The Black Lung Captain

Twenty-Five

Bestwark University was one of the oldest and most prestigious seats of learning in all of Vardia. It had existed for over a thousand years. Kings and queens, dukes and earls had studied there. Great advances in science, medicine, and avionics had been made behind its enormous sandstone walls. Its shadowy studies and echoing halls had played host to conversation and debate between the greatest philosophers, artists and mathematicians in history. The very air was heavy with knowledge.

Frey sat at a table in the university cafe, rustled his broadsheet, and did his best to look educated.

The cafe was built into one side of a large, grassy quad. Tall, square windows looked out over a stone veranda laid with tables and chairs. It was a sunny day, and most of the tables were occupied, but Frey had snagged one near the edge where he could watch the students going to and from their classes. They hurried along the flagged pathways between the trees and ornamental pools, chatting amongst themselves, their faces alight with a kind of enthusiasm that Frey hadn't seen in years. Young men and women, brimming with dreams and possibilities. Young men and women who hadn't yet been let out into the world, all their protection stripped from them, and left to fend for themselves.

Just you wait, Frey thought. You wouldn't smile like that if you knew.

But for all his silent, smug warnings, he was jealous. They reminded him of when he was their age, when he thought the way they did. He'd imagined himself as a dashing freebooter, or a rich and famous explorer like Crewen or Skale, the men who discovered and mapped New Vardia. He remembered that first couple of years with Trinica, when he'd believed he was the luckiest man alive, and he'd been unable to imagine any obstacle they couldn't overcome together.

Sometimes he wished he could be that naive again.

He sipped his coffee and made a show of studying his broadsheet, just for effect. He was acutely aware that he didn't belong here. He couldn't shake the suspicion that he'd only been permitted to enter by mistake and that he'd be escorted out at any moment. Even the waitress who served him the coffee had given him a frankly insulting once-over. Although she might have just been eyeing him up. Frey's instincts were all off in this place. Academia intimidated him.

There was plenty of drama in today's broadsheet. The big news was that the Archduke had announced that his wife was pregnant. The country was in raptures, apparently. Celebrations planned in the cities, and all of that.

An heir, to replace poor dead Earl Hengar. That was bad news for the Awakeners. The Archduke and his wife were staunch opponents of the organisation, and even more so since Hengar's death. The Awakeners had had a hand in that, even if they'd never been held to account for it. They might have hoped the Archduke would die childless, to pass the reins of power to a more sympathetic member of the family. But that hope was now extinguished.

The other news also concerned the Awakeners. A vote was to be taken in the House of Chancellors on a new proposition to ban Awakener activity in the cities. Just the thing that Grand Oracle Pomfrey had been complaining about, shortly before Frey robbed him at the card tables. Frey suspected it had been timed to ride the wave of public support in the wake of the Archduke's announcement. The Archduke didn't actually need the approval of the House to pass any laws, but there were a lot of people out there who'd get angry about the Archduke messing with their religion. The House was the voice of the people, traditionally, even if it was only the aristocracy who got much of a say in it. Their support would make things much easier.

Strange times, he thought. But times had been strange since the Aerium Wars began. Frey didn't trouble himself with the big picture too much. Let the world take care of itself, and he'd do the same. That was his usual philosophy, anyway. Yet, somehow, here he was at Bestwark University, waiting to meet a colleague of Grist's father. All in the name of chasing down that Mane sphere before Grist did anything too terrible with it. And where was the profit in that?

Nowhere. Except that maybe he'd be able to sleep at night, knowing he'd at least tried to prevent a disaster he'd had a hand in causing.

Smult's information had given them a few leads, even if the scumbag had subsequently sold them down the river. Grist was likely on the northern coast somewhere. That was the best place to start asking after him. But before they went flying about, freezing their pods off in the arctic air, Frey wanted to have a word with Daddy. See if he could narrow the search a bit.

So they'd flown over to Bestwark. Trinica had composed a polite letter of introduction. They didn't want to alarm Grist's father, so they pretended to be scholars, interested in discussing his research. She gave false names, just to be safe.

They'd had the letter delivered to the university. The next day, they received a reply from a man called Professor Kraylock, inviting them to meet him. Trinica was surprised at the speed of the response, but neither of them were of a mind to question their luck.

Trinica had disappeared from the Ketty Jay early that morning, to 'make some preparations'. She left word that she'd meet Frey at the university cafe. So Frey went alone, rather nervously. The gate guard had his name on a list, and he was allowed through. He made his way in, and settled there to wait, feeling slightly cowed by the whole experience.

