Retribution falls

Chris Wooding

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.

'That's not the one we're after, is it?' he asked, rather hoping it wasn't.

'No,' said Frey. He wouldn't have taken on a Ghostmoth for any money. He was only concerned that its pilot might spot them and decide to take an interest. You could never be sure. There were a lot of pirates out here. Real pirates, not fairweather criminals like they were.

Nothing sat right with Frey about this whole plan. Nothing except the colossal payoff, anyway.

He'd never liked piracy, and historically he'd displayed a lack of talent in the field. Of the four times he'd tried it, three had been failures. Only once had he successfully downed and robbed a craft, and even then the loot had been meagre and his navigator got stabbed and killed in the process. Twice they'd been forced to flee in the face of superior firepower. On the most recent attempt they'd actually managed to board the craft only to find it had already delivered its cargo. That was the closest his crew had ever come to mutiny, until he hit on the idea of placating them with a night out at the nearest port. The following morning, the incident was forgotten, along with most of their motor skills and their ability to speak.

In general, Frey didn't like being shot at. Piracy was a risky business, and best left to the professionals. Even Quail's assurances of an easy take did little to quell his fears.

The Ghostmoth slid out of view, and Frey relaxed. He checked on Harkins and Pinn, hovering a little way above them and to starboard, dim in the mist. The Ketty Jay drifted silently, but for the occasional hiss of stabilising gas-jets as Frey's hands twitched across the brass-and-chrome dashboard. The cockpit lights had been turned off, leaving the interior gloomy. Jez was sitting at the navigator's station, studying a map. Crake, who had dropped in uninvited, stood behind the pilot's seat, wringing his hands. Frey thought about ordering him back to his quarters but couldn't be bothered with the argument that might ensue.

'Quail said they'd be coming through here?' Crake murmured.

'That's what he said,' Frey replied.

'Makes sense,' Jez told Crake. 'You want to get through the Hookhollows without being spotted, you follow the mountains that rise closest to the cloud ceiling. That way you can't be seen from above and you minimise possible sight-lines from below. Two of the most obvious routes converge on this point.'

Frey turned around in his seat and looked at her. 'I'm beginning to think that, after many months, I've finally found a navigator who actually knows what they're doing,' he said.

'We're few and far between, Cap'n.'

'How's the shoulder?'

'Fine.'

'Good. Don't get shot again. You're useful.'

'I'll do my best,' she said, with a quirky little grin.

Frey settled back to watching. He'd begun to think that Jez was a lucky find. In the few days she'd been on board, she'd shown herself to be far more efficient and reliable than he'd expected. Competence was by no means a prerequisite to joining the crew of the Ketty Jay, but Jez was head and shoulders above the other navigators Frey had worked with. He suspected that she was accustomed to better crews than Frey's mob, but their slapdash technique didn't seem to bother her. And she was good at what she did. She'd brought them in from Marklin's Reach with pinpoint accuracy, with only a featureless sea of cloud and a few mountain peaks to plot their position by. Frey had dropped down through the cloud and found himself dead in the middle of the pass they'd selected for their ambush.

She was a smart one. He only hoped she wasn't too smart.

Perhaps the others hadn't noticed, but Jez knew something was wrong with this job. He kept catching a glimpse of the question in her eyes. She'd open her mouth as if to say something, then shut it again and look away.

She feels it too, Frey thought. Instinct.

Instinct. Perhaps. Or perhaps she sensed that her captain intended to rip them off good and proper.

He tried to feel bad, but he really couldn't manage it. After all, you couldn't be robbed of what you never had. Quail had promised him fifty thousand ducats, not them. Granted, he'd always maintained a system of fair shares for his crew, dividing the booty according to pre-arranged percentages, but these were exceptional circumstances. By which he meant an exceptional amount of money. Too much to share.

It was just this one time, he promised himself. Because after this, he'd never need to work again.

He'd informed the crew that Quail had given them the tip-off in exchange for one thing. There was a chest on board that he wanted. They were to bring it to him. Everything else was theirs for the taking.

Frey had obtained a full description of the chest, and he knew it would be locked tight. Quail had also assured him there were plenty more pickings besides. The crew could loot to their hearts' content, and everyone would be happy. They didn't need to know what was inside the chest. They didn't need to know about the arrangement between Frey and Quail.

But Jez kept giving him that look.

'I hear something,' Crake said suddenly.

Frey listened. He was right: a low throb, accompanied by the higher whines of smaller engines. Hard to make out how many.

'Jez,' Frey murmured. 'Ready on the electroheliograph.'

'Cap'n,' she said, reaching over to the switch.

'This is the one, isn't it?' Crake asked, squinting through the windglass, trying to catch a glimpse.

'This is the one,' Frey said.

The Ace of Skulls slid into the pass, cruising majestically between two broken peaks. Long, blunt-faced and curve-bellied, she had stubs for wings and a tail assembly like an enormous fin. Thrusters pushed her along as she glided through the air, buoyed up with huge tanks of aerium gas. Decals on her flanks displayed her name, printed across a fan of cards. She was a heavy, no-nonsense craft, without frills, solid. Nothing about her gave away the value of the cargo within.

Buzzing alongside, dwarfed in size, were four Swordwings. Frey recognised them by their distinctive conical, down-slanting muzzles and aerodynamic shape. They were fast fighter craft. Nothing exceptional in their design, but in the hands of a good pilot they could be deadly.

'It's not exactly minimum escort,' Crake murmured.

Frey made a distracted noise of agreement. He didn't like the look of those Swordwings. He'd expected two, not four.

'Just give me the word,' Jez said, fingertip hovering over the press-pad of the electroheliograph switch.

Frey stared up at the freighter. It wasn't too late to listen to the voice that told him to back out of this. The voice that told him to lay his cards down when he knew his hand was beat. The voice of caution.

You could just keep going on as you are, he thought. It's not a bad life, is it? You've got your own craft. You don't answer to anyone. The whole world's there for you. Now what's wrong with that?

What was wrong with it was that he didn't have fifty thousand ducats. He hadn't really minded before, but suddenly the lack had become intolerable.

'Cap'n?' Jez prompted. 'Time's a factor.'

Frey had picked a spot just below the mist layer and in the shadow of a peak, to give them a good view of the pass above. But if he could see the Ace of Skulls, she might see him, and without the element of surprise they'd have no chance.

You know this is too good to be true, Frey. Stuff like this just doesn't happen to guys like you. Ambition gets people killed.

'Cap'n?'

'Do it,' he said. Pinn wiped his running nose with the back of his hand and stared at the grey bulk of the Ketty Jay.

'Come on! What's taking so long?' he cried. The need to get up there and shoot something was like a physical pull. His boots tapped against the complicated array of pedals; his gloved fingers flexed on the flight stick. These were the moments he lived for. This was where the action was. And Pinn, as he never tired of telling everyone, was all about action.

The Second Aerium War fizzled out mere days before he had the chance to sign up. Those miserable Sammies called it off just as he was about to get in there and bloody his guns. It was as if they'd intended to spite him personally. As if they were afraid of what would happen when Pinn got into the thick of things.

Well, if the Sammies were too chickenshit to face him in the air, then he'd just take it out on the rest of the world, every chance he got. Having been cheated once, he reasoned it was only his due. A man deserved the opportunity to prove himself.

He snatched up the small, framed ferrotype of his sweetheart Lisinda, that hung on a chain from his dash. The black and white portrait didn't do her justice. Her long hair was fairer, her innocent, docile eyes more beautiful in his memory.

It had been taken just before he left. He wondered what she was doing now. Perhaps sitting by a window, reading, patiently awaiting his return. Did she sense his thoughts on her? Did she turn her pretty face up to the sky, hoping to see the cloud break and the sun shine through, the glimmer of his wings as he swooped triumphantly in to land? He pictured himself stepping down from the Skylance, Lisinda rushing joyously towards him. He'd sweep her up in his arms and kiss her hard, and tears would run uncontrollably down her face, because her hero had returned after four long years.

His thoughts were interrupted by a series of flashes from a lamp on the Ketty Jay's back. A coded message from the electroheliograph.

Go.

Pinn whooped and rammed the prothane thrusters to maximum. The Skylance boomed into life and leaped forward, pressing him back in his seat. He stamped down on a pedal, wrenched the stick, and the craft came bursting out of the mist, arcing towards the small flotilla high above. They'd all but passed overhead now, so he came at them from below and behind, hiding in their blind spot. A fierce grin spread across his chubby face as the engines screamed and the craft rattled all around him.

