Alan Campbell - Sea Of Ghosts

The girl just shrugged. ‘She’s Haurstaf.’

‘What is it?’ Creedy asked.

Granger ignored him. ‘And why is she helping us?’ he said to the witch.

‘She-’ The girl suddenly stopped. ‘I’m not allowed to say.’ She paused for a minute, then nodded. ‘Politics.’

Creedy leaned forward. ‘You getting love letters from psychics now?’

‘She was the only one who liked his joke,’ Banks muttered.

‘What joke was that?’ Creedy asked.

‘The one about the emperor’s cock.’

‘Be quiet,’ Granger said. He took a deep breath. ‘Private Banks, Sergeant Creedy, we are now civilians. Emperor Hu has disbanded the Gravediggers.’

Nobody spoke.

‘We’ve been charged under article 118,’ Granger went on. ‘Attempting to escape active duty through self-inflicted injuries. Warrants already issued. They’ll be coming for us at any moment.’

Creedy roared. ‘Warrants?’

‘We’re fugitives.’

‘Son of a bitch.’

Granger felt suddenly light-headed. ‘Language, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘A direct insult to the emperor-’

‘Fuck him,’ Creedy snarled. ‘Fuck him and fuck the law. We ought to wring that powdered bastard’s neck.’ His eye had begun to bleed again, and a red patch was spreading into the bandage. He looked up again in disbelief. ‘Self-inflicted injuries?’

‘It’s close enough to the truth,’ Granger said. ‘I’m afraid I’ve let us down.’

‘You’re not taking sole responsibility for this one, Colonel,’ Swan said. ‘It was about time somebody said it to his face.’

‘I’ve been itching to have it out with him myself,’ Tummel said. ‘That pond lily has been living in a fantasy too long.’

Swan gave a derisory grunt. ‘Admiral of the Fleet.’

‘Captain of War,’ Tummel added.

The pair of them chuckled. They were taking great care to move silently through the yard behind the Fenwick Ale House, which only seemed to help their drunken voices carry all the further in the darkness. Private Banks shuffled along beside Granger, wrapped in his own thoughts, but Sergeant Creedy’s anger could be heard in the thump of his boots a short distance behind them.

When they reached the yard gate, Tummel glanced over his shoulder to where a yellow outline in the gloom marked the back door of the ale house. ‘When did you last clear the tab?’ he asked his brother.

‘Three days ago,’ Swan replied.

‘Shame. Noril’s usually good for a week.’

‘Quiet now,’ Granger said. He listened for a few moments at the gate, then eased it open. The five men filed out into the alleyway behind. All was silent, but for a tolling bell down by the harbour. Overhead, the city rooftops and chimneys sawed a jagged silhouette across the grand sweep of the cosmos, where the stars sparkled like fine particles of glass. The smell of brine filled Granger’s nostrils. He hefted his kitbag higher onto his shoulder and started walking.

They hurried along the alleyway without another word, until they reach the junction with the main thoroughfare. Granger held up his hand to halt his men. He peered from the shadows. Lamps burned in the windows of the traders’ houses on Wicklow Street, throwing cross-hatch patterns across the paving stones all the way down the hill to the harbour. The masts of trawlers and whalers cluttered the water’s edge like cattails. Stevedores were working on the quayside down there, unloading crates by the light from whale-oil braziers. On the peninsula side of the bay, the dock warehouses and sailors’ hostels clung to the cliffs under the shadow of the City Fortress.

Granger scanned the buildings around that black-water basin until he found what he was looking for. A group of nine Imperial soldiers were waiting outside the Harbour Freight Office, carbine rifles slung across their backs. He traced the road around to the shadowy mass of the dragon cannery situated at the breakwater side of the bay and spotted another unit guarding the entrance to the deepwater docks. This group was smaller – only two men.

‘Samarol,’ he muttered.

Banks moved to his side. ‘I always wondered if they could see in the dark.’

‘Better than most men,’ Granger replied. He thought for a moment. ‘We’ll reach it by sea.’ He pointed to an area several hundred yards west of the harbour, where a great expanse of partially submerged and roofless houses stretched out into the sea. ‘Out through the Sunken Quarter, around the breakwater and back in to the cannery landing ramp itself.’

‘You want to steal a trover’s boat?’

‘Borrow,’ Granger said. ‘There should be dozens of them hidden down there.’

‘That’ll be because trovers are shot on sight, Colonel.’

‘The emperor’s men will be looking landward tonight.’

Banks shrugged his agreement.

They cut straight across Wicklow Street and delved into the network of cobbled lanes that ran like veins down towards the Sunken Quarter. The town houses, like all those in Upper Losoto, were Unmer built, and their pillared marble facades reeked of arrogance. Many had been slavers’ homes, and the brick foundations of the old stock pens could still be seen in a few of the adjoining courtyards, now converted into gazebos, pergolas or fountains by the new owners. Granger wondered how many of those slaves had gone on to occupy their former masters’ homes after the Uprising. Not many, he supposed. The Unmer slavers had butchered their human chattel after the Battle of Awl, when the victorious Haurstaf navy had turned their ships east towards Losoto.

These streets had run with blood.

They passed through a small quadrangle where four grand, shuttered houses faced each other across the spider-web remains of an ancient spell garden. A faintly bitter aroma still surrounded the dead winter-wools, peregollins, spleenworts and liverworts. Sergeant Creedy covered his mouth and nose and muttered something about the inducement of dark dreams. Tummel and Swan ribbed him for the next two streets until Granger ordered them to be quiet.

The houses became more dilapidated as the men drew near to the sea. Smashed windows looked out into the lanes, the rooms inside dark. The stench of brine overpowered everything else. Granger found Banks at his side again. ‘The trovers in Ratpen Pennow hide their boats on the rooftops,’ the private said. ‘Small canoes. They lower them down at night.’

Granger shook his head. ‘This isn’t the Ratpen,’ he said. ‘We should be able to find an illegal mooring in one of the sunken ruins. By the last Imperial reckoning, there were two or three dozen of them.’

‘Planks on the wall?’

‘That’s what I was thinking.’

The private nodded. ‘With any luck we’ll find a cache as well. What did Creedy tell you about his cannery man?’

‘A cousin of a cousin,’ Granger said. ‘Ex-navy. Works as a descaler now.’ He shrugged. ‘Creedy trusts him, and the price is fair.’

‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,’ Banks said. He hesitated for a long moment. ‘I never did get a chance to put very much away, sir. My old man back in the Ratpen lost his pension to some bad investments, so most of my salary went home to him and his sisters.’ He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘I don’t suppose Swan and Tummel are in much of a better state. You’ve seen them play cards.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Private,’ Granger said. ‘It’s been taken care of.’

Banks seemed about to say something, then changed his mind. Finally he said, ‘I’ll pay you back somehow, sir.’

‘I know,’ Granger said.

They arrived at a street running parallel to the coast. The houses here were utterly derelict, a crumbling bank of boarded-up windows and partially collapsed roofs. Graffiti covered the walls. Across the facade immediately before them, someone had scrawled in huge black letters: