Foxmuth was knocked out shortly afterwards, following a chancy call against Gremble’s Ace-Duke paired. Foxmuth’s last card failed to produce the hand he needed, and Gremble scooped up all his money.
Frey was only mildly disheartened. All his careful work in maintaining his lead had been undermined by the bad play of the other two. They’d given all their money to Gremble, making the two remaining players roughly even. He settled down to the task of demolishing his final opponent.
‘Just my luck,’ Foxmuth moaned. ‘The wife’s going to rip me a new arse when I come home. I wouldn’t have even been here if they’d had the parade today.’
Frey was only half-listening. He dealt the cards, three each, then picked up his. A thin chill of excitement ran through him. Three Priests.
‘Why didn’t they have the parade?’ Frey asked, making idle chatter to cover his anticipation.
‘Earl Hengar was supposed to be coming to see the Duke. Big parade and all. But with what’s happened . . . well, I suppose they thought it was in bad taste or something. Cancelled last-minute.’
‘I should think so. Bloody disgrace,’ muttered Gremble. He rapped the table to indicate that he didn’t wish to bet.
‘Bet,’ said Frey. ‘Two bits.’ He pushed the coins in. It was a high opening bid, but he knew Gremble’s style of play by now. Instead of being frightened off, Gremble would assume it was a bluff and match it. Which was exactly what he did.
Frey dealt four more cards to the middle, two for each player in the game. Two face up, two face down. The face-up cards were the Lady of Wings and the Priest of Skulls.
His heart jumped. If he could get that Priest, he’d have an almost unbeatable hand. But Gremble, to the left of the dealer, got to pick his card first from the four in the middle.
‘What’s a disgrace?’ he asked, trying to keep the conversation up. He wanted Gremble distracted.
‘About Hengar and that Sammie bitch.’
Frey gave him a blank look.
‘You don’t know? You been living in a cave or something?’
‘Close,’ said Frey.
‘It’s not been in the broadsheets,’ said Foxmuth. ‘They don’t dare print it. But everyone knows. It’s been all over this past week.’
‘I’ve been away,’ he said. ‘Yortland.’
‘Chilly up there,’ Gremble commented, taking the Lady of Wings as he did so. Frey thrilled at the sight.
‘Yeah,’ Frey agreed. The Priest was his. He made a show of deliberating whether to take one of the two face-down mystery cards or not. ‘So what’s the story with Hengar?’
Hengar, Earl of Thesk and the only child of the Archduke. Heir to the Nine Duchies of Vardia. It sounded like something Frey should be paying attention to, but he was concentrating on depriving this poor sap of all his coins. He picked up the Priest. Four Priests in his hand. If he played this right, the game would be his.
‘So there were all these rumours, right?’ Foxmuth said eagerly. ‘About Hengar and this Sammie princess or something.’
‘She wasn’t a princess, she was some other thing,’ Gremble interrupted, frowning as he looked at his hand.
‘Yeah, well, anyway,’ Foxmuth continued. ‘Hengar was having secret meetings with her.’
‘Political meetings?’
‘The other kind,’ Gremble muttered. ‘They was lovers. The heir to the Nine Duchies and a bloody Sammie! The family wanted it stopped, but he wouldn’t listen, so they was covering it all up. But this past week, well . . . All I can say is someone must’ve shot their mouth off.’
‘What’s so wrong with him seeing a Sammie?’ Frey asked.
‘Did you miss the wars or something?’ Gremble cried.
‘I wasn’t on the front line,’ said Frey. ‘First one, I was working as a cargo hauler. Never saw action. Second one, I was working for the Navy, supply drops and so on.’ He shut up before he said any more. He didn’t want to revisit those times. Rabby’s final scream as the cargo ramp closed still haunted him at night. He could never forget the awful, endless, slicing agony of a Dakkadian bayonet plunging into his belly. Just the thought made him sick with fury at the people who had sent him there to die. The Coalition Navy.
Gremble humphed, making it clear what he thought of Frey’s contribution. ‘I was infantry, both wars. I saw stuff you can’t imagine. And there are a lot of people out there like me. Curdles my guts to think of our Earl Hengar snuggling up to some pampered Sammie slut.’
‘So how did the news get out?’
‘Search me,’ growled Gremble. ‘But the Archduke ain’t happy about it, I bet. There’s already all them rumours about the Archduchess, how she’s secretly a daemonist and that. You know they say the Archduke has a regiment of golems helping guard his palace in Thesk? And that he’s planning to make more regiments to fight on our front lines?’
‘Didn’t know that,’ said Frey.
‘It’s what they say. They say the Archduchess is behind it. They say that’s why they’re doing all that stuff to undermine the Awakeners. Awakeners and daemonists hate each other.’
‘Yeah, I gathered,’ said Frey, thinking back to his earlier conversation with Crake.
‘And now there’s Hengar behaving like this . . .’ Gremble tutted. ‘You know, I always used to like him. He’s a big Rake player, you know that?’ He folded his arms and sucked his teeth. ‘But now? I don’t know what that family’s coming to.’
