The Ace of Skulls totkj-4

by Chris Wooding

  A faint note of caution sounded in the back of her mind. The secrets they’d learned in the Awakener base were dangerous material. They had to be handled carefully. She remembered what had happened with Jakeley Screed. The spy game could be a deadly one, and every player took a risk.

  They’d first approached her not long after Maddeus had kicked her out. Maybe it was just coincidence; maybe they knew she was in need. She’d never have agreed while she was still under his wing, but she was out on her own, and this was an opportunity.

  His name had been Dager Toyle. He was a Vard in the Free Trade Zone, a charismatic man in middle age, with the kind of manner that made everyone want to be on his side. He came to Ashua with an offer.

  We need your eyes and ears, he said. Anything you can tell us. Titbits. Everything helps, and the better you do, the more we’ll pay you.

  It sounded like a win-win situation for Ashua. Sounded like money for old rope. Little did she know.

  And so she began to spy on the Samarlans on the Thacians’ behalf.

  At first she was lazy about it. She knew the underground, and there were always rumours. Toyle was interested in anything. The Thacians, long-time enemies of the Samarlans, would be arrested on sight in the Free Trade Zone or anywhere else in Samarla. They had to keep an eye on their aggressive neighbours somehow. Ashua imagined they had dozens, hundreds of people like her in Shasiith, feeding them scraps.

  But the money wasn’t much, and Ashua wanted more. Motivated, she tried harder. She made friends with the untouchables, the lowest caste of Samarlan society, who were so insignificant to other Samarlans they were practically invisible. And invisible people made good spies. Soon Ashua was regularly providing Toyle with good information, and her pay increased accordingly.

  Eventually the good times ended. Eventually, Jakeley Screed turned up.

  She first heard it through another spy in Toyle’s network. He made contact with her, warned her that Toyle was dead and all his agents compromised. Ashua had warily agreed to a meeting, but he never arrived. She tracked him down, found him dead in his apartment. Frightened, she went into hiding, and while there she learned that the Sammies had employed a Vard spyhunter named Jakeley Screed. He was killing all of Toyle’s agents. It was only a matter of time before he got to her.

  But Frey got to her first.

  In the end, it was through her connections in the untouchables that she heard about the shipment which contained the Iron Jackal. She needed the money to hire protection or to escape, she wasn’t sure which. So she started gathering men for the job, but somehow a whispermonger found out and sold the news to Trinica Dracken. She sent Frey to find Ashua, which led her here. Strange how things worked out.

  Her finger hovered over the press-stud. She’d only ever dealt in small-scale secrets before. The news about the Awakeners was enormous. Big enough to topple governments, start wars, save or destroy hundreds of thousands of lives. She was afraid to let it loose.

  But it was like Malvery said. What they do with the information ain’t my business.

  She began to tap, and with each touch the light on the side of the cube flashed. When she stopped, it began to flash back.

  So the negotiations began.

  Slag had found a thing.

  He found it in the vents, behind one of the grilles that led out into the big world where the big creatures lived. How it got there, he didn’t know. It hadn’t been there before.

  He’d sensed it from some distance away, on his journey up from the depths where the rats scuttled and scampered. Like a discordant sound just on the edge of his hearing, unpleasant and nagging. Now he’d located it, the sensation was stronger. It was out of place, in some deep, instinctive way that he didn’t understand. And it needed investigating.

  He padded closer. The corpse of a rat dangled from his jaws. It was a feeble specimen, but quick, and it had given him more trouble than it should. Once, he’d have pinned it and broken its neck before it knew what was happening. But he’d been slow, his aching muscles responding a fraction too late, and he’d missed his pounce. Catching it had worn him out, and he still hadn’t fully recovered. Where was his energy?

  Every day he slept longer, moved more stiffly. Every day his strength diminished. He’d held off the depredations of age for a very long time, but he couldn’t hold them off for ever. Time was taking its toll, and the price was the heavier for avoiding it.

  But this wasn’t the day. Not today. Today, he could still fight, and run, and kill. Today, he was a warrior, as he had been every day since kittenhood.

