Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts by Alan Campbell Page B

need something to eat? I have—’
    ‘Some water, if you can spare it.’
    He filled a jug from the spigot, then hunted for cups. They were all furred with mould, so he covered the sink with an old towel and handed her the jug. She accepted it hungrily and passed it to her daughter, who gulped down half before handing it back.
    ‘Tastes like rust,’ Ianthe said.
    ‘The purifier is old,’ Granger replied. ‘I’ve been planning to replace it.’
    She stared at him as if he didn’t exist, her pale blue eyes so striking against her earthen complexion, and yet distant at the same time. She was as beautiful as her mother had been all those years ago: that same flawless skin, those dark eyebrows that tapered to perfect points, the black flame of her hair. Ianthe’s gown had been ripped at one shoulder and hung loosely over her breasts.
    Could he be wrong about her?
    When Hana had fallen ill in those final days before his unit had been recalled from Weaverbrook, they hadn’t talked about it. Disease already had a grip on the land. Hu’s bombardment had caused uncountable deaths – the corpses left to rot in fields and drainage ditches. They had never been able to dig enough graves.
    Had Hana known she was pregnant then? Would it have made a difference if she’d told him?
    Ianthe’s pale Losotan eyes belonged to him and no other. He could see that clearly, and it irked him that there was something wrong with her vision. She wasn’t reacting to movement or light the way a normal person would. If he hadn’t seen her reach for the water jug, he’d have thought she was blind.
    That the fault in her should have come from him.
    Hana watched them carefully. Underneath those bruises and the scars of age Granger thought he caught a glimpse of a nervous smile. Was she thinking about those nights fifteen years ago? His unit had commandeered her grandmother’s farm for the duration of the campaign. In sixty-three days of fighting, he’d lost only seven men out of fifteen hundred, while the enemy mourned for four hundred of their own. It would have been an extraordinary victory for the empire, had the empire known about it.
    But telepaths were expensive. And Emperor Hu had always been unwilling to pay.
    He remembered Hana’s terror when the shelling began. By the time Hu’s navy had finished there had been eight thousand more graves to dig, and scant few of his men left alive to dig them. Fewer still when the cholera took its toll.
    That image just stirred his anger. Why was he doing this? He wasn’t responsible for what had happened to her or her village. He’d kept her safe. He couldn’t have taken her with him. He couldn’t have stayed. He didn’t owe her anything. He glanced at Ianthe again, but the sight of her just filled him with despair. A weight of expectation hung in the air between the three of them, and Granger could not define it. He didn’t want to think about it. He had to get his boat repaired. He had to get away from this godforsaken city.
    Drown them both and say they tried to escape.
    He felt trapped and foolish. He snatched up his waterproof gloves and the galoshes Creedy had left for him. And then he grabbed his toolbox and trudged downstairs to see about fixing his prisoners somewhere to sleep.
    Halfway down the steps he paused to put on the thick whale-skin gloves and to pull his galoshes over his boots. He fitted a hemp face mask over his mouth and nose and snapped his goggles into place. His breathing sounded heavy and erratic. He stared at the flooded passageway for a long time before he dropped down into the shallow brine and waded along the corridor. He planned to use the sleeping pallets from three or four vacant cells to build a higher platform for his two new captives.
    The first two rooms contained nothing of use but the dragon-bones he’d stockpiled to repair his roof. Both the pallets here were partially submerged, and even the dry sections of wood looked rotten. Worms had eaten into