'Put down your weapons,' he heard himself say. His voice was flat. 'Crake, take care of Bess.'
He surveyed the faces of the men behind the crates. The men of the Storm Dog. He recognised the bald head and bulbous eyes of Grist's bosun, Crattle. He heard the clatter of weapons being thrown down, and threw down his own. Crake was muttering soothing words to the golem, who was making threatening movements towards the men.
He looked over his shoulder. Trinica was there, her pistol trained on his back. He might have been looking at a statue, for all the emotion she showed.
None of it had been real. None. All this time he'd been fooling himself. He should have listened to sense. He should have learned his lesson on Kurg, when she stole the sphere and dismissed him with barely a word. She was a fake, a ghost, a wreck. The ruined husk of the woman he'd almost married. Just because she knew how to act the way she once had, it didn't mean the emotions were real.
But he'd fallen for it. He'd neglected his crew, he'd ignored their protests, and he'd let her into their lives. All because he thought there was something there still worth fighting for. Some remnant of the past that he could kindle into life. A relic of the time before he'd run out on her, when things seemed honest and straightforward. When he'd loved with abandon, unafraid.
His eyes fell to the ring on her finger. Then he turned back towards the men training guns on them. He'd gone beyond fury or grief, into a numb kind of calm.
'I suggest you let my daemonist deactivate his golem,' he said, loudly. 'Otherwise she's liable to tear someone's head off.'
Crattle waved his gun at them. Crake held up one hand. 'Nobody shoot me, okay?' He slowly reached into his pocket, pulled out his whistle, put it to his lips and blew. Once again there was no sound, but Bess drooped and stopped moving, the life gone from her.
Trinica and her men walked around in front of them, and she took the whisde from Crake's mouth. 'Search them,' she ordered her men. 'The daemonist especially. He may have various devices about his person.'
She reached up and took the silver cuff from Frey's ear. Their eyes met, but she looked through him as if he was a stranger. 'Watch out for his cutlass,' she told her men. 'Keep it away from him. It's dangerous.' Then she moved to Jez and took her earcuff, too.
'The compass,' she said, holding out her hand. Jez gave her a glare of pure hatred and pulled the compass from her pocket. Trinica consulted it, checking that it did indeed point towards the ring on her finger, then tossed it to her bosun.
'Keep hold of that,' she instructed him, and he slipped it into the pocket of his coat.
'Found these,' said another of her men, holding up Crake's pocket watch and his skeleton key that could unlock any door. Trinica held out her hand and took them, too, putting them away with the earcuffs and the whistle.
Then they stepped back to make way for the man who'd come out from behind the crates and was walking towards them, a cigar clamped between his grinning yellow teeth. Frey stared levelly at him. Harvin Grist, of course. The bastard might have outsmarted them again, but Frey wasn't about to show an ounce of humility, or bitterness, or sadness at the way this had all turned out. He wouldn't give them that satisfaction.
'Captain Frey,' he beamed, then launched into an explosive coughing fit that left him red-faced and wheezing, somewhat undermining his moment of glory.
'Captain Grist,' said Frey. 'You know, I have a doctor here if you want him to take a look at that cough.'
'I'll happily pull your lungs out your arse for you,' Malvery added. 'Cure your cough in a jiffy.'
Grist recovered and slapped Malvery on the arm. 'Aye, I don't think that'll be necessary, but thanks anyway.' He straightened and took another drag on his cigar. 'Now where were we?'
'You were warming up for a good, hearty gloat,' Frey replied. 'But under the circumstances, y'know, just skip it and shoot us, eh?'
'Oh, there might not be any need for that,' said Grist. 'I could've had Trinica blow you out of the sky if I wanted you dead.'
'Yes,' said Frey, turning a slow gaze on her. 'I'm sure she'd have been delighted to do that.'
'Don't be a child, Darian,' she said. 'It's business. Grist made me an offer. I accepted.'
'Heard from Osric Smult that you two were lookin' for me,' Grist said, through a cloud of smoke. 'Couldn't find Captain Dracken, but I found the Delirium Trigger in Iktak. I reckoned she'd come back sooner or later, so I left a man there to make her a proposition when she returned.'
'What happened to revenge, Trinica?' said Frey coldly. 'What about thousands will die?'
Trinica tilted her head. 'I didn't feel quite so vengeful after I heard his offer,' she said. 'Everyone has a price. He exceeded mine.' When Frey kept on looking at her, she waved him away. 'Don't act hurt, Darian. You'd have done the same. You know as well as I do that your intentions weren't half as noble as you pretended. As soon as you got your hands on that sphere, you were going to sell it to the highest bidder. Your thousands will die wouldn't be quite so important, weighed against a fortune.'
He laughed bitterly. Laughed because she was so, so wrong. All this time, she'd never even believed him. She thought he was chasing the sphere for his own profit. But for once, on this matter, he knew his own mind absolutely. No amount of money was that important. That was a line he wouldn't cross. Whatever she thought, he had enough honour for that.
Besides, he could have had ridiculous wealth twice over, first with her and then with Amalicia. The easy path. But both times he'd turned it down. Whatever the hole in his life was, filling it with money wasn't enough.
'I don't know how many times I've got to tell you, Trinica,' he said. 'You don't know me half as well as you think. You might have a price. I don't.'
At that, he saw the first flicker of uncertainty on her face. The smallest fracture in her surety.
Good, he thought bitterly. I hope it hurts, damn you. I hope you take it to your grave, and I hope you end up there real soon. I trusted you. But I reckon you don't know what trust is any more.
Grist pointed to Jez. 'Take her,' he told his men. 'The Captain too. Everyone else, lock 'em up down below.'
Jez and Frey were pulled out of the group. 'Hey! She's just a navvie! What do you want with her?' he demanded.
The end of Grist's cigar glowed. 'She's the reason you're here, Captain Frey. See, I need a Mane. And it just so happens you've got one on your crew. Now ain't that a twist?'
Thirty-Four
Jez stared at Frey's back as they were marched into the depths of the hangar at gunpoint. Grist and Crattle accompanied them, along with several of the Storm Dog's crew. Trinica came, too. Perhaps she wanted to enjoy the fruits of her treachery.
The Cap'n walked with slumped shoulders, crushed by Trinica's betrayal. He tried to conceal his pain, but it showed anyway. He'd put every ounce of his faith in that woman, and she'd let him down. Even before the Cap'n had confessed to them that he had a history with Trinica, she'd seen the connection between them. She'd sensed the depth of feeling he carried.
And Trinica? What did she feel? Nothing at all, it seemed. Nothing at all.
Damn it, Cap'n. You're a good man, but you make the worst choices.
It occurred to her that she should be worrying about herself, rather than the Cap'n. It was her that Grist was interested in, not Frey. Because she was a Mane. She wasn't sure why that was important to their enemy, and she wasn't keen on finding out.
But she'd never known the Cap'n so defeated. It hurt her to see him diminished that way.
