The Ace of Skulls

Fourteen

Three years. Three years and they’ve finally caught me. I suppose it’s true what they say, then. The Shacklemores always get their man in the end.

Grayther Crake sat on a metal bench in the back compartment of a small aircraft, contemplating his impending death. At least, he guessed it was small, by the sound of the engines. It was hard to tell with a sack over his head.

The past twenty-four hours had been a terrifying and humiliating ordeal. The Shacklemore Agency had a reputation built on professionalism and a gentlemanly veneer intended to put rich clients at ease. Shacklemores were polite, well-dressed and efficient: the acceptable face of bounty hunting. But scratch the surface, Crake had discovered, and underneath you’d find mercenary thugs like all the rest; proud members of the biggest gang in Vardia.

‘You won’t be using that tooth on us, mate,’ they sneered when they caught him. That was when they put the sack on, and it had hardly been off since. They cuffed his hands behind his back and pulled him, blind and helpless, through the streets of Korrene. Distant guns and nearby explosions made him shudder and cringe in fear, but they tugged him onward mercilessly until they reached an aircraft. When he felt them taking off, he knew he was lost. There was no hope of rescue after that.

He spent a day and a night in a cell, tormenting himself with thoughts of what was to come and what he’d left behind. He thought of the crew, and wondered how they were faring, and wished he’d never been so foolish as to leave. He thought of Samandra, and burned with shame. Better that she thought he’d run out on her and missed their rendezvous, or that he was dead. Better that than the truth.

He thought of Bess. . But no, he couldn’t think of Bess. Bess, the golem he’d abandoned. Bess, the little girl he’d murdered. He’d evaded justice all this time, but he couldn’t evade it for ever.

They left the bag on his head and kept him manacled like an animal. It only came off when they fed him. One man would spoon stew into his mouth while two others stood by with guns in case he should try any daemonist trickery. He ate what he was given. He didn’t have the heart to protest his treatment. He deserved it.

‘Don’t worry. You’ll be on your way soon,’ they told him. ‘We’re just waiting for someone to take you off our hands. You weren’t even supposed to be our catch, but Rokesby here remembered your warrant from the newsletter, didn’t he?’

Rokesby, the clean-shaven young man who’d caught him, gave a proud little smile. ‘Should’ve kept a bit more of a low profile, I reckon,’ he said, filling up another spoonful of stew for his prisoner. ‘Not many people ain’t heard of the Ketty Jay these days. Victim of your own success, ain’t you?’

Crake didn’t care for their explanations. Just get on with it, he thought. Just get it done.

Early in the morning, his escorts arrived. They took him from the cell and walked him to an aircraft. He could smell food cooking and heard the rough conversation of men nearby. It occurred to him that the flight from the spot he was taken had been short; they were probably in the Coalition’s forward camp, where Samandra had kissed him not two days past. A wild thought came to him, filling him with sudden hope: he should shout out for help! But the notion died as soon as it was born. Who would help him? He was a legitimately guilty man. Why would anyone, Samandra most of all, intervene to save a criminal from the law?

He stayed silent. They put him on the aircraft and took off. He didn’t need to ask where they were taking him.

They were taking him home.

I’m going to hang, he thought, as he felt the aircraft touch down. He’d thought it many times since they caught him. Grief and despair, panic and resignation all visited him in their turn while he waited in his cell.

But there were worse things, even, than the prospect of a short sudden trip to oblivion. Worse would be his father’s silent, grief-stricken disappointment. His sister-in-law Amantha’s hysterical shrieks. And Condred, oh, Condred, whose daughter he’d stabbed to death. It didn’t matter that he knew nothing about it till afterwards. It didn’t matter that the whole thing was an awful accident. He’d still have to face the distraught wrath of his brother before they sent him to the gallows.

