Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls (20 page)

One of the Sentinels primed his rifle. Frey suddenly wished he hadn’t allowed himself to be separated from his crew. If it came to it, perhaps Ashua and Bess could help him, but not before he got shot.

There was a quiet
crack
from the stone. The Acolyte picked up the tongs, but Garin signalled him to wait. There was another crack, and a pop. Garin motioned to the Acolyte, and the stone was taken off the brazier, turned upside down and laid onto a wadded cloth on the floor. The Acolyte picked up the cloth with the hot stone in its centre and presented it reverently to Garin. Garin began studying it intently.

Frey peered over his shoulder. The stone had been split by the heat. Crooked black lines spread across it, intersecting each other.

‘Are you getting something from that?’ Frey asked.

‘There are many ways to know the mind of the Allsoul. This is the way that chose me,’ Garin said.

‘The pattern means something?’

‘The pattern means
everything
,’ Garin said, frowning as he studied the lines. All eyes were on the Prognosticator now. Frey saw wonder and amazement on their faces.

You’re all being duped, you bloody idiots. It’s a carnival trick!
he thought. But he wasn’t quite as sure as he pretended. The slim possibility that there might be something to this Awakener mumbo-jumbo had him nervous, and the Prognosticator certainly
looked
like he knew what he was doing. Soon he was as mesmerised as the rest of them, as he waited to learn his fate.

Finally, Garin folded the cloth over the stone and handed it back to the Acolyte. ‘The Allsoul has spoken,’ he said. The Awakeners repeated his words in a low mutter, their eyes cast down to the floor. Garin turned to Frey, and stared at him long and hard.

‘So what’s the verdict?’ Frey asked. The tension was killing him.

Garin laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Welcome,’ he said gravely. ‘We will accept your aid in our righteous cause. See the quartermaster in the town about payment.’

Frey managed to keep the relief off his face. ‘Glad to be here,’ he said.
And glad you’re a massive charlatan with it
, he added mentally.

Garin walked away. The others called down their companions who were guarding the crew, and then followed him out, leaving the Acolyte to tidy up the brazier. Frey waited patiently till everyone was gone, then shut the cargo door behind them.

‘Everythin’ alright, Cap’n?’ Silo enquired from the walkway above.

‘Just fine,’ said Frey, as he was heading towards the sanctum at the back of the hold. ‘We’re in!’

He pushed open the tarpaulin curtain and looked in on Ashua. He found her sitting cross-legged opposite the golem, who’d plonked down on her butt like a baby. Ashua had a large red leather book open in her lap.

‘How’d you manage to get her to keep still like that?’ he asked in amazement.

She lifted up the book to show him.
Stories for Little Girls.
‘Bribery,’ she said. ‘Works a treat.’ Then she turned her attention back to Bess. ‘You ready? Alright, here we go. “
The Duchess and the Daisy-Chain”.
’

Fourteen

Hooded – Crake’s Return – A Bloody Reading – Pinn the Convert

T
hree years
.
Three years and they’ve finally caught me. I suppose it’s true what they say, then. The Shacklemores always get their man in the end.

Grayther Crake sat on a metal bench in the back compartment of a small aircraft, contemplating his impending death. At least, he guessed it was small, by the sound of the engines. It was hard to tell with a sack over his head.

The past twenty-four hours had been a terrifying and humiliating ordeal. The Shacklemore Agency had a reputation built on professionalism and a gentlemanly veneer intended to put rich clients at ease. Shacklemores were polite, well-dressed and efficient: the acceptable face of bounty hunting. But scratch the surface, Crake had discovered, and underneath you’d find mercenary thugs like all the rest; proud members of the biggest gang in Vardia.

‘You won’t be using that tooth on us, mate,’ they sneered when they caught him. That was when they put the sack on, and it had hardly been off since. They cuffed his hands behind his back and pulled him, blind and helpless, through the streets of Korrene. Distant guns and nearby explosions made him shudder and cringe in fear, but they tugged him onward mercilessly until they reached an aircraft. When he felt them taking off, he knew he was lost. There was no hope of rescue after that.

