Three big stevedores worked to unload the vessel. Two of them dragged a pair of hooked chains down the blood-soaked loading ramp below the winch and disappeared with them into the darkness of the ship's hold. After a moment, one of them called out, 'Pull.'

The third man had remained at the winch. He clanked a lever forward, whereupon the chains tightened and then slowly began to reel back onto a huge spool. As Granger watched, the carca.s.s of a dragon emerged from the ship's hold. It was a common red from the Sea of Kings, about eighty feet from snout to tail-tip. The chain hooks had been rammed into the flesh between the scales at the nape of its neck. Its crumpled wings sc.r.a.ped over the b.l.o.o.d.y concrete as the chain dragged it up the ramp towards the huge factory doorway. The stevedores emerged from the ship again, following a few yards behind. The dragon was still bleeding out from a harpoon wound in its chest. At the top of the ramp, the third man stopped the winch. His two comrades unhooked the carca.s.s from one set of chains and hooked it up to another pair fixed to the conveyor system above.

'That's Davy,' Creedy said, pointing to a fourth man who had just appeared through the factory doorway. He was a lean, hard-faced fellow, draped in b.l.o.o.d.y oilskins. A cheroot hung from the corner of his mouth. He carried a head-spade like a staff. He glanced at the carca.s.s, then pulled a lever on the wall behind.

Another clunk clunk, and the dragon carca.s.s rose from the concrete floor, pulled up onto the overhead conveyor system by hooks in its neck and in the base of its tail. When it was fully off the ground, Davy halted the mechanism and then threw another switch.

The conveyor gave a jerk, a rattle, and then rumbled forward, carrying the suspended carca.s.s through the whale-hide doorway.

'Davy!' Creedy called.

The hard-faced man looked up. He frowned and then jerked his head over his shoulder. And then he disappeared back through the doorway into the factory.

'Come on,' Creedy said.

Granger and the others followed the sergeant along the edge of the loading ramp, while the two stevedores below returned the chains to the ship to hook up another carca.s.s. Creedy pushed through the whaleskin flaps covering the conveyor doorway.

Davy was waiting for them on the other side. He glared at Creedy and growled, 'I said two.'

They were in an enormous butchering hall, where dozens of dragon carca.s.ses trundled along the overhead conveyor system. Workers slewed off scales with head-spades and opened bellies to spill out guts and hacked off wings and flesh with heavy machetes. White bones glistened among red meat. Blood ran in runnels across the floor and collected in frothing channels. The smell and heat was overpowering.

'Two, five, what's the difference?' Creedy said.

'The difference is, I only got two suits,' Davy replied. 'The price was for two. We already agreed that.'

Granger stepped between them. 'What does he mean?' he said to Creedy. 'The arrangement was for all five of us.'

Creedy looked at the ground. 'You couldn't afford five,' he said. 'Those suits aren't cheap.'

Granger took a deep breath. 'What did you think was going to happen when we got here?'

Creedy shrugged. 'I dunno,' he said. 'Maybe whaleskins. h.e.l.l, what was I supposed to say? I thought you'd figure something out. You always figure something out.'

Davy laughed. 'Whaleskins? You'll be dead in a day.'

Granger turned to him. 'Show me.'

He led them through the butchering hall and through a set of hangar doors into a cold room. Here, lying among blocks of ice, was an enormous green dragon. It was twice the size of the reds. Its mouth had been propped open with a head-spade, revealing the pink tunnel of its throat. One of its eyes stared gla.s.sily at the ceiling, the other had been mangled into red pulp. On the floor beside it lay two bulky bra.s.s diving suits. They looked perilously old and rotten.

'You were lucky,' Davy said. 'We've not seen a monster like this in months.' He rested a hand on the dragon's snout. 'She sank two ships, dragged them straight to the bottom, before the third put a harpoon through her eye.'

