by Anthony Ryan
“Worried I might have added something to the leaf?” the Electress asked.
“I try to avoid indulgence at times like these.”
The Electress rested her elbows on the desk, one hand on the other with the cigarillo smoking between her broad fingers. “What did you do on the outside?” she asked after a long pause. “And don’t try telling me you were a fucking governess or some such.”
“I stole things and I killed people.”
“For who?”
“Whoever paid me.”
“The Cadre ever pay you?”
Lizanne shook her head. “They couldn’t afford me. Besides, I doubt they’d find me a suitable recruit.”
A soft chuckle escaped the Electress as she took another draw on her cigarillo. “So that’s it. Another child of the revolution.”
“I’ll confess I suffered from some naïve notions in my youth. I assure you any political allegiance is all behind me now. But the experience did leave me with a particular set of skills, skills I’m prepared to offer to you.”
“How generous of you. But you may have noticed that this is a prison. I want a thief or a killer I can throw a rock in any direction and find one.”
“Not like me you can’t.”
The Electress nodded at the grisly prize on the desk. Jemus’s head lay on its side, face towards Lizanne, a vestige of that final desperate smile frozen on his lips. “You think you’re the first to bring me some fucker’s head and demand a favour?”
“I’m not demanding anything,” Lizanne said. “Merely offering my services. If you find them unacceptable I’ll be happy to leave.”
“And offer yourself up to one of my rivals, no doubt. I assume you extracted a list of likely candidates from this bastard before you killed him.”
Lizanne said nothing, knowing confirmation would be taken as a threat. “I chose to come here,” she said instead.
The Electress gave Lizanne another long look of examination before shaking her head in consternation. “Got a lot going on behind those pretty eyes. More than I’d like. And, being honest, you’ll probably live longer as a whore. I treat my girls well.”
“I’m sure you do. But it’s not my line of work.”
The Electress shrugged and stubbed out her cigarillo. “You know how to deal Pastazch?”
“Corvus Twist and Varestian Draw-down.”
“We play our own rules here, Scorazin Two-roll. It’s basically the same as Corvus Twist with three more wild cards. I’m sure you’ll pick it up.”
“You want me to be a croupier?”
“For now. Since you’re so averse to mattress-work. Can’t have you just hanging around the place. People would talk.” She turned to the door, raising her voice, “Anatol! Find this bitch a room!”
CHAPTER 16
Clay
Kraghurst Station was served by a floating-timber dock arranged along a series of buoys. The whole structure was tethered to the ice by huge chains, so as to allow it to rise and fall with the tide. Clay thought it must have been an impressive sight before Last Look Jack came by for a visit, a fine example of the human facility for ingenuity in even the worst climate. Now, however, it was a ragged thing of splintered and burnt wood, held in place by blackened chains, which had failed to burn in the fires cast by the drakes.
He sat at the front of the launch, Loriabeth huddled close to his side. She was finding the cold harder to bear by the day but reacted with fury to any suggestion she stay on the ship. Captain Hilemore had kept the party as small as possible. In addition to the Longrifles and Hilemore himself, the expedition consisted of the hulking Islander and four of his most trusted riflemen along with a predictably miserable Scrimshine and, to Clay’s surprise, the Corvantine lieutenant and two of his men. Clay suspected that Sigoral’s presence might be due to concerns over what mischief the man might foster in the captain’s absence.
Beyond the ruined dock Clay could see dark, shadowed openings carved into the Shelf where Scrimshine said the inhabitants of Kraghurst Station made their home. “They have their own company,” he explained before they set off. “The Kraghurst Trading Co-operative, they called it. Bunch’ve reprobates who’d been thrown out of the larger corporations for various misdeeds, but they certainly made a good go of it. South Seas Maritime has been trying to buy them out for years.” His gaze darkened as he looked at the ruined dock. “Guessing they won’t have to bother now.”
The launch rounded the western edge of the dock and made for the Shelf where a number of iron ladders had been fixed into the ice. “Ship oars!” Steelfine said as the launch came within the last few feet of the Shelf. “Fix a grapnel on that ladder, if you’d be so kind, Mr. Torcreek.”