'This ain't your lucky day,' he muttered as he lined his enemy up in his sights. He believed true heroes always said something dry and chilling before they killed anybody. Then he pressed down on his guns.

The pilot of the nearest Swordwing had only just heard the sound of Pinn's engine when the bullets ripped through the underbelly of his craft. They pierced the prothane tanks and blasted the Swordwing apart in a dirty cloud of flame. Pinn howled with joy, corkscrewed through the fire and burst out of the far side. He craned in his seat to look back, past his port wing, and saw Harkins coming up, machine guns blazing, shredding the rudder of another Swordwing as he shrieked by.

'Yeah!' he cried. 'Nice shooting, you twitchy old freak!'

He hauled the Skylance into a loop, hard enough to make his vision sparkle at the edges, and headed back towards the flotilla. The two remaining Swordwings had broken formation now, taking evasive action. Harkins' target was coiling its way down to a foggy oblivion, leaving a trail of smoke from its ruined tail. Far below, the Ketty Jay had broken cover and was heading towards the slow bulk of the freighter.

Pinn picked another Swordwing and plunged towards it. He dropped into position on its tail, machine guns spitting a broken row of blazing tracer bullets. The pilot banked hard and rolled, darting neatly out of the way. Pinn raised an eyebrow.

'Not bad,' he murmured. 'This is gonna be fun.' 'She's heading for the clouds!' Jez said.

She was right. The Ace of Skulls had turned her nose up towards the cloud ceiling and was gliding towards it. Visibility would be almost nil in there.

'I'm on it,' Frey said, then suddenly yelled, 'Doc!'

'What?' came the bellowed reply through the open doorway of the cockpit.

'Start hassling the fighters! I've got the big fish!'

'Right-o!'

There was the thumping of autocannon fire as Malvery, in the gunner's cupola, began unleashing lead at all and sundry. Frey fed a little more into the prothane engines and the Ketty Jay responded, surging upwards. She was surprisingly light for such a big craft, but Frey was long used to the way she handled. Nobody knew her like he did.

Harkins and Pinn had the Swordwings occupied, chasing them around the sky, leaving the way clear for him. He hunched forward in his seat, frowning intently at his target. Jez and Crake stood behind him, hanging on as best they could as the Ketty Jay rocked and swayed.

The freighter swam higher, thrusters pushing as hard as they were able, but she was a lumbering thing and she couldn't get a steep enough angle without tearing herself apart under her own weight. Frey would only get one chance, but one chance was all he needed. The aerium tanks on a craft like this were an enormous target. Though there was nothing on the outer skin to indicate their location, Frey knew his aircraft. It would be hard to miss.

Just graze the tanks with your guns, he reminded himself. Holed tanks would vent aerium gas, and the steady loss of lift would force the pilot to either land the craft or have her drop out of the sky. A landing might be a bit violent in this kind of terrain, but Frey didn't much care as long as the cargo was intact. The prothane tanks – the dangerous part – were well armoured and buried deep within the craft. It would take a really bad landing to make them go up.

The Ace of Skulls swelled in his view, growing larger as he approached. In attempting to escape she'd exposed her belly. He zeroed in on the spot just under her stubby, finlike wings.

Closer… closer…

He squeezed the trigger on his flight stick. The Ketty Jay's front-mounted machine guns clattered, punching a pattern of holes across the freighter's side.

And the Ace of Skulls exploded.

The windglass of the cockpit filled with a terrible bloom of fire, lighting up Frey's astonished face for a split second. Then the impact hit them.

The detonation was ear-shattering. A concussion wave swamped the Ketty Jay, making her roll sharply and sending Jez and Crake slamming into the navigator's station. Frey wrestled with the controls, yanking on the flight stick with one hand, hitting switches with the other. The engines groaned and stuttered, but Frey had flown this craft for more than a decade and he knew her inside out. Teeth gritted, he gentled her through the chaos, and in seconds they were level again.

Frey looked out of the cockpit. He felt sick and faint. An oily black cloud of smoke, blistering with red and white flame, roiled in the air. The Ace of Skulls' enormous bow was plummeting into the pass far below; her tail assembly crashed against the side of a mountain and broke into pieces. A cloud of lesser debris spun lazily away, thrown out by the colossal force of the explosion.

And in among the debris, charred, limp things fell towards the earth. Some of them were still almost whole.

Bodies. Dozens of bodies. Harkins stared at the slow cascade of wreckage as it tumbled from the sky. He wasn't sure he'd exactly grasped the full implications of what had just happened, but he knew this was bad. This was very, very bad. And not just because they'd screwed up yet another attempt at sky piracy.

Then, suddenly, the Swordwing he'd been chasing broke left and dived. Harkins' attention switched back to his target.

He's running! Harkins thought. A glance told him that the second Swordwing was doing the same, spearing up towards the clouds. Pinn was hot on its tail, spraying tracer fire. Smoke trailed from one of its wings.

Harkins threw the Firecrow into a dive. Whatever had just happened, Harkins was certain of one thing. They were in trouble.

But only if someone lived to tell about it.

The Swordwing was dropping hard, towards the layer of mist that had hidden the Ketty Jay. Harkins rattled off a short burst from his guns, but he was still too far away. He opened the Firecrow's throttle and screamed after the Swordwing as it was swallowed up by the mist.

Oh no, he fretted to himself. I don't want to go in there, I really don't!

But it was too late for second thoughts. The mist closed over him, greying his vision. The Swordwing was a dark smudge ahead. It had pulled level, skimming through the upper layers of mist where visibility was just the right side of suicidal. Harkins tried to close the distance, but they were evenly matched on speed.

Sweat began to trickle down the deep folds of his unshaven cheeks. They were going too fast, they were going way too fast. This pilot was a maniac! Was he trying to get himself killed?

Harkins pressed down on his guns, hoping for a lucky hit. The tracer fire blazed away into the gloom.

A mountain loomed out of the mist to starboard, an unending slope of snowy rock fading into view. The Swordwing swung in recklessly close to it, hugging the mountainside. The shockwave of its passage threw up clouds of loose snow, whipping them into Harkins' path. The pilot was trying to blind him further. But the tactic was ineffective: the powdery snow dispersed too fast, and did nothing to slow him. Harkins angled himself on an intercept trajectory and closed in on his target.

The mountainside ended without warning, and the Swordwing made a dangerously sharp turn, almost clipping the corner. Harkins followed out of reflex. The only safe place in this murk was where his target had already been.

An outcrop of black stone came at him like a thrown fist.

His reactions responded in place of conscious thought. He shoved the flight stick forward and the Firecrow dived, skimming under the jutting stone with barely a foot to spare. It thundered over him for a terrifying instant and was gone.

He pulled away from the mountainside, gibbering. That was too close, too close, too close! His legs had begun to tremble. This was insane! Insane! Who did that pilot think he was, anyway? Why was he putting Harkins through such torment?

But there it was: the Swordwing. Still visible through the bubble of windglass on the Firecrow's snout. It was heading down, further into the dull blankness, a ghostly blur.

Harkins followed. Afraid as he was, he was also afraid to face the consequences of giving up. He couldn't take Frey's wrath if he let the Swordwing go. Death in the cockpit was one thing, but confrontation was quite another. Confrontation was a special kind of hell for Harkins, and he'd do just about anything to avoid it.

Dense, threatening shadows came into view on either side of them: mountains, pressing in close. Harkins bit his lip to stop his teeth chattering. The Firecrow's engines cocooned him in warm sound, but he was acutely aware of how fragile this metal shell would be if it hit something at a hundred knots. He'd seen Firecrows shatter like eggs, some of them with his friends inside.

But that never happened to me! he told himself, firming his will, and he pushed harder on the throttle.

The mountains slid closer on either side, pushing together, and he realised they were heading into a defile. Then, suddenly, the Swordwing slowed. Harkins bore down on it. The blur took on form and shape, growing before him. He pressed down his guns just as the Swordwing went into a steep climb, and the tracers fell astern as it shot upwards and disappeared into the haze.

At that moment, Harkins realised what his opponent was doing. Panic clutched at him. He yanked back on the flight stick, hauling on the throttle and stamping the pedal that opened the flaps for emergency braking. The Firecrow's blunt nose came up; the craft squealed in protest. Harkins felt a weight like a giant's hand shoving him down into his seat.

A wall of grim stone filled his vision. Massive, immovable, racing towards him. The end of the defile. He screamed as the Firecrow clawed at the air, scrabbling to climb. Blood pounded in his thighs and feet. His vision dimmed and narrowed as he began to brown out.

