The Ace of Skulls totkj-4

by Chris Wooding

  Well, damn what he thinks. Damn what any of them think. We’re here now.

  By the time he left the Ketty Jay, he was geared up for the confrontation to come. Trinica had heard of his arrival and sought him out, but that didn’t mean she bore him any tender feeling. Likely she was ready for a fight, so he would be too. He couldn’t imagine what he’d say to her, and he knew it wouldn’t be easy, but it needed to be done.

  It was late afternoon when he emerged. The sun beat down and the air was thick and humid. Balomon Crund waited in the clearing next to a tiny shuttle that was only big enough for four people at most. He was a short, ugly man with a scarred neck and dark, thatchy hair that hadn’t seen soap in a couple of decades. He sneered at Frey as he arrived.

  ‘You took your time,’ he said. His expression conveyed what he thought of Frey’s rakishly unkempt attire.

  ‘You can’t rush perfection,’ said Frey breezily, and flicked an imaginary bit of lint off his shoulder. Crund rolled his eyes, climbed into the pilot’s seat and didn’t say another word.

  They took off and flew away over the grasping tangle of trees. Below, he caught glimpses of the clearings which made up the Awakener base, but even from close by they were well concealed amid the foliage. There were no large craft in the air and he could only see one other in the sky at all, which was a shuttle like the one he was riding in.

  Ahead of them a low wide island rose out of the swamp. Crund steered for it and put them down in a glade on its southern slope. Frey could see nobody about.

  ‘The Cap’n will meet you here,’ Crund said. ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’

  Frey got out. Crund pulled the door shut behind him and took off, leaving him behind.

  Frey was slightly disconcerted. He’d assumed he’d be taken to the Delirium Trigger to meet Trinica in her cabin. Instead he found himself in a pretty glade surrounded by lush green jungle. The grass sloped down towards the edge of a small lake which nosed out from beneath the trees, surrounded by rocks and rushes. Brightly coloured dragonflies hung in the air, and somewhere a chorus of frogs were burping away merrily to themselves.

  Well, Frey thought. At least it’s nice here.

  With nothing to do but wait, he wandered down towards the lakeside, looking for a suitable spot to perch. Halfway down he heard a familiar voice.

  ‘Darian Frey,’ she said.

  It was Trinica, but not the one he was expecting. This was not the dread pirate Trinica with the white face and the black eyes and the torn hair, like a sickened ghoul from some delirious hallucination. This was his Trinica, the Trinica of old. She was still wearing the black outfit and boots that she wore on the Delirium Trigger, but she’d removed her fearsome make-up. That blonde hair was still short but it was longer than he’d ever seen it.

  Just the sight of her locked up his senses and, for a moment, he simply stared.

  ‘Am I going to have to kill you to get you off my tail?’ she asked, as she walked out of the trees.

  ‘Uh. .’ said Darian. ‘Yeah, pretty much.’

  She was smiling. She’d come without her defences up, without the shield of make-up and artifice that she used to deceive everyone else. She’d come as he wanted her.

  Gradually, it dawned on him that he might not be in for a fight after all.

  ‘I can see that’s what it’s going to take,’ she said. She stopped in front of him, looked up into his face. ‘What happened to the layabout boy I used to know? The one who drove my father mad because he was always late on haulage runs?’

  ‘I’m still kind of a layabout,’ Frey said with a grin. ‘Wait, was this whole thing just some plan of yours to instil some ambition in me?’

  ‘Yes, Darian,’ she said, gently sarcastic. ‘Because the whole world revolves around you.’

  ‘Well, who else would it revolve around?’

  He wanted to touch her, but he didn’t dare. Just seeing her made his chest go light. The three months they’d been apart seemed an age; his search for her felt like an epic. And now here she was, and she actually seemed happy to see him. It was more than he could have hoped for.

  ‘You look beautiful this way,’ he said, because he had to. The thought was so strong that it wouldn’t be contained.

  It was clumsy, and he expected a rebuff, or at least a jibe. She gave none. ‘Well, I’d have dressed more appropriately, but I can’t be away for long,’ she said.

  ‘That outfit actually looks pretty good on you, without all that shit on your face,’ Frey said.

