The Iron jackal

Twenty-Seven

Silo listened to the night sounds of the jungle as he watched the last of his rescuers step off the pulley. The warm, wet air brought back a flood of memories and feelings from a time long ago, when he’d been a more passionate man, when the world had been so simple. Black and white. Sammie and Murthian.

He’d slipped through this dark with a knife in his teeth. He’d prowled past guards beneath its cover. He’d seen it lit up with muzzle flashes, the chaos of a firefight. It had been a time of violence, a time of freedom. A time of certainties.

Ehri and Fal stood with him, Fal making roll-ups with his nimble fingers. Ehri was already smoking one. They were older now, but this was the same. This silent togetherness.

He looked over at the Cap’n. Frey was sitting up against a tree, his head bent forward and one hand on his neck. He’d had a rough time of it down there, Silo reckoned. He’d given up hope and got ready for death. Getting pulled back from the brink like that, it wasn’t easy to take. But he was stronger than he thought he was, Silo knew that much.

~ You were lucky, Ehri was saying. ~ We lost track of the marks you left in the dark. We had to follow the gunfire. That place is a maze.

~ You found us by a different way, said Silo. ~ But you came none too soon, and I am grateful.

Nearby, three young Murthians sat on the grass dejectedly, tied up and gagged. The scouts that had captured Silo and Frey on the outskirts of the camp, left as guards by Akkad. They’d always left guards in the past, in case friends or relatives attempted a rescue. But Ehri had brought many friends, and the guards had submitted without a fight.

Fal passed Silo a roll-up, and began working on one for himself. Silo lit it and motioned towards the prisoners.

What will you do with them?

Let them go, said Ehri. ~ After.

He looked at her in the leaf-choked moonlight.

We can either run or finish this, she said. ~ I will not run.

All this because of me?

She shook her head. ~ It was happening anyway. Tomorrow, next week, next month. We were ready. But your arrival has forced our hand.

Fal explained, his eyes on the tube of herbs and paper in his hands. ~ There are many who feel as we do, that Akkad has forgotten the plight of our fellow Murthians. He is no longer interested in freeing our imprisoned brothers and sisters. an"›

He has become paranoid, said Ehri. ~ Every day he tightens his grip.

Silo drew on his roll-up, his thoughts dark. Akkad had been obsessed with disloyalty even before the failed revolt. Afterwards, he must have been many times worse.

This is not the same place you left, said Fal. ~ People are afraid. The ghalls have been fed too often. He sees traitors among the innocent, and so makes traitors of their relatives.

He’ll do anything to protect us, said Ehri bitterly. ~ Whether we want it or not.

She was harder than he remembered, and she was tough even then. But they were different times, when he and Fal had competed for her attention, and she’d been unable to choose between them.

The day he tried to usurp Akkad, Ehri had fallen ill, bitten by a snake. Fal had refused to leave her side. Silo had refused to wait for her to recover. There were too many pieces in place for that. Each of them decided in that moment what or who was most important to them. Ehri had come second best for Silo, but not for Fal. He hadn’t been surprised to find them married when he returned, each wearing the band of the other.

They’d made a pact, while planning their coup. If any of them were put into the warrens as traitors, the others would get them out. But in the end there were no ‘others’. The only able-bodied one of them was Fal, and he could scarcely save them all on his own. He and Ehri escaped retribution because they’d played no part in the coup, and their names were never mentioned. Silo himself was long gone, having fled for his life.

He hadn’t been sure Ehri and Fal would remember the pact. Hadn’t even been sure if they’d been the ones who tipped off Akkad to the plan. The snakebite had been a suspiciously convenient get-out for both of them. But that was an unworthy thought, and he’d never truly believed it. The Ehri he knew would have been torn with guilt at not being there when it counted, and she would have done anything to make it up. As for Fal, he went where she did, as always.

He watched the others checking their weapons and making ready. They were well-drilled and purposeful. Among them was the Vard that Silo had seen standing at Akkad’s side in his hut. His name was Griffden. The rot in Akkad’s world had gone deep, it seemed.

~ How will you do it? he asked.

Fal lit his own roll-up. His fingers were finally still as he breathed in the smoke. ~ Last time we were betrayed. This time we won’t be. He suspects nothing. He only has four guards on his hut, and two of them are ours.

~ And you? asked Ehri, dropping her roll-up to the ground and grinding it out.

