An increasingly desperate group of pirates were shooting from the cover of the rubble. The square was scattered with the bodies of those who had already tried to rush the craft, seeing the Ketty Jay as their only hope of escaping the cataclysm around them.
Frey hurried through the gates of Orkmund’s stronghold with Silo on his back, heedless of the gunfire criss-crossing the air. The ground shook beneath his feet; there was a vast groan of metal from deep below. It felt like the platform they were on might collapse at any moment. He ran low and hunched over in an attempt to keep the Murthian from sliding off. Jez called out at the sight of him and the crew redoubled their fire, keeping the pirates’ heads down as their captain came closer.
Frey was exhausted, running on adrenaline alone. The constant noise of the explosions, the effort of carrying almost ninety kilos of dead weight on his back, and the emotional shock of the past few minutes had put him into a shallow trance. He hardly noticed when a shell obliterated one of the buildings nearby, spraying him with stone chips and pushing him sideways with the force. He staggered, corrected himself, and ran doggedly onward.
Bullets whined past. He didn’t know if they were meant for him. All he wanted was to get to the Ketty Jay.
He stumbled onto the ramp and was met by helping hands from Malvery and Jez, propelling him up into the dim safety of the hold. Bess stepped back onto the ramp, surveying the square threateningly, and Crake pulled the lever to raise it. The pirates screamed with frustration as they saw their chance of escape narrowing, but none of them dared to take on the golem.
All Frey wanted to do was lie down and sleep, but he didn’t have that luxury. He hardened his resolve. This wasn’t over yet.
He let Malvery take Silo from his back. Warm blood had soaked into his coat where the Murthian lay against him. They laid him on the floor of the hold while the doctor looked at his wound. Malvery’s face was pale and fearful.
‘Fix him,’ Frey told Malvery.
‘He’s losing too much blood,’ Malvery said.
‘Fix him, damn you!’ Frey snarled. Then he headed for the stairs that led out of the hold. He went up to the passageway that ran along the spine of the Ketty Jay, then through the doorway into the cockpit, where he flung himself into the pilot’s seat and punched in the ignition code. Jez was moments behind him, dropping into her spot at the navigator’s station as Frey flooded the aerium tanks to maximum.
Another explosion rocked the Ketty Jay as she began to lift her weight off her landing struts. Frey flinched and ducked as a bullet hit the windglass panel in front of his face, leaving a small circular shatter-mark. The pirate frigate loomed above them and to starboard, shells bursting in the air all around it in a pummelling cascade of light and sound. Its keel suddenly came open, unbuttoned in a sequence of detonations that raced along its flank from stern to bow. Frey willed his craft to lift as the frigate tipped sideways towards them with a moan like the death-cry of some enormous metal beast.
‘Come on, come on!’ he murmured under his breath, as the Ketty Jay hauled her bulk into the air and began to ascend. Jez was staring in horror at the black, flaming mass of the frigate as it grew in their vision, threatening to crush them on its way down. The Skylance and Firecrow shot past him on either side and streaked away; they couldn’t help him now, and they had their own safety to consider. Screams from the square could be faintly heard over the concussion of artillery and the sound of the Ketty Jay’s engines. The men and women of Retribution Falls had seen their fate descending on them.
The Ketty Jay had barely cleared the tops of the nearest buildings before Frey kicked the throttle to maximum and the prothane thrusters opened up with a roar. He was thrown back in his seat as they accelerated, their landing struts scraping the roof of an inn, tearing off slates as they powered out of the shadow of the frigate. Frey gritted his teeth as the colossal craft bore down on them from above.
The deck of the frigate plummeted past their stern with a bellow of displaced air, raging with smoke and flame, and collapsed into the square with the force of a landslide. The Ketty Jay carried Frey and his crew away as Orkmund’s stronghold was obliterated, and the great scaffolded platform cracked in half.
For once, Frey was glad that he couldn’t see behind his craft. The appalling destruction in their wake was left to his imagination. A stab of grief surprised him—not for the dead, but for Silo, whom he’d dumped into Malvery’s care as if he was luggage. He forced himself to be cold. He had a responsibility to the others. Time to wallow in remorse after he’d got them safe.
