'No,' said Frey. 'But we're doing it anyway.'
Jez nodded to herself. 'Right you are, Cap'n,' she said. Then she, too, walked off towards the Ketty Jay, and Frey was left alone.
Thirteen
Marlen's Hook stood between the Blackendraft ash flats and the Scourfoot Desert, an outpost of humanity in the most i. lifeless of places. To the west were the Hookhollows, their sharp tips peeping over the edge of the high Eastern Plateau. Restless volcanoes hidden among the mountain peaks filled the sky with a grimy haze which was carried on to the plateau by the prevailing winds. The land was gloomy and bleared.
The port was built on a blunt lump of black rock that thrust dramatically upward from the ash-crusted earth. The heart of the settlement was on the flat top of the rock, where there was a landing pad for aircraft. It was the only place in Marlen's Hook that had anything recognisable as streets.
Jez stood at Frey's shoulder as he brought the Ketty Jay in towards the landing pad. She'd been to Marlen's Hook twice since joining Frey's crew, and she never looked forward to returning. The place was a lawless den of thieves and cut-throats. The Coalition Navy ignored it because it was so remote from civilisation, and because the ash in the air clogged up engines and lungs alike. Just being here was bad for your health.
She turned her eyes to the horizon, where the day was burning down in shades of pink and yellow and purple. Still, she thought, at least it makes for a dramatic sunset.
Outside the central mass of the town, shanty dwellings had gathered in clots. Tents and lean-tos crowded for space. Buildings clung to the sloped flanks of the rock wherever they could, forming a rickety maze of plank walkways and chiselled stairs. Shadows stretched long fingers eastward, or pooled in the hollows.
The Storm Dog was ahead of them and below, descending towards the port. Powerful beam lamps shone up from the landing pad, cutting through the murk, guiding her in. The Ketty Jay followed, her outflyers trailing behind.
'Well,' said Frey. 'It may not be pretty, but if anyone knows where Dracken might be found, they'll be down there somewhere.'
'Let's hope so, Cap'n,' Jez said neutrally. Frey was just talking to fill up the silence. She could tell he was full of doubts, just as she was. The atmosphere on the return journey from Kurg had been strained. The crew had retreated to their quarters or occupied themselves with solitary tasks. Hodd's murder had sobered them. Nobody missed the explorer, but nobody thought he deserved what he got, and they were all wary of Grist now. They didn't like throwing their lot in with someone like that. They'd rather give up on this whole thing.
But the Cap'n had decided otherwise. He'd got the bit between his teeth, and he wasn't going to stop. Jez wished she knew what was going on in his head. He'd been different ever since Grist had turned up. The old Frey would have known when to retreat. He would have folded his hand and got out while they still could. But something had lit a fire under him. There was a kind of doggedness in his manner that she hadn't seen since they got tangled up in the Retribution Falls affair. She sensed they'd be following this through to the end.
But if Grist was a dangerous ally, then Dracken was an even more dangerous enemy. Her involvement was unlikely to be a coincidence. There was more to this than a simple treasure hunt. She just hoped the Cap'n knew what he was doing.
Meanwhile, Jez had preoccupations of her own. Now that the shock had worn off, she'd had time to process everything she learned aboard the dreadnought. Foremost among them was this: Manes were daemons. Daemons that took over the bodies of men and women.
She had a daemon inside her.
The thought was horrifying. Ever since she'd first realised she was dead, she'd thought of the Mane part of her as an infection, a disease that she must resist if she wanted to retain her humanity. But now it was different. Now she was possessed. The enemy was intelligent, and it was within her. Not some mindless force of transformation, but a malicious invader that knew her thoughts and plotted her overthrow.
She held up her hand in front of her and stared at it. The arrow wound she'd sustained on Kurg had already closed up. There was no trace of a scar, and her fingers worked fine. Once her ability to heal rapidly had seemed a useful side effect of her condition; now it was just more evidence of the dreadful entity within her.
Her skin no longer felt like her own. She was violated. Somehow, she had to expel the invader.
This can't go on, she thought.
For years she'd lived in fear of herself, hiding from her fellow humans, afraid to make friends or to stay in one place. She'd tried to resist the creeping influence of the Manes, hoping to drive it back by willpower alone. She'd told herself that she would have been consumed long ago if not for that.
Maybe that was true, maybe not. But the influence grew, nevertheless. Her trances came more easily and frequently now.
She hadn't been winning. She'd just slowed the speed at which she lost.
Something's got to be done, she thought. And soon.
The Butcher's Block stood on a grubby thoroughfare, sandwiched between a pawnshop and a whorehouse. It was a patched-up mess of wind-blasted sheet metal and flapping tarp. The facade leaned outward as if the whole building was about to tip drunkenly into the street. Lamp-posts, made filthy by the insidious ash in the air, glowed in the dark. Most passers-by wore goggles and face masks; those who didn't had red-rimmed eyes and racking coughs.
Inside, smoke replaced ash as the pollutant of choice. The tables and stools were as mismatched as the clientele. An electric iron candelabra hung from the ceiling, buzzing. The rattling of an oil-powered generator could be heard through the outside wall.
Frey pushed in through the door, unwrapping the scarf from around his face. Pinn, Malvery- and Crake followed, hacking and spluttering. None of the worn-looking patrons paid them any attention.
'Someone get me a drink!' Malvery rasped. 'My mouth tastes like a fireplace.'
'Darian Frey!' called the bartender, seeing them come in. 'Rot and damn! How are you?'
Frey walked over and shook his hand. His name was Ollian Rusk, and he was the proprietor. Huge, fat, permanently sweaty and bald as an egg. He kept a shotgun on a rack over the armour-plated bar, to distract attention from the bigger one he kept hidden underneath it.
'How's things in the ashtray of the world, Rusk?' Frey grinned.
'Getting by, getting by. Some drinks for your boys?'
'Reckon so. What do you recommend?'
'Beer's best, if you want to wash the atmosphere off your tongue.'
'Beer, then.'
'Coming up.'
Frey eyed the room, searching for familiar faces as Rusk poured the drinks. A lot of people came and went in Marlen's Hook. Every lowlife Frey had ever met - and he'd met quite a few - passed through here at one time or another. But tonight he was out of luck.
'Quiet lately,' said Rusk, divining his thoughts. 'Navy have come around sticking their noses in. Once word gets about, people don't want to come here so much.'
'Is nothing sacred?' Frey commiserated.
'Navy's jumpy. All these stories about colonies vanishing in New Vardia. Then there's those rumours that the Sammies found aerium, down where Murthia used to be. Everyone's paranoid they're kitting themselves up with a new Navy. Not to mention the Awakeners getting pissy 'cause the Archduke is trying to cut them down to size.' He
