Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts

by Alan Campbell

  A rat scampered along ledges above the water’s edge, its scarred grey snout sniffing after water-beetles. Granger watched it for a while. Once he thought he spied another lantern moving slowly through the deep. Another Drowned soul on an unknowable errand? If Creedy noticed it, he chose not to comment.

  At length they left the shadows of Francialle and steered the boat out into a wide quadrangle open to the full glare of the midday sun.

  Averley Plaza formed a great sunlit harbour in the centre of the city, flanked on three sides by the grand façades of Ethugra’s Imperial jails and administration buildings. Ships from Losoto, Valcinder, Chandel and the liberated territories of Cog-Ellis and Evensraum reached this place by way of the Glot Madera – a deep-water channel that meandered south through the heart of the city to the open sea. The whole basin teemed with boats: merchantmen, trawlers and dragon-claves from all corners of the empire; dredgers, squid lanterns, crane-ships and barges loaded with reclaimed stone, earth and firewood dragged up from undersea forests. A fleet of smaller vessels wove between the larger craft, from hardwood yachts to whaleskin coracles and old Unmer crystal-hulls; they bobbed and danced like bright mirages upon the bronze waters.

  On the north embankment Ethugra’s weekly market was already underway. Several hundred tents and stalls crammed the broad swathe of flagstones along the wharf side, selling everything from soil-grown produce to flame coral, thrice-boiled fish and trove. At the water’s edge stood the stony figures of men and women – not statues, but the corpses of sharkskin men and women, each netted in Ethugra’s own canals and left out to harden in the glare of the sun.

  Creedy was looking south. ‘Lucky we got here when we did,’ he said. ‘The Baster’s early.’

  A former Imperial battleship, the Alabaster Sound was now one of the largest of Emperor Hu’s prisoner transport vessels. Two steam tugs were nudging her battle-scarred steel bow through the gates of the Glot Madera and into Averley Plaza. She had been decommissioned after the Forty-third War of Liberation, but her iron guns still loomed over her deck rails, the shadows of their barrels sweeping across the brine like black banners. Her massive sloping funnel towered above the roofs of even the tallest buildings, disgorging fumes into the blue sky. A blast from her horn announced her arrival to the whole city, and her engines began to rumble like an earthquake as she turned. The captain stood on her wheelhouse deck, clad in emerald storm armour, his bulbous glass faceplate gleaming in the sun like the eye of a frog.

  Ethugra’s prison administrators were busy preparing for the Alabaster Sound’s arrival, laying out their ledgers and inkwells on long tables under canopies facing the waterfront. The harbour master shouted orders to his stevedores, who ran to positions beside stanchions, ready to haul in mooring ropes. Sailors scrambled to move smaller boats and coracles out of the former battleship’s way. An expectant crowd began to gather behind them.

  Creedy steered the launch across the plaza and into a public berth at the westernmost end of the docks, where he and Granger alighted. A dozen hawkers assailed Creedy at once, shoving all manner of cheap food and worthless trove into his face.

  ‘Chariot ballast, Mr Creedy?’

  ‘Catspin claws, sir. Original claws – see the brass work on this . . .’

  ‘. . . dredged from the Mare Verdant . . .’

  ‘Mr Creedy?’

  ‘Six gilders an ounce, my friend.’

  A fat man wearing spectacles stepped in front of Granger. He had dozens of similar pairs of eyeglasses arranged on a tray hung from his neck. ‘See the past through the eyes of a dead sorcerer,’ he said. ‘Genuine Unmer lenses. They’ll show you where to find lost trove, sir.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Unholy rituals, human sacrifices, Unmer sex, dragon sex.’

  Granger ignored them all. Creedy hesitated, ogling the dizzying array of goods with his rapidly stuttering eye. He glanced back, spotted the spectacle seller, and then shoved him aside to let Granger past. ‘Fakes,’ he muttered. ‘You don’t see shit through them.’ He was about to go, but then became distracted by a man selling silver puzzle boxes.