You're not gonna faint… you're not gonna faint…

Then everything tilted, vertical became horizontal, and the wall that had been in front of him was rushing beneath his wings. He let off on the stick, blood thumping back into his head, and the Firecrow shot out of the defile and upwards. There were a few seconds of nothing but grey, then he burst out of the mist and into the clear air.

Stillness.

As if in a trance, he cut back the throttle and gently brought the Firecrow to a hover, letting it float in the air, resting on the buoyancy of its aerium tanks. A dozen kloms away, visible between the peaks, the Ketty Jay hung listlessly, waiting for his return. He looked down into the sea of mist, but his quarry was long gone.

His hands were quivering uncontrollably. He held one up before him and stared as it shook. Seven An Argument – Crake Accuses – What The Cat Thinks Of Jez – Frey Has A Dream The eastern edge of the Hookhollows was full of hiding places. Secret valleys, sheltered ledges. There were folds in the crumpled landscape big enough to conceal a small fleet of aircraft. Freebooters treasured these bolt holes, and when they found a good one they guarded its location jealously.

Nightfall found the Ketty Jay and her outflyers in one of Frey's favourite spots, a long tunnel-like cave he usually employed when he was running from something bigger than he was. It was wider than it was high, a slot in the plateau wall that ran far back into the mountainside. A tight fit for a craft the size of the Ketty Jay, but Frey had brought them in without a scratch. Now the Ketty Jay hunkered in the dark, its dim underbelly lights reflected by the shallow stream that ran along the floor of the cave. There was no sound but for a rhythmic dripping and the relentless chuckle of the water.

Inside the Ketty Jay, things were not so calm.

'What in the name of the Allsoul's veiny bollocks were you aiming at, you shit-wit?' Pinn demanded of his captain, who punched him in response.

Slag, the Ketty Jay's cat, watched the ensuing scuffle with feline disinterest from his vantage point atop a cabinet. The whole crew had gathered in the mess, crowding into one small room, and the comical jostle to separate Pinn and Frey involved a lot of bashing into things and knocking chairs over. The mess was a cheerless place, comprising a fixed central table, a set of metal cabinets for utensils and a compact stove, where Slag warmed himself when Silo chased him out of the engine room.

Slag was an ancient warrior, a grizzled slab of muscle held together by scar tissue and a hostile disposition. Frey had brought him on board as a kitten the day after he took ownership of the Ketty Jay, fourteen years ago. Slag had never known anything beyond the Ketty Jay, and never been tempted to find out. His life's purpose was here, as the nemesis of the monstrous rats that bred in the air ducts and pipeways. For more than a decade the battle had been fought, generations of sharp-toothed rodents versus their indestructible antagonist. He'd seen off the best of them – their generals, their leaders – and hunted their mothers until they were near-extinct. But they always came back, and Slag was always waiting for them.

'Will you two stop acting like a pair of idiots?' Jez cried, as Malvery and Silo pulled Pinn from their captain. Pinn, red-faced with anger, assured Malvery he was calm so the doctor would release him, then made the obligatory second lunge at Frey. Malvery was ready for it, and punched him hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

'What'd you do that for?' Pinn rasped weakly, wide-eyed with the injustice of it all.

'Fun,' replied Malvery, with a broad grin. 'Now calm down before I club your stupid block off. You ain't helping.'

Frey shook Silo off with a baleful glare and dusted himself down. 'Right,' he said. 'Now we've got that out of the way, can I say something, nice and slow so everyone gets it? It – wasn't – my – fault!

'You did blow up the freighter, though,' Crake pointed out.

'If you knew anything about aircraft you'd know they always put the prothane tanks as deep inside as possible, well armoured. Otherwise people like us might be able to hit them and blow the whole thing to smithereens.'

'The way you did,' Crake persisted, out of malice. He hadn't forgotten Frey's behaviour when Lawsen Macarde had a gun to his head.

'But I didn't!' Frey cried. 'Machine guns couldn't have penetrated deep enough to even get to the prothane tanks. Silo, tell them.'

The Murthian folded his arms. 'Could happen, Cap'n. But it's one in a million.'

'See? It could happen!' Pinn crowed, having recovered his breath.

'But it's one in a million!' Frey said through gritted teeth. 'About the same chance as you shutting up for five minutes so I can think.'

Slag unfurled from his spot on top of the cabinet and dropped down to the countertop with a thump. He thought little, if at all, of the other beings with whom he shared the craft, but he was feeling unaccountably piqued that nobody was paying any attention to him amid this puzzling furore. Harkins, who had been keeping his head down anyway, cringed into the corner as he caught sight of the cat. Slag gave him a stare of utter loathing, then leaped to the table so he could get into the middle of things.

'The question isn't whose fault it is-' Jez began.

'Not mine, that's for sure!' Frey interjected.

Jez gave him a look and continued. 'It's not whose fault it is. The question is whether we're going to get blamed for it.'

'Well, thanks to Harkins being a bloody great chicken, we probably will,' Pinn said sullenly.

'That guy was a good pilot!' Harkins protested. 'He was a… he was a fantastic pilot! Well, fantastic, or he had a death wish or something. What kind of idiot flies full throttle through mountain passes in the mist? The… the crazy kind, that's what kind! And I'm a good pilot, but I'm not some crazy idiot! You said minimum escort, someone said minimum escort! No one said anything about… about four Swordwings and one of them being a pilot like that! What's a pilot like that doing flying escort to some grubby old freighter?'

'I'd have caught him,' said Pinn. 'I caught the one I was chasing.'

'Well, yours was probably shit,' Harkins muttered.

Jez was pacing around the mess as the pilots argued, head bowed thoughtfully. As she drew close to Slag, he arched his back and hissed at her. Something about this human bothered him. He didn't understand why, only that he felt threatened whenever she was around, and that made him angry. He hated Harkins for being weak, but he was afraid of Jez.

'What's got into him?' Crake wondered.

'Ugly sack of mange,' sneered Pinn. 'It's finally lost its tiny little mind.'

'Hey!' said Frey, defensive. 'No bitching about the cat.' He put out his hand to stroke Slag, and quickly withdrew it as Slag took a swipe at him.

'Why not? Bloody thing's only fit to use as a duster anyway. Wring its neck, stick a broom handle up it's-'

'Shut up about the cat!' Jez said, surprising them into quiet. For such a little thing she'd proved herself unusually feisty, and she commanded respect far out of proportion to her physical size. 'We've got more important things to deal with.'

She walked in a slow circle around the mess, stepping between them as she spoke. 'We caught them by surprise. Even if that Swordwing got away – he might have crashed in the mist – then he'd have barely had time to work out what was going on before he ran. Harkins was on his tail almost immediately. He'd have had other things on his mind.'

'You don't think he could identify us?' Frey said.

'I doubt it,' Jez replied. 'There are no decals on the craft that identify us as the Ketty Jay, and we're not exactly famous, are we? So, what do they have? Maybe he saw an Wickfield Ironclad accompanied by a Firecrow and a Skylance. You'd have to be pretty dedicated to hunt us down on the basis of that.'

'Quail won't say a word,' said Frey, warming to her optimism. 'Though it's probably best if our paths never cross again. Just to be safe, let's stay out of Marklin's Reach. Silo, put it on our list of no-go ports. Scarwater, too.'

'Aren't that many ports left to go to,' Malvery grumbled.

'Well, now there are two fewer.' He looked around the room. 'Alright, are we done here? Good. Let's keep our heads down, forget this ever happened, and it's business as usual.' He began to leave, but was stopped by a soft voice.

'Am I the only one who remembers there were people on that freighter?' Crake said.

Frey turned around to look over his shoulder at the daemonist.

'That thing was hauling passengers,' Crake said. 'Not cargo.'

Frey's eyes were cold. 'It wasn't my fault,' he said, and clambered up the ladder to the exit hatch.

The crew dispersed after that, some still arguing between themselves. Slag remained in the middle of the table in the empty mess, feeling neglected. After a swift and resentful bout of self-grooming with his tongue, he resolved to make Harkins suffer tonight by creeping into his quarters and going to sleep on his face. Frey stepped into his quarters and slid the heavy iron door shut behind him, cutting off the voices of his crew. With a sigh, he sat on the hard bunk and dragged his hand down his face, mashing his features as if he could smear them away. He sat there for a while, thinking nothing, wallowing in the bleak depression that had settled on him.

