The Black Lung Captain

by Chris Wooding

  He slipped off his gloves, and pulled off the silver ring around his little finger. Then he held it out to her in his palm.

  'Oh, Darian, please,' she said. 'Your ring? Isn't my word good enough for you? You want to keep track of me too?'

  It wasn't quite the response he was expecting. 'I just . . .' he said, but as usual the words crowded up in his mouth and nothing much came out. 'I want you to have it.'

  She looked at him oddly. 'Why?'

  'Next time you're thinking of robbing me blind, I want you to look at this and remember . . . how good we were together.'

  It had started out as a half-hearted attempt at levity, but that only made the finale more pathetic. Frey could feel himself turning red. Damn it, why were unfelt emotions so easy to express, when the real ones tied his tongue?

  She didn't laugh. Her face was solemn, and she had a fragile look about her. 'Alright,' she said quietly. She slipped off her glove and held out her left hand.

  He took it carefully. Handling her as if she was porcelain. Her skin was cold and dry. 'Maybe I can find you again, after all this is done,' he said.

  'That might not be a good idea,' she replied.

  'Never stopped me before,' he replied. Bravado made him feel a little less nervous.

  He slipped the ring on to her little finger. Her fingers were smaller than his, and it didn't fit.

  'It's kind of big, Darian,' she observed gently.

  He tried the next finger, and it slid on perfectly and stayed there.

  Her gaze flickered upward, met his, and held it a long time.

  There was nothing in his head. A wilderness of thought, blasted white by the moment. There was only her, the planes and curves of her face, the intelligence behind those eyes. As long as those eyes stayed on him, everything would remain as it was, beautiful as frost. Her hand still lay in his, but now it was warm: thawed by his touch, perhaps.

  All he wanted was that she'd never stop looking at him.

  But then she drew back, and her gaze fell. She took her hand away from his, and put it back inside its glove. 'I must go,' she said. 'Goodbye, Captain Frey. I'll see you on your return.'

  She walked away from him, back towards the Ketty Jay, not meeting his eye. He looked out over the docks and listened to her boots crunch on the snow until he could hear them no more.

  He walked around for slow hours before he went back to the Ketty Jay. He wanted to give her time: time to change herself, time to leave. It was only after they were airborne and on their way back to Tarlock Cove that he realised the hollow ache, which had been absent all month, had returned.

  Pinn woke with an explosive snort to find that everything was sideways.

  It took him several seconds to locate himself and work out which way up the world was meant to be. The smell of tobacco smoke, grog and sweat hung in the air. A badly tuned piano plinked and clunked in the background. He heard laughter, snarls and curses.

  He was lying face-down on the bar, one chubby jowl spread out under him like a cushion. His chin was wet with drool and spilled beer.

  His head felt heavier than usual as he lifted it. It lolled this way and that, too weighty for his neck to support. He got it under control with some effort and blinked the crust out of his eyes.

  'You look a little the worse for wear, sir,' beamed the bartender, 'if you don't mind me saying.'

  Pinn did mind, but he didn't have the energy to do anything about it. He decided he needed a drink instead. He had a vague memory of putting some coins on the bar in front of him, ready to buy his next drinks. His last two coins in the world. He'd been staring at them glumly at some point before he passed out. Now they were gone. He couldn't even remember what he'd spent them on.

  'Stand me a round, friend?' he mumbled, more in hope than expectation.

  The bartender, a tall mustachioed man with an annoyingly lively character, just grinned ever wider. 'No need, no need! Hold still just a minute.' He leaned over the bar and peeled the missing coins off Pinn's face. 'There you go. That should cover it! A rum and a beer, was it?'

  'Right,' said Pinn. The bartender busied himself with the drinks.

  Pinn wiped his chops with his sleeve and gazed blearily into the mirror behind the bar. Something resembling a bewildered mole stared back. The little thatch of hair atop his head had been crushed into an unflattering slope. He licked his palm and tried to do something about it. When he couldn't work up enough saliva, he dipped his hand in a nearby beer spill and used that.

