The bartender was in his mid-fifties, with thick arms and a face weathered like bark. His head was shaved and his long red beard was gathered into a queue by iron rings. He only spoke in grunts, yet somehow he made it clear that Frey and his men were not welcome here. He’d rather have an empty bar. They ignored him and came anyway.
‘Why don’t you go home, Pinn?’ Crake asked. He was looking up at the rafters, where several arctic pigeons cooed softly to each other. He’d noted the lumpy white streaks among the dried-in bloodstains on the floor, and was covering his flagon of dark beer with his hand.
‘What?’ Pinn asked blearily.
‘I mean, what’s stopping you? You’ve got your own craft. You haven’t been named or identified. Why not go back to your sweetheart? ’
Frey didn’t even raise his head at the mutinous tone of the suggestion. Crake was just baiting Pinn. Those who even believed Pinn had a sweetheart - Malvery was of the opinion that he might have made her up - knew full well he’d never go back to her. In his mind, she waited to welcome him with open arms on the day he returned home swathed in glory; but he seemed to be the only one who didn’t realise that day would never come. Pinn was waiting for glory to happen to him, rather than seeking it out.
Lisinda was the heroic conclusion to his quest, the promise of home comforts after his great adventure. But what if she wasn’t there when he returned? What if she was holding another man’s child? Even in the dim clouds of Pinn’s mind, the possibility must have made itself known, and made him uneasy. He’d never risk the dream by threatening it with reality.
‘Not going back till I made my fortune,’ Pinn said, a note of resentment in his voice. ‘She deserves the best. Gonna go back . . .’ He raised his flagon and his voice at the same time, challenging anyone to defy him. ‘Gonna go back a rich man!’ He slumped again and sucked at his drink. ‘Till then, I’m stuck with you losers.’
An idea struck him. He stabbed a thick finger at Crake and said: ‘What about you, eh? Mister La-di-da, I-talk-so-cultured? Don’t you have a . . . a banquet to attend or something?’ He folded his arms and smirked, pleased at this cunning reversal.
‘Well unfortunately, in the process of saving all your lives at Old One-Eye’s, I let two of the Century Knights get a rather good look at me,’ Crake replied. ‘But it is something I’ve been meaning to bring up.’ He leaned forward on his elbows. ‘They know Jez’s name but they haven’t seen her. Kedmund Drave saw us all but he doesn’t have our names. As a group, we’re rather easy to identify. Apart, they’ll probably never catch us. They’ll only get Frey.’
Harkins looked uneasily around the table. Malvery shifted and cleared his throat. Frey didn’t react.
‘Now, I don’t know about all of you,’ Crake continued, ‘but I am not spending the rest of my life hiding in an icy wasteland. So what I want to know,’ he said, looking directly at Frey, ‘is what you intend to do next. Captain.’
There was a loud plop as something fell from the rafters and into Crake’s beer. Without taking his eyes from Frey, he pushed it away from him with his fingertips.
Frey was still staring at the article, but he wasn’t really seeing it. His mind was working furiously, struggling to puzzle out this crisis, getting nowhere. He’d spent a fortnight raking over the coals of recent events, searching for some buried truth, but there were simply no answers to be had.
It didn’t make any sense. Why him? If this was a set-up, why choose him? An obscure freebooter, his name all but unknown in pirate circles. Yet Quail had asked for him specifically. Quail, to whom he’d done no wrong.
Of course, maybe someone had used Quail to set him up, that was always a possibility. But who had he offended? To whom had he done such a grievous slight? It must be someone powerful, if they could orchestrate something serious enough to involve the Archduke’s personal elite. The Century Knights didn’t usually concern themselves with affairs unconnected to the Archduke.
Was it an accident? A million-to-one shot that destroyed that craft? No. Frey didn’t believe in million-to-one chances. He’d been set up. Someone rigged that freighter to blow, and they put him in position to take the blame.
