The Black Lung Captain

by Chris Wooding

  'I'm so lonely, Uncle,' came her voice again. 'I'm so lonely and it'll never end.'

  'You rot-hearted bastard!' Crake shrieked into the dark. 'I loved her!'

  'It's so hard to think in here, Uncle. What did you do to me?'

  Crake choked back a sob.

  'You should've let me die,' she said.

  'I loved you! I love you!' he protested.

  'How could you?' came the whisper, from right by his ear. He swung around in alarm.

  She was there, reaching towards him, sodden red, open wounds pulsing with blood. But the look in her eyes was pleading.

  'How could you?'

  He screamed, and the light from his lantern went out.

  Hysterical, weeping breathlessly, he fumbled for his matches again, but in his haste to light them he dropped them on the floor. He went down on his knees, searching. At any moment he expected to feel the dreadful touch of the bloodied apparition. But then his fingers found the matchbox, and he managed to steady his trembling hands long enough to strike one. He touched the tiny flame to the wick of his lantern, and light returned to the freezing room.

  There was no sign of Bess. But there, lying next to him like an accusation, was the letter knife.

  He put the lantern on the floor. Sobs racked him, each one like a punch in the chest. He stayed on his knees. He wasn't sure he had the strength to stand any more.

  'I thought I could control it,' he gasped between sobs. 'You weren't supposed to be there.'

  'Sssh,' came the disembodied voice. 'You know what you have to do.'

  'I couldn't let you die.'

  'Sssh.'

  His fingers closed around the hilt of the knife. A sense of peace filled him at its touch. Yes, it would be so simple, wouldn't it? An end to the constant, grinding agony of memory.

  'You've suffered enough, Uncle. It's time to rest.'

  Time to rest. He liked that. She'd given him her blessing, hadn't she? And he was so very tired.

  He put the blade to his neck, angling it under the curve of his jaw. One swift cut in the right place, and he could sleep. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept well.

  'Now push!' hissed the voice from the darkness. 'Push! Push!'

  He felt a trickle of blood running down his throat, and realised he'd already broken the skin. He was already that far along; why not go a little further?

  He took a breath, steadied his hand for the final thrust.

  'Goodbye, Uncle,' said the voice.

  And Crake stopped. Goodbye, indeed. With that one quick cut, he'd be leaving her. He'd be at rest. But Bess wouldn't.

  And who'd save her then?

  He took the blade from his throat. It fell from his hands, ringing as it hit the stone floor.

  Rest. Peace. He didn't deserve it.

  He got to his feet. From the dark, there was only silence.

  The daemon that made him stab his niece had left him alive for a reason. It wanted him to suffer for his arrogance in meddling with forces he didn't fully understand. To spend day after day in torment. In trying to avoid his sentence, Crake had unwittingly made it worse. By refusing to let her die he'd condemned them both to an eternity of misery. He'd only served two years, but it had almost broken him.

  Yet now there was a chance of release, he couldn't take it. Not while Bess was still alive. Bess needed him, and she was his responsibility.

  He'd spent three months as a drunken vagrant before he pulled himself together and found the Ketty Jay. Life on board had brought a window of clarity, but once the whole Retribution Falls affair was done he'd begun sliding back again. Blocking out the pain instead of tackling it. He'd always meant to do something about Bess, but somehow it had never happened. He was too afraid of the possibility of failure. Too scared to leave the relative comfort of the crew to strike out on his own. He knew, one way or another, that this was a task for him alone, and that frightened him.

  But now it came to it, now he had the chance to give up his burden of grief, he found that he couldn't. He'd never atone for what he'd done, but he couldn't turn his back on it either. So there was only one other option. He had to face up to it, and fix it.

  The thought lit a flame in his breast. This was his burden and he'd bear it. Suicide was the coward's way out. And Grayther Crake was no coward.

  'Look what you did to me, Uncle,' whispered the voice. Crake turned, and saw her. Lying there, just as he'd found her that day, with that same look of incomprehension and betrayal on her face. Blood-soaked, gasping, paralysed by shock.

