The Ace of Skulls

Twelve

Artis Pinn, thought Pinn to himself. Hero of the Skies.

He rather liked the sound of that. He pictured the title on the cover of the novel they’d one day write about his adventures. Maybe a few more exclamation marks here and there. Artis Pinn!!! Hero of the Skies!!! Yes, that would do. Make it stand out a little. The cover had to be good, since he’d never actually read it. The important thing was that it looked impressive in the window of a bookshop.

The flight from Korrene had left him time to daydream. Or should it be nightdream? he thought. It’s dark, after all. He congratulated himself on his own wit and wiggled his butt in the seat of the Skylance to dig a more comfortable dent in the padding.

They’d been flying without lights for hours, heading southwest. The glow of the Ketty Jay’s thrusters, the steady roar of his aircraft and the long period of inactivity had lulled him into a half-drowse. His mind, such as it was, wandered freely.

The Coalition Navy had been long left behind them. Crake too, and good riddance to the pompous arsewipe. If he wanted to flounce off in a strop like a girl then let him. Pinn wouldn’t miss him one bit. In fact, he’d have his biographer write Crake out of the book altogether. He didn’t want the reader distracted from the real focus of the story. Artis Pinn. Pilot, lover, rogue.

He glanced at the little picture frame that hung from the dash, swaying gently with the motion of the aircraft. A ferrotype of a middle-aged woman looked back at him, with long curly hair, slightly crooked teeth and a formidable bosom. In the past, he’d spent hours staring at that portrait, but she didn’t look quite so good tonight. He struggled to remember her name, and was alarmed to find that he couldn’t. It might be important, he thought. What if his biographer needed to know?

Emanda, he thought, with the kind of relief he normally associated with unloading a particularly troublesome bowl of oats in the Ketty Jay’s head. Yes, he remembered her now. The woman from Kingspire. He’d spent a few heady days with her, gambling and drinking and shagging like champions. Inevitably, she’d succumbed to his charms, and told him she loved him. She was a bit hammered at the time, but he’d leave that part out. Anyway, he’d known at that moment that she was the one for him, and he left her that night with a note of explanation. He was going to find fame and fortune, and then he’d be back. When he was worthy of her. When he was a hero.

Except, well, all of a sudden he just wasn’t that keen on her.

A thought occurred to him. He held the flight stick awkwardly between his knees to keep it steady, then took the frame from the dash and opened it up. He took out the portrait of Emanda and tossed it aside. Jammed in the frame behind it was another ferrotype. He took that one out too. A blonde, eighteen or so, with a wide, plain face and big innocent eyes. A smile free of guile or intelligence. He frowned as he stared at her. Who was she?

Pinn was a creature of the moment. Seven years was a long, long way back for him. It took time for the memories to seep apologetically through the armour of his consciousness.

Lisinda!

At last he had it. His biographer would want to know that one. His first great love, a girl from his home town. Pinn had slept with other local girls during the tenure of their relationship — men had urges, of course — but never with her. He wanted to keep her pure. That kind of consideration was probably why she adored him, and why she’d ended up telling him she loved him. He left her soon after, with a note of explanation. He was going out into the wide world to seek his fortune. He’d be back when he was worthy of her.

Pinn dimly discerned a pattern there for the briefest of instants, but the thought was slippery and he lost it.

Lisinda. She’d promised she’d wait for him. Well, actually, she hadn’t, he just expected her to, since she’d told him she loved him. Seven years wasn’t that long. But anyhow, she’d gone and married someone else or something, so she could piss off now. He’d found out in a letter she’d sent him. A letter! She didn’t even have the decency to tell him to his face! Faithless wench.

He crumpled up her picture and stuffed it in his pocket so he could deface it later. Then he took up the flight stick again. Lately, a notion had been growing in his mind. Maybe all this heroism and fortune-hunting wasn’t getting him anywhere. Maybe there was something bigger than all this. And maybe there was another woman out there for him, a woman far more intelligent and beautiful than Lisinda or Emanda. A spiritual woman.

Stuck to his dash was a piece of paper. Written on it in barely legible script were several short phrases in pencil:

Jurny.

Deth.

Dark hared stranger (not hot)

Find sumthin important

Trajedy on sum-one deer (emanda?)

You will beleeve!!

The first three lines had been crossed out. He reckoned that Korrene counted as a journey to a place they’d never been to. The dark-haired stranger was obviously Pelaru. And death was probably to do with Osger, since he was dead. Pinn couldn’t understand why Pelaru had been so broken up about some shit-ugly half-Mane with a face like a maggoty bollock, but Thacians were a strange lot.

