From a tar-black sink on the outskirts of Francialle they retrieved a phial of blood-red crystals, which Creedy tried to open.
‘Best leave it be, Sergeant,’ Granger said.
Creedy held the phial close to his eye lens. ‘They could be rubies,’ he muttered.
‘Maybe,’ Granger replied. ‘Maybe not. Let the buyer take the risk.’
This was their problem. Neither of them really knew what most of this stuff did, or, for that matter, what it was truly worth. There were a few Unmer experts in Ethugra, but no one they could trust. What looked like treasure to them them might be worthless in the marketplace, while what appeared to be common might actually be priceless. They were at the mercy of their own ignorance.
But late on the fourth night, Ianthe led them to a discovery that Creedy recognized at once.
On a hunch Creedy had steered the launch deep into the Helt, where the canals formed a precise grid and the massive iron-stitched prison blocks rose sheer above them for more than ten storeys. Finds were sparse here, but Creedy insisted they keep searching. They must have traversed the same intersection four times before Ianthe raised her hand for them to stop.
‘An amphora,’ she said.
It was heavy. If Granger had known beforehand just how much effort would be required to pull it up, he might just have left it on the seabed. And when he saw its dreary bulk resting in the hull, he almost pitched it back in to save himself the trouble of carrying it further.
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. They’d probably be safer there.
‘Can you see what Creedy’s doing?’ he asked.
Ianthe’s spoon halted halfway to her mouth. She appeared to smile slightly, although it was so brief it may have been Granger’s imagination. And then her blank eyes gazed at the ground for a moment. ‘He must be sleeping,’ she said, then went back to her meal.
‘How do you know? How can you find him?’
She spoke with her mouth full. ‘It’s like flying through darkness. You can see little islands of light everywhere, but the islands are really someone’s perception, and you can drift down inside them if you concentrate.’ She swallowed her food and took another bite. ‘Then the darkness goes away and you hear and see exactly what they do. But when there’s nobody about, it’s just black, empty of anything. I can see this roof because you and Mother do. And I can see a room in that building,’ she pointed to Cuttle’s jail, ‘because somebody is moving about over there. But the area between is just dead space, like your friend Creedy’s house.’
‘You know where he lives.’
She shrugged. ‘Only because I sat in his head and watched him go there.’
‘But if he’s somewhere else? Could you still find him?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But I’d have to look inside all the different lights, and that would take all night. How do I know where he is?’
Granger thought about this. Ianthe could follow someone, spy on them, by putting herself inside that person’s mind. But once out of their head, it was difficult for her to relocate them amongst the millions of other people – unless she knew exactly where to look. ‘Can you tell who is who?’ he asked. ‘When you move into these islands in the darkness, these perceptions, do you know whose eyes you are looking through?’
Ianthe finished her meal and set down the bowl. ‘Not at first,’ she admitted. ‘You can see your own arms and legs, but you can’t see your own face, can you? Sometimes the only way I can know for sure is to look at the person through someone else’s eyes, unless they happen to look in a mirror, I suppose. Women look in mirrors a lot… so does Emperor Hu. I don’t think Creedy owns a mirror, though.’
‘You shouldn’t be spying on the emperor,’ Granger said.
She gave him a sarcastic smile. ‘Only on your friends?’