Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls

by Chris Wooding

  Frey was glad to see her up and about. She’d put on new overalls and washed, and she looked more focused than he’d seen her in a while. That, at least, was heartening.

  He made a quick decision. ‘We’ll have a pretty hard time explaining away a dead man if they come aboard,’ he told Ashua. ‘Bring him. Silo, you too.’

  He headed into the infirmary. Ashua pushed the prisoner along after and Silo followed. Frey picked his way through Malvery’s medicine cabinet until he found a bottle with the right label. ‘Hold him still,’ he said absently.

  ‘I didn’t tell them! I swear! I did what you said!’ Abley was wailing, as Silo wrapped strong arms round him to secure him.

  Frey found a wadded rag, tipped some of the bottle on it, and then slapped it over Abley’s nose and mouth. ‘That’s enough out of you,’ he said.

  Abley struggled for a moment, but not hard enough to break Silo’s hold. His eyelids fluttered as he breathed in the chloroform, and then he went limp.

  ‘Give me a hand,’ he told Silo. Between them, they hauled Abley to the operating table and left him there.

  ‘If he’s shopped us, Cap’n, I’m coming back to shoot him, unconscious or not,’ Ashua promised.

  There was a banging on the cargo hold door, faintly heard. Frey straightened, arranged his hair a bit, and went back out into the corridor. ‘Ashua, Silo, come with me. Jez, find Pelaru, make sure he stays quiet. I don’t trust him not to sell us out. Harkins . . .’ He waved at the air, unable to think of anything useful that Harkins could possibly contribute. ‘I don’t know, get dressed or something.’

  ‘Cap’n!’ Harkins saluted smartly and disappeared back into his quarters. Frey shook his head. He couldn’t get used to that saluting thing.

  They made their way down to the hold. Frey thought their numbers were thin for a confrontation, but he didn’t want a firefight here, which was why he’d given Jez a job to keep her out of the way. He didn’t need her making everyone nervous. And anyway, if it came to that, they always had Bess.

  Oh, damn it. Bess.

  He could hear her clanking around as they came down the stairs to the floor of the cargo hold. Without Crake’s whistle to put her to sleep they were going to have trouble hiding the fact there was a daemonist’s golem on board. And that would take some explaining to a bunch of Awakeners.

  ‘Ashua. Go back there to the sanctum. See if you can shut her up.’

  ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ Ashua protested.

  ‘I don’t know. You’re the smart one. Be creative.’

  Ashua muttered something about how creative he’d feel with a rusty fork rammed sideways up his arse, but she did what she was told.

  So now there were two of them. The captain and his first mate. He smoothed his rumpled clothes as Silo went over to the lever that opened the cargo ramp.

  ‘Let’s look like we’ve got nothing to hide, eh?’ he said. Silo pulled the lever and then returned to stand by his captain.

  There were a dozen of them waiting outside, and most of them were carrying rifles. There were Sentinels in grey cassocks, an Acolyte in beige, and an assortment of men who looked like mercenaries. At the head of them was a tall man in a black cassock, high-collared and single-breasted like those of his companions. He had a long flowing moustache and a shaven skull, with the Cipher tattooed prominently on his forehead.

  ‘Brothers!’ Frey called out happily, throwing his arms wide.

  ‘That,’ thundered the man in black, ‘remains to be seen.’

  They came up the ramp and into the cargo hold, spreading out to cover the area with guns. Frey didn’t count that an encouraging sign. The man in black walked up and stood squarely before him.

  ‘My name is Prognosticator Garin,’ he said. ‘And you are Captain Darian Frey.’

  ‘I’m pleased that my reputation precedes me,’ he said, though in this case he really wasn’t. If word had got back that he’d been robbing Awakener vessels, this wouldn’t go well.

  ‘We recognised your aircraft,’ said Garin. He glanced at Silo, then turned his attention back to Frey. ‘And now I’m wondering why you are here.’

  Frey thought about playing the religious conversion angle, but he knew he’d never make it stick. So he went with what he knew. The best lies were closest to the truth.

  ‘Look, mate,’ he said confidingly. ‘I know you lot are into your Allsoul and stuff, but to be honest, that’s not for me. The idea of my destiny being mapped out before me and all that, I don’t much like it. I’m a simple man at heart. But I see the way the common folk rally round your banner, and I think, well, whose side do I want to be on? The Dukes and all those pompous city types? Or down here with the salt of the earth?’

