The Ace of Skulls totkj-4

by Chris Wooding

  ‘He means a great deal to you, doesn’t he?’ Frey said. ‘I didn’t see that before.’

  Pelaru scowled, his features twitching with suppressed emotion. ‘There’s no time for anyone else. The cache was in a buried shrine in Korrene.’

  Frey stopped walking. Pelaru went on a few steps before noticing.

  ‘Korrene,’ said Frey. ‘You want us to fly into a warzone.’

  ‘It’s because it’s a warzone that I need you at all,’ said the whispermonger. ‘The shrine was situated in an uncontested area of the city. Now the battle fronts are closing in on that position.’ He gave Frey a steady gaze. ‘I have to find him before then.’

  ‘You have to find him? I thought we were taking all the risk?’

  ‘No. I’ll be going with you.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Frey. That made things interesting. He folded his arms. ‘Now why would you want to do that?’

  ‘That’s not your business,’ Pelaru said coldly.

  ‘On my craft it is,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not what I heard. I heard the Ketty Jay was the kind of place where a man might not be asked awkward questions.’

  That was true enough, though perhaps less so now than in the past. But he could guess Pelaru’s motives anyway, so he didn’t push it further. Whoever this business partner was, he was important. Pelaru wanted to be there to make sure they did everything they could to save him. Or maybe just to bring back his body.

  ‘You can come,’ said Frey. ‘Alone. I’m not having hired muscle on my craft. That’s how hijacks happen.’

  Pelaru opened his mouth to protest. Frey cut him off.

  ‘That’s the deal, or there’s no deal at all,’ he said. ‘Seems like we’re both looking for someone. Difference is, I only have your word that you’ve found Trinica. I’m not flying my crew into a warzone for that. So you come alone, and the moment we find this man of yours — dead or alive — you tell me what I need to know. And if I don’t like what I hear, if I don’t believe you, I swear I’ll shoot you right there and then.’

  Frey saw the conflict on Pelaru’s face, and felt a small, private sense of triumph. He’d learned this tactic at the Rake tables. Don’t let someone else dictate the play. Always be the one asking the questions. You only learned what a man had when you pushed him. The whispermonger had shown weakness. He hadn’t given away all the cards in his hand, but he’d given away the best one.

  Now he’d see what Pelaru’s information was worth, and whether he was willing to guarantee its value with his life.

  ‘Done,’ said Pelaru. He sounded disgusted at himself.

  ‘We keep whatever we find inside this shrine, too.’

  ‘Done!’ Pelaru cried.

  ‘Alright, then,’ said Frey. ‘Be at the docks tomorrow at ten.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Pelaru said, but Frey was already walking away.

  ‘Half my crew are drunk and I need to sleep. You think you can find a better crew faster, be my guest. Otherwise, I’m the captain, and we set off when I say.’

  Frey waited for a response. Pelaru didn’t give one. He took that as capitulation. That’s what you get when you try to screw me, you sneaky Thacian bastard.

  He felt a little better now that he’d clawed back some advantage, but he was still disappointed and angry about the way it had turned out. He felt bad enough about deceiving his crew this far. They were making a healthy profit, it was true, and if this job came off they’d make a lot more of it; but he didn’t want to put them in further danger. He wanted to be straight with them. He just couldn’t.

  The whole thing was too personal. Frey had never been comfortable talking about emotions, and certainly not to the gang of piss-takers and reprobates that he shared the Ketty Jay with. He knew what they’d say, if they found out what he was up to. They’d say he was deluded. Trinica had made her feelings perfectly clear last time they met. She never wanted to see him again. Aside from that, she was a dangerously unhinged pirate captain who dressed up like Death’s bride, and she’d stabbed him repeatedly in the back. On paper, she wasn’t much of a potential mate.

  But he’d made a promise to himself. A promise to make right what he’d done. And he had to find her, before it was too late, before she forgot who she was, what she’d been and how she loved him once.

  Korrene, he thought. How am I ever gonna explain this one to the crew?

  WANTED FOR PIRACY AND MURDER.