He looked around for Trinica, saw no one, and returned to hiding behind his broadsheet. His eye fell on an article which caught his interest. The Meteorologist's Guild in Thesk was predicting a resurgence in the Storm Belt, the vicious weather system that ran across the Ordic Abyssal and separated the continent of Pandraca from the islands on the far side of the planet. The Aviator's Guild feared that New Vardia and Jagos could become even more isolated if aircraft were forced to take the eastern route instead. That would involve circumnavigating almost two-thirds of the globe, and it was prohibitively fuel-expensive, not to mention dangerous.

'Anything interesting?' It was Trinica's voice. He closed the broadsheet and looked up at her. And kept on looking.

'Darian, you're staring,' she said. A gentle admonishment. Her expression was a little awkward, uncertain, embarrassed. Not exactly the emotions he'd associate with Trinica Dracken, pirate captain.

But he couldn't help it. Whoever this was in front of him, it was not the woman he'd last seen on the Ketty Jay.

She'd transformed herself. The chalk-white pallor and vulgar red lipstick had gone. She wore only the slightest hint of make-up now. Her hair, that had been butchered as if with a blunt knife, had been cut into a short, fashionable style. The black contact lenses had disappeared. Her eyes were green, the way he remembered them. She was wearing a light, summery dress that exposed her pale collarbones.

It was like the past come to life. A vision of the woman he'd loved all that time ago. Oh, there were differences: ten years had passed, after all. Tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. Her face a little leaner than before, cheekbones a fraction sharper. And her hair was different, of course. But none of that was anything to him. Damn, his heart was actually beating harder at the sight of her.

'Are you alright?' she asked. 'You seem a little out of sorts.' There was a smile in her tone. She was flattered by his reaction, even if she didn't want to be.

'You . . .' Frey fought for something witty to say. 'You clean up pretty well,' he managed.

'Seemed foolish to advertise myself, given the circumstances,' she said. She sat down with practised elegance. 'Osric Smult taught me a lesson I won't soon forget. I have you to thank that I'm still alive to learn from it.'

The waitress who had served Frey drifted over to the table. Frey was grateful for the chance to gather his wits as they ordered more coffee and some pastries.

'I missed breakfast,' Trinica confessed with a smile.

Even her manner was different. Not so hard, not so cruel. That outer layer of her disguise had been scraped away. Neither of them were quite certain what lay beneath it.

She leaned back in her chair and looked out over the quad. Watching the students, as he had done. 'I would have gone to a place like this,' she said. 'Bestwark or Hoben or Galmury. I was a good student, you know. And with my family's money, well . . .' She let the sentence drift. 'I wonder what things would have been like, then.'

'At least you would have got in,' said Frey. 'Orphan boy like me, no family name ... I wouldn't have got within fifty kloms of this place, no matter how well I did.'

Trinica laughed. 'You hated studying. You told me so.'

'Well, maybe if I'd have thought I might get to university, I'd have had more of a crack at this "learning" thing,' said Frey, making quotation marks with his fingers.

'You can't blame everything on the circumstances of your birth, Darian,' she said. 'Besides, you didn't do badly for a poor orphan boy. You were a hair's breadth from marrying into a fortune, I recall.'

Frey watched her for signs of an accusation, but she wasn't making one. She seemed in a good mood, in fact. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun. The first time she'd felt it on her bare skin in years, perhaps. Frey found himself worrying that she might burn.

You're worrying? About her? You should worry about yourself!

The voice of reason. He reminded himself not to be beguiled. Just because she'd changed her appearance, it didn't make her any more trustworthy.

The waitress arrived with their drinks and a plate of pastries. Trinica took one and bit into it. Frey realised that he'd never seen her eat while she was aboard the Ketty Jay. She'd taken her meals in her room, perhaps aware that her presence was poisoning the atmosphere in the mess. She had a fussy, precise way of eating that Frey had always found sort of adorable.

He ate a pastry himself. For a short while, they didn't speak. Absurdly, Frey began to feel comfortable. Like they'd known each other for ever. Like it was no big thing that they were sitting together in the grounds of an ancient university eating pastries on a sunny day. The whole situation was bizarre in its normality.

'Trinica, do you ever question what you're doing?' he said.

She peered suspiciously at the pastry in her hand. 'Should I?'

