Macarde gave him a reptilian glare. ‘What?’ he said slowly.
‘No, wait, hear me out,’ said Rat, with the attitude of one caught up in an idea so brilliant that it would require careful explanation to his benighted audience. ‘I mean, killing ’em won’t do no good to us. They don’t look like they’ve got a shillie to their name anyways. If we let ’em go, they could, you know, spread the good word and stuff: “That Lawsen Macarde is a reasonable man. The kind of man you can do business with.” ’
Macarde had been steadily reddening as Rat’s speech went on, and now his unshaven jowls were trembling with fury. Droop-Eye and Bruiser exchanged wary glances. Neither of them knew what had possessed their companion to pipe up with his opinion, but they both knew the inevitable outcome. Macarde’s hand twitched towards the hilt of Frey’s cutlass.
‘You should listen to the man,’ said Crake. ‘He talks a lot of sense.’
Macarde’s murderous gaze switched to Crake. Absurdly, Crake was still smiling. He flashed his toothy grin at Macarde now, looking for all the world like some oily salesman instead of a man facing his imminent demise.
But then Macarde noticed something. The anger drained from his face and he craned in to look a little closer.
‘That’s a nice tooth,’ he murmured.
Yes, keep looking, you ugly bag of piss, Crake thought. You just keep looking.
Crake directed every ounce of his willpower at the smuggler. Rat’s idea wasn’t so bad, when you thought about it. A show of generosity now could only increase Macarde’s standing in the eyes of his customers. They’d come flocking to him with their deals, offering the best cuts for the privilege of working with him. He could own this town!
But Macarde was smarter than Rat. The tooth only worked on the weak-minded. He was resisting; Crake could see it on his face. Even bewitched as he was by the tooth, he sensed that something was amiss.
A chill spread through Crake’s body, something icier and more insidious than simple fear. The tooth was draining him. Hungover and weak as he was, he couldn’t keep up the fight for long, and he’d already used his best efforts on Rat.
Give it up, he silently begged Macarde. Just give it up.
Then the smuggler blinked, and his gaze cleared. He stared at Crake, shocked. Crake’s grin faded slowly.
‘He’s a daemonist!’ Macarde cried, then pulled the pistol from his holster, put it to Crake’s head and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Macarde was as surprised as Crake was. He’d forgotten that he’d loaded his pistol with only a single bullet. There was an instant’s pause, then everything happened at once.
Frey’s cutlass flew out of Macarde’s belt, leaping ten feet across the room, past Droop-Eye and into the captain’s waiting hands. Droop-Eye’s final moments were spent staring in incomprehension as Frey drove the cutlass double-handed into his belly.
Macarde’s bewilderment at having his cutlass stolen by invisible hands gave Crake the time he needed to gather himself. He drove a knee hard into the fat man’s groin. Macarde’s eyes bulged and he staggered back a step, making a faint squealing noise like a distressed piglet.
His hands still bound, Crake wrestled the revolver from Macarde’s beefy fingers just as Rat shook off the effects of the tooth and drew his cutlass back for a thrust. Crake swung the gun about and squeezed the trigger. This time the hammer found the bullet. It discharged point-blank in Rat’s face, blowing a geyser of red mist from the back of his skull with a deafening bang. He tottered a few steps on his heels and collapsed onto a heap of rope.
Macarde was stumbling towards the door, unwittingly blocking Bruiser’s line of fire. As the last thug fought to get an angle, Frey dropped his cutlass, darted across the room and scooped up the lever-action shotgun that Droop-Eye had left on the barrel. Bruiser shoved his boss behind him to get a clear shot at Crake, and succeeded only in providing one for Frey, who unloaded the shotgun into his chest with a roar.
In seconds, it was over. Macarde had gone. They could hear him running along the landing outside, heading downstairs, shouting for his men. Frey shoved the shotgun into his belt and picked up his cutlass.