  ‘Don’t try me with speeches, Captain Frey,’ said Garin, his arms folded.

  ‘Sod it then. We’re here for the mercenary work,’ said Frey, shrugging. ‘The only mercs the Coalition are hiring are Shacklemores. They want everyone on their side all disciplined and legal. Their loss. We reckoned you fellers might put up some coin for a few fighting craft and some experienced pilots.’

  ‘And so you found your way here. Very enterprising. I can’t imagine that would have gone down very well with the daemonist on your crew. A man by the name of Grayther Crake?’

  Ah. That’s what this is about.

  ‘It didn’t,’ said Frey. ‘So we kicked him off. Bloke was a pain anyway.’

  Garin raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s interesting. Rumour has it you were fast friends.’

  ‘Rumour has it your Imperators are all daemons,’ Frey replied. ‘Don’t believe everything you hear.’

  A smile touched the side of Garin’s mouth. ‘You’re far from the first pirate to join our ranks,’ he said. ‘It’s regrettable, but in order to fight the Archduke’s persecution, we’ll take the measures we must.’ His smile faded. ‘But if a man allies himself with the faithless, he’d better be ready for betrayal. You won’t object if we search your aircraft? Just to see if you’re telling the truth about your daemonist.’

  The thought of Awakeners crawling all over his beloved aircraft, poking through his possessions, made Frey want to punch that stupid moustache off Garin’s face. But he didn’t see that he had much choice in the matter, so he hid his feelings behind a broad smile. ‘Of course,’ he said, with admirable control. ‘Take a look around. Silo, why don’t you go upstairs and warn the crew that men with guns are going to be there shortly?’ He looked at Garin. ‘Don’t want an incident, do we?’

  Silo did as he was told. Garin motioned to some of his men to follow the Murthian. ‘Keep the crew up there until I’m done with the Captain,’ he instructed them. He told the others to search the cargo hold.

  ‘What’s through there?’ he asked Frey. He was pointing towards the back, where crates and tarp separated off a section.

  ‘Crake’s old sanctum,’ Frey said. He saw no point in lying. He also saw no point in mentioning Bess.

  Immediately, Garin strode off across the hold towards it. Wrong-footed, Frey stood there a moment, said ‘Er,’ and then hurried after him, frantically thinking of ways he could explain the golem away.

  The Prognosticator pushed aside the tarpaulin curtain and stepped into the sanctum, with Frey at his shoulder. Frey’s heart sank a little at the sight of it. It didn’t look good, with that weird daemonic circle drawn on the floor and the chalkboards covered in formulae and all the books and equipment and stuff. The whole thing looked like a cross between a mad scientist’s laboratory and the domain of someone who should be in a padded cell.

  ‘Hi, Cap’n,’ said Ashua chirpily, straightening up from a bookcase with an armload of books. ‘I was just packing away Crake’s stuff, like you told me to. Who’s this?’

  I could kiss you, you wonderful thing, Frey thought. ‘This is Prognosticator Garin. He just wants to make sure we don’t have any daemonists on board.’

  Ashua smirked. ‘Not any more!’ she said.

  ‘He got sort of snipp
y about leaving,’ said Frey. ‘Some rubbish about money we owed him. So we kicked him about a bit, then threw him off.’

  ‘No honour among thieves, eh?’

  ‘We prefer to think of ourselves as wealth distribution experts.’

  Garin studied the room sceptically. Frey glanced about and found Bess in a shadowy corner. She was standing entirely motionless. He narrowed his eyes and peered closer. Two little glimmers peered back at him from the darkness behind her face-grille. Frey looked away quickly as Garin turned to him. The Prognosticator gave him a penetrating glare.

  ‘I’m not at all sure that what you’re telling me is the truth, Captain Frey,’ he said. ‘But I’ve ways to find out. Follow me.’

  He swept out of the sanctum. Frey pointed at Ashua on the way out. You, he mouthed, are amazing. Ashua did a little curtsey. Bess tried one too, creaking and squeaking as she did so.

  ‘What was that?’ Garin called from outside.