  Frey sat on his bunk, his back against the metal bulkhead, a straining hammock full of luggage suspended above him. He was staring at a creased handbill, its edges bent and pinched from thoughtless storage. Beside a list of his crimes, a younger Darian Frey stared back at him. The ferrotype was a close-up of his face, a little blurred due to cheap ink and paper. He wore a smile that managed to be both posed and genuine. Not the face of a pirate or a killer. Hard to believe he’d turned out that way.

  Frey wasn’t much for mementoes. He’d never seen the point in recording his experiences; he’d always looked forward rather than back. But these days he found himself wishing he’d taken better care of the past. This portrait of himself, smiling and accused, was the closest thing he had to a picture of Trinica.

  ‘Come on! Quick! Quick!’

  Breathless hurry. The whirr of the camera timer.

  ‘Here! Stand there! Smile!’

  ‘It’s not even pointing at us!’ he said.

  ‘Oh! You’re right! Left, left, quick!’

  ‘Right, you said? Over here?’

  ‘Left!’ Laughing now. ‘Quick! Quick!’

  She pulled him to her by his arm, he flashed his teeth, and the camera shutter snapped, biting off that moment, preserving it on a plate. Of all of the ferrotypes they ever appeared in, that one was most perfectly them. Later, the authorities would take that picture and cut Trinica out of it, leaving only the face of a criminal-to-be. But in his mind, the picture was whole, and would always remain so.

  He was there with her now, as she squeezed him and kissed him, then ran off towards the camera. He watched her go, her light summer dress blowing about her pale legs as she hurried across the meadow. The sun was hot on his neck that day, but there was a cooling breeze from the mountains at his back. She went to the camera and worried at it, as if she could open it up then and there and find the moment they’d caught inside.

  ‘I want to see!’ she said.

  ‘All things come to those who wait,’ he told her sagely, because it was something her father would say, one of a thousand jokes they shared.

  ‘Oh, you’re no fun!’ she said, in tones that suggested the opposite. ‘And you’ve never waited for a thing in your life!’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘When there’s something I want, I go right ahead and take it!’ He chased up the meadow towards her, and she squealed like a little girl and fled. When he caught her, he picked her up and lifted her, and with her face turned down to his she kissed him, her long blonde hair falling across his cheek.

  Was it like that? Was it truly the way he saw it in his memory? Had the sunlight caught the floating dandelion seeds and turned them to gold? Had the grass smelt so fine? Did he realise the perfection of the moment at the time, or was it only perfect through the lens of loss?

  The lovers that day had no idea of what was to come, the betrayal and tragedy that would turn their happiness to grief and send them both spinning out into the world, shattered and bitter, careering towards a violent future. That day, they knew nothing but the moment. Perhaps that was how they should have stayed. If he’d loved more fearlessly, instead of poisoning their joy with doubt, then they’d still be together now. But then, maybe it couldn’t have been any other way. Maybe they had to break apart to know each other.

  Once upon a time, before the days of guns and drink and treachery, he’d run in a meadow with a woman he loved entirely. Those days were gone. He wanted them back. It had been that way once; he had to believe it could be so again.

  If he could find her.

&
nbsp; If he could change her mind.

  It had been more than five years since Jez last slept. She didn’t miss it. She’d never been much of a dreamer anyway.

  Her favourite time was the small hours, when the crew were usually asleep and the Ketty Jay was full of ticks and creaks and large empty silences. Then it was only her and the cat and the rats in the hold.

  Sometimes she joined Slag in the hunt, her thoughts mixing with his as he stalked his prey through the vents, ducts and secret places. She shared in the kill and tasted the blood on her tongue. Other times she chose the rats, melting into their hot busy minds.

  When the mood took her, she’d take control of a rat, replacing its instincts with her commands. She’d guide it through the ducts to the spot where Slag lay in wait, and stay with it as it was torn apart. Those sharp, sharp claws sank into her back as they sank into the rat’s, and the pain was almost beyond endurance. But she hung on to those death agonies until there was nothing left to hang on to, and when it was over she felt fiercely alive, her mind clear, and the voices were silenced for a time.