‘There’s the fleet,’ Frey said in his ear, startling him out of his reverie. He lifted his head and saw a knot of lights on the horizon, above the cloud line. It seemed like their hostage’s information about the rendezvous was good.

He dug around for a pencil and crossed out the fourth line. Find something important? That was surely the Awakener base they were heading for. He stared at the paper and shook his head in amazement. This prophecy stuff was really pretty incredible. There had to be something behind it. After all, how did she know?

He looked at the next line of the prophecy.

Tragedy will fall on someone you hold dear.

He stared at the words with an expression of deep thought, then slowly lifted one of his buttcheeks and farted.

‘Here they come,’ said Frey.

Ashua watched the Awakener cruiser approach through the windglass of the cockpit. It had broken away from the main mass when they turned on their lights, and set course towards them. This fleet didn’t have anything as big as a Coalition frigate, but they had guns enough to blow up the Ketty Jay several times over.

‘Stay due north of the fleet. That’s the approach pattern for today,’ Abley told Frey. He was sitting in the navigator’s chair, within easy reach of the press-switch that operated the electroheliograph.

‘Don’t try anything,’ Ashua warned him darkly. ‘They try to board us, I promise they’re gonna find you with a hole in the back of your skull.’

Abley didn’t say anything. He looked cowed enough, though. Ashua was a big believer in threats. You had to make sure people knew their situation. Hostages got it into their heads to try the stupidest things when their backs were against the wall. Their consciences made them brave, so they screwed it up for everyone, and almost invariably ended up dead. She’d seen it happen enough on the streets.

Ashua wasn’t a big fan of the Cap’n’s latest plan. She didn’t want to take sides in this war. Having grown up in the violent slums of Rabban and later in Samarla, she didn’t feel she owed Vardia much. Archdukes or religious fanatics, rulers were all the same to her. Her inclination was to sit back and see who was going to win, then join them.

But the Cap’n called the shots, and he wanted his pirate lady. Ashua had only ever met Dracken briefly, and then Dracken had threatened to have her nails pulled out. Ashua didn’t know what the Cap’n saw in her. Still, she must be quite a woman, with all that Frey was willing to go through to get her. That, or he was just desperate.

Well, at least while he was after Dracken, he wasn’t after her. That made for a more pleasant travel experience all round.

A light began to blink on the cruiser’s electroheliograph mast. Abley watched it closely. Ashua watched him, just as closely. She was good at spotting liars and tricksters. She’d been surrounded by them all her life.

When the blinking stopped, Abley set to work, tapping away. With Jez still out of action, they had no way of telling what he was communicating. Of those in the cockpit, only the Cap’n had any knowledge of EHG code, and he’d relied on navigators for so long that he was abominably slow at it. Ashua exchanged a glance with Silo, who was standing next to her, his arms crossed. No sign from him to betray his emotions, of course. If he was tense, she couldn’t tell.

Abley finished up. They waited. Then the cruiser began flashing again. Abley picked up a pencil and scribbled down the message. Then the cruiser swung away from them, heading back towards the aircraft hanging in the distance. Ashua noted that several of the bigger craft were departing the fleet and heading away, going dark as they left the main mass.

‘They’ve accepted the code,’ said Abley, his shoulders slumped in evident relief. He held up a piece of paper. ‘These are the coordinates for the next rendezvous. Looks like it’s due west of here, over the Splinters. We have to be there by dusk.’

‘The Splinters?’ Ashua said. ‘I thought we were meant to be going to the Barabac Delta.’

‘I don’t know! That’s just what they told me!’ Abley protested.

‘Can’t move a whole fleet all the way ’cross Vardia by daylight,’ Silo rumbled. ‘Least, not without someone takin’ note.’

‘So everyone makes their separate ways to the rendezvous,’ Frey mused, thinking it over. ‘Then they fly down the length of the Splinters by night. Lights off, no one’ll see them.’

‘Makes sense,’ said Ashua.

‘Looks like we’ve got an appointment to keep, folks,’ said Frey. He waved a hand at Silo. ‘Put the lad somewhere he can’t cause any trouble, will you? We’ll sort out what to do with him later.’

‘You said you’d let me go!’ Abley protested, as Silo pulled him to his feet.

‘We will, if you behave,’ Frey replied.

Abley hobbled away with Silo. Ashua, deciding that the danger had passed, went with them down the corridor, then split off and headed to the cargo hold.

She emerged on a walkway overlooking the dim, echoing chamber that had become her home. Below her she heard thumping and clanking: Bess, restless, as she’d been ever since they’d taken off. Ashua spotted her stomping about near the lashed-up crates of Awakener relics they’d pulled off the freighter a few days ago. The weak hold lights reflected from her dull and battered armour.