'No, I mean, do you ever wonder if you're on the right road?'

'My road chose me, rather than the other way around.'

'But, I mean . . . You're rich, right? Even without your family. You could sell your craft, retire. Do anything you wanted.'

She laughed a little laugh. 'Like what? Keep bees? Potter about my manse looking at the flowers?'

'You could read. You always liked to read.'

Trinica gave him a look that was midway between indulgent and patronising. 'I rather think it's you we're talking about here, not me.'

She was right. It had begun as an idle thought, but it had always been heading somewhere. He knitted his fingers behind his head, trying to think of a way to explain the empty, directionless feeling he'd had ever since this whole affair began.

'Let me guess,' said Trinica. 'You're looking for something, but you don't know what it is.'

He was amazed that she'd summed it up so neatly. 'How'd you know?'

'Because you've been saying the same thing since you were seventeen.'

Frey looked blank. 'Have I?'

'Yes!' she said. 'When I met you, you were flying for my father. You'd mortgaged yourself to the eyeballs to afford a second-hand rust bucket called the Ketty Jay, but you were regretting it already, because you'd decided you wanted to join the Navy and fly a frigate.'

Frey did dimly recall wanting to join the Navy at some point, but it seemed unimaginable now.

'Then you decided you were in love with me, and you wanted to be with me for ever, and we all know how that turned out.'

Again, there was no hurt or accusation in the tone. Simple fact. He was a little offended that she could talk about it so lightly.

'I did join the Navy!' he said, suddenly remembering. 'Second Aerium War, flying cargo to the front.'

'You didn't join the Navy,' she said. 'You flew a lot of insanely dangerous freelance missions with the intention of getting yourself killed. And when you almost did, you blamed the Navy and you've hated them ever since.'

She had him there. He tried to think of a rejoinder and couldn't.

'Sorry, Darian. I don't mean to rake over old coals. I'm just making a point. You don't know what you want. You never have.'

Frey thought of Amalicia Thade, how he'd run away from a life of luxury with a beautiful woman. 'Things just seem so much better in theory than in practice. I even wanted to be a pirate for a while, like a real pirate. But it turns out I'm just not that cold-blooded. No offence.'

'None taken,' she said, sipping at her coffee.

"I suppose, at some point, you just have to make a choice and stick to it." he said, unconvincingly. 'Make the best of things.'

'So they say.'

'Hardly seems fair, does it? All that compromise. Never quite getting what you dreamed of.'

'No one gets what they dream of, Darian. That's why they call them dreams.'

'You think so?'

'Even if you get everything you ever wanted, it's rarely all it's cracked up to be. The rich are as unhappy and screwed-up as the poor. Just in a different way." She looked down into the black surface of her coffee. 'You can't get away from yourself.'

'What does that mean?'

'Well, wherever you go, whatever you do, you're still you. You can change your surroundings, start a new life, but you'll always fall into the same old patterns, make the same kind of friends, commit the same mistakes. The thing you need to change is yourself.'

'What's wrong with we?' Frey protested indignantly.

'I'm speaking generally. The thing a person has to change is themselves.'

'Like you did?'

'Like I did.'

'And you're happier?'

'No,' she said. 'But I'm alive.'

She gave him a sad sort of smile. Frey was overwhelmed by a surge of affection. That smile made him want to sweep her up in his arms, to protect her from all harm, to erase the damage of the past somehow.

'I forgot what it was like, talking to you,' he said. 'I mean, really talking, without all the threats and recriminations and stuff.'

'We have a lot to recriminate about,' she said.

He opened his mouth to speak, to say something complimentary, something to express his feelings, even in a small way. But she'd already detected the change in him. She'd seen the tenderness in his eyes and heard the softening of his voice.

'Darian, don't,' she said quietly.

So he didn't. The feeling curled up and died in the heat of bitterness and embarrassment. He got to his feet and threw some money on the table.

'Let's go see this professor, then,' he said.

Trinica nodded wordlessly, left her coffee, and followed him.

Professor Kraylock was a small, thin, elderly man, with a tidy white moustache and a bald head speckled with liver spots. Little round glasses perched on a nose purpled with broken veins: the sign of a man who enjoyed his hard liquor. He was dwarfed by his chair and a colossal desk of walnut and leather. Sunlight beamed through two tall, arched windows behind him, edging him in dazzling light and casting his face into shadow. Blazing dust motes hung in the air around him.