  She laughed. ‘You’ve a silver tongue, Darian. But your compliments need work.’

  She led him to a smooth rock at the edge of the lake. There they settled themselves and looked out across the water. The surface was busy with midges, glowing as they were caught in the glare of the sun. Brilliant motes of golden light appeared and disappeared in a frantic dance.

  They sat together in contented silence for a while. Frey was fine with that. He feared to break the spell that had brought her here, as if one wrong word would turn her into the chill ghost that had haunted him these past years. But to be so close to her and not to know her mind was hard for him, so in the end he had to speak.

  ‘How’s your war going?’ he asked.

  She stirred, almost surprised, as if his voice had brought her out of deep contemplation. ‘Well enough. Yours?’

  ‘Not so great. The Century Knights think I’m a traitor, I lost Crake, and Malvery’s going to mutiny as soon as his hangover clears.’

  ‘You lost Crake?’

  ‘Literally lost. We had an argument, he stormed off and I couldn’t find him before we had to bail out. He’s probably okay, though. Safer than he’d have been with me, at any rate.’ He thought of Prognosticator Garin, and wondered what would have happened if Crake had been on board. Frey’s hasty plan might well have got him hanged, and the rest of them too. Frey wasn’t the only person on the crew to have worked that out.

  But he wasn’t here, Frey told himself. Be grateful for that.

  Trinica sensed something of his thoughts. ‘It’s difficult to be a captain and a friend,’ she said. ‘Usually they want you to be one or the other.’

  Frey made a neutral noise. ‘It’ll be better now, anyway.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we found you. At least they can tell themselves that. Rot knows what would’ve happened if this had been a wild-goose chase.’

  ‘Ah, I see. It seems that neither of us are good for each other’s crews.’

  He opened his mouth to argue, but closed it again. She was right, of course. His single-minded pursuit of her was driving wedges between the crew, and Frey’s mere presence undermined Trinica’s authority among the cutthroats she led.

  Her crew knew her as a tyrant, a cruel goddess to be worshipped and obeyed, distant and untouchable. That was what she’d made herself; that was how she kept them in line. They were crude men who respected brute strength. They wouldn’t let themselves be led by a woman otherwise.

  But where Frey was concerned, she was not as ruthless as they demanded. Frey had killed many of her crew, and yet later they found themselves risking their lives to help him. Several of them had died on his behalf. That was what tore them apart the last time.

  Frey thought of the trip over here. ‘You trust your bosun to keep quiet to the crew?’ he asked. ‘I’d have thought he’d be the first to. . You know.’ He stabbed an imaginary knife in her back.

  She laughed. ‘You always were so eloquent,’ she said. ‘No, Crund is the only one whose loyalty I can be sure of. He has no desire to lead, and he’s done more to keep the crew in line than anyone. He knows the value of secrecy in these matters. But even he has never seen me like this.’ She waved a hand at herself, the woman beneath the mask. ‘I don’t trust him that far.’

  ‘I think the poor idiot’s kind of in love with you,’ Frey said confidingly.

  ‘Ah. Then he is a poor idiot indeed,’ said Trinica, but she gave Frey a knowing look that warmed him
.

  Well, she’d have to pretty blind if she hadn’t figured it out by now, he thought.

  ‘The Awakeners, though?’ Frey asked. ‘You’re working for them? I mean, didn’t you learn your lesson the first two times?’

  She laughed again. ‘I rather think it is they who haven’t learned their lesson. Duke Grephen was hanged, and Grist’s little treasure was lost for ever. I’m hardly their lucky charm. But they do pay so very well.’

  ‘You certainly know how to pick the wrong side.’

  ‘I’m confused. Aren’t we on the same side now?’

  Frey found a stone and skimmed it across the lake. ‘Yeah, well. Appearances can be deceptive.’

  ‘You plan to fight for the Coalition, then? You think they’ll take you now?’

  Frey threw up his hands. ‘I don’t want to be on any side. I didn’t even want to be part of this war!’

  ‘War has a way of making you part of it whether you like it or not,’ she said. She looked back out over the lake. ‘Darian, I. . shouldn’t have left you. Back in Gagriisk.’

