Iron Jackal (32 page)

‘Pressure plate,’ Silo murmured, kneeling down next to it. ‘Prob’ly linked to an alarm.’

‘I don’t hear an alarm,’ Crake said hopefully.

‘Guards around here. These ain’t armed, case the guards set ’em off.’ He stood up, and his eyes glittered in the gloom. ‘When you don’t see no guards, then you worry ’bout the traps.’

Crake nodded, an uncertain look on his face. There was something faintly menacing about Silo these days. An edge to him that hadn’t been there before. Crake had always rather liked the Murthian, and had never minded his tendency towards silence. But lately his quietness seemed more like dangerous brooding.

They crossed the study area to another corridor. On the far side, across the marble floor, they could see a wide, curving stairway. Silo made a quick check and they crossed to the stairs.

The stairs bent back on themselves as they climbed, ending in a small landing at the top and a carved door inlaid with swirling motifs. Overlooking the landing was a huge portrait of the Archducal Family: Archduke Monterick Arken, his wife Eloithe, and their son Hengar. Monterick tall and athletic, wearing a high-collared uniform, his hair and neatly trimmed beard a dark, rich red. Eloithe small and dark-haired, but with a fierceness in her eye that had made her beloved by some of her people and loathed by others.

And then Hengar. Earl Hengar, who’d inherited his father’s fiery hair and bright blue eyes. He was a handsome man, but he wore an enigmatic smile that made him look cruel. At least until Frey had accidentally blown him up aboard the
Ace of Skulls
, almost two years ago.

Crake glanced at Frey, who was looking at the painting. ‘I always thought he had brown hair,’ he whispered.

Crake frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Ferrotypes don’t come in colour, do they? Never seen a
painting
of him.’

Silo, who had no interest in the painting whatsoever, had quietly moved to the door at the top of the landing. It opened inwards, towards him. He peered out through the gap he’d made, then turned back to his companions and put an urgent finger to his lips.

They crept over to see what Silo had spotted. As soon as Crake peeked out, he saw the problem. The door was set halfway along another corridor. There was a shaven-headed guard sitting on a chair a half-dozen metres away, leaning up against the wall. His eyes were closed, but his hands were behind his head, and his foot was swinging lazily. There was a gun in a holster strapped to his thigh. He didn’t look asleep, just bored.

There was no way they were getting past him unseen. Crake pointed back down the stairs.

Silo cupped a hand to his ear. They heard a humming from down below, the simple stepped melody of ‘Little Bright Star’.

Crake began to feel a growing sense of alarm. They were trapped on this staircase. Maybe the humming guard would just walk on past, but maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d come up the stairs, rounding the curve until they came into sight. And then the shooting would start.

Silo was hurriedly yanking off his boots and socks. That done, he motioned at Frey, who didn’t understand him until Silo reached into the inside pocket of Frey’s coat and took out the bottle of chloroform. He pulled off the rag that it was wrapped in, wadded and soaked it, then gave the bottle back to Frey.

He’ll see you
, Crake mouthed, well aware that the guard was only a few metres away through a door that was ajar.

Silo took off his earcuff and showed it to Crake meaningfully, although Crake wasn’t sure what the meaning actually
was
. He followed at Silo’s shoulder as the Murthian went barefoot to the doorway, aimed the earcuff, and tossed it down the corridor.

It flew silently past the guard, hit the floor on the far side of him, tapped and skittered. The guard’s eyes flew open at the sudden noise and he leaped to his feet, hand going to his holster. In doing so, he turned his back to the door. Silo broke cover, running silently on the pads of his feet. The guard heard him at the last moment, but wasn’t quick enough. Silo seized him from behind, clamping the chloroform-soaked rag hard to his mouth, using the other hand to stop him drawing his revolver. He struggled and jerked, making muffled cries, but Silo was surprisingly powerful for someone so lean. The strength leaked out of the guard in seconds, and his eyes fluttered closed, having never even seen his assailant.

Crake and Frey slipped through the door into the corridor. Frey was carrying Silo’s footwear at arm’s length, his nose wrinkled. Crake closed the door quietly behind them. Silo propped the man up in the chair, so that it looked for all the world like he was asleep.

