Crake, with a sinking feeling, began to understand. The others were looking at Ashua now, puzzlement and dawning disbelief on their faces. She kept her gaze fixed on Drave. It must have been easier to meet her accuser’s eyes than her friends’.
‘Do you understand me now, Miss Bree?’ said Drave, turning back to Samandra. ‘These scum you’ve been vouching for are traitors. Whatever they have to say is a lie. They’ve been feeding information to the Samarlans the whole t—’
‘No!’ Ashua blurted. ‘It was the Thacians! Our allies! That’s who I was talking to! Ocken worked for the Thacians!’
Drave gave her a long, slow stare. Then, as if speaking to a child, he said: ‘Is that what he told you?’
The realisation of what she’d done took all the strength out of her, and she staggered. Crake caught her by instinct, and bore her up before she could fall. She met his eyes, and there was confusion and terror in them, and suddenly she was just a scared young woman instead of the tough street-rat that they all knew.
But Crake’s heart had gone hard, and he let her go quickly and stepped back. Had the Ashua he’d known been a lie all along? Was she manipulating them even now? He could hardly believe it, and yet here she was, caught red-handed, a traitor.
She saw what was in his eyes and retreated from him, but there was nowhere to go. She was surrounded by the accusing gazes of the crew, all of them asking the same question. Did you do it? Did you really?
‘It was the Thacians!’ she insisted, desperation making her voice thin.
‘You’re a liar,’ said Drave. ‘Bargo Ocken works for a spyhunter called Jakeley Screed, and he works for the Sammies. You’ve been sending them highly sensitive information. I hope they paid you well, Miss Vode. You won’t live to enjoy it.’ He waved at the troops. ‘They’re all traitors and spies and enemies of the Coalition. Take them to the cells.’
‘Oi! Not us! It’s nothing to do with us!’ Malvery bellowed, and suddenly everyone was pushing and shoving as the soldiers weighed in. Crake felt himself seized, his arm twisted painfully behind his back. He struggled, but cold iron was clamped on his wrist and he was cuffed. Someone barged into him and he got a smack on the nose from the side of their head. Stars blazed in front of his eyes.
This couldn’t be right, he thought, dazed. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. They’d done the right thing: they’d gone to the authorities. Crake had practically made Frey go to the authorities. He’d always had faith in order and reason. Where was the order and reason in this?
They simply didn’t have all the facts. That was the problem. He just had to make them understand, and all of this would be cleared up.
‘Wait!’ he cried over the tussle. ‘Wait! We have to tell you what we found! The Awakeners are on their way! They’re going to destroy the fleet!’
Drave held up the box. ‘I’ve already heard all you have to say, traitor,’ he said. ‘And I’m not interested.’
Crake was wrenched forward then, and he found himself being propelled away from the aircraft, caught up in a tide of people. Faces and bodies surged in the electric light; breath steamed in the chill night air.
‘I’ll straighten this all out!’ Bree shouted after him, an unfamiliar note of distress in her voice. ‘Don’t worry!’
Crake had no words worth saying back to her. He was shoved into position next to the Cap’n, who was handcuffed like he was, and the two of them were frogmarched towards the gate of the landing pad.
Frey threw him a filthy look. Crake turned away, ashamed.
Ashua sat against the wall of her cell, head hung and hugging her knees.
The lights were out, but nobody slept. She could hear the others shifting restlessly nearby, each in their own cells. They didn’t talk between themselves, and she knew why. They didn’t want to. Not while the traitor was listening.
The Samarlans. She’d been selling information to the Sammies all along. She wanted to feather her own nest because she didn’t trust the crew would hold together, and in doing so, she’d condemned them all to death.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
She needed to stay angry at herself. If she didn’t, she’d think of other things. She’d think about how it might feel like when her legs dropped away and the rope snapped tight around her neck. She’d think about whether the noose would kill her instantly or if she’d have time to feel what was happening to her. Would her brain keep working, trapped there inside a skull attached to a useless body, filling her last instants with inconceivable horror?
She punched herself in the arm, hard. It was already bruised.
