‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Frey looked towards the door of the attic. ‘Well, I’m technically not supposed to be here, so I should really be gone before everyone wakes up.’
Amalicia pulled him back down again. ‘It’s not even close to dawn,’ she said. ‘I’ve had nobody to lie with for two years, Darian. We still have some catching up to do.’
Sixteen
A Triumphant Return—Frey Takes On New Crew—Silo’s Warning
It was midday by the time Frey made it back to the grassy valley where the Ketty Jay waited. There was a cold breeze, but the sun warmed the skin pleasantly, and most of the crew were outside. Harkins was tinkering with the Firecrow; Jez was reading a book she’d picked up in Aulenfay; Malvery was lying on his back, basking. Silo was nowhere to be seen. Frey presumed he was inside, engaged in one of his endless attempts to modify and improve the Ketty Jay’s engine.
Frey strolled into their midst, whistling merrily. Pinn—who was lying propped up against the wheel strut of his Skylance—lifted the wet towel off his forehead and gave an agonised groan. He was still wearing his Awakener garb, although the Cipher he’d painted on his head was now just a red smear.
‘I see you managed to keep yourself entertained while I was gone,’ Frey said. ‘Heavy night?’
Pinn groaned again and put the towel back on his forehead.
‘Mission accomplished, Cap’n?’ Jez called, looking up from her book. ‘What happened to your face?’
Frey touched fingertips to his bruised jaw, probing the skin delicately. ‘Little misunderstanding, that’s all,’ he said. Jez ran her eye over his shabby, soot-covered clothes and let the issue drop.
Bess was sitting on the grass, her short, stumpy legs sticking out in front of her, like some vast and grotesque mechanical infant. Crake was cleaning her with a bucket and a rag. She was making a soft, eerie cooing noise, like wind through distant trees. Crake said it meant she was happy, rather like the purring of a cat, but it unsettled Frey to hear the voice of the daemon that inhabited that massive armoured shell.
‘You look chipper today,’ Crake observed.
Malvery sat up, took off his round, green-lensed glasses and peered at Frey. ‘Yes, he has a definite glow about him, despite the battle damage. I’d say he had a very happy reunion with someone. That’s my professional opinion.’
‘A gentleman never tells,’ said Frey, with a broad grin that was as good as a confession.
‘I’m very pleased for you,’ said Crake, disapprovingly.
‘How did your new toys work out?’ Frey enquired.
Crake brightened. ‘I think I can do quite a lot with them. A daemonist needs a sanctum, really, but some processes are more portable than others. I won’t be fooling around with anything too dangerous, that’s for sure, but I can still do beginner’s stuff.’
‘What’s beginner’s stuff? Stuff like my cutlass?’
Crake choked in amazement and almost flung down his rag. ‘Your cutlass,’ he said indignantly, ‘is a work of bloody art that took me years of study to accomplish and almost -’
He stopped as he caught the look of wicked amusement on Frey’s face. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I see. You caught me. Very droll.’
Frey walked over and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘No, seriously, I’m interested. What can you do?’
‘Well, for example . . .’ He drew out two small silver earcuffs from his pocket. ‘Take one of these and put it on your ear.’
Frey fixed it to his ear. Crake did the same with the other. They looked like any other innocuous ornament. Bess stirred restlessly, her huge bulk rustling and clanking as she moved. Crake patted her humped back.
‘Don’t worry, Bess. We’re not finished yet. I’ll clean the rest in a moment,’ he assured her. The golem, mollified, settled down to wait.
‘Now what?’ asked Frey.
‘Go over there,’ said Crake, pointing. ‘And ask me a question. Just talk normally, don’t raise your voice.’
Frey shrugged and did as he was told. He walked fifty yards and then stopped. Facing away from Crake, he said quietly, ‘So what exactly are you doing on the Ketty Jay?’
‘I gave you my cutlass on the condition that you’d never ask me that,’ Crake replied, close enough to his ear so that Frey jumped and looked around. It was as if the daemonist was standing right next to him.
‘That’s incredible!’ Frey exclaimed. ‘Is that really you? I can hear your voice right in my ear!’
