invisible, but her irises were completely black, dilated to the size of coins. It took him a moment to realise they were contact lenses, and not the product of some daemonic possession. Worn for effect, no doubt, but certainly effective.
‘Hello, Frey,’ she said. Her voice was lower than he remembered. ‘Long time.’
‘You look terrible,’ he said as he sat.
‘So do you,’ she replied. ‘Life on the run must not agree with you.’
‘Actually, I’m getting to enjoy it. Catching my second wind, so to speak.’
She looked around the room. ‘A Rake den? You haven’t changed.’
‘You have.’
‘I had to.’
He gestured at the cards on the table between them. ‘Want to play?’
‘I’m here to parley, Frey, not play your little game.’
Frey sat back in his chair and regarded her. ‘Alright, he said. Business it is. You know, there was a time when you liked to sit and talk for hours.’
‘That was then,’ she said. ‘This is now. I’m not the person you remember.’
That was an understatement. The woman before him was one of the most notorious freebooters in Vardia. She’d engineered a mutiny to become captain of the Delirium Trigger and her reputation for utter ruthlessness had earned her the respect of the underworld. Rumour held her responsible for acts of bloody piracy and murder, as well as daring treasure snatches and near-impossible feats of navigation. She was feared by some and envied by others, a dread queen of the skies.
Hard to believe he’d almost married her.
Rabban was one of the nine primary cities of Vardia, and like the others it bore the same name as the duchy it dominated. Though it had suffered terribly in the Aerium Wars, it was still large enough to need over a dozen docks for aircraft. These docks were the first thing to be repaired after the bombing stopped six years ago. Some were little more than islands in a sea of shattered stone, but even these were busy with passenger shuttles, cargo haulers and supply vessels. Transport by air had been Vardia’s only viable option for over a century and, even in the aftermath of a disaster, there was no way to do without it.
Only a few of the docks, however, were equipped to deal with a craft the size of the Delirium Trigger.
She rested inside a vast iron hangar, alongside frigates and freighters: the heavyweights of the skies. A web of platforms, gantries and walkways surrounded it at deck-height, busy with an ant swarm of engineers, dock workers and swabbers. Everything was being checked, everything cleaned, and a complex exchange of services and trade goods was negotiated. A craft like the Delirium Trigger, with a crew of fifty, needed a lot of maintenance.
The Delirium Trigger’s purser was a Free Dakkadian named Ominda Rilk. He had the fair skin and hair typical of his race, the small frame and narrow shoulders, and the squinting eyes that still elicited much mockery in the Vardic press. Dakkadians were famed and ridiculed for their administrative abilities. Education and numeracy were much prized among their kind: it made them useful to their Samarlan masters. But Dakkadians, unlike Murthians, could own possessions, and they could earn their freedom.
It was unusual to find a Dakkadian in Vardia, where there was still much bad feeling towards them after the Aerium Wars. They were seen as pernickety coin-counters and misers by the more generous souls; the rest thought they were cunning, underhanded, murdering bastards. But still, here was Ominda Rilk. He stood among the crates and palettes waiting to be loaded onto the Delirium Trigger, examining everything
