Frey would never make it back to Vardia. He was going to die. He knew that, and accepted it with a strange and awful calm.
But he wasn’t dead yet.
He hit the thrusters, and the Ketty Jay flew. North, towards the coast, towards the sea.
Twenty-Two
Sharka’s Den—Two Captains—A Strange Delivery—Recriminations
The slums of Rabban were not somewhere a casual traveller would stray. Bomb-lashed and tumbledown, they were a mass of junk-pits and rubble-fields, where naked girders slit the low sunset and the coastal wind smoothed a ceiling of iron-grey cloud over all. In the distance were new spires and domes, some of them still partially scaffolded: evidence of the reconstruction of the city. But here on the edges, there was no such reconstruction, and the population lived like rats on the debris of war.
Sharka’s Den had survived two wars and would likely survive two more. Hidden in an underground bunker, accessible only by tortuous, crumbling alleys and an equally tortuous process of recommendation, it was the best place in the city to find a game of Rake. Sharka paid no commission to any Guild, nor any tax to the Coalition. He offered a guarantee of safety and anonymity to his patrons, and promised fairness at his tables. Nobody knew exactly what else Sharka was into, to make the bigwigs so afraid of him; but they knew that if you wanted a straight game for the best stakes, you came to Sharka’s Den.
Frey knew this place well. He’d once picked up a Caybery Firecrow in a game here, on the tail end of a ridiculous winning streak that had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with luck. He’d also wiped himself out several times. As he stepped into the den, memories of triumph and despair sidled up to greet him.
Little had changed. There was the expansive floor with its many tables and barely lit bar. There were the seductive serving girls, chosen for their looks but well schooled in their art. Gas lanterns hung from the ceiling, run off a private supply (Sharka refused to go electric; his patrons wouldn’t stand for it). The myopic haze of cigarettes and cigars infused the air with a dozen kinds of burning leaf.
Frey felt a twinge of nostalgia. If he didn’t count the Ketty Jay, Sharka’s Den was the closest thing to a home he had.
Sharka came over to greet him as he descended the iron steps to the gaming floor. Whip-lean, his face deeply lined, he was dressed in an eccentric motley of colours, and his eyes were bright and slightly manic. There was never a time when Sharka wasn’t on some kind of drug, usually to counteract the one before. He was overly animated, his face stretching and contorting into grins, smiles, exaggerated poses, as if he were mouthing words to somebody deaf.
‘Got you a private room in the back,’ he said. ‘She’s in there now.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You think she was followed?’
‘No. I was hiding out there a while. I watched her go in, checked all the alleys nearby. She came alone.’
Sharka grunted and then beamed. ‘Hope you know what you’re doing.’
‘I always know what I’m doing,’ Frey lied, slapping Sharka on the shoulder.
Sharka was as much a survivor as his den was. Since the age of fifteen he’d pounded his body with every kind of narcotic Frey had ever heard of, yet somehow he’d made it to fifty-six, and there was no reason to suppose he didn’t have thirty more years left. The man’s blood must have been toxic by now, but he was tough as a scorpion. You just couldn’t kill him.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it. You can find your way, eh? Come see me after, I’ll make sure you get an escort to wherever you need. Can’t have Dracken’s men jumping you on the way out.’
Perhaps the stress of what was to come had made him over-emotional, but Frey was deeply touched by that. Sharka was a dangerous man, but he had a heart of gold, and Frey felt suddenly unworthy of his kindness. Even if he didn’t exactly trust him, it was nice to know that someone didn’t want him dead.
‘I’m grateful for what you’ve done, Sharka,’ he said. ‘I owe you big.’
‘Ah, you don’t owe me anything,’ Sharka said. ‘I like you, Frey. You lose more than you win and you tip big when you score. You don’t piss anyone off and you don’t re-raise when you’re holding dirt and then catch a run on your last card. This place is full of cocky kids with money and old hacks playing percentages. Could do with more players like you at my joint.’