He vented aerium to curb the Ketty Jay’s excessive lift and took her around the rim of the sinkhole, skirting the Navy fleet and avoiding the worst of the fighting. Pinn and Harkins fell into position behind him. To starboard, he had a view of the whole battle. Retribution Falls was a ruin, a half-submerged junkyard. The stern ends of broken pirate craft jutted out of the brackish, rancid water, leaking flaming slicks of fuel. Smoke choked the scene. From within came rapid flashes of guns and the sound of explosions.
The Navy had blocked off one route into Retribution Falls, but there were evidently other ways out, and the pirates took them. The defence of the town had been abandoned and the pirates were retreating, melting into the mist overhead, vanishing into gullies and canyons. The Navy had taken losses, but the surprise attack had kept them light.
Frey flew the Ketty Jay behind the Navy fleet, who were still looking in towards the town and not out towards the rim. If anyone noticed the three insignificant aircraft sneaking past, then perhaps they recognised them for who they were and held their fire. In any case, the Ketty Jay passed unmolested into the canyon that led out of the sinkhole and away from the battle. The rocky slopes of the Hookhollows closed around them, blocking out the sight of Retribution Falls. Soon they’d left the pirate town behind, and all was quiet again.
Malvery and Crake carried Silo into the tiny infirmary and laid him on the surgical table. The Murthian was unconscious, his breathing shallow and rapid. His eyes moved restlessly behind their lids. The air smelled of oil and blood, and the floor moved with the tilting of the Ketty Jay as she flew.
Crake’s hands were covered in gore. He felt somehow that he should have been sickened by that, but he was too intent on the moment to allow himself weakness. He remembered the Silo that had helped him patch up Bess after the gunfight at Rabban, the one who had talked and joked with him on that grassy hillside. They were no longer strangers to each other. Crake would do whatever he had to.
Malvery ripped open Silo’s shirt, exposing the wound. A ragged hole had been punched through one slab-like pectoral. Rich blood welled out of it in awful quantity. He swore under his breath.
‘He’s bleeding inside,’ said Malvery. ‘I can’t do anything.’
‘You’ve got to!’ Crake protested. ‘Open him up. Stop the bleeding!’
‘I can’t,’ Malvery said. He adjusted his round green glasses and tugged anxiously at the end of his white moustache. ‘I just can’t.’
He opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of medicinal alcohol. He’d unstoppered it and brought it to his lips before Crake snatched it from him and slammed it angrily down on the operating table.
‘You’re the only one who can do this, Malvery!’ he snapped. ‘Forget what happened to your friend. You’re a surgeon! Do your damn job!’
‘I’m not a surgeon any more,’ Malvery replied, staring at the man on the operating table in front of him. Blood pumped up from the bullet wound and spilled down Silo’s chest in grotesque washes of red. Crake clapped his hands ineffectually over the wound, then began looking around for something better to staunch the flow.
He understood Malvery’s pain, but he’d no time for sympathy while Silo lay dying. If only Crake had been a better daemonist, he might have used the Art to heal the Murthian. But he didn’t have the equipment, so he couldn’t do anything. Silo’s only chance was Malvery, and the doctor was paralysed.
‘Spit and blood, yo
u’re just going to stand by and watch?’ Crake cried.
‘What do you want from me?’ Malvery bellowed. ‘A miracle? He’s dying! I can’t stop that!’
‘You can try!’ Crake shouted back with equal ferocity. Malvery was shocked at the force in Crake’s usually quiet tone. ‘This isn’t like the last time. He’s going to die anyway. Nobody will blame you if you fail, I’ll make sure of that. But I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when the captain finds out you didn’t even try.’
Just then, the Ketty Jay yawed to port, making him stumble; he had to put out a hand on the operating table to steady himself. The bottle of alcohol tipped from the table, but Crake caught it before it fell. Malvery’s eyes went to it.
‘Give me the bottle,’ he said.
Crake just glared at him.
‘I’ll need a swig to steady my hand!’ Malvery insisted.
‘Your hand’s plenty steady, Doc. Do it. Earn your place.’
‘Me?’ Malvery roared. ‘You’ve been barely four months aboard, you arrogant shit!’