  The sight brought fresh tears to his eyes. His lip trembled and he teetered on the edge of hysteria again. But he heaved in a shuddering breath, and he made himself look.

  'Yes,' he whispered. 'Yes, I did that.'

  He walked over to her, picked her up, and held her against him. The sodden, slight, ragged weight of her. She squirmed in his arms, trying to push him off her, but he was too strong and wouldn't let her go. Warm blood slicked his neck and hands.

  'Don't worry,' he murmured. 'Uncle Grayther will make it better. I promise I'll make it better, somehow.'

  She began to squeal and shriek, thrashing in his grip. She pummelled and scratched at him. But he held her tight, tears streaming down his face, as the bloody child fought against him. The pain meant nothing to him now. He could take everything and more, as long as he didn't stop holding her.

  Her screams reached a deafening crescendo, and then the darkness erupted into chaos.

  'Crake!'

  It was Plome. The child in Crake's arms was gone. An unnatural wind was blasting through the sanctum, a hurricane, sending apparatus crashing past him in the dark. There was a terrible roaring, and the sound of something pounding against metal.

  He snatched up his lantern before it could be blown away. On the floor was a sharp length of steel, tipped with blood. His blood. A moment after he saw it, it was caught by the wind, skidded along the floor and out of sight.

  He looked for Plome, and saw him, on the other side of the room. He was struggling with his control panels, lit by the faint glow from the gauges. Desperately trying to keep up the perimeter defences.

  'The chamber!' Plome yelled, pointing.

  Crake staggered into the wind, towards the chamber. It was rocking against its struts, dented by the inhuman pummelling from the creature within. The door was still firmly closed. The daemon bellowed as Crake stumbled past the porthole, and he caught a glimpse of a thrashing muddle of eyes and teeth in the lanternlight. Then he was at the control panel. Fumbling fingers found a lever. He threw it.

  The daemon screeched as it was bombarded with agonising frequencies. Crake leaned against the lever, his eyes closed, wishing ever greater pain on the monster in the chamber. For what it had done to him. for what it had shown him, he wanted to tear it apart. If he leaned on this lever for long enough, it would be shredded to pieces, dashed by the flux.

  He wanted that. He wanted it so badly. But he had a job to do. He had people relying on him. So he took hold of the lever, and he pulled it back. The wind dropped, and there was silence. Several of the electric lights came back on, flickering and crackling uneasily.

  Crake brushed sweat-damp hair back from his forehead, panting.

  'Are you alright?' Plome asked, from where he knelt by his controls.

  'I'm alive,' he said. 'You?'

  'Yes, yes, quite unharmed,' he said, his voice wavering. He brandished the pistol he'd brought at Crake's request. 'No need to shoot you, then?' he joked weakly.

  'I should think not,' said Crake. He threw the lever again, out of spite, and listened to the daemon shriek for a few more seconds before he turned it off. Then he walked round the echo chamber, and stood in front of the porthole, looking in.

  'Now,' he said to the daemon. 'Let's begin again, shall we?'

  Fifteen

  Pinn, Lost In Thought — Jez Takes A Walk —

  A Fortress — Frey Has A Plan

  Artis Pinn lay on his bunk, fingers lac
ed behind his head, and stared at the metal ceiling. It was possible to see shapes in the ancient grime, if you looked hard enough. But today he wasn't playing his usual game. Today, he was thinking.

  The quarters he shared with Harkins were narrow, cluttered and dirty. He had the top bunk, due to Harkins' unfortunate tendency to spasm out of bed several times a night. A square vent high up on one wall let in cool air from outside, wafting away the stench of unwashed bedding. There was a small storage cupboard crammed with their meagre possessions, but space for little else. The Ketty Jay wasn't built for luxury.

  Pinn had lain there for hours now, trying to make sense of things. He didn't know what this empty, listless sensation was, but he didn't like it much. He didn't want to get up. Didn't want to sleep. Didn't want to do anything, actually. The thought of flying his Skylance failed to excite him. Even the prospect of booze had lost its charm, and he'd often said that when that day came, he'd eat a bullet. But he didn't feel much like shooting himself, either.

