Iron Jackal (13 page)

‘I thought you’d like it. All this.’ He waved a hand to indicate the restaurant. ‘Thought maybe you hadn’t been to one in a while.’

An expression of tender gratitude crossed her face, just for a moment, and then she looked away quickly and it was gone. The woman she’d been had enjoyed many meals like this, and in grander places. She was accustomed to finery, and there had been little enough of that as a pirate. This was her normality, but she’d not been normal for a long time.

‘I am rather enjoying being anonymous,’ she said. ‘No one casting sidelong glances at me, no need to worry about where the exits are or who might be out for the bounty on my head.’

‘I wish I could do what you do,’ said Frey. ‘Take off my disguise, stop being a captain for a night.’

‘What if
this
is the disguise?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘This is you. That pirate queen get-up might work on your crew, but you can’t fool me.’

She seemed pleased. ‘Well, disguise or not, I’m still the captain. You never stop being that.’ His face must have fallen a little then, because she frowned and said: ‘Darian, something’s troubling you.’

‘Something happened, during the heist,’ he said. But he didn’t want to tell her about the Dak with the bayonet. He wanted to drop the subject entirely, since they were straying into serious territory, but he couldn’t think of a way to deflect her.

‘You know what happened to my last crew,’ he said, eventually.

It was a statement, not a question, but she answered anyway. ‘I know. The Shacklemores told me.’

He grasped for some way to get at what he wanted to say. ‘How do you cope?’ he asked. ‘I mean, your crew worship you. They want you to lead them. But what if you get it wrong? What if you make a mistake, and all those people die?’

‘I should think, if that happened, I’d die with them.’

‘You would, wouldn’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re just the kind to go down with the ship.’

‘Not with the ship. With the crew.’ She leaned forward. ‘Darian, your crew aren’t your slaves. They’re not even really employees. They choose to do what they do. They share in the risk and they share in the profit. If they’re loyal, it’s because you earned it from them. And they
are
loyal, though sometimes I’m at a loss as to why. They’d follow you anywhere.’

Frey nodded thoughtfully. ‘They’d follow me. That’s what I’m afraid of.’ Then he hit on a way to the heart of what was bothering him. ‘You know what it is? It never mattered if I failed before. Everyone pretty much expected me to screw up. But ever since Sakkan, it’s like I have to be right all the time. And every time I
am
, every time I pull off something like this train heist, it only makes it worse.’

Trinica looked sympathetic. ‘You never could handle it when things were going well.’

‘Reckon you’re right at that,’ said Frey. He sat back and sipped his wine, his face sour. ‘Never really thought I deserved it.’

Trinica cocked her head, her green eyes puzzled, as if that were the oddest thing she’d ever heard. But then her gaze dropped, and she gave a little shake of her head.

‘I wish I had something to say that would make it better, but I don’t. This is what being a captain is. And you
will
fail, sooner or later. If you keep the course you’re on, you
will
lose crew, because the both of us play a dangerous game. If you’re not ready for that, then you shouldn’t be in command.’

Frey looked downcast. ‘You’ve lost men. And I know you care about them. What do you tell yourself?’

‘Some of them I’ve lost to you,’ she reminded him. ‘And it hurts, Darian. I won’t lie to you. But I tell myself I did my best, and that losses are inevitable in our profession, and all manner of things like that. As long as I don’t abuse their loyalty, I can look at myself in the mirror. The day I do is the day I don’t deserve to lead them. Same applies to you.’

Frey smiled weakly, tapping his fingers on the table. ‘I was kind of hoping you’d find a way to make me feel better, not worse.’

Then she did something that surprised him. She sat forward in her chair, hesitated as if uncertain, then quickly reached across the table and laid her hand over his, stilling his fingers. He felt a flush of warmth at her touch. Just this small contact was a gesture of extraordinary intimacy from her. Damn, how he wanted this woman. He couldn’t be near her without feeling the urge to slide his arm around her waist, to kiss her neck, to be close to her. But this was not the woman he left behind, so he never did. He had to let her come to him: each small step needed to be Trinica’s, with no sudden moves on his part.

