‘A minor injury, Emperor,’ Granger replied.
‘Did I give you permission to speak?’
Granger looked at him coldly. Evidently the witch wasn’t the only one who needed a lesson in diplomacy. ‘You addressed the hall, Emperor,’ he said. ‘And I was the logical person to answer your question.’ From the corner of his eye, he saw Banks cringe.
Hu glared at him. ‘I know you, don’t I?’
‘Colonel Granger, Emperor.’
A knowing smirk came to the emperor’s lips. ‘Weaverbrook,’ he said. ‘1432. You’re one of the Gravediggers.’
Granger nodded.
‘Weaverbrook 1432,’ Hu said. ‘The largest loss of Imperial troops in my whole campaign.’
‘I believe it was the second-largest loss, Emperor.’
Hu snorted a laugh. ‘Is that so? For a man who spent more time digging holes for his dead comrades than actually fighting, you don’t sound particularly remorseful, Colonel.’
‘My men fought bravely,’ Granger replied. He could see Banks shaking his head urgently, Swan and Tummel shifting uncomfortably. They didn’t want Granger to say what he was about to say. But he said it anyway. ‘We took the villages and the outlying farms, as ordered. We secured the peninsula to Coomb, as ordered. We arranged an armistice, and I delivered your terms to the Evensraum Council myself. My men were jubilant but exhausted, and I regret we were ill equipped to withstand the naval bombardment you ordered on our position, Emperor.’
Silence filled the hall, only to be broken a moment later by a laugh from the Haurstaf witch.
‘Forgive me, Colonel,’ Banks said, ‘but why did you have to open your goddamned mouth?’
They were walking along a corridor in the City Fortress. Gem lanterns hung from the rafters, but they were ancient and provided scant illumination in this gloom. Moonlight filtered through a line of small grimy windows that overlooked the Naval Dockyards and the dragon cannery. Even from here, Granger could hear the pounding of the factory machines and smell the blood and salt.
‘Did you not see the warlords’ men?’
Granger marched ahead.
Banks went on, ‘You might as well as commented on the size of the emperor’s cock.’
Granger’s boots splashed through a puddle. The floor above held tanks of Mare Lux brine to accommodate sharkskin prisoners of war for experimentation, but the old vats leaked constantly, sending trickles of toxic seawater down through the fabric of the building. Damp stained the corridor walls. Chocolate-coloured ichusan crystals had already begun to form in places.
‘Actually,’ Banks said, ‘it might have been less of a problem if you had—’
‘That’s enough,’ Granger said.
Banks blew between his teeth. ‘Hell,’ he said. ‘At least I’ll take the image of his face to my grave. However soon that’ll be.’
‘I said, that’s enough.’
They found the surgeon in Recovery Room 4. He was leaning over Creedy’s head, feeding gauze into the wounded man’s eye socket. The sergeant reclined on an enormous adjustable chair, clutching a tray full of bloody surgical implements in his lap.
‘That looks like a good clean wound, Sergeant,’ Granger observed.
‘Hurts like a bastard, sir,’ Creedy replied. ‘But I’ve had worse.’
The surgeon looked up. ‘I thought it best to avoid the risk of anaesthetic,’ he said. ‘In this case the arrow has cauterized the wound quite nicely.’ He sighed. ‘We don’t see many injuries like this any more.’
‘You sound disappointed,’ Granger said.
The other man made a non-committal gesture. ‘Void arrows make such lovely wounds. Much cleaner than a sword cut. Much less prone to infection.’ He withdrew his bloody fingers from Creedy’s eye socket. ‘Hand me one of those bandages, will you?’
Granger took a bandage and a couple of snap-pins from a box on a nearby trolley. ‘I’ll finish this off,’ he said. ‘Get yourself cleaned up.’ He wrapped the bandage around Creedy’s head and secured it with a pin.
The recovery room plumbing had been rudely extended to reposition an array of washbasins a foot out from the wall, away from the brine-riddled stonework. The ceiling plaster along the western edge of the room had collapsed, and glassy brown contusions had appeared around the metal window frames. The surgeon washed his hands in fresh water and shook them dry. ‘I don’t suppose you recovered the arrow?’ he asked Granger.
‘It disappeared into the vault wall.’
‘Shame, shame. Skywards or seawards?’
‘A very slight inclination. It must have passed through the city in an instant.’
The surgeon nodded. ‘Heading for the stars.’ He turned back to Creedy. ‘Your eye socket will take an implant, Sergeant. I can have one made up in a couple of weeks. Nothing fancy, just clay and resin.’
‘I like the hole just fine.’ Creedy thought for a moment. ‘Maybe I can keep something useful in there . . . tobacco, ammunition.’ He laughed. ‘Would it hold a grenade?’
‘I have one you could try,’ Banks said. ‘You can have it for free, Creedy.’
The surgeon made a sound of disapproval. ‘I would not recommend that, Sergeant. Colonel, would you like me to take a look at your shoulder?’
Before Granger could reply, the door of the recovery room opened, and a young girl walked in. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but she wore the robes of a Haurstaf cadet and carried herself with all the authority that implied. She approached the colonel and handed him a sealed envelope. ‘Sister Marks asked me to deliver this,’ she said. ‘It’s already in circulation.’
