I can't be responsible for this.
Thousands of lives. All that death would be on her head. Because she was a Mane. Because of the daemon that dwelt inside her.
I can't.
The Manes would come, and they'd give the Invitation to anyone they could, and they'd kill everyone else.
But there was Frey, still struggling, even with a gun to his head. Frey, her captain, the man who'd given her a home on the Ketty Jay when she'd despaired of ever finding one again.
'Thirty seconds,' said Crattle, who was consulting a pocket watch. Trinica looked on, unmoved by Frey's plight.
It wasn't a matter of making it work. It was a matter of preventing it from working. The sphere wanted to be used. Its power leaped eagerly to her, threatening to tip her, to bring on the trance that she knew would be the final step in activating it. Once she let her daemon have its head, it would call its brethren. The eager voices from the Wrack howled encouragement, battering at her resistance.
All those people on one side of the equation. Frey on the other.
'Twenty seconds.'
How could she watch his hand chopped off, then another, then a foot? If she held out now, could she really hold out till the end? What if she crumbled halfway through? That would be worse than death to Frey, to leave him without hands, and she'd still have lost.
It came down to a choice. Between the man she knew, and the thousands she didn't.
'Ten.'
All those people. Because I'm a Mane. I should have died back there in the snows that day.
But she hadn't. And that was part of her now. For better or worse.
'Five.'
She gave up her resistance. The sphere took her like a flood. The trance was almost instantaneous. Between blinks, the world turned to a hyper-real twilight. Her senses became superhumanly clear. She could hear guns firing in the hangar, a sound that had been muffled by the rock until now. Something was up. Bess was awake. She could hear her footsteps.
'Four.'
But whatever help might come, it would come too late to stop Frey being maimed. And she wouldn't allow that.
'Three.'
The silver lines on the sphere glowed with a spectral light, beaming out from within. Crattle stopped counting. He stared, entranced.
Then there was a terrible shriek, a hurricane of sound that tore through the room and blasted her senses white.
And with that, it began.
Thirty-Five
Harkins clutched the shotgun tight as he came down the stairs into the cargo hold of the Ketty Jay. He was trembling with fear and an awful, nauseous excitement. Every shadow could be the one hiding his enemy. Part of him dreaded the sight of that damned despicable cat. Another part, that voice which sometimes got defiant when there was nobody around to challenge it, was hoping Slag would show his face after all. A squeeze of the trigger, a bloody puff of fur, and all his troubles would be over.
Oh, who was he kidding? The noise alone would probably scare him witless. He'd deliberated for a long time between pistol and shotgun, on that basis. In the end, he'd picked the one that most suited his shooting style. He always closed his eyes and cringed away whenever he fired at someone, so accuracy was impossible. The shotgun was louder, but the scatter effect made it a bit more likely that he'd actually hit something.
He swallowed and made himself go down the stairs. Crates and boxes and vents: all possible ambush points. He wished he hadn't come aboard at all. But he had to get a gun. That was the thing. He had to get a gun, to save Jez.
He'd sat with his heart in his mouth, listening via Crake's daemonic earcuff to the gunfight at Grist's warehouse. He thrilled every time she spoke. She was so strong, so capable. He imagined himself battling alongside her, grim-faced, felling guards with a keen aim. And after they'd won, she'd be kind to him. She'd offer soothing words and encouragement, the way she sometimes did.
But then he'd heard the hangar doors slamming. Jez's voice. 'It's a trap!' And he knew they were betrayed.
After that, there was little more than a garble. The earcuffs had been taken off them, it seemed. The signal, weak at this distance, became weaker still. Sounds were muffled. It was hard to tell what was going on. Once in a while, he heard voices he knew. The Captain's, for one. And Jez. Sweet Jez.
She was still alive. She was in trouble. And he was the only one who could help her.
The past month had been hard on him. He'd spent the majority of it in the Firecrow's cockpit. It would have been easier if they hadn't been hopping around towns in the arctic, but the Firecrow had no heating when the engines weren't running, so he spent his nights cocooned in blankets, shivering. Harkins wasn't a reader - in fact, he didn't do much of anything except fly - so a large proportion of his time had been spent staring into space and thinking of nothing. The need to relieve himself drove him out now and then. He'd head into whatever town was nearby and use what facilities he could find. His contact with the crew was minimal. The only person he saw with any regularity was Jez, who brought him his meals.
He'd looked forward to those visits with a mixture of anticipation and dread. He loved to see her. She'd usually inquire how he was doing, even though she was often distracted. He'd babble something, and his tongue would run away with him, and eventually he'd stumble to a stop. It was embarrassing that she should see him that way. She knew why he was hiding. He was afraid of the cat. He thought that maybe she seemed a little less kind to him nowadays, and wondered if it was something to do with that. Had he failed her? Or did she have other things on her mind? After all, it must be a burden being a Mane.
Pinn had told him the news, gleefully, during one of the rare moments when he wasn't depressed about his own sorry love life. 'Your girlfriend's a Mane!' he crowed. 'She's the walking dead! How'd that be, eh? Humping a dead one!' He leered horribly and made a pumping motion with his hips. 'I always pegged you as a necromofelliac.'
Harkins had never heard of one of those before, but it didn't sound like something he wanted to be. Still, he wasn't particularly concerned by the news. Alive or dead or some combination of the two, she was the same old Jez to him. What did concern him was how the rest of the crew began to talk about her after it became known that she was a Mane. They were mistrustful and uncertain. She didn't deserve that.
He tried to keep her spirits up when she came to visit him, but he always got tongue-tied. Did she think he was like the others, muttering behind her back? He hoped not, but it was hard to tell. Damn, why couldn't he just make his mouth say what his heart felt? Why was he born with a knot between his brain and his voicebox?
Well, actions spoke louder than words anyway. And he needed to be brave. That fat fool Pinn had deserted them good and proper, so there was no one left but him. He needed to be strong for Jez. Somehow, he was going to save her.
He wondered how he'd possibly find the courage to single-handedly defeat Grist's gang of smugglers, if he couldn't deal with one elderly cat.
He hurried down the stairs, across the cargo hold and down the ramp. The Cap'n would have chewed him out for leaving it open, but he needed his escape route clear. He'd left the hood of his cockpit up as well, just to be