  He dropped the rat to the floor of the vent, padded forward and sniffed at the curious object. It was a large grey metal casket. There were decorative grooves and etchings on its surface, but it was firmly closed. Slag had no idea of its purpose, but he understood that this object was only a container, and that whatever interested him was inside. He circled it warily, but after a thorough inspection, he was none the wiser as to how to get inside.

  A sound. In the gloom further down the vent, he saw the glitter of eyes. She was there, also drawn by the thing. She crouched at the sight of him, unsure whether to run or stay. Her eyes went to the dead rat lying on the floor between them. Calculating whether she could snatch it before he got to her.

  He moved towards her slowly, eyes narrowed: a sign of peace, a sign he meant her no harm. She backed off, confused, ready to bolt. He paused, let her relax, then moved forward again and gently picked up the rat in his jaws. Still she hovered, wavering on the edge of flight. She was hungry. She had the smell of it. A cat from outside, from beneath the sky, who didn’t know the ways of the iron warrens.

  He approached, moving closer still. She jerked back, halfway to fleeing; but she didn’t. He saw the fear in her. One more step and he’d lose her.

  He lowered his head and laid the rat on the floor. An offering. Then he retreated, backing away down the vent. He sat back on his haunches and watched her carefully.

  She sniffed at the rat. Took an exploratory step forward. Then, with a lunge, she snatched it up in her jaws and flurried away down the vent in a scrabble of claws.

  The scent of her lingered in the air after she was gone. Slag gazed down the empty shaft.

  No, this wasn’t the day. But soon.

  Jez awoke in her bunk, alone.

  Again, the loss. But this time it was so much sharper, so much deeper. There was no disorientation, no need to collect her thoughts. She remembered everything that had happened in the Awakener base. She’d chewed it over in the dark places of her unconscious. And she knew. Pelaru was a half-Mane; now she understood everything.

  She’d been tricked. Tricked by her feelings. She thought she’d fallen in love. At last, after a lifetime, she’d fallen in love.

  But it wasn’t love. Not in that way. It was something she’d brushed against in other times, something she’d yearned for but never dared to seize. The love of the Manes, the sense of connection, of integration, of truly knowing another being and being accepted by them. A companionship more intimate than any she’d felt as a human.

  No matter which way she turned, the Manes were there. Once she’d feared to become one. Later she thought she could exist as a human, with her Mane side held in abeyance. Later still she decided to explore it, drawn by the promise it held. Meeting Pelaru had been a reminder of what she’d give up if she left her humanity behind, the last moment when she might turn aside from her path.

  But she’d been fooling herself. She’d struggled and fought and agonised over the years, but since the day she was given the Invitation, her course had been decided.

  How could her heart possibly hurt this much? It was only a muscle, and it didn’t even work.

  She got up. She was muddy and blood-spattered and stank. It didn’t matter any more. Manes didn’t care for outer beauty.

  Once, she’d been a human cursed with being a Mane. Somewhere along the line, she’d become a Mane playing at being human.

  She slid o
pen the door to her quarters. There was nobody out in the corridor. She could hear them all over the Ketty Jay, and some of them outside. She caught snatches of their thoughts. Ashua was angry about something. The Cap’n was embarrassed and befuddled. The only one she couldn’t sense was Pelaru. But then, she’d never been able to hear his thoughts.

  She walked down the corridor to Crake’s quarters, where they’d put their Thacian passenger. She could hear his heartbeat inside. It was quickening: he was aware of her. She knocked on the door, and he opened it.

  Even knowing what she knew, it didn’t make a difference. The sight of him filled her. She’d thought it was his face that attracted her, his noble Thacian features, firm and beautiful like a hero from some ancient legend. But it wasn’t that. It was the kinship of daemons.

  ‘So you know,’ he said. He seemed sunken and diminished somehow.

  ‘Yes.’

  He stepped aside, and she went in.