Every time, he thought bitterly. Every damned time.

Suddenly, he surged to his feet and drew back his hand to strike the wall, but at the last instant he stopped himself. Instead he pressed forehead and fist against it, breathing deeply, hating. A hatred without target or focus, directed at nothing, the blind frustration of a man maligned by fate.

What had he done to deserve this? Where was it written that all his best efforts should come to nothing, that opportunity should flirt with him and leave him ragged, that money should rust to powder in his hands? How had he ended up living a life surrounded by the witless, the desperate, drunkards, thieves and villains? Wasn't he better than that?

That bastard Quail! He'd done this. Somehow, he was responsible. Frey had known the job was too good to be true. The only people who ever made fifty thousand ducats out of a deal were people who already had ten times that. Just one more way the world conspired to keep the rich where they were, and keep everyone else down.

The Ace of Skulls should never have exploded. It was impossible. What happened to those people… Frey never meant for that. It was an accident. He couldn't be blamed. He'd only meant to hit the aerium tanks. He had hit the aerium tanks. It was just one of those things, like a volcano erupting, or when a craft got caught in a freak hurricane. An act of the Allsoul, if you believed all that Awakener drivel.

Frey sourly reflected there might be something in the idea of an all-controlling entity. Someone was certainly out to get him, intent on thwarting his every endeavour. If there was an Allsoul, then he sure as spit didn't like Frey very much.

He walked over to the steel washbasin and splashed water on his face. In the soap-streaked mirror he studied himself. He smiled experimentally. The lines at the edges of his eyes seemed to have deepened since last time he looked. He'd first noticed them a year ago, and had been shocked by the first signs of decline. He'd unconsciously assumed he'd always stay youthful.

Though he'd never admit it aloud, he knew he was handsome. His face had a certain something about it that pulled women towards him: a hint of slyness, a promise of danger, a darkness in his grin – something, anyway. He never was exactly sure what. It had given him an easy confidence in his youth, a self-assured air that only attracted women more strongly still.

About the only piece of luck I ever got, he thought, since he was in the mood to be peevish.

Even men could be drawn into his orbit, sucked in by a vague envy of his success with the opposite sex. Frey had never had a problem making new friends. Charm, he'd discovered, was the art of pretending you meant what you said. Whether complimenting a man, or offering feathered lies to a woman, Frey never seemed less than sincere. But he'd usually forget them the moment they were out of his sight.

Now here he was, thirty, with lines around his eyes when he smiled. He couldn't trade on his looks for ever, and when they were gone, what was left? What would he do when his body couldn't take the rum any more and the women didn't want him?

He threw himself away from the sink with a snort of disgust.

Self-pity doesn't suit you, Frey. No one likes a whiner.

Still, he had to admit, it had been a pretty bad decade and his thirties had got off to an unpromising start. Waiting for his luck to change had worn his patience thin, and trying to change it himself invariably ended in disaster.

Look on the bright side, he thought. At least you're free.

Yes, there was that. No boss to work for, no Coalition Navy breathing down his neck. No woman tying him down. Well, not in the metaphorical sense, anyway. Some of his conquests had been more sexually adventurous than others.

But damn, this time… this time he really thought he had a chance. The sheer disappointment had shaken him badly.

It could have been different, though. Maybe if you'd taken a different path, ten years ago. Maybe you'd have been happy. You'd certainly have been rich.

No. No regrets. He wouldn't waste his life on regrets.

The captain's quarters were cramped, although they were still the biggest on the craft. He didn't keep them particularly clean. The metal walls were coated in a faint patina of grime and the floor was filthy with bootprints. His bunk took up most of the space, beneath a string hammock of luggage which threatened to snap and bury him in the night. A desk, drawers and cabinets were affixed to the opposite wall, with catches in the drawers and doors to prevent them opening during flight. In the corner was his mirror and washbasin. Sometimes he used the washbasin as a toilet in the night, rather than climb two levels down to use the head. There were advantages to being male.

He got up and opened a drawer. Inside, atop a mess of papers and notebooks, sat a tiny bottle of clear liquid. He took it, and returned to the bunk.

Might as well, he thought, sadly.

He unscrewed the stopper, which also functioned as a pipette. He squeezed the bulb and drew in a little liquid, tipped his head back and administered one drop to each eye. Blinking, he lay back on the bed.

Drowsy relief billowed over his senses. The aches in his joints faded away, to be replaced by a warm, cloudy sensation that erased his cares and smoothed his brow. His eyes flickered shut, and he drifted on the cusp of sleep for a long while before succumbing.

He dreamed that night of a young woman, with long blonde hair and a smile so perfect it made his heart glow like burning embers. But when he woke the next morning, he remembered none of it. Eight Tavern Banter – Crake Visits An Old Friend – The Sanctum – An Unpleasant Surprise Old One-Eye's tavern was a swelter of heat and smoke, pungent with sweat and meat and beer. The gas lamps were muted by the fug that hung in the air. Stoves, lit to keep the chill of dusk away, made the room stifling. The din of conversation was such that people had to shout to be heard, raising the volume ever further. Waitresses passed between the crude wooden tables, expertly avoiding the attentions of rough-eyed men with ready hands.

Buried amid the standing crowd, Frey held court at a table littered with pewter flagons. He was just finishing a tale about his early days working for Dracken Industries as a cargo hauler. The story concerned an employee's senile mother, who had somehow got to the controls of an unattended tractor and driven it into a pile of caged chickens. The punchline was delivered with enough panache to make Pinn spew beer from his nose, which had Malvery laughing so hard he retched. Crake observed the scene with a polite smile. Harkins looked nervously at the people standing nearby, clearly wishing he was anywhere but here. The gangly pilot had been cajoled along on this expedition by Malvery, who thought it would do him good to get out among people. Harkins hated the idea, but had agreed anyway, to avoid the slightest risk of giving offence by refusal.

Jez and Silo were absent. Jez didn't drink alcohol, and kept herself to herself; Silo rarely left the ship.

Crake sipped at his beer as Pinn and Malvery recovered. His companions were all merrily drunk, except Harkins, who radiated discomfort despite having sunk three flagons already. Crake was still working on his first. They'd given up bullying him to keep pace once he'd convinced them he wouldn't be swayed. He had other business tonight, and it didn't involve getting hammered on cheap alcohol.

How easily they forgot, he thought. As if Macarde holding a gun to his head was a trifling matter not worthy of comment. As if the mass murder of dozens of innocent people was something that could be erased with a few nights of heavy drinking.

Was that their secret? Was that how they lived in this world? Like animals, thinking only of what was in front of them. Did they live in the moment, without thought for the past or concern for the future?

Certainly that was true of Pinn. He was too dim to comprehend such intangibles as past or future. Whenever he spoke of them, it was with such a devastating lack of understanding that Crake had to leave the room.

Pinn rambled endlessly about Lisinda, a girl from his village, the sweetheart who waited for him back home. His devotion and loyalty to her were eternal. She was a goddess, a virginal idol, the woman he was to marry. After a brief romance – during which Pinn proudly declared they'd never had sex, as if through some mighty restraint on his part – she'd told him she loved him. Not long afterward, he'd left her a note and gone out into the world to make his fortune. That had been four years ago, and he'd neither seen nor contacted her since. He'd return a rich and successful man, or not at all.

Pinn saw himself as her shining knight, who would one day return and give her all the wonderful things he felt she deserved. The simple truth – which, in Crake's opinion, was obvious to anyone with half a brain – was that the day would never come. What little money Pinn had was quickly squandered on pleasures of the flesh. He gambled, drank and whored as if it was his last day alive, and he flew the same way. Even if he somehow managed to survive long enough to luck his way into a fortune, Crake had no doubt that the bovine, dull-looking girl – whose picture Pinn enthusiastically showed to all and sundry – had long since given up on him and moved on.

In Crake's eyes, Pinn had no honour. He'd lie with whores, then lament his manly weakness in the morning and swear fidelity to Lisinda. The following night he'd get drunk and do it again. How he could believe himself in love on the one hand and cheat on her on the other was baffling. Crake considered him a life-form ranking somewhere below a garden mole and just above a shellfish.

The others, he couldn't so easily dismiss. Harkins was a simple man, but at least he knew it. He didn't suffer the same staggering failure of self-awareness that Pinn did. Malvery had a brain on him when he chose to use it, and he was a good-hearted sort to boot. Jez, while not luminously cultured, was very quick and knew her stuff better than anyone on board, with the possible exception of their mysterious Murthian engineer. Even Frey was smart, though clearly lacking in education.

