Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

Hard to believe he’d almost married her.

Rabban was one of the nine primary cities of Vardia, and like the others it bore the same name as the duchy it dominated. Though it had suffered terribly in the Aerium Wars, it was still large enough to need over a dozen docks for aircraft. These docks were the first thing to be repaired after the bombing stopped six years ago. Some were little more than islands in a sea of shattered stone, but even these were busy with passenger shuttles, cargo haulers and supply vessels. Transport by air had been Vardia’s only viable option for over a century and, even in the aftermath of a disaster, there was no way to do without it.

Only a few of the docks, however, were equipped to deal with a craft the size of the Delirium Trigger.

She rested inside a vast iron hangar, alongside frigates and freighters: the heavyweights of the skies. A web of platforms, gantries and walkways surrounded it at deck-height, busy with an ant swarm of engineers, dock workers and swabbers. Everything was being checked, everything cleaned, and a complex exchange of services and trade goods was negotiated. A craft like the Delirium Trigger, with a crew of fifty, needed a lot of maintenance.

The Delirium Trigger’s purser was a Free Dakkadian named Ominda Rilk. He had the fair skin and hair typical of his race, the small frame and narrow shoulders, and the squinting eyes that still elicited much mockery in the Vardic press. Dakkadians were famed and ridiculed for their administrative abilities. Education and numeracy were much prized among their kind: it made them useful to their Samarlan masters. But Dakkadians, unlike Murthians, could own possessions, and they could earn their freedom.

It was unusual to find a Dakkadian in Vardia, where there was still much bad feeling towards them after the Aerium Wars. They were seen as pernickety coin-counters and misers by the more generous souls; the rest thought they were cunning, underhanded, murdering bastards. But still, here was Ominda Rilk. He stood among the crates and palettes waiting to be loaded onto the Delirium Trigger, examining everything and making small notes in his logbook now and again. And his squinty eyes were keen enough to spot two men transporting a very heavy-looking crate in a manner that was frankly quite surreptitious.

‘Ho there!’ he cried. The men stopped, and he walked briskly over to them. They were dock workers, dressed in battered grey overalls. One was large and big-bellied, with a whiskery white moustache; the other was short, stumpy and ugly, with oversized cheeks and a small thatch of black hair perched atop a small head. They were both flushed and sweating.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, motioning at the crate. It was nine feet tall and six wide, and they’d been rolling it along on a wheeled palette towards the loading area, where a crane picked up supplies for transport to the deck of the Delirium Trigger.

‘Don’t know,’ said Malvery, with a shrug. ‘We just deliver, don’t we?’

‘Well, who’s it from?’ snapped Rilk. ‘Where are the papers? Come on!’

Malvery drew out a battered, folded-up set of papers. Rilk shook them open and checked the delivery invoice. His eyebrows raised a fraction when he read the name of the sender. Gallian Thade.

‘We weren’t expecting this,’ he said, handing back the papers with a scowl.

Malvery gave him a blank look. ‘We just deliver,’ he said again. ‘This box goes on the Delirium Trigger.’

Rilk glared at him, and then at Pinn. There was something not right about these two, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Pinn looked back at him, mutely.

‘Does he speak?’ Rilk demanded, thumbing at Pinn.

‘Not much,’ Malvery replied. At least, he’d been told to keep his trap shut, for fear he’d say something stupid and ruin their disguise. Malvery hoped he’d implied enough threat to keep the young pilot in line. ‘You want us to load this thing on, or what?’

Rilk studied the crate for a moment. Then he snapped his fingers. ‘Open it up.’

Malvery groaned. ‘Aw, come on, don’t be a—’

‘Open it up!’ Rilk said, snapping his fingers again, in a rather annoying fashion that made Malvery want to break them and then stuff his mangled hand down his throat.

The doctor shrugged and looked at Pinn. ‘Open it up,’ he said.

Pinn produced a crowbar. The crate had been nailed shut, but they forced open a gap in the front side with relative ease, then pulled it the rest of the way with brute strength. It fell forward and clattered to the ground.

Rilk stared at the hulking, armoured shape inside the box. A monstrosity of metal and leather and chain mail, with a humped back and a circular grille set low between the shoulders. It was cold and silent.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

Malvery pondered for a moment, studying Bess. ‘I reckon it’s one of those pressure-environment-suit-thingies.’

Rilk looked it up and down, a puzzled frown on his face. ‘What does it do?’

‘Well, you wear it when you want to work on the deck, see. Like, in arctic environments, or when your craft is really, really high in the sky.’

‘It’s cold as a zombie’s tit up there, and the air’s too thin to breathe,’ Pinn added, unable to resist joining in. Malvery silenced him with a glare.

‘I see,’ said Rilk, examining Pinn. ‘And how is it a dock worker knows a thing like that?’

Pinn looked lost. ‘I just do.’

‘Lot of pilots come to the dockside bars,’ Malvery said with forced offhandedness. ‘People talk.’

‘Yes they do,’ said Rilk. He walked up to Bess, put his face to her face-grille, and peered inside. ‘Hello?’ he called. The word echoed in the hollow interior.

‘He thinks there’s somebody in there,’ Malvery grinned at Pinn, giving him a nudge. Pinn chuckled on cue. Rilk withdrew, his pale face reddening.

‘Box it up and load it on!’ he snapped, then made a quick note in his logbook and stalked away.

‘Why did you bring me here, Darian?’ asked Trinica Dracken.

‘Why did you come?’ he countered.

She smiled coldly in the light of the lantern overhead. ‘Blowing you out of the sky after all this time seemed a little . . . impersonal,’ she replied. ‘I wanted to see you. I wanted to look you in the eye.’

‘I wanted to see you too,’ said Frey. He’d scooped up the cards that were laid out on the table.

‘You’re a liar. I’m the last person you ever wanted to see again.’

Frey looked down at the cards and began to shuffle them restlessly.

‘I had people watching you,’ said Trinica. ‘Did you know that? After you left me.’

He was faintly chilled. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘The day after our wedding day, I had the Shacklemores looking for you.’

‘It wasn’t our wedding day,’ said Frey, ‘because there wasn’t a wedding.’

‘A thousand people turned up thinking otherwise,’ said Trinica. ‘Not to mention the bride. In fact, everyone seemed to think they were there for a magnificent wedding right up until the moment the judge called for the groom.’ Her expression became comically sorrowful, a sad clown face. ‘And there was the poor bride, waiting in front of all those people.’ She blew a puff of air into her hand, opening it out as she did so. ‘But the groom had gone.’

Frey was rather unnerved by her delivery. He’d expected shrill remonstrations, but she was utterly empty of emotion. She was talking as if it had happened to someone else. And those black, black eyes made her seem strangely fey and alien. A little frightening, even.

‘What do you want, Trinica?’ The words came out angrier than he intended. ‘An apology? It’s a little late for that.’

‘Oh, that’s most certainly true,’ she replied.