The Black Lung Captain

Thirteen

Marlen's Hook stood between the Blackendraft ash flats and the Scourfoot Desert, an outpost of humanity in the most i. lifeless of places. To the west were the Hookhollows, their sharp tips peeping over the edge of the high Eastern Plateau. Restless volcanoes hidden among the mountain peaks filled the sky with a grimy haze which was carried on to the plateau by the prevailing winds. The land was gloomy and bleared.

The port was built on a blunt lump of black rock that thrust dramatically upward from the ash-crusted earth. The heart of the settlement was on the flat top of the rock, where there was a landing pad for aircraft. It was the only place in Marlen's Hook that had anything recognisable as streets.

Jez stood at Frey's shoulder as he brought the Ketty Jay in towards the landing pad. She'd been to Marlen's Hook twice since joining Frey's crew, and she never looked forward to returning. The place was a lawless den of thieves and cut-throats. The Coalition Navy ignored it because it was so remote from civilisation, and because the ash in the air clogged up engines and lungs alike. Just being here was bad for your health.

She turned her eyes to the horizon, where the day was burning down in shades of pink and yellow and purple. Still, she thought, at least it makes for a dramatic sunset.

Outside the central mass of the town, shanty dwellings had gathered in clots. Tents and lean-tos crowded for space. Buildings clung to the sloped flanks of the rock wherever they could, forming a rickety maze of plank walkways and chiselled stairs. Shadows stretched long fingers eastward, or pooled in the hollows.

The Storm Dog was ahead of them and below, descending towards the port. Powerful beam lamps shone up from the landing pad, cutting through the murk, guiding her in. The Ketty Jay followed, her outflyers trailing behind.

'Well,' said Frey. 'It may not be pretty, but if anyone knows where Dracken might be found, they'll be down there somewhere.'

'Let's hope so, Cap'n,' Jez said neutrally. Frey was just talking to fill up the silence. She could tell he was full of doubts, just as she was. The atmosphere on the return journey from Kurg had been strained. The crew had retreated to their quarters or occupied themselves with solitary tasks. Hodd's murder had sobered them. Nobody missed the explorer, but nobody thought he deserved what he got, and they were all wary of Grist now. They didn't like throwing their lot in with someone like that. They'd rather give up on this whole thing.

But the Cap'n had decided otherwise. He'd got the bit between his teeth, and he wasn't going to stop. Jez wished she knew what was going on in his head. He'd been different ever since Grist had turned up. The old Frey would have known when to retreat. He would have folded his hand and got out while they still could. But something had lit a fire under him. There was a kind of doggedness in his manner that she hadn't seen since they got tangled up in the Retribution Falls affair. She sensed they'd be following this through to the end.

But if Grist was a dangerous ally, then Dracken was an even more dangerous enemy. Her involvement was unlikely to be a coincidence. There was more to this than a simple treasure hunt. She just hoped the Cap'n knew what he was doing.

Meanwhile, Jez had preoccupations of her own. Now that the shock had worn off, she'd had time to process everything she learned aboard the dreadnought. Foremost among them was this: Manes were daemons. Daemons that took over the bodies of men and women.

She had a daemon inside her.

The thought was horrifying. Ever since she'd first realised she was dead, she'd thought of the Mane part of her as an infection, a disease that she must resist if she wanted to retain her humanity. But now it was different. Now she was possessed. The enemy was intelligent, and it was within her. Not some mindless force of transformation, but a malicious invader that knew her thoughts and plotted her overthrow.

She held up her hand in front of her and stared at it. The arrow wound she'd sustained on Kurg had already closed up. There was no trace of a scar, and her fingers worked fine. Once her ability to heal rapidly had seemed a useful side effect of her condition; now it was just more evidence of the dreadful entity within her.

Her skin no longer felt like her own. She was violated. Somehow, she had to expel the invader.

This can't go on, she thought.

