Retribution Falls

Thirty-Four

Mortengrace, ancestral home of Duke Grephen of Lapin, stood out white among the trees like an unearthed bone. It was set amid the folds and pleats of heavily forested coastal hills in the western arm of the Vardenwood, overlooking the sparkling blue waters of the Ordic Abyssal to the south. High walls surrounded it, enclosing a landing pad for aircraft, expansive gardens and the grand manse where the Duke and his family resided. Among the half-dozen outbuildings were an engineer’s workshop, a barracks for the resident militia and a gaol. The latter was rarely used in these more peaceable times, but it had found employment over the last two days, since Trinica Dracken had delivered six of the most wanted men in Vardia.

Crake sat in his cell, with Malvery and Silo, and he waited. It was all that was left to do now. He waited for the noose.

The cell was small and clean, with stone walls plastered off-white. There were hard benches to sleep on and a barred window, high up, that let in the salty tang of the sea. The temperature was mild on the south coast of Lapin, even in midwinter. A heavy wooden door, banded with iron, prevented their escape. There was a flap at the bottom, through which plates of food were occasionally pushed, and a slot their gaoler used to look in on them.

He was a chatty sort, keen to keep them updated on the details of their imminent demise. Through him, they’d learned that Duke Grephen was at an important conference, and was on his way back just as soon as he could get away and find a judge. ‘To execute the sentence nice and legal,’ the gaoler grinned, drawing out the word ‘execute’ just in case they missed how clever he was being by using it. ‘But don’t you worry. There ain’t no hurry, ’cause not a soul knows you’re here. Nobody’s coming to your rescue.’

There were two guards, in addition to the gaoler, though the prisoners rarely heard them speak. They were there to keep an eye on things. ‘Just in case you try any foolery,’ the gaoler said, with a pointed look at Crake. They’d evidently been warned that there was a daemonist among the prisoners. Crake’s golden tooth would be useless: he couldn’t deal with three men. His skeleton key was lying somewhere in the Ketty Jay’s cargo hold, equally useless.

No way out.

He’d been swallowed by an immense sense of emptiness. It had come upon him in the moment they’d lifted off from the Blackendraft, to be taken on board the Delirium Trigger. The news that the Ketty Jay had disappeared did little to alleviate it. Bess was gone.

His thoughts went to the small whistle, hidden in his quarters aboard the Ketty Jay. Only that whistle, blown by the daemonist who had thralled it, had the power to wake her from oblivion. He’d never get to blow that whistle now. Perhaps that was best.

He should never have tried to save her. In attempting to atone for one crime, he’d committed one far greater. And now she’d be left, neither dead nor alive, for an eternity.

Did she sleep? Was she aware? Was she trapped in a metal shell in the endless waste of the ash flats, unable to move or scream? How much was left of the beautiful child he’d ruined? It was so hard to tell. She was more like a faithful dog than a little girl now, muddled and jumbled by his clumsy transfer, prone to fits of rage, insecurity and animal violence.

He should have let her die, but he couldn’t live with the guilt of it. So he’d made her a monster. And, in doing so, made himself one.

A distant howl made Crake, Silo and Malvery look up as one. The voice was Frey’s, coming from the torture room, just beyond the cell he shared with Pinn and Harkins.

‘They’ve started up again,’ said Malvery. ‘Poor bastard.’

Crake stirred himself. ‘Why’s he bothering to hold out? What does it matter if he signs a confession or not? We’re all going to be just as dead with or without it.’

Malvery grinned beneath his white walrus-like moustache. ‘Maybe he just enjoys being an awkward bugger.’

Silo actually smiled at that. Crake didn’t take up the humour. He felt Malvery put a huge arm round his shoulder.

‘Cheer up, eh? You’ve had a face like a soggy arse since Dracken caught us.’