Banks blew through his teeth. 'That is one phenomenally ugly b.i.t.c.h,' he said. 'She reminds me of someone.' He looked over at Creedy. 'Can't think who, though.'

Creedy gave him a grim smile.

'You aren't gonna survive in there without a suit,' Davy said. 'Not all the way to Ethugra, anyways. These greens have guts like acid. Burn a man alive.'

'Can you get more suits?' Granger said.

Davy snorted. 'Tonight?' He stared at the dragon for a long moment. 'Maybe for sixteen thousand, I can get one.'

'I don't have that sort of money.'

'Then you're screwed, aren't you? Ship sails at dawn.'

Banks stepped up to Granger. 'You and Creedy go,' he said. 'We'll follow when we can.'

Granger shook his head.

'Creedy knows Ethugra,' Banks said. 'You'll need him once you get there.'

'Makes sense to me,' Creedy said.

'No,' Granger insisted. 'I'm not leaving anyone behind. Banks and Swan can use the diving suits. The rest of us will have to wrap up in whaleskins. Once the carca.s.s is aboard, we'll climb out and look for another place to hide.'

Creedy grunted. 'It's a G.o.dd.a.m.n prison ship. Where you going to hide?'

'We'll deal with that problem when we have to,' Granger said.

'The sergeant's right for once,' Swan said. 'We wouldn't stand a chance on a ship like that, not outside that big green b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You and Creedy take the suits.' He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. 'To be honest, I never much liked the idea of Ethugra anyway.'

'Absolute s.h.i.t-hole,' Tummel agreed. 'Too many jailers and not enough publicans.'

'Gambling's illegal in Ethugra,' Swan muttered.

'Everything's illegal in Ethugra,' Tummel said.

Banks nodded. 'We'll take our chances here.'

Creedy had already chosen the better of the two diving suits and began to pull it on.

Granger wouldn't have ordered them to obey him if he still had the power to do so. They were his men the last and best of his men but more than that, they were their own men. He couldn't order them, but he didn't have to abandon them either. 'I'm staying here,' he said. 'One of you can have that suit.'

'I don't think you understand, sir,' Banks said. 'If you don't go, the suit stays empty.' He glanced over at Swan and Tummel, and then the three of them turned around and walked away.

Banks looked back once over his shoulder. 'Tell Creedy we're going to find the trover's stash.'

The sergeant had lifted the heavy bra.s.s helmet onto his shoulders, but hadn't yet clamped it down. 'Son of a b.i.t.c.h,' he muttered, his voice m.u.f.fled by the c.u.mbersome headpiece. 'Just our luck if the b.a.s.t.a.r.d finds it.'

'The suit filters will take worst of the brine out of the air,' Davy said, 'and there's a jerry can of water already in there. Don't take off your helmets except when you need to drink. And for G.o.d's sake, don't damage the dragon. It's going to a collector.' He glanced between the two men. 'That's it, except for the money.'

Granger pulled out a wad of gilders from his kitbag and gave it to Davy. It was everything he had. Then he gathered up the other diving suit and began to clamber inside it. Creedy snapped down the last of his helmet clamps and peered out through the circular window at his own gloved hands. 'How do I take a p.i.s.s?' he said.

'The usual way,' Davy said. 'Good luck.'

Creedy got on his hands and knees and crawled inside the dragon's mouth. After a moment, he called back, 'Holy s.h.i.t, Colonel, you'll never guess what this thing has eaten.'

SIX YEARS LATER.

CHAPTER 2.

A OO A APEE.