  ‘Just Ashua tidying up!’ Frey replied hastily, slipping through the tarp.

  They walked back to the far end of the cargo hold, where the Acolyte had assembled a small brazier from pieces in his backpack and was in the process of lighting it. ‘Are we having a barbecue?’ Frey asked, mildly confused.

  Garin ignored him. One of the Sentinels came down the stairs into the hold. ‘Can’t see any sign of him, Prognosticator,’ he said. ‘We’re looking through the engine room now, but there aren’t too many places to hide on a craft like this.’

  ‘I see,’ said Garin. On a piece of cloth, the acolyte laid out a brush, a small pot of ink, a pair of tongs, and a white oval stone the size of a hand. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘There’s an unconscious man in the infirmary.’

  ‘Abley,’ said Frey. ‘He took a bullet through the leg when we were fighting the Coalition in Korrene. It was a bad one. We had to put him out.’

  Garin seemed to have lost interest. He picked up the brush and began painting something in black ink on the stone.

  ‘What’s in here?’ asked one of the Sentinels, rapping the butt of his rifle against the lashed-up pile of chests in the centre of the hold. Frey didn’t turn to look, but his heart sank a little. The relics. All the relics they’d stolen were in those chests.

  He pretended to ignore the question. Garin hadn’t noticed. There was nothing quite so withering than when you spoke and no one listened.

  The Sentinel didn’t repeat his question. He gave one of chests a cursory jiggle but found it closed tight. Eventually he wandered away, slightly embarrassed.

  Frey let out his breath. He needed these people off his aircraft. What was Garin doing, anyway?

  ‘Hold this,’ said Garin, passing him the stone. ‘Careful. The ink’s wet.’

  Frey held the flat stone in his hands. Written on the stone were two words. Darian Frey.

  ‘Say it aloud,’ Garin instructed him.

  ‘Er . . . Darian Frey,’ he said. ‘That’s me.’

  Garin took the stone back carefully and put it over the brazier. The Acolyte, a young carrot-headed boy, watched eagerly. Some of the other searchers began returning to the hold, having found no trace of Crake. They gathered round the brazier, fascinated.

  ‘What exactly are you doing?’ Frey asked, when he couldn’t stand it any more.

  ‘I am asking the Allsoul whether you are a deceiver, or whether you truly want to aid our cause.’

  ‘I truly want to aid it if you pay me,’ Frey corrected. ‘I presume your little barbecue can handle the difference?’

  ‘I’d not be so flippant if I were you. Your freedom, and likely your life, rests on this.’

  One of the Sentinels primed his rifle. Frey suddenly wished he hadn’t allowed himself to be separated from his crew. If it came to it, perhaps Ashua and Bess could help him, but not before he got shot.

  There was a quiet crack from the stone. The Acolyte picked up the tongs, but Garin signalled him to wait. There was another crack, and a pop. Garin motioned to the Acolyte, and the stone was taken off the brazier, turned upside down and laid onto a wadded cloth on the floor. The Acolyte picked up the cloth with the hot stone in its centre and presented it reverently to Garin. Garin began studying it intently.

  Frey peered over his shoulder. The stone had been split by the heat. Crooked black lines spread across it, intersecting each other.

  ‘Are you getting something from that?’ Frey asked.

  ‘There are many ways to know the mind of the Allsoul. This is the way that chose me,’ Garin said.

  ‘The pattern means something?’

  ‘The pattern means everything,’ Garin said, frowning as he studied the lines. All eyes were on the Prognosticator now. Frey saw wonder and amazement on their faces.

  You’re all being duped, you bloody idiots. It’s a carnival trick! he thought. But he wasn’t quite as sure as he pretended. The slim possibility that there might be something to this Awakener mumbo-jumbo had him nervous, and the Prognosticator certainly looked like he knew what he was doing. Soon he was as mesmerised as the rest of them, as he waited to learn his fate.

  Finally, Garin folded the cloth over the stone and handed it back to the Acolyte. ‘The Allsoul has spoken,’ he said. The Awakeners repeated his words in a low mutter, their eyes cast down to the floor. Garin turned to Frey, and stared at him long and hard.

  ‘So what’s the verdict?’ Frey asked. The tension was killing him.

