging anyone who saw it to betray him to the emperor’s men. It was an attitude that had almost killed him more than once. Grey patches of sharkskin marred one side of his jaw – an injury sustained when six privateers had pinned him, momentarily, to a wet dockside in Tallship. His left ear was missing, hacked off in that same brawl. Creedy simply didn’t give a shit. His clockwork eye ticked with the steady precision of a detonator, the small blue lens shuttling back and forth in its socket, but his good eye – the cunning one – was watching Granger. ‘What’s the situation, C
olonel?’ he asked.

  ‘The brine’s risen another inch,’ he replied.

  ‘I meant, are any of your guests still breathing?’

  Granger shrugged. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘Good,’ Creedy said. ‘You’re officially a priority now. Since they can’t expect a man to make a living from an empty jail, they are obliged do something about it.’ He leaned forward and spat out a piece of gristle. ‘That’s the law.’

  Granger hung his lantern on a wall hook. ‘I can’t get to the register,’ he said.

  ‘The hell you keep it down there for anyway?’

  The truth was Granger hadn’t thought about going back for it, not since the old man’s death. But Creedy would never have understood that. All but one of the names in the register had lines scored through them, and after that final one he didn’t think he wanted to add any more. If he accepted more prisoners he’d have to feed them, and it might be years before their families ran out of money to send. And then it would be Granger himself who’d have to carry down the last meal; Thomas Granger who’d have to watch them die. The hardest part of job was the part he did for free.

  He wasn’t running a prison so much as a tomb.

  ‘You should have built that other storey like old Swinekicker said,’ Creedy remarked. ‘Another couple of winters like the last one, and the Mare Lux will be lapping your balls. What are you going to do when you run out of space? Where are you going to live? I mean, look at this place, man.’

  The detritus of Granger’s life filled a series of cramped spaces under the building’s coombed attic ceilings. A jumble of wood, whale- and dragon-bones supported the roof. Morning light fell through the windows facing Halcine Canal, illuminating piles of spent shell casings, drip-pans positioned under leaks, carpentry tools, oarlocks and old engine parts from the Trove Market in Losoto. In the centre of the room sat a massive anchor, too heavy for Granger to lift on his own. God knows how Swinekicker had got it in here. A flap of whaleskin covered the hole leading out to the eaves, while the wooden hatch it had replaced rested against the wall nearby. He’d been forced to rip the little door off its hinges to drag the old man’s coffin out. You could still see the scrapes the heavy box had left in the floorboards; they looked like gouges left by fingernails.