The Iron jackal totkj-3

by Chris Wooding

  ‹?n="justifont face="Times New Roman"›‘Shouldn’t mess with what you don’t understand,’ Ugrik advised.

  ‘Thanks for the advice,’ Frey said sarcastically. ‘Just in time. I almost did something stupid.’

  Ugrik gave him a flat look and started walking again.

  ‘How did you know not to touch it, anyway?’ Frey asked, keeping pace. He swatted at a dragonfly that seemed intent on landing on his nose.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Ugrik. ‘The curse is written on the blade.’

  ‘You can read Azryx?’

  ‘No. But I can read Old Isilian.’

  They forged on through the foliage for a while.

  ‘Okay, you’re gonna have to tell me what that is,’ said Frey eventually.

  ‘All the languages we know – Yortish, Vardic, Samarlan and the rest – they all have their roots in one dead language from way back. Old Isilian. Couldn’t read much of what was on that relic, but there’s enough similarities so I got the gist. Don’t touch. The thing was in its case when I found it, so I never took it out.’

  ‘Strikes me that was probably the sensible thing to do,’ Frey said.

  ‘Aye, well, we can’t all be sensible, can we?’

  Frey looked glumly at his hand. ‘Apparently not.’

  They’d picked their way down to the edge of the city. The undergrowth was broken by glimpses of walls and doorways, and it was almost possible to make out nearby thoroughfares. They were staying well away from the excavated area that was swarming with Sammies, but Ugrik was cautious anyway, and Frey took his cue from that.

  He was feeling more confident now he had a grasp on the situation. At last he knew what had happened to him, and why, and what he could do about it. All he had to do was sneak past the Sammies and put the relic back where Ugrik had found it. It sounded easy when he said it to himself. Time was short, but he’d had closer shaves. There was still a good hour till sunset, and no sign of the moon.

  Ugrik held out a hand to stop him. ‘Ssh,’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t making any n-’

  ‘ Ssh! ’

  Frey shut his mouth, peeved. Ugri? peeved. k was listening attentively. Frey did, too. He heard nothing but the repetitive cry of some exotic bird.

  ‘I reckon someone’s followin’ us,’ said Ugrik.

  Frey belatedly remembered what Crake had told him just before the crash. That someone was tracking the relic. It had gone right out of his head when the Ketty Jay went down, and Crake had been concussed and in no state to elaborate. Ugrik had been there too. Frey wondered if the Yort had forgotten, if he hadn’t been paying attention, or if he just didn’t think it mattered.

  Suddenly, it came to him. He knew who’d planted that signal. He should have figured it out straight away. And if he was right, then there really wasn’t much point running at this stage.

  They waited till they were passing through a particularly thick patch of foliage, and then ducked aside, hiding around the corner of a low building that had been half-consumed by soil, its walls dense with dangling tree roots. Anyone behind them would have to walk by, and they could jump out and confront them.

  Frey waited, ears straining, sweat trickling from his temples. Ugrik, who was carrying a rifle from the Ketty Jay’s armoury, drummed his fingers silently on the barrel.

  Nothing happened. After a time, Frey leaned over to Ugrik and whispered ‘You sure you heard-?’

  ‘ Ssh! ’

  ‘Right.’

  They listened. A wild pig lumbered through the undergrowth nearby, snorting. Birds and insects rustled and peeped. Frey couldn’t imagine how Ugrik could have possibly detected anyone in amid all that noise.

  Behind him, he heard the snap of a twig breaking under a boot.

  He looked over his shoulder. Standing there were two uniformed Sammies, rifles trained on him.

  That was mildly surprising. They weren’t who he was expecting at all.

  Ugrik had noticed them too. He turned around slowly, his hands in the air. They said something in their own language.

  ‘Reckon they want us to-’ he began.

  ‘Drop the guns, yeah, I know,’ Frey said. He held up his pistol and threw it down, then tossed away the other one from his belt. Lastly he surrendered his cutlass. Ugrik laid down his rifle. The Sammies watched them carefully through narrowed eyes.