If somebody somewhere gave out medals for restraint, then he reckoned he was due a couple for sure.

‘Okay,’ he said, breathing out as if he’d just hit the crest of a Shine high. ‘That helps.’

She drew her hand away as quickly as she’d put it there, and looked almost bashful for having done it. That was Trinica. One moment she was all elegance, the next she was a child. She could dance and laugh and then she’d cut your tongue out. She would be giddy with happiness and then suddenly drop into a blackness that no one could save her from.

But she turned her anger on him less and less these days. And her dark moods didn’t seem to reach her quite so often when he was around.

She looked up suddenly, struck with an idea. ‘You need a first mate.’

‘Is that an offer?’

She laughed brightly. ‘I don’t think so. You might be the toast of the barflies but you haven’t caught up with me yet. I just think it might help to have someone to share the burden of command.’

‘Who would I choose?’ he asked. ‘Pinn’s too thick, Harkins is too scared, Malvery wouldn’t want it and Silo’s practically mute: he just does what he’s told. Crake’s smart but he’s no leader.’

‘Which leaves Jez.’

‘Couldn’t pick Jez. She’s capable enough, but she’s a half-Mane. You’ve seen her flip out.’

‘Yes I have. And it saved our lives that day on the
Storm Dog
. Is it so bad?’

‘The crew . . . listen, they all know how great she is at her job, but she’ll always make them uneasy. And it doesn’t help that she keeps to herself so much.’

‘Well,’ said Trinica. ‘It’s your choice, of course.’

But Frey really couldn’t think of anyone suitable. ‘You don’t have a first mate. You’ve got that ugly feller Crund as your bosun.’

‘He deals with the crew, but I don’t need someone to discuss command decisions. The slightest hint of uncertainty would undermine me. I’m a woman leading a crew of violent men. I keep my own counsel on the
Delirium Trigger
. ’

‘Must be lonely.’

‘It’s what I have to do.’

There was something in her tone that brought the conversation to a halt. Frey became aware of the clink of cutlery, the murmur of the other diners in the restaurant, the steady flow of the river beyond the veranda. It felt like a moment, an empty space that was waiting to be filled, and before he knew it, he said:

‘I miss you.’

He was immediately appalled. It was unforgivable to drop his guard like that. He’d been lulled by the night into spilling his feelings in a mess all over the table, and now he’d ruined everything. He waited for her to tell him not to be foolish, to wither him with her scorn.

Instead, she simply said: ‘I know.’ And there was such regret and sorrow in her eyes that she didn’t need to say the rest of it, the part that couldn’t be spoken aloud.

I miss you too.

He poured more wine, and they drank and ordered dessert. They talked of other things and didn’t mention it again. But from that point on till the end of the meal, Frey had to restrain himself from punching the air for joy.

Nine

Crake’s Problem – Imperators, or Otherwise – A Disturbing Revelation – The Revellers Return – The Black Spot

T
he iron ball sat in the centre of the summoning circle, and didn’t move.

Crake tapped the gauges on his portable oscilloscope. His fingers moved across the array of brass dials. He checked the wires leading to the tuning poles. Everything was in order. The phantom frequency that had been plaguing him all day was nowhere to be found.

He sat at his desk and let his head sink into his hands. ‘I can’t work under these conditions,’ he complained.

Bess stirred in the corner of his makeshift sanctum. Perhaps she thought he was talking to her. When it became clear that he wasn’t, she settled back to dormancy with a creak of leather and a jingle of chainmail.

It had all begun that morning.

Crake had managed a good night’s sleep on the flight back to Shasiith – thankfully there were no encounters with the Navy to wake him. He was up early while most of the crew were still in their bunks. After rising he visited the head, where he had his first solid bowel movement in days. Encouraged by such a good start to the day, he decided to be productive. He wanted to try out a new technique he’d read about in a daemonist text he picked up before they left Vardia.

