Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [47]
Creedy stopped him. ‘I know what that is,’ he said excitedly. ‘Hell’s balls, man, I know what that is.’
Granger peered down at the object. It was a clay amphora sealed by a wax stopper. He’d seen hundreds of them for sale in Losoto. ‘Wine,’ he said. ‘Or whale oil. Either way, it’s not worth much more than twenty gilders.’
Creedy shook his head. ‘It’s an olea,’ he said. ‘These markings on the front show a record of its battles.’
Granger frowned at the indecipherable writing scrawled across the container. ‘A fish?’
‘Jellyfish,’ Creedy said. ‘The Unmer used to breed them for sport.’
‘That’s an old amphora,’ Granger said.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ the other man replied. ‘Olea are sorcerous.’
‘It’s still alive?’
He nodded. ‘And seriously pissed off. Imagine how you’d feel being cooped up in a jar for two hundred years.’ He grinned, and his eye-lens glittered in the lantern light. ‘Might get eight hundred for it at market, but a collector would pay more. Up to four thousand for a good specimen.’
Granger stared at the amphora. With his half share, he’d manage a down payment on a deepwater vessel. It was more than he’d dared hope for in such a short space of time. He could be out of Ethugra by the end of the year. ‘Do you know any collectors with that kind of money?’ he asked.
The sergeant was silent for a moment. Then he shrugged. ‘The only one in Ethugra who collects them,’ he said, ‘is Ethan Maskelyne.’
A hollow feeling crept into Granger’s gut. Ethan Maskelyne. Maskelyne the Metaphysicist, Maskelyne the Unappointed, the Wizard of Scythe Island – Ethugra’s unofficial boss had more sobriquets than the tides. He was an amateur scientist, and an avid collector of Unmer esoterica. But to Granger, the title of Maskelyne the Extortionist seemed most fitting. His Hookmen supposedly protected the city from the Drowned, but they took in payment nine out of every hundred gilders earned by the land-living. Once in a while they’d drag a few sharkskin men or women up from the depths and chain them out in Averley Plaza to die in the sun.
‘Eight hundred in the market?’ Granger said.
Creedy looked up. ‘But five times that from Maskelyne himself.’
Granger didn’t like it. Maskelyne would want to know exactly where the olea had come from. Were there any more? How did two jailers come to be in the trove business in the first place? What else had they found? Granger did not want to be scrutinized by a man like Maskelyne. But something else bothered him even more. Finding this treasure had been too . . . convenient. Creedy had wanted to bring Maskelyne in as a partner and now he had a perfect excuse to approach him. And why had Creedy been so insistent that they come here at all? Granger peered down at the amphora again. It remained as unremarkable as any he’d seen, covered with scratches that might be some ancient Unmer script, or not. Anyone might have scrawled them. A fighting jellyfish? Or a jar of vinegar?
‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll sell it through the market.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Creedy said evenly, although the darkness in his expression said otherwise.
Towards dawn, Granger sat with Ianthe and Hana on the roof of his jail, eating thrice-boiled fish baked in sugar and cinnamon that Hana had prepared while they’d been away. A small oil lantern rested on the brine purifier nearby. Ianthe was telling her mother about the amphora.
‘What did it perceive?’ Hana asked.
Ianthe snorted. ‘I don’t know! Jellyfish don’t have any eyes or ears, do they?’
‘You saw nothing inside?’ Granger asked.
‘I don’t see at all,’ Ianthe said.
Granger noted that her tone had become less cynical and hostile. She was beginning to accept her situation, and that troubled him more than he cared to admit. She didn’t belong here, nor anywhere with him. He couldn’t take them with him.
He sighed and rubbed his temples. Once he bought his new boat, he might as well return them to Evensraum. Or even Lions-port, at the edge of the empire.