Creedy sat up.
Granger opened the envelope and read the note inside.
24/Hu-Suarin/1441
NOTICE OF WARRANT(110334)
Imperial Infiltration Unit 7 (the ‘Gravediggers’ – Cmdr Colonel Thomas Granger) is summarily disbanded with immediate effect, pending investigation of article 118 malfeasance. Warrants have been issued for the arrest of the following men:
Colonel Thomas Granger – RN348384793888
Sergeant William Patrick Creedy – RN934308459839
Private Merrad Banks – RN239852389578
Able Seaman Gerhard Tummel – RN934783898 Able Seaman Swan Tummel – RN09859080908
Issued without prejudice on behalf of his Majesty Emperor Jilak Hu.
He stared at the note for a long time. His shoulder began to throb with renewed vigour as his heart rate quickened, but he barely noticed it. He felt strangely numb. He looked at the young witch. ‘How did Sister Marks get this?’
The girl just shrugged. ‘She’s Haurstaf.’
‘What is it?’ Creedy asked.
Granger ignored him. ‘And why is she helping us?’ he said to the witch.
‘She—’ The girl suddenly stopped. ‘I’m not allowed to say.’ She paused for a minute, then nodded. ‘Politics.’
Creedy leaned forward. ‘You getting love letters from psychics now?’
‘She was the only one who liked his joke,’ Banks muttered.
‘What joke was that?’ Creedy asked.
‘The one about the emperor’s cock.’
‘Be quiet,’ Granger said. He took a deep breath. ‘Private Banks, Sergeant Creedy, we are now civilians. Emperor Hu has disbanded the Gravediggers.’
Nobody spok
e.
‘We’ve been charged under article 118,’ Granger went on. ‘Attempting to escape active duty through self-inflicted injuries. Warrants already issued. They’ll be coming for us at any moment.’
Creedy roared. ‘Warrants?’
‘We’re fugitives.’
‘Son of a bitch.’
Granger felt suddenly light-headed. ‘Language, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘A direct insult to the emperor—’
‘Fuck him,’ Creedy snarled. ‘Fuck him and fuck the law. We ought to wring that powdered bastard’s neck.’ His eye had begun to bleed again, and a red patch was spreading into the bandage. He looked up again in disbelief. ‘Self-inflicted injuries?’
‘It’s close enough to the truth,’ Granger said. ‘I’m afraid I’ve let us down.’
‘You’re not taking sole responsibility for this one, Colonel,’ Swan said. ‘It was about time somebody said it to his face.’
‘I’ve been itching to have it out with him myself,’ Tummel said. ‘That pond lily has been living in a fantasy too long.’
Swan gave a derisory grunt. ‘Admiral of the Fleet.’
‘Captain of War,’ Tummel added.
The pair of them chuckled. They were taking great care to move silently through the yard behind the Fenwick Ale House, which only seemed to help their drunken voices carry all the further in the darkness. Private Banks shuffled along beside Granger, wrapped in his own thoughts, but Sergeant Creedy’s anger could be heard in the thump of his boots a short distance behind them.
When they reached the yard gate, Tummel glanced over his shoulder to where a yellow outline in the gloom marked the back door of the ale house. ‘When did you last clear the tab?’ he asked his brother.
‘Three days ago,’ Swan replied.
‘Shame. Noril’s usually good for a week.’
‘Quiet now,’ Granger said. He listened for a few moments at the gate, then eased it open. The five men filed out into the alleyway behind. All was silent, but for a tolling bell down by the harbour. Overhead, the city rooftops and chimneys sawed a jagged silhouette across the grand sweep of the cosmos, where the stars sparkled like fine particles of glass. The smell of brine filled Granger’s nostrils. He hefted his kitbag higher onto his shoulder and started walking.
They hurried along the alleyway without another word, until they reach the junction with the main thoroughfare. Granger held up his hand to halt his men. He peered from the shadows. Lamps burned in the windows of the traders’ houses on Wicklow Street, throwing cross-hatch patterns across the paving stones all the way down the hill to the harbour. The masts of trawlers and whalers cluttered the water’s edge like cattails. Stevedores were working on the quayside down there, unloading crates by the light from whale-oil braziers. On the peninsula side of the bay, the dock warehouses and sailors’ hostels clung to the cliffs under the shadow of the City Fortress.
Granger scanned the buildings around that black-water basin until he found what he was looking for. A group of nine Imperial soldiers were waiting outside the Harbour Freight Office, carbine rifles slung across their backs. He traced the road around to the shadowy mass of the dragon cannery situated at the breakwater side of the bay and spotted another unit guarding the entrance to the deepwater docks. This group was smaller – only two men.
‘Samarol,’ he muttered.
Banks moved to his side. ‘I always wondered if they could see in the dark.’
‘Better than most men,’ Granger replied. He thought for a moment. ‘We’ll reach it by sea.’ He pointed to an area several hundred yards west of the harbour, where a great expanse of partially submerged and roofless houses stretched out into the sea. ‘Out through the Sunken Quarter, around the breakwater and back in to the cannery landing ramp itself.’