It was nothing dangerous, or even difficult. Just an improved method to identify the properties of minor daemons. It was a procedure that carried little risk, and he felt safe running it in his insecure sanctum.

But there was a problem. His oscilloscope readings, used to detect the presence of the daemons, were being skewed by a faint signal that roamed through the upper frequencies. At first he thought it was a machine fault, but all his tests showed that his equipment was working fine.

He decided it was something on the
Ketty Jay
. A fluctuation in the electrical systems, perhaps, or a vibrating pipe that happened to stray across his field of detection. Just one of the many annoyances that came from having to practise the Art in the back of an aircraft’s cargo hold, with only a tarpaulin curtain and some crates for privacy.

By mid-morning the signal was driving him to distraction. He asked Silo to help find the problem, but the engineer seemed distracted. His assistance was half-hearted at best, and came to nothing.

Eventually Crake abandoned his original plan in favour of solving the issue at hand. He set up a small interference field with the tuning poles and wired a resonator to pads attached to a small iron ball, which he placed inside the summoning circle. He intended to thrall a daemon to the ball, and then set it to find the rogue frequency. If all went well, the ball would be attracted to the source of the frequency, and he could follow it. The formulae in his books helped him determine the bandwidth he needed to search to find the kind of daemon he needed. It was a simple task, child’s play really.

Simple, but not quick. His target was elusive. It took him several hours of patient searching to drag in a suitable candidate. By bombarding the daemon with sound, he befuddled it for long enough to break its connection with its place of origin. In doing so, he thralled it to the iron ball, trapping it in the world that the uneducated called reality. After that, he doused it in the troublesome signal. This daemon was a seeker, a barely sentient wisp from the aether: it would find the first thing it was set to. The signal was like a rag to a bloodhound, to give it something to track.

When all was done and he was satisfied, he turned off the interference field. It was a weak form of defence, but more than was needed when dealing with such feeble daemons. Then he waited for the ball to roll off in the appropriate direction.

And nothing happened. Because the signal his daemon was supposed to find had gone. After he’d spent all day trying to find it, it had just stopped.

He sat at his desk, his head in his hands, thoroughly depressed. He’d wasted his time. He’d wasted so much of it, these past years. It hadn’t seemed to matter when he was sunk in a bottle, grieving over the accident that had taken his niece. But Crake had once been driven in his quest for knowledge. His pursuit of the Art had been headlong and reckless. And he was getting impatient with himself.

Daemonism was what he
was
. How long could he sit around and do nothing about it?

He heard the hiss and whine of hydraulics as the cargo ramp opened at the far end of the hold, beyond the tarpaulin curtain and the crates. Someone going out, or someone coming back. He didn’t care. Bess seemed content enough to sleep, or whatever it was she did when she stopped moving and the lights of her eyes went out. He thought he might go and read a little in his quarters, have an early night.

There was a noise from behind him. A soft rumble. He looked over his shoulder.

Slowly and steadily, the iron ball was rolling out of the circle.

Frey hummed a little ditty as he closed the cargo ramp behind him. He was feeling immensely pleased with himself. His dinner with Trinica had been a complete success. Not only that, but on receiving the bill he discovered that she’d ordered the house wine, the cheapest on the menu. She knew he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, so she’d chosen to have mercy on his wallet. Such a small kindness may not have been remarkable in most women, but from Trinica it was epic.

After their dinner, they took a rickshaw to her hotel. She’d taken a room for the night, but she wouldn’t be staying there. It was purely to give her a place to change: to shed her fearsome outer skin after she left the
Delirium Trigger
, and to don it again before returning. Her crew would never know what she’d done for Frey. She was a terrible icon to them, a mistress to be adored, cold and distant as the moon. To show them the woman behind the mask would ruin her. To them, she was the mask.