Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

Crake crept up to the corner, pressing himself against it. He peered round. The butler was in the doorway of a nearby bedroom, a little way inside. His back was to the corridor, and he was talking to the maids within.

Crake took a shallow breath and held it. He had to do this now, before his nerve failed him. Soft-footed, he padded past the doorway. No voice was raised to halt him. The butler kept talking. Unable to believe his luck, Crake kept going, and the conversation in his ear grew audible.

‘. . . concern that . . . still haven’t caught . . .’

He opened a plain-looking door and ducked inside, eager to get out of the corridor. Within was a small, green-tiled room, with a shuttered window, a scalloped white sink, and a flush toilet at the end.

Well, he thought. I found the lavatory after all.

‘It’s imperative that Dracken finds him before the Archduke’s Knights do,’ said Grephen in his ear. ‘It should have been done properly the first time.’

Crake felt a guilty shiver, the chill of an eavesdropper who hears something scandalous. They were talking about Frey.

‘Nobody expected him to get away,’ said Thade. ‘I had four good pilots flying escort.’

‘So why didn’t they do their jobs?’

The lavatory had a lock on the inside, with a large iron key. Crake eased the door closed and quietly turned it, then sat down on the toilet lid. Grephen and Thade were almost directly below him now. He could hear them perfectly.

‘The survivor said they launched a surprise attack.’

‘Well, of course they did! We told them the route the Ace of Skulls would be flying! So why weren’t our pilots warned?’

‘The pilots were independents, hired through middlemen, that couldn’t be connected to you. We needed them to be reliable, untainted witnesses. We could hardly warn them an attack was coming without giving away the fact that we set up the ambush.’

Amalicia Thade was right, thought Crake. Her father wasn’t in this alone. This goes all the way up to the Duke.

‘The Ketty Jay had two outflyers—fighter craft,’ Thade went on patiently. ‘We didn’t even know Frey travelled with outflyers. He’s such an insignificant wretch, it’s a miracle he keeps his own craft in the sky, let alone three.’

‘You didn’t know?’

‘Your Grace, do you have any idea how hard it is to keep track of one maggot amid the swarming cess of the underworld? A man like that puts down no roots and leaves little trace when he’s gone. The sheer size of our great country makes it—’

‘You underestimated him, then.’

Crake heard a resentful pause. ‘I miscalculated,’ Thade said at last.

‘The problem was that you didn’t calculate anything,’ Grephen said. ‘You allowed your personal hatred of this man to blind you. You saw a chance for revenge because he disgraced your daughter. I should never have listened to you.’

‘The Allsoul itself thought that Darian Frey was an excellent choice for our scheme.’

‘The auguries were unclear,’ said Grephen, coldly. ‘Even the Grand Oracle said so. Do not presume to know the mind of the Allsoul.’

‘I am saying that I trust in the Allsoul’s wisdom,’ Thade replied. ‘This is merely a hiccup. We will still emerge triumphant.’

Crake couldn’t help a sneer and a tut. Superstition and idiocy, he thought. Strange how your Allsoul can’t stop me using my daemons to listen to every word you say.

‘The survivor told us that the Ketty Jay’s outflyers were fast craft with excellent pilots,’ Thade explained. ‘The surprise attack threw them into chaos and took out half of our men. We were lucky that one witness escaped to report to the Archduke.’

Nobody spoke for a time. Crake imagined a sullen silence on Grephen’s part.

‘This is not a disaster,’ said Thade, soothingly. ‘Hengar is out of the way, and our hands remain clean. Don’t you see how things have fallen in our favour? That fool’s dalliance with the Samarlan ambassador’s daughter gave us the perfect opportunity to remove him and make it look like a pirate attack. If he’d not been travelling in secret, if your spies hadn’t discovered his affair, our job would have been that much more difficult.’

Grephen grunted in reluctant agreement, allowing himself to be mollified.

‘Not only that,’ Thade went on, ‘but leaking information about the affair to the public has turned them against Hengar and the Archduchy in general. Hengar was the one they loved, remember? He stood aside when his parents began their ridiculous campaign to deprive the people of the message of the Allsoul. His death could have strengthened the family, made them sympathetic in the eyes of the common man, but instead they have never been so unpopular.’

‘That’s true, that’s true.’

Thade was warming to his own positivity now. ‘Don’t you see how kindly the Allsoul looks on our enterprise? We have cleared the line of succession: the Archduke has no other children to inherit his title. The people will welcome you when you seize control of the Coalition. You will be Archduke Grephen, and a new dynasty will begin!’

Crake’s mind reeled. This was what it was all about? Spit and blood, they were planning a coup! They were planning to overthrow the Archduke!

It was all but inconceivable. Nobody alive remembered what it was like to live without a member of the Arken dynasty ruling the land. The rulers of the duchy of Thesk had been the leaders of the Coalition for almost a century and a half. They’d been the ones who forcefully brought the squabbling Coalition to heel after they deposed the King and threw down the monarchy. The first Archduke of Vardia had been of the family of Arken, as had every one since. The Arkens had been the ultimate power in the land for generations, overseeing the Third Age of Aviation and the Aerium Wars, the discovery of New Vardia and Jagos on the far side of the world, the formation of the Century Knights. They’d abolished serfdom and brought economic prosperity and industry to a land strangled by the stagnant traditions of millennia of royal rule.

Crake felt history teetering. Riveted, he listened on.

‘It . . . concerns me that Darian Frey is still on the run,’ said the Duke. ‘He has already been to the whispermonger you employed.’

‘Don’t worry about Quail. Dracken has made sure he won’t speak to anyone ever again.’

‘But Frey is already on the trail. He was spotted near your daughter’s hermitage.’

‘Amalicia has been questioned by the Mistresses, at my request. She swears that he never visited her. Dracken probably caught up to him before he had a chance to—’

‘What if she’s lying?’

‘You know I can’t go in there or bring her out. She must stay in isolation. We have to trust her, and the Mistresses.’

‘My point is, he must know about you. That means he may learn about me.’

‘Peace, your Grace. Who’ll believe him? With Quail dead, there’s nothing to link us but the word of a mass-murderer.’

‘It’s not a chance I want to take. If he digs deep enough, he might find something. I don’t want the Century Knights getting hold of him and giving him the chance to spout his theories to the Archduke.’

Crake was sitting atop the toilet, elbows on his knees, one hand on his forehead with his fingers clenched anxiously through his hair. Finally he understood the true seriousness of their situation. Unwittingly, they’d become entangled in a power-play for the greatest prize in the land. The only problem was they’d been inconvenient enough not to die when they were supposed to. Now they were hunted, both by those who thought they were responsible, and those who wanted them silenced. Small fry dodging the mouths of the biggest fish in the sea.