  He felt something tighten in him at her sudden change of tone. It was the voice she’d used whenever they’d talked about their relationship in the past, and it had always inspired a certain amount of terror. Events of emotional importance were something he’d never be comfortable with, because you couldn’t just shoot an emotion if it all got a bit tricky.

  ‘After what happened. .’ she continued hesitantly. ‘The lives of those men who died on your behalf. . That was on my head, do you understand? What I felt for you, it killed those men. And it killed me.’ She turned to him, her eyes roaming his face. ‘But I turned my back on you, when I knew you were in mortal danger. And once I’d done that, I couldn’t take it back. I didn’t even know where you went after Gagriisk and you had. . what was it, a day? Two days to live?’

  Frey stayed silent, certain that if he spoke he’d spoil things somehow. Was she apologising to him? Of all the ways he’d envisaged this meeting, this had never occurred to him.

  ‘Then when I heard. .’ she said. ‘I heard you were in Vardia again, getting up to rot knows what, and. . Spit and blood, Darian, the relief I felt, it was. .’

  She stopped, gathered herself a moment. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her struggle like this.

  ‘I’m so very sorry,’ she said at last.

  Frey was aware that his shirt was sticking to his back in the swelter of the day. The chatter of the jungle seemed suddenly loud. He picked up another stone. It was a good, flat pebble. He turned it over in his hands, examining it, and thought for a long while before he spoke.

  ‘It’s weird,’ he said. ‘I never blamed you for that. Or if I did, I don’t remember. When you left me, I was. .’ He felt his tongue thickening, words coming harder. It was so difficult to avoid saying the wrong thing. ‘I mean, I was kind of a mess, and I hated that you were gone, and the whole situation felt. . I don’t know, unfair. But I never blamed you for not being there to help me. I can take care of myself.’

  He threw the stone out onto the water. It skipped three times before it sank.

  ‘Besides,’ he said. ‘The Iron Jackal? Kicked its puppy arse.’

  He’d meant it light-heartedly, but it brought to mind a horrible memory. As he’d prepared to strike the final blow the daemon had taken the form of Trinica, hoping to stay his hand with pity. But it had chosen the wrong Trinica, the dread pirate with the white face and black eyes. If it had been the image of the woman before him now, he probably wouldn’t have been able to drive his cutlass into her.

  She seemed grateful for his attempt to lift the mood. ‘Tell me what happened, then,’ she said. ‘After I left you.’

  And so he told her about the Iron Jackal and the Azryx city lost in the Samarlan desert. She was an amazed audience. After he described the Juggernaut they’d unleashed, he had to spend several minutes convincing her that he wasn’t just spinning a yarn. She was more sober when he told her how they discovered that the Samarlans were selling Azryx technology to the Awakeners. Incredible as that was, it was nothing to what he’d already told her.

  When he was done, she was thoughtful again. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I have something to show you.’

  She led him around the edge of the lake, and then headed off into the trees. Frey followed her as they made their way upslope along a narrow dirt trail. Under the leaf canopy it was stifling hot and thick with roots and creepers. Insects hummed loudly. Things that sounded uncomfortably large moved in the undergrowth.

  ‘It’s a relief, in a way,’ Trinica said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Well, for years there have been rumours that the Samarlans have struck aerium. They have huge resources to build aircraft but pitifully little aerium to keep them in the air.’

  ‘I gathered that, Trinica. We fought two wars about it, remember?’

  She gave him a gentle smile over her shoulder. ‘Darian, you know as well as I do that you’re fully capable of fighting in a war without having the faintest idea what it’s about.’

  Frey had to give her that. ‘Yeah,’ he said, and swatted a midge on his neck. ‘I suppose I don’t trouble myself with the big picture much, do I?’

  ‘Anyway, even with the smuggling through the Free Trade Zone, our most pessimistic estimates say that the Samarlans couldn’t keep a sizable fleet in the air for long. Not long enough to sustain a proper war, anyway. We were all worried that might change. But it’s Azryx technology they found, not aerium.’

  ‘And you think that’s better?’

  ‘It is if they don’t know how to use it.’