For years she'd lived in fear of herself, hiding from her fellow humans, afraid to make friends or to stay in one place. She'd tried to resist the creeping influence of the Manes, hoping to drive it back by willpower alone. She'd told herself that she would have been consumed long ago if not for that.

Maybe that was true, maybe not. But the influence grew, nevertheless. Her trances came more easily and frequently now.

She hadn't been winning. She'd just slowed the speed at which she lost.

Something's got to be done, she thought. And soon.

The Butcher's Block stood on a grubby thoroughfare, sandwiched between a pawnshop and a whorehouse. It was a patched-up mess of wind-blasted sheet metal and flapping tarp. The facade leaned outward as if the whole building was about to tip drunkenly into the street. Lamp-posts, made filthy by the insidious ash in the air, glowed in the dark. Most passers-by wore goggles and face masks; those who didn't had red-rimmed eyes and racking coughs.

Inside, smoke replaced ash as the pollutant of choice. The tables and stools were as mismatched as the clientele. An electric iron candelabra hung from the ceiling, buzzing. The rattling of an oil-powered generator could be heard through the outside wall.

Frey pushed in through the door, unwrapping the scarf from around his face. Pinn, Malvery- and Crake followed, hacking and spluttering. None of the worn-looking patrons paid them any attention.

'Someone get me a drink!' Malvery rasped. 'My mouth tastes like a fireplace.'

'Darian Frey!' called the bartender, seeing them come in. 'Rot and damn! How are you?'

Frey walked over and shook his hand. His name was Ollian Rusk, and he was the proprietor. Huge, fat, permanently sweaty and bald as an egg. He kept a shotgun on a rack over the armour-plated bar, to distract attention from the bigger one he kept hidden underneath it.

'How's things in the ashtray of the world, Rusk?' Frey grinned.

'Getting by, getting by. Some drinks for your boys?'

'Reckon so. What do you recommend?'

'Beer's best, if you want to wash the atmosphere off your tongue.'

'Beer, then.'

'Coming up.'

Frey eyed the room, searching for familiar faces as Rusk poured the drinks. A lot of people came and went in Marlen's Hook. Every lowlife Frey had ever met - and he'd met quite a few - passed through here at one time or another. But tonight he was out of luck.

'Quiet lately,' said Rusk, divining his thoughts. 'Navy have come around sticking their noses in. Once word gets about, people don't want to come here so much.'

'Is nothing sacred?' Frey commiserated.

'Navy's jumpy. All these stories about colonies vanishing in New Vardia. Then there's those rumours that the Sammies found aerium, down where Murthia used to be. Everyone's paranoid they're kitting themselves up with a new Navy. Not to mention the Awakeners getting pissy 'cause the Archduke is trying to cut them down to size.' He laid the beers on the bar. 'The higher-ups think there might be conspiracies afoot. Looking for spies and such, I imagine. Turbulent times, friend.'

Malvery, Pinn and Crake snatched up their beers and downed them thirstily. Pinn burped and slammed his empty glass back on the bar.

'Three more, I suppose,' said Frey, whose own mug was only halfway to his lips.

Rusk poured the beers. Halfway through, he suddenly raised a finger and said, 'I forgot. I've got mail for you.'

'Bring it out,' said Frey. 'Let's have a look.'

The Butcher's Block was one of a dozen mail drops Frey had all over Vardia. It was a system used by many freebooters, who tended to have no fixed address. This way, they could be contacted through the underworld without a lengthy search. Some liked to have mail sent to a post office where they could collect it, but Frey distrusted post offices. Returning to the same spot frequently made him too easy to find, and some of the packages he received were suspect, to say the least. Employing bartenders and shopkeepers as unofficial mail drops carried the risk of theft, but usually the need to maintain a reputation kept them honest. Ollian Rusk handled more mail than some post offices did, because he was as trustworthy as they came.

Rusk went into a back room and emerged with a bundle of six letters wrapped in string.