  ‘So I suppose these were the fellers you heard following us, then?’ Frey asked Ugrik from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘No,’ he grunted, pointing with his chin. ‘It was them.’

  There was the unmistakable crunch of lever-action shotguns being primed, and Samandra Bree stepped out of the undergrowth behind the Sammies. Colden Grudge came with her, his autocannon ready.

  ‘Hello, Frey,’ said Samandra.

  ‘Hey, Samandra,’ he said cheerily. Now the world made sense again.

  The Sammies, seeing that the Century Knights had them cold, tossed their rifles to the ground and raised their hands.

  ‘These friends o’ yours?’ Ugrik asked Frey.

  ‘Oh, we’re all best of friends,’ said Samandra. ‘Ain’t we, Frey?’

  Ugrik frowned. ‘She don’t sound too sincere.’

  ‘You noticed that, huh?’ Frey asked, hands still in the air.

  Grudge moved over to the Sammies and herded them up against the wall of the building, covering them with his fearsome cannon. Samandra never took her twin shotguns off Frey and Ugrik as she came closer.

  Frey raised an eyebrow at Samandra. ‘You must’ve been pretty extraordinarily pissed, to follow me all the way here.’

  ‘You could say. Ever since your snake of a daemonist tried to mess with my head, you ain’t been my favourite people. But we got daemonists too, in the Century Knights. Bet you didn’t know that.’

  ‘Actually, pretty much everyone’s guessed by now,’ Frey told her with a shrug. ‘Sorry. By the way, I spotted you in Shasiith when you were following me around. Gotta be more subtle than that.’

  ‘You really shouldn’t tick me off any more than you already have, Frey,’ she warned.

  ‘Can’t help it,’ he said. ‘I’m just in one of those moods. So, what, you got your daemonist to tag the relic after you twigged that Crake was after it?’ Realisation dawned on him. ‘You were gonna let us escape, weren’t you?’

  ‘First we were gonna see if you talked. Then if you didn’t, we’d let you slip away with the relic. Just you. So you thought it was an accident.’

  ‘And then you’d follow me and find out who put me up to the theft.’

  ‘Exactly.’?actly. amp;r

  ‘But you shot at me,’ said Frey.

  ‘You shot first,’ she replied.

  ‘Not at you, though.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘As you can probably see, no one put me up to it.’ He put on a mock-pitiful face. ‘Although I’m hurt that you’d underestimate me like that.’

  ‘Well, regardless,’ she said. ‘You led us a merry damn chase all the same.’ She smiled. ‘But I got the drop on you in the end.’

  There was a noisy clatter of weapons being cocked and loaded all around them. Malvery, Pinn and Crake stepped into view on the roof of the building, weapons pointed at Grudge. Silo and Ashua emerged from the trees behind Samandra, their guns trained on her back.

  ‘What’s up, Cap’n?’ Malvery asked. ‘Got some trouble?’

  Samandra stared at Frey in amazement. ‘How do you do that?’ she asked.

  Frey held up his hand with the ring on it and grinned. ‘I’ve got good people,’ he said.

  Forty

  Adarik – Harkins in the Dark – Frey Plays Matchmaker – An Alliance – First Mate

  It was snowing hard now. Not the blizzard conditions Jez had experienced the day she died, but a heavy, downy snow that drifted from the sky and laid a blanket over everything.

  She’d gone to find her body, but it had been lost. Beyond the settlement was a clean white expanse, and no trac
ks to be seen. If her corpse was out there, she’d never find it. It didn’t seem very important anyway.

  Rinn had disappeared at some point. Jez hadn’t noticed him leave, but that was how dreams worked, she supposed. Dreams, or trances, or whatever this was.

  She made her way back through the domed Yort buildings. The drifts had built themselves high. There was no trace of what had happened here.

  What had happened here? She was finding it hard to remember.

  When she looked back, she saw that her tracks were filling up as fast as she left them.

  She’d been here too long. It was time to leave. Time to will herself awake.

  Where was Rinn? She’d enjoyed talking with him. She wished she could recall what they’d talked about.

  Listlessly, she drifted through the settlement. It seemed like she was the only person in the world now. Just her and the cold and the turning, tumbling flakes of snow.