‘You know,’ Frey whispered to Crake. ‘It occurs to me that I don’t know shit all about that feller.’

‘He is surprisingly, um, I believe the term is
bad-arse
, for someone who’s spent their whole life as a slave,’ Crake observed.

‘He can handle a shotgun as well, and he sure didn’t learn that from any of us.’

‘
It’s all veeeeery mysterious
!!!’ said Jez in a spooky voice, making them jump.

Frey and Crake exchanged a weary glance. ‘Sometimes I hate these bloody earcuffs,’ Frey said, as Jez cackled at them from the cockpit of the
Ketty Jay
.

Silo had retrieved his own earcuff by now. He returned to his companions and put his socks and boots back on. Then he looked at them both as if to say:
Well?

‘That way,’ said Frey, pointing in a direction which Crake assumed was random.

The next door took them into a small, barrel-vaulted chamber with bronze busts in alcoves to either side. At the far end was a metal door, set deeply into the wall beneath a great stone lintel. Its surface was decorated with several sturdy guild crests in bronze and gold and copper.

‘Now that looks like the kind of door a feller might keep something behind,’ said Frey.

Silo put his palm on Frey’s chest as the Cap’n stepped forward. ‘No guards,’ he said.

Crake listened. They couldn’t hear any footsteps anywhere.

‘Right,’ said Frey, catching on. ‘Everyone, stay sharp. And watch where you’re stepping.’

‘Edge of the room,’ said Silo. ‘Any pressure pads, they’ll be in the middle.’

Crake took the engineer’s word for it. They stayed close to the wall. Crake let the others go first, and trod where they stepped. He didn’t want to be the one to bring everything down on their heads.

They reached the door without incident. Frey tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. A large keyhole sat within a flower of moulded metal. Silo tapped Frey’s arm and pointed up. Crake looked. No wonder the door was set so deep. There was a gap in the lintel overhead, and the bottom of a gate could be seen within it.

‘Ah,’ said Frey.

‘Best guess, they got triggers inside,’ said Silo. ‘Trip one, gate come down. Traps you inside ’n’ the guards come.’

‘Let’s not trip any, then,’ said Frey. ‘Mr Crake, if you please?’ He swept his arm theatrically towards the door.

‘My,’ said Crake. ‘Manners. Whatever next?’

‘My toe in your arse, if you don’t get on with it.’

‘Ah, that’s more like the Cap’n I know,’ said Crake, drawing out his skeleton key. He still didn’t feel right after last night, and breaking into the Mentenforth hadn’t helped. His fingers felt slightly numb, his grip weak and his forearm was a block of ice. There was a price to pay for using thralled daemons, even the weak, senseless ones in their earcuffs. He’d improved the earcuffs so that the effect was negligible, but the tooth and the skeleton key were hungrier entities. They fed on the user’s strength, and he needed time to recover. He vaguely wondered if he might be doing permanent damage to himself.

Well, once more won’t hurt
, he said to himself, although he was pretty sure it would.

The lock was a complex one, made for a specialised key, intended to defeat thieves. Crake’s key didn’t even touch the sides, but that didn’t matter. The daemon’s invisible influence expanded to fill the space, feeling out the interior, pushing and twisting and testing until it understood the lock and defeated it. But it was a clever lock, with many parts, and Crake’s arm was trembling and numb to the shoulder by the time the key turned.

‘There,’ he said weakly. He wanted to be sick.

‘You alright?’ Frey asked him, concerned. ‘You don’t look alright.’

‘Let’s just get that relic,’ he muttered. He wanted this over with. He wanted to forget that today and yesterday ever happened. He wanted to sleep, and be miserable, and be left alone.

Silo pushed the door open. The chamber beyond was circular with a domed roof. Arranged in a semicircle were a half-dozen glass display cases on veined marble plinths. Crake’s eyes widened. The most precious treasures that the various guilds possessed, gathered in this room. But he didn’t see the relic on display.

