The Iron jackal

Thirty-Six

Silo sat amid the tight maze of metal walkways that surrounded the Ketty Jay ’s engine assembly. He was staring into space, one arm dangling over his knee and a wrench held loosely in his hand, listening to the engine with half an ear. Everything was smooth. Not even the hint of a fault.

Sweat ran insidiously across his shaven scalp. It was night outside, but the engine kept things hot in here. There was a wet chewing sound from nearby: Slag, devouring a rat somewhere out of sight.

Silo felt restless. His mind wouldn’t settle to any kind of peace. He’d tried to distract himself with duties, but as usual there was nothing for him to do.

He should go see if he could help patch up Bess, perhaps. But Crake was feverishly working at something for the Cap’n, and wouldn’t welcome the disturbance. She’d only taken a few holes; it could wait. Besides, it was painfully obvious make-work, and it smacked of desperation.

He downed tools and headed out of the engine room. He couldn’t stop seeing Fal’s dead face, or Ehri’s hateful eyes. She’d blamed him. In time, perhaps she wouldn’t, but he wouldn’t be there to receive her forgiveness if she did.

And what about Akkad? Akkad, a man who’d been his friend. What had they done with him? Did he go to the Warrens? Did they put Babbad and his other allies in there with him? What about his wife Menlil and their children? Surely not them. Surely Ehri wouldn’t do that.

He’d never asked, not after that first time. He hadn’t dared to. And now he never would.

The door to the engine room was at the end of the main passageway that ran up the spine of the Ketty Jay. The first doorway on his right was the infirmary. It was open. Jez lay on the operating table. Malvery had his feet up on a chair and was sipping from a mug, idly reading a broadsheet.

‘How is she?’ he asked.

Malvery looked up. ‘Same.’

‘Mind if I sit with her awhile?’

Malvery swung his legs off the chair and got up. ‘Could you? I’ve been waiting for someone to keep an eye on her. I’ve got one hulking colossus of a turd to unload. Feels like I’m about to give birth to my own leg.’ He rolled up his broadsheet and strolled off towards the head, whistling.

When he was gone, Silo slid the door shut and took a seat. Jez lay motionless. Malvery had sponged off the blood from her face and hair and hands, but her clothes were still covered with dried gore. There was nothing about her to indicate that she was alive. They were just going on faith that everything would be alright.

Ain’t we always?

He sat there a long while, listening to the rumble of the thrusters. Outside was the desert and the night. They were headed on a course plotted by the Yort explorer, flying to who knew where. By this time tomorrow night, that damned relic would have to be put back wherever it came from.

But what if it wasn’t?

‘I lost my place, Jez,’ he said. He surprised himself by speaking aloud. There was a hollow ring from the empty walls of the infirmary as each word faded.

He looked at Jez. She didn’t move. After a moment he sighed to himself, and settled, and spoke again.

‘Time was, there weren’t no choices and there weren’t no questions. I got born a slave. There weren’t no other way to be. In the end I broke out, but things were just as straight-up then as before. Black ’n’ white, us ’n’ them. And I had a lot of anger to work off.’

He rolled his shoulders, then fished in the pocket of his trousers and drew out a pouch.

‘World ain’t that simple no more,’ he said.

He built himself a roll-up full of Murthian herbs. The process was relaxing. He enjoyed the comforting rhythm of spreading the dried herbs, rolling the paper, licking and sealing it. He let his mind wander while his fingers worked, allowing his thoughts to percolate. He lit a match, took a drag, sat back and waited for what he wanted to say to come out of his mouth. He wasn’t in any hurry, and nor was Jez.

‘When I was back there, back with my people…’ he said at length. ‘Y’know, for a while it felt like things was right again. Like the last nine years din’t happen, like I won instead o’ losin’ when I went up against Akkad, and the world just rolled on without no break.’ He dragged and exhaled, filling the infirmary with the pungent, acrid smell of the herb. ‘But I ain’t that young man no more, Jez. Got old enough to feel my losses. And bein’ back among my people, killin’ Daks

… It makes me someone I don’t wanna be. If I’d stayed, they’d suck me right back in. That’s what your people do. They suck you in. Happens whether you like it or not.’

He examined the roll-up, held between his betweenlong fingers. He’d smoked them ever since he escaped. Seemed like the sort of thing a free man should do.

‘I thought lettin’ another man make my choices for me was the best way to go about things. Turns out it ain’t. Might be the Cap’n gonna be dead this time tomorrow. Might be we all be goin’ our separate ways then.’

He shook his head. ‘Reckon you can’t never go back to what you were,’ he said. ‘But I done bein’ quiet now, I know that.’

