Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

‘What’s a disgrace?’ he asked, trying to keep the conversation up. He wanted Gremble distracted.

‘About Hengar and that Sammie bitch.’

Frey gave him a blank look.

‘You don’t know? You been living in a cave or something?’

‘Close,’ said Frey.

‘It’s not been in the broadsheets,’ said Foxmuth. ‘They don’t dare print it. But everyone knows. It’s been all over this past week.’

‘I’ve been away,’ he said. ‘Yortland.’

‘Chilly up there,’ Gremble commented, taking the Lady of Wings as he did so. Frey thrilled at the sight.

‘Yeah,’ Frey agreed. The Priest was his. He made a show of deliberating whether to take one of the two face-down mystery cards or not. ‘So what’s the story with Hengar?’

Hengar, Earl of Thesk and the only child of the Archduke. Heir to the Nine Duchies of Vardia. It sounded like something Frey should be paying attention to, but he was concentrating on depriving this poor sap of all his coins. He picked up the Priest. Four Priests in his hand. If he played this right, the game would be his.

‘So there were all these rumours, right?’ Foxmuth said eagerly. ‘About Hengar and this Sammie princess or something.’

‘She wasn’t a princess, she was some other thing,’ Gremble interrupted, frowning as he looked at his hand.

‘Yeah, well, anyway,’ Foxmuth continued. ‘Hengar was having secret meetings with her.’

‘Political meetings?’

‘The other kind,’ Gremble muttered. ‘They was lovers. The heir to the Nine Duchies and a bloody Sammie! The family wanted it stopped, but he wouldn’t listen, so they was covering it all up. But this past week, well . . . All I can say is someone must’ve shot their mouth off.’

‘What’s so wrong with him seeing a Sammie?’ Frey asked.

‘Did you miss the wars or something?’ Gremble cried.

‘I wasn’t on the front line,’ said Frey. ‘First one, I was working as a cargo hauler. Never saw action. Second one, I was working for the Navy, supply drops and so on.’ He shut up before he said any more. He didn’t want to revisit those times. Rabby’s final scream as the cargo ramp closed still haunted him at night. He could never forget the awful, endless, slicing agony of a Dakkadian bayonet plunging into his belly. Just the thought made him sick with fury at the people who had sent him there to die. The Coalition Navy.

Gremble humphed, making it clear what he thought of Frey’s contribution. ‘I was infantry, both wars. I saw stuff you can’t imagine. And there are a lot of people out there like me. Curdles my guts to think of our Earl Hengar snuggling up to some pampered Sammie slut.’

‘So how did the news get out?’

‘Search me,’ growled Gremble. ‘But the Archduke ain’t happy about it, I bet. There’s already all them rumours about the Archduchess, how she’s secretly a daemonist and that. You know they say the Archduke has a regiment of golems helping guard his palace in Thesk? And that he’s planning to make more regiments to fight on our front lines?’

‘Didn’t know that,’ said Frey.

‘It’s what they say. They say the Archduchess is behind it. They say that’s why they’re doing all that stuff to undermine the Awakeners. Awakeners and daemonists hate each other.’

‘Yeah, I gathered,’ said Frey, thinking back to his earlier conversation with Crake.

‘And now there’s Hengar behaving like this . . .’ Gremble tutted. ‘You know, I always used to like him. He’s a big Rake player, you know that?’ He folded his arms and sucked his teeth. ‘But now? I don’t know what that family’s coming to.’

‘Speaking of Rake, are you gonna bet?’

‘Five bits!’ Gremble snapped.

‘Raise five more,’ Frey replied.

‘I bet all of it!’ said Gremble immediately, piling the rest of his money into the centre of the table. Then he sat back and looked at his cards with the air of someone wondering what he’d just done.

Frey considered for only a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said. Gremble went pale. He hadn’t expected that.

Frey laid down his cards with a smile. ‘Four Priests,’ he said. Gremble groaned. His own four cards were the Ace, Ten, Three of Wings and the Lady of Wings he’d just picked up. He was going for Wings Full, but even if he made it, he couldn’t beat Four Priests.

Unless Frey drew the Ace of Skulls.

The Ace of Skulls was the wild card. Usually it was worse than worthless, but in the right circumstances it could turn a game around. In most cases, if a player held it, it nullified all their cards and they lost the hand automatically. But if it could be made part of a high-scoring hand, Three Aces or a Run or Suits Full or higher, it made that hand unbeatable.

If Frey drew the Ace of Skulls, his Four Priests would be cancelled and he’d lose everything.

There were two cards left on the table, face down. Gremble reached out and turned one over. The Duke of Wings. He’d made his Wings Full, but it didn’t matter now. He sat back with a disgusted snort.

Frey reached out for his card, but there was a commotion behind him, and he turned around as a tavern-boy came clattering down the stairs.

‘Did you hear?’ he said urgently. Scrone jerked in his chair, startled halfway out of sleep, and then slipped back into unconsciousness.

‘Hear what, boy?’ demanded Foxmuth, rising.

‘There’s criers out in the streets. They’re saying why the parade got cancelled. It’s because of Hengar!’

‘There, what did I tell you?’ said Gremble, with a note of triumph in his voice. ‘They’re ashamed of what he’s done, and so they should be!’

‘No, it’s not that!’ said the boy. He was genuinely distressed. ‘Earl Hengar’s dead!’

‘But that’s . . . He’s bloody dead?’ Foxmuth sputtered.

‘He was on a freighter over the Hookhollows. There was some kind of accident, something went wrong with the engine, and . . .’ The boy looked bewildered and shocked. ‘It went down with all hands.’

‘When?’ asked Frey. The muscles of his neck had tightened. His skin had gone cold. But he hadn’t taken his eyes from that face-down card on the table.

‘Excuse me, sir?’

‘When did it happen?’

‘I don’t know, sir. They didn’t say.’

‘What kind of damn fool question is that?’ Gremble raged. ‘When? When? What does it matter when? He’s dead! Buggering pissbollocks! It’s a tragedy! A fine young man like that, taken from us in the prime of his life!’

‘A good man,’ Foxmuth agreed gravely.

But the when did matter. When meant everything to Frey. When was the final hope he had that maybe, against all the odds, he could avoid the terrible, crushing weight that he felt plummeting towards him. If it happened yesterday, or the day before . . . if it could somehow be that recent . . .

But he knew when it had happened. It had happened three weeks ago. They just hadn’t been able to keep it quiet any longer.

The Century Knights. The job from Quail. All those people, travelling incognito on a cargo freighter. The name of the freighter. It all added up. After all, wouldn’t Hengar travel in secret, returning from an illicit visit to Samarla? And wasn’t he a keen Rake player?

Gallian Thade had arranged the death of the Archduke’s only son. And he’d set Frey up to take the fall.

He reached over and flipped the final card.

The Ace of Skulls grinned at him.

Frey stumbled through the mountain pass, his coat clutched tight to his body, freezing rain lashing his face. The wind keened and skirled and pushed against him while he kept up the string of mumbled oaths and curses that had sustained him for several kloms now. On a good day, the Andusian Highlands at dawn could be described as dramatic—stunning, even—with its wild green slopes and deep lakes nestling between peaks of grim black rock. Today was not a good day.