'What do I owe you?'

'One bit and two for the letters. I'll run you a tab for the drinks.'

'Obliged,' he said, as he took them. The sight of the first letter made him groan.

'Bad news, Cap'n?' Malvery asked. 'You haven't even opened it yet.'

'No, it's nothing,' said Frey.

Malvery looked at him expectantly.

'Alright, it's from Amalicia,' he said. 'I recognise the handwriting. I've had a lot of letters from her lately.'

'Amalicia Thade?' Crake asked. 'The young lady you, er, rescued from the Awakeners by getting her father killed?'

'Hey, he got himself killed!' Frey protested. 'And yes, her.'

'What's she after?' Malvery asked.

Frey squirmed.

'Come on!' the doctor cried, joshing him. 'You might as well tell us. You'll get no peace till you do.'

'Well, she might have somehow got the impression that I was in love with her.'

'Might she?' Malvery asked with a grin. 'And who gave her that idea?'

'I never bloody thought she was going to get out of that hermitage!' Frey said. In fact, he hadn't really thought about the consequences at all. He rarely did when he was making promises to women. The idea that he might have to fulfil them one day rarely crossed his mind, as long as he got what he wanted right then.

'Isn't she the head of the Thade dynasty now?' Crake asked. 'Powerful woman.'

'And filthy rich, too,' said Malvery. 'Not a bad catch, Cap'n. Can't think what she sees in you.'

'I expect it's my rugged charm and roguish demeanour.'

'Must be.'

Frey undid the string and flicked through the rest of the letters. 'There's one here for you, Pinn.'

'For me?' Pinn asked in surprise.

'Oh, that's right,' said Rusk. 'It didn't have your name on, Frey, but it was addressed to the Ketty Jay, so . . .'

Frey handed the letter to Pinn, who tore it open.

'And who's writing to you?' Malvery demanded, descending on Pinn like a slightly inebriated vulture.

'I don't know till I read it, do I?' Pinn said, shrugging him off. He squinted at the letter, concentrating hard, mouthing the words as he processed them. Pinn could just about read and write, although it required a bit of effort. After a few lines his face cleared and a huge smile split his chubby face.

'It's from my sweetheart Lisinda!'

Malvery choked on his beer and sprayed it all over the back of Frey's neck.

'She says . . . she says . . .' Pinn began, then realised he hadn't read that far and went back to the letter. Slowly his smile faded.

'What's the matter?' asked Frey, mopping himself angrily with his scarf. 'What does she say?'

Pinn looked up at them, and his eyes were bewildered and shocked. His expression was one of profound distress.

'She says she's getting married.'

After they left the Butcher's Block, they toured the bars of Marlen's Hook, looking for information about Dracken and the Delirium Trigger. Rusk hadn't been wrong: the port was noticably quieter than usual. Frey complained that many of the familiar faces were absent. It was bad luck that the Navy had come visiting recently.

Crake trudged along, uninterested in the chase. He was rather annoyed that they kept shifting venue, wasting valuable drinking time by wandering the filthy streets. But for once Frey's mind was on the job, not on the booze. He led them here and there, chatting to barmen and interrogating drunks.

Pinn hung about looking glum. He'd barely said a word since reading the letter from his sweetheart, and nobody spoke to him about it. No one was quite sure how to deal with his stunned grief.

Malvery looked particularly awkward. Presumably he was feeling guilty because of all the times he'd said that Lisinda didn't exist.

Privately, Crake sneered at Pinn. His own stupidity had put him in this position. He'd abandoned Lisinda years ago for some absurd quest for glory, and he deserved what he got. If she'd finally woken up and dumped him, well, Crake couldn't really have cared less. Pinn's pain was laughable in comparison to Crake's.

Besides, he wasn't sure if Pinn was even smart enough to feel pain in the way other humans did. It was more like separating animal companions in a zoo, and watching one of them pine for the other.

