Chris Wooding - Retribution Falls

All this time he’d armoured himself against loss by refusing to care for anyone. Now, somehow, he’d been blindsided. He tried to be angry for allowing himself to become so vulnerable, but he couldn’t muster the feeling. It had all been part of a greater change, one that had seen him gain a level of self-respect he’d never had before the destruction of the Ace of Skulls. He wouldn’t trade the days between that moment and this. Not for anything.

But now Silo lay on the edge of death, left in the hands of an alcoholic doctor and an untrained assistant. Silo, who had taken a bullet so Frey wouldn’t have to. Frey didn’t want to live with that responsibility.

What’s taking them so long? Aren’t they done yet?

As if in response, he heard the infirmary door slide open. He hunched his shoulders as if expecting a blow. Footsteps came up the passageway, boots rapping on metal. They were too light to be Malvery, so it had to be Crake. Frey turned in his seat to be sure, and saw the daemonist arrive in the doorway. His hands were gloved with blood, and he was still wearing his filter mask. He pointed to it and said something quizzical which nobody understood.

‘You can take it off now,’ Jez said, guessing his meaning.

Crake pulled off the mask and took a few deep breaths. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Those things are so stuffy.’

‘Mmm,’ said Jez in mild agreement.

‘Everything alright?’ Crake enquired.

‘Will you bloody well tell me what’s going on back there?!’ Frey exploded, unable to bear the tension any more.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Crake. He grinned. ‘The doc stopped the bleeding and got the bullet out. He says the patient is going to be alright.’

Jez gasped and gave a little clap, a surprisingly girlish reaction from someone Frey had come to think of as rather unfeminine. Frey slumped back into his seat with a sigh, and a huge sense of relaxation spread through his body. Exhaustion and relief piled in together. At last, it was over. A broad smile spread across his face. Crake laughed and slapped him on the shoulder, leaving a grotesque handprint there.

‘Good work, boys,’ Frey said. ‘Bloody good work.’

‘Well, I’ve got to go and help Malvery finish up,’ said Crake. ‘Just thought I’d let you know.’ He disappeared down the passageway again and into the infirmary.

‘We’re here, Cap’n,’ said Jez. ‘All stop. You can start ascending now.’

Frey brought the Ketty Jay to a halt and set her rising through the fog. The haze gradually thinned and the darkness brightened by degrees. The flanks of the mountains became discernible again as forbidding slabs of shadow.

Frey looked up. A smile was still on his lips. Up there was light and freedom. Up there was the prospect of a new life, a luxurious life, one financed with the chest full of Awakener gold they’d stolen from Orkmund. Up there was a second chance for all of them.

‘Never seen you smiling like that, Cap’n,’ Jez said.

‘It’s just, for once, I really feel that everything’s going to be okay.’

Then they broke free of the mist, and a shattering explosion hammered the Ketty Jay, filling the cockpit with dazzling light, shaking them about like rag dolls.

When no further explosion came, Frey blinked away the shock and pulled himself back into his seat.

A swarm of Norbury Equalisers surrounded them. Looming ahead of them, with all of its considerable arsenal trained on the Ketty Jay, was the Delirium Trigger.

Frey blew out his cheeks and huffed a sigh of resignation. ‘Bollocks!’

A cold wind chased puffs of grey ash across the Blackendraft plains. Frey’s coat flapped restlessly. Bleak horizons encircled them. Overhead, the sky was the colour of an anvil. The Delirium Trigger hung at anchor a short distance away, its hard, cruel lines stark against the emptiness.

The crew of the Ketty Jay stood in a row at the bottom of the cargo ramp. Pinn and Harkins had grounded their craft and been rounded up. Silo, Bess and Slag were missing. Silo was still in the infirmary. Crake had put Bess to sleep to prevent her going berserk and getting them all killed. Slag had vanished into the vents and airways, on some mysterious errand of his own. Nothing would ever separate him from his aircraft.

Facing them was Trinica Dracken and a dozen men from the Delirium Trigger. The men covered Frey and his crew with their pistols while Trinica looked down into the red-lacquered chest that sat at her feet. She stared at the wealth within for a long time, but her ghost-white face and unnatural black eyes revealed nothing of what she was thinking. Finally, she looked up.

‘You did well, Darian,’ she said. ‘Kind of you to carry this all the way from Orkmund’s stronghold, just for me.’

Pinn muttered something unsavoury under his breath. Malvery clipped him round the ear.

‘I should have killed you when I had the chance,’ said Frey. There was no rancour in it; it was simply an observation. ‘I suppose this is where mercy gets you.’

Trinica gave him a dry smile. ‘Consider this the price of a lesson well learned.’

Frey and Trinica gazed at each other across the dusty gap that separated them. The huge silence of the Blackendraft filled the moment.

He couldn’t feel hate for her. He couldn’t manage to feel much more than a distant disappointment. This felt right, somehow. It had been greed that made him jump at Quail’s too-good-to-be-true offer. And while he didn’t blame himself for the many deaths aboard the Ace of Skulls—they were doomed with or without him—he’d played a part in it. He might have saved the Archduke and done a great service to his country, but he did it by initiating a massacre at Retribution Falls. It didn’t seem fair that he should profit from his own stupidity, at the expense of all those lives.

Maybe he owed the world something. For the crew he’d taken into Samarla and left to die. For every Trinica Dracken and Amalicia Thade whom he’d discarded and forgotten as soon as they showed signs of wanting more than he was prepared to give.

For his baby, that died for its parents’ cowardice.

He’d condemned them all when he agreed to take on the Ace of Skulls. But since then, he’d clawed back all he’d lost, and more besides. He’d forged a crew, and he’d reclaimed himself. Perhaps that was all that was needed, in the end.

‘What happens now, Trinica?’ he asked her.

‘I expect Grephen will hang,’ she said. ‘The Awakeners . . . well, they’re too powerful to be brought down, even by this. But I think the Archduke will redouble his efforts to cripple them from now on.’

‘I mean, what happens to us?’

Trinica gave him a bewildered look. ‘How would I know? I expect you’ll get your pardons, even if you’re not there to collect them.’

‘You’re letting us go?’

‘Of course I am,’ she said. ‘Everyone who put a bounty on your head has either withdrawn it or is in no position to pay any more. Why would I want you?’

His crew visibly relaxed. Frey brushed away a lock of hair that was blowing across his forehead.

‘And you?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be heading off somewhere,’ she replied, nonchalant. ‘I suppose I’ll have to keep out of the Navy’s way from now on, but I’ll survive.’

She motioned to her bosun, who filled a leather bag with coins from the chest. He tied it with a thin piece of rope and gave it to her. It was almost too big to hold in one hand. She weighed it thoughtfully, then hefted it towards Frey, who barely caught it.

‘Finder’s fee,’ she said. ‘That, and you can keep your craft.’