‘Hold out your hands,’ he said to Crake. Crake did so. The cutlass flickered, and his bonds were cut. He tossed the cutlass to Crake and held out his own hands.
‘Now do me.’
Crake weighed the weapon in his hands. To his ears, it still sang faintly with the harmonic resonance he’d used to bind the daemon into the blade. He considered what it would feel like to shove it into the captain’s guts.
‘We don’t have time, Crake,’ Frey said. ‘Hate me later.’
Crake was no swordsman, but he barely had to move his wrist and the cutlass did the rest. It chopped neatly through the gap between Frey’s hands, dividing the cord in two. He threw the cutlass back to Frey, walked over to Rat’s corpse and pulled the pistol from his holster.
Frey chambered a new round into the shotgun. ‘Ready?’
Crake made a sweeping gesture of sarcastic gallantry towards the door. Be my guest.
Beyond was a balcony that overlooked a dim bar-room, musty with smoke and spilled wine. It was empty at this hour of the morning, its tables still scattered with the debris of the previous night’s revelries. Tall shutters held off the pale daylight. Macarde was yelling somewhere below, raising the alarm.
Two men were racing up the stairs as Frey and Crake emerged. Macarde’s men, wielding pistols, intent on murder. They saw Frey and Crake an instant before the foremost thug slipped on Crake’s vomit-slick, which no one had thought to clear up. He crashed heavily onto the stairs and his companion tripped over him. Frey blasted them twice with his shotgun, shattering the wooden balusters in the process. They didn’t get up again.
Frey and Crake ran for a door at the far end of the balcony as four more men appeared on the bar-room floor. They flung the door open and darted through, accompanied by a storm of gunfire.
Beyond was a corridor. The walls were painted in dull, institution-green paint, flaking with age. Several doors in chipped frames led off the corridor: rooms for guests, all of whom had wisely stayed put.
Frey led the way along the corridor, which ended in a set of tall, shuttered windows. Without breaking stride, he unloaded the remainder of the shotgun’s shells into them. Glass smashed and the shutters blew from their hinges. Frey jumped through the gap that was left, and Crake, possessed of an unstoppable, fear-driven momentum, followed him.
The drop was a short one, ending in a steeply sloping, cobbled lane between tall, ramshackle houses. Overhead, a weak sun pushed through hazy layers of cloud.
Crake hit the ground awkwardly and went to his knees. Frey pulled him up. That familiar, wicked smile had appeared on his face again. A reminder of the man Crake had thought he knew.
‘I feel a sudden urge to be moving on,’ Frey said, as he dusted Crake down. ‘Open skies, new horizons, all of that.’
Crake looked up at the window they’d jumped from. The sounds of pursuit were growing louder. ‘I have the same feeling,’ he said, and they took to their heels.
Two
A New Recruit - Many Introductions - Jez Speaks Of Aircraft - The Captain’s Return
‘There she is,’ said Malvery, with a grand sweep of his arm. ‘The Ketty Jay.’
Jez ran a critical eye over the craft resting on the stone landing pad before them. A modified Ironclad, originally manufactured in the Wickfield workshops, unless she missed her guess. The Ketty Jay was an ugly, bulky thing, hunched like a vulture, with a blunt nose and two fat thrusters mounted high up on her flanks. There was a stubby tail assembly, the hump of a gun emplacement and wings that swept down and back. She looked like she couldn’t decide if she was a light cargo hauler or a heavy fighter, and so she wouldn’t be much good as either. One wing had been recently repaired, there was cloud-rime on the landing struts and she needed scrubbing down.
Jez wasn’t impressed. Malvery read her reaction at a
glance and grinned: a huge grin, springing into place beneath his thick white walrus-moustache.
‘Ain’t the loveliest thing you’ll ever see, but the bitch does fly. Anyway, it’s what’s in the guts that counts, and I speak from experience. I’m a doctor, you know!’
He gave an uproarious laugh, holding his sides and throwing his head back. Jez couldn’t help a smile. His guffaw was infectious.
