Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls (15 page)

‘No, Frey! No!’ Crake’s voice was rising in anger. ‘This is a bit beyond a spot of light piracy and occasional theft. You want us to
infiltrate the Awakeners
? I thought you didn’t want to get us involved in this war?’

‘I thought you
did
?’ Frey replied. ‘Don’t you hate them and everything they stand for?’

‘That doesn’t mean I’m willing to die for it!’ Crake was shouting now. ‘Have you forgotten that I’m a daemonist? You know what they’d do to me if they found out? I’m not getting my mind torn apart by an Imperator for the sake of your doomed bloody relationship! Let her go, Frey! She doesn’t want you! Spit and blood, just let it drop!’

Frey boiled over. His recent brush with death, the frustration of being separated from Trinica, the guilt he felt about Jez; all that bubbled up into rage, and he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

‘Stay, then!’ he yelled. ‘Stay, if you want to! I’m not making you come with me! But last I checked, the
Ketty Jay
was
my
craft, and
she
is going wherever Trinica is. You can come along, or you can piss off; it’s all the same to me! Just as long as you shut up while you’re at it!’

Crake’s face was red with anger and indignation. He opened his mouth for a heated retort, then mastered himself and closed it again. He drew himself up with the affronted dignity of an aristocrat and said, very calmly, ‘Goodbye, Cap’n.’ Then, picking up a lantern, he turned and walked away towards the entrance of the pumping house.

‘Fine!’ Frey called after him, when he saw that he really did mean to leave. ‘Fine! Go!’ He turned on the rest of the crew. ‘Anyone else?’

Malvery stepped close to him, his bristly white eyebrows gathered in a frown above the rims of his round, green-lensed glasses. ‘Cap’n,’ he said sternly. ‘That woman is turning you into an arsehole. Stop it.’

Frey swallowed a retort. He could see by the faces of his crew that he’d done wrong. Even Abley looked startled. Crake was his friend, and they’d saved each other’s lives many times. He didn’t deserve the short shrift he’d got. And he must have been plenty offended to storm off in the middle of a warzone.

‘I’ll go get him,’ said Silo.

‘No,’ said Frey, holding out a hand. ‘I’ll go. You lot get back to the
Ketty Jay
. Malvery, can you see to the lad? We’re gonna need him.’

‘Right-o,’ said Malvery. The others readied their packs and picked up their bits without further discussion, more subdued than normal. Frey hurried off through the pumping station after Crake. He was glad to get away from them, to hide his face from their gazes.

There was no sign of anyone when he emerged from the pumping house. The junction where five roads met was quiet except for the distant chattering of gatling guns. He turned off his lantern and left it in the doorway for the others to find, then stepped warily out into the junction.

Crake was nowhere to be seen. Frey cursed under his breath.

There was only one thing for it, then. This place was far too dangerous to call out his name, so he picked a random direction and set off to search.

Crake. Where are you?

Grayther Crake, several streets away, was already beginning to regret his decision. The reality of his situation cooled the heat of his anger. He found himself alone in a broken city, with Coalition troops on one side, Awakeners on the other, and neither likely to ask questions before they opened fire. He didn’t even know which direction he should be heading in to find safety.

You’re a fool, Grayther Crake. A scared, prideful fool
.

He was already ashamed of his outburst in front of the Cap’n. He didn’t like to lose control. Crass emotional displays weren’t his style. But the incident with Jez had disturbed him, brought back terrible memories of Bess, his beautiful niece whom he’d stabbed to death with a letter knife while under the control of a daemon. On top of that, he was humiliated by his latest failure. His daemonist skills were the one thing that set him apart from the arrogant, vapid elite that he came from. Now he’d made himself a laughing-stock. He felt angry and wretched, and Frey’s comment had been the last straw.

Where could he go now? The Cap’n wanted them to join the Awakeners. No, he absolutely wouldn’t do that. Even if it was in order to infiltrate and hurt them. He hated them too much, opposed them too squarely. What if they made him undertake some sort of initiation to prove his faith in the Allsoul? It would be too much a betrayal of himself. The others might possess a more elastic moral fibre than he did, but he wouldn’t be swayed.