‘He’s not here, Bess,’ she said quietly to herself. ‘He left you behind. People do that.’

She was a little sad about Crake. She’d liked him. Maybe it was his aristocratic style, but he reminded her of a younger, finer Maddeus, before he’d wasted away. Now he was gone, and Malvery wasn’t half as much fun since he’d started brooding about the war. The others were still along for the ride for now, but she wondered how much longer they’d stick with the Cap’n if he didn’t find Trinica soon. Or maybe the Cap’n would dump them once he got his woman. Being saddled with a bunch of reprobates was hardly conducive to romance, after all.

Better look out for herself, then. She wasn’t sure how much longer this crew was going to hold together.

She made her way down the steps to the floor of the hold. Bess spotted her and came thundering over with such speed that Ashua almost had to jump out of the way. The golem only just stopped in time. She stood there, looming over Ashua, regarding her with those sharp glimmers of light from behind her face-grille. Then she thrust out a hand.

The armoured glove was holding something. A large red leather book, slightly battered by her grip. Ashua just looked at it. Bess proffered it again, cooing impatiently. Ashua got the hint that time, and took it.

Stories for Little Girls.

Ashua didn’t quite know what to think. She raised an uncertain eyebrow at the golem. ‘You want me to have this?’

Bess poked the book with a heavy, urging finger. Then Ashua remembered hearing the faint murmur of Crake’s voice from behind the tarp curtain at the back of the hold, and she figured it out. ‘You want me to read this to you?’

Bess cooed eagerly. Ashua made a face. ‘Oh, Bess, you’ve got me all wrong. I’m not the mothering type. Sorry.’

She handed the book back to Bess. Bess took it and clutched it to her chest. Despite having no features, she somehow managed to look hurt. She sloped away, moaning disconsolately.

Ashua felt a pang of guilt. Crake had always been evasive about the exact nature of his guardian, but sometimes it seemed almost alive. A passing anger took her, that Crake would abandon his golem this way. She reminded herself that it wasn’t her problem.

She made her way to the nook between the pipes where she slept. She’d fashioned herself a cosy little spot there, lined with tarp and blankets, scattered with what meagre possessions she had. There was a fabric curtain for privacy. She liked her little den; in fact, she’d turned down the chance of a bunk for it. Having grown up sleeping on floors and in corners, she didn’t get on with beds. She enjoyed having the whole cargo hold as her domain instead of the cramped quarters upstairs. The pipes kept her warm at night, and soothed her with their creaking and tapping.

She rummaged through her bedding until she found what she was looking for. She’d hidden it away well between the pipes. She didn’t want anyone asking any questions. They wouldn’t understand.

She brought out the object that Bargo Ocken had given her back in Timberjack Falls, and studied it. It was a brass cube, small enough to sit in her hand. On the upper face was a button. On one of the adjacent faces was a small circular opening, covered with glass. That was all. An innocuous-looking thing, but an important one. With this, she could work her way to a small fortune.

She saw Bargo Ocken’s face as he sat across the table from her in a smoky bar. She heard his slow, measured voice. Look on us as, well, something on the side. Insurance. In case it all goes wrong somewhere down the line.

She began tapping the button on top of the cube. A code, a language she’d memorised long ago, created for just this purpose. With each touch, a light came on behind the glass circle on the side of the cube.

When she was finished, she waited. After a short while, it started blinking back at her.

Slag, the Ketty Jay’s moderately psychopathic cat, clambered out of the ventilation ducts and into the engine room. He was battered, scratched and bloodied, but he was triumphant. Another battle had been won deep in the guts of the aircraft, another blow struck in his lifelong war against the rats. It was all he’d ever known, this conflict. He was a warrior to the core.

The engine room was a noisy, rattling place full of machine smells. Neither the noise nor the stink bothered him: he was more at home here than he ever would be in a field or garden. The pipes and walkways that surrounded the huge engine assembly were Slag’s jungle. Right now he wanted somewhere to rest, somewhere that would put some heat into his ancient bones and tired muscles. He picked his way to his favourite spot atop a water pipe, tested the temperature and found it just right. There he settled to lick his wounds.

In days gone by the breeders in the depths had turned out monsters, huge rats to test his mettle. These were the challengers to his supremacy. The fights were vicious and terrible, but always he put them down. His many years of experience, his strength and speed told out in the end. He reddened his claws on the best of them.

This rat had not been the best of them. Big, yes, but nothing like the legendary enemies he’d defeated in his prime. And yet he’d struggled. He’d killed it, but he’d struggled.

