Retribution Falls

Eleven

On reflection, Crake had spent rather a lot of time in taverns lately. As a man who had once prized study and discipline it made him feel vaguely decadent. He was used to drawing rooms and social clubs, garden parties and soirees. During his university days he’d frequented fashionably seedy dives, but they were usually full of similarly educated folk eager for a taste of the low life. His drinking binges had always been disguised as evenings of intelligent debate. There was no threat of that with the crew of the Ketty Jay.

Nowadays, he simply drank to forget.

He sat at the bar, two mugs of the foul local grog before him. It was late afternoon in Marklin’s Reach, and a sharp winter sun cut low across the town. Dazzling beams shone through the dirty windows and into the gloomy, half-empty tavern. Slowly writhing smoke formed hypnotic patterns, unfurling in the light.

Crake checked his pocket watch and scanned the room. His new friend was late. He wondered if he’d overdone things last night by buying all the drinks. Maybe he’d laid on the flattery a bit thick. Tried too hard.

He thought they’d got on well, all things considered. He thought he’d done a good job bridging the vast gulf in intellect. Still, Crake was never sure with these simple types. He suspected they had a certain intuition. They sensed he wasn’t one of them.

But Rogin had seemed to take to him. He’d been happy to chat with anyone, as long as they were buying the drinks. At the end of the night, they agreed to meet up for a quick mug of grog the next day, before he went on duty. ‘It’ll help me ease into my shift, so to speak,’ he’d said. Crake had brayed enthusiastically and promised to have a drink waiting.

He scratched at his beard. He’d considered shaving it off, since the Century Knights would be looking for a blond-bearded man. But the others who were chasing him were looking for somebody clean-shaven, which was why he’d grown it in the first place. He feared the Shacklemore Agency just as much as the Century Knights, and so, all things being even, he decided the beard suited him and kept it. He thought it made him look pleasingly rugged.

He checked his pocket watch again. Where was that oaf? After all the effort he’d spent following the man home, tracking him to his local haunt and plying him with booze, Crake would be sorely annoyed if he got stood up now.

He was in a sombre mood. Memories of the past and doubts about the future flocked up to meet him. Was he doing the right thing, staying with the Ketty Jay? Wouldn’t he be better off cutting them loose, making his own way? After all, he didn’t exactly owe Frey a huge debt of loyalty after their run-in with Macarde.

But Frey had promised him they’d get to a big city as soon as it was safe. There, Crake could get the supplies he needed to practise his daemonism. He’d allowed himself to be placated by that. He could wait a little longer.

The need to practise the Art was nagging at him. After the accident, he’d imagined he’d never be tempted by it again. But he’d abandoned his studies out of fear, and that was a cowardly thing. Since university, his every spare moment had been secretly devoted to daemonism. It was the only thing that set him apart from the herd of over-educated, moneyed idiots that had surrounded him all his life. He thought himself better than that. He disdained them. He’d been brave enough to look into the unknown, to reach towards the arcane. He could do things that powerful men would marvel at. Shortly before they hanged him.

But no matter the dangers, he couldn’t give it up. To return to the grey unknowing, the humdrum day-to-day, was unimaginable. He’d tasted grief and despair and the highest terror, he’d made the most terrible mistakes and he bore a shame that no man should have to bear; but he’d stared into the fires of forbidden knowledge, and though he might look away for a moment, his gaze would always be drawn back.

You can start small. Start with the easy procedures. See how you go.

Besides, with only enough money to buy the most basic supplies—let alone pay for transport—he wasn’t in a good position to leave. At least on the Ketty Jay he was surrounded by people who asked no questions, people untrained in the aristocratic arts of vicious wit and backstabbing. He rather liked that about them, actually.

A disturbing notion occurred to him. Spit and blood, was it possible he was getting comfortable in their company? He took a swig from his mug to wash away the bad taste that left in his mouth, then choked as he realised the grog tasted even worse.

