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 galoshes he’d borrowed from Creedy. In the gloom the dragon-bone joists in the ceiling looked like a sketch of a land at war with itself, a framework of pale borders dividing innumerable fiefdoms. It was a map of fear, lust and betrayal, just like any other map in Hu’s empire.
Can you hear me?
The shadows gave no reply. Granger felt foolish. Perhaps Ianthe was asleep. Either way, the girl seemed determined to hide her powers from him. All Haurstaf could stare into the minds of their own kind, and an exceptional few could read the thoughts of humans. Their powers over an Unmer mind were akin to rape. And yet none of them possessed preternatural vision and hearing. He shook his head. Ianthe had to be psychic, and a powerful one to boot. And that made her valuable to him. She was his ticket out of here.
A sturdy deepwater boat could take him across the Mare Lux, beyond Losoto and the reach of the empire. Valcinder still maintained some free ports, it was said. He could sell the boat there and buy passage on a vortex-class ship across the Strakebreaker Sea. In a year or so he might reach the Herican Peninsula, the last great wilderness – the place where gods once walked with men.
He could escape the brine.
The thought should have given him solace, and yet he found it impossible to sleep. Doubts continued to nag at him. Was there any way she could simply have heard him pull the drawer from the cabinet? He couldn’t see how such a feat was possible. But if he was going to sell Ianthe to the Haurstaf, then he had to be absolutely certain. She was still too much of a mystery to him. The extent of her abilities remained untested, obscured by her lies. It was like peering into the depths of the sea. One never knew exactly what one might find down there.
He had to determine her limits.
But how do you test a psychic who knows your every thought and plans to confound you?
Granger got up and took the water jug from the sink. Then he walked downstairs to the flooded cell corridor. No windows opened onto the narrow space, and it was utterly dark down there, but Granger could have found his way in his sleep. He counted fifteen steps, then crouched. Slowly and carefully, he eased the lip of the jug into the brine, filling it with poison.
He slept later than usual. When he woke the sun was high and the room was already uncomfortably warm. He opened a window and pissed into the canal below. He still felt tired. He threw on a robe and pulled his borrowed galoshes over his bare feet. Then he picked up the jug of poisonous water and sniffed it. It smelled sulphurous and metallic, but so did everything else in his jail. He doubted any normal person would be able to detect the deception until it was too late. A psychic, however, would already know what he had done.
He carried it down to the flooded cell block.
Neither of his prisoners looked like they’d slept at all. Ianthe didn’t seem to have the energy even to raise her head and scowl at him. She was still curled up in the corner, her head turned away, but breathing with such fierceness that Granger knew she was awake. Hana pushed herself up from the palette and tried to smile.
He handed her the jug and thought to himself, I’ve poisoned the water, Ianthe.
She set it down and rubbed her eyes. ‘Do you feed us?’ she said.
‘In a minute.’ He waited.
She picked up the jug.
‘Hana.’
She lowered the jug and looked at him.
Don’t count on me stopping her from drinking it, Ianthe. I’m not going to do it again. And don’t pretend to be asleep. I can hear you breathing. ‘How did you survive? In Evensraum, I mean. Cholera wiped out the colonies.’
She shrugged. ‘Why did you change your name? Why Swinekicker?’
‘Name of the guy who owned this place,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘I walked east.’ She raised the jug to her lips.
‘East? To where?’
‘Deslorn,’ she said. ‘Hundreds of us took that road.’ She was looking at him strangely now, trying to discover his motives. ‘When the cholera took hold in Deslorn, I moved again. Temple Oak, Cannislaw, other places. A refugee camp in the woods, that’s where Inny was born.’ She lifted the jug again.
Damn you, Ianthe. You’d let her die to prove a point? Granger put his hand on the lip of the jug and lowered it. ‘How did you end up here?’
She let out a deep sigh. ‘Trove,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Inny can spot things lying on the seabed.’ She set down the jug and looked at it. ‘We got involved with this smuggler, Marcus Law. He was dredging the waters out past Port Vassar, the Ochre Sea and places like that. And he’d send the trove he found to the Losoto markets. Illegal, of course. But you always find buyers for exceptional finds, and a lot of Inny’s finds were like that.’