‘Yes. And I saved you all at Tarlock Cove. Bess saved you from Kedmund Drave. I uncovered Grephen’s plans at Scorchwood Heights, and we’d never have taken the charts from Dracken without Bess. We’ve done our part. Pinn and Harkins fly, Jez navigates, Silo keeps the craft running. What do you do that one of us couldn’t? Fire a shotgun? Work the autocannon occasionally? You’re a surgeon who doesn’t operate, Malvery! You’re dead weight!’
Malvery’s face twisted in anger. He lunged across the table to grab him, but Crake was too fast, and pulled himself out of the way.
‘Then prove me wrong!’ he cried. ‘Cut him open! Stop the bleeding and save his life!’
Malvery’s huge fists bunched and unbunched. His face was red with rage. For a moment, Crake though he really would attack; but then he turned away, and stamped over to the wooden cabinet that was fixed to the wall. He pulled it open and drew out a scalpel. The surgical instruments were the only clean things in the grimy room. Malvery came back to the table and stared at Crake.
‘I’ll cut him, damn it,’ he snarled. ‘And you’re staying to help.’
Crake rolled up his sleeves. ‘Tell me what to do.’
Frey sat in the pilot’s seat, staring out at the fog. His air filter still hung round his neck, though more than an hour had passed since they crossed the lava river and its noxious fumes. Jez read out directions and co-ordinates from the navigator’s station behind him, and he followed them automatically. Once in a while she consulted the compass and warned of some distant mine that the Navy minesweepers had failed to catch, but it was always too far away to be a threat.
Frey barely paid attention to the job at hand. This was the fourth time he’d flown along this route, and it had lost its fear for him now. He trusted Jez. Harkins and Pinn were following his lights through the murk. As for the Navy, they could find their own way out.
He was thinking of Silo. The black spectre of loss hovered over him. It wasn’t only the thought that Silo himself might die—Frey had already been surprised by the depth of feeling he had for the taciturn foreigner—but the idea that one of his crew would be lost. With each new peril they survived, he’d thought of them more and more as one indivisible whole. Whereas he’d often dreamed in the past of ditching his crew and flying off alone, now he couldn’t stand the thought of it. They’d become a miniature society, the denizens of the Ketty Jay, and they needed one another to survive. Somehow they’d achieved a balance that satisfied them all, and when they were in balance they’d been able to achieve extraordinary things. Frey feared losing any of them now, in case that balance would be upset. He feared a return to the way things were.
All this time he’d armoured himself against loss by refusing to care for anyone. Now, somehow, he’d been blindsided. He tried to be angry for allowing himself to become so vulnerable, but he couldn’t muster the feeling. It had all been part of a greater change, one that had seen him gain a level of self-respect he’d never had before the destruction of the Ace of Skulls. He wouldn’t trade the days between that moment and this. Not for anything.
But now Silo lay on the edge of death, left in the hands of an alcoholic doctor and an untrained assistant. Silo, who had taken a bullet so Frey wouldn’t have to. Frey didn’t want to live with that responsibility.
What’s taking them so long? Aren’t they done yet?
As if in response, he heard the infirmary door slide open. He hunched his shoulders as if expecting a blow. Footsteps came up the passageway, boots rapping on metal. They were too light to be Malvery, so it had to be Crake. Frey turned in his seat to be sure, and saw the daemonist arrive in the doorway. His hands were gloved with blood, and he was still wearing his filter mask. He pointed to it and said something quizzical which nobody understood.
‘You can take it off now,’ Jez said, guessing his meaning.
Crake pulled off the mask and took a few deep breaths. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Those things are so stuffy.’
‘Mmm,’ said Jez in mild agreement.
‘Everything alright?’ Crake enquired.
‘Will you bloody well tell me what’s going on back there?!’ Frey exploded, unable to bear the tension any more.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Crake. He grinned. ‘The doc stopped the bleeding and got the bullet out. He says the patient is going to be alright.’
Jez gasped and gave a little clap, a surprisingly girlish reaction from someone Frey had come to think of as rather unfeminine. Frey slumped back into his seat with a sigh, and a huge sense of relaxation spread through his body. Exhaustion and relief piled in together. At last, it was over. A broad smile spread across his face. Crake laughed and slapped him on the shoulder, leaving a grotesque handprint there.
