The Black Lung Captain

by Chris Wooding

  'Spindle Street,' said Trinica, pointing at a faded sign high up on one of the walls.

  Spindle Street. Smult had mentioned it. When you come out of the shanties, look for Spindle Street. Follow it to the landing pad.

  The landing pad, and the Ketty Jay, and then out of this dump for ever. Frey had a long list of places he never wanted to return to, for one reason or another. Hawk Point had qualified before he'd even landed.

  There were a few people about, bartering at stalls or chatting in doorways. 'Just act normal,' he said to Trinica, and they walked out of the alley and down the street.

  Frey could feel the glances of the townsfolk as they headed towards the landing pad, but they were left alone. If Smult was right, the men who lay in wait were behind them by now. Only the gunmen at the landing pad were left, as insurance in case they should slip past the others. Jez and Silo should have taken care of them.

  Better check, he thought, reaching into his pocket for his earcuff. He was just clipping it to his ear when there was a flurry of movement to his left. An elderly woman was pushed aside as a pair of gunmen came running out of an alleyway, shotguns held at waist height, trained on Frey and Trinica. He heard footfalls behind him and yelps of surprise from the scattering townsfolk. He turned and saw a third man, moving up from behind with a pistol aimed.

  'Weapons on the ground! Real slow!' barked the first of the gunmen, a heavyset man with a bushy beard that hung down over his chest.

  Trinica looked at Frey, as if expecting him to do something about it. But Frey just shrugged at her. Some guardian I am. That didn't last long.

  'Do it,' he said. He threw his revolvers on the ground before him. His cutlass followed. Then he raised his hands.

  Trinica was still staring at him, an expression of frustrated disappointment on her face. As if she couldn't understand why he'd given up so easily. As if she'd expected him to fight three men that had the drop on them.

  Who does she think I am? he thought angrily. I'm not one of the Century bloody Knights.

  But he couldn't hold her gaze, so he turned his head away. After a few moments, he heard her guns clatter down on top of his.

  'Bounty's ours, boys!' crowed the second gunman, a long-faced fellow in a dirty shirt, with braces holding up his trousers. 'Trinica bleedin' Dracken!'

  'I told you!' said the third one, who'd moved nearer now. He was the youngest of the three, barely old enough to grow a decent stubble on his cheeks. 'Cost us every shillie we had, but she'll be worth it.'

  The heavyset man was looking Trinica over. 'Aye. The Navy'll pay us back five times over. You was right; Smult was good as his word.'

  Frey felt Trinica tense at the sound of his name. Smult. He'd sold them out twice over. Bleeding all sides for as much money as he could get.

  'Your friend Smult,' said Frey under his breath, 'is quite a piece of shit.'

  'If we ever get out of this,' said Trinica, 'I'm going to teach him the meaning of suffering.'

  'Oh, I shouldn't worry about that. You take out the two in front, I'll handle the one behind me.'

  'What?' said Trinica. 'How can I—'

  But he wasn't talking to her. He was talking to Jez and Silo.

  Gunshots. The heavyset man and his long-faced companion wheeled and jerked, eyes wide in shock. Frey was already moving as they fell, turning to face the man behind him. As he did so, he held out his arm, and his cutlass leaped from the ground of its own accord. He felt it slap into his palm just as his opponent raised his pistol and fired at his chest from a distance of two metres. The blade jerked in his hand; the bullet sparked off the metal. His attacker had only a moment to stare in disbelief before Frey cut his hand off at the wrist and beheaded him on the return stroke.

  Three corpses slumped to the ground together. Frey turned to Trinica, raised an eyebrow at her, and then walked away towards Jez and Silo. The look of amazement on her face was priceless.

  Jez and Silo hurried up to him from the direction of the landing pad. 'Everything okay, Cap'n?' Jez asked.

  'It is now,' he said. 'Should I ask how you found me?'

  Jez brandished Crake's compass. 'Followed the needle. We came looking for you after we dealt with the men on the roof. Thought you might need a hand.'

  Frey held his hand up before him and studied the ring on his little finger. 'I keep forgetting about this thing.'