And yet, he couldn’t help wondering if that was really the reason.
‘Don’t you want to strike a blow for the Coalition?’
Frey had said. And he
did
want that, he
did
want to strike. For the Coalition, but more importantly, against the Awakeners. Wasn’t this his chance to do that? And wasn’t he turning his back on it?

Since the civil war began, he’d fretted about whether he should be joining in. Now that he had the opportunity, he realised that he really didn’t
want
to get involved. Much as it pained him to admit it, he was scared. He wanted to sit out the war and let somebody else deal with the Awakeners. In the end, he was no better than Frey, or any of the others.

He stopped, turning this way and that. The smashed and shadowed streets watched him malevolently. Fear wormed its way into him.

‘You have no idea where you’re going, do you?’ he asked himself.

And then, with a shock, he remembered Bess. Not the girl he’d killed but the golem he’d made of her. In all his self-absorbed fury he’d forgotten that there was someone back on the
Ketty Jay
that relied on him. Spit and blood, what a selfish creature he was! If his thoughts weren’t of himself then they were usually of Samandra. And where did that leave the golem in his charge?

No choice
, he told himself.
Go back
.

No way was he going to any Awakener hideout, but the Cap’n would surely drop him and Bess off at the forward base. Or somewhere safer than this, anyway. They’d both have to swallow a bit of pride, but Frey wouldn’t refuse him that.

And then he could go to Samandra. He wondered if he’d have stormed off at all, if he hadn’t known that she’d be waiting for him.

Taking a deep breath, he turned around to retrace his steps.

There was a man in the street, walking purposefully towards him. A tall man in a trenchcoat and a black hat, carrying a shotgun. Crake’s heart leaped in his chest. He had no idea who that man was, or what side he was on, but he knew that he didn’t want to meet him. He spun to go the other way.

And found himself staring down the barrel of a revolver. The man on the end of it was young and clean-shaven, and gave him a crooked smile.

‘Grayther Crake,’ he said. ‘We’re from the Shacklemore Agency. And you’re comin’ with us.’

Eleven

A New Recruit – Pinned Down – Minor Surgery – The Cupola – A Peach of a Shot

F
rey flinched as the sky overhead erupted with a boom louder than thunder. Running in a half-crouch, he scampered along the street, staying close to the walls for cover but ready to flee if any looked like falling on him. The anti-aircraft guns had started up again in earnest. A few streets away he saw a ragged old Westingley lift itself above the broken parapets of the ancient city.

The Awakeners were pulling out, under covering fire from their guns. If the
Ketty Jay
didn’t get going soon, they’d miss their chance to infiltrate the Awakener fleet.

Damn you, Crake. Why’d you have to run off now?

The street ended suddenly at a chasm, an enormous rip in the earth, twenty metres wide. Parts of buildings still hung precariously over the abyss. Frey decided that Crake was unlikely to have gone this way, unless he’d secretly developed the ability to fly. He backtracked and tried a side-alley, but that turned out to be blocked by a fallen house.

Frey spat on the ground. Dead end. He must have picked the wrong road back at the junction. That meant Crake could be anywhere. Searching for him was all but hopeless.

But he wouldn’t give up. Not yet. Not when it was his fault that Crake was out here. The crew always became unbalanced when one of them went missing. They were a team, and they needed each other. And what about Bess? He didn’t want to think how she might react when she twigged that her master wasn’t coming home.

His eyes fell to the silver ring he wore on his little finger. Crake usually carried the compass with him on expeditions, just in case Frey managed to get himself lost. Had he brought it this time? Frey wasn’t sure. But the compass meant Crake could always find him, if he wanted to.

The problem was, he didn’t want to.

He heard running footsteps coming from a side road. He cast around for a way to get out of sight, but he wasn’t quick enough. Three men came into view. Two of them wore a Sentinel’s cassock and carried rifles. The other was a middle-aged man with a broad, plain face and a cauliflower ear.

One of the Sentinels stopped in front of Frey, ushering the other men past him. More were coming up behind, ten or twelve at least. Three of them carried the various parts of a gatling gun. ‘Come on!’ the Sentinel urged Frey. ‘There are Coalition troops right behind us!’

