Retribution Falls

Twenty-Six

Frey celebrated his victory in the traditional manner, and was roaring drunk by dawn.

They reclaimed the Firecrow and the Skylance from their hiding place outside Rabban, then flew for three hours, changing course several times until they were thoroughly sure that any attempts at pursuit would be hopeless. After that they began to search for a place to put down. Frey found a hillside clearing amid the vast moon-silvered landscape of the Vardenwood. There they sallied out, built a campfire, and Frey proceeded to get hammered on cheap grog.

It had been a long, long time since he felt this good.

He looked around at the laughing faces of the men who drank with him: Malvery, Pinn, even Harkins, who had loosened up and joined them after a little bullying. Jez was in her quarters, keeping to herself as usual, deciphering the charts they’d stolen from Dracken’s cabin. Crake and Silo were nearby, tending to the damage that Bess had suffered. Nobody wanted to sleep. They were all either too fired up or, in Crake’s case, too anxious. He was fretting about his precious golem.

But Frey couldn’t worry about Crake for the moment. Right now, he was basking in the satisfaction of a job well done. His plan had worked. His crew had triumphed against all the odds. Despite that cold bitch’s condescending words, her cruel pity, he’d screwed her over like a master. He imagined her face when she got back to find her crew in disarray and her precious charts missing. He imagined how she’d smoulder when she heard of the heroic last-minute rescue in the Ketty Jay. He imagined her rage when she realised how badly she’d misjudged him.

You thought you knew me, he gloated. You said I was predictable. Bet you didn’t predict that.

And the best thing was that none of his people had got hurt. Well, except for Crake’s little pet and the scratch on Pinn’s leg, but that didn’t really count. All in all, it was a brilliant operation.

If this was what success tasted like, he wanted more of it.

The bottle of grog came round to him and he swigged from it deeply. Malvery was telling some ribald story about a high-class whore he used to treat back when he was a big-city doctor. Pinn was already in stitches, long before the punchline. Harkins spluttered and grinned, showing his browned teeth. Their faces glowed warmly, flushed in the firelight and the colours of the breaking dawn. Frey felt a surge of alcohol-fuelled affection for them all. He was proud of them. He was proud of himself.

It hadn’t been an easy thing, to entrust Jez with the ignition code to the Ketty Jay. The code was set during the manufacture of the aircraft, and because it relied on various complex mechanisms it couldn’t ever be changed without lengthy and expensive engineering procedures. Jez would forever have the power to activate and fly the Ketty Jay. Even now, Frey had to fight the suspicion that Jez might be creeping towards the cockpit, intending to punch in the numbers and run off with his aircraft before anyone could stop her.

It’s done now, he thought. Live with it.

It had been absolutely necessary for the completion of his plan that someone else fly the Ketty Jay. Jez had assured him she could, having grown up flying many types of aircraft. But he’d still found himself unable to give away the code at first. Like marriage, it felt like sacrificing too much of himself to a stranger.

In the end, he’d convinced himself by making an analogy to Rake. He found that most things in life could be related to cards, if only you thought hard enough.

In Rake, it was possible to play too carefully. If you waited and waited for the perfect hand, then the obligatory minimum bets each round would gradually whittle you down. You’d run out of time and money waiting for an opportunity that never came. Sooner or later, you had to take a risk.

So he’d bet on Jez, and thankfully he’d won big. She was an odd fish, but he liked her, and he knew she was competent. He even had to admit to a slight sense of relief at the sharing of the secret code, although he wasn’t exactly sure why. It felt like he’d let out the pressure a little.

Malvery reached the punchline of his story, and they howled with laughter. Frey hadn’t been paying attention, but he laughed anyway, caught up in the swell. He passed on the bottle, and Malvery gulped from it. Later, Frey would think of other things: the task they still had ahead of them, the bitter sting that came from seeing Trinica’s face again. But for now, drinking with his men, he was happy, and that was enough.

Crake was anything but happy. Their narrow escape hadn’t invigorated him with a sense of triumph, but depressed him instead. He was acutely aware that they’d only made it out because Jez had arrived early. She’d been forced to take off sooner than planned, driven back to the Ketty Jay by far superior numbers, and had then headed directly to their pick-up point at the hangar. Once there, she’d spotted the disturbance inside and realised there was trouble. Their estimation of the length of the operation had been off: they’d allowed themselves far too much time.

In the end, they got lucky.