Jakeley Screed. That son of a bitch. He’d played her. And she’d fallen for it.
It was all so painfully simple. Dager Toyle, the man who’d originally employed her in Shasiith, was a Thacian spy. Screed had killed him and begun exterminating his network. Ashua thought she’d escaped, but she’d only bought herself some time. Screed had found her in the end, and when he did, he had a better use for her than just taking her out. She was in Vardia now, on the Ketty Jay, whose crew had acquired something of a reputation for mixing it up with the big players. Handily placed to feed the Sammies good information. So he sent Ocken to pose as one of Toyle’s men, come to renew an old arrangement. He let Ashua believe he was dead, that it was safe again. And she, her eyes gleaming at the thought of all that money, never questioned it for a moment.
It wasn’t her fault. She’d been tricked. She never meant the crew to be blamed for it. She’d never meant for them to find out.
Will you listen to yourself?
She punched herself in the same spot. The pain was enough to stop her breath for a moment. But she had to keep doing it, otherwise she might remember the expression on Malvery’s face. The way he’d looked at her, the betrayal in his eyes. Or she might remember Crake, who could hardly bear to touch her. She’d remember the resentful glare the Cap’n gave her as he passed, reminding her whose fault it was that they were all getting arrested.
She sensed them out there, sitting in their cells in silence, because of her.
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, she thought. But she couldn’t say it. Apologies didn’t mean shit in her world.
For a short while there, she’d felt like she had a family. But she’d been wrong. A few months didn’t make a family. They didn’t know her at all. Not well enough to understand why she did what she did. And they’d never trust her again. Because accidentally or not, she’d been spying for the Sammies. And, in the eyes of Malvery and Crake at least, there wasn’t much she could do that was lower than that.
She punched herself again. She’d hurt like a bastard tomorrow. But she wouldn’t hurt for long.
Thirty-Six
Gallows Talk – Bells – Hero of the Skies – The Wrong End of a Whipping – ‘It Ain’t Over Till it’s Done!’
The crew of the Ketty Jay stood in a line facing the grey morning, hands tied behind their backs and nooses round their necks. Side by side, as they’d always been.
Frey watched the sky as the judge droned on in the background, listing crimes real and imagined, filling up time with dreary accusations and pompous legalese. A biting chill was in the air. Clouds hung dark and heavy, muffling the weak winter sun. A flurry of thin sleet blew across the courtyard, leaving cold droplets on his skin.
There was a storm coming. He’d never been more certain of anything.
The witnesses assembled before the gallows platform were mainly soldiers, but there were familiar faces too. Samandra Bree, for one. She was handcuffed; it was the only way they’d let her stay after she went berserk at the sight of her lover at the end of a rope. She’d begged them in the end. Now she was quiet and pale, her face locked in an expression of abject fear, her eyes fixed only on Crake. There was something terrible in seeing a woman like that defanged.
Drave was there, of course, his arms folded beneath his broad chest, stern-faced and grim as rock. Grudge and Kyne were present, but under guard, as Samandra was. Their w
eapons had been taken from them until their reputations could be repaired. If it was shown that they’d been taken in by traitors, they’d be disciplined. Not that Frey much cared about that, given the circumstances.
He looked down at his feet with detached interest. Only a bolt kept the trapdoor he was standing on in place. Only that between him and oblivion. Seemed a precarious place to be.
‘. . . and so it has been decreed that your loyalty to the Coalition and his Grace, the Archduke Monterick Arken, shall be determined on this day by such evidence as shall present itself, and on such evidence shall you be judged and your sentence carried out with all immediacy, or otherwise shall it commuted and judgement deferred to another day, for in such instance . . .’
Frey tuned out again. That was the nub of it, anyway. They were getting the formalities out of the way now, so the executioner could do his job once Drave gave the word. Drave had explained it to them in more straightforward terms.
‘You’re going to be up there just long enough to see the Awakener fleet destroyed, Frey,’ he’d said. ‘Just long enough to prove you’re a liar. You can thank Kyne and Miss Bree that you’ve got even that much of a courtesy. I’d have seen you swinging by dawn.’
