Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls (52 page)

‘We had a deal,’ said Frey. ‘I help you get the Imperators. You give me what I need to help Trinica. I kept my part of the bargain. Now you want to change the deal?’ His gaze fell stonily on Crake. ‘I need to get to her. And I need your help to get the daemon out of her. You gonna leave me to do it on my own?’

Crake swallowed. He let the daemonist squirm for a moment. ‘Cap’n—’ Crake said, but Frey held up his hand. He didn’t want to hear whatever mealy-mouthed bullshit Crake had in store to make himself feel better about betrayal.

‘Do any of you understand?’ he said, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. ‘The woman I—’ He lost the word; it came out as a breath. He screwed his face into a grimace, determined to express the depth of what he felt. ‘The woman I
love
is out there somewhere. Might be she’s dead and something’s walking round in her skin. Might be they’ve cut out her tongue by now.’ He felt frustrated tears prick at his eyes. They stood there, but didn’t fall. ‘Might be she’s trapped in there with it, trapped in some . . . some
torment
I can’t even begin to imagi—’ His voice failed him again. He took a hard breath, let it hiss out through his teeth. ‘Do
any
of you get that?’

There was silence. They knew better than to pretend they did.

‘Cap’n,’ said Silo at last, his deep voice calm. ‘Whole Awakener fleet gonna be at Thesk tomorrow. Trinica gonna be with ’em, ain’t she? Strikes me that whatever way you wanna go, it’s all the same direction.’

Frey shut his eyes, trying to keep a lid on the emotions boiling up inside him. He hadn’t considered that. He wasn’t thinking straight.

‘We need to do this, Frey,’ said Crake. ‘The whole civil war might rest on what we do right here and right now. If we don’t give it our absolute best shot, we might be handing Vardia to the daemons tomorrow. We
have
to.’

Frey barely heard him. Why couldn’t they all just bloody well leave him alone?

‘You got a plan for how you’re gonna get to her?’ said Samandra, more gently than before.

Frey opened his eyes and looked up. ‘What?’

‘Y’know,’ she said. ‘How you’re gonna get past the Awakeners, and then past her crew. How you’re gonna subdue her or whatever. And then how you’re gonna get her back to a sanctum where Grayther can do his stuff?’ She turned to Crake. ‘If it works, I mean. You didn’t seem too confident about it before.’

Grayther didn’t say anything, but his face said enough.

‘No,’ said Frey. All the anger had drained from him and now he was weary, so very weary. ‘I thought I could lure her out, maybe . . .’

He trailed off lamely. Lure her? She probably didn’t even know him any more. Yes, Crake might cobble together some daemonic device so he could tackle her, but his chances of even getting close were appallingly slender. He had no idea how to subdue her, for she wouldn’t come willingly, and he could never smuggle her out past her crew. His only chance was getting her alone, and he couldn’t see any way that could be done. The old Trinica he knew how to manipulate; but there was no telling what now walked in her place.

There was pity in Crake’s eyes, and that was what crushed him. He saw his delusion mirrored on his friend’s face. Suddenly it all seemed so absurd, so pointless, so pathetic. Love had made him wretched and desperate. But it was time to face the truth.

Trinica was gone, or beyond his reach. Jez was a blackened corpse in the infirmary. These things were irretrievable. And here he was among all these people, and all of them wanted something from him, leadership or sacrifice, decisions too important to delay. He felt crowded, panicked, suffocated . . . but most of all, he felt bone tired. And with that tiredness came a kind of bitter peace, an acceptance that turned the storms inside him to calm: the bleak cold calm of a stony desert.

Let the world do with him as it would. He didn’t care.

He stood up slowly. There was a great weakness on him. His chair scraped against the floor as he pushed it back.

‘Let’s go to Thesk,’ he said, and walked over to the ladder that would take him up and out of the mess.

‘Cap’n,’ said Crake. ‘What are we going to do when we get there?’

Frey paused with one hand on a rung. He didn’t look back. ‘We’re going to surrender,’ he said.

Ashua was first out of the mess after Frey. She hurried down into the hold, her boots echoing in the silence, and had her hand on the lever of the cargo ramp before sense caught up with her.

What are you gonna do, Ashua? Where are you gonna go?

