Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [63]
Granger folded the letter into a tight wad and threw it. It arced across the harbour waters, and landed on the wharf side four storeys below.
He watched, waiting for someone to pick it up.
An old woman and her daughter passed by. The young girl glanced at it but didn’t stop. Shortly afterwards, a young man, barely older than a boy, stopped, and picked up the letter. He was dressed like a deckhand. He opened it up and read it. Then he looked about. Nobody else had noticed.
Granger watched silently from his high window as the deckhand shoved the letter into his pocket and wandered off. When he reached the wharf, he called out to an older fisherman sitting on the dockside. His father? This man rubbed his hands on his breaches before accepting the letter. He was too far away to see his expression clearly, but he took a long time reading it. Some discussion passed between the two. The young man pointed back towards the wall of the jail where he’d found the letter. The older man shrugged, then shoved the paper into his own pocket.
And then he did nothing.
Granger cursed under his breath. Couldn’t they see how valuable the letter was? The Haurstaf would gladly pay to receive news of one of their own, an undiscovered talent rotting in an Ethugran prison.
But the fisherman just sat there, watching the boats in the harbour.
Granger’s fate, his daughter’s fate – hell, perhaps even the future of the empire – now lay in the hands of a stranger.
CHAPTER 8
IANTHE
Ianthe found herself inside a hollow metal ball. Aqueous yellow light danced across curves of pitted steel, across thick gloves resting on the knees of whaleskin breeches. Not her gloves; the hands inside them belonged to the sailor whose perceptions she had borrowed. She could not move this body, merely occupy it. From all around came a deep and regular hissing and rushing sound, like the breathing of some strange consumptive monster. Haaaa . . . Shuuu . . . Haaaa . . . Shuuu . . . Tiny portholes on all sides looked out into golden brine as thick as honey and illuminated by gem lanterns.
She was inside a man, and the man was inside a metal vessel, and the vessel was being lowered down through the sea.
The submariner peered through a porthole. Golden motes drifted past, like flecks of hay. Some form of sea life, perhaps? Ianthe could see nothing in the gloom beyond the lantern light.
Haaaa . . . Shuuu . . . Haaaa . . . Shuuu . . .
The sound seemed to come from overhead. There must be a pipe up there, an air supply. Frustratingly, her host did not look up to verify this. He had no interest in that particular aspect of the machine, Ianthe could sense. She could also sense his fear. He didn’t want to be down here.
Now through the brine she discerned vague shapes and pools of darkness. The machine was nearing the sea floor. Her host reached up and rang a bell three times. Ianthe smelled his perspiration. He looked through one window after another. A grid of ancient, tumble-down walls criss-crossed the ground – the footprints of roofless dwellings now buried under silt. This place, then, had once been a city. Now fish glided through doorways and windows. A hacker crab ambled backwards along a soft grey street, its claws raised as a warning to the rapidly descending craft.
They were dropping fast.
The submariner must have been aware of this too, for he rang the bell another three times.
Then he looked down, and Ianthe realized that the floor of this craft was not solid. A circle of brine waited under