  Granger urged him on.

  Scores of other jailers had gathered around the administrators’ desks by now. They sat on the harbour’s edge with their legs dangling over the poisonous water, or leaned on the corpse-statues, watching the stevedores secure the ship and lower her loading ramps. Granger recognized a few faces and nodded greetings. They were all small-timers. Nobody from the larger prisons would bother with such low-value captives. There wasn’t enough profit in peasants. Creedy fell into conversation with a man Granger didn’t know, so Granger turned back to watch the Alabaster Sound.

  The captain stomped down the gangplank, his helmet gripped in the crook of his arm, his lacquered steel boots clanking. He was typical Losotan, dark-haired with fine features. He grinned broadly, wiped sweat from his brow and called out, ‘Grech.’

  The head administrator peered up from his desk with darkly suspicious little eyes. ‘You’re early,’ he said. He was all joints, this man – a great shambling preying mantis. He wore a dusty wig, woven into plaits, and an ash-coloured Imperial robe enriched with silver and lead chain-links around the shoulders. His chin hovered over his ledger like a stalactite.

  The captain handed him a scroll. ‘One hundred and sixty-three redundants. Eighteen twenty-eight still breathing, and another eighteen lawbreakers pickling in our seawater tanks. That’s two thousand and nine bodies delivered.’

  ‘Eighteen lawbreakers?’ the administrator said. ‘That seems excessive.’

  ‘Discipline,’ the captain replied. ‘You give these people an inch and their lawlessness starts to infect the crew. Besides, I know how much you like to watch them dry out.’ His gaze wandered to the nearest stone figure – the stone body of a woman curled up on the ground, her face a rictus of agony – and he gave a little smile.

  The administrator examined the document, then scrawled something across the bottom and handed it back to the other man. The captain turned and gestured to one of the Alabaster Sound’s deck crew, who began unloading their human cargo.

  The prisoners were much as Granger had expected: a rabble of Evensraum farm labourers, militia, women and old men. Hardly a trained combatant among them. Shackled hand to foot and linked by chains, they shuffled down the loading ramps under the watchful eyes of the ship’s overseer. The crew lined them up on the dockside, while Ethugra’s jailers crowded around the administrators’ desks to collect the numbered tickets necessary to claim new arrivals. Granger was about to join them, when Creedy came forward, holding out two slips of paper.

  ‘You’re sorted,’ he said.

  Granger hesitated. ‘How did you get these?’

  The sergeant grunted. ‘My first cousin’s husband knows a man who knows a man,’ he said. ‘Just take them, Colonel, or we’ll be here all day. It’s too damn hot to hang around here any longer than we need to.’

  Granger accepted the tickets and examined them. He was to be allocated prisoners forty-three and forty-four from the first batch. ‘Is there anyone in this city your family doesn’t know?’

  Creedy thought for a moment. ‘Aye, but they’re all below water.’

  The two men waited their turn as the first prisoners were brought, one by one, before the administrators. Documents were signed and passed along the line to be stamped and countersigned. Numbers were called out, whereupon the jailer holding the appropriate ticket claimed his captive and herded them further down the line to finalize the paperwork. The Alabaster Sound’s overseer unlocked chains, lashing his whip at his charges when they delayed.

  The sun h
ammered them without mercy. The smell of whale oil from the ship’s funnels lingered in the air and clung to the roof of Granger’s mouth. He watched the boats bobbing in the bay. He eyed a beer seller and rummaged in his pocket for coins, but his hand came out empty. He tugged at his collar and wiped sweat from his brow and peered down the line of prisoners. Fewer than thirty had been processed. Underfed and dejected, half of them wouldn’t last a year in Ethugra.

  ‘Thomas?’

  A female captive at the front of the line was staring at Granger. Evidently she had been troublesome on the voyage, for the face under her bonfire of black hair had been beaten black and yellow. Dried blood caked her lower lip. She was clinging fiercely to a girl of fifteen or sixteen, trying to stop the overseer from separating them. ‘Thomas?’ she said quickly. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’

  Granger shook his head. ‘I don’t know you, ma’am.’