Frey and Trinica sat on the other side of the desk. Trinica and the professor were talking and laughing. Preamble stuff: greetings, inquiries about each other's health, that kind of thing. Frey had stayed largely silent. He wasn't good making small talk with educated folk.

Trinica was, though. She chatted pleasantly with Kraylock, asking him about his studies and the affairs of the university, commenting on some rare sculpture he had in an alcove. This was the Trinica he remembered. The Trinica who would charm the socks off her father's guests at some swanky dinner function. The Trinica who you could talk to for hours, because she made you feel that everything you said was fascinating and important.

Frey's eyes roamed the study, idly wondering if there was anything worth stealing. There was a lot of potentially valuable junk here. A brass orrery, an ornamental spyglass. Furniture that looked older than the planet. And books. Lots of books.

Frey distrusted books. He had a sneaking suspicion that most people only bought them to make themselves seem impressive. He couldn't possibly imagine anyone reading so many massive, boring tomes. Had Kraylock really ploughed through every one of the forty volumes of the Encyclopaedia Vardia? Or the whole of Abric's Discourses on The Nature of Mankind? He doubted it.

'I do appreciate you taking the time to speak with us,' Trinica was saying. 'But could I ask why Professor Grist wasn't able to meet us himself?'

'Because he's dead,' Kraylock replied. 'In fact, I was rather surprised you didn't know that yourself. It's been almost two years now.'

Great, thought Frey. Just great.

Trinica looked appropriately bewildered. 'I'm sorry. We didn't know.'

'You didn't, hmm? Your letter said you were interested in discussing his research. What research, exactly, were you interested in discussing?'

It was obvious by his tone that the game was up before it had begun. He didn't believe their cover story for a moment. Trinica was still searching for a response when Frey leaned forward. 'Look,' he said. 'We're not students. We're searching for Professor Grist's son, Harvin. He's stolen something from us and we want it back. Well, actually the Awakeners stole it first, but that's by the by. We were hoping to talk to his dad and get an idea where he was. But his dad's dead, so . . .' He spread his hands. 'Sorry to have wasted your time.'

He was getting out of his chair when Kraylock spoke. 'The Awakeners, you said. They stole something from you?'

'Right.'

'May I hazard a guess as to what it was?'

'If you like.'

'Something to do with the Manes?'

Frey became suddenly interested again. 'That's quite a guess.'

Kraylock motioned at him with one thin hand. 'Sit down.'

Frey did so. Kraylock regarded them both from behind his glasses. 'Do you intend to kill him? Harvin, I mean?'

Trinica leaned forward, her face solemn. 'He has a Mane artefact that could be extremely dangerous. We believe he intends to use it to cause harm to a lot of people. We're trying to stop him. But first we need to find him.'

Kraylock studied them, searching for a lie, finding none. Eventually he sighed. 'That boy,' he said. 'He was nothing but heartache for Maurin. I always knew he'd come to a bad end.'

'Can you tell us about Maurin Grist?' Trinica said. 'What was his field of research?'

Kraylock blinked. 'Isn't it obvious? Manes. He was foremost authority on Manes in Vardia. Perhaps the world.'

Frey and Trinica exchanged a glance.

'We were friends for thirty years,' he said. 'We spoke often about his research. He believed the Manes' condition was a result of daemonic possession. That is nothing new, of course. It is a theory that has been widely discussed in the scientific community. But his unique idea concerned the nature of the daemon itself. Do you know what a symbiote is?'

Trinica gave the answer. Frey suspected it was more for his sake than anything else. 'It's an entity that bonds with another entity for the mutual benefit of both.'

'Exactly. The daemon doesn't consume or destroy its host. Maurin had assembled witness testimonies from survivors of Mane raids. He—'

'Hang on,' said Frey. 'I though Manes didn't leave survivors? I heard they hunt down everyone. They say there's no point hiding from them; they even get you inside locked rooms.'

Kraylock snorted, irritated at being interrupted. 'It's true there have been cases where Manes have got into apparently impossible places. When the bodies are found, the doors are still locked from the inside. No one knows how the A lanes do it. But no, they don't hunt down everyone. There have been plenty of survivors over the years.' He glared at Frey. 'May I continue?'

'Sony,' said Frey meekly. He was having flashbacks to his days in the orphanage, when he'd be chewed out by teachers for interrupting in class.