After some time, he heard the aircraft doors open, and they came for him. They took him outside and walked him along a path. Even blind, he suspected he knew where they were. When it kinked right and went up a shallow incline, he was sure. He’d walked the route from the Crake family’s private landing pad a thousand times.

Ahead of him and to his left was the mansion he’d grown up in. Behind him, across the grounds, was Condred’s house, where Crake had spent his post-university years playing the layabout while studying daemonism in secret. Condred had taken him in as an act of arrogant charity. He thought it would improve his idle brother’s attitude to live with a family that knew the value of duty and hard work.

No doubt he’d regretted his charity since.

They took him into the foyer and along a route he recognised, though he’d seldom travelled it. The study was his father’s sanctuary. After Crake’s mother died, Rogibald took to it more and more often, until he was seldom seen elsewhere except for meals and business. His sons knew not to bother him there. Rogibald disliked being interrupted when he was working. Or thinking. Or doing pretty much anything, for that matter.

He’ll make an exception for me now, I’ll bet, Crake thought. Even in the midst of his misery, he could summon a touch of bitterness where his father was concerned.

They opened the door without knocking and led him inside. He felt a key in his cuffs and his wrists were freed. Then they pulled the bag from his head.

He blinked at the morning light streaming in through the high windows. The room was as he remembered it: expensive fixtures and furniture gone comfortably shabby with age. There were many books but no ornaments. Rogibald was not a man for sentiment, nor did he appreciate art.

His father was sitting in a high-backed red leather chair, facing the hearth. All Crake could see of him was one arm of a houndstooth suit jacket. A butler that Crake didn’t recognise was just delivering a glass of brandy on a silver tray. There was an identical chair next to Rogibald, this one unoccupied. A fire had been newly lit to fend off the chill of winter in the hills.

‘Sit down, Grayther,’ Rogibald said. His voice was worn and weary. Not at all the tone that Crake was used to hearing from him. ‘Everybody else, get back to your duties.’

One of the Shacklemores, a young fellow with a pencil moustache, seemed uncomfortable at the idea. ‘Sir, perhaps we should stay? To ensure that the fugitive doesn’t get out of hand.’

‘I have nothing to fear from my son,’ Rogibald snarled. ‘Get out!’

The butler opened the door and invited them to leave. They did so. The butler left with them, and closed the door behind him.

Crake sat down in the empty chair. His father was thinner than he remembered. He’d always been lean, but now the flesh was falling off his bones, and his once stern face was gaunt. He seemed to have shrunk inside his clothes, and there was the sour smell of the old about him. But for all that, he was still Rogibald Crake: solemn, erect, intimidating.

‘Hello, Father,’ said Crake.

Rogibald didn’t reply. He rarely indulged in pleasantries. He was a big believer in the idea that a man shouldn’t speak unless he had something worth saying.

Crake had never been able to suffer those silences for long. He needed something to fill up the space. ‘You have a new butler,’ he heard himself saying. ‘What happened to Charden?’

‘I got rid of him,’ Rogibald said. ‘I got rid of all the servants. Amantha insisted, after. .’ He waved a hand. ‘You know.’

Yes, thought Crake. I know perfectly. But neither of us can say it.

‘She used to fly into a rage at the sight of them,’ Rogibald said. ‘Blamed them for not seeing it coming, not watching Bessandra closely enough, not locking the doors, or some such thing. She cleared out her own household, then started on mine. I let them go, to keep the peace. But Charden. . that was hard. That man had been with me twenty years.’ He shifted in his chair and folded his legs. ‘She was insane,’ he said. ‘We just didn’t know it then.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘The sanatorium at Clock Shallows. We sent her there a year ago. I don’t think it’s made her any better, but she seems happy, at least. She has come to believe that Bessandra is there with her. Nobody is inclined to discourage the notion.’

Crake felt his throat close up. His brother’s wife in a sanatorium. His doing. He’d never liked her, but that hardly mattered. Her ruin lay at his feet.