Crake gave him an amazed look. ‘You know, all my life I’ve been under the illusion that the fear of death was a common, almost universal part of being human. But recently I’ve come to think I’m the only one on this crew who is actually worried about it in the slightest.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I bet the other cell is half-full of Harkins’ shit by now, he’s so scared,’ Malvery said with a wink. ‘Then again, he’s afraid of just about everything. The only reason he’s still a pilot is because he’s more afraid of not being a pilot than he is of getting shot down.’

‘But . . . I mean, don’t you have regrets? Thwarted hopes? Anything like that?’ Crake was exasperated. He’d never been able to understand how the vagabonds of the Ketty Jay lived such day-today lives, never seeming to care about the future or the past.

‘Regrets? Sure. I’ve got regrets like you wouldn’t believe, mate,’ said Malvery. ‘Told you I was a doc back in Thesk, didn’t I? Well, I was good at it, and I got rich. Got a little flush with success, got a little fond of the bottle too.

‘One day a messenger from the surgery turned up at my house. There was a friend of mine, been brought in gravely ill. His appendix, was what it was. It was early in the morning, and I hadn’t gone to bed from the night before. Been drinking the whole time.’

Crake noted that the light-hearted tone was draining out of Malvery’s voice. He realised suddenly that he was in the midst of something serious. But Malvery kept going, forcing himself to sound casual.

‘Well, I knew I was drunk but I also knew it was my friend and I believed I was the best damn surgeon for the job, drunk or sober. I’d got so used to being good that I thought I couldn’t do no wrong. Wouldn’t trust it to anyone else. Some junior doc tried to stop me but I just shrugged him off. Wish he’d tried harder now.’

Malvery stopped suddenly. He heaved a great sigh, as if expelling something from deep in his lungs. When he spoke again it was with a deep resignation in his tone. What had been done had been done, and could never be undone.

‘It should have been easy, but I got careless. Slipped with the scalpel, went right through an artery. He bled out right in front of me, on the table, while I was trying to fix him up.’

Even obsessed with his own misery, Crake felt some sympathy for the big man. He knew exactly how he felt. Perhaps that was why they’d instinctively liked each other when they first met. Each sensed in the other a tragic victim of their own arrogance.

Malvery cleared his throat. ‘I lost it all after that,’ he said. ‘Lost my licence. Lost my wife. Spent my money. Didn’t care. And I drank. I drank and drank and drank, and the money got less and less, and one day I didn’t have nothing left. I think that was about when the Cap’n found me.’

‘Frey?’

Malvery pushed back the round, green-lensed spectacles on his broad nose. ‘Right. We met in some port, I forget which. He bought me some drinks. Said he could use a doctor. I said I wasn’t much of a doctor, and he said that was okay, ’cause he wasn’t gonna pay me much anyway.’ He guffawed suddenly. ‘Ain’t that just like him?’

Crake cracked a smile. ‘Yes. I suppose it is.’

‘I ain’t never picked up a scalpel since that day when I killed my friend. I don’t think I could. I keep those instruments polished in the infirmary, but I’ll never use ’em. I’m good for patching you up and a bit of stitching, but I’d never trust myself to open you up. Not any more. You wanna know the truth, I’m half a doctor. But that’s okay. ’Cause I found a home on the Ketty Jay, and I’ve got the Cap’n to thank for it.’ He paused as Frey screamed from down the corridor. A spasm of anger crossed his face, but was gone again in an instant. ‘He’s a good man, whatever faults he’s got. Been a good friend to me.’

Crake remembered how Trinica had put a gun to his head, and how Frey had given up the codes to his beloved aircraft rather than see the daemonist shot.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘To me, too.’

Crake knotted his fingers behind his head and leaned back against the wall of the cell. Silo, Harkins, and now Malvery: Frey certainly had a thing for picking up refugees. Granted, they were all useful to him in some way, but all owed a debt of gratitude and loyalty to their captain that Crake hadn’t detected until recently. Perhaps Frey’s intentions had been entirely mercenary—it could be that he just liked cheap crew—but at least half his men viewed him as a saviour of sorts. Maybe Frey didn’t need them, but they certainly needed him. Without their captain, Silo would end up lynched or sent back to slavery in Samarla, Harkins would be forced to face a life without wings, and Malvery would be a destitute alcoholic once again.

