Tales of the Ketty Jay #01 - Retribution Falls Chris Wooding

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 2009
by Gollancz
An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

eISBN : 978 0 5750 8664 7

www.chriswooding.com
www.orionbooks.co.uk

This ebook produced by Jouve, France

One

Lawsen Macarde - A Question Of Probabilities - Frey’s Cutlass - New Horizons

The smuggler held the bullet between thumb and forefinger, studying it in the weak light of the store room. He smiled sourly.

‘Just imagine,’ he said. ‘Imagine what this feels like, going through your head.’

Grayther Crake didn’t want to imagine anything of the sort. He was trying not to throw up, having already disgraced himself once that morning. He glanced at the man next to him, hoping for some sign that he had a plan, some way to get them out of this. But Darian Frey’s face was hard, and showed nothing.

Both of them had their wrists tied together, backs against the damp and peeling wall. Three armed thugs ensured they stayed there.

The smuggler’s name was Lawsen Macarde. He was squat and grizzled, hair and skin greasy with a sheen of sweat and grime, features squashed across a face that was broad and deeply lined. Crake watched him slide the bullet into the empty drum of his revolver. He spun it, snapped it shut, then turned towards his audience.

‘Do you think it hurts?’ he mused. ‘Even for a moment? Or is it all over - bang! - in a fash?’

‘If you’re that curious, try it out on yourself,’ Frey suggested.

Macarde hit him in the gut, putting all of his considerable weight behind the punch. Frey doubled over with a grunt and almost went to his knees. He straightened with some effort until he was standing again.

‘Good point,’ he wheezed. ‘Well made.’

Macarde pressed the muzzle of the revolver against Crake’s forehead, and stared at Frey.

‘Count of three. You want to see your man’s brains all over the wall?’

Frey didn’t reply. Crake’s face was grey beneath his close-cropped blond beard. He stank of alcohol and sweat. His eyes flicked to the captain nervously.

‘One.’

Frey showed no signs of reacting.

‘I’m just a passenger!’ Crake said. ‘I’m not even part of his crew!’ His accent betrayed an aristocratic upbringing which wasn’t evident from his appearance. His hair was scruffy, his boots vomit-spattered, his greatcoat half-unbuttoned and hanging open. To top it off, he was near soiling himself with fear.

‘You have the ignition code for the Ketty Jay?’ Macarde asked him. ‘You know how to fire her up and get her flying?’

Crake swallowed and shook his head.

‘Then shut up. Two.’

‘Nobody flies the Ketty Jay but me, Macarde. I told you that,’ Frey said. His eyes flickered restlessly around the store room. Cloud-muffled sunlight drifted in through horizontal slits high up on one stone wall, illuminating rough-sewn hemp sacks, coils of rope, wicked-looking hooks that hung on chains from the ceiling. Chill shadows cut deep into the seamed faces of Macarde and his men, and the air smelled of damp and decay.

‘Three,’ said Macarde, and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Crake flinched and whimpered as the hammer fell on an empty chamber. After a moment, it sank in: he was still alive. He let out a shuddering breath as Macarde took the gun away, then cast a hateful glare at Frey.

Frey’s expression was blank. He was a different person to the man Crake knew the night before. That man had laughed as loud as Malvery and made fun of Pinn with the rest of them. He’d told stories that had them in stitches and drank until he passed out. That man, Crake had known for almost three months. That man, Crake might have called a friend.

Macarde studied the pistol theatrically. ‘Five chambers. One down. Think you’ll be lucky again?’ He put the muzzle back to Crake’s forehead.

‘Oh, please, no,’ Crake begged. ‘Please, please, no. Frey, tell him. Stop playing around and just tell him.’

‘One,’ said Macarde.

Crake stared at the stranger to his right, his eyes pleading. No doubt about it, it was the same man. There were the same wolfishly handsome features, the same unkempt black hair, the same lean frame beneath his long coat. But the spark in his eyes had gone. There was no sign of the ready, wicked smile that usually lurked in the corner of his mouth.

He wasn’t going to give in.

‘Two.’

‘Please,’ he whispered. But Frey just looked away.

‘Three.’

Macarde paused on the trigger, waiting for a last-moment intervention. It didn’t come.

Click.

Crake’s heart leaped hard enough to hurt. He let out a gasp. His mouth was sticky, his whole body was trembling and he desperately wanted to be sick.

You bastard, he thought. You rot-hearted bastard.

‘Didn’t think you had it in you, Frey,’ Macarde said, with a hint of admiration in his voice. He thrust the revolver back into a holster somewhere amidst the motley of battered jackets that he wore. ‘You’d let him die rather than give up the Ketty Jay? That’s cold.’

Frey shrugged. ‘He’s just a passenger.’ Crake swore at him under his breath.

Macarde paced around the store room while a rat-faced thug covered the prisoners with the point of a cutlass. The other two thugs stood in the shadows: an enormous shaven-headed bruiser and a droop-eyed man wearing a tatty knitted cap. One guarded the only exit, the other lounged against a barrel, idly examining a lever-action shotgun. There were a dozen more like them downstairs.

Crake clawed at his mind for some way to escape. In spite of the shock and the pounding in his head, he forced himself to be rational. He’d always prided himself on his discipline and self-control, which only made the humiliation of the last few moments harder to bear. He’d pictured himself displaying a little more dignity in the face of his own extinction.

Their hands were tied, and they’d been disarmed. Their pistols had been taken after they were found at the inn, snoring drunk at the table. Macarde had taken Frey’s beautiful cutlass - my cutlass, Crake thought bitterly - for his own. Now it hung tantalisingly from his belt. Crake noticed Frey watching it closely.

What of Malvery and Pinn? They’d evidently wandered off elsewhere in the night to continue their carousing, leaving their companions to sleep. It was just bad luck that Macarde had found them, tonight of all nights. Just a few more hours and they’d have been out of port and away. Instead they’d been dragged upstairs - pausing only for Crake to be sick on his own feet - and bundled into this dank store room where an anonymous and squalid death awaited them if Frey didn’t give up the ignition codes for his aircraft.

I could be dead, Crake thought. That son of a bitch didn’t do a thing to stop it.

‘Listen,’ said Macarde to Frey. ‘Let’s be businessmen about this. We go back, you and I. Worked together several times, haven’t we? And even though I came to expect a certain sloppiness from you over the years - late delivery, cargo that wasn’t quite what you promised, that sort of thing - you never flat-out screwed me. Not till now.’

‘What do you want me to say, Macarde? It wasn’t meant to end up this way.’

‘I don’t want to kill you, Frey,’ said Macarde in a tone that suggested the opposite. ‘I don’t even want to kill that milksop little pansy over there. I just want what’s mine. You owe me an aircraft. I’ll take the Ketty Jay.’

‘The Ketty Jay’s worth five of yours.’

‘Well, consider the difference as the price of me not cutting off your balls and stuffing them in your ears.’

‘That’s fair,’ conceded Frey.

‘That aerium you sold me was bad stuff. Admit it.’

‘What did you expect for that price?’

‘You told me it came straight from the refinery. What you sold me was so degraded it wouldn’t have lifted a biscuit, let alone twenty tons of aircraft.’

‘Sales patter. You know how it is.’

‘It must have been through the engines of every freebooter from here to the coast!’ Macarde growled. ‘I’d have got better quality stuff siphoning it off the wrecks in a junkyard!’

Crake gave Frey a fleeting look of guilt. ‘Actually,’ grinned Frey, ‘it’d have been about the same.’

Macarde was a stocky man, and overweight, but his punch came blindingly fast, snapping Frey’s head back so it cracked against the wall. Frey groaned and put his hands to his face. His fingertips came away bloody from a split lip.

‘Little less attitude will make this all go a lot smoother,’ Macarde advised.

‘Right,’ said Frey. ‘Now you listen. If there’s some way I can make this up to you, some job I can do, something I can steal, whatever you want . . . well, that’s one thing. But you will never get my craft, you hear? You can stuff whatever you like in my ears. The Ketty Jay is mine.’

‘I don’t think you’re in much of a position to negotiate,’ Macarde said.

‘Really? ’Cause the way I see it, the Ketty Jay is useless without the ignition code, and the only one who knows it is me. That puts me in a pretty strong position as long as I don’t tell you.’

Macarde made a terse gesture towards Droop-Eye. ‘Cut off his thumbs.’

Droop-Eye left his shotgun atop the barrel he’d been leaning on and drew a dagger.

‘Whoa, wait!’ said Frey quickly. ‘I’m talking compensation. I’m talking giving you more than the value of your craft. You cut off my thumbs and I can’t fly. Believe me, you do that and I take the code to my grave.’

‘I had five men on that craft,’ said Macarde, as Droop-Eye came over. ‘They were pulling up out of a canyon. I saw it. The pilot tried to get the lift and suddenly it just wasn’t there. Bad aerium, see? Couldn’t clear the lip of the canyon. Tore the belly off and the rest of it went up in flames. Five men dead. You going to compensate me for them, too?’

‘Listen, there’s got to be something you want.’ He motioned suddenly at Crake. ‘Here, I know! He’s got a gold tooth. Solid gold. Show them, Crake.’

Crake stared at the captain in disbelief.

‘I don’t want a gold tooth, Frey,’ said Macarde patiently. ‘Give me your thumbs.’

‘It’s a start!’ Frey cried. He glared hard and meaningfully at Crake. ‘Crake, why don’t you show them your gold tooth?’

