Iron Jackal (56 page)

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’

‘You could say that.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Do nothing. You’re a half-Mane. Be content with that.’

She nodded to herself. Suddenly, she was tired of the sight of the excavation, and a moment later they were outside the ice caves, on the glacier, looking down over the town and the dreadnought hanging over it. She could see its decks now. They were empty, but she could still hear the singing of her brethren, and it tugged at her.

‘What if I’m
not
content with that?’ she asked.

‘Then you’ll be welcome among us, beloved,’ said Rinn, now wearing rags, his skin like parchment, his voice breathy and hoarse. His thick hair had become a greasy straggle, and his lips had peeled back to show yellowed and daggerlike fangs. ‘But if you choose that way, you’ll walk a fine line. We can think because we used to be human. The daemon you have inside you, it doesn’t think in any way you can comprehend. It’ll change you if you let it. It can’t help itself. Bit by bit, you’ll become more like us and less like them.’

‘Is this how it works, for those who refuse the Invitation?’ she asked. ‘You let them go, so they can make their own way back? Because you want them willing?’

‘We’re not so devious. The choice is yours.’

‘But I bet they all come back in the end, don’t they?’

‘Most do. Some don’t. The others . . .’

‘They kill themselves,’ said Jez.

‘Yes.’

Jez could understand. She’d never contemplated it herself, but the terror of the Manes and the temptation of their call could have easily driven her to madness in those early days. A more delicate soul might have ended themselves rather than risk succumbing to that.

She surveyed the scene. The snow was falling more heavily now, and the far side of the town was becoming obscured. ‘When do I wake up?’ she asked.

‘That’s up to you.’

She thought about that. Then she walked over to a hillock of ice and sat down. ‘I reckon I’d like to stay a while yet. Chew things over. Will you stay with me?’

Rinn was Rinn again, pink-cheeked and healthy, clad in furs and hide. The man she’d known when she was alive. He sat down next to her.

‘I’d like that,’ he said.

Crake stood in his makeshift sanctum at the back of the
Ketty Jay
’s cargo hold, his hand on his bearded chin, and regarded the relic with deep suspicion. It sat on the floor inside a protective summoning circle, amid a jumble of cables and detecting devices. The black case was open, showing the jackal emblem inside the lid. The double-bladed weapon lay in its finely-wrought cradle. He hadn’t dared to touch it.

But then, as it turned out, he hadn’t needed to.

He checked the readings on the oscilloscope again. There was no question.

Something was very wrong here.

He frowned. The damned thing was so
alien
. The long, narrow blades at either end of the handle were made of some material he’d never seen before. They had a crisp, dry ceramic quality, and gave off no reflection. The way they curved in opposite directions resembled no ancient weapon he’d ever seen. Admittedly he was no authority, but he knew his way around a museum.

Then there were the symbols, cut with exquisite precision into the handle and blades. Faintly suggestive of language, but if so it was a long way from any he recognised. And there was the question of its age. They had only Crickslint’s word that it was ancient. It might have been fashioned yesterday, judging by its lack of wear.

But most puzzling of all was the daemonism. It simply defied his analysis. He couldn’t hope to penetrate its complexities with the equipment he had. All he’d gleaned were clues, and they would have to be enough.

If this relic was indeed thousands of years old, then it was the find of the century. It proved that daemonism was alive and thriving long before most civilisations and religions got to their feet. It hinted at untold possibilities for today’s practitioners, if only they could overcome the prejudice fostered by the Awakeners. And as long as nobody mentioned that the Manes were created by the hubris of the early daemonists.

But what if it
wasn’t
thousands of years old? He was beginning to wonder. Because he’d decoded part of the orchestra of chords that had been thralled into the relic. And what he found was a very modern technique indeed.

There were sheets of formulae and diagrams all over the room. One side of the sanctum looked more like an engineer’s workshop, where he’d been experimenting with all the devices and parts he’d bought in Thesk. Bess was slumped in the corner of the sanctum, a blanket draped over her shoulders, stumpy legs sticking out. Her glittering eyes had disappeared; there was only darkness behind her face-grille. Her favourite storybook lay loosely in her hand.

The sight of her caused a sudden, plunging sadness. There were new bullet-holes in her soft leather parts that would need repairing. New chips and dents in her armour. She was in a sorry state. He didn’t take care of her as well as he wished he could, and he’d been distracted of late with his mission to protect the Cap’n.

What if he failed? What if they couldn’t get the relic back in time, and Crake’s untested methods came to nothing? Crake would survive without the
Ketty Jay
, but where would Bess go? He could hardly walk around with her in public: she was evidence that he was a daemonist. It struck him then that he’d been so obsessed with his own needs, and later with the Cap’n’s, that he’d barely thought about her at all since this whole affair began.

You’re a despicable person, Grayther Crake
, he told himself.
No wonder you did what you did to Miss Bree
.

Grim-faced, he marched out of the sanctum, through the tarpaulin flap that led into the hold.

It was more of a mess than usual down here, after hauling fifty Murthians to Gagriisk and Frey’s hefty landing, which knocked everything around. It was a miracle that most of the equipment in his sanctum survived a jolt like that. Only his harmoniser had broken, but luckily he could do without that for the moment.

The Rattletraps had been retrieved after the battle. They’d only used two of the three – the ones with mounted gatlings – but those had made it back in surprisingly good condition. They may have looked like pieces of junk, but Ashua evidently knew what she was doing when she bought them.

Reminded by that thought, he stopped at the bottom of the stairs and peered round the side, into the darkness that gathered against the bulkhead. He could hear breathing in there. Not the Iron Jackal, thankfully. The heavy breathing of sleep.

