A brine mutation? Granger considered this. She didn’t see me fill the jug with poison because it was dark?
‘What about the trove?’ he demanded
‘The Drowned have eyes too,’ Hana retorted, ‘and their vision is attuned to the gloom. They can see better than any human can. You never notice them, but they’re down there. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands.’
Disassociated perception? Given the right heritage, one in a million conceptions might produce a psychic child, but Granger had never heard of a condition like this – not in Awl, not anywhere. His anger egged him to argue with her, to beat the truth from her. He was sick of being lied to. And yet Hana’s comment explained everything. ‘She can see through my eyes,’ he said, ‘listen through my ears? Even when I’m somewhere else?’
‘You could be on the other side of the world.’
‘And she can do this trick with anyone?’
‘Almost any living thing.’
‘Haurstaf?’
Hana nodded.
Now Granger understood why she was such a threat to the Guild of Psychics. The Haurstaf openly sold their powers to every warlord who could afford them. In battles it was not uncommon to find telepaths on both sides, each reporting on the other’s position. Emperor Hu might rage at Sister Marks, cursing both their expense and their infuriating neutrality, but he was helpless to act against the Guild. If his enemies used their services then so must he.
But if Ianthe could sneak behind the eyes and ears of anyone she chose to, she would be the perfect spy. There could be no secrets while she lived, not even among the Haurstaf themselves. She was worth more to the empire than a hundred psychics. Surveillance was an essential expedient of control. And Ianthe’s talents could be turned against anyone.
‘Almost any living thing,’ Hana repeated. ‘But there is one person whose eyes she cannot see through and whose ears she can’t hear through.’
‘Who?’
‘Herself,’ Hana said. ‘Your daughter is deaf and blind.’
CHAPTER 5
BETRAYAL
Dear Margaret,
Thank you. Mr Swinekicker paid off Maskelyne’s Hookman, at least for the time being. Mr Swinekicker says I shouldn’t worry about the future. He’ll sort something out. Some new prisoners arrived the other day – an Evensraum woman and her teenage daughter. It’s going to take them time to adjust. It’s hard to come to terms with the idea of staying here for the rest of your life. I survive because the money you send makes my life bearable. Without your help, I don’t think I could go on.
Love,
Alfred
Granger woke late in the afternoon to the smell of fried eels. Hot sunshine poured into the garret through open windows, throwing ripples across the ceiling. He rubbed his eyes.
Creedy was busy at the stove. ‘Six hundred gilders,’ he said, turning so that his clockwork eye flashed in the sun.
‘Each?’
‘Between us,’ Creedy replied, returning his attention to the frying pan. ‘The pendant wasn’t worth shit, and that engine wouldn’t even bark. Your share’s on that crate.’
Granger got up and stretched. He noted the stack of coins and bills piled on the munitions crate; it was far less than he would have believed possible for a haul like that. He thought about challenging Creedy, but then decided against it. Right now, he needed him. And if the sergeant’s help came at a price, at least it was one he could afford. ‘What time did you get here?’ he asked.
‘About an hour ago.’
‘Do you ever sleep?’
‘I thought we might try for that sea-bottle again.’
Granger shook the fog of sleep from his head. ‘Give me a minute.’ He went over to the window and took a piss, then put a pot of water on the stove to boil. His shoulder still ached from this morning’s confrontation. He ran a hand over the tough grey skin. It felt as hard and cracked as a dry riverbed.
Creedy scooped the eels onto a plate and sat down. He didn’t offer Granger any. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘about what we talked about before – about deepwater salvage.’
‘There’s nothing more to discuss. We don’t have the resources.’
‘Not now,’ Creedy admitted. ‘But a few more hauls like last night, and we could start attracting some real investment. There are people in Ethugra with deep enough pockets. We’d make a hundred thousand in the first year.’
Granger shook his head. ‘You’re talking about going up against Maskelyne.’ He didn’t want to tell Creedy his real concerns about expanding the operation. Deepwater salvage wasn’t something you could go into quietly. You needed a large ocean-class vessel, cranes, power winches, deep-sea nets and a good-sized crew to keep everything running. It would be difficult to hide an operation like that. People would notice, and talk. He couldn’t risk exposing Ianthe to that level of attention. Her talents were far too valuable to put on display.
His deaf-blind daughter. He thought about her walking down the wharf, stopping whenever he looked away. She had not been able to see the ground in front of her, except when he looked in her direction. He tried to imagine her growing up in Evensraum, unable to hear the wind in the trees unless someone else was there to hear it too. What kind of life was that for a child? The implications of all this were too intricate for him to unravel at once. He needed to think them through.
‘We don’t need to compete with him,’ Creedy said. ‘He has all the deepwater gear we’d need.’
Granger looked up. ‘A partnership?’
The other man shrugged. ‘Maskelyne’s a businessman.’
‘He’s a criminal,’ Granger said, ‘and a murderer.’
Creedy chewed his food slowly.
Granger picked up the money from the crate. With these gilders and the four hundred from yesterday, he could pay off his debts at the boatyard and maybe convince Maddigan to order in some new planking for his boat’s hull. Once the old girl was fixed up, he could trade her in against a storm-sealed deepwater cruiser, hopefully a tug or even an ex-naval vessel. About thirty or forty thousand would buy him something sturdy enough to cross the open ocean.
He poured two mugs of tea, then joined Creedy. ‘Somebody stole that Unmer doll.’
Creedy scraped eel jelly from his plate and spooned it into his mouth. ‘Lot of thieves about.’
‘So it seems.’
‘It’s no big deal,’ Creedy said. ‘Now we have the girl.’
‘Assuming she agrees to keep working with us.’
Creedy grunted. ‘She doesn’t have shit to say about that.’ He finished his meal and stood up. ‘Are we going, or what?’
The two men took Creedy’s launch back to the basin behind the Bower family prison in Francialle, leaving Ianthe behind. Creedy switched off the engine and stared into the brine with open hostility, as though he expected resistance from whatever lay below, and was fully prepared to counter it with force. They began to dredge the gloomy waters with a claw.
But again the bottle eluded them.
Shadows gathered in the basin and the canal beyond as evening approached. The sky between the buildings turned golden with the setting sun. Creedy grew irritable and then angry. His clockwork eye ticked and whirred as though struggling to focus. In his long whaleskin gloves, cloak and goggles he looked like some infernal golem. He hauled in the rope for the hundredth time, examined at the empty claw and then smashed it down on the deck. ‘She’s messing with us,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing down there. You said yourself the Unmer only dumped ichusae in deep water.’
‘Francialle used to be full of Unmer forges,’ Granger replied. ‘Conceivably, they could have made thousands of ichusae here. Changed ordinary glass phials and copper stoppers into something else.’
‘How did they get all the brine inside them?’