How, then, could these people live so day-to-day? How could they discard the past and ignore the future with such enviable ease?

Or was it simply that the past was too painful and the future too bleak to contemplate?

He finished his drink and got to his feet. This was a question for another time.

'Excuse me, gentlemen,' he said. 'I have to pay someone a visit.'

His announcement was greeted by a rousing wa-hey! from the table.

'A lady friend, eh?' Malvery enquired with a salacious nudge that almost unbalanced him. 'I knew you'd crack! Three months I've known him and he's not so much as looked at a woman!'

Crake managed to maintain a fixed smile. 'You must admit, the quality of lady I've been exposed to hasn't been terribly inspiring.'

'Hear that?' jeered Pinn. 'He thinks he's too good for our sort! Or maybe it's just that women aren't to his taste,' he finished with a smirk.

Crake wasn't sinking to that level. 'I'll be back later,' he said stiffly, and left.

'We'll be here!' Frey called after him.

'You great big ponce!' Pinn added, to raucous howls of laughter from his companions.

Crake pushed his way out of the tavern, cheeks burning. The cold, clear air off the sea soothed him. He stood outside Old One-Eye's, collecting himself. Even after several months on board the Ketty Jay, he wasn't used to being mocked quite so crudely. It took him a short while before he felt calm enough to forgive the crew. Not Pinn, though. That was just one more score against him. Ponce, indeed. That moron didn't know how to love a woman.

He buttoned up his greatcoat, pulled on a pair of gloves and began to walk.

Tarlock Cove at dusk was rather picturesque, he thought. A fraction more civilised than the dives he'd become accustomed to, anyway. With the Hookhollows rising steeply at the back of the town and the wild Poleward Sea before it, there was a dramatic vista at every corner. It was built into the mountainside and straggled around the encircling arms of the bay, connected by steep stairs and winding gravel paths. Houses were narrow, wooden and generally well kept once you got away from either of the two docks. Vessels of both air and sea made port here, as Tarlock Cove was built on fishing. The ships trawled the shoals and sold their catch to the aircraft crews for distribution.

It was, in fact, the reason they'd come here. Having been burned by their last endeavour, Frey decided to play it safe with some nice, legal work that wasn't liable to get them all killed. He'd all but emptied the Ketty Jay's coffers to buy a cargo of smoked bloodfish, which he planned to sell inland for a profit. Apparently, it was 'easy work' and 'nothing could go wrong', both phrases Crake had learned to mistrust of late.

He headed up railed stone stairways and along curving lanes. The houses pressed close to a waist-high barrier wall, which separated pedestrians from the sheer cliffs on the other side. Lamplighters were making their way along the cobbled streets, leaving a dotted line of hazily glowing lamp-posts in their wake. Tarlock Cove was preparing for dusk.

As Crake climbed higher, he could see the lighthouse at the mouth of the bay, and he was pleased when he noticed it brighten and begin to turn. Such things, signs of a well-run and orderly world, gave him a sense of enormous satisfaction at times.

Orderliness was one of the reasons he'd liked Tarlock Cove on his previous visits. It was overseen by the family whose name it bore, and the Tarlocks ensured their little town wasn't left to ruin. Houses were well painted, streets swept clean, and the Ducal Militia made certain that the ragamuffin traders who passed through were kept from bothering the respectable folk higher up the mountainside.

Dominating it all from the highest point of the town was the Tarlock manse. It was unassuming in its grandeur, a wide, stout building with many windows, benevolently overlooking the bay. A classically understated design, Crake thought: the picture of aristocratic modesty. He'd visited with the Tarlocks once, and found them delightful company.

But it wasn't the Tarlocks he planned to see tonight. He went instead down a winding, lamp-lit lane and knocked at the door of a thin, three-storey house sandwiched between other houses of a similar design.

The door was opened by a rotund man in his sixties wearing pincenez. The top of his head was bald, but stringy grey hair fell around his neck and over the collar of his brown-and-gold jacket.

He took one look at his visitor and the colour drained from his face.

'Good evening, Plome,' Crake said.

'Good evening?' Plome spluttered. He looked both ways up the alley, then seized him by the arm and pulled him over the threshold. 'Get off the street, you fool!' He shut the door the moment Crake was inside.

The hallway within was shadowy at this hour: the lamps hadn't yet been lit. Gold-framed portraits and a floor-to-ceiling mirror hung on panelled walls of dark wood. As Crake began to unbutton his greatcoat, he glanced through the doorway into the sitting room. Tea and cakes for two had been laid out on a lacquered side table next to a pair of armchairs.

'You were expecting me?' Crake asked, bemused.

'I was expecting someone entirely different! A judge, if you must know! What are you doing here?' Before Crake could answer, Plome had taken him by the elbow and was hurrying him down the hall.

At the end of the hall was a staircase. Plome steered Crake around the side to a small, innocuous door. It was a cupboard under the stairs, to all appearances, but Crake knew by the prickling of his senses that appearances were deceptive here. Plome drew a tuning fork from his coat and rapped it smartly against the door frame. The fork sang a high, clear note, and Plome opened the door.

Inside was a single shelf with a lantern, and a set of wooden steps leading down. Plome held the fork high, still ringing, and ushered Crake past. Crake felt himself brushed by the daemon that had been thralled into the doorway. A minor glamour. Anyone opening the door before subduing the daemon with the correct frequency would have seen nothing but a cluttered cupboard, probably accompanied by a strong mental suggestion that there was nothing interesting inside.

'Watch yourself,' said Plome. 'I'll go first. Third step from the bottom will paralyse you for an hour or so.'

Crake stopped and waited for Plome to shut the door, strike a match and touch it to the lantern. He led the way down the stairs, and Crake followed him. At the bottom Plome struck another match and lit the first of several gas-lamps set in sconces on the walls. A soft glow swelled to fill the room.

'Electricity hasn't caught on here yet, I'm afraid,' he said apologetically, moving from lamp to lamp with the match. 'The Tarlocks banned small generators. Too noisy and smelly, that's the official line. But really it's so they can build their own big generator and charge us all for the supply.'

The sanctum under the house had changed little since Crake's last visit. Plome, like Crake, had always leaned towards science rather than superstition in his approach to daemonism. His sanctum was like a laboratory. A chalkboard was covered with formulae for frequency modulation, next to a complicated alembic and books on the nature of plasm and luminiferous aether. A globular brass cage took pride of place, surrounded by various resonating devices. There were thin metal strips of varying lengths, chimes of all kinds, and hollow wooden tubes. With such devices a daemon could be contained.

Crake went cold at the sight of an echo chamber in one corner. It was a riveted ball of metal, like a bathysphere, with a small circular porthole. He felt the strength drain out of his limbs. A worm of nausea crawled into his gut.

Plome followed his gaze. 'Oh, yes, that. Rather an impulse purchase. I haven't used it yet. Need to wait for the electricity to get here. To provide a constant vibration to produce the echo, you see.'

'I know how it works,' Crake assured him, his voice thin. He felt suddenly out of breath.

'Of course you do. And I expect you know how dangerous and unpredictable the echo technique is, too. Can't risk a battery conking out on me while I've got some bloody great horror sitting inside!' He laughed nervously, before noticing that Crake had lost the colour in his face. 'Are you quite alright?'

Crake tore his eyes away from the echo chamber. 'I'm fine.'

Plome didn't pursue the matter. He produced a handkerchief and mopped his brow. 'The Shacklemores were here looking for you.'

'The Shacklemores?' Crake was alarmed. 'When?'

'Sometime around the end of Swallow's Reap, I think. They said they were visiting all your associates.' He wrung his hands. 'Made me quite uncomfortable, actually. Made me think they knew about… well, this.' He made a gesture to encompass the sanctum. 'It'd be very awkward if this got out. You know how people are about us.'

But Crake too busy thinking about himself. The Shacklemore Agency was bad news. Bounty hunters to the rich and famous. He'd expected they'd be involved, but the confirmation still came as a blow.

'Sorry, old chap,' Plome said. 'I suppose they found you out, eh?'

'Something like that,' he replied. Something much, much worse.

'Barbarians,' he snorted. 'They take one look at a sanctum, then cry "daemonist" and hang you. Doesn't matter who you are or what you've done. Ignorance will triumph over reason every time. That's the sad state of the world.'

Crake raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected such a comment from this generally conservative man. 'You don't think I should have stayed to face the music? Argued my case?'