Dear Margaret,Thanks to Mr Swinekicker, I'm now officially dead. This means you can make the payments directly to him without losing half of it to tax, which will save you money and allow me to remain here in prison for twice as long. Yesterday I saw a bird soaring above my cell window. I don't know what sort it was, but it was white and it had something clutched in its claws. Didn't birds like that once dive for fish?I wonder what this one had?All my love,Alfred The brine had risen another inch in the week since he'd last been down here. All the books he'd piled upon the floorboards to act as stepping stones had now vanished under its toxic brown surface. Granger stood at the bottom of the steps with his lantern raised and peered along the flooded corridor, wondering how he was going to get the prison register out of the storage room at the far end. He only had one more book left, and sacrificing that one wouldn't help. The air down here had a burned-salt, chemical aroma, like the air in a whaling station. He pulled his goggles over his eyes, then squatted down as close to the water as he dared, swinging the light around him. Dead beetles floated everywhere. Blisters of green paint and brown ichusan crystals marred the walls along the waterline, but the cell doors on either side of the pa.s.sage looked intact.

'Anyone still alive down here?' he called.

He heard a thump and a splash, as if something had been thrown against one of the doors, then a man's voice called back from the shadows: 'Give me some food, you son of a b.i.t.c.h.'

Granger raised his goggles and went back up the stairs.

Creedy had tilted his chair back on its rear legs and sat with his boots resting on the munitions crate Granger used as a table. A huge man with a boxer's face and hair shaved close to his skull, he still possessed an aura of brute savagery. Even now he was gnawing on a dragon knuckle, sucking at the cartilage and ripping shreds of meat free with soft, b.e.s.t.i.a.l grunts. Most men with a past like his would have chosen to hide it, but William Patrick Creedy still wore the Gravediggers' tattoo on the back of his hand openly, proudly, challenging anyone who saw it to betray him to the emperor's men. It was an att.i.tude that had almost killed him more than once. Grey patches of sharkskin marred one side of his jaw an injury sustained when six privateers had pinned him, momentarily, to a wet dockside in Tallship. His left ear was missing, hacked off in that same brawl. Creedy simply didn't give a s.h.i.t. His clockwork eye ticked with the steady precision of a detonator, the small blue lens shuttling back and forth in its socket, but his good eye the cunning one was watching Granger. 'What's the situation, Colonel?' he asked.

'The brine's risen another inch,' he replied.

'I meant, are any of your guests still breathing?'

Granger shrugged. 'I didn't hear anything.'

'Good,' Creedy said. 'You're officially a priority now. Since they can't expect a man to make a living from an empty jail, they are obliged do something about it.' He leaned forward and spat out a piece of gristle. 'That's the law.'

Granger hung his lantern on a wall hook. 'I can't get to the register,' he said.

'The h.e.l.l you keep it down there for anyway?'

The truth was Granger hadn't thought about going back for it, not since the old man's death. But Creedy would never have understood that. All but one of the names in the register had lines scored through them, and after that final one he didn't think he wanted to add any more. If he accepted more prisoners he'd have to feed them, and it might be years before their families ran out of money to send. And then it would be Granger himself who'd have to carry down the last meal; Thomas Granger who'd have to watch them die. The hardest part of job was the part he did for free.

He wasn't running a prison so much as a tomb.

'You should have built that other storey like old Swinekicker said,' Creedy remarked. 'Another couple of winters like the last one, and the Mare Lux will be lapping your b.a.l.l.s. What are you going to do when you run out of s.p.a.ce? Where are you going to live? I mean, look at this place, man.'

The detritus of Granger's life filled a series of cramped s.p.a.ces under the building's coombed attic ceilings. A jumble of wood, whale- and dragon-bones supported the roof. Morning light fell through the windows facing Halcine Ca.n.a.l, illuminating piles of spent sh.e.l.l casings, drip-pans positioned under leaks, carpentry tools, oarlocks and old engine parts from the Trove Market in Losoto. In the centre of the room sat a ma.s.sive anchor, too heavy for Granger to lift on his own. G.o.d knows how Swinekicker had got it in here. A flap of whaleskin covered the hole leading out to the eaves, while the wooden hatch it had replaced rested against the wall nearby. He'd been forced to rip the little door off its hinges to drag the old man's coffin out. You could still see the sc.r.a.pes the heavy box had left in the floorboards; they looked like gouges left by fingernails.