He caught the tension in her tone, and gur te groessed at its cause. She was the driving force behind this uprising. He should have seen it immediately; it could only be her. She might have been glad to have him back, but his unexpected return threatened her. This was her rebellion.

I need a map, he said.

We heard. You’re looking for Gagriisk.

And when you have it? Fal prompted.

Cap’n needs me.

We need you! Fal protested, aghast. ~ You’re a legend in this camp. You’re everything Akkad isn’t. He won’t even let us raid Sammie camps for the medical supplies we need! But you, you’re ruthless.

He’s right, said Ehri, though her voice was tight and her eyes flinty. ~ After we’re done with Akkad, if you were with us, they’d unite behind you. People remember what you tried to do.

I’m no leader, said Silo.

No, said Ehri. ~ But I am. And I would have you on my side in this. They’ll follow you.

Silo sucked on the last of his roll-up, hard enough to make his throat burn, then spat in his hand, docked it out and put it in his pocket. An old habit. Leaving smoking dog-ends around the jungle was a sure way to let an enemy know you were near. ~ They followed me once. I won’t bear that burden again.

Ehri had taken a step away from him. Something was dawning on her face. Something ugly behind her eyes.

You didn’t come back for us, did you?

No, said Silo. He indicated Frey. ~ I came back for him.

A Vard? she sneered.

A friend. An old friend.

Older than us? Fal said in disbelief.

Ehri had turned her face away from Silo. She radiated disappointment. He hadn’t come back to reclaim his place. Hadn’t come to inspire anyone. He’d come for a map, and then he was going to leave. Turn his back on his people for the second time. Turn his back on the cause.

"Why are you looking for Gagriisk? she said, her voice distant and unfriendly in the warm murk of the night.

" To free a prisoner.

"A Murthian?

"A Yort."

Ehri spat on the ground. ~ What happened to you, Silo?

" I tried and failed.

"You tried and gave up, she said venomously. She could scarcely disguise her scorn now.

" Ehri… said Fal, ever the peacemaker. He reached out to touch her, but she shrugged him off angrily.

" You promised Akkad medical supplies and food, she told Silo. ~ Deliver them, and you’ll have your map.

" That’s fair, said Silo.

She crossed her arms. ~ You have transport? For fifty?

" They’ll fit.

" Ehri! said Fal. ~ Gagriisk? You can’t be serious.

" That place has been a byword for the murder of Murthians since we were born, she snapped, rounding on her husband. ~ There are hundreds of our brothers and sisters being worked to death there right now!

Fal was hurt, his delicate features drawing together into hard lines. ~ And you want to attack it?

" Yes! And every free Murthian will hear of it. It’s exactly what we need to get the young men behind us. To show them that things will be different after Akkad.

Fal shook his head. ~ It’s suicide.

She glared at Silo. ~ It’s what Silo would have done.

Silo looked down at the ground and nodded to himself. He deserved all the ire she directed at him.

" We don’t need you, she told him. ~ Take your captain. Go back to your craft. By dawn, this will all be over.

" What about Akkad? he asked. ~ What will you do with him?

" That’s not your concern. You’re no part of this.

Silo turned away. ~ Time is a factor. I hope to be back tomorrow, or the next day at the latest. Be ready.

He walked over to Frey. Behind him, he could hear Ehri organising her people. They would sneak back to the camp, and do what had to be done. Silo’s path led in another direction.

Frey looked up as he approached, then past him, noticing the activity. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

It took Silo a moment to switch his brain back to Vardic. ‘Tell you on the way back,’ he said.

‘We’re not going with them?’

‘Nuh,’ he said.

Frey reached out an arm and Silo helped him up. Frey frowned. ‘You alright?’

‘I’m good, Cap’n,’ he said.

Frey let it drop, and Silo was grateful for that. He wondered then if the reason he’d stayed with this man for so long was not because he had nowhere else to go, or because he feared to come home, but because deep down he believed Frey would understand him if his past ever came to light. Maybe Frey was the only man who could.

The day he’d found Frey dying in the crashed Ketty Jay, he’d also found the body of a young Dak boy in the hold, shot dead, with a rifle nearby and a bloody bayonet affixed. Since there were no other crew on board, it didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened.

They’d both failed as leaders, and they both knew it now, even if neither had ever spoken of it. Their reactions to tragedy had been different, though. Silo chose never to lead again, thinking himself unworthy to decide anything for anyone. Frey carried on being a captain, on the condition that he didn’t have to care.

