Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [31]
‘And the drawer?’ he said.
Ianthe hesitated. ‘What drawer?’
‘The drawer in your cell,’ he said. ‘Did you hear that too?’ He turned to find her glaring furiously at him and knew he’d trapped her. ‘I’m sending a letter to Losoto tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose I need to tell you who it’s for and what I’m going to write.’ The Haurstaf would pay a fortune for one of their own.
Her cold hard eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ she growled. ‘I know all about you. Your father was a beggar and your mother was Drowned when he took her. That’s why you’re so ugly. She squeezed you out of her womb like a fish. And your father took one look at you and wanted to vomit, so now you run this rotting prison because you can’t do anything else. A sad little tinpot dictator who gets his thrills out of locking people up. You make me sick.’
Hana closed her eyes.
Granger took a deep breath. Then he unlocked the girl’s leg-irons, seized her by the waist and pitched her over his shoulder. She wasn’t heavy, but she fought like a cat in a kitbag, screaming and kicking and trying to scratch him. One of her boots flew off and smashed into the crockery in the sink. He carried the struggling girl down the stairs and along the flooded corridor and dumped her unceremoniously onto the platform he’d constructed in the fourth cell. And then he stood there wheezing while she scrambled back against the wall, her cheeks burning with embarrassment, her eyes mere pinpricks of hate.
‘You . . . stay, while I get . . . your mother.’
‘Bastard.’
He didn’t bother to close the cell door behind her. The brine would damage her feet if she tried to escape. When he reached the bottom of the steps he sat down and rested his head against the wall. Ten slow breaths. The metal stench of seawater pinched his nostrils. He could hear her sobbing further down the corridor. He gnashed his teeth and dragged himself upright and went back upstairs.
Hana was sitting on the floor. ‘We’ve been in one cell or another for the last six months,’ she said. ‘The detention centre, the ship, but the worst was Interrogation. When we didn’t know the answer to their questions; they kept on asking until we did. The hard part was figuring out what they wanted to hear.’
‘And that’s what you’ve been doing with me?’
She looked at him directly. ‘The Haurstaf will kill her.’
‘They’ll give her a good life.’
She shook her head defiantly.
Granger frowned. ‘Is it so hard to let her go? Even if it means keeping her here?’
Hana closed her eyes. ‘How do I convince you to trust me?’
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘We tried to!’
Granger unlocked her leg-irons and led her downstairs to the cell block. She didn’t resist as he scooped her up in his arms. He carried her along the flooded corridor and across the threshold into the cell. Ianthe was curled up in the corner, crying into her elbows. Hana went over to her at once and embraced her.
Granger watched them for a moment, and then he eased the cell door closed behind him and turned the key in the lock out of habit.
Moonlight flooded the garret. Granger couldn’t sleep. His prisoners would probably be awake in their cell below. No one slept well on the first night. They’d be looking at the walls and wondering what the dawn would bring. They’d be looking at the slop drawer. Granger lay in his cot, wrapped in blankets that didn’t reach his feet, and stared at the head of a nail embedded in the ceiling. In this quiet darkness the smell of the sea always reminded him of his childhood in Losoto. The scent of brine was much stronger down in the cells, where there were bars instead of glass in the windows. Some nights it made you dream of drowning.
On the floor all around lay the scraps of wood and tools that he and Swinekicker had gathered over the years to fix the old man’s boat. He’d dismantled most of the furniture last winter and burned what he decided couldn’t use. His whaleskin cloak lay in a crumpled pile beside the heavy grey