‘You want to steal a trover’s boat?’
‘Borrow,’ Granger said. ‘There should be dozens of them hidden down there.’
‘That’ll be because trovers are shot on sight, Colonel.’
‘The emperor’s men will be looking landward tonight.’
Banks shrugged his agreement.
They cut straight across Wicklow Street and delved into the network of cobbled lanes that ran like veins down towards the Sunken Quarter. The town houses, like all those in Upper Losoto, were Unmer built, and their pillared marble façades reeked of arrogance. Many had been slavers’ homes, and the brick foundations of the old stock pens could still be seen in a few of the adjoining courtyards, now converted into gazebos, pergolas or fountains by the new owners. Granger wondered how many of those slaves had gone on to occupy their former masters’ homes after the Uprising. Not many, he supposed. The Unmer slavers had butchered their human chattel after the Battle of Awl, when the victorious Haurstaf navy had turned their ships east towards Losoto.
These streets had run with blood.
They passed through a small quadrangle where four grand, shuttered houses faced each other across the spider-web remains of an ancient spell garden. A faintly bitter aroma still surrounded the dead winter-wools, peregollins, spleenworts and liverworts. Sergeant Creedy covered his mouth and nose and muttered something about the inducement of dark dreams. Tummel and Swan ribbed him for the next two streets until Granger ordered them to be quiet.
The houses became more dilapidated as the men drew near to the sea. Smashed windows looked out into the lanes, the rooms inside dark. The stench of brine overpowered everything else. Granger found Banks at his side again. ‘The trovers in Ratpen Pennow hide their boats on the rooftops,’ the private said. ‘Small canoes. They lower them down at night.’
Granger shook his head. ‘This isn’t the Ratpen,’ he said. ‘We should be able to find an illegal mooring in one of the sunken ruins. By the last Imperial reckoning, there were two or three dozen of them.’
‘Planks on the wall?’
‘That’s what I was thinking.’
The private nodded. ‘With any luck we’ll find a cache as well. What did Creedy tell you about his cannery man?’
‘A cousin of a cousin,’ Granger said. ‘Ex-navy. Works as a descaler now.’ He shrugged. ‘Creedy trusts him, and the price is fair.’
‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,’ Banks said. He hesitated for a long moment. ‘I never did get a chance to put very much away, sir. My old man back in the Ratpen lost his pension to some bad investments, so most of my salary went home to him and his sisters.’ He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘I don’t suppose Swan and Tummel are in much of a better state. You’ve seen them play cards.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Private,’ Granger said. ‘It’s been taken care of.’
Banks seemed about to say something, then changed his mind. Finally he said, ‘I’ll pay you back somehow, sir.’
‘I know,’ Granger said.
They arrived at a street running parallel to the coast. The houses here were utterly derelict, a crumbling bank of boarded-up windows and partially collapsed roofs. Graffiti covered the walls. Across the façade immediately before them, someone had scrawled in huge black letters:
WHY ARE WE PAYING TO KEEP THE UNMER ALIVE?
Most of the doors had been staved in, revealing cavernous rooms beyond. Granger poked his head through the nearest doorway. The reek of brine filled the darkness. Through an open doorway in the opposite wall, he heard the gentle slosh of sea-water coming from the rooms beyond. He glanced around. Nothing but wet rubble and the remains of an old fire.
They set off down the street, peering into each of the houses. After a short while Banks gave a low whistle and beckoned the others over to one particular house.
Inside, the room was as damp and miserable as any other, a gloomy, rubble-filled shell with two doorways in the opposite wall. The only thing different was a wooden plank leaning against the wall to the left of the door. Granger set down his kitbag, then picked up the plank and carried it over to the first of the doorways opposite.
It had been a kitchen once. The sinks had been ripped out and taken, but a rusted iron stove remained under the chimney stack. Most of the ceiling had collapsed, along with a good part of the roof above, and heavy beams lay strewn across the floor. A doorway led out into what must have once been a back garden or courtyard. The floor here was an inch deep in brine. In this gloom the brown water looked like tar.
‘There,’ Banks said. He was pointing to a place low on the back door frame. ‘You see those marks? Something has been knocked against the wood.’
Granger returned for his kitbag. He opened it and handed out hemp face masks and sailors’ goggles to his men. They wouldn’t need them unless the wind picked up, but it was best to be safe. With the lenses resting on his forehead, and the mask slung loosely around his neck, he traversed the kitchen again, stepping between mounds of rubble to keep his boots out of the brine. The back doorway led to a courtyard full of dark seawater. Steps vanished down into that toxic murk. Granger couldn’t tell how deep the water was, but it was unlikely to be more than a few feet here. Small waves came through an open gate in the back wall of the yard, pushing in from the lane beyond, and lapping around the edges of the enclosed space. Someone had built a number of stone piles leading out through that gate, like widely spaced stepping stones.
Granger lowered the plank between the doorway and the first pile, then turned back into the kitchen. ‘Bring me some of those ceiling beams,’ he said.