'It's a prison,' he said. 'What do you expect it to look like?'

Creedy grunted. 'Other people manage to keep themselves in comfort. You're letting this place slip under.' He looked around. 'That hatch'll go back on easy enough.'

Granger didn't reply.

'And you could raise the floors in the cells downstairs.'

Granger shrugged. 'Some people build things . . .'

'. . . and other people break them,' Creedy finished, with an oafish laugh. 'Do you remember Dunbar?'

Granger was looking for a crowbar among his tools. 'Dunbar's underwater now,' he said. He couldn't find the crowbar so he picked up a head-spade instead and carried it over to a spot at the far end of the living room, about forty paces from the front gable. He got down on his knees and crawled around, squinting down through the gaps in the floorboards. When he spotted the top of the wardrobe in the storage room below, he jammed the head of the spade between two boards and began ripping up wood.

'Banks found that silverfin's egg in the cave under the cliff,' the other man went on, 'and there you were, boiling it up in an old concussion sh.e.l.l when Hu's Lancers came up the path. I'll never forget the look on that young officer's face. You stared right at him. You remember what you said?'

Granger tossed a plank aside and pulled up another.

'Would you be kind enough to keep an eye out for the mother?' Creedy said in an affected tone. Then he guffawed. 'Would you be kind enough?' He tore another shred of meat from the bone and chewed it thoughtfully. 'Tenacious b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, though, I'll give them that.'

'Hu's Lancers?'

'Dragons, man. You ever hear the stories about that green?'

Granger eased himself down through the hole he'd made in the floor, planting his feet on the top of the wardrobe underneath. It creaked under him. 'Maskelyne just makes those up,' he said. 'He'll sell the beast on to another collector once he's given it a reputation as a monster.'

'It was was a monster,' Creedy said. 'Sank seven ships before they harpooned it in the eye.' a monster,' Creedy said. 'Sank seven ships before they harpooned it in the eye.'

'Two ships,' Granger said.

'Well,' Creedy said. 'But you saw what it ate.'

Grunting, Granger manoeuvred his shoulders down through the gap in the floor. 'Saw it?' he said. 'I disarmed the b.l.o.o.d.y thing.'

Creedy laughed. 'I don't think Davy even knew what it was.'

Granger dropped to a squatting position. It was a tight squeeze, but he managed to duck his head under the joists. Apart from the wardrobe, some shelves stuffed with moth-eaten blankets and a stack of old tin pails, the storage room was empty.

'What are you doing?' Creedy said. 'I've got galoshes you could have borrowed. You don't have to rip the G.o.dd.a.m.n house apart to get down there.'

Granger opened the wardrobe door, then, turning to face the wall, he lowered himself down on splayed elbows. His boots scuffed the sides of the wardrobe and kicked against the open door, knocking it back against the wall. Finally the air under his heels gave way to a solid surface. With another grunt, he hopped down inside the narrow wooden s.p.a.ce.

It was musty and dark, but his fumbling hands located the tin box at once. He picked it up and slid it on top of the wardrobe, then stopped as pain seized his chest. It hit him like a punch. 'Could you give me a hand back up, Mr Creedy?'

'You got your own self down there.'

'I can't . . . breathe.'

Granger heard a chair sc.r.a.pe across the floor above. A moment later, a shadow fell across the gap above, and he saw his former sergeant's big, ugly face staring down. 'You're never going to fix this hole, are you?'

'Grab that box and give me a hand.'

Once he was back up in the garret, he took a drink of water straight from the spigot and then sat down on the floor, breathing slow until the cramps in his chest relaxed. He'd been inhaling this sea air for too long, living too close to the brine. The Mare Lux had got into his lungs, and there was nothing to be done about it now.

'You don't look well,' Creedy said.

'The register's in that box.'