‘Sure as I can be.’ Frey was recalling that monstrous beast, flesh and machine fused, striding over the city in its last moments, before it was consumed in a ball of silent lightning. He’d seen some strange things in his time, but not much stranger than that.
‘This pillar is about nine thousand years old,’ she said. ‘The people who made it were the first settlers in Vardia, as far as we know. They shared the legend of the Juggernaut with the early Samarlans. The Samarlans remember, but we have forgotten.’
‘Yeah. I remember you talking about it, back in Shasiith. The Nameless and all that, right?’
‘You did learn something, then,’ she said, with a smile to show she was teasing. He grinned at her. Damn, it was good to be with her when she was like this. Her moods were treacherous at times, but when she was happy, it felt perfect.
He walked to the cliff edge and looked out across the island. His attention had been dominated by the pillar thus far, but now he saw something he hadn’t noticed at first. At the foot of the cliff, the island dropped away into a massive sinkhole, a gaping maw of rock, its edges shaggy with foliage. Anchored inside the sinkhole was the dark bulk of the Delirium Trigger.
The sight of it dimmed the day a little. Wherever Trinica was, the Delirium Trigger wasn’t far away. He wondered how many craft the Awakeners had like it, tucked away in secret niches all over the delta.
‘The Samarlans see the Juggernauts as the gods’ punishment for their ungratefulness,’ Trinica said. ‘But these people,’ she touched the pillar reverently, ‘they see them differently. They believe that their civilisation was once poisoned, corrupt, oppressive. The Juggernauts set them free.’
‘How? By destroying everything in sight?’
‘Sometimes you have to burn a house to the ground before you can rebuild it,’ said Trinica.
Frey felt grim unease edge into his heart. ‘Is that why you showed it to me?’
She didn’t reply. He could see men moving about on the deck of the Delirium Trigger. He watched them for a time.
‘What do you feel, Trinica?’ he said. ‘About us?’
‘That might be the first time you ever asked me that,’ she replied. ‘You’re normally so afraid of the response.’
‘I’m still afraid of it,’ he murmured.
She laid a hand on his arm, briefly. He turned to face her, and she withdrew it, as if to touch him had committed herself too far. But she didn’t answer him, and so he felt he had to speak, to try to make her understand something of why he’d followed her here.
‘What I did back then . . .’ he began. ‘Leaving you on our wedding day and . . . everything that happened after . . .’ He felt his throat closing up as he thought of it. The child that would never be born because of him. Because of her. ‘I just . . . I . . .’
‘No, Darian,’ she said quietly. ‘We’ve both done terrible things. But we were young. We were so very young. What we did then, we can perhaps forgive ourselves. But what we’ve done since?’ She took a breath, and tears stood in her eyes. ‘Look at us,’ she whispered. ‘We’re ridiculous.’
He wanted to say something to that, to offer her comfort, but her expression hardened and she became angry. She swept away from him, away from the cliff edge.
‘What do you want for us, Darian? A house? Children? A soft life in the country? Do you think either of us could live that way after what we’ve seen, what we’ve done?’
‘I don’t know!’ said Frey. Her anger aroused his own. He followed her back towards the trees, shouting after her. ‘I don’t care how we live! Why are you always trying to stop this from working? I want to be with you, that’s all! Why does it have to be complicated?’
‘Because I have a crew! And so do you! We have responsibilities! I thought you understood that?’
‘They’re not your dependants. If you walked away, they’d get on fine.’
‘And me? How would I get on? What would I be then?’
‘You’d be Trinica Dracken. As you are now. Not the woman in the make-up, not the pirate captain. And you could do whatever you wanted!’
The heat went out of her as fast as it had come, and she saddened. ‘I’ve been a pirate for a long time now,’ she said. ‘Everything I wanted was given to me, until the day I left home. From that point on, I fought for every damned thing that I’ve got. I won that craft and I won its crew—’
‘And someday someone will take it from you,’ said Frey. ‘You know what happens to pirates in the end. They don’t live out their lives counting their ducats. They don’t retire to Retribution Falls. They hang on too long and they bloody die, whether it’s fast from a bullet or slow from the grog.’