‘The range could be better,’ said Crake modestly. ‘But it’s quite a simple trick to thrall two daemons at the same resonance. They’re the most rudimentary type; stupid things, really. Little sparks of awareness, not even as smart as an animal. But they can be very useful if put to a task.’
‘I’ll say!’
‘I was thinking, if I can whip up some better versions, that you could use them to communicate with your pilots or something. Better than that electroheliograph thing you have.’
‘That’s a damn good idea, Crake,’ he said. ‘Damn good idea.’
‘Anyway, better take it off. These things will tire you out if you wear them too long. Daemons have a way of sucking the energy out of you.’
‘My cutlass doesn’t,’ Frey replied.
He heard the slight hesitation. My cutlass, Crake was undoubtedly thinking.
‘One of many reasons it’s such a work of art,’ he said.
Frey unclipped the earcuff and returned to Crake, who had resumed scrubbing the golem. ‘I’m impressed,’ he said, handing it back. ‘You want to go to a party?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘A ball, actually. Formal ball, held by Gallian Thade.’
‘The Winter Ball at Scorchwood Heights?’
‘Ummm . . . yes?’ Frey replied uncertainly.
‘You have invitations?’
Frey brandished the letter from Amalicia. ‘I will have soon. I was thinking you might go, and take Jez with you.’
Crake looked at him, searching for a sign of mockery.
‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘I could really use your help, Crake. Thade will be there, and if he’s working with someone else, it’s our best chance of finding out what he’s up to.’
Crake was still watching him narrowly, indecision in his eyes.
‘Look,’ said Frey. ‘I know I have no right to ask. You’re a passenger. That’s what you signed on for. You don’t owe me anything.’ He shrugged. ‘But, I mean, you and Bess . . .’
Bess shifted at the sound of her name, a quizzical coo coming from deep within her. Crake patted her back.
Frey coughed into his fist, looked away into the distance, and scratched his thigh. He was never very good with honesty. ‘You and Bess, the both of you saved our lives back in Marklin’s Reach. I’ve kind of got to thinking that, well . . .’ He shrugged again. Crake just kept on looking at him. The daemonist wasn’t making it easy. ‘What I’m saying—badly—is that I’ve started to think of you more as part of the crew, instead of just dead weight. I’m saying, well . . . look, I don’t know what business you’re really on, or why you took up with me in the first place, but it’s getting to be pretty bloody handy having the two of you around. Especially if you’re gonna start making more little trinkets like those ear things.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Frey,’ said Crake. ‘Are you offering me a job?’
Frey hadn’t really thought about that. He just knew that he needed Crake to help him out. ‘Would you take one if I offered it?’ he heard himself saying. ‘Part of the crew? Just till . . . well, until we get this whole mess sorted out. Then you could decide.’
‘Do I get my cutlass back?’
‘No!’ Frey said quickly. ‘But I’ll cut you in on a share of what we make.’
‘We don’t seem to make a great deal of anything.’
Frey made a face, conceding the point.
‘What would I have to do in return?’ Crake asked. He returned to scrubbing Bess’s massive b
ack. A deep, echoing groan of pleasure came from the golem’s depths.
‘Just . . . well, stick around. Help us out.’
‘I thought I was doing that already.’
‘You are! I mean . . .’ Frey was getting frustrated. He was a supremely eloquent liar, but he struggled when he had to talk about things that he actually felt. It made him vulnerable, and that made him angry at himself. ‘I mean, you and Bess could just up and walk, right? It’s like you said back in Yortland: they’d never come looking for you. It’s me they’re after. And I’m sure you’ve other business you want to be getting on with, something to do with all that daemonism stuff you picked up.’
‘So what you’re saying is that you’d like us to stay around?’ Crake prompted.
‘Yes.’
‘And that you . . . well, that you need us.’
Frey didn’t like the triumphant tone creeping into Crake’s voice. ‘Yes,’ he said warily.
‘And what are you going to do next time someone puts a gun to my head and spins the barrel?’
Frey gritted his teeth. ‘Give them the ignition codes to the Ketty Jay,’ he said, glaring malevolently at the grass between his feet. ‘Probably.’
