Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls (73 page)
Read Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls Online
Authors: Chris Wooding
‘Yeah,’ said Frey, with a rueful grin. ‘We don’t have much of either.’
The others laughed uneasily. But Frey put a hand across the table. ‘I’ll be sorry to see you go, Harkins. You can keep the Firecrow, if you want. Won’t be much good to me, and you thrashed it so hard I can’t even sell it anyhow.’
‘Thanks for understanding, Cap’n,’ said Harkins, and he shook Frey by his good hand.
‘I’m going back home with Lisinda!’ Pinn declared loudly, oblivious to the sombre mood. ‘Done my stuff! I’m a bona fide hero! Reckon it’s time to settle down with a good woman.’ He looked into Lisinda’s adoring eyes. ‘Maybe even raise a couple of kids.’
Malvery spluttered into his mug of ale and covered his face in froth.
Crake, Pinn, Harkins
. ‘How about the rest of you?’ Frey asked. He felt Trinica take his hand under the table. He didn’t know what he wanted them to say. He didn’t know what he wanted to do. His whole life had been a game of Rake, with steadily ascending stakes; he’d never thought about what would happen after he won.
Malvery spoke up first. ‘Well, that sorta depends on you, Cap’n.’ He inclined his head towards Trinica. ‘Seems like your circumstances changed more than most. There’s your lady; you got her. So what are
you
gonna do?’
Frey looked at Trinica, seeking a reaction. She put her hands up in the air. ‘Oh, no! Don’t put this on me! You make your own choice, Darian, and I’ll go where you go. I’m homeless and don’t have a ducat to my name; the Coalition seized all my assets, remember?’
‘That’s kinda fair, considering where you got ’em,’ said Samandra. ‘Consider it the price for us forgettin’ Trinica Dracken ever existed.’
‘See?’ said Trinica to Frey. ‘I don’t exist.’ But the wink she gave him suggested that the Coalition hadn’t quite found
all
of her rainy day money.
Frey sat back, puffed out his cheeks and ran a hand through his hair. So, the decision was all his? But he didn’t
want
to make it on his own. It wasn’t just about him any more. It was about everyone.
‘Well, I still got the
Ketty Jay
,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘You fellers even
want
to tag along any more? Doc, weren’t you thinking of opening up a practice in Thesk or something?’
‘Cap’n,’ said Malvery. ‘More people get shot around you per hour than any other location in Vardia. Reckon I’m more use by your side than anywhere else. Besides, someone’s got to keep an eye on you.’
‘And someone’s got to keep an eye on
you
!’ Ashua said.
‘Someone gotta keep an eye on
all
o’ you,’ said Silo. ‘I’m with you, Cap’n. Medal or no medal, I ain’t got no other place I belong more ’n’ on that aircraft.’
Frey began to get excited. Malvery, Ashua, Silo, himself . . . and Trinica. Well, that was pretty much a crew, wasn’t it? ‘So what are we gonna do?’ he asked them. ‘Where are we gonna go?’
‘Who cares?’ said Malvery. ‘Let’s go hunt down Peleshar, that island that disappeared! Your mad mate Ugrik said he had a plan to find it, didn’t he?’
‘New Vardia!’ Ashua said. ‘I always fancied the frontier!’
‘Since when?’ Malvery asked.
‘Since thirty seconds ago. Damn, we’ll go join Red Arcus and be rebels!’
‘You’re just pissed ’cause you didn’t get a medal,’ said Pinn, waggling his medal at her.
‘Alright then, let’s go to Samarla!’ Ashua said, laughing. ‘Give the Thacians a hand, see if we can’t help out some of Silo’s folk.’
‘Hey, hey, hey!’ said Crake, holding up his hands for silence. ‘Can I throw a wild idea in here? Don’t any of you want to, you know, take it easy for a while? Do some honest trading, maybe? Go on holiday?’
They all looked at one another across the table. Then a grin spread across Crake’s face, and Malvery roared with laughter and clashed his mug against Crake’s. Suddenly they were all shouting over each other, boasting, joking, making plans and dreaming possibilities. Frey sat back and slid his arm around Trinica; she leaned into him, and he knew everything was alright, that the future was theirs for the taking.
Everything he’d always dreaded had come upon him: responsibility, commitment, the weight of expectations. And yet here he was with the woman he loved at his side and the world at his feet. He was freer than he’d ever felt. He could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. And he’d never been happier than now.
‘You think we can do it?’ he said to her quietly, as the rest of them argued and hollered and jostled. ‘You and me? You think we can ever forget what we did to each other, make it how it was, begin again?’
She took his face in her hands and kissed him. His friends whooped and cheered like louts. And when she let him go, she looked deeply into his eyes, and there on her lips was a little heartbreaking smile of hope.
‘Yes, Darian,’ she said. ‘Let’s begin again.’
I
n the gloomy, gaping silence of the
Ketty Jay
’s hold, tiny claws clicked on metal.
It was a small rat, not like the great monsters of old, but it had courage beyond its size. It came out tentatively and slipped along a narrow pipe with its body held low, then clambered down the bulkhead to the floor. Once there, it stood on its hind legs and raised itself, sniffing the air.
Instinct told it to be careful. It was a foolish rat that braved the open spaces with the Adversary about.
But things had changed of late. The terrible stench of their tormentor had faded from the vents and ducts and the deep places. The scourge of generations had departed, it seemed, and the rats grew bold. They sensed the balance of power in their world had shifted.
The rat ran out into the hold, stopped, sniffed around again. The chill air held the promise of great bounty. It could smell edible things inside some of those crates. The ducts were meagre hunting grounds, but here was the promised land they’d been denied for so long. It scuttled off, following the scent.
This one was only the first; there would be others, and more after them. The rats would come, and they’d feed, and they’d breed. The
Ketty Jay
would be theirs again.
A thumping of paws came quick from the shadows. The rat turned to flee back the way it had come, but the cat sensed its plan and intercepted it. Claws like blades plunged into its side. Fanged jaws snapped shut on its throat.
It was a foolish rat that braved the open spaces with the Adversary about.
The ugly mottled cat tore and gulped at the flesh, and licked the blood from her black and orange fur. She was not a big tom like Slag had been, but she was learning that these little rats were not beyond her. There were many of them, and that was good, for she was often hungry now.
She ate every morsel she could strip from the carcass, and left the remains where they lay. Then she padded away across the hold, back towards the little nest she’d made in a far dark corner. She went to sleep with the taste of the hunt still on her tongue, and the warm presence of new life quickening in her belly.
Also by Chris Wooding from Gollancz:
The Braided Path Omnibus
The Fade
TALES OF THE
KETTY JAY
Retribution Falls
The Black Lung Captain
The Iron Jackal
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Chris Wooding 2013
All rights reserved.
The right of Chris Wooding to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2013 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 09813 8
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