Free Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts by Alan Campbell Page B

sweat from his brow and called out, ‘Grech.’
    The head administrator peered up from his desk with darkly suspicious little eyes. ‘You’re early,’ he said. He was all joints, this man – a great shambling preying mantis. He wore a dusty wig, woven into plaits, and an ash-coloured Imperial robe enriched with silver and lead chain-links around the shoulders. His chin hovered over his ledger like a stalactite.
    The captain handed him a scroll. ‘One hundred and sixty-three redundants. Eighteen twenty-eight still breathing, and another eighteen lawbreakers pickling in our seawater tanks. That’s two thousand and nine bodies delivered.’
    ‘Eighteen lawbreakers?’ the administrator said. ‘That seems excessive.’
    ‘Discipline,’ the captain replied. ‘You give these people an inch and their lawlessness starts to infect the crew. Besides, I know how much you like to watch them dry out.’ His gaze wandered to the nearest stone figure – the stone body of a woman curled up on the ground, her face a rictus of agony – and he gave a little smile.
    The administrator examined the document, then scrawled something across the bottom and handed it back to the other man. The captain turned and gestured to one of the Alabaster Sound ’s deck crew, who began unloading their human cargo.
    The prisoners were much as Granger had expected: a rabble of Evensraum farm labourers, militia, women and old men. Hardly a trained combatant among them. Shackled hand to foot and linked by chains, they shuffled down the loading ramps under the watchful eyes of the ship’s overseer. The crew lined them up on the dockside, while Ethugra’s jailers crowded around the administrators’ desks to collect the numbered tickets necessary to claim new arrivals. Granger was about to join them, when Creedy came forward, holding out two slips of paper.
    ‘You’re sorted,’ he said.
    Granger hesitated. ‘How did you get these?’
    The sergeant grunted. ‘My first cousin’s husband knows a man who knows a man,’ he said. ‘Just take them, Colonel, or we’ll be here all day. It’s too damn hot to hang around here any longer than we need to.’
    Granger accepted the tickets and examined them. He was to be allocated prisoners forty-three and forty-four from the first batch. ‘Is there anyone in this city your family doesn’t know?’
    Creedy thought for a moment. ‘Aye, but they’re all below water.’
    The two men waited their turn as the first prisoners were brought, one by one, before the administrators. Documents were signed and passed along the line to be stamped and countersigned. Numbers were called out, whereupon the jailer holding the appropriate ticket claimed his captive and herded them further down the line to finalize the paperwork. The Alabaster Sound ’s overseer unlocked chains, lashing his whip at his charges when they delayed.
    The sun hammered them without mercy. The smell of whale oil from the ship’s funnels lingered in the air and clung to the roof of Granger’s mouth. He watched the boats bobbing in the bay. He eyed a beer seller and rummaged in his pocket for coins, but his hand came out empty. He tugged at his collar and wiped sweat from his brow and peered down the line of prisoners. Fewer than thirty had been processed. Underfed and dejected, half of them wouldn’t last a year in Ethugra.
    ‘Thomas?’
    A female captive at the front of the line was staring at Granger. Evidently she had been troublesome on the voyage, for the face under her bonfire of black hair had been beaten black and yellow. Dried blood caked her lower lip. She was clinging fiercely to a girl of fifteen or sixteen, trying to stop the overseer from separating them. ‘Thomas?’ she said quickly. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’
    Granger shook his head. ‘I don’t know you, ma’am.’
    The overseer wrenched the young girl away from the older woman and thrust her towards a waiting jailer. The woman shrieked, ‘Ianthe,’ and tried to