Frey smiled at that. He nodded his thanks again and then headed through the tables towards the back rooms. Sharka was a good sort, he told himself. Sharka wouldn’t sell him out for the reward on his head. Everyone knew that Sharka’s was neutral ground. He’d lose more in custom than he’d gain by the reward if there was the slightest suspicion that he’d turned in a wanted man. Half the people here were wanted by someone.
A serving girl in an appealingly low-cut dress met him at the back rooms and directed him to one of the private gaming areas. Sharka’s was all bare brick and brass—not pretty, but Rake players distrusted glitz.
He stepped in to a small, dim room. A lantern hung from the ceiling, throwing light onto the black baize of the Rake table. A pack of cards was spread out in suits across it. A well-stocked drinks cabinet rested against one wall. There were four chairs around the table.
Sitting in one of the chairs, facing the door, was Trinica Dracken.
The sight of her was a jolt. She was lounging in the chair, small and slim, dressed head to toe in black: black boots, black coat, black gloves, black waistcoat. But from the buttoned collar of her black shirt upwards, everything changed. Her skin was powdered ghost-white. Her hair—so blonde it was almost albino—was cut short, sticking up in uneven tufts as if it had been butchered with a knife. Her lips were a red deep enough to be vulgar.
But it was her eyes that shocked him most. Her lashes were almost invisible, but her irises were completely black, dilated to the size of coins. It took him a moment to realise they were contact lenses, and not the product of some daemonic possession. Worn for effect, no doubt, but certainly effective.
‘Hello, Frey,’ she said. Her voice was lower than he remembered. ‘Long time.’
‘You look terrible,’ he said as he sat.
‘So do you,’ she replied. ‘Life on the run must not agree with you.’
‘Actually, I’m getting to enjoy it. Catching my second wind, so to speak.’
She looked around the room. ‘A Rake den? You haven’t changed.’
‘You have.’
‘I had to.’
He gestured at the cards on the table between them. ‘Want to play?’
‘I’m here to parley, Frey, not play your little game.’
Frey sat back in his chair and regarded her. ‘Alright, he said. Business it is. You know, there was a time when you liked to sit and talk for hours.’
‘That was then,’ she said. ‘This is now. I’m not the person you remember.’
That was an understatement. The woman before him was one of the most notorious freebooters in Vardia. She’d engineered a mutiny to become captain of the Delirium Trigger and her reputation for utter ruthlessness had earned her the respect of the underworld. Rumour held her responsible for acts of bloody piracy and murder, as well as daring treasure snatches and near-impossible feats of navigation. She was feared by some and envied by others, a dread queen of the skies.
Hard to believe he’d almost married her.
Rabban was one of the nine primary cities of Vardia, and like the others it bore the same name as the duchy it dominated. Though it had suffered terribly in the Aerium Wars, it was still large enough to need over a dozen docks for aircraft. These docks were the first thing to be repaired after the bombing stopped six years ago. Some were little more than islands in a sea of shattered stone, but even these were busy with passenger shuttles, cargo haulers and supply vessels. Transport by air had been Vardia’s only viable option for over a century and, even in the aftermath of a disaster, there was no way to do without it.
Only a few of the docks, however, were equipped to
deal with a craft the size of the Delirium Trigger.
She rested inside a vast iron hangar, alongside frigates and freighters: the heavyweights of the skies. A web of platforms, gantries and walkways surrounded it at deck-height, busy with an ant swarm of engineers, dock workers and swabbers. Everything was being checked, everything cleaned, and a complex exchange of services and trade goods was negotiated. A craft like the Delirium Trigger, with a crew of fifty, needed a lot of maintenance.
The Delirium Trigger’s purser was a Free Dakkadian named Ominda Rilk. He had the fair skin and hair typical of his race, the small frame and narrow shoulders, and the squinting eyes that still elicited much mockery in the Vardic press. Dakkadians were famed and ridiculed for their administrative abilities. Education and numeracy were much prized among their kind: it made them useful to their Samarlan masters. But Dakkadians, unlike Murthians, could own possessions, and they could earn their freedom.