Clay flexed his fingers, numb despite the thick gloves he wore, and hefted the rope and grapnel at his feet. The water was placid and the launch close enough to make it an easy throw, the iron hook snagging on one of the lower rungs at the first attempt. Preacher and Braddon helped him haul the launch to the base of the ladder where Clay began to climb up.
“Belay that!” Hilemore barked. “Mr. Steelfine and Lieutenant Sigoral will go first.”
“I ain’t one to shirk a risk, Captain,” Clay told him, finding his pride piqued a little.
“You’re our only Blood-blessed,” Hilemore reminded him. “Without you this mission is over.”
He nodded at Steelfine, who shouldered his way past Clay and onto the ladder, ascending with a sailor’s customary swiftness, Sigoral close behind. The marine had a repeating carbine strapped across his back whilst Steelfine carried a sea-axe and a pistol. The two men reached the top quickly, climbing up onto the ledge and drawing their weapons before disappearing inside. Steelfine’s head reappeared after a few moments. “All clear, sir!”
At Hilemore’s insistence Clay and the Longrifles were the last up the ladder, having spent some time fixing hauling lines to the supplies. Following Scrimshine’s advice, the captain had ensured the food consisted mainly of salted meat plus a crate of preserved limes to stave off scurvy. There seemed to be much more than they would ever need but the convict had been insistent. “When a man’s out on the ice,” he said, “he’ll eat twice what he usually would and still find his belt looser by the day. At these climes the cold wears at you like a grindstone.”
When Clay finally ascended the ladder he found himself confronted by a broad, rectangular cavern with dozens of side tunnels in the walls. Hilemore and Steelfine stood regarding what appeared to be a pile of blackened sticks at the rear of the chamber as the rest of the party went about unpacking the supplies.
“They must have clustered together at the end,” Hilemore commented as Clay drew closer. He could see the pile for what it was now, fleshless skulls grinning up at him from the mass of part-melted bone.
“How many?” he asked.
“Hard to tell,” Steelfine said. “At least twenty here. Lieutenant Sigoral and I found another dozen in the next chamber.”
“A sustained stream of fire,” Hilemore said, glancing around at the glassy smoothness of the surrounding ice. “Last Look Jack was very thorough, it seems.”
“So no survivors,” Clay muttered, turning away from the burnt monstrosity. “At least you gave them some revenge, Captain.”
Hilemore merely glanced at him before turning his gaze to the cavern opening and the Superior sitting at anchor beyond. Clay knew he was wondering if he would ever see it again and wished he could offer some assurance. But the closer they came to their goal, and the fulfilment of their shared future, he found himself increasingly lacking in certainty. We were always going to be here, he reminded himself. But where next?
He saw Hilemore blink before removing his gaze from his ship, striding off, voice raised to cast out a series of orders. “Let’s get these packs filled, lads. I want to be gone from here before nightfall.”
• • •
Clay’s judgement proved to be grimly accurate. Their journey through the tunnels and chambers of Kraghurst Station revealed only more corpses in various states of immolation, as well as a wealth of incinerated furniture and supplies. They found only one unburnt body, a large man of middling years huddled in a side tunnel, his hair and skin frozen solid and his eyes two blank orbs in a desiccated leather mask.
“Cold got him,” Scrimshine judged. “And right quick too. Tends to happen when a fella loses all hope of deliverance.”
“He saved himself,” Braddon said. “Found a corner where the fire couldn’t reach.”
“Truly,” Scrimshine conceded. “But what to do next? No ships to take you away. All the food burned up and the open ice the only place left to go.” He crouched to rummage through the dead man’s stiff, frosted clothing, pocketing a small roll of exchange notes. “Won’t do him much good will it?” he said in response to Braddon’s disapproving frown.