He spent a day and a night in a cell, tormenting himself with thoughts of what was to come and what he’d left behind. He thought of the crew, and wondered how they were faring, and wished he’d never been so foolish as to leave. He thought of Samandra, and burned with shame. Better that she thought he’d run out on her and missed their rendezvous, or that he was dead. Better that than the truth.

He thought of Bess . . . But no, he couldn’t think of Bess. Bess, the golem he’d abandoned. Bess, the little girl he’d murdered. He’d evaded justice all this time, but he couldn’t evade it for ever.

They left the bag on his head and kept him manacled like an animal. It only came off when they fed him. One man would spoon stew into his mouth while two others stood by with guns in case he should try any daemonist trickery. He ate what he was given. He didn’t have the heart to protest his treatment. He deserved it.

‘Don’t worry. You’ll be on your way soon,’ they told him. ‘We’re just waiting for someone to take you off our hands. You weren’t even supposed to be our catch, but Rokesby here remembered your warrant from the newsletter, didn’t he?’

Rokesby, the clean-shaven young man who’d caught him, gave a proud little smile. ‘Should’ve kept a bit more of a low profile, I reckon,’ he said, filling up another spoonful of stew for his prisoner. ‘Not many people ain’t heard of the
Ketty Jay
these days. Victim of your own success, ain’t you?’

Crake didn’t care for their explanations.
Just get on with it
, he thought.
Just get it done
.

Early in the morning, his escorts arrived. They took him from the cell and walked him to an aircraft. He could smell food cooking and heard the rough conversation of men nearby. It occurred to him that the flight from the spot he was taken had been short; they were probably in the Coalition’s forward camp, where Samandra had kissed him not two days past. A wild thought came to him, filling him with sudden hope: he should shout out for help! But the notion died as soon as it was born. Who would help him? He was a legitimately guilty man. Why would anyone, Samandra most of all, intervene to save a criminal from the law?

He stayed silent. They put him on the aircraft and took off. He didn’t need to ask where they were taking him.

They were taking him home.

I’m going to hang,
he thought, as he felt the aircraft touch down. He’d thought it many times since they caught him. Grief and despair, panic and resignation all visited him in their turn while he waited in his cell.

But there were worse things, even, than the prospect of a short sudden trip to oblivion. Worse would be his father’s silent, grief-stricken disappointment. His sister-in-law Amantha’s hysterical shrieks. And Condred, oh, Condred, whose daughter he’d stabbed to death. It didn’t matter that he knew nothing about it till afterwards. It didn’t matter that the whole thing was an awful accident. He’d still have to face the distraught wrath of his brother before they sent him to the gallows.

After some time, he heard the aircraft doors open, and they came for him. They took him outside and walked him along a path. Even blind, he suspected he knew where they were. When it kinked right and went up a shallow incline, he was sure. He’d walked the route from the Crake family’s private landing pad a thousand times.

Ahead of him and to his left was the mansion he’d grown up in. Behind him, across the grounds, was Condred’s house, where Crake had spent his post-university years playing the layabout while studying daemonism in secret. Condred had taken him in as an act of arrogant charity. He thought it would improve his idle brother’s attitude to live with a family that knew the value of duty and hard work.

No doubt he’d regretted his charity since.

They took him into the foyer and along a route he recognised, though he’d seldom travelled it. The study was his father’s sanctuary. After Crake’s mother died, Rogibald took to it more and more often, until he was seldom seen elsewhere except for meals and business. His sons knew not to bother him there. Rogibald disliked being interrupted when he was working. Or thinking. Or doing pretty much anything, for that matter.

He’ll make an exception for me now, I’ll bet,
Crake thought. Even in the midst of his misery, he could summon a touch of bitterness where his father was concerned.

They opened the door without knocking and led him inside. He felt a key in his cuffs and his wrists were freed. Then they pulled the bag from his head.

He blinked at the morning light streaming in through the high windows. The room was as he remembered it: expensive fixtures and furniture gone comfortably shabby with age. There were many books but no ornaments. Rogibald was not a man for sentiment, nor did he appreciate art.

