The Iron jackal

Eighteen

The tavern was called The Wayfarers. It was pleasant enough, nestled on the side of a hill in a quiet district of Thesk, with the palace visible in the distance through windows paned with coloured glass. The bar area was full of niches and sheltered corners, and there were parlours upstairs. It was a place for privacy, away from the raucous press of the dockside taverns. Prices were high, but not exclusive. Guards on the door ensured order within.

All in all, it was Crake’s kind of drinking hole. The decor reminded him of his university days, with its cramped feel, the dark wood-panelled walls, the low murmur of conversation and the stuffy warmth of several fires. In other circumstances, he would have taken great comfort in finding himself here, scribbling formulae on a piece of paper with a pint of black ale in a pewter mug. But he was troubled, and he couldn’t set himself at ease.

The Cap’n had woken him up in something of a state last night. Crake had listened with growing horror to the story of the attack he’d suffered. Frey showed him the slash-marks along the back of his greatcoat, desperate to prove that he wasn’t as mad as he sounded. But Crake needed no convincing. He was already gravely concerned.

Frey had been dragged off to the Militia’s district headquarters for causing a disturbance, but once he’d calmed down he managed to convince them to let him go. After that, he came to see Crake, and after that he was going to take a dose of Shine, since it was the only way he’d get any sleep that night. Crake usually disapproved of narcotics, but ind hdiv heigtonight he couldn’t blame the Cap’n.

It will come for you three more times. The third time will be on the night of the full moon. If you’re not dead already by then, that night will be your last.

That was the first. And it would only get stronger.

He had to find a way to stop it.

He sat in a corner of the tavern, furiously scribbling calculations, pen scratching over paper. He’d consulted what tomes of daemonism he had on the Ketty Jay, but they’d offered him nothing. He’d spoken with the daemonists he knew in Thesk, one of whom was an old friend from Galmury who had been responsible for getting him into the Art in the first place. Only one had heard of any daemonist who’d attempted something similar to what Crake was trying: an obscure fellow named Parkwright, who’d published some articles in secret daemonist broadsheets and then went mysteriously silent. Needless to say, those broadsheets wouldn’t be easy to get hold of, if it were possible at all.

The problem was that there was so little call for daemonism outside the sanctum. Daemons, when summoned, were capable of escaping a daemonist’s protective measures, with terrible consequences – Crake had ample experience of that – but they never lasted long outside of the resonator fields that pinned them to human reality. Their frequency was naturally out of phase with the world that people saw and felt and heard, and they returned to that state unless thralled to an object or, in the case of the Manes and the Imperators, to a body.

The fact was, it was extraordinarily difficult to find unthralled daemons outside of the sanctum. Attempting to experiment on them turned an already dangerous pastime into something approaching a suicide attempt. Apart from this Parkwright fellow – who presumably perished during his research – nobody had really tried.

All of which made Crake’s task a very tall order indeed. And with no less than the Cap’n’s life at stake, the pressure was immense.

Their best chance rested in retrieving the relic and putting it back where it came from. If they could break the curse, the Cap’n would be spared the third, fatal visit on the full moon. But to even begin to do that, first they had to find it. The Cap’n and the rest of the crew were shaking down every low-life and whispermonger in the city, but time was against them.

Crake had his own part to play tonight. It was one he felt deeply conflicted about. But he said he’d do it, for the Cap’n. For his friend.

Lost in his formulae, he didn’t see her come in. Didn’t see the barman point him out. Didn’t see her approach. It was only when she spoke that he jerked out of his state of intense concentration.

‘Grayther Crake,’ said Samandra Bree. ‘As I live and breathe.’ his state="0"›

The sight of her gave him a warm flush of pleasure. She was dressed as she usually was, in a weatherbeaten duster, loose trousers and scuffed boots. Black hair spilled in waves from beneath a tricorn hat, framing an appealing and mischievous face that probably shouldn’t have belonged to someone who’d shot as many people as she had.

