The Ace of Skulls

Sixteen

Crake stared down at the inert form of his brother. Condred lay there on the bed, pale and still, dressed in a red silk gown. His hair, once dark, was now white peppered with grey. Even in repose the folds around his mouth were deep, and he wore a troubled look.

Crake could not match the figure on the bed to the one in his memory. Condred was a man who strode into a room and demanded attention, a man with all the hauteur of their father but none of his modesty or restraint. He was high-handed, patronising and infuriating, and Crake had all but hated him.

Yet he’d given up his revenge. Even after Crake had cost him his wife and child.

Why didn’t you want to punish me? Crake thought. The Condred he knew would have been full of wrath. He’d have pounded the table and demanded satisfaction. Crake would have done the same, in his place. But Condred had called off the Shacklemores instead.

Why?

Two burly orderlies and a nurse were standing in the doorway of the bedroom. He motioned to them.

‘Bring him,’ he said.

The orderlies carried in a stretcher and busied themselves with loading Condred onto it. The nurse hovered nearby.

‘They say it’s a plague, sir,’ she said. She was a mousy woman in her middle forties with a nervous disposition. ‘There’ve been cases all over. Master Rogibald had all the best doctors in, but as you can see. .’ She gestured at his brother.

When Crake didn’t offer a reply, she asked: ‘Begging pardon, sir. Are you a doctor?’

‘Of a sort,’ said Crake, and left it at that.

The nurse stayed to tidy up while the orderlies took Condred from the building and across the grounds. Crake walked ahead of them. Gardeners stopped to stare when they saw him. Servants watched from the windows. More than one of them made a sign against evil as the procession passed.

Superstitious lot, Crake heard his father say. His eyes went to the Shacklemores that patrolled the manor grounds. Is this how bad it’s got out in the country?

It made him angry to see his father so diminished, hiding behind armed guards for fear of the locals. Rogibald was a man who’d built an industrial empire from modest beginnings. Even though Crake had the misfortune to be his son, he respected his father’s drive. It was wrong for a man like that to be threatened in his own home by the ignorance of the common folk, baying at the call of those damned Awakeners. It offended his sense of order. Vardia’s aristocracy was far from perfect, but they deserved better than that.

And his father had fallen far indeed, if he’d called on the Shacklemores to bring him Crake. The very sight of his second son was loathsome to him. It was the act of a desperate man, and he must have choked on his pride to do it.

The servants knew it too. He saw it in their faces. They might not have been here at the time, but they’d heard the stories. Murderer, they thought. Daemonist. They’d never thought to see him back, not without a noose round his neck. Yet here he was, leading a pair of orderlies, bearing their master’s son away from the mansion and back towards the house where Crake had once lived with Condred and his family.

Back towards his sanctum.

As they approached the house he kept his features stony to disguise the fact that his insides were turning to water. His hand went to his pocket, felt the weight of a heavy brass key that he’d once kept close to him at all times. The key to the wine cellar. The place where all his nightmares began.

His skin prickled as he stepped into the foyer. A mirror showed him his reflection, hollow-eyed and haggard. A clock ticked on the wall. Everything had been dusted, everything was in its place. . but nothing was right.

At first he thought it was just old memories reaching for him out of the past, but it was something more than that. Long years practising the Art had honed his instincts. Paranoia lurked on the edge of his consciousness. Something sinister hung in the air.

Had he done this? Had he poisoned the house with his crime, turned the very walls and floor evil?

Stop it, he told himself. You’re a man of science. Act like one.

The orderlies hesitated at the threshold. Perhaps they sensed it too. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he snapped at them, and he stalked into the house.

It had been two weeks since Condred fell asleep and didn’t wake. Servants still lived here, but the house felt chill and unoccupied nonetheless. And still, that sense of faint but pervasive dread lingered.

A narrow set of stairs led down to the servant’s quarters. In an out-of-the-way alcove near the bottom was a door. It was heavy and small and made of dark oak. Crake stood before it for a long moment before he drew the key from his pocket.

He should have warded the door. It would have been easy to fashion something to deflect attention. But Condred and his wife had always been sneeringly dismissive of their lodger’s mysterious experiments, and the servants had been ordered not to pry, so there didn’t seem much point. Besides, he was afraid of getting it wrong and drawing suspicion upon himself. They thought he was nothing more than a budding and inept scientist; better to let them keep thinking that. A locked door was enough.

But a locked door hadn’t been enough to keep a curious child out.

Maybe he’d got complacent and left the door unlocked. Maybe Bess had found a spare key somewhere, in an old drawer or on a peg in some dusty recess. Maybe it was just some sick twist of fate, some awful alignment of coincidence that brought her to his sanctum on that exact night, at that exact time. He’d never know. It didn’t matter.