  The overseer wrenched the young girl away from the older woman and thrust her towards a waiting jailer. The woman shrieked, ‘Ianthe,’ and tried to follow, but the overseer kicked her to the ground. She reached out her arms and wailed. ‘She’s my daughter!’

  Both mother and daughter wore simple Evensraum peasant clothes, as torn and filthy as any of the other captives, and yet the girl’s boots were exceptionally fine, certainly not the sort of footwear one might expect a farm girl to own. Even in rags she was a striking young woman, olive-skinned with full lips, and a slender nose under a riot of black hair. She was terrified, confused, her eyes wild and brimming with tears. She didn’t even appear to see the jailer as he grabbed her wrist and dragged her quickly down the line of tables. Something about her appearance struck a chord in Granger’s heart. She looked strangely familiar.

  ‘Please,’ the woman on the ground begged him. ‘Don’t let them take her away from me. It would kill her.’

  ‘Ma’am . . .’ Granger began.

  ‘My name is Hana,’ she cried. ‘You know me, Thomas. You know me from Weaverbrook.’

  A slow, horrible realization came over Granger as he looked down at the beaten woman, at the face behind the bruises. She hadn’t aged well. Suddenly he found himself staring after the girl in the hands of the other jailer. She had her mother’s hair and skin, but what about the rest? The almond shape of that face, the tiny bump in the bridge of her nose, the strong line of her chin. Anyone could see the girl had some Losotan blood. And her eyes? Not dark like her mother’s, but the same pale shade of blue Granger looked at in his shaving mirror every day. Fifteen years old? God help him. Fifteen years. Not here, not now. Not in this godforsaken place.

  Creedy must have seen Granger’s expression change, because he grabbed his arm and whispered, ‘Fucking hell, Colonel. Don’t even think about it. You’re not Granger no longer. What happens in wartime happens. This has nothing to do with you now.’

  The woman was sobbing. ‘Please help her.’

  The grip on Granger’s arm tightened. ‘Not a good idea, Mr Swinekicker.’

  Granger wrenched away from the other man. He walked up to the administrator’s desk and laid down his tickets. ‘Give me these two,’ he said.

  The administrator didn’t even glance at the tickets. ‘I’m sorry, sir. These prisoners have already been claimed.’

  ‘What difference does it make?’ Granger insisted. ‘They’re randomly allocated.’

  One of the men standing nearby glanced at the sobbing peasant woman, then turned to him and said, ‘She’s supposed to come with me, but I don’t need the trouble, mate.’ He held out his ticket. ‘I’ll trade you.’

  Granger swapped tickets with the man. Then he approached the jailer holding the young girl. ‘What do you say?’

  The other man made a dismissive gesture. ‘Forget it. I ain’t queuing up again.’ He handed his prison ledger to one of the administrators and stood there, studiously avoiding Granger’s eye. The administrator looked at the ledger, then looked at Granger.

  Granger leaned close to the jailer and said, ‘One prisoner is as good as another.’

  The other man shook his head. ‘I told you,’ he replied weakly. ‘I’m not interested.’ He rubbed sweat from his brow and stared intently down at the desk. Still, the official did nothing. The sun beat down on the plaza, on the administrators’ desks, on the assembled crowds. Finally the jailer turned to Granger and whispered, ‘I got another business to run, you know?’ He moistened his lips. ‘I can’t trade her for some old man.’

  ‘You paid extra for her?’

  ‘You know how it is, man.’

  Granger placed his remaining ticket and his ledger on the desk. ‘Sign her over to me,’ he said to the administrator.

  The administrator gazed blankly at the scrap of paper.

  ‘Do it,’ Granger hissed, ‘before I start using words like corruption and prostitution. Those terms are quite clearly defined in the Evensraum Convention.’