  The bartender put the drinks down in front of him. 'Forgive the observation, sir, but you've got about you the air of a man who doesn't quite know where he is. Am I right?'

  Pinn looked around the bar again. 'Yeah. Where am I?'

  'The Grog Hatch, sir. Finest tavern in town.'

  Pinn thought for a moment. 'And what town is that, then?'

  The bartender was impressed. 'You are a free spirit, sir. Well then, I have the pleasure of informing you that you find yourself in the fine port of Kingspire. Home of the best spitted divehawk in Vardia. I urge you to try it, if you haven't already. Might I ask what brings you to this place?'

  The bartender's conversation was making Pinn's head hurt. 'I was going somewhere . . .' he mumbled. 'My sweetheart's getting married.'

  'Oh, how terrible! And you, sir, are racing to prevent it?'

  'I was,' he said. 'Dunno how I ended up here.'

  'Perhaps you were inclined to a have a drink to steel your nerve?' suggested the bartender, who'd begun cleaning glasses.

  'Yeah.'

  'And after several drinks . . . Why, a man alone in a place like this, he has needs, doesn't he? Needs a woman can't understand. Perhaps you took a fancy to one of the local doxies?'

  'More than one,' Pinn grunted. He swigged his rum to clear the taste of previous rums out of his mouth.

  'You must possess a surfeit of manly desire, sir.'

  Pinn wasn't sure what that meant, but he liked the sound of it so he agreed. 'Damn right.'

  'Perhaps you gambled a little, too?'

  'Got to do a bit of gambling after you've done a whore,' said Pinn. 'That's the time to hit the tables. A man thinks best when his pods are empty. '

  'And, if I may venture to extrapolate from your recent attempt to solicit refreshments, perhaps you've been here several days, spent all the money you have and now find yourself stranded, without a shillie to your name, and many kloms still to go to your sweetheart?'

  'That's it,' said Pinn. 'Exactly.'

  The bartender sighed dramatically. 'You have my sympathy, sir. Fortune is cruel to romantics.'

  Pinn raised his mug of rum to that. This bartender was one wordy son of a bitch, but he was wise. He understood. You couldn't blame a man for cutting loose once in a while.

  It had been a hard month, after all. Worrying about Lisinda, trying to work out what he should do. Suffering that bitch Dracken for the Cap'n's sake. Even after she peeled off the ghoul mask and it turned out she was hot underneath, he still hated her. Not enough that he'd have said no, but you didn't have to like a woman to sleep with them. It was simply a matter of letting the pressure off. A man had to let the pressure off every so often. Otherwise, he was apt to do all kinds of stupid things. That was just nature.

  So the first thing Pinn did when he got out on his own was to let the pressure off. There was nobody giving him orders, nobody to stop him. nobody to make him drink coffee and sober up. It took him two days to spend all the money he had in the world.

  It w as only now, in the cold light of impending poverty, that he remembered why he'd stopped at Kingspire in the first place. In his haste to reach Lisinda he'd been pushing the afterburners hard, and they'd eaten up all his fuel. He was running on fumes when he touched down in Kingspire and. unless some kind of miracle had occurred in the meantime, that was still the case.

  The bartender was right It was like the world was conspiring against him. Trying to thwart his attempts to reach his sweetheart. If there really was a
n Allsoul, it certainly seemed to have a grudge against Pinn.

  Miserably, he assembled a roll-up. He considered offering one to the bartender - it would be good to befriend him, since Pinn would be tapping him up for drinks later - but his tobacco was low and he wanted it for himself. He was just licking the paper when someone eased on to the bar stool next to him, arriving in a wave of strong perfume.

  'Got one of those for me, stranger?' she asked.

  She was plump, heavily rouged, and showing a terrifying amount of cleavage. Red hair spilled in curls over a mole-pocked expanse of white flesh. One of her front teeth slightly overlapped the other. She was at least twenty years older than him, but she dressed like a woman half her age.

  He handed over his roll-up, as if in a daze, and lit it for her with a match. She took a drag and smiled at him. It might have been the booze, but Pinn thought she was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen.

