Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

Frey settled back in his seat. The sight of her stirred up all the old feelings. Bad feelings. He’d loved this woman once, back when she was sweet and pretty and perfect. Loved her in a way he’d never loved anyone since. But then he’d broken her heart. In return, she’d ripped his to pieces. He could never forget what she’d done to him. He could never forgive her.

But an argument would do him no good now. He couldn’t take the risk that Trinica would storm out. The object of this meeting was to keep her here as long as possible, to let his men do their job on the Delirium Trigger.

He cleared his throat and strove to control the bitterness in his voice. ‘So,’ he said. ‘You set the Shacklemores on me.’ He began cutting the cards and reshufing them absently.

‘You were a hard man to find,’ she said. ‘It took them six months. By then . . . well, you know what had happened by then.’

Frey’s throat tightened. Rage or grief, he wasn’t sure.

‘They came back and said they’d found you. You were doing freelance work somewhere on the other side of Vardia at the time. Using what you’d learned from working as a hauler for my father’s company, I suppose. Making your own deals.’

‘It was a living,’ said Frey neutrally.

She gave him a faint, distracted smile. ‘They asked me if I wanted them to bring you back. I didn’t. Not then. I asked them instead to let you know—discreetly—how I was doing. I was sure you hadn’t troubled to enquire.’

Frey remembered that meeting well. A stranger in a bar, a shared drink. Casually mentioning that he worked for Dracken Industries. Terrible what had happened to the daughter. Just terrible.

But Trinica was wrong. He had enquired. By then, he’d already known what she’d done.

Memories overwhelmed him. Searing love and bilious hate. The stranger before him was a mockery of the young woman he’d almost married. He’d kissed those lips, those whore-red lips that now smiled at him cruelly. He’d heard the softest words pass from them to him.

Ten years. He’d thought that everything would be long ago buried by now. He’d been badly mistaken.

‘It didn’t seem fair, really,’ Trinica said, tilting her head like a bird. There was a childish look on her face that said: Poor Frey. Poor, poor Frey. ‘It didn’t seem fair that you should be able to turn your back and walk away like that. That you could leave your bride on her wedding day and never have to think about what you’d done, never take any responsibility.’

‘I wasn’t responsible!’

She leaned forward on the card table, deadly serious, those awful black eyes staring out of her white face. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you were.’

Frey dashed the cards across the table, but his fury died as soon as it had come. He sat back in his chair, his arms folded. He wanted to argue but he needed to keep things calm. Keep things together.

Don’t let this bitch get to you. Play for time.

‘You had the Shacklemores keep track of me after that?’ he asked. Trinica nodded. ‘Why the interest?’

‘I just forgot to call them off.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘It’s true. At first, I’ll admit, I wanted to see what effect my news would have on you. I wanted to see if you suffered. But then . . . well, I left home, and other things got in the way. It was only years later that I realised they’d been keeping the file open on you all that time, drawing a fee every month. My father was paying for them, you see. When you’ve that much money, it’s easy to forget about something like that.’

‘You know I joined the Navy, then?’ he said.

‘I know they conscripted you when the Second Aerium War began,’ she said. ‘And I know you were drinking too much, and you started taking all the most dangerous jobs. I know nobody wanted to fly with you because it was only a matter of time before you self-destructed.’

‘You must have enjoyed hearing all about that.’

‘I did, yes,’ she replied brightly. ‘But I didn’t find out until after you had disappeared.’

Frey didn’t say anything.

‘They tell me the position was overrun by Samarlan troops. My guess is, you landed there and they ambushed you. What happened to the rest of the crew?’

‘Dead.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Navy intelligence,’ Frey sneered. ‘Bunch of incompetent bastards. They sent us out there and the Sammies were waiting.’

Trinica laughed: the sound was sharp and brittle. ‘Same old Darian. Picked on by the world. Nothing’s ever your fault, is it?’

‘How was it my fault?’ he cried. ‘I landed in a war zone because of information they gave me.’

Trinica sighed patiently. ‘It was a war, Darian. Mistakes happen all the time. You landed in a war zone because you had been flying the most dangerous front-line missions for months. You never used to ask questions; you just took the missions and flew. It was a miracle it didn’t happen sooner.’

‘It was the best chance I had to pay off the loan on the Ketty Jay,’ he protested, but it sounded weak even to him. He couldn’t forget the desperate tone in Rabby’s voice as he closed the cargo ramp. Don’t you leave me here!

‘If you wanted to die, why didn’t you just kill yourself?’ Trinica asked. ‘Why try and take everyone else with you?’

‘I never wanted to die!’

Trinica just looked at him. After a moment she shrugged. ‘Well, evidently you didn’t want it enough, since here you are. Everyone thought you were gone. The Shacklemores closed the file. The loan company wrote off the rest of your repayments on the Ketty Jay. And off you went, a corpse to all intents and purposes. Until one day . . . one day I hear your name again, Darian. Seems you’re alive, and everyone’s looking for you. And I just had to throw my hat in the ring.’

‘You just had to, huh?’ Frey said scathingly.

Trinica’s demeanour went from casual to freezing in an instant. ‘That day you disappeared, you cheated me. I thought I’d never get to make you pay. But you’re alive, and that’s good. That’s a wonderful thing.’ She smiled, the chill smile of a predator, her black eyes glittering like a snake watching a mouse. ‘Because now I’m going to catch you, my wayward love, and I’m going to watch you hang.’

The Ketty Jay was berthed at a small dock in the outskirts of Rabban, far from the Delirium Trigger. The dock was little more than a barely used landing pad set above a maze of shattered and leaning alleyways. Only a few other craft of similar size shared the space. They sat dark and silent, their crews nowhere to be seen. A few dock personnel wandered around, looking for something to do, their presence revealed by a cough or a slow movement in the shadows. All was quiet.

Silo and Jez worked in the white glare of the Ketty Jay’s belly lights, rolling barrels from the cargo hold and manhandling them into rows of five. There were several such rows positioned around the Ketty Jay. A haphazard kind of arrangement, an observer might think, unless they guessed what the barrels were really for.

They were building barricades.

Harkins was skirting the edge of the landing pad, scampering along in a crouch, a spyglass in his hand. He stayed out of the light of the electric lamp-posts that marked out the landing pad for flying traffic. Every so often he’d stop and scan the surrounding alleyways, then run off in a nervous fashion to another location and do it again. The dock personnel paid him no mind. As long as his captain paid the berthing fee, they were happy to tolerate eccentrics.

The night was still new when Harkins straightened, his whole body frozen in alarm. He adjusted his spyglass, shifted it this way and that, counting frantically under his breath. Then he fled back towards the Ketty Jay as if his heels were on fire.