Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts (11 page)

A sturdy deepwater boat could take him across the Mare Lux, beyond Losoto and the reach of the empire. Valcinder still maintained some free ports, it was said. He could sell the boat there and buy passage on a vortex-class ship across the Strakebreaker Sea. In a year or so he might reach the Herican Peninsula, the last great wilderness – the place where gods once walked with men.

He could escape the brine.

The thought should have given him solace, and yet he found it impossible to sleep. Doubts continued to nag at him. Was there
any
way she could simply have heard him pull the drawer from the cabinet? He couldn’t see how such a feat was possible. But if he was going to sell Ianthe to the Haurstaf, then he had to be
absolutely certain
. She was still too much of a mystery to him. The extent of her abilities remained untested, obscured by her lies. It was like peering into the depths of the sea. One never knew exactly what one might find down there.

He had to determine her limits.

But how do you test a psychic who knows your every thought and plans to confound you?

Granger got up and took the water jug from the sink. Then he walked downstairs to the flooded cell corridor. No windows opened onto the narrow space, and it was utterly dark down there, but Granger could have found his way in his sleep. He counted fifteen steps, then crouched. Slowly and carefully, he eased the lip of the jug into the brine, filling it with poison.

He slept later than usual. When he woke the sun was high and the room was already uncomfortably warm. He opened a window and pissed into the canal below. He still felt tired. He threw on a robe and pulled his borrowed galoshes over his bare feet. Then he picked up the jug of poisonous water and sniffed it. It smelled sulphurous and metallic, but so did everything else in his jail. He doubted any normal person would be able to detect the deception until it was too late. A psychic, however, would already know what he had done.

He carried it down to the flooded cell block.

Neither of his prisoners looked like they’d slept at all. Ianthe didn’t seem to have the energy even to raise her head and scowl at him. She was still curled up in the corner, her head turned away, but breathing with such fierceness that Granger knew she was awake. Hana pushed herself up from the palette and tried to smile.

He handed her the jug and thought to himself,
I’ve poisoned the water, Ianthe.

She set it down and rubbed her eyes. ‘Do you feed us?’ she said.

‘In a minute.’ He waited.

She picked up the jug.

‘Hana.’

She lowered the jug and looked at him.

Don’t count on me stopping her from drinking it, Ianthe. I’m not going to do it again. And don’t pretend to be asleep. I can hear you breathing.
‘How did you survive? In Evensraum, I mean. Cholera wiped out the colonies.’

She shrugged. ‘Why did you change your name? Why Swinekicker?’

‘Name of the guy who owned this place,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

‘I walked east.’ She raised the jug to her lips.

‘East? To where?’

‘Deslorn,’ she said. ‘Hundreds of us took that road.’ She was looking at him strangely now, trying to discover his motives. ‘When the cholera took hold in Deslorn, I moved again. Temple Oak, Cannislaw, other places. A refugee camp in the woods, that’s where Inny was born.’ She lifted the jug again.

Damn you, Ianthe. You’d let her die to prove a point?
Granger put his hand on the lip of the jug and lowered it. ‘How did you end up here?’

She let out a deep sigh. ‘Trove,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Inny can spot things lying on the seabed.’ She set down the jug and looked at it. ‘We got involved with this smuggler, Marcus Law. He was dredging the waters out past Port Vassar, the Ochre Sea and places like that. And he’d send the trove he found to the Losoto markets. Illegal, of course. But you always find buyers for exceptional finds, and a lot of Inny’s finds were like that.’

Granger thought about this, now curious despite his misgivings. If Ianthe could do what her mother claimed, then what she was telling him made sense. Black-market salvage operations like these funnelled money into the Evensraum Resistance. The Imperial Navy had closed down dozens of them.

‘You’re telling me she can actually
see
trove down there?’

Hana nodded. ‘Like you can see me now.’ She picked up the water jug and held it out to her daughter. ‘Inny . . .’

‘I don’t want anything from
him
,’ the girl said. ‘You drink it.’

Hana looked up at him helplessly, then she raised the jug to her own lips.

‘Stop.’ Granger took the jug away from her. His thoughts were reeling now. Had Ianthe been about to let her mother drink brine, simply
to conceal her talents
? Or was it more likely that Hana was telling the truth, that Ianthe simply didn’t know about the poisoned water? He stared down at the jug in confusion. ‘I have some wine, if you’d prefer.’

‘Thank you,’ Hana said. ‘That would be nice.’

He emptied the jug in the corridor outside. Ianthe’s behaviour continued to confound him. Had mother and daughter known about the poison all along and
planned
that whole display for his benefit? Had Hana
counted on him
preventing her from taking a sip? It was the only thing he could think of that made sense.

How do you test a psychic who knows your every thought and plans to confound you?

Had they simply outwitted him? Granger let out a growl of frustration and went to find them some wine.

At noon he cooked them thrice-boiled fish, adding oats to turn it into a thick porridge. If he was going to outwit his prisoners, he decided, it was best to earn their trust first. He found a little honey he’d been saving for himself and spooned that in too. It made the gruel more pleasant. He tasted it with his finger, then added salt and tasted it again. Not too bad. He felt quite pleased with himself. As he was ladling the mixture into bowls he heard the sound of a bell ringing outside. He went over to the open hatch and ducked outside.