Unless the Awakener fleet wasn’t destroyed, of course. Unless the Coalition fleet fell out of the sky. Then Frey would be proved right. Except then he’d be stuck in the middle of Thesk as the Awakener army invaded with overwhelming force, and they’d all likely end up killed in the carnage anyway.
Lose-lose, then. Still, it’d be worth it to see Drave’s face.
The judge, a hangdog scarecrow of a man, snapped his book shut and stepped back. ‘Anything to say?’ Drave asked them.
‘It’s not too late, Drave!’ Crake called out. He was sweating and trembling and looked like he was about to be sick, but he still found his voice. ‘Tell the generals! Keep the fleet away! The Awakeners have a device that will destroy them all!’
Frey pitied his friend. There was something wide-eyed and hurt about him, the shock of a slapped child. He still wanted to believe in order and authority and the powers that be. He thought of the world as an upright, sensible place, where righteousness would prevail if only everyone tried hard enough. Frey knew otherwise. His only regret was that he hadn’t been strong enough to deny Crake the chance to find out for himself.
‘We know about the device, just like we know about the attack,’ said Drave. ‘We’ve known for some time. We have very good spies in the Century Knights; some of the best in the world. We know the Samarlans sold the device to the Awakeners, and that they smuggled it to the Barabac Delta and hid it there. And we know something else as well. It doesn’t work!’
It was said with such damning conviction that Frey began to doubt it himself. Had they actually seen that particular device in action? No. They’d only heard what the scientists said to the Lord High Cryptographer, scientists who were just blowing smoke up the boss’s arse to save their own necks. Hadn’t they been griping about how it hadn’t been tested enough? He’d assumed at the time that they were just being pernickety, crossing the ‘t’s and dotting the ‘i’s, but now their lives were on the line, he wasn’t so sure. Had it been tested at all? What had they actually said? He couldn’t remember exactly.
‘It does work!’ Crake insisted. ‘They got to your spies somehow. With Imperators, maybe. They want you to think it doesn’t work so you’ll bring the whole fleet to bear!’
‘Now, there you’re mistaken,’ said Drave. ‘They want us to think it does work so we won’t. It took our best operatives months to dig out the date of the attack and uncover the news that the Azryx device wasn’t working. But over the past week we’ve been getting all kinds of reports. Informants everywhere are saying the same thing: the device is operational. Awakeners have been defecting and giving themselves up just to bring us the news. Everyone has the same message: keep the fleet away from Thesk, or it’ll be destroyed. Now doesn’t that seem strange to you? News was so hard to come by, but all of a sudden it’s so very easy. Almost as if the Awakeners wanted us to know it.’
Frey felt a grudging and bitter smile touch the edge of his mouth. The Awakeners had changed their tune a week ago. Just after the crew of the Ketty Jay escaped the Barabac Delta. Well played, you slithery bastards.
The Awakeners had tricked the Coalition into believing that their device didn’t work. Then, when someone threatened to expose them, they flooded their information networks to make it seem they were desperate to convince their enemies of the opposite. The Coalition thought the Awakeners were bluffing them, but it was a double bluff. By the time Frey and his crew arrived with the truth, the Awakeners had already discredited it.
Add that to the fact that Drave had seen Frey fighting on the Awakener side with his own eyes, and Frey’s frankly patchy history with the Coalition, and Frey could understand why they never had a hope of being believed. As far as Drave was concerned, they were just another bunch of pirates in the employ of the Awakeners, peddling false information so that Thesk would be undefended when the fleet arrived.
And maybe he was right. Maybe Frey and his crew had become unwitting patsies of the Awakeners, rushing to deliver their lies. Patriotic stupidity at its finest. And if so, the Coalition fleet would shoot the Awakeners down and they’d all hang.
He faced death with resignation. Despair had robbed him of will and energy. Failure had crushed him. It didn’t even feel like he was really there, standing on the gallows. He felt disconnected from his own body. The immediacy of the danger didn’t touch him.