Frey didn’t miss a beat. He’d always been an agile liar. ‘Thank the Allsoul, brother! When I lost my unit, I thought I was dead!’

‘Get going!’ the Sentinel told him, and Frey ran off with the rest of the Awakeners, who were conveniently hurrying in the general direction of the
Ketty Jay
.

The recruits were mostly rural folk, by their dress. Some wore stitched Ciphers on their clothes, others didn’t. Some were grimly determined, some looked scared. The Awakener army was a rag-tag mob of untrained recruits. No match for the disciplined Coalition forces. The Archduke’s men could mop these fellers up without the help of people like Frey.

He kept pace with them, waiting for an opportunity to dump them and get away. It occurred to him that he might stay with them, and get to Trinica that way, but there was no chance he was leaving the
Ketty Jay
behind. Rot knew what would happen if Jez got at the controls, and she was the only other crew member who could fly her.

The street they were following ended in a small square with an ornamental fountain in the centre, long dry. The houses on all sides had been shaken to pieces by the quake. Weeds grew thick among cracked flagstones and piles of broken bricks. Flashes of light from above gave them brief snapshots of the ruin that surrounded them.

They were halfway across when a dozen Coalition soldiers ran into the square from a road to their left. The soldiers were as surprised as the Awakeners, and for a moment no one did anything but stare. No one but Frey, who threw himself over the stone lip of the fountain just before both sides let loose on one another.

Rifles and pistols snapped, men shouted, some shrieked as they were hit. Frey kept his head down while the rest of the Awakeners came piling into cover around him. Some of them had gunshot wounds. One man was shot in the back while trying to help another over.

The Sentinel who’d first spoke to Frey ended up next to him. ‘Get that gun firing!’ he yelled at a group of men down the line. They began hastily assembling the gatling gun. Then he glared at Frey. ‘What are you waiting for?’ And he aimed his rifle and started firing.

Frey pulled out the revolver that he’d emptied into the daemon back at the shrine, and began loading bullets into it. He had a full one in his belt, but he wanted time to think. He wasn’t keen on shooting at Coalition troops. That seemed like the kind of thing that might get a man into trouble. But he’d had no bright ideas by the time he was loaded, so he popped up and loosed off a couple of shots to look convincing. He aimed wild on purpose. The Sentinel was too busy to notice.

No way I’m dying with these losers
, he thought, as he looked around for a way out. The Coalition troops had retreated into cover at the edge of the square. To his right, Frey could see a gap in the rubble, perhaps an old alley or something. It would take some clambering to get to, but it was an exit and, most importantly, it was sheltered from Coalition fire by a collapsed house.

There’s my way out
, he thought.
Now I just have to get there
.

It wasn’t far, but it was far enough. If he broke out of cover he’d be a target for the Coalition soldiers. And once the Awakeners saw him deserting, he had little doubt they’d shoot him in the arse.

He hunkered down again as bullets chipped the stone fountain, showering him with speckles of grit. Damn it, he had to get to Trinica! He didn’t have time to get pinned down in a fire-fight!

The Sentinel next to him took advantage of a break in the shooting to pop his head up and aim again. Frey heard him take in a sharp breath and saw his eyes widen. ‘By the Code!’ he said. ‘That’s—’

He was rudely interrupted when his head blew apart, spraying Frey with blood and strips of gelatinous muck that used to be his brain.

‘Ewwww,’ Frey groaned. Getting covered in bits of other people ranked among his least favourite things. He wondered what the Sentinel had seen before he died, but he wasn’t curious enough to stick his head up and find out.

‘You men who fight for the Awakeners!’ roared a commanding voice. ‘Put down your arms and surrender!’

The gunfire petered out at the sound. Frey closed his eyes in silent despair. He knew that voice, and it meant he was screwed.

He found a crack in the fountain wide enough to peer through, and put his eye to it. It only confirmed what he already knew. There was Kedmund Drave, standing boldly before his troops, a smoking pistol in one hand.

Frey cursed his luck. If he was caught by Drave in the company of Awakeners, the Century Knight would string him up for sure.