A worm of uncertainty crawled into his gut. He glanced at Frey, and knew that he felt it too.

Spit and blood, please don’t let me be wrong about this
.

Silo crouched down and examined the floor inside the doorway. ‘Wait,’ he said, then pointed to a pair of slabs and added ‘Don’t step there.’

They watched as Silo did a cursory check of the room. Crake examined the slabs so he didn’t have to think about what he’d say to the Cap’n if it turned out Samandra’s information had been inaccurate. It was actually quite easy to see the seams of the pressure pads, when you knew what to look for.

Silo returned. ‘Room looks clean,’ he said. Then he pointed at one of the display cases. ‘Relic’s in that one.’

Crake felt a wonderful moment of relief at those words. They stepped over the pressure pads and into the chamber, and went where he’d indicated. The relic case was inside, closed and lying flat on the bottom, which was why they hadn’t seen it from the doorway. Frey had told Crake about the double-bladed object inside, but at the moment it just looked like a black, featureless oblong. It wasn’t arranged for display like the other objects. It had simply been put there.

Frey’s eyes lit up as he saw it, but only for a moment. ‘There’s something not right,’ he muttered.

‘They’ve only had it a few days,’ said Crake. ‘That’s not enough time to study it, really. No point putting it on display till they know what it is.’

‘So, what, they’re just
keeping
it here?’

‘In the vault? Why not?’ Crake said absently. He’d already strayed to the other exhibits in the chamber. An enormous and beautiful vase from pre-republic Thace. And there . . . Spit and blood, could that suit of armour have come from the War of Three? And look! An engraving from ancient Samarla, showing men and women worshipping at the feet of the God-Emperor. There was a plaque next to it, dating it to PU 1400 or thereabouts, long before the unification of Vardia under Wilven the Successor. He did a quick calculation and marvelled. Four thousand eight hundred and fifty years old, or near enough.

Silo came up to stand beside Frey. ‘Problem, Cap’n,’ he grunted.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Frey said. ‘Pressure pads underneath the exhibits.’

‘Yuh,’ said Silo. ‘My guess is, we lift one of ’em off, that gate by the door slams down.’

Frey blew out his cheeks. ‘How in damnation are we gonna get that relic out of that case, then?’

‘Boys, I’d say that’s the least of your worries right now.’

Frey and Silo swivelled at the sound of the voice, guns flashing into their hands. But they froze when they saw who it was.

Crake didn’t need to see. He knew, and it caused a crawling nausea in his stomach. But he turned and looked anyway, because there was nothing else to do.

Standing in the doorway of the chamber, guns trained on them, were Samandra Bree and Colden Grudge.

Twenty-One

‘You Ain’t Much More Than Thieves’ – A Thousand Ways To Die – Plan B – Frey Holds On

B
ree and Grudge, of the Century Knights. Sometimes they’d been allies to Frey, sometimes enemies. Tonight, they were definitely the latter.

Colden Grudge towered over his companion, shaggy-haired and bearded, clad in dirty plates of armour, carrying an autocannon cradled under his arm that could put a hole in a man the size of . . . well, pretty much the size of a man. Bree looked positively delicate next to him, her twin lever-action shotguns puny in comparison. They stood just outside the doorway to the circular chamber, covering the room. Three guns for three targets.

This wasn’t going to go well.

‘Samandra . . .’ Crake began limply.

‘You shut your meat-hole,’ she snapped, raising the shotgun in her left hand, aiming at his head. ‘I don’t mind admittin’ to a certain amount of disappointment, Grayther Crake. Thought you were better than this.’

Crake looked crushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You weren’t supposed to remember.’

‘You think that makes it
better
?’ she cried, and Frey saw with some surprise that she was genuinely angry. ‘You got in my head, you bastard! I oughta gun you down like a dog!’

‘Hey,’ said Frey quickly. ‘Let’s nobody shoot anybody. Crake here had a good reason to do what he did.’

‘Yeah, I know the reason,’ she sneered. ‘Grothsen’s new acquisition.’ She spat on the floor. ‘Damn daemonist trickery. For all the tales told about you, you ain’t much more than thieves.’