‘Went down the wrong pipe, eh?’ said a voice behind him, and he was pummelled on the back hard enough to break a rib.

Crake smiled weakly and wiped his tearing eyes as the man sat down next to him. Grubby and balding, with a lumpy nose and cheeks red with gin blossoms, Rogin wasn’t easy on the eye. Nor on the nose, for that matter. He had the sour and faintly cabbagey smell of a man accustomed to stewing in his own farts.

Crake made a heroic attempt to summon some manly gusto and slapped Rogin on the shoulder in greeting. ‘Good to see you, my friend,’ he said, with his best picture-pose grin. The low shafts of sunlight glinted on his gold tooth. ‘I got you a drink.’

Rogin picked up the mug provided for him—a mug Crake had laced with Malvery’s special concoction—and lifted it up so they could clink them together.

‘To your health!’ said Rogin, and downed his grog in one swallow.

‘Oh, no,’ murmured Crake, with a self-satisfied smirk. ‘To yours.’

The warmth drained from the air as the sun dipped beneath the horizon. Frost gathered on the churned mud of the thoroughfares, and the people of Marklin’s Reach retreated into their homes. A thin blue mist of fumes hung near the ground, seeping from portable generators that hummed and clattered in the alleys behind the wooden shanties. Chains of electric bulbs brightened and dimmed as the power fluctuated.

Frey huddled in the mouth of an alleyway, concealed by a patch of shadow conveniently created when Pinn smashed the bulbs overhead. Silo and Jez stood with them. Crake and Harkins had been left back at the Ketty Jay, since both of them were a liability in a firefight. Harkins would be reduced to a dribbling wreck in seconds, and Crake was more likely to hit a friend than an enemy.

Xandian Quail’s house stood across the street, secure behind its high walls and its wrought-iron gate. Frey had been watching the two guards behind the gate for an hour now as they stamped back and forth, bundled up in jackets and hoods. He was cold and impatient, and was wondering whether Crake had put enough of Malvery’s concoction into Rogin’s drink.

Malvery himself loitered a little way away, near the wall but out of sight of the guards. A black doctor’s bag lay at his feet. His hands were thrust into his coat pockets and he looked as miserable as Frey felt. As Frey watched he leaned down, opened the bag and took a warming hit of medicinal alcohol from the bottle within.

Then, finally, a groan from behind the wall. Malvery stiffened, listening. After a moment Rogin swore and groaned again, louder still. His companion’s voice was too muffled to hear the words, but Frey detected alarm in his tone.

Malvery looked for him expectantly. Frey stepped out of the shadows and waved the doctor into action.

Go.

Malvery scooped up the doctor’s bag and set off. Rogin’s groans had become low cries of pain now, foul oaths forced through gritted teeth. Malvery passed in front of the gate, halted theatrically as if he’d only just heard the sounds of Rogin’s distress, and then peered through the bars.

Rogin was curled in a ball on the other side, clutching his stomach. His companion, a tall, wiry man with ginger hair and a broken nose, looked up as Malvery hailed him.

‘Get lost, old feller!’ the guard snapped.

‘Is your friend alright?’ Malvery enquired.

‘Does he look alright?’

‘It’s my guts!’ Rogin gasped. ‘My bloody guts! Hurts like a bastard.’ He grimaced as another spasm of agony racked him.

‘Let me help him. I’m a doctor,’ Malvery said. The ginger-haired guard looked up suspiciously. Malvery brandished his doctor’s bag. ‘See?’

The guard glanced back at the doorway of the house, wondering if he should tell someone inside.

‘For shit’s sake! Let him in!’ Rogin cried, his voice getting near to hysteria. ‘I’m dying, damn it!’

The guard fumbled out a set of keys and opened the gate, then stepped back to allow Malvery through.