  'I take it things didn't go so well with the whispermonger?'

  'We've got enough to be going on with,' said Frey. He spotted Trinica walking over to them and added, 'If Trinica asks, I planned this whole crafty counter-ambush all along.'

  'Right you are, Cap'n,' said Jez. Her eyes roamed his face uncertainly. Neither knew quite how to behave around the other. Frey felt that he was supposed to be mad at her, but it didn't feel right after what had just happened. And yet, when he looked at her, he still saw something he was afraid of.

  'Thanks,' he said awkwardly. Then he looked at Silo, where he was on safer ground. 'Both of you.'

  'Um,' said Jez. 'You're welcome.'

  Then he walked off down the road, heading for the Ketty Jay. With every footstep, his good humour grew, and by the time she came into sight he was positively brimming with confidence. Smult might have tried to get one over on them, but they'd slipped the trap. And however he'd done it, he'd saved Trinica, and now she owed him. A pretty satisfactory day, all in all.

  On the cargo ramp, he paused and looked back over the blasted, ramshackle settlement towards the town hall.

  'Now who can't tie their bootlaces, you scabby son of a bitch?' he muttered under his breath. And with that, he headed to the cockpit for take-off.

  Twenty-Five

  Among The Civilised —

  Kray lock's Revelations — Frey Joins The Dots

  Bestwark University was one of the oldest and most prestigious seats of learning in all of Vardia. It had existed for over a thousand years. Kings and queens, dukes and earls had studied there. Great advances in science, medicine, and avionics had been made behind its enormous sandstone walls. Its shadowy studies and echoing halls had played host to conversation and debate between the greatest philosophers, artists and mathematicians in history. The very air was heavy with knowledge.

  Frey sat at a table in the university cafe, rustled his broadsheet, and did his best to look educated.

  The cafe was built into one side of a large, grassy quad. Tall, square windows looked out over a stone veranda laid with tables and chairs. It was a sunny day, and most of the tables were occupied, but Frey had snagged one near the edge where he could watch the students going to and from their classes. They hurried along the flagged pathways between the trees and ornamental pools, chatting amongst themselves, their faces alight with a kind of enthusiasm that Frey hadn't seen in years. Young men and women, brimming with dreams and possibilities. Young men and women who hadn't yet been let out into the world, all their protection stripped from them, and left to fend for themselves.

  Just you wait, Frey thought. You wouldn't smile like that if you knew.

  But for all his silent, smug warnings, he was jealous. They reminded him of when he was their age, when he thought the way they did. He'd imagined himself as a dashing freebooter, or a rich and famous explorer like Crewen or Skale, the men who discovered and mapped New Vardia. He remembered that first couple of years with Trinica, when he'd believed he was the luckiest man alive, and he'd been unable to imagine any obstacle they couldn't overcome together.

  Sometimes he wished he could be that naive again.

  He sipped his coffee and made a show of studying his broadsheet, just for effect. He was acutely aware that he didn't belong here. He couldn't shake the suspicion that he'd only been permitted to enter by mistake and that he'd be escorted out at any moment. Even the waitress who served him the coffee had given him a frankly insulting once-over. Although she might have just been eyeing him up. Frey's instincts were all off in this place. Academia intimidated him.

  There was plen
ty of drama in today's broadsheet. The big news was that the Archduke had announced that his wife was pregnant. The country was in raptures, apparently. Celebrations planned in the cities, and all of that.

  An heir, to replace poor dead Earl Hengar. That was bad news for the Awakeners. The Archduke and his wife were staunch opponents of the organisation, and even more so since Hengar's death. The Awakeners had had a hand in that, even if they'd never been held to account for it. They might have hoped the Archduke would die childless, to pass the reins of power to a more sympathetic member of the family. But that hope was now extinguished.