‘Here, let us have a look,’ Rat said, leaning closer to Crake. ‘Show us a smile, you little nancy.’

Crake took a deep, steadying breath, and gave Rat his most dazzling grin. It was a picture-pose he’d perfected in response to a mortifying ferrotype taken by the family photographer. After that, he vowed he’d never be embarrassed by a picture again.

‘Hey! That’s not half bad,’ Rat commented, peering at his reflection in the shiny tooth. And Crake grinned, harder than he’d ever grinned in his life.

Droop-Eye pulled Frey away from the wall over to a set of cob-webbed shelves. He swept away a few empty jars with his arm, and then forced Frey’s bound hands down onto the shelf. Frey had balled his fists and was refusing to extend his thumbs. Droop-Eye hammered him in the kidney, but he still held fast.

‘What I’m saying, Macarde, is that we can both come out ahead,’ he argued through gritted teeth. ‘We’ll work off the debt, me and my crew.’

‘You’ll be halfway to New Vardia the second I take my eyes off you,’ Macarde replied.

‘What about collateral? What if I leave you one of the fighters? Pinn has a Skylance, that thing’s faster than greased owl shit. You ought to see it go!’

Droop-Eye drove a knee into his thigh, making him grunt, but he still wouldn’t extend his thumbs. The thug by the door smirked at his companion’s attempts to make Frey co-operate.

‘Here, listen!’ Rat shouted. Everyone stopped and turned to look at him, surprised by the volume of his voice. A strange expression crossed his face, as if he was puzzled to find himself the centre of attention. Then it disappeared beneath a dawning revelation.

‘Why don’t we let them go?’ he suggested.

Macarde gave him a reptilian glare. ‘What?’ he said slowly.

‘No, wait, hear me out,’ said Rat, with the attitude of one caught up in an idea so brilliant that it would require careful explanation to his benighted audience. ‘I mean, killing ’em won’t do no good to us. They don’t look like they’ve got a shillie to their name anyways. If we let ’em go, they could, you know, spread the good word and stuff: “That Lawsen Macarde is a reasonable man. The kind of man you can do business with.” ’

Macarde had been steadily reddening as Rat’s speech went on, and now his unshaven jowls were trembling with fury. Droop-Eye and Bruiser exchanged wary glances. Neither of them knew what had possessed their companion to pipe up with his opinion, but they both knew the inevitable outcome. Macarde’s hand twitched towards the hilt of Frey’s cutlass.

‘You should listen to the man,’ said Crake. ‘He talks a lot of sense.’

Macarde’s murderous gaze switched to Crake. Absurdly, Crake was still smiling. He flashed his toothy grin at Macarde now, looking for all the world like some oily salesman instead of a man facing his imminent demise.

But then Macarde noticed something. The anger drained from his face and he craned in to look a little closer.

‘That’s a nice tooth,’ he murmured.

Yes, keep looking, you ugly bag of piss, Crake thought. You just keep looking.

Crake directed every ounce of his willpower at the smuggler. Rat’s idea wasn’t so bad, when you thought about it. A show of generosity now could only increase Macarde’s standing in the eyes of his customers. They’d come flocking to him with their deals, offering the best cuts for the privilege of working with him. He could own this town!

But Macarde was smarter than Rat. The tooth only worked on the weak-minded. He was resisting; Crake could see it on his face. Even bewitched as he was by the tooth, he sensed that something was amiss.

A chill spread through Crake’s body, something icier and more insidious than simple fear. The tooth was draining him. Hungover and weak as he was, he couldn’t keep up the fight for long, and he’d already used his best efforts on Rat.

Give it up, he silently begged Macarde. Just give it up.

Then the smuggler blinked, and his gaze cleared. He stared at Crake, shocked. Crake’s grin faded slowly.

‘He’s a daemonist!’ Macarde cried, then pulled the pistol from his holster, put it to Crake’s head and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Macarde was as surprised as Crake was. He’d forgotten that he’d loaded his pistol with only a single bullet. There was an instant’s pause, then everything happened at once.

Frey’s cutlass flew out of Macarde’s belt, leaping ten feet across the room, past Droop-Eye and into the captain’s waiting hands. Droop-Eye’s final moments were spent staring in incomprehension as Frey drove the cutlass double-handed into his belly.

Macarde’s bewilderment at having his cutlass stolen by invisible hands gave Crake the time he needed to gather himself. He drove a knee hard into the fat man’s groin. Macarde’s eyes bulged and he staggered back a step, making a faint squealing noise like a distressed piglet.

His hands still bound, Crake wrestled the revolver from Macarde’s beefy fingers just as Rat shook off the effects of the tooth and drew his cutlass back for a thrust. Crake swung the gun about and squeezed the trigger. This time the hammer found the bullet. It discharged point-blank in Rat’s face, blowing a geyser of red mist from the back of his skull with a deafening bang. He tottered a few steps on his heels and collapsed onto a heap of rope.

Macarde was stumbling towards the door, unwittingly blocking Bruiser’s line of fire. As the last thug fought to get an angle, Frey dropped his cutlass, darted across the room and scooped up the lever-action shotgun that Droop-Eye had left on the barrel. Bruiser shoved his boss behind him to get a clear shot at Crake, and succeeded only in providing one for Frey, who unloaded the shotgun into his chest with a roar.

In seconds, it was over. Macarde had gone. They could hear him running along the landing outside, heading downstairs, shouting for his men. Frey shoved the shotgun into his belt and picked up his cutlass.

‘Hold out your hands,’ he said to Crake. Crake did so. The cutlass flickered, and his bonds were cut. He tossed the cutlass to Crake and held out his own hands.

‘Now do me.’

Crake weighed the weapon in his hands. To his ears, it still sang faintly with the harmonic resonance he’d used to bind the daemon into the blade. He considered what it would feel like to shove it into the captain’s guts.

‘We don’t have time, Crake,’ Frey said. ‘Hate me later.’

Crake was no swordsman, but he barely had to move his wrist and the cutlass did the rest. It chopped neatly through the gap between Frey’s hands, dividing the cord in two. He threw the cutlass back to Frey, walked over to Rat’s corpse and pulled the pistol from his holster.

Frey chambered a new round into the shotgun. ‘Ready?’

Crake made a sweeping gesture of sarcastic gallantry towards the door. Be my guest.

Beyond was a balcony that overlooked a dim bar-room, musty with smoke and spilled wine. It was empty at this hour of the morning, its tables still scattered with the debris of the previous night’s revelries. Tall shutters held off the pale daylight. Macarde was yelling somewhere below, raising the alarm.

Two men were racing up the stairs as Frey and Crake emerged. Macarde’s men, wielding pistols, intent on murder. They saw Frey and Crake an instant before the foremost thug slipped on Crake’s vomit-slick, which no one had thought to clear up. He crashed heavily onto the stairs and his companion tripped over him. Frey blasted them twice with his shotgun, shattering the wooden balusters in the process. They didn’t get up again.

Frey and Crake ran for a door at the far end of the balcony as four more men appeared on the bar-room floor. They flung the door open and darted through, accompanied by a storm of gunfire.

Beyond was a corridor. The walls were painted in dull, institution-green paint, flaking with age. Several doors in chipped frames led off the corridor: rooms for guests, all of whom had wisely stayed put.

Frey led the way along the corridor, which ended in a set of tall, shuttered windows. Without breaking stride, he unloaded the remainder of the shotgun’s shells into them. Glass smashed and the shutters blew from their hinges. Frey jumped through the gap that was left, and Crake, possessed of an unstoppable, fear-driven momentum, followed him.

The drop was a short one, ending in a steeply sloping, cobbled lane between tall, ramshackle houses. Overhead, a weak sun pushed through hazy layers of cloud.

Crake hit the ground awkwardly and went to his knees. Frey pulled him up. That familiar, wicked smile had appeared on his face again. A reminder of the man Crake had thought he knew.

‘I feel a sudden urge to be moving on,’ Frey said, as he dusted Crake down. ‘Open skies, new horizons, all of that.’

Crake looked up at the window they’d jumped from. The sounds of pursuit were growing louder. ‘I have the same feeling,’ he said, and they took to their heels.

Two

A New Recruit - Many Introductions - Jez Speaks Of Aircraft - The Captain’s Return

‘There she is,’ said Malvery, with a grand sweep of his arm. ‘The Ketty Jay.’

Jez ran a critical eye over the craft resting on the stone landing pad before them. A modified Ironclad, originally manufactured in the Wickfield workshops, unless she missed her guess. The Ketty Jay was an ugly, bulky thing, hunched like a vulture, with a blunt nose and two fat thrusters mounted high up on her flanks. There was a stubby tail assembly, the hump of a gun emplacement and wings that swept down and back. She looked like she couldn’t decide if she was a light cargo hauler or a heavy fighter, and so she wouldn’t be much good as either. One wing had been recently repaired, there was cloud-rime on the landing struts and she needed scrubbing down.

Jez wasn’t impressed. Malvery read her reaction at a glance and grinned: a huge grin, springing into place beneath his thick white walrus-moustache.

‘Ain’t the loveliest thing you’ll ever see, but the bitch does fly. Anyway, it’s what’s in the guts that counts, and I speak from experience. I’m a doctor, you know!’

He gave an uproarious laugh, holding his sides and throwing his head back. Jez couldn’t help a smile. His guffaw was infectious.