‘Damnably difficult, keeping any servants these days,’ Rogibald went on. ‘They’re a superstitious lot. People in the village talk. The way they tell it, the manor is cursed and all of us with it. Not many servants stay long after they hear that.’ He sipped his brandy. ‘Superstitious lot,’ he said again.

Crake couldn’t bear listening to his father talk this way. He was usually so direct, a no-nonsense man who got to his point instantly. To hear him working up the courage to address the real subject was awful. Only then did Crake realise how much pain he’d inflicted on a man he’d thought incapable of feeling.

‘Father. I know there are no words that can-’

‘No,’ he said. ‘There aren’t.’

Crake shut up. All of a sudden, he wanted to cry; but that would never do. It was unthinkable to shed a tear in front of Rogibald. Condred had always followed their father in all things, but Grayther had been a disappointment. Rogibald had always said he’d bring shame on the family.

Well, at least he could take solace in the fact that he’d been proved right. For Rogibald, being right was everything.

Crake looked hard out the window, to gather himself. Trench-coated Shacklemores walked the lawns in the crisp morning light, or patrolled near the wall that surrounded the grounds. They carried shotguns. It seemed a lot of firepower for a single fugitive.

‘The bounty hunters?’ Crake asked, when he found his voice again.

Rogibald said nothing.

‘Father?’ he prompted.

‘I’m sorry, was that a question?’

Crake had forgotten how wilfully obtuse his father could be. When he wasn’t being infuriatingly literal, he was being pedantic. It was his way of maintaining superiority.

He tried again. ‘Why are there so many Shacklemores here?’

Rogibald’s jaw tightened at that. He stared into the fire. ‘The rabble hereabouts.’

‘The villagers? The farmers?’

‘All of them. The Awakeners have stirred up the countryside, Grayther. Turning the common folk against the gentry. If we don’t declare for their cause. . Well, I wouldn’t be the first to be strung up because I won’t bend the knee to their nonsense. Many of us have gone to the cities, but I’ll not cave in to ignorance.’ He turned to Crake, and there was a feverish anger in his eyes. ‘I won’t, you hear? No matter what the cost!’

Crake had the sense that there was some meaning to Rogibald’s words that he was missing. But he had other questions, and he couldn’t take the suspense any more. His father’s feelings be damned; he had to know.

‘Where is Condred, Father?’

Rogibald flinched as if struck. He seemed to diminish, and shrank back into his chair, where he took a swallow of brandy.

‘Father, where is he?’ Crake persisted. ‘He took the contract out on me, didn’t he? Why did they bring me to you and not him?’

‘Your brother. .’ said Rogibald, his voice heavy with a melancholy disgust. ‘He cancelled the contract two years ago.’

Crake just stared dumbly. Two years ago? All this time he’d been living under a shadow, and there was no contract on him? No wonder the Shacklemores hadn’t been on his back. He’d always thought it strange that they hadn’t been more persistent.

‘We kept the murder out of the courts, for the family’s sake,’ Rogibald said. ‘Condred wanted to deal with you himself. But after a year. . After Amantha. .’ The tiniest of frowns crossed his brow: a sign of what his next words cost him. ‘It would have been a hollow victory, he said. To exact vengeance on his brother. No matter what you did.’

Crake’s hands began to tremble. A torrent of muddled emotions threatened to overwhelm him. Relief and guilt came all together. Was he reprieved? Would he live after all? And if so, where was his justice, his retribution? He couldn’t believe that his brother would ever have forgiven him for what he did. And yet. .

‘If he cancelled the contract, why did the Shacklemores bring me here?’

‘Because I told them to,’ said Rogibald. He finished the last of his brandy, grimacing as if he’d swallowed something rank. Then, venomously:

‘Because I need your help.’

Pinn hurried across the clearing, his heart beating hard in his chest. The sun was low and yellow as it pushed through the swampy tangle at the clearing’s edge. Insects swam in clouds in the early evening swelter.