  Lisinda, he thought. My sweetheart is marrying another man.

  Was it even possible? He wasn't sure. After all, she'd said she loved him. Hadn't that meant anything to her? It had certainly meant something to him. It had inspired him to be a hero. It made him want to be a better man. It even made him want to stop cheating on her, although the gap between the desire and the reality was vast indeed.

  How could she do it?

  A sudden thought struck him, that hadn't occurred until now, even after hours of contemplation. If she was marrying another man, that must mean she'd been fooling around with him for at least a couple of months. Maybe longer. A flood of rage swept through him, and he gritted his teeth. How he'd like to get his hands round that other bloke's throat! Messing with another man's woman! Didn't he know she was taken? She'd already made her choice. Hadn't she said she loved him?

  But killing her husband-to-be would surely make Lisinda a bit sad. He'd never do anything to make her cry, and yet honour demanded he stamp his rival's face into the ground. How to solve a problem like that? It was all very confusing. He wished he had half the Cap'n's brains. The Cap'n would have known what to do.

  No matter how he turned it over in his head, he couldn't conceive how Lisinda would want to marry anyone else. It just wasn't possible. She must be an innocent victim in all this, somehow. Her heart had been swayed by some sleazy charmer from out of town. Women couldn't help themselves sometimes, that was just a fact. She couldn't be blamed. She was powerless to resist his influence.

  Or maybe she was being forced into it. Yes, that was it! She'd said in her letter that she was very happy, but that clearly couldn't be true. Not when her heart was with her absent hero.

  His blood boiled at the thought. His Lisinda, married off to some scheming aristocrat three times her age! The kind of man who coveted her beauty because he was too old to win her by fair means. He'd bought her like an ornament to wear on his arm, no doubt.

  What if she'd been kidnapped? What if the letter was her coded cry for help? She must have known he'd never believe she would leave him. It was too ridiculous. Had her kidnapper allowed her to send this letter, thinking it innocent? Had she cleverly concealed a message within the message?

  He pulled the letter out from under his pillow and began frantically scanning it, searching for codes or clues. Halfway through, he froze as another possibility occurred to him.

  Could it be that this was all a plan by some love rival? Perhaps they had written the letter, hoping that Pinn would come racing home prematurely. Then Lisinda would see that he hadn't yet become the strong, honourable and, most importantly, rich man he'd promised he'd be. She'd turn away from him then, disappointed. Right into the arms of another.

  He studied the letter furiously, searching for signs of forgery. What did Lisinda's handwriting look like, anyway? She'd never written him a letter before. Neither of them were much for reading or writing. Eventually he gave up. He'd never recognise a forgery if he didn't know the genuine article.

  It all made his head hurt. What did the letter mean? And what was this strange, aching feeling in his guts, this heaviness in his limbs, this lack of appetite? He supposed that all this thinking was making him ill.

  He heard a noise by the door and stuffed the letter back under the pillow just as Harkins peeped in. He was carrying a large butterfly net. His eyes roamed the room nervously.

  'Pinn. Er . . . you wouldn't happen to ... I mean, have you seen the cat?'

  Harkins' eyes widened as he saw that the grille had been taken off the air vent and was lying on the floor. No matter how many times he fixed it back, Pinn always took it off again, complaining that it made the room stuffy. It also allowed Slag to creep into the room and suffocate Harkins, which was part of the fun.

  'You took the grille off,' Harkins accused.

  'Yeah,' said Pinn.

  Harkin's lip quivered. A determined look crept into his gaze. Pinn could see him visibly plucking up his courage. Allsoul's balls, was the twitchy old freak actually going to try to stand up to him?

  'Now you listen!' Harkins said sternly. 'I've had enough of this! This is my room as much as yours, and I—'

  'Piss off, Harkins, I'm thinking,' Pinn snapped.

  Harkins flinched at the tone of his voice and scurried out. Pinn sighed, settled himself back on his bunk and stared at the ceiling again.