He took another drag, drawing the smoke into his lungs. He held it there till it started to burn, then he let it seep out from between his lips.

Jez still hadn’t moved. He wondered if she ever would.

‘Where are you, Jez?’ he asked quietly. ‘Where you gone?’

Snow flurried around Jez’s face, driven by a chill wind. Loose strands of hair fluttered against her cheek. She stood over her own dead body, looking down.

The Yortish coast. The bleak settlement where the Manes had caught her. White flakes sifted from the grey clouds.

Her corpse lay on its side in a foetal position, half-buried. The snow had gathered in the hollows of her body and face, obscuring her.

Had she been here before? She couldn’t quite remember. Had it been different then? She couldn’t remember that, either.

She followed her own tracks back to the town. Between the domed buildings, she saw hints of more corpses – a frozen hand, a blue face in a drift – but the carnage had been mostly erased beneath the whiteness, and it was possible to ignore it as she wandered.

She found the main thoroughfare. A snow-tractor lay in a deep drift, with only the corner of its cab visible. She had a vague recollection of cracked windows and smeared blood, but there was nothing visible now. The street had a quiet, abandoned feel. The only sound was the restless whistle of the wind.

A dreadnought hung in the air above the thoroughfare. Ropes and chains hung from its flanks, trailing down to the ground. The chains clanked softly as they were stirred by the wind. She regarded it curiously, running an eye over its spiked gunwales and dirty iron keel.

She was waiting. Listening. And soon she heard it: the slowly swelling sound, the baying of the pack, their screeching. They were up there, on the dreadnought. She couldn’t see them, but she knew they were there. They didn’t call to her as they had in the past. They keened and howled to each other instead. But their voices provoked in her a desire to be with them, to join them in the feral simplicity of the hunt. To be a sister to them, and be enfolded in the warmth of their community. She was always in between, not quite human and nowhere nand nowhear Mane. She felt the lonely ache of separation.

A hand touched her shoulder, and she turned. Standing there, dressed in thick furs, was someone she’d never thought to see again. The man who’d been with her that day when the Manes came, who’d tried to protect her when her own courage had failed. Who’d saved her from the Invitation by killing the Mane that caught her.

His hood had been thrown back and his mask hung on a strap round his neck. Thick black hair framed a plain and honest face.

Rinn.

She hugged him, surprising herself. He was the last person she saw before she died. It was important to her that he was here.

His arms folded around her with uncertain reverence, then he clutched her tightly. There was longing in his touch. The pilot had always felt something for her that she never had for him.

‘I thought you were dead,’ she said.

‘No more dead than you are.’

She let him go. ‘They took you?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘What happened?’

‘After you ran into the snow, I tried to follow. But I was alone, and two of them caught me. There was no one to help me.’ He smiled. ‘Now I’m glad of it.’

Jez searched his face. He seemed like the same old Rinn: solid, reliable, relentlessly normal.

‘What’s it like?’ she asked.

He shook his head slightly, as if to say: you wouldn’t understand . He held out a gloved hand to her.

‘Come with me,’ he said.

And then, in the way of dreams, they were elsewhere.

They stood inside a huge cave of ice. At their feet, the ground fell away in sharp steps, cut out in great squares and rectangles that descended towards a narrow shaft in the centre. Excavation machinery, brutal claws and drills, sat among the ladders and scaffolding, their surfaces rimed with frost. The wind blew outside, but within the cavern was a vast quiet, and the air was still. It felt like an abandoned temple.

‘Remember this?’ Rinn asked.

‘I hardly ever came up here,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know they’d dug down so far. amp;rsquoso far.

‘The Professor was warned. He knew it was coming up to blizzard season, and that was when the Manes went raiding along the coast of the Poleward Sea. But he was obsessed. He was convinced there was an Azryx city buried under this spot, and he couldn’t wait.’

She studied the excavation. ‘I knew it too,’ she said. ‘I just didn’t really believe the stories. But all that talk about the Azryx’s wonderful advanced technology, this utopian civilisation lost beneath the ice…’ She discovered that she was wearing a fur-and-hide coat, the same one she’d been wearing the day she died, and she drew it close about her even though she wasn’t cold. ‘Sort of romantic,’ she said. ‘Making history. I wanted to be part of it.’

‘But there was nothing down there in the end,’ he said.

‘What happened to the Professor?’

‘He was killed,’ said Rinn. ‘When we came for him, he surrounded himself with men with guns. We don’t like that.’

Something in his voice had changed. Jez turned to look at him. He was gazing back at her with sunken, blood-coloured eyes. His teeth had sharpened to points. His face was gaunt and hollow. None of it disturbed her in the least.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked.