At least one of the pilots in the escort craft was superb. Whoever arranged all this must have banked on someone living to tell the tale. Even if no one had escaped, they’d have pinned it on him somehow, he had no doubt. But this way they had a witness, presumably unconnected to the real brains behind the operation.
What was on board that freighter?
‘Frey?’ Crake prompted, snapping him out of his reverie. Frey’s head came up. ‘I asked what you intend to do now?’
Frey shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I see,’ said Crake, his voice dripping with scorn. ‘Well, let me know when you do. I’d be interested in finding out. If I’m still here.’ With that, he got up and left.
There was a long silence. The crew were not used to seeing Frey so beaten. It unsettled them.
‘What about New Vardia?’ Malvery suggested. ‘Fresh start. Unknown lands. Just the sort of thing for a bunch of lads in our position.’
‘No!’ Harkins cried, and they all looked at him. He went red. ‘I mean to say, umm, the Ketty Jay might make it - I say might - but the fighters, nuh-uh. The Storm Belt’s still too bad to the west, and they can’t carry enough fuel to go the other route. We’d have to leave the fighters behind and me, no way, I ain’t leaving that Firecrow, even if she does belong to the Cap’n. He leaves the Firecrow behind, I stay behind with her. Final.’
Frey was surprised at Harkins’ unusual assertiveness on the matter.
‘Retribution Falls,’ said Pinn. ‘That’s what my money’s on. Nobody’d find us in Retribution Falls.’
‘Nobody would find us because it’s impossible to find,’ explained Frey patiently. ‘Any ideas how we would find it?’
Pinn thought for a moment and came up blank. ‘Well, there’s got to be a way,’ he muttered. ‘You hear about all those pirates who’ve been there. You hear about Orkmund, don’t you?’
Frey sighed. Retribution Falls: the legendary hidden pirate town. A place safe from the dangers of the world, where you could fight and drink and screw to your heart’s content and the Navy could never touch you. It was said to be founded by the renowned pirate Orkmund, who mysteriously disappeared ten years ago and had never been reliably sighted since. Other famous pirates who were no longer around were often said to have retired to Retribution Falls. It made a more romantic story than a slow death by syphilis or alcoholism, or being murdered in the night by your own crew.
But that was all it was: a story. Orkmund was dead. The other pirates were dead. Retribution Falls was a myth.
Pinn saw that nobody was taking up his idea and began to sulk. Frey returned to the same obsessive thoughts that had been keeping him up at night.
New Vardia. Maybe he could go to New Vardia. Leave the fighters behind.
The idea wasn’t appealing. It was a long and dangerous journey to the other side of the world, and once there, there was nowhere to hide. A few small settlements. A frontier lifestyle, lived without luxuries. If his pursuers tracked him to New Vardia, he’d be easily caught.
He ticked off options in his head. Samarla? They wouldn’t last two days, and Silo would never go. Thace? They’d be caught and deported if they tried to stay. Thacians were very defensive of their little utopia. Kurg? Populated by monsters.
Of the countries this side of the Great Storm Belt, only Yortland provided a haven, and it was a cold and bitter one, entirely too close to Vardia. They couldn’t hide there for ever. Not with the Century Knights and Trinica Dracken on their tail.
His eyes fell to the broadsheet spread out on the table. Bitterness curdled in his guts. The sanctimonious tone of the writer, exulting in Frey’s imminent downfall, enraged him. The memory of Crake’s snide dismissal made him grit his teeth. The picture of himself smiling out from the page inspired a deep and intolerable hatred. Th
at they should use that picture. That one!
This was too much. He could take the vagaries of chance that robbed him at cards time and again. He could handle the knowledge that his best efforts at self-improvement were doomed to be thwarted by some indistinct, omnipotent force. He could live with the fact that he was captain of a crew who were only staying with him because they had nowhere else to go.
But to be so thoroughly stitched up, without any idea who was behind it or even what he’d done to deserve it? It was so tremendously, appallingly unfair that it made his blood boil.
‘I can’t run any more,’ he murmured.
