Duke Grephen is planning something.’
Trinica smiled. ‘Must I?’
Frey cursed her silently. She wasn’t giving anything away. He wanted to push her for more information, but she wouldn’t play the game. Telling her that he knew about Grephen was intended to lead her up the wrong path, but he couldn’t reveal that he knew about the coup, or her mysterious hideout. That would tip his hand.
‘One question,’ he said. ‘The ferrotype. The one on the Wanted posters. How did they get that, if you didn’t give it to them?’
‘Yes, I was surprised, too,’ she said. ‘We had it taken when we were up in the mountains. Do you remember?’
Frey remembered. He remembered a time of romantic adventure, a couple newly in love. He was a lowly cargo pilot and she was the daughter of his boss, one of the heirs to Dracken Industries. He was poor and she was rich, and she loved him anyway. It was breathless, dangerous, and they were both swept giddily along, careless of consequences, armoured by their own happiness.
‘It was my father who gave it to them, I’d imagine,’ she said. ‘I suppose the Navy had no pictures of you, and they knew you had worked for Dracken Industries before that. They were probably hoping for a staff photograph.’
‘He kept that one?’
‘He kept it because I was in it. I imagine that’s how he’d like to remember me.’
The Wanted posters had only shown Frey’s face, but in the full picture, Trinica was clinging to his arm, laughing. Laughing at nothing, really. Laughing just to laugh. He remembered the ferrotype perfectly. Her hair blowing, mouth open and teeth white. A rare, perfect capture; a frozen instant of natural, unforced joy. No one would connect that young girl with the woman sitting in front of him.
In that moment, Frey felt the tragedy of that loss. How cruel it was, that things had turned out the way they did.
But Trinica saw the expression on his face, and correctly guessed its cause. She always knew his thoughts, better than anyone.
‘Look at yourself, Darian. Cursing the fate that brought you here. One day, you’re going to realise that everything that’s happened to you has been your own fault.’
‘Dogshit,’ he spat, sadness turning to venom in an instant. ‘I’ve tried my damnedest. I tried to better myself.’
‘And yet here you are, ten years later, barely scraping a living. And I am the captain of a crew of fifty, infamous and rich.’
‘I’m not like you, Trinica. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon shoved up my arse. I didn’t have a good education. Some of us don’t get the luck.’
She looked at him for a long moment. Then her black eyes dropped to the face-down cards, scattered on the table.
‘I remember when you used to talk about Rake,’ she said, idly picking up a card and flipping it over. It was the Lady of Crosses. ‘You used to say everyone thought luck was a huge factor. They said it was all about the cards you were dealt. Mostly luck and a bit of skill.’ She flipped over another: Ten of Fangs. ‘You thought they were idiots. You knew it was mostly skill and a bit of luck.’
The Ace of Skulls came next. Frey hated that card. It ruined any hand in Rake, unless it could be made part of a winning combination, which could hardly ever be done.
‘A good player might occasionally lose to a mediocre one, but in the long run, the good players made money while the bad ones went broke,’ Trinica continued.
The