Rather to his surprise, Silo had emerged from the engine room to help him patch up Bess. The Murthian was a silent, solid presence around the Ketty Jay, but because he rarely offered an opinion and never socialised, Crake had unconsciously begun to ignore him, as if he was one of the servants back home. He suspected that Silo was simply curious, and saw an opportunity to get a closer look at the golem, to work out what made her tick. Whatever his motives, Crake was glad of the help and the quiet company. Between them, they pulled out bullets, stitched up leather, and soldered her wounds.

Though the damage was all superficial, Crake was wracked with guilt. He’d allowed Bess to be used as an object. What if they had dynamite? What if they had a really big cannon? Could she have stood up to that? For that matter, what would actually happen to her if she was destroyed?

Bess was a shell, inhabited by a presence. That was as much as Crake knew. A vacant suit of armour, a skin surrounding nothing. Where did the presence truly exist? What exactly was in there? Did it occupy the skin of the suit, or was it somewhere inside? Those glittering eyes in the emptiness—did they mean something?

He didn’t know. He didn’t even truly know how he’d made her. Bess was an accident and a mystery.

‘Does it hurt her?’ Silo asked suddenly, rubbing his finger across a bullet hole in her knee. His deep, molten voice was heavily inflected. Doors eet hoort hair?

‘I don’t know,’ said Crake. ‘I think so. In a way.’

The Murthian stared at him, waiting for more.

‘She was . . . upset,’ he said awkwardly. ‘When they were shooting her. So I think she feels it.’

Silo nodded to himself and returned his attention to his work. Bess was sitting quietly, not moving. She was asleep, he guessed. Or at least, he called it sleep. In these periods of catatonia, she was simply absent. There were no glittering lights inside. She was an empty suit. Where the presence had gone, or if it had really gone anywhere at all, he couldn’t have said.

The silence between them returned, but Crake felt a pressure to say something now that Silo had. It seemed momentous that the Murthian should be out here alongside him, asking him an un-prompted question. He began to feel more and more uncomfortable. The rising chorus of birds from the trees all around seemed unnaturally loud.

‘The captain seems in good cheer,’ he said at length.

Silo only grunted.

‘How do you and he know each other?’

Silo stopped and looked up at him. For a few seconds, Silo regarded him in the pale dawn light, his eyes unreadable. Then he went back to his task.

Crake gave up. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps Silo really didn’t want to talk.

‘I escaped from a factory,’ Silo told him suddenly. Arr scorrpt fram a fack-truh. He kept working as he talked. ‘Seven year back. Built aircraft there for the Samarlans. My people are slaves down there. Bet you know that, yuh?’

‘Yes,’ said Crake. He was shocked to hear such a torrential monologue from Silo.

‘The Dakkadians gave up. Stopped fighting long ago, joined their masters. But those of us from Murthia, we never give up. Five hundred year and we never give up.’ There was a fierce pride in his voice. ‘So when the time comes, some of us, we kill our overseer and we run. They come after us, yuh? So we scatter. Into the hills and the forest. And pretty soon, there’s just me. Starved and lost, but I ain’t dead and I ain’t no slave.

‘Then I see a craft coming down. Ain’t damaged, but flies like it is. Pilot look like he don’t know a thing. Makes a rough landing, and off I go. That’s my way out. And when I get there, I find the Cap’n inside. Stabbed in the guts. In a bad way.’

It took Crake a moment to catch on. ‘Wait, you mean our captain? Frey?’

‘Frey and the Ketty Jay,’ said Silo.

‘How did it happen?’

‘Didn’t ask, and he didn’t say,’ Silo replied. ‘Now, there’s plenty food and supplies there on that craft, but I can’t fly. I know craft on the inside, but I never flew one. So I take care of the Cap’n. I get him his drugs and bandages and I get him well. And in the meantime, I eat, get strong.’ He shrugged. ‘When he got better, he said he wasn’t never goin’ back to the people who sent him there. Said he was goin’ to live the life of a freebooter. That was fine by me. He flew us both out, and I been on the Ketty Jay ever since.’

‘So you saved his life?’

‘S’pose. S’pose he saved mine too. Either way, here I am, yuh? We ain’t never spoken of it since. I fix his craft, he keeps me in shelter. That’s the way it is, and I’m grateful every day I have on board the Ketty Jay. Every day, that’s one more day I ain’t a slave. Lone Murthian wouldn’t last long out here in Vardia. Your people ain’t exactly fond of us since the Aerium Wars.’