  Lisinda. Sweetheart. What are you trying to say to me?

  Jez clambered up the ladder to the upper gantry of the engine room, trying not to spill the mug of coffee in her hand. The engine assembly was quiet, but it still radiated a faint warmth. A sleeping monster of pipes and black iron.

  Silo had a panel off and was poking around with a screwdriver. She squatted down next to him and put the coffee by his side.

  'Made it just short of lethal, the way you like it.'

  He grunted in thanks and kept poking.

  'How's it going?' she asked, trying to peer past him.

  'Same as before,' he said. 'Can't do nothin' without the parts. She could hold up for weeks. She could give out any minute. No tellin'.' He found something loose and tightened it. 'You thought about what I said?'

  Jez remembered their surprising conversation in the rainforest of Kurg. 'I have. I am.'

  'Talked to Crake?'

  'Not yet,' she said. It seemed hard to find the right moment. 'You know he hasn't had a drink since last night?'

  'He tell you that?'

  'I can smell it on him.'

  'Huh.'

  Sensing that nothing else would be forthcoming, Jez ducked away and headed back down the ladder. The truth was, she'd been thinking a lot about Crake of late. She was becoming more and more convinced that he was the only one who could help her. Who better to deal with a daemon than a daemonist?

  But it wasn't quite as simple as just walking up and asking. There had always been a distance between them. Crake seemed to resent her a little for being the one he'd confessed his crime to. Jez, for her part, had found it hard to entirely forgive him for what he'd done. Then there had been the drinking, and his gradual deterioration of late. He'd become bitter and unapproachable.

  Jez was never the kind who was comfortable opening up to others. She was afraid they might one day use her vulnerabilities against her. And she was still afraid of what would happen if she admitted the whole truth about her condition. What if Crake reacted with fear and panic? What if he felt he had to tell the Cap'n? No matter how much the crew liked her or how useful she was, having a Mane on board would make anyone nervous. She could be shunned and ejected from the Ketty Jay, and she couldn't face that. She couldn't go back to that life of wandering, moving from crew to crew, never putting down roots.

  But she had a daemon inside her. And the longer it stayed the more power it would have over her. Sooner or later she'd be forced to take action. Even if it cost her her place on the Ketty Jay.

  She went out into the passageway. She could see Malvery through the open door of the infi
rmary, asleep on the surgical table, snoring. Ahead of her, Harkins was stalking down the corridor on tiptoe, a butterfly net in his hand. He flushed beetroot red as he saw her.

  'Jez! Um . . . I . . . you see, I picked this up in Tarlock Cove and I . . . er . . .'

  'I don't think I want to know,' said Jez.

  'Right. Hm. Yes. Probably best.'

  She went down to the cargo hold and outside. The Ketty Jay sat in a grassy mountain dell, high up in the Splinters. A broken, bald peak thrust up ahead of her. Frey and Crake were somewhere on the other side, with Grist and his bosun. Scouting out the location that Crake's daemon had identified, the place where Grist's mysterious sphere was being kept. Nearby was the Storm Dog. A few of Grist's crew lounged about, enjoying the bright, cool morning. Jez walked past them, towards the trees that fringed the dell.

  She still had deep misgivings about this whole affair, but she was loyal to her Cap'n. He'd given her a home, and she had a way to go before she paid him back for that, even if she'd already saved his life more than once. She felt included here, and needed.

  Just as she'd felt when that Mane was trying to turn her, on that snowy night in Yortland. The moment when she'd seen into their world, and felt the connections between them.

  She understood why that crew on the crashed Mane craft had lain down and died. She'd only had a taste of what could have been. Having that, living with it and then giving it up would have been unthinkably terrible. A mutilation of the senses.

  And yet they did it anyway. They made that choice. So maybe they're individuals, rather than slaves to a collective mind. Maybe I wouldn't lose myself if I joined them.

  Dangerous thinking. A temptation like that would be too easy to give in to. It was no easy thing to resist the call, day after day, night after night. The need to belong had always been a part of her. And no one belonged like a Mane did.