'Anyway, Maurin saw evidence of free will, decision-making, even arguments and disagreements. In the past, it was popularly supposed that they were mindless puppets, all under the control of a single guiding force - the daemon. It was the only way we could make sense of the way they acted.'

'How's that?' Frey asked.

'Well, for example, their manner is savage and they are never heard to speak. But during a raid they will all retreat together back to their dreadnoughts, without any signal being seen or heard. That, we thought, was evidence of control. They build and fly aircraft of their own, using technologies that even we don't understand. But they seemed so bestial, we had to believe that some other intelligence was responsible for that.'

'And Maurin thought otherwise?' Trinica prompted.

'He came to believe that the Manes were not being controlled at all. Instead, they were communicating silently. Speaking without words. He deduced from the evidence that each Mane always knew where the other A lanes were, even if they could not see or hear them. From this, he decided that they were connected in some way. The daemon forges that connection between its host bodies. But it does not control them. You've heard the story, perhaps, of the boy whose father came home a Mane?'

'I know it,' said Frey. 'It was thirty years later, but his father hadn't aged a day. The boy killed him.'

'Yes. The tale is true. But before the boy killed him, the father tried to reason with him. Father to son. Tried to persuade him to become a Mane. Spoke of brotherhood and belonging. The Navy has records of the son's story.'

There was a moment's silence while they digested that.

'So why do they look like they do?' Frey asked. When Trinica raised an eyebrow at him, he rolled his eyes. 'Yes, yes, I judge by appearances.'

'It may be supposed that the daemon wreaks some physical change. Maurin never knew why. It differs from Mane to Mane. But there are certain advantages to having longer teeth, specialised vision, and so on. The daemon protects itself by enhancing its host.'

'Enhancing? By making them ugly?'

'They have no need to mate, as far as we can tell. They reproduce by converting other humans. Infecting them, like a virus. So why would they need to look pretty?'

Frey shrugged. 'I dunno. Just because.'

'Maurin theorised that mind-speech means that facial expressions and verbal communication become redundant. Perhaps they lose the finer facets of communication while keeping the more primal, animalistic ones, like snarling.'

Frey thought of Jez, back on board the Ketty Jay. What about her? Would she lose the power of speech? Was she part of this . . . connection that Kraylock was talking about? What if she was speaking to the Manes, even now? Feeding them information from all over Vardia while they waited eagerly to invade? How could he be sure where her loyalties lay?

'What happened to Maurin?' he asked.

The professor looked momentarily uncomfortable. The sun went behind a cloud, and the light from the windows dimmed. Kraylock seemed frail in his huge chair.

'He just died. There was no reason. His heart.' He rapped the desk with his knuckles. 'Stopped.'

His manner was too casual. Frey wasn't fooled. 'But you think there's more to it, don't you?'

Kraylock met his gaze steadily.

'The Awakeners,' Frey said. It had been the mention of the Awakeners that had got Kraylock talking in the first place. And from the Awakeners, Kraylock had guessed their business concerned the Manes. 'You think the Awakeners killed him.'

'An Imperator,' Trinica said, catching on. 'His heart stopped, just like that.' She nodded to herself. 'Sounds like something they'd do. But why?'

Kraylock didn't reply for a moment. Debating whether or not to say anything. Then he sighed wearily and spoke.

'His latest paper was going to be . . . controversial. He was drawing parallels between the Manes and the Awakeners. Specifically, the Imperators.'

'Parallels?' Trinica asked.

'He thought the Manes and the Imperators were essentially similar,' Kraylock said. 'Human hosts possessed by daemonic entities. The nature of the daemon is different, but the process is the same.'

Frey was amazed. 'You're saying that the Awakeners have been employing daemons? The same Awakeners who denounce daemonism and hang daemonists wherever they're found?'

'So he believed. The Manes and Imperators are both shrouded in secrecy and myth, but based on what truths he could obtain, he concluded that the Imperators were human hosts, presumably chosen from the ranks of the most faithful, who had been joined with a daemon to grant them extraordinary abilities. The Awakeners had always explained the Imperators' powers as evidence of the might of the Allsoul. Gifts from their deity to the loyal. But Maurin didn't hold with any of that. He wanted a scientific answer.'

'And he could prove it?'

'He had compelling research. He believed he had traced the origin of the Manes to its source, for one thing.'

'Where?'

'I don't know exactly. Somewhere in the north, near the coast. Marduk, I believe. Beneath the snows.'

'What happened there?'