‘Good work, boys,’ Frey said. ‘Bloody good work.’
‘Well, I’ve got to go and help Malvery finish up,’ said Crake. ‘Just thought I’d let you know.’ He disappeared down the passageway again and into the infirmary.
‘We’re here, Cap’n,’ said Jez. ‘All stop. You can start ascending now.’
Frey brought the Ketty Jay to a halt and set her rising through the fog. The haze gradually thinned and the darkness brightened by degrees. The flanks of the mountains became discernible again as forbidding slabs of shadow.
Frey looked up. A smile was still on his lips. Up there was light and freedom. Up there was the prospect of a new life, a luxurious life, one financed with the chest full of Awakener gold they’d stolen from Orkmund. Up there was a second chance for all of them.
‘Never seen you smiling like that, Cap’n,’ Jez said.
‘It’s just, for once, I really feel that everything’s going to be okay.’
Then they broke free of the mist, and a shattering explosion hammered the Ketty Jay, filling the cockpit with dazzling light, shaking them about like rag dolls.
When no further explosion came, Frey blinked away the shock and pulled himself back into his seat.
A swarm of Norbury Equalisers surrounded them. Looming ahead of them, with all of its considerable arsenal trained on the Ketty Jay, was the Delirium Trigger.
Frey blew out his cheeks and huffed a sigh of resignation. ‘Bollocks!’
Thirty-Nine
‘This Is Where Mercy Gets You’—Dracken’s Choice—Conclusions
A cold wind chased puffs of grey ash across the Blackendraft plains. Frey’s coat flapped restlessly. Bleak horizons encircled them. Overhead, the sky was the colour of an anvil. The Delirium Trigger hung at anchor a short distance away, its hard, cruel lines stark against the emptiness.
The crew of the Ketty Jay stood in a row at the bottom of the cargo ramp. Pinn and Harkins had grounded their craft and been rounded up. Silo, Bess and Slag were missing. Silo was still in the infirmary. Crake had put Bess to sleep to prevent her going berserk and getting them all killed. Slag had vanished into the vents and airways, on some mysterious errand of his own. Nothing would ever separate him from his aircra
ft.
Facing them was Trinica Dracken and a dozen men from the Delirium Trigger. The men covered Frey and his crew with their pistols while Trinica looked down into the red-lacquered chest that sat at her feet. She stared at the wealth within for a long time, but her ghost-white face and unnatural black eyes revealed nothing of what she was thinking. Finally, she looked up.
‘You did well, Darian,’ she said. ‘Kind of you to carry this all the way from Orkmund’s stronghold, just for me.’
Pinn muttered something unsavoury under his breath. Malvery clipped him round the ear.
‘I should have killed you when I had the chance,’ said Frey. There was no rancour in it; it was simply an observation. ‘I suppose this is where mercy gets you.’
Trinica gave him a dry smile. ‘Consider this the price of a lesson well learned.’
Frey and Trinica gazed at each other across the dusty gap that separated them. The huge silence of the Blackendraft filled the moment.
He couldn’t feel hate for her. He couldn’t manage to feel much more than a distant disappointment. This felt right, somehow. It had been greed that made him jump at Quail’s too-good-to-be-true offer. And while he didn’t blame himself for the many deaths aboard the Ace of Skulls—they were doomed with or without him—he’d played a part in it. He might have saved the Archduke and done a great service to his country, but he did it by initiating a massacre at Retribution Falls. It didn’t seem fair that he should profit from his own stupidity, at the expense of all those lives.
Maybe he owed the world something. For the crew he’d taken into Samarla and left to die. For every Trinica Dracken and Amalicia Thade whom he’d discarded and forgotten as soon as they showed signs of wanting more than he was prepared to give.
For his baby, that died for its parents’ cowardice.
He’d condemned them all when he agreed to take on the Ace of Skulls. But since then, he’d clawed back all he’d lost, and more besides. He’d forged a crew, and he’d reclaimed himself. Perhaps that was all that was needed, in the end.
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