It was unusual to find a Dakkadian in Vardia, where there was still much bad feeling towards them after the Aerium Wars. They were seen as pernickety coin-counters and misers by the more generous souls; the rest thought they were cunning, underhanded, murdering bastards. But still, here was Ominda Rilk. He stood among the crates and palettes waiting to be loaded onto the Delirium Trigger, examining everything and making small notes in his logbook now and again. And his squinty eyes were keen enough to spot two men transporting a very heavy-looking crate in a manner that was frankly quite surreptitious.
‘Ho there!’ he cried. The men stopped, and he walked briskly over to them. They were dock workers, dressed in battered grey overalls. One was large and big-bellied, with a whiskery white moustache; the other was short, stumpy and ugly, with oversized cheeks and a small thatch of black hair perched atop a small head. They were both flushed and sweating.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, motioning at the crate. It was nine feet tall and six wide, and they’d been rolling it along on a wheeled palette towards the loading area, where a crane picked up supplies for transport to the deck of the Delirium Trigger.
‘Don’t know,’ said Malvery, with a shrug. ‘We just deliver, don’t we?’
‘Well, who’s it from?’ snapped Rilk. ‘Where are the papers? Come on!’
Malvery drew out a battered, folded-up set of papers. Rilk shook them open and checked the delivery invoice. His eyebrows raised a fraction when he read the name of the sender. Gallian Thade.
‘We weren’t expecting this,’ he said, handing back the papers with a scowl.
Malvery gave him a blank look. ‘We just deliver,’ he said again. ‘This box goes on the Delirium Trigger.’
Rilk glared at him, and then at Pinn. There was something not right about these two, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Pinn looked back at him, mutely.
‘Does he speak?’ Rilk demanded, thumbing at Pinn.
‘Not much,’ Malvery replied. At least, he’d been told to keep his trap shut, for fear he’d say something stupid and ruin their disguise. Malvery hoped he’d implied enough threat to keep the young pilot in line. ‘You want us to load this thing on, or what?’
Rilk studied the crate for a moment. Then he snapped his fingers. ‘Open it up.’
Malvery groaned. ‘Aw, come on, don’t be a—’
‘Open it up!’ Rilk said, snapping his fingers again, in a rather annoying fashion that made Malvery want to break them and then stuff his mangled hand down his throat.
The doctor shrugged and looked at Pinn. ‘Open it up,’ he said.
Pinn produced a crowbar. The crate had been nailed shut, but they forced open a gap in the front side with relative ease, then pulled it the rest of the way with brute strength. It fell forward and clattered to the ground.
Rilk stared at the hulking, armoured shape inside the box. A monstrosity of metal and leather and chain mail, with a humped back and a circular grille set low between the shoulders. It was cold and silent.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
Malvery pondered for a moment, studying Bess. ‘I reckon it’s one of those pressure-environment-suit-thingies.’
Rilk looked it up and down, a puzzled frown on his face. ‘What does it do?’
‘Well, you wear it when you want to work on the deck, see. Like, in arctic environments, or when your craft is really, really high in the sky.’
‘It’s cold as a zombie’s tit up there, and the air’s too thin to breathe,’ Pinn added, unable to resist joining in. Malvery silenced him with a glare.
‘I see,’ said Rilk, examining Pinn. ‘And how is it a dock worker knows a thing like that?’
Pinn looked lost. ‘I just do.’
‘Lot of pilots come to the dockside bars,’ Malvery said with forced offhandedness. ‘People talk.’
‘Yes they do,’ said Rilk. He walked up to Bess, put his face to her face-grille, and peered inside. ‘Hello?’ he called. The word echoed in the hollow interior.
‘He thinks there’s somebody in there,’ Malvery grinned at Pinn, giving him a nudge. Pinn chuckled on cue. Rilk withdrew, his pale face reddening.
‘Box it up and load it on!’ he snapped, then made a quick note in his logbook and stalked away.
‘Why did you bring me here, Darian?’ asked Trinica Dracken.
‘Why did you come?’ he countered.