  'Strange and mysterious, the paths our hearts take us,' said the bartender sagely. But nobody was listening to him, so he drifted off to the other side of the bar, where there was another drunken soul in need of a sympathetic ear.

  Thirty-Two

  Plome's Confession —

  Conversations In The Sanctum — An Ending, Of Sorts

  Summer had got hold of Tarlock Cove, and Jez was glad to feel the sun on her face. After all that time in the arctic north it was a pleasure to be reminded that not every day was a hostile one. She took winding lanes up the mountainside, past streets turned sluggish in the heat. The distant sound of crashing waves drifted up to her as the sea patiently battered at the coast far below.

  The address that Crake had left with the Cap'n turned out to be a tall, narrow house tucked away down a well-kept cobbled alley. She approached the door and composed herself. Now that she was here, she felt nervous. She'd not seen Crake since that day on the All Our Yesterdays when her Mane side had taken over. By the time she was out of the infirmary, he was long gone. She had no idea what to expect from him.

  Would he welcome her, or be angry? Would he resent her for coming, and scorn her attempts to talk him back to the Ketty Jay? Would he despise her for being part Mane? Or would he offer to help her, as she hoped? That was, after all, her reason for coming.

  Yes, she wanted him back on the crew, for everyone's sake. Yes, she was concerned about his well-being and worried that he might be in some kind of trouble. But first and foremost, she needed him for his expertise. Because she had a daemon inside her, and who but a daemonist could drive it out?

  If anyone could help her deal with what she was, it was him. But she'd never told him about her condition. He'd hinted in the past that he knew, or at least suspected, what lay behind her unique abilities. Yet she still hadn't spoken out. And then, on the very day it became obvious to all and she could hide it no longer, Crake decided to leave.

  Just when she needed him most. Just when she could finally admit to him that she was part Mane.

  Was it just bad timing? Or did he leave because of me? Does he fear me? Or does he fear what I might ask him?

  No way to know. She should have talked to him a long time ago. Should have asked him to take care of the daemon that plagued her. But instead she'd suffered, because she didn't dare admit her secret.

  In that, at least, they understood one another.

  She rapped on the door and waited. After a few moments she heard footsteps, and the door was opened by a harassed-looking middle-aged man, stout and balding. This, she assumed, was Plome, the owner of the house.

  'Yes?' he inquired, looking her over critically. It occurred to her that she should have worn something more impressive than her grey overalls, but she'd never been much interested in clothes or jewellery.

  'I'm looking for Crake,' she said. 'Is he here?'

  'And who might you be?' he asked suspiciously, studying her over his pince-nez.

  'I'm Jez. I'm the navvie on the—'

  But Plome's face had already lit up. 'Oh, thanks be! Come in, come in!' He hurried her inside and shut the door.

  'He spoke about you,' Plome explained, as Jez found herself propelled down the hallway. 'Said you were the only one who knew about what happened to him. I'm so glad you're here. So very, very glad.' He stopped and seized her by the shoulders. 'You have to take him away!'

  'Err . . .' said Jez, who was still catching up. 'That was the idea, actually.'

  'Good! Good!' Plome cried. 'I thought it would be wonderful having him here, you know. Such an eminent daemonist to learn from. Oh!' He clamped his hand over his mouth, aware that he'd let something slip. 'You mustn't tell anyone!' he urged.

  'Tell anyone what?'

  'That I'm a daemonist. Just an amateur, you understand, but then, aren't we all? No professionals in our business!' He laughed nervously, produced a handkerchief and mopped his glistening pate. 'I'm in politics, you know. Running for the House of Chancellors. If anyone knew, it'd be the death of me.'

  Jez held up her hands. 'Mr Plome. Calm down. I'm not going to tell anyone anything. Now what's happened to Crake?'