‘To warn you. You’ve been testing your abilities, Jez. Pushing your boundaries. But you don’t know the cost involved. The more you use them, the more you unlock, the more you’ll become like us.’

‘I thought the Manes had agreed to let me be.’

‘We have done. The Manes don’t want the unwilling. That’s why I’m telling you now. It’s you who’s doing this.’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’

‘You could say that.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Do nothing. You’re a half-Mane. Be content with that.’

She nodded to herself. Suddenly, she was tired of the sight of the excavation, and a moment later they were outside the ice caves, on the glacier, looking down over the town and the dreadnought hanging over it. She could see its decks now. They were empty, but she could still hear the singing of her brethren, and it tugged at her.

‘What if I’m not content with that?’ she asked.

‘Then you’ll be welcome among us, beloved,’ said Rinn, now wearing rags, his skin like parchment, his voice breathy and hoarse. His thick hair had become a greasy straggle, and his lips had peeled back to show yellowed and daggerlike fangs. ‘But if you choose that way, you’ll walk a fine line. We can think because we used to be human. The daemon you have inside you, it doesn’t think in any way you can comprehend. It’ll change you if you let it. It can’t help itself. Bit by bit, you’ll become more like us and less like them.’

‘Is this how it works, for those who refuse the Invitation?’ she asked. ‘You let them go, so they can make their own way back? Because you want them willing?’

‘We’re not so devious. The choice is yours.’

‘But I bet they all come back in the end, don’t they?’

‘Most do. Some don’t. The others…’

‘They kill themselves,’ said Jez.

‘Yes.’

Jez could understand. She’d never contemplated it herself, but the terror of the Manes and the temptation of their call could have easily driven her to madness in those early days. A more delicate soul might have ended themselves rather than risk succumbing to that.

She surveyed the scene. The snow was falling more heavily now, and the far side of the town was becoming obscured. ‘When do I wake up?’ she asked.

‘That’s up to you.’

She thought about that. Then she walked over to a hillock of ice and sat down. ‘I reckon I’d like to stay a while yet. Chew things over. Will you stay with me?’

Rinn was Rinn again, pink-cheeked and healthy, clad in furs and hide. The man she’d known when she was alive. He sat down next to her.

‘I’d like that,’ he said.

Crake stood in his makeshift sanctum at the back of the Ketty Jay ’s cargo hold, his hand on his bearded chin, and regarded the relic with deep suspicion. It sat on the floor inside a protective summoning circle, amid a jumble of cables and detecting devices. The black case was open, showing the jackal emblem inside the lid. The double-bladed weapon lay in its finely-wrought cradle. He hadn’t dared to touch it.

But then, as it turned out, he hadn’t needed to.

He checked the readings on the oscilloscope again. There was no question.

Something was very wrong here.

He frowned. The damned thing was so alien. The long, narrow blades at either end of the handle were made of some material he’d never seen before. They had a crisp, dry ceramic quality, and gave off no reflection. The way they curved in opposite directions resembled no ancient weapon he’d ever seen. Admittedly he was no authority, but he knew his way around a museum.

Then there were the symbols, cut with exquisite precision into the handle and blades. Faintly suggestive of language, but if so it was a long way from any he recognised. And there was the question of its age. They had only Crickslint’s word that it was ancient. It might have been fashioned yesterday, judging by its lack of wear.

But most puzzling of all was the daemonism. It simply defied his analysis. He couldn’t hope to penetrate its complexities with the equipment he had. All he’d gleaned were clues, and they would have to be enough.

If this relic was indeed thousands of years old, then it was the find of the century. It proved that daemonism was alive and thriving long before most civilisations and religions got to their feet. It hinted at untold possibilities for today’s practitioners, if only they could overcome the prejudice fostered by the Awakeners. And as long as nobody mentioned that the Manes were created by the hubris of the early daemonists.

But what if it wasn’t thousands of years old? He was beginning to wonder. Because he’d decoded part of the orchestra of chords that had been thralled into the relic. And what he found was a very modern technique indeed.

There were sheets of formulae and diagrams all over the room. One side of the sanctum looked more like an engineer’s workshop, where he’d been experimenting with all the devices and parts he’d bought in Thesk. Bess was slumped in the corner of the sanctum, a blanket draped over her shoulders, stumpy legs sticking out. Her glittering eyes had disappeared; there was only darkness behind her face-grille. Her favourite storybook lay loosely in her hand.

The sight of her caused a sudden, plunging sadness. There were new bullet-holes in her soft leather parts that would need repairing. New chips and dents in her armour. She was in a sorry state. He didn’t take care of her as well as he wished he could, and he’d been distracted of late with his mission to protect the Cap’n.