And what of the rest of them? He himself had found a place to hide while he stayed ahead of the Shacklemores. Pinn had found a place that would tolerate him, where he could forever avoid the reality of his sweetheart in his doomed search for riches and fame. And Jez? Well, maybe Jez just wanted to be in a place where nobody asked any questions.

Like it or not, Frey gave them all something they needed. He gave them the Ketty Jay.

‘We’re all running from something,’ Crake said wryly. Malvery’s words, spoken weeks ago, before they’d shot down the Ace of Skulls and all this had begun. Malvery bellowed with laughter, recognising the quote.

Crake looked up at the ceiling of the cell. ‘I deserve to be here,’ he said.

Malvery shrugged. ‘Then so do I.’

‘Ain’t no deserving, or otherwise,’ Silo said, his bass voice rolling out from deep in his chest. ‘There’s what is, and what ain’t, and there’s what you do about it. Regret’s just a way to make you feel okay that you’re not makin’ amends. A man can waste a life with regrets.’

‘Wise words,’ said Malvery, tipping the Murthian a salute. ‘Wise words.’

Distantly, Frey screamed again.

Frey had been shot twice in his life, beaten up multiple times by members of both sexes, bitten by dogs and impaled through the gut by a Dakkadian bayonet, but until today he’d always been of the opinion that the worst pain in the world was cramp.

There was nothing quite so dreadful to Frey as waking up in the middle of the night with that tell-tale sense of tightness running like a blade down the length of his calf. It usually happened after a night on the rum or when he’d taken too many drops of Shine, but on the cramped bunk in his quarters he often lay awkwardly and cut off the circulation to one leg or the other, even when dead sober.

The worst moments were those few seconds before the agony hit. There was always time enough to try and twist out of it in such a way that the pain wouldn’t come. It never worked. The inevitable seizure that followed would leave him whooping breathlessly, writhing around in his bunk and clutching his leg. It invariably ended with him knocking multiple items of luggage from the hammock overhead, which crashed down onto him in a tumble of cases and dirty clothes.

Finally, after the chaos of bewildering, undeserved pain, would come a relief so sweet that it was almost worth going through the preceding trauma to get there. He’d lie half-buried in the luggage, gasping and thanking whoever was listening that he was still alive.

Frey had learned long ago that the violent clenching of the muscles in his lower leg could send him wild with agony. Today, his torturer had introduced him to the joys of electrocution. Instead of just his leg seizing up, now it happened to his entire body at once.

If he survived this, Frey decided, he’d have to rethink his definition of pain.

Blinding, shocking torment; his back arching involuntarily; muscles tensed so hard they could break bone; teeth gritted and jaw pulled back in a grimace.

And then the pain was gone. The joy was enough to make him want to break down and weep. He slumped forward in the chair as much as his restraints would allow, sweat dripping off his brow, chest heaving.

‘Do you want to be hurt? Is that it?’ the torturer asked.

Frey raised his head with some difficulty. The torturer was looking at him earnestly, wide grey eyes sympathetic and understanding. He was a handsome fellow, square-jawed and neat, wearing a carefully pressed light blue uniform in the ducal colours of Lapin.

‘You should have a go at this,’ Frey said, forcing out a fierce grin. ‘Gives you quite a kick.’

The guard standing by the door—a burly man in an identical uniform to the torturer—smiled at that for a moment, before realising he wasn’t supposed to. The torturer tutted and shook his head. He moved over to the machine that stood next to Frey’s chair. It was a forbidding metal contraption, the size of a cabinet, with a face of dials and semicircular gauges.

‘Obviously it’s not kicking hard enough,’ the torturer said, turning one of the dials a few notches.

Frey braced himself. It did no good.