There was something immediately likeable about Malvery. It was hard to withstand the force of his good humour, and despite his large size he seemed unthreatening. A great, solid belly pushed out from his coat, barely covered by a faded pullover that was stained with the evidence of a large and messy appetite. His hair had receded to a white circlet around his ears, leaving him bald on top, and he wore small round glasses with green lenses.

‘What happened to your last navigator?’ she asked.

‘Found out he’d been selling off spare engine parts on the side. He navigated himself out the cargo door with the Cap’n’s toe up his arse.’ Malvery roared again, then, noticing Jez’s expression, he added, ‘Don’t worry, we were still on the ground. Not that the thieving little bastard didn’t deserve dropping in a volcano.’ He scratched his cheek. ‘Tell you the truth, we’ve had bad luck with navigators. Been through seven in the past year. They’re always ripping us off or disappearing in the night or getting themselves killed or some damn thing.’

Jez whistled. ‘You’re making this job sound awfully tempting.’

Malvery clapped her on the back. ‘Ah, it ain’t so bad. We’re a decent lot. Not like the cut-throat scum you might take on with otherwise. Pull your weight and keep up, you’ll be fine. You take a share of whatever we make, after maintenance or whatnot, and the Cap’n pays fair.’ He studied the Ketty Jay fondly, balled fists resting on his hips. ‘That’s about as much as you can ask for in this day and age, eh?’

‘Pretty much,’ said Jez. ‘So what are you lot into?’

Malvery’s look was unreadable behind his glasses.

‘I mean, cargo hauling, smuggling, passenger craft, what? Ever work for the Coalition?’

‘Not bloody likely!’ Malvery said. ‘The Cap’n would sooner gulp a pint of rat piss.’ He reddened suddenly. ‘Pardon the language.’

Jez waved it away. ‘Just tell me what I’m signing up for.’

Malvery harumphed. ‘We ain’t what you’d call a very professional lot, put it that way,’ he said. ‘Cap’n sometimes doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, to tell you the truth. Mostly we do black market stuff, smuggling here and there. Passenger transport: people who want to get somewhere they shouldn’t be going, and don’t want anyone finding out. And we’ve been known to try a bit of light piracy now and again when the opportunity comes along. I mean, the haulage companies sort of expect to lose one or two cargoes a month, they budget for it, so there’s no harm done.’ He made a vague gesture in the air. ‘We sort of do anything, really, if the price is right.’

Jez deliberated for a moment. Their operation was clearly a shambles, but that suited her well enough. They didn’t seem like types who would ask many questions, and she was lucky to find work at all in Scarwater, let alone something in her field of expertise. To keep moving was the important thing. Staying still too long was dangerous.

She held out her hand. ‘Alright. Let’s see how it goes.’

‘Fine decision! You won’t regret it. Much.’ Malvery enfolded her hand in thick, meaty fingers and shook it enthusiastically. Jez couldn’t help wondering how he managed to button his coat with fingers like that, let alone perform complex surgery.

‘You really a doctor?’ she asked.

‘Certified and bona fide!’ he declared, and she smelled rum on his breath.

They heard a thump from within the belly of the craft. Malvery wandered round to the Ketty Jay’s stern, and Jez followed. The cargo ramp was down. Inside, someone was rolling a heavy steel canister along the floor in the gloom. The angle prevented Jez from seeing anything more than a pair of long legs clad in thick trousers and boots.

‘Might as well introduce you,’ said Malvery. ‘Hey there! Silo! Say hello to the new navvie.’

The figure in the cargo hold stopped and squatted on his haunches, peering out at them. He was tall and narrow-hipped, but his upper body was hefty with muscle, a thin cotton shirt pulled tight across his shoulders and chest. Sharp eyes peered out from a narrow face with a beaked nose, and his head was shaven. His skin was a dark yellow-brown, the colour of umber.

He regarded Jez silently, then got to his feet and resumed his labour.

‘That’s Silo. Engineer. Man of few words, you could say, but he keeps us all in the sky. Don’t mind his manner, he’s like that with everyone.’

‘He’s a Murthian,’ Jez observed.

‘That’s right. You have been around.’

‘Never seen one outside of Samarla. I thought they were all slaves.’

‘So did I,’ said Malvery.

‘So he belongs to the Cap’n?’

Malvery chuckled. ‘No, no. Silo, he ain’t no slave. They’re friends of a sort, I suppose, though you wouldn’t know it sometimes. His story . . . well, that’s between him and the Cap’n. They ain’t said, and we ain’t asked.’ He steered Jez away. ‘Come on, let’s go meet our flyboys. The Cap’n and Crake ain’t about right now. I expect they’ll be back once their hangovers clear up.’

‘Crake?’

‘He’s a daemonist.’

‘You have a daemonist on board?’

Malvery shrugged. ‘That a problem?’

‘Not for me,’ Jez replied. ‘It’s just . . . well, you know how people are about daemonists.’

Malvery made a rasping noise. ‘You’ll find we ain’t a very judge-mental lot. None of us are in much of a position to throw stones.’

Jez thought about that, and then smiled.

‘You’re not in with those Awakener fellers, are you?’ Malvery asked suspiciously. ‘If so, you can toddle off right now.’

Jez imitated Malvery’s rasp. ‘Not likely.’

Malvery beamed and slapped her on the back hard enough to dislodge some vertebrae. ‘Good to hear.’

They walked out of the Ketty Jay’s shadow and across the landing pad. The Scarwater docks were half-empty, scattered with small to medium-sized craft. Delivery vessels and scavengers, mostly. The activity was concentrated at the far end, where a bulbous cargo barque was easing itself down. Crews were hustling to meet the newcomer. A stiff breeze carried the metallic tang of aerium gas across the docks as the barque vented its ballast tanks and lowered itself gingerly onto its landing struts.

The docks had been built on a wide ledge of land that projected out over the still, black lake which filled the bottom of the barren mountain valley. It was a wild and desolate place, but then Jez had seen many like it. Remote little ports, hidden away from the world, inaccessible by any means but the air. There were thousands of towns like Scarwater, existing beneath the notice of the Navy. Through them moved honest traders and smugglers alike.

It had started as a rest stop or a postal station, no doubt. A dot on the map, sheltered from the treacherous local winds, with a ready source of water nearby. Slowly it grew, spreading and scabbing as word filtered out. Opportunists arrived, spotting a niche. Those travellers would need a bar to quench their thirst, someone thought. Those drunkards would need a doctor to see to their injuries when they fell off a wall. And they’d need someone to cook them a good breakfast when they woke up. Most major professions in the cities were harshly regulated by the Guilds, but out here a man could be a carpenter, or a baker, or a craftbuilder, and be beholden to nobody but himself.

But where there was money to be made, there were criminals. A place like Scarwater didn’t take long to rot out from the inside. Jez had only been here a week, since leaving her last commission, but she’d seen enough to know how it would end up. Soon, the honest people would start to go elsewhere, driven out by the gangs, and those who were left would consume each other and move on. They’d leave a ghost town behind, like all the other ghost towns, haunted by abandoned dreams and lost possibilities.

To her left, Scarwater crawled up the stony hillside from the lake. Narrow lanes and winding stairways curved between simple rectangular buildings set in clusters wherever the land would take them. Aerial pipe networks cut across the streets in strict lines, steaming gently in the chill morning air, forming a scaffold for the jumble beneath them. Huge black mugger-birds gathered on them in squads, watchful for prey.

This isn’t the place for me, she thought. But then, where was?

Ahead of them on the landing strip were two small fighter craft: a Caybery Firecrow and a converted F-class Skylance. Malvery led her to the Skylance, the closer of the two. Leaning against its flank, smoking a roll-up cigarette and looking decidedly the worse for wear, was a man Jez guessed was the pilot.

‘Pinn!’ Malvery bellowed. The pilot winced. ‘Someone you should meet.’

Pinn crushed out the cigarette as they approached and extended a hand for Jez to shake. He was short, stout and swarthy, with a shapeless thatch of black hair and chubby cheeks that overwhelmed his eyes when he managed a nauseous smile of greeting. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, young for a pilot.

‘Artis Pinn, meet Jezibeth Kyte,’ said Malvery. ‘She’s coming on as navigator.’

‘Jez,’ she corrected. ‘Never liked Jezibeth.’

Pinn looked her up and down. ‘Be nice to have a woman on board,’ he said, his voice deep and toneless.

‘Pinn isn’t firing on all cylinders this morning, are you, boy?’ Malvery said, slapping him roughly on the shoulder. Pinn went a shade greyer and held up his hand to ward off any more blows.

‘I’m an inch from losing my breakfast here,’ he murmured. ‘Lay off.’ Malvery guffawed and Pinn cringed, pummelled by the doctor’s enormous mirth.

‘You modified this yourself?’ Jez asked, running a hand over the Skylance’s flank. The F-class was a racer, a single-seater built for speed and manoeuvrability. It had long, smoothly curved gull-wings. The cockpit was set far back along the fuselage, to make space for the enormous turbine in its nose that fed to a thruster at the tail end. This one had been bulked out with armour plate and fitted with underslung machine guns.

‘Yeah.’ Pinn roused a little. ‘You know aircraft?’

‘Grew up around them. My dad was a craftbuilder. I used to fly everything I could get my hands on.’ She nodded towards the Ketty Jay. ‘I bet I could even fly that piece of crap.’

Malvery snorted. ‘Good luck getting the Cap’n to let you.’

‘What was your favourite?’ Pinn asked her.

‘He built me an A-18 for my sixteenth birthday. I loved that little bird.’

‘So what happened? You crash it?’

