Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

To abandon her here would be to lose her for ever.

‘I’ve an idea,’ said Dracken, addressing Frey. ‘It seems the only other person who knows the ignition code is dead, and I’d rather not kill you until after you’ve given us a confession. But a daemonist . . . well, he could be problematic. They have all kinds of . . . arts. Probably easier to get rid of him now.’

Crake saw what was coming. She lifted her gun and pointed it at his forehead in what was becoming a depressingly familiar state of affairs.

‘Unless you’ve something to tell me, Frey?’ she prompted.

Frey’s face had gone stony. Crake had seen that impassive expression before, when Lawsen Macarde put him in a similar situation. Except this time, there was little doubt that Trinica’s gun was fully loaded.

A strange calm came over him. Let it end, then.

‘You have until three,’ said Trinica. ‘One.’

He was tired. Tired of struggling against the grief and shame. Tired of living under the weight of one arrogant mistake, to think that he might summon one of the monsters of the aether and come away unscathed. Tired of trying to understand that awful twist of fortune that had led his niece to his sanctum on that particular night, instead of any other.

Leave her here, amid the ash and dust. If he didn’t wake her up, no one ever would. Let her sleep, and perhaps she’d dream of better things.

‘Two.’

He closed his eyes, and to his faint surprise, dislodged a tear. He felt it trickle down the side of his face, over the hump of his cheekbone, to be lost in his beard.

He’d worked so hard to be great. It had ended in ignominy, disgrace and failure. What was a world worth, that treated its inhabitants so?

‘Thr—’ Trinica began.

‘Stop!’ Frey snapped.

Crake’s eyes stayed closed. Hovering on the razor-blade edge between existence and oblivion, he dared not tip the balance with the slightest movement.

‘Seven sixty-seven, double one, double eight,’ he heard his captain say.

There was a long pause. His body shook with each thump of his heart. He didn’t even hope. He didn’t even know if he wanted to be left in the world of the living.

But the choice wasn’t his to make. He felt the chill metal of the revolver muzzle leave his forehead. His eyes fluttered open. Dracken had stepped back, and was regarding him like a child who has just spared an insect. Then she turned to Frey and raised an eyebrow. Frey looked away angrily.

Crake felt detached from himself, clothed in a dreamlike numbness. He watched as Dracken’s crew carried Bess away from the Ketty Jay. Then, with obvious glee, they stood her on her feet. A hunched metal statue, a monument to their victory. He heard Dracken order the man with the steel ear to assign two men to fly the Ketty Jay behind them. Frey wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye: he’d been broken by Dracken, and was burning with a hate and fury such as Crake had never seen him show.

But it all seemed far away and inconsequential. He was still alive, somehow, although he wasn’t sure he’d fully returned from the brink yet.

Someone patted his shoulder. Malvery. They were being urged towards the nearby passenger shuttle. From there they’d be taken to the Delirium Trigger’s brig. Crake sent a mental message to his feet to get them moving. Dazed, he stumbled along with the group, his boots scuffing up little grey clouds. They were herded up some steps and into the belly of the shuttle, where they sat, surrounded by armed guards.

Crake looked out through the shuttle door at the lonely figure of Bess. The crewmen had deserted her now, and were attending to other tasks. The shuttle was powering up its engines, sending veils of dust to coat her.

Let her sleep, he thought. Goodnight, Bess.

Then the door slammed closed, and she was lost from his sight.

‘Out, you.’

Frey looked up, and saw a thickset, bald man with a bushy black beard on the other side of the bars. ‘You mean me?’

‘You’re the cap’n, ain’t ya?’

He glanced around at his crew, trying to decide whether there was any advantage in protesting. All six of them had been put in the same cell on the Delirium Trigger’s brig. There were five cells in all, each capable of holding ten men. The walls were metal, and the lights were weak. The smell of oil was in the air, and the sound of clanking machinery and distant engines echoed in the hollow spaces.

Silo met his eyes with a customarily inscrutable gaze. Malvery just shrugged.

‘I’m the captain,’ Frey said at length.

‘Cap’n Dracken wants to see you,’ the bald man informed him.

The gaoler unlocked the door and pushed it open, waving a shotgun to deter any attempts at a breakout. Frey walked through, and the door clanged shut behind him.

‘Hey,’ said Malvery. ‘While you’ve got her ear, ask if we can get some rum down here, eh?’

Pinn laughed explosively. Crake didn’t stir from where he sat in a corner, drowned in his own misery. Harkins had fallen asleep, tired out by being afraid of everything. Silo was silent.

And Jez? What was Jez doing right now? Frey had turned it over and over in his mind, but he still couldn’t work out how she could fake her own death convincingly enough to fool Trinica’s man. She’d refused to reveal how she was going to do it when she first told him of her plan. She just said: ‘Trust me.’

Still, he was beginning to wonder if she actually had died.

The bald man took him by the arm and pressed a pistol into his side, then walked him out of the brig and through the passageways of the Delirium Trigger. They passed other crewmembers on the way. Some sneered triumphantly at Frey; others gave him looks of abject hatred. Their humiliation at Rabban—not to mention the deaths of a dozen or so crewmen—hadn’t been forgotten.

When they reached the door to the captain’s cabin, the bald man brought him to a halt. Frey expected him to knock, but he didn’t. He appeared to be deliberating some question with himself.

‘Are we going in?’ Frey prompted.

‘Listen,’ replied the crewman, turning on Frey with a threatening look in his eyes. ‘You be careful what you say in there. The Cap’n . . . she’s in one of her moods.’

Frey arched an eyebrow. ‘Thanks for the concern,’ he said, sarcastically. ‘What’s she going to do, kill me?’

‘It ain’t you I’m concerned about,’ came the reply, and then he knocked on the door and Trinica called for them to enter.

Trinica’s cabin was well ordered and clean, but the dark wood of the bookcases and the brass fittings of the dim electric lamps gave it a close, gloomy feel. Trinica was sitting behind her desk at the far end of the room, on which a large logbook lay open next to a carefully arranged writing set and the brass compass-like device they’d used to navigate the minefields of Retribution Falls. She was looking out of the sloping window. Beyond, night had fallen.

She didn’t acknowledge Frey as he was brought in. The bald man stood him in the centre of the room. After a moment, without turning from the window, she said:

‘Thank you, Harmund. You can go.’

‘Cap’n,’ said the big man, and left.

Frey stood uncertainly in the centre of the room for a moment, but still she didn’t speak to him. He decided he’d be damned if he’d feel awkward in front of her. He walked over to a reading-chair by one of the bookcases and sat down in it. He could wait as long as she could.

His eyes fell to the compass on the desk. The sight of it inspired a momentary surge of bitterness. That would have been his proof. That device and the charts that came with it would have won him his freedom. He’d been so close.