She went silent. The look on her face made him feel that he’d been cruel, and he decided not to press his point. He walked over to her, wanting to hold her, not knowing how.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
‘They can sense weakness,’ she said quietly. ‘They’re like wolves with the scent of blood in their nostrils.’ She raised her head and looked at him, and he was shocked to see fear in her eyes. ‘I thought turning my back on you would make it better, but it didn’t. Not two weeks ago, I had Crund haul up a man in front of the crew and I had him hanged. Once that would have cowed them. Now it’s made them hate me.’
Suddenly she clutched herself to him, pressing herself hard against his chest.
‘They know,’ she whispered.
Her body was warm, so wonderfully warm, but Frey had gone cold. He felt cheated. He’d waited so long to have her in his arms again, but not like this. He’d dreamed of affection; he found desperation instead. He sensed real terror in her, and that inspired terror in him too. He felt a powerful need to comfort and protect her, but he wasn’t sure if he could. So he held her, and her arms tightened across his back.
He knew what she feared. He’d thought about it enough. It wasn’t dying. It was the loss of her world, the world that had sustained her and kept her stitched together after the horrors she’d suffered. Attempted suicide, the loss of a child, her kidnap and the dreadful ordeals that followed. She’d become steely and cold and vicious because that was what it took to survive and thrive in the hell where she found herself. But change was threatening, from within and without. That was worse than any bullet.
‘Don’t go back,’ he said to her. ‘Come with me. We’ll get on the Ketty Jay and fly out of here, and damn them if they try to stop us.’
She gave a cynical little chuckle, and he knew that he’d lost her. His time was up. She broke away from him gently, and when she did she was different. More bunched, more businesslike.
‘The Awakeners have a compound a few kloms northeast of the main base,’ she said. ‘They’ve invited me and the other frigate captains to visit it tonight. I expect they intend to share their plans with us. There are rumours that the Lord High Cryptographer himself has been seen, the supreme leader of the Awakeners. If there is any news of Azryx technology, we may well hear it there.’
Frey was disappointed by the change in her. She’d withdrawn. Not all the way, not into sharp pitilessness, but she’d closed up all the same. ‘And after that?’ he asked.
‘Then I will decide what to do next. I am not going to die for the Awakeners’ coin. Unless they have some great plan in store, it’s hard to see how they can win this war. I suspect other captains feel the same, and the Awakeners are keen to keep the bigger craft on side. So we shall see what we shall see.’
‘That wasn’t really what I meant,’ Frey said.
‘I know.’ She softened a little. ‘As to that, I can’t say. Every time we meet it’s different. Every time we meet it all begins again.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. He understood that strange sense of renewal and reset each time they were brought together. ‘Yeah, that’s how it is.’
She walked back to the cliff edge, and looked down at the Delirium Trigger. ‘You should go,’ she said. ‘Crund will be back at the clearing soon to pick you up. I have to change.’
She meant it literally. Not her clothes, but herself. The crew wouldn’t recognise the beautiful woman before him. They only knew the ghoul in the make-up with the black, black eyes.
He wanted to stay with her until everything was resolved. He feared to let her out of his sight. But she wouldn’t have that. Her moment of weakness had been only a moment. So he could only do as she said, and take what she’d given him. It had already been more than he dared to dream. She still felt for him, that was clear. That would have to be enough for now.
‘Will you see me again tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, without turning around. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Sixteen
The Patient – A Man of Science – Unwelcome Modifications – A Bit of Breaking & Entering – Slag Defends His Territory
Crake stared down at the inert form of his brother. Condred lay there on the bed, pale and still, dressed in a red silk gown. His hair, once dark, was now white peppered with grey. Even in repose the folds around his mouth were deep, and he wore a troubled look.