Crake grinned and gave Bess a quick buff on the hump. ‘You hear that, Bess? We’re pirates now!’ Bess sang happily, a ghostly, off-key nursery rhyme.
‘So you’ll go to the ball?’ Frey asked.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ll go.’
Frey felt a flood of relief. He hadn’t realised how much he’d been counting on Crake’s co-operation until this moment. He was about to say something grateful-sounding when he was interrupted by a cry from further up the valley.
‘Cap’n!’
It was Silo. The tall Murthian wasn’t in the engine room after all, but running down the valley towards them with a haste that could only spell trouble. He was carrying a spyglass in his hand.
‘Cap’n! Aircraft!’ Silo cried, pointing. The others—with the exception of Pinn -scrambled to their feet or ran to look.
‘I see it,’ said Jez.
‘Damn, you’ve got good eyes!’ said Malvery. ‘I don’t see a thing!’
‘Nor me!’ added Crake.
Jez looked around guiltily. ‘I mean, I can’t make it out or anything, not really. Just saw a flash of light, that’s all.’
Silo reached them and passed the spyglass to Frey. Frey put it to his eye.
‘She coming . . . from the south . . .’ he panted. ‘Think she . . . heading for the . . . hermitage . . .’
‘Then she’ll pass over us?’
‘Yuh-huh. See us for sure.’
Frey cast about with the spyglass, struggling to locate the incoming threat. It swung into view and steadied. Frey’s mouth went dry.
She was a big craft. Long and wide across the deck, black and scarred, yet for all her ugliness she was sleek. A frigate, built more like an ocean vessel than an aircraft: a terrible armoured hulk bristling with weaponry. Her wings were little more than four stumpy protuberances: she was too massive to manoeuvre quickly. But what she lacked in speed, she more than made up for in firepower. This was a combat craft, a machine made for war with a crew of dozens.
Frey took the spyglass away from his eye.
‘It’s the Delirium Trigger,’ he said.
Seventeen
Dracken Catches Up—Equalisers—Jez Makes A Plan—Pinn’s Defence—Lightning
The reaction among the crew was immediate. Frey had never seen them scramble into action so fast. He vainly wished he had half the authority that the Delirium Trigger apparently did.
‘Everyone! Get to stations! We’re airborne!’ Frey yelled, even though Silo, Jez and Malvery were already bolting up the cargo ramp. Harkins had scampered into the cockpit of the Firecrow like a frightened spider, and Pinn was grumbling nauseously to himself as he set about getting himself into the Skylance.
‘Crake! Get Bess inside and shut the ramp!’ he ordered, as he raced aboard the Ketty Jay. He made his way to the cockpit with speed born of panic, flying up the steps from the cargo hold two at a time. He squeezed past Malvery, who was climbing into the autocannon cupola on the Ketty Jay’s back, and found Jez already at her post. He threw himself into his chair, punched in the ignition code, and opened up everything he could for an emergency lift.
How did she find me?
Harkins was in the air by the time the Ketty Jay began to rise, and Pinn took off a few moments later, still clad in his half-buttoned Awakener cassock and with a red smear across his forehead. There was a look of frantic bewilderment on his face, like someone rudely awakened from sleep to find their bed is on fire.
The Ketty Jay was facing the Delirium Trigger as she rose. The frigate was coming in fast. Now it was easily visible to the naked eye, and growing larger by the second. She couldn’t fail to have spotted the craft lifting into the sky, directly in her path. The question was, would she recognise the Ketty Jay at this distance?
As if in answer, four black dots detached from her, and began to race ahead. Outflyers. Fighter craft.
‘She’s on to us!’ Frey cried. He swung the craft around one hundred and eighty degrees, and hit the thrusters. The Ketty Jay bellowed as she accelerated to the limit of her abilities.
‘Orders, Cap’n?’ Jez asked.
‘Get us out of here!’
‘Can we outrun her?’
‘The Trigger, yes. The outflyers are Norbury Equalisers. We can’t outrun them.’
‘Okay, I’m on it,’ said Jez, digging through her charts with a loud rustling of paper.
‘Heads up, everyone!’ Malvery called from the cupola. ‘Incoming!’