  The jailer threw his ticket down. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Have her. What do I care?’ He snatched up his ledger and stormed away into the crowd.

  Back in the launch, Granger felt like shivering despite the sun. What had he just done? His heart seemed to stutter as it wavered between feelings of responsibility and regret. He clutched his prison ledger in bloodless knuckles. Creedy steered the boat across the plaza, wrapped in a disapproving silence, while the two prisoners huddled together in the bow. Hana held her daughter tightly under a spare whaleskin cloak. She kept glancing over at Granger, a question burning in her eyes. The girl, Ianthe, stared absently across the brine, as though she wasn’t really seeing anything at all, as though the world around her didn’t really exist. She hadn’t looked at Granger once.

  Nobody spoke until they’d left the open water and plunged into the canals of Francialle, when Creedy suddenly said, ‘Big mistake, Colonel. They’re prisoners, for god’s sake.’ He picked up his boat hook and pushed the hull away from a wall with an angry grunt. ‘They’d have been better off with anyone else in Ethugra.’ He let out a sarcastic laugh. ‘And it’s against the fucking law.’

  Creedy was right, of course, and it shamed Granger to think he had finally fallen so low. His own father would have raged and beaten him over it, would have forced him to hand Hana and Ianthe back to the prison administrators.

  But his father was dead. And his mother was dead. His brother John killed in Weaverbrook, leaving a wife and child somewhere in Losoto. Even old Swinekicker had finally gone under the brine. The only family Granger had left was sitting in this boat.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 3

  PERCEPTION

  Dear Margaret,

  There’s been an unexpected turn of events. One of Maskelyne’s Hookmen spotted me looking out of my cell window. He wants four hundred gilders to keep his mouth shut. Mr Swinekicker needs the money by the end of the month, or Maskelyne’s man will let the authorities know I’m still alive. If that happens I’ll be convicted of complicity in fraud and placed in one of the city plunge tanks. They drown you, and then they drag you out again and leave you to die in the sun. Sometimes the process can last for days. There’s no time to write more. I need your help.

  Love,

  Alfred

  The Evensraum woman and her daughter knelt on the floor in Granger’s garret, their leg-irons chained to a water pipe running along the wall. He didn’t know what he was going to do with them yet, and he was angry with himself for not having thought this through. The downstairs cells lay under six inches of poisonous brine.
He’d have to fashion some kind of temporary platform, if he was going to keep them out of harm’s way.

  But Granger hesitated.

  Creedy’s parting words still rang in his ears. Drown them both and say they tried to escape. Do it now and save yourself all the grief later on. They’re nobodies, Tom. You’ll be lucky if you get three payments for them.

  Ianthe stared into space like a girl in a trance, while her mother hugged her daughter’s shoulders and rocked backwards and forwards, murmuring softly. They were surrounded by piles of rusting junk, broken tools and engine parts, all the things Granger had meant to fix up when he had a few spare gilders. The flap across the entrance hatch lifted in the breeze and then sank back down again.

  ‘Listen—’ Granger began.

  ‘Thank you for doing this,’ Hana said.

  He tried to read the woman’s face, searching for some hint of her expectations, but her bruises confounded him. He couldn’t see past them. ‘The cells are downstairs,’ he said at last. ‘That’s what I do now. It’s my job.’

  She nodded.

  ‘The name’s Swinekicker, now,’ he said. ‘Don’t call me Granger in public again.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ve got to sort things out,’ he said. ‘There’s flooding down there. You stay here.’ He was about to turn away, when he remembered his manners. ‘Do you need something to eat? I have—’

  ‘Some water, if you can spare it.’

  He filled a jug from the spigot, then hunted for cups. They were all furred with mould, so he covered the sink with an old towel and handed her the jug. She accepted it hungrily and passed it to her daughter, who gulped down half before handing it back.

  ‘Tastes like rust,’ Ianthe said.

  ‘The purifier is old,’ Granger replied. ‘I’ve been planning to replace it.’