There were a few hundred people here, gathered round a haphazard collection of dirty tents. A couple of light cargo freighters, ugly Ludstrome craft, loomed in the background. From the tents, he could smell food cooking. A dozen voices sang tonelessly over the strumming of a stringed instrument and some clattering percussion. A small group had gathered outside an open tent painted with the Cipher on its side. Pinn headed for that one.

The Awakener base was spread out over many clearings, and beyond the central ‘town’ at its hub there were smaller gathering-places like this one. Pinn had tramped around plenty of them since he woke up. He was hot and bothered and his buttcrack was so sweaty that it bubbled whenever he farted. But none of that mattered now, because his search was at an end at last. Stumpy legs pumping, he hurried over to the tent and looked inside.

There she was. Young and pretty, her hair in a strawberry blonde bob, wearing a white Speaker cassock with red piping. A group of people were watching her, fascinated, as she held a needle to the upraised fingertip of an old woman. Beneath the woman’s hand was a pedestal, on which sat a wooden saucer to catch the blood. Her tattooed forehead was creased in concentration, her wide blue eyes intent as she aimed.

The sight of her made him want to burst with joy. ‘Marinda!’ he cried as he rushed into the tent. Marinda jumped violently and stabbed the needle right through the old woman’s hand.

‘Oh! Oh my! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!’ Marinda gasped. The old woman stared at her hand, took a breath, and screamed. Suddenly everyone in the tent was on their feet, crowding round, yelling advice and accusations.

Pinn fought his way through to stand behind Marinda. She was bending over the old woman, who’d sunk to floor in shock. The woman’s hand was held up in the air by the men who crowded round her. People were arguing about what to do with the needle. Someone grabbed it and pulled it out. Blood squirted in thin jets everywhere, on Marinda’s face and all over her crisp white cassock.

‘Hey!’ said Pinn, trying to get her attention over the ruckus. ‘Hey! Don’t you remember me?’

‘Call for help!’ she shouted. ‘We need a doctor!’

‘Pinn, remember?’ Pinn continued. ‘From the freighter? You read my future?’

But Marinda, panicking, wasn’t even looking at him, let alone listening. ‘She needs a bandage!’ she cried. Someone ripped off a sleeve of their shirt and began wadding it together. The old woman was wailing like a cat with its tail stuck in a door.

Pinn tried a new tack. He dug in his pocket and pulled out the piece of paper that had been stuck to his dashboard. ‘Look!’ he said, talking a bit louder. Someone shoved past him rudely, but he wasn’t to be deterred. He brandished the piece of paper over her shoulder. ‘Look, I wrote down your prophecy!’

She snatched the piece of paper from his hand, glanced at it a moment, and threw it away. ‘That’s no good, I said a bandage!’

The man with the ripped shirt seized the old woman’s hand and wrapped his sleeve around it. ‘Get her to the doctor!’ someone cried, and the old woman was pulled to her feet.

Pinn was a little put out by what had happened to his precious piece of paper, but he forged on regardless. ‘Isn’t this crazy?’ he asked. ‘You and me, here? What are the chances? I mean, I know there’s a lot of Awakeners gathered here, but still. . Whew! If that’s not the Allsoul’s will, I don’t know what is!’

The old woman was being bundled away by the spectators now. Marinda tried to go after her but a glare from one of the helpers stopped her. ‘I’m sorry! I’m so very sorry!’ she called. ‘Oh, my! Oh my, this is terrible!’

‘Hey!’ Pinn said, with more than a touch of annoyance now. ‘It’s me!’

She whirled on him, a flash of anger in her eyes. ‘What do you wa-?’ The words froze in her throat and her face went slack with horror as she recognised him.