The pain seemed like it would never end, until it did. The room swam back into focus. He’d always pictured torture chambers as dank and dungeon-like, but this place was clean and clinical. More like a doctor’s surgery than a cell. The electric lights were bright and stark. There were all kinds of instruments in trays and cabinets, next to racks of bottles and drugs. Only the metal door, with a viewing-slot set into it, gave away the true nature of this place.

The confession sat on a small table in front of him. A pen waited next to it. The torturer had obligingly read it out to him yesterday, before they began. It was pretty much as he’d expected: I, Frey, admit every damn thing. I conspired with my crew to kill the Archduke’s son because we’re greedy and bad, and then we all laughed about it afterwards. It was all my idea and certainly nobody else’s, especially not Duke Grephen’s or Gallian Thade’s, who are both spotless and loyal subjects of our revered leader, and whose very faeces smell of roses and almond, et cetera, et cetera.

The torturer picked up the pen and held it out to him. ‘End it, Darian. Why struggle? You know there’s no way out of here. Why must you make the last few hours of your life so miserable?’

Frey blinked sweat out of his eyes and stared dully at the pen. Why didn’t he just sign it? It was only a formality. As soon as Grephen arrived with a judge, they’d be tried and hanged anyway, though not necessarily in that order.

But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t sign that paper because he didn’t want to make it easy on them. Because he’d fight for every moment he had left, eke out every inch of existence there was to be had.

Confessing was giving up. He wasn’t resisting in the hope of achieving anything; he was resisting just to resist. It didn’t matter how futile it was. He was bitter that he’d got so close, that he’d almost managed to get his crew out of the mess he’d got them into. It enraged him.

So he relished the small victories that were left. However she did it, Jez had got away, and taken the Ketty Jay with her. The fact that Grephen wasn’t hurrying back immediately to dispose of his prisoners suggested that Trinica Dracken had neglected to mention that she’d lost the Ketty Jay en route. Unwittingly, Dracken had bought them some time.

He’d embarrassed her twice now. He took solace in that. He hadn’t failed to notice that Trinica kept her compass and charts close to her at all times now. She’d been carrying them as they were shuttled from the deck of the Delirium Trigger to the landing pad at Mortengrace. She was nervous that they might be stolen again, and didn’t want to leave them in her cabin.

Small victories. But victories, nevertheless.

He didn’t hold out hope of Jez coming back. Not only would it be stupid, she had no real reason to. They were just a crew, like many she’d taken up with before. Though efficient at her job, she’d always seemed stand-offish, keeping to her cabin most of the time. He didn’t imagine she held any particular affection for them, and he had no reason to expect loyalty. After all, she’d barely joined before he turned her into an outlaw.

But the Ketty Jay survived, and with a new captain at the helm. That was alright with Frey. If he couldn’t have her, he was glad that someone could, and he’d always liked his diminutive navigator. He’d always wonder how Jez did it, though he took consolation in the fact that he wouldn’t have to wonder long.

I suppose Slag made it too, he thought. I wonder how he’s going to get on with his new captain.

‘Sign!’ the torturer urged, pressing the pen into his hand.

Frey took it. ‘Give me the paper,’ he said.

The torturer’s eyes lit up eagerly. He moved the table closer, so Frey could write on it. The leather cuffs he wore were attached to straps that gave him a few inches of slack. The torturer presumably thought a man couldn’t spasm efficiently without a little room to writhe.

‘Bit closer. I can’t reach,’ said Frey. The torturer did as he was asked. ‘Can you hold the paper steady? This isn’t easy with one hand.’

The torturer smiled encouragingly as he steadied the paper for Frey to sign. He stopped smiling when Frey stabbed the pen into the soft meaty part between his thumb and forefinger.

A third man in uniform burst in through the door, and stood bewildered at the sight that faced him. The torturer was wheeling around the room, shrieking, holding his impaled hand, which still had a pen sticking out of it. The guard by the door was in paroxysms of laughter. Frey had crumpled the confession into a ball and was trying to get it into his mouth to eat it, but couldn’t quite reach. He paused guiltily as the newcomer stared at him, then let it drop from his hand.