‘Samandra Bree! What a surprise!’ He was only half faking; he’d been so tied up in his work, he’d almost forgotten the reason he was here in the first place. It had been a while since he’d been so absorbed in the Art.

‘Is it?’ she asked wryly. She plonked herself down in a chair opposite him with a jingle of buckles and guns, and took a mouthful of grog from the mug in her hand. ‘I wondered how long it’d take you to track me down. Gotta say, I wasn’t sure you would.’

Crake gaped for a moment. He hadn’t expected to have his bluff called quite so quickly. He’d hoped to fence a little before it became blindingly obvious that he fancied the arse off her.

‘I’d have come sooner, but I understand you’ve been occupied of late,’ he said, after what seemed like an eternity of embarrassment, but which was probably only a second or two.

‘Oh yeah, the Awakeners,’ she sighed. She hoisted her feet up on the table. ‘Kickin’ up a fuss all over.’

Crake stared at her boots with appalled delight. She was so fascinatingly vulgar!

She motioned to the small sheaf of notes on the table in front of him. ‘You daemonists got brave now the Awakeners have been run out of the cities.’

He was slow to catch her meaning. ‘Oh this? Anyone who doesn’t know who I am will just think it’s mathematics. Anyone who does…’ He tidied them away. ‘Well, it’s not as if anyone ever needed evidence to hang daemonists, is it?’

‘Reckon more people know of you than you think. You lot got quite a reputation since Sakkan. From the stories, you wouldn’t even know the Century Knights were there at all, saving your sorry hides. How’s the hand, by the way?’

‘It healed up fine, thank you,’ he said, showing her. ‘You can barely see the tooth-marks any more.’

‘Guess you proved you don’t turn Mane by getting bit,’ she said with a wink.

‘I’ve always said a man should be willing to risk life and limb for science.’

‘Is that what you always said? Don’t recall you sayin’ it to me.’

‘That’s because our acquaintance has been far too short.’

‘That is a shame. I’m always on the move.’

‘So am I.’

‘Yet here you are.’

‘So are you.’

She raised her mug, as if to acknowledge the point, and took another swallow. He sat back in his chair, relaxing a little. The nervousness he felt at the thought of meeting her was fading quickly. Her confidence was infectious.

He motioned to the room. ‘They say you come here almost every evening when you’re at home in Thesk.’

‘They?’

‘The Press.’

‘The Press,’ she said, in a tone that somehow managed to combine fondness and disgust.

‘Why here in particular?’

‘Good as any other,’ she said. ‘They know me. They keep the reporters out.’ She shrugged. ‘S’pose there’s better places around, but what can I say? I found it, I liked it, I stayed.’ A smile touched the edge of her mouth. ‘Guess I ain’t very adventurous.’

‘Lucky for me. It was easy to find you.’

‘Believe it or not, sometimes I like to be found,’ she said, tipping back her tricorn hat. ‘Most of the time it’s just me and Colden. Never in the same place for more than a day or two. Colden’s a sweetheart, but he ain’t the world’s greatest conversationalist. Tends to make his points with an autocannon, you know?’

‘I understand,’ said Crake. ‘Civilised conversation is in pretty short supply aboard the Ketty Jay too.’

‘Now, I didn’t say civilised,’ she grinned. ‘Sometimes, Grayther Crake, I think you get me mixed up with a lady.’

‘You looked like a lady at Aberham Race’s little soiree,’ he said.

‘Well, I scrub up good for a Draki girl,’ she said. ‘Can’t do much about the accent, though. I’m always gonna sound like a scuffer.’ She rolled the word round her mouth and released it with a smile. A derogatory term for the simple peasant folk who lived in the poisoned deserts of dust and volcanic ash that made up Vardia’s least pleasant duchy.

‘I like your accent,’ he said, without thinking. Then, quickly, to cover up the clumsy compliment: ‘Our engineer has a Draki accent too. Thicker than yours, though, from up near the border with the Andusian Highlands.’