Crake looked over at the fire, where Malvery was holding Frey down and pouring grog into his mouth while the other two cheered. Every time he thought he had Frey figured out, he was bewildered anew.

‘You never said.’

‘You never asked,’ said Silo. ‘It’s a fool that speaks when there ain’t no cause to. Too many loudmouths already on this craft.’

‘On that we agree,’ said Crake.

Silo got to his feet and stretched. ‘Well, I done what I can with your lady Bess,’ he said. ‘Gonna catch some sleep.’

‘Thank you for your help,’ said Crake. Silo grunted and began to walk off.

‘Hey,’ called Crake suddenly, as a new question occurred to him. ‘Why do they call you Silo?’

‘The name mama gave me is Silopethkai Auramaktama Faillinana,’ came the reply. For the first time that Crake could remember, he saw the Murthian smile. ‘Think you can remember it?’

‘Cap’n.’

Frey was faintly conscious of someone shaking him. He wished with all his heart that they’d go away.

‘Cap’n!’

There it was again, dragging him upwards from the treacly, grog-soaked depths of sleep. Leave me alone!

‘Cap’n!’

Frey groaned as it became clear they weren’t going to give up. He was aware of a cool breeze and warm sun on his skin, the smell of grass, and the forbidding portents of a dreadful hangover. He opened his eyes, and flinched as the eager sun speared shafts of light directly into his brain. He blocked the light with his hand and turned his head to look at Jez, who was kneeling next to him.

‘What?’ he said slowly, making it a threat.

‘I’ve figured out the charts,’ she said.

He levered himself upright and groaned again, mashing his face with his palm. His mouth tasted like something had shat in it and subsequently died there. The embers of the fire were still alive, but the sun was high in a blue sky on an unseasonably warm winter’s day. Malvery snored like a tractor nearby. Pinn was sucking his thumb, his other hand twitching towards his crotch, around which all his dreams revolved.

‘Don’t you sleep?’ he said.

‘Not much,’ she admitted. ‘Sorry if it’s a bad time. You said you wanted to know straight away. You said time is—’

‘—of the essence, yes, I remember.’ He deeply regretted those words now. ‘So you know where Trinica’s hideout is?’

‘I believe so, Cap’n. The charts weren’t easy to work out. It’s not just an X-marks-the-spot kind of thing.’

‘Uh? A chart’s a chart, isn’t it?’

‘Not really. These are very close detail, marking a route through the mountains. Either we’re missing a chart or Trinica already knows the general area where the hideout is. If you don’t know where to start, you’re just looking at a bunch of mountains.’ She gave a quirky smile. ‘Lot of mountains in Vardia.’

‘But you figured it out?’

‘Matched the position of the bigger mountains with my other charts.’

‘Good work, Jez.’

‘Thank you, Cap’n.’

‘Now tell me where we’re going.’

‘You’re not gonna like it.’

‘I rarely do.’

‘I assume you’ve heard of Rook’s Boneyard?’

‘Oh, for shit’s sake,’ he sighed, and then slumped down onto his back again, his eyes closed. He’d expected bad news, just not quite that bad.

Jez patted him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll be in my quarters when you’re ready,’ she said. Then he heard her get up and walk back to the Ketty Jay.

Everybody who flew over the south end of the Hookhollows knew Rook’s Boneyard. They all knew to avoid it if they possibly could. Aircraft that went into that small, restlessly volcanic area were rarely seen again. Those that ventured into the mists spoke of seeing their companions mysteriously explode. Pilots went mad and flew into mountainsides. Survivors talked of ghosts, terrible spirits that clawed at their craft. It was a cursed place, named after the first man to brave it and survive.

Why don’t I just lie down and die here? thought Frey. It’ll save time.

Time. Time was something they didn’t have. There was no telling how long it would take Trinica to replenish her crew and familiarise the newcomers with the complexities of the Delirium Trigger. A day? A week? Frey had no idea. It really depended on whether there was anyone really vital among the men Jez had machine-gunned on the gantry.

But he knew one thing. As soon as she was up and running, Trinica would be after them with redoubled fury. Without her strange compass and her charts, she wouldn’t be able to get to the hideout, but she knew that Frey would be heading that way. She might be able to get word to her allies somehow. He wanted to be in and out before she had a chance to act.

He got to his feet and swayed as his head went light. It took a few moments for everything to stabilise again. He wasn’t, he reflected, in good shape for facing certain death anytime soon.

‘Alright,’ he told himself unconvincingly. ‘Let’s do this.’ And he stumbled off to rouse the crew.