Chris Wooding - The Ace of Skulls

‘Some, I believe. Morben Kyne. Colden Grudge. Samandra Br-’

Frey clapped his hands and twisted in his seat to grin at Crake. ‘You hear that?’

‘One word, Frey. .’ Crake warned.

‘What?’ Frey protested innocently. ‘You should be happy. That girl’s a knockout.’

Crake hurried out of the cockpit, face burning, Ashua’s laughter in his ears. Samandra Bree. Spit and blood, just the thought of her made his heart beat faster. Samandra, who he hadn’t seen since she decked him in the Samarlan desert. Samandra: loud, vulgar, wonderful.

As he headed for his cramped quarters, he began calculating how much time he had before landing. Enough to trim his short blond beard and do what he could with his hair. Enough to pick out his best coat and apply a little scent. Enough to make sure his hands were clean and his fingernails clipped.

Samandra.

The dangers of Korrene had paled into insignificance all of a sudden. Today, he was both the happiest man alive, and the most terrified.

The Coalition’s forward base was near the eastern edge of the city, set around a cracked landing pad surrounded by a clutter of ruined buildings and broken streets. There were a dozen craft there, tough military models, Tabingtons and Besterfields. Shuttles flew back and forth from the freighter to the south. Portable anti-aircraft guns scanned the sky.

Half the pad was taken up by the camp. Tractors pulled trailers loaded with crates between the tents. Generals debated over maps. Squads of blue-uniformed men smoked and waited restlessly.

The Windblades escorted the Ketty Jay down. Pinn and Harkins landed their fighters alongside. They’d barely touched the ground before a half-dozen men came heading over, led by the formidable figure of Kedmund Drave.

‘Let’s get out there and meet our fans,’ said Frey, who seemed rather jolly at the prospect of an argument.

They assembled down in the cargo hold, all but Bess, whom Crake had left dormant and hidden in the back. He thought it best if she stayed asleep: she wasn’t much help in delicate negotiations.

Silo pulled the lever and the cargo ramp opened up. The stink of prothane and aerium gas slipped in from outside, along with the noise of men and machines.

‘Best smiles, everyone,’ said Frey, and they followed him down to meet the welcoming committee.

Kedmund Drave was a man with a fearful reputation. He was the Archduke’s attack dog: stern, implacable, ruthless. They said he could smell treason; they said he could look into a man’s heart and root out a lie. And when you saw him, you believed it. He had a face that looked like it had never known a smile, cheek and throat scarred, eyes grey as stone, cropped hair the same colour. He wore close-fitting crimson armour beneath a dust-stained black cloak, a two-handed sword across his back, pistols at his waist.

‘Captain Frey,’ he said. ‘Just when I thought I had trouble enough.’

‘There’s always room for a bit more,’ said Frey. ‘How are you, Drave? Been a while.’

‘And haven’t you been busy since?’ said Drave, with an unmistakably dangerous insinuation which Crake didn’t much like.

Crake’s eyes went to the man standing nearby. Many of the Century Knights were familiar to the public through ferrotypes and broadsheets or children’s trading cards. Morben Kyne’s was a picture that nobody forgot.

He was cloaked in black like Drave, but his armour was even finer, delicately moulded to his body, the colour of burnished copper. A large-bore pistol that was more like a cannon hung at his hip, along with a pair of exquisite shortblades.

But it was his face that was most arresting; or rather, the lack of it. A deep cowl hid him partially, but Crake could still see the bronze mask beneath. It was smooth but etched with rows of tiny, strange symbols. The mouthpiece was rectangular and protruded slightly, like the radiator grille of a motorised carriage, giving him a mechanical look. And indeed, he might have been some kind of automaton, for there was not a millimetre of skin to be seen. Artificial eyes shone from the shadow within the cowl, pallid green glitters in the dark.

‘Pelaru,’ said Drave, switching his attention to the whispermonger. ‘Didn’t expect to find you keeping such company.’

‘Captain Frey graciously agreed to escort me to you,’ Pelaru replied. ‘I have information.’

‘Don’t you always? And what’s your price?’

‘That we can discuss in private.’

Crake stopped listening to the conversation as he caught sight of the woman striding purposefully towards them across the landing pad. His insides fluttered with delighted fear.

It was her.

She was dressed with typical practicality. Grubby coat, scuffed boots, hide trousers. Twin lever-action shotguns, a cutlass at her belt. And that tricorn hat, made famous by the Press and ten thousand ferrotypes. She walked right up to him, ignoring Drave and the others.

There was intention in her step. He suddenly realised she was going to hit him again.

‘Miss Bree,’ he began to protest in an embarrassingly high voice. ‘I think you should-’

She swept off her hat, her dark hair falling free, then grabbed the back of his head and kissed him on the mouth. After a moment she let him go, stared hard into his eyes.

‘You,’ she told him firmly, ‘are late.’

Frey laughed. Drave made a noise of exasperated disgust. Pinn called him a jammy turd.

‘Mind if I borrow him?’ she asked Frey. ‘You kept him from me long enough.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Frey, smiling. ‘Just bring him back in one piece.’

‘Comin’?’ she asked Crake, and before he could reply or even get over the shock, she was away. He looked awkwardly around at his company and then followed.

By the time he’d caught her up, he found his voice again: ‘I tried to see you.’

‘I know you did,’ she said, still walking. ‘Adrek at the Wayfarers told me you’d been by.’

‘Three times,’ he told her, getting breathless from keeping up. ‘Whenever we were near Thesk. I sent you letters.’

‘I got ’em,’ she said. ‘That was sweet of you. Meant to send some back, but I’m not too much for writin’. This damn war, I been all over everywhere, barely had time to-’

‘Hey!’ He grabbed her arm. It seemed an unconscionably brave thing to do once he’d done it. She stopped and spun back towards him, looking faintly surprised. After that, there seemed no elegant way out of the situation but to seize her and kiss her properly.

Happily, she didn’t batter him for the liberty.

They slowed down a little after that, took their time, got used to one another again. Crake was still in something of a daze. He was used to being wrongfooted by her lack of propriety, but he’d never been so glad of it as today.

They walked through the camp, stepping over bits of uncleared rubble and cracks where weeds had pushed the stone apart. The air was still and cold, taut with expectation. A medical tent was being prepared — last night’s casualties had all been ferried to the frigate by now, Samandra explained — and scouts hurried here and there with messages. All around the edge of the landing pad, the crumbled city pressed in. They were an island in a sea of ruin.

‘Quite a thing we started, ain’t it?’ Samandra said, looking over to the west where the sun was sinking through a long wing of feathery cloud towards the shattered skyline. Crake wasn’t sure if she meant their relationship or the war, so he made a noise of agreement and waited for her to clarify.

‘We ain’t found the Azryx tech yet,’ she went on. ‘We know the Sammies were selling it to the Awakeners from those records Malvery found in the city, but that’s about all we do know. Not how much, not what it does, nothin’ like that. Even if they got something we should be scared of, might be they don’t have the first clue how to make it work. Still, it got the Archduke and his lady going. Final straw, as far as they were concerned.’