There was something immediately likeable about Malvery. It was hard to withstand the force of his good humour, and despite his large size he seemed unthreatening. A great, solid belly pushed out from his coat, barely covered by a faded pullover that was stained with the evidence of a large and messy appetite. His hair had receded to a white circlet around his ears, leaving him bald on top, and he wore small round glasses with green lenses.
‘What happened to your last navigator?’ she asked.
‘Found out he’d been selling off spare engine parts on the side. He navigated himself out the cargo door with the Cap’n’s toe up his arse.’ Malvery roared again, then, noticing Jez’s expression, he added, ‘Don’t worry, we were still on the ground. Not that the thieving little bastard didn’t deserve dropping in a volcano.’ He scratched his cheek. ‘Tell you the truth, we’ve had bad luck with navigators. Been through seven in the past year. They’re always ripping us off or disappearing in the night or getting themselves killed or some damn thing.’
Jez whistled. ‘You’re making this job sound awfully tempting.’
Malvery clapped her on the back. ‘Ah, it ain’t so bad. We’re a decent lot. Not like the cut-throat scum you might take on with otherwise. Pull your weight and keep up, you’ll be fine. You take a share of whatever we make, after maintenance or whatnot, and the Cap’n pays fair.’ He studied the Ketty Jay fondly, balled fists resting on his hips. ‘That’s about as much as you can ask for in this day and age, eh?’
‘Pretty much,’ said Jez. ‘So what are you lot into?’
Malvery’s look was unreadable behind his glasses.
‘I mean, cargo hauling, smuggling, passenger craft, what? Ever work for the Coalition?’
‘Not bloody likely!’ Malvery said. ‘The Cap’n would sooner gulp a pint of rat piss.’ He reddened suddenly. ‘Pardon the language.’
Jez waved it away. ‘Just tell me what I’m signing up for.’
Malvery harumphed. ‘We ain’t what you’d call a very professional lot, put it that way,’ he said. ‘Cap’n sometimes doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, to tell you the truth. Mostly we do black market stuff, smuggling here and there. Passenger transport: people who want to get somewhere they shouldn’t be going, and don’t want anyone finding out. And we’ve been known to try a bit of light piracy now and again when the opportunity comes along. I mean, the haulage companies sort of expect to lose one or two cargoes a month, they budget for it, so there’s no harm done.’ He made a vague gesture in the air. ‘We sort of do anything, really, if the price is right.’
Jez deliberated for a moment. Their operation was clearly a shambles, but that suited her well enough. They didn’t seem like types who would ask many questions, and she was lucky to find work at all in Scarwater, let alone something in her field of expertise. To keep moving was the important thing. Staying still too long was dangerous.
She held out her hand. ‘Alright. Let’s see how it goes.’
‘Fine decision! You won’t regret it. Much.’ Malvery enfolded her hand in thick, meaty fingers and shook it enthusiastically. Jez couldn’t help wondering how he managed to button his coat with fingers like that, let alone perform complex surgery.
‘You really a doctor?’ she asked.
‘Certified and bona fide!’ he declared, and she smelled rum on his breath.
They heard a thump from within the belly of the craft. Malvery wandered round to the Ketty Jay’s stern, and Jez followed. The cargo ramp was down. Inside, someone was rolling a heavy steel canister along the floor in the gloom. The angle prevented Jez from seeing anything more than a pair of long legs clad in thick trousers and boots.
‘Might as well introduce you,’ said Malvery. ‘Hey there! Silo! Say hello to the new navvie.’
The figure in the cargo hold stopped and squatted on his haunches, peering out at them. He was tall and narrow-hipped, but his upper body was hefty with muscle, a thin cotton shirt pulled tight across his shoulders and chest. Sharp eyes peered out from a narrow face with a beaked nose, and his head was shaven. His skin was a dark yellow-brown, the colour of umber.
He regarded Jez silently, then got to his feet and resumed his labour.