‘She gave up the ghost five years back. I put her down in some little port up near Yortland and she just never took off again. I didn’t have two shillies to bash together for repairs, so I took on with a crew as a navvie. Thought I could do long-haul navigation easy enough; I mean, I’d been doing it for myself all that time on the short-haul. That first trip I got us lost; we wandered into Navy airspace and a couple of Windblades nearly blew us out of the sky. Had to learn pretty quick after that.’

‘I like her,’ Pinn said to Malvery.

‘Well, good,’ he replied. ‘Come on, let’s say hi to Harkins.’ They nodded their farewells.

‘He ain’t a bad lad,’ said Malvery as they walked over to the Firecrow. ‘Dumb as a rock, but he’s talented, no doubt about that. Flies like a maniac.’

Firecrows had once been the mainstay of the Navy, until they were succeeded by newer models. They were built for dogfighting, with two large prothane thrusters and machine guns incorporated into the wings. A round bubble of windglass was set into the blunt snout to give the pilot a better field of vision from the cockpit, which was set right up front, in contrast to the Skylance.

Harkins was in the Firecrow, running rapidly through diagnostics. He was gangly, unshaven and hangdog, wearing a leather pilot’s cap pushed far back. His dull brown hair was thin and receding from his high forehead. Flight goggles hung loosely around his neck. He moved in rapid jerks, like a mouse, tapping gauges and flicking switches with an expression of fierce concentration. As they approached, he burrowed down to examine something in the footwell.

‘Harkins!’ Malvery yelled at the top of his considerably loud voice. Harkins jumped and smashed his head noisily on the flight stick.

‘What? What?’ Harkins cried, popping up again with a panicked look in his eyes.

‘I want to introduce you to the new navvie,’ Malvery said, beaming. ‘Jez, this is Harkins.’

‘Oh,’ he said, taking off his hat and rubbing his crown. He looked down at Jez, then launched into a quick, nervous babble, his sentences running into each other in their haste to escape his mouth. ‘Hi. I was doing, you know, checking things and that. Have to keep her in good condition, don’t I? I mean, what’s a pilot without a plane, right? I guess you’re the same with maps. What’s a navigator without a map? Still a navigator, I suppose, it’s just that you wouldn’t have a map, but you know what I mean, don’t you?’ He pointed at himself. ‘Harkins. Pilot.’

Jez was a little stunned. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ was all she could say.

‘Is that the Cap’n?’ Harkins said suddenly, looking away across the docks. He pulled the flight goggles up and over his eyes. ‘It’s Crake and the Cap’n,’ he confirmed. His expression became alarmed again. ‘They’re, um, they’re running. Yep, running down the hill. Towards the docks. Very fast.’

Malvery looked skyward in despair. ‘Pinn!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Something’s up!’

Pinn sloped into view around his Skylance and groaned. ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘No, it bloody can’t. Tool up. Cap’n needs help.’ He looked at Jez. ‘Can you shoot?’

Jez nodded.

‘Grab yourself a gun. Welcome to the crew.’

Three

A Hasty Departure - Gunplay - One Is Wounded - A Terrifying Encounter

They were passing out weapons, gathered behind a stack of crates that had been piled up astern of the Ketty Jay, when Crake and the captain reached them.

‘Trouble?’ Malvery asked.

‘Must be that time of the week,’ Frey replied, then yelled for Silo.

‘Cap’n,’ came the baritone reply from the Murthian, who was squatting at the top of the cargo ramp.

‘You get the delivery?’

‘Yuh. Came an hour ago.’

‘How long till you can get her up?’

‘Aerium’s cycling through. Five minutes.’

‘Fast as you can.’

‘Yes, Cap’n.’ He disappeared into the hold.

Frey turned to the others. ‘Harkins. Pinn. Get yourselves airborne. We’ll meet you above the clouds.’

‘Is there gonna be a rumble?’ Pinn asked hopefully, rousing briefly from his hangover. Harkins was already halfway to his aircraft by the time he finished the sentence.

‘Get out of here!’ Frey barked at him. Pinn mumbled something sour under his breath, stuffed his pistol into his belt and headed for the Skylance, oozing resentment at being cheated of a fight.

‘Macarde’s on his way,’ said Frey, as Malvery passed him a box of bullets. ‘Bringing a gang with him.’

‘We’re low on ammo,’ Malvery murmured. ‘Make ’em count.’

‘Don’t waste too many on Crake, then,’ Frey said, loading the lever-action shotgun he’d taken from Droop-Eye. ‘He couldn’t hit the side of a frigate if he was standing next to it.’

‘Right-o, Cap’n,’ said Malvery, giving Crake a generous handful anyway. Crake didn’t rise to the jibe. He looked about ready to keel over from the run.

Frey nodded at Jez. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Jez. New navvie,’ Malvery said with the tone of someone who’d got tired of introducing the same person over and over.

Frey gave her a cursory appraisal. She was small and slight, which was good, because it meant she wouldn’t take up too much space and would hopefully have an equally small appetite. Her hair was tied in a simple ponytail which, along with her unflatteringly practical clothes, suggested a certain efficiency. Her features were petite and appealing but she was rather plain, boyish and very pale. That was also good. An overly attractive woman was fatal on a craft full of men. They were distracting and tended to substitute charm and flirtatiousness for doing any actual work. Besides, Frey would feel obliged to sleep with her, and that never worked out well.

He nodded at Malvery. She’d do.

‘So who’s Macarde, then?’ Jez asked, chambering bullets as she spoke. When they looked at her, she shrugged and said, ‘I just like to know who I’m shooting.’

‘The story, in a nutshell,’ said Malvery. ‘We sold the local crime lord twelve canisters of degraded aerium at cut price rates so we could raise the money to buy three canisters of the real stuff, since we barely had enough to get off the ground ourselves.’

‘Problem is, our contact let us down,’ said Frey, settling into position behind the crates and sighting along his shotgun. ‘His delivery came late, which meant he couldn’t get us the merchandise on time, which meant we were stuck in port just long enough for one of Macarde’s bumble-butt pilots to fly into a wall.’

‘Hence the need for a swift departure,’ said Malvery. ‘Flawless plans like this are our stock-in-trade. Still want to sign on?’

Jez primed her rifle with a satisfying crunch of metal. ‘I was tired of this town anyway.’

The four of them took up position behind the crates, looking out at the approach road to the docks. The promontory was accessed by way of a wide, cobbled thoroughfare that ran between a group of tumbledown warehouses. The dockers who worked there were moving aside as if pushed by a bow wave, driven to cover by the sight of Lawsen Macarde and twenty gun-wielding thugs storming down the street.

‘That’ll be us outnumbered and outgunned, then,’ Malvery murmured. He looked back to where the Skylance and the Firecrow were rising from the ground, aerium engines throbbing as their electromagnets turned refined aerium into ultralight gas to fill their ballast tanks. Separate, prothane-fuelled engines, which powered the thrusters, were warming up with an ascending whine.

‘Where’s Bess, anyway?’ Frey asked Crake.

‘Do I look like I’ve got her in my pocket?’ he replied irritably.

‘Could do with some help right now.’

‘She’ll be cranky if I have to wake her up.’

‘Cranky is how I want her.’

Crake pulled out a small brass whistle that hung on a chain around his neck, and blew it. It made no sound at all. Frey was about to offer a smart comment concerning Crake’s lack of lung power when a bullet smashed into a crate near his head, splintering through the wood. He swore and ducked reflexively.

Crake replaced the whistle, then leaned out of cover and unleashed a wild salvo of pistol fire. His targets yelled and pointed fearfully, then scattered for cover, throwing themselves behind sacks and barrels that were waiting to be loaded into the warehouses.

‘Ha!’ Crake cried in triumph. ‘It seems they don’t doubt my accuracy with a pistol.’

An instant later his hair was blown forward as Pinn’s Skylance tore through the air mere feet above him, machine guns raking the street. Barrels were smashed to matchwood and several men jerked and howled as they were punched with bullets. The Skylance shrieked up the street and then twisted to vertical, arrowing into the clouds and away.

‘Yeah,’ said Frey, deadpan. ‘You’re pretty scary with that thing.’

The dockers had all fled inside by now, leaving the way clear for the combatants. Macarde’s men were at the edge of the landing pad, fifty feet away. Between them was a small, two-man flyer and too much cover for Frey’s liking. The smugglers had been shocked by Pinn’s assault, but they were regrouping swiftly.

Frey and Jez began laying down fire, making them scuttle. One smuggler went down, shot in the leg. Another unwisely took shelter behind a large but empty packing crate. Malvery hefted a double-barrelled shotgun, aimed, and blew a ragged hole through the crate and the man behind it.

‘Silo! How we doing?’ Frey called, but the mechanic couldn’t hear him over the return fire from the smugglers.

‘Darian Frey!’ Macarde called, from his hiding place behind a stack of aircraft tyres. ‘You’re a dead man!’

‘Threats,’ Frey murmured. ‘Honestly, what’s the point?’

‘They’re trying to flank us!’ said Jez. She fired at one of the smugglers, who was scampering from behind a pile of broken hydraulic parts. The bullet cut through the sleeve of his shirt, missing him by a hair. He froze mid-scamper and fled back into hiding.

‘Cheap kind of tactic, if you ask me,’ Crake commented, having recovered sufficient breath for a spot of nervous bravado. He knocked the shells from the drum of his revolver and slotted five new ones in. ‘The kind of sloppy, unoriginal thinking you come to expect from these mid-level smuggler types.’