His father was sitting in a high-backed red leather chair, facing the hearth. All Crake could see of him was one arm of a houndstooth suit jacket. A butler that Crake didn’t recognise was just delivering a glass of brandy on a silver tray. There was an identical chair next to Rogibald, this one unoccupied. A fire had been newly lit to fend off the chill of winter in the hills.

‘Sit down, Grayther,’ Rogibald said. His voice was worn and weary. Not at all the tone that Crake was used to hearing from him. ‘Everybody else, get back to your duties.’

One of the Shacklemores, a young fellow with a pencil moustache, seemed uncomfortable at the idea. ‘Sir, perhaps we should stay? To ensure that the fugitive doesn’t get out of hand.’

‘I have nothing to fear from my son,’ Rogibald snarled. ‘Get out!’

The butler opened the door and invited them to leave. They did so. The butler left with them, and closed the door behind him.

Crake sat down in the empty chair. His father was thinner than he remembered. He’d always been lean, but now the flesh was falling off his bones, and his once stern face was gaunt. He seemed to have shrunk inside his clothes, and there was the sour smell of the old about him. But for all that, he was still Rogibald Crake: solemn, erect, intimidating.

‘Hello, Father,’ said Crake.

Rogibald didn’t reply. He rarely indulged in pleasantries. He was a big believer in the idea that a man shouldn’t speak unless he had something worth saying.

Crake had never been able to suffer those silences for long. He needed something to fill up the space. ‘You have a new butler,’ he heard himself saying. ‘What happened to Charden?’

‘I got rid of him,’ Rogibald said. ‘I got rid of all the servants. Amantha insisted, after . . .’ He waved a hand. ‘You know.’

Yes
, thought Crake.
I know perfectly
.
But neither of us can say it.

‘She used to fly into a rage at the sight of them,’ Rogibald said. ‘Blamed them for not seeing it coming, not watching Bessandra closely enough, not locking the doors, or some such thing. She cleared out her own household, then started on mine. I let them go, to keep the peace. But Charden . . . that was hard. That man had been with me twenty years.’ He shifted in his chair and folded his legs. ‘She was insane,’ he said. ‘We just didn’t know it then.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘The sanatorium at Clock Shallows. We sent her there a year ago. I don’t think it’s made her any better, but she seems happy, at least. She has come to believe that Bessandra is there with her. Nobody is inclined to discourage the notion.’

Crake felt his throat close up. His brother’s wife in a sanatorium. His doing. He’d never liked her, but that hardly mattered. Her ruin lay at his feet.

‘Damnably difficult, keeping any servants these days,’ Rogibald went on. ‘They’re a superstitious lot. People in the village talk. The way they tell it, the manor is cursed and all of us with it. Not many servants stay long after they hear that.’ He sipped his brandy. ‘Superstitious lot,’ he said again.

Crake couldn’t bear listening to his father talk this way. He was usually so direct, a no-nonsense man who got to his point instantly. To hear him working up the courage to address the real subject was awful. Only then did Crake realise how much pain he’d inflicted on a man he’d thought incapable of feeling.

‘Father. I know there are no words that can—’

‘No,’ he said. ‘There aren’t.’

Crake shut up. All of a sudden, he wanted to cry; but that would never do. It was unthinkable to shed a tear in front of Rogibald. Condred had always followed their father in all things, but Grayther had been a disappointment. Rogibald had always said he’d bring shame on the family.

Well, at least he could take solace in the fact that he’d been proved right. For Rogibald, being right was everything.

Crake looked hard out the window, to gather himself. Trench-coated Shacklemores walked the lawns in the crisp morning light, or patrolled near the wall that surrounded the grounds. They carried shotguns. It seemed a lot of firepower for a single fugitive.

‘The bounty hunters?’ Crake asked, when he found his voice again.

Rogibald said nothing.

‘Father?’ he prompted.

‘I’m sorry, was that a question?’

Crake had forgotten how wilfully obtuse his father could be. When he wasn’t being infuriatingly literal, he was being pedantic. It was his way of maintaining superiority.

He tried again. ‘Why are there so many Shacklemores here?’

Rogibald’s jaw tightened at that. He stared into the fire. ‘The rabble hereabouts.’

‘The villagers? The farmers?’