Frey had closed up. Crake had hurt him.
'Thank you, Cap'n,' Crake said eventually, as if that would salve his feelings.
'Frey,' he said. 'It's just Frey, now.'
There was something terrible and final in that. Crake suddenly wanted to take it all back, to stay on the Ketty Jay with the people he cared about. He wanted to ask for their help, to have them share in his mission. But he couldn't. It would mean telling them what he'd done. Like Jez, he was going to hold on to his secret to the end.
They walked back down the path towards the docks. Despite the warmth of his furs, Crake felt as cold as he'd ever been in his life.
Twenty-Three
'Another day, another rat-hole,' said Frey with forced cheeriness, as he brought the Ketty Jay in over Hawk Point.
The settlement below had a blank, starved look to it. It was crushed into a mountain pass, deep in the Splinters, blanched by the hot spring sun. Carefully laid rows of buildings betrayed its orderly origins, but it had long since turned ramshackle. Brown strips of withered flowerbeds rotted on the main street. Slates had gone missing from the roofs. Though the town centre still had a ghost of its former pride, the outskirts had decayed into shanties.
Frey had never been here before, but he'd seen its like a hundred times. Another dying outpost, founded on high hopes and promises of freedom, only to end up violence-ridden and destitute. Honest traders came here to escape the cities and the crushing grip of the Guilds, but without Guild bribes the Ducal militia paid it no attention, and soon the criminals took over. Before long, the dreams of the first settlers had fallen into ruin, and they abandoned their failed town to try again elsewhere.
The Coalition Navy traditionally showed little interest in out-of-the-way, insignificant places like Hawk Point. Which made the presence of one of their frigates all the more unusual.
'What are they doing here?' Trinica muttered. She was standing at Frey's shoulder, one hand on the back of the pilot's seat. Jez sat at the navigator's station, behind him. Individually, they made Frey uneasy; together, it was all he could do not to jump whenever one of them spoke.
'Still a wanted woman, Trinica?' he asked.
'Of course. Quite a bounty on my head, last I heard. Though I think they have other matters to worry about right now.'
'You mean all that about the Sammies arming up in the south?'
'Amongst other things.'
'Like their mortal enemies, the Awakeners, trying to steal some terrible doomsday weapon that could possibly destroy vast swathes of Vardia?' Frey suggested.
Trinica ignored the jab. 'I'd be surprised if they knew about that at all.' She watched the frigate turning slowly in the air above the town. Its thrusters glowed, and moments later they heard a low roar that ratded the cockpit.
'Looks like they're heading off,' said Frey.
Trinica tutted. 'I hope they haven't disturbed my contact. He'll be far less agreeable if he's agitated. Not that he's usually very agreeable.'
'Are you sure this feller's any good?' Frey asked.
'The best. When I need information, he's the first one I go to.'
'Really? I know lots of whispermongers, and I never heard of Osric Smult.'
'You wouldn't have,' said Trinica, and left it at that. Frey felt his hackles rising at the slight edge of disdain in her voice.
Calm down, he thought. Don't let her know that she gets to you.
'Wind from the north, Cap'n,' said Jez from behind him. 'You'll get some heavy push on the way in.'
Frey made a grunt of acknowledgement. Jez had been subdued ever since she emerged from the infirmary. She went about her job quietly and with her head down, saying only the bare minimum to fulfil her duties. Frey, for his part, was fine with that. He didn't want to tackle the question of Jez right now. He had enough on his plate.
The problem was, he felt betrayed. A Mane, a damned Mane, here on his aircraft! He'd been hearing tales of those sky-ghouls since he was old enough to fly. He'd never have hired Jez if she'd told him about her condition in advance. Not that he'd have done differently in her shoes, but that was hardly the point.
The point was, she let him care about her. She didn't tell him, and she let him care about her, and then he found out. That was the betrayal.
Not only was she the best navigator he ever had, and utterly invaluable, but he liked her. She was a friend. She was, in fact, Frey's only female friend. For the rest, friendship was just an inconvenient on the way to sex. But he'd felt almost brotherly towards Jez.
Largely it was because she wasn't up to his standards as far as women went, but it was also because he respected her. There weren't many women Frey respected, but Jez was one of them.
He knew there was something off about her, of course he did. But he'd never thought . . . well, not this.
Now he was repulsed by her, and afraid, and guilty for feeling that way. He knew she was the same old Jez, but at the same time she wasn't, and that confused him and made him angry and frustrated. He was mad at her for that.
Why did she have to screw everything up by being a Mane?
The tension was scarcely less outside the cockpit. Morale was low throughout the crew. Like him, everyone was nervous around Jez. They didn't quite know what to make of her since they'd seen her rip the head off an Imperator with her bare hands.
There were other problems, too. The departure of Crake and Bess had left a hole bigger than anyone would have thought. Malvery missed the daemonist most of all: he was gloomily drinking himself stupid. Meanwhile Harkins had taken to sleeping in the cockpit of his Firecrow, and hardly set foot on the Ketty Jay. Whenever he did, Slag emerged to drive him off. Silo kept his own counsel, as ever, but Pinn was becoming a handful. He'd been depressed ever since he got that letter from his sweetheart, but he became downright mutinous at the news that Trinica Dracken would be travelling with them. It took all of Frey's powers of coercion, and a few good old- fashioned threats, before he'd consent to go anywhere with a woman he loathed.
Pinn's opinion of Dracken was shared by the rest of the crew, although none of them were as vocal as he was. Even Frey had decided he didn't much want her on board. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but having her here destroyed the one safe haven he had in his life. When he was flying the Ketty Jay he could pretend that he was a mighty captain, free to find adventure wherever it lay. A lord of the skies! But Trinica's presence punctured all his illusions. Reflected in those black, black eyes, he saw himself as she must: captain of a heap of junk, leader of a miserable crew, a man who'd made nothing of himself.
'Are your engines supposed to make that sound?' she inquired, as Frey lowered the Ketty Jay towards the small, crowded landing pad.
'Didn't have time to get them fixed in Iktak, did I?' he said. 'Speed is of the essence, and all that. It would've taken a couple of weeks to get the parts.' Not that I could have afforded them, anyway, he added mentally.
'You must have a fine engineer, then,' Trinica remarked.
He couldn't work out whether the compliment was snide or genuine, but it didn't matter in the end. Just by being here, she made him feel like a failure.
What was he even doing? Chasing after some artefact with no clear idea of what it was or what it did? It