Jez peered round the side of the crates, looking for the man she’d shot at. Instead she saw another, making his way from cover to cover, attempting to get an angle on them. He disappeared before she could draw a bead on him.

‘Can I get a bit less wit and a bit more keeping your bloody eyes open for these sons of bitches coming round the side?’ she snapped.

‘She’s no shrinking violet, I’ll give her that,’ Frey commented to Malvery.

‘The girl’s gonna fit right in,’ the doctor agreed.

More of Macarde’s gang had moved up and taken shelter behind the two-man flyer. Crake was peppering it with bullets.

‘Ammo!’ Malvery reminded him.

Frey ducked away as a salvo of gunfire blasted chips from the stone floor and splintered the wood of the crates. Malvery answered with his shotgun, loudly enough to discourage any more, then dropped back to reload.

Jez stuck her head out again, concerned that she’d lost sight of the men who were trying to flank them. Despite her warning, her companions were still preoccupied with taking pot-shots at the smugglers approaching from the front.

A flash of movement: there was another one! A third man, edging into position to shoot from the side, where their barricade of crates would be useless.

‘Three of them over here!’ she cried.

‘We’re a little busy at the moment,’ Frey replied patiently.

‘You’ll be busy picking a bullet out of your ear if you don’t—’ she began, but then she got shot.

It was a white blaze of pain, knocking the wind from her and blasting her senses. Like being hit by a piston. The impact threw her backwards, into Crake, who half-caught her as she fell.

‘She’s hit!’ he cried.

‘Already?’ Frey replied. ‘Damn, they usually last longer than that. Malvery, take a look.’

The doctor blasted off two shots to keep the smugglers’ heads down, then knelt next to Jez. Her already unhealthy pallor had whitened a shade further. Dark red blood was soaking through her jacket from her shoulder. ‘Ah, girl, come on,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t be dying or anything.’

‘I’m alright, Doc,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘I’m alright.’

‘Just you stay still.’

‘Haven’t got time to stay still,’ she replied, struggling to her feet, clutching her shoulder. ‘I told you they were coming round the side! Where’s the one who . . . ?’ She trailed off as she caught sight of something behind them, coming down the cargo ramp, and her face went slack. ‘What is that?’

Malvery turned and looked. ‘That? That’s Bess.’

Eight feet tall and five broad, a half-ton armoured monstrosity loomed out of the darkness into the light of the morning. There was nothing about her to identify her as female. Her torso and limbs were slabbed with moulded plates of tarnished metal, with ragged chain mail weave beneath. She stood in a hunch, the humped ridge of her back rising higher than her enormous shoulders. Her face was a circular grille, a criss-cross of thick bars like the gate of a drain. All that could be seen behind it were two sharp glimmers: the creature’s eyes.

Jez caught her breath. A golem. She’d only heard of such things.

A low growl sounded from within the creature, hollow and resonant. Then she came down the ramp, her massive boots pounding the floor as she accelerated. Cries of alarm and dismay rose from the smugglers. She jumped off the side of the ramp and landed with a rattling boom that made the ground tremble. One gloved hand scooped up a barrel that would have herniated the average human, and flung it at a smuggler who was hiding behind a pile of crates. It smashed through the crates and crushed the man behind, burying him under an avalanche of broken wood.

‘Well, she’s cranky, alright,’ said Frey. ‘Good old Bess.’

The golem tore into the smugglers who had been sneaking round the flanks, a roaring tower of fury. Bullets glanced from her armour, leaving only scratches and small dents. One of the smugglers, panicking, made a break from cover. She seized him by the throat with a loud crack and then flung his limp corpse at his companions.

Another man tried to race past her while her back was turned, but she was quicker than her bulk suggested. She lunged after him, grabbing his arm with massive fingers. Bone splintered in the force of her grip. Her victim’s brief shrieks were cut short as she tore the arm from its socket and clubbed him across the face with it, hard enough to knock him dead.

The remainder of Macarde’s men suddenly lost their taste for the fight. They turned tail and ran.

‘What are you doing?’ Macarde screamed at them, from his hiding place near the rear of the conflict. ‘Get your filthy yellow arses back there and shoot that thing!’

Bess swung around and fixed her attention on him, a deep rattling sound coming from her chest. He swallowed hard.

‘Don’t ever come back here, Frey, you hear me?’ he called, backing off a few steps as he did so. ‘You ever come back, you’re dead! You hear me? Dead! I’ll rip out your eyes, Frey!’

His parting shot was barely audible, since he was bolting away as he delivered it. Soon he had disappeared, chasing his men back into the tangled lanes of Scarwater.

‘Well,’ said Frey. ‘That’s that.’

‘She up and ready, Cap’n!’ Silo hollered from the top of the cargo ramp.

‘Exquisite timing, as always,’ Frey replied. ‘Malvery, how’s the new recruit?’

‘I’m okay,’ Jez said. ‘It went right through.’

Malvery looked relieved. ‘So you won’t need anything taking out, then. Just a little disinfectant, a bandage, and you’ll be right.’

Jez gave him an odd look. ‘I suppose so.’

‘She’s a tough little mite, Cap’n,’ Malvery declared with a tinge of pride in his voice, as if her courage was some doing of his.

‘Next time, try not to get shot,’ Frey advised her.

‘I wouldn’t have been shot if you’d bloody listened to me.’

Frey rolled his eyes. ‘Doc, take her to the infirmary.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Jez protested.

‘You just had a bullet put through your shoulder!’ Frey cried.

‘It’ll heal.’

‘Will you two just get on that damn aircraft?’ Frey said. ‘Crake! Bring Bess. We’re leaving ten minutes ago!’

Frey followed Malvery and Jez up the ramp and into the Ketty Jay. Once they were out of sight, Crake stepped gingerly through the wreckage and laid a hand on the golem’s arm. She turned towards him with a quiet rustle of chain mail and leather. He reached up and stroked the side of her face-grille, tenderness in his gaze.

‘Well done, Bess,’ he murmured. ‘That’s my girl.’

Four

A Pilot’s Life - Crake Is Listless - Malvery Prescribes A Drink

There were very few moments in Jandrew Harkins’ life when he could be said to be truly relaxed. Even in his sleep he’d jitter and writhe, tormented by dreams of the wars or, occasionally, dreams of suffocation brought on by Slag, the Ketty Jay’s cat, who had a malicious habit of using his face as a bed.

But here, nestled in the cramped cockpit of a Firecrow with the furnace-roar of prothane thrusters in his ears, here was peace.

It was a calm day in the light of a sharp autumn sun. They were heading north, following the line of the Hookhollow Mountains. The Ketty Jay was above him and half a mile to starboard. Pinn’s Skylance droned alongside. There was nothing else in the sky except a Navy frigate lumbering across the horizon to the west, and a freighter out of Aulenfay, surfacing from the sea of cloud that had submerged all but the highest peaks. To the east it was possible to see the steep wall of the Eastern Plateau, tracing the edge of the Hookhollows. Further south, the cloud was murky with volcanic ash, drifting towards the Blackendraft flats.

He looked up, through the windglass of his cockpit canopy. The sky was a perfect, clear, deep blue. Never ending.

Harkins sighed happily. He checked his gauges, flexed his gloved hand on the control stick and rolled his shoulders. Outside this tight metal womb, the world was strange. People were strange. Men were frighteningly unpredictable and women more so, full of strange insinuations and cloaked hunger. Loud noises made him jump; crowds made him claustrophobic; smart people made him feel stupid.

But the cockpit of a Caybery Firecrow was his sanctuary, and had been for twenty years. No awkwardness or embarrassment could touch him while he was encased in this armour. Nobody laughed at him here. The craft was his mute servant, and he, for once, was master.

He watched the distant Navy frigate for a time, remembering. Once, as a younger man, he’d travelled in craft like that. Waiting for the call to clamber into his Firecrow and burst out into the sky. He remembered with fondness the pilots he’d trained with. He’d never been popular, but he’d been accepted. Part of the team. Those were good days.

But the good days had ended when the Aerium Wars began. Five years fighting the Sammies. Five years when every sortie could be the one you never came back from. Five years of nerve-shredding dogfights, during which he was downed three times. He survived. Many of his friends weren’t so fortunate.

Then there was the peace, although the term was relative. Instead of Sammies the Navy were after the pirates and freebooters who had prospered during the war, running a black market economy. Harkins fought the smugglers in his own lands. The enemy wasn’t so well equipped but they were more desperate, more savage. Turf wars became grudge matches and things got even uglier.

Then, unbelievably, came the Second Aerium War, a mere four years after the first, and Harkins was back fighting alongside the Thacians against the Sammies and their subjects. After all they’d done the first time, all the lives that were lost, it was the politicians who let them down. Little had been done to defang the Samarlan threat, and the enemy came back with twice the vigour.

It was a short and dirty conflict. People were demoralised and tired on all sides. By the end - an abrupt and unsatisfying truce that left everyone but the Sammies feeling cheated - Harkins was out of it. He’d had too many near misses, lucked out a little too often, seen death’s face more than any man should have to. He was a trembling shell. They discharged him two weeks before the end of the war, after fourteen years in the service. The meagre pension they gave him was all the Navy could afford after such a ruinous decade.

Those years were the worst years of all.

Harkins had come to realise that the world changed fast these days, and it wasn’t kind to those who weren’t adaptable. He had no skills other than those he’d learned as a fighter pilot, and nobody wanted a pilot without a plane. A bleak, grey time followed, working in factories, doing odd jobs, picking up a pittance. Scraping a living.