But time had made him care. Time, and the things they’d been through since Retribution Falls. And now the weight of expectation was crushing him. Silo saw how it killed the Cap’n to be dragging them through his problems, making them atone for his mistake. It would shatter him if one of them died for his sake.

He wished he had the words to convince the Cap’n that his crew were behind him. That it didn’t matter whether it was his problem or everyone’s: they were in it together. But he didn’t think he could. He didn’t have the right to give advice about leadership. Not any more.

Nine years passive. Nine years a slave of his own making. And now here he was, full circle, a lesser man than when he started.

That didn’t sit right with him. Didn’t sit right at all.

Pinn was frustrated.

He sat on the dirty metal floor of the quarters he shared with Harkins. His little Samarlan gewgaw lay in front of him, on top of several sheets of paper covered in crude diagrams. The damned thing had broken two days after he bought it, and now the clockwork bird sat motionless in its cage, its cheeping forever quieted. But it was still a thing of beauty, a mysterious masterpiece forged by craftsmen who possessed a skill just short of sorcery. And it was most definitely not, as Malvery had repeatedly claimed, ‘just a knackered old rip-off piece of junk.’

Harkins was asleep in the lower bunk, twitching violently, as if he dreamed of being mauled by something horrible. Pinn was glad of the peace. Harkins hated him working in the room, and he’d complained about everything: about the light being on, about the noise of Pinn’s pen scratching, about Pinn’s loud and noxious farts which caused him to gag and which made his vision go dim. But this was Pinn’s inventing space, so Harkins had been forced to put up with it, until he was finally overpowered by the meaty fumes from Pinn’s arse and slipped into unconsciousness.

Pinn knew he had it in him to be a great inventor. He knew it because he reckoned himself great at everything he turned his hand to. Maybe he didn’t know how to make those fiddly little trinkets that the Sammies did, but that was okay. He was an ideas man.

It was just that he wasn’t having any ideas.

The toast-and-cat theory he’d put on hold until he could get some more cats. He’d never seen Slag fall off anything and land on his feet. It was completely possible that Slag was a defective cat. He was certainly mentally defective, so it followed that he was weird in other ways, too. Wasn’t he about a thousand years old or something? Very unusual. Plus, he was violent, as evidenced by the dozens of plasters all over Pinn’s face and head. The scratches still stung.

Slag. Definitely not a good subject for his experiments.

He tried to remember how he made his batch of Professor Pinn’s Incredible Flame-Slime, but he found himself at a loss. His experiments at remixing it just ended up with goop. Besides, despite his obvious brilliance in coming up with it – even that pansy Crake was impressed! – he was having a hard time working out what it would actually be useful for.

He’d taken to carrying a small pot of it around with him, searching for some practical application for his invention. The best idea he’d had so far was to put some on the end of a cigarette to make it last longer, but smoking it made him hallucinate. He’d seen something lurking in the shadows of the cargo hold, some awful half-dog half-man half-metal thing – fractions weren’t Pinn’s strong suit. After that he decided that maybe his Flame-Slime was a bit poisonous.

He’d sat up all night in his quarters trying to come up with a new idea while Silo and the Cap’n were away, but he was short on inspiration. He’d managed a few messy scrawls, and a lot of arrows pointing to different things, but an hour later he wasn’t sure what he’d actually been trying to design. It didn’t help that both his arms were in slings now, which made it damned hard to draw anything at all. He felt like a man in a straitjacket, or a plucked turkey waiting for the oven.

He dug into his pocket with some difficulty and pulled out a folded-up ferrotype. It was one of two he had of his sweetheart Emanda. The other was in a little frame that hung off the dash of his Skylance. He vaguely remembered some other girl who used to occupy that place – Larinda? Lisandra? – buta? best ide whoever that was, she was gone now.

White creases divided Emanda’s portrait into quarters. She was in her late forties, almost twice his age, and wearing a low-cut, frilly dress that revealed an expansive bosom. A broad grin was on her face, her front teeth adorably crooked. She had a thick head of curls, probably red, but they might have been brown. He wasn’t sure. Ferrotypes only came in black and white, and it had been a few months since he’d seen her.

Usually her picture made him sigh, but this time he thought he detected a judging look in her eyes. When are you going to be rich, Artis? When are you going to give me all the things I deserve?

‘I’m trying, Emanda,’ he muttered. He wiggled his wounded arms to show her. ‘It’s not my fault.’