  Garin laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Welcome,’ he said gravely. ‘We will accept your aid in our righteous cause. See the quartermaster in the town about payment.’

  Frey managed to keep the relief off his face. ‘Glad to be here,’ he said. And glad you’re a massive charlatan with it, he added mentally.

  Garin walked away. The others called down their companions who were guarding the crew, and then followed him out, leaving the Acolyte to tidy up the brazier. Frey waited patiently till everyone was gone, then shut the cargo door behind them.

  ‘Everythin’ alright, Cap’n?’ Silo enquired from the walkway above.

  ‘Just fine,’ said Frey, as he was heading towards the sanctum at the back of the hold. ‘We’re in!’

  He pushed open the tarpaulin curtain and looked in on Ashua. He found her sitting cross-legged opposite the golem, who’d plonked down on her butt like a baby. Ashua had a large red leather book open in her lap.

  ‘How’d you manage to get her to keep still like that?’ he asked in amazement.

  She lifted up the book to show him. Stories for Little Girls. ‘Bribery,’ she said. ‘Works a treat.’ Then she turned her attention back to Bess. ‘You ready? Alright, here we go. “The Duchess and the Daisy-Chain”.’

  Fourteen

  Hooded – Crake’s Return – A Bloody Reading – Pinn the Convert

  Three years. Three years and they’ve finally caught me. I suppose it’s true what they say, then. The Shacklemores always get their man in the end.

  Grayther Crake sat on a metal bench in the back compartment of a small aircraft, contemplating his impending death. At least, he guessed it was small, by the sound of the engines. It was hard to tell with a sack over his head.

  The past twenty-four hours had been a terrifying and humiliating ordeal. The Shacklemore Agency had a reputation built on professionalism and a gentlemanly veneer intended to put rich clients at ease. Shacklemores were polite, well-dressed and efficient: the acceptable face of bounty hunting. But scratch the surface, Crake had discovered, and underneath you’d find mercenary thugs like all the rest; proud members of the biggest gang in Vardia.

  ‘You won’t be using that tooth on us, mate,’ they sneered when they caught him. That was when they put the sack on, and it had hardly been off since. They cuffed his hands behind his back and pulled him, blind and helpless, through the streets of Korrene. Distant guns and nearby explosions made him shudder and cringe in fear, but they tugged him onward mercilessly until they reached an aircraft. When he felt them taking off, he knew he was lost. T
here was no hope of rescue after that.

  He spent a day and a night in a cell, tormenting himself with thoughts of what was to come and what he’d left behind. He thought of the crew, and wondered how they were faring, and wished he’d never been so foolish as to leave. He thought of Samandra, and burned with shame. Better that she thought he’d run out on her and missed their rendezvous, or that he was dead. Better that than the truth.

  He thought of Bess . . . But no, he couldn’t think of Bess. Bess, the golem he’d abandoned. Bess, the little girl he’d murdered. He’d evaded justice all this time, but he couldn’t evade it for ever.

  They left the bag on his head and kept him manacled like an animal. It only came off when they fed him. One man would spoon stew into his mouth while two others stood by with guns in case he should try any daemonist trickery. He ate what he was given. He didn’t have the heart to protest his treatment. He deserved it.

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be on your way soon,’ they told him. ‘We’re just waiting for someone to take you off our hands. You weren’t even supposed to be our catch, but Rokesby here remembered your warrant from the newsletter, didn’t he?’

  Rokesby, the clean-shaven young man who’d caught him, gave a proud little smile. ‘Should’ve kept a bit more of a low profile, I reckon,’ he said, filling up another spoonful of stew for his prisoner. ‘Not many people ain’t heard of the Ketty Jay these days. Victim of your own success, ain’t you?’

  Crake didn’t care for their explanations. Just get on with it, he thought. Just get it done.

  Early in the morning, his escorts arrived. They took him from the cell and walked him to an aircraft. He could smell food cooking and heard the rough conversation of men nearby. It occurred to him that the flight from the spot he was taken had been short; they were probably in the Coalition’s forward camp, where Samandra had kissed him not two days past. A wild thought came to him, filling him with sudden hope: he should shout out for help! But the notion died as soon as it was born. Who would help him? He was a legitimately guilty man. Why would anyone, Samandra most of all, intervene to save a criminal from the law?