It wasn’t Navy life that he missed, with its discipline and structure. It wasn’t the camaraderie - that had soured after enough of his friends had died. It was the loss of the Firecrow that truly ached.

Though he’d flown almost a dozen different Firecrows, with minor variations and improvements as time went on, they were all the same in his mind. The sound of the thrusters, the throb of the aerium engines pumping gas into the ballast tanks, the enclosing, unyielding hardness of the cockpit. The Firecrow had been the setting for all his glories and all his tragedies. It had carried him into the wondrous sky, it had seen him through the most desperate dogfights, and occasionally it had failed him when it had no more to give. Everything truly important that had ever happened in his life, the moments of purest joy and sheer, naked terror, had happened inside a Firecrow.

Then in his darkest hour, there came a light. It was almost enough to make him believe in the Allsoul and the incomprehensible jabber of the Awakeners. Almost, but not quite.

His overseer at the factory knew about Harkins’ past as a pilot for the Coalition Navy. It was all Harkins talked about, when he talked at all. So when the overseer met a man in a bar who was selling a Firecrow, he mentioned it to Harkins.

That was how Harkins met Darian Frey, who had won a Caybery Firecrow on an improbably lucky hand of Rake and now had no idea what to do with it. Harkins had barely enough money to keep a roof over his head, but he went to Frey to beg. He’d have sold his soul if it got him back into the cockpit. Frey didn’t think his soul was worth much, so he suggested a deal instead.

Harkins would fly the Firecrow on his behalf. The pay would be lousy, the life unpredictable, probably dangerous and usually illegal. Harkins would do exactly as he said, and if he didn’t, Frey would take his craft back.

Harkins had agreed before Frey had even finished laying out the terms. The same day, he left port as an outflyer for the Ketty Jay. It was the happiest day of his life.

It had been a long journey from that Navy frigate to here, flying over the Hookhollow Mountains under Darian Frey. He’d never again have the kind of steel in his spine he had as a young pilot. He’d never have the obscene courage of Pinn, who laughed at death because he was too dim to comprehend it. But he’d tasted what life was like trapped on the ground, unable to rise above the clouds to the sun. He was never going back to that.

He glanced around apprehensively, as if someone, somewhere might be watching him. Then he settled back into the hard seat of the Firecrow and allowed himself a broad, contented smile.

For Crake, there was no such contentment. Listless, he wandered the tight confines of the Ketty Jay. There was a strange void in his belly, as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He drifted about, a spectre of bewildered sadness.

At first he’d confined himself to the near-vacant cargo hold, until the space began to oppress him and his mood started to make Bess uneasy. After that he went to the mess and drank a few mugs of strong coffee while sitting at the small communal table. But the mess felt bleak with no one to share it with.

So he climbed up the ladder from the mess to the passageway that linked the cockpit at the fore of the craft to engineering in the aft. In-between were several rooms that the crew used as quarters, their sliding doors stained with ancient, oily marks. Electric lights cast a dim light on the grimy metal walls.

He thought about going up to the cockpit to have a look at the sky, but he couldn’t face Frey right now. He considered going to his quarters, perhaps to read, but that was unappealing too. Finally he remembered that their new recruit had managed to get herself shot, and decided it would be the decent thing to go and enquire after her health. With that in mind, he walked down the passageway to Malvery’s infirmary.

The door was open when he got there, and Malvery had his feet up, a mug of rum in his hands. It was a tiny, squalid and unsanitary little chamber. The furniture comprised little more than a cheap dresser bolted to the wall, a washbasin, a pair of wooden chairs and a surgical table. The dresser was probably intended for plates and cutlery, but it had found new employment in the display of all manner of unpleasant-looking surgical instruments. They were all highly polished - the only clean things in the room - and they looked like they’d never been used.

Malvery hauled his feet off the chair where they were resting, and shoved it towards Crake. Then he poured a stiff measure of rum into another mug that sat on the dresser. Crake obligingly sat down and took the proffered mug.

‘Where’s the new girl?’ he asked.

‘Up in the cockpit. Navigating.’

‘Didn’t she just get shot?’

‘You wouldn’t think so, the way she’s acting,’ Malvery said. ‘Damnedest thing. When she finally let me have a look at her, the bleeding had already stopped. Bullet went right through, like she said.’ He beamed. ‘All I had to do was swab it up with some antiseptic and slap on a patch. Then she got up and told me she had a job to do.’

‘You were right, she is tough.’

‘She’s lucky, is what she is. Can’t believe it didn’t do more damage.’

Crake took a swig of rum. It was delightfully rough stuff, muscling its way to his brain where it set to work demolishing his finer mental functions.

Malvery adjusted his round, green-tinted glasses and harumphed. ‘Out with it, then.’

Crake drained his mug and held it out for a refill. He thought for a moment. There was no way to express the shock, the betrayal, the resentment he felt; not in a way that Malvery would truly understand. So he simply said: ‘He was going to let me die.’

He told Malvery what had happened after he and Frey were captured. It was an effort to keep everything factual and objective, but he did his best. Clarity was important. Emotional outbursts went against his nature.

When he’d finished, Malvery poured himself another shot and said, ‘Well.’

Crake found his comment somewhat unsatisfying. When it became clear the doctor wasn’t going to elaborate, he said, ‘He let Macarde spin the barrel, put it to my forehead and pull the trigger. Twice!’

‘You were lucky. Head wounds like that can be nasty.’

‘Oh, spit and blood!’ Crake cried. ‘Forget it.’

‘Now that’s good advice,’ Malvery said, tipping his mug at his companion. He hunkered forward in his chair. ‘I like you, Crake. You’re a good one. But this ain’t your world you’re living in any more.’

‘You don’t know a thing about my world!’ Crake protested.

‘Don’t think so?’ He swept out a hand to indicate the room. ‘Time was I wouldn’t set foot in a place like this. I used to be Guild approved. Worked in Thesk. Earned more in a month than this little operation makes in a year.’

Crake eyed him uncertainly, trying to imagine this enormous, battered old drunkard visiting the elegant dwellings of the aristocracy. He couldn’t.

‘This ain’t no family, Crake,’ Malvery went on. ‘Every man is firmly and decidedly for himself. You’re a smart feller; you knew the risks when you threw your lot in with us. What makes you think he’d give up his craft in exchange for you?’

‘Because . . .’ Crake began, and then realised he’d nothing to say. Because it would have been the right thing to do. He’d spare himself Malvery’s laughter.

‘Look,’ Malvery said, more gently. ‘Don’t let the Cap’n fool you. He’s got a way with people, when he has a mind to try. But it’s not here nor there to him if you live or die. Or me, for that matter, or anyone else on board. I wonder if he even bothers about himself. The only thing he cares about is the Ketty Jay. Now if you think that’s heartless, then you ain’t seen the half of what’s out there. The Cap’n’s a good ’un. Better than most. You just got to know how he is.’

Crake didn’t have an answer to that. He didn’t want to say something childishly bitter. Already he felt faintly embarrassed at bringing it up.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be here.’

‘Hey now, I didn’t say that !’ Malvery grinned. ‘Just saying, you got to realise not everyone thinks like you. Hard lesson, but worth it.’

Crake said nothing and sipped his rum. His sad mood was turning black. Perhaps he should just give it up. Get off at the next port, turn his back on all this. It had been six months. Six months of moving from place to place, living under an assumed name, muddying his traces so nobody could find him. At first he’d lived like a rich hobo, haunting shabby hotels all over Vardia, his days and nights spent in terror or drunken grief. It was three months before the money began to run short and he collected himself a little. That was when he found Frey, and the Ketty Jay.

Surely the trail had gone cold by now?

‘You’re not really thinking of packing it in, are you?’ Malvery prompted, turning serious again.

Crake sighed. ‘I don’t know if I can stay. Not after that.’

‘Bit daft if you leave now. The way I understand it, you paid passage for the whole year with that cutlass.’

Crake shrugged, morose. Malvery shoved him companionably with his boot, almost making him tip off his chair.

‘Where you gonna go, eh?’ he said. ‘You belong here.’

‘I belong here?’

‘Of course you do!’ Malvery bellowed. ‘Look at us! We’re not smugglers or pirates. We’re not a crew! The Cap’n’s only the cap’n ’cause he owns the aircraft; I wouldn’t trust him to lead a bear to honey. None of us here signed on for adventure or riches, ’cause sure as spit there’s little enough of either.’ He gave Crake a conspiritorial wink. ‘But mark me, ain’t one of us that’s not running from something, you included. I’ll bet my last swig of rum on that.’ He swigged the last of his rum, just to be safe, then added, ‘That’s why you belong here. ’Cause you’re one of us.’

Crake couldn’t help a smile at the cheap feeling of camaraderie he got from that. Still, Malvery was right. Where would he go? What would he do? He was treading water because he didn’t know which direction to swim in. And until he did, the Ketty Jay was as good a place as any to hide from the sharks.

‘I just . . .’ he said. ‘It’s just . . . I thought he was my friend.’

‘He is your friend. Kind of. Just depends on your definition, really. I had lots of friends, back in the day, but most of ’em wouldn’t have thrown me a shillie if I was starving.’ He opened a drawer in the dresser and pulled out a bottle of clear liquid. ‘Rum’s done. Have a suck on this.’

‘What is it?’ Crake asked, holding out his mug. He was already pleasantly fogged and long past the point of being capable of refusing.

