Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [13]
‘Rat stew with dumplings,’ Tummel said.
‘Rat on a stick,’ Swan added.
Creedy glared at them. ‘You pair make me sick,’ he said. He climbed up on to one end of the beam, tested it with his foot and then strolled across to the opposite house.
‘The man has no taste,’ Swan said. ‘It’s not as if he hasn’t eaten rat before.’
‘Best keep that quiet,’ Tummel said.
As Granger stomped over the makeshift bridge after Sergeant Creedy, he experienced a moment of dizziness. For an instant he wavered between the black, sucking brine and the stars cartwheeling across the heavens above. He halted and crouched on the beam until the moment passed.
‘Colonel?’ Banks was clinging to the window frame of the house behind, his hand outstretched.
Granger shook his head. ‘Lack of sleep,’ he muttered. But it had seemed to him something far more profound, as if the universe had just shifted around him. He looked down at the beam and noticed an old Unmer sigil carved into the grain: an eye encircled. This particular lump of wood had once been part of an Unmer ship. Hadn’t eye sigils been used to observe a ship’s crew from afar? Granger wasn’t entirely sure. So much of their understanding of Unmer sorcery was little more than conjecture. He stood up, careful to keep his heavy kitbag from unbalancing him. Creedy waited in the opposite room with his fists on his hips.
Granger crossed over the remainder of the bridge and ducked through the window into another dark bedroom.
‘Signs of life here, Colonel,’ Creedy said, shifting a pile of empty cans with the toe of his boot. ‘Trovers used this place recently.’ It was an observation that need not have been said, but Granger gave his sergeant a nod. Creedy had a habit of taking even the smallest opportunity to prove his worth when Banks was around.
The other three men arrived. Now that they were far enough from the occupied city to avoid detection, Granger opened his kitbag and took out a gem lantern. He handed it to Banks, who opened its shutters. Light flooded the dismal chamber. Tummel helped Swan pull the bridge across to their side, and then the whole group set off through the derelict house. The rooms had all been stripped bare. They filed along passageways still clad in peeling wallpaper with floral or mathematical designs. They peered out of glassless windows into drowned lanes and gardens steeped in darkness. They stepped over the skeleton of a dog. Openings smashed through the outer walls gave them access to adjacent buildings. And always Banks’s keen eyes kept them on the correct path through this brine-sodden labyrinth.
Finally they came to the doorway of a large attic. A square trapdoor occupied the centre of the floor beyond. The hatch was padlocked shut, but marks in the dust around it indicated it had been opened recently. Creedy was about to step through, when Granger seized his arm.
Creedy froze.
Granger slid his kitbag down from his shoulder. He held it out at arm’s length over the floorboards inside the doorway. Then, keeping a hold of the strap, he let the heavy bag drop.
The floorboards shattered where it hit the floor, falling into the darkness below. Granger heard the splash of water.
Banks looked down at the hole and blew through his teeth. ‘They must have chiselled into the floorboards from below.’
Granger nodded. ‘That’s what I would do.’
The men stepped over the hole and into the attic. Creedy broke the lock hinge with the butt of his hand-cannon and opened the trapdoor.
Two wooden canoes floated on brine four feet below the opening. Their mooring lines had been tied to a bent nail under the floor. Creedy moved to ease himself down through the opening, but Granger stopped him. He opening his kitbag again and pulled out a length of wire cord, which he attached to the handle of the gem lantern. Then he lay down on the floor, lowered the light down through the trapdoor and poked his head through after it.
The smell of that black brine made him cough. The canoes rocked gently in the centre of a broad chamber. Treasure-hunting equipment packed each