  Crake’s quarters were more cluttered than hers, which had almost nothing in them at all. The upper bunk was a bookshelf, with tomes of daemonism secured in place with a cargo belt. She stood there awkwardly for a moment, acutely aware of her proximity to Pelaru. Then she sat down on the bunk, and Pelaru closed the door and sat down beside her.

  ‘How did it happen?’ she asked him.

  ‘I was in Yortland,’ he said. ‘It was in the early days, when I was making connections, when I had to go and meet people face to face. I had a meeting on a prothane rig off the north coast. It was my bad fortune that the mists came while I was there.’

  ‘But they didn’t take you.’

  ‘I refused them.’

  She watched him keenly. No, he wasn’t lying. ‘You refused the Invitation?’

  ‘As did you,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Only because the Mane was interrupted. If it hadn’t been. .’ Her eyes were far away. ‘I doubt I could have resisted.’

  A sour expression passed over his face. ‘I couldn’t resist them entirely. I’m still. . infected.’

  She was surprised at his tone. ‘You hate what they’ve done to you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘And I hate them.’

  ‘But you loved Osger.’

  ‘But it wasn’t love!’ he cried. ‘I thought it was, but then I met you, and I felt exactly the same! Don’t you understand? I thought I loved him, but they cheated me!’

  Jez’s head was hung. Straggles of hair had escaped her hairband and fallen across her face. ‘Oh, I understand perfectly,’ she said.

  ‘And yet. .’ Pelaru seemed to be struggling with his words now. ‘I know it’s not real, but I still feel it!’

  ‘It is real,’ said Jez quietly. ‘It’s just not what we thought it was.’

  Pelaru’s fists tightened, but he said nothing.

  ‘How is it that you can make me blind to you?’ Jez asked. ‘I can’t sense your mind the way I can with others.’

  ‘I don’t know how I do it. It’s different for everyone, I think,’ Pelaru said. ‘Every half-Mane is not the same. Osger couldn’t control it. He changed at the slightest provocation. I saw him slipping away from me, becoming more like them. He liked it.’

  ‘And you didn’t.’

  ‘I won’t give them that. I won’t give them an inch. They won’t have me.’ His hands were trembling. ‘But some things. . some things I can’t fight. And then the change will come.’

  ‘Imperators.’

  ‘There were two of them,’ he whispered. It was almost an apology.

  There was silence then, and she thought how strange it was to love the Manes and hate them at the same time.

  ‘We’re infected,’ he said. ‘It’s a disease. Every day you have to fight it. Every day. Or it will take you.’

  She stirred and raised her head. ‘What if you want to be taken?’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ He burst to his feet, sweeping an arm out angrily as if to dash her words away. ‘Osger would say that! Look at me! Do I fall into a coma after I change? Do I become wild and savage and lose my mind? No! Because I won’t submit to them, not even a little. Because I have it under control!’

  Do you? she thought. Is that even possible?

  He turned to her, an eager look on his face, and behind it something faintly desperate. ‘Maybe I could show you. I could teach you how to suppress it so nobody even notices you’re a half-Mane. I’ve seen how the others treat you. They flinch away; they can’t help themselves. You’ve lost control, that’s all! I could help you get it back!’

  For the first time she saw him, unclouded by thoughts of love. She felt something unfamiliar then. Pity. Pity for this poor, pathetic creature who denied what he was. So what if he’d been made this way against his will? It was done. You could only deny your nature for so long.

  ‘I don’t want to control it,’ she said.

  She met his eyes, and saw the shock there. He couldn’t believe what she was saying. But she’d never been more sure of anything. She got up, and walked past him, and went out of the room.

  The last promise that humanity had offered her had turned out to be a lie. This was not a human love, but the love of the Manes for one another. Out there were her kin, ever waiting, ever faithful. They wanted her to join them. And she couldn’t think of a single reason to resist them any longer.

  Twenty-Five

  A Rude Awakening — Wrath — The Gathering — Divided Loyalties — Silo Steps Up

  Frey dreamed he was in a metal box and someone was banging violently on the outside. Then he woke to find it was true.