Crake could not match the figure on the bed to the one in his memory. Condred was a man who strode into a room and demanded attention, a man with all the hauteur of their father but none of his modesty or restraint. He was high-handed, patronising and infuriating, and Crake had all but hated him.
Yet he’d given up his revenge. Even after Crake had cost him his wife and child.
Why didn’t you want to punish me? Crake thought. The Condred he knew would have been full of wrath. He’d have pounded the table and demanded satisfaction. Crake would have done the same, in his place. But Condred had called off the Shacklemores instead.
Why?
Two burly orderlies and a nurse were standing in the doorway of the bedroom. He motioned to them.
‘Bring him,’ he said.
The orderlies carried in a stretcher and busied themselves with loading Condred onto it. The nurse hovered nearby.
‘They say it’s a plague, sir,’ she said. She was a mousy woman in her middle forties with a nervous disposition. ‘There’ve been cases all over. Master Rogibald had all the best doctors in, but as you can see . . .’ She gestured at his brother.
When Crake didn’t offer a reply, she asked: ‘Begging pardon, sir. Are you a doctor?’
‘Of a sort,’ said Crake, and left it at that.
The nurse stayed to tidy up while the orderlies took Condred from the building and across the grounds. Crake walked ahead of them. Gardeners stopped to stare when they saw him. Servants watched from the windows. More than one of them made a sign against evil as the procession passed.
Superstitious lot, Crake heard his father say. His eyes went to the Shacklemores that patrolled the manor grounds. Is this how bad it’s got out in the country?
It made him angry to see his father so diminished, hiding behind armed guards for fear of the locals. Rogibald was a man who’d built an industrial empire from modest beginnings. Even though Crake had the misfortune to be his son, he respected his father’s drive. It was wrong for a man like that to be threatened in his own home by the ignorance of the common folk, baying at the call of those damned Awakeners. It offended his sense of order. Vardia’s aristocracy was far from perfect, but they deserved better than that.
And his father had fallen far indeed, if he’d called on the Shacklemores to bring him Crake. The very sight of his second son was loathsome to him. It was the act of a desperate man, and he must have choked on his pride to do it.
The servants knew it too. He saw it in their faces. They might not have been here at the time, but they’d heard the stories. Murderer, they thought. Daemonist. They’d never thought to see him back, not without a noose round his neck. Yet here he was, leading a pair of orderlies, bearing their master’s son away from the mansion and back towards the house where Crake had once lived with Condred and his family.
Back towards his sanctum.
As they approached the house he kept his features stony to disguise the fact that his insides were turning to water. His hand went to his pocket, felt the weight of a heavy brass key that he’d once kept close to him at all times. The key to the wine cellar. The place where all his nightmares began.
His skin prickled as he stepped into the foyer. A mirror showed him his reflection, hollow-eyed and haggard. A clock ticked on the wall. Everything had been dusted, everything was in its place . . . but nothing was right.
At first he thought it was just old memories reaching for him out of the past, but it was something more than that. Long years practising the Art had honed his instincts. Paranoia lurked on the edge of his consciousness. Something sinister hung in the air.
Had he done this? Had he poisoned the house with his crime, turned the very walls and floor evil?
Stop it, he told himself. You’re a man of science. Act like one.
The orderlies hesitated at the threshold. Perhaps they sensed it too. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he snapped at them, and he stalked into the house.
It had been two weeks since Condred fell asleep and didn’t wake. Servants still lived here, but the house felt chill and unoccupied nonetheless. And still, that sense of faint but pervasive dread lingered.
A narrow set of stairs led down to the servant’s quarters. In an out-of-the-way alcove near the bottom was a door. It was heavy and small and made of dark oak. Crake stood before it for a long moment before he drew the key from his pocket.
He should have warded the door. It would have been easy to fashion something to deflect attention. But Condred and his wife had always been sneeringly dismissive of their lodger’s mysterious experiments, and the servants had been ordered not to pry, so there didn’t seem much point. Besides, he was afraid of getting it wrong and drawing suspicion upon himself. They thought he was nothing more than a budding and inept scientist; better to let them keep thinking that. A locked door was enough.