‘Speaking of Rake, are you gonna bet?’
‘Five bits!’ Gremble snapped.
‘Raise five more,’ Frey replied.
‘I bet all of it!’ said Gremble immediately, piling the rest of his money into the centre of the table. Then he sat back and looked at his cards with the air of someone wondering what he’d just done.
Frey considered for only a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said. Gremble went pale. He hadn’t expected that.
Frey laid down his cards with a smile. ‘Four Priests,’ he said. Gremble groaned. His own four cards were the Ace, Ten, Three of Wings and the Lady of Wings he’d just picked up. He was going for Wings Full, but even if he made it, he couldn’t beat Four Priests.
Unless Frey drew the Ace of Skulls.
The Ace of Skulls was the wild card. Usually it was worse than worthless, but in the right circumstances it could turn a game around. In most cases, if a player held it, it nullified all their cards and they lost the hand automatically. But if it could be made part of a high-scoring hand, Three Aces or a Run or Suits Full or higher, it made that hand unbeatable.
If Frey drew the Ace of Skulls, his Four Priests would be cancelled and he’d lose everything.
There were two cards left on the table, face down. Gremble reached out and turned one over. The Duke of Wings. He’d made his Wings Full, but it didn’t matter now. He sat back with a disgusted snort.
Frey reached out for his card, but there was a commotion behind him, and he turned around as a tavern-boy came clattering down the stairs.
‘Did you hear?’ he said urgently. Scrone jerked in his chair, startled halfway out of sleep, and then slipped back into unconsciousness.
‘Hear what, boy?’ demanded Foxmuth, rising.
‘There’s criers out in the streets. They’re saying why the parade got cancelled. It’s because of Hengar!’
‘There, what did I tell you?’ said Gremble, with a note of triumph in his voice. ‘They’re ashamed of what he’s done, and so they should be!’
‘No, it’s not that!’ said the boy. He was genuinely distressed. ‘Earl Hengar’s dead!’
‘But that’s . . . He’s bloody dead?’ Foxmuth sputtered.
‘He was on a freighter over the Hookhollows. There was some kind of accident, something went wrong with the engine, and . . .’ The boy looked bewildered and shocked. ‘It went down with all hands.’
‘When?’ asked Frey. The muscles of his neck had tightened. His skin had gone cold. But he hadn’t taken his eyes from that face-down card on the table.
&nb
sp; ‘Excuse me, sir?’
‘When did it happen?’
‘I don’t know, sir. They didn’t say.’
‘What kind of damn fool question is that?’ Gremble raged. ‘When? When? What does it matter when? He’s dead! Buggering pissbollocks! It’s a tragedy! A fine young man like that, taken from us in the prime of his life!’
‘A good man,’ Foxmuth agreed gravely.
But the when did matter. When meant everything to Frey. When was the final hope he had that maybe, against all the odds, he could avoid the terrible, crushing weight that he felt plummeting towards him. If it happened yesterday, or the day before . . . if it could somehow be that recent . . .
But he knew when it had happened. It had happened three weeks ago. They just hadn’t been able to keep it quiet any longer.
The Century Knights. The job from Quail. All those people, travelling incognito on a cargo freighter. The name of the freighter. It all added up. After all, wouldn’t Hengar travel in secret, returning from an illicit visit to Samarla? And wasn’t he a keen Rake player?
Gallian Thade had arranged the death of the Archduke’s only son. And he’d set Frey up to take the fall.
He reached over and flipped the final card.
The Ace of Skulls grinned at him.
Thirteen
Frey Is Beleaguered - A Mysterious Aircraft - Imperators
Frey stumbled through the mountain pass, his coat clutched tight to his body, freezing rain lashing his face. The wind keened and skirled and pushed against him while he kept up the string of mumbled oaths and curses that had sustained him for several kloms now. On a good day, the Andusian Highlands at dawn could be described as dramatic - stunning, even - with its wild green slopes and deep lakes nestling between peaks of grim black rock. Today was not a good day.
Frey dearly wished for the sanctuary and comfort of his quarters. He remembered the grimy walls and cramped bunk with fondness, the luggage rack that ever threatened to snap and drop an avalanche of cases and trunks on his head. Such luxurious accommodation seemed a distant dream now, after hours of being pummelled by nature. He was woefully underdressed to face the elements. His face felt like it had been flayed raw and his teeth chattered constantly.
He lamented his bad luck at being caught out in the storm. So what if he’d set out completely unprepared? How could he have known the weather would turn bad? He couldn’t see the future.
It seemed like days had passed since he left the Ketty Jay hidden in a dell. He couldn’t risk landing too close to his target for fear of being seen, so he put her down on the other side of a narrow mountain ridge. The journey through the pass should have taken five hours or so. Six at the most.