None of the crew understood him. Everybody thought they knew about love, but none of them really did. Look at Harkins, mooning after Jez while she ignored him. Look at Frey, chasing that corpse-skinned bitch, when any fool could see she’d put a knife in his back just for giggles. Look at Crake, who thought he was so much better than Pinn, but got all flustered whenever anyone mentioned Samandra Bree. Talk about pipe dreams! She was so far out of his league that… that. .. Well, he couldn’t think of a decent comparison, but it was pretty damn far.

All of them were jealous of him. Because he had a woman. A woman who loved him. She’d told him so, or near enough, during that heady few days of drinking and gambling in Kingspire. That was when he decided that a penniless vagrant like him wasn’t good enough for a lady like that. Once he got rich and famous, he’d go back to her. Once he could afford to treat her right.

He wondered if she’d heard of his exploits in the Rushes yet. Pinn’s grip on reality was always a bit slippery, and in his mind, the rumour had become the literal truth. It really had been him that flew that day. He had won that race, he had landed his aircraft with no engines. Artis Pinn. What a pilot he was. She must have heard by now; it would be all over Vardia. She’d be proud. Proud that she loved a hero.

But his amazing exploits still weren’t getting him rich.

With an annoyed huff, he folded up the ferrotype, put it back in his pocket and left his quarters. It wasn’t an easy task to open the sliding metal door with both his arms restrained. He wondered why Malvery had bothered to put his burned arm in a sling, instead of simply wrapping it up. It didn’t seem to need any support. It occurred to him, as he finally got the door open, that the Doc might just have done it for a laugh.

He encountered Slag out in the corridor, who eyed him menacingly, a rat hanging from his jaws. Deciding if he was disabled enough to be worth savaging again. Pinn aimed a kick at him, but Slag just turned around and padded off with an insulting lack of fear.

Sounds from the cargo bay drew him downstairs: voices, and the icegn="justiwhine of the ramp hydraulics. When he got there, he found that the Cap’n and Silo had returned. Grey dawn light filtered in from outside. Ashua and Crake were there too, and Jez followed Pinn in, all of them alerted by the sound of the ramp. It was unusual to see people up at dawn, but the crew of the Ketty Jay kept odd hours. Jez didn’t sleep, and Crake barely did these days: he’d been looking more and more worn out lately. He was inventing something of his own, apparently. Pinn took it as further evidence of his jealousy.

‘Good trip, Cap’n?’ Crake asked, yawning into his fist.

‘Could have been worse,’ he said. ‘Why’s everyone awake?’

‘Inventing!’ Pinn declared loudly.

Crake gave him a look. ‘I think I might have something to help with your daemon problem, Cap’n, when you’ve got a minute.’

‘Fix that daemon, and you can have my firstborn,’ said Frey.

Ashua scoffed. ‘As if you’ll ever have kids.’

‘As if I’d want one of his,’ Crake added.

Frey didn’t seem in the mood for a jolly retort. ‘Look, we have a problem. There’s a camp full of people back there that need general medical supplies and food. Food’s easy; meds, not so easy. I don’t need to tell you the clock’s running on this one.’

‘Taking time out for charity, Cap’n?’ asked Jez, puzzled.

‘It’s a trade. They get help. We get our assault force.’

Crake looked questioningly at Silo, who gave him a blank gaze in return. Crake sighed. ‘Spit and blood, you really are going to waltz in there with guns blazing, aren’ t you?’

Frey ignored him and appealed to his audience. ‘Any ideas about where we find a lot of medical supplies at very short notice? Or does someone want to wake up Malvery?’

‘I’ve got it covered,’ said Ashua.

Everyone turned to look at her. ‘Sorry?’ Frey said.

‘Medical supplies. Take me to Shasiith, I’ll get you what you need.’

Frey blinked. ‘Really?’ he asked at length, as if he couldn’t believe it would be that easy.

‘Yes!’ she snapped, exasperated.

Frey became suspicious. ‘How much will it cost me?’

‘The man I know, he doesn’t need money. There’s only one thing I can think of that would persuade him to part with that amount of drugs that fast.’ She tapped her foot in agitation, took an irritable breath and looked up at the ceiling. Pinn was surprised to see that her eyes shone with moisture. ‘The price is that I get to join your crew. Permanently. Until I say otherwise.’

‘No!’ Pinn cried, horrified.

‘No!’ Jez protested.

‘No!’ Crake blurted.

‘Done,’ said Frey.