  ‘Cap’n! Get up, you dozy sod!’ yelled Malvery, hammering at the door to his quarters. He jerked out of his bunk, tried to stand, and his feet went out from under him. He fell among the scattered luggage that covered the floor, bashing his elbow on the corner of his bed. He swore at the top of his lungs. Today was not starting well.

  He unlocked the door and pulled it open. Malvery was standing there, holding a shotgun, wearing the grubby union suit that he slept in and heavy boots on his feet. The sight of the doctor in his underwear confused Frey for a moment. Then he remembered that he was wearing long johns himself, and he realised Malvery must be just out of bed like he was.

  ‘They’ve found us!’ he cried. What little hair he had left was sticking everywhere, and his eyes were cracked with a hangover. ‘The Coalition’s here!’ And with that, he ran off up the corridor. He’d only done up one button on the arse-flap of the union suit. Frey saw something he never wanted to see again.

  He stood there and rubbed the back of his head dreamily. He’d taken a lot of Shine yesterday, and everything was just a little too hectic right now. The news took a moment to penetrate.

  When it did, his eyes flew open and he sprinted for the cockpit.

  The sound of thrusters grew all around him as he hurried to the front of the cockpit and stared up through the windglass. He swore again as he saw what was up there. A Tabington Wrath, a heavy fighter craft, about half the size of the Ketty Jay but with three times the armaments. It was a brick of dark metal, bulky and brutal. It kept its nose towards the Ketty Jay as it swung in to land, weapons trained. He wouldn’t get off the ground before they blew him to pieces. Nor would Malvery have time to get up in the autocannon cupola and swing it round.

  But he couldn’t just do nothing. Drave would string him up if he got hold of him. The lethargy that grief had brought on was swept away by the need to survive.

  Get outside. Fight if you have to. Flee if you can. But you can’t stay here.

  He ran the other way, met Silo coming up the corridor. The Murthian was dressed in engineer’s overalls. He slung a pistol to Frey without a word and they headed down into the hold.

  Someone had already opened the cargo ramp as they descended. An icy blast of wind flurried through and grey light seeped in. Jez was heading outside, rifle in hand; Malvery was on her heels. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, Bess went thumping past, eager to see what all the fuss was about.
r />   Frey caught sight of Ashua, who was hovering between going outside and staying put. She met his eye, looked away in disgust, and followed the others.

  Frey ran after her. He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have anything. He was simply swept along in the momentum. Small arms would be no good against a Tabington Wrath, but he was damned if he’d hide inside his aircraft either. He felt stupid and reckless. He was in the mood to shoot someone.

  They found Harkins and Pelaru outside. The chill hit him through his long johns and his bare feet sank into cold, wet earth. The grass was dewed with the morning. The crew had taken cover where they could find it: behind the Ketty Jay’s landing struts, behind the Firecrow, behind black volcanic rocks. Bess was stamping the ground; she’d been idle too long. The Wrath descended from a gloomy sky, coming in to land alongside them.

  ‘How’d they know we were here?’ Ashua cried over the roar of the engines.

  ‘Who cares?’ Frey shouted, though the question hadn’t been directed at him. ‘If they give us any shit, gun the bastards down!’

  Malvery looked at him in disbelief. ‘That’s Coalition troops up there!’ he said, pointing.

  ‘I’m not going quietly to the noose, Malvery,’ he called back.

  ‘Look!’ said Ashua.

  The electroheliograph on the Wrath was flashing. Frey made a hopeless attempt to figure it out before remembering that Jez was with them too.

  ‘Jez!’ he called.

  ‘I got it, Cap’n,’ she replied. ‘They don’t want to fight, Cap’n. They’re saying there’s no need for the weapons.’

  ‘We’ll decide that,’ said Frey.

  ‘Hold your fire till they’re down!’ Silo shouted. Frey felt a momentary surprise at hearing Silo give an order. Sometimes he had to remind himself that the Murthian was his first mate. It had only been a few months since he’d accepted the job, and Frey still wasn’t used to him being assertive.