The Ace of Skulls totkj-4

by Chris Wooding

  ‘I can’t explain it to you, Grayther,’ he murmured. ‘I just. . One day, I didn’t hate you any more. So I resolved to let you go. There had been enough suffering. Causing more wouldn’t undo a thing.’

  He’d never heard Condred speak this way before. Crake didn’t know what to say in return. Words seemed a pitiful tool for the purpose.

  ‘It was an accident. .’ he said, and then stopped because it sounded pathetic.

  ‘I know,’ said Condred. ‘Of course I knew. You adored her. We all did.’

  But Crake blundered on. If he didn’t get it out now, he feared he’d never get the chance. ‘It wasn’t. .’ he said. ‘It wasn’t me that did it, do you understand? There was a daemon in me. It was my fault, oh, spit, it was my fault but it wasn’t me in there, it wasn’t me that did that.’ He felt tears coming again. ‘I locked the door. I always locked the door. But maybe that time I didn’t. .’

  ‘You locked the door.’ Condred’s voice was weary, devoid of feeling. It was as if it had all been drained out of him. He was never an emotional man, at least not on the outside, and he must have cried all the tears he ever would over this. ‘I knew what you were doing down there.’

  Crake looked up at him in surprise. Condred snorted. ‘Living under my roof, spending all your time in my wine cellar, pretending you were working on some grand invention? You think I’d let you build some scientific contraption without my knowing about it? I feared you’d blow the house up. There was always a second key, Grayther. So when you were away, I went down there.’

  He sighed, and ran his hand over his forehead, pushing back his lifeless grey and white hair.

  ‘When I found out, I pitied you. Poor little brother with his wild ideas, never able to settle to business like I could, never able to find his place.’ He shifted position, sitting up against the echo chamber with a wince. ‘I thought daemonism was superstitious nonsense. I thought you’d grow out of it. But I was blind and careless, and one day I left the key out.’ He managed a small, bitter smile. ‘You remember how desperate Bess was to see your workshop? You told her you were making toys down there. Every so often you’d bring a toy from the city and tell her you made it. Well, she found that key. You locked the door, Grayther. It was my fault she got in.’

  His head hung, though whether from exhaustion or grief Crake couldn’t tell. He stared at Condred, numbed by the moment, processing all that he’d been told. If not for Condred, Bess would never have been down in the sanctum that night. If not for him, she’d be alive. And his brother blamed himself for that.

  ‘The Awakeners did this to me,’ said Condred, raising his head. ‘I remember the man in my bedroom, the fear of him, how it crushed me. And then nothing.’ His eyes narrowed in concentration. ‘He was carrying something. . He held it out towards me. .’ Then he shook his head. The memory was gone.

  ‘Some thralled object, no doubt,’ said Crake, his voice firmer now they were on safer ground. ‘Perhaps a ring or a bracelet or a band. It contained the daemon that kept you unconscious. He put it on you after you were subdued, and the daemon passed into you.’ His voice became grave. ‘Others have fallen to this sickness. I’ll wager all of them are the sons and daughters of aristocrats who refused to bend the knee to the Awakener cause.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Condred. ‘I wonder if Father would have received some message eventually. Promising my recovery if he would lend his resources and support.’

  Crake thought back on his conversation with his father. ‘Perhaps he already did,’ he said.

  There was silence between them at that.

  ‘They want the rural areas,’ said Condred at last. ‘That’s where they’re strongest. They’ll get the country folk on their side, trap the Coalition in the cities, cut off their supplies.’

  Crake was about to agree, but then he heard a faint sound from outside the cellar. A sound that had become familiar to him over these past years. He scrambled to his feet as he heard another, and another and another.

  Condred pricked up his ears. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Gunfire,’ said Crake. ‘It’s gunfire!’

  Nineteen

  A Conversation — The Prize — The Mouth of the Allsoul — Frey Sees the Future — No Escape

  ‘Somebody’s coming!’

  Jez’s hissed warning sent them scampering back down the corridor and through a side door. Beyond was a small infirmary, shiny and sterile in a way that Malvery’s never was. They crowded inside. Frey left the door open a crack and pressed his eye to it.