What if he failed? What if they couldn’t get the relic back in time, and Crake’s untested methods came to nothing? Crake would survive without the Ketty Jay, but where would Bess go? He could hardly walk around with her in public: she was evidence that he was a daemonist. It struck him then that he’d been so obsessed with his own needs, and later with the Cap’n’s, that he’d barely thought about her at all since this whole affair began.

You’re a despicable person, Grayther Crake, he told himself. No wonder you did what you did to Miss Bree.

Grim-faced, he marched out of the sanctum, through the tarpaulin flap that led into the hold.

It was more of a mess than usual down here, after hauling fifty Murthians to Gagriisk and Frey’s hefty landing, which knocked everything around. It was a miracle that most of the equipment in his sanctum survived a jolt like that. Only his harmoniser had broken, but luckily he could do without that for the moment.

The Rattletraps had been retrieved after the battle. They’d only used two of the three – the ones with mounted gatlings – but those had made it back in surprisingly good condition. They may have looked like pieces of junk, but Ashua evidently knew what she was doing when she bought them.

Reminded by that thought, he stopped at the bottom of the stairs and peered round the side, into the darkness that gathered against the bulkhead. He could hear breathing in there. Not the Iron Jackal, thankfully. The heavy breathing of sleep.

He could just about make her out among the pipes, curled up in a nook in the bulkhead that had been padded out with tarp. She was lying on her side, swallowed by a dusty and voluminous sleeping bag. The shiver and shudder of the wind against the Ketty Jay didn’t seem to bother her at all.

The Cap’n had made noises about shuffling people around to give her a bed – Crake had feared he was going to have to swap quarters with Jez, and lose the upper bunk he used for books and storage – but she preferred to be down here. She said she’d grown up sleeping rough, and couldn’t sleep in a bed anyway. Plus there was lots of space in the hold. It was a little odd, but nobody complained.

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about having her on board. His initial reaction had been horror. He hadn’t wanted anyone or anything to upset the delicate balance that they’d managed to maintain all this time. But he wondered now if he’d been overly harsh. She appeared to have a brain, which was something that Crake generally approved of. Her sass was never directed at him, which was a point in her favour. In fact, she seemed to have chosen him as her co-conspirator when mocking someone else. That was a nice feeling. Malvery seemed quite taken with her, too, and he respected the doctor’s opinion in most things.

So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, if the Cap’n could keep his hands off her.

The Cap’n, he thought. Yes. He had news to deliver.

He made his way up to the cockpit. Frey was flying them low over a sea of dunes. The moon was dead ahead, only a slim black fingernail away from a perfect circle. It was a bright night. Crake tried not to think about the risks of being spotted by a Samarlan patrol. Maybe that was why they were flying so distressingly low.

Ugrik was in the navigator’s seat, amid an untidy mass of charts. He turned in his seat as Crake entered, and cackled at him.

‘The mysterious Mr Crake emerges from his den!’ Ugrik declared. ‘What’ve you been up to down there, eh? Stirring up the infinite?’

‘Something like that,’ said Crake stiffly. He found the bluntness of Yorts rather rude, and he hadn’t thought he was being especially mysterious anyway.

‘Something like that,’ Ugrik muttered to himself, sotto voce. ‘Aye, something very like that, I’ll bet.’

Crake couldn’t work out what he meant by that. It sounded disconcertingly like a threat. Ugrik went back to his maps. Crake gave him a doubtful glance and then turned his attention to the Cap’n.

Frey was staring ahead with the fixed concentration of a man determined to think about nothing. Crake had heard that Trinica had been on board. It wasn’t hard to guess who was responsible for the Cap’n’s present mood.

‘Any word on our destination, Cap’n?’

Ugrik cackled again, not looking up from his charts. ‘You’ll see! You’ll see!’

Frey thumbed at Ugrik, as if to say: there’s your answer.

Crake cleared his throat. ‘Would you like the good news or the bad news first?’

‘Bad news first is traditional, isn’t it?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Gimme the good news.’

‘The bad news is… er, right. The good news is, I’ve made a certain amount of progress on the question of the daemon. I’ve been working on some things based on your rather brave field test of my concealment device, and I’ve developed a few techniques that might prove effective. If the worst should come to the worst, that is.’

Frey nodded, without much enthusiasm. ‘Did I ever thank you, Crake?’

‘For what?’

‘That thing, that device. Saved my life.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he thought for a moment. ‘No, you didn’t.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve been working flat out on my behalf all this time. I want you to know I appreciate it.’