‘What’d you say?’ asked Malvery.
He surged to his feet, knocking his flagon aside with the back of his hand, his voice rising to a shout. ‘I said I can’t run any more!’ He snatched up the broadsheet and flung it away, pointing after it. ‘There’s nowhere I can go that she won’t find me! She’ll never stop! Now I’m a man well accustomed to being shat on by fate, but everyone has their limits and I’ve bloody well reached mine!’
The others stared at him as if he was mad. But he wasn’t mad. Suddenly, he felt inspired, empowered, alive! Swept up in the excitement of a resolution, Frey thundered on.
‘I’m damned if I’m going to run halfway round the planet to get away from these people! I’m damned if I’m going to hang for a crime without even knowing what I’ve done! And I’m damned if I’m going to rot out the rest of my days in some icebound wasteland!’ He pounded his fist down on the table. ‘There is one person who might know who’s behind all this. That brass-eyed bastard who gave me the tip: Xandian Quail. We all know his kind never reveal their sources, but he made one big mistake. He left me nothing else to lose. So I’m gonna go back. I’m gonna head right back there even if the whole bloody country is looking for me and I’m gonna find out who did this! I’ll make them sorry they ever heard the name of Darian Frey!’ He thrust his fist in the air. ‘Who’s with me ?’
Malvery, Pinn and Harkins gaped at him. Silo watched him inscrutably. The bartender cleaned flagons. The only sound in the silence that followed was the squeak of cloth against pewter.
‘Oh, piss on you all,’ snapped Frey, then stormed off towards the door. ‘If you’re not on the Ketty Jay in half an hour I’ll leave you here to freeze.’
Eleven
Crake Mixes With The Common Man - A Bad Case Of Indigestion - Smoking Out The Enemy - Questions and Answers
On reflection, Crake had spent rather a lot of time in taverns lately. As a man who had once prized study and discipline it made him feel vaguely decadent. He was used to drawing rooms and social clubs, garden parties and soirees. During his university days he’d frequented fashionably seedy dives, but they were usually full of similarly educated folk eager for a taste of the low life. His drinking binges had always been disguised as evenings of intelligent debate. There was no threat of that with the crew of the Ketty Jay.
Nowadays, he simply drank to forget.
He sat at the bar, two mugs of the foul local grog before him. It was late afternoon in Marklin’s Reach, and a sharp winter sun cut low across the town. Dazzling beams shone through the dirty windows and into the gloomy, half-empty tavern. Slowly writhing smoke formed hypnotic patterns, unfurling in the light.
Crake checked his pocket watch and scanned the room. His new friend was late. He wondered if he’d overdone things last night by buying all the drinks. Maybe he’d laid on the flattery a bit thick. Tried too hard.
He thought they’d got on well, all things considered. He thought he’d done a good job bridging the vast gulf in intellect. Still, Crake was never sure with these simple types. He suspected they had a certain intuition. They sensed he wasn’t one of them.
But Rogin had seemed to take to him. He’d been happy to chat with anyone, as long as they were buying the drinks. At the end of the night, they agreed to meet up for a quick mug of grog the next day, before he went on duty. ‘It’ll help me ease into my shift, so to speak,’ he’d said. Crake had brayed enthusiastically and promised to have a drink waiting.
He scratched at his beard. He’d considered shaving it off, since the Century Knights would be looking for a blond-bearded man. But the others who were chasing him were looking for somebody clean-shaven, which was why he’d grown it in the first place. He feared the Shacklemore Agency just as much as the Century Knights, and so, all things being even, he decided the beard suited him and kept it. He thought it made him look pleasingly rugged.
He checked his pocket watch again. Where was that oaf? After all the effort he’d spent following the man home, tracking him to his local haunt and plying him with booze, Crake would be sorely annoyed if he got stood up now.
He was in a sombre mood. Memories of the past and doubts about the future flocked up to meet him. Was he doing the right thing, staying with the Ketty Jay? Wouldn’t he be better off cutting them loose, making his own way? After all, he didn’t exactly owe Frey a huge debt of loyalty after their run-in with Macarde.