'Approximately one hundred and fifteen years ago, a group of eminent daemonists assembled there. Maurin had letters detailing their plans. He even had the location, though, as I say, he never told me exactly. They came together to attempt a grand summoning. Something huge, something never before attempted.' He took off his glasses and cleaned them with a rag from the table. 'Something that went terribly wrong.'

'And the first of the Manes appeared soon after,' Trinica said.

Kraylock nodded. 'Those daemonists were the first of the Manes. Whatever they unleashed infected them. After that, they were the ones who spread the condition.'

Frey was getting impatient. 'So what does this have to do with—'

'The Awakeners?' Kraylock said. 'Because Maurin believed they knew about it. At the time they were aggressively attacking other religions. Any threat to their superiority was being wiped out. All the old gods were dying.'

'Not so immortal after all, eh?' Frey said, but his comment was ignored.

'There were survivors of that first disaster,' Kraylock continued. 'At least two. Maurin had letters, hinting at the tragedy that had occurred. They went into hiding, but then they disappeared. Maurin thought the Awakeners took them.'

'Why did he think that?'

'Because five years later, the first of the Imperators appeared.'

Frey and Trinica worked it out at the same time.

'So, the Awakeners heard what the daemonists were up to,' Trinica said. 'When it failed, they kidnapped the survivors—'

'—refined the process—' Frey continued.

'—and used it themselves, yes,' Kraylock finished. 'Infecting their most faithful subjects with symbiote daemons.'

Frey whistled, impressed by the scale of their hypocrisy.

'But they could never admit to employing daemonism,' Kraylock went on. 'The Lord High Cryptographer had already issued an edict condemning it as heresy. So they painted the Imperators as evidence of the superiority of their faith, and used them to root out and destroy other faiths. Daemonists in particular. They were extraordinarily effective. Their rivals were soon scattered or eliminated entirely.'

'The Awakeners want to control all daemonism in Vardia,' Trinica said.

'Exactly. Daemonists are capable of genuine miracles. The Allsoul can't compete with that. So the Awakeners discredited their competition while claiming its achievements as their own.'

'Crake always said the Awakeners were more like a business than a religion,' Frey commented. Now he understood why the Awakeners were so interested in rumours of a crashed Mane dreadnought. They didn't want anyone getting hold of what was on board. The Awakeners knew the Manes were daemons, and daemonism was their thing. If there was any daemonic treasure to be had, they wanted control of it.

'So what happened to all this evidence?' said Trinica.

'Gone,' said Kraylock. 'That is what leads me to suspect foul play in his murder. That, and the subject of his paper.'

Frey frowned. 'When did you say he died again?'

'Two years ago.'

Frey snapped his fingers at Trinica. 'And when did Smult say Grist suddenly started taking an interest in the Manes?'

'Don't snap your fingers at me,' said Trinica. 'He said the spring before last.'

'Yes. Two years ago.'

Frey watched Trinica make the deduction in her head. 'What if Maurin suspected he was going to be killed?'

Frey grinned. 'What if he made a copy of his research and sent it to someone nobody would suspect?'

Excitement was dawning on Trinica's face. Frey was feeling so damn clever, he barely knew what to do with himself.

'He sent his notes to his son!' Frey said. 'That's how Grist knew about the sphere. That's how he knew to bring a daemonist to unlock the door. That's how he got access to Navy reports. It was all in his father's notes.'

'You think they might not have been lost?' Kraylock said in amazement. 'You have to get them back! That research, in the right hands ... it could be the end of the Awakeners!' He sat back in his chair and blew out a breath, as if unable to believe what he'd just said.

'The end of the Awakeners." he said, more quietly. 'If the Archduke got hold of that . . . if the House of Chancellors knew about it . . . Why, the Awakeners have been using daemonists for more than a century! Spit and blood, that would be something. Maurin would laugh at that from his grave.' His eyes were alight. 'You must get me those notes!'

Frey got to his feet. Trinica rose with him. 'First we have to find Grist,' he said. 'North coast of Marduk. Sounds like a good place to start.' He shook Kraylock's hand vigorously. 'Thanks for your help, Professor.'

'The notes!' Kraylock said as they walked out. 'Don't forget the notes!'

Trinica gave Frey a sideways glance as they walked out of the door. 'I'm impressed, Captain Frey,' she said wryly. 'And that's the second time in three days. What's become of you?'

Frey was more than a little impressed himself. 'Stick around,' he said. 'There's more where that came from.'