  Voices were approaching. Two men in conversation.

  ‘Then what’s the effective range?’

  ‘Ten kloms.’

  ‘Theoretically.’

  ‘Based on the Sammies’ measurements of an identical device.’

  ‘So, not actually tested at all, then.’

  The voices were louder now, and Frey heard footsteps, walking fast and with purpose. He glanced round the room to check on his crew. Ashua was close to the door, listening, with Pinn crowding in to hear as well. Jez waited in that feral stance of hers that meant she was ready to pounce. Pelaru stood there fearlessly, arms folded; he even made a Sentinel’s cassock look good, damn him. Malvery was pilfering suppies from the medicine cabinet.

  ‘You know what we’re up against,’ said the first voice. ‘They want it kept secret. How are we meant to test its parameters when this place has become a refugee camp for every Awakener in Vardia? We needed more time.’

  ‘We get one chance at this, that’s all I’m saying. It’s our necks if we’re wrong.’

  Frey saw them now, as they passed the door and continued down the corridor. Two middle-aged men, one balding and with spectacles, the other with unkempt hair and an untidy beard. They were wearing the standard issue Awakener cassocks, but unusually their cassocks were brown. Frey didn’t understand the significance of that. He wished Crake were there to shed light on the subject; he didn’t want to ask Pelaru.

  ‘Effective radius is ten kloms,’ said the balding one. ‘That’s all you need to say. Now tidy yourself up. They’ll hang you if you present yourself to the Lord High Cryptographer like that. Where’s your respect?’

  ‘Respect? I’m in it for the science. For the chance to work with something no one’s ever seen before. You know I don’t believe that Awakener nonsense.’

  ‘When you see him, you will,’ said the balding man, and with that they passed out of hearing.

  ‘Sounds like something we should be investigating, Cap’n,’ Ashua suggested.

  ‘That it does,’ Frey agreed.

  Once the coast was clear, they sallied out and headed in the direction the men had come from. The interior of the building had an industrial feel to it, with steel floors and sterile grey walls. This wasn’t a place meant to impress somebody, it was a place where you got things done. The question was: what?

  He covered his ear and listened to the earcuff again, but the signals were frustrating. Occasional garbled voices came in faint snatches, and none of it understandable. He heard Trinica’s voice once in a while, and she sounded relaxed and calm. That made him feel a little better. Probably they were all making nice, the Awakeners buttering up the captains with promises in order to secure their aircraft. But Frey wanted to know for sure; he wanted to know exactly what they were saying. This damned interference, though — he’d never heard anything like it.

  Thanks to Jez’s uncanny senses they’d managed to avoid bumping into anyone in the corridors so far, but Frey wasn’t sure how much longer their luck would last. He was beginning to think that this whole idea was a bad one. He should have just taken a chance and trusted Trinica to tell him what she learned. But he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to look around the Awakeners’ base. He needed a card in his hand in case the Century Knights tracked him down, or someone stuck a bounty on him. The way events were going, it might be the only thing between him and the noose.

  There was a sliding metal door at the end of the corridor, of t
he kind they used on the Ketty Jay, except considerably cleaner. Jez listened at it, then nodded at Frey. He pulled it aside.

  Beyond was a small steel-walled room filled with a bewildering array of gauges, dials and instruments. A ledger lay open on a desk, full of scribbled calculations. Two half-empty coffee mugs stood cold next to it. Frey crossed the room, passing strange scientific devices of brass and glass. He could only guess at the purpose of half of them, and he didn’t care to. Behind the instruments was a window, and he went to that.

  ‘That’s what we’re looking for,’ he said.

  They were standing in an observation room, set high up on the side of a large circular chamber. Around the edges of the chamber were banks of instruments: cabinets that clanked and chattered, bellows that wheezed up and down, gyroscopes tilting this way and that. None of that interested Frey. The prize piece was in the centre, on a pedestal, surrounded by rods and sensors and rot knew what else.