He became aware of a scullery maid standing at the end of the corridor, agape. She was watching him with terror in her eyes.

He put the key in the lock and turned it. She gasped and fled.

Well might you run, he thought. The orderlies had seen her reaction and caught on to her fear, but they were big men and not given to retreat. He pushed the door open before they — or he — could change their minds.

Beyond the doorway, steps led downward into darkness. He reached inside and found the switch with his fingers. An electric lamp sputtered into life, illuminating stone arches and brick pillars, an island of light in the darkness. By that flickering, fitful light he saw a mess of cables and rusty devices, overturned poles and broken bulbs and a large brown stain on the floor which he dared not look at. In the centre was a large metal chamber like a bathysphere. It had been dented outward as if struck by some great force from within, and its door hung open.

He heard a wet clicking noise, so clear that it seemed momentarily real. That sound had troubled his nights for years. The sound of his niece trying to draw breath into punctured lungs.

He wanted to be sick. He wanted to turn and run and never have to return to this place. But he couldn’t, because he owed Condred more than he could ever pay. Everything he suffered, he deserved.

‘Follow me,’ he told the orderlies, and he stepped into the dark.

‘What in all damnation is going on here?’ Frey cried, as he jumped out of the Delirium Trigger’s shuttle and went hurrying across the muddy clearing.

The Ketty Jay and her outflyers were the centre of a mass of activity. Engineers in overalls were fiddling about inside the cockpit hoods of the fighter craft. Teams of men swarmed over the Ketty Jay, pasting enormous decals onto her flanks. A team of Sentinels stood by with rifles.

Frey stormed over. Harkins was being restrained by Pinn, crying in strangled agony as his beloved Firecrow got a massive blue Cipher pasted on to its underwing. Malvery went stamping past the other way, his face like thunder. He ignored Frey’s attempts to hail him.

‘Well, that’s just great, that is!’ he fumed. ‘If that ain’t just the bloody limit!’

Frey looked about for someone to strangle. Prognosticator Garin presented himself.

‘Will you tell me what in the wide world of buggering shitarsery you are doing to my aircraft?’ he yelled.

‘Calm down, Captain Frey,’ said Garin. ‘You’re making a fool of yourself.’

‘Nobody messes with the Ketty Jay without my say-so!’

Several Sentinels with guns walked over to stand next to the Prognosticator, alerted by the tone of Frey’s voice.

‘You weren’t here,’ said Garin. ‘There are a lot of aircraft waiting to be assimilated into the fleet. We don’t have time to wait around for permission. I take it you do still want to join the Awakeners?’ The question had a sinister and ever-so-slightly threatening edge to it.

Frey saw the trap and thought fast. ‘I haven’t even spoken to the quartermaster about pay yet!’

‘If you wanted to quibble about your price, you should have done it before you got here,’ said Garin. ‘This is a secret base, Captain. Nothing bigger than a shuttle gets airborne without permission. If you try to fly out, we’ll shoot you down.’

Frey looked over his shoulder to see the Delirium Trigger’s own shuttle taking off. Of course: a shuttle wouldn’t be able to fly far enough to escape the delta. He couldn’t be sure, but could swear he could see Balomon Crund grinning at his discomfort.

‘What are you doing to the engines?’ Frey demanded.

‘Trust in the Code, Captain,’ said Garin benevolently.

‘That’s no bloody answer!’

‘A harmless modification. You won’t notice it.’

‘What does it do, Garin? My men will be flying those aircraft, I can’t have them-’

Garin held up a hand. ‘I have my orders, as do we all. The answer will be revealed to you in time. Until then, it’s not the business of a soldier to know the plans of his superiors. The Lord High Cryptographer will guide us.’

Frey narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t know what it does, do you?’

Garin just stared at him. Frey swore loudly and stalked off towards the Ketty Jay.

Silo met him on the cargo ramp and walked inside with him. Ashua came rushing up anxiously. Engineers were descending the stairs into the hold, carrying bags of tools.

‘They been up in the engine room, Cap’n,’ Silo advised him.

‘You gotta get rid of them,’ Ashua murmured urgently. ‘Don’t know how much longer I can keep Bess quiet.’

‘You done?’ Frey shouted at the engineers that were coming down the stairs. ‘Good! Now piss off!’ He stormed over, seized one by the shirt and practically threw him across the cargo hold towards the exit. The others hurried after him. When they were gone, Frey hit the lever and shut the ramp behind them.

‘You let them on the Ketty Jay?’ he cried, rounding on Silo.

‘They got armed Sentinels with ’em, Cap’n. Reckoned we wanted to look co-operative.’

‘They’re messing with our engines!’ Frey cried.