‘I use it to swab wounds,’ Malvery said.

‘I suppose this is a medicinal-grade kind of conversation,’ Crake said. Malvery blasted him with a hurricane of laughter, loud enough to make him wince.

‘That it is, that it is,’ he said, raising his glasses to wipe a teary eye.

‘So why are you here?’ Crake asked. ‘Guild-approved doctor, big job in the city, earning a fortune. Why the Ketty Jay?’

Malvery’s mood faltered visibly, a flicker of pain crossing his face. He looked down into his mug.

‘Let’s just say I’m exactly where I deserve to be,’ he said. Then he rallied with a flourish, lifting his mug for a toast.

‘To friends!’ he declared. ‘In whatever form they come, and howsoever we choose to define them.’

‘Friends,’ said Crake, and they drank.

Five

Flying In The Dark - Pinn And The Whores - A Proposition Is Made

Night had fallen by the time they arrived at Marklin’s Reach. The decrepit port crouched in the sharp folds of the Hookhollows, a speckle of electric lights in the darkness. Rain pounded down from a slow-rolling ceiling of cloud, its underside illuminated by the pale glow of the town. A gnawing wind swept across the mountaintops.

The Ketty Jay sank out of the clouds, four powerful lights shining from her belly. Her outflyers hung close to her wings as she descended towards a crowded landing pad. Beam lamps swivelled to track her from below; others picked out an empty spot on the pad.

Frey sat in the pilot seat of the Ketty Jay’s cockpit, his eyes moving rapidly between the brass-and-chrome dials and gauges. Jez was standing with one hand resting on his chair back, looking out at the clutter of barques, freighters, fighters and privateer craft occupying the wide square of flat ground on the edge of the town.

‘Busy night,’ she murmured.

‘Yeah,’ said Frey, distracted. Landing in foul weather at night was one of his least favourite things.

He watched the aerium levels carefully, venting a little and adding a little, letting the Ketty Jay drift earthward while he concentrated on fighting the crosswinds that bullied him from either side. The bulky craft jerked and plunged as she was shoved this way and that. He swore under his breath and let a little more gas from the trim tanks. The Ketty Jay was getting over-heavy now, dropping faster than he was comfortable with, but he needed the extra weight to stabilise.

‘Hang on to something,’ he murmured. ‘Gonna be a little rough.’

The Ketty Jay had picked up speed now and was coming in far too fast. Frey counted in his head with one eye on the altimeter, then with a flurry of pedals and levers he wrenched the thrusters into full reverse, opened the air brakes and boosted the aerium engines to maximum. The craft groaned as its forward momentum was cancelled and its descent arrested by the flood of ultralight gas into its ballast tanks. It slowed hard above the space that had been marked out for her, next to the huge metal flank of a four-storey freighter. Frey dumped the gas from the tanks and she dropped neatly into the vacant spot, landing with a heavy thump on her skids.

He sank back in the chair and let a slow breath of relief escape him. Jez patted him on the shoulder.

‘Anyone would think you were worried for a moment there, Cap’n,’ she said.

Water splattered in puddles on the landing pad as the crew assembled at the foot of the Ketty Jay’s cargo ramp, wrapped in slickers and stamping their feet.

‘Where’s Malvery and Crake?’ Frey asked.

Silo thumbed at the ramp, where a slurred duet could be faintly heard from the depths of the craft.

‘Hey, I know that one!’ Pinn said, and began to sing along, off-key, until he was silenced by a glare from Silo.

‘What are we doing here, Cap’n?’ Jez asked. The others were hugging themselves or stuffing their hands in their pockets, but she seemed unperturbed by the icy wind.

‘There’s a man I have to see. A whispermonger, name of Xandian Quail. There shouldn’t be any trouble, but that’s usually when there’s the most trouble. Harkins, Pinn, Jez, grab your guns and come with me. Silo, you take care of the docking permits, watch the aircraft and all that.’ The tall Murthian nodded solemnly.

‘Think I might need to do some diagnostics,’ blurted Harkins suddenly. ‘Check out the Firecrow, you know? She was all tick-tick-tick on the port side, don’t know what it was, best check it out, probably, if you know what I mean. Don’t want to fall out of the sky, you know, zoooooom, crash, haha. That wouldn’t be much good to anyone, now would it? Me dead, I mean. Who’d fly it then? Well, I suppose there’d be nothing to fly anyway if I crashed it. So all round it’d be best if I just ran my eye over the internals, make sure everything’s ship-shape, spickety-span.’

Frey gave him a look. He squirmed. It was transparently obvious that the thought of a gunfight terrified him.

‘Diagnostics,’ he said, his voice flat. Harkins nodded eagerly. ‘Fine, stay.’

The pilot’s face split in a huge grin, revealing a set of uneven and lightly browned teeth. ‘Thank you, Cap’n!’

Frey surveyed the rest of his crew. ‘What are we all standing around for?’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘Get to it!’

They hurried through the drenched streets of Marklin’s Reach. The thoroughfares had become rivers of mud, running past the raised wooden porches of the shops and houses. Overhead, strings of electric light bulbs fizzed and flickered as they were thrown about by the wind. Ragged children peered from lean-to shacks and alleyways where they sheltered. Water ramped off awnings and gurgled down gutters, the racket all but drowning out the clattering hum of generators. The air was thick with the smell of petrol, cooking food, and the clean, cold scent of new rain.

‘Couldn’t we go see this guy tomorrow instead?’ Pinn complained. ‘I’d be dryer underwater!’

Frey ignored him. They were already cutting it fine. Being held up in Scarwater had put them behind schedule. Quail had been clear in the letter: get here before the end of Howl’s Batten, or the offer would go dead. Frey had been lazy about picking up his mail, so he hadn’t got the message for some time. With one thing and another, it was now the last day of the month of Howl’s Batten, and Frey didn’t have time to delay any longer.

‘Gonna end up with pneumonia, that’s what’s gonna happen,’ Pinn was grumbling. ‘You try flying when your cockpit’s waist-deep in wet snot.’

Xandian Quail lived in a fortified compound set in a tumbledown cluster of alleys. His house hulked in the darkness, square and austere, its tall, narrow windows aglow. The grinding poverty experienced by the town’s denizens was shut out with high walls and stout gates.

‘I’m Darian Frey!’ Frey yelled over the noise of the downpour. The guards on the other side of the gate seemed nonplussed. ‘Darian Frey! Quail’s expecting me! At least, he bloody well better be!’

One of the guards scampered over to the house, holding the hood of his slicker. A few moments later he was back and indicated to his companion that he should let them in.

They were escorted beneath the stone porch, where another guard - this one wearing a waistcoat and trousers and sporting a pair of pistols - opened the main door of the house. He had a long face and a patchy black beard. Frey recognised him vaguely from previous visits. His name was Codge.

‘Guns,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘And don’t keep any back. You’ll make me real upset if you do.’

Frey hesitated. He didn’t like the idea of going into a situation like this without firepower. He couldn’t think of any reason for Quail to want him dead, but that did little to ease his mind.

It was the mystery that unnerved him. Quail had given no details in his letter. He’d only said that he had a proposition for Frey, for Frey in particular, and that it might make him very rich. That in itself was enough to make him suspicious. It also made him curious.

I just have to hear him out, Frey thought to himself. Anyway, they were here now, and he didn’t much fancy tramping back to the Ketty Jay until he’d warmed up a bit.

He motioned with his head to the others. Hand ’em over.

Once he’d collected their weapons, Codge stepped out of the way and let them into the entrance hall, where they stood dripping. Three more armed guards lounged about in the doorways, exuding an attitude of casual threat. A pair of large, lean dogs loped over to investigate them. They were white, short-haired and pink-eyed. Night hunters, that could see in the dark and tracked their prey by following heat traces. They sniffed over the newcomers, but when they reached Jez, they shied away.

‘Time for a new perfume, Jez,’ Frey quipped.

‘I do have a way with animals, don’t I?’ she said, looking mildly put out.

Quail’s house was a marked contrast to the dirty streets that had led to it. The floor and walls were tiled in black granite. Thick rugs had been laid underfoot.

Coiled-brass motifs ran along the walls towards two curving staircases. Between the staircases was a large and complicated timepiece. It was a combination of clock and calendar, fashioned in copper and bronze and gold. Behind the hands were rotating discs with symbols for all ten months of the year and each of the ten days of the week. Frey was slightly relieved to see that the calendar read: Queensday Thirdweek, Howl’s Batten - the last day of the month. He’d not been certain he had the date right until now.

‘Just you,’ said Codge, motioning up the stairs and looking at Frey. Frey shucked off his slicker and handed it to Pinn, who took it absently. The young pilot’s attention had been snared by the four beautiful, seductively dressed women who had appeared in one of the doorways to observe the newcomers. They giggled and smiled at Frey as he headed for the stairs. He gave them a gallant bow, then took the hand of the foremost to kiss.

‘You can butter up the whores later. The boss is waiting,’ Codge called. One of the women pooched out her lip at him, then favoured Frey with a dirty smirk.

‘He’ll have to come down again, though, won’t he?’ she said, raising an eyebrow.

‘Good evening, ladies,’ said Frey. ‘I’m sure my friend over there would love to entertain you until I return.’

Pinn licked his palm, smoothed down the little thatch of hair atop his potato-like head, and put on his best nonchalant pose. The whores eyed him, unimpressed.

‘We’ll wait.’

‘Frey!’ said Xandian Quail, as the captain entered the study. ‘Dramatically late, I see. I didn’t think you’d come.’