  Adarik. That’s what it’s called. This tiny little town where I died. Adarik.

  Why had it taken her so long to remember a thing like that?

  She came out onto the main thoroughfare, and there was the dreadnought. The ropes and chains that hung from it dragged softly against the snow as they were brushed by the wind.

  They were singing up there. The baying, discordant animal howls touched chords inside her. She found herself wanting to howl with them. There was freedom in it, and release. There was no self-consciousness among the Manes. Each knew its fellows intimately. Each was connected on a level that was at once primitive and near-divine. She listened, and swayed to the sound.

  She’d been here too long. There were things she needed to do. Her people needed her.

  She walked over to one of the dangling chains. It swayed before her.

  She’d been here too long. It was time to wake up.

  She grabbed hold of the chain and began to climb, up towards her brethren at the top.

  Harkins was scared.

  This was nothing new, of course. But today it was a different flavour of fear, and one he hadn’t tasted for a long while. Tonight, he was scared because he was alone.

  Well, alone except for her.

  He stood in the passageway, just out of sight of the infirmary door, jigging from foot to foot. A lantern dangled from each hand. The spare was necessary, because if he only carried one it might suddenly go out, and then he would probably die of a heart attack.

  The Ketty Jay was eerily quiet, and a terrifying dark lurked beyond the lamplight. The sunset was a meagre glow, filtered through sand banked up against the windglass of the cockpit, which lay at the end of the passageway. Hardly enough to see by. Without engines or power, the Ketty Jay was just a lump of metal, still baking from the heat of the departing day. The floor underfoot seemed foreign and unfamiliar: the decks slanted forward because her nose was buried in the desert.

  He wasn’t used to b?o; t usedeing here when it was empty. There was always someone around, even if it was only Bess. He’d have even taken the cat for company right now, that hateful bag of mange, but Slag had buggered off into the depths of the Ketty Jay’s circulation system and wasn’t coming out.

  He should have gone with the others. Maybe they could have squeezed him on to a Rattletrap. After all, he was only skinny.

  When they heard him volunteer to stay behind, he could tell what they were thinking. Same old Harkins. As if all his recent bravery had just been a phase, and they knew he’d return to type in the end.

  But they were wrong about him. Staying here was being brave. Staying here alone with her. That was braver than chasing off after the Cap’n with a gang of gun-toting companions.

  There was something he needed to do. And he needed to do it alone.

  He checked on the knife in his belt. Good and sharp. He might only get one chance at this.

  He took a deep breath, let it out shakily, and then peered through the doorway to the infirmary.

  She was still there, on the operating table. Lying still as death.

  That was a relief. If she hadn’t been there, it would have been worse. He didn’t think his sphincter had the sheer clench-force to handle an event like that.

  He crept into the infirmary, fighting the awkward slope of the floor, and laid the lanterns on the top of the cabinets. Their flickering light reflected from the glass doors of a dresser, behind which hung Malvery’s surgical instruments. They gleamed in the light. They were the only clean thing in here.

  The smell of blood made his stomach roil. Jez’s clothes were soaked in it, and it had long dried and begun to reek. Flies hummed around the room. The Ketty Jay ticked and creaked as she cooled.

  He licked his lips.

  ‘Jez?’ he whispered hoarsely. Then, realising that even the cat would have been hard-pressed to hear him, he coughed lightly and said ‘Jez?’ with a fraction more volume.

  She didn’t stir. He took a step towards her, extended one trembling finger, and gave her a sharp poke before springing back across the room in anticipation of violent reprisals.

  There was no reaction, so finally, he drew out the knife.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jez,’ he said. ‘I mean… I really am. I didn’t want to have to do this. Not… not to you.’

  He cre?Roman"›Hpt closer again, his coward’s instincts fearing some trick. Had she heard him, and was waiting to spring when he got close enough? Did she sense what he intended?

  He swallowed. Be a man, he told himself. Finish this.