'Dear me, no! Running was the only thing you could have done. They just don't understand what we're about, people like us. They're afraid of the unknown. And those blasted Awakeners don't help, shooting their mouths off about Allsoul this and daemonism that, riling up the common folk. Why do you think I'm brown-nosing up to the local judge, eh? So I've got a fighting chance if anyone discovers what I've got hidden under my house!'

Plome had reddened during his tirade, and he had to take a few breaths and mop his brow when he was done. 'Speaking of which, he could be here any minute. What can I help you with?'

'I need supplies,' Crake said. 'I need to get back into the Art, and I don't have any of the equipment.'

'It's practising the Art that got you into this pickle in the first place,' Plome pointed out.

'I'm a daemonist, Plome,' Crake said. 'It's what I am. Without that, I'm just another shiftless rich boy, good for nothing.' He gave a sad, resigned smile. 'Once you've touched the other side, you can't ever go back.' A sudden, unexpected surge of tears surprised him. He fought them down, but Plome saw his eyes moisten and looked away. 'A man should… a man should get back on a horse if it throws him.'

'What happened to you?' Plome asked, getting worried now.

'The less you know, the better,' he said. 'For your own good. I don't want you involved.'

'I see,' said Plome, uncertainly. 'Well, you can't go to your usual suppliers. The Shacklemores will have them staked out.' He hurried over to a desk, snatched up a sheet of paper that was lying there, and scribbled down several addresses. 'These are all trustworthy,' he said, handing Crake the paper.

Crake ran his eye over the addresses. All in major cities, dotted around Vardia. Well, if he couldn't persuade Frey to visit one of them, he could always take leave of the Ketty Jay and make his own way.

'Thanks. You're a good friend, Plome.'

'Not at all. Our kind have to stick together in these benighted times.'

Crake folded the paper over, and saw that Plome had written it on the back of a handbill. He opened it out, and went grey.

'Where did you get this?'

'They're posted all over. Whoever that is, they want him badly. Him and his crew.'

'You don't say,' Crake murmured weakly.

'You know, the Century Knights just turned up in town looking for him, if you can believe that!' Plome enthused. 'The Archduke's personal elite!' He whistled and pointed at the flyer. 'He must have really messed up. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes when the Knights catch up with him!'

Crake stared at the handbill, as if he could simply will it out of existence.

WANTED FOR PIRACY AND MURDER, it said. LARGE REWARD.

Staring back at him was a picture of Frey. Nine A Matter Of Honour – Bree And Grudge – 'One More Town We're Not Coming Back To' – Departure Is Delayed Crake hurried through Tarlock Cove as fast as he dared. The streets were dark now, deepening towards true night, and stars clustered thickly overhead. The beam of the lighthouse swept across the town and out to sea. Crake walked with his collar up and his head down, his blond hair blowing restlessly in the salt wind, trying not to draw attention to himself.

Run, he told himself. Just run. You weren't a part of it. They don't even know you're on the crew.

But run where? His assets had been seized, so he had only the money he'd taken when he fled, and there was little enough of that left. His only contact here was Plome, and the last thing Plome needed was to shelter a fugitive. He had his own secrets to keep. No, Crake wouldn't implicate him in this matter. He'd deal with it on his own.

Run!

But he couldn't. Because the only way he was going to stay ahead of the Shacklemore Agency was to keep on the move, and the only way he could do that was aboard the Ketty Jay.

And there was more, besides. It was a matter of honour. He didn't care for Frey at all, and Pinn was beneath consideration, but the others didn't deserve to be hung out to dry like that. Especially not Malvery, of whom Crake was becoming quite fond.

But if he was honest with himself, even if he'd hated them all, he'd have gone back. If only to warn them. Because it was the right thing to do, and because it made him better than Frey.

He traced his steps back to Old One-Eye's, and paused at the threshold, listening for signs of a disturbance. He'd been seen drinking with the crew. If they'd already been caught, there was no sense getting himself picked up as well.

There was a good chance Frey hadn't been recognised, though. The ferrotype on the handbills must have been taken a long while ago, ten years or more. It didn't look much like Frey. He had a little less weight and a lot less care on his face. He was clean-shaven and looked happy, smiling into the camera, squinting in the sun. There were mountains and fields in the background. Crake wondered when it was taken, and by whom.

The drinkers were merry and the noise inside the tavern was customarily deafening. All seemed well. Peering through the windows, which were bleared with condensation, he detected nothing amiss.

Get in, grab them, and get out of town.

He took a breath, preparing himself to face the throng inside. That was when he spotted a pair of Knights heading up the street towards him.

He knew them from their ferrotypes. Everyone knew the Knights. Broadsheets carried news of their exploits; cheap paperbacks told fictional tales of their adventures; children dressed up and pretended to be them. Most citizens of Vardia could identify twenty or thirty of the hundred Century Knights. But nobody knew all of them, for they operated as much in secret as in public.

These two were among the most famous, and they attracted stares from passers-by as they approached. The smaller Knight was Samandra Bree, wearing a long, battered coat and loose hide trousers that flared over her boots. Perched on her head was her trademark tricorn hat. Her coat flapped back in the wind as she strode along, offering glimpses of twin lever-action shotguns and a cutlass at her belt. Young, dark-haired and beautiful, Samandra was a darling of the press. By all accounts she did little to encourage their attention, which only made the people love her more and the press chase her harder.

Her companion was Colden Grudge, who wasn't quite so photogenic. He was a man of bruising size with a face like a cliff. Thick, shaggy brown hair and an unkempt beard gave him a spiteful, simian look. Beneath a hooded cloak, time-dulled plates of armour had been strapped over his massive limbs and chest. He bore the insignia of the Century Knights on his breastplate. Two double-bladed hand-axes hung at his waist, and an autocannon was slung across his back.

Crake's mouth went dry and he almost fled. It took him a few moments to realise that they weren't heading for him at all, but for the tavern he was standing in front of. They were going to Old One-Eye's.

He didn't have time to think. In moments they'd be inside. Before he knew what he was doing, he thrust the handbill at them and blurted: 'Excuse me. You're looking for this man, aren't you?'

The Knights stopped. Grudge glared at him, tiny eyes peering out from beneath a beetling brow. Samandra tipped back her tricorn hat and smiled. Crake found himself thinking that she really was quite strikingly gorgeous in person.

'Why, yes we are, sir,' she said. 'Seen him?'

'I just… yes, I just did, yes,' he stammered. 'At least I think it was him.'

'And where was that?' Samandra asked, with a faintly amused expression. She took his nervousness to be the reaction of a man intimidated by a pretty woman, instead of someone strangled by the fear of discovery.

'In a tavern… that way!' Crake improvised, pointing up the road.

'Which tavern?' Grudge demanded impatiently.

Crake grasped for a name. 'Oh, it's the one with lanterns out front, you know… The Howling Wolf or something… The Prowling Wolf! That's it! That's where I saw him!'

'You sure about that?' Grudge asked, unconvinced.

'You're not from around here, are you?' Samandra asked, in that charmingly soft voice that made Crake feel like pond scum for lying to her.

'Does it show?' he said, with a grin. He gave them a smile, a glimpse of the golden tooth. Putting just a little power into it, letting the daemon suck a tiny fraction of his vital essence, just enough to allay their suspicions, just enough to say: believe him. 'I'm visiting a friend.'

Samandra's eyes had flicked to his tooth for just an instant, drawn by the glimmer. Now they were back on him.

'Be where we can find you,' she said.

Crake looked at her blankly.

'The reward!' she said, pointing at the handbill. 'You do want the reward?'

'Oh, yes!' Crake said, recovering. 'I'll just be in here.' He thumbed towards Old One-Eye's.

Samandra and Grudge exchanged glances, then they hurried off up the road in the direction of The Prowling Wolf. Crake let out a slow, shaky breath and plunged into the tavern. Frey was having a rare old time. He was exhausted from laughing and perfectly drunk, hovering in that elusive zone of inebriation where everything was in balance and all was right with the world. He never wanted this night to end. He loved Malvery and Pinn and even silent Harkins as brothers in arms. And if things began to wind down, well, the waitress had been giving him looks. She had a homely sort of face, but he liked her red hair and the freckles on her button nose, and he was in the mood for something curvy and soft tonight.

What a life it was! A fine thing to be a captain, a freebooter, a lord of the skies.

Crake's arrival was something of a downer. 'We're getting out of here,' he said, slapping the handbill onto the table and thrusting a finger at the picture of Frey. 'Now!'