‘Thank you,’ said Malvery as he passed. Then, since the guard had one hand on the gate and the other on the key, he drew out a pistol and pressed it to the unfortunate man’s temple. ‘Why don’t you leave it open, eh?’ he suggested.

Frey, Silo, Pinn and Jez sallied out from the shadows and across the deserted thoroughfare, then slipped through the open gate. Silo went to the fallen man and quickly disarmed him while Jez did the same to Malvery’s guard. Rogin made a strangled sound of mingled fury and pain, but Silo crouched down next to him and tapped the barrel of a revolver against his skull.

‘Sssh,’ he said, finger on his lips.

Jez closed the gate and Frey kept his gun on the ginger-haired guard while Silo and Malvery trussed Rogin up. They gagged him with a length of rag and one of Pinn’s balled-up socks, which Malvery had chosen for additional anaesthetic effect. Then they carried him off to the nearby guardhouse.

‘Don’t worry, mate,’ said Malvery as they went. ‘The prognosis is good. The pain’ll pass in a few hours, although I’d suggest you send your loved ones out of town before you take your next dump.’

Frey scanned the house quickly. The curtains were drawn across the windows and no one seemed to have paid any attention to Rogin’s cries. If they’d heard him at all, they probably assumed it was someone on the street outside.

He didn’t dare to hope that all might be going well. That would only put the jinx on him.

‘Right, you,’ he said to the remaining guard, as Malvery returned. ‘I’ve got a job for you. Do it well, and you don’t get hurt. Understand? ’

The guard nodded. He was angry and humiliated, but he was mostly terrified. Probably his first time being held at gunpoint. Good. Frey didn’t want to shoot him if he didn’t have to.

Jez tossed Malvery his shotgun as he and Silo returned from the guardhouse. Malvery always felt better with a bit of proper firepower. He didn’t trust pistols; he thought them fiddly.

They assembled on either side of the heavy oak doors, beneath the stone porch. Frey dragged the guard up by his arm and stepped back, pistol trained on him.

‘Get them to open the door,’ he said. ‘Don’t try anything, if you want to keep your brains in your head.’

The guard nodded. He took a nervous breath and rapped on the door.

Frey’s hand was trembling, just a little. His throat had gone dry. He wondered if the guard knew how scared he was himself.

I don’t want to die.

‘Yeah?’ came a voice from inside.

‘It’s Jevin. Open the door,’ said the guard.

The door opened a little way. It was Codge, he of the long face and the patchy black beard.

‘What’s up?’

Frey shoved the guard aside and aimed his revolver point-blank at the white expanse of Codge’s forehead. Codge stared at him in surprise for an instant. Then he went for his gun.

Frey’s reaction was as instinctive as Codge’s had been. He pulled the trigger. Codge’s head snapped back; tiny beads of blood spattered Frey’s face. Codge tipped backwards and crumpled to the ground.

Frey wasted a moment on shock. He hadn’t wanted to fire. What was that idiot doing, going for his gun like that?

Malvery shouldered the door hard and it opened a little way before jamming against the dead weight of Codge’s body. Frey wriggled through the gap and into the hallway. There was a panicked moment as he found himself alone and exposed, face to face with a guard who had been too bewildered to react until now. The man’s hand moved for the pistol in his holster, but Frey’s weapon was out and ready, and he was faster. His arm snapped out straight, finger poised over the trigger.

Don’t.

To Frey’s relief, this one had more sense than Codge. He slowly raised his hands. Malvery shoved the door open the rest of the way, barging Codge’s corpse aside. There was a swell of women’s voices from one of the doorways leading off the hallway, crying variations of ‘Stop!’ But a guard came stumbling out anyway, naked from waist to ankle, his engorged penis waggling ridiculously. One hand was struggling to pull up the pair of trousers that tangled his legs, while he attempted to aim a pistol with the other. Malvery sighted and blew him away before he’d taken two steps.