The postboat was moving slowly along Halcine Canal, puffing steam from its short brass funnel. She was an old Valcinder coastal cruiser, slender and graceful. East Empire shipwrights had carved her hull from the jawbone of a hexen barracuda and fashioned her stem from hundreds of white and yellow angui bones that still gleamed like twists of marzipan. The waterway here was narrow enough to allow the postman’s son, Ned, to toss bundles of letters onto the prison wharfs or into the open decks of the jailers’ own tethered boats. Most of Granger’s neighbours had postboxes fixed to their wharfs, but it wasn’t raining so Ned wasn’t bothering to use them. The Hoekens and Mrs Pursewearer would complain about that, and Ned would just laugh uproariously and carry on as usual.

On the opposite side of the canal Dan Cuttle was climbing down a series of ladders that zigzagged all the way down one side of his brick jail like huge iron stitches. He waved and called down, ‘Fine hot day.’

‘It’s cooler down here in the shade,’ Granger replied. ‘Any time you want to swap your business for mine, I’d be happy to oblige you.’

Dan laughed and shouted back, ‘I’ve got plenty of leftover bricks if you need them, Tom. Odd sizes, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you could use ’em. Rather give ’em to you than let the bloody Drowned have ’em back.’

‘I might take you up on that, Dan. Thanks.’ He thought about the Drowned family he’d seen going into the other man’s basement, but then decided not to mention them. Dan would have Maskelyne’s Hookmen down here in droves.

As the postboat slipped past, Ned threw a single envelope towards Granger’s wharf. It looped momentarily in the air, before missing the wharf altogether and drifting down onto the open hull of Granger’s rotten little boat.

Ned laughed. ‘Sorry Tom.’

‘Every time,’ Granger muttered.

His vessel,
Hana
, was sitting lower in the water than ever before. He allowed his gaze to linger a moment on the name he’d painted across her bow. He could barely make out the faded letters among the cracks and blisters. The hull was in bad shape. Brine had leaked through cracks in the resin along the keel and pooled in the bottom. Thankfully the letter had landed on the centre board and remained dry. He balanced his foot on her port gunwale, but her hull tilted and the letter slid an inch closer to the brine. The toe rail cracked under his weight. A sloshing sound came from somewhere under the thwarts. Even at full stretch, he couldn’t quite reach the letter, so he ripped loose a couple of long sections of toe rail and used them like pincers to grab the envelope.

It was addressed to
Mr Alfred Leach c/o Captain R. Swinekicker, Halcine Canal
and it contained four hundred gilders in fifties, and a letter. Granger pocketed the money and wandered back upstairs, reading the letter.

Granger crumpled up the piece of paper and shoved it in his pocket. He went back to the stove and ladled the cooling porridge into two bowls. Then he washed and refilled the water jug and carried the lot down to his captives.

The moment he entered the cell he could see that Ianthe had mustered her rage for another outburst. Her jaw was tight, her eyes brimming with cruel intent.

He tried to pre-empt her. ‘Should I just throw this into the brine and save you the effort of rejecting it?’ By the time he’d closed his mouth he regretted ever opening it.

She actually snarled. ‘Fish porridge? Isn’t that like cannibalism for you? Boiling up your own relatives to feed to your prisoners?’ She was speaking through her teeth. ‘I know beggars eat that muck, but they normally have the decency not to inflict it on others. Take it away and bring us something edible, or just leave us to starve to death.’ She snorted. ‘That’s what you’re going to do anyway, isn’t it? When the council payments run out?’

‘Inny, please!’ Hana reached for her daughter, but the girl snatched her hand away.

Ianthe had adopted an air of smug self-righteousness. ‘I can’t believe you slept with him,’ she said to her mother. ‘Did he wear a bag over his head? Or did he rape you? That, at least, would be understandable. You’re never
really
fulfilled unless you’re somebody’s victim.’

Hana’s cheeks flushed.

‘That’s enough.’ Granger stood there in the open doorway with an armload of crockery: a great lumbering, red-faced fool. Ianthe must have known about her parentage from the beginning. How do you keep secrets from a psychic? But he was surprised to find the girl’s hostility directed at her mother, rather than him. He set their food down on the platform, weary and anxious to leave. ‘I don’t care if it’s not what you’re used to, it’s all I can afford right now.’

‘Poor you,’ Ianthe scoffed. ‘If only you had four hundred gilders in your pocket.’

He stopped. A slow grin spread across his face. ‘Four hundred gilders, Ianthe?’

She snorted.

There was no doubt left in Granger’s mind now. Only a psychic could have known about the money. ‘I need it for something else.’

‘Whores, I suppose.’

He took a deep breath. He was about to speak, but then he changed his mind and voiced his thoughts internally instead.
I didn’t want be your father. I don’t know you, and I don’t want to. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to write to the Haurstaf. You’ll be out of here in a couple of weeks and you can spend the rest of your life living in a marble tower, causing wars and blackmailing emperors and screwing the Unmer and whatever else it is you people do.
He smiled grimly. ‘Did you get all that? Or would you like me to repeat it out loud?’

Ianthe glared at him defiantly.

Hana glanced at her daughter, then back at Granger. ‘I told you she doesn’t read minds.’

Granger lost his temper. ‘You’ve told me nothing but lies,’ he exclaimed. ‘It seems to me that
I’m
the only one who’s acting in our daughter’s interests. What is it with you? Pride? Selfishness? Are you so afraid of being alone that you’d keep her rotting in jail when she could be out of here in a heartbeat?’ He set down the bowls roughly, spilling porridge everywhere. ‘I don’t get it, Hana. Do you think I’m suddenly going to become the good father? My responsibilities to you ended fifteen years ago in Weaverbrook, when you chose to keep your pregnancy a secret.’

Hana stiffened. She closed her eyes. In a voice no louder than a whisper she said, ‘You wouldn’t have stayed with me.’

‘I was an
Imperial soldier
.’