‘Ain’t nothing they can do I can’t undo,’ Silo said.

The Murthian’s unflappable manner took the edge off Frey’s rage. He saw the sense in that, but it was the principle of the thing. He felt defiled.

‘We oughta go see what they been up to,’ said Silo.

Ashua made to follow, but Frey stopped her. ‘Keep Bess busy till the Awakeners have gone, will you?’

‘Sure, sure. Not like I’ve got anything better to do,’ she grumbled as she headed back to the sanctum.

The engine room was an oven, warmed by the south coast sun. They made their way among the pipes and gauges until Silo spotted what they were looking for. It was a rectangular metal case, thoroughly sealed and bolted to the frame of the engine. There were no markings on it beyond a meaningless identification code.

Silo poked around at it. ‘Don’t look like it’s even connected to the engine, Cap’n. They just stuck it here. Don’t see how it gonna affect anythin’.’

‘Could it be a bomb?’

‘S’pose,’ he said. ‘Don’t see the good of it, though. Need a bitch of a transmitter to set it off at a distance. And if it’s on a timer, well. .’ He shrugged. ‘If they wanted to kill us, reckon they’d have done it.’ He tapped the case with the end of a screwdriver that had appeared from his pocket. ‘Let me get into, Cap’n. I’ll let you know.’

‘Later,’ said Frey. ‘I need you downstairs.’

By the time they opened the Ketty Jay up again, the Prognosticator and his men were packing up and heading off. Frey glared at them till they were gone. Harkins was flapping about the Firecrow, gibbering in horror at the sight of all those Ciphers. Pinn was complaining about people messing with his engine.

‘Alright, alright! Get in here, you lot!’ Frey called.

The crew assembled in the cargo hold. Pelaru materialised from the gloom. Jez jumped down from the walkway many metres above to land expertly on top of a pile of crates, where she crouched, watching them with shining eyes. Once the ramp was shut, Ashua came out of the sanctum with Bess tramping after her.

‘Swear I need double pay for being her bloody mother on top of everything else,’ she grouched.

‘Ciphers on the Ketty Jay,’ Malvery muttered. ‘Insult to injury, that’s what it is. Never thought I’d see the day.’

‘Settle down, everyone,’ said Frey. ‘I’ve got some information.’

‘Oh yeah? Get it from your sweetheart, did you?’ Malvery was in a foul mood.

‘Clam it, eh? You’ll want to hear this. Might stop you carping for two seconds.’

When he had everyone’s attention, he began. ‘So I was talking to Trinica-’

He was interrupted by a chorus of groans.

‘-talking to Trinica,’ he continued pointedly, ‘and she told me the Awakeners have a hidden compound a few kloms from here. They’re planning on inviting a bunch of captains over there, her included. Sounds like there’s something important on the boil. I want to find out what, and take a look at that compound while we’re at it.’

‘Bit of breaking and entering, Cap’n?’ Ashua asked, with a wicked look in her eye.

‘Might come to that,’ he said.

‘Why not just find out from Trinica?’ Pelaru asked.

‘Because, believe it or not, she might not tell me the truth,’ Frey replied, irritation creeping in to his voice. ‘Now let’s get something straight, everyone. Despite appearances, we are not on the Awakeners’ side and we sure as shit aren’t gonna fight for them. But right now we’ve got a chance to find out what they’re up to and I for one don’t plan to waste it. Might even get us back in the Coalition’s good graces if we’ve got a juicy bone to throw ’em. Right, Doc?’

Malvery crossed his arms, reluctantly mollified. ‘Yeah,’ he sulked. ‘S’pose.’

‘Harkins,’ said Frey. ‘I reckon you should-’

‘Yes, sir! Staying behind to look after Bess, sir!’ said Harkins with a smart salute, his chin outthrust.

‘Er. . good,’ said Frey, who’d been about to suggest exactly that.

‘I would like to come,’ said Pelaru.

‘If there’s information to be found, you want in, huh?’ said Frey. ‘Alright, you can come.’ Privately he was relieved: he worried what Pelaru might get up to and didn’t trust Harkins to deal with him if he proved troublesome.

He held out his hand to Jez. ‘Lend me your earcuff, will you?’

She plucked it from inside her overalls and dropped it down to him. ‘What happened to yours?’ she asked.

‘It’s in Trinica’s pocket. I slipped it in there when she hugged me. As long as we’re close enough to receive, we’ll be able to hear everything the Awakeners tell her.’ He winked at them. ‘Still got it,’ he said with a grin, and then walked away from his amazed crew, snapping his fingers in the air.

Oblivious to the furore, Slag prowled among the pipes and panels of the Ketty Jay’s maintenance ducts. He was angry. A challenge had been made to his supremacy, and that would not be borne. It could only end in blood.

