Retribution Falls (29 page)

Don’t let this bitch get to you. Play for time.

‘You had the Shacklemores keep track of me after that?’ he asked. Trinica nodded. ‘Why the interest?’

‘I just forgot to call them off.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘It’s true. At first, I’ll admit, I wanted to see what effect my news would have on you. I wanted to see if you suffered. But then . . . well, I left home, and other things got in the way. It was only years later that I realised they’d been keeping the file open on you all that time, drawing a fee every month. My father was paying for them, you see. When you’ve that much money, it’s easy to forget about something like that.’

‘You know I joined the Navy, then?’ he said.

‘I know they conscripted you when the Second Aerium War began,’ she said. ‘And I know you were drinking too much, and you started taking all the most dangerous jobs. I know nobody wanted to fly with you because it was only a matter of time before you self-destructed.’

‘You must have enjoyed hearing all about that.’

‘I did, yes,’ she replied brightly. ‘But I didn’t find out until after you had disappeared.’

Frey didn’t say anything.

‘They tell me the position was overrun by Samarlan troops. My guess is, you landed there and they ambushed you. What happened to the rest of the crew?’

‘Dead.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Navy intelligence,’ Frey sneered. ‘Bunch of incompetent bastards. They sent us out there and the Sammies were waiting.’

Trinica laughed: the sound was sharp and brittle. ‘Same old Darian. Picked on by the world. Nothing’s ever your fault, is it?’

‘How was it my fault?’ he cried. ‘I landed in a war zone because of information they gave me.’

Trinica sighed patiently. ‘It was a war, Darian. Mistakes happen all the time. You landed in a war zone because you had been flying the most dangerous front-line missions for months. You never used to ask questions; you just took the missions and flew. It was a miracle it didn’t happen sooner.’

‘It was the best chance I had to pay off the loan on the Ketty Jay,’ he protested, but it sounded weak even to him. He couldn’t forget the desperate tone in Rabby’s voice as he closed the cargo ramp. Don’t you leave me here!

‘If you wanted to die, why didn’t you just kill yourself?’ Trinica asked. ‘Why try and take everyone else with you?’

‘I never wanted to die!’

Trinica just looked at him. After a moment she shrugged. ‘Well, evidently you didn’t want it enough, since here you are. Everyone thought you were gone. The Shacklemores closed the file. The loan company wrote off the rest of your repayments on the Ketty Jay. And off you went, a corpse to all intents and purposes. Until one day . . . one day I hear your name again, Darian. Seems you’re alive, and everyone’s looking for you. And I just had to throw my hat in the ring.’

‘You just had to, huh?’ Frey said scathingly.

Trinica’s demeanour went from casual to freezing in an instant. ‘That day you disappeared, you cheated me. I thought I’d never get to make you pay. But you’re alive, and that’s good. That’s a wonderful thing.’ She smiled, the chill smile of a predator, her black eyes glittering like a snake watching a mouse. ‘Because now I’m going to catch you, my wayward love, and I’m going to watch you hang.’

Twenty-Three

Barricades - Bess Awakes - A Lesson In Cardplay - The Monster Belowdecks - Thieves

The Ketty Jay was berthed at a small dock in the outskirts of Rabban, far from the Delirium Trigger. The dock was little more than a barely used landing pad set above a maze of shattered and leaning alleyways. Only a few other craft of similar size shared the space. They sat dark and silent, their crews nowhere to be seen. A few dock personnel wandered around, looking for something to do, their presence revealed by a cough or a slow movement in the shadows. All was quiet.

Silo and Jez worked in the white glare of the Ketty Jay’s belly lights, rolling barrels from the cargo hold and manhandling them into rows of five. There were several such rows positioned around the Ketty Jay. A haphazard kind of arrangement, an observer might think, unless they guessed what the barrels were really for.

They were building barricades.

Harkins was skirting the edge of the landing pad, scampering along in a crouch, a spyglass in his hand. He stayed out of the light of the electric lamp-posts that marked out the landing pad for flying traffic. Every so often he’d stop and scan the surrounding alleyways, then run off in a nervous fashion to another location and do it again. The dock personnel paid him no mind. As long as his captain paid the berthing fee, they were happy to tolerate eccentrics.

