Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

By the time she reached the settlement, she had a story, and a plan.

Keep moving. Keep your secret. Survive, as much as you can be said to live at all.

But it had been a long and lonely three years since that day.

She passed over the southern part of the Hookhollows, their glowing magma vents making bright scribbles in the dark. The Eastern Plateau rose up before her, and she took the Ketty Jay down through the black, filthy clouds. Her engines were robust enough to take a little ash. Once she’d broken through, she brought the Ketty Jay to a few dozen metres above ground level, and skimmed over the Blackendraft flats. She glanced at the navigational charts she was following. Charts that had been meticulously kept by Dracken’s navigator since they’d commandeered the Ketty Jay.

Trust me, she’d said to Frey, when he demanded to know how she was going to fool Dracken’s men into thinking she was dead. The kind of trust he’d shown when he gave her the ignition code to his precious aircraft, the one thing he could be said to love. Even though he was afraid she might steal it and fly off for ever, he’d trusted her.

And he trusted her to come back and save him. She wouldn’t let him down.

She was under no illusion that she was risking her own life, and she knew that even if she succeeded, she’d probably be despised. They couldn’t be her friends. She’d never belong to that crew. If they learned how she was slowly, steadily becoming a Mane, they’d be forced to destroy her. She couldn’t blame them for that.

Yet she’d try anyway. Perhaps afterwards she’d go to the north, to the Manes; but first, she’d try.

It made no sense. But sometimes, humans did things that made no sense.

There was one last thing to do before she set off. Though she’d been lying in the infirmary with all the appearance of a corpse, she’d been wide awake. And she’d heard Dracken’s men talk. Not all the crew of the Ketty Jay had been taken on board the Delirium Trigger.

She slowed the Ketty Jay to a hover and consulted the charts again. She wanted to get this right first time. It was a small challenge to herself. She adjusted the craft’s heading, pushed her on half a klom, then stopped again. When she was satisfied, she engaged the belly lights. The ashen, dusty waste below her was flooded in dazzling light. She smiled.

Damn it, Jez. You’re good.

There, right where they’d left her, was Bess.

Mortengrace, ancestral home of Duke Grephen of Lapin, stood out white among the trees like an unearthed bone. It was set amid the folds and pleats of heavily forested coastal hills in the western arm of the Vardenwood, overlooking the sparkling blue waters of the Ordic Abyssal to the south. High walls surrounded it, enclosing a landing pad for aircraft, expansive gardens and the grand manse where the Duke and his family resided. Among the half-dozen outbuildings were an engineer’s workshop, a barracks for the resident militia and a gaol. The latter was rarely used in these more peaceable times, but it had found employment over the last two days, since Trinica Dracken had delivered six of the most wanted men in Vardia.

Crake sat in his cell, with Malvery and Silo, and he waited. It was all that was left to do now. He waited for the noose.

The cell was small and clean, with stone walls plastered off-white. There were hard benches to sleep on and a barred window, high up, that let in the salty tang of the sea. The temperature was mild on the south coast of Lapin, even in midwinter. A heavy wooden door, banded with iron, prevented their escape. There was a flap at the bottom, through which plates of food were occasionally pushed, and a slot their gaoler used to look in on them.

He was a chatty sort, keen to keep them updated on the details of their imminent demise. Through him, they’d learned that Duke Grephen was at an important conference, and was on his way back just as soon as he could get away and find a judge. ‘To execute the sentence nice and legal,’ the gaoler grinned, drawing out the word ‘execute’ just in case they missed how clever he was being by using it. ‘But don’t you worry. There ain’t no hurry, ’cause not a soul knows you’re here. Nobody’s coming to your rescue.’

There were two guards, in addition to the gaoler, though the prisoners rarely heard them speak. They were there to keep an eye on things. ‘Just in case you try any foolery,’ the gaoler said, with a pointed look at Crake. They’d evidently been warned that there was a daemonist among the prisoners. Crake’s golden tooth would be useless: he couldn’t deal with three men. His skeleton key was lying somewhere in the Ketty Jay’s cargo hold, equally useless.

No way out.

He’d been swallowed by an immense sense of emptiness. It had come upon him in the moment they’d lifted off from the Blackendraft, to be taken on board the Delirium Trigger. The news that the Ketty Jay had disappeared did little to alleviate it. Bess was gone.

His thoughts went to the small whistle, hidden in his quarters aboard the Ketty Jay. Only that whistle, blown by the daemonist who had thralled it, had the power to wake her from oblivion. He’d never get to blow that whistle now. Perhaps that was best.

He should never have tried to save her. In attempting to atone for one crime, he’d committed one far greater. And now she’d be left, neither dead nor alive, for an eternity.

Did she sleep? Was she aware? Was she trapped in a metal shell in the endless waste of the ash flats, unable to move or scream? How much was left of the beautiful child he’d ruined? It was so hard to tell. She was more like a faithful dog than a little girl now, muddled and jumbled by his clumsy transfer, prone to fits of rage, insecurity and animal violence.

He should have let her die, but he couldn’t live with the guilt of it. So he’d made her a monster. And, in doing so, made himself one.

A distant howl made Crake, Silo and Malvery look up as one. The voice was Frey’s, coming from the torture room, just beyond the cell he shared with Pinn and Harkins.

‘They’ve started up again,’ said Malvery. ‘Poor bastard.’

Crake stirred himself. ‘Why’s he bothering to hold out? What does it matter if he signs a confession or not? We’re all going to be just as dead with or without it.’

Malvery grinned beneath his white walrus-like moustache. ‘Maybe he just enjoys being an awkward bugger.’

Silo actually smiled at that. Crake didn’t take up the humour. He felt Malvery put a huge arm round his shoulder.

‘Cheer up, eh? You’ve had a face like a soggy arse since Dracken caught us.’

Crake gave him an amazed look. ‘You know, all my life I’ve been under the illusion that the fear of death was a common, almost universal part of being human. But recently I’ve come to think I’m the only one on this crew who is actually worried about it in the slightest.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I bet the other cell is half-full of Harkins’ shit by now, he’s so scared,’ Malvery said with a wink. ‘Then again, he’s afraid of just about everything. The only reason he’s still a pilot is because he’s more afraid of not being a pilot than he is of getting shot down.’

‘But . . . I mean, don’t you have regrets? Thwarted hopes? Anything like that?’ Crake was exasperated. He’d never been able to understand how the vagabonds of the Ketty Jay lived such day-today lives, never seeming to care about the future or the past.

‘Regrets? Sure. I’ve got regrets like you wouldn’t believe, mate,’ said Malvery. ‘Told you I was a doc back in Thesk, didn’t I? Well, I was good at it, and I got rich. Got a little flush with success, got a little fond of the bottle too.