Part 14 (1/2)

The door to Maskelyne's prison opened, and a group of men filed out five, six, eight of them. Granger recognized Bartle and two of his crew from Swinekicker's place. A scribe stood beside them holding a bunch of keys. The other four were jailers and carried blackjacks looped around their wrists. Bartle saw Granger and grinned. 'What do you think you're doing, Tom?'

Granger crouched down beside Hana again. 'I'm sorry,' he said. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly to his chest. He kissed her ear and stroked her hair. The metal salt taste of brine lingered on his lips, and then began to burn. Granger crooked his arm around her neck and squeezed.

She gasped, but she didn't struggle.

Her tough, leathery flesh barely yielded under his grip. He gripped her neck harder, squeezing the muscles of his forearm into her windpipe, trying to drive the last pitiful breaths from her. But then Maskelyne's men reached him and it was too late.

One of the jailers swung his blackjack, striking Granger across the temple. Granger's vision swam, but he held on to Hana with all of his strength. He heard her choke.

They struck him again, and the world went dark.

'Forty-six minutes,' Maskelyne said. 'That's how long it took him to break out of the best and most expensive prison in Ethugra.'

The jailer hung his head.

'Where do you you think the fault lies?' Maskelyne said. think the fault lies?' Maskelyne said.

'The fault?' The man glanced at the body in the olea tank. 'I don't know, sir.'

'You don't know?' Maskelyne sat up. He studied the man for a moment, trying to judge the fellow's level of r.e.t.a.r.dation. 'Well let me ask you this: Did he spend those forty-six minutes tunnelling through the walls?'

The jailer was growing paler with every pa.s.sing moment. 'We thought he'd killed himself.'

'We?'

'I thought he'd killed himself.'

Maskelyne stood up and wandered over to the brine-filled alcoves. He pressed his hands against the gla.s.s and watched the jellyfish drift past like tiny luminous globes. They had absorbed almost all of their meal by now. Only the corpse's skull and part of its spine remained in the tank. 'Men like that don't kill themselves,' he said. 'They keep on going, and going, and going until somebody like me stops them. That's why men like me are so valuable to the empire.'

'Yes, sir.'

'You stripped his new cell?'

'Completely, sir. Basin, bed, mattress and commode. He's got nothing but his clothes.'

'Nothing?'

The jailer shook his head, then nodded. 'A blanket, sir.'

Maskelyne thought for a moment. He glanced at his pocket watch. It was approaching forty-five minutes since his men had hosed the colonel down and placed his unconscious body into the new cell. 'I'd like to see him myself,' he said.

'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

Maskelyne wandered over to one of the tables. He opened an ornate box and took out a tangle of red wires like a small bird's nest, which he placed in his jacket pocket. 'Bring a chair,' he said to the jailer.

'A chair, sir?'

'Any one of these will do.'

They walked over to the prison wing, with the jailer carrying a chair from the lounge. He set this down to unlock the watch station and then carried it inside. The duty guard rose to attention and admitted them into the cell corridor.

Maskelyne ordered the jailer to place the chair outside Granger's cell. He took a seat, while the other man opened the hatch at the bottom of the door.

There was a moment's pause.

And then the jailer let out a hiss and said, 'He's trying the same d.a.m.n thing again, sir.'

Maskelyne looked at his pocket watch again, and smiled. 'What could he have used to stuff the mannequin with this time?'

The jailer frowned. 'Nothing, sir.' He looked puzzled, and then realization slowly dawned in his eyes. He peered back through the hatch again.

'Open the door,' Maskelyne said.

This time it was no mannequin hanging from the lantern chain, but the body of Thomas Granger himself. He had fas.h.i.+oned a second rope from the blanket they'd left with him. To this one he had added a noose. His eyes were closed, his neck crooked, and his tongue protruded from his mouth. His boots dangled a foot from the floor.

Maskelyne looked up at the hanging figure in utter disbelief. Brine scars now covered Granger's lips and one side of his face. From the plaza outside could be heard the wailing of the Drowned woman.

'Cut him down,' he said. And then he turned and left the room.

Granger's eyes opened the moment he felt the jailer grab his legs. He reached inside his s.h.i.+rt and tugged at the knot he'd tied across his chest. The whole of his makes.h.i.+ft harness immediately came undone, and he dropped down from the rope into the arms of the startled jailer.

He slammed his head into the other man's nose, shattering it, then slugged him hard across the side of his head.

The jailer slumped to the ground.

'You're very good at exposing my employees' inadequacies, Mr Granger.'

Maskelyne was standing in the cell doorway.

'If the circ.u.mstances had been different, I might actually have hired you to vet them for me,' he went on. He slipped a hand into his tunic pocket and withdrew an object that looked like tangle of red wires. As Granger watched, Maskelyne's hand began to bleed. A faint humming sound came from the wire device. He let out a shuddering breath. 'Do you know what this is?' he said.

It was a.s.suredly Unmer, but Granger knew nothing beyond that. The humming noise intensified, and yet it did not appear to emanate from the device. Rather, it felt as if Granger's own bones were reverberating, as though his body had been plucked like a harp string. His legs felt suddenly weak. His jaw tightened, making it difficult to speak. He managed to say, 'Cut Hana loose.'

'The siren-wire is a hideous little weapon,' Maskelyne said. 'Ill suited to humans.' The strain was evident in his eyes. Droplets of blood fell from his fingers to the floor. 'It can kill a man unaccustomed to handling it.' He grinned, revealing b.l.o.o.d.y teeth. 'As with so much of Unmer sorcery, one must build up a tolerance.'

All the strength left Granger's legs. His knees trembled and then buckled and he found himself lying on the ground. The ceiling reeled over him drunkenly. He tried to rise, but his nerves just screamed, and his limbs would not function. 'Her chains,' he said.

Maskelyne's face loomed over Granger, long and cadaverous, his expression taut with concentration. He was bleeding from his eyes now, but he continued to clutch the Unmer artefact in his fist. The hum from the siren-wire seemed to infuse his words. 'It's important for people to watch her die,' he said. 'Understanding the horror of the seas keeps them safe from harm.' He crouched over Granger, his jaw locked, his whole body trembling. 'Try to get some rest, Mr Granger, for both our sakes.'

That night he didn't sleep at all. The world turned, carrying Granger and his prison under the stars. Hana's voice grew steadily weaker. She uttered no words that he could understand. Whether she was no longer capable of human speech, or whether her pain had pushed her beyond words, he did not know. He prayed that someone a fisherman or market trader would show her mercy, silence her. But no one did.

They had removed everything from the cell but his clothes.

By dawn she was struggling to breathe and quite incapable of screaming. From his cell window Granger watched the Hookmen return. They took buckets of brine from the harbour and used them to soak her drying body. They forced seawater down her windpipe, softening up her lungs for another day. She gasped and choked, and then the pitiful cries began again. Granger gripped the bars of his window.

Around mid morning a jailer brought Granger a wooden pitcher of fresh water and a bowl of fish-gut soup. He tested the food by placing a strip of it under his tongue. When, after a few minutes, it began to burn, he spat it out and rinsed his mouth. The remainder of the meal he placed on the window ledge, where he hoped it might attract a rat.