‘What do you want?’ screamed the torturer, when he got his breath back.

‘You can stop now,’ said the newcomer.

‘But he’s not confessed!’

‘We’ll draft a new one and sign it for him. The Duke is back with a judge. He wants this done.’

‘Can’t you give me an hour?’ the torturer whined, seeing his chance at revenge slipping away.

‘I’m to take charge of him immediately,’ the newcomer insisted. ‘Get him out of that chair. He’s coming with me.’

The sky was blue. Clear, cloudless and perfect. Frey squinted up at the sun and felt it warm his face. Amazing, he thought, how the north coast of the continent was gripped in ice and yet it was still pleasant here in the south. Vardia was so vast, its northern edge breached the Arctic Circle while its southern side came close to the equator. He’d always thought of winter as the grimmest season; but like anything, he supposed, it depended on where you were standing.

The spot chosen for his execution was a walled courtyard behind the barracks, where the militia conducted their drills. There was a small raised platform in the centre where a general might stand to oversee proceedings. A wrought iron lamp-post projected from its centre, flying the Duke’s flag. Ornamental arms projected out from the lamp-post. They were intended for hanging pennants, but the pennants had been removed and a noose thrown over one of the arms to form a crude gallows. The end of the noose lay loosely around Frey’s neck. An executioner—a massive, sweaty ogre with a thin shirt stretched over an enormous gut—waited to pull it taut.

A small crowd was assembled before him. There were two dozen militia, a judge, the Duke, and two witnesses: Gallian Thade and Trinica Dracken. Off to one side was a wagon with bars on its sides. Inside this wheeled cage were the remainder of his crew. They were unusually subdued. The seriousness of their situation had sunk in at last. Even Pinn was getting it now. They were going to watch their captain die. Nobody felt like joking.

He’d always wondered how he’d face death. Not the quick, hectic rush of a gun-battle but the slow, considered, drawn-out finale of an execution. He’d never imagined that he’d feel quite so serene. The wind stirred a lock of hair against his forehead; the sun shone on his cheeks. He felt like smiling.

The Darian Frey they were about to kill wasn’t the same Darian Frey they’d set out to frame for their crime. That man had been a failure, a man who lurched from crisis to disaster at the whim of fate. A man who had prided himself on being better than the bottom-feeding scum of the smuggling world, and hadn’t desired any more than that.

But he’d surprised them. He’d turned and fought when he should have run. He’d evaded and outwitted them time and again. He’d turned a bunch of dysfunctional layabouts into something approximating a crew. Stories would be told of how they tweaked the nose of the infamous Trinica Dracken in a hangar bay in Rabban. Word would spread. Freebooters all over Vardia would hear of Darian Frey, and his craft, the Ketty Jay. He’d come close to unearthing a daring conspiracy against the ruling family of the land, involving a Duke of Vardia, the legendary pirate captain Orkmund, and the mighty Awakener cult.

Only a final twist of ill fortune had stopped him. Trinica had made copies of the charts he stole. Without the compass she couldn’t make it through the magnetic mines that guarded Retribution Falls, but she could wait at the point where she knew he’d emerge.

One little slip-up. But he’d led them a merry chase all the same. They might have caught him, but he still felt like he’d won.

He looked at the faces behind the bars: Malvery, Crake, Silo, Harkins . . . even Pinn. He was surprised to find he was sad to be leaving them. He didn’t want it all to end now. He’d just begun to enjoy himself.

Frey had stopped listening to the list of crimes and accusations that the judge was reading out. The preliminaries were unimportant. He was thinking only of what was to come. Death was inevitable. He accepted that, and was calm. His hands were tied securely before him, and there were two dozen guards with rifles waiting to fill him with bullets if he should try to escape.

But he still had one trick left to play. The world would remember him, alright. Maybe they’d never know the truth, but they’d know his name.

The judge, an ancient, short-sighted relic who was more than half dust, finished his rambling and looked up, adjusting his spectacles.