Frey, a little slow off the mark, was more surprised by the picture than the danger it represented. He recognised it immediately. How did they get their hands on that one? Who gave it to them?

Crake snatched the handbill away and stuffed it in his pocket. 'I just had to head off Samandra Bree and Colden Grudge. They're looking for us. They'll be back in a few minutes. I suggest we not be here when they do.'

'You met Samandra Bree?' Pinn gaped. 'You lucky turd!'

'Spit and blood! Get moving, you idiots!'

The penny had finally dropped. They surged up and pushed their way through the crowd towards the door.

By the time they emerged from the tavern, Frey's mood had seesawed from elation to cold, hard fear. The Century Knights? The Century Knights were on his tail? What had he done to deserve that?

'Back to the Ketty Jay?' Malvery suggested, scanning the street.

'Bloody right,' Frey muttered. 'This is one more town we're not coming back to.'

'Why don't we just emigrate and be done with it?'

'Not a bad idea at that,' Frey said over his shoulder, as he hurried away in the direction of the docks.

The town's landing pad was situated halfway along one of the mountainous arms that sheltered the bay. Houses became sparser as they approached, and the streets were whittled down to a single wide path that dipped and curved with the land. It was flanked by storage sheds, the occasional tavern and a customs house. The vast, moist breathing of the sea was loud here. Waves crashed and spumed on the rocks far below.

Frey hugged his coat tight around him as he led his crew along the stony path. The previously welcoming town seemed suddenly threatening and nightmarish. He glanced over his shoulder for signs of pursuit, but nobody came running after them. Perhaps they'd given the Knights the slip.

Wanted for murder? Piracy, fine, he'd own up to that (to himself, at least. Damned if he'd admit it to a judge). But murder? He was no murderer! What happened to the Ace of Skulls wasn't his fault!

It didn't matter that piracy and murder carried the same penalty of hanging. In real terms, whether he did both or only one was moot: his end would be the same. But it was the principle of the thing. It was all so tragically unfair.

He slowed as they spotted a trio of Ducal Militiamen coming towards them. They were striding along the road from the docks, clad in the brown uniform of the Aulenfay Duchy, all buttoned-up jackets and flat-topped caps. The path afforded nowhere to duck away without looking suspicious.

'Cap'n…' Malvery warned.

'I see them,' Frey said. 'Keep walking. It's only me they'll recognise. '

Frey tucked his head down into his collar and shoved his hands into his pockets, playing the frozen traveller hurrying to get somewhere warm. He dropped back into the group, keeping Malvery's bulk between him and the militiamen.

Their boots crunched on the path as they approached. Frey and his crew moved to the side of the path to let them pass. Their eyes swept the group as they neared.

'Bloody chilly when the sun goes down, eh?' Malvery hailed them with his usual booming good humour.

They grunted and walked on. So did Frey and his men.

The landing pad was busy with craft and their crews, loading the day's catch onto the vessels for the overnight flight inland. A freighter was rising slowly into the air, belly-lights bright. Its aerium engines pulsed as electromagnets pulverised refined aerium into ultralight gas, flooding the ballast tanks.

Frey had planned to avoid the rush and leave in the morning, since his cargo wasn't nearly as perishable as fresh fish, but now he was glad of the chaos. It would provide cover for their departure.

They passed the gas-lamps that marked the edge of the pad and wended their way towards the Ketty Jay. Crews laboured in the dazzling shine of their aircrafts' lights, long shadows blasted across the tarmac by the dark hulks that loomed above them. Thrusters rumbled as the freighter overhead switched to its prothane engines and began pushing away from the coast. The air was heavy with the smell of fish and the tang of the sea.

'Harkins, Pinn. Get to your craft and get up there,' said Frey. 'Harkins, I know you're drunk but that's my Firecrow and if you crash it I'll stuff you into your own arsehole and bowl you into the sea. Clear?'

Harkins belched, saluted, and staggered away. Pinn scurried off towards his Skylance without a word. The mention of the Century Knights had intimidated him enough that he was glad to get out of there.

Silo was standing at the bottom of the Ketty Jay's cargo ramp when Frey, Malvery and Crake arrived. He was idly smoking a roll-up cigarette made from an acrid Murthian blend of herbs. As they approached, he spat into his hand and crushed it out on his palm.

'Where's Jez?' Frey demanded.

'Quarters.'

'Good. We're going.'

'Cap'n.'

Silo joined the others as they headed up the ramp and into the cargo hold. The hold was steeped in gloom as always, stacked high with crates that were lashed untidily together. The reek of fish was overpowering in here.

Frey was making for the lever to raise the cargo ramp when a gravelly voice called out:

'Make another move and everybody dies.'

They froze. Coming up the cargo ramp, revolvers in both hands, was a figure they all knew and had hoped to never see. The most renowned of all the Century Knights. The Archduke's merciless attack dog: Kedmund Drave.

He was a barrel-chested man in his late forties, his clumsily assembled face scarred along the cheek and throat. Silver-grey hair was clipped close to his scalp, and he wore a suit of dull crimson armour, expertly moulded to the contours of his body by the Archduke's master artisans. A thick black cloak displayed the Knights' insignia in red, and the hilt of his two-handed sword could be seen rising behind his shoulder.

'Back away from that lever,' he commanded Frey. One revolver was trained on him; the other covered the rest of the crew. 'Get over with your friends.'

Frey obliged. He'd sobered up fast. The effects of the alcohol had been cancelled by the chill shock of adrenaline. He wracked his brains frantically to think of a way out of this, because he knew one thing for sure: if Kedmund Drave took him in, he'd swing from the gallows.

'Guns!' Drave snapped, as he herded them together. 'Knives. All of it.'

They disarmed, throwing their weapons down in a small heap in front of them. Drake looked them over critically.

'Step back. Against the crates.'

They did as they were told.

'Now. Who's this Jez I heard you mention?'

'She's the navigator,' Frey replied.

Drave glanced at the stairs leading out of the cargo hold. Deciding whether it was worth the risk of going up and getting her.

'Anyone else?'

'No,' said Frey.

Drave took a sudden step towards them and pressed the muzzle of his revolver to Crake's forehead. 'If you're lying, I'll blow his brains out!'

Crake whimpered softly. He'd had just about enough of people putting guns to his head.

'There's not another soul on board!' Frey said. He started with himself, and then pointed to each of the crew in turn. 'Pilot. Engineer. Doctor. Navigator is in her quarters. You've got a full crew here. This one…' he waved at Crake, 'he's just along for the ride.'

'The others? The outflyers?'

'Already gone.'

Drave glared at him, then took the revolver off Crake and backed away to a safer distance.

'Both of them?'

'Already gone,' Frey repeated, shrugging. 'They took off when they heard the Knights were on the case. Could be halfway to anywhere by now. We're all alone here.'

Deep in the shadows between the piles of crates, two tiny lights glimmered. There was the heavy thump of a footstep and a rustle of chain mail and leather. Drave spun around to look behind him, and the colour drained from his face.

'Well, unless you count Bess,' Frey added, and the golem burst from the darkness with a metallic roar.

Drave's reactions saved him. The armour of the Century Knights was legendarily light and strong, made using secret techniques in the Archduke's own forges, and it slowed him not at all as he flung himself aside to avoid Bess's crushing punch. He hit the ground in a roll and came up with both revolvers blazing. Bess flinched and recoiled as the bullets ricocheted from her armour and punched through her leather skin, but the assault did nothing more than enrage her. She bellowed and swept another punch at Drave, who jumped backwards to avoid it.

As soon as the Knight was distracted, the crew scattered. Frey dived for the guns, came up with Malvery's shotgun in his hands and squeezed the trigger. As he did so, he realised he'd forgotten to prime it first. He hoped the doctor had been careless enough to keep a round in the chamber.

He had. Drave saw the danger, raised his pistol, and was a split second from firing when Frey hit him full in the chest. The impact blasted him off his feet. He landed hard on the cargo ramp and rolled helplessly down it and off the end.

Silo lunged across the hold and raised the lever to close the cargo ramp. Bess started to run down it, chasing the fallen Knight, but Crake shouted after her. She stopped, somewhat reluctantly, and settled for guarding the closing gap. Drave was already trying to pick himself up off the ground. He was groggy but otherwise unharmed, saved by his chestplate.

Frey had bolted for the stairs that led up to the main passageway before the cargo ramp had even closed. He sprinted into the cockpit, past Jez, who was just opening the door to her quarters.

'Was that gunfire?' she asked.