Once, freedom was the most important thing to him, but he was a prisoner now. Later he’d come to care about his crew, but now he’d led one of them to her death and the rest to the noose. Only Pinn, the idiot, had got out in time. Lastly, he’d come to realise the depth of his feelings for Trinica. But he’d lost her too, and with her the chance to make amends for the death of their child and everything else he’d put her through.
Even if he survived to see another day, the idea of picking himself up again and going on with his life seemed an insurmountable effort. Better to end it here and now, perhaps. Better to let fortune wash him down whichever path it saw fit. He was done trying.
There was a commotion near the gates of the courtyard. A man in ducal livery stepped through, and announced loudly: ‘His Grace, the Archduke Monterick Arken, Her Grace the Archduchess Eloithe, and the Lady Alixia!’
Even with nooses round their necks, Malvery, Harkins and Crake stood up straighter. He could see the hope in their eyes. The most powerful man in the land: surely he would set things to rights? Surely he wouldn’t be so blind?
Stop hoping, Frey thought. It only makes it worse.
The crowd of soldiers moved aside, and the Archduke and his family came to stand before the gallows. Drave moved protectively to their side.
The Archduke wore a high-collared uniform and a heavy cloak of fur that rippled in the icy wind. He was tall and straight-backed, with dark red hair and a close-cropped beard. His wife was small, but her eyes were bright and fierce. Her dark hair blew about her face as she looked up at them, the baby Alixia swaddled in her arms.
The Archduke swept his gaze along the length of the platform, taking in each of the prisoners. Malvery, Harkins and Crake, standing to attention. Silo, statuesque, showing nothing as he stared straight ahead. Ashua, trying to stay strong but barely keeping it together. And finally Frey, who just gazed back at him blandly, unimpressed.
‘This is him?’ said the Archduke, in a rich and resonant bass voice.
‘That’s him,’ said Drave.
The Archduke looked at Frey a long time. Frey returned the gaze insolently. The Archduke’s face twitched with suppressed rage, and his eyes were hateful.
Finally the Archduke turned to Drave and nodded. Drave gave a tiny bow. The Archduke laid his hand on Eloithe’s shoulder. She gave Frey a look of pure loathing and then allowed herself to be turned. Together they walked back towards the gate
.
‘Your Grace!’ Crake called, his voice breaking as he did so. But the Archduke didn’t stop, and the gates boomed closed behind him.
So that was what they’d come for. To look upon the face of the man who’d killed their son. They’d been cheated of their retribution the first time around, but they wouldn’t be denied a second time.
Frey stared bleakly into the middle distance. Their pain was nothing to him. He’d pain enough of his own.
In the distance, a bell began to ring. More bells picked up the sound, until it spread across the city, a discordant clanging that rose from the streets to fill the air. The soldiers stirred.
‘They’re coming,’ said Drave.
Pinn sang to himself over the sound of the engines, loud and off key and entirely without rhythm. He pumped his fist and swung his free arm around as if conducting himself. ‘Arrr-tis Pinn! Hero of the skies! Ar-tis Pi-iiiiiin! Heeeee-ro of the skiiiiiiies!’
All in all, Pinn was pretty happy about going to war.
The Awakener fleet seemed vast from close up. Pinn estimated its size as hundreds, possibly billions, of aircraft, though he allowed there might be some margin for error as he couldn’t count very high at the best of times. There were patched-up rustbuckets and shining new fighter craft. There were crop-dusters and ex-military models, cargo haulers and thundering frigates and sleek high-end luxury liners. Anything that could fly – and some only barely could – had been pressed into service. Anything that could handle a gun had been fitted with one. Every scrap of might that the Awakeners had been able to muster was focused here, in one enormous convoy.
‘Heeeeeee-ro ooooooooof . . . THE SKIES!’ he finished with a flourish, and slumped back in his seat, out of breath and sweaty. He grinned at the ferrotype of Lisinda stuck to the dash. It had been creased and crumpled so thoroughly that he could barely make her out any more, but that didn’t bother him. She’d always been prettier in real life anyway.
The Ace of Skulls Page 42