  But they always came back.

  She crouched, perfectly balanced, on a walkway railing that overlooked the Ketty Jay’s cavernous cargo hold. She liked to be high up. The way her crewmates moved bored her: walking on the floor, labouring up stairs, following paths laid out for feet. She wanted to leap from perch to perch, zigzagging through her environment. She wanted a three-dimensional world, not one restricted to flat surfaces and prescribed routes. When she was in company she resisted her impulses, knowing how it disturbed the others. But at night, alone, she was free.

  She had more in common with the cat than the Cap’n these days. Sometimes that concerned her, sometimes it didn’t.

  Ashua was asleep below her, wrapped in a sleeping bag and tucked up in her little nest, a padded nook in the bulkhead. Jez could hear the sigh of her breath, the slow beating of her heart. Elsewhere, she heard the soft chink of Bess’s chainmail parts moving in the faint breeze from the Ketty Jay’s air circulation system. The golem was dormant and still, an empty suit standing in Crake’s makeshift sanctum at the back of the hold, hidden by a wall of crates and a tarpaulin curtain.

  There were other sounds too, sensed rather than heard. The mutter and babble of dreaming minds. The distant call of the Manes, a plaintive howl like a wolf-pack missing a member. Loudest were the thoughts of the pilots, labourers and customs officials who walked the docks outside. They came to her in a whispered susurrus, a confused mess of voices on the edge of understanding.

  She could listen to them, if she wanted, though it was frustratingly hard to make sense of what she heard. It came as stitched-together patches of nonsense, windows of clarity in a shifting haze. She made it a point never to consciously spy on the crew’s thoughts, but she couldn’t help overhearing some things. She knew the Cap’n’s concerns about her. She shared them herself.

  At least he thought it was only her uncanny hearing he had to worry about. If he knew the truth, he’d kick her off the Ketty Jay for sure.

  Frey had wondered how she knew so much about that Awakener freighter in the storm. Things that couldn’t possibly be accounted for by hearing alone. The truth was, she’d been listening to the mass of thoughts from the people it carried, gleaning titbits from the muddle.

  ‘. . should have told her when I. .’

  ‘. . emember to fill this up before. .’

  ‘. . is he now? What is he. .’

  ‘. . not my problem anyway, no matter what they. .’

  ‘. . feel sick. Been a month now since I’ve felt right. Should see a. .’

  She brought herself back to her body with an effort. It was perilously easy to lose herself in other people’s worries and desires. Too many minds nearby, even at night. During the day it was worse. In a crowd, it required constant concentration just to keep herself together. She felt that if she let go, she’d scatter like light, flying away in a thousand directions at once.

  I’m losing it, she told herself. Losing myself.

  Riss had warned her. The more she tested herself, the more she practised her newfound Mane abilities, the more like them she’d become. She’d accepted that. She’d chosen to change. But it was hard to let go of what she once was, what she’d always been. It was hard to let go of the world that surrounded her.

  She’d drifted into an unknown sea, with no shore to navigate by and no lights to guide her. She was becoming estranged from both her companions and herself, and getting closer to nobody. It frightened her.

  Then she saw Pelaru.

  The thought of him focused her mind. The voices from outside faded. She saw his face, clear as if he was standing there beside her on the walkway. His olive skin, the sculpted hauteur of his features, the curve of his mouth, the straight set of his shoulders.

  Beautiful.

  Beautiful, in a way that startled her. Beautiful like an infant saw beauty as it stared in wonder at the sunrise. Incomprehensible, overwhelming, penetrating to the core.

  What did it mean? What had she seen, when she saw the whispermonger?

  Jez had always been detached, even before that day in Yortland when the Manes came. She’d yearned to connect with others but never could. She had friends and family and partners, but the deep, passionate link that she craved in her adult life had always eluded her. Aspects of human relationships that other people seemed ready to kill and die for had never seemed that important to her.

  Once she’d slept with a man forty years older than her just to get the Cap’n’s neck out of a noose. Most people would have been appalled by the notion. For her, it was simply the most expedient way of getting something done. She hadn’t been defiled by the experience. She hadn’t felt much of anything about it.