They pressed on, the air growing colder the deeper they went. Scrimshine called to Hilemore to halt when they came to a large chamber where daylight could be seen through a narrow opening at the far end. “Looks like we’ve finally had some luck, Skipper,” he said, moving towards a tarpaulin-covered mound. He pulled the tarpaulin aside to reveal a collection of narrow objects, each about seven feet long. They were constructed from a wood-and-wicker frame set atop a pair of iron runners.
“Guessing the dogs went the way of everyone else,” Scrimshine observed. “Not that I mind. Vicious bugger, your sled-dog. Have your fingers off if y’don’t handle him proper.”
“What use are they without dogs to haul them?” Clay asked.
“Man can haul a sled too.” Scrimshine bent to retrieve a harness from atop the nearest sled. “Less you want that bundle weighing on your back all the way to the mountain.”
They dragged five of the sleds out onto the ice and piled on the supplies. Hilemore divided the party into teams and allocated each a sled, sparing Loriabeth, who, for once, didn’t voice an objection. She stood apart as they donned the harnesses, staring at the vast expanse to the south. The ice stretched away towards the misted horizon beneath a dark blue sky where stars were already glimmering. Not since the Red Sands had Clay seen anything so completely devoid of life or feature. He saw how Loriabeth’s expression alternated between reluctance and determination now she stood confronted by the enormity of their task. All the guts and skill in the world can’t put any more meat on those bones, he thought, wondering if it might have been better to chain her to her bunk before disembarking the ship.
“Won’t be much use this far south, Skipper,” Scrimshine advised as Hilemore flipped open a small compass. “You’ll find the needle dances about too much to gauge a heading.”
“Then how do we fix our course?”
Scrimshine jerked his head at the stars beading the darkening sky. “The mountain sits betwixt Southern Jewell and the Crossed Swords. Reckon we got us maybe two more hours of daylight.”
Hilemore glanced around to ensure they were all buckled in then waved a hand before starting off, the three other men in his team marching in step as he led the way. “Then we’d best make good use of it.”
• • •
They covered a little over five miles before nightfall. The ice was a deceptive surface to traverse. Apparently thick snow-banks often transformed into loose piles of powder concealing slippery patches that left more than a few of the party with a painful rump. Elsewhere the surface rose into large jagged mounds several yards wide, necessitating long diversions from their course until they found a way around. Added to the aggravating terrain was the all-consuming cold, which Clay found sapped his strength with every step. It seemed a tangible thing, pressing in on all sides and making every breath feel like an inhalation of tiny needles. Like the others he had been quick to tie a cloth over his mouth and nose but it provided only minor relief.
At Scrimshine’s urging they made camp by upending the sleds and arranging them in a circle. They then strung tents between the sleds to form a roof with a gap in the centre where Steelfine used lamp oil to light a fire. The evening meal consisted of boiled salt-beef washed down with black coffee dosed with a hefty portion of sugar. True to Scrimshine’s word, Clay found his stomach still growling after wolfing down his meal though he resisted the urge to ask for seconds. He sat with his arm around his cousin’s shoulders as she cradled a tin mug of steaming coffee with trembling hands. Scrimshine sat close by, using a small knife to whittle on a piece of bone from the Blue corpse he had helped Skaggerhill harvest.
“What was it?” Clay asked him, recalling his tale from their interview back in the Lossermark gaol. “The great treasure you came here to find?”
Scrimshine kept his attention on his carving, though his bony face betrayed a certain sheepish reluctance as he muttered a reply, “Bledthorne’s Hoard.”
On the far side of the fire, Clay heard Steelfine give voice to a rarely heard chuckle, one that was soon echoed by the other sailors. Hilemore turned to the smuggler, raising an amused eyebrow. “Did you, perchance, have a map showing you the exact location? Possibly a map that had been hidden for years?”
“Wasn’t my idea,” Scrimshine said, scowling a little. “And it was a long time ago, before the story was so widely known.”
“Story?” Clay enquired.