Frey pulled the guard who had surrendered over to him, pressing the pistol to his back, using him as a shield. He disarmed his prisoner and tossed the gun aside as Malvery moved out of the way of the door and Jez and Pinn came in after him.

‘Silo?’ Frey asked.

‘Covering the guard outside,’ Jez replied. ‘Jevin, or whatever his name is.’

Frey was thankful that someone had the presence of mind to do that. He’d half-expected them all to come rushing in when he did.

He wrapped his arm around his prisoner’s throat from behind. ‘Where’s the other one?’ he hissed. There had been four guards inside, last time he’d visited. Without waiting for an answer, he called: ‘We got your friend here! Step out and you won’t get hurt! I’ve got no business with you!’

There was silence, but for the ticking of the clock that overlooked the hall. Then a voice drifted out from another doorway:

‘Bren? That you?’

‘It’s me, Charry,’ Frey’s prisoner replied. ‘They got a gun to my head. There’s four of ’em.’

Another long silence. ‘Alright,’ said Charry. ‘I’m coming out. Don’t nobody shoot. Nobody’s gonna shoot, are they?’

‘Nobody’s gonna shoot,’ said Frey, with a pointed glare at Pinn.

A rifle skidded out from one of the doorways, followed by a pistol and a knife. A young, swarthy-looking man emerged, his hands held high. Jez took him over to stand with the other prisoner. Silo came in from outside.

‘Where’s the guard you were covering?’ Frey asked, appalled.

‘Tied him up. Put him in the guardhouse with the other,’ said Silo.

‘Right, right,’ Frey said, relieved. He allowed himself to relax a little. ‘Should’ve thought of that myself.’

Pinn and Malvery exchanged a glance. Malvery looked skyward in despair.

‘Your boss is upstairs?’ Frey asked the prisoners. They nodded. ‘No more guards?’ They shook their heads. ‘The whores?’

‘In there,’ said Charry, indicating the room the half-naked man had come from. ‘Obviously.’

Frey looked at Silo. ‘You’re in charge. Anyone moves, shoot them. Malvery, you and me are going to have a word with Quail.’ As an afterthought, he added: ‘Bring your bag. I don’t want him dying before he talks.’

‘Right-o,’ said Malvery, heading outside to collect the doctor’s bag that he’d left on the porch.

Frey walked up to the whores’ doorway and stood to one side. The dead man with his trousers round his ankles had a comically astonished expression on his face.

We can all but hope to die with such dignity and elegance, he thought.

‘Ladies?’ he called. There was no reply. He stuck his head around the doorway, and drew it back rapidly as a shotgun blast blew part of the door frame to splinters.

‘Ladies!’ he said again, slightly annoyed this time. His ears were ringing. ‘We’re not going to hurt you!’

‘No, you’re bloody not!’ came the reply. ‘I know your sort! We give what we give ’cause we’re paid to! Nobody takes it by force!’

‘Nobody’s taking anything,’ said Frey. ‘You might remember me. Darian Frey? We were introduced just a few weeks ago.’

‘Oh,’ came the reply, rather less harsh than before. ‘Yes, I remember you. Stick your head out, let us have a look.’

‘I’d rather not,’ he replied. ‘Listen, ladies, our business is with Quail. We’ll be done with it and go. Nobody’s going to bother you. Now will you let us past?’

There was a short debate in low voices. ‘Alright.’

‘You won’t shoot?’

‘Long as nobody tries to come in. Specially that one who looks like a potato. He’s enough to turn a woman to the other side.’

Silo grinned at Pinn, who kicked an imaginary stone and swore under his breath.

‘Especially not him,’ Frey agreed.

‘Well. Okay then.’

Malvery returned with his bag. He took another swig of swabbing alcohol and stuffed it back inside. Pinn bleated for a taste, but Malvery ignored him.