Well, there was the mansion. She wouldn’t freeze to death, at least, although it’d be cold with the generator out. The staff had aircraft to put them in touch with civilisation. No doubt they’d be flying out as soon as the blizzard cleared, to summon help. Maybe she could hitch a ride. Maybe she could steal one.

And go where?

She closed her eyes, squeezed them shut against the fear. She wanted to run. She wanted to run so badly. To remain on the
Ketty Jay
meant going to Thesk, to seek forgiveness for something she hadn’t even done. Presenting herself for the judgement of the rich and powerful so they could decide whether she was worthy to continue living.

This wasn’t her way. Damn it, this wasn’t even the
Cap’n’s
way. If Frey hadn’t been so broken down he’d have told them where to stick their absolution. Since when did they bow to anyone? Wasn’t the whole point of being a freebooter to be free?

But Crake, oh, Crake with his bloody trust in authority. And Malvery too, and Harkins. She knew what they would have said, if they’d been there. The idiocy of patriotism enraged her. She had to get out.

Now her heart was fluttering, and she trembled. She couldn’t breathe easily. Panic had her by the throat. She gritted her teeth and fought to pull herself back from the brink.

Easy
, she said to herself.
What’s wrong with you?

But she knew what was wrong. She’d seen it before in the slums. After a kid made his first kill, or after someone had walked out of a fight unscathed that left everyone else dead. She was shaken up badly. The adrenaline of the battle had drained away, and now the shock was setting in.

She took her hand away from the lever. There were no solutions out there. Just white emptiness and cold.

Ocken!
she thought suddenly.
Bargo Ocken! Than man owes you enough to set you up for a long time!

The thought of him drove her to her sleeping-nook, where she’d hidden the communication device under her blankets, between the pipes. She let the fabric curtain fall behind her. Once closed in, she felt a little safer. She dug out the device and turned it over in her hands. A small brass cube, with a button on one face and a small glass light on another.

Get off this craft right now. Get in touch with Ocken. Take your payoff.

An ascending hum sounded from all around her, making the pipes vibrate. The engines were warming. The Cap’n was preparing for take-off.

Beyond the curtain of her nook, she heard footsteps as several people made their way down into the hold. Voices came to her, getting louder as they neared the bottom of the metal stairs.

‘What about you? Are you coming with us?’ said Crake.

‘No, no, I don’t think so.’ She recognised the high, nervous tones of the politician, Plome. ‘Can’t see what help I’d be, to be honest. I shall stay here with the staff and see to things. They’re not happy about being locked up like that. And someone needs to explain to the Tarlocks what happened to their property. Not a job I relish, I tell you that!’

Bullshit
, thought Ashua, who distrusted politicians of any kind.
You
just don’t want to be in Thesk when the fleet arrives tomorrow. Well, you might be a weasel, but you’ve got some sense at least.

She should go. Nothing was stopping her. Nothing but herself.

Ashua thought of herself as a loner, but as far back as she could remember, she’d never been alone. A child couldn’t survive on the streets of Rabban without help. Her earliest memories were peopled by benefactors and guardians. Adults who took pity on her, older children who fed and protected her, kids her own age who provided strength in numbers. Later there was Maddeus, father figure and employer both. Though she prowled the streets, tough as an alley-cat, she always had a home to go back to after he took her in.

And even when Maddeus sent her away, she had Shasiith, a city full of contacts and acquaintances to support her. When Shasiith had gone bad, when Jakeley Screed came after her and the Sammies were out for her blood, she’d jumped on board the
Ketty Jay
and found her support there.

But now there was nowhere left to go. And she found that she didn’t want to leave anyway.

Her life had been filled with companions of necessity, her friendships more like alliances, easily broken when the need arose. Even Maddeus, distant intellectual Maddeus, had put her aside when it suited him. But in her time on the
Ketty Jay
she’d found people she liked and, more importantly, whom she trusted: Malvery, Crake, even the Cap’n when he wasn’t being an arsewit. She respected Silo and was even sort of fond of Harkins. And Bess, well . . . she couldn’t deny a certain affection for the golem, too. She’d always secretly wanted a pet.

She knew them now, and she’d seen how they were with one another. For all their bickering, they looked after each other, and the Cap’n looked after them. And she was part of that now. Maybe not as much as the others, but still. They wouldn’t drop her if things got tough. If she needed help, they’d give it. She believed that, and it touched her. She’d never had that in her life before.