When he set off the skies had been clear and the stars twinkling as the last light drained from the sky. There had been no hint of the storm to come. Malvery had waved him on his way with a cheery ta-ra and then taken a swig of rum to toast the success of his journey. Crake had been playing with the new toys he’d picked up in Aulenfay. Bess was having fun uprooting trees and tossing them around. Pinn had stolen the theatrical make-up pen that Frey had bought in the South Quarter and painted the Cipher on his forehead - the six connected spheres, icon of the Awakener faith. He was prancing around in the ill-fitting Awakener robes that had been tailored for Frey, pulling faces and acting the clown.
Frey had been unusually full of good cheer as he walked. All of them had come back from Aulenfay. Frey took that as a vote of confidence, even if the truth was they had no better alternatives. But even with the news of Hengar’s death looming over him, he felt positive. Bullying Quail had energised him. Having a name to put to the shadowy conspiracy against him gave him a direction and a purpose. He’d got so used to running away that he’d forgotten how it felt to fight back, and he was surprised to learn that he liked it.
Besides, he thought sunnily, things were about as bad as they could possibly get. After a certain point, it didn’t really matter if they hung him for piracy, mass murder, or for assassinating Earl Hengar, heir to the Archduchy. He’d be just as dead, any way you cut it. That meant he could do pretty much whatever he liked from here on in.
His buoyant mood survived while the first ominous clouds came sliding in from the west, blacking out the moon. He remained persistently jolly as the first spots of rain touched his face. Then the howling wind began, which took the edge off his jauntiness a little. The rain became torrential, he got lost and then realised he had no map. By this time he’d begun to freeze and was desperately searching for shelter, but there was none to be found and, anyway, he didn’t have the supplies to wait out a really bad storm. He decided to keep going. Surely he was almost there by now?
He wasn’t.
Dawn found him exhausted and in bad shape. His face was as dark as the clouds overhead. He stumped along doggedly, head down, forging through the tempest. His good mood had evaporated. It wasn’t positivity but spite that drove him onward now. He refused to stop moving until he’d reached his destination. Every time he crested a rise and saw there was another one ahead, it made him angrier still. The pass had to end eventually. It was him against the mountain, and his pride wouldn’t let him be beaten by a glorified lump of rock, no matter how big it thought it was.
Finally the wind dropped and the rain dwindled to a speckling. Frey’s heart lifted a little. Could it be that the worst was over? He didn’t dare admit the possibility to himself, for fear of inviting a new tempest. Fate had a way of tormenting him like that. The Allsoul punished optimists.
He struggled up another sodden green slope and looked down into the valley beyond. There, at last, he saw the Awakener hermitage where Amalicia Thade was cloistered.
The hermitage sat on the bank of a river, a sprawling square building constructed around a large central quad. It was surrounded by lawns which opened on to fields of bracken and other hardy highland plants. With its stout, vine-laden walls, deeply sunken windows and frowning stone lintels, it looked to Frey like a university or a school. There was a quiet gravity to the place, a weightiness that Frey usually associated with educational institutions. Academia had always impressed him, since he’d only a passing acquaintance with it. All that secret knowledge, waiting to be learned, if only he could ever be bothered.
A little way from the hermitage, linked to it by a gravel path, was a small landing pad. There were no roads into the valley. Like so many places in Vardia, it was only accessible from the air. In a country so massive and with such hostile geography, roads and rail never made much sense once airships were invented. A small cargo craft took up one corner of the pad. It was their only link with the outside world, most likely, although there would certainly be other visitors from time to time.
Frey could see the tiny figures of Awakener Sentinels patrolling the grounds, carrying rifles. They issued from a guardhouse, which had been built outside the hermitage. He’d intended to arrive under cover of deepest night, but getting lost in the storm had put him severely behind schedule. There was no way he could approach the hermitage during the day without being seen.
The last of the rain disappeared, and he saw hints of a break in the clouds. Shafts of sun were beaming down on the mountains in the distance, warm searchlights slowly tracking towards him. There was nothing for it but to find a nook and rest until nightfall. Now that the storm had given up and he’d reached his destination, he was tired enough to die where he stood. A short search revealed a sheltered little dell, where he piled dry bracken around himself and fell asleep in the hollow formed by the roots of a dead tree.
He woke to the sound of engines.
It was night, clear and cold. He extricated himself from the tangle of bracken and stood up. His skin was fouled with old sweat, his clothes were stiff and he desperately needed to piss. His body ached as if he’d been expertly beaten up by a squad of vicious midgets. He stood, groaned and stretched, then spat to clear the rancid taste in his mouth. That done, he went to investigate what that noise was all about.
>
He looked down into the valley while he relieved himself against the side of a tree. The moon had painted the world in shades of blue and grey. The windows of the hermitage glowed with an inviting light, a suggestion of heat and comfort and shelter. Frey was looking forward to breaking in, if only to get a roof over his head for a while.
The craft he’d heard was a small black barque, bristling with weapons. A squat, mean-looking thing, possibly a Tabington Wolverine or something from that line. It was easing itself down onto the landing pad, lamps on full, a blare of light in the darkness.
A visitor, thought Frey, buttoning himself up. Best get down there while they’re occupied.