Eventually, Pinn put them all out of their misery and wandered off back to the Ketty Jay. The mood lightened immediately, though not by much. Crake had been hoping for a raucous night, ending in oblivion, but Frey was too preoccupied and Malvery had something on his mind.

Well, at least there was the booze. He didn't need much more than that.

At one point, they bumped into Grist, Crattle and a few men from the Storm Dog in the street. Grist seemed to be having a similarly frustrating time. Crake, nicely smashed by this point, allowed himself a bitter smile. Good. He'd come to despise Grist, and was quite scared of him. No matter how much Crake had wanted to plunge a machete into Hodd's neck himself, it was inexcusable that Grist had lost control like that. What was a man if he didn't have control? Nothing better than those savages from Kurg.

Let Dracken disappear without trace, he thought. She outwitted us. Move on.

When they got to a bar, Crake and Malvery were largely left to their own devices while Frey went to work charming the clientele. They took their drinks to a corner and set to work on them. Conversation was minimal. Malvery kept on glancing at him, as if he was about to speak, and then didn't.

'What?' Crake asked irritably.

'Nothing,' said Malvery.

It was the eighth or ninth bar they'd visited, and they were both unsteady on their feet, when Malvery broached the subject he'd been working up to all night.

'Know how long I've been an alcoholic?' he asked.

Crake picked up their bottle of rum and filled Malvery's mug, narrowly avoiding igniting the sleeve of his coat on the candle that sat in the centre of the table.

'Oh, you're not an alcoholic,' Crake said. 'You just like a drink.'

Malvery barked a laugh. 'No, mate. Whatever way you cut it, I'm an alcoholic. Five years now.'

Crake didn't quite know what to say. 'How's that going?' he managed eventually.

Malvery grinned. 'Suits me, actually. I don't mind a bit.'

'Hmm.'

They both drank from their mugs. Crake had a suspicion that something more was coming, but he wasn't going to be the one to prompt it.

'Listen,' said Malvery. He leaned forward. His green-lensed glasses sat askew on his broad nose, and droplets of rum hung from his big white moustache.

Crake waited. When Malvery still hadn't said anything after several seconds, he said, 'Um . . .'

Malvery held one thick finger in the air to silence him. 'Remember . . .' he said. 'Remember I told you what I did?'

There was only one thing he could be referring to. Several years ago, he'd operated on a friend while drunk, and killed him. It had cost him his livelihood, his wife, and everything he had.

'I remember,' said Crake.

Malvery's eyes drifted out of focus. 'I always thought . . . things could've gone two ways that day,' he said. Suddenly he snatched up the bottle of rum and held it between them. 'See, I could've said, "Oi, mate, you know who killed your friend? That bottle in your hand! Get rid of it!" And I'd have gone clean and sober. That would've been the sensible thing to do.' He put the bottle down. 'But instead I just drank more. Wanted to. I wanted to block it out. To forget.'

Crake was watching the mesmerising play of candlelight in the curve of the bottle. 'That, I understand,' he said.

Malvery wiped his moustache with the back of his hand. 'Let me tell you. Doesn't work.' He tapped the bottle with a finger. 'This bottle ain't gonna forgive you, Crake. You've got to do that yourself.'

Crake's eyes went to Malvery's. 'Some things can't be forgiven,' he said.

'Then they can't be forgotten, either,' Malvery replied.

'I suppose not,' Crake conceded.

Malvery sat back in his chair. 'So you can't forgive yourself and you can't forget. Fine. Now what?'

Crake was confused by that, and irritated by the turn of the conversation. 'There is no "now what",' he said.

"Course there is,' said Malvery. 'You just keep on living, don't you?'

Crake shrugged.

'Look, mate. It was you that persuaded me to pick up a scalpel again, after all those years. We saved Silo, between us. Remember that?'

'Of course I do.'