  The other news also concerned the Awakeners. A vote was to be taken in the House of Chancellors on a new proposition to ban Awakener activity in the cities. Just the thing that Grand Oracle Pomfrey had been complaining about, shortly before Frey robbed him at the card tables. Frey suspected it had been timed to ride the wave of public support in the wake of the Archduke's announcement. The Archduke didn't actually need the approval of the House to pass any laws, but there were a lot of people out there who'd get angry about the Archduke messing with their religion. The House was the voice of the people, traditionally, even if it was only the aristocracy who got much of a say in it. Their support would make things much easier.

  Strange times, he thought. But times had been strange since the Aerium Wars began. Frey didn't trouble himself with the big picture too much. Let the world take care of itself, and he'd do the same. That was his usual philosophy, anyway. Yet, somehow, here he was at Bestwark University, waiting to meet a colleague of Grist's father. All in the name of chasing down that Mane sphere before Grist did anything too terrible with it. And where was the profit in that?

  Nowhere. Except that maybe he'd be able to sleep at night, knowing he'd at least tried to prevent a disaster he'd had a hand in causing.

  Smult's information had given them a few leads, even if the scumbag had subsequently sold them down the river. Grist was likely on the northern coast somewhere. That was the best place to start asking after him. But before they went flying about, freezing their pods off in the arctic air, Frey wanted to have a word with Daddy. See if he could narrow the search a bit.

  So they'd flown over to Bestwark. Trinica had composed a polite letter of introduction. They didn't want to alarm Grist's father, so they pretended to be scholars, interested in discussing his research. She gave false names, just to be safe.

  They'd had the letter delivered to the university. The next day, they received a reply from a man called Professor Kraylock, inviting them to meet him. Trinica was surprised at the speed of the response, but neither of them were of a mind to question their luck.

  Trinica had disappeared from the Ketty Jay early that morning, to 'make some preparations'. She left word that she'd meet Frey at the university cafe. So Frey went alone, rather nervously. The gate guard had his name on a list, and he was allowed through. He made his way in, and settled there to wait, feeling slightly cowed by the whole experience.

  He looked around for Trinica, saw no one, and returned to hiding behind his broadsheet. His eye fell on an article which caught his interest. The Meteorologist's Guild in Thesk was predicting a resurgence in the Storm Belt, the vicious weather system that ran across the Ordic Abyssal and separated the continent of Pandraca from the islands on the far side of the planet. The Aviator's Guild feared that New Vardia and Jagos could become even more isolated if aircraft were forced to take the eastern route instead. That would involve circumnavigating almost two-thirds of the globe, and it was prohibitively fuel-expensive, not to mention dangerous.

  'Anything interesting?' It was Trinica's voice. He closed the broadsheet and looked up at her. And kept on looking.

  'Darian, you're staring,' she said. A gentle admonishment. Her expression was a little awkward, uncertain, embarrassed. Not exactly the emotions he'd associate with Trinica Dracken, pirate captain.

  But he couldn't help it. Whoever this was in front of him, it was not the woman he'd last seen on the Ketty Jay.

  She'd transformed herself. The chalk-white pallor and vulgar red lipstick had gone. She wore only the slightest hint of make-up now. Her hair, that had been butchered as if with a blunt knife, had been cut into a short, fashionable style. The black contact lenses had disappeared. Her eyes were green, the way he remembered them. She was wearing a light, summery dress that exposed her pale collarbones.

  It was like the past come to life. A vision of the woman he'd loved all that time ago. Oh, there were differences: ten years had passed, after all. Tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. Her face a little leaner than before, cheekbones a fraction sharper. And her hair was different, of course. But none of that was anything to him. Damn, his heart was actually beating harder at the sight of her.

  'Are you alright?' she asked. 'You seem a little out of sorts.' There was a smile in her tone. She was flattered by his reaction, even if she didn't want to be.

  'You . . .' Frey fought for something witty to say. 'You clean up pretty well,' he managed.

  'Seemed foolish to advertise myself, given the circumstances,' she said. She sat down with practised elegance. 'Osric Smult taught me a lesson I won't soon forget. I have you to thank that I'm still alive to learn from it.'

  The waitress who had served Frey drifted over to the table. Frey was grateful for the chance to gather his wits as they ordered more coffee and some pastries.

  'I missed breakfast,' Trinica confessed with a smile.