‘The Murthian? Where’d he pick that up?’

‘I’ve often wondered that myself. I don’t know a great deal about him. Nobody does, really.’

She raised her mug in a toast. ‘Well, here’s to findin’ out about people,’ she said. She drained the mug, raised it in the air and whistled to the barman. ‘Hey, Adrek! Bring a bottle and another mug, huh? I got distinguished company!’

They talked for hours. About politics, daemons, Awakeners and the Samarlan threat. They talked about Thace and Kurg and legendary Peleshar, the Vanishing Isle. They talked about what would happen to New Vardia and Jagos, the distant frontier colonies on the far side of the planet, if the Great Storm Belt kicked up again as the Aviator’s Guild feared it would. They talked about the Archduchess’s pregnancy and the prospect of a new heir (Crake was careful not to mention how he’d unwittingly had a hand in the demise of the last one). But mostly, they talked about themselves.

She told him about growing up on the blasted flats near the Samarlan border, of an elder brother she’d competed with at everything and who’d died of a scorpion sting. She talked about her father, a militiaman, who brought her up tough and hoped that one day she’d follow him into the profession. So she was enrolled in a militia training school, but she wasn’t there a year before the scouts picked her for the Knight’s Academy. One of the youngest entrants ever, she said with some pride, and one of the youngest to graduate from the Duke’s Guard to a full Knight.

‘Course, the Aerium Wars helped with that,’ she said, grimly. ‘You can only have a hundred Knights, and they gotta die or quit to make spaces. We lost a lot of ’em round then.’

Crake, for his part, talked of a childhood in the aristocracy, as the son of a steel tycoon. He spoke of a father who was overbearing and distant all at once, and an arrogant elder brother who scorned him for his lack of interest in the family business. He recalled his time at Galmury, his disillusionment with the life of politics he was being pushed towards, and his discovery of daemonism there.

There was much that they both left out. Her work and the training methods of the Knight’s Academy were secret. Crake couldn’t tell her the real reason he joined the Ketty Jay, the summoning that went terribly wrong and resulted in the death of his niece and the creation of the golem that bore her name. But she had a plain and straightforward way of speaking that charmed him, and he found himself talking more freely than he had in months. He wanted her to know him. It wasn’t something he’d felt for a long time.

There’d been women in his life before, but thbefademey’d all been of aristocratic stock. He hadn’t mixed with less privileged people in his youth; he found the men frighteningly rough, and the girls were scornful of his airs and graces. It was only his time on the Ketty Jay that had brought him into contact with society’s more… fragrant individuals. He liked to think he was a little more worldly-wise these days, although the truth was, it was not by much.

Samandra was anything but aristocratic. She swaggered. She laughed loud instead of tittering. She said exactly what she thought, and she drank like a trooper. It certainly helped that she was beautiful enough to melt lead, but Crake was not Frey: beauty was not the be-all and end-all when it came to women. He suspected he would have fallen for Samandra Bree even if he’d been blind.

He was having such a wonderful time that he almost forgot he had a job to do. It was late, and they were both quite drunk, when Samandra said:

‘How’s your captain, anyway? Whatsisface, the cocky son of a bitch

…’ She slapped the table. ‘Frey!’

That name sucked the joy out of Crake. Suddenly, he thought of the daemon, and of what he’d come here to do. Samandra thought he’d come to see her of his own accord, but the truth was, he’d never have had the guts if he hadn’t been pushed. He never imagined she’d be so pleased to see him. He hadn’t envisioned spending the evening as the sole object of her attention.

But now he was reminded of the real reason he’d come, and the moment was cheapened by deceit. Crake thought of himself as an honourable sort, when it came down to it, but what he intended to do was certainly not honourable. Yet it had to be done, for Frey’s sake.

She saw it on his face. ‘That bad, huh?’