The smell of the intruder was everywhere. It seemed he could scarcely pass a corner without finding that the foreign cat had rubbed against it, impressing its scent over his own. It maddened him and made him murderous.

Slag was not capable of any emotion as subtle as indignant outrage, but his instincts provided a pretty close approximation. The Ketty Jay was his. He allowed the puzzling and noisy big ones to share it, but only because they knew their place and paid him tribute in food (and occasionally booze). Otherwise he found them generally inoffensive. But the intruder’s scent dredged up hot new sensations that compelled him into action.

The wounds from his fight with the rat hadn’t entirely healed, and the bruises were still making themselves known. In his younger days he’d have shaken them off, but he wasn’t young any longer. He did his best to ignore the aches and twinges, obsessed with the need to eradicate this pretender to his territory.

The intruder was elusive. He’d neither seen nor heard it on his patrols. But now he was on the trail.

He stopped and sniffed at the edge of a vent. The scent was strong. Fresh. He listened. His ears weren’t as keen as they once were, but they were good enough to hear faint movement up ahead. And it didn’t sound like a rat.

He crept slowly forward, hackles rising. At last he had his prey within reach.

The vent became a crossroads up ahead. The sound of movement came from around the corner. It was his enemy, rubbing up against something. He knew the secret ways and hidden routes of the Ketty Jay, and he knew that was a dead end. The other cat had no way out.

Slag stalked closer, eyes fixed. Small red lights provided illumination in the warm, close ducts. He sneaked silently through the glow, a dark pile of muscle and mange.

Not silently enough. He heard the enemy freeze, tensing up in alarm. He lunged towards the corner, but the other cat flashed across the junction in front of him. Slag hissed as he went in with his claws, but the intruder was small and fast, and it went darting away down the duct to his left.

Claws scrabbling, Slag gave chase. There was no way he was letting that cat get away.

Down the air ducts they went, over and under pipes and obstacles, sprinting where they could. Slag’s blood was up now; by the size of it, the other cat was no threat at all, and he threw caution to the wind. He pursued it here and there, and though it was agile it didn’t know this territory like he did, and it didn’t have his fury. They thumped and thundered through the narrow metal passageways, Slag yowling like a thing possessed.

Suddenly it skidded to a stop. He caught his first good look at it then, as it bunched its haunches to spring, eyes fixed on something above. It was a thin, ragged, ugly thing, fur a muddle of black and orange. He raced towards it, hoping to bring it down before it jumped, but he was too slow. It disappeared just before his unsheathed claws could find it, leaped upward through a shaft in the ceiling of the vent. He heard a scrabble, and then it was gone.

Slag’s pounce had taken him a half-metre down the vent. He found his feet, turned about and ran back. The shaft above him looked impossibly high. When he was in his prime he could have got up it, but he hadn’t attempted a jump like that in years.

Still, the invader had managed it. And he wouldn’t be outdone.

He screwed himself down on his haunches, wiggling his hindquarters as if to build up power for the leap to come. His gaze never left the shaft above. He ignored his aches and tiredness and the weakness of age, and let anger lend him strength. Then, with a mighty surge, he sprang.

His jump took him to the lip of the shaft, but only barely. His forepaws cleared the edge; his claws tried to dig in, but there was no purchase. For a terrifying instant, he began sliding back towards the drop. Then his back paws found a grip against the side of the shaft, and propelled him over, and he was triumphant.

There was the intruder, backed into a dead end. It was pressed down low, eyes wide with terror, ears flat against its head. Slag approached with his back arched and hackles up, crooning dangerously. There was no escape for it now. He moved slowly closer, ready to exact retribution.

But just as he came close enough to strike, he felt a new and puzzling feeling wash through him. His anger began to dissipate. There was something in the newcomer’s scent, something. . interesting. He’d detected it before but hadn’t known what it was. He’d been isolated from his own kind for so long that he hadn’t anything to compare it with. Now he was up close it was overwhelming, and instinct told him what he should have known all along.

The intruder was a female.

Confused, Slag came closer, sniffing at her. He hadn’t encountered a female since before pubescence. Powerful, unfamiliar sensations swept through him. He didn’t want to sink his claws into her any more, he wanted to sink his-

The female lashed out with a hiss, and a stunning burst of pain startled him as she scratched him across his sensitive nose. She squirmed past him and back down the shaft. By the time he recovered, she was long gone.

Slag blinked, and licked at his nose. The wound was nothing. The newcomer. . that was something else. A female? On board the Ketty Jay? What was he supposed to do now?

He looked around as if to check no one was watching, then began to groom himself uneasily with his tongue.