  It was a tall cylinder, twice the height of a man, encased in a mass of pipes and protrusions that looked like they’d been carved from yellowed bone. Inside the cylinder, a bruise-coloured gas swirled, and little sparks of lightning flashed and flickered. At its four corners were squat, thick towers of some brass-like material that wasn’t quite brass. Their surfaces were trenched and pitted with what might have been language, or perhaps a form of subtle machinery.

  He’d seen its like before. It was Azryx technology.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Ashua, who’d come up to stand next to him. Its very presence seemed to dent the world around it. ‘Is that what’s messing up your, y’know?’ She flicked his earcuff, which Frey found deeply annoying.

  ‘Must be,’ said Frey, batting her hand away.

  ‘It’s not,’ said Jez from behind them. ‘Not that. Something else.’

  ‘There’s something else in this building weirder than that?’ said Pinn sceptically.

  Malvery had crowded in now. ‘That must be what the Sammies sold to the Awakeners,’ he muttered. ‘Whatever these buggers are up to, that’s the key to it down there.’

  Frey looked across at Pelaru. His eyes showed nothing as he gazed down at the machine. ‘Any ideas, whispermonger? Any titbits you want to share?’

  Pelaru’s eyes flicked to him disdainfully, then back to the Azryx device.

  ‘Alright then. I’m gonna take a closer look. Doc, you wanna come?’

  ‘Bloody right I do,’ Malvery said.

  Frey took off his earcuff and tossed it to Ashua. ‘Keep hold of that, will you? I can’t handle conversation in my ear when I’m being sneaky. Everyone else, stay here. If those scientists come back, well. .’ He made a vague motion in the air. ‘You can handle a couple of scientists, can’t you?’

  There was a hatch in the floor in the corner of the room. It was open, and they saw a metal ladder leading down into the chamber, secured against the outer wall. They descended and stepped out from among the banks of machinery, peering around warily as if someone might be hidden in here, waiting to catch them. There was a large door to the chamber, big enough to drive a vehicle through, but it was securely closed and there was no one else in sight.

  Once they’d established that they were safe, they approached the Azryx machine. The coloured gas in the cylinder was hard on the eyes; it became disorientating if stared at too long. Parts of the device hinted at familiar technology, but that only made the rest stranger by contrast. Frey had seen the preserved bodies of the Azryx, and knew them to be human, but they seemed unfathomably alien nonetheless. Their works awed him a little. After seeing a Juggernaut in action, it was hard not to be afraid of what they could do.

  ‘Buggered if I know what it is,’ Malvery declared, after a cursory inspection. ‘We ought to smash it or something.’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Frey. ‘Remember what happened last time we tried to smash up a piece of Azryx tech? Wiped out everything within a dozen kloms.’

  Malvery waited for his point.

  ‘We’re within a dozen kloms,’ Frey elaborated, measuring the distance from Malvery to the machine with his arms.

  ‘Never thought I’d hear you arguing against wanton property destruction, Cap’n,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Old age has mellowed me,’ said Frey. It was good to hear a bit of banter from Malvery again. His mood had improved considerably since Frey had decided to infiltrate the Awakener base. Frey gave himself a mental pat on the back for his excellent crew-handling skills, then remembered Jez and Crake and stopped patting.

  Malvery resumed his study of the device. ‘You think the Sammies gave ’em an instruction manual with this thing?’ he asked.

  Frey scanned the room, searching for something that might shed light on its purpose. Habit made him check on his crew, and he glanced up at the window of the observation room. Jez was waving at him frantically. He wondered what on earth she was doing. When he twigged, alarm bells went off all over his body.

  ‘Doc!’ he snapped, racing towards a bank of machinery at the edge of the chamber. Malvery huffed after him, and the two of them hid amid the clicking cabinets and whirling gyroscopes. Not a moment too soon: the door to the chamber hissed and slid upwards, and four Awakeners trooped in.

  They were unlike any that Frey had ever seen. They didn’t wear the traditional cassocks of their order, but red hooded cloaks emblazoned with the Cipher, and fitted silver armour as exquisite as a Century Knight’s. Their rifles were polished and top of the line, and their faces were covered with red silk masks below their eyes. On their foreheads were more Ciphers, tattoos displaying their faith.