Slag was an old cat. Tough as a chewed boot, but old. And of late he wasn’t as strong as he had been, nor as quick. He lived in a world of instinct and not reason, but even so, on some level he was dimly aware that his body was failing him.

The knowledge meant nothing. He could conceive of no other life but this one. His world was the Ketty Jay, its ducts and crawlspaces and pipes, and there he was a tyrant. He’d been beaten only once, by one of the huge two-legged entities that wandered around in the open spaces. The vile scrawny one had lured him away from his territory once, and defeated him there. But never on his own turf. Here, he was still supreme.

He lifted his head. A strange smell came to his nostrils, the merest whiff in amongst the acrid stench of aerium and prothane and oil. It was gone in a moment, but it was enough to put a suspicion in him. Ignoring the pain of his wounds and the aches in his joints, he dropped down from his perch and went prowling.

There it was again. He followed his nose, padding along metal walkways, up and down steps. It was no human smell that he knew, nor a smell of machines or rats. Soon he found a spot where it was strong, a particular corner he liked to spray on to mark his territory.

But there was a new scent there now, over the old. He sniffed. Something about it stirred a sense-memory from a time before the Ketty Jay, when he was only a squirming kitten in a litter. It took a few moments for everything to fall into place.

A cat. He was smelling another cat.

And it was on board the Ketty Jay.

Jez’s eyes opened. A crushing sense of loss settled on her. She was back on her bunk on the Ketty Jay.

How she dearly wanted that unconsciousness back. For that precious time, she’d been formless, drifting, and all around her had been music. The voices of her kin calling, their thoughts flashing everywhere, the great communication of the Manes. And in the darkness of non-thought she’d been with them, connected, and they’d welcomed her and begged their reluctant sibling to stay, stay, come and join them and be one of them for ever. She’d felt the enormity of belonging, and it was like a glowing coal in her heart.

But the memory was fading faster than a dream. She was back in the world, back in that place of limited senses and limited desires. Back to the drab, cold torpor of isolation.

‘You hear them, don’t you?’

Pelaru’s voice made her turn her head sharply. He was sitting in the dark by her bunk. She felt a flood of nervous joy at seeing him there, washing away the sadness.

‘Yes,’ she said. Her tongue felt unfamiliar. She had trouble shaping the word. It was sometimes like this, when she returned. It got harder and harder to remember how to be human.

Pelaru shifted himself. He seemed discomfited. ‘Osger heard them. All the time, he said. Tempting him. Drawing him away from me. Sometimes he. .’ The Thacian’s voice drifted off. ‘What is it like, to be so close to them?’

‘It’s. . wonderful,’ she said. His expression tightened, and she knew she’d said the wrong thing. But she couldn’t lie.

‘Do you think he’s with them now?’

‘I don’t know.’

Her eyes roamed over his face in the dark. His grief suited him, made him seem nobler; but she longed to see him smile.

‘He was always. . torn,’ said Pelaru, and then he did smile, but not in the way she’d wanted. A bitter smile, recognising the irony of what he had said. Osger had ended up in two halves. ‘I could never understand. Why would you give yourself up that way? Give up your humanity? To be one of them?’

He spoke the last word with such hatred that Jez almost feared to answer. How could he love a half-Mane and yet despise them so? ‘It’s not like giving yourself up,’ she said at last. ‘It’s like opening yourself up.’

‘By turning yourself into a horror,’ Pelaru sneered, and the disgust in his voice wounded her.

She sat up in bed. She was fully clothed, still covered in stone dust, her overalls torn at the arms and legs. She looked a mess, but she didn’t care. ‘Is that what you think I am?’ she asked. ‘A horror?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, and that’s the worst of it. I. . feel for you, Jez. From the first moment I saw you, I felt something. Something as strong as that which I felt for Osger. Even seeing you that way, back in the shrine. . as a Mane. It doesn’t change a thing.’

A sensation both hot and cold and blessed spread through her, like the touch of some benevolent deity. She tried to make herself speak, but found that it was hard, although for different reasons than before.

‘I. . I feel that too,’ she said clumsily.

Agitated, he flung himself to his feet. ‘What is it?’ she asked, fearing that she’d done something wrong, that she’d repelled him. How was she supposed to act? She’d never done this before, never anything like this.

‘This shouldn’t be,’ he said, his voice thick. ‘Osger is not a day dead in my mind and yet. .’ He clenched his fists. ‘This shouldn’t be!’ he said again, angrily. Then he walked out of Jez’s quarters, and slid the door shut behind him.

Jez was left sitting on her bunk, the joy of a moment ago withering to an ashy despair.

‘Why not?’ she asked the darkness, quietly.