It was delivered in an oddly emotionless monotone. Crake began to worry about the ry aboutCap’n’s state of mind. Perhaps he was just exhausted. They were all exhausted. It seemed like they hadn’t had a chance to catch their breath since they first found the black spot on Frey’s hand.

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Bad news now,’ Frey said.

‘Bad news.’ Crake paused for a moment, wondering how best to approach this. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a harmonic resonance bounce?’

Frey gave him a withering look over his shoulder. Crake decided it was not the look of a person who was likely to have heard of a harmonic resonance bounce.

‘Silly question, I suppose. Let me put it simply. You remember that ring I gave you a while ago, that was linked to a compass?’

‘This ring?’ Frey asked, raising his hand.

Crake suddenly understood. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Cap’n, I’m very sor-’

‘Buy me a drink if I’m not dead by tomorrow night. You were saying?’

Crake had been knocked off his stride. ‘Er… anyway. The way the ring and compass works is that you thrall two daemons which oscillate at the same frequency to both objects, allowing one to always find the other, rather like a magnetic pull. The earcuffs run on the same principle of matched oscillation, though they’re a sight more complex. When a daemon is thralled to something in this way, it forms a unique chord which is out of phase with the rest of the object, setting up an invisible wave which travels between the objects, which is what we call a harmonic reson-’

‘Layman’s terms, Crake,’ said Frey, getting ever so slightly annoyed.

‘Someone’s tracking the relic.’

‘There, now, that wasn’t so hard.’

Crake wondered if he did have a tendency to over-explain. He ought to work on that. ‘It’s just like the ring and compass, although, I reluctantly admit, more skilful and precise. But somebody, somewhere, has a device that tells them exactly where the relic is at all times.’

‘And only a daemonist could do this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Know any?’

‘None that have been anywhere near that relic.’

‘Can you block it?’

‘Should be easy enough. But it’ll take time.’

Frey tutted. ‘Time’s exactly what we don’t -’

A heavy shudder ran through the Ketty Jay, violent enough to make Crake stumble.

‘-have…’ Frey finished, in a tone of apprehension.

They waited, eyes roaming their surroundings as if they might see what had caused the disturbance.

‘Turbulence, I reckon,’ said Frey.

The Ketty Jay shivered again. Then suddenly it was shaken hard, and Crake wheeled across the cockpit to crash into the bulkhead on the far side.

He shook his head to clear it, only to find that the sickening slant to the cockpit was not a result of his disorientation. The Ketty Jay ’s thrusters puffed and boomed, dying and relighting again. She was listing hard to starboard, and there was a horrible ascending drone that Crake had learned to associate with plummeting aircraft. His stomach plummeted in sympathy.

‘Cap’n!’ he cried. ‘What’s happeni-’

‘Shut it! I’m busy!’ Frey barked at him. The Cap’n was struggling with the flight stick, frantically pulling levers, turning valves, kicking pedals. ‘Everything’s gone haywire!’

Crake clambered to his feet with the help of the back of the pilot’s seat. Over Frey’s shoulder, he could see all kinds of brass dials and meters on the dash. They were flicking crazily this way and that. The steel-coloured waves of desert sand outside were tilted at a frightening angle.

‘One of the aerium tanks is jammed half open!’ Frey cried, thrashing at a nearby lever. They lurched forward, throwing Crake hard against the back of the chair. ‘And the damn thrusters are-’ He swore and punched a button. The thrusters boomed once more and died.

The quiet was sudden and awful. The Ketty Jay ’s nose tipped steadily downwards. Frey wrestled with the stick to stop her rolling to starboard.

‘ What did you do to the thrusters? ’ Crake screamed.

Ugrik chuckled. ‘This is just like this time in Marduk. So cold, it were, the engine froze, and we-’

‘You can shut your trap as well!’ Frey yelled at him. He began frantically strapping himself in with one hand, while trying to hold the course with the other. He cr other. aned round in the seat and shouted down the corridor. ‘Everyone hang on!’

‘Hang on to what?’ Crake howled, casting around the cockpit for something to attach himself to. In the end, he stayed clinging to the back of the chair. He felt the Ketty Jay getting heavier and heavier as she lost aerium. She glided with terrible silent grace through the moonlit night.

‘Do something!’ Crake flapped.

‘Suggestions would be good!’

‘Hit some buttons!’

The Cap’n suddenly lit up. ‘Hey, I never tried that button before.’ He stabbed it with his finger.

The silence was filled by the steady whirring of fans as the air filtration system kicked in.

‘Oh, that ’s where it was,’ said Frey, and then Crake felt a terrific shove from behind, he struck his head against something hard, and the world went black.