'Now I ain't never going to be the surgeon I once was, and I've still got a liver blacker than pickled shit, but I know how to save a life. Maybe I've got ten years left, maybe just one, but maybe in that time I can save someone else. Maybe you.'

'What's your point? That you figured out how to be a doctor again? Malvery, you're still drinking.'

'It's far too late for me,' he said. 'Besides, I'm a damn good alcoholic.' He swigged his rum to prove the point, then wagged a finger at Crake. 'But I ain't nobody's role model. Why'd you wanna go this way?'

'I'm not your bloody apprentice, Malvery,' Crake said. 'This isn't about you.'

But Malvery wasn't about to be put off. 'You're a smart feller. Careful. Polite. You think things through. But lately, mate, you've been getting nasty when you drink. And that's not you.'

This was ridiculous. Crake felt like he was being preached at, and it made him angry. 'So what's the diagnosis, doc?' he said, his voice dripping with scorn. 'How do you propose to cure me?'

'I faced my daemons, mate. You made me. Now you gotta face yours.'

'What do you know about my daemons?' Crake sneered.

Malvery shrugged. 'Not much, not much. But I know you've got 'em, and they're big ugly bastards at that. Otherwise you wouldn't be spending half your life in a bottle.'

'More than half,' Crake said, refilling his mug. 'So what?'

Malvery studied him for a moment. 'How'd it feel, when you fixed that door for us?'

'What do you mean?'

'The door in the dreadnought. The one you popped open.'

Crake thought about that. 'It felt good,' he said. 'I felt useful.'

'You like all that daemonist stuff, don't you?'

'I wouldn't be a daemonist if I didn't,' Crake replied. He ran his fingers through his scruffy blond hair. 'Obsession comes with the territory. Once you've seen the other side . . .'he trailed away.

'And how much have you done, these last couple of months?'

'Excuse me?'

'How much daemonism, mate? New stuff, I mean. Testing your boundaries, learning your craft, all of that.'

'I don't see what you're driving at.'

Malvery leaned forward on his elbows. 'I see the stuff you've made. Frey's cutlass, your gold tooth, those little ear thingies the pilots wear, that skeleton key you've got. Some of those things are real damn clever.'

'Thank you.'

'Now how many of them did you make in the last six months?'

Crake opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again.

'I expect you've been all tied up in research, trying out some new method or something, ain't you?' Malvery prompted. 'Maybe you're working on something really special?'

Crake glared at him. Malvery- sat back and folded his arms. Point made.

Crake took a resentful swallow from his mug. Being called an alcoholic was easy enough to take, but he didn't like having his commitment to the Art questioned. And yet, he couldn't deny Malvery had a point. He didn't have any excuses. He'd stopped practising daemonism almost entirely of late. The thrill of it, the allure of new discoveries, had disappeared.

For a while, he'd rather enjoyed the challenge of working aboard the Ketty Jay. Being without a sanctum forced him to think of creative ways to get the best out of his portable, sub-standard equipment. But as the weeks passed there were fewer and fewer hours in the day when he was clear-headed enough to study the formulae he needed. He seemed to be always hungover or drunk, and it became a huge effort to turn his brain to the complex problems of daemonism. Easier to leave it until the next day. He told himself he'd do some work then. But the next day was the same as the last, and somehow it just never happened.

He looked at the bottle on the table. It was the first time it had occurred to him that his drinking was affecting his Art. Without that forbidden knowledge to set him apart he was just another layabout aristocrat, no better than Hodd. The idea appalled him. He considered himself better than that. Yet the evidence indicated otherwise.

Then an idea occurred to him. A drunken, stupid, furious idea born out of frustration at being faced with his own inadequacies. Something he never would have dared consider when he was sober. But he was keen to prove Malvery wrong, keen to show the doctor -and himself - that he was still worth something. He was more than a privileged idler with a hobby; he was extraordinary. So he said it aloud, and once said, he was committed.

'I think I know a way we can find that sphere.'

'How?'

'I'm going to ask a daemon.'