‘Sentence of death has been passed,’ he droned. ‘Tradition grants the prisoner the opportunity to make a last request. Does the prisoner have such a request?’

‘I do,’ said Frey. ‘To be honest, I consider it a bit of an insult that the Duke couldn’t even provide a decent gallows to hang me by. I request an alternative method of execution.’

Duke Grephen’s sallow face coloured angrily. Trinica watched the prisoner curiously with her black eyes.

‘I’d like to be beheaded with my own cutlass,’ Frey said.

The judge looked at the Duke. Grephen swiped a strand of lank blond hair from his forehead and huffed.

‘I can see no objection,’ creaked the judge warily, in case the Duke had any objection.

‘Fetch his cutlass!’ Grephen cried. One of the guards hastened away to obey.

Frey stared at the Duke coolly. Even in his uniform, he looked like a spoiled boy. His deeply set eyes glittered with childish spite. He was a cold and humourless man, Frey surmised that much. He’d murdered dozens on board the Ace of Skulls, just to kill the Archduke’s son in such a way that it could be pinned on someone else. Frey didn’t believe it bothered him one bit. If there was any warmth in him, it was reserved for the Allsoul.

Next to him stood Gallian Thade. Sharp-faced, beak-nosed, with a pointed black beard. He was all angles and edges, where the Duke was soft and pudgy. Thade watched him with an air of smugness. He’d waited a long time to see the man who had deflowered his daughter receive his punishment.

And then there was Trinica. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Her ghost-white face revealed nothing. Would she be pleased to see him die? Would she finally be able to close the chapter of her life that had begun with him? Or was she even now remembering fonder moments from their past, wondering if she’d done the right thing in bringing him here?

Grephen had destroyed the Ace of Skulls; Thade had picked Frey to frame for it; Trinica had caught him.

He had reason to kill them all. But he’d only have time to do one of them. And he’d already chosen his target.

The guard returned from the barracks with his cutlass. Grephen took it and inspected it before passing it to the executioner. The executioner ran his thumb admiringly down the blade, then hissed through his teeth as he slashed the tip open.

‘Could you get this thing off me?’ Frey asked, jiggling his shoulders to indicate the noose. The executioner thrust the cutlass into his belt and removed the noose with one hand, sucking his bleeding thumb with the other.

‘Kneel down, mate,’ he said. Frey went to his knees on the wooden platform at the foot of the lamp-post. He shifted his wrists inside their knots of rope and rolled his neck.

He looked over at the cage, where his crew were imprisoned. Once he was dead, they’d follow him. Pinn seemed bewildered. Crake’s gaze was heavy with tragedy. Silo was inscrutable, Harkins was cringing in a corner and looking away. Malvery gave him a rueful smile and a thumbs-up. Frey nodded in silent thanks for his support.

‘Sentence of execution by beheading,’ said the judge, ‘to be carried out in the sight of these eminent witnesses.’

The executioner drew the cutlass and took aim, touching the blade to the back of Frey’s neck. ‘Don’t worry, eh?’ he said. ‘One swipe and it’ll be done.’

Frey took a breath. One swipe. He saw the blade descending in his mind’s eye. He saw himself dropping one shoulder, rolling, holding up his hands as the daemon-thralled sword slashed neatly through his bonds. He saw the blade jump from the hands of the executioner and into Frey’s grasp. He saw the surprise on Grephen’s face as Frey flung it from the podium. He saw it slide point first into the Duke’s fat heart.

The sword always knew his will. He might go down in a hail of bullets, but the author of his misery would go down with him. And all of Vardia would know how Duke Grephen died at the hands of an insignificant little freebooter, who had outwitted him at the last.

‘Kill him,’ said Grephen to the executioner.

The executioner raised the cutlass. Frey closed his eyes.

Ready . . .

The blade quivered, and he fancied he heard the harmonic singing of the daemon within.

Ready . . .

And then a loud voice cried: ‘STOP!’