Walking out now felt like a betrayal. She could face the Cap’n, maybe, but not Crake and certainly not Malvery. She’d have to slip away, and would hurt them worse by doing so.

She didn’t want to do that. But she didn’t want to die, either. The war was coming to Thesk, and they were heading right to its heart. Even if they weren’t treated as traitors, they’d be caught up in the fight. And this one would make the battle she’d just been through seem like a street-corner spat between children.

But it was that, or be alone.

The hydraulics kicked in with a thump, and the cargo ramp opened. A swirl of cold air stirred the curtain. It was bitter out there, but warm in her nook. The pipes radiated a drowsy heat, and she was protected in her hollow.

‘Are you sure you can straighten things out with Drave and the Archduke?’ Crake was saying as they walked down the ramp.

‘Drave’s a tough nut, but he ain’t stupid. He’ll listen to us,’ said another voice: Samandra Bree. So the other footsteps must have been the other two Century Knights. ‘ ’Sides, honey, if he don’t, there ain’t gonna be much left worth survivin’ for anyway.’

‘That’s a good point,’ said Crake. ‘I never thought of that.’

‘Optimism,’ said Samandra. ‘Keeps me young.’

Their voices faded. When the ramp began to raise, she almost bolted. But she balled up a blanket in her fist and gripped it hard, willing herself not to move. Finally the ramp closed with a boom that echoed through the hold.

She relaxed her hand. So it was done. She’d made her choice. She’d passed through a gate, and it had shut behind her. She felt better for it.

She looked at the device in her hand. Leaving or not, she still had a job to do. If the Awakeners were heading for Thesk, then the Thacians needed to know. Pelaru might have already told his people about the Awakeners’ secret weapon, but even if he had, he hadn’t known when or where the strike would come. Perhaps Ocken could get the message to someone who could help. Perhaps the Thacians could make the Archduke listen to Frey’s warnings. Vardia and Thace had been allies for a long time, united against Samarlan aggression. Thace wouldn’t want to see Vardia fall to the Awakeners and end up an ally of Samarla. That would make their neighbours twice as dangerous.

So she’d send the message. She’d do what she could for the good of the country. And after that, she was going to find Malvery, and she was going to get really, really drunk.

The engine room had always been Silo’s domain, and he went there once the
Ketty Jay
was airborne, to escape the prevailing mood. Here he could lose himself in the noise and heat, disappear among the walkways and pipes. Silo was a man comfortable with his own company, and right now he wanted no one else’s.

Jez’s death had hit them all hard. There was a sense of shock among the crew, but no time to grieve or heal. That was bad. Silo had seen his fair share of grief; he knew the kind of things it might make a man do, if he didn’t get it out. But there’d be no quarter yet. They’d been caught in a whirlpool for a long time now, since way back in the days of Retribution Falls. Now they were nearing the centre. It was down to them whether they’d be swallowed or spat back out.

Well, what gonna come, gonna come,
he thought.
Too late to pull out now.

Each of the crew were dealing with the tragedy in their own way. Crake had thrown himself into his work. He was on the Wrath with Kyne, in the Century Knight’s sanctum, using the readings they’d taken from the Imperator to knock up some countermeasures as best they could. And maybe when he was done, if there was time, he’d find solace in the Samandra’s arms.

Harkins was flying the Firecrow. That was where he was happiest. Malvery was drinking, and Ashua was drinking with him for company. She didn’t feel it like the others did, but she was there for the doc, and that was good. Malvery was the kind of man who needed to talk it out.

They’d survive. They’d get through. Silo had sorrow of his own, but his was more measured. Life as a slave, and later as a resistance fighter, had inured him somewhat to the pain of loss. Death was part of Murthian life, always at their shoulder. He’d honour his friend when the moment was right.

It was Frey that worried him. The Cap’n hadn’t been all there since he came out of the Awakeners’ base camp. This new blow might have been too much. He always was a self-destructive sort, but he’d always been defiant. Silo didn’t like what he saw in the Cap’n’s eyes at the mess table. It reminded him of people he’d known in the slave camps. The ones who’d been pushed too far, who’d lost too much. The ones who gave up, lay down and died.