‘He’s having some problems,’ Crake said awkwardly. When he didn’t elaborate, Samandra merely nodded.

Crake looked out of the window, to the Archduke’s palace, lit up by electric floods on its perch above the city. ‘I’d like to see inside the Archduke’s palace one day,’ he said.

She went with the change of subject. ‘Maybe you will,’ she said. ‘Mannered feller like yourself.’

‘There must be many rare treasures and works of art in there,’ he said.

‘Sure. All kinds of stuff like that.’

He turned to her, raised an eyebrow, tried to sound casual. ‘Has he made any new acquisitions recently?’

‘Antiquities ain’t really my thing.’

He looked out of the window again, pondering. in, re Damn, how to put this? How to make it seem natural?

‘Say if he did,’ Crake said. ‘Would they go straight to the palace, do you think?’

‘Would what go straight to the palace?’

‘The antiquities.’

‘I expect the head of the Archaeologists’ Guild would want to mess around with them first. Why’re you so interested?’

‘I’m always interested in culture,’ he said. Spit and blood, this was clumsy. He could only hope that Samandra was drunk enough not to notice. ‘So, hypothetically, if the head of the Archaeologists’ Guild acquired a new object, something rare or valuable, say… where would he take it?’

There was a faint flicker of suspicion in her eyes. Crake was surprised by how sharply it wounded him.

‘I guess I don’t know,’ she said slowly. A lie.

I wish you hadn’t done that, he thought. Because he saw, at that moment, that she did know, that she must have heard about the acquisition of the relic, and that she’d never tell him where it was. There were no words that could persuade her. She was one of the Archduke’s elite, and she’d never help him steal from her liege. A gulf had opened between them.

But Frey’s life was on the line.

He grinned. Her gaze flicked to the gold tooth that glinted in his mouth, and stayed there.

‘You can tell me,’ he said.

Crake felt like the lowest person on the planet. He walked through the streets of Thesk, soaked in misery, despising himself. The fact that he’d got what he wanted didn’t matter. The fact that it might end up saving the Cap’n was small consolation.

He shouldn’t have done that to her.

Employing the tooth required a delicate balance. Push too hard, and the victim would notice, alarm bells ringing in their subconscious as they felt themselves influenced by the daemon thralled to the gold. Even with all the practice he’d had, the tooth wouldn’t have worked on Samandra when she was sober. It’d been a terrible risk even when she was drunk. He suspected that it was only her good feeling towards him, and the fact she had her guard down, that let him in.

That made him feel worst of all.

Once she’d explained where the relic was and how to get it, he told her to forget he’d even asked. He meant it literally. But he couldn’t forge amp;rs›Once she amp;t, and afterwards, he could hardly look at her. It was a harmless act, to make her give up a scrap of information, but he’d taken the choice away from her all the same. It felt like he’d violated her. And even though she didn’t remember the conversation they’d just had, she started acting oddly. Not quite so easy in his company as before. As if she sensed something was wrong but didn’t know what. Or maybe she just picked up on Crake’s torment.

Soon after, he made his excuses and left.

‘You come see me agai n soon, Grayther Crake,’ she told him.

‘I will,’ he said. But he wasn’t altogether sure that he would. He wasn’t sure he could, any more.

Damn you, Cap’n, he thought bitterly. The fact that the Cap’n had been responsible for his meeting Samandra in the first place, for the happiness he’d felt in her company, just made him angrier. It wasn’t fair that things had worked out this way. Wasn’t fair at all.

Using the tooth was exhausting in that state. It leached his vitality, sucked at his will as it sucked at the will of its target. It was only now that he realised how much he’d drunk while they were talking. Too much. He felt weak and depressed and unsteady.

A barque was lifting off from the docks over the rooftops. He headed in that direction, back towards the Ketty Jay. At least he could tell the Cap’n what he’d learned. Then he could lay his head down and pretend this whole awful turn of events had never come about.

But he shouldn’t have done what he did. Not to her.