But a locked door hadn’t been enough to keep a curious child out.
Maybe he’d got complacent and left the door unlocked. Maybe Bess had found a spare key somewhere, in an old drawer or on a peg in some dusty recess. Maybe it was just some sick twist of fate, some awful alignment of coincidence that brought her to his sanctum on that exact night, at that exact time. He’d never know. It didn’t matter.
He became aware of a scullery maid standing at the end of the corridor, agape. She was watching him with terror in her eyes.
He put the key in the lock and turned it. She gasped and fled.
Well might you run, he thought. The orderlies had seen her reaction and caught on to her fear, but they were big men and not given to retreat. He pushed the door open before they – or he – could change their minds.
Beyond the doorway, steps led downward into darkness. He reached inside and found the switch with his fingers. An electric lamp sputtered into life, illuminating stone arches and brick pillars, an island of light in the darkness. By that flickering, fitful light he saw a mess of cables and rusty devices, overturned poles and broken bulbs and a large brown stain on the floor which he dared not look at. In the centre was a large metal chamber like a bathysphere. It had been dented outward as if struck by some great force from within, and its door hung open.
He heard a wet clicking noise, so clear that it seemed momentarily real. That sound had troubled his nights for years. The sound of his niece trying to draw breath into punctured lungs.
He wanted to be sick. He wanted to turn and run and never have to return to this place. But he couldn’t, because he owed Condred more than he could ever pay. Everything he suffered, he deserved.
‘Follow me,’ he told the orderlies, and he stepped into the dark.
‘What in all damnation is going on here?’ Frey cried, as he jumped out of the Delirium Trigger’s shuttle and went hurrying across the muddy clearing.
The Ketty Jay and her outflyers were the centre of a mass of activity. Engineers in overalls were fiddling about inside the cockpit hoods of the fig
hter craft. Teams of men swarmed over the Ketty Jay, pasting enormous decals onto her flanks. A team of Sentinels stood by with rifles.
Frey stormed over. Harkins was being restrained by Pinn, crying in strangled agony as his beloved Firecrow got a massive blue Cipher pasted on to its underwing. Malvery went stamping past the other way, his face like thunder. He ignored Frey’s attempts to hail him.
‘Well, that’s just great, that is!’ he fumed. ‘If that ain’t just the bloody limit!’
Frey looked about for someone to strangle. Prognosticator Garin presented himself.
‘Will you tell me what in the wide world of buggering shitarsery you are doing to my aircraft?’ he yelled.
‘Calm down, Captain Frey,’ said Garin. ‘You’re making a fool of yourself.’
‘Nobody messes with the Ketty Jay without my say-so!’
Several Sentinels with guns walked over to stand next to the Prognosticator, alerted by the tone of Frey’s voice.
‘You weren’t here,’ said Garin. ‘There are a lot of aircraft waiting to be assimilated into the fleet. We don’t have time to wait around for permission. I take it you do still want to join the Awakeners?’ The question had a sinister and ever-so-slightly threatening edge to it.
Frey saw the trap and thought fast. ‘I haven’t even spoken to the quartermaster about pay yet!’
‘If you wanted to quibble about your price, you should have done it before you got here,’ said Garin. ‘This is a secret base, Captain. Nothing bigger than a shuttle gets airborne without permission. If you try to fly out, we’ll shoot you down.’
Frey looked over his shoulder to see the Delirium Trigger’s own shuttle taking off. Of course: a shuttle wouldn’t be able to fly far enough to escape the delta. He couldn’t be sure, but could swear he could see Balomon Crund grinning at his discomfort.
‘What are you doing to the engines?’ Frey demanded.
‘Trust in the Code, Captain,’ said Garin benevolently.
‘That’s no bloody answer!’
‘A harmless modification. You won’t notice it.’
The Ace of Skulls Page 18