He leaped into his chair and punched in the ignition code, then boosted the aerium engines to full. The Ketty Jay gave a dolorous groan as its tanks filled and began to haul the craft skyward. He could hear gunfire outside over the sound of the prothane thrusters: Drave shooting uselessly at the hull. The dark aircraft that shared the landing pad sank from view as they lifted into the night sky.

'Cap'n?' Jez enquired, from the doorway of the cockpit. 'Are we in trouble?'

'Yes, Jez,' he said. 'We're in trouble.'

Then he hit the thrusters and the Ketty Jay thundered, tearing away across the docks and racing out to sea. Ten Jez Has Visions – Trinica Dracken – An Ultimatum From Crake – Frey Takes A Stand It was a still day. Light flakes of snow drifted from a sky laden with grey cloud. The silence was immense.

Jez stood on the edge of the small landing pad, wrapped up in pelts, holding a cup of cocoa between her furred mittens. She'd bought her new arctic attire soon after arriving. Her meagre possessions had been left behind in her room at the lodging-house in Scarwater. Truth be told, despite the temperature, she didn't need to wear anything at all. The cold didn't seem to affect her nowadays. But it was essential to keep up appearances: her safety depended on it. Anyone in their right mind would kill her if they knew what she was.

The landing pad was set on a raised plateau above a great, icy expanse. On the horizon, a range of ghostly mountains lay, blued by distance. A herd of snow-hogs were trekking across the plain.

Yortland. A frozen, hard and cruel place, but the only place on the continent of North Pandraca where the Coalition Navy held no sway, and Coalition laws didn't apply. The only place left for the crew of the Ketty Jay to run to.

She took a sip of her cocoa.

I could stay here, she thought. I could walk out into that wilderness and never be seen again.

Behind her sat the Ketty Jay and her outflyers. Snow had settled on the Ketty Jay's back and wings, several inches deep. Nearby, an elderly Yort was hammering at the struts of his craft, knocking off icicles. He looked strong despite his age, with a thick neck and huge shoulders. He was bundled up in heavy furs, only his bald and tattooed head exposed to the elements. His ears, lips and nose were pierced with rings and bone shards. Otherwise, there was nobody to be seen.

Besides the Ketty Jay there were a couple of Yort haulers and some small personal racers, which Jez had already examined and mentally criticised – a habit born from a life as a craftbuilder's daughter. They were blockish, dark and ugly, built for efficiency, without a care for aesthetics. Typical Yort work. In such an excessively masculine society, owning a craft of elegant design was viewed at best as pointless, at worst as potential evidence of homosexuality. Not something to be taken lightly, since sodomy carried the death penalty out here. As a result, Yorts designed everything to suggest that the owner was so enormously virile, a woman would need armour-plated ovaries to survive a night with him.

Jez's eyes unfocused as she stared out across the plain.

Get away from everyone, she thought. Maybe that's best. Get away from everyone, before it's too late.

But the loneliness. She couldn't take the loneliness. What was the point in existence, if you were forever alone?

Scattered across the plateau was the settlement of Majduk Eyl. Yorts built mostly underground for insulation, and their dwellings were barely visible. All that could be seen from the pad were the shallow humps of their dome-shaped roofs, the doorways that thrust through the snow, the skylights sheltered by overhanging eaves. Smoke rose from three dozen chimneys, curling steadily up to join the clouds. A small figure, hooded and cloaked, was scattering grit from a sack over the slushy trails that ran between the dwellings.

The crew of the Ketty Jay were in one of those buildings. They were just another set of companions, like the ones before, and the ones before that. She kept herself aloof from them. It would make it hurt less when she had to leave.

Sooner or later, they'd notice something was different about her. The little things would begin to add up. The way her bullet wound had healed so fast, the way she never seemed to sleep, the way she never got tired. The way animals reacted to her.

Then she'd have to move on again, find a new crew. Keep going.

Going where? Doing what?

Anywhere. Anything. Just keep going.

She drank her cocoa. She only ate or drank these days because she liked the taste, not out of need. During the month of Swallow's Reap, as an experiment, she'd gone without food or water for a week. Nothing happened except a vague, instinctive suspicion that something was missing in her daily routine. After that, she'd made sure to join the crew at mealtimes, and occasionally comment loudly on her hunger or thirst; but she ate little, because she wasn't wasteful by nature.

The snow-hogs were inching across the ice-plain, shambling heaps of muscle and tusk and shaggy white fur. She could see a pair of predators tracking them, huge doglike things, a type of creature she didn't recognise. They loped along hungrily, hoping for a chance at a straggler.

Here I am again, she reflected, as she scanned the landscape. A few years ago, she'd been a frequent visitor to the wild, icebound northern coast, part of a scientific expedition in search of the relics of a lost civilisation. It hadn't been a conscious decision to stay away from Yortland, but it was only now that she realised she'd never been back since… well, since…

Her thoughts flickered away from the memory, but it was too late. A dreadful sensation washed over her, beginning at her nape and sweeping through her body. Her skin tightened, then relaxed; her muscles clenched and unclenched. The world flexed, just a fraction, and when it sprang back into shape, everything was different.

A strange twilight had fallen. Though it seemed darker, her vision had sharpened. It was as if she'd been looking at the world through a steamed-up pane of glass, and it had suddenly been removed. Details were thrust at her eyes; edges became stark as razors.

The herd of snow-hogs prickled with a faint purplish aura. Though they were several kloms away, she could count their teeth, and see the pupils of their rolling eyes. She sensed the path of the faint wind chasing along the plain; she could picture its route in her mind.

There was so much she was sensing, hearing, smelling. She could hardly breathe under the assault of information. It felt like she was being battered by an irresistible river. At any moment she'd lose her footing and be swept into oblivion.

One of the predators suddenly broke into a run. Its aura was deep crimson, and it left a slowly dispersing trail as it ran. Then suddenly she was with the predator, in the predator, its blood pumping hard, heart slamming, tongue-loll and tooth-sharp, all paws and look-see yes yes yes that one is weak, that one, and my kin-brother alongside and wary of the sharp sharp tusks of the mother but oh oh the hunger-

Jez gulped in a breath, like a drowning woman who had just broken the surface. Reality snapped into place: the world was once again as it had always been. Snow drifted down, undisturbed by her panic. She took a step back, disorientated, wanting to be away from that edge of the plateau. The mug had fallen from her hands and lay on the ground before her. Brown, steaming cocoa ate through the ice.

She began to tremble, helplessly, and not from the cold. She clutched herself and looked about. The Yort was nowhere to be seen. Nobody was there. Nobody had witnessed it.

Witnessed what? she demanded of herself. What's happening to me?

A gust of wind blew from the north, and there was a sound on the wind, something she sensed rather than heard. Voices, raised in a cacophony, calling. A terrible, desperate longing swelled in her.

She looked to the north, and it was as if she could see past the mountains, past the sea, her vision carried on bird's wings. She rushed onward, over icebergs and waves until there came fog and mist and a vast wall of churning grey.

She knew this place. It was the swirling cloud-cap they called the Wrack, which cloaked the north pole. The frontier than no one had ever returned from. Not alive, anyway.

There was something behind the cloud. A shape, an aircraft, black and vast, looming towards her. The voices.

Come with us.

She screwed her eyes shut and staggered away with a cry, stumbling towards the Ketty Jay. Her mind rung like a struck bell, resounding with the howling, the Wrack, and the terror of what lay beyond. The bar was empty, but for the crew of the Ketty Jay and the bartender. The menfolk of the village were in the mines or out hunting; the women generally stayed out of sight. During the day, Frey and the others had the place to themselves.

Frey stared dejectedly at his picture. This time it was no handbill. He'd made the national broadsheets now.

'It's only on page ten!' Malvery bellowed, giving him a thump on the shoulder. 'It doesn't even look like you! Besides, that issue's a week old. Mark me, they'll have forgotten about it by now.'

Frey took little comfort in that. It was true that he looked less and less like his picture, but that was mostly because the Frey in the picture was so happy and carefree. The real Frey was becoming less so by the day. His stubble had grown out to an untidy beard and his hair was getting beyond the control of a comb. His eyes were sunken and there were dark bags beneath them. In the two weeks since they'd fled Tarlock Cove he'd become ever more sullen and withdrawn.

And now this: a broadsheet from Vardia, given to Silo by a trader who bought their cargo of smoked fish at a rock-bottom price. Frey had hidden angrily in his quarters during the transaction, in case he was recognised.