They hurried past the doorway. Frey caught a glimpse of the whores, hidden behind a dresser with a double-barrelled shotgun poking over the top. They held a pair of white, pink-eyed dogs on leashes, for extra protection. One of the whores waved and made a kiss-face as he passed, but he was out of sight too quickly to respond.

He headed up the stairs, Malvery close behind. The coiled-brass motif from the hallway continued on the upper level, but here the walls and floor were panelled in black wood and lit by electric bulbs in moulded sconces. The place had a dark, grand feel to it. Frey was feeling pretty dark and grand himself right now.

As they approached Quail’s study they heard something crash inside. The sound of a desk tipping over. Presumably he was making a barricade. Frey remembered the bars on the windows from his last visit. They couldn’t be opened from the inside. Quail wasn’t going anywhere.

They took position either side of the door. Frey kicked it open and stepped back as a pistol fired twice. The door rebounded and came to rest slightly ajar. There were two coin-sized holes in the wood panelling of the corridor at chest-height.

‘Anyone comes through that door, they’ll be sorry!’ Quail cried. His attempt to sound fierce was woeful. ‘I’ve got a couple of guns and enough ammo for the whole night. The militia will be here sooner or later! Someone will have heard the racket you made downstairs!’

Frey thought for a moment. He waved at Malvery. ‘Give me the bottle.’

‘What?’ Malvery said, feigning ignorance.

‘The bottle of alcohol in your bag. Give it here.’

Malvery opened his bag reluctantly. ‘This bottle?’ he asked querulously, rather hoping Frey would reconsider.

‘I’ll buy you another one!’ Frey snapped, and Malvery finally handed it over. He snatched it off the doctor and pulled out the stopper. ‘Now a rag.’

‘Oh,’ Malvery murmured, divining Frey’s plan. He passed Frey a bit of cloth with the expression of one about to witness the cruel extinction of some lovable, harmless animal.

Frey stuffed the rag into the neck of the bottle and upended it a few times. He pulled out a match—one of several that had lived in the creases of his coat pocket for many years—and struck it off the door jamb. He touched it to the rag and flame licked into life.

‘Fire in the hole,’ he grinned, then booted open the door and lobbed the bottle in. He ducked back in time to avoid the gunfire that followed.

The throw had been pitched into the corner of the room—he didn’t want to incinerate Quail quite yet—but the whispermonger started howling as if he were on fire himself, instead of just the bookshelves.

Frey and Malvery retreated a little way down the corridor to another doorway, where they took shelter and aimed. Black smoke began to seep out of Quail’s study. They could hear him clattering around inside, cursing. Glass smashed, bars rattled. The smoke became a thick, churning layer that spread out along the ceiling of the corridor. Quail began to cough and hack.

‘You think this is gonna take much longer?’ Malvery asked, and an instant later Quail burst from the room, his good eye watering, waving a pistol in one hand.

‘Drop it!’ Frey yelled, in a voice so loud and commanding that he surprised himself. Quail froze, looking around, and spotted Frey and Malvery with their guns trained on him. ‘Drop it, or I’ll drop you.’

Quail dropped his gun and raised his hands, coughing. His smart jacket was smoke-stained and his collar had wilted. His sleeve was ripped, revealing the polished brass length of his mechanical forearm.

Frey and Malvery emerged from hiding. Frey grabbed the whispermonger by the lapels and dragged him down the corridor, away from the smoke and flames of the study. He slammed Quail bodily up against the wall. Quail glared at him, teeth gritted, defiance on his face. Frey saw himself reflected in Quail’s mechanical eye.

‘Right then,’ said Frey, then stepped back and shot him in the shin.

Quail screamed and collapsed, writhing on the ground, clutching at his leg. ‘What the shit did you do that for, you rotting whoreson?’ he yelled.

Frey knelt down on one knee next to him. ‘Look, Quail. I don’t have time for the preliminaries, and to be honest, I’m pretty unhappy with you right now. So let’s pretend you’ve already put up a spirited resistance to my questioning and just tell me: who set me up? Because if I have to ask again, it’s your kneecap. And after that I’m going for something you can’t replace with a mechanical substitute.’