The night was still new when Harkins straightened, his whole body frozen in alarm. He adjusted his spyglass, shifted it this way and that, counting frantically under his breath. Then he fled back towards the Ketty Jay as if his heels were on fire.

‘Here we go,’ said Jez, as she saw him coming. Silo grunted, and levered another barrel of sand into place.

‘There’s twenty of ’em!’ Harkins reported in a quiet shriek. ‘I mean, give or take a couple, but twenty’s near enough! What are we supposed to do against twenty? Or even nearly twenty. Ten would be too many! What’s he expect us to do? I don’t like this. Not one measly rotting bit!’

Jez studied him, worried. He was even more strung out than usual. The Firecrow and Skylance were not even in the city: they’d been stashed at a rendezvous point far away. Without his craft, he was a snail out of its shell.

‘We do what the Cap’n told us to do,’ she said calmly.

‘But we didn’t know there’d be twenty! That’s almost half the crew!’

‘I suppose Dracken doesn’t want to leave anything to chance,’ said Jez. She exchanged a glance with Silo, who headed up the cargo ramp and into the Ketty Jay.

Harkins watched him go, then turned to Jez with a slightly manic sheen in his eyes. ‘Here, that’s an idea! Why don’t we just go inside, close up the cargo hold and lock it? They’d never get in then.’

‘You don’t think they’ve thought of that? They’ll have explosives. Either that, or someone who knows how to crack open and rewire a keypad.’ She motioned towards the small rectangle of buttons nested in the nearby landing strut, used to close and open the cargo ramp from the outside.

The belly lights of the Ketty Jay went out, plunging them into twilight. The barely adequate glow of the lamp-posts gave a soft, eerie cast to the near-empty dock. Silo emerged carrying an armful of guns and ammo.

Jez gave Harkins a reassuring pat on the arm. He looked ready to bolt. ‘Twenty men here means twenty less for the others to deal with,’ she said. ‘The Cap’n said Dracken would be coming for us. We’re ready for it. We just have to hold out, that’s all.’

‘Oh, just that!’ Harkins moaned with hysterical sarcasm. But then Silo grabbed his hand and slapped a pistol into his palm, and the glare the Murthian gave him was enough to shut him up.

Malvery and Pinn rejoined Crake, who was waiting at a safe remove from the Delirium Trigger with a worried frown on his brow. Together, they watched Bess being loaded on. The arm of the crane was chained to the four corners of one great palette, on which were secured dozens of crates. It lifted the palette onto the deck of the Delirium Trigger. From there, Dracken’s crew carried the crates to a winch which lowered them through an opening into the cargo hold. Dockers were not allowed aboard. Dracken was wise to the dangers of infiltration that way.

‘I don’t like this,’ Crake said to himself, for the tenth time.

‘She’ll be fine,’ said Malvery, looking at his pocket watch.

‘And if she’s not,’ said Pinn, ‘you can always build a new girlfriend.’

Malvery clipped him around the head. Pinn swore loudly.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Malvery said again.

Pinn fidgeted and adjusted his genitals inside his trousers. He was dressed in dock worker’s overalls, as were his companions, with his regular clothes beneath them. It would be necessary to change in a hurry later. Until then, exertion and multiple layers had left him sweltering. ‘When can we get on with it? My pods are dripping.’

The others ignored him. He smoked a roll-up resentfully as they observed the activity aboard. The palette, once empty, was lifted off the Delirium Trigger by the crane and returned to the elevated hangar deck, where more crates were loaded on.

‘Right-o,’ said Malvery. ‘Let’s head down there. Crake, keep your mouth shut. Nobody’s gonna believe you’re a docker with that accent. Pinn . . . just keep your mouth shut.’

Pinn made a face and spat on the ground.

‘Now, the Cap’n wants this to go like clockwork,’ Malvery said. ‘We all know there’s bugger all chance of that, so let’s just try not to get ourselves killed, and we’ll all be having a drink and a laugh about this by dawn.’

They made their way back across the busy dock, weaving between piles of chests and netting and screeching machinery. Huge cogs turned; cage-lifts rattled up and down from the lower hangar decks. Cranes swung overhead, and shouts echoed round the iron girders of the roof, where squadrons of pigeons roosted and shat. A massive freighter was easing in on the far side of the hangar, its aerium tanks keeping it weightless, nudging into place with its gas-jets.