He could just about make her out among the pipes, curled up in a nook in the bulkhead that had been padded out with tarp. She was lying on her side, swallowed by a dusty and voluminous sleeping bag. The shiver and shudder of the wind against the
Ketty Jay
didn’t seem to bother her at all.

The Cap’n had made noises about shuffling people around to give her a bed – Crake had feared he was going to have to swap quarters with Jez, and lose the upper bunk he used for books and storage – but she preferred to be down here. She said she’d grown up sleeping rough, and couldn’t sleep in a bed anyway. Plus there was lots of space in the hold. It was a little odd, but nobody complained.

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about having her on board. His initial reaction had been horror. He hadn’t wanted anyone or anything to upset the delicate balance that they’d managed to maintain all this time. But he wondered now if he’d been overly harsh. She appeared to have a brain, which was something that Crake generally approved of. Her sass was never directed at him, which was a point in her favour. In fact, she seemed to have chosen him as her co-conspirator when mocking someone else. That was a nice feeling. Malvery seemed quite taken with her, too, and he respected the doctor’s opinion in most things.

So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, if the Cap’n could keep his hands off her.

The Cap’n
, he thought. Yes. He had news to deliver.

He made his way up to the cockpit. Frey was flying them low over a sea of dunes. The moon was dead ahead, only a slim black fingernail away from a perfect circle. It was a bright night. Crake tried not to think about the risks of being spotted by a Samarlan patrol. Maybe that was why they were flying so distressingly low.

Ugrik was in the navigator’s seat, amid an untidy mass of charts. He turned in his seat as Crake entered, and cackled at him.

‘The mysterious Mr Crake emerges from his den!’ Ugrik declared. ‘What’ve you been up to down there, eh? Stirring up the infinite?’

‘Something like that,’ said Crake stiffly. He found the bluntness of Yorts rather rude, and he hadn’t thought he was being especially mysterious anyway.

‘Something like that,’ Ugrik muttered to himself,
sotto voce
. ‘Aye, something very like that, I’ll bet.’

Crake couldn’t work out what he meant by that. It sounded disconcertingly like a threat. Ugrik went back to his maps. Crake gave him a doubtful glance and then turned his attention to the Cap’n.

Frey was staring ahead with the fixed concentration of a man determined to think about nothing. Crake had heard that Trinica had been on board. It wasn’t hard to guess who was responsible for the Cap’n’s present mood.

‘Any word on our destination, Cap’n?’

Ugrik cackled again, not looking up from his charts. ‘You’ll see! You’ll see!’

Frey thumbed at Ugrik, as if to say:
there’s your answer
.

Crake cleared his throat. ‘Would you like the good news or the bad news first?’

‘Bad news first is traditional, isn’t it?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Gimme the good news.’

‘The bad news is . . . er, right. The
good
news is, I’ve made a certain amount of progress on the question of the daemon. I’ve been working on some things based on your rather brave field test of my concealment device, and I’ve developed a few techniques that might prove effective. If the worst should come to the worst, that is.’

Frey nodded, without much enthusiasm. ‘Did I ever thank you, Crake?’

‘For what?’

‘That thing, that device. Saved my life.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he thought for a moment. ‘No, you didn’t.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve been working flat out on my behalf all this time. I want you to know I appreciate it.’

It was delivered in an oddly emotionless monotone. Crake began to worry about the Cap’n’s state of mind. Perhaps he was just exhausted. They were all exhausted. It seemed like they hadn’t had a chance to catch their breath since they first found the black spot on Frey’s hand.

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Bad news now,’ Frey said.

‘Bad news.’ Crake paused for a moment, wondering how best to approach this. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a harmonic resonance bounce?’

Frey gave him a withering look over his shoulder. Crake decided it was not the look of a person who was likely to have heard of a harmonic resonance bounce.

‘Silly question, I suppose. Let me put it simply. You remember that ring I gave you a while ago, that was linked to a compass?’

‘This ring?’ Frey asked, raising his hand.

Crake suddenly understood. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Cap’n, I’m very sor—’

‘Buy me a drink if I’m not dead by tomorrow night. You were saying?’

Crake had been knocked off his stride. ‘Er . . . anyway. The way the ring and compass works is that you thrall two daemons which oscillate at the same frequency to both objects, allowing one to always find the other, rather like a magnetic pull. The earcuffs run on the same principle of matched oscillation, though they’re a sight more complex. When a daemon is thralled to something in this way, it forms a unique chord which is out of phase with the rest of the object, setting up an invisible wave which travels between the objects, which is what we call a harmonic reson—’

‘Layman’s terms, Crake,’ said Frey, getting ever so slightly annoyed.

‘Someone’s tracking the relic.’

‘There, now, that wasn’t so hard.’

Crake wondered if he did have a tendency to over-explain. He ought to work on that. ‘It’s just like the ring and compass, although, I reluctantly admit, more skilful and precise. But somebody, somewhere, has a device that tells them exactly where the relic is at all times.’

‘And only a daemonist could do this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Know any?’

‘None that have been anywhere near that relic.’

‘Can you block it?’

‘Should be easy enough. But it’ll take time.’

Frey tutted. ‘Time’s exactly what we
don’t
—’

A heavy shudder ran through the
Ketty Jay
, violent enough to make Crake stumble.

‘—have . . .’ Frey finished, in a tone of apprehension.

They waited, eyes roaming their surroundings as if they might see what had caused the disturbance.

‘Turbulence, I reckon,’ said Frey.

The
Ketty Jay
shivered again. Then suddenly it was shaken hard, and Crake wheeled across the cockpit to crash into the bulkhead on the far side.