Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [76]
The big man was silent a moment. ‘What do you propose?’
Maskelyne smiled. ‘I propose to set you up, Mr Creedy. I will outfit you with a ship of your own, a crew and a generous salary. You will also have a captain’s lay of any saleable trove you find – which is one-fifteenth – on the condition that you return any locked containers to me unopened. I need men such as yourself, sir: men with wits and ambition, training, an eye for treachery and a firm hand to quell it, and of course a certain moral flexibility. These are dangerous seas and turbulent times. Only the ruthless survive, Mr Creedy.’
‘A fifteenth lay?’
‘Of such trove as has no intellectual value to me.’
‘My own ship?’
‘You agree, then?’
The jailer grinned. ‘Where do I sign?’
Maskelyne rummaged in the desk drawer for some papers, then inclined his head towards a pen protruding from a brass holder in front of Creedy.
‘I always knew you were a fair man,’ Creedy said. He plucked the pen from its holder.
There was a click.
And the hidden trapdoor under Creedy’s chair opened.
The jailer, chair and all, disappeared down a shaft in the floor. From below came the sound of an enormous splash, followed by a cry cut short. And then the pumps began to work. The floor of Maskelyne’s laboratory trembled. A gurgling, rushing sound came from the huge pipes below, and then behind the wall and, a moment later, Creedy’s writhing body dropped down into in the Mare Lux tank amidst a swarm of bubbles.
He was gagging, clutching at his throat as he drowned.
Maskelyne looked at the struggling figure behind the glass, then looked down at the empty pen holder and sighed. ‘They always take the pen with them.’
The Guild man-o’-war Irillian Herald was gliding along the Glot Madera, her tall masts and yards rising above the buildings on either side. Briana Marks stood at the prow, as pale and slender as a dragon-bone figurehead. Her long coat tails flapped in the breeze as she stared out at the godforsaken dump that was Ethugra. A red sun burned low in the west, blurred by the haze of smoke that lingered over the city. The buildings themselves spread out before her in a filthy maze of yellow stone and chimneypots, eaves and gables aflame in the sunset, rooftops cluttered with cranes and piles of seabed rubble. Construction never stopped here. She could hear the sound of masons’ hammers coming from a dozen places in the city, like some irregular heartbeat.
The ship’s old Unmer engines thrummed under Briana’s feet as she watched the greasy brown waters flow past the Herald’s red dragon-scale hull. The channel was full of dead rats, newspapers and milk cartons. Indeed, the whole city reeked of brine and death. She could smell occasional wafts of spoiled food on the breeze, the earthen scent of mortar and the ever-present metal stink of the sea. There were no birds, she noted. Not one bird in Ethugra.
A whistle shrilled and the engines dropped to a low rumble. On the open deck below, Guild mariners began taking up their positions at the docking lines. Beyond the ship’s bow Briana could now see the pillars of a great gate, and a wide harbour beyond. The womb of the city. On a promenade at the far end of the harbour waited a welcome committee of Ethugran administrators – men in black cloaks and white wigs, standing grimly in the heat. Thankfully, the general populace had been banished from this reception.
The engines dropped to an even lower tone as the great ship passed the gate and began to turn, lining her port side up with the deepwater berth at the promenade. Briana reached out towards the waiting men with her mind, and sensed . . . nothing at all. Not a spark of ability among the lot of them. She was alone here.
And yet