Posing as dock workers, the three imposters were invisible in the chaos. They picked some cargo from a stack of netted crates and barrels that were being loaded onto the Delirium Trigger, and made their way towards the huge palette that was chained to the crane arm. The cargo had been piled high on the palette by now. They carried their loads on and went around to the far side of the palette, where they couldn’t be seen by the workers on the dock. There, they began unlashing a group of crates, rearranging them to make a space.

Another docker rounded the corner, carrying a heavy-looking chest. Malvery, Pinn and Crake did their best to look focused and industrious. The docker - a grizzled, burly man with salt-and-pepper hair - watched them in puzzlement for a moment, then decided that whatever they were doing wasn’t interesting enough to comment on. He put down the chest, secured it with some netting and left.

Once they’d dug out a space, they checked the coast was clear and crammed in. Then they stacked their own crates in front of it, sealing themselves inside.

Their timing was perfect. No sooner had they hushed each other to silence than a steam-whistle blew. They heard the footsteps of dock workers beyond their hiding place, evacuating the palette, and then, with a lurch, it began to lift.

Malvery had to steady the unsecured crates in front of them, for fear of being buried; but the crane moved slowly and the palette was heavy enough to be stable. Though the crates made slight and distressing shifts, nothing moved far enough to fall. Tucked in their little corner, they felt themselves transported across the gap between the hangar deck and the deck of the Delirium Trigger.

Crake found himself thinking that this must be how a mouse felt. Hiding in the dark, at the mercy of the world, frightened by every unknown sound. Spit and blood, he hated this. He didn’t have it in him to be a stowaway. He was too afraid of getting caught.

But Bess was aboard. He was committed now. He’d committed her.

Why did you do it? Why did you agree to this?

He agreed to it because he was ashamed. Because since their encounter with the man from the Shacklemore Agency, he couldn’t look Jez in the eye. Absurdly, he felt he owed her something. He felt he owed the crew. He needed to atone, to make amends for being such a despicable, vile monster. To apologise for his presence among them. To make himself worthy.

Anyway, it was too late to turn back now.

‘We’re nearly there,’ Malvery said. ‘Do it.’

Crake drew out his small brass whistle. He put it to his lips and blew. It made no sound at all.

‘That’s it?’ asked Pinn, bemused.

‘That’s it,’ said Crake.

‘So now what happens?’

‘Bess has just woken up to find that she’s in a box,’ Crake replied. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in the Delirium Trigger’s cargo hold right now.’

By the time the palette bumped down onto the deck, the howling and smashing had begun.

‘I suppose you know I’m innocent, don’t you?’ Frey asked.

Trinica was pouring two glasses of whisky from the drinks cabinet. She looked back at him: a moon-white face partially eclipsed by the black slope of her shoulder.

‘You’re not innocent, Frey. You killed those people. It doesn’t matter if you were set up or not.’

‘The Ace of Skulls was rigged to blow. Those people were going to die anyway, with or without me.’

‘Everyone is going to die, with or without you. It doesn’t mean you’re allowed to murder them.’

She was needling him and he knew it. It enraged him. She always had a way of pricking at his conscience, puncturing his excuses. She never let him get away with anything.

‘You were in on it, then?’ he asked. ‘The plot?’

She handed him his whisky and sat down again. The card table lay between them, the cards face down where they’d been thrown by Frey. Skulls, Wings, Dukes and Aces, all hidden in a jumble.

‘No. I didn’t set you up. I didn’t know you were alive until I heard you were wanted.’

‘But you know now. You know Duke Grephen is the man behind it all, and that Gallian Thade is in on it too. You know they made me the scapegoat?’

She raised an eyebrow, blonde against white. ‘My. You evidently think you’ve learned a lot. Was that your sucker punch? Should I be awed at how clever you’ve been?’

‘A little awe would be nice, yes.’

She sipped her whisky. ‘I assume you’re appealing to my better nature? Wondering how I could be part of such a terrible miscarriage of justice? How I could willingly let you take the blame for the death of Hengar when I know it was Grephen’s idea?’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘Because Grephen is paying me a lot of money. And because, frankly, I’d do it for free. You deserve it.’

‘It doesn’t concern you to be an accomplice to the murder of the Archduke’s son? Don’t you think there might be bigger implications involved?’

‘Possibly there are,’ said Trinica. ‘But that’s none of your concern, since it’ll all be over for you very soon.’