“You mean to say you’ve never heard of Arneas Bledthorne?” Hilemore asked in mock surprise. “The Red Scourge of the Eastern Seas. A pirate so fearsome Queen Arrad herself offered a million gold crowns to anyone who could bring her his head. For ten years or more the Royal Fleet hunted him hither and yon, but always he eluded them, taking ships at will and casting their crews into the sea for his vile amusement. So great was his fortune, it’s said his ship, the Dreadfire, nearly sank under its weight. Eventually, with all ports closed to him, he sailed south and hid his treasure somewhere in these frozen wastes, then murdered his crew lest they betray the location. Maddened by his crimes and his greed, and lacking any hands to sail his ship, he was unable to leave and died raving amidst vast wealth.”
“Quite a story,” Braddon observed.
“Indeed so,” Hilemore said. “And for many years unscrupulous cartographers made good money selling maps purporting to show the very spot where Bledthorne’s Hoard could be found. Eventually the story attracted the attention of a Consolidated Research Company scholar who traced it back to a novel from the late Imperial Era. It transpired the tale was mostly fiction. There had been a minor pirate named Arneas Bledthorne, who disappeared along with his ship somewhere in the southern seas. But in his short career his list of prizes amounted to the grand total of three ships, none of them laden with treasure. Also, there is no documentation confirming that Queen Arrad had ever even heard of him, let alone offered a reward for his capture. However, this doesn’t prevent the foolish or deluded occasionally risking their lives on the promise of an aged parchment they won at the card table.”
“Captain Sturwynd wasn’t a man to cross,” Scrimshine said, grimacing at the memory. “Especially when he had a firm notion in his head. He spent a great deal of loot on that map and wasn’t about to be told he was a fool for doing so.”
“I’m guessing you never found anything,” Clay said.
“Just a lotta ice, lad. And poor mad Captain Sturwynd found his death.” Scrimshine gave a sorrowful sigh. “Crazed and cruel though he was, he’d saved my skin on a bundle of occasions, so when he finally gasped out his last I wouldn’t let the others eat him. It got ugly for a time, a right old knife party. Still, plenty more food to go round when it was done.”
The nascent atmosphere of humour in the shelter faded quickly. “Your crew ate their dead?” Steelfine asked, staring hard at Scrimshine.
The smuggler shrugged, not looking up from his work. “You’ll be surprised how fast a man starts to resemble a side of pork when you’ve tracke
d across the ice on an empty belly for days on end.”
A few voices muttered in judgemental disgust but fell silent at Hilemore’s sharp glare. Scrimshine, apparently oblivious to any offence he may have caused, kept on whittling. Clay drifted off to sleep a short while later to the steady scrape of Scrimshine’s blade on drake bone.
• • •
It took five days before Mount Reygnar came into view, rising above the morning haze and dispelling Clay’s weariness with the sheer novelty of looking upon something that broke the endless monotony of the ice. They reached the lower slopes by evening, making camp amid a cluster of massive boulders part-submerged in the encroaching glacier. Reygnar loomed above, stirring unwelcome memories of the narrow peak that had concealed the White’s lair, though the two mountains were very different. The Nail had been a giant rocky spike whilst Mount Reygnar was a flat-topped mound that resembled the snow-speckled hide of a sleeping monster. But still, Clay couldn’t suppress a shudder of unease as his gaze tracked across the slopes.
“Wondering what might be inside?” his uncle asked, coming to his side.
“Maybe,” Clay replied with a shrug.
“The smuggler says it’s a volcano, though it’s stayed quiet for years. Nothing inside but molten rock.”
“There was a whole lotta molten rock beneath the Nail. I think the folks that built the city chose it for that.”
“Something you saw in your visions?”
Clay closed his eyes as the collage of memories crowded in. He had tried sorting through it all more than once, but so many images had been pushed into his head that making sense of it all was never easy, the effort inevitably leaving him with a pounding headache. “Just a guess, Uncle,” he said.
• • •
Hilemore and the Longrifles climbed the peak the next day. Loriabeth wasn’t among them, Braddon having ordered her to stay at the camp and eat all the food Steelfine prepared for her. She was growing more emaciated by the day and Clay knew it was only a matter of time before she would have to be placed on a sled and dragged along. Seeing the guilt dominating his uncle’s face, Clay thought better of voicing any concern.