  Even her manner was different. Not so hard, not so cruel. That outer layer of her disguise had been scraped away. Neither of them were quite certain what lay beneath it.

  She leaned back in her chair and looked out over the quad. Watching the students, as he had done. 'I would have gone to a place like this,' she said. 'Bestwark or Hoben or Galmury. I was a good student, you know. And with my family's money, well . . .' She let the sentence drift. 'I wonder what things would have been like, then.'

  'At least you would have got in,' said Frey. 'Orphan boy like me, no family name ... I wouldn't have got within fifty kloms of this place, no matter how well I did.'

  Trinica laughed. 'You hated studying. You told me so.'

  'Well, maybe if I'd have thought I might get to university, I'd have had more of a crack at this "learning" thing,' said Frey, making quotation marks with his fingers.

  'You can't blame everything on the circumstances of your birth, Darian,' she said. 'Besides, you didn't do badly for a poor orphan boy. You were a hair's breadth from marrying into a fortune, I recall.'

  Frey watched her for signs of an accusation, but she wasn't making one. She seemed in a good mood, in fact. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun. The first time she'd felt it on her bare skin in years, perhaps. Frey found himself worrying that she might burn.

  You're worrying? About her? You should worry about yourself!

  The voice of reason. He reminded himself not to be beguiled. Just because she'd changed her appearance, it didn't make her any more trustworthy.

  The waitress arrived with their drinks and a plate of pastries. Trinica took one and bit into it. Frey realised that he'd never seen her eat while she was aboard the Ketty Jay. She'd taken her meals in her room, perhaps aware that her presence was poisoning the atmosphere in the mess. She had a fussy, precise way of eating that Frey had always found sort of adorable.

  He ate a pastry himself. For a short while, they didn't speak. Absurdly, Frey began to feel comfortable. Like they'd known each other for ever. Like it was no big thing that they were sitting together in the grounds of an ancient university eating pastries on a sunny day. The whole situation was bizarre in its normality.

  'Trinica, do you ever question what you're doing?' he said.

  She peered suspiciously at the pastry in her hand. 'Should I?'

  'No, I mean, do you ever wonder if you're on the right road?'

  'My road chose me, rather than the other way around.'

  'But, I mean . . . You're rich, right? Even wit
hout your family. You could sell your craft, retire. Do anything you wanted.'

  She laughed a little laugh. 'Like what? Keep bees? Potter about my manse looking at the flowers?'

  'You could read. You always liked to read.'

  Trinica gave him a look that was midway between indulgent and patronising. 'I rather think it's you we're talking about here, not me.'

  She was right. It had begun as an idle thought, but it had always been heading somewhere. He knitted his fingers behind his head, trying to think of a way to explain the empty, directionless feeling he'd had ever since this whole affair began.

  'Let me guess,' said Trinica. 'You're looking for something, but you don't know what it is.'

  He was amazed that she'd summed it up so neatly. 'How'd you know?'

  'Because you've been saying the same thing since you were seventeen.'

  Frey looked blank. 'Have I?'

  'Yes!' she said. 'When I met you, you were flying for my father. You'd mortgaged yourself to the eyeballs to afford a second-hand rust bucket called the Ketty Jay, but you were regretting it already, because you'd decided you wanted to join the Navy and fly a frigate.'

  Frey did dimly recall wanting to join the Navy at some point, but it seemed unimaginable now.

  'Then you decided you were in love with me, and you wanted to be with me for ever, and we all know how that turned out.'

  Again, there was no hurt or accusation in the tone. Simple fact. He was a little offended that she could talk about it so lightly.

  'I did join the Navy!' he said, suddenly remembering. 'Second Aerium War, flying cargo to the front.'

  'You didn't join the Navy,' she said. 'You flew a lot of insanely dangerous freelance missions with the intention of getting yourself killed. And when you almost did, you blamed the Navy and you've hated them ever since.'

  She had him there. He tried to think of a rejoinder and couldn't.

  'Sorry, Darian. I don't mean to rake over old coals. I'm just making a point. You don't know what you want. You never have.'