  ‘They made the whole city invisible!’ Frey protested. ‘They had some kind of interference field that made me crash the Ketty Jay!’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘The Azryx did that. It was probably on when they got there.’

  ‘Well, they must have dealt with it somehow. A guard told us they saw Sammie aircraft flying in and out every so often.’

  ‘That is troubling,’ said Trinica. ‘But the fact remains: if the Samarlans don’t have aerium, they can’t mount a full-scale invasion. So instead they’re helping the Awakeners.’

  ‘And when the Awakeners are in power, they’ll lift the embargo and sell aerium to the Sammies again.’

  ‘Exactly.’ She shrugged. ‘See? A relief. At least there won’t be a Third Aerium War.’

  ‘Yeah, that is a relief,’ said Frey. ‘We’ll just live in a country ruled by fanatics instead.’

  ‘It’ll be just like having the old kings back,’ Trinica quipped. ‘Ah, here we are.’

  They came out of the trees onto a narrow strip of clear land at the lip of a cliff that overlooked the southern flank of the island. Here, the ground was too stony for anything bigger than wild grasses to take root. Standing near the edge of the cliff was a triangular pillar roughly three metres high. It was covered in strange designs, and it appeared to have been fashioned from dull grey metal, now rusty and weathered with dirt and time.

  ‘That’s, er, unusual,’ said Frey.

  He went over to look at it more closely. The designs were hard to make out, and heavily stylised, but they seemed to be depicting events of some kind. In one, three people walked through a desert towards a mountain. In another, a grieving figure held a dying man, with other dead figures in the background. Near the bottom there was a panel that showed men labouring while robed figures watched them from a tower. There was writing amid the designs which looked vaguely familiar, but it wasn’t Vardic or Samarlan or any other alphabet he’d seen with any frequency.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘They call them watchpoles,’ said Trinica. ‘They were quite common on the south coast once, but many have been taken away for study, and many more have been broken or stolen. You can still find a few here and there, in remote places. The language is Old Isilian.’

  Now Frey knew why he recognised it. It bore a passing similarity to writing he’d seen in the A
zryx city.

  ‘Look on the south side,’ she said. ‘The one facing the cliff edge. For some reason they always built them with one side facing south. The other two sides show scenes of history or myth, but that one. . well, see for yourself.’

  Frey did. The flat side was mostly worn away below chest height, but he could make out the topmost shape. It showed a creature standing on all fours, facing outward, with fearsome eyes but a mouth in a perfect O.

  Then he realised. No, it wasn’t a mouth. It was supposed to be a tube. A cannon.

  ‘That’s a Juggernaut,’ he said. ‘That’s what it looked like.’

  Trinica was watching him closely, eyes bright with excitement. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure as I can be.’ Frey was recalling that monstrous beast, flesh and machine fused, striding over the city in its last moments, before it was consumed in a ball of silent lightning. He’d seen some strange things in his time, but not much stranger than that.

  ‘This pillar is about nine thousand years old,’ she said. ‘The people who made it were the first settlers in Vardia, as far as we know. They shared the legend of the Juggernaut with the early Samarlans. The Samarlans remember, but we have forgotten.’

  ‘Yeah. I remember you talking about it, back in Shasiith. The Nameless and all that, right?’

  ‘You did learn something, then,’ she said, with a smile to show she was teasing. He grinned at her. Damn, it was good to be with her when she was like this. Her moods were treacherous at times, but when she was happy, it felt perfect.

  He walked to the cliff edge and looked out across the island. His attention had been dominated by the pillar thus far, but now he saw something he hadn’t noticed at first. At the foot of the cliff, the island dropped away into a massive sinkhole, a gaping maw of rock, its edges shaggy with foliage. Anchored inside the sinkhole was the dark bulk of the Delirium Trigger.

  The sight of it dimmed the day a little. Wherever Trinica was, the Delirium Trigger wasn’t far away. He wondered how many craft the Awakeners had like it, tucked away in secret niches all over the delta.

  ‘The Samarlans see the Juggernauts as the gods’ punishment for their ungratefulness,’ Trinica said. ‘But these people,’ she touched the pillar reverently, ‘they see them differently. They believe that their civilisation was once poisoned, corrupt, oppressive. The Juggernauts set them free.’