  Maybe there was something wrong with her. Maybe she wanted to feel more than she had a right to, more than she was capable of. That was why she’d chosen the Manes, in the end. They promised togetherness, companionship, the kind of unity that was beyond anything she’d experienced before.

  But now this. Was this what the Cap’n felt when he thought of Trinica? This astonishing, stunned sense of wanting? Was she in love? And if that was so, was it too late to turn back from the path she’d chosen?

  Was it too late to choose to be human?

  Five

  The Ghost City — Reunions — Morben Kyne — An Island in a Sea of Ruin — Unwelcome Allies

  The city of Korrene lay at the feet of the Hookhollow mountains, on a stony hill that afforded a commanding view of the plains to the west. In the days before the Third Age of Aviation and mass-manufactured aircraft, it had been an important gateway for travellers and merchants making their perilous way up to Vardia’s vast Eastern Plateau.

  Those days were long gone.

  ‘Damn,’ said Frey, peering through the windglass of the Ketty Jay’s cockpit. He looked across at Ashua. ‘And I thought your city was a piece of shit.’

  Crake couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. Rabban, where Ashua grew up, had been bombed to rubble during the Aerium Wars and still hadn’t been adequately rebuilt. But the destruction in Korrene was of another order of magnitude altogether.

  The ancient city had been literally ripped apart. An enormous crooked chasm ran through the heart of it, separating the western third. Smaller cracks radiated outwards; the streets slumped into them. Broken stubs of towers jutted from the wreckage of palaces, shattered arches lay in pieces, winding lanes and terraces had folded and crumbled. The river that had run through the city was dry now, choked off by the cataclysm.

  Fifty years since the final quake. The city had endured many shocks over thousands of years, but this last one had been the end of it. The survivors left and never returned. Once the scavengers had picked it over, not even the pirates wanted to stay. It became a ghost city, a bitter reminder of the savage nature of the land they lived in.

  But the ghosts had been stirred up by the civil war, and the city wasn’t so empty any mor
e.

  ‘Somebody tell me why they’re fighting over that heap of bricks?’ Ashua asked. She was leaning against a bulkhead, hands in one of her many pockets. Her expression, as was usual, suggested she was deeply unimpressed by everything. A black tattoo swirled around her left eye, reaching over her cheek and onto her forehead. Rabban gang fashion, from a time when the borders of that smashed city were the limit of her world.

  When nobody answered her question, she looked at Pelaru, who was standing near the doorway. The cockpit was crowded, as it often was these days. Usually the Cap’n was easily annoyed by people pestering him while he was flying, but Crake got the sense that Frey didn’t like being alone with Jez. Nor did any of them, for that matter.

  ‘How about you?’ she asked the whispermonger. ‘Isn’t it your job to know everything?’

  Pelaru gave her a faint smile. ‘And if I gave it away for free, how would I eat?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’d eat just fine,’ said Frey, with the merest hint of sulkiness. ‘Fighters coming in.’

  There was a Navy frigate to the south of the city, hanging in the early evening sky. Several small shapes had detached from it and were approaching. They were hard to make out against the mountains, but since it was a Navy frigate, it was a safe bet they were Windblades.

  Frey touched his earcuff. ‘Nice and easy, Pinn. We’re all friends here, remember? Stay off the trigger.’

  Crake shifted uneasily and his gaze returned to the city. He didn’t like the idea of going down there, and not only because of his lifelong aversion to getting shot. It was something deeper than that, something that had been nagging him for weeks now.

  It wasn’t the idea of stealing from the Awakeners that bothered him. It was the aristocratic sense of honour that had been instilled in him by a stern and industrious father. There was a clear enemy here, a threat to the nation and his way of life. He felt he should be participating in this war rather than living off it.

  Besides, it was in his own interests to see the Awakeners defeated. They’d persecuted daemonists for more than a century and poisoned the populace against them, forcing them to practise the Art in secret or risk being lynched. If the Awakeners won, the persecution would only get worse.