  Frey didn’t need Crake to guess what they were. The Lord High Cryptographer’s honour guard. The supreme leader of the Awakeners was about to make his entrance.

  A half-dozen Sentinels followed, along with a red-cassocked Interpreter and the two scientists they’d observed earler. With them came a tall hooded lady in black and red walking at the side of the Lord High Cryptographer himself.

  It wasn’t hard to pick him out. The Awakeners dressed in an austere fashion as a rule, but not their leader. He was draped in white and gold, swathed in fine fabrics, and though he was small and bent with age he seemed to shine in the dim light of the chamber. An embroidered red mantle hung about his shoulders, and he wore a great golden collar that made his head seem tiny in comparison. That head was covered with a skin-tight white fabric mask that concealed the face totally, and across his eyes was a strange grilled visor that wrapped from ear to ear, giving him a disconcertingly mechanical look.

  ‘That’s the bastard behind it all,’ whispered Malvery, clenching a fist. ‘Just give me ten minutes alone with that decrepit son of a bitch. I’ll kick his arse to dust.’

  ‘Easy, mate,’ said Frey. ‘Lot of firepower in here. I plan to be around to see the good guys win.’

  All eyes were on the Lord High Cryptographer as he shuffled into the room. There was something fascinating about that strange, anonymous figure. An aura, for want of a better word. He felt somehow precious and fragile. Frey wanted to protect him, and didn’t know why.

  The Lord High Cryptographer whispered to the hooded lady, who bowed down to hear him.

  ‘The Lord High Cryptographer asks if all is in readiness,’ she announced in a ringing voice.

  ‘Everything is ready,’ said the balding scientist, with a warning glance at his companion. ‘The device has been thoroughly tested.’

  The Lord High Cryptographer whispered again and the hooded woman spoke. ‘The Mouth of the Allsoul demands to know how quickly his great weapon can be deployed.’

  ‘We can have it aboard an aircraft within an hour, Honoured One,’ said the Interpreter, a tall narrow man with slicked-back black hair. ‘It can be anywhere in Vardia in two days.’

  The Lord High Cryptographer conferred with his aide again. Frey felt a powerful desire to hear the old man’s voice. He could see why some people fell for the teachings: the Lord High Cryptographer commanded the room without even showing his face. Even the sc
eptical scientist with the beard gazed at him with a sort of bewildered wonder in his eyes.

  ‘The Lord High Cryptographer advises you that the time is very near,’ the aide announced. ‘Our triumphant assault will soon begin, and it will fall like a hammer blow upon the enemy. The Lord High Cryptographer himself will accompany the fleet in his flagship, such is his belief in our victory. By the Allsoul’s will, we shall prevail over those who seek to silence us.’

  ‘As the Code dictates,’ some of the assembled muttered.

  Frey exchanged a glance with Malvery. Normally he rolled his eyes at the pompous overblown language that boring people used to sound important, but this talk of hammer blows and triumphant assaults worried him. It sounded like the Awakeners were planning something big, and soon.

  ‘The Lord High Cryptographer may rest assured,’ said the Interpreter, ‘the device will work as our Samarlan allies have promised. Our enemies’ weapons will jam, their lights will fail, and they will fall from the skies.’

  Frey felt his heart turn to ice. He knew exactly what the Azryx machine did now. He’d experienced its power in the Samarlan desert, when an identical device had disabled the Ketty Jay and brought her crashing down. That one was destroyed when the Azryx city was obliterated, but there must have been others. The Samarlans had got hold of one, and they’d sold it to the Awakeners.

  He saw in his mind’s eye what would happen if that device was activated in the middle of a fleet. Frigates, fighters, gunships, spiralling out of control or diving unstoppably earthward as their aerium tanks vented. Those that didn’t crash would just hang in the air, sitting ducks for the enemy guns.

  Hundreds of aircraft. Thousands of lives. Rot and damnation, it would be a massacre.

  He’d been content to drift through the civil war and let it work itself out without much help from him, safe in the knowledge that the Coalition could handle itself. But matters had become a whole lot more urgent all of a sudden. He’d never really thought the Awakeners might actually win.