  ‘I never knew,’ he said, his voice giving him the confidence to take another step. ‘They said you were a Mane, but… Spit, I didn’t realise… I mean, I only saw you, the nice Jez, the one who was always… always kind to me when everyone else laughed.’ His eyes went from the blade to her. ‘I never knew how it’d be… to see what you really are, underneath.’

  Still she didn’t move. Not so much as a muscle. Maybe she’s already dead. That’d make things easier.

  He couldn’t allow himself any excuses. He crept closer, the lanterns throwing his shadow across her. He brought up the knife. It was shaking in his hand.

  ‘This… it’s really for the best,’ he said.

  The edge of the knife came closer to her throat.

  ‘I’m doing this for us.’

  He firmed his will, and made ready to do what had to be done.

  ‘You see…’ he said. He took another breath, and then the words all came out in a tumble. ‘The thing is, I just don’t fancy you any more.’

  With one hasty movement, he grabbed up a lock of her hair and sheared it off. He put it to his face and sniffed it. He was appalled to find it stank of old blood. He retched and stuffed it in his pocket.

  It was while he was wiping his mouth with his sleeve that he saw her eyes were open. His heart kicked in his chest and dread flooded him. She was staring at him, like she’d heard him, like s he knew what he’d done!

  ‘It’s a memento!’ he shrieked.

  She looked around blearily. ‘Harkins?’

  ‘I just wanted something to remind me of the romance!’ he gabbled.

  Jez was deeply confused. ‘What… er… what romance?’

  She lifted herself up on her elbows, and that was the final straw. Harkins’ attempt at explanation degenerated into a gibbering wail and he took to his heels at full speed.

  He didn’t get far. In his panic, he’d miscalculated where the doorway was. He caught his shoulder on the edge of? the edgit, caromed into the corridor, and charged head-first into the wall. The impact was a shower of stars, and then he was being dragged down into the dark.

  The last thing he heard was Jez calling his name in a tone of utter and complete bewilderment.

  ‘Harkins?’

  Then nothing.

  Frey took off the fingerless glove and showed his palm to Samandra Bree.

  ‘Ew,’ she said. ‘That is one manky hand.’

  ‘Shows what you know. This is one of the finest curses you’re ever likely to come across,’ Frey said
, prodding at it. ‘Straight from the Azryx! Ten thousand years old!’

  ‘Looks like gangrene to me,’ said Samandra, unimpressed.

  Frey snatched his hand away and put the glove back on. ‘Anyway, now do you believe him?’

  They both looked at Crake, who was standing a short way away, gazing at Samandra with the plaintive eyes of a recently whipped dog.

  ‘There wasn’t any other way,’ he said quietly. ‘The Cap’n was going to die otherwise. I’m so very, very sorr-’

  ‘Save it,’ said Samandra, crushing him. ‘I ain’t interested in your apologies. What I’m interested in is what those fellers have to tell us.’

  She nodded towards the Samarlan guards, who were trussed up against a tree. One had been gagged with a sock. The other was talking rapidly to Silo and Ashua, no doubt encouraged by Silo’s knife resting just beneath his kneecap. Frey vaguely wondered if he should send Malvery over there to make sure Silo didn’t get out of hand – he tended to, when Sammies were concerned – but the Murthian seemed surprisingly calm.

  Once everyone had stopped pointing guns at each other and decided that they were on the same side for the moment, the Century Knights and the crew of the Ketty Jay had led their prisoners back into the depths of the undergrowth. They needed to get off the patrol route for a quick and dirty interrogation. Frey chafed at the small delay, but he went with it. He reckoned he had a much better chance of getting to where he needed to be with the Century Knights on board, and they might come with him once they’d satisfied themselves here. Besides, their encounter with the patrol had made him wary. He wasn’t so sure that getting the relic back to its rightful place would be as simple as he’d hoped.

  ‘The way I see it,’ he said to Samandra, ‘I’ve led you to the most important find since they discovered New Vardia. Wanna know why the Sammies pulled out of the war? Wanna know what they amp;?ow what rsquo; ve really been up to for the last eight years or so? Look down there.’ He waved vaguely in the direction of the excavation, then folded his arms. ‘I reckon that more than cancels out a few smashed-up museum pieces and some petty theft.’