Frey wrenched the control stick and the Ketty Jay banked hard. A rapid salvo of distant booms rolled through the air, followed a moment later by a sound like the end of the world. The sky exploded all around them, a deafening, pounding chaos of shock and flame. The Ketty Jay was shaken and thrown, flung about like a toy. Pipes shrieked and burst in the depths of the craft, spewing steam. Cracks split the glass of the dashboard dials. A low howl of metal sounded from somewhere in the guts of the craft.
And then suddenly the chaos was over, and somehow they were still flying, the majestic green canvas of the Highlands blurring beneath them.
‘Ow,’ said Frey weakly.
‘You alright, Cap’n?’ asked Jez, brushing her hair out of her eyes and gathering up her scattered charts.
‘Bit my damn tongue,’ Frey replied. His ears were whistling and everything sounded dim.
‘They’re firing again!’ cried Malvery, who had a view of the Delirium Trigger from the blister on the Ketty Jay’s back.
‘What kind of range do those guns have?’ Frey murmured in dismay, and sent the Ketty Jay into a hard dive. But there was no cataclysm this time. The explosions fell some way behind them, and the concussion was barely more than a sullen shove.
‘Not enough, apparently,’ said Jez.
‘Malvery! Where are those fighters?’ called Frey through the door of the cockpit.
‘Catching us up!’ the doctor replied.
‘Don’t fire till they’re close enough to hit! We’ve not got much ammo for that cannon!’
‘Right-o!’
He turned to his navigator. ‘I need a plan, Jez.’
She was plotting frantically with a pair of compasses. ‘This craft has Blackmore P-12s, right?’
‘Uh?’
‘The thrusters. P-12s.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay.’ She looked up from her chart. ‘I have an idea.’
Pinn’s mouth tasted like decomposing mushrooms and his peripheral vision was a swarming haze. He felt like there wasn’t a drop of moisture in his body and yet his bladder throbbed insistently. He was utterly detached from the world. Reality was somewhere else. He was cocooned in his own private suffering.
And yet, some faint part of him was alarmed to find that he was in the cockpit of his Skylance, racing over the Highlands, purs
ued by four fighter craft intent on shooting him down. That part was urging him to sharpen up pretty quickly and pay attention. Eventually, he began to listen to it.
With some difficulty, he craned around and looked over his shoulder. The enemy craft were close enough to make out now. He recognised the distinctive shape of Norbury Equalisers: their bulbous, rounded cockpits right up front; their straight, thick wings, cut off at the ends; their narrow, slightly arched bodies. Norburys were a pain in the arse. Speedy and highly manoeuvrable. They were like flies: annoyingly hard to swat. And when you got frustrated, you made mistakes, and that was when they took you out.
He could outrun them, for sure. He could outrun just about anything in his modified Skylance. But an outflyer’s job wasn’t to save his own neck. He had to protect the Ketty Jay. Besides, running was for pussies.
The Ketty Jay was to starboard. He saw her change tack, swinging towards the west, and he banked to match. The horizon became uneven as the edge of the Eastern Plateau came into view, a hundred kloms ahead of them. Beyond it, invisible, the land fell away in the steep, sheer cliffs and jagged, crushed peaks of the Hookhollows.
Pinn frowned. Where did they think they were going? They might be able to make it to the mountains, where there would be ravines and defiles to use as cover, but there was still no way the Ketty Jay could outmanoeuvre an Equaliser.
He glanced to port. The Delirium Trigger was safely out of the race, but the Equalisers were banking to intercept the Ketty Jay on her new course, and they were closing the gap even faster than before.
Minutes ticked by. The slow, excruciating minutes of the long-distance chase. Pinn’s world shrank back to the pulsing of his hangover, the low roar of the thrusters, the shudder and tremble of the Skylance. But every time he looked around, the Equalisers were closer. One thing was clear: whatever the Ketty Jay was heading for, she wouldn’t make it before the Equalisers reached her.
Then, in the far distance, he saw an indistinct fuzz in the air. Gradually the fuzz darkened, until there could be no question as to what it was. Just beyond the lip of the Eastern Plateau was a line of threatening clouds. The clear blue of the sky ended abruptly in a piled black bank of gathering thunderheads.
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