Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [10]
‘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 façades 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