report, when they found a downed dreadnought? I neglected to mention a couple o' things. Like how there were still Manes alive on it, and the Navy fought 'em back. And how one of 'em locked itself behind one of those daemonically guarded doors that your man Crake had so much fun gettin' through. And how, right after, a half-dozen dreadnoughts appeared. Appeared, Frey. A hole got punched in the sky, and they came sailin' through.' He puffed on his cigar. 'That takes power of a kind you and I can't imagine. Dad reckoned that whatever provided it, it was behind that door. And he was right.'
'What about the dreadnought we found?' asked Frey. 'Why didn't they use the sphere?'
'Maybe they didn't want to go back,' said Jez. 'They'd rejected the Manes. It killed them in the end.'
She shivered with the memory of the terrible, endless loneliness. But that's how we all live, every day. Sealed up in our own little worlds. We only know of each other what we choose to show.
Frey frowned. 'Listen, Grist. I had a chat with an Awakener, back on the All Our Yesterdays. He told me that thousands of people would die if that fell into the wrong hands. Now you're telling me it's just an alarm?'
'Oh, right,' said Grist. 'See, he was probably thinkin' of what'll happen when the alarm goes off. What'll happen to all the people in this city when them Manes turn up, after I activate this thing.' He turned and stared at Jez, his face hardening. 'Or rather, when you do.'
Crake sat with his back against the wall of the store room, and whistled a tune to himself.
'Dunno how you can be so damn calm, while we're cooped up in this place and the Cap'n and Jez are in who knows what kind of trouble,' said Malvery, who was pacing the floor. He walked up to the metal door that sealed them in, and hammered on it with his fist. 'Hey! We're freezing in here! Give us some rum, for pity's sake!' When he got no response, he pulled his coat tighter around him and continued to stomp up and down. Silo, sitting in the corner, watched him blandly.
'May I have your pocket watch, Malvery?' he asked. 'Trinica's men took mine. Presumably they thought it was possessed.'
Malvery took out his watch and tossed it over. Crake pressed the catch and the case sprang open.
'You late for something?' Malvery asked irritably.
'Oh, no,' said Crake. 'Right on time.'
He smiled wryly. It seemed like a long time since he'd smiled. As if a tombstone had been laying on his chest, heavy and cold, which was now gradually lifting away.
The grief he felt at the death of his niece was both old and new. He'd always known in his heart that he could never get her back, but he could never make himself believe it. Not until he'd tried. Now that he had, now that he'd seen the sheer impossibility of it, the weight of the task he'd placed upon himself was lessening day by day. It had taken Jez's harsh words to make him face up to himself.
It was strange. Bess, his niece, was dead. It was his responsibility, his hand that had wielded the blade. He would never shed the guilt of that. And yet he felt better now than he had for two years. He'd finally accepted what he'd done, instead of trying to change it.
It hurt. Of course, it hurt, like a bright blade in his guts. But it was a clean hurt. The pain of healing. Not the slow, grim death that he'd been trying to blot out with alcohol. For the first time since his niece had died, he saw light. Sharp and hard, but light. And he wouldn't look away, no matter how it brought the tears to his eyes.
Malvery was suspicious of Crake's smile. He narrowed his eyes. 'You've got something up your sleeve, haven't you?' He hunkered down next to Crake and poked him in the ribs with a meaty finger. 'What you up to, eh?' he asked.
'You remember the first time Dracken captured us?' he said. 'Just outside Retribution Falls?'
'Ain't likely to forget it. We all nearly got hanged on account of her.'
'We put down in the Blackendraft,' said Crake. 'An endless, trackless waste of ash, far as the eye could see. I put Bess to sleep so she wouldn't attack anyone and get us all killed. Trinica left her there when we flew off.'
'Right,' said Malvery. 'You were all in a gloom, thought you'd never see her again. But Jez found her. S'pose because of those Mane abilities she's got.' He paused. 'Never thought of that till now.'
'Yes. But if we hadn't got out of being hanged, or if Jez hadn't found Bess, then she'd have stayed asleep for ever. Like a metal statue in the middle of the wastes.'
'Where you heading with this, Crake?'
'Back in Marlen's Hook, you asked me if I'd done anything useful lately. Any new daemonic artefacts, any new techniques, that sort of thing.'
Malvery waved it off, embarrassed. 'Aw, mate. I was just giving you a kick in the arse, you know. Trying to get you to lay off the booze before you ended up like me.'
'I know,' said Crake. 'And I want to thank you for that. You and Jez, you both helped me a lot.'
Malvery shrugged. 'That's what friends do, right? They give it to you straight. Speaking of which, get back on the subject.'
'Look, the point was, what you said got me thinking. About that time with Bess. How it could happen again, and I might not be so lucky next time. If I put her to sleep, and I lost that damn whistle . . . then what? I might never be able to wake her up.'
'S'pose not. So what?'
'So, I taught her a few more whistles. A few more frequencies, you see. You can't hear them, and it takes a daemonist to make them work, but to Bess they're loud and clear. They make her do different things, rather than just put her to sleep indefinitely.'
'Like what?'
He looked at Malvery's pocket watch again. 'Like putting her to sleep for . . . oh, about half an hour.'
Malvery grinned. Crake grinned with him. Malvery took back his pocket watch and snapped the case shut.
'It's bloody good to have you back, mate,' said the doctor.
In the distance, the gunshots and screams began.
Something was amiss on the Ketty Jay.
Slag opened his eyes slowly and licked his chops. The fur around his face still carried the taste of rat blood. But it wasn't rats that had brought him out of his doze.
He got up and loped through the ventilation ducts, towards the cargo hold. Slag was the master of these hidden byways. It was his mission in life to keep them clear of invaders. The world outside was full of those curious beings that occasionally - unwisely - tried to touch him or pick him up. But they were too big to get into the vents. Here, it was Slag versus the rats. And while there had been some epic struggles in his time, fought against large and vicious opponents, Slag had always dominated. He'd never come across an enemy he couldn't beat. He didn't know the meaning of defeat.
He slipped out of the duct into the cargo hold. Cold air was blowing in from the outside, stirring his whiskers and chilling his nose. The cargo ramp was open. Sounds came to him from beyond: people shouting to one another, the clank of machinery, the roar of thrusters as an aircraft accelerated overhead. The sharp tang of aerium gas, vented from a freighter that was touching down. The busy industry of landing pads was terrifying in contrast to the safety of his enclosed world. It was an assault on the senses that confused and intimidated him.
The cargo ramp being open was not unusual. Slag padded out into the centre of the room and sniffed.
That was it. That was what had woken him.
The cowardly one had dared to come aboard.
He made a sinister crooning noise from low in his throat. The thought of that pathetic specimen on his territory made him angry. He listened, and heard scurrying footsteps in the corridor overhead, the main passageway that ran down the spine of the aircraft.
This wasn't the first time, either. He knew his prey had sneaked aboard several times recently. Sometimes Slag detected him and chased him away. Other times, he'd been busy in the depths of the aircraft, and all that was left when he emerged was the sour smell of fear and sweat.
Slag's instinct was to chase him off again. But he was an old cat, a veteran of many secret wars, and he'd learned a thing or two. He knew how the rats would keep coming back, no matter how many times he killed them. There were always more. Unless he hunted them down to their lair. Kill them there, kill the mothers, and the rats didn't come back.
He could chase off the intruder, but the intruder would return. It was time to take an altogether more crafty
