Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [25]
A former Imperial battleship, the Alabaster Sound was now one of the largest of Emperor Hu’s prisoner transport vessels. Two steam tugs were nudging her battle-scarred steel bow through the gates of the Glot Madera and into Averley Plaza. She had been decommissioned after the Forty-third War of Liberation, but her iron guns still loomed over her deck rails, the shadows of their barrels sweeping across the brine like black banners. Her massive sloping funnel towered above the roofs of even the tallest buildings, disgorging fumes into the blue sky. A blast from her horn announced her arrival to the whole city, and her engines began to rumble like an earthquake as she turned. The captain stood on her wheelhouse deck, clad in emerald storm armour, his bulbous glass faceplate gleaming in the sun like the eye of a frog.
Ethugra’s prison administrators were busy preparing for the Alabaster Sound’s arrival, laying out their ledgers and inkwells on long tables under canopies facing the waterfront. The harbour master shouted orders to his stevedores, who ran to positions beside stanchions, ready to haul in mooring ropes. Sailors scrambled to move smaller boats and coracles out of the former battleship’s way. An expectant crowd began to gather behind them.
Creedy steered the launch across the plaza and into a public berth at the westernmost end of the docks, where he and Granger alighted. A dozen hawkers assailed Creedy at once, shoving all manner of cheap food and worthless trove into his face.
‘Chariot ballast, Mr Creedy?’
‘Catspin claws, sir. Original claws – see the brass work on this . . .’
‘. . . dredged from the Mare Verdant . . .’
‘Mr Creedy?’
‘Six gilders an ounce, my friend.’
A fat man wearing spectacles stepped in front of Granger. He had dozens of similar pairs of eyeglasses arranged on a tray hung from his neck. ‘See the past through the eyes of a dead sorcerer,’ he said. ‘Genuine Unmer lenses. They’ll show you where to find lost trove, sir.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Unholy rituals, human sacrifices, Unmer sex, dragon sex.’
Granger ignored them all. Creedy hesitated, ogling the dizzying array of goods with his rapidly stuttering eye. He glanced back, spotted the spectacle seller, and then shoved him aside to let Granger past. ‘Fakes,’ he muttered. ‘You don’t see shit through them.’ He was about to go, but then became distracted by a man selling silver puzzle boxes.
Granger urged him on.
Scores of other jailers had gathered around the administrators’ desks by now. They sat on the harbour’s edge with their legs dangling over the poisonous water, or leaned on the corpse-statues, watching the stevedores secure the ship and lower her loading ramps. Granger recognized a few faces and nodded greetings. They were all small-timers. Nobody from the larger prisons would bother with such low-value captives. There wasn’t enough profit in peasants. Creedy fell into conversation with a man Granger didn’t know, so Granger turned back to watch the Alabaster Sound.
The captain stomped down the gangplank, his helmet gripped in the crook of his arm, his lacquered steel boots clanking. He was typical Losotan, dark-haired with fine features. He grinned broadly, wiped sweat from his brow and called out, ‘Grech.’
The head administrator peered up from his desk with darkly suspicious little eyes. ‘You’re early,’ he said. He was all joints, this man – a great shambling preying mantis. He wore a dusty wig, woven into plaits, and an ash-coloured Imperial robe enriched with silver and lead chain-links around the shoulders. His chin hovered over his ledger like a stalactite.
The captain handed him a scroll. ‘One hundred and sixty-three redundants. Eighteen twenty-eight still breathing, and another eighteen lawbreakers pickling in our seawater tanks. That’s two thousand and nine bodies delivered.’
‘Eighteen lawbreakers?’ the administrator said. ‘That seems excessive.’
‘Discipline,’ the captain replied. ‘You give these people an inch and their lawlessness starts to infect the crew. Besides, I know how much you like to watch them