‘That’s Silo. Engineer. Man of few words, you could say, but he keeps us all in the sky. Don’t mind his manner, he’s like that with everyone.’
‘He’s a Murthian,’ Jez observed.
‘That’s right. You have been around.’
‘Never seen one outside of Samarla. I thought they were all slaves.’
‘So did I,’ said Malvery.
‘So he belongs to the Cap’n?’
Malvery chuckled. ‘No, no. Silo, he ain’t no slave. They’re friends of a sort, I suppose, though you wouldn’t know it sometimes. His story . . . well, that’s between him and the Cap’n. They ain’t said, and we ain’t asked.’ He steered Jez away. ‘Come on, let’s go meet our flyboys. The Cap’n and Crake ain’t about right now. I expect they’ll be back once their hangovers clear up.’
‘Crake?’
‘He’s a daemonist.’
‘You have a daemonist on board?’
Malvery shrugged. ‘That a problem?’
‘Not for me,’ Jez replied. ‘It’s just . . . well, you know how people are about daemonists.’
Malvery made a rasping noise. ‘You’ll find we ain’t a very judge-mental lot. None of us are in much of a position to throw stones.’
Jez thought about that, and then smiled.
‘You’re not in with those Awakener fellers, are you?’ Malvery asked suspiciously. ‘If so, you can toddle off right now.’
Jez imitated Malvery’s rasp. ‘Not likely.’
Malvery beamed and slapped her on the back hard enough to dislodge some vertebrae. ‘Good to hear.’
They walked out of the Ketty Jay’s shadow and across the landing pad. The Scarwater docks were half-empty, scattered with small to medium-sized craft. Delivery vessels and scavengers, mostly. The activity was concentrated at the far end, where a bulbous cargo barque was easing itself down. Crews were hustling to meet the newcomer. A stiff breeze carried the metallic tang of aerium gas across the docks as the barque vented its ballast tanks and lowered itself gingerly onto its landing struts.
The docks had been built on a wide ledge of land that projected out over the still, black lake which filled the bottom of the barren mountain valley. It was a wild and desolate place, but then Jez had seen many like it. Remote little ports, hidden away from the world, inaccessible by any means but the air. There were thousands of towns like Scarwater, existing beneath the notice of the Navy. Through them moved honest traders and smugglers alike.
It had started as a rest stop or a postal station, no doubt. A dot on the map, sheltered from the treacherous local winds, with a ready source of water nearby. Slowly it grew, spreading and scabbing as word filtered out. Opportunists arrived, spotting a niche. Those travellers would need a bar to quench their thirst, someone thought. Those drunkards would need a doctor to see to their injuries when they fell off a wall. And they’d need someone to cook them a good breakfast when they woke up. Most major professions in the cities were harshly regulated by the Guilds, but out here a man could be a carpenter, or a baker, or a craftbuilder, and be beholden to nobody but himself.
But where there was money to be made, there were criminals. A place like Scarwater didn’t take long to rot out from the inside. Jez had only been here a week, since leaving her last commission, but she’d seen enough to know how it would end up. Soon, the honest people would start to go elsewhere, driven out by the gangs, and tho
se who were left would consume each other and move on. They’d leave a ghost town behind, like all the other ghost towns, haunted by abandoned dreams and lost possibilities.
To her left, Scarwater crawled up the stony hillside from the lake. Narrow lanes and winding stairways curved between simple rectangular buildings set in clusters wherever the land would take them. Aerial pipe networks cut across the streets in strict lines, steaming gently in the chill morning air, forming a scaffold for the jumble beneath them. Huge black mugger-birds gathered on them in squads, watchful for prey.
This isn’t the place for me, she thought. But then, where was?
Ahead of them on the landing strip were two small fighter craft: a Caybery Firecrow and a converted F-class Skylance. Malvery led her to the Skylance, the closer of the two. Leaning against its flank, smoking a roll-up cigarette and looking decidedly the worse for wear, was a man Jez guessed was the pilot.