He threw his arms wide. ‘That’s right! Artis Pinn, Hero of the Skies, ace pilot, at your service! And I’m pretty handy with a shotgun, too!’ To prove it he pulled out his shotgun and spun it round with his finger through the trigger guard. He thought he hadn’t primed it, but obviously he had, because it went off with an ear-shattering boom and blew a hole in the roof of the tent. There was a muffled honk from above, and the world’s most unfortunate goose thumped heavily to the turf just outside the entrance.

‘Yep. Pretty handy,’ Pinn said, to break the shocked silence that followed. His memory was already rewriting history, and he wasn’t entirely sure whether he’d aimed for that bird or if it had been an accident. In five minutes’ time there would be no doubt: he was quite the marksman, after all. At least in his own mind.

‘You. .’ Marinda began, gaping. She had a very pretty gape. ‘You robbed us, you monster!’

‘Never mind that!’ said Pinn, a stupid grin plastered on his chubby face. ‘I’m an Awakener now!’

‘You’re a. . What? How?’

‘I just am! Look!’ He bent down, picked up the piece of paper, and gave it to her. It was a bit muddy.

She looked around for help, embarrassed and not a little afraid. People were staring into the tent, drawn by the gunshot, but nobody dared come near. She brushed her hair behind her ear and read the piece of paper, frowning as she struggled to cope with Pinn’s mangled scrawl and his appallingly tortured Vardic. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘It’s your prophecy!’ said Pinn. ‘Look, it came mostly true. Except the tragedy bit, but I reckon that’s coming up.’

Marinda’s frown deepened as things began to fall into place. ‘Do the Sentinels know that you crashed an Awakener freighter, killed two dozen people and stole the artefacts on board?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yeah. Some Proboscitator feller came on board, cleared it all up.’

‘A Prognosticator? And he said it was alright?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘More or less. Why else would they let us stay here, right? He let us off, ’cause we’re Awakeners now.’ Pinn wasn’t sure if this was true or not, since it had happened while he was asleep, but it seemed to make sense.

‘Oh,’ said Marinda, disarmed. ‘Well, I’m. . I suppose I’m very glad, then. That you’ve decided to join us. Now I should go and see to that lady I hurt.’ She was already halfway to walking off, but Pinn grabbed her arm before she could escape.

‘It was you!’ he said, leaning close with the manic sheen of the determined molester on his face. ‘What you said to me, it. . It changed my whole way of thinking! It changed my life!’

‘Well, that’s kind of you to say, but-’

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded a shrill voice. An elderly man in a black cassock was striding towards them across the tent. ‘Speaker Marinda, what’s all the commotion?’

She stepped away from Pinn, blushing. ‘I’m so very sorry, Prognosticator. I was attempting a reading, I was clumsy, and. .’

‘She converted me, Mr Pugnostrilator!’ Pinn declared. ‘She showed me the Allsoul!’

Marinda looked awkward. ‘I explained, um, some of the nature of the Allsoul to this man. He has decided to join our cause.’

‘But I need to know more!’ Pinn said hastily. ‘There’s so much I don’t understand. All that stuff about the cat god and the saucer of milk!’

‘Our god is not a cat!’ Marinda snapped. She thought for a moment, then added: ‘Or a god!’

‘Temper does not serve a Speaker’s purpose well,’ the Prognosticator chided her. ‘It seems you have an enthusiastic pupil here. Is not the task of the Speaker to spread the word of the Allsoul?’

‘Yes. . but. .’ Marinda began. She had the expression of some adorable and harmless animal that could sense the door of its cage swinging shut.

The Prognosticator looked up at the hole in the tent roof, then raised an eyebrow at Pinn.

‘Misfire,’ said Pinn. ‘Won’t happen again.’

The Prognosticator turned his benevolent gaze back to Marinda. ‘You should atone for your mistake, Marinda,’ he intoned piously. ‘Our greatest challenges are sometimes our greatest lessons. Teach those who would be taught.’

‘Oh, yes!’ said Pinn, with a grin that oozed smugness. ‘Teach me.’