But Frey had promised him they’d get to a big city as soon as it was safe. There, Crake could get the supplies he needed to practise his daemonism. He’d allowed himself to be placated by that. He could wait a little longer.
The need to practise the Art was nagging at him. After the accident, he’d imagined he’d never be tempted by it again. But he’d abandoned his studies out of fear, and that was a cowardly thing. Since university, his every spare moment had been secretly devoted to daemonism. It was the only thing that set him apart from the herd of over-educated, moneyed idiots that had surrounded him all his life. He thought himself better than that. He disdained them. He’d been brave enough to look into the unknown, to reach towards the arcane. He could do things that powerful men would marvel at. Shortly before they hanged him.
But no matter the dangers, he couldn’t give it up. To return to the grey unknowing, the humdrum day-to-day, was unimaginable. He’d tasted grief and despair and the highest terror, he’d made the most terrible mistakes and he bore a shame that no man should have to bear; but he’d stared into the fires of forbidden knowledge, and though he might look away for a moment, his gaze would always be drawn back.
You can start small. Start with the easy procedures. See how you go.
Besides, with only enough money to buy the most basic supplies - let alone pay for transport - he wasn’t in a good position to leave. At least on the Ketty Jay he was surrounded by people who asked no questions, people untrained in the aristocratic arts of vicious wit and backstabbing. He rather liked that about them, actually.
A disturbing notion occurred to him. Spit and blood, was it possible he was getting comfortable in their company? He took a swig from his mug to wash away the bad taste that left in his mouth, then choked as he realised the grog tasted even worse.
‘Went down the wrong pipe, eh?’ said a voice behind him, and he was pummelled on the back hard enough to break a rib.
Crake smiled weakly and wiped his tearing eyes as the man sat down next to him. Grubby and balding, with a lumpy nose and cheeks red with gin blossoms, Rogin wasn’t easy on the eye. Nor on the nose, for that matter. He had the sour and faintly cabbagey smell of a man accustomed to stewing in his own farts.
Crake made a heroic attempt to summon some manly gusto and slapped Rogin on the shoulder in greeting. ‘Good to see you, my friend,’ he said, with his best picture-pose grin. The low shafts of sunlight glinted on his gold tooth. ‘I got you a drink.’
Rogin picked up the mug provided for him - a mug Crake had laced with Malvery’s special concoction - and lifted it up so they could clink them together.
‘To your health!’ said Rogin, and downed his grog in one swallow.
‘Oh, no,’ murmured Crake, with a self-satisfied smirk. ‘To yours.’
The warmth drained from the air as the sun dipped beneath the horizon. Frost gathered on the churned mud of the thoroughfares, and the people of Marklin’s Reach retreated into their homes. A thin blue mist
of fumes hung near the ground, seeping from portable generators that hummed and clattered in the alleys behind the wooden shanties. Chains of electric bulbs brightened and dimmed as the power fluctuated.
Frey huddled in the mouth of an alleyway, concealed by a patch of shadow conveniently created when Pinn smashed the bulbs overhead. Silo and Jez stood with them. Crake and Harkins had been left back at the Ketty Jay, since both of them were a liability in a firefight. Harkins would be reduced to a dribbling wreck in seconds, and Crake was more likely to hit a friend than an enemy.
Xandian Quail’s house stood across the street, secure behind its high walls and its wrought-iron gate. Frey had been watching the two guards behind the gate for an hour now as they stamped back and forth, bundled up in jackets and hoods. He was cold and impatient, and was wondering whether Crake had put enough of Malvery’s concoction into Rogin’s drink.
Malvery himself loitered a little way away, near the wall but out of sight of the guards. A black doctor’s bag lay at his feet. His hands were thrust into his coat pockets and he looked as miserable as Frey felt. As Frey watched he leaned down, opened the bag and took a warming hit of medicinal alcohol from the bottle within.