She smiled coldly in the light of the lantern overhead. ‘Blowing you out of the sky after all this time seemed a little . . . impersonal,’ she replied. ‘I wanted to see you. I wanted to look you in the eye.’
‘I wanted to see you too,’ said Frey. He’d scooped up the cards that were laid out on the table.
‘You’re a liar. I’m the last person you ever wanted to see again.’
Frey looked down at the cards and began to shuffle them restlessly.
‘I had people watching you,’ said Trinica. ‘Did you know that? After you left me.’
He was faintly chilled. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘The day after our wedding day, I had the Shacklemores looking for you.’
‘It wasn’t our wedding day,’ said Frey, ‘because there wasn’t a wedding.’
‘A thousand people turned up thinking otherwise,’ said Trinica. ‘Not to mention the bride. In fact, everyone seemed to think they were there for a magnificent wedding right up until the moment the judge called for the groom.’ Her expression became comically sorrowful, a sad clown face. ‘And there was the poor bride, waiting in front of all those people.’ She blew a puff of air into her hand, opening it out as she did so. ‘But the groom had gone.’
Frey was rather unnerved by her delivery. He’d expected shrill remonstrations, but she was utterly empty of emotion. She was talking as if it had happened to someone else. And those black, black eyes made her seem strangely fey and alien. A little frightening, even.
‘What do you want, Trinica?’ The words came out angrier than he intended. ‘An apology? It’s a little late for that.’
‘Oh, that’s most certainly true,’ she replied.
Frey settled back in his seat. The sight of her stirred up all the old feelings. Bad feelings. He’d loved this woman once, back when she was sweet and pretty and perfect. Loved her in a way he’d never loved anyone since. But then he’d broken her heart. In return, she’d ripped his to pieces. He could never forget what she’d done to him. He could never forgive her.
But an argument would do him no good now. He couldn’t take the risk that Trinica would storm out. The object of this meeting was to keep her here as long as possible, to let his men do their job on the Delirium Trigger.
He cleared his throat and strove to control the bitterness in his voice. ‘So,’ he said. ‘You set the Shacklemores on me.’ He began cutting the cards and reshufing them absently.
‘You were a hard man to find,’ she said. ‘It took them six months. By then . . . well, you know what had happened by then.’
Frey’s throat tightened. Rage or grief, he wasn’t sure.
‘They came back and said
they’d found you. You were doing freelance work somewhere on the other side of Vardia at the time. Using what you’d learned from working as a hauler for my father’s company, I suppose. Making your own deals.’
‘It was a living,’ said Frey neutrally.
She gave him a faint, distracted smile. ‘They asked me if I wanted them to bring you back. I didn’t. Not then. I asked them instead to let you know—discreetly—how I was doing. I was sure you hadn’t troubled to enquire.’
Frey remembered that meeting well. A stranger in a bar, a shared drink. Casually mentioning that he worked for Dracken Industries. Terrible what had happened to the daughter. Just terrible.
But Trinica was wrong. He had enquired. By then, he’d already known what she’d done.
Memories overwhelmed him. Searing love and bilious hate. The stranger before him was a mockery of the young woman he’d almost married. He’d kissed those lips, those whore-red lips that now smiled at him cruelly. He’d heard the softest words pass from them to him.
Ten years. He’d thought that everything would be long ago buried by now. He’d been badly mistaken.
‘It didn’t seem fair, really,’ Trinica said, tilting her head like a bird. There was a childish look on her face that said: Poor Frey. Poor, poor Frey. ‘It didn’t seem fair that you should be able to turn your back and walk away like that. That you could leave your bride on her wedding day and never have to think about what you’d done, never take any responsibility.’
‘I wasn’t responsible!’
She leaned forward on the card table, deadly serious, those awful black eyes staring out of her white face. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you were.’
Frey dashed the cards across the table, but his fury died as soon as it had come. He sat back in his chair, his arms folded. He wanted to argue but he needed to keep things calm. Keep things together.
Don’t let this bitch get to you. Play for time.
‘You had the Shacklemores keep track of me after that?’ he asked. Trinica nodded. ‘Why the interest?’
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