Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [14]
Granger lowered the lantern even further, allowing it sink down beneath the surface of the poisonous seawater. As the light descended, it illuminated the flooded room below the canoes: bare brick walls, a rubble-strewn floor.
Banks’s voice came suddenly from behind. ‘Bloody hell.’
Three women and a boy stood under the surface of the brine, their corpse-eyes gazing up at the lantern above them. They waited, immobile and expressionless, their grey sharkskin flesh draped in the last tatters of their former clothing. Slowly, one of the women reached up her hands towards the light.
‘That one’s fresh,’ Tummel said. ‘Can’t be more than three or four days since they drowned her. The others are just about gone. The little one’s probably her son. Looks enough like her.’
Granger stared down at the people under the water. He’d heard of trovers drowning people to scour the seabed for treasure, but he’d never seen any until now. The victims’ personalities couldn’t survive for more than a few days. After that, they’d forget who they were. They’d drift away, become part of the sea itself.
‘Fucking trovers,’ Banks said.
Creedy peered down over his shoulder and laughed. ‘That is one phenomenally ugly bitch,’ he said. ‘You ask me, they did her a favour.’
Banks wheeled round and took a swing at Creedy. But the big man was way too fast for him. He knocked Banks’s blow aside with his elbow and then drove his fist into the smaller man’s stomach. Banks doubled over, gasping, and dropped to his knees. Creedy raised his hand to strike him across the back of the neck.
‘Sergeant!’ Granger said.
Creedy lowered his hand. He looked abashed. ‘Fucker started it,’ he said. He spat on the floor and then walked over to the doorway to be by himself.
Granger pulled up the lantern. He couldn’t do anything for the Drowned but leave them in peace. ‘Banks, Swan and Tummel, take the first canoe,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Creedy, you’re with me in the second.’
One by one they dropped down into the small craft. Granger passed down his kitbag to Creedy. Once it was safely stowed, he eased himself down into the tiny boat, untied the lines and then pushed off against the low ceiling with the paddle. Both canoes slid across the dark water and passed through the hole in the wall.
Stars glimmered above. They paddled through a large glass-less greenhouse, where the branches of sunken trees reached out to pluck at them. Granger glanced back to see Swan edging the other canoe along behind with all the skill of an old smuggler. Banks sat between the two brothers, wrapped in sullen silence. They glided out of the greenhouse into another yard, slipped through a set of tall iron gates and reached a channel where the walls and railings on the far side side barely broke the surface of the water. The tide was going out, Granger noted. He could see ichusan crystals clinging to the metalwork, glinting as Creedy moved the gem lantern across the brine.
‘Eyes ahead, Sergeant,’ Granger said. ‘This is no time to search for trove.’
Creedy glanced back over his shoulder. ‘I saw bubbles, sir. Could have been a sea-bottle down there.’
Granger shook his head. ‘It’s just the Drowned,’ he said. ‘The Unmer sank all their ichusae in deep water.’ After they’d realized that defeat was inevitable, the Unmer had seeded the oceans with god-only-knew how many millions of these toxic little bottles. It had been an act of astonishing spite, so typical of the Unmer. They would watch the world drown in poison rather than leave it to their enemies.
Creedy peered down into the black water. ‘You reckon those women are following us?’ he said.
Granger nodded. ‘It’s what they were trained to do.’
Creedy wrapped his cloak more tightly around his shoulders and said nothing more about it for a while. He gazed up at the blazing heavens. He sniffed and spat into the water. Finally he said, ‘How did you know they were down there at all? Why lower