‘Far as I’m concerned, a margin for error is just wasted space,’ Frey said, then shook hands with a hearty camaraderie far above what he actually felt for the man. Quail offered a glass of wine and did a magnificent job of not noticing the trail of muddy footprints that Frey had brought in with him.

Frey sat down and admired the room while Quail poured the drinks. The front of Quail’s desk was carved in the likeness of a huge Cloud Eagle, stern and impressive. An ornate and valuable brass barometer hung behind it, the arrow pointing firmly towards RAIN. The windows had complicated patterned bars set on the outside, for security and decoration alike. A black iron candelabra hung from the ceiling, bulbs glowing dimly with electric power. The walls were panelled in mahogany and lined with books. Frey read some of the titles, but didn’t recognise any. It was hardly a surprise. He rarely read anything more complicated than the sensationalist broadsheets they sold in the cities.

Quail gave Frey a crystal glass of rich red wine, then sat opposite him with a glass of his own. He’d probably been handsome once, but no longer. A fiery crash in a fighter craft had seen to that. Now half his bald head was puckered with scar tissue, and there was a small metal plate visible on one side of his skull. A brassy orb sat in the socket where his left eye should have been, and his left arm was entirely mechanical.

In spite of this, he carried himself like an aristocrat, and dressed like one too. He wore a brocaded black jacket with a stiff collar and his patent leather shoes shone. Wet, sweaty and dishevelled, Frey was unimpressive by comparison.

‘I’m glad you made it,’ said Quail. ‘Another day and I’d have offered my proposition elsewhere. Time is a factor.’

‘I just came to hear what you have to say,’ said Frey. ‘Make your pitch.’

‘I have a job for you.’

‘I know your rates,’ Frey said. ‘I don’t have that kind of money.’

‘I’m not selling the information. This one’s for free.’

Frey sipped his wine and studied the other man.

‘I thought whispermongers always stayed neutral,’ Frey said.

‘Those are the rules,’ said Quail. He looked down at his mechanical hand and flexed the fingers thoughtfully. ‘You don’t get involved, you don’t take sides, you never reveal your sources or your clients. Just hard information, bought and sold. You trade secrets but you never take advantage of them.’

‘And you certainly don’t offer jobs.’

‘With what we know, you think we’re never tempted? We’re only human, after all.’ Quail smiled. ‘That’s why we’re very particular about who we use. It wouldn’t be good for our profession if it were known that we occasionally indulge in a little self-interest.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘There’s a barque out of Samarla, heading for Thesk. The Ace of Skulls. Minimum escort, no firepower. They want to keep things low-key, like it’s just another freight run. They don’t want attention. From pirates or the Navy.’

The Ace of Skulls. As a keen player of the game of Rake, Frey didn’t miss its significance. The Ace of Skulls was the most important card in the game. ‘What are they carrying?’

‘Among other things, a chest of gems. Uncut gems, bound for a Jeweller’s Guild consortium in the capital. They cut a deal with a mining company across the border, and they’re flying them back in secret to avoid the Coalition taxes. The profit margin would be huge.’

‘If they got there.’

‘If they got there. But they won’t. Because you’ll bring those gems to me.’

‘Why trust me? Why wouldn’t I head for the hills with my new-found riches?’

‘Because you’d be a fool to try it. I know about you, Frey. You don’t have the contacts or the experience to fence them. You’ve no idea how dangerous that kind of wealth can be. Even if you didn’t get your throat slit trying to sell them, you’d be ripped off.’

‘So what do you propose as payment?’

‘Fifty thousand ducats. Flat fee, non-negotiable, paid upon delivery of the gems to me.’

Frey’s throat went dry. Fifty thousand. He couldn’t possibly have heard that right.

‘You did just say fifty thousand ducats, didn’t you?’

‘It’s a better offer than you’ll get trying to sell them yourself, and the deal will be straightforward and safe. I’m rather hoping it will help you avoid temptation.’

‘How much is the chest worth?’

‘Considerably more, once the gems are cut. But that doesn’t concern you.’

‘Let me get this straight. You said fifty thousand ducats?’

‘On delivery.’

Frey drained his wine in a gulp.

‘More wine?’ Quail offered politely.

‘Please,’ Frey rasped, holding out his glass.

Fifty thousand ducats. It was a colossal amount of money. More than enough riches to live in luxury for the rest of his days, even after he’d cut the others their share. If he cut them a share, he corrected himself.

No, don’t think about that yet. You just need to decide if this really is too good to be true.

His heart pounded in his chest, and his skin felt cold. The opportunity of a lifetime. He wasn’t stupid enough to think it came without a catch. He just couldn’t see it yet.

Ever since he became a freebooter he’d stuck to one hazy and ill-defined rule. Keep it small-time. Ambition got people killed. They reached too far and got their hands bitten off. He’d seen it happen time and again: bright-eyed young captains, eager to make a name for themselves, chewed up in the schemes of businessmen and pirates. The big-money games were run by the real bad men. If you wanted to play in that league, you had to be ready for a whole new level of viciousness.

And then there was the Navy. They didn’t concern themselves with the small-time operators, but once you made a reputation they’d take an interest. And if there was one thing worse than the backstabbing scum-sacks that infested criminal high society, it was the Navy.

Frey wasn’t rich. What money he made was usually gambled away or spent on drink or women. Sometimes it was a struggle just to keep craft and crew together. But he was beholden to no one, and that was the way he liked it. Nobody pulled his strings. It was what he told himself whenever money was tight and things looked bad.

At least I’m free, he thought. At least there’s that.

In the murky world of bottom-feeders, Frey could count himself among the larger fishes, simply by dint of smarts. The world was full of morons and victims. Frey was a cut above, and he was comfortable there. He knew his level, and he knew what happened when people overestimated themselves.

But it was one job. Fifty thousand ducats. A life of appalling, obnoxious luxury staring him in the face.

‘Why me?’ he asked as Quail refilled his glass. ‘I must have dealt with you, what, three times?’

‘Yes,’ said Quail, settling again. ‘You sold me a few titbits. Never bought anything.’

‘Never could afford it.’

‘That’s one point in your favour,’ he said. ‘We’re barely acquainted. The scantest of links between us. I couldn’t risk offering this opportunity to most of my clients. My relationship with them is too well known.’ He leaned forwards across the desk, clasping his hands together, meshing metal fingers with flesh. ‘Make no mistake, if this operation goes bad, I don’t know you, and you never heard about those gems from me. I will not allow this to be traced back here. I have to protect myself.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m used to people pretending they don’t know me. Why else?’

‘Because fifty thousand ducats is an absurd amount of money to you and I believe it will keep you loyal. Because you’re too small-time to fence those gems for yourself, and you’re beneath the notice of the Navy and other freebooters alike. And because no one would believe you if you told them I was involved. You’re frankly not a very credible witness.’

Frey searched his face, as if he could divine the thoughts beneath. Quail stared back at him patiently.

‘It’s an easy take, Frey. I know her route. She’ll be following the high ground, hugging the cloud ceiling, staying out of sight. No one’s going to know she’s there but you. You can bring her down over the Hookhollows. Then you pick up the gems, and you fly them to me.’

Frey didn’t dare hope it was true. Was it possible that he was simply in the right place at the right time? That a man like him could have a chance to make a lifetime’s fortune in one swoop? He wracked his memory for ways he might have given Quail offence, some reason why the whispermonger would send him into a trap.

Could Quail be working on someone else’s behalf? Maybe. Frey had certainly made enemies in his time.

But what if he’s not setting you up? Can you really take that chance?

The clammy, nauseous feeling he had at that moment was not unfamiliar to him. He’d felt it many times before, while playing cards. Staring at his opponent over a hand of Rake, a pile of money between them, his instincts screaming at him to fold and walk away. But sometimes the stakes were just too high, the pot too tempting. Sometimes, he ignored his intuition and bet everything. Usually he lost it all and left the table, kicking himself. But sometimes . . .

Sometimes, he won.

‘Tell you what. Throw in some female company, a bed for the night and all the wine we can drink, and you got a deal.’

‘Certainly,’ said Quail. ‘Which lady would you like?’

‘All of them,’ he said. ‘And if you have one who’s particularly tolerant - or just blind - she might see to Pinn, too. I’m gonna need his head straight for flying, and the poor kid’s gonna split his pods if he doesn’t empty them soon.’

Six

The Ghostmoth - Frey’s Idea Of Division - The Ace Of Skulls - Harkins Tests His Courage

In the steep heights of the Hookhollows, where the lowlands of Vardia smashed up against the vast Eastern Plateau, silence reigned. Snow and ice froze tight to the black flanks of the mountains, and not a breath of wind blew. A damp mist hazed the deep places, gathering in crevasses and bleak valleys, and a glowering ceiling of cloud pressed down hard from above, obscuring the peaks and blocking out any sight of open sky. Between sat a layer of clear air, a sandwich of navigable space within which an aircraft might pick its way through the stony maze.

It was isolated and dangerous, but this claustrophobic zone was the best way to cross the Hookhollows unobserved.

A distant drone came floating through the quiet. It steadily rose in volume, swelling and thickening. Around the side of a mountain came a lone, four-winged corvette. A heavily armed Besterfield Ghostmoth.

Lurking in the mist layer, barely a shadow, the Ketty Jay stayed hidden as it passed.

Frey watched the Ghostmoth from the cockpit, its dark outline passing overhead. Crake watched it with him.

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