‘Gallian Thade!’ he blurted. ‘It was Gallian Thade who gave me the job, that’s all I know! It came through a middleman but I knew something was funny so I traced it back to him. He’s a rich land-owner, a nobleman who lives out in—’

‘I know who Gallian Thade is,’ Frey said. ‘Go on.’

‘They said it should be you, specifically you that I offered the job to. But they said . . . aaah, my leg!’

‘What did they say?’ Frey demanded, and punched him in his wounded shin. Quail shrieked and writhed, breathless with pain.

‘I’m telling you, I’m telling you!’ he protested. ‘They said if you couldn’t be found, I could offer it to someone else, last-minute. The important thing . . . the important thing was that the Ace of Skulls was passing through the Hookhollows on that date, they knew that, and they wanted someone to attack it. Preferably you, but if not, any lowlife would do.’

‘You’re not in much of a position to make insults, Quail.’

‘Their words! Their words!’ he said frantically, holding up a hand to ward off further punishment. ‘Someone who wouldn’t be missed, that’s what they said. You’ll forgive me if I’m not thinking too clearly since you just shot me in my damn leg!’

‘Pain does cloud one’s judgement,’ Malvery observed sagely, crouched alongside Frey.

‘You’ve no idea what was on that aircraft?’ Frey pressed the whispermonger. He coughed into his fist. Time was getting short. The corridor was filling with hot smoke, and the only breathable air was low down. The militia wouldn’t be far away.

‘He told me jewels! He said he’d buy them from me if you came back. If not, he’d pay me a fee anyway. It was a cover story, I knew that, but I didn’t . . . didn’t find out what was underneath.’

‘You don’t want to speculate? Any idea why the Century Knights are all over me? Why there’s such a big reward offered that Trinica Dracken is involved?’

‘Dracken!’ His eyes widened. ‘Wait, I do know this! Trinica Dracken . . . she’s put the word out in the underground. Anyone sees you, they tell her. Not the Century Knights. She’s offering an even bigger reward. But it’s for information only . . . she wants to catch you herself.’

‘Well, of course she does—’

‘No, you don’t understand. Dracken doesn’t have that kind of money. Someone’s funding her. I don’t know who. But whoever it is, they want her to get you before the Century Knights do. This isn’t just about a reward, Frey. This is something more. Someone doesn’t want the Knights to find you.’

Frey’s jaw tightened. Deeper and deeper. Worse and worse.

‘We’d better go, Cap’n,’ said Malvery, coughing. ‘Smoke’s getting bad.’

‘Alright,’ Frey muttered. ‘Come on.’

‘What about me?’ Quail said, as they got up. ‘You can’t just—’

‘I can,’ said Frey. ‘You still have one good leg.’ With that, they left, the whispermonger hurling oaths after them.

‘Should we truss up the rest of his men?’ Malvery asked, as they hurried down the stairs at the end of the hall. Pinn, Jez and Silo still had the surviving guards at gunpoint at the far end.

‘No time. Besides, I think they’ll have their hands full saving the house.’ Frey raised his voice to address everyone in the hall. ‘Ladies, gentlemen, we’re out of here! Your boss is upstairs, and only mildly wounded. Go help him if you have the inclination. You’ll also notice that the house is on fire. Make of that what you like.’

Militia whistles were sounding in the distance as the crew of the Ketty Jay slipped through the front gate, their breath steaming the air. Bright yellow flames were pluming from the eaves of the house behind them.

‘This time we’re really not coming back,’ said Frey, as they headed for the dock.

‘One question,’ said Malvery as he huffed alongside. ‘Gallian Thade, this noble feller, you know him?’

‘No,’ said Frey. ‘But I knew his daughter very well. Intimately, you could say.’

Malvery rolled his eyes.