  Plome was describing frantic little circles around the hallway, wringing his handkerchief. 'He's become a liability, that's what! Oh, don't think badly of me. I've been a good friend to him. I lent him money. I helped him in everything. He bought rare books, sought out other daemonists, gathered all the research he could. But he always needed more. And one time he emerged from the sanctum, ranting about daemonism, while there were guests in the house! Came damnably close to blowing my cover and sending me to the gallows!' He threw his hands up in the air. 'I've become a recluse! Trapped in my own home, guarding him! I spend every day dreadfully afraid that the madman in my basement will break out and the world will know I've been dabbling with daemons. It's a short trip from there to the noose, believe me, young lady! And I'm supposed to be in the middle of a campaign to become a Chancellor of the Duchy! My rival makes ground every day I'm not out there! The Tarlocks are breathing down my neck, wondering what I'm up to! It's a disaster!'

  He was panting by the time he finished. Jez decided she'd heard enough. 'Show me where he is.'

  Plome led her around the side of the staircase at the end of the hall. There a cupboard door lay hidden and out of sight. He began fumbling in his pocket for something.

  'Through here?' Jez asked, and pulled the door open.

  'Wait! Don't open that yet!' Plome said.

  Jez felt a strange tingle through her body. Her senses tipped, threatening to send her into a trance. Then everything righted itself, and she was looking at a set of steps, leading down, just beyond the door.

  'He's down there?' she asked.

  Plome, who was holding a tuning fork in his hand for some reason, gaped at her. 'But . . . the glamour . . . You can see the stairs?'

  Jez looked at him oddly. 'Of course I can. Can't you?'

  Plome looked bewildered. 'Oh, my. It's time I thralled a new daemon to that doorway. This one's lost its fizz. You shouldn't have seen anything but an old cupboard.'

  Jez was eager to see Crake. She headed down. There were deep scratches on the walls of the stairway, which looked relatively fresh.

  'Don't tread on the third step from the bottom!' Plome called after her. Jez stepped over it obediently. She could feel the faint thrum of energy7 from the wood. Another daemon, she guessed. She wondered if it was any more effective than the last.

  The sanctum was a mess. Electric lights buzzed behind their shades, but half the bulbs had died and not been replaced. Chemical apparatus lay half-disassembled. Muddled equations were scrawled on blackboards, overlapping one another. There was a huge brass vat against one wall with a window in the side. It was full of a murky yellow liquid and attached to various machines. A large, riveted metal device like a bathysphere stood in the centre of the room. Books lay face-down and open where they'd been thrown.

  Crake was sitting at a desk, his back to her. He was scribbling in a notebook, with occasional pauses to consult an enormous hidebo
und tome. His blond beard and hair had grown out; he looked shaggy and untidy. Bess sat near the desk, dormant. She was wired up to a complex tangle of equipment.

  Jez suddenly understood the scratches on the narrow stairway. They must have had quite a time getting her down here.

  'Crake,' she said.

  He jumped at the sound of her voice, and his pen nib snapped. He stared at the notebook for a moment, then swept it off the desk.

  'I can't make it work, Jez,' he said. He got to his feet and began pacing back and forth, his hand on his forehead. Red-rimmed eyes searched the middle distance restlessly. 'I can't make it work.'

  'You can't make what work?'

  'This!' he snapped, gesturing towards Bess. 'It's impossible!'

  Jez was shocked by the state of him. He was like a madman, full of frantic energy, waving his arms around, bubbling on the edge of mania. He stank of sweat.

  'What were you trying to do?'

  'I was trying to get her back! There were rumours, you see. Always rumours among daemonists. They said there was a way to bring someone back from the dead. If you just collected the right raw materials, you could put them in a tank, you could infuse it with the essence, the . . . the . . . frequency of your loved ones, that you'd recorded when they were alive. And the body would grow itself!

  Bones would form and muscles knit and there they'd be, floating in the tank, the way they always were!'

  As he spoke, his face was full of mad hope, like a crazed prophet; but then his expression twisted and turned to rage.

  'Lies! All lies! There are no records! I've searched everywhere, I've asked everybody, and no one's ever done any such thing! I don't even know where to start, do you understand? It's so far beyond me I can't even beginV

  Jez was appalled. That had been his plan? She'd suspected that he'd left the crew to deal with the question of Bess, but this sounded like a far-fetched method of doing so, even to her. She began to worry7 that he'd taken leave of his reason altogether.

  'You were trying to bring her back from the dead?'